Against Faustus the Manichaean 26.1–28.5

Faustus said: If Jesus was not born, how did he die? This is now plainly conjecture, and no one uses conjecture except one whom proofs have failed. Yet we shall answer this too, bringing examples from nowhere else than from the things you are accustomed to believe; if they are true, they will confirm us as well; if false, they will destroy you too. You say, then: How did Jesus die if he was not a man? And I ask you in turn: How did Elijah not die, when he was a man? Or was this mortal allowed, beyond his condition, to seize the right of immortality, and was Christ, the immortal, not allowed to take something of death to himself, if it was necessary? And if Elijah lives for ever against nature, why do you not rather grant that Jesus could die for three days only against nature—especially since you believe this not only of Elijah but also of Moses and Enoch, that they too are immortal and were caught up with their bodies into heaven? Therefore, if by this argument it is rightly inferred that Jesus was a man because he died, it could equally be inferred by the same argument that Elijah was not a man because he did not die. But it is false that Elijah was not a man, though he is believed to be immortal; it will be equally false that Jesus was a man, though he is thought to have died. And if you will believe me when I tell the truth, both of them acquired a false reputation among the Hebrews: Jesus for his death and Elijah for his immortality; for neither did the latter not die, nor did the former die. But you believe what you wish; what you do not wish, you bring back to nature. Therefore, if one asks what is proper to nature, nature wills neither that the immortal should die nor that the mortal should not die. But if we ask about the power in God and in man to do what they wish, I think it more possible that Jesus could die than that Elijah could not die, for the power in Jesus is greater than in Elijah. And if you, forgetting nature and his condition, lift the less powerful into heaven against the licence of nature and consecrate him to perpetuity, why should I not grant that Jesus could die if he willed, even if I were to agree that it was truly death and not the semblance of death? For just as from the beginning, having taken the likeness of a man, he feigned all the affections of the human condition, so it would not have been out of keeping if at the end too, in order to seal the dispensation, he had appeared to die as well.

Besides, this too should be mentioned: if one asks what is permitted to each thing by nature, the question ought to be asked about everything that Jesus did, not only about his death. For nature does not allow one blind from birth to see the light; yet Jesus is seen to have done this mightily for blind men of this kind, so that the Jews themselves exclaimed that never since the beginning of the world had it been seen that anyone opened the eyes of one born blind. To have healed a withered hand, to have restored voice and speech to those deprived of them by nature, to have restored the breath of life to the dead, to bodies already dissolved in decay, by giving back their frame—whom would this not reduce to amazement, and in a sense compel to disbelieve, when he considers what is or is not permitted by nature? Yet all these things we Christians in common believe were done by the same Jesus, no longer with regard to nature, but only to the power and might of God. We read also that once, thrown by the Jews from the brow of a hill, he went away unharmed. Why, then, could he who did not die when cast down from a high mountain, because he did not will it, not also die when he willed? And this has now been answered by us in this way because you like to argue and try others’ weapons, wishing to dispute dialectically; otherwise, for us neither did Jesus die nor is Elijah immortal.

Augustine replied: Whatever holy Scripture, set at the highest summit of authority by sure and great proofs of its trustworthiness, testifies about Enoch, Elijah, and Moses, that we believe—not what Faustus suspects we believe. But what is according to nature and what is against nature, people who err as you do cannot know. We do not deny, however, that in human fashion something is called against nature which is against the course of nature known to mortals. So it is with what the apostle says: “If you were cut from the wild olive, natural to you, and grafted against nature into the good olive”; he called that against nature which is against the custom of nature that human knowledge grasps, namely that a wild olive grafted into an olive bears not the berries of the wild olive but the richness of the olive. But God, the creator and founder of all natures, does nothing against nature; for whatever he has done will be natural to each thing, since from him is all measure, number, and order of nature. Nor does man himself do anything against nature except when he sins; and yet he is brought back to nature by punishment. For it belongs to the natural order of justice that either sins are not committed or they cannot go unpunished. Whichever of these is the case, the natural order is preserved, if not by the soul, then certainly by God. For sins trouble the conscience and harm the mind itself, since by sinning it is deprived of the light of justice, even if there follow no pains, whether those inflicted on the ones to be corrected or the last ones reserved for the uncorrected. But we say, not unfittingly, that God does something against nature when he does something against what we know in nature. For we also call nature the course of nature that is known and usual to us; and when God does something against it, these are called mighty works or wonders. But against that supreme law of nature, which is remote from the knowledge either of the ungodly or of those still weak, God no more acts than he acts against himself. And the spiritual and also rational creature, to which kind the human soul belongs, the more it shares in that unchangeable law and light, the more it sees what can and cannot be done; but the further it is removed from it, the more it wonders at unusual things, the less it discerns what is to come.

