Augustine in His Own Words
Against the Manichees 207
(Mk 1:1), as though correcting Matthew, who calls him 'Son of David.' Maybe the Jesus that Matthew proclaims is not the same Jesus that Mark does. This, therefore, is the reason that I do not accept a Christ who is born. You: Make them agree with one another, if you can; remove this stumbling block for me, and I, somehow or another, will give ground. In any case, it will certainly not be worthy to believe that out of some womb God was born—the God of the Christians. . . .
(20.2) "We believe that the Father dwells in the highest or principal light, which [the Apostle] Paul calls 'inaccessible' (1 Tm 6:16). The Son takes His stand in this second or visible light. The Son is twin-like, as the Apostle knew him, speaking of Christ being God's power and God's wisdom. So we believe that His power dwells in the sun, but His wisdom, in the moon. And, further, we confess that the Holy Spirit, who is third in majesty, takes up residence within the whole ambit of the air, and from His powers or spiritual outpouring, the earth conceives and bears forth the suffering Jesus, who, hanging from every tree, is the life and salvation of humankind. . . . This is our faith."14
(iii) Manichean Rejection of the Old Testament
The Manichees rejected the Old Testament. Here Faustus lists stock reasons for that rejection. From Faustus, Chapters, quoted in Augustine, Against Faustus the Manichee, Book 4:
(1) Faustus said: "Do I accept the Old Testament? If it's my inheritance, I accept it; if not, I don't accept it. Now it's the height of unscrupulousness to seize and lay claim to a will that testifies to one's own disinheritance. Or are you oblivious to the fact that the Old Testament promises the land of the Canaanites to the Jews, that is, to the circumcised and to sacrificers and to abstainers from pigs and the rest of the meats which Moses labeled unclean; to observers of Sabbaths and feasts of unleavened breads and the rest of that sort of stuff—which Moses himself as testator mandated them to observe? No Christian has agreed to these things, and not one of us keeps up these practices. It is only right that in refusing the inheritance we should also hand back the legal documents. This, therefore, is the first reason, I believe, why we should reject the Old Testament—unless you can teach me some more prudential way of seeing it. The second reason is that this inheritance is so miserable, so bodily, and so far off from what profits the soul that, after seeing the blessed promise of the New Testament—which promises me the kingdom of heaven and eternal life—I would turn up my nose at it even if the testator foisted it on me free of charge."15
14. Contra Faustum 2.1–20.2 (CSEL 25.1:253–536); my trans. Augustine discusses these in Contra Faustum 20.11 (CSEL 25.1:548–51), cited below. See Julien Ries, "Jésus le Splendeur, Jesus patibilis, Jésus historique dans les textes manichéens occidentaux," in Gnosisforschung und Religiongeschichte: Festschrift für Kurt Rudolph zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. H. Preißler and H. Seiwert (Marburg: diagonal-Verlag, 1994), 235–45; Majella Franzmann, Jesus in the Manichean Writings (London: T&T Clark, 2003).
15. Contra Faustum 4.1 (CSEL 25.1:268); my trans. On Faustus's anti-Jewish rhetoric and Augustine's