Against Faustus the Manichaean 12.1–12.15

Faustus said: Why do you not accept the prophets? Rather, you tell me, if you have anything to say, why we ought to accept the prophets. “Because of the testimonies,” he says, “which they spoke beforehand about Christ.” I, for my part, have found none, though I have read them quite attentively and most carefully. And yet it is also the confession of a feeble faith not to believe in Christ without witness and proof. Indeed you yourselves usually teach that nothing should be inquired into too curiously, because Christian belief is simple and absolute. How then do you now destroy the simplicity of faith by propping it up with evidence and witnesses, and Jewish ones at that? Or if your first view displeases you and so you have gone over to the other, what witness ought to be more trustworthy to you than God himself concerning his Son, who, not through a seer nor through an interpreter, but by a voice breaking forth of its own accord from heaven, when he sent him to earth, said: “This is my most beloved Son; believe him”? And he himself also said about himself: “I came forth from my Father and came into this world,” and many other such things. At which the Jews, snarling, said: “You testify about yourself; your testimony is not true.” To whom he said: “Even if I testify about myself, my testimony is true, because I am not alone. For in your law too it is written: The testimony of two men is true. I am the one who testifies about myself, and the Father who sent me testifies about me.” He did not say: the prophets. Besides this, he calls his own works to testify for him, saying, “If you do not believe me, believe the works”; he did not say: if you do not believe me, believe the prophets. Therefore we need no testimonies about our Savior; in prophets we look only for examples of an honorable life, and for prudence and virtue; none of which, as I perceive you are well aware, was found in the seers of the Jews, since, when I asked you why you thought they should be accepted, you, not without foresight nor without wit, passed over their deeds in silence and leapt to their predictions alone, forgetting, of course, that it is written that “grapes are never gathered from thorns, nor figs from thistles.” So let this be my brief and restrained answer for now to your question, since you ask why we do not accept the prophets; for the rest, that they prophesied nothing about Christ has already been abundantly shown in the books of our fathers. But I will add this: if the Hebrew seers knew and preached Christ and yet lived so shamefully, what Paul testifies of the wise men of the Gentiles could rightly be said of them too: that “although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks, but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened.” You see, then, that it is no great thing to have known great things unless you live in accordance with their dignity.

Augustine replied: With all these words Faustus aims to make us believe that the Hebrew prophets foretold nothing about Christ; that, if they did foretell anything, their testimonies are of no use to us; and that they themselves did not live in a manner worthy of those testimonies. We, then, will show both their predictions of Christ and how much help we have received through them toward the truth and firmness of faith, and that they lived in a manner fitting and suited to their prophecy. In this threefold discussion, to prove the first point by bringing testimonies from all those books to show that Christ was foretold would be long; but I will crush this man’s levity with the heaviest weight of authority. For he does not accept the Hebrew prophets, yet he professes to accept the apostles. Let us hear, then, what the apostle Paul says of their prophecy—the apostle about whom, when he questioned himself, as if in an opponent’s voice, whether he accepted him, he answered, “Most certainly.” “Paul,” he says, “a servant of Christ, called as an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he had promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures concerning his Son, who was made for him of the seed of David according to the flesh.” What more does he want? Unless perhaps they want this to be understood as said of some other prophets, not of our Hebrew ones. But by whomever it was said, still the gospel was promised concerning that Son of God who was made for him of the seed of David according to the flesh, the gospel for which the apostle says he was set apart; and though this is already contrary to their faithlessness, since according to this gospel we believe that the Son of God was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, let them nevertheless learn clearer passages, in which most evident testimony is borne to the Hebrew prophets by that apostle by whose authority the necks of these proud men may be broken.

“I speak the truth in Christ,” he says; “I do not lie, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom belong the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the worship and the promises; whose are the fathers, and from whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed forever.” What could be said more abundantly, declared more expressly, commended more holily? For what is the adoption of the Israelites except through the Son of God? Hence he says to the Galatians: “But when the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive the adoption of sons.” And what is their glory, if not chiefly that of which the same Paul speaks to the same Romans: “What advantage, then, has the Jew? Or what is the profit of circumcision? Much in every way. First, because the oracles of God were entrusted to them.” Let these men inquire what the oracles of God were that were entrusted to the Jews, and show us any others than those of the Hebrew prophets. And why did he say that the covenants belong especially to the Israelites, if not because the Old Testament was given to them, and the New was figured in the Old? As for the giving of the law, which was given to the Israelites, these men, not understanding its dispensation, because God no longer wants us to be under the law but under grace, are accustomed to find fault with it in furious ignorance. Let them, then, yield to apostolic authority, which, in praising and commending the excellence of the Israelites, listed this too, that the giving of the law belongs to them. If it were evil, it would certainly not be placed among their praises; and if it did not preach Christ, the Lord himself would not say, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me also; for he wrote of me”; nor would he testify to it after the resurrection, saying, “Everything had to be fulfilled that is written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms concerning me.”

