^P Written about the year 400. [Faustus was undoubtedly the acutest, most determined and most unscrupulous opponent of orthodox Christianity in the age of Augustin. The occasion of Augustin's great writing against him was the publication of Faustus' attack on the Old Testament Scriptures, and on the New Testament so far as it was at variance with I Manich^ean error. Faustus seems to have followed in the footsteps of Adimantus, against ' whom Augustin had written some years before, but to have gone considerably beyond Adi- mantus in the recklessness of his statements. The incarnation of Christ, involving his birth from a woman, is one of the main points of attack. He makes the variations in the gene- alogical records of the Gospels a ground for rejecting the whole as spurious. He supposed the Gospels, in their present form, to be not the works of the Apostles, but rather of later Judaizing falsifiers. The entire Old Testament system he treats with the utmost contempt, blaspheming the Patriarchs, Moses, the Prophets, etc., on the ground of their private lives and their teachings. Most of the objections to the morality of the Old Testament that are now current were already familiarly used in the time of Augustin. Augustin's answers are only partially satisfactory, owing to his imperfect view of the relation of the old dispensation to the new; but in the age in which they were written they were doubtless very effective. The writing is interesting from the point of view of Biblical criticism, as well as from that of BOOK I.
WHO FAUSTUS WAS. FAUSTUS S OBJECT IN WRITING THE POLEMICAL TREATISE THAT FORMS THE BASIS OF augustin's REPLY. AUGUSTIN's REMARKS THEREON I. Faustus was an African by race, a citi- zen of Mileum; he was eloquent and clever, jbut had adopted the shocking tenets of the Manichcean heresy. He is mentioned in my I Confessions,^ where there is an account of my 'acquaintance with him. This man published a certain volume against the true Christian I faith and the Catholic truth. A copy reached I us, and was read by the brethren, who called for an answer from me, as part of the service of love which I owe to them. Now, therefore, in the name and with the help of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, I undertake the task, that all my readers may know that acuteness of mind and elegance of style are of no use to a man unless the Lord directs his steps. ^ In the mysterious equity of divine mercy, God often bestows His help on the slow and the feeble; while from the want of this help, the most acute and eloquent run into error only 2 Ps. XXX vii. 23.
156 THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN.
[Book II.
with greater rapidity and willfulness. I will give the opinions of Faustus as if stated by himself, and mine as if in reply to him.
2. Faustus said: As the learned Adiman- tus, the only teacher since the sainted Mani- chreus deserving of our attention, has plenti- fully exposed and thoroughly refuted the errors of Judaism and of semi-Christianity, I think it not amiss that you should be sup- plied in writing- with brief and pointed replies to the captious objections of our adversaries, that when, like children of the wily serpent, they try to bewilder you with their quibbles, you may be prepared to give intelligent an- swers. In this way they will be kept to the subject, instead of wandering from one thing to another. And I have placed our opinions and those of our opponent over against one another, as plainly and briefly as possible, so as not to perplex the reader with a long and intricate discourse.
3. AuGUSTiN replies: You warn against semi-Christians, which you say we are; but we warn against pseudo-Christians, which we have shown you to be. Semi-Christianity may be imperfect without being false. So, then, if the faith of those whom you try to mislead is imperfect, would it not be better to supply what is lacking than to rob them of what they have? It was to imperfect Christians that the apostle wrote, "joying and beholding your conversation," and "the deficiency in your faith in Christ." ' The apostle had in view a spiritual structure, as he says elsewhere, "Ye are God's building;" - and in this structure he found both a reason for joy and a reason for exertion. He rejoiced to see part already finished; and the necessity of bringing the edifice to perfection called for exertion. Im- perfect Christians as we are, you pursue us with the desire to pervert what you call our semi-Christianity by false doctrine; while even those who are so deficient in faith as to be unable to reply to all your sophisms, are wise enough at least to know that they must not have anything at all to do with you. You look for semi-Christians to deceive: we wish to prove you pseudo-Christians, that Chris- tians may learn something from your refuta- tion, and that the less advanced may learn to avoid you. Do you call us children of the; serpent? You have surely forgotten how^ often you have found fault with the prohibitioni in Paradise, and have praised the serpent for opening Adam's eyes. You have the better claim to the title which you give us. The serpent owns you as well when you blame him as when you praise him.
