Augustine -
Anti-Manichaean Writings On the Sabbath
(354-430 AD)
1. Faustus said: "I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it." If these are
Christ's words, unless they have some other meaning, they are as much
against you as against me. Your Christianity as well as mine
is based on the belief that Christ came to destroy the law and the
prophets. Your actions prove this, even though in words
you deny it. It is on this ground that you disregard the
precepts of the law and the
prophets. It is on this ground that we
both acknowledge Jesus as the founder of the New Testament,
in which is implied the
acknowledgment that the Old Testament is destroyed. How, then, can we believe that Christ said
these words without first confessing that hitherto we have been
wholly in error, and without showing our repentance by entering on a
course of obedience to the law and the prophets, and of careful
observance of their requirements, whatever they may be? This done, we may honestly believe
that Jesus said that he came not to
destroy the law, but to fulfill it. As it is,
you accuse me of not believing what you do not believe yourself, and
what therefore is false. 2. But grant that we have been in the wrong
hitherto. What is to be done now? Shall we come under
the law, since Christ has not destroyed, but fulfilled it? [A contrast which has been fulfilled
is not destroyed: it simply is no longer binding because all of the
conditions of the Law "added because of transgression" have been
satisfied. There is nothing we can do to improve over what Christ has
done. Shall we by circumcision add shame to shame, and
believe that God is pleased with such sacraments? Shall we glut the demon of the Jews, for he
is not God, with the slaughter of
bulls,
rams, and goats, not to say of men; and adopt, only with greater
cruelty, in obedience to the law and the prophets, the practices on
account of which we abandoned idolatry? Shall we, in fine, call the flesh
of some animals clean, and that of others unclean, among which,
according to the law and the prophets, swine's flesh has a particular
defilement? Of course you will allow that as Christians we
must not do any of these things, for you remember that Christ says
that a man when circumcised becomes twofold a child of hell.
1 It is plain also that Christ neither observed the
Sabbath himself, And regarding foods, he says expressly that
man is not defiled by anything that goes
into his mouth, but rather by the
things which come out of
it. 2
Regarding sacrifices, too, he often
says that God desires mercy, and not
sacrifice. 3
If Christ said this,
he must have meant something
else, or, what is not to be thought of,
he told a lie, or he never said it. 3. For my part, as
a Manichaean, this verse has little
difficulty for me, for at the outset I am taught to believe that many
things which pass in Scripture under the name of the Saviour are
spurious, and that they must therefore be tested to find whether they
are true, and sound, and genuine; for the enemy who comes by night
has corrupted almost every passage by
sowing tares among the wheat.
So I am not alarmed by these words,
notwithstanding the sacred name affixed to them; for I still claim
the liberty to examine whether this comes from the hand of the good
sower, who sows in the day-time, or of the evil one, who sows in the
night. But what escape from this difficulty can there be for you, who
receive everything without examination, condemning the use of reason,
which is the prerogative of human nature, and thinking it impiety to
distinguish between truth and falsehood, and as much afraid of
separating between what is good and what is not as children are of
ghosts? For suppose a Jew or any one acquainted with these words
should ask you why you do not keep the precepts of the law and the
prophets, since Christ says that he came not to destroy but to
fulfill them: you will be obliged either to join in the superstitious
follies of the Jews, or to declare this verse false, or to deny that
you are a follower of Christ. 4. Augustin replied: Since you continue repeating what has been so often
exposed and refuted, we must be content to repeat the refutation.
The things in the law and the prophets
which Christians do not observe, are only
the types
of what they do observe. These types were figures of things to come, and are necessarily removed when the things themselves
are fully revealed by
Christ, that in this very removal the
law and the prophets may be fulfilled. So it is written in the
prophets that God would give a new covenant, "not as I gave to their
fathers." 4
Such was the hardness of
heart of the people under the Old
Testament, that many precepts were given to them, Still, in all these things the future was
foretold and prefigured, although the people did not understand the
meaning of their own observances. After the manifest appearance of
the things thus signified, we are not required to observe the types;
but we read them to see their meaning. So, again, it is foretold in
the prophets, "I will take away their stony heart, and will give them
a heart of flesh," 5
-that is, a sensible heart, instead of an insensible one. To this the
apostle alludes in the words: "Not in tables of stone, but in the
fleshy tables of the heart." 6
The fleshy tables of the heart are the same as the heart of flesh.
Since, then, the removal of these observances is foretold, the law
and the prophets could not have been fulfilled but by this removal.
Now, however, the prediction is accomplished, and the fulfillment of
the law and the prophets is found in what at first sight seems the
very opposite. 5. We are not afraid to meet your
scoff at the Sabbath, when you call it the fetters of Saturn. It is a silly and
unmeaning expression, which occurred to you only because you are in
the habit of worshipping the sun on what
you call Sunday. What you call Sunday we call the
Lord's day, and on it we do not
worship the sun, but the
Lord's resurrection. And in the same way, the fathers observed the
rest of the Sabbath, The Gentiles, of whom the
apostle says that they "worshipped and served the creature rather than the
Creator," 8
gave the names of their
gods to the days of the week. And so far you do the same, except
that you worship only the two brightest
luminaries, and not the rest of the
stars, as the Gentiles did. Besides, the Gentiles gave the names of their
gods to the months. In honor of Romulus, whom they believed to be the
son of Mars, they dedicated the first month to Mars, and called it
March. The next month, April, is named not from any god, but from the
word for opening, because the buds generally open in this month. The
third month is called May, in honor of Maia the mother of Mercury.
