And when Nicodemus, understanding too little, was in doubt and inquired how this could come about — for a man that is old cannot enter into his mother's womb and be born again — Jesus answering him said: «Unless a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God.» And there follows: «That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.» Wherefore, if there is not only that nativity by which we are begotten in the body, but also that other by which we are reborn in the spirit, it is a matter of no less concern to inquire this very thing also: in which of these two God makes us. The manner of being born, too, is twofold: the one is proper to fury and intemperance, whereby we are shamefully and through lust sown by our begetters;
but the other belongs to honour and holiness, whereby in Christ Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, under the teachings of good men, we have been made disciples unto the faith — whence all religion, and especially the Christian, calls those newly instructed for the sacrament «infants.» Signifying this very thing, the Apostle also says: «My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you.» Wherefore it is no longer asked whether God makes man, but when, and whom, and in what manner he makes him. For if it is when we are fashioned in the womb — as is the opinion of most among the Gentiles and the Jews, and even of you yourselves:
then God forms us into his image and makes us «old» and creates us through fury and lust — which I know not whether it befits his divinity; but if it is when we believe and are converted to a better state of life, then we are formed by God — as, in general, Christ and his apostles and we ourselves hold — assuredly then God both makes us «new» and makes us honourably and purely. And what is more consonant, or more fitting, to his holy and venerable majesty than this? But if you too do not despise the authority of Paul, from Paul himself we will show you whom, and when, and in what manner God makes man. He says to the Ephesians: «That you put off, according to your former conversation, the old man, who is corrupted through the desires of error;
but be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who according to God is created in justice and the holiness of truth.» You see, then, when man is created according to the image of God; you see here also that another man is shown, and another nativity, and another manner of being born. For when he says «put off yourselves and put on,» he certainly signifies the time of belief; but when he testifies that the new man is created by God, then he indicates that the old is neither from God nor formed according to him.
And when he goes on to say that the one is indeed made in holiness and justice and truth, then he designates and demonstrates that other manner of nativity — the one which I said is far unlike this, which sowed our bodies through the frenzied embraces of our begetters, and which he also shows to be not from God, since he showed that the former alone is from God. And also to the Colossians he says the same thing over again: «Strip off the old man with his deeds, and put on the new, who is renewed in the knowledge of God according to the image of him who created him in you.» And so from this too he shows not only that the new man is the one whom God makes, but also when and by what means he is formed. He has taught it, that is, «in the knowledge of God,» by which the time of belief is signified.
And further, «according to the image,» he says, «of him who created him,» so that from this it may be clear that the old man is neither the image of God nor formed by him. For that indeed which follows, when he says: «where there is no male and female, Jew and Greek, barbarian and Scythian,» shows more and more that this nativity — which made us males and females, Greeks and Jews, Scythians and barbarians — is not that in which God works when he forms man, but rather that other one, which, stripping us of all variety of nations and of sex and condition, renders us one, after the likeness of him who is one, that is, Christ; just as the same Apostle again says: «As many as have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ;
there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither male nor female, there is neither slave nor free, but all are one in Christ.» Therefore man is made by God at the time when he becomes one out of the many for God, not when out of one he is divided into many. But the first origin, that is, the bodily one, divided us; the second, the intelligible and divine, unites us: and therefore we have most rightly judged that the former is to be ascribed to the nature of the body, but the latter to the supernal majesty. Wherefore the same Apostle again says to the Corinthians: «In Christ Jesus, through the gospel, I have begotten you»; and to the Galatians, of himself: «When it pleased him who separated me from my mother's womb, to reveal his Son in me, that I might announce him among the Gentiles, immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood.»
You see, then, that everywhere he asserts that in this other nativity of ours — the spiritual, that is — we are formed by God, and not in that former, obscene and shameful one, which conceived and formed and bore us in the maternal womb no more excellently nor more cleanly than the other animals. On which matter, if you will consider it, you will find that in this respect we differ from you not so much in profession as in understanding, since if it pleases you to attribute to this old and outer and earthly man that he is formed by God, we, on the contrary, will have granted this to the heavenly man, and assign it to the inner and new man — and that not rashly or presumptuously, but as learners from Christ and his apostles, who are shown to have been the first to teach these same things in the world.
AUGUSTINE replied: The Apostle Paul indeed wishes the inner man to be understood as being through the spirit of the mind, but the outer as being in the body and in this mortal life; yet it is nowhere read in his writings that he ever called both of these together two men, but rather one — whom God made whole, that is, both that which is inner and that which is outer. But he made him to his own image only according to that which is inner, which is not only incorporeal but also rational, which is not in cattle.
He did not, then, make one man to his own image and make another not to his own image; but because this pair, the inner and the outer, is together one man, he made this one man to his image — not according to that which has a body and a bodily life, but according to that which has a rational mind, whereby it may know God and be set above all irrational creatures by that same excellence of reason. But Faustus concedes that the inner is made by God, when he says: «when it is renewed in the knowledge of God according to the image of him who created him.» This apostolic saying I plainly acknowledge:
Why, then, does he himself not acknowledge that other saying: «God has set the members, each one of them, in the body as he willed»? Behold, God is proclaimed by the same Apostle to be also the maker of the outer man. Why, then, does he choose from him what he thinks is for himself, and pass over in silence or reject what cuts away the fables of the Manichees? Likewise, when the same Paul was discoursing on the earthly and the heavenly man, distinguishing between the mortal and the immortal, between what we are in Adam and what we shall be in Christ, out of that very law, that very book, and that very passage he brought forward the testimony of the earthly, that is, the animal body, where it is written that God made the earthly man too.
For when he was treating of how the dead shall rise and with what body they shall come, having given comparisons from the seeds of grain — that bare grains are sown and God gives them a body as he has willed, to each of the seeds its own proper body (where none the less he overthrows the error of the Manichees, who say that both grains and herbs and all roots and shrubs are created by the race of darkness, not by God, and who believe that in these forms and kinds of things God is rather bound up than that he does anything of them) — when, then, against the sacrilegious vanity of the Manichees he had said these things too, he comes to the differences of flesh. «Not all flesh,» he says,
«is the same flesh»; thence to the heavenly and earthly bodies; thence to the change of our body, whereby it may become spiritual and heavenly. «It is sown,» he says, «in dishonour, it shall rise in glory; it is sown in weakness, it shall rise in power; it is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body.» And thence, wishing to show the origin of the natural body: «If there is a natural body,» he says, «there is also a spiritual; so also it is written: The first man Adam was made into a living soul.» Now this is written in Genesis, where it is narrated how God made man and animated the body which he had formed from the earth.
But by «the old man» the Apostle means nothing other than the old life, which is in sin, in which one lives according to Adam — of which he says: «By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death; and so it passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned.» Therefore that whole man, that is, both in his inner and in his outer part, grew old because of sin and was condemned to the penalty of mortality; but now he is renewed according to the inner man, where he is reformed according to the image of his Creator, stripping off unrighteousness, which is the old man, and putting on righteousness, which is the new man.
But then, when the spiritual body shall rise — which is sown a natural body — the outer man too will receive the dignity of the heavenly condition, so that all that was created may be recreated, and all that was made may be remade, by him who recreates who created, and by him who remakes who made. This he briefly explains where he says: «The body indeed is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him who raised up Christ from the dead dwells in you, he who raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies, because of his Spirit that dwells in you.»
For who, instructed in catholic truth, is ignorant that according to the body some men are males, others females, but not according to the spirit of the mind, in which we are renewed according to the image of God? Yet, because God made both, the same Apostle is again a witness, where he says: «Neither is the woman without the man, nor the man without the woman, in the Lord; for as the woman is of the man, so also is the man by the woman; but all things are of God.» What does the foolish deceit of men, alienated from the life of God through ignorance which is in them because of the blindness of their heart, say to this — except: «In the apostolic writings, what we wish is true, what we do not wish is false»? Thus let the Manichees rave; and let them come to their senses, and be Manichees no longer.
If it be asked of them — since they confess that the inner man is renewed according to the image of God, and even bring forward this testimony of their own accord: for Faustus says that God makes man then, when the inner is renewed in the knowledge of God — whether he himself made him, who remakes him; whether he himself founded him, who renews him: they will answer, «He himself.» And if to this answer of theirs we add, asking when he formed him whom he now reforms, they will look about for where to hide themselves, lest they be forced to lay bare the disgrace of their fable. For they do not say that he was formed or founded or established by God, but that a part of his very substance was sent forth against the enemies;
and not made old by sin, but taken captive by necessity and deformed by the enemies — and the rest, which it now wearies me to recount. For there too they mention a first man — not the one whom the Apostle calls «of the earth, earthly,» but some particular one of their own, leaping forth from the ark of lies: concerning whom Faustus is altogether silent, though he had set himself a question about man, fearing lest it become known in any way to those against whom he disputes. BOOK TWENTY-FIVE. FAUSTUS said: Has God an end, or is he infinite? If your prayer does not deceive, which says «the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob,» God has an end — unless perhaps this one, about whom you inquire, is other than the one you pray to;
otherwise the boundary of circumcision, which marks off Abraham and Isaac and Jacob from the fellowship of the other nations, sets a limit also to the power of God himself concerning them; and whose power is finite, he himself too is not without an end. Finally, in this prayer you make no mention even of the ancients who were before Abraham — Enoch, I mean, and Noah, and Shem, and the rest of their like, whom you do not deny to have been indeed just in their uncircumcision; but because they lacked the mark of circumcision, you refuse to have even them for their God, but only the God of Abraham and of his seed.
If, therefore, God is one and infinite, what does this so careful and anxious caution of your invocation mean — that, not content to have named God, you add also «whose,» namely of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, as though your prayer would go astray in some crowd of gods, or suffer shipwreck, unless it sailed toward the sign of Abraham? And this indeed, for a certain fixed reason, it is not absurd for the Jews to pray thus, seeing they are circumcised; for so they show that they invoke the God of circumcision on account of the gods of the foreskin. But why you yourselves do this, I little understand, since you by no means bear the sign that Abraham had, whose God you call him.
For truly, as far as one is given to understand, it appears that, for the sake of mutual recognition — lest, that is, they stray from one another — the Jews and the Jews' God imposed such marks upon each other by turns. And he indeed marked them with the obscene character of circumcision, whereby, wherever on earth they might be, among whatever nations, they might yet be recognized through circumcision as his own; while they in turn marked their own God with the surname of their forefathers, whereby, wherever he too might be — in however great a throng of gods — when he heard «the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob,» he might at once recognize that he was being invoked. This is what generally happens among many who have one name, so that none of them, when called, answers unless the surname is heard.
For so also the shepherd and the herdsman brand marks upon their beasts, lest any of them appropriate for his own use what belongs to another. And because you likewise do this to God, saying «the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob,» you not only show that God has an end, but also that you yourselves are strangers to him, being without that sign of his and that sacrament, which is the mutilation of the male parts, by which he recognizes his own. Wherefore, if this is the God whom you worship, it is quite clear from this that he has an end. But if you wish God to be infinite, you must first renounce this one, and, changing your prayer, do penance for your past error. And this indeed is so said that we may seem to have conquered you out of your own resources;
otherwise, if it be asked whether the supreme and true God is himself infinite or not, on this the very contrariety of good and evil will briefly be able to instruct us. For seeing that, if there is no evil, God is assuredly infinite; but he has an end, if there is evil; and it is established that evil exists — therefore God is not infinite; for from that quarter they receive that evils exist, where there is the end of good things. AUGUSTINE replied: Far be it that anyone who knows you should put this question to you, or discuss this matter at all with such as you. For you must first be cleansed, by pious faith and by however small a measure of the reason of truth, from the fiction of carnal and corporeal thoughts, so that you may in some way and in whatever measure be able to think of spiritual things.
As long as you cannot do this — for your heresy indeed knows nothing but to stretch out both body and soul and God through spaces of place, whether finite or infinite, whereas body alone occupies such spaces or is occupied by such spaces — you would act more advisedly if you did not entangle yourselves in this question, where you can neither teach anything true — as neither in the rest — nor are you fit to learn what perhaps you can learn in the rest, if you are not proud and quarrelsome. For when it begins to be asked how God is finite, whom no place contains; how infinite, whom the Son wholly knows; how finite, the immeasurable; how infinite, the perfect; how finite, having no measure;
how infinite, the measure of all things — all carnal thought vanishes away; and if it wishes to become what it is not yet, it first blushes for shame out of what it is. Wherefore this which you set before yourselves concerning a finite and infinite God, you better bring to an end by keeping silent, until you cease to stray so far from the end of the law, which is Christ. But concerning the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob — since he himself is the true God of every creature — why he willed to make himself known to his people by that name, we have already said, as much as was enough. Concerning circumcision too, in the earlier parts of this work, we have often replied against inept slanders. But if they would think, with a Christian and not a heretical mind, of this sign divinely given in a fitting part of the body, by which the stripping off of the flesh was figured — how it was said:
«All things are clean to the clean,» they would in no way deride it. But because that which follows is also true: «but to the unclean and unbelieving nothing is clean, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled,» we gently admonish those who deride and wittily insult, that if, according to themselves, circumcision is shameful, they have there nothing to laugh at, but rather to mourn — because their own god is bound and defiled, mingled both with that particle which is foretold and with that blood which drips down. BOOK TWENTY-SIX. FAUSTUS said: If Jesus was not born, how did he die? This now is indeed mere conjecture; but no one uses conjectures except one whom proofs have failed. We shall answer.
nevertheless, even for this, bringing examples from nowhere else than from those things which you are wont to believe: which, if they are true, will confirm us too; if false, will destroy you too. You say, then: How did Jesus die, if he was not a man? And I in turn require of you: How did Elijah not die, since he was a man? Or was it permitted to this mortal, contrary to his condition, to seize the right of immortality, while it was not permitted to Christ, who was immortal, to usurp somewhat from death, if it was necessary?
And if Elijah lives forever contrary to nature, why would you not the rather grant that Jesus could, for three days only, die contrary to nature — especially since you believe this not only of Elijah, but also of Moses and Enoch, that they are immortal and were themselves caught up with their bodies into heaven? Wherefore, if by this argument it is rightly concluded that he was a man because he died, it will nonetheless be possible by the same argument to conclude that Elijah was not a man, because he did not die. But it is false that Elijah was not a man, although he is believed immortal; equally false will it be that Jesus was a man, although he is reckoned to have died.
And if you are willing to believe me speaking truly, each of the two drew a false opinion among the Hebrews — Jesus concerning death, and Elijah concerning immortality; for neither did the one die, nor did the other not die. But you believe what you wish; what you do not wish, you reduce to nature. Wherefore, if it is asked what is proper to nature, nature indeed wills neither that the immortal die nor that the mortal not die. But if we inquire about the power in God and man to effect what they will, I rather think that Jesus could die than that Elijah could not die; for there is greater power in Jesus than in Elijah.
And if you exalt into heaven the less powerful one, against the license of nature, and consecrate him to perpetuity, forgetful of his nature and condition, why should I not grant that Jesus could die, if he willed — even though I agree that that death was truly a death and not a figure of death? For just as, having taken on the likeness of man from the beginning, he simulated all the affections of the human condition, so it was not out of place if, at the end also, for the sake of sealing the dispensation, he had appeared even to die. Moreover, this too must be recalled: that if it is asked what is permitted to each by nature, this must be asked concerning all the things which Jesus did, not concerning his death alone. For nature does not allow one blind from birth to see the light.
Yet Jesus is seen to have worked powerfully upon blind men of this kind, so much so that the Jews themselves cried out that from the beginning of the world it had never been seen that anyone should open the eyes of one born blind; that he healed a withered hand; that he restored voice and speech to those deprived of them by nature; that to bodies dead and already dissolved into corruption he restored their frame and renewed the vital spirit — whom would this not bring to amazement, and in a manner compel to disbelieve utterly whoever thinks of what is permitted or not permitted by nature? Yet all these things we Christians believe to have been done alike by the same one — no longer by consideration of nature, but only of the power and the virtue of God. It is read too that, cast down from the brow of a mountain by the Jews, he once departed unharmed.
