Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 15 part 4/37

For that animal is placed in the law as unclean by reason of the fact that it does not chew the cud; yet this is not a fault of it, but its nature. But there are men who are signified by this animal, unclean by their own fault, not by nature — who, though they gladly hear the words of wisdom, afterward think nothing at all about them. For what is it, other than in some way to ruminate spiritually, to recall the useful thing you have heard, as it were from the belly of memory back to the mouth of thought, by the sweetness of remembering? Those who do not do this are figured by the class of those animals; whence too the very abstinence from such flesh forewarned us to beware of such a fault.

For since wisdom itself is a desirable treasure, concerning this cleanness of ruminating and uncleanness of not ruminating it is written in another place: 'A desirable treasure rests in the mouth of the wise, but a foolish man swallows it down.' Now these likenesses of things in figurative expressions and observances usefully and pleasantly move rational minds, for the exercise of seeking and comparing. But to the earlier people many such things were commanded, not only to be heard, but even to be observed. For it was the time in which it was fitting that those things which were to be revealed at a later time should be prophesied not only by words, but also by deeds.

Now that these things have been revealed through Christ and in Christ, the burdens of observances have not been imposed upon the faith of the Gentiles, yet the authority of prophecy has been commended. Behold, we have said for what cause, though according to the sentence of the Lord and the Apostle we hold no flesh of animals to be unclean, we nevertheless do not oppose the Old Testament, where certain things were called unclean. Now do you say why you consider flesh unclean. If, according to your error, on account of the commingling of the race of darkness not the flesh but your very God is unclean in that part which He sent and mingled — as it were to be swallowed up and defiled for the conquering and capturing of enemies — and then, on account of that very commingling, whatever else also you eat is unclean. But you say:

'Flesh is far more unclean.' And why flesh is more unclean — it would be tedious to recount their ravings on this matter, but I will touch briefly on what suffices, so that these reprovers of the Old Testament may be seen to be overcome by so ancient a folly that, as accusers of the flesh without any spiritual truth, they are convicted of relishing the flesh alone. For perhaps this somewhat lengthier reply will so instruct the reader against them that in the remaining replies so many words will not be required of us.

For these vain talkers and seducers of the mind say that in that battle, when their first man ensnared the race of darkness with deceptive elements, the princes of both sexes having thereby been captured, when the world was being constructed out of them, very many of them were bound in the celestial fabrics, among whom there were also some pregnant females; and these, when the heaven had begun to revolve, being unable to bear that same whirling, cast out their conceptions by abortion; and these same abortive offspring, both males and females, fell from heaven to earth, lived, grew, copulated, and begot. Hence, they say, is the origin of all the flesh that moves upon the earth, in the water, and in the air.

Therefore, if the origin of flesh is from heaven, it is most absurd on this account to consider it more unclean — especially since in the very structure of the world they say that those same princes of darkness are, throughout the whole fabric, from the highest to the lowest, so bound that, the more of the commingled good each one had, the more sublimely it deserved to be placed; and by this reasoning the flesh, whose origin is from heaven, ought to be cleaner than the crops which arise from the earth. Furthermore, what could be said so insane as that conceptions made before the commingling of life were so much more full of vitality that even the aborted ones, falling from heaven to earth, lived, whereas the commingled life cannot live unless brought forth at the mature time, and if they fall from a somewhat higher place

they die at once? Surely, if the kingdom of life waged war against the kingdom of death, the commingled life ought to have made things more full of vitality, not more corruptible. But if in its own nature each thing better retains its own incorruption, they ought to have proclaimed not two natures, a good and an evil, but two good ones, of which one is better. Whence, then, do they assert that flesh — which they affirm to derive its lineage from heaven — is more unclean? At least this flesh known to all. For they suppose that the very first bodies of the princes of darkness arose from trees born in that same place, like little worms, and that those trees themselves arose from those five elements.

Accordingly, if the bodies of animals have their first origin from trees, their second from heaven, what reason is there that they should be judged more unclean than the fruits of trees? If it is because, when they die, they lose their soul, so that now whatever remains after life has forsaken it is unclean — why, by the same rule, are the vegetables or fruits not unclean, which likewise, as was said above, die when they are plucked or torn off? For they refuse to be guilty of these homicides, so long as they pluck nothing from the earth or from a tree. Furthermore, since they affirm that there are two souls in the one body of a living creature — one good, from the race of light, the other evil, from the race of darkness — when the animal is killed, does the good soul flee and the evil one remain?

