Saint Augustine (354-430)

Against Faustus

Translated by Richard Stothert

Book XX

Chapter 15

Every one must see the folly of your boasting of superiority to the Pagans because they use altars and temples, images and sacrifices and incense, in the worship of God, which you do not. As if it were not better to build an altar and offer sacrifice to a stone, which has some kind of existence, than to employ a heated imagination in worshipping things which have no existence at all! And what do you mean by saying that you are a rational temple of God? Can that be God’s temple which is partly the construction of the devil? And is this not true of you, as you say that all your members and your whole body were formed by the evil principle which you call Hyle, and that part of this formative mind dwells in the body along with part of your god? And as this part of your god is bound and confined, you should be called the prison of God rather than his temple. Perhaps it is your soul that is the temple of God, as you have it from the region of light. But you generally call your soul not a temple, but a part or member of God. So, when you say you are the temple of God, it must be in your body, which, you say, was formed by the devil. Thus you blaspheme the temple of God, calling it not only the workmanship of Satan, but the prison-house of God. The apostle, on the other hand, says: “The temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.” And to show that this refers not merely to the soul, he says expressly: “Know ye not that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of God?” You call the workmanship of devils the temple of God, and there, to use Faustus’ words, you place Christ, the Son of God, the living image of living majesty. Your impiety may well contrive a fabulous temple for a fabulous Christ. The image you speak of must be so called, because it is the creature of your imagination.

Book XX Chapter 14

Book XX Chapter 16