Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.18–19.29

What ground, then, have these people for slandering the law and the prophets, saying that Christ came to abolish them rather than to fulfil them because Christians do not observe what is commanded there? For they do not observe only those things through which Christ was promised, and they do not observe them precisely because Christ has now fulfilled those promises, and they are no longer promised because they have been fulfilled; and their promising signs had to come to an end in those whom the faith of Christ, who fulfils them, had found already imbued with them. Do Christians not observe what is in that scripture: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God; you shall not make yourself an idol,” and so on? Do Christians not observe what is said there: “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain”? Do Christians not observe the sabbath itself, in so far as it serves to understand true rest? Do Christians not pay honor to parents, as is commanded there? Do Christians not refrain from sexual immorality, murders, thefts, false witness, from coveting a neighbor’s wife ⟨or a neighbor’s property⟩? All these things are written in that law. These are precepts of morals; those are sacraments of promises. These are fulfilled through grace that helps; those through truth rendered. Both are fulfilled through Christ, who always gave that grace and now also reveals it, and who then promised this truth and now displays it; for “the law was given through Moses; but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Finally, the precepts which are kept in a conscience that lives rightly are fulfilled by “faith working through love”; but those that consisted in promissory signification have passed away now that the realities have been rendered. So these too have not been abolished but fulfilled, because Christ showed them to be neither void nor deceptive when he displayed what was promised by their signification.

So it is not, as Faustus imagines, that the Lord Jesus fulfilled certain precepts which had already been spoken by the righteous men of old before the law of Moses, such as “You shall not kill,” which he did not refute by its opposite but rather strengthened when he called us back even from anger and abuse; and that he abolished certain others which seemed peculiar to the law of the Hebrews, such as “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” which he seems rather to have taken away than confirmed when he says, “But I say to you, do not resist evil; but if anyone strikes you on your right cheek, offer him the other also,” and so on. For we say that even these precepts, which these people think Christ abolished by stating the opposite, were both well instituted at that time, for that time, and are now not abolished by Christ but fulfilled.

So I ask them first whether those righteous men of old, Enoch and Seth (for Faustus names these above all), and any others there were, not only before Moses but also before Abraham, were angry with a brother without cause or said to a brother, “Fool.” For if they did not say it, why should they not also have taught such things? And if they did teach such things, I ask how Christ fulfilled their righteousness and teaching by adding, “But I say to you: if anyone is angry with his brother, or if anyone says ‘Raca,’ or if anyone says ‘Fool,’ he will be liable to judgment, or to the council, or to the fire of Gehenna,” since they too lived in the same way and taught that one must live in the same way. Or did those righteous men not know that anger must be curbed and that a brother must not be provoked with insolent abuse; or did they know it, but were unable to keep themselves from these things? Then they were liable to Gehenna; how then were they righteous? Surely you do not dare to say that their righteousness was either so ignorant of what belonged to its duty, or so intemperate, as to make them liable to Gehenna. Why then should Christ fulfil, by adding these things, that law by which the righteous men of old lived, when their righteousness too could not exist without these things? Or will you say that headlong anger and a wicked tongue began to belong to iniquity from the time Christ came, while before it was not wicked to commit these things in heart or mouth, just as in certain matters, among the institutions belonging to particular times, we find that something is not lawful now which was lawful before, or that what was not lawful before is lawful now? You are not so foolish as to say this; but even if you say it, the answer will be that on this understanding Christ did not come to fulfil what was lacking in the ancient law, but to institute a law that did not exist, if, when saying “Fool” to a brother had not been unrighteous among the righteous men of old, Christ willed it now to be so unrighteous that whoever says it is liable to Gehenna. So you have not yet found to what law these things were once lacking, so that by adding them now Christ might fulfil it.

Or perhaps the law against adultery was only half-full among those righteous men of old, until it was filled up by the Lord, who added that no one should look at a woman to desire her? For this is how you quoted that saying: “You have heard that it was said: You shall not commit adultery; but I say to you, do not even desire.” “That is fulfilment,” you say. Set out the gospel words plainly, do not weaken what was said with your own words, and see what you have implied about those most ancient righteous men. “You have heard,” he says, “that it was said: You shall not commit adultery; but I say to you: whoever looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Did those righteous men, then, Seth or Enoch or any like them, commit adultery in their hearts? And was their heart either not the temple of God, or did they commit adultery in the temple of God? But if you do not dare to say this, how did Christ, coming only now, fulfil their law on this matter too, when among them it was already full even then?

