Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 15 part 34/37

For neither is this present opinion of yours just—that we indeed, who reckon that only the priestly class of men among the people ought to abstain from flesh, should seem to you followers of the doctrines of devils; whereas your prophets and Moses himself, who first forbade not only to the chief priests but to the whole promiscuous race of men swine's flesh and hare's flesh and hedgehog's flesh and cuttlefish and squid and the other kinds of fish that lack scales, you should judge to have spoken this not in a seducing spirit nor in a doctrine of devils, but rather in God and in the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, even granting you for the moment that Paul said this, I shall nevertheless not be vanquished by you until you condemn Moses and the prophets, so that what you would perhaps never have done had you been convinced by reason and truth, you now seem to do for the belly's sake—namely, to blaspheme Moses. There is also another matter about the three young men in Daniel among you, by which you will likewise be greatly confounded, if it be established that to abstain from foods is a religion of devils. For they are read to have abstained not only from things forbidden by the law but even from things permitted; and these you are wont greatly to admire and to number among the martyrs, though they too have followed a doctrine of devils, if this be established as the testimony of the apostle.

Besides these, Daniel himself declares that he fasted three weeks of days and ate no flesh nor drank wine, while he entreated for his people. What then? Does he too here glorify himself in a doctrine of devils and snatch glory from the invention of a seducing spirit? But what shall I say of you—that is, of the more Christian among you, some of whom indeed abstain from swine's flesh, most from every quadruped, and others altogether from every animal—and on this account the whole Church bears them in her eyes and, receiving them with the highest veneration, all but reckons them gods? And you do not see, you unteachable ones, that if this testimony be true and spoken by the apostle, they too are mocked by the doctrines of devils.

But what shall we say also of that which anyone would indeed hardly dare to frustrate or deny, since it stands settled among all and is celebrated equally throughout the whole world every year with all zeal in the catholic assembly? I mean Lent. And whoever among you shall have thought it should be duly observed must needs abstain from all those things which this passage says were created by God to be received by us, and which it moreover calls a doctrine of devils—this abstinence from the aforesaid things. What then, dearly beloved? Do you then live by the rite of devils, when these mysteries of the passion of Christ are celebrated by you, and are you caught by the fraud of a seducing spirit, and do you speak lies in hypocrisy, and have your conscience seared?

But if none of these things applies to you, then neither to us. What then does this passage mean, or by whom shall we suppose it was written, and against whom—since it confirms neither the traditions of the Old Testament nor the ordinances of the New? For it teaches that this abstinence is to be practised by all, as appears from yourselves, and that other kind by certain persons—yet abstinence all the same; but this opinion of yours would have all abstinence whatsoever from carnal foods be a doctrine of devils. And if you too believe this—as I shall say the same thing more than once—condemn Moses, renounce the prophets, and pass an equal sentence upon yourselves as well, since, just as they always abstained from certain foods, so you at times abstain from all.

But if Moses and the prophets, when they distinguish foods, seem to you to sanction the law of God and not of devils; if Daniel observed three weeks in the Holy Spirit; if the youths Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael by the prompting of a divine mind chose rather to use herbs and pulse; if, finally, among you as many as abstain do so not driven by devils; if Lent is kept by you without wine and flesh not superstitiously but by divine law—see, I pray, see, lest it be of the utmost madness to suppose it was said by Paul that all abstinence from foods is a doctrine of devils, and 「forbidding to marry,」 just as neither is that, when he says that even to dedicate virgins to Christ is a doctrine of devils.

Yet you, reading this passage without consideration, as the rest, keep referring it to us again and again, and do not see that hence both your own virgins are marked as caught by a doctrine of devils, and that you yourselves are priests of devils—you who ever eagerly incite them to this profession by your persuasions, so that now in almost all the churches a greater number of virgins than of married women is reckoned among you. Why then do you not now also desist from such undertakings? Why do you lead the wretched daughters of men into fraud, if in them not the will of Christ is fulfilled, but of devils? And yet I should like you first to answer us this: whether it is altogether a doctrine of devils to make virgins, or only to make them by the prohibition of marrying?