And so we do not know what was done with Elijah; yet we believe about him what truthful Scripture testifies. This at least we know: that what was done with him is what the will of God holds, and that what the will of God does not hold cannot be done with anyone at all. Accordingly, if I am told that it can happen that the flesh, say, of this or that man is changed into a heavenly body, I grant that it can happen; but whether it will happen I do not know, and I do not know because what the will of God holds on this matter is hidden from me. Yet this is not hidden from me: that without doubt it will happen, if the will of God holds it. Further, if I hear that something was going to happen, but God acted so that it did not happen, I will answer most confidently: what was rather going to happen was what God did, not that thing on account of which, as though it were going to happen, he did this. For God certainly knew what he was going to do, and so he knew at the same time that that thing was not going to happen which he was going to act to prevent; and without doubt what God knows is truer than what man supposes. Hence future things can no more not happen than past things can not have been done, since it is not in God’s will that anything should be false in the very respect in which it is true. Therefore all things that are truly going to be will without doubt happen; and if they have not happened, they were not going to be. So too all things that are truly past have without doubt passed.

So whoever says, “If God is almighty, let him make what has been done not to have been done,” does not see that he is saying, “If he is almighty, let him make things that are true false in the very respect in which they are true.” For he can make something not be that was; for he makes it not be when he finds something existing to work upon, as when he makes someone who began to be by being born cease to be by dying; for he finds something already made to work upon. But who would say that he makes what already is not to not be? For whatever is past already is not. And if anything can be done with it, there is still something to work upon; and if there is, how is it past? So what we truly say has been, is not; but it is true that it has been because this is true in our statement, not in the thing, which no longer is. For the statement by which we say that something has been is true precisely because the thing of which we speak no longer is. This statement God cannot make false, because he is not contrary to the truth. And if you ask where this true statement is, it is found first in our mind, when we know and say that it is true. But even if it is taken from our mind, when we have forgotten what we knew, it will remain in the truth itself. For it will always be true that what was and is not has been; and it will be true that what was has been, there where it was true, before it came about, that what was not was going to be. To this truth God cannot be opposed, in whom is the supreme and unchangeable truth itself, by which whatever is true in the souls and minds of anyone is illumined so that it may be. Nor do we call God almighty as though we believed that he could also die, so that, because he cannot do this, he should not be called almighty. He alone is plainly and truly called almighty, because he truly is, and from him alone is whatever in any way is, whether spiritual or bodily; because he uses his whole creation as he pleases; and it pleases him, according to the true and unchangeable justice that he himself is to himself, to change all changeable things, while he himself is unchangeable, according to the deserts either of natures or of deeds. Are we then going to say that Elijah, being a creature, could not be changed either for the worse or for the better, or could not be changed in a manner unusual to the human race, according to the will of almighty God? Who would be so foolish as to say this? Why then should we not believe what is set down about him in most truthful Scripture—unless we think that God can do only what we are accustomed to see?

