Hence we recalled a little earlier what Paul says: 'For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God.' These are the eyes flashing from wine. Yet because there follows: 'or if we are sober, it is for you,' the little ones are not left to be nourished only with milk, for here too there follows: 'and his teeth whiter than milk.' What do you answer to these things, you madmen? Surely these matters are plain; surely they drive off not only the slanders of contradiction but even the mists of doubt. Seek first for such things in those books; believe first in such things, which now can be neither all recounted by me, because they are too many, nor many, because it would be long, nor would I wish them to be few, lest they be thought by those men to stand alone.
—for those men do not read those books—and lest a faithful and diligent reader reproach me, when he has found many things more evident, for having set down precisely these which happened to occur to me for the moment. For you will find many things which do not need even such an admonition as I have just employed in the words concerning Jacob. For who would now seek an expositor while he reads: 'He was led as a sheep to the slaughter,' and all the things said there in manifold and evident ways: 'that by his bruise we are healed, that he himself bore our sins'? Who would not think it is chanted like a Gospel: 'They pierced my hands and my feet, they numbered all my bones; but they themselves gazed upon me and looked at me;'
'they divided my garments among them, and cast lots upon my clothing'? Who, unless exceedingly blind, does not now perceive to be fulfilled: 'All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship in his sight'? What of that in the Gospel: 'My soul is sorrowful even unto death,' and: 'Now is my soul troubled'? Did it not sound before in the Psalm: 'I slept, being troubled'? And how did it come about that he slept? By whose voices was it cried out: 'Crucify, crucify'? Does it not in the following Psalm foretell: 'The sons of men, their teeth are weapons and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword'?
But what did they do, what harm did they inflict on him who was to rise again, to ascend above the heavens, and to possess the whole globe of the earth by the glory of his name? See whether the Psalm passed this over beforehand in silence; for there follows: 'Be exalted above the heavens, O God, and thy glory above all the earth.' Who has ever doubted that it was said of Christ: 'The Lord said unto me, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee; ask of me, and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance, and for thy possession the ends of the earth'? Whom else has anyone been permitted to understand where Jeremiah says, doubtless of Wisdom: 'He delivered her to Jacob his servant and to Israel his beloved; afterward she was seen upon earth, and conversed with men'?
Who would not recognize the same Saviour in Daniel, when to the Ancient of days the Son of man is presented and receives a kingdom without end, that all nations should serve him? And now, if that passage which the Lord recalled from the prophecy of the same Daniel—'When you shall see the abomination of desolation (which was spoken of by Daniel) standing in the holy place: let him who reads understand'—if, computing also the times of the weeks, that number be worked through, not only Christ but even the time is found in which it behooved him to come to suffer. And yet even without any reckoning of times we are wont to press the Jews with the manifest outcomes of events, with whom our dispute is not
whether our salvation is in Christ, but whether he has already come and suffered. But they are convicted by the very plainest facts—not only concerning the faith of all the nations, which the same Scripture, to which they are compelled to yield, foretold would serve him, a faith which shines forth so brightly throughout the whole world that it strikes the eyes of all who evade it—but also concerning those things which have already been done within the Jewish people itself: that the sanctuary is overthrown, that the sacrifice and the priesthood and the ancient anointing have ceased. All these Daniel then foretold as future, when he clearly prophesied that the Holy of Holies would be anointed. Since therefore all these things have already been done, there is required of them also the anointed Holy of Holies, and what they should answer they do not find.
But how would they dispute with us not about Christ, but only about his coming, unless they well knew that he had been prophesied in their books? Why do they ask of John whether he himself is the Christ? Why do they say to the Lord himself: 'How long dost thou hold our soul in suspense? If thou art the Christ, tell us plainly'? Why do Peter and Andrew and Philip say to Nathanael: 'We have found the Messiah, which is interpreted Christ,' unless because this name was both known and awaited in that people through those writings? For no other nation had and called its kings and priests 'christs' (anointed), whose significant anointing it was not lawful should cease except when he had come who was foretold in them.
For thus did the Jews know those christs of theirs, yet in such a way that they hoped for one, by whom at last they might be set free; but blinded by the hidden justice of God, while they think only of his power, they did not understand his weakness, in which he died for us. Hence we recognize those words foretold concerning them in the book of Wisdom: 'Let us condemn him to a most shameful death; for there shall be respect had unto him in his words. If he be truly the Son of God, he will receive him and deliver him from the hands of his adversaries. These things they thought, and were deceived; for their own malice blinded them.' This can also be said most truly of these men, who amid so great a multitude of testimonies, amid so great an ordering of things foretold,
amid so great a manifestation of things fulfilled, still say that Christ was not prophesied in those Scriptures. But if they say this again and again, we too can again and again bring forth documents, with the help of him who has furnished so great an abundance against the slanders of human error, so that we need not repeat those things which we have already recalled. Now furthermore, there is that other evasion of Faustus which, when he too was being struck by the most brilliant light of prophecy, I believe he thought he had most cunningly devised. It is irksome even to refute it, lest for that reason he be thought to have said something because it was deemed worthy to answer him. For what most demented man would say that it is a mark of feeble faith not to believe concerning Christ without a witness?
I would wish these men to answer me: on whose word did they themselves believe concerning Christ? Did they hear that voice from heaven: 'This is my Son'? For it is rather to that voice that Faustus bids us believe—he who will not have men believed as witnesses concerning Christ—as though the knowledge of that same voice had reached even to us without any human witness, when it is both manifest that it so reached us, and the Apostle says: 'But how shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe him whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? Or how shall they preach unless they be sent? As it is written: How beautiful are the feet of them that announce peace, that announce good things!'
You certainly see how prophetic testimony accompanies the preaching of apostolic teaching. For that the things the apostles announced might not be despised nor accounted fabulous, it was shown that these had been foretold beforehand by the prophets; because, even though miracles bore witness, there would not have been lacking—as even now some still mutter—men who would ascribe all those things to magical power, had not such thinking of theirs been overcome by prophetic attestation. For that they had established for themselves prophets by magical arts long before those prophets were born, by whom they should be foretold—no one at all would say this. But of course Faustus forbids us to believe concerning the true Christ on the testimony of the Hebrew prophets—he who believed concerning the false Christ on the errors of the Persians.
But catholic discipline teaches that the Christian mind ought first to be nourished by simple faith, in order to make it capable of understanding things heavenly and eternal. For thus the prophet also says: 'Unless you believe, you shall not understand.' And that very thing is the simple faith by which we believe before we come to know the surpassing knowledge of the love of Christ, that we may be filled unto all the fulness of God. Not without cause was the dispensation of his humility—by which he was humanly born and suffered—foretold so long beforehand by the prophets, through the prophetic nation, through the prophetic people, through the prophetic kingdom, save because in that foolishness which is wiser than men, and in that weakness which is stronger than men,
something great lies hidden unto our justification and glorification, and there are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, which are opened to no one who despises the food conveyed through the maternal flesh—that is, the nourishment of milk through the apostolic and prophetic breasts—and who, disdaining it as infantile fare as though of some overgrown age, rushes headlong into the poisons of heretics before he rushes into the food of wisdom, for which he rashly judges himself fit. Therefore, that we say a simple faith is necessary is not contrary to what we say, that the prophets are to be believed; for it pertains rather to this, that the prophets be believed before, with a mind purified and strengthened, one can understand who it was that so spoke through the prophets.
'But,' they say, 'if they prophesied Christ, they did not live worthily nor in keeping with their prophesying.' Whence do you know this? Or can you, whose righteousness is that a melon which has no feeling ought rather to be relieved by you, that you may eat it, than a hungry beggar to whom you might give something to eat—can you judge what it is to live either well or ill? But for catholic little ones, before they know what is the perfect righteousness of the human soul, and how great is the difference between that righteousness for which one sighs and this by which one here lives, it suffices to hold this opinion of those men which the soundness of apostolic teaching commends: 'that the just man lives by faith'; and 'Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness.'
For the Scripture, foreseeing that God justifies the nations by faith, foretold to Abraham, saying: 'In thy seed shall all nations be blessed.' These are the Apostle's words. To this voice, so clear and so very well known to all, if you would awaken from your most deceitful dreams, you would follow the footsteps of our father Abraham and be blessed in his seed together with all the nations. For he himself received, as the Apostle says, 'the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of faith which he had while uncircumcised: that he might be the father of all who believe through uncircumcision, that it might be reckoned to them also for righteousness; and the father of the circumcision to those who are not only of the circumcision,'
'but also who follow the footsteps of the faith of our father Abraham which he had while uncircumcised.' Since therefore the righteousness of his faith is set before us as an example to be imitated, so that we too, being justified by faith, may have peace with God, we ought to understand how he lived, not to reproach him, lest we slip out by miscarriage from the womb of mother Church before, formed by a stable conception, we are born perfected. This much I would briefly answer to Faustus concerning the morals of the patriarchs and prophets, in the voice of our little ones—among whom I would reckon even myself—provided that I do not reproach the life of the holy men of old, even if I do not understand how mystically they lived,
whose life the apostles laudably proclaimed to us in their Gospel, just as those men in their prophecy foretold the apostles who were to come, so that the two Testaments cry out to one another, like the two seraphim: 'Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God of hosts.' But when Faustus begins to accuse the patriarchs and prophets, not with a general and indefinite reproach as he did here, but by properly recounting their deeds, the Lord their God—who is also ours—will help me to answer each point fittingly and aptly. But as it is, Faustus the Manichaean reviles those men; the Apostle Paul, however, praises them: let each choose whom he will believe. THE THIRTEENTH BOOK. FAUSTUS said:
How do you worship Christ while repudiating the prophets, from whose predictions it is received that he was to come? That any of the prophets of the Hebrews announced our Christ—that is, the Son of God—I do not know whether anyone could prove, once the matter begins to be examined. Yet even if this be so, what is it to us? That reproach remains for those who, converted perhaps from Judaism to Christianity, afterward neglected—under the testimonies, as you allege, of the prophets—those prophets, as being ungrateful for their benefits. But we for our part are Gentiles by nature—that is, what Paul calls uncircumcision—born under another law and with other forerunners, whom Gentiledom calls seers (vates).
And from among these we were afterward converted to Christianity, not first made Jews so that we should deservedly follow the faith of the Hebrew prophets in going over to Christianity, but roused solely by the fame and by the report of the virtues and wisdom of our liberator Jesus. Hence, if while I still lingered in my ancestral religion a preacher had come to me wishing to introduce Christ from the prophets, I would straightway have thought him mad, who to me—a Gentile and a man of a far different religion—should attempt to build up doubtful things from more doubtful ones. What need, then, was there, except that he should first persuade me that the prophets ought to be believed by me, and then through the prophets, Christ? And that this very thing might come about, there was in turn need of other prophets who might make good faith for those.
Wherefore, if you think Christ is to be accepted through the prophets, through whom will you accept the prophets? Or will you say 'through Christ in turn'—that is, that the one commends the other, Christ the prophets and the prophets Christ? But a pagan, free from the condition of either of them, would believe neither the prophets when they speak of Christ nor Christ when he speaks of the prophets. Thus whoever becomes a Christian from among the Gentiles owes the whole to none other than his own faith. And that what we say may be made clearer by an example, let us suppose that some Gentile is now being catechized by us, to whom, sitting beside him, we say: 'Believe Christ, because he is God.' But he says: 'Whence do you prove this to me?' And we answering say: 'From the prophets.' Again, he asking: 'Which prophets?'
We answer: 'The Hebrews.' And he, smiling, says: 'But these I by no means believe.' We in turn answer: 'What? But Christ confirms them.' And he, laughing much more, says: 'What? But I do not believe even in Christ himself.' What will happen once things have passed off in this way? Shall we not be stuck, and he, having laughed at us as at foolish men, return to his own affairs? Thus, as I have said, the testimonies of the Hebrews contribute nothing to the Christian Church, which consists more of Gentiles than of Jews. Indeed, if there are, as report goes, any predictions of the Sibyls concerning Christ, or of Hermes whom they call Trismegistus, or of Orpheus and other seers among the Gentiles, these will be able to help us somewhat toward faith, we who are made Christians from among the Gentiles;
but the testimonies of the Hebrews, even if they be true, are useless to us before faith, and superfluous after faith: because before, indeed, we could not believe them, but now we believe them from a superabundance. AUGUSTINE replied: May the foregoing so lengthy response profit us in this place toward brevity of reply. For I think that whoever has now read it laughs at this man raving such things and still saying that the Hebrew prophets did not foretell Christ the Son of God—in which nation alone the very name that is called 'Christ' was most sacred, both in king and in priest, and was not taken away thence until he himself had come who was prefigured in them. But let them themselves answer whence they learned the name of Christ.
