Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 15 part 11/37

'For whatever things were written before,' he says, 'were written for our instruction, that through the patience and consolation of the Scriptures we might have hope toward God.' But Faustus contradicts. Let it, then, be to him as Paul says: 'If anyone shall have preached to you a gospel other than that which you received, let him be anathema.' BOOK FOURTEEN. FAUSTUS said: Why do you not accept Moses? For love and piety's sake, wherewith we worship Christ. For who is so irreligious as to look with pleasure upon one who has cursed his own father? Wherefore we too, although Moses spared none, of men or of things divine, in blaspheming, yet abominate him the more on this account: that Christ, the Son of God, who for the sake of our salvation hung upon the tree,

he assailed with the dire abuse of a curse; whether willingly or by chance, you may see. For by neither of these will he be excused, so that, being commended, he ought to be accepted. For he says that everyone is cursed who hangs upon a tree. This man, then, you want me to accept, this man you want me to believe—when, if he was divine, it is established that he cursed Christ knowingly and willingly; but if he cursed unwillingly and unknowingly, it is established that he was not divine. You, therefore, choose whichever you will: either that Moses was not a prophet and sinned through imprudence, so that while he cursed others after his custom he blasphemed even God unknowingly; or that he was indeed divine and was not ignorant of these things to come, but, nevertheless envying our salvation which was to be from the tree, poured out the venom of his cursing mouth upon its author.

And who, then, would believe that this man saw or knew the Father, who so tore the Son to pieces? that he could foretell this coming of the Son, who was ignorant of the outcome of his ascension? To this is added that I also consider this: how widely this abuse has been scattered, and how many it comprehends and violates, so that it touches even all the just and the martyrs, as many as have departed from life by the outcome of a like passion—as Peter and Andrew and the rest of the same lot. Whom, unless Moses either as no prophet had not known, or as a malignant man had hated, he would not, if he was a prophet, have torn with the insult of so raw a cursing. For he does not even say that they are cursed merely among the common people—that is, only among men—but cursed by God.

But if this is so, whence now shall any hope of blessing be left, whether to Christ or to the apostles or to us ourselves, if it should befall us to be crucified for the sake of his name? How imprudent, in fine, and how void of divine inspiration was he, that he could not consider that men are hung upon a tree for diverse causes: some indeed for an iniquitous crime, but certain ones for the cause of justice and for God's sake.

And therefore he cast all men confusedly and without any distinction under the same curse, whereas—if he had any prudence, I will not say divination—it ought to have been said, if the cross had so offended him that it alone was excepted and cast out from every kind of punishment, that cursed is every wicked and impious man who has hung upon a tree, so that there might be some distinction between the just and the unjust; although not even so would he have spoken the truth, since Christ brought the robber with himself from the tree into the paradise of his Father. Where, then, is 'cursed is everyone who hangs upon a tree'?

Was that notorious robber Barabbas—who was not only not at all hung upon a tree, but was even released from prison at the request of the Jews—more blessed than he who ascended into heaven with Christ from the cross? What, finally, of the fact that he even calls him cursed who has worshipped the sun or the moon? If, then, being placed under a Gentile king I should be compelled to worship the sun, and, when I had resisted for fear of this curse, I should be ordered to be crucified, I should run into another curse of his, which he uttered against him who hangs upon a tree. Or is it his wont to curse all good men? But we ought to esteem his cursings at just so much as are those of the vexed old women.

For thus he pursues all God's boys and virgins with equal devotion, saying that everyone is cursed who does not raise up seed in Israel. And this same reproach touches primarily Jesus himself, who was born — as you say — of the Jews, yet raised up no offspring among them for the sake of preserving posterity; and next his disciples, some of whom he separated from their wives (those whom he had found already joined), while others whom he found untouched he forbade to marry at all. On this account you may rightly recognize that we have cursed this unpunished tongue of Moses with the darts of maledictions, for it assails Christ who is the light, holiness, and the seeker of all things divine.

Or perhaps you think there is a great difference between one who is hanged and one who is crucified — for this too you are wont to take up as a bulwark of your defence — you may hear Paul, in the face of these your fabrications, laying down: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having been made a curse for us, for it is written: Cursed is everyone who hangs upon a tree. AUGUSTINE replied: The pious man Faustus grieves that Christ was cursed by Moses, and on this account hates Moses because he loves Christ. Meanwhile, before I disclose in how great a sacrament and how piously it was said, Cursed is everyone who has hung upon a tree, I ask these pious men why they are angry with Moses, since his curse has not, according to them, reached Christ at all.

For if Christ hung upon the tree, he was assuredly fastened with nails — whence also he showed those very scars after the resurrection to the disciple who was too little believing. And if this is so, then he assuredly had a body that could be wounded and could die, which these men refuse to confess. If therefore both those wounds and those scars were false, then it is also false that he hung upon the tree; and thus that curse could not reach him, nor is there any reason why they should be indignant at him from whose mouth it proceeded. And so, if they pretend that they are angry at one who cursed the false death of Christ — since according to them I would say it was false — how are those to be shunned who do not curse Christ? Yet, what is more execrable, do they lay charges against him?

For if he is to be counted as bringing an accusation who heaps a curse upon mortality, how much more is he to be detested who casts falsehood upon truth? But now let us see, taking the occasion from these calumniating heretics, how that sacrament may be expounded to the faithful. The death of man is from the penalty of sin; whence death itself too is called sin — not because a man sins in dying, but because it came about from sin that he should die. Just as, in another way, that flesh which moves within the teeth beneath the palate is properly called the tongue, and in another way that which is done by the tongue is called a tongue — in which sense one is called the Greek tongue, another the Latin — and the hand in one way is properly called that very member of the body which we move to work,

and in another way a writing is called a hand, because it is made by the hand. For we say: "His hand has been produced," "His hand has been read against him," "I have your hand," "Take back your hand." The hand, to be sure, is properly a member of a man; but I do not think that writing is a member of a man, and yet it is called a hand, because it was made by hand. So too sin is called not only that very evil deed which is worthy of penalty, but also death itself, which was brought about by sin, is called sin. That sin, therefore, by which one would be guilty of death, Christ did not commit; but that other, namely death, which was inflicted upon human nature because of sin, he took upon himself for us. This he hung upon the tree; this was cursed through Moses;

there death was condemned, that it might not reign, and was cursed, that it might perish. Wherefore, through such a sin of Christ, our sin too was condemned, that we might be set free, lest, with sin reigning, we should remain condemned. Why then does Faustus wonder that sin was cursed, that death was cursed, that the mortality of the flesh was cursed — a mortality that was without sin in Christ, yet made from man's sin even in Christ? For he took his body from Adam, since the Virgin Mary, who bore Christ, was from Adam. But God had said in paradise: On the day you touch it, you shall die the death. This is the curse which hung upon the tree. Let him deny that Christ was cursed, who also denies that he died;

but he who confesses that he died and cannot deny that death is from sin, and that on this account death itself too is called sin, let him hear the Apostle saying: For our old man was crucified together with him — and let him understand what it is that Moses called cursed. And therefore the Apostle says confidently concerning Christ: He was made a curse for us, just as he did not fear to say: He died for all. For "he died" is the same as "he was cursed," since death itself is from the curse, and every sin is cursed — whether it be that which is done, so that punishment may follow, or the punishment itself, which is in another way called sin, because it comes from sin.

Now Christ took upon himself our punishment without guilt, that thereby he might loose our guilt and also end our punishment. I would be saying these things from my own invention, were it not that the Apostle so often drives this home, in order both to rouse the sleeping and to stop the mouths of the calumniators. God, he says, sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, that from sin he might condemn sin in the flesh. That flesh, therefore, was not the flesh of sin, because it had not come into Mary through a male by the propagation of mortality; yet because death is from sin, and that flesh, though from a virgin, was nevertheless mortal, by that very fact that it was mortal it had the likeness of sinful flesh. This too he calls sin, saying consequently: that from sin he might condemn sin in the flesh.

Again in another place he says: Him who knew no sin he made to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Why then should Moses have feared to say "cursed," that which Paul did not fear to call "sin"? Clearly the prophet was bound both to foresee and to foretell this, prepared to be reproved by the heretics along with the Apostle. For whoever reproves the prophet for having said "cursed" is compelled to reprove the Apostle for having said "sin"; for surely the curse is the companion of sin. Nor is there greater odium because he added "of God," so as to say: Cursed of God is everyone who has hung upon a tree. For unless God had hated our sin and our death, he would not have sent his own Son to take it upon himself and to destroy it.

