Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 37–43

“What harm,” you say, “would there be if these too were made supremely good?” And yet, if any of us were asked, once God the Father has been accepted and believed to be the supreme good, whence another supreme good, if there were one, should piously be thought to be, we could in no way answer rightly except: from God the Father, who is supremely good. What is from him, then, let us remember, was born of him, not made by him from nothing, and therefore it too is supremely, that is, incorruptibly, good; and we see that it is unjust to demand that the things he made from nothing be as supremely good as he whom he begot from himself; and had he not begotten only one, he would not have begotten what he himself is, since he himself is one. Therefore it is ignorant and impious to seek brothers for the only Son, through whom all good things were made by the Father from nothing, except insofar as he deigned to appear in man. For that is why in the Scriptures he is called both only-begotten and firstborn: only-begotten from the Father, firstborn from the dead. “And we saw,” it says, “his glory, as of the only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth”; and Paul says, “that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” But if we say, “Then these things made from nothing should not exist, but only the nature of God,” we will begrudge such great goods; and it is an impious voice that thinks it a wrong not to be what God is, and therefore does not want there to be any good because God is preferred to it. I beg you, nature of the rational soul, bear being somewhat less than God is, and so much less that after him there is nothing better than you; bear it, I say, and grow gentle toward him, lest he drive you back still further into the lowest things, where through penal straits the good that you are becomes cheaper to you again and again. You are proud against God if you are indignant that he goes before you, and you think too insultingly of him if you do not rejoice ineffably that you are so great a good that he alone is more excellent. This being established and confirmed, do not say: “God should have made me the only nature; I would not want anything good to be made after me.” For the good that comes next after God ought not to have been the last. And from this especially it appears how great a dignity he has given you: that God, who alone is by nature your master, made other goods over which you too would be master. Nor should you wonder that now they do not serve you in every way and sometimes even torment you, because your Lord has greater power over the things that serve you than you yourself have, as over the servants of his servants. What wonder, then, if, when you sin, that is, do not obey your Lord, the things over which you were master have been made penal for you? For what is so just, and what more just than God? For this is what human nature deserved in Adam, about which this is not the place to argue; but still the just ruler is shown to be such both by just rewards and by just punishments, by the happiness of those who live rightly and the punishment of sinners. Yet you have not been abandoned without mercy, for you are called to return by fixed measures of things and times. Thus by the right governance of the most high Creator the order reaches down to earthly goods, which are corrupted and restored, so that you might have consolations mixed with punishment, so that you might both praise God, delighted by the order of goods, and take refuge in him, trained by the experience of evils. Thus, insofar as earthly things serve you, they teach you that you are their mistress; insofar as they are troublesome, they teach you to serve your Lord.

Therefore, although corruption is an evil, and although it is not from the Creator of natures but comes from their having been made from nothing, yet it too, under his rule and governance of all that he made, is so ordered that it harms only the lowest natures, for the punishment of the condemned and for the training and admonition of those returning, so that they may cleave to the incorruptible God and remain uncorrupted, which is our one good, as is said through the prophet: “But for me it is good to cleave to God.” And do not say: God should not have made corruptible natures. For insofar as they are natures, God made them; but insofar as they are corruptible, God did not make them; for corruption is not from him who alone is incorruptible. If you grasp this, give thanks to God; if you do not grasp it, be quiet, and do not rashly condemn what you do not yet understand, but turn humbly to him who is the light of the mind, that you may understand. For when “corruptible nature” is said, not one word but two are said. Likewise, when it is said that God made from nothing, we hear not one name but two. Assign, then, each of the one pair to each of the other, so that when you hear “nature” it belongs to God, and when you hear “corruptible” it belongs to nothing; yet in such a way that the corruptions themselves, though they are not from God’s craft, are nevertheless in his power, to be disposed according to the order of things and the deserts of souls. So we rightly say that both reward and punishment are from him. For he did not make corruption, and yet he can hand over to corruption one who has deserved to be corrupted, that is, one who has begun to corrupt himself by sinning, so that he who willingly committed the corruption that flattered him may unwillingly feel the corruption that torments him.