As for not swearing, since here too you said that their law was fulfilled by Christ, I cannot affirm that the righteous men of old did not swear; for we find that even the apostle Paul swore. But frequent swearing is never off your lips, since you swear by the light, which you love along with the flies (for you do not know how to think, even in part, of that light of minds, wholly foreign to these eyes, which enlightens every man coming into this world), and by your lord Manichaeus, who in his native language was called Mani. But you, to avoid the name of madness among the Greeks, as it were declined and lengthened the name and added a sort of pouring, where you slip further. For one of you explained to me why he was called Manichaeus: namely, so that in the Greek language he might seem to be, as it were, pouring out manna, because in Greek “pours” is chei. What you have achieved by this I do not know, except to dream up madness for yourselves more expressly. For you did not add one letter in the first part of the name, so that manna might be recognized, but you added two syllables in the latter part, calling him not Mannichaeus but Manichaeus, so that it sounds as though he pours out nothing but madness for you in his long-winded and empty discourses. You very often swear also by the Paraclete, not of course the one whom Christ promised and sent to his disciples, but by that same man, the madness-pourer, to translate his name into Latin. Since, then, you never stop swearing, I should like to know how you understand this part of the law too, which you want to be understood as most ancient, to have been fulfilled for you by the Lord; and all the more because of the apostle’s oaths. For what authority are you, even to yourselves, much less to me or to anyone? From this I think it is now clear how differently we must take what Christ says: “I did not come to abolish the law but to fulfil it”: namely, not by these additions, which belong either to the explanation of the ancient sayings put forward or to the manner of life, not to their fulfilment.

For since they understood homicide to mean only the destruction of a human body by which it is deprived of life, the Lord made plain that every wicked impulse to harm a brother is reckoned as a kind of homicide. Hence John also says: “Whoever hates his brother is a murderer.” And since they thought that only bodily unlawful intercourse with a woman was called adultery, the Master showed that such desire too is nothing else. Again, since swearing falsely is a grave sin, while not swearing, like swearing truly, is no sin at all, but the one who is not accustomed to swear at all is farther removed from swearing falsely than the one who is quick to swear truly, the Lord preferred that we, without swearing, should not depart from the truth rather than that, swearing truly, we should come near to perjury. And so the apostle too never swore in the speeches he is reported to have given, lest by a habit of swearing he should at some time slip into perjury even unawares. But in his writings, where there is greater and more careful consideration, he is found to have sworn in many places, so that no one should think that one sins even by swearing truly, but should rather understand that the hearts of human frailty are more safely kept from perjury by not swearing. Having considered these things, we find that those precepts which Faustus wants to belong properly to Moses have not been destroyed either, as he thinks.

