Contra Faustum, I

Contra Faustum, I May 13, 2015

As is well known from Confessions, Faustus played a crucial role in Augustine’s formation. As a young Manichean Auditor and devotee of astrology, Augustine puzzled over philosophical and quasi-scientific conundrums that he wanted to pose to a Manichean master. When Bishop Faustus visited Carthage, Augustine found him affable, humble, charming, but unable or unwilling to give an opinion on speculative or dogmatic questions. 

Faustus’s combination of Manicheanism and Academic skepticism, the latter learned from his reading of Cicero, gave his mind a decidedly practical orientation that allowed him to answer Augustine’s questions with a cheerful, nonplussed “I don’t know.”[1] Faustus was not the kind of guide Augustine was looking for. He maintained contact with Faustus perhaps until he left Carthage for Rome, but he eventually abandoned the Manichees and found a more intellectually satisfying mentor in Ambrose.[2]

Faustus’ version of Manicheanism was indebted to the earlier work of Adimantus or Adda, who adapted the Manichee system to Western categories, employed skeptical arguments to deflate dogmatic certainty, and appropriated “Marcionite Christian critiques of the Old Testament.”[3] The last aspect of Faustus’ thought is at the center of Augustine’s concern. Faustus’ Capitula, to which Augustine responds, was a series of apologetic “talking points” for Manicheans to use against Catholics. Each chapter begins with a question posed by Catholics to Manicheans, followed by Faustus’ response. 

Displaying the rhetoric skill and wit for which Augustine admired him, Faustus goes about his business cleverly; he cites no Manichean texts and skirts specific Manichean beliefs and gives attention exclusively to Catholic Scriptures. When Augustine points to New Testament evidence that contradicts Faustus—Paul’s claim that Jesus was born a son of David according to the flesh, or the genealogy that begins Matthew’s gospel—Faustus seeks refuge in text criticism. Matthew the disciple did not write the first gospel, and therefore his testimony is not authoritative, and since Paul elsewhere claims that Jesus was from God, and since Paul cannot contradict himself, Romans 1:4 must be from someone other than Paul.

Nearly half of the sections of Faustus’ treatise deal with the question of the relation of Old and New Testaments. For Faustus, Israel’s prophets never spoke of Christ, the God of the Jews is a demon, and the fact that the Jews used Moses to condemn Jesus shows that Moses and Jesus are radically at odds. Insofar as the Old Testament is concerned with flesh, it reflects not a predecessor to the Christian faith but a rival: “the Capitula called into question the very concept of orthodoxy’s double canon.”[4]

Faustus’ critique of the Catholic endorsement of the Old Testament hit home with particular power because, as Paula Fredriksen has brilliantly detailed, the contra Iudaeos tradition in the church shared an uncomfortable degree of common group with Manicheans and Marcionites. Faustus condemns the literalism of the Jews; so do Catholic writers. Faustus abhors animal sacrifice; Catholic writers regularly express the same repugnance, and some interpreted the destruction of Jerusalem’s temple in 70 AD as a demonstration that God never wanted the Jews to perform sacrifice in the first place.[5]

Faustus’ attacks are directed not only at the Old Testament but also to Catholic Christians, whom he considers lukewarm Judaizers—Judaizers because they continue to affirm the authority of the Old Testament and return to the weak and beggarly elemental things from which Christ sets us free (Book 8), lukewarm because they refuse to practice the rites that the Old Testament requires. Catholics are mixed vessels, adding vinegar to the honey, water to the wine, fish sauce to the vinegar (melli fel, et aquam vino, et aceto garos, Book 15). Vessels should be filled with a single uniform substance, and Faustus calls Catholics to abandon their adulterated faith (Book 15).[6] Better to give up the Old Testament entirely, Faustus insists. Old Testament promises, after all, are offered to the circumcised, and since the church no longer practices circumcision, they are not heirs to those promises. No follower of Jesus cares to inherit Jewish promises anyway, since they are “miserable and bodily” (misera . . . et corporalis) and distant from the soul (longe ab animae commodis; Contra Faustum 4). 

Not only the inheritance of the Jews, but their practices are shameful and needless (supervacua), if not idolatrous. Manicheans laugh at Jewish festivals, their forbidden mixtures, their absurd rules against shaving. So do Catholics, and the only difference is that Catholics “choose to lie and to act like a slave by praising in words what you hate in your mind” (Book 6).

Behind this assault is Faustus’ conviction that practice rather than belief or profession is the heart of religious life.[7] “You ask if I believe the Old Testament,” he writes. “Of course not, for I do not keep its precepts” (Contra Faustum 6.1). Do I believe the gospel? he asks in another place, and answers “You ask me if I believe it, though my obedience to its commands shows that I do.” He turns the question back to the Catholic interlocutor: “I should rather ask you if you believe it, since you give no proof of your belief” (Contra Faustum 5.1). 

Catholics counter by citing Jesus’ statement that he came to fulfill not abolish the Law. Faustus acknowledges that Jesus spoke the words of Matthew 5, but questions which law He meant. There are three laws: the law of sin and death, the law of the Gentiles, and the law of truth. Likewise, there are three types of prophets: Jews had prophets, but there were prophets among the Gentiles and there were also prophets of the truth, who preceded the Jews. When Jesus defended the law, he was not speaking of the Jewish law, but the older law. Jesus’ commandments fulfill that law. As for Jewish law, it is eradicated, and Faustus cannot resist finishing this line of argument with a repetition of his favorite tu quoque: By their actions, Catholics show that they too believe Jesus abolished Jewish law (Book 19). In practice, which is the only thing that matters, there is no difference between “fulfill” and “destroy.”

(This is taken from a paper given at the Wilken Colloquium, Baylor University, in March 2011.)


[1] BeDuhn (Augustine’s Manichaean Dilemma, I, pp. 112-113, 125-126) emphasizes the philosophical “subtext” of Faustus’s tolerant liberal Manicheanism.

[2] BeDuhn carefully reviews the mostly implicit evidence of a deeper relationship with Faustus (Augustine’s Manichaean Dilemma, pp. 131-134).

[3] BeDuhn, Augustine’s Manichaean Dilemma, p. 111).

[4] Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews, p. 214.

[5] Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews, pp. 223-234.

[6] Given his line of argument, it is ironic that Faustus implicitly invokes biblical prohibitions on forbidden mixtures.

[7] Though Manicheanism is often characterized as an intellectualist form of Gnosticism, BeDuhn has argued persuasively that participation in bodily disciplines and rituals are what make a Manichean a Manichean. See BeDuhn, The Manichaean Body: In Discipline and Ritual (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2000). BeDuhn emphasizes the practical orientation of Faustus in particular throughout his chapter in Augustine’s Manichaean Dilemma (ch. 4).


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