If by prohibition, it has nothing to do with us; for we too judge it as foolish to restrain one who is willing as it is wicked and impious to compel one who is unwilling. But if you think that to favour this purpose also and not to resist one who wills it is likewise a doctrine of devils, I now say nothing of your danger; I already fear for the apostle himself, lest he seem then to have introduced a doctrine of devils at Iconium, when he kindled Thecla, already pledged to the marriage-chamber, into a love of perpetual virginity by his discourse.

But what shall we say also of the Master Himself and the Author of all holiness, Jesus, and the heavenly Bridegroom of this very profession of maidens—who in the Gospel, marking three kinds of eunuchs, one born so, another made so, the third voluntary, nevertheless assigned the palm to those who, He says, 「have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven,」 signifying virgins and youths who, the very desire of marrying being cut out from their hearts, dwell in place of eunuchs in His Church as ever in a royal house? What then? Does this too seem to you a doctrine of devils and spoken in a seducing spirit? And who else will there be that speaks in God, if Paul and Christ are proved to have been priests of devils?

For I pass over the rest of the apostles of our same Lord—Peter and Andrew, Thomas, and that one untried by Venus among the rest, the blessed John—who through diverse ways sang with divine proclamation the possession of this good among virgins and youths, leaving to us, and indeed to you yourselves, a pattern for the making of virgins. But these indeed, as I said, I pass by, because you have excluded them from the canon and can easily with your sacrilegious mind impute to them doctrines of devils. Will you then be able to say the same things also of Christ, or of the apostle Paul, who is likewise everywhere agreed always both to have preferred in word the unmarried to the married and to have shown this also in deed toward the most holy Thecla?

But if this was not a doctrine of devils, which both Paul announced to Thecla and the other apostles announced to others, to whom can it now be credited that this was recorded by him as though the persuasion of holiness too were a will and doctrine of devils? It is not, then, the case, as you suppose, that we make virgins only by exhortations and not by the prohibition of marrying. For this very thing is implanted in us also. And truly that man is to be thought not merely foolish but mad who supposes that a private law can prohibit what has been publicly permitted—I mean this very thing, to marry. Wherefore we too exhort the willing indeed, that they may remain, yet do not compel the unwilling to approach it.

For we know how much the will, and how much the very force of nature itself, avails even against a public law, still less against a private one, to which it is free to answer 「I will not.」 If, then, to make virgins in this way is without crime, we too are beyond fault; but if in any way whatsoever to make virgins is a crime, you too are guilty. But now with what mind or counsel you bring forward this passage against us, I do not see. AUGUSTINE replied: Hear then what you confess you do not see—with what mind or counsel we bring forward this passage against you. Not because you abstain from flesh;

for this some even of our first fathers did, as you recall—yet not for the sake of condemning it, but of signifying something you do not understand, and on which I have already spoken in the earlier parts of this work as far as seemed sufficient—and Christians, not heretics but catholics, for the sake of taming the body, that the soul may be the more humbled in prayers, not because they believe those things to be unclean, abstain not only from flesh but even from certain fruits of the earth, either always, as a few do, or on certain days and seasons, as during Lent almost all do, each the more or the less according as he has willed or been able.

But you say that the very creature is not good and call it unclean, because the devil, you say, fashions flesh out of the more dreggy matter of evil, and on this account you cast these things away as though the more unclean and more savage bonds of your god, shuddering at them. Yet to your Hearers, whom you have called as it were distinct from the class of the Elect, you grant these things to be eaten by way of indulgence—just as the apostle grants to certain persons by way of indulgence not every conjugal intercourse, even that which is done solely for the cause of begetting, but that which is done through incontinence, yet still with a spouse. For nothing is granted by way of indulgence except sin. This you think of every food of flesh; this you yourselves have learned from your heresy and teach your Hearers;

but to them, as I said, you grant it as something to be pardoned, because they minister to you things necessary—not saying that it is not sin, but bestowing pardon on those who sin; while you yourselves abstain from every such thing as from an evil and unclean contagion. And on this account, that which follows those words of the apostle with which you ended the citation of this passage is the very thing—altogether the very thing—that makes us fling this testimony back at you; which you too, I think, knew, so that you did not put those words first and told us at the end: 「With what mind or counsel you bring forward this passage against us, I do not see,」 when you preferred to keep silent about this our very counsel rather than to recall it. For when the apostle had said:

「abstaining from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by the faithful,」 he went on and said: 「and by those who have known the truth; for every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be cast away that is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.」 These are the things you deny; with this mind, this will, this opinion you refrain from foods of this kind, because they are, not in signification but in nature, evil and unclean. In which matter you without doubt blaspheme their Creator; this is what pertains to the doctrine of devils. Do not marvel, then, that this was prophesied of you by the Holy Spirit so long beforehand.

