Augustine in His Own Words (continued)
and children, other things which the Gospel commands. And you question whether I accept the Gospel? Maybe it's just that you don't know what committing to the Gospel means. The Gospel is nothing other than the preaching and the commands of Christ. I've rejected silver and gold. I've given up having money in my wallet. I'm content with each day's food. I don't worry about tomorrow. Nor am I anxious about whether my stomach's going to get filled or my body clothed. And you want to know whether I accept the Gospel? You see in me Christ's Beatitudes—those things that make up the Gospel. And you ask me whether I accept this Gospel? You see a poor man. You see someone meek. You see a peacemaker, one pure in heart, one mourning, hungering, thirsting, one persecuted and hated for righteousness' sake. And you doubt whether I accept the Gospel!"13
(ii) Manichean Rejection of the Incarnation
Manicheism had three different Christ figures. One was "Jesus the Splendor," a mythical being who served as messenger from the Kingdom of Light. Another was the "suffering Jesus" whose light remained trapped in the material world (especially within vegetation). A third was the Jesus of the Gospels, though Manichees denied that this Jesus was really born of the Virgin Mary or really died on the cross. From Faustus, Chapters, quoted in Augustine, Against Faustus the Manichee, Books 2, 3, and 20:
(2.1) Faustus said: "Do I accept the Gospel? Absolutely! Do I therefore accept that Christ was born? Absolutely not! For it does not follow that, if I accept the Gospel, on account of that I accept that Christ was born. Why? Because the Gospel came into being and gets its name from the preaching of Christ. And He Himself never says that He was born from human beings. Genealogy is so far from being Gospel that even its writers did not dare name the genealogy 'the Gospel' . . .
(3.1) "Do I accept the Incarnation? For my part, I really tried for a long time to persuade myself, somehow or other, that God was born. But I ran up against the discrepancy of two of the evangelists, Luke and Matthew, who wrote down His genealogy, and I hesitated, uncertain which would be better to follow. For I thought it might happen that, since I'm not prescient, the one I figured to be lying was telling the truth and the one I figured to be telling the truth was perhaps lying. So I went on past their unending and, to me, interminable wrangling, and conferred with John and Mark— from those two to these two, from those evangelists to others who go by the same name. The beginnings [of John's and Mark's Gospels] immediately and not undeservedly pleased me, because they brought in neither David nor Mary nor Joseph, but John says: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God' (Jn 1:1)—meaning Christ. Mark says: 'The Gospel of Jesus Christ Son of God'
13. Contra Faustum 5.1 (CSEL 25.1:271); my trans.