Faustus does not think it would be a great honor to sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, whose moral characters as set forth in the Old Testament he detests.  He justifies his subjective criticism of Scripture.  Augustin sums up the argument, claims the victory, and exhorts the Manichæans to abandon their opposition to the Old Testament notwithstanding the difficulties that it presents, and to recognize the authority of the Catholic Church.

1.  Faustus said:  You quote from the Gospel the words, "Many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven,"¹⁰⁷³

1073 Matt. viii. 11.

1074 Luke xxiii. 43.

1075 Matt. xxi. 31.

1076 John viii. 3-11.

1077 Matt. v. 45.

2.  However, there is a difficulty in deciding as regards this verse too, whether the words were really spoken to Christ, for there is a discrepancy in the narratives.  For while two evangelists, Matthew and Luke, both alike tell of the centurion whose servant was sick, and to whom these words of Jesus are supposed to have applied, that He had not seen so great faith, no, not in Israel, as in this man, though a Gentile and a Pagan, because he said that he was not worthy that Jesus should come under his roof, but wished Him only to speak the word, and his servant should be healed; Matthew alone adds that Jesus went on to say, "Verily I say unto you, that many shall come from the east and from the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven; but the children of the kingdom shall be cast into outer darkness."  By the many who should come are meant the Pagans, on account of the centurion, in whom, although he was a Gentile, so great faith was found; and the children of the kingdom are the Jews, in whom there was no faith found.  Luke, again, though he too mentions the occurrence in his Gospel as part of the narrative of the miracles of Christ, says nothing of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  If it is said that he omitted it because it had been already said by Matthew, why does he tell the story at all of the centurion and his servant, since that, too, has the advantage of being recorded at length in Matthew’s ingenious narrative?  But the passage is corrupt.  For, in describing the centurion’s application to Jesus, Matthew says that he came himself to ask for a cure; while Luke says he did not, but sent elders of the Jews, and that they, in case Jesus should despise the centurion as a Gentile (for they will have Jesus to be a thorough Jew), set about persuading Him, by saying that he was worthy for whom He should do this, because he loved their nation, and had built them a synagogue; ¹⁰⁷⁸

1078 Matt. viii. 5-13; Luke vii. 2-10.

1079 Luke xiii. 24-29.

3.  It is not without reason that we bring a critical judgment to the study of Scriptures where there are such discrepancies and contradictions.  By thus examining everything, and comparing one passage with another, we determine which contains Christ’s actual words, and what may or may not be genuine.  For your predecessors have made many interpolations in the words of our Lord, which thus appear under His name, while they disagree with His doctrine.  Besides, as we have proved again and again, the writings are not the production of Christ or of His apostles, but a compilation of rumors and beliefs, made, long after their departure, by some obscure semi-Jews, not in harmony even with one another, and published by them under the name of the apostles, or of those considered the followers of the apostles, so as to give the appearance of apostolic authority to all these blunders and falsehoods.  But whatever you make of that, as regards this verse, I repeat that I do not insist on rejecting it.  It is enough for my position, that, as I said before, and as you are obliged to confess, before the coming of our Lord all the patriarchs and prophets of Israel lay in infernal darkness for their sins.  Even though they may have been restored to light and liberty by Christ, that has nothing to do with the hateful character of their lives.  We hate and eschew not their persons, but their characters; not as they are now, when they are purified, but as they were, when impure.  So, whatever you think of this verse, it does not affect us:  for if it is genuine, it only illustrates Christ’s goodness and compassion; and if it is spurious, those who wrote it are to blame.  Our cause is as safe as it always is.

4.  Augustin replied:  Poor safety, indeed! when you contradict yourself by hating the patriarchs as impure, at the same time that you grieve for your impure god.  You allow that, since the advent of the Saviour, the patriarchs have had purity restored, and have enjoyed the rest of the blessed; while your god, even after the Saviour’s advent, still lies in darkness, is still sunk in the ocean of iniquity, still wallows in the mire of all uncleanness.  These men, therefore, were not only better than your god in their lives, but also happier in their death.  Where was the abode of the just who departed from this life before Christ’s coming in the flesh, and whether their condition also was improved by the passion of Christ, in whom they had believed as to come, and to suffer, and to rise again, and had, moreover, foretold this in suitable language under the guidance of the Spirit of prophecy, is to be discovered from the Holy Scriptures, if any clear discovery in this matter is possible; we are not called on to adopt the crude notions of all and sundry, still less the heretical opinions of men who have gone astray into such egregious error.  There is a vain attempt here on the part of Faustus to introduce by a side-door the idea that we may obtain something after this life besides the due reward of our conduct in this life.  It will be better for you to abandon your error while you are still alive, and to embrace and hold the truths of the Catholic faith.  Otherwise the expectations of the unrighteous will be sadly disappointed when God begins to fulfill His threatenings to the unrighteous.