Again, if you exhorted to virginity in the way that the apostolic doctrine exhorts—「he that gives in marriage does well, and he that gives not in marriage does better」—so as to say that marriage is good, but virginity better, as the Church does, which is truly the Church of Christ, the Holy Spirit would not so foretell of you, saying: 「forbidding to marry.」 For he forbids who says this to be evil, not he who prefers to this good another better. In fact you especially detest that intercourse which alone is honourable and conjugal, and which the marriage-tablets too display as their aim, for the sake of procreating children: whence in truth you forbid not so much to lie together as to marry.

For men lie together even for the sake of lusts, but they marry only for the sake of children. Nor should you on this account say that we do not forbid, because you tolerate many of your Hearers who are unwilling or unable to obey in this, while friendship is preserved. For you have the one thing in the doctrine of your error, the other in the necessity of fellowship. Hence it is that I deferred a little before to say why the death of Christ seemed to you to be preached even as false and feigned, and not also His nativity. For death, as it were the separation of the soul—that is, of the nature of your god—from the body of its enemies, that is, from the fashioning of the devil, you preach and praise. And on this account you believed it a thing worthy which Christ should commend, even if not by dying, yet by simulating death.

But in the nativity, because you believe that your god is not loosed but rather bound, you were unwilling to believe that Christ even feignedly imagined this, so that Mary would not so displease you if she had lain with a man and not conceived, as she displeases you because she did not lie with a man and yet gave birth. You see, therefore, how great a difference there is between those who exhort to virginity by preferring the greater good to the lesser good, and those who forbid to marry by more vehemently accusing the intercourse of propagation, which alone is properly nuptial; how great a difference between those who abstain from foods for the sake of the signification of a sacrament or for the sake of the chastisement of the body, and those who abstain from foods which God created by saying that God did not create them.

Accordingly, that former is the doctrine of the prophets and apostles; this latter, of lying devils. BOOK THIRTY-ONE. FAUSTUS said: 「Unto the pure all things are pure, but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and their conscience is defiled.」 This too—whether it be expedient for you to believe it said by Paul—must be considered; for thus far it has stood established that Moses and the prophets were not only harassed by devils, since they brought forward such laws about differences of foods, but were even themselves defiled and polluted in mind and conscience, so that that which follows may fittingly fall upon them too: 「they profess that they know God, but in works they deny Him.」

And to whom does this apply more than to the prophets and Moses, who are proved to have lived far otherwise than befitted those who know God? Yet I until now had supposed that, apart from adulteries and frauds and murders, there was nothing else whereby Moses and the prophets might seem to have had polluted consciences; but now, this passage demonstrating it, it is now granted to know that on this ground too they were of a defiled mind, because they thought something to be defiled. To what end, then, do you suppose that even now the vision of the divine majesty could have touched such men, since it is written that none but those who are pure in heart can see God?

But even if these men had been chaste from unlawful crimes, yet this superstition alone of abstaining from certain foods, if it defiles the mind, could have denied to them the sight of the Godhead. Now therefore has vanished, and is at the same time extinguished, that boasting also of Daniel and of the three young men: who themselves too, until this preaching which decrees that nothing is unclean, were held in Judaism to be plainly most chaste youths of a good mind, because forsooth, mindful of their fathers' traditions, they kept themselves undefiled from the banquets of the Gentiles and especially from things offered, with all zeal. For only now at last has it appeared that they too were contaminated in their minds and conscience, and then most of all, when their mouth abstained from blood and from deadly foods.

But perhaps ignorance may excuse them; for since this Christian faith, which would teach that all things are pure to the pure, had not yet appeared, they too may have thought certain things to be not pure; but you—what excuse do you now use, if, while Paul cries out that nothing is not pure, and calls abstinence from foods a doctrine of devils, and calls those polluted in mind who have thought anything to be defiled—you not only abstain, as we have said, but even snatch glory therefrom and believe yourselves the more acceptable to Christ the more abstinent you are from foods, that is, according to this opinion, the more defiled in mind and the more polluted in conscience? What?