What wonder is it, then, if that is cursed by God which God hates? For he grants us immortality — which will come when Christ comes — all the more gladly, as he all the more mercifully hates our death, which hung upon the tree when Christ died. And as to what was added, "everyone," so that it should be said, Cursed is everyone who has hung upon a tree, it is not indeed that Moses failed to foresee that the just too would be upon the cross, but he rightly foresaw that heretics would deny the true death of the Lord, and would therefore wish to sever Christ from this curse, in order to sever him also from the truth of death. For if that death was not true, no curse hung upon the crucified Christ on the tree, since he was not truly crucified either.

But against the heretics who would come far off in time, Moses cries out as from afar, "Without cause do you shift and evade," you to whom the truth of Christ's death is displeasing. Cursed is everyone who hangs upon a tree — not this one or that one, but absolutely everyone! Even the Son of God too? Yes, altogether. For this is what you do not want: this is what you busy yourselves over, this is where you seduce men. For the curse for our sake displeases you, because the death for our sake displeases you; for then he is outside the curse of that Adam, only if he is outside his death.

But since from man and for man he took death, from him and for him he did not disdain to take also the curse which accompanies death — even he, yes even that very Son of God, ever living in his own righteousness, yet dead on account of our sins in the flesh he assumed from our penalty. So too he is ever blessed in his own righteousness, yet cursed on account of our sins in the death he assumed from our penalty. And on this account was added "everyone," lest Christ be said not to pertain to true death, if by a foolish show of honour he were separated from the curse which is joined to death.

But he who is faithful according to the truth of the Gospel understands that it is no insult to Christ from the mouth of Moses when he called him cursed — not from the divinity of his majesty, but from the condition of our penalty, from which he was hung upon the tree — just as it is no praise of Christ from the mouth of the Manichaeans, when they deny that he had mortal flesh in which he might suffer true death; for from that prophetic curse the praise of humility is understood, while from this heretical, as it were, honour the crime of falsehood is cast upon him. If therefore you deny the curse, deny his death; if you deny his death, you now contend not against Moses, but against the Apostles. But if you confess his death, confess that he took upon himself the penalty of our sin without our sin.

Now indeed, when you hear of the penalty of sin, believe that it comes either from a blessing or from a curse. If the penalty of sin comes from a blessing, then choose to be always in the penalty of sin; but if you desire to be freed from it, believe that it came from a curse by the justice of the divine sentence. Confess, therefore, that he took upon himself the curse for us, whom you confess to have died for us; and confess that Moses meant to signify nothing else when he said:

Cursed is everyone who has hung upon a tree — nothing but "mortal is everyone, and dying is everyone, who has hung upon a tree." For he could have said, "Cursed is everyone who is mortal," or "Cursed is everyone who dies"; but this is what the prophet asserts, because he knew that Christ's death would be weighed out upon the cross, and that heretics would come who would say: "He indeed hung upon the tree, but under a certain appearance, not so as truly to die." Therefore, by crying "cursed," he cried out nothing else than that he was truly dead, knowing that the death of sinful man — which he himself took without sin — comes from that curse whereby it was said: If you touch it, you shall die the death.

To this also pertains that serpent hung upon a tree, whereby it was signified that Christ did not feign a false death, but suspended that true death upon the tree of his passion — the death into which that serpent cast man by evil persuasion. This true death these men refuse to behold, and therefore they are not healed from the venom of the serpent, just as in the wilderness all who looked upon it were healed. And so we grant that it is said by the unlearned that to be fastened to a tree is one thing, and to hang upon a tree another. For some think this question is to be resolved in such a way that they say Judas was cursed by Moses, who hanged himself with a noose — as though they knew, in the first place, whether he hanged himself from wood or from stone.

But it is true, as even Faustus mentioned, that the Apostle does not allow it to be understood otherwise than that it was foretold of Christ. Yet such ignorance of some Catholics is the hunting-ground of the Manichaeans; for such people they are wont to assail, such people they ensnare in their deceptions. Upon such we too had fallen; to such we had clung; from such we were rescued not by our own strength but by the mercy of God. But what things divine did Moses assail, as Faustus alleges, saying that he spared none, whether of things human or divine? For he said it and went off: he took no pains to prove it, he took no care to demonstrate it. But we know that Moses piously praised all things truly divine, and justly governed human affairs in accordance with the fittingness of his time and by the grace of his dispensation.

