Craftily indeed you say you are prepared, if you should find any prophecies about Christ in the books of Moses, so to receive them, as if a fish from the sea, while the very water from which the fish is caught you spit out. But since everything Moses wrote is about Christ—that is, pertains altogether to Christ, whether because he foreannounces Him by figures of things either done or spoken, or because he commends His grace and glory—you, who have believed in a fictitious and deceptive Christ from the writings of Manichaeus, are unwilling to believe these things of Moses, just as you are unwilling to eat the fish. But there is this difference: that you assail Moses with hostility, while you praise the fish deceitfully. For if to eat a fish from the sea does no harm, as you yourself said, why do you thus proclaim it harmful,
so that, if no other food is at hand, you would sooner be consumed with hunger than feed on a fish? What then? Since, if all flesh is unclean, as you say, and in all water and every plant that wretched life of your god is retained, which is purged through your foods—your detestable superstition compels you both to throw away the fish which you praised, and to drink sea water and eat thorns which you disparaged. And to what purpose have you also compared God's servant to demons, so that, such as they were when they confessed Christ, such also this one should be received, if anything can be found in his books that proclaims Christ—he indeed does not disdain the reproach of his Lord. For if the master of the house was called Beelzebub, how much more they of his household!
But see you from whom you have learned these things—assuredly more wicked than those who thus reviled the Lord. For they did not believe Him to be Christ, and therefore thought Him deceitful; but you do not think a doctrine to be truthful unless it dares to proclaim Christ deceitful. But whence does it seem to you that the law of Moses differs in nothing from paganism? Is it because it commends temple, sacrifice, altar, and priest? But all these names are found also in the New Testament. 'Destroy this temple,' He says, 'and in three days I will raise it up'; and: 'when thou offerest thy gift at the altar'; and: 'Go, show thyself to the priest, and offer for thyself the sacrifice which Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.'
But of what things these were figures, in part the Lord Himself demonstrates, when He compares the temple of His own body to that temple; in part we learn from apostolic teaching; for 'the temple of God is holy,' says the apostle, 'which you are'; and: 'I beseech you therefore by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God,' and other things of this kind. Accordingly all those things were figures of us, as the same one says and it must often be recalled, because they were offered not to demons, but to the one true God, who made heaven and earth—not as if He needed such things, but as distinguishing the times and commanding things present, through which He might signify things to come.
But you, who—in order to seduce and deceive simple and imperfect Christians—feign that you detest paganism, produce for us the authority of Christian books in which it has been commanded you to worship and adore the sun and moon. Your error, then, is rather like paganism, since you do not even worship Christ, but under the name of Christ some I-know-not-what which you have feigned for yourselves by lying, and you adore gods either visible in that conspicuous sky, or others innumerable and fabricated. For which phantasms, as though for vain and empty images, you have built not little shrines, but you have made your hearts temples. You demand of me that I show what Moses wrote about Christ.
Indeed many things have already been demonstrated above, but who could demonstrate all? Especially since, if I should recall certain things, this perverse man seems ready either to try to twist them into another meaning, or, if he be overwhelmed by the evidence of clearer truth, to say that he catches those as a sweet fish from the salt sea, and that he ought not therefore to be compelled to the whole scripture of Moses as if to drink sea water. Wherefore I judge it sufficient for this work to show that those very things which he culled out as blameworthy from the scripture of the law of the Hebrews pertain to the proclaiming of Christ, if they be rightly understood:
from which it may sufficiently appear that much more do the rest—whether pronounced at once, or diligently and truthfully searched out—agree with the Christian faith, if those things which the enemy casts up as to be derided and condemned are convicted, by that very Christian truth, of being themselves worthy of condemnation. Wherefore, O you full of all deceit, since the Lord in the Gospel said: 'If ye believed Moses, ye would believe me also, for he wrote of me'—there is no reason for you to feign yourself placed in a mighty ferment and to seem compelled to one of two things, either to pronounce this passage false or Jesus a liar. For just as this passage is true, so also Jesus is truthful. 'More rightly,' you say, 'it seemed to ascribe falsehood to the writers than a lie to the author of truth.'
Do you then believe Christ to be the author of truth, whom you proclaim to be a simulator of flesh and of death and of wounds and of scars? I want you to show me whence you learned that Christ is the author of truth, if to those who wrote about Him—whose authority, commended and confirmed by recent memory, flowed down to posterity—you dare to ascribe falsehood. For you did not see Christ, nor did He speak with you as with the apostles, nor did He call you from heaven as He did Saul. What can we think of Him, what can we believe, save what the scripture testifies?
