Heresy III, Of the Books of the Mosaic Law

OF THE BOOKS OF THE MOSAIC LAW — Heresy III (De Libris Mosaicae legis. Haeresis III)

Whosoever [would] repudiate the books of the Mosaic law.

ASSERTORES HVIVS HAERESEOS [The Assertors of this Heresy]

The Ptolemaeite heretics, who descend from Ptolemaeus the Gnostic, of the sect of the Valentinians (as Epiphanius writes), damned these books, because they believed that the things which are contained in them are not from the good God, but composed by three diverse authors: namely, one part of them by God the maker of this world, who was middle between the good God and the devil; another part by Moses, according to his own mind, and not according to the will of God; a third by the elders of the Jews, devised according to their own talent. But the Manichaeans, far more iniquitous, affirm that they reject those books for this reason: that from the beginning even to the end they were dictated by the evil God of the Hebrews, and were stuffed by his sons, the Jews, with every turpitude and foulness — [the Jews] who, in order to cover those foulnesses, inserted into them a few certain words of that natural law which the good God impressed upon human minds, so that — as if by a veil and a mist of divine words superinduced — they might conciliate faith and authority to their own books. And Faustus, and the Anonymous disciple of Fabritius, collected, for the subversion of these books, whatsoever Celsus, Porphyry, Julian, and the other enemies of the sacred volumes barked out against the divine law. ¹

IMPVGNATIO [The Refutation]

Already, in those things which were said above at the beginning of this book, we have sufficiently confuted the present insanity of the heretics, showing that the whole scripture of the old testament emanated from the good God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ — by whom its writers, inspired, committed to those letters only those things which the Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son, suggested. Wherefore there is no need that we repeat here again the same things, or things like to the same.

OBJECTIONS OF THE HERETICS (Obiectiones Haereticorum)

1. “We,” say the Ptolemaeites, “do not receive the books of Moses as divine: because we know that they were written not according to the mind of the good and perfect God, but partly according to [the will] of men, partly according to the will of the middle God. And first, that that law which is called the Decalogue, engraved on the twin tablets, is not from the good and perfect God, appears [thus]: because the works of the perfect God are perfect; but this [law] is imperfect, and needing completion — for the fulfilling and consummating of whose perfection our Savior testified that he had come. It appears also that there is in these books a certain other legislation, brought not by God, but by Moses, which he dictated following not the will of God but his own understanding, the perfect law of God ²

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[dictating] the perfect law of God [otherwise], permuting [it] according to the debility and necessity of those who were pressed by the grave burden of the divine law: lest, while they could not keep it, being driven by desperation, they should precipitate themselves into every injustice. As when, from himself, he gave a law of repudiation [divorce] contrary to the divine law, on account of the hardness of the people; so that, if they could not keep the divine [law] which says, “What God hath joined, let not man separate,” they might not forthwith be turned to raging unto the slaughter of the wife, but might have a refuge to repudiation as to a lighter fault: which Christ testifies, saying, “Moses, on account of the hardness of your heart, permitted [you] to dismiss the wife; but from the beginning it was not so. For God said: They shall be two in one flesh; what therefore God hath joined, let not man separate.” Again, certain other laws and traditions of the elders are found wrapped up in these books, against which our Savior is carried [inveighs], the testimony of Isaiah being applied, saying: “God says, Honor thy father and thy mother; but you have said (he says, speaking to the elders), whatsoever gift is from me [shall be] turned to thy profit — hypocrites! rightly did Isaiah [prophesy] of you: In vain do they worship me, teaching doctrines and commandments of men; for you have made void the commandment of God for your traditions.” These [things] Ptolemaeus, in the epistle to Flora. ³

2. But the Manichaeans — among whom Faustus and the anonymous disciple of Fabritius — add that they do not receive the books of Moses, because in them, from the beginning even to the end, are read [things] unworthy of the good God and of his son Christ, [things] destroying piety and morals. And first of all, in the very vestibule of Genesis, Moses describes a certain God turned [busied] in darkness from eternity, saying that darkness was before light was created, and that God walked over the waters beset with darkness through the night, before he made light. ⁴

3. He describes also God wondering at the aspect of the unwonted light, and stupefied — and so much [so that], not knowing before what light was, when he first had seen it, then he judged it best. ⁵

