Against Adimantus, a Disciple of Mani 14–16

On the text in Deuteronomy: “According to the desire of your soul, kill and eat all meat according to the pleasure which the Lord has given you; but take care not to eat blood, but pour it out like water upon the ground.” Adimantus thinks that what the Lord says in the gospel is contrary to these words of the law: “Let your hearts not be weighed down with indigestion and drunkenness and worldly cares”; and what the apostle says, “It is good not to eat meat or drink wine”; and again, “You cannot share in the table of the Lord and the table of demons.” But we say that all these things, whether written in the Old or in the New Testament, were set down as their own reasons required, and we show that they are not opposed to each other. Yet he himself could have noticed, in the very words he set down from the Old Testament, that the saying “According to the desire of your soul, kill and eat all meat” does not refer to immoderate gluttony, since there follows: “according to the pleasure which the Lord has given you.” For the Lord has not given you immoderate pleasure, but as much as suffices for the sustenance and health of nature. Whoever follows immoderate gluttony follows his own vice, not the pleasure which the Lord gave; and so what is set down in the gospel is not contrary: “Let your hearts not be weighed down with indigestion and drunkenness and worldly cares.” For when anyone fills up nothing but the pleasure the Lord has given, that is, a moderate and natural one, his heart is not weighed down with indigestion and drunkenness and worldly cares. As for what the apostle says about not eating meat and not drinking wine, he did not command this because he thought those things unclean, as these people suppose, who in their error hurl into error those they have persuaded of such things. But since he himself has given the reason why he said this, this saying need not be interpreted or expounded by us. It is enough to join the whole passage from the apostle's letter to this discussion, so that both the reason why the apostle said this and the deceit of these people may clearly appear, who pick out certain fragments of the Scriptures to deceive the unskilled, without connecting what is written above and below, from which the will and intention of the writer can be understood. So the apostle says: “Welcome the one who is weak in faith, not for disputes over opinions. One believes he may eat everything; but let the one who is weak eat vegetables. Let the one who eats not despise the one who does not eat, and let the one who does not eat not judge the one who eats; for God has welcomed him. Who are you to judge another's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand. One judges between days, another judges every day alike. Let each abound in his own understanding. The one who observes the day observes it for the Lord, and the one who eats eats for the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and the one who does not eat abstains for the Lord and gives thanks to God. For none of us lives for himself, and none dies for himself. If we live, we live for the Lord; if we die, we die for the Lord. So whether we live or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and rose again, that he might be Lord of the dead and the living. But you, why do you judge your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of the Lord. For it is written: As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. So each of us will give account for himself. Let us therefore no longer judge one another, but rather judge this: not to put a stumbling block or occasion of offense before your brothers. I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is common through him; but to one who thinks anything to be common, to him it is common. For if your brother is grieved because of food, you are no longer walking in love. Do not by your food destroy him for whom Christ died. So let not our good be blasphemed. For the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Whoever serves Christ in this pleases God and is approved by human beings. So let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding. Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food. All things indeed are clean, but it is evil for the person who eats with offense. It is good not to eat meat or drink wine, or anything by which your brother is offended. The faith that you have, keep to yourself before God. Blessed is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves. But whoever doubts is condemned if he eats, because it is not from faith; and whatever is not from faith is sin.” Is anyone's interpretation needed in order to understand both why the apostle said this and with what malice these people pluck certain pieces out of the Scriptures to trap the unskilled? For the apostle said both that all things are clean according to faith, and that they are unclean to the one who thinks them unclean, and that one must abstain from them when they are taken with offense, that is, when some weak person thinks he must abstain from all meat lest he come upon sacrificial meat, and so can think that one who eats does it in honor of idols and be gravely offended by it, although sacrificial meat itself, if taken in faith by someone who does not know, defiles no one. Hence in another place the same apostle forbids asking questions when something is bought from the market, or when someone invited by an unbeliever sees meat served to him at his table, meat which these people think unclean not because of the sacrifice but because it is meat; whereas the apostle proclaims that all things are clean, that every creature of God is good, and that all things are sanctified through the word and prayer, and yet that one should abstain from them if perhaps some weak person is offended. And in one place he pointed to these people most plainly when he said that in the last times there would be some who forbid marriage and abstain from foods which God created. For he properly designates those who abstain from such foods not in order to rein in their own desire or to spare another's weakness, but because they think meat itself unclean and deny