Moreover, since there are three religions in the world which alike place the purification of the mind in chastities and abstinence, though by a most diverse rite—I mean Jews and Christians and Gentiles—from which of these religions this discourse comes cannot be discovered, the discourse that teaches that nothing is unholy. Certainly not from Judaism in the least; likewise not from paganism, because that too distinguishes foods; nor is there any difference, save that the Hebrew disagrees with the pagan in the matter of certain animals. There remains the Christian faith, of which, if you think this to be proper—to reckon nothing polluted—it is first necessary that you confess there is no Christian among you.

For all among you, to be silent about the rest, nevertheless reckon carrion and things offered to be no small defilement; or if this too is done by you by the right of Christianity, then it is not the opinion even of this religion, which utterly removes all abstinence from unclean things. To what end, then, could this have been said by Paul, which suits no religion? For indeed the apostle did not so much put off religion as change the rite, when from a Jew he became a Christian. But he who wrote this passage seems to me to have been supported by no religion whatsoever.

Wherefore, if in future you find anything from the Scriptures by seeking to the injury of our faith, then at last remember to set it before us, when you have thoroughly seen that it is not contrary to you. Just as also that which you are wont to bring forward about Peter, as though he once saw a vessel let down from heaven, in which were all kinds of animals and serpents, and, while he was astonished and wondering, a voice was heard saying to him: 「Peter, whatsoever you see in the vessel, kill and eat.」 To which he, answering the same, said: 「Lord, I will not touch what is common and unclean.」 And again the voice to him: 「What I have sanctified, call not unclean.」

Now although this very thing may seem, even through allegory, to signify something else and not an indifference of foods, nevertheless, because you are pleased so to understand this too, you must needs feed indiscriminately on all beasts and vipers and snakes and every other serpentine kind, according to Peter's vision. For thus far you will prove yourselves obedient to the voice which he is reported to have heard; and—yet remember this too always—that Moses and the prophets were hence condemned, who thought many things to be polluted concerning those which, according to the sentence of this voice, God had sanctified. AUGUSTINE replied: When the apostle says, 「unto the pure all things are pure,」 he wished the very natures to be understood, which God created, according to that

which Moses wrote in Genesis: 「and God made all things, and behold they were very good」—not the significations, according to which God, through the same Moses, distinguished the clean from the unclean; whereof, because we have already said much and in many places, it will now suffice to have briefly recalled it. Accordingly, those who, already in the time of the revelation of the New Testament, would still think those shadows of things to come were to be so kept that they contended the Gentiles could not receive the salvation which is in Christ without them, the apostle calls unclean, because they were of a carnal understanding, and unbelieving, because they did not distinguish the time of grace from the time of the law.

To these he therefore says that nothing is pure, because both in the things they refused and in the things they took, they used them neither holily nor justly—as indeed do all unbelievers, but especially you, Manichaeans, to whom nothing at all is pure. For not even the food itself which you take, although you separate it with great diligence as it were from the contagion of the flesh, is pure to you, since you say it was created by none but the devil. In it too you profess that by eating you purge your god, who is bound and polluted. You at least should seem pure to yourselves, by whose bellies he deserves to be purged. But you contend that your bodies too are the nature and workmanship of the race of darkness, and your souls, moreover, defiled by the very bodies. What then is pure to you?

Not the things you take, not that whereby you pass out the things you take, not you yourselves who purge what is taken. You see, therefore, on whose account the apostle then spoke this sentence; yet he spoke it in such a way as would hold all unbelievers and unclean persons, but especially and most of all would convict you. All things, therefore, are pure to the pure according to the nature in which they were created; yet not all things were pure according to signification to the first people of the Jews; nor are all things suited to us, whether for the health of the body or for the custom of human society; but when to each thing its own is rendered and it keeps its natural order, all things are pure to the pure; but to the unclean and unbelieving, such as you especially are, nothing is pure.

