Against Secundinus the Manichaean

Contents

Reading pages: 1–9 · 10–18 · 19–26

1. 1Augustine thanks Secundinus for his goodwill but rejects his suspicion that Augustine left the Manichaeans out of fear or ambition, leaving his own conscience to God.
2. 2Augustine says he left the Manichaeans for fear of Paul's warning against those who forbid marriage and foods, and for the honor promised to those who do good, and invites Secundinus to examine the truth together.
3. 3Augustine takes Secundinus's phrase “Jesus Christ, King of all lights” and argues that a king rules lower beings, so the lights must have been created, not begotten from God or existing independently, contrary to Mani's two kingdoms.
4. 4Augustine argues that the lights over which Christ reigns were made neither from God's own substance nor from pre-existing matter, but ultimately from nothing, by God's word.
5. 5Augustine distinguishes Christ as only-begotten Son by nature from Christ as firstborn among brothers who are sons of God by adoption, against a Manichaean reading of “firstborn” as eldest of consubstantial lights.
6. 6Augustine presses Secundinus on how Christ could be “firstborn” among divine lights: priority in time would make the divine nature changeable, and change belongs only to creatures made by God.
7. 7From Romans 1:25 Augustine argues that Creator and creature are of different substances, while the Son, being of one substance with the Father, is not a creature, and explains “only-begotten” and “firstborn” accordingly.
8. 8Augustine argues that creation, being changeable, was made from nothing by the Trinity, and uses Secundinus's own account of the soul choosing between the spirits of virtue and vice to show that the soul is changeable and so not of God's substance.
9. 9Augustine rejects Secundinus's claim that the soul sins only through mingling with flesh: an unchangeable soul could not be changed by mingling, and only the confession that creation was made from nothing avoids making God changeable.
10. 10Augustine explains the spiritual struggle of Eph 6:12 without Manichaean dualism: the evil powers are fallen creatures, God permits them power to test the faithful, and the body will be changed in the resurrection, not absorbed into a Manichaean “globe”.
11. 11Augustine defines evil as a voluntary falling away of a being from what is more to what is less, and refers Secundinus to his three books On Free Choice, available from Paulinus at Nola.
12. 12Augustine notes that Secundinus's letter admits the soul sins by its own will when it consents to evil, which undermines both Mani's teaching on punishment and the claim that evil is a substance.
13. 13Augustine analyzes the soul's consent to evil: it must belong to the soul, so on Manichaean premises the soul itself would be evil, or else its coming would increase evil.
14. 14Augustine argues that if the soul's evil consent were a substance, the soul could create evil natures and there would be three natures, not Mani's two; so consent is not a substance but exists in a substance.
15. 15Augustine concludes that evil consent is not a substance but a voluntary falling away within the good substance of the soul, and compares the passing of temporal things to the ordered succession of syllables in speech.
16. 16Augustine argues that what the soul consents to in sin is good in its own kind but loved wrongly, illustrating this with the sun, which the Manichaeans worship, loved so immoderately that a man wrongs his neighbors.
17. 17Augustine distinguishes the first sin, loving a creature above the Creator, from the second, persuading others to it, and explains the devil's fall as pride, a falling away of a good substance rather than an evil nature.
18. 18Augustine argues from Secundinus's own admission that the soul sins by consenting: both the persuader and the one who consents are good natures made evil by sin, so there is no nature of evil.
19. 19Augustine asks where the soul's capacity to be corrupted came from before any contact with evil; if it is God's substance, God would be changeable, so evil must be the free will of a creature made from nothing.
20. 20Augustine attacks the Manichaean myth of God's war with darkness: either God could be harmed and is corruptible, or he fought needlessly and handed his own substance over to sin, while even the captive Daniel kept his integrity.
21. 21Augustine answers Secundinus's ridicule of Hosea's marriage and of Genesis on marriage and procreation, attributing it to the Manichaean belief that conception imprisons divine light, and affirms that bodily goods too come from God.
22. 22Augustine answers Secundinus's mockery of “kill and eat” and of Sarah's barrenness, charging that Manichaean hostility to childbearing fulfills 1 Tim 4:3, and explains the patriarchs' marriages as serving the coming of Christ in the flesh.
23. 23Augustine answers Secundinus's ridicule of Abraham's oath, Noah's ark, Jacob's wrestling, and Abraham's deception about Sarah, reading each as prophetic and contrasting it with the Manichaean god captured and torn by darkness.
24. 24Augustine answers Secundinus's question about his conversion: the very fact that his soul changed proves it is not God's nature, and the devil is a fallen creature, not an evil principle.
25. 25Augustine answers Secundinus's claim that Christ was only spiritual: it contradicts his hope in Mani, who had flesh, and makes Christ a deceiver in showing his wounds to Thomas, whereas Augustine prefers to believe Mani the liar.
26. 26Augustine urges Secundinus not to take pride in the Manichaeans' small numbers, to cast away their scriptures as poison as Paul counted his Jewish privileges loss, and to turn to the unchangeable God who alone can make darkness light.