Collection

Reply to Faustus the Manichaean (Contra Faustum Manichaeum)

Augustine of Hippo

Written in the late 390s against the Manichaean bishop Faustus, whose lost *Capitula* had circulated widely and whose eloquence Augustine had known firsthand during his own nine years among the sect, this long refutation proceeds by an unusual method: Faustus is quoted in full, chapter by chapter, and answered in Augustine's own voice, so that the Manichaean case survives here in something close to its own words. The controversy turns on the shape of Christian scripture — whether the Old Testament belongs with the New, whether the genealogies of Matthew and Luke can be trusted, whether the God of the Christians could truly be born of a woman — and Augustine's answers work out, piece by piece, the Catholic habit of reading the two Testaments as one inheritance. The tone shifts between patient exegesis and sharp polemic, and the ascetic life of the Manichaean Elect is confronted on its own ground.