Against Secundinus the Manichaean 10–18

But the apostle says: “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers,” who, by turning aside with ungodly will to the love of their own pride and honor, begrudge devout souls their return. But this is the difference between your opinion and our faith: you think that these same princes arose from some nature of their own, which God neither begot nor made but had adjoining him in eternal neighborhood, and that they made war against God and inflicted on him, before the mingling of good and evil, the first great evil of necessity, in that he was compelled to mingle his substance with them, to be afflicted and disturbed, changed in error and wholly plunged into forgetfulness of itself, so that it needed a liberator, corrector, reformer, teacher (you see how foolishly and fabulously this is said, and with how great a crime of impiety it binds one). But we have been persuaded through the Christian faith that nothing is contrary to God, who supremely is, except what wholly is not; and that whatever in any way is has from him who supremely is that it is in whatever way it is, and is good in its own kind, but some things are more, some less. And so all good things made by God the founder are ordered in fixed and distributed ranks: partly by intervals and positions of place, like all bodily things; partly by natural worth, as the soul is set above the body; partly by the deserts of rewards and punishments, as the soul is either raised to rest or subjected to pains. And so those princes against whom the apostle says we have a struggle suffer the penalty of their sins first, in order to do harm. For no envious one harms another without being first a torment to himself. The stronger harm the weaker; for no one overcomes another except where he is more powerful. Yet the wicked princes themselves are weaker than if they had remained in their original state and righteousness. But it matters in what respect anyone is stronger than another: in body, as horses than human beings; or in the nature of the soul, as the rational than the irrational; or in disposition of mind, as the just than the unjust; or in rank of power, as a general than a soldier or a provincial. And power is believed to be given wholly by the supreme power of God; often even to the worse over the better, that is, to the wicked over those who either already hold to righteousness or strive to attain it. For it is given so that those proved by patience may become manifest, either to themselves for hope or to others for imitation. “Knowing,” says the apostle, “that tribulation produces patience, patience proof, proof hope.” Of this kind of contest it is when a faithful person struggles against the principalities and powers of the transgressing angels and against the spiritual forces of wickedness, when they receive power to tempt and he commandments to endure; from which it comes about that they win in the lower thing and are defeated in the more powerful: they often overcome a weaker body and are overcome by a stronger mind. For against their force one fights with patience, against their snares with prudence, so that they neither bend us by compulsion nor deceive us by trickery into ruinous consent. And since there is a Power and Wisdom of God through which all things were made, therefore among the things that were made, when higher things incline toward lower (where all sin and all that is called evil is found), force imitates power and deceit imitates wisdom; but when those that had turned aside run back and return, greatness of spirit imitates power and learning imitates wisdom. Sinners imitate God the Father himself by ungodly pride, the righteous by devout generosity. Finally, the greed of the wicked and the love of the upright imitate the Holy Spirit. Yet both [cannot] depart from the imitation of God, from whom and through whom and in whom the natures themselves were made, but the one by vicious, the other by praiseworthy imitation. Nor is it surprising if, when those advancing and those falling away come into conflict, the imitation of those falling away is overcome by the imitation of those advancing; for the former are cast down by pride, the latter rise up by humility. And if it troubles you why those stronger in mind are weaker in body, it is no wonder that those set free by the forgiveness of sins are exercised by the mortality of the body, with whose immortality they will be crowned. For a punishment is not easily escaped unless the one released from it has overcome by merits. Hence the apostle: “But if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus Christ from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Jesus Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit dwelling in you.” So the mind, bearing mortal flesh because of the punishment of sin, if, changed for the better, it does not live according to the mortal flesh, both changes the flesh itself for the better and will deserve to have an immortal body; but this at the end, when the last enemy, death, will be destroyed, when this corruptible will have put on incorruption, not by that fabulous globe of yours, but by that change of which he says: “We shall all rise, but we shall not all be changed.” For when he had expressed it, saying, “And the dead will rise incorrupt, and we shall be changed,” he then went on to add, showing what change he meant, and said: “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” For he was treating the question of the body of those who rise, which he had put thus: “But someone will say: How will the dead rise? With what body will they come?” So read that whole passage attentively with devout care, not disturbed by obstinate contention, and with God's help your mind, needing no interpreter, will find nothing other than what I say. And then recall your mind to what we had set out to treat, and see now, if you can, that I am not saying that the righteous fight against nothing, but against those substances which fell away by not standing in the truth.

