Retractations 1.12–1.14

At that time I also wrote a book On True Religion, in which it is argued in many ways and most fully that the one true God, that is, the Trinity, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, is to be worshiped by true religion; and with how great mercy the Christian religion, which is the true religion, has been granted to human beings through the temporal dispensation; and how man is to be fitted, by a certain sweetness, to that same worship of God. This book, however, speaks chiefly against the two natures of the Manichaeans. In one place in this book I said: “Let it be clear and understood by you that there could have been no error in religion if the soul did not worship, in place of its God, a soul or a body or its own phantasms.” Here I put “soul” for the whole incorporeal creation, not speaking in the manner of the Scriptures, which, when they do not use the word in a transferred sense, I do not know whether they wish “soul” to be understood as anything other than that by which mortal living creatures live, among whom are human beings too, as long as they are mortal. A little later, however, I expressed the same sense better and briefly, when I said: “Let us not, then, serve the creature rather than the Creator, nor become vain in our thoughts, and religion is perfect.” For by the one name “creature” I signified both, that is, the spiritual and the bodily. What remains, my saying there “or its own phantasms,” is the reason why I said here, “nor become vain in our thoughts.” Likewise what I said, “That is the Christian religion in our times, which to know and follow is the safest and most certain salvation,” was said with reference to this name, not to the reality itself whose name it is. For the reality itself which is now called the Christian religion existed among the ancients also, and was not lacking from the beginning of the human race until Christ came in the flesh; from which time the true religion, which already existed, began to be called Christian. For when, after his resurrection and ascension into heaven, the apostles had begun to preach him and very many believed, the disciples were first called Christians at Antioch, as it is written. That is why I said, “This is the Christian religion in our times”: not because it did not exist in earlier times, but because it received this name in later times. In another place I said: “Attend, then, to what follows, diligently and devoutly, as far as you can; for God helps such people.” This is not to be understood as though he helps only such people, since he also helps those who are not such, so that they may become such, that is, so that they may seek diligently and devoutly; but he helps such people so that they may find. And likewise elsewhere I said: “Then it will follow that after bodily death, which we owe to the first sin, this body will be restored in its own time and order to its former stability.” This is to be taken thus: that the former stability of the body too, which we lost by sinning, had so great a happiness that it did not decline into the failing of old age. To this former stability, then, this body will be restored in the resurrection of the dead; but it will have more, so that it is not even sustained by temporal food, but is given life sufficiently by the spirit alone, when it has risen into a life-giving spirit, because it will then be spiritual. That first body, however, although it would not have died if man had not sinned, was nevertheless made animal, that is, into a living soul. And elsewhere I said: “Sin is so much a voluntary evil that it is in no way sin if it is not voluntary.” This definition can seem false; but if it is examined carefully, it will be found to be most true. For that is to be thought of as sin which is only sin, not that which is also the punishment of sin, as I showed above when I recalled certain things from the third book On Free Choice; although even those things which are not undeservedly called involuntary sins, because they are committed either by people who do not know or by people who are compelled, cannot be committed altogether without the will. For he who sins in ignorance certainly sins by the will, since he thinks that what ought not to be done ought to be done; and he who, when the flesh lusts against the spirit, does not do what he wills, lusts indeed unwillingly, and therefore does not do what he wills; but if he is overcome, he consents willingly to the lust, and therefore does only what he wills, free, that is, from justice and a slave of sin. And what is called original sin in little children, since they do not yet use the choice of the will, is not absurdly called voluntary too, because, contracted from the first evil will of man, it has become in a certain way hereditary. It is not false, then, what I said: “Sin is so much a voluntary evil that it is in no way sin if it is not voluntary.” Therefore by the grace of God not only is the guilt of all past sins loosed in all who are baptized in Christ, which is done by the spirit of regeneration, but also in grown persons the will itself is healed and prepared by the Lord, which is done by the spirit of faith and charity. As for what I said in another place of the Lord Jesus Christ, “He did nothing by force, but everything by persuading and warning,” it had not occurred to me that he drove the sellers and buyers out of the temple with a whip. But what is this, or how much, although he also cast out demons from human beings against their will, not by the word of persuasion but by the force of power? Likewise in another place I said: “Those are to be followed first who say that the one supreme God alone is to be worshiped; if the truth has