Contra Faustum, III

Last updated on: May 13, 2015 at 12:00 am by Peter Leithart

Contra Faustum, III 2015-05-13T00:00:00+06:00 Peter Leithart

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When Augustine turns to the typology of unclean foods in his reply to Faustus, he introduces a linguistic analogy that lays a foundation for the later arguments. Paul’s claim that all things are clean (1 Timothy 4:4) does not contradict the Old Testament, since Paul is talking about the nature of things and not about what they signified in the old economy. Unclean meats, like Sabbath and circumcision, provided “certain prophetic signs suited to that time.” What was unclean was not the animal itself, but the thing signified by the animal – not the pig but porcine human behavior.

In speech, Augustine points out, the words “fool” and “sage” are both “clean” with regard to their “nature” – the sound is not polluted, nor the visual signifier on the page. What the words signify, however, is different. “Fool” is “unclean” because of the unclean person that it signifies. Similarly, the words “pig” and “lamb” are both clean in nature, but signify an unclean and a clean animal respectively. In the case of unclean meats, signification is doubled. The word “pig” refers to an animal, but that animal is in turn a signum of a human res. With the doubling of signification, the uncleanness is put off to a second remove. Not just the word “pig” but the animal itself is “naturally” pure and good, being a creation of the Holy God. In its prophetic significance, however, the animal is a quasi-linguistic signifier of a certain kind of human.

Relying on Leviticus 11, Augustine notes the specific features of the pig that make it an unclean animal: It divides the hoof but it does not ruminate. These features of piggishness are not defects in a pig, since it is in the nature of pigs to divide the hoof but not ruminate. The absence of rumination signifies a human defect. Some hear the words of God, but store them away and never bring them up again “from the stomach of thought” so they can ruminate on them spiritaliter. The prohibition of pork thus served a useful purpose, and learning about this prohibition remains useful, insofar as it warns us “to avoid such a defect” and encourages us to ruminate again and again on the nourishing word of God.[1] If one is looking for a res corresponding to the signum, one need look no further than Faustus: Manicheans are among the pigs, for they do not ruminate on Scripture and they do not “divide the hoof” by acknowledging two testaments (Book 16).

From this complex analogy, it becomes clear that for Augustine “spiritual” observance is not simply mental or incorporeal observance, not merely a matter of reading and understanding. The rules of unclean meats inculcate forms of responsiveness proper to the word of GodAugustine extends the same pattern of reflection to other institutions of the Old order. Unleavened bread was a shadow of the future, and Christians are no longer bound to expunge leaven for a week after Passover. Since the final Passover has been sacrificed, however, we are to continuously expel the leaven of malice and wickedness.

It is no longer a sin to refrain from participating in the feast of tabernacles, as once it was, but it is a sin not to be part of the tabernacle of God, quod est Ecclesia. It is no longer a sin to wear clothing of mixed fabric, but it is sinful to “live in a disordered way and to want to confuse distinct vocations in life.”[2] We can plow with an ox and an ass yoked together if we like; it makes for uneven furrows, but there is no sin. But we are prohibited from mixing folly and wisdom. . Christian study of Old Testament practices nurtures New Testament practice. In fact, Christians not only study and understand but practice even the symbolic regulations of the law, though not in the same form as Israel did.

Augustine perfects earlier responses to gnostic Marcionism in another way as well. He shifts from a purely spiritualizing hermeneutic to a “typological” approach in which the gap between promise and fulfillment is temporal, not ontological. This implies that Israel’s form of life foreshadows the church’s. At least some of the Jews understood that their corporal actions and rites were prophetic of something better, but, even more importantly, Augustine suggests that even those who failed to grasp the ultimate intention of the rites were engaged in prophetic performance. Israel as a whole was prophetic, and became so precisely by taking the Law literally and performing it as God’s commandment.

In contrast to earlier Catholic writers, Augustine gives limited approval to Jewish literalism: God was not dissembling when He ordered sacrifice, instituted food laws, or delivered rules of purity from Sinai. He intended Israel to understand these laws secundum litteram and to obey them secundum carnem, with the goal that their bodily ritual performance would make Israel a figura of the good things to come. Israel plays its proper figural role only by being stubbornly literal.

We also are beginning to see how Augustine can address Faustus’ fundamental charge regarding the inconsistency of Christian practice. Augustine further clarifies his position in Book 19, the most-cited portion of contra Faustum in the Reformation era and probably the most important section of the treatise throughout the church’s history. The chapter deals with Jesus’ claim that he has come to fulfill, not abolish, the law and the prophets. Augustine rightly sees that Faustus’ conclusion that Jesus is not referring to Jewish law is special pleading that makes no contextual sense. But then the questions are, What does it mean for Jesus to fulfill the law?

Jesus fulfills the law in two senses, which match the two sorts of precepts he identified earlier. With regard to the permanent precepts governing conduct, Jesus fulfills the law by giving us grace to do what the law demands. He fulfills the law in us, who constitute the body of the totus Christus. With regard to the symbolic regulations, Jesus fulfills the law by bringing in the reality that those observances figured.

It is precisely because Jesus fulfilled the symbolic regulations that Christian do not practice them. Were Christians to observe these prophetic signa futurorum, they would betray in practice the fulfillment they announce in proclamation. The sheer non-practice of circumcision is a witness that the fulfillment of these regulations has occurred. Fulfillment does not rob these symbol laws of their continuing use, and in Book 19 Augustine emphasizes their practical use.

Circumcision as practice does not dissolve into text, nor does Augustine moralize or spiritualize the symbolic regulations of the Old Covenant. Circumcision is fulfilled not only in the spiritual reality of heart circumcision but in a rite better than circumcision, a rite that announces the fulfillment of what circumcision figured in a shadowy way. Jesus’ resurrection intervenes between Jewish circumcision and Christian initiation, and through His resurrection He enlivens the better sacrament of baptism. More generally, the Old figural and prophetic sacraments are fulfilled in new sacraments, virtute maiora, utilitate meliora, actu faciliora, numeero pauciora (19.13). The church cannot exist without rites, any more than any society. For there is no religious society, Augustine insists, whether true or false, that does not need to be “coagulated” into a community by sacraments and signs.

A linguistic analogy again fills out the point. Augustine describes the sacraments as visibilia verba, but, against the Reformers’ use of the phrase, his point is not to emphasize the visibility of the sacrament nor to draw an analogy between preaching and sacraments. Augustine introduces the phrase while comparing temporal and changeable sacred rites to the changing tenses of a verb. Two verb forms can refer to the same event. If the verb points to a future event, the verb is future: Baylor will make the Sweet Sixteen. If the event has happened, the verb is past: Baylor made the Sweet Sixteen. The reality is the same, but the form of the sign differs with the times. Just so, the event once promised by the linguistic signs nasciturus, passurus, resurrecturus is now announced as completed and fulfilled by the signifiers natus sit, passus sit, resurrexerit. Rites are verbal in this sense.

Both Old and New sacraments refer to Christ in His atoning death and conquering resurrection, but they refer to Him differently – first as coming, now as come. Circumcision is a future-tense sign that promises a Christ to come; baptism, the present-tense rite of initiation, announces that He has come. Animal sacrifice figures a future Christ; Eucharist memorializes a final sacrifice. Rites are words because they morph to remain congruent with the times, as time moves from the time of promise to the time of fulfillment. Rites conjugate.[3]

To sum up: Faustus claimed that the Catholics belie their profession by their practice: They say the Old Testament is Scripture, but do not practice it. Augustine’s final answer is that Christians announce the fulfillment of the symbolic ordinances of the Old Covenant precisely by their non-observance of rites once commanded, and that Christian sacraments are the rites of the old law in fulfilled form. What unites these two responses is the conviction that in Christ and His Body Israel’s future-tense is conjugated into the joyous perfect tense of the gospel.

(The three posts on Augustine’s Contra Faustum are portions of a paper delivered at the Wilken Colloquium, Baylor University, Waco, Texas, in March 2011.)

[1] The realities of Christian living had to be foretold in action as well as word. Once the reality is revealed, the burden of observance is lifted but the authority of the prophetic meaning is commended to the church (onera observationum non sunt imposita, prophetiae tamen auctoritas commendata; Book 6).

[2] He illustrates with the examples of a nun who wears jewels and a married woman who dresses like a virgin (Book 6).

[3] I have developed this analogy at more length in “Conjugating the Rites: Old and New in Augustine’s Theory of Signs,” Calvin Theological Journal 34:1 (1999), pp. 136-147.

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