“But if Elijah,” he says, “was a man and could avoid dying, why could Christ, though he was not a man, not die?” That is as if someone were to say: “If the nature of man could be changed into something better, why could the nature of God not be changed into something worse?” Foolish! For the nature of man is changeable, but the nature of God unchangeable. Someone equally insane could say: “If he can grant to man to reign for ever, why can he not also make himself to be damned for ever?” “I do not say this,” he says, “but compare at least a three-day death of God with the eternal life of a man.” Certainly, if you took the three-day death of God in this way, that in him the flesh died which he took from the race of mortals, you would be thinking the truth; for the truth of the gospel proclaims that this three-day death of Christ took place for the eternal life of men. But when you want a three-day death in the divine nature itself, without any mortal creature taken up, to be believed without absurdity because human nature can be given immortality, you are surely as foolish as one who knows neither God nor the gifts of God. Then again, how is it that you do not say, and hold, the very thing I put above: that God has not made for himself that by which he is damned for ever, when that part of your god is to be fastened for ever in the globe? Or will you say this too, that a part of light is light, but a part of God is not God? Finally, so that without any reasoning, and by the plain truth of faith, you may hear from us why we believe that Elijah, born a man, was caught up from the earth by God, and that Christ was both truly born of a virgin and truly died on the cross: we believe these things because holy Scripture testifies both that of Elijah and this of Christ; and no one is godly unless he believes it, no one fails to believe it unless he is ungodly. But you deny that about Elijah, because you feign everything. And about Christ, not even you say that he could not be born and could die; rather, you contend that his birth from a virgin never happened at all, and that his death on the cross was false, that is, that it too was nothing, but feigned to deceive human eyes—for no other purpose than that you too, who lie about everything, may be pardoned by those who have believed these things.

But who would put to you the question that Faustus puts to himself as if from the mouth of a Catholic, “If Jesus was not born, how did he die?”—except one who has given too little thought to Adam himself, who was not born and yet died? If, then, the Son of God had willed to form for himself human and true flesh from the same source from which he formed it for that first man—since all things were made through him—who would dare to affirm that he could not? If, again, he had willed to change a body taken from a heavenly or airy or watery creature into the most real quality of human flesh, in which as a mortal man he could both live and die, who would deny that he could do this, the almighty Son of the Almighty? No one would dare. Finally, if he had willed to take a body from none of the bodily elements created through him, but to create true flesh for himself entirely out of nothing, just as all things that were not were created through him, which of us would contradict it, which of us would contend that it could not have been done? So we do not believe that he was born of the virgin Mary because he could not otherwise exist in true flesh and appear to men, but because it is so written in that Scripture which, unless we believe it, we can be neither Christians nor saved. We believe, then, that Christ was born of the virgin Mary, because it is so written in the gospel; we believe that he was crucified and died, because it is so written in the gospel; and that he was truly born and truly died, because the gospel is truth. Why he willed to suffer all those things in flesh taken from a woman’s womb, the whole counsel rests with him—whether because he judged that both sexes, which he had created, should be commended and honoured in this way too, by taking the form of a man and being born of a woman, or for some other reason. What that reason is, I would not rashly say; but this I will say confidently: that it was done in no other way than the truth of the gospel has taught, and that it ought not to have been done in any other way than the wisdom of God judged. We set the faith of the gospel above all the disputations of heretics; and we praise the counsel of God’s wisdom above all the counsel of any creature whatever.

Yet Faustus urges us to believe him, saying: “And if you will believe me when I tell the truth, both of them acquired a false reputation among the Hebrews: Jesus for his death and Elijah for his immortality”—though a little later he says: “For just as from the beginning, having taken the likeness of a man, he feigned all the affections of the human condition, so it would not have been out of keeping if at the end too, in order to seal the dispensation, he had appeared to die as well.” Most wicked and most deceitful man, how am I to believe you as one telling the truth, when you say that Christ could feign death? Was he lying, then, when he said, “The Son of Man must be killed and rise on the third day,” and are you not lying when you tell us to believe you as one telling the truth? Was Peter more truthful, then, when he said to him, “Far be it, Lord; this shall not happen”—for which he deserved to hear, “Get behind me, Satan”? And he did not hear this without fruit, for afterwards, corrected and made perfect, he preached the truth of Christ’s death until his own death. But if he, merely because he thought that Christ would not die, deserved to hear “Satan,” what do you deserve to hear, who not only deny that he died but even say that he feigned death? “But,” he says, “he must be believed to have feigned death too, because he feigned all the affections of the human condition.” Who is going to grant you, against the gospel, that he feigned all the affections of the human condition? Certainly, if the evangelist said “Jesus slept,” if he said “he hungered,” “he thirsted,” “he was sorrowful,” “he rejoiced,” and anything else of the kind, all these are true; for they were so narrated that they are written as things he did not feign but plainly did or showed—not indeed by the necessity of his condition, but by the will to teach and by divine power as well. For a man is often angry even if he does not wish it; sorrowful even if he does not wish it; sleeps even if he does not wish it; hungers and thirsts even if he does not wish it; but he did all these because he willed. So too men are born and suffer, not because they will it, nor because they will it not; but he did these also because he willed. Yet these things are true, and were faithfully and truthfully written of him, so that whoever believes his gospel may be instructed by truth, not mocked by lies.

Faustus said: If Jesus was not born, neither did he suffer; but if he suffered, then he was also born. Believe me, it does not serve you to look for natural consequence in these matters; otherwise your whole faith will be weakened. For you too believe that Jesus was born of a virgin without intercourse with a man; and if what comes first must be proved from what follows, this will be false. For one could answer you too in this way: “If Jesus was born of a woman, then he was also begotten of a man; but if he was not begotten of a man, then neither was he born of a woman.” Yet, as you believe, he could be born without being begotten; why then could he not also suffer without being born?

Augustine replied: No one puts to you the question you put to yourself, except an unskilled person whom you deceive, not an instructed one by whom you are refuted. For Jesus could both be born without being begotten and suffer without being born; but one of these he willed, the other he did not. He willed to be born without being begotten; he did not will to suffer without being born, for he suffered having been born. You say to me: How do you know? Because I read it in the gospel of truth. But if I say to you: How do you know what you say? You set against me the authority of Mani; you say there is falsehood in the gospel. But I would not believe Mani saying this even if he did not praise Christ to me for lying. That he did not find in Christ; but he betrays what he himself loves.

Faustus said: “But he could not die unless he had been born.” And I answer: Nor could he be born unless he were not God; or if he could both be God and be born, why could he not also both not be born and die? You see, then, that it is not useful enough in these matters to look for consequence or to rely on arguments when the matters in question concern Jesus; rather we must ask what he himself proclaimed about himself, or what his apostles proclaimed about him. And so the genealogy itself must be thoroughly examined, and we must see whether it agrees with itself, rather than seek the truth of his birth by inference from his passion; for he could both suffer without being born, and, having been born, not suffer at all—especially since you yourselves confess that nothing is impossible for God; and that too will be false if it is established that one not born could not die.

Augustine replied: Again and often you put to yourself what you do not hear from those by whom you are refuted. No one says to you, “He could not die unless he had been born,” for Adam died though he had not been born. But this is said to you: He was born, because the holy gospel says so, not some heretic or other; he died, because this is read in the holy gospel, not in the book of some heretic. But you, who forbid argument when the matters in question concern Jesus, and judge that we must ask what he himself proclaimed about himself or what his apostles proclaimed about him—when I begin to recite the gospel of his apostle Matthew, where the whole account of his birth is set out, you will at once say that this account is not Matthew’s, though the whole Church says it is Matthew’s, the Church brought down by sure succession from the apostolic sees to the present bishops. What will you read me against it? Some book of Mani, perhaps, where it is denied that Jesus was born of a virgin. Just as I believe, then, that this book is Mani’s, because it has been preserved and handed down from the very time when Mani lived in the flesh, through his disciples, by a sure succession of your leaders, right to your own time, so you too should believe that this book is Matthew’s, which the Church has brought down to these times, in an unbroken series of times and by a sure succession of connection, from the time when Matthew himself lived in the flesh. And tell me which book we ought rather to believe: that of the apostle who clung to Christ while he was still on earth, or that of some Persian or other who was born so long afterwards? But perhaps you will bring out another book bearing the name of some apostle who is known to have been chosen by Christ, and you will read there that Christ was not born of Mary. Since, then, one of these two books must be lying, which do you judge we ought rather to trust? That which the Church—begun by Christ himself, advanced through the apostles, extended by a sure series of successions to these times and spread over the whole world—acknowledges and approves as handed down and preserved from the beginning? Or that which the same Church rejects as unknown, especially when it is brought forward by men so truthful that they praise Christ for lying?

Here you will say: “Let the genealogy itself in the two books of the gospel be considered, whether it agrees with itself.” We have already said elsewhere in this work what needed to be said on this. For nothing troubles you except how Joseph could have had two fathers. Even if it had not occurred to you as you thought about it that one begot him and another adopted him, you ought not even so to have pronounced so hasty a verdict against so great an authority. But now, if, at least when reminded, you consider how this could have happened, simply believe the gospel, and cease rather from arguing so badly and perversely.

As for Faustus’s view that we must ask what Jesus himself proclaimed about himself, to whom would this not seem just? But can this be known except through the narration of his disciples? If they are not believed when they report that he was born of a virgin, how will they be trusted when they report what he proclaimed about himself? For if some writing were produced that was said to be properly Christ’s own, with no one else reporting it, how could it happen that, if it were truly his, it would not be read, not received, not raised to the very summit of authority in his Church—the Church which, propagated from him through the apostles by bishops succeeding one another, is spreading to these times, with many things in it already fulfilled that were foretold before, and with those that remain until the end without doubt still to come and to arrive? For if such writings were produced, one would certainly have to consider by whom they were produced. If they came from him, they could without doubt have been produced first to those who were then with him, and through them reach others also. And if this had happened, they would shine forth with the most firmly established authority through those successions of leaders and peoples that I have mentioned. Who, then, is so mad as to believe today that a letter which Mani produced is Christ’s, and not to believe the deeds and sayings of Christ that Matthew wrote? Or, if he doubts even about Matthew whether he wrote these things, why does he not rather believe about Matthew himself what he finds in the Church, which is shown by a sure series of successions from the times of Matthew himself to this time, instead of believing some man or other who comes from the side, out of Persia, two hundred or more years later, and urges that he, rather, should be believed about what Christ said and did? For even the apostle Paul himself, called from heaven after the Lord’s ascension—if he had not found apostles in the flesh, by communicating with whom and conferring the gospel with whom he might be shown to belong to the same fellowship, the Church would not have believed him at all. But when it learned that he proclaimed what they also proclaimed, and that he lived in their communion and unity, with signs also coming through him such as they too worked, he so earned authority, the Lord commending him, that his words are heard today in the Church as though Christ were heard speaking in him, as he himself most truly said. And Mani thinks that the Church of Christ ought to believe him when he speaks against Scriptures established by so great and so ordered an authority—Scriptures through which the Church has been especially charged that whoever proclaims to it anything other than what it has received, let him be anathema.

“But I bring forward a reason,” he says, “by which to show that those Scriptures are not to be believed.” Surely you are not arguing? And yet even in the argument itself you are defeated. For all your argument comes down to this: that the soul should at last believe that it is wretched in this world because by its wretchedness it came to the help of its God, lest he be deprived of his kingdom, and that his nature and substance is so changeable, corruptible, violable, and capable of defilement that a certain part of it cannot even be cleansed, and is punished with the eternal penalty of the globe by the very one who, knowing it to be innocent and committing no sin while with him, mixed it from his own inward parts into so great a contamination. This is the end of all your arguments and fables—and would that there were an end of them, but in your heart and your mouth, so that at last you might cease to believe and to say such execrable blasphemies. “But from those writings themselves,” he says, “I prove that they are not to be believed everywhere, since they contradict themselves.” Why then do you not rather say that they are to be believed nowhere, as inconsistent witnesses that impugn one another? “But I choose,” he says, “what I see to be consistent with the truth.” With what truth? With your fable, of course, which has at its head the war of God, in its middle the contamination of God, at its end the damnation of God. “And nowhere,” he says, “are writings that are opposed and contrary to one another believed.” But it seems so to you because you do not understand; for whatever you have brought forward that seemed such has been shown to be something you do not understand, and whatever you bring forward will be shown so. There is therefore no reason why we should not believe those writings endowed with such authority; and this is plainly the greatest reason why we should anathematize those who proclaim anything else.