The fourth is called June, from Juno. The rest to December used to be
named according to their number The fifth and sixth, however, got the
names of July and August from men to whom divine honors were decreed;
while the others, from September to December, continued to be named
from their number. January, again, is named from Janus, and February
from the rites of the Luperci called Februae. Must we say that you
worship the god Mars in the month of March? But that is the month in which you
hold the feast you call Bema with great pomp. But if you
think it allowable to observe the month of March without thinking of
Mars, why
do you try to bring in the name of
Saturn in connection with the rest of the seventh day enjoined in
Scripture, merely because the Gentiles call the day Saturday?
The Scripture name for the day is
Sabbath,
which means rest. Your scoff is as unreasonable as it is profane.
The Manichaeans rejected the
Eucharist and most of the Christian sacraments, replacing them with
their own ceremonies of prayer, recitation and reading of scriptures,
music, singing, fasting and feasting, and weekly confession. The
central ritual of the community was the Table--
the daily common
meal-- in which the
Hearers would ritually serve, and the Elect would ritually consume, such foods as were to considered to
possess a high content of Light, such as cucumbers, melons, wheat
bread and fruit juice. The Light would be absorbed into the bodies of
the Elect, there to be retained until their deaths, when it would be
delivered up the Column of Light with their souls. The Light
contained within animals was considered to be too closely bound to
matter for liberation through digestion. The Manichaeans also celebrated
the annual feast of the Bema,
or the Master's
Chair, each Spring. The
Bema was a commemoration of Mani's death, and was the culmination of
the 30 day fast enjoined on the Hearers. Ken Shaw 6. As regards animal sacrifices, every
Christian knows that they were enjoined as suitable to a
perverse people, and not because God had any pleasure in them. Still,
even in these sacrifices there were types of what we enjoy;
for we cannot obtain purification or the propitiation of God without
blood. The fulfillment of these types is in Christ, by whose blood we
are purified and redeemed. In these figures of the divine oracles,
the bull represents Christ, because with the horns of His cross He
scatters the wicked; the lamb, from His matchless innocence; the
goat, from His being made in the likeness of sinful flesh, that by
sin He might condemn sin. 9
Whatever kind of sacrifice you choose to specify, I will show you a
prophecy of Christ in it. Thus we have shown regarding
circumcision, and the Sabbath, and the
distinction of food, and the sacrifice of animals, but to fulfill, by fulfilling what was thus foretold. Your opponent is
the apostle, whose opinion I give in his own words: "All these things
were our examples." 10 7. If you have learned from Manichaeus the
willful impiety of admitting only those parts of the Gospel which do not contradict your
errors, while you reject the rest, we
have learned from the apostle the pious caution of looking on every
one as accursed that preaches to us another gospel than that which we
have received. Hence Catholic Christians look upon you as
among the tares; for, in the Lord's exposition of the meaning of the
tares, they are not falsehood mixed with truth in the Scriptures, but
children of the wicked one-that is, people who imitate the
deceitfulness of the devil. It is not true that Catholic Christians
believe everything; for they do not believe Manichaeus or any of the
heretics. Nor do they condemn the use of human reason; but what you
call reasoning they prove to be fallacious. Nor do they think it
profane to distinguish truth from falsehood; for they distinguish
between the truth of the Catholic faith and the falsehood of your
doctrines. Nor do they fear to separate good from evil; but they
contend that evil, instead of being natural, is unnatural. They know
nothing of your race of darkness, which, you say, is produced from a
principle of its own, and fights against the kingdom of God, and of
which your god seems really to be more frightened than children are
of ghosts; for, according to you, he covered himself with a veil,
that he might not see his own members taken and plundered by the
assault of the enemy. To conclude, Catholic Christians are in no
difficulty regarding the words of Christ, though in one sense they
may be said not to observe the law and the prophets; for by the grace
of Christ they keep the law by their love to God and man; and on
these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
11 Besides, they see in Christ and the Church the
fulfillment of all the prophecies of the Old Testament, whether in
the form of actions, or of symbolic rites, or of figurative language.
So we neither join in superstitious follies, nor declare this verse
false; nor deny that we are followers of Christ; for on those
principles which I have set forth to the best of my power, the law
and the prophets which Christ came not to destroy, but to fulfill,
are no other than those recognized by the Church. Counter added 1.07.05 8:26p 794
"Interpreted, this
means that they have rejected the ruling of the law, But their
rejoicing shall come to an end and shall be changed into
mourning. I will ravage her
vines and her fig trees, of which she said,
'They are my wage
which my lovers have given me'. I wall make them a thicked and the
will beasts shall eat
them...ii, 12
But they, like Adam, have broken the Covenant (vi, 7) Its
interpretation... they have forsaken God and walked according to the decrees of the Gentiles.... 784
........... Shall we observe the rest
of the Sabbath, and bind ourselves in the fetters of Saturn?
nor commanded it to be
observed.
What becomes, then, of the statement that he came not to destroy the
law, but to fulfill it?
........... No Christian will allow that Jesus spoke falsely;
therefore he must
........... ...........
either not have said this, or
........... ...........
said it with another meaning.
........... not so much because they were good, as because they suited the people.
........... not because they worshipped
Saturn,
........... but because it was incumbent at that time,
........... for it was a shadow of things to come,
as the apostle testifies. 7
that all these things were our examples, and our
prophecies, which Christ came not to
destroy,
and have followed the festivals of the nations.