For if this were so, if the slain animal were to live, how did it live in the race of darkness, when it had only the soul of its own race, by which it had even rebelled against the divine realms? Since, then, in the death of any animal both souls, the good and the evil, forsake the flesh, why is the flesh called unclean, as though it were forsaken by the good soul alone? For even if some remnants of life remain, they remain from both; for they say that not even the very dung remains without some slight remnants of the members of God. They find, therefore, no cause at all why they should assert that flesh is more unclean than crops.

But evidently, in their attempt to display their deceitful chastity, they think flesh the more unclean because it comes from copulation — as though they were not thereby so much the more vehemently compelled to come to the aid of that divine member by eating it, the more tightly they think it bound up there. Finally, if this is the cause of the greater uncleanness of flesh, let them eat the bodies of those animals which do not arise from copulation, such as the innumerable kinds of worms, some of which certain Venetic regions commonly eat, born from trees. Frogs too, which the earth suddenly generates from a single rain, these men ought to have taken for food, so as to liberate the members of their god commingled in such forms, if they detest that flesh which is propagated by copulation.

And they would convict the human race of error, because it feeds on hens and doves procreated from the coitus of males and females, and casts away frogs, the cleaner daughters of heaven and earth. For according to the fable of these men, cleaner are the first princes of darkness, whose parents were trees, than Manichaeus himself, whom father and mother begot by copulation; cleaner too are their lice, which are born without copulation from the sweat of the flesh or the exhalation of the body, than these very wretched men themselves, who were born of copulating parents.

Or if now they think whatever is born of flesh, even without copulation, to be for this reason unclean — because the flesh itself is from copulation — then unclean will be the vegetables and crops which spring up more fertilely and abundantly from dung. Here let them see what they should do or answer, they who say that crops are cleaner than flesh. For what is cast out of the flesh that is more unclean than dung, and what is applied to crops that is more fruitful? Certainly they themselves say that through the wearings-down and digestions of foods, life flees from thence, and something scanty remains in the dung. Why then, where scanty life remains, do your foods — that is, the fruits of the earth — arise from the dung both better and greater and more numerous? Flesh is nourished not by the refuse of the earth, but by its produce;

but the earth is made fruitful by the refuse of flesh, not by its produce. Let them choose which is cleaner; or else, now corrected, let them cease to be unclean and unbelieving men, to whom nothing is clean, and let them embrace with us the Apostle who says: 'All things are clean to the clean'; 'The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof'; 'Every creature of God is good.' For all things which naturally exist are good in their own order, and no one sins in them, save he who, not keeping his own order in obedience to God, also disturbs their order by using them wrongly. But our fathers, who pleased God, kept their own order in that very obedience, so that whatever God, by commanding at fitting times, apportioned, they observed just as He apportioned it.

And so not only did they, at that time, not eat certain flesh given for food — though all was by nature clean, yet unclean by some signification — during the time in which it was commanded not to be eaten, so that by such significations the future manifestation of things might be prefigured; but also unleavened bread and other things of this kind, in which the Apostle says there was a shadow of things to come. The men of that time and of that people would have been as much guilty as regards that matter, had they scorned to observe them at the time when it was fitting that these things should so be done, and that those things which are now revealed should then be so foretold, as we would be foolish if now, under the New Testament already made manifest, we should think those foretelling observances to profit us anything.

Just as the sacrilegious and impious would be, if — should we faithfully and firmly hold those same books, which were written for our sake, recognizing that those things which have now been revealed to us and announced in manifestation were so long before foretold to those men in those figures — they should for this reason think that they ought to be cast aside, because the Lord commands us now no longer to observe bodily, but to understand and to do spiritually, those things which are there written; for they were written for our sake, upon whom the end of the ages has come, as the same Apostle likewise says: 'For all things which were written aforetime were written that we might be taught.' Wherefore, not to eat unleavened bread throughout the appointed seven days was, in the time of the Old Testament, a sin; but in the time of the New Testament it is not a sin.

But in the hope of the age to come, which we have in Christ — who, both clothing our soul with righteousness and clothing our body with immortality, wholly renews us — to believe that we must suffer or do anything out of the necessity and neediness of the old corruption is always a sin, so long as these seven days revolve, by which the course of time is carried out. But this, in the times of the Old Testament, hidden in a figure, was understood by certain holy men; whereas in the time of the New Testament, revealed in manifestation, it is preached to the peoples. Whence that very Scripture was then a precept, now a testimony. Not to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles was once a sin; now it is not a sin.

But not to be joined together with the tabernacle of God, which is the Church, is always a sin. But at that time the prefiguration was carried out under precept, now the revelation is read in testimony. For that which was then done would not be called the tabernacle of the testimony, unless by a certain fitness of signification it bore witness to some truth which was to be declared in its own time. To mingle purple with garments of linen, and to be clothed in a garment of mixed linen and wool, was once a sin; now it is not a sin. But to live disorderly, and to wish to mingle professions of diverse kinds — so that either a consecrated woman should have the ornaments of married women, or she who, not being continent, has married should bear the appearance of a virgin — is in every way a sin;

and if anything is unbecomingly woven together out of a diverse kind in anyone's life. But that thing which was then figured in garments is now declared in morals; for that was the time of signifying, this of manifesting. Therefore the very Scripture, which then was the exactor of signifying works, is now the witness of the things signified; and what was then observed for foretelling is now recited for confirmation. To yoke an ox and an ass together for working was then not lawful; now it is lawful. For it has been declared through the Apostle — when, concerning the ox that treads out the grain not being muzzled, he recalled the Scripture which says, 'Is it for oxen that God cares?' Why then is it now read, when that which He forbade is now lawful? Because the same Apostle there, following on, says:

'The Scripture says it for our sake.' And it is assuredly impious that we should not read what was written for our sake; for it was written more for our sake, to whom it is made manifest, than for those in whom it was figured. Anyone, if it be necessary, yokes together an ox and an ass without detriment to the work; but a wise man and a fool — not so that one commands and the other obeys, but equally, from an equal authority, that they may announce the word of God — no one makes companions without scandal. And so we hold the same Scripture as, at that time, by the authority of precept commanding that to be covered with shadows which now should be laid open, and, now, by authority bearing witness that to be laid open in light which was then covered. But concerning the bald man and the red-haired man —

that the law called them unclean, Faustus had paid too little attention, or had lighted upon a corrupt manuscript. But would that he himself had been willing to have a bald forehead, and had not blushed to fix the cross of Christ upon it! Assuredly he would have believed that Christ, who cries out, 'I am the truth,' neither lay dead with false wounds nor rose again with false scars. Nay more, He says: 'I have not learned to deceive; what I feel, I speak.' He is not, therefore, a disciple of his own Christ, whom in his madness he supposes to have shown false scars to the doubting disciples, and who wishes to be believed, not only concerning the rest of his vanities, but even concerning the very deceit of Christ, as though he himself did not deceive:

whether he is better than Christ, in that while Christ deceives he himself does not deceive, or is rather a disciple, not of a truthful Christ, but of a deceitful Manichaeus, since in this very thing he deceives, wherein he boasts that he has not learned to deceive. BOOK SEVEN. FAUSTUS said: Why do you not believe in the genealogy of Jesus? There are indeed many causes, but the chief one is this: that neither does He anywhere with His own mouth confess that He has a father or a lineage on earth, but on the contrary, that He is not of this world, that He proceeded from God the Father, that He came down from heaven, that He has no mother and brothers except those who do the will of His Father who is in heaven. And to these very things,

those very men who ascribe these genealogies to Him seem not to have known Him before His birth, nor even immediately when He was born — so that they might be believed to have written those things which they saw done concerning Him with their own eyes — but they were joined to Him when He was already a young and mature man, that is, of about thirty years, if indeed age too can be ascribed to divine things without blasphemy. Wherefore, since in every testimony of truth this is always wont to be asked — whether one has heard or has seen — but these men confess neither to have heard from Himself this order of His generation, or that He was born at all, nor to have seen it with their eyes, since they came to know Him a long time afterward, that is, after His baptism:

to me and to everyone judging rightly it seems as foolish to believe this, as if someone should call a blind and deaf witness into judgment. AUGUSTINE replied: The cause which he calls the chief one, why he does not accept the genealogy of Jesus Christ — there he is shown most plainly to the readers to be overcome by those things which we said above concerning the Son of Man, that Christ so frequently testifies Himself to be this, and concerning the Son of God, how the same one is also the Son of Man; how according to His divinity He has no lineage on earth, but according to the flesh He is of the seed of David, according to what the apostolic doctrine testifies. Whence it behooves Him to be believed and understood both to have gone forth from the Father and to have come from heaven, and yet here, the Word made flesh, to have dwelt among men.

But if for this reason they think He had no mother or lineage on earth, because He said, 'Who is my mother, or who are my brothers?' — it remains that they should also affirm that His disciples, to whom He gave this example in Himself, that they should despise the ties of earthly lineage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, had no fathers, because He said to them: 'Call no man your father on earth; for one is your Father, God.' What therefore He taught these men concerning fathers, this He Himself first did concerning mother and brothers, just as He did many other things also, in which He deigned to offer Himself to us, that we might imitate Him, and to go before, that we might follow. Wherefore this man, who is so overcome in that which he thinks his chief point, how he lies prostrate and entangled in the rest is to be observed.

Indeed, he says that the apostles are not to be believed, they who announced not only His divine but also His human nativity, because they afterward attached themselves to Him as a young man, and neither saw Him born nor said that they had heard this from Him. Why then do they believe John, who says: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; the same was in the beginning with God; all things were made through Him, and without Him was made nothing,' and the rest, which, though they do not understand them, nevertheless please them? Let them say where John saw this, or where he said that he had heard this from the Lord Himself.

For whatever they say — from whence John could have known this, from thence we believe that all the announcers of Christ's nativity could also have known that which they announced. Next I ask, from whence do they believe that the Lord said: 'Who is my mother, or who are my brothers?' If because the evangelist related this, why do they not believe him also in that: 'that His mother and brothers were seeking Him'? But if he lied in this, which they refuse to believe, how do they believe him that Christ said what they refuse to understand? Next, if Matthew could not have known Christ born, because he had already attached himself to Him as a young man, from whence could Manichaeus, born so many years afterward, have known Christ not born? They will say: the Holy Spirit knew this, who was in Manichaeus.

He, to be sure, if he were the Holy Spirit, would have spoken true things. But why do we not rather believe concerning Christ the disciples of His, who also attached themselves to Him bodily — who not only could have known through the Holy Spirit imparted by Him, if anything lay hidden in human affairs, but with so recent and present a memory, even by human sense alone, gathered the lineage of Christ according to the flesh and His whole origin? And yet the apostles are called blind and deaf witnesses. Would that you had not only been blind and deaf, so as not to learn such vain and sacrilegious things, but also mute, so as not to say such things! BOOK EIGHT. FAUSTUS said: Why do you not accept the Old Testament? Because I am already forestalled by the New; and the old does not agree with the new, as the Scripture testifies.

For 'no one,' he says, 'sews a new patch onto an old garment, otherwise a greater rent is made.' Since therefore I take care not to make a greater rent, as you do, I do not mingle Christian newness with Hebrew oldness. For who would not judge it even sordid, when clothed in new garments, not to give the old ones to his inferiors? Wherefore I, even if I had been born a Jew, as the apostles were, it would nevertheless have been worthy of me, having received the New Testament, to repudiate the Old, as they themselves did. But now, having obtained by the benefit of nature that I was not born under the yoke of servitude, and Christ meeting me straightway with the full gift of liberty, how wretched and foolish and moreover ungrateful shall I be, if of my own accord I should surrender myself to servitude?

For Paul rebukes the Galatians on this ground: that by relapsing into circumcision they were sinking back to the weak and beggarly elements, to which they wished to be enslaved once again. How, then, should I take up that in which I see another being reproved? It is shameful to return into slavery, but more shameful still to go into it. AUGUSTINE replied: We have already shown sufficiently above why and how we hold to the authority of the Old Testament, not for the imitation of Jewish bondage, but for the attestation of Christian liberty. For it is not my own voice but the Apostle's: 'All these things happened to them in a figure, and they were written for our sake, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.'