Let these men demand that I teach this, provided that they themselves shall first have attempted to teach what Faustus objects — cautiously indeed, as he was shrewd, yet in this incautious, because by his own sharpness he was destroying himself. For a heart that is sharp toward the truth is happy, but a heart sharp against the truth is unhappy. He did not say, "He spared none of men or of gods," but "of things human," he says, "and of things divine." For if he had said that he did not spare God, he would easily be convicted of a false accusation, since Moses is found everywhere honouring and proclaiming the true God, who made heaven and earth.

But if he had said that he spared none of the gods, he would betray to Christians that he worships those gods whom Moses forbids to be adored, and thus he would not gather beneath the wings of the Catholic Mother the chicks fleeing to her — chicks she did not bear. Therefore, in order to lay snares for the little ones, he said that Moses spared none of things divine, so that neither could Christians flee, by an open cult of the gods, from the impiety of these men that shrinks all too much from the Christian religion, nor could the pagans favour them against us — pagans who know that Moses said many true and worthy things against idols and against the gods of the nations, which are demons. But if this displeases these men, let them openly confess themselves to be worshippers of idols or of demons — which indeed they would be through ignorance, by that very fact alone, that they are heretics.

For concerning such men the Apostle said: that in the last times certain men shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, to doctrines of demons, in the hypocrisy of speakers of lies. For who but demons, who are friends to deception, would persuade these men that Christ suffered deceptively, died deceptively, showed his scars deceptively — that is, that he neither truly suffered nor truly died, nor were those true scars from true wounds? What are more evident doctrines of the lie-speaking demons than these, whereby it is urged upon men that the Son of God — that is, Truth itself — is a liar?

But these men have in their doctrine also an open worship — not indeed of demons, yet nonetheless of the creature — which the Apostle condemns, saying: and they worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator. Accordingly, in the phantasms of their fables these men worship idols and demons without knowing it; but in the sun and moon they know that they serve the creature. And in that they think they serve the Creator also, they are greatly deceived; for they serve their own phantasm, but in no way do they serve the Creator, since they deny that God created those things which the Apostle plainly shows to pertain to God's creation, saying, when he was treating of foods and meats: For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected that is received with thanksgiving.

See what sound doctrine is, which, being unable to bear, you have turned aside to fables. As the Apostle both praises the creature of God and yet forbids the worship of religion to be shown to it, so also Moses — who seems to you to have spared none of things divine (I suspect for no other reason than that he forbade the sun and moon to be adored, toward whose circuit you turn yourselves through every corner in order to adore them) — praised the sun and moon with true praise, when he related, as it is, that they were made by God and set in the heavenly order to perform their works: the sun to have power over the day, the moon over the night. But by your false praises the sun and moon do not rejoice. The devil knows how to rejoice in false praise — the transgressing creature.

But the powers of the heavens, which have not fallen through sin, wish their Maker to be praised in them: theirs is that true praise, whereby no injury is done to their Creator. But injury is done when it is said that they are his parts, or his members, or something of his substance. For he, being perfect and needing nothing, nowhere flowing away, neither cut asunder nor stretched out through places, wholly present with himself, unchangeable and self-sufficient, blessed in himself by reason of the abundance of his goodness, spoke through his Word, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created. Accordingly, if earthly bodies, of which the Apostle was speaking when he said no food was unclean, are good, because every creature of God is good:

how much more the heavenly ones, among which the sun and moon excel — since the Apostle himself says: there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies; but the glory of the heavenly is one, that of the earthly another. Therefore Moses does not revile the sun and moon when he forbids them to be adored, but he praises them as a heavenly creature, while he praises God as the Creator of things heavenly and earthly, and he does not wish God to be offended when those things are adored in his stead which for his sake and from him are praised. But how cleverly Faustus seemed to himself to reprove the fact that Moses calls cursed also anyone who has adored the sun and moon.

"If therefore," he says, "being placed under a pagan king I am compelled to adore the sun, and, when I resist for fear of this curse, I am ordered to be crucified, I shall fall into that other curse of his which he pronounced against him who hangs upon a tree." No pagan king indeed compels you to adore the sun — which even the sun itself would not compel, if it reigned upon earth, since not even now does it wish this to be done by you; but just as the Creator himself endures his impious blasphemers until the judgment, so also the heavenly bodies themselves tolerate their vain adorers until the judgment of their Creator. Yet remember that a Christian king cannot compel the sun to be adored. For Faustus put forward the example from a pagan king, knowing full well that what you do — when you adore the sun — pertains to the pagans.

This, therefore, is not Christian; but everywhere now the partridge sets forth the name of Christ, that it may gather what it did not bear. Yet see how easily the truth and sound doctrine answer, how easily they break asunder this, as it were, inescapable and two-headed noose of your question. Behold, let us make someone armed with royal power threaten a Christian man that, if he refuses to adore the sun, he shall be hung upon the tree. "If I avoid," you say, "the curse which the law pronounced against the adorer of the sun, I shall fall into that which the same law pronounced against him who has hung upon the tree." Truly then you will be thrown into confusion — but you; nay, not even you, who adore the sun even when no one compels you.

But the Christian, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, attends to the several causes and the several curses, and sees that the one pertains to the mortal body, which is hung upon the tree, the other to the soul, by which the sun is adored. For although the body is bent down in the act of adoring, yet the soul either reveres what it adores or feigns to; and both are pernicious. Wherefore, since in both cases death has merited the curse — as the death of the body is to hang upon the tree, so the death of the soul is to adore the sun — the curse in the death of the body is therefore to be chosen, by which curse the body itself will be freed in the resurrection; but the curse in the death of the soul is to be shunned, lest it be condemned together with its body in eternal fire.

For the Lord resolves this question for us, saying: Do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul; but fear him who has power to kill both soul and body in the gehenna of fire — as though he were saying: Do not fear the curse of bodily death, which is loosed for a time, but fear the curse of spiritual death, through which the soul is tormented forever together with its body. Behold, it is no old-wife's curse, but a prophetic prediction: Cursed is everyone who hangs upon a tree. For thus will Christ take away curse from curse, just as death from death, sin from sin. So then Moses did not blaspheme by saying:

Cursed is everyone who hangs upon a tree — just as the apostles did not blaspheme in teaching: He died; and: Our old man was fastened to the cross with him; and: From sin he condemned sin; and: Him who knew no sin he made to be sin for us; and many things of this kind. But you, since you shudder at Christ cursed, confess that you shudder at the death of Christ. Here appears your curse — not an old-wife's, but a diabolical dissembling — you who do not believe in the death of Christ's body, to the death of your own soul. Yet you urge that death of Christ to be not true, but only simulated — as though you did not dare to deceive men under the Christian name, unless you made Christ himself the master of deceit.

But as to what seemed to Faustus to be envious of continence or virginity, because it was said, Cursed is everyone who does not raise up seed in Israel — let them read Isaiah crying out: Thus says the Lord to all the eunuchs: those who have kept my precepts and have chosen the things that I will, and have guarded my covenant, to them I will give in my house and within my walls a named place, better than of sons and daughters; an everlasting name I will give them, and it shall not fail them. Or, if they think Isaiah contrary to Moses, let this one please them if that one displeases — it is no small matter against these men. For it is enough for us to know that one God spoke both through Moses and through Isaiah,

and that everyone is cursed who does not raise up seed in Israel — whether then, when, for the propagating of the people according to the flesh, even the work of carnal offspring within conjugal chastity pertained to civic duty, or now, lest anyone spiritually born should think it enough for himself, and should not press on for the Lord's gains, whereby each one, according to his own measure, ought by preaching Christ to beget Christians. Thus that divine sentence embraces the times of both testaments with wonderful brevity: Cursed is everyone who does not raise up seed in Israel. BOOK FIFTEEN. FAUSTUS said: Why do you not receive the Old Testament? Because even every vessel that is full does not receive what is poured over it, but pours it out, and a sated stomach rejects what is put into it.

Accordingly, the Jews too, having been sated beforehand by Moses' preoccupation with the Old Testament, spat out the New; and we, being filled beforehand by Christ's anticipation with the New, spit out the Old. You therefore receive both, because in neither are you full, but half-filled; and the one is not so much filled up by the other in you as it is corrupted, since half-empty vessels are never filled from unlike material, but from the same and its like — as wine with wine, honey with honey, vinegar with vinegar — over which if you pour unlike things not of their own kind, as gall over honey, or water over wine, or fish-sauce over vinegar, this will not be called a filling but an adulteration. This, then, is the reason why we receive little of the Old Testament. And it is because our Church, the bride of Christ, married indeed to a poorer