that God is its creator. But let us hold to the apostolic teaching which says that to the clean all things are clean, keeping the moderation of the gospel, so that our hearts may not be weighed down with indigestion and drunkenness and worldly cares. As for what the same apostle says, “You cannot share in the table of the Lord and the table of demons,” I do not see why the Manichaeans believed it should be set against this passage of the law as if contrary. For the law is not speaking of sacrifices when it says in Deuteronomy, “According to the desire of your soul, kill and eat all meat according to the pleasure which the Lord has given you,” but of foods that belong to human nourishment. But since the Manichaeans say that even when any animals are prepared for a person's dinner it is a sacrifice, by their own understanding they thought these things contrary. That is why they also cited the passage where the apostle says, “What the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God,” although the apostle was speaking most plainly of victims offered to demons in a temple, not of the foods people prepare for themselves. For he says: “What then? Do I say that what is sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? But that what they sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. I do not want you to become partners of demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot share in the table of the Lord and the table of demons. Or are we provoking the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? All things are lawful, but not all things are helpful; all things are lawful, but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own, but that of the other. Eat whatever is sold in the market, asking no questions for conscience' sake. For the earth is the Lord's and its fullness. If any of the unbelievers invites you and you wish to go, eat whatever is set before you, raising no question for conscience' sake. But if anyone says to you, ‘This is sacrificial meat,’ do not eat, for the sake of the one who pointed it out, and for conscience' sake; I mean not your conscience but the other's. For why is my freedom judged by another's conscience? If I partake with thanks, why am I blasphemed for that for which I give thanks? So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” Let the Manichaeans pay attention to this, and see in what sense it is said in Deuteronomy: “According to the desire of your soul, kill and eat all meat according to the pleasure which the Lord has given you.” For what was commanded the Jews about not eating certain meats, which were called unclean, serves to signify unclean people, who are marked out by figures in the ancient Scriptures. For just as that ox, which he forbids to be muzzled while threshing, signifies the preacher of the gospel, as the apostle most plainly explains, so also the things that were forbidden signify certain kinds of human uncleanness which are not received into the fellowship of the body of Christ, that is, into the stable and everlasting Church. For as far as food is concerned, it appears most clearly that nothing at all is unclean, but that it is evil for the person who eats with offense.

On the text written in Leviticus: “Separate the unclean from the clean, and let no one eat the meat of the camel, the ass, the hare, the pig, the eagle, the kite, the raven, the vulture, and the rest.” Nowhere can the soul of this man, who threw up chapters of both Testaments as if opposed and contrary to each other, be caught more plainly full of tricks and frauds than in this passage, where he mentioned that it is written in Leviticus that one should abstain from the meat of some animals. For against this saying he thought he should set the passage of the gospel where the Lord says: “Nothing that goes into a person defiles him, but the things that come out of him defile him.” If he did this unwittingly, nothing is blinder; if knowingly, nothing more wicked. Had he not himself set down a little before the testimony of the apostle saying, “It is good, brothers, not to eat meat or drink wine,” when he wanted the New Testament to oppose the Old, where it is said, “According to the desire of your soul, kill and eat all meat”? How then does he now like the Lord's saying, in which he says that nothing that goes into a person defiles him, but that the things that come out of a person defile him? Where will he hide from this saying? Where will he flee? Let him tell me: when does he command, with a perverse and superstitious fancy of self-restraint, that the uncleanness of meats must be shunned and kept apart from the food of the saints? For surely, if it is true that the things that go into a person do not defile him, the Manichaeans say in great error that foods are unclean when people eat meat. But if such foods are unclean, what will they do with this testimony, brought forward on the gospel's divine authority, where the Lord says that a person is not defiled by the things that go into him but by those that come out of him? Or will they perhaps say, as they usually do when the authority of the Scriptures presses them, that this chapter was inserted into the gospel by corrupters of the Scriptures? Why then does Adimantus use this chapter as a witness and try from it to attack the Old Testament, when he himself is laid low by it? For when some catholic Christian, who reveres and understands both Scriptures, answers him that these are not contrary, because those commands about the meats of certain animals, which a still fleshly people was commanded not to eat, were set down to signify human ways of life which the Church, which is the body of the Lord, cannot receive into the stable and everlasting bond of its unity, rejecting them as unclean foods and not converting them into its inner parts; so that all those commands laid on a fleshly people prophesied the future discipline of a spiritual people; and that therefore they do not conflict with the Lord's saying, in which he says most truly that a person is not defiled by what goes into him as food (for that saying lays burdens on servants, this one now shakes the yoke of servitude off free people; and yet that one was so spoken that the burdens of the servants foretell the faith of the free; for all things, as the apostle says, happened to them in figure for our sake, upon whom the end of the ages has come; if, then, what they suffered happened in figure, what they were instructed they received in figure): when I have answered thus, and shown in this way that these two chapters brought from the two Testaments are not contrary, what will he do, against whom a witness gives the gravest testimony, a witness whom he himself produced against his adversary? For he himself cited from the gospel the testimony of the Lord saying that a person is not defiled by the foods that go into him; and he himself does not cease admonishing and teaching that one must abstain from meat as from unclean food. And yet he felt how great a wound he was inflicting on himself, and with how great a blow he would wound himself on the rebound. For lest anyone ask him and say, “How then do you forbid eating meat, if the Lord says, as you yourself mention, ‘Nothing that goes into a person defiles him, but the things that come out of him defile him’?”, he wanted, as it were, to apply a remedy, to no purpose, to a mortal wound. For he set down the gospel testimony itself thus: “In the gospel,” he says, “the Lord says to the crowd: Hear and understand, nothing that goes into a person defiles him,” and so on. His mentioning that the Lord said this to the crowd shows nothing else than that he did what he did not from ignorance but from malice, so that he might afterwards tell his hearers that the Lord said these things to the crowd, not to the few saints, such as they want themselves to be thought; so that, since they permit their hearers, as still unclean, to eat meat, but think it criminal and wicked for themselves, as already clean, the Lord might seem to have held this view too, since he taught these things not to a few saints but to the crowds. O most wicked man, so sure of the carelessness of the human race for hiding his deceptions! For he did not believe that anyone would exist who would take up the gospel and read what follows, and would find a man hiding snares for the unwary and less careful in the very pastures where the Lord feeds his flocks. For the disciples, disturbed by these words and believing that the Lord had spoken not literally but figuratively when he said that a person is not defiled by what goes into him through food (since the disciples too were Jews, who had received from childhood an ingrained habit of shunning certain meats as food), came to him and said: “Do you know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard the saying?” And he answered and said: “Every plant which my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them be: they are blind and leaders of the blind. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both fall into a pit.” So, although he called the unbelief of the Jews a planting which the heavenly Father had not planted, Peter, still thinking that it was a parable and that the Jews had been rebuked and called blind because they could not understand it, answered and said to him: “Explain this parable to us.” And he, showing most plainly that it was not a parable but a literal statement, said to them: “Are you too still without understanding? Do you not understand that everything that enters the mouth goes into the belly and is cast out into the drain? But what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart, and that defiles a person. For from the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, acts of sexual immorality, thefts, false witness, blasphemies; these are what defile a person. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a person.” The Jews had raised the question about unwashed hands, and on that occasion the Lord pronounced his saying in general about the things that enter the mouth, go into the belly, and are cast into the drain, that is, about our food. So although it is written that he called the crowds to himself and said, “Not what enters the mouth defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth,” it is clear enough, as was said a little before, with what fear this man added this to his words in which he cited such a testimony: so that he might have an answer for those who raised the question with him why the leaders of the Manichaeans think it wicked for themselves to eat meat, namely so that the Lord might seem to have granted what he said only to the crowds, not to the elect. But since it is made clear from what follows that the Lord also answered Peter, who asked him privately, and the disciples who heard him, whom he was certainly bringing forward to the summit of the Church, in such a way that he testified that he had not said those things in a parable and showed that they applied to all, these people have no ground on which to take food from people's mouths and bind them with the noose of superstition. Perhaps one of them may say: “Explain, then, what is signified by the meat of the pig and camel and hare and kite and raven and the rest, from which the law commands abstinence.” I will not, because it is long. But suppose I cannot: does it follow that no one can? There are already countless volumes in which these things are explained. For refuting these people, however, it is enough for us that not I but the apostle says that those observances are a shadow of things to come, when he forbids them to be kept in servile fashion and yet declares that they signify something, saying: “Let no one judge you in food or in drink or in regard to a feast day or a new moon or sabbaths, which is a shadow of things to come.” So once those things to come, which were signified in those observances, came through our Lord Jesus Christ, the servile observances were removed, but their interpretations are kept by the free. For whatever signified the Church to come is prophecy. And you have the same apostle saying: “Do not quench the Spirit; do not despise prophecy; read all things, hold fast what is good.” So the divine Scripture must be read, the arrangement of the Holy Spirit recognized, and the prophecy looked into; and fleshly servitude must be rejected and free understanding retained.

On the text in Deuteronomy: “Keep and sanctify the day, as the Lord has commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work; but on the seventh day, the day of the Sabbath, feast to the Lord your God, doing no work, you or your son or your daughter or your male or female servant, your ox and your ass and all your beasts and your tenant; let your manservant and your maidservant rest as you do. Remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and the Lord your God rescued you with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. That is why the Lord commanded you to keep the seventh day.” And again it is written in Genesis, where he speaks to Abraham about circumcision: “Keep my covenant,” he says, “you and your seed that will be after you. This is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and you and your seed: you shall circumcise every male in the flesh of their foreskin; and let this be the sign of the covenant between me and you. On the eighth day you shall circumcise all the males in your nation, so that you circumcise also the one born in the house and the one bought, besides the foreigner; and this shall be the covenant in your nation. And every male who does not circumcise his foreskin shall lose his soul from the midst of the people, because he has broken my covenant.” Adimantus sets out all these words of the Old Testament in order to oppose the New Testament to them, and he asserts that what the Lord says in the gospel about the proselyte is contrary: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, who travel around sea and land to make one proselyte; and when you have made him, he will be a son of hell much more than you are.” As if the Lord called the proselyte a son of hell because he is circumcised and observes the Sabbath, and not rather because he is compelled to imitate the depraved morals and wicked way of life of the Jews, not in that they observe the commandments of the law, but in that they act against the law. He says this of them most plainly in another place, where he says that they reject the commandment of God in order to establish their own tradition: because, though the law commanded that father and mother be honored, they themselves laid down a way for parents to be dishonored. And likewise when he says to them: “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, who have the keys of the kingdom of heaven; you neither enter yourselves nor allow others to enter.” Or when in another place he commanded his hearers to obey the words of the scribes and Pharisees but not to imitate their deeds. For he says: “They sit on the seat of Moses; do what they say, but do not do what they do; for they say and do not do.” In this passage the Lord both confirms the authority of the law given through Moses and yet shows most plainly that the morals of those who did not obey the law they had received must be guarded against and shunned. By these perversities of theirs they brought it about that, when any Gentile had passed over to their law, that is, had become a proselyte, he took on their morals and became a son of hell much more than they were themselves. For they took great pains that someone from the Gentiles should become a Jew, and once he had become a Jew they compelled him to imitate their very bad morals. Nor could Adimantus notice that what he cites from the apostle as contrary is not contrary at all, because his whole eye was intent not on examining Scripture but on finding fault with it. For he cites the apostle saying: “Was anyone called circumcised? Let him not draw on a foreskin. Was anyone called in foreskin? Let him not be circumcised; for foreskin is nothing and circumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God.” What is plainer than that the apostle commands here that each should remain as he was called? For when the realities came of which those observances were shadows, this was done to show that hope must not be placed in the shadows themselves, but in the realities which those shadows signified would come, that is, Christ and the Church. And so all those things were by then empty; yet the apostle commands that they be disregarded as superfluous rather than removed as harmful, so that if any Jew had believed in Christ, he should not be forbidden, to avoid offending his own people, to remain in those superfluous things, yet should not think his salvation was established in them; for it is not those signs but what they signify that bring one into salvation. And so foreskin is nothing and circumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God. And when he says in another place, “Would that those who trouble you would even cut themselves off,” the apostle does not say this because circumcision is contrary to the gospel, as the Manichaeans think; what is contrary to the gospel is that anyone should desert the reality figured by that shadow and follow the emptiness of the shadow itself. This is what those wanted who imposed the yoke of circumcision, as necessary for salvation, on Gentiles believing in Christ, when a shadow was no longer to be figured in the body, but the reality itself was to be carried in the heart. And what he says, “You observe days and sabbaths and solemnities; I fear for you, lest I have labored over you in vain,” is not in fact written as Adimantus puts it. For the apostle does not name the Sabbath there. He says: “You observe days and years and seasons; I fear for you, lest I have labored over you in vain.” But suppose it was said of the Sabbath: do we too not say that these things are not to be observed, but rather those which they signify? For they observed them servilely, not understanding to the signification and foretelling of what realities they pertained. This is what the apostle blames in them and in all who serve the creature rather than the Creator. For we too solemnly observe the Lord's day and Easter and any other Christian festivals of days; but since we understand what they point to, we observe not the times but what is signified by those times. The Manichaeans, however, find fault with these things as if they observed no days and seasons. But when they are questioned about these according to the opinion of their sect, they try to explain everything so that they seem to observe not the times themselves but the realities of which they are signs. That these realities are fabulous and utterly false is shown in other places; it is said now so that they may be compelled to admit with their own mouth that such things can be celebrated reasonably. And so it is evident that circumcision of the flesh was both rightly imposed on servants and rightly understood by the free. We therefore reject it as fleshly, with the apostle, and approve it as spiritual, with the apostle; and we do not observe the rest of the Sabbath in time, but understand the temporal sign and direct the gaze of the heart to the eternal rest which that sign signifies. So we reject the observance of times with the apostle, and we hold the understanding of temporal signs with the apostle; and we approve the difference of the two Testaments in such a way that in the one are the burdens of servants, in the other the joys of the free; in the one the prefiguring of our possession is recognized, in the other the possession itself is held. The apostle interprets the Sabbath in Hebrews when he says, “So there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.” He also interprets circumcision when he says of Abraham, “And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of faith.” So I hold the apostolic interpretation spiritually, and by freedom I disregard the fleshly observance of servitude, revering God as the author of both Testaments, who both set against the old man as he fled, as a Lord, something to fear, and opened to the new man as he returned, as a Father, something to love.