To fall away is not yet nothing, but to tend toward nothing. For when things that are more incline to things that are less, it is not the things to which they incline but those that incline which fall away and begin to be less than they were, not so as to be the things to which they inclined, but less according to their own kind. For when the mind inclines to the body, it does not become body, but by a deficient desire it becomes, in a way, bodily. So too a certain angelic sublimity, when it took greater delight in its own lordship in itself, inclined its affection to what is less, and began to be less than it was, and according to its rank tended toward nothing. For the less anything is, the nearer it is to nothing. When these fallings away happen voluntarily, they are rightly blamed and called sins; and when there follow upon these voluntary fallings away harms, troubles, pains, adversities, all of which we suffer against our will, then sins are certainly rightly either punished by penalties or washed away by exercises. If you are willing to look at this with a calm mind, you will surely stop accusing natures and charging substances themselves with crime. And if you want anything more fully and clearly explained on this matter, read our three books entitled On Free Choice, which you can find at Nola in Campania with Paulinus, the noble servant of God.

But now I must remember that I am answering a letter, though one much longer, with a letter. That is why I have not been silent on these matters in other works, so as not to be forced to say the same things everywhere. But I had promised to persuade you from your own letter how false are the things you have believed and how true is the assertion of the catholic faith. For certainly the whole difference between us is not that you say a certain substance is evil, while we say that evil is not a substance but an inclination from what is more to what is less. So hear this too. For you put in your letter, and say of the soul, that it is led to sin by mingling with the flesh, not by its own will. And there at once, I believe, when you saw that, if this were so, the almighty God would have to come to the aid of absolutely every soul and none at all ought to be condemned, since it would not sin by will (and once that was established, the sentence which Mani thunders terribly about the punishments of souls, even those coming from the part of light, would be overturned), you very watchfully added, saying: “But if, when it has come to know itself, it consents to evil and does not arm itself against the enemy, it has sinned by its own will.” It is good indeed that you at some point admit that it can happen that the soul sins by its own will; but to what evil, after all, does it sin by its own will if it consents? Certainly to that which you say is a substance.

But I already see three things; you too, I think, see them with me. For the soul that consents to evil, and the evil itself to which consent is given, are two. The third is the consent itself; for you do not say that this too is the soul, but that it belongs to the soul. Of these three, then, see: the soul is a substance; that evil too, by consenting to which the soul sins voluntarily, is a substance according to your opinion. So I ask what the consent itself is: do you say it is a substance, or is in a substance? For if you say it is a substance, you will think there are now not two substances but three. Or do you say two because the soul's consent, by which it consents to evil, is of the same substance as the soul itself? Then I ask whether this consent is evil or good. If it is good, the soul certainly does not sin when it consents to evil. But not only does the truth proclaim, you too write that it then sins by will. So this consent is evil, and therefore so is the soul's substance, if it is both the soul's substance and both are one substance. Do you see what you are forced into, so as to declare that the soul and that evil are no longer one good substance and the other evil, but two evil ones? Here perhaps you will try to attribute the blameworthy consent not to the soul that consents to evil, but to the evil itself to which it consents, so that in this way there can be two substances, one good and the other evil: the soul being said to be from the part of the good, while its consent, by which it consented to evil, and the evil itself to which it consents, are placed together on the other side, and both are assigned, not to the soul, but to the evil substance. Who could rave more absurdly? For the soul does not consent if the consent is not its own; but it does consent; so it is its own. Further, if the consent is its own, and this consent is evil, this evil is its own. For if this evil too belongs to that evil to which the soul consents, that evil did not have this evil before the soul consented to it. What sort of good, then, is the soul, at whose arrival that evil is either doubled or, to put it more mildly, increased?

Next, if this consent, which is agreed to be evil, is a substance, we find that it is in the soul's power that some evil substance either exists or does not exist, since this consent is in the soul's power. For if it is not, then the soul does not consent by its own will. But you said that it sins by its own will on account of this consent. So the soul has it in its power, as I said, that some evil substance either exists or does not exist. And what else is a substance but a nature? So there will be some nature which is neither natural to the soul, since, if the soul does not will it, it will not exist, nor to that evil to which the soul consents by will; for you cannot say that the evil is natural to the race of darkness which is established there by another's will, that is, by the soul's will. To what nature, then, will this nature be assigned, that is, this consent, if it is a nature, which is natural neither to the soul nor to the race of darkness, unless, to argue against Mani, you say that there are not two but three natures? For even if there were once two, now at any rate, after this consent arose, there have certainly become three. This third, born of the consenting soul and of the evil to which it consents, you are forced to call, as it were, the daughter of both. But since it was born of two natures, one good and the other evil, I ask why something neutral was not born; for just as what is born of a horse and an ass is neither horse nor ass, so what was born of a good and an evil nature, if it is itself a nature, ought to be neither good nor evil. But you admit that the consent is evil; for you say that the soul sins by its own will when it consents to evil. Or do you perhaps think that the good nature and the evil nature are like two sexes, male and female, so that, just as from male and female not something neuter but either a male or a female is begotten, so from good and evil you maintain that not some third thing, neither good nor evil, but the other, evil, was born? If so, where is that victorious nature of the soul? Was it so set aside that the other, good, was not born instead? Then do you not see that you are now speaking of different sexes, not natures? For if there were a diversity of natures between good and evil, nothing would arise from both but some third thing, which could be neither good nor evil; or else the mingling itself would be sterile, and no third substance would be produced from it. For if from those animals I mentioned above, when they mate, nothing is begotten but a male or female mule, which is neither the one nor the other, how much more should it have happened so in so great and extreme a diversity as that of good and evil? Or if no new nature arose from their mingling, it would not be evil, even if it could not be good. It remains, then, that we cannot avoid such incredible ravings unless we admit that that consent, which is agreed to be evil and blameworthy, is not a substance, but say that it is in some substance.

Next let us inquire most carefully in what substance it is. Although to whom is it not plain that, just as persuasion happens only in the one persuading, so consent exists only in the consenting nature? So when the soul consents to evil, it is itself a substance, but its consent is not a substance. You now see, I think, in what substance it is; that is, you surely see that this consent is in the soul, which consent you do not doubt is sin and therefore evil. From this you now understand that it can happen that in a good substance, such as the soul is, there is some evil which is not a substance, such as this consent is, from which evil the soul too is called evil. For a sinner is certainly evil; and it sins when it consents to evil. So one and the same thing, that is, the soul, is good insofar as it is a substance; but insofar as it has something evil which is not a substance, that is, this consent, to that extent it is evil. For it has this consent not from advance but from falling away. For it falls away when it consents to evil, and begins to be less and therefore to be less strong than it was while, consenting to nothing, it stood firm in virtue; certainly the worse, the more it inclines from what supremely is to what is less, so that it itself is less; and the less it is, the nearer it certainly becomes to nothing. For what becomes less tends toward not being at all; and although it does not reach that point, so as to perish utterly and be nothing, it is nonetheless plain that any falling away is the beginning of perishing. So open now the eyes of your heart and see, if you can, that any substance whatever is something good, and that therefore the falling away of a substance is evil, because it is good to be a substance; yet that not every falling away is blameworthy, but only the voluntary one, by which the rational soul, deserting its founder, inclines its affection to the things founded below it; for this is what is called sin. The other fallings away, which are not voluntary, are either penal, so that sins are punished by the supreme justice that regulates and orders, or they occur in the measures of the lowest things, so that the earlier give way to the later, and thus all temporal beauty is carried through in its turns and in its own kind. For just as speech is carried through by syllables, as it were, dying and rising, which are drawn out through fixed intervals of length and, their spans fulfilled, withdraw in the ordered succession of those following, until the whole utterance is brought to its end; and how long a syllable is lengthened or shortened, or with what form of letters each keeps the moments of its places, lies not in the running sounds themselves but in the speaker's control, while the art itself that makes the speech neither resounds with sounds nor is rolled along and varied by times: so by the rising and setting, departure and succession of temporal things, in fixed and definite stretches, until it runs back to its appointed end, temporal beauty is woven together. It is not evil because we can understand and admire better things in spiritual creatures; but it has its own grace in its kind, and it suggests to those who live well the highest wisdom of God, hidden on high above all the boundaries of times, its maker and regulator.

Come now, consider whether that which you called evil, by consenting to which the soul sins voluntarily, is some substance, or whether here too you cannot accuse a substance. For I ask what draws the soul to consent: does that thing rush upon it at random, and is the soul said to consent because it is moved by some delight in it to enjoy it? If so, it does not follow that the thing should be called evil because it is not loved rightly. For if I show that something is loved wrongly where the fault lies not with what is loved but with the lover, you will surely admit that the beauty of any thing is not at once vicious because the consent of one who desires it slips viciously toward it. How much this helps me will appear later. But to show what I promised, what should I choose rather, when an abundance of things flows around me? What, I say, should I choose rather than that which we praise as a heavenly creature, but you worship as a portion of the Creator himself? What among all visible things is brighter than this sun? Yet if someone desires its light immoderately, he brings quarrels upon his own eyes; and if he gets some power by which he can fulfill what he seeks, he smashes his neighbors' houses that stand next to his windows, so that the sun may flood his inner rooms from a more open sky. Is it then a fault of the sun that he so loved this light that he dared to put it before the light of justice, and, wishing to receive the light of fleshly eyes more abundantly into the dwelling of the body, shut the door of the heart and the gaze of the mind against the light of equity? You see, then, that a good thing can be loved with a love that is not good. Therefore, when you call that evil by consenting to which the soul sins, I call it good in its own kind, but such a good that it is not fitting for the soul, which is better, to consent to it. For since the soul is itself higher than the body and has God higher than itself, although the nature of the body is good in its order, the soul nonetheless sins and by sinning becomes evil if it joins to the lower body the consent of love which it owes to the higher God.

