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Reply to Faustus the Manichaean

7.

As for this threefold or rather fourfold fiction, what shall I say of the secret light of the Father, but that you can think of no light except what you have seen? From your knowledge of visible light, with which beasts and insects as well as men are familiar, you form some vague idea in your mind, and call it the light in which God the Father dwells with His subjects. How can you distinguish between the light by which we see, and that by which we understand, when, according to your ideas, to understand truth is nothing else than to form the conception of material forms, either finite or in some cases infinite; and you actually believe in these wild fancies? It is manifest that the act of my mind in thinking of your region of light which has no existence, is entirely different from my conception of Alexandria, which exists, though I have not seen it. And, again, the act of forming a conception of Alexandria, which I have never seen, is very different from thinking of Carthage, which I know. But this difference is insignificant as compared with that between my thinking of material things which I know from seeing them, and my understanding justice, chastity, faith, truth, love, goodness, and things of this nature. Can you describe this intellectual light, which gives us a clear perception of the distinction between itself and other things, as well as of the distinction between those things themselves? And yet even this is not the sense in which it can be said that God is light, for this light is created, whereas God is the Creator; the light is made, and He is the Maker; the light is changeable. For the intellect changes from dislike to desire, from ignorance to knowledge, from forgetfulness to recollection; whereas God remains the same in will, in truth, and in eternity. From God we derive the beginning of existence, the principle of knowledge, the law of affection. From God all animals, rational and irrational, derive the nature of their life, the capacity of sensation, the faculty of emotion. From God all bodies derive their subsistence in extension, their beauty in number, and their order in weight. This light is one divine being, in an inseparable triune existence; and yet, without supposing the assumption of any bodily form, you assign to separate places parts of the immaterial, spiritual, and unchangeable substance. And instead of three places for the Trinity, you have four: one, the light inaccessible, which you know nothing about, for the Father; two, the sun and moon, for the Son; and again one, the circle of the atmosphere, for the Holy Spirit. Of the inaccessible light of the Father I shall say nothing further at present, for orthodox believers do not separate the Son and the Spirit from the Father in relation to this light.

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Contra Faustum Manichaeum libri triginta tres

7.

In qua tripertita vestra vel potius iam quadripertita fabula de patris quidem secreto lumine quid vobis dicam, nisi quia lumen cogitare non potestis, nisi quale videre consuestis? Hoc enim conspicuum et omni carni non tantum hominum, verum etiam bestiarum et vermiculorum notissimum lumen intuentes ex illo conceptam corde phantasiam in immensum soletis augere et eam lucem dicere, ubi deus pater habitat cum regnicolis suis. Quando enim discrevistis lucem, qua cernimus, ab ea luce, qua intellegimus, cum aliud nihil umquam putaveritis esse intellegere veritatem nisi formas corporeas cogitare, sive finitas sive ex aliquibus partibus infinitas, quae inania phantasmata esse nescitis? p. 541,15 Proinde cum tantum intersit inter cogitationem, qua cogito terram luminis vestram, quae omnino nusquam est, et cogitationem, qua cogito Alexandriam, quam numquam vidi, sed tamen est, rursusque tantum intersit inter istam, qua cogito Alexandriam incognitam, et eam, qua cogito Karthaginem cognitam: ab hac quoque cogitatione, qua certa et nota corpora cogito, longe _ (-o ?)_incomparabiliter distat cogitatio, qua intellego iustitiam, castitatem, fidem, veritatem, caritatem, comitatem et quicquid eiusmodi est; quae cogitatio, di‹s›cite, si potestis, quale lumen sit, quo illa omnia, quae hoc non sunt, et inter se discernuntur, et quantum ab hoc distent, fida manifestatione cognoscitur. p. 541,27 Et tamen etiam hoc lumen non est lumen illud, quod deus est; hoc enim creatura est, creator est ille; hoc factum, ille qui fecit; hoc denique mutabile, dum vult, quod nolebat, et scit, quod nesciebat, et reminiscitur, quod oblitum erat, illud autem incommutabili voluntate, veritate, aeternitate persistit, et inde nobis est initium existendi, ratio cognoscendi, lex amandi; inde omnibus et irrationalibus animantibus natura, qua vivunt, vigor, quo sentiunt, motus, quo appetunt; inde etiam omnibus corporibus mensura, ut subsistant, numerus, ut ornentur, pondus, ut ordinentur. Itaque lumen illud, trinitas inseparabilis, unus deus est, cuius vos nullo corpore adiuncto per se ipsam incorpoream spiritalem incommutabilemque substantiam etiam locis dividitis. p. 542,10 Nec saltem trinitati loca tria datis, sed quattuor: patri unum, id est lumen inaccessibile, quod prorsus non intellegitis, filio duo, solem scilicet atque lunam, spiritui sancto rursus unum, id est aeris hunc omnem ambitum. De patris ergo inaccessibili lumine, quia veram fidem tenentibus non inde separatur filius et spiritus sanctus, hactenus in praesentia dixerim.