not shone out among them, then at last one must move elsewhere.” This can seem to have been said as though I had doubted the truth of this religion. But I said it as suited the person to whom I was writing. For I said, “if the truth has not shone out among them,” in no doubt that it would shine out among them; as the apostle says, “If Christ has not risen,” certainly not doubting that he had risen. Likewise what I said, “Nor have those miracles been permitted to last into our times, lest the soul should always seek visible things, and the human race grow cold through familiarity with the very things whose novelty set it on fire,” is indeed true. For now, when hands are laid on the baptized, they do not receive the Holy Spirit in such a way as to speak in the tongues of all nations; nor now are the sick healed by the passing shadow of the preachers of Christ; and if any such things were done then, it is clear that they ceased afterward. But what I said is not to be taken in such a way that no miracles are believed to be done now in the name of Christ. For I myself, when I wrote this very book, already knew that a blind man had been given sight at the bodies of the martyrs of Milan in that same city, and some other things; and so many such things happen even in these times that we can neither know them all nor count those we know. And in another place, what I said, “as the apostle says, ‘All order is from God,’” the apostle did not say in those words, although the sense seems to be the same. For he said: “Those that exist have been ordered by God.” And elsewhere I said: “Let no one deceive us at all: whatever is rightly blamed is rejected in comparison with something better.” This was said of substances and natures, for that was the subject of the discussion, not good actions and sins. And likewise elsewhere I said: “But not even so is man to be loved by man as brothers in the flesh, or sons, or spouses, or any kinsfolk or in-laws or fellow citizens are loved; for this love too is temporal. For we would have no such ties, which come about by being born and dying, if our nature, remaining in the commandments and image of God, had not been banished into this corruption.” I altogether disapprove this view, which I have already disapproved above in the first book On Genesis against the Manichaeans. For it leads to the belief that those first spouses would not have begotten human descendants if they had not sinned, as though it were necessary that those begotten should die if they were begotten from the union of male and female. For I had not yet seen that it could have come about that those who would not die should be born of those who would not die, if human nature had not been changed for the worse by that great sin; and thus, if happiness and fruitfulness had remained in both parents and children, human beings would have been born, up to the fixed number of saints whom God predestined, not to succeed parents who die but to reign with parents who live. So there would also be these kinships and relations by marriage if no one sinned and no one died. Likewise in another place I said: “Tending toward the one God and binding our souls to him alone, from which religion is believed to be named, let us be free of all superstition.” In these words of mine the reason given for the name “religion” pleased me more. For I am well aware that writers of the Latin language have explained another origin of this name: that religion is so called because it is re-chosen (religitur), a verb compounded from legere, that is, eligere (to choose), so that in Latin religo seems formed like eligo. This book begins thus: “Since the way of every good and happy life…”

When I was already a presbyter at Hippo Regius, I wrote a book On the Usefulness of Believing to a friend of mine who, I knew, had been deceived by the Manichaeans and was still held in that error, and who mocked the discipline of the Catholic faith because people were commanded to believe and were not taught what is true by most certain reasoning. In this book I said: “Yet in those precepts and commands of the law which Christians may not now observe, such as the sabbath or circumcision or sacrifices and anything of the kind, such great mysteries are contained that every devout person understands that nothing is more harmful than to take whatever is there according to the letter, that is, word for word, and nothing more wholesome than that it be revealed by the spirit. Hence it is said: ‘The letter kills, but the spirit gives life.’” But I explained these words of the apostle Paul otherwise, and, as it seems to me, or rather as the matter itself shows, much more fittingly, in the book entitled On the Spirit and the Letter; although this sense too is not to be rejected. Likewise I said: “For there are two kinds of persons praiseworthy in religion: one, those who have already found, whom one must also judge most blessed; the other, those who seek most zealously and most rightly. The first, then, are already in possession itself; the others are on the way, by which, however, one most certainly arrives.” In these words of mine, if those who have already found, whom we said to be already in possession itself, are taken to be most blessed in such a way that they are so not in this life but in the life which we hope for and toward which we tend by the way of faith, this sense contains no error; for those are to be judged to have found what was to be sought who are already there where we desire to arrive by seeking and believing, that is, by holding to the way of faith. But if they are thought to be, or to have been, such in this life, that does not seem to me to be true; not because nothing true at all can be found in this life which is discerned by the mind and not believed by faith, but because whatever it is, it is not so great as to make people most blessed. For what the apostle says, “We see now through a mirror in an enigma,” and, “Now I know in part,” is not something not discerned by the mind; it is plainly discerned, but it does not yet make people most blessed. What makes them most blessed is what he says: “But then face to face,” and, “Then I shall know as I also am known.” Those who have found this are to be said to stand in the possession of blessedness, to which the way of faith leads, which we hold and where we desire to arrive by believing. But who those most blessed ones are who are already in that possession to which this way leads is a great question. That the holy angels are there is no question. But concerning holy human beings already dead, whether they are to be said to stand already in that possession is rightly asked. For they have indeed already been stripped of the corruptible body by which the soul is weighed down; but they too are still awaiting the redemption of their body, and their flesh rests in hope and does not yet shine in the incorruption to come. But whether they lack anything on that account for contemplating the truth with the eyes of the heart, as it is said, “face to face,” this is not the place to inquire by discussion. Likewise what I said, “For to know great and honorable or even divine things is most blessed,” we must refer to that same blessedness. For in this life, however much it is known, it is not yet most blessed, since what is not known of it is incomparably greater. And what I said, “It makes a great difference whether something is held by the certain reasoning of the mind, which we call knowing, or is usefully commended to posterity by report or by writing to be believed,” and a little later, “What we know, then, we owe to reason; what we believe, to authority,” is not to be taken in such a way that in more ordinary speech we should be afraid to say that we know what we believe on suitable witnesses. Properly speaking, indeed, we say that we know only what we grasp by the firm reasoning of the mind. But when we speak in words more suited to custom, as the divine Scripture also speaks, let us not hesitate to say that we know both what we perceive by the senses of our body and what we believe on witnesses worthy of faith, provided that we understand the difference between these and the other. Likewise what I said, “No one doubts that all human beings are either fools or wise,” can seem contrary to what is read in the third book On Free Choice: “As if human nature admitted no intermediate condition besides the foolish and the wise.” But that was said there where the question was about the first man, whether he was made wise or foolish or neither; since we could in no way call him foolish who was made without fault, folly being a great fault; and how we could call him wise who could be led astray was not clear enough. And so I wished to say, for brevity: “As if human nature admitted no intermediate condition besides folly and wisdom.” For I was also considering little children, whom, though we confess that they contract original sin, we nevertheless cannot properly call either wise or foolish, since they do not yet use free choice either well or badly. Here, however, I said that all human beings are either wise or foolish, wishing those to be understood who already use reason, by which they are distinguished from beasts so as to be human; just as we say that all human beings wish to be happy. For in so true and clear a statement are we afraid that little children might be understood too, who cannot yet wish this? In another place, when I had recalled the miracles which the Lord Jesus did when he was here in the flesh, I added: “Why, you will say, are these things not done now?” And I answered: “Because they would not move people unless they were wonderful; but if they were usual, they would not be wonderful.” I said this because such great ones are not done now, nor all of them; not because none at all are done even now. At the end of the book I said: “But since this discourse of ours has gone on much longer than I thought, let us end the book here. In it I want you to remember that I have not yet begun to refute the Manichaeans and have not yet attacked those trifles, nor have I disclosed anything great about the Catholic Church itself, but I have only wished to root out of you, if I could, the opinion about true Christians maliciously or ignorantly instilled into you, and to raise you up to learn certain great and divine things. So let this volume stand as it is. When your mind has been made more peaceable, I shall perhaps be readier in the rest.” I did not say this as though I had not yet written anything against the Manichaeans or committed nothing to writing about Catholic teaching, since so many volumes published earlier testify that I had not kept silent on either subject; but in this book written to him I had not yet begun to refute the Manichaeans and had not yet attacked those trifles, nor had I disclosed anything great about the Catholic Church itself, because I hoped that, this beginning having been made, I would write to him what I had not written here. This book begins thus: “If to me, Honoratus, it seemed one and the same…”

