Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.79–22.90

Why, then, do we leap into rash criticisms—and would that they were of men and not of God? Let the ministers of the Old Testament, who were also the foretellers of the New, have served by killing sinners; let the ministers of the New Testament, who are also the expounders of the Old, have served by dying at the hands of sinners: yet both served the one God, who at different and fitting times teaches both that temporal goods are to be sought from him and to be despised for his sake, and that temporal hardships can be imposed by him and ought to be borne for his sake. What cruelty, then, did Moses either command or do when, zealous with holy zeal for the people entrusted to him and desiring them to be subject to the one true God, after he learned that they had fallen away to making and worshipping an idol and had prostituted their unchaste mind to demons, he took vengeance with the sword on a few of them, whom God himself, whom they had offended, by a deep and secret judgment had willed to be brought to be struck, and so both wholesomely frightened them in the present and established discipline for the future? For who would not recognize that he did what he did with no cruelty but with great love, in the words with which he prayed for their sin, saying: “If you forgive them their sin, forgive; but if not, blot me out of your book”? Whoever, then, godly and prudent, compares that slaughter and this prayer surely sees most clearly—sees how great an evil it is for the soul to commit fornication through the images of demons, when he who loves so rages so. So plainly too the apostle, not cruelly but lovingly, handed a man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. He handed over others too, that they might learn not to blaspheme. The Manichaeans read apocryphal writings composed under the apostles' name by some cobblers of fables or other; writings which, in the times of their writers, would have deserved to be received into the authority of the holy church if the holy and learned men who were then in this life and could examine such things had recognized that they spoke the truth. There, nevertheless, they read that the apostle Thomas, when he was at a certain wedding feast as a stranger and quite unknown, and was struck with the palm of the hand by a certain servant, called down on the man an immediate and cruel punishment. For when he had gone out to a spring, to draw water for the guests, a lion rushed upon him and killed him, and his hand, with which he had struck the apostle's head with a light blow, was torn from his body and, according to the word of that same apostle, who wished and prayed for it, a dog brought it in to the tables at which the apostle himself was reclining. What can seem crueller than this? But because, unless I am mistaken, it is also written there that he asked pardon for him in the world to come, compensation was made by a greater benefit: so that both the apostle, through this fear, might be commended to those who did not know him as dear to God, and that man might be provided for eternally after this life, which must end some time. Whether that narrative is true or invented makes no difference to me now. Certainly the Manichaeans, by whom those writings which the church's canon rejects are accepted as true and genuine, are at least compelled by this to confess that that virtue of patience which the Lord teaches, saying, “If anyone strikes you on your right cheek, offer him the left also,” can be in the readiness of the heart even if it is not shown by bodily gesture and spoken words; since the apostle, struck with the palm, rather asked God that the injurious man be spared in the world to come, but that that injury be not left unavenged in the present, rather than either offering the striker the other side or inviting him to strike again. He certainly kept within the affection of love and without required an example of correction. Whether this is true or invented, why will they not believe that the servant of God Moses laid low with the sword the makers and worshippers of the idol with such a mind, when it is clear enough from his words that he begged pardon for this kind of sin in such a way that, unless he obtained it, he wished to be blotted out of God's book? And what likeness is there between an unknown man struck with the palm and God, who freed them from slavery in Egypt, led them across the divided sea, covered their pursuing enemies with the waves, and was abandoned and despised when an idol was preferred to him? And if we compare the punishments themselves, what likeness is there between being killed by the sword and being slaughtered and torn by wild beasts? For judges who serve the public laws order those guilty of a greater crime to be thrown to the beasts rather than struck with the sword.

There remains, among the slanderous and sacrilegious criticisms of Faustus, that to which I now reply: that the Lord spoke to the prophet Hosea and said: “Take for yourself a wife of fornication, and have sons by the woman of fornication.” In this scripture their unclean heart is so blinded that they do not understand even the plainest words of the gospel, where the Lord says to the Jews: “The harlots and tax collectors will go before you into the kingdom of heaven.” For what is contrary to the clemency of truth, what hostile to the Christian faith, if a harlot, leaving fornication, is changed into chaste marriage? And what so unfitting and foreign to the faith of a prophet as if he did not believe that all the sins of an unchaste woman changed for the better were forgiven? So, when the prophet made a harlot his wife, both the woman was helped to amend her life and the sacrament of a figure, of which we shall speak shortly, was expressed. But who does not see what in this deed rather offends the error of the Manichaeans? Namely, that harlots are accustomed to take care not to become pregnant. Accordingly, a fornicating woman who remained so pleased them more, so as not to bind their god, than one who, made the wife of one man, should bear children.

And of Solomon what shall I say, except that he is reproved more severely by the testimony of the faithful and holy Scripture itself than by Faustus's petulant and trifling abuse? For it spoke truly and faithfully of him: both what good he had at first and what evil he did in leaving the good in which he had first been. But Faustus, with his eyes closed or rather put out, did not go where he was led by the light that makes things plain, but rushed where he was carried headlong by malevolence. For by this very thing the holy books have the more shown to their religious readers and choosers how chastely the holy men had several wives: that Solomon, who had them not in that way, but rather for lust than for offspring, was disapproved and reproved in these words, so that he was called a lover of women, and thereby, having slipped and sunk into the depth of idolatry, he was exposed by the same truth, which accepts no one's person.

Now, then, having dealt with all the persons by whom Faustus thought the Scriptures of the Old Testament were to be blamed, and having given each his fitting discussion, by which either the men of God were defended against the slanders of heretics and fleshly people, or, though the men were reproved, the Scripture was nonetheless shown to be praiseworthy and venerable, let us see next, in the order in which Faustus named those men in his accusation, what the deeds of the men themselves also signify, what prophecies they carry, what things to come they foretell. This we have already done for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, by whose names God willed to be called as though he were God of them alone, though he is God of the whole creation; certainly not giving them so great an honour for nothing, but because he knew in them, as he alone also could know perfectly and supremely, a sincere and outstanding love; and because in these three fathers he in a way completed the great and wonderful sacrament of his future people: that they begot through free women not only into freedom, as through Sarah, Rebecca, Leah, and Rachel, but also into slavery, as through the same Rebecca was born Esau, to whom it was said: “You shall be your brother's servant”; and through maidservants not only into slavery, as through Hagar, but also into freedom, as through Bilhah and Zilpah. For so in the people of God, through spiritual free men too, some are born not only into praiseworthy freedom, as those to whom it is said, “Be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ,” but also into damnable slavery, as Simon through Philip; and through fleshly slaves some are born not only into damnable slavery, those who imitate them, but also into praiseworthy freedom, those to whom it is said: “What they say, do; but what they do, do not do.” Whoever wisely recognizes this great sacrament in the people of God keeps the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace to the end, by cleaving to some and bearing with others. We have done this also for Lot, showing what of his Scripture narrated as to be praised, what as to be blamed, and what it signified to be understood from the whole event.

It follows that we consider the deed of Judah in lying with his daughter-in-law, what it signified of things to come. But first something must be said by way of preface, lest anyone of slight consideration be offended that in the holy Scriptures some things to come, not evil but good, are signified by certain evil works of men. For divine providence everywhere keeps the power of its goodness, so that, just as from the intercourse of adulterers a human being is formed and born, a good work of God from an evil work of men (as we have already said in the preceding discussion, from the fruitfulness of seeds, not from the foulness of vices), so in the prophetic Scriptures, which narrate not only the good but also the evil deeds of men, since the narration itself is prophetic, something of future goods is signified even by the evil works of men, through the work not of the sinner but of the writer. For Judah, when overcome by desire he went in to Tamar, did not have this intention in his lust, that something should be signified by it that pertained to the salvation of men; just as neither did that Judas who betrayed the Lord intend that something should be done by it that pertained to that same salvation of men. Further, if from so evil a work of that Judas the Lord made so good a work, that he redeemed us by the blood of that same passion of his, what wonder if his prophet, of whom he himself said, “For he wrote of me,” signified something good from the evil deed of this Judah, so as to teach us by his ministry? For the prophet-narrator, under the disposing and inspiring of the Holy Spirit, gathered those deeds of men whose insertion was not empty of foreshadowing the things he intended to prophesy. And for signifying some good things it makes no difference whether the deeds by which they are signified are good or evil. For what difference does it make to me, when I want to learn something by reading, whether I find black Ethiopians written in red ink and white Gauls in black ink? But if I saw such a thing not in writing but in a painting, I would without doubt find fault with it. So in men's deeds which are set forth for imitation or avoidance it matters more whether they are good or evil; but in those written or spoken for signifying, it makes no difference what praise or blame they deserve in the morals of the doers, provided only they have some necessary fitness for prefiguring the thing in question. For just as Caiaphas in the gospel—as regards his harmful and ruinous mind, and indeed as regards the very words, if you attend in them to the will of the speaker, by which he was working that a just man should be unjustly killed—spoke what was certainly evil, yet without his knowing it signified a great good when he said, “It is expedient that one man die and that the whole nation not perish,” and it was said of him, “This he did not say of himself, but, being high priest, he prophesied that Jesus was to die for the nation”: so the deed of Judah, according to his lust, was evil, but without his knowing it signified a great good; for he did evil of himself, but he did not signify good of himself. And this, which I thought it necessary to say by way of preface, should apply not only to this deed of Judah but also to the others, if any evil works of men occur by which something good was prophesied by the narrator.

In Tamar, then, Judah's daughter-in-law, is understood the people of the kingdom of the Jews, to whom kings from the tribe of Judah were joined as husbands. Rightly her name means “bitterness”; for she gave the Lord a cup of gall. And two kinds of rulers who did not act rightly among the people—one of those who did harm, the other of those who did no good—are signified in the two sons of Judah, of whom one was wicked or cruel before the Lord, the other spilled on the ground so as not to give seed to make Tamar fruitful. Nor are there more than two kinds of men useless to the human race: one of those who harm, the other of those who will not give, and who waste whatever good they have in this earthly life, as if spilling it on the ground. And since in evil the one who harms comes before the one who does no good, therefore the wicked one is called the elder, and the next the one who spilled on the ground. Also the name of the elder, who was called Er, means “of skins,” such tunics as the first humans were clothed in when sent out of paradise in punishment for their condemnation. The name of the next, who was called Onan, means “their grief.” Whose? But theirs to whom he does no good, though he has the means to do good and wastes it on the ground. Further, the evil of life taken away, which skin signifies, is greater than that of life not helped, which “their grief” signifies. Yet God is said to have killed both: in which it is figured that he took the kingdom away from such men. And the third son of Judah, in not being joined to that woman, signifies the time from which kings began not to be made for the Jewish people from the tribe of Judah. So he was indeed a son of Judah, but Tamar did not receive him as husband, because the tribe of Judah was the same, but no one from it now reigned over the people. Hence his name too, that is Shelah, means “his dismissal.” Certainly the holy and righteous men do not belong to this signification, who, though they lived at that time, belong to the New Testament, which they knowingly served by prophesying, such as David was. At that time, indeed, when Judea had begun not to have kings from the tribe of Judah, Herod the Great is not to be counted among its kings as a husband of Tamar; for he was a foreigner, and was not joined to her by that sacrament of the mystic anointing as by a conjugal covenant, but ruled like a stranger: a power he had received from the Romans and from Caesar. So too his sons the tetrarchs, one of whom was called Herod by his father's name, who came to agreement with Pilate at the Lord's passion. These foreigners, then, were so far from being reckoned in that mystic kingdom of the Jews that the Jews themselves publicly cried out, gnashing their teeth against Christ: “We have no king but Caesar.” Nor was this true except by that universal dominion of the Romans; for Caesar too was not properly king of the Jews; but so that they might deny Christ and flatter him, they condemned themselves by such a cry.

At that time, then, when the kingship had already failed from the tribe of Judah, Christ was to come, the true Saviour, our Lord, who would do no harm and much good. For so it had been prophesied: “A ruler shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until he comes for whom it is promised; and he is the expectation of the nations.” By that time all the teaching authority of the Jews also, and the mystic anointing itself—from which they were called christs—had failed, according to the prophecy of Daniel. Then came he for whom it was laid up, the expectation of the nations, and the holy of holies was anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows. For he was born in the time of Herod the Great, and suffered under the tetrarchy of the younger Herod. Of him, then, coming to the sheep that were lost of the house of Israel, Judah himself bore the figure when he went to shear his sheep at Timnah, which means “failing.” For the ruler from Judah had already failed, and all the teaching authority and anointing of the Jews, so that he might come for whom it was laid up. And he came with his shepherd the Adullamite, whose name was Hirah; and Adullamite means “testimony in water.” Plainly with this testimony the Lord came, having indeed a greater testimony than John, yet for the sake of the weak sheep he used this testimony in water. For Hirah too, the name of that shepherd, means “vision of my brother.” John certainly saw his brother—brother according to the seed of Abraham, according to the kinship of Mary his mother and Elizabeth John's mother—and the same his Lord and God, since, as he himself says, he received from his fullness. He certainly saw him, and so among those born of women none greater than he has arisen, because of all who foretold Christ he saw what many righteous men and prophets desired to see and did not see; he greeted him from the womb, he recognized him more perfectly from the dove, and so, like the Adullamite, he truly bore testimony in water. And the Lord came to shear the sheep, that is, to unload them of their laborious burdens, from which the teeth of the church praised in the Song of Songs would be like a flock of shorn ewes.