For it is not only written in the Old Testament, “I make good things and create evil things,” but more plainly in the New, where the Lord says: “Do not fear those who kill the body and after that have nothing more that they can do; but fear him who, when he has killed the body, has power to send the soul into Gehenna.” And that a penal corruption is added by divine judgment to voluntary corruption the apostle Paul testifies most plainly when he says: “For the temple of God is holy, which you are; whoever corrupts the temple of God, God will corrupt him.” If this had been said in the Old Law, with what invectives these men would attack it, accusing God of being a corrupter! Fearing this word, many Latin translators would not say “will corrupt” but said “God will destroy him,” and without departing from the thing itself they avoided offense at the word. Though these men would inveigh no less against God as a destroyer if they found this in the Old Law or the Prophets. But they are refuted by the Greek copies, in which it is written most plainly: “Whoever corrupts the temple of God, God will corrupt him.” And if anyone asks them how this was said, so that God may not be thought a corrupter, they at once explain that “will corrupt” means “will hand over to corruption,” or in some other way if they can. If they had this attitude toward the Old Law, they would both understand many wonderful things there and, instead of tearing with hatred what they do not yet understand, would put it off with reverence.

But if anyone does not yet believe that corruption is from nothing, let him set before himself these two, “being” and “not being,” as if on opposite sides, for the sake of understanding (since with the slow we must walk more slowly); then let him place something in the middle, say the body of a living creature, and ask himself this: while that body is being formed and born, while its form increases, while it is nourished, grows strong, is strengthened, adorned, made firm, insofar as it lasts and insofar as it is established, toward which side does it tend, toward being or toward not being? He will not doubt that there is indeed something even in its very beginnings, but that the more it is established and made firm in shape and form and strength, the more it comes to be, and tends toward the side where being has been placed. Now let it begin to be corrupted: let that whole condition be weakened, let the strength languish, the vigor wither, the shape be marred, the framework of the members fall apart, the harmony of the parts waste away and dissolve. Let him ask now too toward which side it tends through this corruption, toward being or toward not being: I do not think anyone so blind and slow that he would doubt what to answer himself, and would not perceive that the more anything is corrupted, the more it tends toward destruction, and that whatever tends toward destruction tends toward not being. Since, then, God must be believed to exist unchangeably and incorruptibly, and what is called nothing plainly does not exist at all; and since, having set before yourself being and not being, you have recognized that the more form increases, the more anything tends to be, and the more corruption increases, the more it tends not to be: why do you hesitate to say, of each corruptible nature, what in it is from God and what is from nothing, since form is according to nature and corruption against nature? Since increase of form compels being, and we confess that God exists supremely, while increase of corruption compels not being, and it is agreed that what does not exist is nothing: why, I say, do you hesitate to say, of a corruptible nature, which you call both a nature and corruptible, what is from God and what is from nothing? And why do you seek a nature contrary to God, when, if you confess that he exists supremely, you see that not being is what is contrary to him?

“Why, then,” you say, “does corruption take away what God gave to natures?” It does not take it away except where God permits; and he permits it where he judges it most orderly and most just, according to the ranks of things and the deserts of souls. For the form of an uttered sound also passes away and is destroyed by silence; and yet our speech is carried on by the departure and succession of passing words and is fittingly and pleasantly divided by measured intervals of silence. So it is also with the lowest beauty of temporal natures: it is carried on by the passing of things and divided by the death of those that are born. If our sense and memory could grasp the order and measures of this beauty, it would so please us that we would not dare to call the failings by which it is divided even corruptions; but the toil we undergo in our part of this beauty, while the flowing temporal things we love desert us, is our paying the penalty for sins and our being admonished to love eternal things.

Let us not, then, seek in this beauty what it has not received; it is the lowest precisely because it has not received what we seek; and in what it has received, let us praise God, because he has given so great a good of form even to this beauty, though it is the lowest. Yet let us not cleave to it as its lovers, but pass beyond it as praisers of God, so that, placed above it, we may judge it, and not, bound to it, be judged in it. And let us hasten to that good which neither ranges through places nor rolls on in time, and from which all natures in place and time receive their form and shape. To see it, let us cleanse the heart through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, who says: “Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God.” For the eyes that must be prepared to see that good are not those by which this light is seen spread through places, not whole everywhere, but having one part here and another elsewhere. Rather let us purify that sight and keenness by which is seen, as far as is allowed in this life, what is just, what is godly, what the beauty of wisdom is; whoever sees these things prefers them far above the fullness of all spaces of place, and perceives that, in order to see them, the keenness of his mind is not spread through spaces of place but is established by an incorporeal power.

Since phantasms, which our thought draws from carnal sense and turns over and holds in imagination, are very hostile to this sight, let us detest this heresy, which, following belief in its own phantasms, scattered and spread the divine substance through spaces of place, however infinite, like a formless mass, and cut it off on one side to find a place for evil, which it could not see is not a nature but against nature; and which adorned evil itself with such beauty and forms and peace of parts flourishing in each nature (since without these goods it could conceive of no nature) that the evils it censures there are buried by an abundance of countless goods. But let this be the end of this volume; in the others, God permitting and helping, its other ravings will be refuted.