But since the Manichaeans preach another Christ, not the one whom the apostles preached, but their own, a deceiver, and preach him deceitfully—and the followers of that falsehood fittingly lie themselves as well, except that they shamelessly want to be believed, though they profess to be disciples of a liar—there has happened to them what the apostle says of the unbelieving Jews: “When Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart.” For this veil, through which they do not understand Moses, will not be taken away unless they pass over to Christ, not such a Christ as they have invented, but such as the Hebrew fathers prophesied. For so the same apostle says: “But when you pass over to the Lord, the veil will be taken away.” Nor is it strange that these men refuse to believe Christ when he rose and said, “Everything had to be fulfilled that is written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms concerning me,” since Christ himself told what Abraham said to a certain unmerciful rich man, when he was tormented in the underworld and asked that someone be sent from there to his brothers to teach them, so that they too might not come to that place of torment. For this was said to him: “They have Moses and the prophets there.” And when he said that they would not believe unless someone rose from the dead, the most true answer was given: “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe if someone rises from the dead.” Therefore these men, not hearing Moses and the prophets, not only do not believe Christ risen from the dead, but do not believe at all that Christ rose from the dead. For how do they believe that he rose, whom they do not believe to have died? And how do they believe that he died, whom they do not believe to have had a mortal body?

But we do not believe them, as deceitful preachers not of a Christ who was a deceiver but of one who did not exist at all. For we have the true and truthful Christ, foretold by the prophets, foretold by the apostles, who presented testimonies to their preaching from the law and the prophets, as they show in countless places. Paul summed this up most briefly and most truly when he said: “But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been manifested, attested by the law and the prophets.” What prophets but those of the Israelites, to whom he said most plainly belong the covenants and the giving of the law and the promises? Promises about whom but Christ? This he briefly defines in another place, speaking of Christ: “For all the promises of God, in him they are Yes.” Paul tells me that the giving of the law belongs to the Israelites; he also says, “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes”; he also says, speaking of Christ, “For all the promises of God, in him they are Yes”; and you tell me that the prophets of the Israelites foretold nothing about Christ? What then remains but for me to choose whether to believe Mani, telling a vain and long fable against Paul, or Paul, who warns beforehand: “If anyone preaches to you a gospel other than what we have preached to you, let him be anathema”?

Here perhaps they will say: “Show us where Christ was foretold by the Israelite prophets.” As if that authority were small by which the apostles say that what we read in the writings of the Hebrew prophets was fulfilled in Christ, or by which the Lord himself says that those things were written about him! So whoever cannot show this is the one who does not understand; it is not the apostles or Christ or the holy books that lie. However, not to collect many things, let me mention this one, which the apostle says next in the same passage: “But it is not possible that the word of God has failed. For not all who are from Israel are Israelites, nor are all who are the seed of Abraham children; but in Isaac shall your seed be called: that is, it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as seed.” What will they answer to this, since it is plainly said to Abraham about this seed in another place: “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed”? For if we were debating this at the time when the apostle was expounding it, saying, “The promises were made to Abraham and to his seed—he does not say ‘and to seeds,’ as of many, but as of one, ‘and to your seed,’ which is Christ”—perhaps someone might refuse to believe it not so shamelessly, before he saw all nations believe in Christ, who is preached as of the seed of Abraham. But now, when we see this fulfilled which we read was foretold so long before, when all nations are already blessed in the seed of Abraham, to whom it was said thousands of years ago, “In your seed all nations shall be blessed,” who would be so stubbornly mad as either to try to bring in another Christ who is not of the seed of Abraham, or to think that the Hebrew prophecies, belonging to the nation whose father is Abraham, foretold nothing about this true Christ?