Now let Tamar change her dress; for Tamar also means “changing.” But let the name of bitterness wholly remain in her—not that bitterness in which she gave the Lord gall, but that in which Peter wept bitterly; for Judah in Latin is “confession.” Let bitterness, then, be mingled with confession, so that true repentance may be foreshadowed. By this repentance the church established in all nations is made fruitful. For Christ had to suffer and rise on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins had to be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. For the harlot's dress itself is the confession of sins. Tamar now bears the type of the church called out of the nations, sitting in this dress at the gate of Enan or Enaim, which means “springs.” For she ran like the hart to the springs of water, to reach the seed of Abraham; there she is made fruitful by one who does not recognize her, because it was foretold of her: “A people whom I did not know served me.” She received in secret the ring, the necklace, and the staff: she is sealed by calling, adorned by justification, exalted by glorification. “For those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.” But these things, as I said, are still in secret, where the conception of holy fruitfulness also takes place. And the promised kid is sent as to a harlot—the kid, the reproach of sin—through the same Adullamite, as though rebuking and saying: “Brood of vipers.” But the reproach of sin did not find her, whom the bitterness of confession had changed. Afterwards, by the public signs of the ring, the necklace, and the staff, she overcame the Jews who judged rashly, whose person Judah himself now bore, who still today say that this is not the people of Christ and that we do not have the seed of Abraham; but when the most certain proofs of our calling, justification, and glorification are brought forward, they will without doubt be confounded and will confess that we are more justified than they. I would search out and expound these things more thoroughly and, so to speak, limb by limb and joint by joint, as far as the Lord helped my effort, did not concern to finish this work, which is already longer than I would wish, keep me from this more laborious diligence.

Now I will touch, as briefly as I can, on what David's sin signified in prophecy. For the names themselves, when interpreted, show sufficiently what this deed too prefigured. David means “strong of hand” or “desirable”; and what is stronger than that Lion of the tribe of Judah, who conquered the world? And what more desirable than him of whom the prophet says: “The one desired by all nations will come”? Bathsheba means “well of fullness” or “seventh well”; and whichever of these interpretations of the name we take, it suits well enough what we intend to say. For in the Song of Songs that bride is the church, who is called a well of living water. And to this well the name of the number seven is joined, signifying the Holy Spirit, by reason of Pentecost, the day on which the Holy Spirit came, sent from heaven. For the scripture of Tobit also testifies that this feast day is made up of weeks. And to forty-nine, which is seven times seven, one is added, by which unity is commended. In this reckoning lives that apostolic saying: “Bearing with one another in love, eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” By the spiritual gift, then, that is, the sevenfold, the church was made a well of fullness, because there was made in her a spring of water welling up to eternal life, which whoever has will never thirst. And who was her husband? What else does he signify, by the interpretation of his name, but the devil? To him were bound in a most evil marriage all whom the grace of God sets free, so that the church without spot or wrinkle may be united to her own Saviour. For Uriah means “my light of God,” and Hittite “cut off,” either because he did not stand in the truth, but was cut off, by the desert of pride, from the light from above which he had from God, or because, having fallen and lost his true strength, he nevertheless transforms himself into an angel of light, still daring to say: “My light is of God.” This David, then, sinned gravely and wickedly; which crime of his God both rebuked through the prophet with reproof and David himself washed away by repentance. Yet that one desired by all nations loved the church washing herself on the roof, that is, cleansing herself from the filth of the world and by spiritual contemplation rising above and treading down the house of clay; and having begun acquaintance with her by a first meeting, he afterwards killed the devil, utterly separated from her, and united her to himself in perpetual marriage. Let us hate the sin, then, but not extinguish the prophecy; let us love that David as much as he is to be loved, who by mercy freed us from the devil; and let us love this David also, who healed so grave a wound of iniquity in himself by the humility of repentance.

Now what shall I say of Solomon? Holy Scripture rebukes and condemns him severely and mentions nothing at all of his repentance or of God's indulgence towards him. Nor does anything occur to me that this lamentable sinking of his signifies of good even in allegory, unless perhaps someone were to say that the foreign women with whose love he burned signify the churches chosen from the Gentiles. This might perhaps be understood not absurdly if those women had forsaken their gods for Solomon's sake and worshipped his God. But since he, for their sake, offended his God and worshipped their gods, there is nothing good we can conjecture from it. Yet I do not think it signifies nothing, but something evil, as we said of Lot's wife and daughters. For in the person of this Solomon there appears both a wonderful excellence and a wonderful overthrow. What, then, existed in him at different times—first good and afterwards evil—is shown in the church in this world still at one and the same time. For I think that by his good the good of the church are signified, and by his evil the bad of the church; as in the unity of one threshing floor, as in that one man, the good in the grain and the bad in the chaff; as in the unity of one field, the good in the wheat and the bad in the weeds. If, by a more careful examination of what is written of him, something else more probable can come to light from this, either to me or to more learned and better men, still for now we have not so let the matter go that it hinders our purpose, hastening on to other things, like an interrupted thread of composition.

Of the prophet Hosea there is no need for me to say what that command or deed signifies, when the Lord said to Hosea, “Go, take for yourself a wife of fornication, and have sons of fornication,” since Scripture itself shows clearly enough why and for what reason it was said. For it continues: “For the land will surely commit fornication, departing from the Lord. And he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim; and she conceived and bore him a son. And the Lord said to him: Call his name Jezreel, for yet a little while, and I will visit the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Judah, and I will make it cease, and I will turn away the kingdom of the house of Israel. And on that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. And she conceived again and bore a daughter. And the Lord said to him: Call her name ‘Without mercy,’ for I will no longer have mercy on Israel, but I will utterly forget them; but on the house of Judah I will have mercy, and I will save them in the Lord their God, and I will not save them by bow or by sword or by war or by horses or by horsemen. And she weaned her who was ‘Without mercy,’ and conceived and bore a son. And the Lord said to him: Call his name ‘Not my people,’ for you are not my people, and I will not be your God. And the number of the sons of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which is without measure and cannot be numbered; and it shall be that in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ it shall be said to them, ‘Sons of the living God.’ And the sons of Judah and the sons of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head, and they shall go up from the land, for great is the day of Jezreel. Say to your brothers, ‘My people,’ and to your sister, ‘She has obtained mercy.’” Since, then, the Lord himself plainly discloses the figure of this command and deed through the same scripture, and since the apostolic writings testify that this prophecy was fulfilled in the preaching of the New Testament, who would dare to say that it was not commanded and done for the reason for which he who commanded it explains in the holy writings that he commanded it and the prophet did it? For the apostle Paul says: “in order to make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he has called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles; as Hosea also says: I will call ‘not my people’ ‘my people,’ and ‘not beloved’ ‘beloved,’ and it shall be that in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called sons of the living God.” Paul, then, shows that this was prophesied of the Gentiles. Hence Peter too, writing to the Gentiles, without naming the prophet inserts his prophecy into his own words, saying: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, that you may proclaim the virtues of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light; you who once were not a people, but now are the people of God; on whom once he had no mercy, but now has mercy.” From this it plainly appears that what was said through the prophet—“And the number of the sons of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which is without measure and cannot be numbered,” and what is added next, “and it shall be that in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ it shall be said to them, ‘Sons of the living God’”—was not at all said of that Israel which is according to the flesh, but of that of which the apostle says to the Gentiles: “You, then, are Abraham's seed, heirs according to the promise.” But since many from that Judea also believed and will believe—for from there were the apostles, from there the many thousands who were joined to the apostles in Jerusalem, from there the churches of which he says to the Galatians, “I was unknown by face to the churches of Judea that are in Christ”; whence also he interprets the Lord, called the cornerstone in the psalms, as having joined in himself two walls, namely of the circumcision and of the uncircumcision, “so as to create in himself one new man from the two, making peace, and to reconcile both in one body to God through the cross, killing the enmity in himself; and coming he preached peace to those who were far off and to those who were near,” that is, to the Gentiles far off and to the Jews near; “for he is our peace, who made both one”—rightly this prophet too, putting the sons of Judah for the Jews and the sons of Israel for the Gentiles, says: “And the sons of Judah and the sons of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head, and they shall go up from the land.” Whoever, then, contradicts this prophecy, so plainly declared by the very outcome of events, most impudently contradicts not only the prophetic but also the apostolic writings, and not only any writings but things fulfilled and flooded with the clearest light. The deed of Judah perhaps required somewhat more careful attention, so that this harlot, who signifies the church gathered from the prostitution of Gentile superstitions, might be recognized in the dress of that woman called Tamar; but here, since Scripture itself discloses its meaning and is illuminated by the harmonious writings of the apostles, why do we linger here any longer, and not now look at what remains concerning the servant of God Moses, what the things Faustus objected also signify?

That in defending his brother he killed the Egyptian readily suggests to anyone that the devil, who does us wrong in this pilgrimage, is killed by the Lord Christ in our defence. And that he buried the dead man in the sand plainly shows that the devil's now dead presence lies hidden in those who have no firm foundation. Hence the Lord builds the church on the rock, and compares those who hear his word and do it to a wise man who builds his house on the rock, so that it may not give way and collapse under temptations; but those who hear and do not do it he compares to a foolish man building on sand, whose house, when tried, falls with a great ruin.