After this book, while still a presbyter, I wrote against the Manichaeans On the Two Souls, of which they say that one is a part of God, the other from the race of darkness, which God did not create and which is coeternal with God; and they rave that both these souls, one good and the other evil, are in one man, saying that the evil one belongs properly to the flesh, which flesh they also say is of the race of darkness, but that the good one is from the part of God that came in from outside and fought with the race of darkness, and that both are mixed together; and they attribute all the good in man to the good soul and all the evil to the evil soul. In this book, what I said, that there is no life of any kind which, by the very fact that it is life and insofar as it is life at all, does not belong to the highest fount and principle of life, I said in such a way that it is to be understood as belonging to him as a creature to its creator, not as being thought to be from him as a part of him. Likewise what I said, that sin is nowhere except in the will, the Pelagians can think was said in their favor, because of little children, whom they deny to have original sin to be remitted to them in baptism, because they do not yet use the choice of the will. As if the sin which we say they contract originally from Adam, that is, being entangled in his guilt and on that account held liable to punishment, could ever have existed except from the will, the will by which it was committed when the transgression of the divine commandment took place. This statement, in which we said that sin is nowhere except in the will, can also be thought false because the apostle said: “But if I do what I do not will, it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells in me.” For this sin is so far from being in the will that he says, “What I do not will, this I do.” How then is sin nowhere except in the will? But this sin of which the apostle spoke in this way is called sin because it was made by sin and is the punishment of sin, since this is said of the lust of the flesh, as he makes plain in what follows, saying: “I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh; for to will is present with me, but to accomplish the good is not.” For the accomplishment of the good is that even the lust of sin itself should not be in man; to which indeed, when one lives well, the will does not consent; yet he does not accomplish the good, because there is still in him the lust which the will resists. The guilt of this lust is loosed in baptism, but the weakness remains, against which every believer who is making good progress struggles most zealously until it is healed. But the sin which is nowhere except in the will is to be understood especially as that which just condemnation followed; for this “entered the world through one man”; although this sin too, by which one consents to the lust of sin, is not committed except by the will. For this reason I also said in another place: “One does not sin, then, except by the will.” Likewise in another place I defined the will itself, saying: “Will is a movement of the soul, with nothing compelling it, toward either not losing or obtaining something.” This was said so that by this definition the one who wills might be distinguished from the one who does not will, and so that the attention might thus be directed to those who were first in paradise and became the origin of evil for the human race by sinning with nothing compelling them, that is, by sinning with free will; because they both acted knowingly against the commandment, and the tempter persuaded them to do it, he did not compel them. For one who sinned without knowing can also not unfittingly be said to have sinned unwillingly; although he too, what he did without knowing, nevertheless did willingly; thus not even his sin could exist without the will. That will, certainly, as defined, was a movement of the soul, with nothing compelling it, toward either not losing or obtaining something. For what he would not have done if he had not willed, he was not compelled to do. Because he willed, therefore, he did it, even if he did not sin because he willed, not knowing that what he did was a sin. So not even such a sin could exist without the will, but by the will of the deed, not by the will of the sin; which deed was nevertheless a sin, for what was done was what ought not to have been done. He, however, who sins knowingly, if he can resist without sin what compels him to sin and yet does not do so, certainly sins willingly, since he who can resist is not compelled to yield. But he who cannot resist compelling desire with his will, and therefore acts against the precepts of justice, this is then sin in such a way that it is also the punishment of sin. Therefore it is most true that sin cannot exist without the will. Likewise the definition of sin in which we said, “Sin is the will to retain or obtain what justice forbids and from which one is free to abstain,” is true for this reason: that what was defined is what is only sin, not what is also the punishment of sin. For when it is such that the same thing is also the punishment of sin, how much can the will do under the domination of desire, except perhaps, if it is devout, to pray for help? For it is free to the extent that it has been set free, and to that extent it is called will. Otherwise the whole of it is properly to be called desire rather than will; which is not, as the Manichaeans foolishly say, an addition from an alien nature, but a fault of our own, from which it is healed only by the grace of the Savior. And if anyone says that desire itself is nothing other than will, but will that is faulty and enslaved to sin, there is no need to resist or to dispute about words when the matter is settled. For even so it is shown that there is no sin without the will, whether in act or in origin. Again, in what I said, I had already begun to ask whether that evil kind of souls had any will before it was mixed with the good. “For if it had none, it will be without sin and innocent, and therefore in no way evil.” Why then, they say, do you speak of the sin of little children, whose will you do not hold guilty? The answer is that they are held guilty not by any will of their own but by their origin. For what is every earthly man by origin but Adam? And Adam certainly had a will, and when he sinned by that will, sin entered the world through him. Likewise in what I said, “Souls can in no way be evil by nature,” if it is asked how we take what the apostle says, “We too were by nature children of wrath, like the rest,” we answer that in these words of mine I meant to be understood the nature which is properly called nature, in which we were created without fault. For that other is called nature because of origin, which origin certainly has a fault, which is contrary to nature. And again, as for what was said, “To hold anyone guilty of sin because he did not do what he could not do is the height of injustice and madness”: why then, they say, are little children held guilty? The answer is that they are held guilty by their origin from him who did not do what he could have done, namely, keep the divine commandment. As for what I said, “Whatever those souls do, if they do it by nature and not by will, that is, if they lack a free movement of the soul both for doing and for not doing, if, finally, no power is granted them to abstain from their work, we cannot hold them guilty of sin”: the question about little children does not trouble this, because they are held guilty by their origin from him who sinned by his will, when he did not lack a free movement of the soul both for doing and for not doing, and had the fullest power to abstain from the evil work. This the Manichaeans do not say of the race of darkness, which they bring in most fabulously, and which they contend was a nature always evil, never good. It can be asked, however, how I said: “Even if there are souls (which for the moment is uncertain) given over to bodily functions not by sin but by nature, and which, although they are inferior, touch us by a certain inner proximity, they should not therefore be held evil because we are evil when we follow them and love bodily things.” For I said this of those of whom I had begun to speak more openly, saying: “Although, even if it is granted to them that we are enticed to shameful things by another, inferior kind of souls, they do not conclude from this either that those natures are evil or that these are the highest good.” For I carried the discussion of these as far as this point, where I said: “Even if there are souls (which for the moment is uncertain) given over to bodily functions not by sin but by nature,” and so on. It can be asked, then, why I said, “which for the moment is uncertain,” when I ought not to have doubted at all that there are no such souls. But I said it because I had come across people who said that the devil and his angels are good in their own kind and in the nature in which God created them, in their own order, such as they are; but that it is evil for us if we are enticed and led astray by them, while if we beware of them and overcome them, it is honorable and glorious. And those who say this think that they bring suitable testimonies from the Scriptures to prove it: either what is written in the book of Job, when the devil is being described, “This is the beginning of the Lord's fashioning, which he made to be mocked by his angels,” or that in the hundred and third Psalm: “This dragon, which you formed to mock him.” This question, which would have to be taken up and solved not against the Manichaeans, who do not hold this, but against others who do, I did not wish to treat and unravel at that time, lest I should make the book much longer than I wished, since I saw that, even if this were granted, the Manichaeans could and should already be refuted, who in their most insane error bring in a nature of evil coeternal with the eternal good. So I said “which for the moment is uncertain,” not because I had any doubt about it, but because the question had not yet been settled between me and those whom I had found to think so. This, however, I settled with as much clarity as I could in other, much later books of mine, On Genesis according to the Letter according to the holy Scriptures. In another place I said: “We sin, therefore, by loving bodily things, because we are commanded by justice and are able by nature to love spiritual things, and then we are best and happy in our own kind.” Here it can be asked why I said “we are able by nature” and not “by grace.” But the question against the Manichaeans was about nature; and grace certainly accomplishes this: that this nature can do, through him who came to seek and to save what was lost, what it cannot do as vitiated. Yet remembering this grace even then, I prayed for my closest friends, who were still held in that deadly error, and said: “Great God, almighty God, God of supreme goodness, whom it is right to believe and understand to be inviolable and incorruptible, threefold unity, whom the Catholic Church worships, I humbly pray, having experienced your mercy in myself, that you do not allow those men with whom I have had the closest agreement in human life since boyhood to disagree with me in your worship.” Praying thus, I already held by faith not only that those converted to God are helped by his grace to make progress and be perfected (where it can still be said that this grace is given for the merit of their conversion) but also that their being converted to God belongs to the very grace of God; for I prayed to him for those who were far turned away from him, and prayed that they might be converted to him. This book begins thus: “With the help of God's mercy…”