Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 15 part 20/37

Furthermore, if you should ask about sects, there will be no more than two — that is, the Gentiles' and ours, who hold views far different from them, opposed indeed to one another as are truth and falsehood, as day and night, as want and plenty, as sickness and health. But you are the sect neither of error nor of truth, but a schism only — and not even of truth, but of error. AUGUSTINE replied: O unskilled pestilence and shifty vanity! Why do you object to yourself a thing which, if anyone objects it to you, he knows not with whom he is dealing? For we do not call you pagans, or a schism of the pagans, but say that you have a certain likeness to them, in that you worship many gods;

but that you are far worse than they, because they worship things which exist, though they ought not to be worshipped as gods — for idols too exist, but for salvation they are nothing. And he who worships a tree, not indeed by ploughing but by adoring, worships not a thing which is nowhere, but a thing which ought not so to be worshipped. The very demons also — whence the Apostle says, 'The things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God' — assuredly exist, they to whom he says those men sacrifice, and whose partners he wills us not to be. And now the heaven and the earth, the sea and the air, the sun and moon and the other stars, all these appear manifest to the eyes and are present to the very senses.

When the pagans worship these as gods, or as parts of one great god — for some of them think the whole universe to be the supreme god — they worship things which exist. When we deal with them, to persuade them not to worship these, we do not say to them that they are nothing, but that they ought not to be worshipped; and we urge them to worship the invisible God, the Creator of all these things, by participation in whom alone a man can become blessed: which no one doubts that all men wish.

But because some of them worship an invisible and incorporeal creature — such as the human soul and mind — nevertheless, because not even by participation in a creature of this kind is a man made blessed, that God who is not only invisible but also unchangeable, that is, the true God, must be worshipped; because He alone must be worshipped, in enjoying whom alone His worshipper becomes blessed, and in not enjoying whom alone every mind is wretched, however much it may enjoy any other thing. But you, since you worship things which do not exist at all, but are feigned by the vanity of your deceitful fables, would be nearer to true piety and religion, if at least you were pagans, or of the kind of those who worship bodies — even though not to be worshipped, yet at least real.

Whence I would more truly say that you do not even worship this sun, toward whose circuit your prayer revolves. For even concerning it you boast such false and detestable things that, if it were to avenge its own injuries, you would already be burning alive in its flames. For first you say that it is a certain ship; so that not only, as the saying goes, do you err by the whole heaven, but you even swim! Then, though it shines round to the eyes of all, and that figure is perfect for it according to the position of its order, you allege it to be triangular — that is, that this light radiates to the world and the lands through a certain triangular window of heaven.

Thus it comes about that toward this sun indeed you bend your back and neck, yet you adore not the sun itself, conspicuous with such clear roundness, but some ship or other, glittering and shining through a triangular aperture, which you conceive to be fabricated. Which surely that shipwright would not make, if — just as the timbers are bought from which the planks of ships are joined together — so likewise were bought the words from which the fables of heretics are fabricated. But these things are more tolerably either laughed at or wept over in you;

but that is intolerably wicked which you say concerning this very ship — that beautiful girls and boys are set forth on it, at whose most shapely bodies the princes of darkness are inflamed, the males toward the females and the females toward the males, so that in that very burning lust and gaping concupiscence the members of your God may be loosed from their members as from foul and filthy fetters. And to these most obscene rags of yours you attempt to stitch the ineffable Trinity, saying that the Father dwells in a certain secret light, the power of the Son in the sun, the wisdom in the moon, but the Holy Spirit in the air!

In this threefold — or rather now fourfold — fable of yours, concerning the Father's secret light what shall I say to you, save that you cannot conceive light except such as you are accustomed to see? For gazing at this conspicuous light, most familiar not only to the flesh of men but even of beasts and little worms, you are wont to enlarge into immensity the phantasm conceived thereby in the heart, and to call it the light where God the Father dwells with the inhabitants of His kingdom. For when have you distinguished the light by which we discern from that light by which we understand — since you have never thought that to understand the truth is anything else than to imagine corporeal forms, whether finite or infinite in some of their parts, which you do not know to be empty phantasms?

Accordingly, since there is so great a difference between the thought by which I think of your 'land of light,' which is nowhere at all, and the thought by which I think of Alexandria, which I have never seen yet which nevertheless exists; and again so great a difference between that by which I think of the unknown Alexandria and that by which I think of the known Carthage: from this thought too, by which I think of certain and known bodies, incomparably far distant is the thought by which I understand justice, chastity, faith, truth, love, kindness, and whatsoever is of this kind. Tell me, if you can, what sort of light that thought is, by which all those things — which are not this corporeal light and are distinguished among themselves, and how far they are distant from it — are known by a trustworthy manifestation.

And yet even this light is not that light which God is; for this is a creature, He is the Creator; this is made, He is the one who made it; this, finally, is mutable — while it wills what it did not will, and knows what it did not know, and remembers what it had forgotten — but He persists in unchangeable will, truth, and eternity; and from Him comes to us the beginning of existing, the reason of knowing, the law of loving; from Him is to all even irrational living things the nature by which they live, the vigour by which they perceive, the movement by which they seek; from Him is also to all bodies measure that they may subsist, number that they may be adorned, weight that they may be ordered.

And so that light, the inseparable Trinity, is one God, whose incorporeal, spiritual, and unchangeable substance — through itself, with no body annexed — you nevertheless divide even by places. Nor do you even give three places to the Trinity, but four: to the Father one, that is, the inaccessible light, which you utterly fail to understand; to the Son two, namely the sun and the moon; to the Holy Spirit again one, that is, this whole compass of the air. Concerning the Father's inaccessible light, then — because for those who hold the true faith the Son and the Holy Spirit are not thereby separated from it — let this suffice to be said for the present. But what pleased your vanity, to place the power of the Son in the sun and the wisdom in the moon?

For since the Son abides inseparable in the Father Himself, how can His wisdom be separated from His power, so that the one be in the sun and the other in the moon — since by places of this kind nothing but bodies can be divided and separated? And if you knew this, you would never weave such fables with a foolish and insane phantasm. But even within that very falsity and deceit, how incongruously, how perversely you say that the seat of wisdom shines less than the seat of power — whereas to power it seems to belong to work and to effect, but to wisdom to teach and to show.

And by this, if heat were in the sun and light on the other hand prevailed in the moon, in some fashion these figments might have found a mist of verisimilitude for deceiving carnal and animal men, who think nothing to exist save what they have imagined as corporeal; for the violence of heat is an operation for moving, whence it might be assigned to power; but the bright splendour of light is for showing, whence they might give this to wisdom. But since light by far excels in the sun, how is power there, while here what shines so much less is wisdom? O sacrilegious folly! And since Christ is one, 'the power of God and the wisdom of God,' but the Holy Spirit is not Christ Himself, how is Christ separated from Himself, when the Holy Spirit is not separated from Him?

For the air, which your fable assigns as the seat of the Holy Spirit, you allege to fill the whole fabric of the world. Whence the sun and moon, performing their circuits, are always with it; but the moon departs from the sun and again draws near to the sun. Thus, with you as authors — or rather deceivers — through the half of the circle wisdom recedes from power, and through the other half again draws near to it; and when it is full, then wisdom is far from power; for then these two lights are so divided from each other by so great an interval that, when the sun inclines to the west, then the moon rises from the east. Whence it comes about that, since all things which are deserted by power are weakened, wisdom is the weaker the fuller the moon is. But if,

as the truth holds, the wisdom of God is always of just so much worth, and the power of God is always of just so much wisdom, why do you speak of these two in such a way as to separate them by seats and intervals of place — when you say that the seat itself is of the same substance — you men not withdrawing your blind and insane mind from the phantasm of bodies, and so destitute of power and of wisdom that you can neither be wise in anything with strength, nor be strong wisely? Is it truly so, O detestable and anathema-worthy folly, that Christ, stretched out through the sun and moon, dwelling here by power, there by wisdom — neither here perfect and full, nor wise in the sun, nor mighty in the moon — in both places procures beautiful boys to be lusted after by the female princes of darkness, and girls for the males?

These things you read, these you believe, these you teach, and by this faith and doctrine you live. And you marvel that we thus abominate you! But if in these so eminent and so well-known lights you thus err, so that in them you adore not what they are, but what you most insanely feign to yourselves, what shall I say of the rest of your fables? For who is the 'Bearer of Splendour' who suspends the world, and who is the Atlas who supports it with him? These things, and innumerable others which you likewise rave about, exist not at all, and yet you worship them. Hence we call you worse than the pagans, like them only in this, that you worship many gods; but for the worse unlike them, in that they worship, in place of gods, things which exist, though they are not gods;

but you worship things which are neither gods nor anything at all, since they are utterly nothing. They too, indeed, have certain fabulous figments; but they know those to be fables, and either assert that they were feigned by the poets for the sake of delight, or attempt to interpret them with reference to the nature of things or the manners of men. As Vulcan lame, because the movement of earthly fire is of that kind; and Fortune blind,

because those things which are called fortuitous happen from uncertainty; and the three Fates with distaff and spindle and fingers twisting the thread from wool, on account of the three times: the past, which is already spun and wound upon the spindle; the present, which is passed between the fingers of her who spins; the future in the wool, which is wrapped about the distaff, which is still to be passed through the fingers of the spinner to the spindle, as through the present to the past; and Venus the wife of Vulcan, because pleasure is naturally derived from heat, and the adulteress of Mars, because she is incongruous with those who wage war; and Cupid a flying and shooting boy, because irrational and unstable love wounds the hearts of wretched men, and very many others in this manner.

Wherefore in these things we deride them, that they thus adore, when interpreted, things which — though damnably, yet more excusably — they would adore if not interpreted. For by these very interpretations they are convicted of worshipping, not that God by participation in whom alone the mind is made blessed, but the creature created by Him; and not the powers only of that creature — such as Minerva, whose fable, that she was born of Jupiter's head, they interpret as referring to the prudence of counsels, which is proper to reason, to which even Plato assigned the seat of the head — but also its vices, as we said of Cupid. Whence one of their tragic poets says: 'That love is a god, base lust, favouring vice, has feigned.'

For the Romans even consecrated images of bodily vices, such as of Pallor and Fever. So then, to pass over the fact that the adorers of images have an affection about the very figures of the bodies, so that they fear as gods those very forms, exalted in places of honour, to which they see such homage exhibited — those very interpretations, by which these mute and deaf and blind and lifeless things are defended, are more worthily accused; nevertheless even these, in whatever way they exist — although, as I have already said, for salvation or any usefulness they are nothing — and the things which are interpreted from them, are found among realities. But you set forth the first man warring with five elements;

and the mighty Spirit who fabricates the world out of the captive bodies of the race of darkness, or rather out of the conquered and subjected members of your God; and the 'Bearer of Splendour' holding in his hand the remnants of those same members of your God, and bewailing all the rest captured, oppressed, and defiled; and the great Atlas beneath, bearing on his shoulders together with him, lest, wearied, he cast the whole down.

And thus, that your fable, as it were on a theatrical tapestry, may reach the drapery-fall of that last globe, and countless other things equally inept and insane you set forth neither by painting or sculpturing nor by interpreting; and these, though they are utterly nothing, you believe and worship, and moreover you insult Christians who cleanse pious minds by faith unfeigned, as though they were rashly credulous. For, not to seek out many things by which it may be shown that these things do not exist at all — because to treat more subtly and loftily of the fabric of the world, even though it were not difficult for me, would certainly be too long — this I say: if these things are true, the substance of God is mutable, corruptible, defilable. But to believe this is full of sacrilegious insanity.

Therefore all those things are vain, are false, are nothing. Accordingly you are utterly worse than those pagans who are commonly known and existed of old and now already blush in their remnants — because they worship things which are not gods, but you, things which utterly do not exist. And so, if you think you hold the truth for this reason, that you are far dissimilar from the error of the pagans, and that we for this reason are in error, because we are perhaps farther from you than from the pagans, then let a dead man also be called healthy because he is now no longer sick, and let him who is healthy be reproved because he is nearer to the sick man than to the dead. Or if most pagans are to be reckoned not as sick but as dead.

Let the shapeless ash in the tomb be praised, because it no longer even retains the form of a corpse, and let living limbs be blamed, because they are more like a corpse than like ash. Just so these men think we deserve blame, because they say we are more like the funeral of the pagans than like the ash of the Manichaeans; although through many differences each thing is usually divided this way and that for the sake of distinction, so that what belonged to one class is found, through other differences, in another class where it was not before. For example, if someone divides all flesh into the winged and those that cannot fly, then by this difference the four-footed beasts are more like men than like birds, for they equally cannot fly.

Again, if someone divides by another difference, saying that some things are rational and others irrational, then now the four-footed beasts are more like the birds than like men, for they are equally devoid of reason. Not considering this, Faustus says: 'Moreover, if you inquire into the sects, there will be no more than two, that is, the sect of the Gentiles and our own, who hold opinions far different from theirs' — evidently because he had said that the Gentiles differ from the Manichaeans chiefly in this, that they say all things come from one principle, which the Manichaeans deny, adding the principle of the race of darkness. In this difference — which must be admitted — very many pagans agree with us;

but he did not see that likewise, if someone divides in such a way as to say that among those who are held by some religion, some hold that one God is to be worshipped, others that many gods are, then by this difference both the pagans are set apart from us, and these men are reckoned with the pagans, while we are reckoned with the Jews. Someone therefore, according to this difference, might in this way too think that there are only two sects. Here perhaps you may say that you assert your many gods to be from one substance, as though the pagans do not assert their many gods to be from one, even though they assign to them different functions and works and powers.

For even among you, one god assaults the race of darkness, another fashions the world out of it once captured, another suspends it from above, another bears it up from below, another spins in the depths the wheels of fire, of winds, and of waters, and another, circling in the heaven, even gathers with his rays the members of your god out of the sewers. And who could count all the fabulous functions of all your gods — functions manifested by no truth, figured by no allegory? Further, if someone divides all men in this way, saying that some believe that God cares for human affairs, while others do not believe this at all, then in this respect both the pagans agree with us, and the Jews, and you, and all heretics who are in any way called Christians;

but in that other class are found the Epicureans, and any others who have held that opinion. Is this difference a trifling one? Why then, according to this difference too, should there not be said to be only two sects, so that in one of them you would be with us? Or will you dare, in this difference, to depart from us — we who proclaim that God cares for human affairs — and to be with the Epicureans, who deny this? Here surely, repudiating those men, you run to us. So through one difference and another they are found now here, now there, joined on one side, sundered on another, in turn all with us and we with all, and again none of them with us nor we with any of them. If Faustus had considered this, he would not rave so eloquently. But what shall I say to this, that he says:

'That out of the powers of the Holy Spirit and by a spiritual effusion the earth also, conceiving, brings forth a passible Jesus, who is the life and salvation of men, hung upon every tree'? O madman! — that for the moment I may not sift your empty prattling on this matter of yours — can the earth conceive a passible Jesus from the Holy Spirit, and could the Virgin Mary not do so? Compare, if you dare, that virginal womb sanctified with so great chastity with all the places of the earth where trees and herbs grow. Do you thus shudder — or feign to shudder — at that woman's womb consecrated to purity, and yet not shudder that in all the gardens around every city things are begotten from the filth of the sewers? For what moisture, however foul, does not bring forth and nourish innumerable sprouts?

Thus you proclaim that a passible Jesus is born, though you cry out that it is unworthy to believe he was born of a virgin. If you think flesh unclean, why does it not seem to you more unclean, namely that which nature herself expels from the flesh for the sake of the flesh's own health? Or is flesh unclean, while dung, which is discharged from the flesh, is clean? Do you then not attend, do you not see, that the fields rejoice in manure, so that they may be more richly made fruitful? Surely your madness comes back to this: that the earth conceives all the more abundantly and joyfully from the Holy Spirit — whom you say the flesh of Mary disdained — the more zealously it has been enriched with the filth and squalor of flesh. Or, to defend this, will you say that the Holy Spirit is powerful everywhere with an incontaminable presence? It is answered you:

why then not also in the virgin's womb? But that I may now say nothing of the conception, look next at the birth itself. You say that the earth, conceiving from the Holy Spirit, brings forth a passible Jesus, whom nevertheless you assert to be so contaminated by hanging from every tree in crops and fruits, that he is yet more contaminated by the flesh of the innumerable animals of the animals that feed upon them, to be purged only from that part which your hunger has relieved. And so we, in our heart, believe, and with our mouth confess, that Christ, the Son of God, the Word of God, was clothed with flesh incontaminably, because that substance can be contaminated neither by flesh nor by anything else, since it can be contaminated by nothing;

but you, according to your fable, say that he is already contaminated while hanging on the tree in the crops, before he enters the flesh of any who feeds. Or if he is not contaminated, how do you purge him by eating? Then, since you say all trees are his cross, whence is it that Faustus proclaims him 'hung upon every tree'? Why is it not that, just as Joseph of Arimathea, doing a good work, took that true and good Jesus down from the cross in order to bury him, so you too pluck the fruits, in order to bury in your belly the crops taken down from their hanging on the wood? Or why is it pious to lay Christ in a tomb, but impious to take him down from the wood? Or is it that of you too there fits what the Apostle sets down from the prophet:

'Their throat is an open sepulchre'? With mouth open you wait, that someone may bring in Christ as into the jaws of a most excellent burial. Finally, tell us how many Christs you say there are. Is he one, whom the earth, conceiving from the Holy Spirit, brings forth passible, hung not only upon every tree but also lying in the grass; and another, that one whom the Jews crucified under Pontius Pilate; and a third, that one stretched out through the sun and moon? Or is it one and the same, in a certain part of himself bound in the trees, but in a certain part free, coming to the aid of that same part which is bound and captive?

But if it is so, that one whom you grant to have suffered under Pontius Pilate — since you narrate that he was without flesh (I do not yet say how he could have endured such a death without flesh) — I ask, to whom did he leave those ships, so that descending thence he might suffer such things as could not happen without some body? For according to a spiritual presence he could in no way suffer those things; but according to a bodily presence he could not be at once in the sun and in the moon and on the cross. Accordingly, if he had no body, he was not crucified; but if he had one, I ask whence he had it, since you say all bodies are from the race of darkness, although you have never been able to conceive of the divine substance except as corporeal.

Whence you are compelled either to say that he was crucified without a body — than which nothing more absurd and insane can be said — or that he was seen to be crucified in a phantasm rather than in truth — than which impiety, again, what is worse? — or that not all bodies are of the race of darkness, but that there is also a body of the divine substance which nevertheless is not immortal but can be fastened to wood and slain — which is no less full of madness — or that Christ had a mortal body from the race of darkness, and thus, though you fear to believe that the Virgin Mary was the mother of that body of his, you do not fear the race of demons. And finally.

Since, according to the opinion of Faustus — which indeed he plucked from that very long fable of yours and touched upon with as much brevity as he could — the earth, conceiving from the Holy Spirit, brings forth a passible Jesus, who is the life and salvation of men, hung upon every tree: why does that Savior, in hanging, suit the one who hangs, yet in being born not suit the one who is born? But if for this reason you say that Jesus is in the trees, and Jesus crucified under Pontius Pilate, and Jesus stretched out through the sun and moon — because all this is of one and the same substance — why do you not include under this name the other thousands of your deities as well?

For why should not that Splendour-Holder be Jesus too, and that Atlas, and that King of Honour, and that Powerful Spirit, and that First Man, and whatever else you innumerably proclaim under diverse names and diverse offices? Finally, why is the Holy Spirit himself placed in the third person, when he is among innumerable ones? Or why should he too not be Jesus? And what does that deceitful weaving of words now mean to itself in the writings of Faustus, where, attempting as it were to accord with true Christians — from whom he is set very far apart — he says: 'Therefore we worship the one and the same divine power of God the Father Almighty, and of Christ his Son, and of the Holy Spirit, under a threefold appellation'?

For why under a threefold, and not rather under a manifold appellation — indeed not only in appellation but also in reality, if there are as many persons as there are names? For it is not as with weapons, where one thing is under a threefold appellation: 'ensis,' 'mucro,' 'gladius' (blade, point, sword); or as you call one and the same thing both moon, and lesser ship, and nocturnal luminary, and whatever other name you assign to the same thing. In that way you might say that the same First Man is he whom you call the Powerful Spirit, and the Splendour-Holder, and the greatest Atlas; but that one is different, and this and that are each other still, and none of them are you accustomed to call Christ. Or how is there one divine power, if there are diverse works?

Or why is he not wholly one Christ all at once, if on account of one substance there is Christ both in the trees, and Christ in the persecution by the Jews, and Christ in the sun and moon? Surely your phantasms have lost all their ways. Surely they are nothing else than the visions of madmen. But why Faustus should think our religion equal to theirs concerning the bread and the cup, I do not know, since for the Manichaeans to taste wine is not religion but sacrilege. For in the grape they recognize their god, in the cask they will not, as though the trodden and enclosed thing had somehow offended them. But our bread and cup — not any whatsoever, as though on account of Christ bound in the ears of grain and in the vine-shoots, as those men rave — but by a certain consecration becomes mystical to us; it is not born.