BOOK ONE. There was a certain Faustus, African by race, a citizen of Milevis, sweet in eloquence, cunning in mind, a Manichaean by sect and therefore perverted by an abominable error. I myself had known the man, as I have recalled him in the books of my Confessions. He published a certain volume against the right Christian faith and Catholic truth. When it had come into our hands and had been read by the brethren, they desired — and by the right of the charity by which we serve them, they earnestly demanded — that we should answer it. This I now undertake, in the name and with the help of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, so that all who read these things may understand how utterly nothing a sharp mind and a polished tongue are, unless a man's steps be directed by the Lord.
This has been granted, by the hidden equity of divine mercy, to many even slower and weaker persons, while many most keen and most eloquent men, abandoned by God's help, ran swiftly and obstinately toward this very end — that they should stray farther from the way of truth. I think it convenient to set down his words under his name, and my response under mine. FAUSTUS said:
The errors having now been more than sufficiently brought to light, and the falsehood both of the Jewish superstition and of the half-Christians abundantly exposed by that most learned Adimantus — the only one worthy of our study after our blessed father Manichaeus — it has seemed to me not out of place, dearest brethren, to write for you these brief and neat replies as well, on account of the cunning and crafty propositions of those who dispute with us; so that when they, after the manner of their father the serpent, wish to entrap you with captious little questions, you yourselves may be vigilantly equipped to answer them. For thus it will come about that, bound fast to the very things they have proposed, they can no longer wander this way and that.
And lest the minds of the readers be flooded by a diffuse or confused discourse, I have set out their words and ours over against each other, as briefly as distinctly. AUGUSTINE replied: You think the half-Christians are to be guarded against, which you say we are; but we guard against the pseudo-Christians, which we show you to be. For what is 'half' is in some part incomplete, yet false in no part. What then? If something is lacking to the faith of those whom you attempt to entrap, is that which is present in them therefore to be destroyed, and not rather that which is lacking to be built up? Just as the apostle, speaking to certain incomplete ones, says: 'rejoicing and beholding your good conduct and that which is lacking to your faith in Christ.'
He was surely discerning a kind of spiritual building, as he says elsewhere: 'You are God's building'; and in it he discerned both — both that from which he might rejoice and that about which he might be anxious. He rejoiced over what he already saw built up; he was anxious over what he perceived still needed to be built up, all the way to the summit of perfection. And so you persecute us who are truly Catholics — not yet perfect, but in a certain manner, as you put it, half-Christians — whom you may deceive and seduce by your perversity. But if any are still even such, if they come to understand that you are pseudo-Christians, then, although they cannot answer the captious propositions of your questions because of what is lacking to their faith, they nevertheless recognize that you are not to be followed but avoided.
As therefore your intention is to seek out the half-Christians whom you may deceive, so our intention is to show you to be pseudo-Christians, so that not only may the more skilled Christians expose you by convicting you, but even the less skilled may profit by guarding against you. But why did you call the serpent our father? Or has it slipped your mind how you are accustomed to blame God, who gave the commandment to man in paradise, and to praise the serpent, because by his counsel he opened man's eyes? I think it just that you should rather acknowledge that serpent — the devil praised by you — as your own parent; for even now, blamed though he is, he acknowledges you as his son. BOOK TWO. FAUSTUS said: Do you accept the gospel? Yes, most emphatically. Accordingly, then, do you also accept Christ as born?
It is not so. For it does not follow that, if I accept the gospel, I therefore accept Christ as born. Why? Because the gospel indeed both began to exist and to be named from the preaching of Christ, in which, however, He nowhere says that He was born of men. But the genealogy is so far from being the gospel that not even its own writer dared to call it a gospel. For what did he write? 'The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David.' Therefore not 'the book of the gospel of Jesus Christ,' but 'the book of the generation' — since there too a star is introduced, which confirms the horoscope, so that this may rightly be called a 'nativity-book' rather than a gospel.