For here too I ask them why they want to be peculiar to the law of Moses what was said to the ancients: “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” Did not the apostle Paul also call certain men hateful to God? And certainly in this very admonition the Lord himself urges us to imitate God: “So that you may be children,” he says, “of your Father who is in heaven, who makes his sun rise on the good and the evil and sends rain on the just and the unjust.” So we must ask how it is to be understood that, after the example of God, to whom Paul said some are hateful, enemies are to be hated, and again, after the example of God, who makes his sun rise on the good and the evil and sends rain on the just and the unjust, enemies are to be loved. Thus it will appear that the Lord wished to bring in, for those who misunderstood the saying “You shall hate your enemy,” what they did not know at all, that they should love their enemies. How both are to be kept would take long to discuss. But meanwhile, to these people, who are displeased in general if anyone hates his enemy, we have a word that will put them out of countenance, when we ask them whether their God loves the race of darkness; or, if enemies are to be loved now because they have a share of good, why we ought not also to hate them because they have a share of evil. For by that rule this too is resolved, and it is shown that there is no contradiction between what is said in the ancient scripture, “You shall hate your enemy,” and in the gospel, “Love your enemies”: every wicked man, in so far as he is wicked, is to be hated, but in so far as he is a man, he is to be loved; so that we may reprove what we rightly hate in him, that is, the vice, in order that what we rightly love in him, that is, human nature itself, may be set free when the vice is corrected. This, I say, is the rule by which we may both hate an enemy for what is evil in him, that is, his iniquity, and love an enemy for what is good in him, that is, a social and rational creature; except that we prove that he is evil not by nature, either his own or another’s, but by his own will. They, however, think that a man is evil by the nature of the race of darkness, which, according to them, God feared wholly before he was conquered in part, and in part was so conquered by it that he was not even wholly set free. So, having heard and not understood what was said to the ancients, “You shall hate your enemy,” men were carried into hatred of a man when they ought to have hated nothing but the vice. These the Lord corrects by saying, “Love your enemies,” so that he who had already said, “I did not come to abolish the law but to fulfil it,” and who therefore was not abolishing what is written in the law about hating an enemy, might, by commanding us to love our enemies, compel us to understand how we could both hate one and the same man for his fault and love him for his nature. But for their perverse minds this is a great deal to understand. They need only be pressed to defend, according to the lost reasoning, or rather madness, of their slander, their God, whom they cannot call a lover of the race of darkness; and therefore they have no way of urging, after his example, that each should love his enemy. For they could more easily have attributed love of an enemy to the race of darkness itself than to their God. For that race, as they rave, desired the light near and adjoining it, and wished to enjoy it, and, in order to enjoy it, planned to invade it. Nor is this a fault, when the true and beatifying good is sought. Hence the Lord too says: “The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and those who do violence will seize it.” See, according to their empty fancy, the race of darkness wished to do violence and to seize the good it had loved, delighted by its brightness and beauty; and God did not love it in return, but, detesting it with hatred, set about uprooting it utterly when it wished to enjoy him. If, then, the evil love the good in order to enjoy it, while the good hate the evil in order not to be polluted, answer, Manichaeans: which of them fulfils what the Lord said, “Love your enemies”? See, if you want these to be separate and conflicting sayings, your God did what is written in the law of Moses, “You shall hate your enemy,” and the race of darkness did what is written in the gospel, “Love your enemies.” And yet even by your fictions you have not been able to find how to settle the question between the flies that seek the light and the cockroaches that flee it; for you maintain that both are offspring of the race of darkness. Why then do the one love a light foreign to them, while the others, shunning it, rather delight in their own origin? Or are flies born more cleanly in stinking sewers than cockroaches in dark bedrooms?

Now, how is the saying to the ancients, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” contrary to what the Lord says, “But I say to you, do not resist evil; but if anyone strikes you on your right cheek, offer him the other also,” and so on, since that ancient precept too was given in this way to check the flames of hatred and to rein in the unbridled spirits of the raging? For who is easily content to return only as much vengeance as he has received injury? Do we not see men slightly hurt plotting murder, thirsting for blood, and hardly finding in the sufferings of their enemy enough to satisfy them? Who, when struck with a fist, does not either stir up the courts to condemn the one who struck him, or, if he wants to strike back himself, pound the whole man with fists and heels, if he does not even snatch up some weapon? On this immoderate and therefore unjust revenge the law fixed a just measure and instituted the penalty of retaliation, that is, that each should pay a punishment equal to the injury he inflicted. So “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” is not tinder for fury but a boundary to it, set not so that what had died down might be kindled by it, but so that what was burning might not spread further. For there is a certain just vengeance, and it is justly owed to the one who has suffered injury. Hence, when we forgive, we in a way give freely from our own right. Hence too they are called debts, which in the Lord’s Prayer we are taught to forgive in human fashion, so that ours too may be forgiven us in divine fashion. And what is owed, even if it is kindly forgiven, is still not unjustly demanded back. But just as in swearing, even the one who swears truly comes near to perjury, from which the one who does not swear at all is far removed, and although the one who swears truly does not sin, yet the one who does not swear is farther from sin (so that the admonition not to swear is a safeguard against the sin of perjury), so, since the one who wishes to be avenged unjustly, without measure, sins, while the one who wishes to be avenged justly, observing measure, does not sin, the one who does not wish to be avenged at all is farther from the sin of unjust vengeance. For the one who exacts more than is owed sins; the one who exacts what is owed does not sin; but the one who does not exact what is owed at all is far safer from the sin of the unjust exactor, especially so that he himself may not be forced to pay his own debt by him who has no debt. So I too could put these things thus: “It was said to the ancients: You shall not avenge yourself unjustly; but I say, do not even avenge yourselves”: that is fulfilment; just as Faustus says about swearing: “It was said, ‘You shall not swear falsely’; but I say, ‘Do not swear at all’; that too is fulfilment.” I too, then, could have spoken thus, if it seemed to me that by these added words Christ supplied what was lacking in the law, and not rather that what the law wished to bring about, that no one should sin by avenging himself unjustly, is more safely kept if he does not avenge himself at all, just as what it wished to bring about, that no one should sin by swearing falsely, is more safely kept if he does not swear. For if “an eye for an eye” and “whoever strikes you on the cheek, offer him the other also” are contrary, why are “Render your oath to the Lord” and “Do not swear at all” not contrary? And yet Faustus thinks the latter is not destruction but fulfilment; and he ought to have thought the same here. For if “swear truly” is fulfilled by saying “do not swear,” why is “avenge justly” not also fulfilled by saying “do not avenge”? So I think that in both there is a safeguard against the sin by which one either swears falsely or avenges unjustly; although this precept about giving up vengeance entirely also avails for this, that by forgiving debts of this kind we may deserve to have ours forgiven too. But a measure first had to be applied to a hard people, by which it might learn not to go beyond what was owed, so that, once the anger that rushes to immoderate vengeance had been tamed, whoever wished might calmly consider what he himself owed, which he would wish the Lord to forgive him, and by this consideration forgive his fellow servant his debt.

