Edition Masquer
Contra Faustum Manichaeum libri triginta tres

1.

Faustus dixit: _Apostolum accipis?_Et maxime. _Cur ergo non credis filium dei ex semine David natum secundum carnem? _Non equidem crediderim apostolum dei contraria sibi scribere potuisse et modo hanc, modo illam de domino nostro habuisse sententiam. p. 313,8 Sed quia vobis ita placet, qui numquam sine stomacho auditis aliquid esse in apostolo cauponatum, ne hoc quidem nobis scias esse contrarium, si quidem haec vetus videatur esse et antiqua opinio Pauli de Iesu, cum eum et ipse David filium putaret ut ceteri, quod tamen ubi falsum didicit, interpolat et infirmat scribensque ad Corinthios nos inquit neminem novimus secundum carnem ; et si cognovimus secundum carnem Christum, sed nunc iam non novimus. Quare consideres oportet, quantum intersit inter haec duo capitula, e quibus unum perhibet Iesum filium David secundum carnem, alterum vero iam se neminem nosse secundum carnem. p. 313,19 Quae si utraque sunt Pauli, aut hac ratione erunt, qua dixi, aut unum ipsorum non erit Pauli. Prosequitur deinde: Itaque inquit si qua est in Christo nova creatura, vetera transierunt, ecce facta sunt omnia nova. Vides ergo eum veterem appellare et transitoriam fidem illam priorem, id est Iesum credidisse ex semine David secundum carnem, novam vero hanc secundam et permanentem, quia neminem iam noverit secundum carnem. Quapropter et alibi cum essem inquit parvulus, ut parvulus loquebar, ut paruulus sapiebam, ut parvulus cogitabam; cum autem factus sum vir, quae parvuli erant, evacuavi. Quod si ita est, quid ergo et nos indignum facimus, si novam et meliorem Pauli tenentes confessionem veterem illam ac deteriorem proicimus ? Aut si vobis secundum quod ad Romanos scribit credere cordi est, nobis quare licitum non sit secundum quod ad Corinthios dogmatizare? Quamvis et hoc ad duritiam vestram ita responderim, alioquin absit apostolum dei, quod aedificavit, umquam destruere, ne se ipse praevaricatorem constituat, ut contestatus est. Verumtamen si eius est prior illa sententia, nunc emendata est; sin fas non est Paulum inemendatum dixisse aliquid umquam, ipsius non est. p. 314,10

Traduction Masquer
Reply to Faustus the Manichaean

1.

Faustus said: Assuredly I believe the apostle. And yet I do not believe that the Son of God was born of the seed of David according to the flesh, ¹ because I do not believe that God's apostle could contradict himself, and have one opinion about our Lord at one time, and another at another. But, granting that he wrote this,--since you will not hear of anything being spurious in his writings,--it is not against us. For this seems to be Paul's old belief about Jesus, when he thought, like everybody else, that Jesus was the son of David. Afterwards, when he learned that this was false, he corrects himself; and in his Epistle to the Corinthians he says: "We know no man after the flesh; yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more." ² Observe the difference between these two verses. In one he asserts that Jesus was the son of David after the flesh; in the other he says that now he knows no man after the flesh. If Paul wrote both, it can only have been in the way I have stated. In the next verse he adds: "Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." The belief that Jesus was born of the seed of David according to the flesh is of this old transitory kind; whereas the faith which knows no man after the flesh is new and permanent. So, he says elsewhere: "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things." ³ We are thus warranted in preferring the new and amended confession of Paul to his old and faulty one. And if you hold by what is said in the Epistle to the Romans, why should not we hold by what is said to the Corinthians? But it is only by your insisting on the correctness of the text that we are made to represent Paul as building again the things which he destroyed, in spite of his own repudiation of such prevarication. If the verse is Paul's, he has corrected himself. If Paul should not be supposed to have written anything requiring correction, the verse is not his.