4. He shows [him] also malevolent, who prohibited man from taking the food of the knowledge of good and evil — that is, prudence, by which alone human life seems able to be sustained: as if he had wished him to be equal to the cattle that know not these things; whereas he [the serpent], whom he had made superior to the beasts, had denied this [to man], by which alone man surpasses the beasts. ⁶

5. But he makes the serpent better, or stronger, than God himself: better, indeed, because, by alluring man to the food of prudence, he made [him] like to God — as God himself is witness, saying, “Behold, Adam is made as one of us, knowing good and evil”; but stronger, because he was able to deceive and conquer man, whom God had made. ⁷

6. He makes God also either ignorant of the future, when he commanded that precept [to Adam] which he did not know whether Adam would keep; or imprudent, when he commanded that which he knew Adam would not keep. ⁸

7. Improvident likewise, when — man lying hidden in a corner of paradise after his nakedness was recognized — as though he could not see him, he sought [him] with clamors, saying, “Adam, where art thou?”

8. Nor less envious than fearful, when he armed an angel with a fiery lance (framea) for the guarding of paradise, fearing lest perhaps our first parents — who, by the benefit of the serpent, had already been made participants of prudence — should again return into paradise, and taste of the tree of life, whence in future they might enjoy immortality, even himself [God] being unwilling. ⁹

9. He describes also God as desirous of blood and fat, when — out of every kind of sacrifices, as if greedy of flesh and entrails — he commands [them] to be offered to himself. ¹⁰

10. Likewise jealous (zelantem), bearing [it] ill and laboring with jealousy, while to other gods, of whom he is jealous, [are offered] the same things which he forbids to be offered to himself.

11. Wrathful, moreover, threatening, and truculent, and unjust; since so often he is angry, now against his own, now against strangers, destroying so many thousands of men on account of certain slight [things], or no crime committed — threatening that he will come with a devouring sword, and will spare no one, neither the just nor the unjust.

12. Nor only with contumelies of this kind did Moses treat his own God, but — what is more execrable — Christ the son of God, who for the cause of our salvation hung upon the wood, he lacerated with a dire reproach of [religious] devotion [i.e. a curse], pronouncing that every one is cursed who hung upon the wood; who — whether willing, or by chance, he did it — is in neither [case] to be excused. For if unwilling he cursed Christ, it is agreed that he was not divine, nor a prophet; but if willing, and not ignorant of these future things, he was certainly envious of our salvation, which was to be from the wood, in whose author [Christ] he drew forth the poison of his maledicent mouth. Which reproach touches also all the just and the martyrs, as many as died by a like exit of passion — as Peter and Andrew, and the rest of the same lot: for neither does he say that they are cursed among the common [people] only, that is, among men only, but cursed by God. ¹¹

13. For so also he pursues all the boys [children] of God, and the virgins, with a like [religious] devotion [curse], saying that every one is cursed who has not raised up seed in Israel. Which reproach principally touches Christ, who, sprung (as is said) from the Jews, nevertheless raised up no offspring for the sake of a posterity to be preserved among them. Then also his disciples, some of whom he [Christ] separated from wives, whom he had found joined [married], and some he forbade to be joined, whom he apprehended untouched [chaste]. ¹²

14. Besides these things, Moses also extinguished all hope of the future resurrection in men, who pronounced the soul to be mortal, and said it to be blood, when he wrote: “The soul of all flesh is the blood.” ¹³

THE DILUTING OF THE OBJECTIONS (Dilutio Obiectorum)

1. The rash Ptolemaeus contentiously asserted that the books of the law have something from the middle God, something from Moses, something from the elders; yet he cannot anywhere show, from the holy scriptures which he is ignorant of, that the whole law of Moses is not from the best and most perfect God. Which [law], although it was not perfect in every part, and needed a fulfilling made through Christ, nevertheless — according to the distribution of those times and the disposition of persons, as much as its office befitted — was perfect, suiting the rude and carnal people, whom it, as it were a pedagogue, led [down] to Christ the teacher of perfection, for whose sake that law was given to Moses: [Moses] who never commanded or wrote anything in his books outside the will of God. Neither [did he ordain] an inseparable [bond] of marriage ¹⁴

