Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.22–21.9

For it is not true, as Faustus said, that our predecessors the Jews, separated from the Gentiles, since they had a temple and sacrifices and altars and priesthoods, gave up only carved images, that is, idols. For they could, as some do even without carved idols, have sacrificed to trees and mountains, and finally even to the sun and moon and the other stars. If they had done this, with that worship which is called latria, serving the creature rather than the creator, and so erring in the no small evil of impious superstition, the demons would nonetheless have presented themselves to delude them and to take what they had offered in this way. For those proud and impious spirits are fed not by the savor and smoke, as some foolish people think, but by the errors of men: not by refreshment of their body, but by malevolent delight, when they deceive in any way whatever, or by the arrogant pride of a counterfeit majesty, when they boast that divine honors are paid to them. So our fathers did not give up only the images of the Gentiles; but, sacrificing nothing to the earth or to any earthly thing, nor to the sea, nor to the sky, nor to the host of heaven, they offered victims to the one God, creator of all, who willed them to be offered to him, promising through their likeness the true victim through whom he has reconciled us to himself by the forgiveness of sins in Christ Jesus our Lord; and Paul addresses the faithful, made the body of this head, saying: “I beseech you, brothers, by the mercy of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God.” But the Manichaeans say that human bodies are the handiwork of the race of darkness and prisons in which God, conquered, is shut up; hence Faustus proclaims one thing, Paul quite another. But since “whoever preaches to you a gospel other than what you have received, let him be accursed,” Christ speaks truly in Paul; let Mani be accursed in Faustus.

He also says that we have changed nothing of the morals of the Gentiles, not knowing what he is saying. For since “the righteous lives by faith,” and “the end of the commandment is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned,” and there remain for forming the life of the faithful these three, “faith, hope, love,” how can anyone have the same morals as someone with whom he does not share these three? For whoever believes something different, hopes for something different, loves something different, must live differently. And if the use of certain things seems to be the same for us as for the Gentiles, such as food and drink, houses, clothes, baths, and, for those of us who lead married life, taking and having wives, begetting, rearing, and leaving inheritances to children, yet the one who refers their use to a different end uses these things very differently, and so does the one who gives thanks for them to God, about whom he believes nothing wrong or false. For just as, in your very error, though you eat the same bread as other men, and live on fruits and springs, and are clothed in wool and linen woven alike, you still do not lead the same life in these things, not by eating or drinking or wearing something different, but by thinking and believing something different and referring all these things to a different end, namely the end of your error and vanity: so we too, both in these and in other things which we take alike, do not live alike with the Gentiles, since we refer the same things not to the same end, but to the end of the lawful and divine commandment, “love from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned, from which some, straying, have turned aside to vain talk.” In this, indeed, you hold first place, not observing, not considering how much a different faith avails for a different life in having and doing the same things. So, although your hearers both have wives and take up children, however unwillingly, and amass or keep inheritances for them, eat meat, drink wine, bathe, reap, gather grapes, do business, hold public offices, you nevertheless count them with you and not with the Gentiles, although their deeds seem more like the Gentiles’ than yours. For although the deeds of certain Gentiles come nearer to yours than those of some of your hearers (for some of them, in their sacrilegious rites, abstain from wine and from meat and from intercourse), you count rather your hearers, who use all these things and in that are unlike you, in the flock of Mani, than those who do the same things that you do; and you call a woman who has believed in Mani yours rather, even if she bears children, than the Sibyl, who did not even marry. “But many are called catholic Christians who are adulterers, robbers, misers, drunkards, and whatever else is opposed to sound doctrine.” Well then, among you, in your so small and almost nonexistent number, are not many such, and are some among the pagans not such? Do you therefore say that pagans who are not such are better than you? Yet because of the sacrilegious vanity of your sect, even those among you who are not such are worse than pagans who are such. Hence it is clear that sound doctrine, which alone is catholic, is not discredited because many want to be reckoned under its name but do not want to be healed by it. For that fewness which the Lord especially commends is to be recognized within a huge and countless multitude spread throughout the whole world: a fewness of saints and faithful which, as must often be pointed out, is called few as the grains are few in comparison with the multitude of the chaff, but which in itself makes so great a mass of wheat that it surpasses by an incomparable multitude all your good and bad members alike, whom the truth rejects equally. See, we are not a schism of the Gentiles, from whom we differ very greatly for the better; but neither are you, since you differ from them very greatly for the worse.

Faustus said: “Is there one God, or two?” Plainly one. “How then do you assert two?” Never in our assertions has the name of two gods been heard. But I should like to know from where you suspect this. “Because you teach two principles, of good and of evil.” It is true that we confess two principles, but one of them we call God, the other Hyle, or, to speak in common and usual terms, the demon. But if you think this means two gods, then when a physician discusses sickness and health you will be able to think they are two healths; and when someone names good and evil, you will be able to think they are two goods; and hearing of plenty and want, you will think they are two plenties. What then? If, when I discuss white and black, cold and hot, sweet and bitter, you were to say that I had shown two whites, two hots, and two sweets, would you not seem out of your mind and of a brain far from sound? So too, when I teach two principles, God and Hyle, I ought not on that account to seem to you to be showing two gods. Or, because we assign all harmful power to Hyle and all beneficial power to God, as is fitting, do you think on that account that it makes no difference whether we call both of them God? If so, hearing of poison and antidote, you will be able to think it makes no difference whether both are called antidote, because each has its own power, each does and works something. And hearing of a physician and a poisoner, you will call both physicians; and hearing of a just man and an unjust one, you will be able to call both just, because each of them does something. But if it is absurd to do this, how much more absurd to think God and Hyle two gods because each of them works something? Therefore this argument is silly and quite exhausted of strength: because you cannot answer me about the thing, you stir up ill will from names alone. For I do not deny that we too sometimes call the opposing nature “god,” but not according to our faith; rather, according to the name already applied to it by its worshippers, who imprudently think it a god; as the apostle too says, “The god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers,” naming him god because he was already so called by his own, but adding that he blinds minds, so that it may be understood from this that he is not the true God.

Augustine replied: We do indeed often hear of two gods in your disputations; and although you denied it at first, a little later you yourself admitted it, as if giving the reason why you say so, because the apostle too says, “The god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers.” Many of us punctuate this sentence so as to say that the true God has blinded the minds of unbelievers. For when they have read, “in whom God,” they pause in pronouncing it, and then add, “has blinded the minds of the unbelievers of this world.” For even if you do not punctuate it so, but for the sake of explanation change the order of the words thus, “in whom God has blinded the minds of the unbelievers of this world,” the same sense shines out as in that punctuation. For even such an operation, by which the minds of unbelievers are blinded, can in a certain way belong to the true God; it is not malice that does it, but justice, as the same Paul says elsewhere: “Is God unjust, who inflicts wrath?” And again elsewhere: “What then shall we say?” he says; “Is there injustice with God? By no means. For he says to Moses: I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will show compassion to whom I am compassionate.” Since, then, he had first laid down what must be held unshaken, that there is no injustice with God, notice what he says a little later: “But if God, wishing to show his wrath and to make known his power, endured with much patience the vessels of wrath made for destruction, and in order to make known the riches of his glory toward the vessels of mercy, which he prepared for glory,” and so on. Certainly here it can in no way be said that one God shows his wrath and makes known his power in the vessels made for destruction, and another shows his riches in the vessels of mercy. For the apostolic teaching testifies that one and the same God does both. Hence also this: “For this reason God gave them up to the desires of their heart, to uncleanness, so that they dishonor their bodies among themselves”; and a little later: “Therefore God gave them up to shameful passions”; and again a little later: “And since they did not see fit to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind.” See how the true and just God blinds the minds of unbelievers. For in these words of the apostle which I have quoted, no other God has ever been understood than the one who sent his Son, who says: “For judgment I came into this world, so that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” For here too it is clear enough to the minds of the faithful how God blinds the minds of unbelievers. For something hidden goes before, in hidden places, where God carries out the most just examination of his judgment, so that the minds of some are blinded and those of others enlightened; to whom it is most truly said: “Your judgments are a great deep.” Marveling at the impenetrable height of this depth, the apostle exclaims: “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments!” and so on.