- I Cor. iii. 9.
BOOK II.
FAUSTUS CLAIMS TO BELIEVE THE GOSPEL, YET REFUSES TO ACCEPT THE GENEALOGICAL TABLES ON VARIOUS GROUNDS WHICH AUGUSTIN SEEKS TO SET ASIDE.
I. Faustus said: Do I believe the gospel? Certainly. Do I therefore believe that Christ was born? Certainly not. It does not follow that because I believe the gospel, as I do, I must therefore believe that Christ was born. This I do not believe; because Christ does not say that He was born of men, and the gospel, both in name and in fact, begins with Christ's preaching. As for the genealogy, the author himself does not venture to call it the gospel. For what did he write? "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ the Son of David."' The book of the generation is not the book of the gospel. It is more like a birth-register, the star confirming the event. Mark, on the other hand, who recorded the preaching of the Son of God, without any genealogy, begins most suitably with the I Matt. i. I.
I Matt. i. I.
words, " The gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God." It is plain that the genealogy is not the gospel. Matthew himself says, that after John was put in prison, Jesus began to preach the gospel of the kingdom; so that what is mentioned before this is the genealogy, and not the gospel. Why did not Matthew begin with, "The gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God," but because he thought it sin- ful to call the genealogy the gospel? Under- stand, then, what you have hitherto overlooked —the distinction between the genealogy and the gospel. Do I then admit the truth of the gospel? Yes; understanding by the gospel the preaching of Christ. I have plenty to say about the generations too, if you wish. But you seem to me now to wish to know not whether I accept the gospel, but whether I| accept the generations.
2. AuGUSTiN replied: Well, in answer to your j T.OOK II.]
REPLY TO FAUSTUS THE MANICH.EAN.
D/ own questions, you tell us first that you believe the gospel, and next, that you do not believe in the birth of Christ; and your reason is, that the birth of Christ is not in the gospel. What, then, will you answer the apostle when lie says, " Remember that Christ Jesus rose from the dead, of the seed of David, accord- ing to my gospel? " ' You surely are ignorant, or pretend to be ignorant, what the gospel is. Vou use the word, not as the apostle teaches, but as suits your own errors. What the apos- tles call the gospel you depart from; for you do not believe that Christ was of the seed of David. This was Paul's gospel; and it was also the gospel of the other apostles, and of all faithful stewards of so great a mystery. For Paul says elsewhere, "Whether, there- fore, I or they, so we preach, and so ye be- lieved.'' - They did not all write the gospel, but they all preached it. The name evange- list is properly given to the narrators of the birth, the actions, the words, the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ. The word gospel means good news, and might be used of any good news, but is properly applied to the nar- rative of the Saviour. If, then, you teach something different, you must have departed from the gospel. Assuredly those babes whom you despise as semi-Christians will oppose you, when they hear their mother Charity declaring by the mouth of the apostle, " If any one preach another gospel than that which we have preached to you, let him be ac- cursed." 3 Since, then, Paul, according to his ,L;ospel, preached that Christ was of the seed of David, and you deny this and preach some- thing else, may you be accursed! And what can you mean by saying that Christ never de- clares Himself to have been born of men, when on every occasion He calls Himself the Son of man?
3. You learned men, forsooth, dress up for our benefit some wonderful First Man, who came down from the race of light to war with the race of darkness, armed with his waters against the waters of the enemy, and with his lire against their fire, and with his winds against their winds. And why not with his smoke against their smoke, and with his dark- ness against their darkness? According to you, he was armed against smoke with air, and against darkness with light. So it appears I that smoke and darkness are bad, since they j could not belong to his goodness. The other Ithree, again — water, wind, and fire — are good. I How, then, could these belong to the evil of the enemy? You reply that the water of the race of darkness was evil, while that which ' 2 Tim. ii, 8.
« I Cor. XV. II, 3 Gal. i. 8, 9, the First Man brought was good; and so, too, his good wind and fire fought against the evil wind and fire of the adversary. But why could he not bring good smoke against evil smoke? Your falsehoods seem to vanish in smoke. Well, your First Man warred against an opposite nature. And yet only one of the five things he brought was the Qpposite of what the hostile race had. The light was op- posed to the darkness, but the four others are not opposed to one another. Air is not the opposite of smoke, and still less is water the op- posite o*f water, or wind of wind, or fire of fire. 4. One is shocked at your wild fancies about this First Man changing the elements which he brought, that he might conquer his enemies by pleasing them. So you make what you call the kingdom of falsehood keep honestly to its own nature, while truth is changeable in order to deceive. Jesus Christ, according to you, is the son of this First Man. Truth springs, forsooth, from your fiction. You praise this First Man for using change- able and delusive forms in the contest. If you, then, speak the truth, you do not imi- tate him. If you imitate him, you deceive as he did. But our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the true and truthful Son of God, the true and truthful Son of man, both of which He testifies of Himself, derived the eternity of His godhead from true God, and His incar- nation from true man. Your First Man is not the first man of the apostle. " The first man," he says, "was of the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven, heavenly. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy; as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. As we have borne the image of the earthy, let us also bear the im- age of the heavenly."^ The first man of the earth, earthy, is Adam, who was made of dust. The second man from heaven, heaven- ly, is the Lord Jesus Christ; for, being the Son of God, He became flesh that He might be a man outwardly, while He remained God w[thin; that He might be both the true Son of God, by whom we were made, and the true Son of man, by whom we are made anew. Why do you conjure up this fabulous First Man of yours, and refuse to acknowledge the first man of the apostle? Is this not a fulfillment of what the apostle says: " Turning away their ears from the truth, they will give heed to fables?" ^ According to Paul, the first man is of the earth, earthy; according to Manich^eus, he is not earthy, and is equipped with five elements of some unreal, unintelli- gible kind. Paul sa3's: " If any one should ^ 2 Tim, iv. 4, 158 THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN.
[Book II.
have announced to you differently from what we have announced let him be accursed." Therefore lest PauJ be a liar, let Manicheeus be accursed.
5. Again, you find fault with the star by which the Magi were led to worship the in- fant Christ, which you should be ashamed of doing, wihen you represent your fabulous Christ, the son of your fabulous First Man, not as announced by a star, but as bound up in all the stars.' For you say that he mingled with the principles of darkness in his conflict with the race of darkness, that by capturing these principles the world might be made out of the mixture. So that, by your profane fancies, Christ is not only mingled with heaven and all the stars, but conjoined and com- pounded with the earth and all its produc- tions,= — a Saviour no more, but needing to be saved by you, by your eating and disgorging Him.
This foolish custom of making your disci- ples bring you food, that your teeth and stomach may be the means of relieving Christ, who is bound up in it, is a conse- quence of your profane fancies. You declare that Christ is liberated in this way — not, how- ever, entirely; for you hold that some tiny particles of no value still remain in the excre- ment, to be mixed up and compounded again and again in various material forms, and to be released and purified at any rate by the fire in which the world will be burned up, if not before. Nay, even then, you say, Christ is not entirely liberated; but some extreme par- ticles of His good and divine nature, which have been so defiled that they cannot be cleansed, are condemned to stay for ever in the horrid mass of darkness. And these people pretend to be offended with our saying that a star announced the birth of the Son of God, as if this were placing His birth under the influence of a constellation; while they subject Him not to stars only, but to such polluting contact with all material things, with the juices of all vegetables, and with the decay of all flesh, and with the decomposition of all food, in which He is bound up, that the only way of releasing Him, at least one great means, is that men, that is the Elect of the Manichasans, should succeed in digesting their dinner.
We, too, deny the influence of the stars ' [This mixture of the substance of Primordial Man, with the kingdom of darkness, and the formation of stars out of portions thereof, was probably a part of primitive Manichaean teaching. — A. H. N.]