He, then, who having been cast down from a high mountain did not die — because assuredly he did not will to — why could he not also die when he willed? And let this indeed now be so answered by us, because it pleases you to argue and, wishing to dispute in dialectical fashion, you take up weapons that are not your own: otherwise, to us Jesus neither died nor is Elijah immortal. AUGUSTINE replied: Whatever holy Scripture, set upon the highest summit of authority, testifies concerning Enoch and Elijah and Moses by the sure and great documents of its faith, this we believe — not what Faustus suspects us to believe. But what is according to nature, what is contrary to nature, men who err as you do cannot know.
But that in human fashion it is said to be «contrary to nature» when something is contrary to the use of nature known to mortals — this we too do not deny. Just as is that which the Apostle says: «If you, cut out of the naturally wild olive, were grafted contrary to nature into the good olive» — he called that contrary to nature which is contrary to the custom of nature that human knowledge comprehends, namely that a wild olive, grafted into an olive tree, should bear not the berries of the wild olive but the richness of the olive. But God, the Creator and Founder of all natures, does nothing contrary to nature; for that will be natural to each thing which he has done, from whom is every measure, number, and order of nature. But not even man himself does anything contrary to nature, except when he sins — who nevertheless by punishment is brought back to nature.
It belongs, indeed, to the natural order of justice that either sins should not be committed, or that they should not be able to go unpunished. Whichever of these is the case, the natural order is preserved: if not by the soul, then certainly by God. For sins vex the conscience and injure the very soul, since by sinning it is deprived of the light of justice, even though there follow no pains such as are inflicted for the correcting of the wayward, or reserved to the last for those not corrected. But we say, not improperly, that God does something against nature when He does something contrary to that which we have come to know in nature. For we also call this 'nature'—the course of nature known and customary to us—and when God does something against it, such things are named great wonders or miracles.
But against that supreme law of nature, which is removed from the knowledge whether of the impious or of those still weak, God no more acts than He acts against Himself. Now the spiritual and likewise rational creature—in which kind the human soul also is—the more fully it becomes a partaker of that immutable law and light, so much the more it sees what can be done and what cannot; but the farther removed from it a thing is, the more it marvels at what is unusual, the less it discerns what is to come. And by this it follows that what was done concerning Elijah we do not know; yet this we believe concerning him, which the truthful Scripture attests. This indeed we do know was done concerning him, namely what the will of God holds; but what the will of God does not hold cannot possibly be done to anyone at all.
Accordingly, if it be said to me that it is possible for the flesh, let us say, of this or that man to be changed into a heavenly body, I grant that it can be done; but whether it will be I do not know, and I do not know for this reason: because what the will of God holds concerning this matter is hidden from me. Yet this is not hidden from me: that it will without doubt be, if the will of God holds this. Further, if I should hear that something was going to be, but that God acted so that it should not be, I shall most confidently reply: rather that thing was going to be which God did, not that which, had it been going to be, He would have done this. For God assuredly knew what He was going to do, and therefore at the same time knew that that was not going to be which He was going to act so that it should not be; and beyond doubt it is rather true, that which God knows, than that which man supposes.
Whence things future can no more fail to come to pass than things past can fail to have been done; since it is not within the will of God that anything should be false by that very means by which it is true. Wherefore all things that are truly future will without doubt come to pass; but if they shall not have been done, they were not future. So too all things that are truly past have without doubt passed away. Whoever therefore says, 'If God is omnipotent, let Him bring it about that things which have been done should not have been done,' does not see that he is saying this: 'If He is omnipotent, let Him bring it about that things which are true should, by the very fact that they are true, be false.' For He can bring it about that something should not be which was; for then He acts so that it should not be, when He finds that it exists, out of which the change is made.
As when someone who has begun to exist by being born, He causes not to exist by dying; for here He finds a thing already made, out of which the change may be wrought. But who would say that God should cause that which already is not, not to be? For whatever is past already is not. And if something can still be made out of it, then that still is, out of which it is made; and if it is, how is it past? Therefore that which we truly say has been, is not; yet it is true that it has been, because in our judgment it is true, not in that thing which already is not. For the judgment by which we say that something has been is true for this reason: because that of which we speak already is not. This judgment God cannot make false, because He is not contrary to truth.