Acts of the Debate with Fortunatus the Manichaean 1–20

Augustine said: What I once thought was truth I now think is error; whether my judgment is right I wish to hear from you, face to face. Fortunatus said: Begin by setting out the error. Augustine said: First of all, I think it the greatest error to believe that almighty God, in whom our one hope lies, can in any part be violated, defiled, or corrupted. I know that your heresy affirms this, not indeed in the words I have just used; for when you are questioned, you too confess that God is incorruptible and in every way inviolable and undefilable; but when you begin to set out the rest, you are compelled to confess that he is corruptible, penetrable, and defilable. For you say that some race of darkness or other rebelled against the kingdom of God; and that almighty God, when he saw how great a ruin and devastation threatened his realms unless he set something against the opposing race and resisted it, sent this power, from whose mixture with evil and with the race of darkness the world was constructed; and that this is why good souls here toil, are in servitude, go astray, and are corrupted, so that they needed a deliverer to cleanse them from error, release them from the mixture, and free them from servitude. I think it impious to believe that almighty God feared any opposing race, or suffered a necessity such that he cast us headlong into hardships. Fortunatus said: Because I know that you were among us, that is, that you took part among the Manichaeans, these are the principal points of our faith. What is at issue here is our way of life, the false charges with which we are assailed. So let the good men present hear from you whether the things of which we are accused and attacked are true or false. For from your teaching, your account, and your showing they will be able to know our way of life more truly than truth itself, if it is disclosed by you. Were you present at our prayer?

Augustine said: I was present. But the question of faith is one thing, the question of morals another; I proposed the question of faith. But if those who are present prefer to hear about morals, I do not shrink from that question either. Fortunatus said: I wish first to clear myself before your conscience, in whose eyes we are defiled, by the testimony of a competent man, who is competent for me both now and at the future examination at the just judgment of Christ: whether he saw in us, or came to know of, the things that are bandied about.

Augustine said: You are calling me to another subject, when I had proposed the faith. About your morals, however, those who are your Elect can know fully. And you know that I was not one of your Elect but a Hearer. So although I was present at your prayer, as you asked, whether you hold some prayer separately among yourselves God alone can know, and you. Yet at the prayer at which I was present I saw nothing shameful done; I noticed only that, against the faith which I afterwards learned and approved, you make your prayer facing the sun. Apart from this I found out nothing new in that prayer of yours. Whoever raises any question of morals against you raises it against your Elect. What you who are Elect do among yourselves I cannot know. For I often heard from you that you receive the Eucharist; but since the time of receiving it was hidden from me, how could I know what you receive? So keep the question of morals, if you please, to be discussed among your Elect, if it can be discussed. The faith was given me by you, and today I reject it. It is about that that I made my proposal. Let my proposal be answered. Fortunatus said: And our profession is this very thing: that God is incorruptible, that he is full of light, unapproachable, ungraspable, impassible, that he dwells in eternal light that is his own, that he brings forth from himself nothing corruptible, neither darkness nor demons nor Satan, and that nothing else opposed to him can be found in his kingdom; that he sent a Savior like himself; that the Word, born from the foundation of the world, when he was making the world, came among men after the world had been made; that he chose souls worthy of himself, sanctified by his holy will through his heavenly commands, imbued with faith and with the understanding of heavenly things, and that under his guidance these same souls will return from here once more to the kingdom of God, according to the holy promise of him who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the door,” and, “No one can come to the Father except through me.” These things we believe, because otherwise, that is, through any other mediator, souls will not be able to return to the kingdom of God unless they have found him, the truth, the way, and the door. For he himself said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father also,” and, “Whoever believes in me will not taste death for ever, but will pass from death to life and will not come into judgment.” These things we believe, and this is the account of our faith: to obey his commands according to the strength of our mind, following the one faith of this Trinity, of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Augustine said: These souls, which you confess come from death to life through Christ: what cause cast them headlong into death? Fortunatus said: From this point deign to pursue the matter and argue against it, if there is nothing besides God.

Augustine said: No, you deign to answer what you are asked: what cause gave these souls over to death. Fortunatus said: No, you deign to say whether anything exists besides God, or whether all things are in God.

Augustine said: This I can answer, which the Lord willed me to know: that God can suffer no necessity, and cannot be violated or corrupted in any part. Since you too confess this, I ask by what necessity he sent here the souls which you say return through Christ. Fortunatus said: As to what you said, that God has revealed to you thus far that he is incorruptible, as he has to me also, we must seek the reason how, or for what cause, souls came into this world, so that he should now rightly free them from this world through his only-begotten Son, who is like himself, if there is nothing besides him.

Augustine said: We ought not to disappoint so many men of standing who are present by passing from the question proposed to another. If we both confess, if we grant each other, that God is incorruptible and inviolable and could suffer nothing (from which it follows that your heresy is false, which says that God, when he saw devastation and ruin threatening his realms, sent a power to war with the race of darkness, and that from that mixture our souls toil here), then my argument is short and, as I judge, perfectly plain to anyone. If God could suffer nothing from the race of darkness, because he is inviolable, he sent us here without cause, to suffer hardships here. But if he could suffer something, he is not inviolable, and you deceive those to whom you say that God is inviolable. For your heresy denies this when you set out the rest. Fortunatus said: We hold what the blessed apostle Paul teaches us, who said: “Have this mind in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men and found in appearance as a man; he humbled himself, made subject even to death.” This, then, we hold of ourselves which we hold of Christ: that though he was in the form of God, he was made subject even to death, to show the likeness of our souls. And as he showed in himself the likeness of death, and showed that the Father is in him and he in the Father, raised from the midst of the dead, so let us hold that it will be with our souls: that through him we shall be able to be freed from this death, which is either foreign to God, or, if it belongs to God, then both his mercy ceases and the name of deliverer and the works of one who delivers.

Augustine said: I ask how we came into death, and you tell me how we are freed from death. Fortunatus said: The apostle said in this way how we ought to think about our souls, as Christ showed us: if Christ was in suffering and death, so are we; if by the will of the Father he came down into suffering and death, so did we.

Augustine said: It is known to all that the catholic faith holds this: that our Lord, that is, the power and wisdom of God and the Word, through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made, took on a man for our deliverance. In that man whom he took on he showed the things you speak of. But we are now inquiring about the substance of God himself and of his ineffable majesty, whether anything can harm him or not. For if anything can harm him, he is not inviolable. If nothing can harm him, what was the race of darkness going to do to him, against which you say war was waged by God before the foundation of the world, in which war you assert that we, that is, souls, which plainly now need a deliverer, were mixed with every evil and entangled in death? For I return to that very short argument: if he could be harmed, he is not inviolable; if he could not, he cruelly sent us here to suffer these things. Fortunatus said: Is the soul of God, or not?

Augustine said: If it is just that my questions go unanswered and I am questioned, I answer. Fortunatus said: Whether the soul acts in its own right: this is what I ask you.

Augustine said: I will say what you asked; only remember that you refused to answer my questions, while I answer yours. If you ask whether the soul came down from God, it is indeed a great question; but whether it came down from God or not, I answer concerning the soul that it is not God: God is one thing, the soul another. God is inviolable, incorruptible, impenetrable, and undefilable, one who can be corrupted in no part and harmed in no part. But the soul we see to be sinful, to be in hardship, to seek the truth, and to need a deliverer. This change in the soul shows me that the soul is not God. For if the soul is the substance of God, the substance of God errs, the substance of God is corrupted, the substance of God is violated, the substance of God is deceived: which it is impious to say. Fortunatus said: So you have denied that the soul is from God, on the ground that it is subject to sins and vices and worldly things and is led by error, since it cannot be that either God or his substance suffers this. For God is incorruptible and his substance is immaculate and holy. But the question here put by you is whether the soul is from God or not. This we confess, and show it from the coming of the Savior, from his holy preaching, from what is read of him, since he has mercy on souls and the soul is said to have come according to his will, so that he might free it from death, lead it to eternal glory, and restore it to the Father. But what do you yourself say or hope about the soul: is it from God or not? And can the substance of God, from which you deny that the soul is, be subject to no sufferings?