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[nor did he command that] the union of marriage, instituted by God, be dissolved — although he brought [made] a law about giving a bill of repudiation. For repudium (divorce) is one thing, and a bill of repudiation another: repudiation is a permission; to give a bill [of divorce] is a precept. Moses did not say, “Whoever shall wish, let him dismiss the wife” — which would be contrary to the law of God — but, “If anyone shall dismiss [her], let him not dismiss [her] unless a bill of repudiation be first given”: so that, namely, by the interposed delay, the mind — [being] headlong into dissension — might, broken by the writing-out of the bill, desist, and might think what evil it is to dismiss a wife; and, by the wisdom and piety of the judges (praesides), before whom he was bound to read the bill, [the husband] might be recalled to conjugal concord. But if so much hatred intervened that it could not be extinguished and emended, then he permitted a divorce to be made — knowing that a man would not, without cause, dismiss a wife whom he so hated. All the legislation of Moses, therefore, is from God, nor are there in it any traditions of the elders mixed in. For the traditions of which the Savior spoke are altogether outside the law, and are (as we have already said) the fourfold expositions of the Jews — namely of R. Moses, R. Akiba, R. Juda, and of the sons of Asomonaeus [the Hasmoneans]. And that Christ understood these [traditions], his speech openly shows, when he says: “If anyone shall say to his father, Korban [Corban], that is, [it is] a gift, etc.” — which words, since they are found nowhere in the books of Moses, it is consequent that Christ spoke of the traditions of the elders, which are outside the law. ¹⁵

2. But as much as pertains to the calumnies of the Manichaeans, we respond: first, that although light was not upon the face of the abyss before God created light, God was nevertheless not busied (versabatur) in darkness before he made light. For there was not lacking, before this temporal and visible light, another eternal and inaccessible light in which God dwelt — namely God himself, in whom there are no darknesses. This light God inhabited from eternity, alone sufficient to himself for perpetual light. Accordingly, when the Spirit of the Lord was borne over the waters still beset with darkness, and cherished them by his own power, he did not lie hidden in the darkness as [one] destitute of light, but in the most clear light — namely, in his very self — he remained. ¹⁶

3. But as to what they calumniate — that God wondered [was astonished] — that is neither written, nor does it follow from the things which are written. For it is read: “And God saw the light, that it was good” — which words show God rather [as] the approver of the light created by himself, than the admirer of an unexpected light. But even if the old scripture had said that God wondered, nothing absurd would thence be suffered [i.e. follow], since also in the new testament we read that Christ — whom the Manichaeans confess to be God — the faith of the centurion having been heard, wondered [marveled]: not because he saw anything beyond expectation when he first saw [it] in the centurion, but as [one who] approved that that which he had already before foreknown as future ought so to be done. ¹⁷

4. Now, indeed, to that calumny of malevolence we respond, that the discernment of good and evil is twofold: one through science [knowledge], which is of the blessed man; the other through experience, which is of the miserable man, and is unhappily learned, and happily not known. For diseases and pains — how much more happily should I not know them? Therefore God, who prohibited man from this unhappy discernment, is to be called not malevolent, but benevolent — just as we would call a physician benevolent who would forbid us ¹⁸ from some food, by which he foreknew that we, having received [it], would sicken; and on that account, from the very event, would call the same food [the food] “of the knowledge of health and of weakness,” because through it man, when he had begun to sicken, would recognize by experience what difference there was between contracted ill-health and lost good health — which he certainly would better have been ignorant of, if he had remained in that health which he lost, believing the physician through obedience, not the disease through experience.