For that precept of the Lord too, about not putting away a wife, when it was said to the ancients, “Whoever puts away his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce,” will be seen not to be contrary, if we look carefully. For the Lord explained what the law intended when it commanded the man who put away his wife at will to give her a certificate of divorce. For it does not say, “Whoever wishes, let him put away his wife,” to which not putting away would be contrary; but certainly he did not wish a wife to be put away by her husband, he who put in this delay, so that a mind rushing headlong into separation might be checked by the writing of the certificate and desist, and consider what an evil it was to put away a wife; especially because, as they report, among the Hebrews no one was permitted to write Hebrew letters except the scribes alone, who professed a superior wisdom, and those of them who were endowed with fairness and piety not only professed it but also pursued it. To these, then, who ought to be wise interpreters of the law and just dissuaders from separation, the law wished to send the man whom it commanded to give a certificate of divorce if he put away his wife. For the certificate could be written for him only by them, who, by this opportunity arising from necessity, might in a way guide him back into their own hands by good counsel, and, by dealing peaceably between him and his wife, persuade them to love and concord. But if so great a hatred came between them that it could not be extinguished or amended, then of course the certificate would be written, because he would refrain in vain from putting away a woman whom he so hated that he could not be recalled to the love due in marriage by any persuasion of the wise. For if a wife is not loved, she is to be put away; therefore, since she is not to be put away, she is to be loved. But love can be brought about by admonishing and persuading, not imposed by compelling the unwilling. This the scribe ought to do, being just and wise, as one in that profession ought to be. So that the man would come to him, the discordant husband was commanded to have a certificate written; and a good and wise man would not write it unless the counsel of concord could prevail nothing in a mind too averse and perverse. But I ask you, out of the sacrilegious emptiness of your error, why you are displeased by the putting away of a wife, whom you judge is to be kept not for the faithfulness of marriage but for the crime of lust. For marriage (matrimonium) is so called because a woman ought to marry for no other reason than to become a mother (mater): which to you is hateful. For you think that in this way the part of your God that was conquered and subdued in battle by the race of darkness is bound even with fleshly fetters.

But to explain rather the matter now in hand: if Christ, where he put forward certain ancient sayings and added, “But I say to you,” neither fulfilled the law of the first men by this addition of words, nor destroyed the law given through Moses by setting opposites against it, but rather so commended everything he quoted from the law of the Hebrews that whatever he said further in his own person served either to supply an explanation, if the law had stated something obscurely, or to keep more safely what the law intended: you see how differently we must understand his saying that he did not come to abolish the law but to fulfil it. It was not that the law, as if half-full, should be made complete by these words, but that what could not be done while the letter commanded, because of the presumption of the proud, should be fulfilled while grace persuades, because of the confession of the humble, by the performance of deeds, not by the addition of words. For faith, as the apostle says, “works through love.” Hence he also says: “For whoever loves another has fulfilled the law.” Because Christ, when he came, gave openly, through the Holy Spirit whom he promised and sent, this love by which alone the righteousness of the law could be fulfilled, he therefore said, “I did not come to abolish the law but to fulfil it.” This is the New Testament, in which the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven is promised to this love, which was veiled in the figures of the Old Testament according to the distribution of times. Hence he also says: “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another.”

