Against the Jews 1–7

It happened recently: a disputation was held between a Christian and a Jewish proselyte. Taking turns, as in a tug-of-war, each of them dragged the day out into the evening. And since some supporters of each side also made a din, the truth was overshadowed as by a cloud. So I decided that what could not be fully cleared up amid the clamor of the disputation should be examined more carefully, and that the questions should be settled by going over them again in writing. For the occasion of defending divine grace even for the Gentiles had this advantage: that it was a man from the Gentiles, not a Jew of the stock of the Israelites, who undertook to claim God's law for himself. For this is enough: that the Gentiles can be admitted to God's law, so that Israel may no longer boast that the Gentiles are reckoned as a drop from a bucket or dust from the threshing floor. And yet we have God himself as a sufficient promiser and faithful guarantor, who promised Abraham that in his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed, and that from Rebecca's womb two peoples and two nations would come forth: the Jews, that is, Israel, and the Gentiles, that is, ours. Each, then, is called both a people and a nation, so that no one may dare to claim a privilege of grace from the name. For God appointed that two peoples and two nations should come forth from the womb of one woman, and grace made its distinction not in the name but in the order of birth, so that the one who was to come out of the womb first should be subject to the lesser, that is, the later. For thus God spoke to Rebecca: “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples will be divided from your belly, and people will overcome people, and the greater will serve the lesser.” So since the people or nation of the Jews is earlier in time and greater through the grace of first favor in the law, while ours is understood to be lesser in the age of time, having obtained the knowledge of divine mercy in the last span of the world, without doubt, by the decree of the divine utterance, the earlier and greater people, that is, the Jewish, must serve the lesser, and the lesser people, that is, the Christian, must overcome the greater. For according to the records of the divine Scriptures, the people of the Jews, the older one, forsook God and served idols, abandoned the Godhead and gave itself to images, when the people said to Aaron, “Make us gods to go before us.” And when the gold from the women's necklaces and the men's rings had been melted in the fire and a bull's head had come forth for them, all Israel, forsaking God, gave honor to this figure, saying, “These are the gods who brought us out of the land of Egypt.” So too in later times, when kings ruled over them, they worshiped golden cows and groves along with Jeroboam, and gave themselves over to Baal. Hence it is proved from the documents of the divine Scriptures that they have always been marked out as guilty of the crime of idolatry. But our people, the lesser, that is, the later, has left the idols it formerly served and turned to the same God from whom Israel, as we recalled above, had departed. Thus the lesser, that is, the later, people has overcome the greater, since it obtains the grace of divine favor from which Israel has been rejected.

Let us, then, come to close quarters and mark out the sum of the question itself with fixed lines. For why should God, the founder of the universe, the governor of the whole world, the fashioner of man, the sower of all nations, be believed to have given the law through Moses to one people, and not be said to have assigned it to all nations? For unless he had given it to all, he would in no way allow proselytes from the Gentiles to have access to it. But, as befits the goodness of God and his fairness, since he is the fashioner of the human race, he gave the same law to all nations, and commanded it to be observed at fixed and appointed times, when he willed, through whom he willed, and as he willed. For in the beginning of the world he gave Adam and Eve themselves a law, that they should not eat of the fruit of the tree planted in the middle of paradise; and if they did otherwise, they would die the death. That law would have sufficed for them if it had been kept. For in this law given to Adam we recognize, laid up in it, all the precepts that later sprouted forth when they were given through Moses: namely, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul”; and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”; and “You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and mother”; and “You shall not covet what is another's.” For the primordial law was given to Adam and Eve in paradise as the womb, so to speak, of all the precepts of God. In short, if they had loved the Lord their God, they would not have acted against his precept; if they had loved their neighbor, that is, each other, they would not have believed the persuasion of the serpent, and so would not have committed murder against themselves by falling from immortality through acting against God's precept. They would also have abstained from theft if they had not secretly tasted the fruit of the tree, nor would they have sought to hide under a tree from the sight of the Lord their God; nor would they have become partners with the devil when he asserted a falsehood, by believing him that they would be like God; and so they would not have offended God, as a father, who had formed them from the clay of the earth as from a mother's womb. If they had not coveted what was another's, they would not have tasted the forbidden fruit. So in this general and primordial law of God, which God had ordained to be observed in the fruit of the tree, we recognize that all the precepts of the later law were specifically contained, which sprouted forth when they were published in their own times. For it belongs to the same God afterwards to bring in a law who had first sent ahead a precept, since it is also his afterwards to train those whom he had earlier undertaken to form as righteous. What wonder is it if he who instituted discipline increases it, if he who began it advances it? In short, I contend that before the law of Moses written on tablets of stone there was an unwritten law, which was naturally understood and kept by the fathers. For how was Noah found