But you, unable to distinguish what God does by kindness and what by judgment, because our psalter is far from your heart and from your mouth, where it is said, “Of mercy and judgment I will sing to you, Lord,” remove altogether from the decision and judgment of God whatever has offended you through the weakness of human mortality, having of course another, evil god ready, whom not truth shows you but vanity invents, to whom you attribute not only whatever you do unjustly but also whatever you suffer justly; thus attributing to God the benefits of his gifts and taking from him the judgments of punishment, as though Christ said that eternal fire was prepared for the wicked by another god than him “who makes his sun rise on the good and the evil and sends rain on the just and the unjust.” Why do you not understand that such goodness here and such severity there belong to one God, except because you do not know how to sing of mercy and judgment? Does not the same one who makes his sun rise on the good and the evil, and sends rain on the just and the unjust, nevertheless break off the natural branches and graft in the wild olive contrary to nature? Does not the apostle say there of the one God himself: “See then the goodness and severity of God: severity toward those who were broken off, but goodness toward you, if you remain in goodness”? Surely you have heard, surely you have noticed, how he neither takes from God his judicial severity nor from man his free will. It is hidden, it is deep, it is shut off from human thought in an unapproachable secret, how God both condemns the ungodly and justifies the ungodly; for the truth of the holy scriptures speaks of both concerning him. Does it delight you, then, to chatter against the divine judgments because they are unsearchable? How much more fitting, how much better suited to our measure, it is to be awestruck where Paul was awestruck, and to exclaim: “O the depth of the riches of the knowledge and wisdom of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out!” How much better to marvel at what you are not able to search out, than to want to invent another, evil god because you could not comprehend the one good God! For the question is not about the name, but about the work.

For Faustus seems to have defended himself quickly when he says, “We do not speak of two gods, but of God and Hyle.” But when you ask what he means by Hyle, you will hear plainly a description of another god. For if they called hyle the formless matter capable of bodily forms, as it was called by the ancients, none of us would charge them with calling it a god. As it is, how great an error, how great a madness it is either to call the matter of bodies the maker of bodies, or to deny that the maker of bodies is God! Since, then, what the true God does, namely the qualities and forms of bodies, elements, and living things, so that there are bodies, elements, and living things, you say some other being does, whatever name you call him by, you are rightly said by your error to bring in another god. For in this one matter you err twice with a sacrilegious error: once, in that you say that what God made is made by one whom you blush to confess as god (but you will in no way bring it about that he is not god, unless you deny that he makes such things as only God makes); and again, because you suppose that what the good God makes good is both made by an evil one and is evil, shuddering with a childish mind at what does not suit the weakness of penal mortality and loving what does suit it. So you call him evil who made the snake, but you think this sun so great a good that you believe it was not made by God but brought forth or sent out from him. But the true God, in whom I grieve exceedingly that you do not yet believe, made both the snake among other lower things and the sun among other higher ones, and, higher still, not bodily heavenly things but spiritual things far better than this light, which no carnal man perceives, much less you, who, when you detest the flesh, detest nothing other than your own rule by which you measure good and evil! For there can be in you no thought either of evils, except of the kind that offend the carnal sense, or of goods, except of the kind that delight the carnal eye.

