Latin original · 39 verses · some words can be tapped for a gloss · long chapter, split into parts; this part covers 15:193–15:231 (1391 verses in all)
And yet, because it is a sure hope, he says 'He saved us' as though that same salvation had already been given. For in another place he says most clearly: 'We ourselves groan within ourselves, awaiting the adoption, the redemption of our body. For by hope we were saved; but hope that is seen is not hope; for what a man sees, why does he hope for it? But if we hope for what we do not see, we await it through patience.' As therefore here he did not say 'we shall be saved' but 'from now on we have already been saved'—yet not yet in reality, but in hope, for 'by hope,' he says, 'we were saved'—so also there it was said:
'from now on we know no one according to the flesh'—it will be understood as not yet in reality, but in hope, because our hope is in Christ, because in Him has already been fulfilled that which we hope is promised to us. For He indeed has already risen, and death shall no longer have dominion over Him. Him, even though we had known Him according to the flesh, when He was still about to die—for there was in His body that mortality which the apostle properly calls flesh—yet now henceforth we know Him so no longer; for that mortal element of His has already put on immortality, so that according to its former mortality it can no longer be called flesh. Let us therefore consider the connection of the very passage in which this sentence stands, over which these people cavil, that what I say may shine forth the more clearly.
'The love of Christ,' he says, 'constrains us, judging this: that if one died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live may now live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again for them. Therefore from now on we know no one according to the flesh; even though we had known Christ according to the flesh, yet now henceforth we know Him so no longer.' Surely now it is plain to anyone that the apostle said this on account of the resurrection of Christ, since these words were preceded by that: 'that those who live may now live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again for them.' For what else does it mean:
that they should live not for themselves but for Him—except that they should live not according to the flesh in the hope of earthly and corruptible goods, but according to the spirit in the hope of resurrection, which has already been accomplished in them in Christ? Therefore of those for whom Christ died and rose again, and who now live no longer for themselves but for Him, the apostle had known no one according to the flesh, on account of the hope of future immortality, in the expectation of which they were living—a hope which in Christ was now no longer hope but reality. Him, although he had known Him according to the flesh when He was still about to die, yet he now knew Him so no longer, because he knew that He had risen and that death would no longer have dominion over Him. And because we all are this in Him, though not yet in reality, yet already in hope, he continues and says:
'If, therefore, there is any new creation in Christ, the old things have passed away; behold, all things have been made new; but all things are of God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ.' Every new creation therefore—that is, the people renewed through faith, so that it may have meanwhile in hope what afterwards will be perfected in reality—has already in Christ what it hopes for in itself. And so now the old things have passed away according to hope, because now it is no longer the time of the old testament in which a temporal and carnal kingdom is expected from God; and all things have been made new according to the same hope, so that we may hold as promised the kingdom of heaven, where there will be no death and no corruption.
But in the resurrection of the dead, not now according to hope but according to reality, both the old things will pass away, when the last enemy, death, shall be destroyed; and all things will be made new, when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption and this mortal shall have put on immortality—which has already come to pass in Christ, whom according to reality Paul now knew no longer according to the flesh. But of those for whom He died and rose again, he had known no one according to the flesh—not yet according to reality, but according to hope—because by His grace, as the same apostle says to the Ephesians, we have been saved. For that very passage also thus attests to this sentence: 'But God,' he says,
'who is rich in mercy, on account of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, made us alive together with Christ, by whose grace we have been saved.' For what he here said, 'made us alive together with Christ,' this he said to the Corinthians: 'that those who live may now live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again for them.' And what he here says, 'by whose grace we have been saved,' he speaks as though it were already accomplished, which he holds in hope; for as I recalled a little before, he says most plainly elsewhere: 'For by hope we were saved.' And therefore here too he goes on and enumerates as already accomplished what is yet to come: 'and He raised us up together,' he says, 'and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.'
For surely Christ already sits in the heavenly places, but we do not yet; but because with sure hope we already hold what is to come, he said that we sit together in the heavenly places—not yet in ourselves, but already in Him. And indeed, lest you should think that what is spoken thus in hope, as though it were already accomplished, is already now accomplished, and that you may understand it still to be future, he goes on and says: 'that He might show in the ages to come the overflowing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.' Hence too is that saying: 'For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins, which are by the law, worked in our members, so that they bore fruit unto death.' For thus he said, 'when we were in the flesh,' as though they were now no longer in the flesh. This is understood thus:
when we were in the hope of carnal things, at the time when the law—which cannot be fulfilled except through spiritual love—lay upon them for this end, that through transgression the offence might abound, so that afterwards, when the new testament was revealed, grace might superabound through pardon. Hence likewise he says elsewhere: 'But they who are in the flesh cannot please God.' And lest anyone should think that those were meant who are not yet dead, he immediately added: 'But you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit'—that is: those who are in the hope of carnal goods cannot please God; but you are not in the hope of carnal things, but in the hope of spiritual things, that is, of the kingdom of heaven, where the body itself, through that transformation, will in its own way be spiritual, which is now animal.
'For a natural body is sown,' as the same apostle says to the Corinthians, 'a spiritual body shall rise.' If therefore the apostle now knew none of those according to the flesh, who for this reason were said not to be in the flesh, because they were not in the hope of carnal things—although they still bore corruptible and mortal flesh—how much more expressly would he say of Christ that he now knew Him no longer according to the flesh, in whose body there had already been perfected even in very deed that which those men held as promised in hope!
How much better, then, how much more religiously are the divine Scriptures handled in such a way that, when all things have been discussed, they are found to agree, than that—when a man fails in a question which he cannot solve—they should be accepted in part as true and condemned in part as false! For even when the apostle was a little child and understood the things of a little child—although he said this by way of comparison—he was nevertheless not yet spiritual, such as he already was when he wrote those things which, not by the exercise of one making progress but by the authority of one giving precepts, were to pass through the hands of the studious for the edification of the churches, and to be read in the ecclesiastical canon. BOOK TWELVE. Faustus said: Why do you not accept the prophets?
Nay rather, do you tell me instead, if you have anything to say, why we ought to accept the prophets. 'On account of the testimonies,' he says, 'which they foretold concerning Christ.' I indeed have found none, although I have read them quite attentively and most curiously. But even this is a confession of a feeble faith: to believe in Christ without witness and proof. For you yourselves are wont to teach that nothing is to be too curiously inquired into, because Christian belief is simple and unconditional. How then do you now destroy the simplicity of faith by propping it up with proofs and witnesses—and that too from the Jews?
Or if the first view displeases you, and you have therefore passed over to the other, who ought to be a more faithful witness to you than God Himself concerning His own Son—who, not through a seer nor through an interpreter, but by a voice bursting forth of its own accord from heaven, when He sent Him to earth, said: 'This is My most beloved Son, believe Him'? And likewise He Himself concerning Himself: 'I proceeded from My Father and came into this world,' and many other things of this kind. At which the Jews, gnashing their teeth, said: 'You testify concerning Yourself; Your testimony is not true.' To whom He Himself replied: 'Even though I testify concerning Myself, My testimony is true, because I am not alone. For in your law also it is written: The testimony of two men is true.
I am one who testify concerning Myself, and the Father who sent Me testifies concerning Me.' He did not say, 'the prophets.' To this too He calls His own very works as witness for Himself, saying, 'If you do not believe Me, believe the works'; He did not say, 'If you do not believe Me, believe the prophets.' Wherefore we have need of no testimonies concerning our Saviour;
we seek in the prophets only examples of an honourable life, and prudence, and virtue—none of which, I perceive, has escaped your notice was to be found in the seers of the Jews, since when I asked you why you thought they should be accepted, you did not imprudently nor discourteously, by passing over their deeds in silence, cross over into their predictions alone, having surely forgotten that it is written: 'a grape is never gathered from thorns, nor a fig from thistles.' Wherefore let me have answered your question briefly for now and with restraint, since you ask why we do not accept the prophets; besides, that they prophesied nothing concerning Christ has already been abundantly shown in the books of our forefathers. But I would add this,
that if the Hebrew seers, knowing and proclaiming Christ, lived so disgracefully, then rightly may there be said even against them that which Paul testifies concerning the wise men of the Gentiles: 'that when they had known God, they did not glorify Him as God nor give thanks, but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened.' You see then that it is no great thing to have known great things, unless you live worthily of them. Augustine replied: Surely by all these words Faustus is aiming at this: that we should believe that the Hebrew prophets foretold nothing concerning Christ; and that, even if they did foretell it, their testimonies are of no profit to us; and that those very men did not live worthily of the dignity of those same testimonies.
We therefore will demonstrate both their foretellings concerning Christ, and how much provision was made for us through them toward the truth and firmness of faith, and that they lived congruously and fittingly to their own prophecy. In this three-part disputation, that which I set first is a long task to prove in such a way as to bring forward testimonies from all those books whereby I might show that Christ was foretold; but I shall crush the levity of this man with the very weighty weight of authority. For he does not accept the Hebrew prophets in such a way as nevertheless to profess that he accepts the apostles. But the apostle Paul—when Faustus, as though from an opposing voice, had asked himself whether he accepted him, replied: 'yes, most of all.' Let us hear what he says concerning their prophecy.
'Paul,' he says, 'a servant of Christ, called an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which He had promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures concerning His Son, who was made to Him from the seed of David according to the flesh.' What does he want more? Unless perhaps they wish this to be understood as said of certain other prophets, not of our Hebrews. But although it may have been said through whomsoever, yet the gospel was promised concerning that Son of God,
who was made to Him from the seed of David according to the flesh, to which gospel the apostle says he was set apart—while the very contrary of this is the perfidy of these people, in that according to this gospel we believe the Son of God was made from the seed of David according to the flesh. Yet let them recognize things more open still, whereby a most evident testimony is borne to the Hebrew prophets through that apostle, by whose authority the necks of these proud men may be broken. 'I speak the truth,' he says, 'in Christ, I do not lie, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, that there is great sorrow to me and continual grief in my heart.'
'For I myself was wishing to be anathema from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, whose is the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the worship and the promises; whose are the fathers, and from whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed forever.' What can be said more abundantly, what declared more expressly, what commended more sacredly? For what is the adoption of the Israelites except through the Son of God? Whence to the Galatians he says: 'But when the fullness of time came, God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that He might redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.'
And what is their glory, if not chiefly that of which the same Paul says to the same Romans: 'What advantage then has the Jew? Or what is the profit of circumcision? Much in every way. First indeed, because to them were entrusted the oracles of God.' Let these men seek what are the oracles of God entrusted to the Jews, and let them show us any others besides those of the Hebrew prophets. Now indeed why did he say that the covenants pertain chiefly to the Israelites, except because both the old testament was given to them, and the new was prefigured in the old? But the giving of the law, which was given to the Israelites, these men are wont to reproach with furious ignorance, not understanding its dispensation, because God now wills us to be not under the law, but under grace.
Let them therefore yield to the apostolic authority, which, praising and commending the excellence of the Israelites, enumerated also this, that the giving of the law is theirs. And if it were evil, it would surely not be placed among their praises; but if it did not proclaim Christ, the Lord Himself would not say: 'If you believed Moses, you would believe Me also; for he wrote concerning Me,' nor after the resurrection would He so attest to it, saying: 'It was necessary that all things be fulfilled which are written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms concerning Me.'
But because the Manichaeans proclaim another Christ, not Him whom the apostles proclaimed, but their own deceptive one deceptively, whose followers, as devotees of that falsehood, congruously also lie themselves—except that they shamelessly wish to be believed, while professing that they are disciples of a liar: there has befallen them that which the apostle says concerning those very unbelieving Jews: 'When Moses is read, a veil is over their heart'; for neither shall this veil be taken away, through which they do not understand Moses, unless they cross over to Christ—not such as they themselves have fabricated, but such as the Hebrew fathers prophesied. For thus the same apostle says: 'But when you shall have crossed over to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away.' Nor is it any wonder that to the risen Christ, and to Him who says:
'It was necessary that all things be fulfilled which are written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms concerning Me,' these men refuse to believe, since Christ Himself narrated what Abraham said to a certain merciless rich man, when he was being tormented in hell and asked that someone be sent thence to his brethren, by whom they might be taught, lest they too should come into that place of torments. For this was said to him: 'They have there Moses and the prophets.' And when he had said that they would not believe unless someone rose from the dead, it was most truly answered: 'If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe though someone rise from the dead.'
Wherefore these men, not hearing Moses and the prophets, do not believe not only in Christ risen from the dead, but altogether that Christ rose from the dead at all. For how do they believe He rose, whom they do not believe to have died? For how do they believe He died, whom they do not believe to have had a mortal body? But we do not believe the deceptive preachers—not of that Christ who was deceptive, but of one who was not at all. For we have the true and truthful Christ, foretold by the prophets, foretold by the apostles who exhibit the testimonies of their preaching from the law and the prophets, as they show in innumerable places. This Paul embraced most briefly and most truly, saying:
'But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested, being testified by the law and the prophets.' What prophets except the Israelites, whose he most plainly said were both the covenants and the giving of the law and the promises? Concerning whom the promises, except concerning Christ? This he briefly determines in another place, when speaking of Christ he says: 'For as many as are the promises of God, in Him also.' Paul tells me that the giving of the law is the Israelites'; he says also: 'For Christ is the end of the law unto righteousness to everyone who believes'; he says also, speaking of Christ: 'For as many as are the promises of God, in Him also': and do you tell me that the prophets of the Israelites foretold nothing concerning Christ?
What then remains, except that I should choose whether to believe the Manichaean narrating an empty and long fable against Paul, or Paul forewarning: 'If anyone shall evangelize to you otherwise than what we have evangelized to you, let him be anathema'? Here perhaps they will say: 'Show us where Christ is foretold by the Israelite prophets.' As though that authority were a small thing, whereby the apostles say that those things which we read in the writings of the Hebrew prophets have been fulfilled in Christ; or that the Lord Himself says concerning Himself that those things were written. Accordingly, whoever cannot show this does not himself understand; the apostles, or Christ, or the holy books do not lie.
Nevertheless, that I may not gather many things but recall this one, which the apostle consequently says in the same place: 'But the word of God cannot fail. For not all who are of Israel, these are Israelites, nor are they who are the seed of Abraham all sons, but: In Isaac shall your seed be called: that is, not those who are the sons of the flesh, these are the sons of God, but the sons of the promise are reckoned as the seed.' What will they answer to these things, when openly in another place it is said to Abraham concerning this seed: 'In your seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed'? For if we were disputing about this at the time when the apostle was expounding it, saying: 'To Abraham were the promises spoken, and to his seed'—he does not say:
'and to seeds, as though in many, but as though in one—and to your seed, which is Christ': perhaps someone would not so shamelessly refuse to believe this, before he saw all the nations believing in Christ, who is preached as of the seed of Abraham. But now, when we see this being fulfilled, which we read was foretold so long before—when all the nations are already being blessed in the seed of Abraham, to whom it was said thousands of years ago: 'In your seed shall all the nations be blessed'—who would rave so obstinately as either to attempt to introduce another Christ, who is not of the seed of Abraham, or to suppose that the Hebrew prophecies foretold nothing concerning this true Christ, of whose nation Abraham is the father?
But who can—I do not say in one brief response, such as we are constrained to have in this work, but in any huge volume whatever—recount all the proclamations of the Hebrew prophets concerning our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ? Since all the things contained in those books are either said of Him or on account of Him. But for the rousing of the seeker and the delight of the finder, far more things are there insinuated through allegories and enigmas, partly by words alone, partly also narrated as deeds. Yet unless some things there were manifest, the sense could not be grasped whereby even the obscure things might grow clear.
And yet even from those things which are wrapped in figures, if certain ones are set forth as it were woven together under a single view, they so join their voices in the attestation of Christ that the deafness of any dull person may blush. In six days in Genesis God consummated all His works, on the seventh He rested: in six ages the works of God mark the human race in this world through the successions of times. Of these the first is from Adam to Noah, the second from Noah to Abraham, the third from Abraham to David, the fourth from David to the migration to Babylon, the fifth from thence to the humble coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, the sixth, which is now being enacted, until the Exalted One comes to judgment.
But the seventh is understood to be in the rest of the saints, not in this life, but in another, where the rich man, while tormented in hell, saw the poor man resting—where there comes no evening, because there is there no failing of things. On the sixth day in Genesis man is formed to the image of God: in the sixth age of the world our reformation is made manifest in the newness of the mind according to the image of Him who created us, as the apostle says. To the sleeping man a spouse is made from his side: to the dying Christ the Church is made from the sacrament of the blood which flowed from the side of the dead One. Eve is called life and the mother of the living, she who was made from the side of her husband: and the Lord says in the gospel:
'If anyone does not eat My flesh and drink My blood, he shall not have life in himself.' And all the things that are there understood, being treated fully and in detail, foretell Christ and the Church, whether among good Christians or among bad. For not in vain did the apostle say: 'Adam, who is the figure of Him who was to come,' and that: 'A man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh. This mystery,' he says, 'is great; but I speak in Christ and in the Church.' For who would not recognize that Christ in this manner left His Father, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal to God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant?
That he also left his mother, the synagogue of the Jews which clings carnally to the Old Testament, and cleaved to his wife, the holy Church, so that in the peace of the New Testament the two might be one flesh; for although he is God with the Father, through whom we were made, he became through the flesh a partaker of our nature, that we might be the body of that Head. Just as Cain's sacrifice from the fruits of the earth is rejected, while Abel's sacrifice from the sheep and their fat is accepted, so the faith of the New Testament, praising God from the innocence of grace, is set before the earthly works of the Old Testament; for although the Jews formerly did those things rightly, yet in this they are guilty of unbelief:
namely, that when Christ came they did not distinguish the time of the New Testament from the time of the Old Testament. For God said to Cain: If you offer rightly but do not divide rightly, you have sinned. And if he had obeyed God, who said: Be still, for its turning is toward you, and you shall rule over it — he would have turned his sin back to himself, attributing this to himself and confessing to God, and so, aided by the grace of pardon, he would himself have ruled over his sin, and would not, with sin ruling over him, have become a slave of sin and slain his innocent brother. So too the Jews, in whom these things were enacted as a figure: if they had rested from their disturbance and, recognizing the time of salvation through grace in the remission of sins, had listened to Christ saying: They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick;
I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance; and: Everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin; and: If the Son shall make you free, then you shall be free indeed — if they had turned their sin back to themselves in confession, as it is written in the psalm, saying to the Physician: I said, Lord, have mercy on me; heal my soul, for I have sinned against you — then, as free men, they would have ruled over that same sin as long as it was still in their mortal body, through the hope of grace. But now, being ignorant of God's righteousness and wishing to establish their own, lifted up over the works of the law and not humbled over their own sins, they were not still;
and with sin reigning in their mortal body so as to obey its desires, they stumbled at the stone; they stumbled and blazed with hatred against him, whose works, when they saw them to be accepted by God, they grieved, when the man born blind, who now saw, said to them: We know that God does not hear sinners, but if any man worship him and do his will, him he hears — as though he were saying to them: Upon Cain's sacrifice he does not look, but upon Abel's sacrifice he looks. And so the younger-born Abel is slain by the elder-born brother: Christ, the Head of the younger-born people, is slain by the Jewish people, the elder-born; the one in the field, the other in the place of Calvary.
God questions Cain — not as though ignorant of him, in order to learn from him, but as a judge questioning the accused whom he is to punish — where his brother is. He answered that he did not know and that he was not his brother's keeper. To this day, what do the Jews answer us, when by the voice of God, that is, by the voice of the holy Scriptures, we question them concerning Christ, except that they do not know the Christ whom we proclaim? For the deceitful ignorance of Cain is the false denial of the Jews. Yet they would in a certain manner be keepers of Christ, if they had been willing to receive and keep the Christian faith. For he who keeps Christ in his heart does not say what Cain said: Am I my brother's keeper? God says to Cain: What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries to me from the earth.
So does the divine voice in the holy Scriptures rebuke the Jews. For Christ's blood has a mighty voice in the earth, since, when it has been received by all the nations, the response comes: Amen. This is the clear voice of the blood, which the blood itself expresses from the mouth of the faithful who have been redeemed by that same blood. God says to Cain: And now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive the blood of your brother from your hand; for you shall till the earth, and it shall not add to give you its strength; groaning and trembling shall you be upon the earth. He did not say, "Cursed be the earth," but you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive the blood of your brother from your hand.