righteous, if the righteousness of the natural law did not go before him? How was Abraham counted the friend of God, if not by the fairness and righteousness of the natural law? How was Melchizedek named priest of the Most High God, if before the priesthood of the Levitical law there were no Levites who offered sacrifices to God? So after the patriarchs named above the law was given to Moses, at the time after they had left Egypt, after an interval and span of many ages. In fact, the law was given four hundred and thirty years after Abraham. Hence we understand that God's law existed even before Moses, and not first at Horeb only, or at Sinai and in the desert, but older: first in paradise, then to the patriarchs, and so also to the Jews, reformed at fixed times; so that we should not now attend to the law of Moses as though it were the principal law, but as a subsequent one, which God at a certain time presented to the Gentiles too, and, having promised it again through the prophets, reformed for the better; and he forewarned that, just as the law was given through Moses at a certain time, so it would be believed to have been observed and kept for a time. And let us not take away from God this power of reforming the precepts of the law according to the conditions of the times for man's salvation. In short, let him who contends that the sabbath must still be kept as a remedy for salvation, and circumcision on the eighth day because of the threat of death, teach that righteous men in the past kept the sabbath or were circumcised and so became friends of God. For if circumcision cleanses a person, why did God, when he made Adam uncircumcised, not circumcise him, or at least after he had sinned, if circumcision cleanses? Certainly, when he placed him in paradise, he set him there uncircumcised as the tiller of paradise. So since God created Adam neither circumcised nor keeping the sabbath, consequently he also praised his offspring Abel, who offered him sacrifices uncircumcised and not keeping the sabbath, accepting what he offered in simplicity of heart, and rejecting the sacrifice of his brother Cain, who did not rightly divide what he offered. Noah too, uncircumcised and not keeping the sabbath, God delivered from the flood. And Enoch, a most righteous man, not circumcised and not keeping the sabbath, he translated from this world, and he has not yet tasted death, so that as a candidate for eternity he might show us already that we too can please God without the burden of the law of Moses. Melchizedek too, priest of the Most High God, uncircumcised and not keeping the sabbath, was chosen for the priesthood of God. And Lot, the brother of Abraham, proves that he was delivered from the burning of the Sodomites for the merits of righteousness without observance of the law.

“But Abraham,” you say, “was circumcised.” Yes, but he pleased God before he was circumcised, and yet he did not keep the sabbath. For he had received circumcision, but as a sign for that time, not as a privilege of salvation. In fact, subsequent patriarchs were uncircumcised, like Melchizedek, who, uncircumcised, offered bread and wine to Abraham himself, already circumcised, as he returned from battle. “But,” he says, “the son of Moses would have been choked by the angel then, if Zipporah his mother had not circumcised the infant's foreskin with a stone. Hence,” he says, “there is the greatest danger if anyone does not circumcise the foreskin of his flesh.” Yet if circumcision brought salvation in every way, Moses himself would not have failed to circumcise his son on the eighth day, since it is agreed that Zipporah did it on the journey, compelled by the angel. Let us consider, then, that the compelled circumcision of one infant could not prescribe for a whole people and lay down a law, as it were, of this precept. For God, foreseeing that he would give this circumcision to the people of Israel as a sign, not for salvation, therefore urged that the son of Moses, the future leader, be circumcised, so that when he began to give the people the precept of circumcision through him, the people would not despise it, seeing the example already carried out in the leader's son. For circumcision was to be given, but as a sign by which Israel might be distinguished in the last time, when, according to its deserts, it would be forbidden to enter the holy city, through the words of the prophets saying: “Your land is desolate, your cities burned with fire; strangers will devour your country in your sight; and the daughter of Zion will be left desolate and overthrown by foreign peoples, like a hut in a vineyard, like a watchman's shelter in a cucumber field, and like a city that is being besieged.” Why so? Because the prophet's following word reproaches them, saying: “I have begotten sons and raised them up, but they have rejected me.” And again: “And if you stretch out your hands, I will turn my face from you; and if you multiply prayers, I will not hear you; for your hands are full of blood.” And again: “Woe, sinful nation, a people full of sins, wicked sons; you have forsaken God and provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger.” This, then, was God's providence in giving circumcision to Israel as a sign by which they could be distinguished when the time came in which, for their deserts mentioned above, they would be forbidden admission into Jerusalem; which, because it was to come, was announced, and because we see it done, we recognize. For just as carnal circumcision, which was temporary, was imposed as a sign on a stubborn people, so spiritual circumcision has been given for salvation to an obedient people, as the prophet Jeremiah says: “Renew yourselves, and do not sow among thorns; be circumcised to God, and circumcise the foreskin of your heart.” And in another place he says: “For behold, the days will come, says the Lord, and I will arrange for the house of Judah and the house of Jacob a new covenant, not such as I gave their fathers on the day I led them out of the land of Egypt.” Hence we understand both that the former circumcision then given would cease, and that a new law is announced to come forth, not such as he had already given to the fathers; as Isaiah proclaimed, saying that in the last days the mountain of the Lord and the house of God would be manifest above the tops of the mountains: “And it will be exalted,” he says, “above the hills, and all nations will come upon it, and many will walk and say: Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob”: not of Esau, the elder son, but of Jacob, the later one, that is, of our people, whose mountain is Christ, cut out without the hands of cutters, filling the whole earth, as was shown in Daniel. Then Isaiah announces in the following words that a new law also will come forth from this house of the God of Jacob, saying: “For out of Zion will go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, and he will judge among the nations” (that is, among us, who have been called from the nations), “and they will beat,” he says, “their swords into plows and their spears into sickles, and nation will not take up sword against nation, and they will no longer learn to fight.” Who, then, are meant but we, who, taught by the new law, observe these things, now that the old law has been blotted out, whose coming abolition the very deed shows? For the old law avenged itself by the vengeance of the sword, and plucked out an eye for an eye, and repaid injury with vengeance; but the new law pointed to clemency, turned the former ferocity of swords and spears into tranquility, and reshaped the former waging of war against the rivals and enemies of the law into the peaceful acts of plowing and tilling the earth. So, as we showed above that the old law and carnal circumcision were declared to be ceasing, so also the observance of the new law and of spiritual circumcision has shone forth in the obedience of peace. “A people,” he says, “whom I did not know has served me; at the hearing of the ear it has obeyed me.” The prophets announced it. And what people was ignorant of God but ours, who formerly did not know God? And who listened to him at the hearing of the ear but we, who have left idols and turned to God? For Israel, which had been known to God, which had been exalted by him in Egypt and carried across the Red Sea, which was fed with manna in the desert for forty years, brought into a likeness of eternity, not defiled by human passions nor fed on the foods of this world, but fed with manna, the bread of angels, and bound firmly enough to God by his benefits, forgot its Lord and God, saying to Aaron: “Make us gods to go before us; for that Moses who brought us out of the land of Egypt has abandoned us, and we do not know what has happened to him.” And therefore we, who formerly were not the people of God, have become his people by receiving the new law spoken of above and the new circumcision foretold before.

It follows, then, that just as the abolition of carnal circumcision and of the old law is shown to have been carried out at its own time, so the observance of the sabbath too is shown to have been temporary. For the Jews say that from the beginning God sanctified the seventh day, resting on it from all his works which he had made, and that from this Moses too said to the people: “Remember the day of the sabbaths, to sanctify it; you shall do no servile work on it, except what pertains to life.” From this we understand rather that we ought always to keep sabbath from all servile work, and not only every seventh day but at all times. And so we must ask what sabbath God wants us to keep. For the Scriptures mark out an eternal sabbath and a temporal sabbath. For the prophet Isaiah says, “My soul hates your sabbaths”; and in another place he says, “You have profaned my sabbaths.” From this we discern that the temporal sabbath is human, while the eternal sabbath is reckoned divine; of this he preaches through Isaiah: “And it will be,” he says, “month after month, and day after day, and sabbath after sabbath, and all flesh will come to worship in Jerusalem, says the Lord.” We understand this to have been fulfilled in the times of Christ, when all flesh, that is, every nation, came to worship in Jerusalem God the Father through Jesus Christ his Son, as was foretold through the prophet: “Behold, proselytes will go to you through me.” So, then, before this temporal sabbath there was also an eternal sabbath shown beforehand and foretold, just as before carnal circumcision there was also a spiritual circumcision shown beforehand. In short, let them teach, as we have said before, that Adam kept the sabbath, or that Abel pleased God by observing the sabbath when he offered him a holy victim, or that Enoch, when he was translated, was a keeper of the sabbath, or that Noah, the builder of the ark, observed the sabbath on account of the immense flood, or that Abraham offered his son Isaac in observance of the sabbath, or that Melchizedek received the law of the sabbath in his priesthood. But the Jews will say that from the time this precept was given through Moses it had to be observed from then on. It is clear, then, that the precept was not eternal or spiritual, but temporal, to cease at some time. Indeed, this solemnity is so far from having to be celebrated by resting on the sabbath, that is, the seventh day, that Joshua son of Nun, at the time when he was conquering the city of Jericho, said he had been commanded by God to order the people that the priests should carry the ark of God's covenant around the city for seven days, and that when the circuit of the seventh day was completed, the walls of the city would fall of their own accord. So it was done, and when the span of the seventh day was finished, as had been foretold, the walls of the city fell. From this it is plainly shown that the sabbath day fell within the number of those seven days. For seven days, from whatever point they begin, must include a sabbath day; and on that day not only did the priests work, but the city was made spoil at the edge of the sword by all the people of Israel. Nor is there any doubt that they did servile work when they took the spoils of war at God's command. In the times of the Maccabees, too, they acted bravely by fighting on sabbaths, conquered foreign enemies, and by fighting on sabbaths restored their ancestral law to its former state of life. Nor should I think they were defending any other law than the one in which they remembered that the command about the sabbath day was laid down. Hence it is clear that precepts of this kind were valid for a time and for the necessity of a present cause, and that God did not formerly give them such a law to be observed for all time.

So too we have shown that sacrifices of earthly offerings and of spiritual sacrifices were foretold; and indeed that from the beginning the earthly sacrifices of the elder son, that is, Israel, were foreshown in Cain, and the different sacrifices of the younger son Abel, that is, of our people, were displayed. For Cain, the elder, offered gifts to God from the fruit of the earth, but the younger son Abel from the fruit of his sheep. God looked on Abel and on his gifts, but on Cain and on his gifts he did not look. And God said to Cain: “Why has your face fallen? If you offer rightly but do not divide rightly, have you not sinned? Be still. For your turning is toward you, and he shall rule over you.” And then Cain said to Abel his brother, “Let us go into the field,” and he went off with him there and killed him. And then God said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” And he said, “I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?” To him God said, “The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the earth. Therefore cursed is the earth, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood. Groaning and trembling you will be upon the earth, and everyone who finds you will kill you.” From this event, then, we observe that the twofold sacrifices of the two peoples were foreshown even then, from the beginning. Then, when the priestly law was written down through Moses in Leviticus, we find it prescribed to the people of Israel that sacrifices should be offered to God in no other place than in the land of promise, which the Lord God was to give to the people of Israel and their brothers, so that, once Israel had been brought in, sacrifices and whole burnt offerings, both for sins and for souls, should be celebrated there and nowhere else but in the holy land. Why, then, does the Spirit afterwards proclaim through the prophets that sacrifices would be offered to God in every place and in every land? As he says through Malachi the angel, one of the twelve prophets: “I will not receive a sacrifice from your hands, for from the rising of the sun to its setting my name has been glorified among all the nations, says the Lord almighty; and in every place they offer pure sacrifices to my name.” Likewise in the Psalms David says: “Bring to God, you families of the nations” (undoubtedly because the preaching of the apostles was to go out into all the earth), “bring to God glory and honor, bring to God the sacrifices of his name; take up victims and enter into his courts.” For that God is to be propitiated not with earthly sacrifices but with spiritual ones, we read as it is written: “A heart crushed and humbled is a sacrifice to God”; and elsewhere: “Sacrifice to God a sacrifice of praise, and pay your vows to the Most High.” So spiritual sacrifices of praise are pointed out, and a crushed heart is shown to be a sacrifice acceptable to God. And so, just as carnal sacrifices are understood to be rejected, of which Isaiah too speaks, saying, “What is the multitude of your sacrifices to me? says the Lord,” so spiritual sacrifices are proclaimed accepted, as the prophets announce. “For even if you bring me fine flour,” he says, “it is a vain supplication, an abomination to me.” And again he says: “Your whole burnt offerings and your sacrifices and the fat of goats and the blood of bulls I do not want, nor that you come to be seen by me; for who has required these from your hands?” “For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name has been glorified among all nations, says the Lord.” And of the spiritual sacrifices he adds: “And in every place they offer pure sacrifices to my name, says the Lord.”