Moreover, if the Gospel is a liar—disseminated and known to all nations, and from the beginning of the preaching of the name of Christ set in all churches on so great a summit of sanctity—what scripture can be brought forward to which faith about Christ should be given? What written thing will you be able to produce which he who is unwilling to believe this will not say to be forged, if so great a fame of the Gospel comes into doubt? Then you subjoin that you yourself heard Him saying that all who came before Him were thieves and robbers. Whence did you hear Him saying this except from the Gospel? But if this—which you thus believe from the Gospel, so that you say you heard it as from the mouth of the Lord—another should contend to be false, and deny that Christ said this, whither will you go? What will you do?
Will you not proclaim the evangelical authority with all the strength you can? Wretched one, there is written what you are unwilling to believe, in the very place where you learned what you so believe that you say you heard it from Christ Himself. Behold, we believe both, because we believe the holy Gospel, where both are written: both that Moses wrote of Christ, and that all who came before Christ were thieves and robbers. For He wishes 'came' to be understood thus, namely because they were not sent; for those who were sent, such as Moses and the holy prophets, came not before Him, but with Him, because they did not wish through pride to precede Him, but bore Him humbly as He spoke through them.
But you, who understand these words of the Lord in this fashion, sufficiently confess by your own interpretation that you have no prophets who prophesied that Christ would come; and therefore you have fashioned him for yourselves just as you wished him to be. For if you do have some prophets of your own — to whom, indeed, no faith is to be given for this very reason, that they are put forward by none but you — yet if there are any whom you would dare to say prophesied that Christ would come in a false body, would suffer a false death, and would offer false scars to his doubting disciples, I do not say from this very fact how detestable and to be shunned they are, and how they cannot be truthful, seeing that a lying Christ is pleasing to them:
— to say nothing of this, yet, as I had begun to say, according to that interpretation of yours they were thieves and robbers, since they came before Christ, they who in whatever manner proclaimed that he would come. Further, if that interpretation is true, so that those are said to have come before Christ who refused to come with Christ, that is, with the Word of God, but who, though God did not send them, brought their own lies to men — then you yourselves too, although you were born into this world after the passion and resurrection of Christ, are thieves and robbers, because, before he himself enlightened you that you might proclaim his truth, you wished to run ahead of him, that you might parade your own falsehood. But in that passage, where it was said to him by the Jews, 'You bear witness of yourself;
your witness is not true' — it is no wonder that you do not see him going on to say that Moses had prophesied of him; for you do not have the devout eye by which you might be able to see this. For behold, that very thing which he answered them, namely: 'In your law it is written that the witness of two men is true. I am one who bears witness of myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness of me' — what else does this sound like to those who rightly understand, save that that number of witnesses was consecrated and commended in the law by the prophetic Spirit, so that in this very way the future revelation of the Father and the Son might be foretold, whose Spirit is, in that inseparable Trinity, the Holy Spirit? Therefore it is written: 'In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word stand.'
Otherwise, even a single witness often speaks the truth, and many often lie; and at the beginning of the faith of the Gentiles, more credence was given to one apostle preaching the gospel than to the erring peoples by whom he suffered persecution. Not in vain, therefore, was this number of witnesses in a certain manner consecrated; and when the Lord gave this answer, by that very thing he wished it to be understood that Moses had prophesied of him. Or do you perhaps raise a cavil from this, that he did not say 'in the law of God,' but 'in your law it is written'? Who would not recognize here the customary manner of speech of the Scriptures? For he said 'in your law,' the law given to you, just as the apostle calls it 'his gospel,' which nevertheless he testifies he received not from man, but through the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Or do you also say that Christ denied that he had God as his Father, wherever he does not say 'our Father' but 'your Father'? But now that voice which you have mentioned as sent down from heaven, 'This is my most beloved Son, believe him' — because you did not hear it, refuse to believe it! But if you believe it because you found it in the Holy Scriptures, in the same place is also this saying, in which you refuse to believe that Moses wrote of Christ; and there also are many other passages to which you likewise deny credence — and you do not fear, wretched men, lest some profane person should say in like manner that that voice did not sound from heaven at all.
And just as you, against the salvation of the human race — which is conferred upon all nations by the authority of the gospel — argue even to your own ruin, when you say that Christ is therefore not to be believed when he said that Moses wrote of him, because, had he said this, the Jews could not have kept silent, but immediately, being malicious and cunning as they were, would have asked what that was which he thought Moses had written of him: so too that vain and lost man may say, 'If that voice had sounded from heaven, all the Jews who heard it would have believed.'
Why then do you not consider, you madmen, that just as it could happen that even after that heavenly voice the hard unbelief of the Jews persisted, so it could likewise happen that when Christ said Moses had written of him, they — the more so fearing by their malicious cunning that they might be refuted — refused altogether to inquire what Moses had written about him? But Faustus perceives that this argument is not only sacrilegious against the sanctity of the gospel, but also nerveless and feeble, and rather transfers his contention to this other point, and says that he is more strongly held by it, namely that, having examined the whole of Moses' Scripture, he found no prophecies of Christ there. To him I quickly reply: because he does not understand;
and if anyone should ask why he does not understand, I will answer: 'Because he reads with a hostile, with an adverse mind; because he does not examine the Scriptures in order to learn, but thinks he already knows what he does not know.' This presumption of swollen arrogance either closes the eye of the heart, so that it does not see at all, or distorts it, so that it sees perversely, and approves or disapproves one thing in place of another. 'You teach me,' he says, 'what it is that, when perhaps I was reading, escaped my notice, recorded in the Scripture of Moses concerning God and our Lord.' And here let me quickly reply: the whole of it escaped you, because he wrote the whole of it about Christ. But since we cannot sift and treat the whole, I will, in this work, if I can, with the Lord's help, keep for you what I said above,
namely, that I may show that those very things which you choose to censure were written concerning Christ. Indeed you also demand that I should not say, as the ignorant are wont, that this alone ought to suffice for faith, namely that Christ said Moses wrote of him. And if I say this, I say it not as one ignorant, but as one faithful; yet that this does not avail to convince a Gentile or a Jew, I too admit; but that against you, who in some fashion glory in the Christian name, it is sufficiently apt and mighty, you too — although you long shuffled about — were nevertheless compelled to confess, saying: 'For I do not now wish you to regard me, whom my profession has made bound to believe, so that I cannot but believe him whom I follow; but suppose that we are dealing with a Jew, suppose with a Gentile.'
By which words you showed that meanwhile — you, the one with whom I now have to deal, because your profession has made you bound to believe — you are sufficiently convicted that Moses wrote of Christ, because it is written in the gospel that Christ himself said this, whose so illustrious and holy authority you dare not weaken;
because even when you dare it obliquely, pressed by the straits of your own difficulty and seeing what great ruin overwhelms you when it is said to you that there is no Scripture which you may demand should be believed concerning the deeds and words of Christ, if you think that the gospel — so holy and so widely and universally known — is not to be believed, and fearing lest, with the cloak of the Christian name lost, your naked vanity should remain to be spat upon and detested by all, you try again to gather up your wounded self, and say that by these words of the gospel your profession has already made you bound to believe.
Thus, then, in the meantime I hold you — you, the one with whom I now contend — I strike you, I destroy you, that is, your error and your falsehood, and I compel you to confess that Moses wrote of Christ, because we read in the gospel that Christ said this, to believe which your profession has made you bound. But if it should be necessary for me to dispute with a Jew or a Gentile, I have already shown above in what ways I judge that I ought to proceed, according to my slender powers, for the sake of my little ones. Nor do I deny that that too was foretold concerning Christ which you chose as though it were easy to refute, where God speaks to Moses saying: 'I will raise up for them a prophet from among their brethren, like unto you.'
Nor do your polished and elegant antitheses, by which you wished to color and paint your muddy discourse, deter me in any way from this truth of faith. For comparing Christ and Moses, and desiring to demonstrate their unlikeness, so that on this account what is written might not seem to be understood of Christ — 'I will raise up for them a prophet like unto you' — you set up against yourself many contrary points: that the one was man, the other God; the one a sinner, the other holy; the one born of intercourse, the other, according to us, of a virgin, but according to you not even of a virgin; the one, having offended God, was slain on the mountain; the other, being wholly pleasing to the Father, suffers by his own will.
