Against Faustus the Manichaean 33.1–33.9

Faustus said: “It is written in the gospel that many will come from the east and the west and will recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. Why then do you not accept the patriarchs?” Far be it from us to begrudge any mortal whom God, perhaps looking on him in his mercy, has at some time brought back from perdition to salvation. But we certainly put this down to the clemency of him who had mercy, not to the merit of one whose life you cannot deny was disreputable. And so the fathers of the Jews too, namely Abraham and Isaac and Jacob—if this testimony of Christ about them that you bring forward is certain—although they themselves were most shameful, as Moses their great-grandson indicates, or whoever else is the author of this history called Genesis, who wrote their lives for us as most deserving of all hatred and disgust—let them too be now in the kingdom of heaven; let them be in a place that they never believed in nor hoped for, as appears plainly enough from their books; provided only that it is agreed, with you too confessing it, that after a long interval they were set free by Christ our Lord from the foul and penal prison of the underworld, where the deserts of their lives held them confined, and that it was through his mystic passion that they could come to that very thing which is written of them, if they did come to it. For just as no one would begrudge it, or could be so inhuman as to be displeased by so great an act of kindness, because our same Lord set a certain robber free from the cross and said that on that same day he would be with him in the paradise of his Father—yet we will not on that account say that the lives and morals of robbers ought to be acceptable to us because Jesus granted pardon to a robber, or because he forgave the errors of tax collectors and harlots and said that they would even go before into the kingdom of heaven those who had behaved proudly. For he himself acquitted a certain woman caught in wrongdoing and in adultery when the Jews accused her, commanding her to sin no more. Therefore, if he did something of this kind with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, thanks be to him; it shows that he works such things for souls who makes his sun rise on the good and the evil and sends rain on the just and the unjust. But this one thing troubles me in this opinion of yours: why you think this only of the fathers of the Jews, and not also of the other patriarchs of the gentiles, that they too at some time experienced this grace of our deliverer—especially since the Christian Church is made up more of their sons than of the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But you will say, of course, that those worshipped idols, while these worshipped almighty God, and that therefore Jesus cared for them alone. So the worship of almighty God thrusts one down into Tartarus, and one who worshipped the Father needs the help of the Son? But see to it yourself. Let us agree, I say, up to this point: that they were brought back to heaven, not because they deserved it, but because divine clemency overcomes the force of sins.

However, whether even this was said by Christ, the very variety of the writers makes us doubtful and uncertain. For while two evangelists, Matthew and Luke, both tell of a certain centurion whose servant was then sick, and on whose account Jesus is seen to have said this very thing—namely, that he had not found such faith in Israel as in that man, a gentile and indeed a pagan, because he said he was not worthy that Jesus should enter under his roof, but asked only that he should command with a word and his servant would be healed—yet Matthew alone adds that Jesus went on to say: “Amen, I say to you, many will come from the east and the west and will recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but the sons of the kingdom will be cast into the outer darkness.” By the many who were to come he signified the pagans, on account of the centurion, since he too was a gentile, yet in him such great faith had been found; and by the sons of the kingdom he meant the Jews, in whom no faith had been found. But Luke, though he too thought this a necessary and memorable thing to insert in his gospel among Christ’s wonderful deeds, makes no mention there of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If anyone says that he passed it over because it had already been said sufficiently by Matthew, why then does he relate the deed itself concerning the centurion and his servant, which had equally long since been made known to us sufficiently by Matthew’s diligence? But that is false. For about the very request that Jesus come, Matthew says that the centurion came to him in person to ask for healing; but Luke does not, but says that he sent the elders of the Jews to him, who, lest perhaps he be spurned by him as a gentile—since these men will have Jesus to be plainly a Jew—set about persuading him, saying that he was worthy that he should do this for him, since he loved their nation and had himself built them a synagogue: as if this too concerned the Son of God, if the Jews had obtained the building of their synagogue from a pagan centurion. Nor did Luke keep silent altogether about this saying—thinking, I suppose, that it might perhaps be true—but he changes its place and attaches it to another occasion far different, namely where Jesus says to his disciples: “Strive to enter by the narrow door; for many will come seeking to enter and will not be able. And when the master of the house has entered,” he says, “and shut the door, you will begin to stand outside and knock, saying, ‘Lord, open to us.’ And he will answer, ‘I do not know you.’ Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets and synagogues.’ And he will say to you, ‘I do not know where you are from; depart from me, all you workers of iniquity.’ There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets entering into the kingdom of God, but yourselves thrust out. And they will come from the east and the west and the south and the north and will recline in the kingdom of God.” Now this very point, that many will be shut out of the kingdom of God who bore only the name of Christ but did not do his works, Matthew did not omit to write either; but there he makes no mention at all of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Likewise Luke too wrote about the centurion and his servant; but he too testifies nothing at all there about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So, since it cannot be established with certainty where it was said, nothing prevents us from not believing that it was said at all.