So when I consider these works of God at the bottom of things, earthly, weak, mortal, yet works of God, such as we can see, I am moved beyond words to praise their creator, who is so great in great works that he is not less in the least. For the divine art by which heavenly and earthly works are made, though these are unlike one another, is itself like itself in all of them, because in perfecting each in its own kind it is everywhere perfect. For it does not make the universe in each single thing, but, making single things for the embrace of the universe, it offers itself whole both to the universe to be made and to single things, making and arranging all things fittingly in their places and orders, and giving what is fitting to all, both individually and universally. See here, at what is as it were the lowest floor of the whole creation, look at the living things that fly and swim and walk and creep. Surely they are mortal; surely their life, as it is written, is “a vapor that appears for a little while.” For they contribute this small measure, received from the best of founders, to the universe as to a common store, to fill it out according to the share of their kind, so that, with these lowest things, all things may be good, among which the higher are better than they. But pay attention, and give me a single animal, however abject, whose soul hates its flesh and does not rather nourish and cherish it, and quicken, rule, and in a way administer with vital motion, according to the smallness of its kind, a sort of universe of its own joined to it for preserving its safety. For when the rational soul chastises its body and brings it into subjection, so that the perception of wisdom may not be hindered by immoderate earthly appetite, even so it certainly loves its flesh, which it lawfully subjects and orders to obey it. Finally, you yourselves, although by a carnal error you detest the flesh, cannot but love your flesh and look after its health and safety, avoiding all the blows, falls, and bad weather by which it is harmed, and seeking the protection and health by which it is preserved; so you show that the law of nature prevails against the opinion of your error.

What of the flesh itself: its vital organs, the harmony of its whole form, its members for working, its vessels for sensing, all distinguished by their places and offices and woven together in harmonious unity with moderation of measures, equality of numbers, and order of weights: do they not point to their maker, the true God, to whom it is truly said, “You have arranged all things in measure and number and weight”? If, then, you had a heart not perverted and corrupted by empty fables, you would clearly see his invisible things, understood even through these things that have been made in this lowest and fleshly creation. For from where do these things I have mentioned come to them, except from him by whose unity every measure is established, by whose wisdom every beauty is formed, by whose law every order is arranged? But if you have no eye to behold these things, let the authority of the apostle guide you.

For when the apostle was giving precepts about holy love, such as that of husbands for their wives ought to be, he took his example from the soul that loves. “He who loves his wife,” he says, “loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church.” See, the whole fleshly substance is before your eyes! See how this common bond of nature points every living thing, joined to itself for its safety, to love its own flesh. For this is not only so in men, who, when they live rightly, not only look after the safety of their flesh but also tame and rein in fleshly impulses to the use of reason; but beasts too flee pain and fear destruction, and whatever can break and sever that framework of members and that bond of flesh and spirit from its harmonious joining, they avoid with all the agility they have, they too nourishing and cherishing their own flesh. “For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes,” he says, “and cherishes it, as Christ also does the church.” See from where to where he has ascended; behold, if you can, what force the creature draws from the creator, from the heavenly structures themselves down to flesh and blood, bounded by the fullness of the universe, adorned by the variety of forms, ordered by the grades of things.

Again, when the same apostle was teaching us something plainly great, divine, and hidden about spiritual gifts, diverse yet harmonizing in unity, he gave a likeness drawn from this very flesh of ours; and while saying this he by no means kept silent that God is its maker. Although the passage is long, yet because it is very necessary I shall not be reluctant to insert the whole of it from his letter to the Corinthians into this work. “Concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant. You know that when you were Gentiles, you went up to voiceless images, led as you were. Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking in the Spirit of God says ‘Anathema Jesus,’ and no one can say ‘Lord Jesus’ except in the Holy Spirit. Now there are divisions of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are divisions of ministries, and the same Lord; and there are divisions of workings, but the same God, who works all things in all. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good: to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith in the same Spirit, to another the gift of healings in the one Spirit, to another the workings of powers, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues: but one and the same Spirit works all these, dividing to each his own as he wills. For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free; and we were all given to drink of one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body,’ is it therefore not of the body? Or if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I am not of the body,’ is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the smelling be? But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body as he willed. If they were all one member, where would the body be? But now there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you’; but much more, those members of the body that seem to be weaker are necessary; and those of the body that seem to be less honorable, on these we bestow more abundant honor; and our unseemly parts have more abundant seemliness, while our seemly parts have no need. But God has tempered the body together, giving greater honor to the part that lacked, so that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another; and if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is glorified, all the members rejoice with it.” If there is in you, I do not say any Christian faith, so that you believe the apostle, but any human sense, so that you perceive what is plain, let each one see and consider these things in himself: how true, how certain they are, how great in what is small, how good in what is lowest; since the apostle sets these things in a place of praise, so that through these weak bodily things which are seen, those sublime spiritual things which are not seen may be more easily understood.

So you see whom he contradicts who denies that God is the maker of these members and of our body, which the apostle so commends and praises, proclaiming to us something other than what we have received. What need is there, then, for him to be refuted by me rather than anathematized by all Christians? The apostle says, “God tempered the body,” and this man says, “Hyle, not God.” What is plainer than these enmities, to be anathematized before they are refuted? Did the apostle here too, when he said “God,” add “of this world”? There, even if someone understands that the devil blinds the minds of unbelievers, we do not deny it, by evil persuasions; and those who consent to them lose the light of justice, God repaying what is just. All these things we read in the holy scriptures. For this too was said of seduction coming from outside: “I fear lest, as the serpent seduced Eve by his cunning, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity and chastity that is in Christ.” Like this is: “Evil conversations corrupt good morals.” And this, that each one may be his own seducer: “But whoever thinks he is something, when he is nothing, deceives himself.” And this about God’s punishment, which I mentioned above: “God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do what is not fitting.” So too in the old books, after saying first, “God did not make death, nor does he delight in the destruction of the living,” a little later it says, “Through the envy of the devil death entered the world.” And again about death itself, lest men should put themselves outside blame: “But the ungodly,” it says, “summoned it by their hands and words, and thinking it a friend they wasted away”; and elsewhere: “Good things and bad, life and death, riches and poverty, are from the Lord God.” Here confused men do not understand that in one and the same evil work, not by another punishment following later, which will be manifest, but by a certain punishment accompanying it at once, one thing comes from the cunning of the persuader, another from the wickedness of the one who wills, another from the justice of the one who punishes: the devil suggests, man consents, God abandons. Therefore in the evil work, that is, the blinding of unbelievers, if the devil too is understood because of the malice of his persuasion, so that it is punctuated thus, “the god of this world,” it does not seem to me absurd. For he is not called god without an addition, since “of this world” is added, that is, of ungodly men who want to flourish only in this world; in which sense the world is also called evil, as it is written: “to rescue us from the present evil world.” For of the same kind is this: “whose god is the belly”; if “whose” were not there, he would in no way say “god is the belly.” Nor could demons be called gods in the psalm unless “of the nations” were added; for so it is written: “For the gods of the nations are demons.” But here it is neither “the god of this world,” nor “whose god is the belly,” nor “the gods of the nations are demons,” but it is stated simply, “God tempered the body”; and this can be understood only of the true God, creator of all. For those things are said with reproach, but this is said with praise. Unless perhaps Faustus understands that God tempered the body not by the arrangement of the members, that is, by fashioning and constructing, but by the admixture of his light: namely, that another, who fashioned it, placed these members so distinguished and located in their seats, while God, by mixing in his goodness, tempered the malice of this structure. For with such fables they dull childish minds; but God, coming to the aid of little ones through the mouths of the saints, has not allowed them to say even this. For you have also a little earlier: “God placed the members, each one of them, in the body as he willed.” Who now would not understand that God is called the tempering maker of the body in this sense, that he fashioned the body from many members which keep the offices of different works within the framework of unity?