As though, forsooth, when something is said to be 'like,' it must be understood as like in every part and in every manner! For not only are those things which are of one and the same nature said to be like one another — as twin men, or sons to their parents, or all men to all men, insofar as they are men, are surely alike (which is most easily observed also in other animals or in trees, so that an olive is said to be like an olive, a laurel like a laurel) — but also things of a disparate nature are, and are said to be, alike in many respects, as the wild olive to the olive, and spelt to wheat. I speak still of things near and closely touching one another; for what is so far distant from the Son of God, through whom all things were made, as a beast and a stone? And yet it is read in the gospel:
'Behold the Lamb of God,' and in the apostle: 'and that rock was Christ' — which no one could rightly say in any way, if he did not take up in himself some likeness to them. What wonder, then, if Christ did not disdain to be made like to Moses himself, who was made like to a sheep, which, in his prefiguration, God commanded through Moses himself to be eaten by his people, and its blood to be applied for the safeguard of salvation, and to be called the Pasch — which no one is now permitted to dissemble has been fulfilled in Christ? Wherefore, from the Scriptures I acknowledge him unlike; from the Scriptures do you too, along with me, acknowledge him like: unlike not for the reason he is like, but the one for this cause, the other for that, provided that I demonstrate both. Christ is unlike man,
because he is God: for it is written of him, 'who is over all, God blessed for ever'; and Christ is like man, because he is man, for it is likewise written of him, 'the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus.' Christ is unlike a sinner, because he is ever holy; and Christ is like a sinner, because 'God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, that of sin he might condemn sin in the flesh.' Christ is unlike a man born of intercourse, insofar as he was born of a virgin; but Christ is like a man born, insofar as he too was born of a woman, to whom it was said: 'that which shall be born of you, being holy, shall be called the Son of God.' Christ is unlike a man who died for his own sin,
insofar as he died without sin and by his own power; but again Christ is like a man who died, insofar as he too died a true death of the body. Nor should you on this account disparage Moses, the servant of God, because you said that he was a sinner and was slain on the mountain when he had offended his God. For he too knew how to glory in the Lord, that by him he might be made safe: by that same Lord by whom also he was saved who says, 'Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.' For Moses is reproved by the divine voice, because his faith wavered somewhat about bringing water forth from the rock — which he may have in common with the sin of Peter, who amid the waves doubted with a like failure of faith.
But far be it that we should believe him on this account to have been estranged from the eternal fellowship of the saints — he who, with holy Elijah, as the gospel relates, was found worthy to stand beside the Lord glorified on the mountain. For, as we read in the ancient books, even after that very sin it appears how great his merit is before God. But as for what the cause may have been that God should speak of avenging his sin with such a death — since I have promised to demonstrate that these very things which you have selected for censure pertain to the foretelling of Christ — I will do so, as I can, with the Lord's help, so that I may teach that this too, which you censured in the death of Moses, was a prophecy concerning Christ to those who rightly understand.
For, as is the custom of the divine mysteries in the Holy Scriptures, that the same man should at different times bear now this and now that person for the signifying of some matter, then Moses bore the person of the Jewish people set under the law, and prefigured it in the prophetic foretelling. As, therefore, Moses striking the rock with his rod doubted concerning the power of God, so that people, which was held under the law given through Moses, fixing Christ to the wood of the cross, did not believe him to be the power of God. But as the struck rock poured forth water for the thirsty, so the wound of the Lord's passion was made life for believers. For we have concerning this matter the most illustrious and most faithful voice of the apostle, when he was speaking thereof, saying: 'and that rock was Christ.'
This carnal despair, then, concerning Christ's divinity, God commands to die in the very loftiness of Christ, when he ordains that the death of Moses' flesh should take place on the mountain. For as the rock is Christ, so also the mountain is Christ: the rock is lowly strength, the mountain is towering greatness; because, as the apostle says, 'the rock was Christ,' so the Lord himself says, 'a city cannot be hidden that is set upon a mountain' — evidently declaring himself the mountain, and his faithful ones, founded in the glory of his name, the city. The prudence of the flesh lives when, as the struck rock, the humility of Christ on the cross is despised; for 'Christ crucified is to the Jews a stumbling-block, but to the Gentiles foolishness.'
And the prudence of the flesh dies when, as the eminence of a mountain, the exalted Christ is acknowledged; for to those very ones who are called, both Jews and Greeks, 'Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.' Moses therefore ascended the mountain, that with the flesh dead he might be received by the living spirit — a mountain to which Faustus had not ascended, so that with a dead mind he spoke carnal calumnies. Did not Peter himself, through the prudence of the flesh, shudder at the very rock being struck, when to the Lord foretelling his passion he said, 'Be it far from you, Lord; this shall not be; be gracious to yourself'? For the Lord did not spare this sin, when he retorted to him, 'Get behind me, Satan; you are a stumbling-block to me; for you savor not the things that are of God, but the things that are of men.'