And not without reason do we never bring our ears to Scriptures of this kind, so discordant and varied, without judgment and reason; but, considering everything and comparing one thing with another, we weigh whether each of them could have been said by Christ or not. For many words have been inserted into the sayings of our Lord by your forefathers which, though stamped with his name, do not agree with his faith; especially since, as we have often proved already, these things were not written by him or by his apostles, but a long time after their being taken up were gathered from rumours and opinions by some Semi-Jews or other who did not even agree among themselves; and yet these, ascribing everything to the names of the Lord’s apostles, or of those who seemed to have followed the apostles, falsely claimed that they had written their errors and lies according to them. But see to it yourself. Meanwhile, as I say, I would not contend too much with you about this passage, since what I put forward before is enough for my defence, and you yourselves cannot deny it: that before the coming of our Lord all the patriarchs of Israel and the prophets lay in the darkness of Tartarus according to their deserts. If they were ever set free from there by Christ and brought back to the light, what has that to do with hatred of their lives? For we hate and reject, not what they were—that is, men—but what kind of men they were—that is, wicked; nor what they are now—that is, purified—but what they were—that is, once impure. And so, meanwhile, however you wish it to be, this passage is no obstacle to us: if it is true, Christ’s mercy and goodness are commended here; if false, the crime attaches to his writers. Either way we are safe, as always.

Augustine replied: How safe, wretched man? How safe, you who say you hate the patriarchs as impure and still lament your god as impure? Certainly you have granted that those patriarchs, after the Saviour’s coming, received purification and were given blessed rest; but your god, even after the Saviour’s coming, still lies in darkness, is still plunged in all crimes, still wallows in all impurities. So not only was the life of those men better than your god, but even their death was happier. But in what abodes the righteous were who had left this life before Christ came in the flesh, and whether Christ’s passion also brought them to something better—they who not only believed in him as one who would come, suffer, and rise again, but also, as was fitting, foretold this very thing by the prophetic Spirit—must be searched out in the holy Scriptures, if in any way it can be clearly searched out; not from the rash opinions of any men whatever, let alone from the perversities of so execrable a heresy of men straying far from the truth. In vain does Faustus promise himself by this crooked path that something can be granted to anyone after this life which he has not secured for himself in this life. It is good for you, while you live here, to abandon this error and to know and hold the truth of the Catholic faith. Otherwise what the unrighteous man promises himself will be far away, when what God has threatened against the unrighteous begins to come to pass.

On the life of the patriarchs I have already given this slanderer many answers, as many as I thought sufficient. The Lord bore witness to them—not as men corrected at their death or justified after his passion—when he admonished the Jews that, if they were Abraham’s sons, they should do the works of Abraham; and that Abraham longed to see his day, and saw it and was glad; and that the angels carried that poor man, afflicted and despised by the proud rich man, into Abraham’s bosom, that is, into some great and hidden secret place of quiet happiness. What shall I say of the apostle Paul? Does he too perhaps praise Abraham as justified after death, because before he was circumcised he believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness? He values this so highly that he says that we, who are not descended from his flesh, have been made his sons for no other reason than that we follow the footsteps of his faith.

But what am I to do with you, whom iniquity has made so deaf to the testimonies of the Scriptures that whatever is brought against you from them you dare to say was not spoken by the apostle but written under his name by some forger or other? So openly foreign to Christian teaching is the doctrine of demons that you preach that you cannot defend it at all under the name of Christian teaching unless you say that the Scriptures of the apostles are false. Unhappy enemies of your own souls! What writings will ever have any weight of authority if the gospel and apostolic writings do not? Of what book will it be certain whose it is, if it is uncertain whether the writings are the apostles’ which the Church says are the apostles’ and holds as handed down from the apostles themselves and declared with such eminence through all nations? And will it be certain that the apostles wrote what heretics opposed to this Church bring forward, called by the names of their authors, who lived long after the apostles? As if in secular literature too there had not been authors entirely certain, under whose names many things were later brought forward and therefore rejected, because they did not agree with the works established as theirs, or because at the time when those authors wrote they did not become known and were not handed on and commended to posterity by them or by their closest friends. To pass over others, were not certain books brought forward under the name of Hippocrates, the most renowned physician, not received as authoritative by physicians? Nor did some likeness of matter and words help them, when, compared with those established as truly Hippocrates’, they were judged unequal, and because they had not become known from the time when his other writings became known as truly his. But how is it established that these books, by comparison with which those brought in from the side are rejected, are Hippocrates’? If anyone denies this, he is not even refuted but laughed at—why, except that the series of succession has commended them from the very time of Hippocrates to this time and onward in such a way that to doubt it is the mark of a madman? How have men known that the books of Plato, Aristotle, Varro, Cicero, and other such authors are theirs, except by the same continuous testimony of times succeeding one another? Many have written much on ecclesiastical literature, not indeed with canonical authority, but out of some zeal to help or to learn. How is it established which is whose, except that at the times when each wrote them, he made them known and published them to whom he could, and from there, the knowledge continued to one person after another and more widely confirmed, they reached posterity even to our own times, so that, when asked whose each book is, we do not hesitate what we should answer? But why go on into the distant past? Look at these writings that we have in our hands: if, some time after this life of ours, anyone were to deny either that those are Faustus’s or that these are mine, how would he be refuted, except that those who now know these things pass on their knowledge to those who will come long afterwards by continued successions of their descendants? Since this is so, who is blinded by such madness—unless he has been overthrown by consenting to the malice and deceit of lying demons—as to say that the Church of the apostles, so faithful, so numerous a concord of brothers, could not have achieved this: to pass on their writings faithfully to posterity, when it kept their chairs to the present bishops by a most certain succession—when this happens with such ease for the writings of men of any sort, whether outside the Church or in the Church itself?

“But,” he says, “their writings are found to contradict one another.” You read with malice and evil intent; foolish, you do not understand; blind, you do not see. For what great thing would it have been to examine them carefully and find the great and wholesome agreement of these writings, if contentiousness had not perverted you and if piety had helped you? For who, reading two historians writing about one thing, ever thought that both or either of them was deceiving or deceived, if one of them said what the other passed over; or if one summarized something more briefly, keeping only the same sense whole and intact, while the other set out everything, as it were, member by member, so as to convey not only what was done but also how it was done? Just as Faustus wanted to slander the truth of the gospels on this ground: that Matthew said something which Luke, when narrating the same thing, omitted to say—as if Luke denied that Christ said what Matthew wrote that he said. On this there was never any question at all, nor can this be objected except by people altogether imprudent and unwilling or unable to consider anything of these matters. But this is indeed commonly inquired about among the faithful and objected by unbelievers, and also by those who are either poorly educated or too contentious, unless they come to their senses when admonished: that Matthew said, “A centurion came to him, asking him and saying,” while Luke says that he sent elders of the Jews to him, asking this very thing about his servant who was sick, that he would heal him; and as he was approaching the house, he sent others through whom he said that he was not worthy that Jesus should enter his house, nor was he himself worthy to come to Jesus. How then, according to Matthew, “did he come to him, asking and saying, ‘My servant lies at home paralysed and is grievously tormented’”? This is understood thus: Matthew briefly summarized the true and complete sense, saying that the centurion came to Jesus, and not saying whether he came in person or through others; and that he said that to him about his servant, not expressing whether he said it in person or through others. What then? Is not human usage full of such expressions, when we say that someone has come very close to something, though we do not yet say that he has arrived? And do we not very commonly speak of the arrival itself—to which nothing, it seems, can be added—as taking place through others, often saying, “He pleaded his case, he got through to the judge,” or, “He got through to this or that powerful man,” when for the most part he does it through friends, without seeing at all the one he is said to have got through to? Hence such men, whoever by the art of ambition reach the somehow inaccessible minds of the powerful, whether in person or through others, are even popularly called “getters-through.” What then? When we read, do we forget how we are accustomed to speak? Or was the Scripture of God going to speak to us otherwise than in our own way? This, then, is what I would answer the stubborn and turbulent from the common usage of speech.

But let those who inquire into these things not contentiously but peaceably and faithfully come to Christ, not in the flesh but in the heart, not by bodily presence but by the power of faith, as that centurion did; then they will better perceive what Matthew said. For to such it is said in the psalm: “Come to him and be enlightened, and your faces shall not blush.” Hence that centurion, whose faith he so praised, had come closer to Christ than those very men through whom he sent his words. Similar to this is what the Lord said, “Someone touched me,” when the woman who suffered from a flow of blood touched the fringe of his garment and was made well. For he seemed to his disciples to say this strangely, “Who touched me?” and “Someone touched me,” when the crowd was pressing on him. In fact they answered him: “The crowds are pressing on you, and do you say, ‘Who touched me?’” So, just as they pressed but she touched, so they were sent to Christ, but the centurion came closer. Thus Matthew both kept the custom of a not very unusual expression and conveyed something mystically; while Luke showed how this was actually done, so that from this we might be compelled to notice in what sense Matthew said it. I would like one of these empty men, who slanderously throw such petty questions at the gospel as if they were great ones, to narrate the same thing twice himself—not falsely or deceitfully, but wishing wholly to convey and set it out—and to have his words taken down with the pen and read back to him, to see whether he would not say something more or less, or in a different order, not only of words but even of things; or whether he would not add something of his own sense, as though another had said it, which he had not heard him say but clearly knew he meant and thought; or whether he would not summarize briefly the truth of some sense whose points he had earlier set out more explicitly, as it were; and anything else that can perhaps be grasped by fixed rules, how it comes about that, either in the single narratives of the same thing by two people or in two narratives of one person about one and the same thing, many different things are found, yet none opposed; many varied, yet none contrary. So all those knots are untied with which these wretched men tie their own necks, so as to keep in the spirit of their error within and admit none of salvation from without.

Therefore, after refuting all the slanders of Faustus—at least those of his chapters to which in this work I have replied sufficiently, I think, and at length, as far as the Lord deigned to help me—I briefly admonish you who are held by that so wicked and execrable error: if you want to follow the authority of the Scriptures, which must be preferred to all things, follow that which has come down from the times of Christ’s own presence, through the ministries of the apostles and the sure successions of bishops from their sees, to these times, kept, commended, and made glorious throughout the whole world. For there you will see both the obscure things of the Old Testament revealed and the things foretold fulfilled. But if you are moved by reason, as you claim, first consider who you are, how little fit to comprehend the nature—I will not say of God, but of your own soul—to comprehend it, that is, as you say you wish or have wished, by most certain reason, not by most empty credulity. Since you can by no means do this—for without doubt, as long as you are such as you are, you will in no way be able to—at least think or believe what is naturally implanted in every human mind, provided it is not disturbed by the depravity of perverse opinion: that the nature and substance of God is utterly unchangeable, utterly incorruptible; and at once you will no longer be Manichaeans, so that at some time you may also be Catholics. Amen.