But if you say that you do not call it blameworthy consent when a thing is loved that does not act to get consent for itself, but that the soul consents when the one to whom it consents persuades or compels it to something, and that this is evil because it persuades or presses for something evil to be committed: that is a second question, and it too must be treated very soon in its order. But let us remember here first the sin which has, I think, been discussed enough, and it has become clear that it can happen that a thing good in its own kind is loved wrongly and, while the lover is blamed, the thing itself is not reproached. What then? If a soul already sinful and vicious through such love persuades another to the same sin, is not the soul that consents to the persuader corrupted by the same vice as the one it follows? So the first sin is to put a creature, however good, before the Creator in love; the second is to tempt another to do so as well, either by persuading or by compelling. For no one wishes to lead another into depravity who has not first been depraved himself. And those who sin wish to lead others into sin either from foolish goodwill or from malicious envy. For who advises his sons to think no gain shameful but to acquire ample money from anywhere, except by loving them perversely? He certainly does not hate them, and yet he persuades them ruinously. He himself is already corrupted by love of such things, although gold and silver are not evil, any more than that sun of which we spoke above; yet the disordered lover of a good thing is at fault. But by envy, when someone wishes another to sin, he loves honor with immoderate pride and longs to excel in it and to surpass the rest; and since he sees it bestowed more fully and more truly on virtues, lest he be surpassed in it, he longs for others to be brought down from the citadel of equity into the whirlpool of iniquity. In this way the devil tries to persuade or compel to sins. But is honor itself at fault because the devil, by loving it perversely and impiously, became impious? Or is the angelic substance of that same devil, which God created, evil because it is a substance? But when, deserting the love of God and turned too much toward his own, he wished to seem equal to him, he was cast down by the swelling of pride. So he is evil not insofar as he is a substance, but, since he was made a substance, insofar as he loved himself more than him by whom he was made; and he is evil because he is less than he would be if he had loved what supremely is. So falling away is evil. Every falling away, then, tends from what is toward not being, just as every advance tends from what is less toward being more. Indeed the highest honor, such as the devotion of the religious offers, is certainly owed to God. So one who loves honor imitates God. But humble souls wish to be honored in him, the proud in place of him. And the humble, toward God, become higher than the unjust, while the lofty, against God, become lower than the just, by that dispensation of rewards and punishments, because the former loved God above themselves, the latter loved themselves instead of God.

Now, I think, it is easy for you to understand from the very words of your letter, in which you said that the soul sins by will when it consents to evil, that no evil is an evil nature or the love of an evil nature; but that, since all natures are good in their own kind, evil is sin, which happens by the will of the soul when it loves the creature in place of the Creator, whether at its own prompting, when it is evil, or at another's persuasion, when it consents to evil. And nonetheless it also becomes evil in this way, by the punishments that follow, so that all things are disposed according to deserts by the supremely good Creator in a creature that is good but not supremely good, because he did not beget it from himself but made it out of nothing. But you have set up two natures, one of which you want to be good and the other evil, or rather one of good and the other of evil; for an evil nature comes even from a good one by sinning. Yet you admit that the nature which you call good does evil by consenting to evil, that is, sins by will. But I assert that both are good, but that one of them does evil by persuading, the other does evil by consenting. And just as the consent of the one is not a nature, so neither is the persuasion of the other; and just as the one, if it does not consent, will remain good, guarding the integrity of its nature, so the other, if it does not persuade, will be more upright; and if it too does not commit the sin which it does not persuade, both would be equally whole and praiseworthy in their own kind. For even if the one sins twice, which both commits and persuades, and the other once, if it only consents to doing evil, still they become evil by sins, they are not evil by nature. Or if that nature is evil because of persuasion, so is the other because of consent. But if persuading seems worse to you than consenting, let the one be evil and the other worse; yet let there not be such respect of persons, such unjust favoritism in judging, that when both sin, though one more gravely and the other more lightly, one is called the nature of evil and the other of good, and not rather either both good, but the one better that sins less, or both evil, but the one worse that sins more.