And finally Mark, who did not trouble to write the generation, but only the preaching of the Son of God, which is the gospel — see how fittingly he began: 'The gospel,' he says, 'of Jesus Christ, the Son of God' — so that from this it may appear abundantly enough that the genealogy is not the gospel. For even in Matthew himself it is read that Jesus then began to preach the gospel of the kingdom, after John had been shut up in prison. Therefore whatever was narrated before this is agreed to be genealogy, not gospel. Otherwise, what prevented Matthew too from putting 'the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,' except that he thought it improper to call a genealogy a gospel?
Wherefore, if it is now sufficiently clear to you — what until now you did not know — that the gospel is something far other than the genealogy, know that I, as I said, accept the gospel, that is, the preaching of Christ. Concerning it, whatever you now wish to inquire further, ask, leaving the generations aside. Or if you have a mind to confer about these too, I for my part do not refuse, since I have a great store even about these for answering; but do you learn to ask what comes first. For you seem to me now to want to know, not whether I accept the gospel, but whether I accept the generations. AUGUSTINE replied: Certainly you questioned yourself, as it were in our person, whether you would accept the gospel, and you answered: most emphatically.
And again you asked whether you would accept Christ as born, and you answered: it is not so — subjoining this reason, namely, that the generation of Christ does not pertain to the gospel. What then will you answer to the apostle when he says: 'Remember that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, of the seed of David, according to my gospel'? You see surely how you do not know — or pretend not to know — what the gospel is, and how you name the gospel not from apostolic doctrine but from your error. But if you call 'gospel' that which the apostles called it, then you stray from the gospel, you who do not believe that Christ is of the seed of David — which the apostle testified is preached according to his gospel.
And what was the gospel of the apostle Paul, this too was the gospel of the other apostles and of all the faithful stewards of so great a mystery. For he says elsewhere: 'Whether therefore it be I or they, so we preach and so you believed.' For not all of them wrote the gospel, yet all of them preached the gospel. For the narrators of the origin, deeds, sayings, and sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ were properly called evangelists. For if we ask what the very name means in Latin, 'euangelium' is called 'good message' or 'good announcement.' This indeed can always be said whenever anything good is announced, yet properly this word has come to belong to that announcement of the Saviour of which I spoke.
But if you announce something else, it is manifest that you are outside the gospel. Surely the little ones, whom you call half-Christians, are against you, if they hear the voice of mother charity resounding to them from the apostolic mouth: 'If anyone announce to you anything beyond what we have announced to you, let him be anathema.' Since therefore Paul himself, according to his gospel, announced Christ of the seed of David, you who deny this and announce something else — be anathema. But who does not see with how great blindness it is said that Christ nowhere calls Himself born of men, when He almost never keeps silent that He is the Son of man?
But of course, most learned men, you bring forth to us from your cupboard some sort of 'first man,' who descended from the race of light to make war on the race of darkness, armed with his own waters against the enemies' waters, and with his own fire against the enemies' fire, and with his own winds against the enemies' winds. Why then not also with his own smoke against the enemies' smoke, and with his own darkness against the enemies' darkness — but against smoke he was armed, as you say, with air, and against darkness with light? Or is it because smoke and darkness are evil that his goodness could not possess them? Then those three are good: water, wind, fire. Why then could the malice of the opposing race possess them? Here you answer:
'But that water of the race of darkness was evil, whereas the water which the first man brought was good; and that one's wind was evil, but this one's good; so too this one's good fire fought against that one's evil fire.' Why then could he not also bring good smoke against evil smoke? Or in the smoke do your lies, like smoke itself, vanish away and fail? Certainly your first man waged war against a contrary nature. Why, against those five elements which you fabricate in the contrary race, was only one contrary thing brought from the divine realms — light against darkness? For the other four are not contrary. For neither is air contrary to smoke, much less water to water, wind to wind, and fire to fire.
But now, who could listen to those sacrilegious ravings — that you say your first man, in accordance with the will of the enemies, in order to capture them, changed and altered the elements which he bore, so that the kingdom which you call the kingdom of falsehood, remaining in its own nature, fought without deceit, while the substance of truth appeared mutable, in order to deceive? You wish the Lord Jesus Christ to be believed the son of this first man. You call truth the daughter of this fabricated fable. This first man, whom you praise because he fought against the opposing race with changeable and lying forms — if you speak the truth, you do not imitate him; but if you do imitate him, then you too are lying.