5. If, therefore, that knowledge which God forbade to man is miserable, it sufficiently appears that the serpent was not better than God, as the impious triflers blaspheme, but — beyond what can be said — evil and worst, who showed to man so unhappy a knowledge of all evils. Nor are those words, “Behold, Adam is made as one of us,” words of God affirming [it], but rather of [God] reproaching: just as that [saying] of the Apostle when he says, “Forgive (Donate) me this injury” — [which] certainly he wishes to be understood from the contrary, if there be present a learned expounder, not an unlearned calumniator. Nor is the serpent therefore stronger than God, because he deceived the man whom God made: ¹⁹ for God would by no means be deceived, if he [man] had not receded from God in [his] heart. Because, therefore, he receded from God, therefore he was deserted by God, and was conquered by the serpent. But neither did the serpent conquer, since by his very self he is himself deceived and conquered. For as much [as] he who deceived, as he whom he deceived, both are deceived, receding from him who cannot be deceived; and both are conquered, receding from him who cannot be conquered — by whom certainly, whoever recedes more, is conquered more, because he becomes so much the worse, [by] how much the more remote [he is]. And therefore it is necessary that he who seems to conquer by first inflicting evil on another, should himself the more be conquered by losing good; nor can it come to pass that a place should be better for him for whom the cause is worse. And when for a time the devil seemed to have prevailed, man being overcome, even so he is conquered for eternity, man being repaired [restored].

6. But as to that which they proudly deride — that God [was] ignorant of the future — we say that God was not ignorant that man would sin, but at the same time also foreknew, by [his] highest divinity, what of just and good he was going to do concerning the sinner: nor did he institute [that precept] which would be harmful, if man had not wished to harm himself, but rather he instituted that which would profit. Because man would not, without a good reward, have kept obedience, and not without a useful example — that his holy posterity might keep it — [and not without] having paid the penalties of disobedience. ²⁰ Nor did he will [command] that which [man] could not [do]; for he willed this: that man should be either obedient, or, [if] disobedient, not unpunished. Nor did he will fruitlessly that which man was not going to keep — because the penalty of the contemner taught others to obey.

7. Neither was God improvident, because he asked Adam, lying hidden, where he was: for he therefore asked, that he might convince the man by his own response; although he knew not only where he was, but also what he was going to answer to himself, and willed that these things be answered to himself, so that — the confession of the crime being extorted — he might seem not unjustly to punish him. ²¹

8. Similarly, neither is God to be argued of envy, because he did not permit the sinners to enter beyond the gates of paradise to the eating of the vital [life-giving] tree; but [he is] as [one] justly to be praised by merit, who from eternity — [+ knew what] justly

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[who from eternity, what] justly had been given to the obedient, justly prohibited to the prevaricators [transgressors]. Just as neither would the Manichaeans say that Christ [is] envious, or fearful, because he did not permit the foolish virgins to enter into his kingdom, the door being shut; but [that he is] just, who did not admit sinners to eternal life.

9. But to think that God is desirous of blood and fat, because he commands the fat and entrails of animals to be offered to himself, is [the mark] of a man ignorant of the divine sacraments [mysteries]. For God did not command these things as [though] he were delighted by the slaughter of animals and the effusion of blood, or fed by their odor, or desired to be satiated with the blood of victims and the vapors of holocausts; but that, by those sacrifices, he might fore-announce to us that true sacrifice which the one true God-priest — the mediator of God and men — offered to the one true God, whose promissory figures it behooved to be celebrated in the victims of animals, on account of the commendation of the future flesh [of Christ], through which one victim there would be made the remission of the sins contracted from the flesh. ²²

10. Nothing, moreover, unworthy of God do [the scriptures] attribute, naming him a “Zealot” — since even in the new testament Christ, the money-changers being cast out of the temple, says of himself: “The zeal (Zelus) of thy house hath eaten me up.” For the zeal of God is not that perturbation of mind by which a husband, troubled by the adultery of a spouse, pines away, but the loving care of conjugal chastity to be conserved, which God is wont to apply, when he admonishes his people as a spouse, lest through many false gods she fornicate; or when he exhorts each one that the chastity which the soul owes to the one God be not, through the false enticements of this world, corrupted and prostituted and defiled. Zeal, therefore, is attributed to God, not according to the anxiety of a livid [envious] perturbation, but according to the most tranquil goodness of [his] benevolence toward us; or according to the property of the Hebrew tongue; or according to the abuse [catachresis] of the word, by which virtues are frequently wont to be called, among all nations, by the word of vices. ²³