But who could recount, I do not say in one short reply, such as we are constrained to keep to in this work, but in any huge volume, all the proclamations of the Hebrew prophets about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ? For all things contained in those books were either said about him or said for his sake. But to rouse the seeker and to delight the finder, much more there is suggested through allegories and enigmas, partly in words alone, partly also in deeds that are narrated. Yet unless some things there were plain, the sense by which even obscure things become clear would not be grasped. And even of those things that are wrapped in figures, if some are set out together, as if woven into one view, they join their voices in testifying to Christ in such a way that the deafness of anyone, however dull, would blush.

In six days, in Genesis, God completed all his works, and on the seventh he rested: in six ages the works of God mark the human race in this world, through the succession of times. The first of these is from Adam to Noah, the second from Noah to Abraham, the third from Abraham to David, the fourth from David to the deportation to Babylon, the fifth from then to the humble coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, the sixth, which is now passing, until he comes on high to judgment. The seventh is understood as the rest of the saints, not in this life but in the other, where that rich man, tormented in the underworld, saw the poor man at rest; where there is no evening, because there is no failing of things there. On the sixth day in Genesis man is formed in the image of God: in the sixth age of the world our re-formation is manifested in newness of mind, according to the image of him who created us, as the apostle says. A wife is made from the side of the sleeping man: the church is made for the dying Christ from the sacrament of the blood that flowed from the side of the dead one. Eve, who was made from her husband’s side, is called life and the mother of the living: and the Lord says in the gospel, “Whoever does not eat my flesh and drink my blood will not have life in him.” And everything understood there, if treated thoroughly and in detail, speaks beforehand of Christ and the church, whether in good Christians or in bad. For not in vain did the apostle say, “Adam, who is a type of the one to come,” and: “A man will leave father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two will be in one flesh. This is a great mystery,” he says; “but I speak of it in Christ and in the church.” For who would not recognize that Christ left his Father in this way, he who, though he was in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant; that he left his mother too, the synagogue of the Jews clinging carnally to the Old Testament, and cleaved to his wife, the holy church, so that in the peace of the New Testament the two might be in one flesh; because, though he is God with the Father, through whom we were made, he became through the flesh a sharer with us, so that we might be the body of that head?

As Cain’s sacrifice from the fruits of the earth is rejected, while Abel’s sacrifice from the sheep and their fat is accepted, so the faith of the New Testament, praising God from the innocence of grace, is preferred to the earthly works of the Old Testament; because, although the Jews did those things rightly before, they are nevertheless guilty of unbelief in this, that, when Christ came, they did not distinguish the time of the New Testament from the time of the Old. For God said to Cain: “If you offer rightly but do not divide rightly, you have sinned.” If he had obeyed God when he said, “Be still; for its turning is toward you, and you shall rule over it,” he would have turned his sin toward himself, attributing it to himself and confessing it to God, and so, helped by the grace of forgiveness, he would himself have ruled over his sin, and would not, with sin ruling over him, have killed his innocent brother as a slave of sin. So too the Jews, in whom these things were being figured, if they had been still from their agitation, and, recognizing the time of salvation through grace in the forgiveness of sins, had heard Christ saying, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance,” and, “Everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin,” and, “If the Son sets you free, then you will be truly free,” they would have turned their sin toward themselves in confession, as is written in the psalm, saying to the physician, “I said, Lord, have mercy on me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against you”; and, free through the hope of grace, they would have ruled over that sin as long as it was still in their mortal body. But as it is, ignorant of God’s righteousness and wishing to establish their own, puffed up by the works of the law and not humbled about their sins, they were not still; and, with sin reigning in their mortal body so that they obeyed its desires, they stumbled on the stone of stumbling and blazed with hatred against him whose works they grieved to see were accepted by God, when the man born blind, who now saw, said to them, “We know that God does not hear sinners, but if anyone worships him and does his will, him he hears”; as if he were saying to them: He does not look on the sacrifice of Cain, but he looks on the sacrifice of Abel. So Abel, the younger, is killed by his elder brother: Christ, the head of the younger people, is killed by the elder people of the Jews; the one in a field, the other in the place of Calvary.

God asks Cain where his brother is, not as one ignorant who wants to learn from him, but as a judge asks the accused whom he will punish. He answered that he did not know, and that he was not his brother’s keeper. What do the Jews answer us to this day, when we question them about Christ with the voice of God, that is, with the voice of the holy Scriptures, except that they do not know the Christ of whom we speak? The deceitful ignorance of Cain is the false denial of the Jews. But they would in a sense be keepers of Christ if they had been willing to accept and keep the Christian faith. For whoever keeps Christ in his heart does not say what Cain said: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” God says to Cain: “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries to me from the earth.” So the divine voice in the holy Scriptures convicts the Jews. For the blood of Christ has a loud voice on earth, when, after it has been received, all nations respond: Amen. This is the clear voice of the blood, which the blood itself draws from the mouth of the faithful, redeemed by that same blood.