Wherefore our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the true and truthful Son of God, the true and truthful Son of man — both of which He Himself testifies concerning Himself — drew from true God the eternity of divinity, and from true man the origin of flesh. Apostolic doctrine does not know your first man. Hear the apostle Paul: 'The first man,' he says, 'is of the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven, heavenly. As is the earthy, such also are they that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such also are they that are heavenly. As we have borne the image of the earthy, let us bear also the image of Him who is from heaven.' The first man, therefore, of the earth, earthy, is that Adam formed from clay; but the second man, from heaven, heavenly, is the Lord Jesus Christ, who as the Son of God came to flesh.
This flesh being assumed, He became man outwardly and remained God inwardly, so that He was both the true Son of God, through whom we were made, and became the true Son of man, through whom we were remade. Why then do you produce your fabricated first man from I know not where, and are unwilling to acknowledge the first man whom apostolic doctrine teaches? Or is it that there may be fulfilled in you what the apostle himself says: 'turning away their hearing indeed from the truth, but being turned aside to fables'? Paul announces a first man of the earth, earthy; Manichaeus announces a first man not earthy, clothed with I know not what five deceptive elements. And Paul says: 'If anyone announce to you anything beyond what we have announced to you, let him be anathema.'
Therefore, lest Paul be a liar, let Manichaeus be anathema. But that you also calumniate the star, by which the magi were led to adore the infant Christ — you do not blush, since you place your fabricated Christ, the son of your fabricated first man, not under the testimony of a star, but say that he is bound up in all the stars; because, namely, you believe that he was mingled with the princes of darkness in that war in which your first man himself fought with the race of darkness, so that out of those very princes of darkness, thus mingled and captured, the world might be fashioned.
Whence these sacrilegious ravings compel you to say that Christ is fastened, bound, and congealed not only in heaven and in all the stars, but also on the earth and in all the things that are born from it — no longer your saviour, but one to be saved by you, when you eat those things and belch them up. For, seduced by this impious vanity, you also seduce your hearers into bringing you foods, whereby Christ, bound in them, may be succoured through your teeth and bellies. For by such aids you preach that he is loosed and set free;
nor even the whole of him, for you contend that still — albeit tiny and filthy — remnants of him remain in the excrements, so that in one form after another of corporeal things they are held again and again, entangled and enfolded; and if, while the world stands, they cannot be loosed and purged, then in that final fire, in which the world itself will burn, they may be loosed and purged. Nor yet even then do you say that the whole Christ can be liberated, but that the last and residual particles of his good and divine nature, which are so befouled that they can in no way be washed clean, are damned for eternity, fastened to the horrid globe of darkness.
Behold those who feign indignation that an injury is done to the Son of God because a star is said to have shown Him born — as though His nativity were set under a fatal constellation — while they themselves set Him not only under the connection of the stars, but in the bonds of all earthly things, in the juices of all herbs, in the rottenness of all flesh, and in the corruption of all foods — so bound and polluted that he cannot be loosed and purged from a great part, though not from the whole, unless he be belched up even by men — namely, the Elect of the Manichaeans — even in leeks and little roots.
And we indeed place the nativity of no man under the fate of the stars, so that, on account of the just judgment of God, we may vindicate the free choice of the will — by which one lives either well or ill — from every bond of necessity: how much less do we believe that the temporal generation of Him was made under the condition of the stars, who is the eternal creator and Lord of all things. And so that star which the magi saw did not rule over Christ, born according to the flesh, so as to decree, but served Him so as to bear witness; nor did it subject Him to its command, but pointed Him out by its homage.
Accordingly, this star was not one of those which, from the beginning of creation, keep the order of their courses under the creator's law; rather, at the new birth of a virgin a new star appeared, which rendered the ministry of its office even to the magi themselves as they sought Christ — going before their face — until, by going ahead, it led them all the way to the very place where the Word of God was an infant. What astrologers ever established the fates of men being born under the stars in such a way that they would assert that one of the stars, at some man's birth, forsook the order of its circuit and made its way to him who was born? For they suppose that the lot of one being born is bound to the order of the stars, not that the order of the stars can be changed for the day of a man's birth.