Wherefore we do not perform in bondage those things which were commanded in order to prefigure us, but in liberty we read those things which were written in order to confirm us. Who, then, would not now understand from what the Apostle recalls the Galatians—not from reading in a religious spirit the Scripture concerning circumcision, but from now wishing, in a superstitious spirit, to be circumcised? Hence we do not sew a new patch onto an old garment, but are instructed in the kingdom of heaven after the likeness of that householder whom the Lord mentions as bringing forth 'out of his treasure things new and old.' But he sews a new patch onto an old garment who wishes to have spiritual continence yet has not laid aside carnal hope. For read diligently and see how the Lord answered when questioned about fasting:

'No one sews a new patch onto an old garment.' For as yet the disciples loved the Lord in a carnal way, seeing that they even dreaded lest they should lose him if he were slain. Hence he calls Peter 'Satan' when Peter would recall him from the Passion, because he savoured not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men. Accordingly, consider, in that fantasy of yours concerning the kingdom of God—whereby you love and adore this light of the sun, visible to the flesh, as though it were set before you for an example—what carnal hope you cherish; and you will find how your fasts are sewn, like a new patch, onto the prudence of the flesh as onto an old garment.

But since a new patch does not agree with an old garment, how could the members of your god—not merely joined and stitched to the princes of darkness, but, what is far worse, mingled and concreted with them—cohere together? Or is each of them old, since each is false, and each springs from the prudence of the flesh? Unless perhaps you wish thereby to prove that the one was new and the other old, because a greater rent was made, so that the wretched patch was torn away from the kingdom of light and fastened with eternal punishment to the mass of darkness. And yet the filthy patcher or beggarly clothier of such fables fancies that he can prick, as with the needle of his tongue, the very foundations of the divine Scriptures. BOOK NINE. FAUSTUS said: Why do you not accept the Old Testament?

If it was permitted to the apostles, who were born under it, to depart from it, why should it not be permitted to me, who was not born under it, not to lay claim to it at all? For we are all born Gentiles, not Jews, and certainly not Christians. But the Old Testament draws some to itself out of that same Gentile stock and makes them Jews, while the New draws others and initiates them as Christians—just as if two trees, one sweet and one bitter, should each draw into itself, out of the soil of one and the same earth, a power to be transformed according to their own qualities. Since, then, the apostles passed from bitter into sweet, how mad shall I be if I turn from sweet into bitter? AUGUSTINE replied:

Why, then, does the Apostle—whom you say passed, upon leaving Judaism, from bitterness into sweetness—rather say that those were 'branches broken off' who, out of that very people, refused to believe in Christ, and that the Gentiles were engrafted, like a wild olive, into the very root of the olive, that is, into the origin of the holy Hebrews, so that they might be made partakers of the fatness of the olive? For when he was warning the Gentiles against the fall of the Jews, lest they should be proud, he spoke thus: 'For I speak to you, Gentiles,' he says; 'inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I will honour my ministry, if by any means I may provoke to emulation my own flesh, and may save some of them. For if the casting away of them is the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead?'

'And if the firstfruit is holy, so also is the lump; and if the root is holy, so also are the branches. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive, were engrafted among them and were made partaker of the root and of the fatness of the olive, boast not against the branches. But if you boast, it is not you that bear the root, but the root that bears you. You will say then: The branches were broken off, that I might be engrafted. Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, but you stand by faith. Be not high-minded, but fear; for if God spared not the natural branches, neither will he spare you. Behold, therefore, the goodness and the severity of God: toward those indeed who fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, if you continue in his goodness; otherwise you also shall be cut off.'

'And they also, if they continue not in unbelief, shall be engrafted; for God is able to engraft them in again. For if you were cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and were engrafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree, how much more shall these, who are the natural branches, be engrafted into their own olive tree? For I would not, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own conceits: that blindness in part has happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in; and so all Israel shall be saved.' You see, therefore, that you who are unwilling to be engrafted into this root are indeed not like the broken branches, as is the carnal and impious people of the Jews, but have remained in the bitterness of the wild olive. For what does it savour of but the wild olive of the Gentiles, to worship the sun and moon?

Unless perhaps you suppose that you are no longer in the wild olive of the Gentiles for this reason: that you have added thorns of a new kind and a false Christ, whom, together with the sun and moon, you worship—one whom you fashioned not by the craftsman's hand but by your perverse heart. Be engrafted, therefore, into the root of the olive, into which the Apostle rejoices to have been restored—he who had been among the branches broken off through unbelief. For he says that he was delivered from that state when he rejoices that he passed over from Judaism to Christ, because Christ was always proclaimed in that root and in that tree; and those who, when he came, did not believe in him were broken off from it, while those who did believe were engrafted therein. And lest these should be proud, it is said to them: 'Be not high-minded, but fear; for if God spared not the natural branches, neither will he spare you.'