11. The like also is to be thought concerning the anger and fury of God — who, although he can be troubled by no human passions, is nevertheless said to be angry, when he inflicts on our crimes the penalties of due vengeance. His anger also signifies [his] vengeance, whether by some property of the Hebrew tongue, or by the abuse of the word — which is widely applicable in all tongues, when, by the names by which vices are properly denoted, virtues also are named: [as when] they say cunning for prudence, and cupidity for will. ²⁴ God, therefore, did not — turbidly, like a human [being] — rage by anger, but retributed [something] just, a divine anger, which is named “anger” not on account of the lust of avenging, but on account of the rigor of vindicating [justice], by a certain use of speech. But as to the thousands of men destroyed on account of certain slight [things], or nothing: if those stolid [men] would expressly commemorate them, we would show [these] to be neither slight nor nothing, but most grave. For what greater impiety can there be, than to oppose the creatures to the creator? or to tempt God? or to murmur against him? or to defect from his worship? or to despair of his providence and aid? — all which things those [people] perpetrated, of whom many thousands are read [to have been] slain in the desert. ²⁵ Whence God, who threatens that he will spare no one, neither just nor unjust, is neither truculent nor unjust: because — as we [read] — that vine-dresser [God] otherwise prepares the pruning-hook for the branches in the unfruitful [vines], otherwise in the fruitful; the [fruitful] ones, indeed, to be purged, ²⁶ but those [unfruitful] ones to be cut away — the impious, as branches cut off for burning; but the just he does not spare, for the perfecting of [their] purgation: he spares not the just, nor the sinner — [flogging] that one as a son, [punishing] this one as impious. So, therefore, applying to the just a salutary correction, he is merciful and clement, not truculent and wrathful; but to sinners, retributing due severity on account of [their] sins, he is not unjust, but most just.

12. But now let us see what understanding that [saying] has which the execrable heretics vituperate — [the saying] concerning the curse of [one] hanging on the wood, brought forth by Moses. It is to be known that, just as the tongue and the hand in some manner signify those very parts and members of the body, but in some manner [signify] the works which follow from them — as the speech of men is called “tongue,” because it is made through the tongue; and a man’s writing is called “hand,” because it is made by the hand — so “sin,” or “curse” (which is the same), signifies not only that evil work itself, but also, in the holy scriptures, [signifies] death itself: because death is from sin, which is called a “cursed thing.” ²⁷ In which sense Moses called Christ “cursed,” because Christ, without guilt, took up death, the punishment of us [who are] cursed. In which sense also Paul called Christ “sin” and “a cursed thing,” when he said: “Him (Eum) who knew not sin, he made sin for us” — that is, the punishment of our sin; and, “He was made (Factus) a curse for us” — that is, dead for us: for it is the same thing, dead, [as] cursed; because death itself is from the curse, and cursed is every sin. ²⁸

13. But as to [the claim] that Moses is hostile to continence or virginity because he said, “Cursed (Maledictus) [is] every one who has not raised up seed in Israel” — let him read Isaiah, crying out in the same spirit: “Thus (Haec) saith the Lord to all the eunuchs (spadonibus) who shall have observed my precepts: I will give to them in my house a place named better than [that] of sons and of daughters; an eternal name will I give to them, and it shall not fail them.” Or, if they think Isaiah contrary to Moses, let Moses please them, if Isaiah displeases. This is not of little [weight] against those [heretics]: for it suffices us to know that the one God spoke, both through Moses and through Isaiah; and that, according to the spiritual understanding, cursed is every one who has not left seed in Israel — that is, every one who, according to the measure of his own virtue, has not increased [invested] with the dominical gains [talents], and has not left seed which may see God: that is, who has not had either a son, or a servant, or a neighbor, whom he may teach the fear of God upon the earth. Spiritually, therefore, Moses is to be understood. ²⁹

14. [Moses] who, indeed, if he had believed the soul to be mortal, would not in another place say: “Every one (Omnis) who shall have touched the dead — and there shall have been a dead [person in his tent] — and he shall not have been purified, his soul shall be cut off from Israel, because he is still unclean.” “Still” (Adhuc), certainly, he said, even after death, because he is not purified. But he called the soul “blood” not [in respect] of substance, but for the cause of signification — in the manner in which it is said, “The Rock (Petra) was Christ”: not because it was this [literally], but because hence it was signified. Nor did he in vain wish to signify the soul by blood: because, just as blood in our body has the principate [rules] more than the other humors, so the soul invisibly prevails over all the [parts] of which we consist. Thus far concerning the books of the law; now let us pass on to the prophetic books. ³⁰

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