Augustine in His Own Words
Against the Manichees 227 veyed that, once interpreted, force those who wanted beforehand to condemn rather than learn to confess their own misery.36
Christ's Refreshing Presence in the
Old Testament
Faustus had dismissed the Old Testament as unworthy of and worthless to true Christians. This attitude exasperated Augustine. In his Against Faustus, he spends more energy answering this objection than any other. Why? Because, as time went on, he became deeply convinced that the Old Testament did not simply offer scattered predictions about Christ's coming; it itself contained the story of Christ. To reject the Old Testament was to reject Christ. He tells Faustus at one point: "Everything contained there in the texts [of the Old Testament] is said either of Christ or on account of him."37 In the following passage, one sees how Augustine sensed Christ's "refreshing" presence everywhere in the pages of the Old Testament. From Against Faustus the Manichee, Book 12:
(25) You say that Christ was not predicted by the Israelite prophets— Christ, the One for whom all those [Old Testament] pages keep vigil, looking out so as to predict him. If only you would just piously scrutinize things rather than superficially rail against them. Who else left his own land and his own kinsmen in the person of Abraham in order to grow rich and prosperous among outsiders (Gn 12:1–3) but the One who, as we see, abandoned the land and kin of the Jews—from which He was born according to the flesh— and flourished and prevailed among the Gentiles? Who else carried wood for sacrifice in the person of Isaac (Gn 22:6) but the One who Himself carried the cross for His own Passion? What other soon-to-be-immolated ram got His horns snagged in a thornbush (Gn 22:13) except the One who got fastened to the cross-beam of the cross as an offering on our behalf?
(26) Who else wrestled with Jacob in the person of the angel when, on the one hand, He blessed—as the weaker to the stronger and the conquered to the conqueror—the one who overcame him and yet, on the other hand, He rendered [Jacob's] thigh bone lame (Gn 32:24–31), but the One who, having allowed the people of Israel to overcome Him, blessed those among them who believed in Him? Jacob's thigh, however, became lame, as it were, in the multitude of the people of His flesh. What other stone was placed at Jacob's head and was even anointed (Gn 28:11) but Christ, the head of the [new] man? (This happened so that, in some way, it would be named and expressed. For
36. De utilitate credendi 3.9 (CSEL 25.1:12–13); my trans., based on Meagher, FOTC 4:400–402. 37. Contra Faustum 12.7 (CSEL 25.1:335); my trans.
who is unaware that "Christ" means "anointed one"?) Christ refers to this very thing in the Gospel and testifies to it openly as a figure of Himself when He said that a certain Nathaniel was a true Israelite, in whom there was no deceit. And when that man (as though having that Stone at his head) confessed that Christ was Son of God and King of Israel (Jn 1:47–50), by this confession in some way anointing the stone, that is, acknowledging that Christ was the Anointed One, then the Lord rightly recalled the matter, what Jacob—who, through the blessing, was called Israel—saw: "Amen I say to you, you will see the heavens open and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man" (Jn 1:51). For Israel had seen this when he had the stone at his head: a stairway from earth to heaven on which the angels of God were ascending and descending (Gn 28:11–18).
The angels symbolize the evangelists, the preachers of Christ. The ascending refers to how they, in seeking to understand Christ's super-eminent divinity, transcend the created universe to find, as in the beginning, God with God, the One through whom all things were made. The descending, however, refers to finding Him "born from a woman, born under the Law, in order that He may redeem those who were under the Law" (Gal 4:4–5). For in Him there is a stairway from earth to heaven, from flesh to spirit, because, in progressing in Him, fleshly persons become spiritual ones by ascending. And these spiritual persons themselves descend in a certain way to those being nourished on milk when they cannot speak to them as spiritual ones but only as fleshly (1 Cor 3:1–3). And thus they both ascend and descend upon the Son of Man. For the Son of Man is above as our Head—that is, the Savior Himself—and the Son of Man is below in His body—that is, the Church. We understand that He Himself is the stairway because He Himself said: "I am the Way" (Jn 14:6). To Him, therefore, one ascends in order that He may be understood as He is in heaven's heights; and to Him one descends in order that the little ones may be nourished in His members. And so through Him one ascends and descends. Following His example, those who are preachers not only rise up in order that they may see Him in His sublimity but, humbling themselves, announce Him soberly. Look, see the Apostle ascending: "If we become ecstatic in mind," he says, "it is for God." Look, see him descending: "If we become sober," he says, "it is for you" (2 Cor 5:13). Let the Apostle speak of the One by whom he ascends and descends: "For the love of Christ compels us to the conviction that if one has died for all, then all have died. And He died for all, that those who live live no longer for themselves but for Him who died and rose for them" (2 Cor 5:14–15).
(27) Those who take no delight in these sacred scenes of sacred Scripture turn to [Manichean] fables, unable to sustain themselves on healthy teaching (2 Tm 4:3–4). And, of course, those fables provoke all sorts of delights in the