God says to Cain: “And now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand; for you will work the earth, and it will not continue to give you its strength; groaning and trembling you will be on the earth.” He did not say, “Cursed is the earth,” but, “Cursed are you from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.” For the unbelieving Jewish people is cursed from the earth, that is, by the church, which opened its mouth in the confession of sins to receive the blood of Christ, shed for the remission of sins by the hand of the persecutor who would not be under grace but under the law; so that he was cursed by the church, that is, so that the church understood and showed him to be cursed, as the apostle says: “For whoever are of the works of the law are under the curse of the law.” Then, having said, “Cursed are you from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand,” he did not say, “for you will work it,” but said, “for you will work the earth, and it will not continue to give you its strength.” Hence it is not necessary to understand that Cain works the same earth that opened its mouth to receive his brother’s blood from his hand; but he is understood to be cursed from this earth because he works the earth which will not continue to give him its strength; that is, the church recognizes and shows the people of the Jews to be cursed because, after Christ was killed, it still works the earthly circumcision, the earthly sabbath, the earthly unleavened bread, the earthly passover. All this earthly working has a hidden strength, the understanding of the grace of Christ, which is not given to the Jews who persevere in impiety and unbelief, because it has been revealed in the New Testament; and since they do not pass over to the Lord, the veil is not taken away from them, which remains in the reading of the Old Testament, because it is done away only in Christ—not the reading of the Old Testament itself, which has a hidden strength, but the veil by which that strength is hidden. Hence, when Christ suffered on the cross, the veil of the temple was torn, so that through the passion of Christ the secrets of the sacraments might be revealed to the faithful who pass over, to drink his blood with mouth opened in confession. Therefore that people, like Cain, still works the earth, still carries on the working of the law carnally, which does not give it its strength, because it does not understand in it the grace of Christ. Therefore also in that very earth which Christ bore, that is, in his flesh, they themselves worked our salvation by crucifying Christ, who died for our offenses. And that same earth did not give them its strength, because they were not justified by the power of his resurrection, who rose for our justification; because, though he was crucified out of weakness, yet he lives by the power of God, as the apostle says. This, then, is the strength of that earth, which it did not show to the impious and unbelieving. Hence, when he rose, he did not appear to those by whom he had been crucified, as to Cain working the earth so that that grain might be sown, the same earth not showing them the fruit of its strength: “for you will work the earth,” he says, “and it will not continue to give you its strength.”

“Groaning and trembling you will be on the earth.” Now see: who does not see, who does not recognize, throughout the whole earth, wherever that people has been scattered, how it groans in grief for its lost kingdom and trembles in fear under innumerable Christian peoples? And so Cain answered and said: “My case is too great; if you cast me out today from the face of the earth, I shall also be hidden from your face, and I shall be groaning and trembling on the earth, and everyone who finds me will kill me.” Truly he groans and trembles for this, lest, having lost even his earthly kingdom, he be killed by this visible death. This he calls a greater case than that the earth does not give him its strength, lest he die spiritually. For he savors carnally, and does not think it grievous to be hidden from the face of God, that is, to have God angry, but only fears being found and killed. He savors carnally, as one working the earth whose strength he does not receive. But to savor according to the flesh is death; not understanding this, he groans for his lost kingdom and trembles at bodily death. But what does God answer him? “Not so,” he says; “whoever kills Cain will loose seven vengeances”; that is, not as you say: the impious race of carnal Jews will not perish by bodily death. For whoever destroys them in that way will loose seven vengeances; that is, he will take away from them the seven vengeances with which they are bound because of the guilt of killing Christ; so that through this whole time, which rolls on in the sevenfold number of days, it may be made sufficiently plain to faithful Christians, the more so because the Jewish nation does not perish, what subjection those have deserved who, in proud rule, killed the Lord.

“And the Lord God set a mark on Cain, so that no one who found him would kill him.” This is truly very wonderful: how all the nations subjugated by the Romans passed over into the rite of Roman worship and took up those sacrileges to observe and celebrate, while the Jewish nation, whether under pagan kings or under Christian ones, has not lost the mark of its law, by which it is distinguished from other nations and peoples; and every emperor or king who finds them in his kingdom finds them with that mark and does not kill them, that is, does not bring it about that they are not Jews, set apart from the fellowship of other nations by a certain sure and proper mark of their observance—except whoever of them passes over to Christ, so that he is no longer found as Cain, nor goes out from the face of God, nor dwells in the land of Nod, which is said to mean “commotion.” Against this evil God is entreated in the psalm: “Do not give my feet to be moved,” and, “Let not the hands of sinners move me,” and, “Those who trouble me will exult if I am moved,” and, “The Lord is at my right hand, that I may not be moved,” and countless such things: this is what all suffer who go out from the face of God, that is, from the mercy of his love. Hence it is said in a certain psalm, “I said in my abundance, I shall never be moved.” But see what follows: “Lord, by your will you gave strength to my beauty; but you turned away your face, and I was troubled.” From this it is understood that every soul is beautiful and comely and strong in virtue by participation in the light of God, not by itself. If these Manichaeans considered and understood this, they would not fall into such blasphemy as to think themselves the nature and substance of God. But they cannot, because they are not still; for they do not understand the sabbath of the heart. For if they were still, as was said to Cain, they would turn their sin toward themselves, that is, attribute it to themselves and not to some nation of darkness or other, and so through the grace of God they would rule over that sin. But as it is, both they and all who, by stubbornly resisting the truth in various errors, go out from the face of God, like Cain, like the lost Jews, dwell in the land of commotion, that is, in carnal agitation against the delight of God, that is, against Eden, which is interpreted “feasting,” where paradise was planted. Now I will touch briefly on a few other things out of many, so as not to obstruct the purpose of this work and of my reply by excessive length.

For whom would it not move to seek and understand Christ in those books—to omit those things which, though they are contemplated the more sweetly the more hidden the places from which they are drawn out, still demand a long discussion, because they need more supporting testimonies; to omit such things, then—whom would it not move toward saving faith that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, pleased God and was translated, and that a seventh rest is preached, to which everyone is translated who is formed, as on the sixth day, in the sixth age of the world, by the coming of Christ? That Noah with his family is delivered through water and wood, as the household of Christ is delivered through baptism signed with the passion of the cross? That the ark is built of squared timbers, as the church is constructed of saints always ready for every good work? For a squared thing stands firm whichever way you turn it. That its length is six times its breadth and ten times its height, showing the likeness of the human body, because Christ appeared in a human body? That its breadth extends to fifty cubits, as the apostle says, “Our heart is enlarged”? How, if not by spiritual love? Therefore he also says: “The love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” For on the fiftieth day after his resurrection Christ sent the Holy Spirit, by whom he enlarged the hearts of believers. That it is three hundred cubits long, to make six times fifty, as the whole time of this world extends through six ages, in all of which Christ has never ceased to be preached: foretold in five through prophecy, spread abroad in the sixth through the gospel? That its height rises to thirty cubits, a number which the length of three hundred cubits contains ten times: because Christ is our height, who, at the age of thirty years, consecrated the gospel teaching, testifying that he had come not to abolish the law but to fulfil it. And the heart of the law is recognized in the ten commandments; hence the length of the ark is completed by ten times thirty; hence too Noah himself is counted the tenth from Adam. That the timbers of the ark are glued with bitumen inside and out, so that in the structure of unity the forbearance of love might be signified, lest, when scandals tempt the church, whether from those within or from those without, the brotherly joining give way and the bond of peace be loosed. For bitumen is a very hot and very strong glue, signifying the ardor of love, which with great force of strength bears all things to hold together the spiritual fellowship.

That all kinds of animals are shut in the ark: as the church contains all nations, which that dish shown to Peter also signifies. That both clean and unclean animals are there: as both good and bad take part in the sacraments of the church. That the clean are by sevens and the unclean by twos: not because the bad are fewer than the good, but because the good keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. And divine Scripture commends the Holy Spirit in a sevenfold working: of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and strength, of knowledge and piety and the fear of God. Hence also that number of fifty days, belonging to the coming of the Holy Spirit, is completed in seven times seven, which makes forty-nine, with one added: for which reason it is said, “eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” But the bad are shown in the number two as prone to schisms and in a way divisible. That Noah himself with his family is counted as the eighth: because in Christ the hope of our resurrection appeared, who rose from the dead on the eighth day, that is, the first after the seventh, the sabbath; which day is the third from the passion, but in the number of days that roll on through all time it is the eighth and the first.