Augustine said: I have denied that the soul is the substance of God in the sense that I deny it is God; yet it is from God as its author, because it was made by God. He who made is one thing, what he made is another; he who made cannot be corruptible at all, but what he made cannot in any way be equal to him who made it. Fortunatus said: Nor did I say that the soul is like God. But since you said that the soul is made and that there is nothing besides God, I ask where God found the substance of the soul.

Augustine said: Only remember that I answer what you ask, but you do not answer what I ask. I say that the soul was made by God, like all the other things that were made by God, and that among the things which almighty God made, the chief place was given to the soul. But if you ask from what God made the soul, remember that I confess with you that God is almighty. And he is not almighty who seeks the help of some material from which to make what he wills. From this it follows that, according to our faith, all the things that God made through his Word and Wisdom he made from nothing. For so we read: “He commanded, and they were made; he gave the order, and they were established.” Fortunatus said: Do all things consist by his command?

Augustine said: So I believe, but all the things that were made. Fortunatus said: As things made they agree; but since these things are incompatible with one another, it is established by this that there is not one substance, even if by the command of one they came to the composition and appearance of this world. For the rest, it is evident from the things themselves that darkness and light are nothing alike, truth and falsehood nothing alike, death and life nothing alike, soul and body nothing alike, and the other things like these, which differ from one another in names and in kinds; and our Lord rightly said, “The tree which my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted and thrown into the fire,” the tree that does not bear good fruit, and that the tree is rooted. From this it is established also by the nature of things that there are two substances in this world, which differ in kinds and names: one of them is the substance of the body, the other is eternal, which we believe to be the almighty Father's.

Augustine said: These contraries that move you to think things adverse came about on account of our sin, that is, on account of the sin of man. For God made all things good and ordered them well; but sin he did not make, and this alone is what is called evil: our voluntary sin. There is also another kind of evil, which is the punishment of sin. Since, then, there are two kinds of evil, sin and the punishment of sin, sin does not pertain to God; the punishment of sin pertains to him as avenger. For as God is good, in that he established all things, so he is just, in that he avenges sin. Since, then, all things are ordered most excellently, the things that now seem adverse to us have befallen man deservedly, fallen as he is, since he would not keep the law of God. For to the rational soul which is in man God gave free choice; for only so could we have merits, if we were good by will, not by necessity. Since, then, one ought to be good not by necessity but by will, it was fitting that God should give the soul free choice. To this soul, while it obeyed his laws, he subjected all things without adversity, so that the other things God created should serve it, if it too were willing to serve God; but if it were unwilling to serve God, the things which served it would be turned to its punishment. Therefore, if all things are rightly ordered by God, they are good, and God suffers no evil. Fortunatus said: He does not suffer it, but God forestalls evil.

Augustine said: From whom, then, was he going to suffer it? Fortunatus said: This is my point: that he willed to forestall it, not rashly, but by power and foreknowledge. For the rest, deny that evil exists apart from God, when through his precepts he shows that there are other things which happen apart from his will. A precept does not intervene except where there is also opposition; free capacity of living is not given except where there is a fall, according to the reasoning of the apostle, who says: “And you, when you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the teaching of this world, according to the prince of the power of this air, the spirit which now works in the sons of unbelief, among whom we too and all once lived in the desires of our flesh, doing the wills of the counsels of the flesh; and we were by nature children of wrath, as the rest also. But God, who is rich in all mercy, had mercy on us, and when we were dead in sins made us alive together in Christ, by whose grace you have been saved; and raised us together and seated us together in the heavenly places with Christ Jesus, that he might show in the ages to come,” and the rest, up to what is written, “killing the enmity in himself. And coming he preached peace to you who were far off, and peace to those who were near; for through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.”

Augustine said: This reading of the apostle, which you chose to recite, if I am not mistaken, makes very much for my faith and against yours. First, because that very free choice by which, as I said, it comes about that the soul sins is sufficiently expressed here, when he named sins and when he said that our reconciliation with God comes about through Jesus Christ. For by sinning we had turned away from God, but by keeping the precepts of Christ we are reconciled to God, so that we who were dead in sins may, by keeping his precepts, be made alive and have peace with him in one Spirit, from whom we had been estranged by not keeping his commandments, as our faith proclaims concerning the man who was first created. So now I ask you, according to the reading that has been read, how we have sins if a contrary nature forces us to do what we do. For one who is forced by necessity to do something does not sin; but one who sins sins by free choice. Why has repentance been enjoined on us, if we have done nothing evil, but the race of darkness has? I ask likewise: to whom is the forgiveness of sins given, to us or to the race of darkness? If forgiveness of sins is given to the race of darkness, it too will reign with God, receiving forgiveness of sins; but if forgiveness of sins is given to us, it is plain that we sinned by will. For it is quite foolish that one should be pardoned who has done nothing evil; and he has done nothing evil who has done nothing by his own will. Today, then, when God promises the soul forgiveness of sins and reconciliation if it ceases to sin and repents of its sins, suppose it were to answer according to your faith and say: “What sin have I committed? What have I deserved? Why did you expel me from your realms, to fight against some race or other? I have been weighed down, mixed, corrupted, exhausted; free choice was not preserved for me. You know the necessity by which I was pressed; why do you charge me with the wounds I received? Why do you compel me to repentance, when you are the cause of my wounds; when you know what I suffered, what the race of darkness did to me on your authority; you who could not be violated, and yet, wishing to protect your realms, which nothing could harm, cast me headlong into miseries? If indeed I am a part of you, who came forth from your inmost being, from your kingdom and from your mouth, I ought to have suffered nothing in this race of darkness, so that it would have been subjected while I remained uncorrupted, if I was a part of the Lord. But now, since it could not be tempered except by my corruption, how am I called a part of you, or how do you remain inviolable, or how are you not cruel, who willed me to suffer for those realms which nothing could harm from that race of darkness?” Answer this, if you please, and deign also to explain to me how it is said by the apostle Paul, “We were by nature children of wrath,” those whom he says were reconciled to God. If, then, they were by nature children of wrath, how do you say that the soul is by nature a daughter of God and a portion of God? Fortunatus said: If the apostle had said with respect to the soul that we are by nature children of wrath, the soul would have been estranged from God by the apostle's own mouth; and in this way you show by reasoning that the soul is not of God, because, says the apostle, we are by nature children of wrath. But if it is with respect to the fact that the same apostle was held by the law, descending from the seed of Abraham, as he himself testifies, then it is plain that he said in a bodily sense that we were children of wrath, as the rest also. But he shows that the substance of the soul is from God, and that the soul cannot be reconciled to God otherwise than through the teacher, who is Christ Jesus. The soul did indeed appear to have become unworthy of God until the enmity was slain; but that it was sent, this we confess: sent, however, by almighty God, both taking its origin from him and sent to seal his will, just as we believe that Christ the Savior came from heaven to fulfil the will of the Father. And this will of the Father was to free our souls from that enmity by slaying the enmity. If it had not been opposed to God, it would not be called enmity where there was unity, nor would slaying be spoken of or take place where there was life.

Augustine said: Remember that the apostle said that we were estranged from God by our conduct. Fortunatus said: I teach that there were two substances: that God is held to be in the substance of light, incorruptible, as we said above; but that there was a contrary nature of darkness. I confess that this is overcome by the power of God even today, and that Christ the Savior was sent forth for my return, as the same apostle said above.

Augustine said: Those who are listening to us proposed that we should discuss belief in the two natures by reasoning. But since you have again taken refuge in the Scriptures, I come down to them, and I ask that nothing be passed over, lest by using certain selected passages we bring a fog upon those to whom the Scriptures are not known. Let us consider, then, from the beginning what the apostle Paul has in his letter to the Romans. For on its first page there is something strongly against you. For he says: “Paul, servant of Jesus Christ, called an apostle, predestined for the gospel of God, which he had promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was made for him from the seed of David according to the flesh, who was predestined Son of God in power according to the Spirit of sanctification from the resurrection of the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.” We see the apostle teaching us about our Lord that he was both predestined by the power of God before the flesh and made for him from the seed of David according to the flesh. Since you have always denied this and deny it still, how can you demand the Scriptures, so that we discuss according to them instead? Fortunatus said: You assert that he is from the seed of David according to the flesh, when he is proclaimed to have been born of a virgin and is magnified as the Son of God. For it cannot be otherwise than that what is of spirit is held to be spirit, and what is of flesh is understood to be flesh. Against this is the very authority of the gospel, in which it is said that flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God, nor will corruption possess incorruption. At this point an uproar was raised by those sitting by, who wanted the matter to be conducted by reasoning instead, because they saw that he was unwilling to accept everything written in the apostle's book. Then conversation began to be held here and there by everyone, until he said that the Word of God was bound in the race of darkness. When those present shuddered at this, the meeting broke up. On the following day, a stenographer being employed again, the proceedings went as follows. Fortunatus said: I say that almighty God brings forth nothing evil from himself, and that what is his remains uncorrupted, arisen and begotten from one inviolable fountain; but that the other things which exist in this world as contraries do not flow from God, nor have they obeyed God as their principle in this age, that is, they do not derive their origin from him. These things, then, we have received in faith: that evils are foreign to God.

