Augustine in His Own Words
that he could not possibly suffer without a body of some sort. In terms of spiritual presence he could not suffer such things. In terms of bodily presence, he could not at the same time be in the sun and in the moon and on the cross. So then, if he did not have a body, he was not crucified. But if he had one, where, I ask, did he get it? After all, you say that all bodies come from the realm of the Kingdom of Darkness since you cannot think of divine substance as anything but bodily. From this, you are forced to say either that he was crucified without a body (nothing more absurd and more demented can be said!) or that he only seemed to be crucified, an apparition, a phantasm rather than reality (here again, can impiety get worse?). Or that not all bodies come from the realm of the Kingdom of Darkness, but that there may be a body of divine substance, which, however, is not immortal but can be nailed to wood and killed (this, no less, is overwhelming madness). Or that Christ got a mortal body from the realm of the Kingdom of Darkness. And so you are afraid to believe that the Virgin Mary was the mother of His body, but you are not afraid that the Kingdom of demons is His body's mother. . . .
(26.7) . . . We do not believe that He was born of the Virgin Mary simply because He could not appear to human beings in any other way but existing in real flesh. We believe it because that is what is written in the Scriptures. And unless we so believe them, we will neither be Christians nor be saved. We believe, therefore, that Christ was born from the Virgin Mary because it is written in the Gospel. We believe that Christ was crucified and died because it is written in the Gospel. Truly born and truly died because the Gospel is truth. But why He willed to suffer all those things in the flesh that He had taken up from the womb of a woman—that most lofty decision-making belongs to Him. Perhaps He judged that taking the form of a male and being born from a female was a way of commending and honoring both sexes—both of which He had created. Perhaps it was some other reason. Whatever it may have been, I will not carelessly speculate. But I can confidently say that it did not happen any other way than what the truth of the Gospel teaches; nor would it have happened in any other way than what the Wisdom of God judged right. We prefer the faith of the Gospel over the wranglings of heretics, and we praise the decision of God's Wisdom over the decision of whatsoever kind of creature.39
A Peroration on the Controversy
In concluding his early commentary on Genesis, Augustine appended a summary of the points where Manichees and Christians differ. Roland Teske has remarked that "this
39. Contra Faustum 20.11–26.7 (CSEL 25.1:548–736); my trans.