5.  I have already given what I considered a sufficient answer to Faustus’ calumnies of the lives of the patriarchs.  That they were punished at their death, or that they were justified after the Lord’s passion, is not what we learn from His commendation of them, when He admonished the Jews that, if they were Abraham’s children, they should do the works of Abraham, and said that Abraham desired to see His day, and was glad when he saw it; ¹⁰⁸⁰

1080 John viii. 39; 56.

1081 Luke xvi. 23.

1082 Rom. iv. 3.

6.  You are so hardened in your errors against the testimonies of Scripture, that nothing can be made of you; for whenever anything is quoted against you, you have the boldness to say that it is written not by the apostle, but by some pretender under his name.  The doctrine of demons which you preach is so opposed to Christian doctrine, that you could not continue, as professing Christians, to maintain it, unless you denied the truth of the apostolic writings.  How can you thus do injury to your own souls?  Where will you find any authority, if not in the Gospel and apostolic writings?  How can we be sure of the authorship of any book, if we doubt the apostolic origin of those books which are attributed to the apostles by the Church which the apostles themselves founded, and which occupies so conspicuous a place in all lands, and if at the same time we acknowledge as the undoubted production of the apostles what is brought forward by heretics in opposition to the Church, whose authors, from whom they derive their name, lived long after the apostles?  And do we not see in profane literature that there are well-known authors under whose names many things have been published after their time which have been rejected, either from inconsistency with their ascertained writings, or from their not having been known in the lifetime of the authors, so as to be banded down with the confirmatory statement of the authors themselves, or of their friends?  To give a single example, were not some books published lately under the name of the distinguished physician Hippocrates, which were not received as authoritative by physicians?  And this decision remained unaltered in spite of some similarity in style and matter:  for, when compared to the genuine writings of Hippocrates, these books were found to be inferior; besides that they were not recognized as his at the time when his authorship of his genuine productions was ascertained.  Those books, again, from a comparison with which the productions of questionable origin were rejected, are with certainty attributed to Hippocrates; and any one who denies their authorship is answered only by ridicule, simply because there is a succession of testimonies to the books from the time of Hippocrates to the present day, which makes it unreasonable either now or hereafter to have any doubt on the subject.  How do we know the authorship of the works of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Varro, and other similar writers, but by the unbroken chain of evidence?  So also with the numerous commentaries on the ecclesiastical books, which have no canonical authority, and yet show a desire of usefulness and a spirit of inquiry.  How is the authorship ascertained in each case, except by the author’s having brought his work into public notice as much as possible in his own lifetime, and, by the transmission of the information from one to another in continuous order, the belief becoming more certain as it becomes more general, up to our own day; so that, when we are questioned as to the authorship of any book, we have no difficulty in answering?  But why speak of old books?  Take the books now before us:  should any one, after some years, deny that this book was written by me, or that Faustus’ was written by him, where is evidence for the fact to be found but in the information possessed by some at the present time, and transmitted by them through successive generations even to distant times?  From all this it follows, that no one who has not yielded to the malicious and deceitful suggestions of lying devils, can be so blinded by passion as to deny the ability of the Church of the apostles—a community of brethren as numerous as they were faithful—to transmit their writings unaltered to posterity, as the original seats of the apostles have been occupied by a continuous succession of bishops to the present day, especially when we are accustomed to see this happen in the case of ordinary writings both in the Church and out of it.

7.  But Faustus finds contradictions in the Gospels.  Say, rather, that Faustus reads the Gospels in a wrong spirit, that he is too foolish to understand, and too blind to see.  If you were animated with piety instead of being misled by party spirit, you might easily, by examining these passages, discover a wonderful and most instructive harmony among the writers.  Who, in reading two narratives of the same event, would think of charging one or both of the authors with error or falsehood, because one omits what the other mentions, or one tells concisely, but with substantial agreement, what the other relates in detail, so as to indicate not only what was done, but also how it was done?  This is what Faustus does in his attempt to impeach the truth of the Gospels; as if Luke’s omitting some saying of Christ recorded in Matthew implied a denial on the part of Luke of Matthew’s statement.  There is no real difficulty in the case; and to make a difficulty shows want of thought, or of the ability to think.  There is, indeed, a point in the narrative of the centurion which is discussed among believers, and on which objections are raised by unbelievers of no great learning, who prove their quarrelsomeness, when, after being instructed, they do not give up their errors.  The point is, that Matthew says that the centurion came to Jesus "beseeching Him, and saying;" while Luke says that he sent to Jesus the elders of the Jews with this same request, that He would heal his servant who was sick; and that when He came near the house he sent others, through whom he said that he was not worthy that Jesus should come into his house, and that he was not worthy to come himself to Jesus.  How, then, do we read in Matthew, "He came to Him, beseeching Him, and saying, My servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, and grievously tormented?"¹⁰⁸³

1083 Matt. viii. 5-13; Luke vii. 2-10.

8.  Those who examine this matter not in a disputatious but in a calm believing spirit are invited to come to Jesus, not outwardly but in heart, not in bodily presence but in the power of faith, as the centurion did, and then they will better understand Matthew’s narrative.  To such it is said in the Psalm "Come unto Him, and be enlightened; and your faces shall not be ashamed."¹⁰⁸⁴

1084 Ps. xxxiv. 5.

1085 Luke viii. 43; 46.

9.  Now that all Faustus’ calumnies have been refuted, those at least on the subjects here treated of at large and explained fully as the Lord has enabled me, I close with a word of counsel to you who are implicated in those shocking and damnable errors, that, if you acknowledge the supreme authority of Scripture, you should recognise that authority which from the time of Christ Himself, through the ministry of His apostles, and through a regular succession of bishops in the seats of the apostles, has been preserved to our own day throughout the whole world, with a reputation known to all.  There the Old Testament too has its difficulties solved, and its predictions fulfilled.  If you ask for demonstration, consider first what you are, how unfit for comprehending the nature of your own soul, not to speak of God; I mean an intelligent comprehension, such as you profess to desire, or to have once desired, and not the notions of a credulous fancy.  Admitting this incompetency, which must continue while you remain as you are, you may at least be referred to the natural conviction of every human mind, unless it is corrupted by error, of the perfect unchangeableness and incorruptibility of the nature and substance of God.  Admit this, or believe it, and you will no longer be Manichæans, so that in course of time you may become Catholics.

E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH