Acts of the Debate with Fortunatus the Manichaean 21–37

Augustine said: I say that there is no sin if one does not sin by one's own will; and that this is why there is also reward, because we do right by our own will. Otherwise, if one who sins unwillingly deserves punishment, one who does good unwillingly ought also to deserve reward. But who doubts that a reward is given only to one who has done something with good will? From this we understand that punishment too is inflicted on one who has done something with evil will. But since you call me back to the first natures and substances, my faith is that almighty God (and this above all must be noted and fixed in the mind), almighty God, just and good, made good things; but the things made by him cannot be such as he is who made them. For it is unjust and foolish to believe that works are equal to the craftsman and things founded to their founder. Therefore, if it is a godly faith that God made all things good, though he himself is far more excellent and far superior to them, the origin and head of evil is in sin, as the apostle said: “The root of all evils is desire; some, pursuing it, have made shipwreck of the faith and have entangled themselves in many sorrows.” For if you seek the root of all evils, you have the apostle saying that the root of all evils is desire. I cannot seek a root of the root; or if there is some other evil whose root is not desire, desire will not be the root of all evils. But if it is true that the root of all evils is desire, we seek some other kind of evil in vain. As for your contrary nature, which you bring in (since I have now answered your objections, I ask that you too deign to tell me): if that contrary nature is wholly evil and there can be no sin except from it, it alone ought to deserve punishment, not the soul, from which the sin does not come. But if you say that it alone deserves punishment and the soul does not, I ask to whom repentance has been given, who has been commanded to repent. If the soul has been commanded to repent, the sin is from the soul, and it sinned by will. For if the soul is forced to do evil, and it is not the soul that did the evil, is it not foolish and full of madness that the race of darkness should sin and I should repent of the sins? Is it not full of madness that the race of darkness should sin and forgiveness of sins be given to me? For can I not say, according to your faith: “What have I done? What have I committed? I was with you, I was whole, I was stained by no blemish; you sent me here, you suffered necessity, you protected your realms, when great ruin and devastation threatened them. Since, then, you know the necessity by which I am oppressed here, under which I could not breathe, which I could not resist, why do you accuse me as a sinner? Or why do you promise forgiveness of sins?” Answer this without evasions, if you please, as I answered you without evasions. Fortunatus said: This is what we say: that the soul is compelled to offend by a contrary nature. You will allow it no root except only this, that evil dwells in us, though it is evident that, apart from our bodies, evils exist in the whole world. Not only the things we have in our bodies, but also those which exist in the whole world and pass for good under their names, have an evil root. For your Worthiness said that this, desire, is the root of evils, the desire which dwells in our bodies; whereas when the desire of evil does not come from our bodies, it dwells in the whole world from that principal contrary nature. For the apostle called desire the root of evils, not a single evil, the desire which you called the root of all evils. But desire, which you called the root of all evils, is not to be understood in one way only, as if it dwelt only in our hearts; for it is evident that this evil which dwells in us descends from an evil author, and that this root, as you call it, is a small portion of evil, so that it is not itself the root but a small portion of evil, of that evil which exists everywhere. This root and evil tree our Lord called one that never bears good fruit, which his Father did not plant, and which is rightly uprooted and thrown into the fire. As for your saying that sin ought then to be charged to the contrary nature: that nature is evil's own; and it is the soul's sin if, after the admonition of our Savior and his sound teaching, the soul separates itself from the stock that is contrary and hostile to it, adorning itself with purer things; otherwise it cannot be restored to its own substance. For it has been said: “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now, because I came and spoke and they would not believe me, they will have no pardon for their sin.” Hence it is evident that repentance was rightly given after the coming of the Savior and after this knowledge of things, by which the soul, as if washed in a divine fountain from the filth and vices both of the whole world and of the bodies in which the same soul dwells, may be presented again to the kingdom of God from which it went forth. For it has been said by the apostle that the wisdom of the flesh is hostile to God: “for it is not subject to the law of God, nor can it be.” It is evident, then, from these things that the good soul is seen to sin through the doing of that which is not subject to the law of God, not of its own accord. And the same apostle goes on: “The flesh desires against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, so that you do not do whatever you wish.” He says again: “I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and leading me captive into the law of sin and death. So, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death, except the grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ,” “through whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world?”

Augustine said: I acknowledge and embrace the testimonies of the divine Scriptures; and how they agree with my faith I will set out in a few words, as God will deign to grant. I say that there was free choice of the will in that man who was formed first. He was so made that nothing at all resisted his will, if he willed to keep the precepts of God. But after he sinned by free will, we who descend from his stock were cast headlong into necessity. Any of us can find with a little reflection that what I say is true. For today, in our actions, before we are entangled by some habit, we have free choice of doing something or not doing it. But when by that freedom we have done something, and the pernicious sweetness and pleasure of the deed has taken hold of the soul, the soul is so entangled by its own habit that afterwards it cannot conquer what it has fashioned for itself by sinning. We see many who do not wish to swear but, because habit has now taken hold of their tongue, cannot restrain it, since things come out of their mouths which we cannot say do not belong to the root of evil. For, to deal with you in these words of yours (and I wish that, as they never leave your mouths, so they were understood in your hearts): you swear by the Paraclete. If, then, you wish to test whether what I say is true, resolve not to swear: you will see that habit carried where it usually goes. And this is what fights against the soul: habit formed with the flesh. This, surely, is the wisdom of the flesh, which, as long as it is such, cannot be subject to the law of God, as long as it is the wisdom of the flesh; but when the soul is enlightened, it ceases to be the wisdom of the flesh. For it was said that the wisdom of the flesh cannot be subject to the law of God just as if it were said that icy snow cannot be hot. For in no way can it be hot as long as it is snow. But as snow is melted by heat and ceases to be snow, so that it can become warm, so that wisdom of the flesh, that is, habit formed with the flesh, when our mind has been enlightened and God has subjected the whole man to himself under the rule of the divine law, makes, in place of the soul's evil habit, a good habit. Hence it was most truly said by the Lord of those two trees which you mentioned, the good tree and the evil tree, that they have their own fruits: that is, neither can the good give evil fruits nor the evil good ones, but evil ones as long as it is evil. Let us take two men, a good man and an evil man. As long as the one is good, he cannot give evil fruits; as long as the other is evil, he cannot give good fruits. But that you may understand that these two trees were put forward by the Lord so as to signify free choice, and that these two trees are not natures but our wills, he himself says in the gospel: “Either make the tree good, or make the tree evil.” Who is there who can make a nature? If, then, we are commanded to make the tree either good or evil, it is ours to choose what we will. Of this sin of man and of this habit of the soul formed with the flesh, the apostle says: “Let no one deceive you”; “every creature which was made by God is good.” The same apostle whom you yourself mentioned says: “As through the disobedience of one many were made sinners, so through the obedience of one many will be made righteous”; “since through a man came death, and through a man the resurrection of the dead.” As long, then, as we bear the image of the earthly man, that is, as long as we live according to the flesh (which is also called the old man), we have the necessity of our habit, so that we do not do what we will. But when the grace of God has breathed divine love into us and made us subject to his will, we to whom it was said, “You were called to freedom,” and, “The grace of God has freed me from the law of sin and death” (and the law of sin is that whoever sins shall die), we are freed from this law when we have begun to be righteous. The law of death is that by which it was said to man, “You are earth, and to earth you will go.” For from him we are all born so, because we are earth, and we will go to earth because of the desert of the first man's sin. But because of the grace of God, which frees us from the law of sin and death, we are turned to righteousness and freed, so that afterwards that same flesh which tormented us with punishments while we remained in sins may be subjected to us in the resurrection and shake us with no adversity to keep us from observing the law and the divine precepts. Hence, since I have answered your questions, deign to answer what I want to know: how it can be that, if there is a nature contrary to God, sin is imputed to us, who were sent into that nature not by our will but by God himself, whom nothing could harm.

Augustine said: Our Lord sent his lambs into the midst of wolves, that is, righteous men into the midst of sinful men, to preach the gospel at the time when man was taken on by the inestimable divine Wisdom, so as to call us from sin to righteousness. And what the apostle says, that our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers and the rest that are mentioned, means this: that the devil and his angels also fell and lapsed by sin, as we say we did, and gained possession of earthly things, that is, sinful men; and as long as we are sinners we are under their yoke, just as, when we are righteous, we shall be under the yoke of righteousness; and we have a struggle against them, so that by passing over to righteousness we may be freed from their dominion. So deign, you too, to answer me briefly on the one thing I ask: could God be harmed, or could he not? But I beg you to answer me, “He could not.” Fortunatus said: He could not be harmed.

Augustine said: Why, then, according to your faith, did he send us here? Fortunatus said: My profession is this: that God could not be harmed, and that God directed us here. But since that is contrary to your view, you tell me by what reason the soul appeared here, which our God now desires to free both by his commands and by sending his own Son.

Augustine said: Since I see that you could not answer my questions and wanted to ask me something, see, I satisfy you, provided you remember that you have not answered what I asked. Why the soul is here in the world, wrapped in miseries, I have said not just now but a little earlier, I do not know how many times. The soul sinned and therefore is miserable. It received free choice; it used free choice as it willed; it fell, was cast out of blessedness, was entangled in miseries. To this end I recited to you the testimony of the apostle, saying, “As through one man death, so also through one the resurrection of the dead.” What more do you ask? Now you answer: why did he whom nothing could harm send us here? Fortunatus said: This is the cause to be sought: why the soul came here, or why God desires to free from here the soul that lives in the midst of evils.

Augustine said: It is this cause I ask of you, that is: if God could not be harmed, why did he send us here? Fortunatus said: We are asked, if evil cannot harm God, why the soul was sent here, or for what reason it is mixed with the world. This is plain from what the apostle says: “Does the thing formed say to him who formed it, Why have you formed me thus?” If, then, this matter is to be made a complaint, he must be asked who directed the soul with no necessity compelling him; but if there was a necessity of sending the soul, there is rightly also a will to free it.

Augustine said: Is God, then, pressed by necessity? Fortunatus said: Now this is the point: do not stir up ill will over what was said, for we do not make God subject to necessity, but say that he sent the soul voluntarily.

Augustine said: Read back what was said above. (And it was read back: “But if there was a necessity of sending the soul, there is rightly also a will to free it.”) Augustine said: We have heard. So you said that there was a necessity of sending the soul. But if you now wish to speak of will, I add this too: for one whom nothing could harm, the will to send the soul into such great miseries was cruel. And because I say this in order to refute it, I ask pardon from the mercy of him alone in whom we have hope of deliverance from all the errors of heretics. Fortunatus said: You keep asserting that we say God is cruel in sending the soul. Yet you say that God made man and breathed a soul into him, a soul which he surely, by his knowledge, knew would be entangled, and would be unable, by the 'benefit' of evils, to be presented again to its inheritance. This is the act either of one who is ignorant or of one who gives the soul over to these evils mentioned above. I mention this because you said, not long ago, that God adopted the soul for himself, not that it is from him; for to adopt is something else.

Augustine said: About our adoption, I remember saying some days ago, according to the testimony of the apostle, who says that we have been called into the adoption of sons, that this was not my answer but the apostle's. About that matter, that is, about this adoption, let us inquire in its own time, if you please; and about that breathing-in I will answer when you have answered my objections. Fortunatus said: I say that the soul went forth against the contrary nature, a nature which could do no harm to God.

Augustine said: What need was there for this going forth, when God, whom nothing could harm, had nothing to guard against? Fortunatus said: Is it agreed in our conscience that Christ came from God?

Augustine said: Again you question me. Answer what you are asked. Fortunatus said: So I have received in faith, that he came here by the will of God.

Augustine said: And I say: God almighty, inviolable, unchangeable, whom nothing can harm, why did he send the soul here, to miseries, to error, to these things we suffer? Fortunatus said: For it has been said, “I have power to lay down my soul and power to take it up.” Did he not say that the soul went forth by the will of God?

Augustine said: But I ask the cause, since nothing can harm God. Fortunatus said: We have already said that nothing harms God, and we have said that the soul is in the contrary nature in order to impose a measure on the contrary nature; once the measure has been imposed on the contrary nature, God takes the soul back. For he himself said: “I have power to lay down my soul and power to take it up. This power the Father gave me, to lay down my soul and to take it up.” God, then, who spoke in the Son: of what soul was he speaking? It is evident that it is our soul, which is in these bodies, that came by the will of God and is taken back again by his will.

Augustine said: Why our Lord said, “I have power to lay down my soul and I have power to take it up,” is known to all: because he was going to suffer and rise again. But I ask you again and again: if nothing could harm God, why did he send souls here? Fortunatus said: To impose a measure on the contrary nature.

Augustine said: So almighty God, the most merciful of all, in order to impose a measure on the contrary nature, willed that it be brought within measure for this purpose, that he might make us immoderate? Fortunatus said: But for that reason he calls the soul back to himself.

Augustine said: If he calls it back to himself from immoderation, from sin, from error, from misery, what need was there for the soul to suffer such great evils for so long a time, until the world is ended, when God, by whom you say it was sent, can be harmed by nothing? Fortunatus said: What, then, am I to say?

Augustine said: And I know that you have nothing to say, and that when I used to listen to you I never found anything to say on this question, and that I was thereby admonished by God to leave that error and to turn, or rather to return, to the catholic faith, by the kindness of him who did not allow me to cling to this deception for ever. But if you confess that you have nothing to answer, I will set out the catholic faith to all who are listening and recognizing it, since they are believers, if they permit and wish it. Fortunatus said: Without prejudice to my profession, let me say this: when I have gone over the objections you raise with my superiors, if they do not answer this question of mine, which you now likewise put to me, I will consider (since I too desire my soul to be freed by a sure faith) coming to an inquiry into this matter, which you offer me and promise you will show. Augustine said: Thanks be to God.