So since it is clear that a temporal sabbath has been shown and an eternal sabbath foretold; that carnal circumcision was foretold and spiritual circumcision indicated beforehand; that a temporal law and an eternal law were announced; that carnal sacrifices and spiritual sacrifices were foreshown; it follows that, after all these precepts had been given in a carnal way to the people of Israel in the time before, there should come a time when the precepts of the ancient law and the old ceremonies would cease, and there would come the promise of a new law, the recognition of spiritual sacrifices, and the pledge of a new covenant, as the light from on high shone upon us, who sat in darkness and were held in the shadow of death. So the necessity lies upon us, since we have said that a new law was proclaimed by the prophets, and not such as had already been given to their fathers at the time when he led them out of the land of Egypt, to show and prove both that the old law has ceased and that the promised new law is now at work. And indeed it must first be asked whether there is awaited a giver of a new law, an heir of a new covenant, a priest of new sacrifices, a purifier by a new circumcision, and an observer of an eternal sabbath, who would restrain the old law, establish the new covenant, offer the new sacrifices, repress the ancient ceremonies, restrain the old circumcision together with its sabbath, and announce a new kingdom which cannot be corrupted. This giver of the new law, I say, this observer of the spiritual sabbath, high priest of eternal sacrifices, eternal ruler of an eternal kingdom: it must be asked whether he has already come or not, so that, if he has already come, he may be served; if he has not yet come, he may be waited for; provided it is clear that at his coming the precepts of the old law are to be restrained and the beginnings of the new law must arise. And first of all it must be laid down that the ancient law and the prophets could not have ceased unless he had come who was announced by that same law and those same prophets as the one to come.

So let us join battle on this: whether the Christ who was announced as coming has already come, or is still hoped for as one to come. To prove this very point, we must also search out the times at which the prophets announced that Christ would come, so that, if we recognize that he came within those times, we may believe without doubt that he is the one whom the prophets sang of as coming, in whom we, that is, the Gentiles, were announced as going to believe; and, once it is established that he has come, we may believe without doubt that a new law has been given by him, and not deny that a new covenant has been arranged for us in him and through him. For we know that the Jews too do not dispute that Christ will come, since they stretch out their hope toward his coming. Nor need we inquire at length about this, since all the prophets of old preached about him, as Isaiah: “Thus says the Lord God to my Christ the Lord, whose right hand I have held, that the nations may hear him: I will break the strength of kings, I will open gates before him, and cities will not be closed to him.” This we see fulfilled. For whose right hand does God the Father hold but Christ's, his Son? Him all nations have heard, that is, in him all nations have believed; and his preachers, the apostles, are shown in the Psalms of David: “Their sound,” he says, “has gone out into the whole earth, and their words to the ends of the earth.” For in whom else have all nations believed but in Christ, who has already come? In whom have the nations believed: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and those who live in Mesopotamia, Armenia, Phrygia, Cappadocia, those dwelling in Pontus and Asia and Pamphylia, those staying in Egypt and living in the region of Africa beyond Cyrene, Romans and sojourners, then too Jews in Jerusalem, and the other nations: by now the various peoples of the Gaetulians and the many territories of the Moors, all the borders of the Spanish provinces, the different nations of the Gauls, and places of the Britons inaccessible to the Romans but subject to Christ, and places of the Sarmatians, Dacians, Germans, and Scythians, and of many hidden nations and provinces and many islands unknown to us, which we can scarcely enumerate? In all these places the name of Christ, who has already come, reigns, since he is the one before whom the gates of all cities have been opened and to whom none are closed, before whom iron bars have been broken and bronze doors opened. Although these things are also to be understood spiritually (that the hearts of individuals, besieged in various ways by the devil, have been unlocked by faith in Christ), yet they have been plainly fulfilled as well, since in all these places the people of Christ's name dwell. For who could have reigned over all nations but Christ, the Son of God, who was announced as going to reign over all forever? For if Solomon reigned, it was only within the borders of Judah; the limits of his kingdom are marked from Beersheba to Dan. If Darius reigned over the Babylonians and Parthians, he did not have power over all nations; if Pharaoh, or whoever succeeded him in the hereditary kingdom, reigned over the Egyptians, he held the dominion of his kingdom there only; if Nebuchadnezzar with his petty kings, he had the borders of his kingdom from India to Ethiopia; if Alexander of Macedon, he held no more than all Asia and the other regions, after he had conquered them. The Germans are still not allowed to cross their frontiers; the Britons are shut in within the circuit of their ocean; the nations of the Moors and the barbarous Gaetulians are hemmed in by the Romans lest they overstep the bounds of their regions. What shall I say of the Romans themselves, who fortify their empire with the garrisons of their legions and cannot extend the strength of their rule beyond these nations? But the name of Christ extends everywhere, is believed everywhere, is worshiped by all the nations listed above, reigns everywhere, is adored everywhere, is given equally to all everywhere. With him a king has no greater favor, a barbarian no lesser joy; no one's merits are distinguished by rank or birth; to all he is equal, to all king, to all judge, to all God and Lord. Nor should you hesitate to believe what we assert, since you see it happening.