If from Mani, I ask of Mani himself how they believed him—to say nothing of others—Africans believing a Persian. Since Faustus reproaches the Romans and Greeks or other nations, if they should believe the Hebrew prophets as foreigners concerning Christ, and says that the oracles of the Sibyl and of Orpheus, or if perchance there be any others of the Gentile seers, are more suited to them for believing in Christ—and he does not observe that these are recited in no churches, whereas the Hebrew prophets shine forth among all nations and lead such great swarms of the faithful to Christian salvation—but to say that Hebrew prophecy is not suited to the Gentiles for believing in Christ, when he sees all nations believing in Christ through Hebrew prophecy, is ridiculous madness.
Such a Christ as was foretold through the Hebrews displeases you; and yet all the peoples of the nations, among whom you suppose Hebrew prophecy to have no weight of authority, believe in such a Christ as was foretold through the Hebrews—by accepting, namely, the Gospel which God had promised beforehand, as the Apostle recalls, through his prophets in the holy Scriptures concerning his Son, who was made to him of the seed of David according to the flesh. Whence the prophet Isaiah says: 'There shall be a root of Jesse, who shall arise to rule the nations; in him shall the nations hope,' and: 'Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel,' which is interpreted: 'God with us.'
Let these men not suppose that only a man was foretold by the Hebrew prophets as Christ; for this Faustus seems to have touched upon when he said 'our Christ, the Son of God'—as though the Hebrews did not call their Christ the Son of God. Behold, we have shown from Hebrew prophecy that Christ, the son of the virgin, is God. For indeed the Lord himself, lest the carnal Jews too should think that this alone was the Christ—that for our sake he was made man of the seed of David—admonishes them from the prophecy of David himself, asking of them what seemed to them concerning the Christ, whose son they said he was. When they had answered 'David's,' lest, as I said, this alone should be thought, and they should not regard Emmanuel, which is interpreted 'God with us,' he says: 'How then,'
'David himself in the Spirit calls him Lord: The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.' Behold, I say, we have shown from Hebrew prophecy that Christ is God; do you show some prophecy of yours, whence you learned the name of Christ. For your Mani was not a prophet of a Christ to come: he indeed calls himself Christ's apostle, with most shameless falsehood, of course; for it is established that this heresy arose not only after Tertullian but even after Cyprian. Yet all his letters begin thus: 'Manichaeus, an apostle of Jesus Christ.' Why did you believe this man concerning Christ? What witness did he bring you of his apostleship?
And the very name of Christ, which we know to have been instituted only in the kingdom of the Jews, among priests and kings, so that not only this or that man, but the whole nation itself and the whole kingdom might become a prophet of Christ and of the Christian kingdom—why did this man invade, why did he usurp it, he who forbids you to believe the Hebrew prophets, so that a false and deceitful apostle might make you the deceitful disciples of a false Christ? Finally, lest it should be said to him, 'You lie,' let him bring forth to you also some prophets, foretelling Christ according to his own assertion. What will you do with him, of the kind that Faustus set forth as being catechized in the example, who was willing to believe neither those prophets nor him? Or will he call our apostles as witnesses for himself? He will not, I suppose, produce men.
but will open books: which he will find opened not for him, but against him. For there we read and teach that Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, there that the Son of God was made of the seed of David according to the flesh. But if he says these have been falsified, he himself will impugn the trustworthiness of his own witnesses; but if he brings forth others, which he says are the codices of our apostles, how will he himself give them the authority which he did not receive through the churches of Christ established by the apostles themselves, so that thence, with the recommendation confirmed, it might run down to posterity? How does he, whom I do not believe, bring forth to me the scriptures by which I should believe concerning him, and himself attempts to give them authority, when I do not believe him?
But if you believed report concerning Christ—for this too Faustus, hemmed in by great straits, touched upon in passing, lest, namely, he be compelled either to bring forth those books whose authority is null, or be bound to those whose authority is contrary to him—therefore if you believed report concerning Christ, see whether it is a suitable witness; consider diligently into what you are hurling yourselves. For report spreads many evil things about you, which you do not wish to be believed. What reasoning, then, is it to wish this report about Christ to be truthful, which you wish to be lying about yourselves? What? Since you even contradict the report about Christ.
For that report is clearer, that one more prevailing, which holds the ears and minds and tongues of all nations, which it fills with Christ, disseminated of the seed of David according to the Hebrew Scriptures—for it is written there, promised to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob: 'In thy seed shall all nations be blessed.' What then do you answer, on whose word you believed concerning Christ, you to whom foreign witnesses are not pleasing? Furthermore, the authority of our books, strengthened by the consent of so many nations through the successions of apostles, bishops, and councils, is against you; but that of yours is null, both because it is brought forth by so few, and by those who worship a lying god and Christ.
Whence it comes about, against their lying doctrine, that they too—as imitators of their god and Christ—should be held to be liars. But report itself, even when consulted, both proclaims you to be most wicked and does not cease to preach Christ of the seed of David against you. You did not hear the voice of the Father from heaven; you did not see the works of Christ by which he bore witness concerning himself; the codices in which these things are written you accept, as it were, that you may deceive under a Christian appearance; yet, lest they be read against you, you say they have been falsified. You bring forth from them Christ saying: 'If you do not believe me, believe the works,' and: 'I am he who bears witness of myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness of me,' and you do not wish it to be brought forth from them against you:
'Search the Scriptures, in which you think you have eternal life; they themselves bear witness of me,' and: 'If you believed Moses, you would believe me also; for he wrote of me,' and: 'They have there Moses and the prophets; let them hear them,' and: 'If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe if someone rise from the dead!' Whence have you come here? Whence do you take confidence? You spurn Scriptures established and commended with such great authority; you work no miracles: which, if you did work them, we would be on our guard even against these among you, since the Lord forewarns us, saying: 'Many false christs and false prophets shall arise, and shall do signs and great wonders, so as to deceive, if it be possible, even the elect; behold, I have foretold you.'
To such a degree did he wish nothing to be believed against the confirmed authority of the Scriptures, which proves its own trustworthiness by the very facts, which it shows to be fulfilled and accomplished through the successions of the ages, which it foretold so long before they came to pass. It remains that you should say you offer a reasoning so certain and unconquerable that, the truth being declared through itself, it requires no authority of a witness, no truth of a miracle. What do you say? What do you bring forth? What reasoning, what truth? That fable of yours is long and empty, a childish mockery and a womanish diversion and an old-woman's raving, containing a truncated beginning, a rotten middle, and a ruinous end. For when it has been said to you from its beginning:
'To the immortal, invisible, incorruptible God, what could the nation of darkness have done, if he had been unwilling to fight with it?' And concerning its middle: 'How is God incorruptible and undefiled, whose members you grind to pieces by eating and digesting them in fruits and vegetables, that you may purify them?' And concerning its end: 'What did the wretched soul do, that it should be punished with a perpetual chain in the globe of darkness—the soul which, defiled not by its own fault but by another's, could not be cleansed because its own god failed, by whose sending it was polluted?'—when you hesitate and cannot find what to answer, there are seen so many, so large, and so costly codices of yours, and much is lamented the labors of the copyists and the money-bags of the wretched and the bread of the deceived.
If therefore neither the antiquity of the Scriptures' authority, nor the power of miracles, nor the soundness of morals, nor the truth of reasoning supports you, depart confounded and return confessing that he himself is Christ, the Saviour of all who believe in him: whose name and whose Church present times so exhibit as past times announced—not by anyone proceeding from cavernous hiding-places, but by a certain nation and a certain kingdom propagated and established for this purpose, that there all things concerning him might be prefigured beforehand in figures, which are now recognized as expressed in realities, and that there the things foretold through the prophets might be written, which are now furnished as preached through the apostles. Accordingly, set before us some Gentile to be catechized,
in whom Faustus laughed that we should fail, where he himself, not to be laughed at but to be bewailed, failed. For if we say to a Gentile man: 'Believe Christ, because he is God,' and he answers: 'Whence do I believe?'—and, the authority of the prophets being brought forth, he says he does not believe them, because they are Hebrews and he a pagan: we show the trustworthiness of the prophets from those things which they sang would come and are perceived to have come. For I believe it would not escape him how great persecutions the Christian religion had first endured from the kings of this world; or if it did escape him, it would easily be proved to him through the very history of the nations and the imperial laws committed to letters and to memory. And when he learned that this had been foretold from the prophet so long before, who says:
'Why did the nations rage, and the peoples meditate vain things? The kings of the earth stood up, and the princes came together in one against the Lord and against his Christ'—which words it easily appears were not said of David himself in the same psalm; for there is said also that which confounds men however most obstinate by the very manifestation of the facts: 'The Lord said unto me: Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee; ask of me, and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance, and for thy possession the ends of the earth':