Wherefore, if that star was one of those which perform their courses in the heaven, how could it decree what the born Christ was going to do, when at Christ's birth it was bidden to leave off what it was doing? But if, as is more probably believed, it arose in order to point out Christ — which it was not before — then Christ was not born because it came into being, but rather it came into being because Christ was born. Whence, if one had to speak in such terms, we would say that the star was not the fate of Christ, but rather Christ the fate of the star. For He indeed brought to it, not it to Him, the cause of coming into being.
If therefore there are 'fates,' which are named from 'fando,' that is, from 'speaking' — since Christ is the Word of God, in whom, before they existed, all things were spoken — then the fellowship of the stars is not the fate of Christ, but Christ is the fate even of the stars: He who assumed that very flesh, created beneath the heaven, by that same will by which He also created the heaven, and laid it down and took it up again by that same power by which He also commanded the stars. Why then should that which is narrated concerning this generation not be a gospel, since it is announced to us as so good that through it our infirmity is healed? Or is it because Matthew did not begin so as to say 'the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ,' as Mark says, but 'the book of the generation of Jesus Christ'?
By this reasoning let it be denied that John too wrote a Gospel, since he himself does not say 'the beginning of the Gospel' or 'the book of the Gospel,' but 'In the beginning was the Word.' Unless perhaps Faustus was so elegant a fabricator of words that he would have named this opening of John's a 'verbidium' on account of the 'Word' (verbum), just as he dared to call that other one a 'genesidium' on account of the 'genesis.' But why do you not rather consider with how great shamelessness you call those long-winded and impious fables of yours a Gospel?
For what good is announced there, where it is said that God, against some rebellious, hostile, and alien nature—I know not what—could in no other way provide for and safeguard his own kingdom, except by sending a part of his own nature into that nature's greedy jaws to be devoured and thus defiled, so that after such great toils and torments it could not even be wholly purified? Is such a bad message a Gospel? Surely all who know Greek, even slightly, interpret 'Gospel' as 'good news' or 'good announcement.' But how is this good news, seeing that God himself is announced to you as mourning behind a veil set before him, until his members are restored and cleansed from that devastation and contamination?
And if he ever ends his mourning, he will be cruel. For what evil did that part of him deserve, which is to be bound in the clod? which is surely to be mourned forever, because it is to be condemned forever. But we have escaped, because whoever attends diligently to this message is compelled not to mourn—for it is bad—but to laugh, for it is false. BOOK THREE. FAUSTUS said: Do you then accept the generation? Indeed I long tried to persuade myself of this very thing, whatever it is, that God was born; but, offended above all by the disagreement of two evangelists, Luke and Matthew, who write his genealogy, I hung back uncertain which of them I should most follow.
For I thought it might be that, since I am no foreknower to judge which was lying, the one might be speaking truth, and the one I judged to speak truth might perhaps be lying. So, passing over their boundless and endless dispute, I betook myself to John and Mark—not unequally, from two to two, and from evangelists to professors of the same name. Their beginnings for the time pleased me, not without reason, because they bring in neither David nor Mary nor Joseph; but John indeed says that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God—signifying Christ; while Mark says, 'The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God,' as if reproaching Matthew, who had set down 'the son of David.'