Or where did this carnal distrust die, save in the glorification of Christ, as though on the height of the mountain? For surely it was alive when he timidly denied him, and surely it was dead when he freely proclaimed him. This distrust was alive in Saul, when, detesting the stumbling-block of the cross, he laid waste the Christian faith; and where was it dead, save on that mountain, when Paul was already saying, 'yet now not I live, but Christ lives in me'? What have you then, heretical vanity, whereby you think you can prove that it was not foretold concerning Christ: 'I will raise up for them a prophet from among their brethren, like unto you' — when you cannot even do so from the fact that you show him unlike? For by other causes we too show him like.
Or is it because he was called a prophet, who deigned to be man also, and foretold so many future things? Unless perhaps a prophet is something other than a man foretelling things to come beyond human conjecture. Whence he too says of himself, 'A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country.' But of you I shall see — you who a little while ago confessed yourself convicted, when you said that your profession made you bound to believe the gospel. Let the Jew himself come forward into the midst, who lifts up his neck ill-freed from the yoke of Christ, and therefore still thinks it lawful for himself to say: 'Your Christ lied; Moses wrote nothing of him.' Let him tell me what prophet God promised when he said to Moses: 'I will raise up for them a prophet from among their brethren like you,' or 'like unto you.'
For many prophets afterward there were, but surely he wished some one particular one to be understood. Here, I believe, that successor of Moses would most readily present himself to him — he who led the people, freed from Egypt, into the land of promise. Thinking of him, he will perhaps still laugh at me for asking of whom it was said, 'I will raise up for them a prophet like unto you,' when I read who succeeded Moses, when he died, in that same office of ruling and leading that people. And when he has laughed at me as though ignorant — for such is Faustus too described to be — I shall not cease still to accost the man, and to recall him from carefree laughter to the care of answering, by asking and demanding:
why for this very man, his future successor — in whom he was disapproved, so that he himself should not lead the people into the land of promise, lest, forsooth, the law given through Moses not for saving but for convicting the sinner should be thought to lead into the kingdom of heaven, but 'grace and truth came through Christ the giver of the law' — I will therefore ask of the Jew, why for this very man, his own future successor, Moses changed his name. For he was called Hoshea, and he called him Joshua (Jesus). Why, finally, did he so name him at the time when, from the valley of Paran, he sent him ahead to that same land, into which the people, under his own leading, was about to come? For the true Jesus himself says: 'and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself.'
I shall ask also whether the prophet does not bear witness to this figure, saying: 'God will come from the south, and the Holy One from Paran' — as though he said: 'A holy God of that name will come.' Of what name was he who came from the south, from Paran? That is, Joshua (Jesus). To this is added that the very Word of God is understood to speak, where it promises that same successor of Moses, through whom the people would be sent into the land of promise, calling him by the name of an angel — as even men announcing something are wont to be called in divine Scripture — and thus it says: 'Behold, I send my angel before your face, to guard you in the way, to bring you into the land which I have sworn to you. Attend to yourself and obey him; do not disbelieve him, for he shall withhold nothing from you.'
'for my name is in him.' What is this? Let him now examine those Scriptures — not the Manichean now, but even the Jew himself — and let him see whether God said of any angel, 'my name is in him,' except of this one whom he promises as the introducer into the land of promise. Then let him seek among men who the successor of Moses was that led the people in, and he will find Joshua (Jesus) — called so not from the beginning of his life, but with his name changed. He, then, who said, 'my name is in that Joshua' — he is the true Jesus, the ruler and leader of the people into the inheritance of eternal life according to the New Testament, of which the Old Testament was a figure.
Thus, as far as pertains to the prophetic apparatus, nothing could be done or said more remarkable, since the matter has been carried through even to the express statement of the name. It remains that the Jew — if he wishes to be a Jew even in secret, not by the letter but by the spirit; if he wishes to be reckoned a true Israelite, in whom there is no guile — should recall in the figure that dead Joshua who led into the land of the dying, and should acknowledge in the truth the living Jesus, under whose leadership he may enter into the land of the living. For such a one, no longer bitter, will not resist so plain a prophecy, but from the remembrance of the Joshua who led into that land of promise, being made gentle, will now hear that very one, whose name he bore, more truly introducing, and saying: