Against Adimantus, a Disciple of Mani 17–21

On the text in Exodus: “If you listen with your ear to my voice and do whatever I command you, I will hate those who hate you and afflict those who afflict you; my angel will go before you and will lead you to the Amorites and Perizzites and Canaanites and Jebusites and Girgashites, and you shall kill them. Do not worship their gods nor do their works, but overthrow them utterly and blot out their memory.” Against these words thus cited from the old books, Adimantus sets as contrary what is written in the gospel, where the Lord says: “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, and do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute you.” In this passage we must first see that what he pointed out was written in the old law about killing enemies ought to have been enough for a man who wanted to show contradictions. For the Lord's command about loving enemies certainly concerned human beings, who can be converted to salvation through our patience and love, as anyone understands and as has very often been shown by examples. What then does he mean by thinking he should add what follows, where it is written, “Do not worship their gods nor do their works, but overthrow them utterly and blot out their memory,” unless the Manichaeans compel us to love the gods of the Gentiles too, and think that what the Lord says in the gospel, “Love your enemies,” applies not only to human beings but also to demons, or even to idols? If that is so, who would not detest such madness? But if they do not think so, this man went badly astray in choosing to cite the Old Testament command that the superstitions of the Gentiles be overthrown, when he wanted to set against it as contrary what is written in the New about loving enemies. We, however, do not say that what was said to that people in the old books about killing human enemies is contrary to this gospel command by which the Lord commands us to love our enemies, since that killing of enemies suited a people still fleshly, to whom the law had been given as a tutor, as the apostle says. But as for those who were then holy and spiritual in that people, very few, like Moses, like the prophets, with what spirit they carried out that killing of enemies, whether they loved those whom they killed, is quite hidden from the untaught and the ungodly, who love their blindness; and since they are not fit to see these things, they must rather be pressed by the weight of authority. For what does the apostle mean when he says: “For I, absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged, as if present, the one who has done this, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, you and my spirit being gathered with the power of our Lord Jesus, to hand such a one over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus”? What does that killing which these people greatly exaggerate and spread about invidiously involve, except the destruction of the flesh? But since the apostle explained with what spirit he acted, he made it clear enough that punishment can proceed against an enemy with love. And yet here the destruction of the flesh may perhaps be understood in another way too, as happening through repentance. But they themselves read apocryphal scriptures, which they even call most uncorrupted, where it is written that the apostle Thomas cursed a man by whom he had been struck with the palm of the hand through rashness, the man not knowing who he was, and that the curse took effect at once. For when that man, being the attendant at the banquet, went out to the spring to bring water, he was killed and torn to pieces by a lion; and so that this might be made known to frighten others, a dog brought his hand to the tables where the apostle was dining. And so, when those who did not know asked the cause and it was revealed to them, they were turned to great fear and great honor of the apostle; and from this came the beginning of commending the gospel. If anyone wanted to turn the Manichaeans' teeth against themselves, how bitingly he could find fault with this! But since there too the spirit in which it was done is not passed over in silence, the love of the one who punished is seen. For in that scripture one reads that the apostle prayed for the man on whom temporal punishment had fallen, that he might be spared at the future judgment. If, then, in the time of the New Testament, when love is above all commended, fear was divinely cast upon fleshly people by visible punishments, how much more must we understand that this suited that people in the time of the Old Testament, whom the fear of the law restrained like a tutor? For this is the shortest and plainest difference between the two Testaments: fear and love. The one belongs to the old man, the other to the new; yet both were brought forth and joined by the most merciful arrangement of the one God. And in the Old Scripture the spirit of those who punished is passed over in silence, because the very few spiritual men knew by divine revelation what they were doing, so that the people, for whom terror was useful, might be tamed by a most severe command; so that, just as they saw ungodly enemies and worshipers of idols handed over into their hands to be killed, they themselves might dread being handed over into the hands of their enemies if they despised the commands of the true God and slipped into the worship of idols and the ungodliness of the Gentiles. For when they themselves sinned in a similar way, punishment fell on them in a like manner. But all this temporal punishment frightens weak minds, so that it may instruct those brought up under discipline and turn them away from eternal and inexpressible punishments, because fleshly people fear more what God punishes in the present than what he threatens for the future. So there can be love in one who punishes, as everyone shows with his own son when he restrains him with the most severe correction as he slides into very bad ways, and the more so the more he loves him and thinks he can be corrected in this way. People do not kill the sons they love when they want to correct them, because many hold this life to be a great good and place all their hope of bringing up their sons in this life. And faithful and wise people, who believe that there is another, better life and know it in part as far as they can, do not themselves punish by killing when they want to correct their sons, because they believe they can be corrected in this life. But God, who knows what to give to each, punishes by killing whomever he wills, whether through human beings or by the hidden order of things, not because he hates them insofar as they are human beings, but insofar as they are sinners. For in those very old books we read it said to God: “And you hate nothing of the things you have made”; but he disposes all things, whether by punishments or by rewards, with justice governing. Was not the apostle Paul speaking to Christian believers when he said: “Let a person examine himself, and so eat of the bread and so drink of the cup. For whoever eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks judgment on himself, not discerning the body of the Lord. That is why many among you are weak and sick, and a good number are sleeping. But if we judged ourselves, we would certainly not be judged. But when we are judged, we are corrected by the Lord, so that we may not be condemned with this world”? See, it is evident that God corrects with love, not only by weaknesses and illnesses but even by temporal deaths, those whom he does not wish to condemn with the world. Let these people pay attention to this and see how ungodly nations could be handed over to be killed into the hands of a people that, though still fleshly, worshiped the one God, while any spiritual people in that nation understood God's arrangement without hatred of anyone; and see how what the Lord commands us in the gospel, to love our enemies, is not contrary, although he himself promises vengeance on them, when he brings in the comparison of that judge who, though he was unjust, neither fearing God nor respecting human beings, could not bear the daily pleas of the widow asking him to avenge her, and heard her so as not to be troubled further; from this comparison he said that God, who is most kind and most just, much more avenges his sons on their enemies. Let these people dare to raise a question against him and say, if they can: “Why is it that you commanded us to love our enemies, and you arrange to avenge us on them?” Or is he perhaps going to act against the will of his saints by punishing and condemning those whom they love? No; rather let them turn from this slanderous blindness to God and understand his will in both Testaments, lest they be found on the left side among those to whom the Lord is going to say: “Go into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you did not give me food to eat,” and so on. For these wretches are displeased that God handed over enemies to his people to be killed; and they themselves forbid bread to be given to a beggar, not an enemy but a suppliant. Let them rather understand that there can be punishment without hatred, which few understand; and yet as long as it is not understood, the reader of the books of both Testaments must be tossed about with great labor or error and think the Scriptures contrary to each other. This punishment without hatred the apostles had not yet grasped in their minds when, angry at those who would not receive them as guests, they asked the Lord whether he wished them to call down fire from heaven, as Elijah had done, to consume the inhospitable people. Then the Lord answered them, saying that they did not know whose spirit they were sons of, and that he had come to set free, not to destroy, because they wanted with a hostile spirit to destroy those whom they wished consumed by fire. But afterwards, when they had been filled with the Holy Spirit and made perfect, so that they could now love even their enemies, they received the power of punishing, because they could now punish without hatred. The apostle Peter too used this power, in the book which these people do not accept because it plainly contains the coming of the Paraclete, that is, of the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom he sent to those who were mourning when he had ascended from their sight into heaven. For a comforter is sent to the sorrowful, according to that saying of the same Lord: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” He also said: “Then the sons of the bridegroom will mourn, when the bridegroom is taken away from them.” In that book, then, where it is most plainly declared that the Holy Spirit, whom the Lord had promised as Comforter, had come, we read that at Peter's sentence people fell down and died, a husband and wife who had dared to lie to the Holy Spirit. These people find fault with this in great blindness, while in the apocrypha they read as a great work both what I mentioned about the apostle Thomas, and that Peter's own daughter was made paralyzed by her father's prayers and a gardener's daughter died at the prayer of Peter himself; and they answer that this was good for them, that the one should be paralyzed and the other die; yet they do not deny that it was done at the apostle's prayers. But who told them that it was not good for the ungodly nations to be killed, which they pretend to marvel at, mocking that they were divinely handed over into the hands of the people of the Jews? And when the apostles did those things not from hatred but with good will, from what do these people prove that the spiritual men who were in that people hated those whom divine justice commanded to be removed from this life through them? Let them rather restrain their rashness and not deceive the unskilled, who either have no leisure to read, or do not want to read, or read with a perverse mind and do not notice that the mercy and the severity of God are both commended in the writings of both Testaments. For about love of an enemy, so that evil is not repaid for evil, is it not read in the old books: “O Lord my God, if I have done this, if there is iniquity in my hands, if I have repaid evil to those who repaid me, may I deservedly fall empty before my enemies”? Who would say this, except one who knew that it pleases God that no one should repay evil for evil? But it belongs to the perfect to hate nothing in sinners but the sins, while loving the people themselves; and when they punish, not to punish with the bitterness of cruelty but with the moderation of justice, lest the very letting go of a sin harm the sinner more than the penalty of punishment. Yet righteous men did not do this except by divine authority, lest anyone think he is allowed at random to kill whomever he wishes, or prosecute him at law, or afflict him with any punishments. Sometimes this divine authority is stated openly in the Scriptures, sometimes it is hidden, so that the reader may be instructed by what is plain and exercised by what is obscure. Certainly David received King Saul, his enemy and persecutor, most ungrateful and most hostile, into his power, to do to him what he wished; and he chose to spare rather than to kill. For he had not been commanded to kill, but neither had he been forbidden; indeed he had even heard from God that he might do with impunity whatever he wished to his enemy; and yet he turned so great a power to gentleness. Let someone tell me whom he feared when he would not kill. We cannot say that he feared the man whom he had received into his power, nor God, who had given him. So where there was neither difficulty in killing nor fear, love spared the enemy. See, David the warrior fulfilled the command of Christ which we have received, to love our enemies. And would that these people imitated this, who have twisted the human feeling of mercy into I know not what cruel ravings! For while they believe that bread weeps, which cannot happen, they do not hold it out to a human being whom they see weeping. Perhaps they may say, as the blind usually hurl insane abuse, that David, who spared his enemy, was better than God, who had given him the power to kill; as if God did not know to whom he gave this power. He certainly knew the will of his servant; but so that the love of an enemy which was already known to God in David's heart might become known to other people too for imitation, he gave him the enemy into his power, an enemy whom he did not yet wish killed, because of a certain arrangement of things that was to be fulfilled through him. Thus David's goodness was commended, so that people might have something to love, and Saul's wickedness was put off to a more fitting end, so that people might have something to fear.

On the text in Deuteronomy: “If you listen with your ear to the voice of the Lord your God, blessed are you in your field, blessed are you in your meadow, blessed is the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land and the offspring of your beasts and the herd of your oxen and the flock of your sheep; blessed are you in your coming in and your going out.” They say that this is contradicted in the gospel by: “If anyone wishes to follow me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For what does it profit a person if he gains the whole world but suffers the loss of his soul? Or what will a person give in exchange for his soul?” But by that rule it is shown not to be contrary, by which it must by now be known that fleshly and temporal rewards were fittingly promised to a still fleshly people, yet by the one God to whom all creation, higher and lower, belongs. For certainly Adimantus himself set down a testimony from the gospel where the Lord says: “Do not swear, either by heaven, because it is his throne, or by the earth, because it is the footstool of his feet.” This is written in the old books as well: “Heaven is my throne, the earth the footstool of my feet.” What wonder, then, if he gives the goods of his throne to those who serve him spiritually, and the goods of the footstool of his feet to those who serve him in a fleshly way, since the spirit is higher and the flesh lower, as heavenly things are higher and earthly lower? Although all those things, that is, field and meadow and fruit of the womb and fruit of the land and of the beasts and herd of oxen and flock of sheep, can also be understood spiritually; but that discussion is not relevant now. But even in the New Testament itself, whose reward and inheritance belongs to the new man, the Lord nonetheless promises to those very people whom he wants to despise temporal things in order to serve him in the gospel a multiplication of those same things in this age, saying that they will receive a hundredfold in this age and in the age to come eternal life; as it is also said in the Old Scripture: “To the faithful man the whole world is wealth.” Hence the apostle exults, saying: “As having nothing and possessing all things.” If, then, in the New Testament, besides the eternal possession promised to the saints, the multiplication of this possession too, which will pass away, is not withheld, and becomes the richer the more it is held in contempt, how much more ought such to have been the rewards of a fleshly people in the Old Testament, while the one true God, governor of all times, regulated and administered all things according to the time? But lest they think these things are despised only in the books of the New Testament, let them hear the prophet rejecting such happiness and singing that one must flee to the one Lord God. For he says: “From the malignant sword rescue me, and deliver me from the hand of alien sons, whose mouth has spoken vanity, and their right hand is a right hand of iniquity; whose sons are like young plants established in their youth, their daughters adorned and decked out like the likeness of a temple; their storehouses full, overflowing from one to another; their sheep fruitful, multiplying in their outgoings; their oxen fat; there is no breach in the wall, nor going out, nor outcry in their streets. They have called happy the people to whom these things belong; happy is the people whose Lord is its God.” Let them notice, then, how this happiness is mocked in ungodly people, and the whole of blessedness is fixed unshaken in God alone. For they say, “Happy the people to whom these things belong”; but, “Happy the people whose Lord is its God.” As for their also thinking contrary to this passage of the Old Testament what the Lord says, “Everyone who is ashamed of me or my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man too will be ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of his Father and the praise of his holy angels,” I do not see what it has to do with contempt of temporal things. And if it does apply, in that no one, frightened by the loss of such things, should either blush or fear to confess Christ, what have they to say? For we too say that these things are gifts of God, but lowest gifts, which in comparison with saving confession must be not only lost but even thrown away of one's own accord; yet they were usefully promised by the Lord God to fleshly people who loved them and did not yet grasp the heavenly promises, so that they would not seek them from idols and demons.

On the text in the law: “I am the one who gives riches to my friends and poverty to my enemies.” Against this saying they set what the Lord says: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” and: “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” But why will they not look at other things in the gospel too? For where it is written, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” there follows: “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” See, they have the friends of God made rich with the inheritance of the earth. And when that rich man is reduced to such want that he begs the poor man whom he had neglected to let a drop of moisture fall on his parched tongue from the tip of a finger dipped in water, let them understand how the enemies of God become poor, and recognize that this is what is written in the law: “I am the one who gives riches to my friends and poverty to my enemies.” For I showed above that these temporal riches are despised in the Old Scripture too, and whoever wishes to read will find it in countless places. Hence too that text: “Better is a little for the righteous than the many riches of sinners”; and: “The law of your mouth is good to me above thousands of gold and silver”; and: “The judgments of God are true, justified in themselves, more desirable than gold and much precious stone”; and: “Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, and immortal the one who sees prudence. For it is better to acquire her than treasures of gold and silver; she is more precious than the finest stones; no evil resists her; she is well known to all who draw near to her and to those who consider her carefully; and nothing precious is worthy of her”; and: “Therefore I prayed, and understanding was given me; and I called upon God, and the spirit of wisdom came into me. And I preferred her to kingdoms and thrones, and I counted honor nothing in comparison with her. Nor did I compare a precious stone to her, for all gold in comparison with her is a little sand, and silver will be reckoned as mud before her.” If these people either read these things, or did not read them impiously, they would see that everything in the Scriptures of both Testaments, as to what is to be sought and what shunned, what taken up and what rejected, is in agreement and ordered in its own ranks.

On the text in the law: “If you walk in my law and keep my commandments, I will give rains in their season, and the land will bring forth its fruits and the trees their apples, and your vintage will follow your harvests and your sowing your vintage; and you will be satisfied and will sit in peace in your land, and you will sleep, and there will be no one to frighten you; and I will destroy every wild beast from your land, and you will pursue your enemies, and they will fall before you by the sword; and five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will pursue ten thousand, and your enemies will fall before you by the sword; and I will come and bless you and multiply you and set you in order. You will eat the old that has grown old, and you will throw out the old before the new.” By now no one should require us to show how fittingly God promised these things to that people. For we have said much on this matter, and anyone to whom it seems little is too slow. But as for their saying that a New Testament text is contrary to this passage too, namely what the Lord says: “Do not carry gold or silver or coins in your belts, no bag for the road, nor two tunics nor shoes nor staff; for the laborer is worthy of his wages”: what wonder if he granted this to the preachers of the gospel? Was the Jewish people called to this ministry? Yet all these things must be examined spiritually, lest the Lord himself seem to the ungodly to have acted against his own commands, since he even had a money box in which money was carried for necessary food. Unless perhaps they will say that having money in belts is a sin, but in a money box it is not a sin! That these things were not commanded but permitted to the apostles is understood from the fact that the apostle Paul earned his food by working with his own hands, not using, as he himself says, the power which the Lord gave to the preachers of the gospel. For what is permitted by the Lord one may also not do; but what is commanded is a sin unless it is done. They also add the rich man to whom God had said, “Fool, this night I will require your soul of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” and they say that this is no less contrary to this chapter of the law; whereas in this case the emptiness of a vain joy was mocked, because he took uncertain things as certain, while for the people of Israel the omnipotence of the one promising made that promise certain. Hence also the apostle Paul, writing to Timothy about the rich of this age, whom he knew to have their place among the members of the Church, speaks thus: “Command the rich of this age not to be haughty, nor to hope in the uncertainty of riches, but in the living God, who provides us with all things abundantly to enjoy: let them do good, be rich in good works, give readily, share, store up for themselves a good foundation for the future, so that they may lay hold of the true life.” Who does not understand here that it is not blameworthy to have these things, but to love them and put hope in them, to prefer them or even compare them to truth, righteousness, wisdom, faith, good conscience, and love of God and neighbor, in which every devout soul is rich in its inner places before the eyes of God? But in order that God may be loved, who bestows on those who love him all these invisible and eternal things, that is, gives himself, full of all these, to those who love him; in order, then, that he himself may be loved, even at that time when the fleshly soul, entangled in the affections of the flesh, knows how to desire nothing but earthly and temporal things, it must be persuaded that God gives these things too to human beings, because it is both true and very usefully believed. This was done for the people of Israel through those promises which the wretches most ignorantly deride, so that even in those lowest things they might become accustomed, as best they could, to love God, although fear was more at work there. Yet all those temporal gifts are figures of eternal gifts, and that victory over enemies prefigures the victory over the devil and his angels. And as for their adding, as if contrary to the Old Testament, that the apostle says God delights not in strife and dissension but in peace: let them know that the God proclaimed in those Scriptures is one from whom no one can take away his peace, not such a one as they themselves proclaim, who, fearing that war would break in upon his realms, sent his own members far away to endure foreign wars, and afterwards, conquered and defiled, they could not be set free and cleansed. But in human nature, which slid down to lower things by sin, God so delights in peace that he does not abandon the balance of justice, nor wish the peace he loves to be trampled by sinners, but to be loved by those who strive and grasped by those who conquer; and he promises it in figures to the fleshly and shows it openly to the spiritual.

On the text in Deuteronomy: “Cursed is everyone who has hung on a tree.” Although this question has often been aired by the Manichaeans, I still do not see what is contrary to this saying in what Adimantus thought he should set against it from the gospel, where the Lord says: “If you wish to be perfect, sell all that you possess and distribute to the poor, and take up your cross and follow me.” Here, apart from his naming the cross, he notices nothing contrary to what was said: “Cursed is everyone who has hung on a tree.” As if everyone could take up such a cross and follow the Lord! But the cross taken up when we follow the Lord is the one of which the apostle says: “Those who belong to Jesus Christ have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires.” For by such a cross the old man, that is, the old life which we drew from Adam, is put to death, so that what was voluntary in him became natural in us. The apostle shows this when he says: “We too were once by nature children of wrath, like the rest.” If, then, the old life is from Adam, which is why the old life is marked by the name of the old man, what is absurd in a curse being pronounced against the old man, whom the Lord hung on the tree? For through that very succession he bore mortality, being born mortally of the Virgin Mary, having flesh that was not sinful but nonetheless bore the likeness of sinful flesh, because it could die, and death is from sin. Hence too that text: “Knowing that our old man was crucified together with him, so that the body of sin might be done away with.” So it was not the Lord, through the tongue of Moses the servant of God, but death itself that deserved the curse, death which our Lord did away with by taking it on. So that death hung on the tree which came through the woman to the man by the serpent's persuasion. That is why Moses also lifted up a serpent on a pole in the desert to signify that very death. And since we are healed of deadly desires through faith in the Lord's cross, by which cross death was hung on the tree, those who were poisoned by the bites of serpents were at once healed when they looked on the serpent that was fixed and lifted up on the pole. The Lord himself bore witness to this sacrament, saying: “For just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” And by taking on the most shameful kind of death among human beings, that is, the death of the cross, our Lord Jesus Christ commended his love to us, so that the apostle rightly said, kindling us to love of him: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. For it is written: Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”; so that Christian freedom might dread not only no death, but no kind of death, as Jewish servitude did.