Unless perhaps this one announces one Jesus and that one another. This, then, is the reason why I do not accept that Christ was born. But you, if you are so great as to remove this stumbling-block from me, bring it about that they agree among themselves, and I will somehow yield—although even so it will not be worthy to believe that God was born from a womb, and the God of the Christians at that. AUGUSTINE replied: O, if you had read the Gospel with pious zeal, and had chosen diligently to inquire into, rather than rashly to condemn, those things in the evangelists which moved you as if contradictory—that at least, on account of the very thing which as it were meets one at first sight,
you would consider that most obvious contradiction, and would reflect that, unless something great lay hidden there, it could scarcely have come about that so great an authority was granted them throughout the world, by which they subdued to themselves the minds of so many most learned men. For what is so great in seeing what you have seen—that some of Christ's forefathers according to the flesh are recorded by Luke, others by Matthew, since both set down Joseph, Matthew as the one at whom he ends, Luke as the one from whom he begins: who, on account of a certain holy and virginal marriage with his mother, himself also deserved to be called the parent of Christ, so that on account of the male dignity the generations should be woven either from him or up to him? What then is so great in what you have seen—that according to Matthew Joseph has one father,
according to Luke another, and according to the one grandfather another, according to the other another; and thereafter upward all the way to David, through so many generations, other forebears of his are enumerated by the one, others by the other? Would so many acute and learned men, most diligent expositors of the divine Scriptures, not have seen so plain and manifest a diversity?—men who indeed are very few in the Latin tongue, but who could count them in the Greek? They saw it plainly. For what is easier? Or who, looking even a little at these things, does not see it?
But thinking piously, on account of the eminence of so great an authority, they believed that something lay hidden there which would be given to those who ask, denied to those who bark against it, found by those who seek, withdrawn from those who carp, opened to those who knock, closed to those who assail: they asked, they sought, they knocked, they received, they found, they entered. Truly the whole question in this matter is how Joseph could have had two fathers. For if it is shown that this could have happened, there is no cause whatever why any of these evangelists should be believed to have spoken falsely in enumerating diverse generations.
For from two fathers it will no longer be strange or contradictory that there could also be two grandfathers, and great-grandfathers, and great-great-grandfathers, and whatever is above, all the way up to David, whose sons both were—Solomon, who belongs to the line which Matthew followed, and Nathan, who is in the series which Luke set forth. For some attend to these things and see that a man cannot be begotten by two men through the mingling of flesh, and therefore think this question cannot be resolved. And they do not observe what is most usual and most easy: that anyone's father is called not only he by whom he was begotten, but also he by whom he was adopted.
For the bond of adoption was not foreign to the customs of the ancients, since we find that even women adopted for themselves sons not born of their own womb—as Sarah did from Hagar, and Leah from her handmaid, and Pharaoh's daughter adopted Moses. Jacob himself adopted his grandsons, the sons of Joseph. And that the very name of adoption has the greatest force in the mystery of our faith, the apostolic teaching bears witness. Whence the apostle Paul, when he was speaking of the merits of the Jews, says: 'whose is the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law; whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever.' Likewise he says:
'And we ourselves also groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body'; and again in another place: 'But when the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that he might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.' How great a mystery this adoption is, is sufficiently apparent from these and similar testimonies. For God has one only Son, whom he begot of his own substance, of whom it is said: 'Being in the form of God, he thought it not robbery to be equal with God.' But us he did not beget of his own substance; for we are a creature, which he did not beget but made; and therefore, to make us brethren of Christ according to our own manner, he adopted us.
This manner, therefore, by which God—when we already existed, not born of him but created and established by him—begot us by his Word and by his grace, that we might be his sons, is called adoption. Whence John says: 'He gave them power to become the sons of God.' Since, then, the right of adopting sons was customary among our fathers and in the holy Scriptures, what madness of impiety hurls you headlong first to charge the evangelists with falsehood because they recorded diverse generations—as though both could not be true—rather than to consider and attend to and see, which is most easy, how by the very frequent practice of the human race one man could have two fathers: one by whose flesh the man was begotten, and another
by whose will he was adopted as a son when he was already a man? And if such a one is not rightly called father, then neither do we rightly say, 'Our Father, who art in heaven,' to him of whose substance we were not born, but by whose grace and most merciful will we were adopted, according to the apostolic teaching and the most faithful truth. For we have him as our God, and Lord, and Father: God, because by him we were also created out of human parents; Lord, because we are subject to him; Father, because by his adoption we were reborn.
It was therefore easy for religious searchers of the divine writings to consider a little and to see, in the diverse generations of Christ recorded by the two evangelists, how Joseph could have had two fathers, whose forebears are enumerated differently. This you too, if the zeal of contention did not blind you, could easily see. But by those men other things also were sought out and found, when they examined thoroughly all the parts of these narratives; these things, however, are very far removed from your understanding.