Faustus doesn’t believe that the Old Testament provides testimonies of Christ, and Augustine sets out to prove him wrong:
“The ark was three hundred cubits long so that, all told, it was six times fifty cubits, just as all the time of this world is stretched out over six ages, in all of which Christ never ceases to be proclaimed. in five ages he was predicted by prophecy; in the sixth he had been made known everywhere by the gospel. The ark’s height rises to thirty cubits, the number that the length of three hundred cubits contains ten times. For Christ is our height, and when he was thirty years of age, he consecrated the teaching of the gospel, testifying that he did not come to destroy but to fulfill the law. But the heat of the law is recognized in the ten commandments. Hence, the length of the ark is completed by ten times thirty cubits. And for this reason Noah is counted as the tenth from Adam. The timbers of the ark are glued together with pitch on the inside and on the outside in order to signify the tolerance of love in the framework of unity, so that fraternal unity does not yield to the scandals that try th Church, whether from those who are inside or from those who are outside, and so that the bond of peace is not destroyed. For pitch is a very hot and strong glue that signifies the ardor of love, which tolerates all things with great strength in order to maintain a spiritual community.”
Take that , Faustus.
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…