So all, or nearly all, the things he advised or commanded where he added “But I say to you” are found also in those old books. There, against anger, it is said: “My eye was troubled because of anger,” and, “Better is he who conquers anger than he who takes a city.” There, against a harsh word: “The stroke of a whip makes a bruise; but the stroke of the tongue breaks bones.” There, against adultery of the heart: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.” For it does not say, “Do not commit adultery,” but, “Do not covet.” Hence the apostle quotes this from the law, saying: “For I would not have known covetousness, if the law had not said, You shall not covet.” There, on the patience of not resisting, the man is praised who offers his cheek to the one who strikes him and is filled with insults. There, on loving an enemy, it is said: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink.” For the apostle quoted this from there; and there is that in the psalm: “With those who hated peace I was peaceable,” and much else. And that we should imitate God by refraining from vengeance and by loving even the wicked, you have there an ample passage about God himself doing so; for there it is written: “For to be very strong is always in your power alone, and who will stand against the might of your arm? For the whole world before you is like a grain on the scales, and like a drop of the morning dew that falls on the earth. But you have mercy on all, because you can do all things, and you overlook the sins of men for the sake of repentance. For you love all things that exist, and hate none of the things you have made; for you would not have made anything if you hated it. How then could anything endure if you had not willed it, or how would anything be preserved that had not been called by you? But you spare all things, because they are yours, Lord, who love souls. For your good Spirit is in all things; therefore you correct little by little those who go astray, and you admonish and speak to them about the things in which they sin, so that, leaving their wickedness, they may believe in you, Lord.” To imitate this kindly patience of God, “who makes his sun rise on the good and the evil and sends rain on the just and the unjust,” Christ urges us, so that we may disregard avenging our injuries and do good to those who hate us, that we may be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. And that our forgiving others these debts of revenge avails for the forgiveness of the debts of our own sins, and that we must beware lest, if we do not do this, the bond of sin is not forgiven us either when we pray, is written thus in those old books: “He who wishes to be avenged will find vengeance from God, and he will surely confirm his sins. Forgive your neighbor who harms you, and then, when you pray, your sins will be loosed. Does a man keep anger against a man and seek healing of the flesh from the Lord? Does he have no mercy on a man like himself, and pray to the Lord for his own sins? He himself, while he is flesh, keeps anger, and does he ask atonement from the Lord? And who will intercede for his sins?”

Now, about not putting away a wife, what else, or what more fitting, could I quote from those books than the passage from which the Lord himself answered the Jews when they questioned him on this matter? For when they asked whether it was lawful to put away a wife for any cause, he said to them: “Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said: For this reason a man shall leave father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall be in one flesh? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined, let no man separate.” See, the Jews, who thought that they were acting according to the will of the law of Moses when they put away their wives, are refuted from the books of Moses: a wife is not to be put away. At the same time we learn here, on the testimony of Christ himself, that God made and joined male and female; and by denying this the Manichaeans stand condemned, resisting now not the book of Moses but the gospel of Christ. Moreover, if what they themselves suppose and preach is true, that the devil made and joined male and female, by what devilish cunning does Faustus blame Moses as dissolving marriages through the certificate of divorce, and praise Christ as strengthening that bond by the precept of the gospel, when according to his own foolish and sacrilegious opinion he ought to have praised Moses for separating what the devil had made and joined, and to have reproached Christ for making firm the devil’s fabrication and binding? Again, how does the good Master explain why Moses himself, from whose book was brought forward the conjugal chastity, so holy and not to be violated by any separation, from the first joining of male and female, afterwards permitted a wife to be put away? For when they had replied, “Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce and to put her away?” he said to them, “Because Moses, for the hardness of your heart, permitted you to put away your wives.” This is what we explained a little earlier. For how great was the hardness that could not be loosened and bent, even by the interposition of the certificate, where an opportunity for dissuasion would be given to the just and wise, to receive or recall the love of marriage? So the Lord declared, by the testimony of the same law, what the law both commanded to the good and permitted to the hard, when he both warned that a wife is not to be put away, by recalling from the same scripture the joining of male and female and setting out the divine authority of that joining, and showed that the certificate of divorce was to be given because of hardness of heart, whether a heart to be tamed or an untamed one.