2 [Compare Book xx. 2, where Faustus states the Manichsean doctnne of the Jesus patabilis. Beausobre, Mosheim and Baur agree in thinking that Augustin has not distinguished accurately in these two passages between names Christ and Jesus, as used by the jNIanichjeans. See Baur: Das Manichiiische Religionssysteiit, p. 72.— A. H. N.]
upon the birth of any man; for we maintain that, by the just law of God, the free-will of man, which chooses good or evil, is under no constraint of necessity. How much less do we subject to any constellation the incarna- tion of the eternal Creator and Lord of all! When Christ was born after the flesh, the star which the Magi saw had no power as govern- ing, but attended as a witness. Instead of assuming control over Him, it acknowledged Him by the homage it did. Besides, this star was not one of those which from the be- ginning of the world continue in the course ordained by the Creator. Along with the new birth from the Virgin appeared a new star, which served as a guide to the Magi who were themselves seeking for Christ; for it went be- fore them till they reached the place where they found the Word of God in the form of a child. But what astrologer ever thought of making a star leave its course, and come down to the child that is born, as they imagine, under it? They think that the stars affect the birth, not that the birth changes the course of the stars; so, if the star in the Gospel was one of those heavenly bodies, how could it deter- mine Christ's action, when it was compelled to change its own action at Christ's birth?
But if, as is more likely, a star which did not exist before appeared to point out Christ, it was the effect of Christ's birth, and not the cause of it. Christ was not born because the star was there; but the star was there because Christ was born. If there was any fate, it was in the birth, and not in the star. The word fate is derived from a word which means to speak; and since Christ is the Word of God by which all things were spoken before they were, the conjunction of stars is not the fate of Christ, but Christ is the fate of the stars. The same will that made the heavens took our earthly nature. The same power that ruled the stars laid down His life and took it again.
6. Why, then, should the narrative of the birth not be the gospel, since it conveys such good news as heals our malady? Is it because Matthew begins, not like Mark, with the words, " The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ," but, ''The book of the generation of Jesus Christ?" In this way, John, too, might be said not to have written the gospel, for he has not the words. Beginning of the gospel, or Book of the gospel, but, " In the beginning was the Word." Perhaps the clever word-maker Faustus will call the introduc- tion in John a Verbtditim, as he called that in Mattliew a Gc?icsidium. The wonder is, that you are so impudent as to give the name of gospel to your silly stories. What good Book HI.]
REPLY TO FAUSTUS THE MANICH.^EAN.
159 news is there in telling us that, in the conflict against some strange hostile nation, God could protect His own kingdom only by sending part of His own nature into the greedy jaws of the former, and to be so defiled, that after all those toils and tortures it cannot all be purged? Is this bad news the gospel? Every one who has even a slender knowledge of Greek knows that gospel means good news. But where is your good news, when your God himself is said to weep as under eclipse till the darkness and defilement are removed from his members? And when he ceases to weep, it seems he becomes cruel. For what has that part of him which is to be involved in the mass done to deserve this Qondemnation? This part must go on weeping for ever. But no; whoever examines this news will not weep because it is bad, but will laugh because it is not true.
BOOK III.
FAUSTUS OBJECTS TO THE INCARNATION OF GOD ON THE pROUND THAT THE EVANGELISTS ARE AT VARIANCE WITH EACH OTHER, AND THAT INCARNATION IS UNSUITABLE TO DEITY. AUGUSTIN ATTEMPTS TO REMOVE THE CRITICAL AND THEOLOGICAL DIFFICULTIES.
1. Faustus said: Do I believe in the in- carnation? For my part^ this is the very thing I long tried to persuade myself of, that God was born; but the discrepancy in the genealogies of Luke and Matthew stumbled me, as I knew not which to follow. For I thought it might happen that, from not being omniscient, I might take the true for false, and the false for true. So, in despair of settling this dispute, I betook myself to Mark and John, two authorities still, and evangel- ists as much as the others. I approved with good reason of the beginning of Mark and John, for they have nothing of David, or Mary, or Joseph. John says, " In the begin- ning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,'' meaning Christ. Mark says, " The gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God," as if correcting Matthew, who calls him the Son of David. Perhaps, how- ever, the Jesus of Matthew is a different per- son from the Jesus of Mark. This is my reason for not believing in the birth of Christ.
Remove this difficulty, if you can, by har- monizing the accounts, and I am ready to yield. In any case, however, it is hardly con- sistent to believe that God, the God of Chris- tians, was born from the womb.
2. AuGUSTiN replied: Had you read the Gospel with care, and inquired into those places where you found opposition, instead of rashly condemning them, you would have seen that the recognition of the authority of the evangelists by so many learned men all over the world, in spite of this most obvious discrepancy, proves that there is more in it than appears at first sight. Anyone can see, as well as you, that the ancestors of Christ in Matthew and Luke are different; while Joseph appears in both, at the end in Matthew and at the beginning in Luke. Joseph, it is plain, might be called the father of Christ, on ac- count of his being in a certain sense the hus- band of the mother of Christ; and so his name, as the male representative, appears at the be- ginning or end of the genealogies. Any one can see as well as you that Joseph has one father in Matthew and another in Luke, and so with the grandfather and with all the rest up to David. Did all the able and learned men, not many Latin writers certainly, but innumerable Greek, who have examined most attentively the sacred Scriptures, overlook this manifest difference? Of course they saw it. No one can help seeing it. But with a due regard to the high authority of Scripture, they believed that there was something here which would be given to those that ask, and denied to those that snarl; would be found by those that seek, and taken away from those that criticise; would be open to those that knock, and shut against those that contradict. They asked, sought, and knocked; they re- ceived, found, and entered in.
3. The whole question is how Joseph had two fathers. Supposing this possible, both genealogies may be correct. With two fathers, why not two grandfathers, and two great- grandfathers, and so on, up to David, who was the father both of Solomon, who is men- tioned in Matthew's list, and of Nathan, who occurs in Luke? This is the difificulty with many people who think it impossible that two men should have one and the same son, for- getting the very obvious fact that a man may be called the son of the person who adopted him as well as of the person who begot him.
Adoption, we know, was familiar to the ani6o THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN.
[Book III.
cients, for even women adopted the children of other women, as Sarah adopted Ishmael, and Leah her handmaid's son, and Pharaoh's daughter Moses. Jacob, too, adopted his grandsons, the children of Joseph. More- over, the word adoption is of great importance in the s)'stem of our faith, as is seen from the apostolic writings. For the Apostle Paul, speaking of the advantages of the Jews, says: " Whose are the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law; whose are the fathers, and of whom, accord- ing to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever."' And again: "We ourselves also groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God, even the redemption of the body." '^ Again, elsewhere: "But in the fullness of time, God* sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons."^ These passages show clearly that adoption is a significant symbol. God has an only Son, whom He begot from His own substance, of whom it is said, " Being in the form of God, He thought it not robber)^ to be equal to God."-* Us He begot not of His* own sub- stance, for we belong to the creation which is not begotten, but made; but that He might make us the brothers of Christ, He adopted us. That act, then, by which God, when we were not born of Him, but created and formed, begot us by His word and grace, is called adoption. So John says, " He gave them power to become the sons of God. ' ' ^ Since, therefore, the practice of adoption is common among our fathers, and in Script- ure, is there not irrational profanity in the hasty condemnation of the evangelists as false because the genealogies are different, as if both could not be true, instead of considering calmly the simple fact that frequently in human life one man may have two fathers, one of whose flesh he is born, and another of whose will he is afterwards made a son by adoption? If the second is not rightly called father, neither are we right in saying, "Our Father which art in heaven," to Him of whose substance we were not born, but of whose grace and most merciful will we were adopted, according to apostolic doctrine, and truth most sure. For one is to us God, and Lord, and Father: God, for by Him we are created, though of human parents; Lord, for we are His subjects; Father, for by His adoption we are born again. Careful students of sacred Scripture easily saw, from a little considera- tion, how, in the different genealogies of the two evangelists, Joseph had two fathers, and 3 Gal. iv. 4, 5.
consequently two lists of ancestors. You might have seen this too, if you had not been blinded by the love of contradiction. Other things' far beyond your understanding have been discovered in the careful investigation of all parts of these narratives. The familiar occurrence of one man begetting a son and another adopting him, so that one man has two fathers, you might, in spite of Manichsean error, have thought of as an explanation, if you had not been reading in a hostile spirit.