Augustine said: Our faith too is this: that God is not the begetter of evils and made no nature evil. But since each of us agrees that God is incorruptible and undefilable, it is for the prudent and the faithful to judge which faith is purer and more worthy of the majesty of God: that in which it is asserted that the power of God, or some part of God, or the Word of God can be changed, violated, corrupted, bound; or that in which it is said that almighty God and all his nature and substance can never in any part be corrupted, but that evils exist through the voluntary sin of the soul, to which God gave free choice. If God had not given this free choice, there could be no just judgment in punishing, nor merit in doing rightly, nor divine precept that repentance be done for sins, nor that very forgiveness of sins which God has given us through our Lord Jesus Christ; for one who does not sin by will does not sin. I think this is open and clear to all. Therefore it ought not to trouble us if we suffer some hardships among the things God made, according to our deserts. For as he is good, in that he established all things, so he is just, in that he does not spare sins. And these sins, as I said, would not be sins unless there were free will in us. For if, for example, someone were bound by another in all his other limbs, and a forgery were written with his hand without his own will, I ask whether, if this were made clear to a judge, he could condemn this man on a charge of forgery. Therefore, if it is plain that there is no sin where there is no free choice of the will, I want to hear what evil the soul, which you call a part or a power or the Word or anything else of God, has done, that it should be punished by God or do penance for sin to merit pardon, when it has itself sinned in nothing. Fortunatus said: I made my proposal about substances: that God is held to be the creator of good things only, but the avenger of evils, because evils are not from him. Rightly, then, I hold this, that God avenges evils because they are not from him. Otherwise, if they were from him, or if he gave license to sin, since you say God gave free choice, he would already be found to consent to my offense, because he would be the author of my offense; or else ignorant that I would offend, he who would not have established me unworthy of himself. This, then, is what I proposed, and what I now ask: whether God established evils or not, and whether he himself established the end of evils. For the things we have said were made by him, as by God the craftsman, are held, as created and begotten by him, to be incorruptible; this is evident from the things themselves, and the faith of the gospel teaches it. These things I have proposed, which belong to our belief and which can be confirmed by you in this profession of ours, yet so that the authority of the Christian faith is not lacking. And since I can in no way show that I believe rightly unless I have confirmed that faith by the authority of the Scriptures, this, then, is what I have put forward, what I have said. Either, if evils came into the world with God as their author, deign to say so yourself; or, if it is rightly believed that evils are not from God, let the consideration of those present also follow and accept this. I spoke about substances, not about the sin that is in us. For if what makes us think of committing offenses had no origin, we would not be compelled to come to sin or to offense. For because we sin unwillingly and are compelled by a substance contrary and hostile to us, for this reason we follow the knowledge of things. Admonished by this knowledge and restored to its former memory, the soul will recognize from what it takes its origin, in what evil it dwells, and by what good things, amending what it sinned unwillingly, it may through the amendment of its offenses, by the grace of good works, lay up for itself the merit of reconciliation with God, by the agency of God our Savior, who teaches us both to practise good and to flee evil. For what is put to us is that it is not by some contrary nature but of his own accord that a man either serves righteousness or makes himself liable to sins. If there were no contrary race, and the soul, set in the body, dwelt there alone, the soul to which, as you say, God gave free choice, it would be without sin and would not make itself liable to sins.