The rest of the apostle's words which follow you yourselves might wholesomely say to yourselves, if you were willing that your seared conscience should be healed. For it follows: 「but their mind and conscience is defiled.」 BOOK THIRTY-TWO. FAUSTUS said: If you receive the Gospel, you ought to believe all things which are written in it. For why do you, because you receive the Old Testament, therefore believe all things indiscriminately which are written in it? Surely you excerpt from thence the prophecies alone which signified a king to come to the Jews, because you think it is Jesus, and a few certain precepts of civil discipline that are common, such as:

「thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery,」 while you pass over the rest and judge them to be no better than, and the very same as, the things which Paul counted as dung. What then is foreign or what is wondrous in this—if I too, reading from the New Testament each purest thing and what is suited to my salvation, pass over those things which, deceitfully introduced by your elders, discolour both His majesty and His grace?

Or if a father's testament has certain things in which it deserves to be little heeded—for you will have the Jewish law to be the father's, of which we know how many things cause you horror, how many cause you shame, so that, as far as regards the mind, you yourselves have long since judged it not to be genuine, although partly the Father Himself, as you believe, wrote it for you with His own finger, and partly Moses, faithful and upright—do you think that the Son's testament alone could not have been corrupted, that it alone has nothing which ought to be disapproved in it?

Especially since it is agreed that it was written neither by Him nor by His apostles, but a long time afterward by certain men of uncertain name, who, lest faith should not be granted to them writing things they did not know, put upon the fronts of their writings partly the names of the apostles, partly of those who were seen to have followed the apostles, asserting that they had written according to these the things which they wrote.

Wherefore they seem to me all the more to have inflicted grave injury upon the disciples of Christ, because the things which they wrote as discordant and repugnant to one another, these they referred to those very disciples and professed to write these gospels according to them—gospels so stuffed with such errors, with such contradictions both of narratives and of opinions, that they agree neither with themselves at all nor among one another. What else, then, is this than to calumniate good men and to summon the concordant company of Christ's disciples upon a charge of discord?

And because we, reading these things, observe them with a most sound gaze of the heart, we have judged it most fair, having taken the useful things from these same writings—that is, those things which both build up our faith and propagate the glory of Christ the Lord and of His almighty Father, God—to reject the rest, which suit neither their majesty nor our faith. Accordingly, neither do you, as I had begun to say, believe that from the Old Testament circumcision is to be received carnally, although it is so written, nor that the sabbath is to be kept in leisure and idleness, although it is so read, nor that God is to be appeased by sacrifices and offerings, as it seems to Moses; but these things indeed, as altogether foreign and set far from the Christian rite and in no part approvable, you have despised.

But some of these you have even divided in two, and one part you embrace while the other you reject, as with the Passover, which is itself likewise an annual sacred observance of the Old Testament. In the celebration of it, though it is written for you not only that a lamb should be slaughtered and eaten by night, but also that for seven days you should abstain from leaven and be content with unleavened bread together with bitter herbs, you indeed take up the Passover, yet you pass over that rite and custom by which it was enjoined that the same should be kept.

Likewise the seven weeks of days, that is, Pentecost, which Moses in the same way judged should be observed with a certain kind and number of sacrifices, you equally keep, but with a part of it condemned, that is, with those very oblations and sacrifices, because these do not agree with the Christian faith. As for the command to abstain from common foods, it has seemed good to you and been vehemently believed by you that things that died of themselves and things sacrificed are indeed unclean; but concerning pork you were unwilling to believe the same, nor concerning the hare or the hedgehog, nor concerning mullets and cuttlefish and the other kinds of fish that have suited your palate, although Moses testifies that all these same things are unclean.

But those things I believe you are unwilling even to hear from the Old Testament, much less to admit: namely, that fathers-in-law lay with their daughters-in-law as Judah did; that fathers lay with their daughters as Lot did; that prophets consorted with harlots as Hosea did; that husbands sold the nights of their wives to lovers as Abraham did; that one husband coupled with two sisters born of the same parents as Jacob did; that rulers of the people, and those whom you would suppose most filled with God, wallowed with thousands and hundreds of harlots as David and Solomon did; or again that which is enjoined by the marriage law in Deuteronomy, that the wife of a deceased brother, if he has died without children, ought to marry the surviving brother, and to raise up from her the same offspring in her brother's place: