Manichaeism in the early church

Fragment 26 on John 2:1Origen · ca. 226-254 · On John 2:1: Christ, maker of man and woman, who brought Eve to Adam and forbade separating what God joined, honors marriage by attending the wedding; the mention of his mother refutes the Manichaeans.
Against the Manichaeans 2Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander introduces Mani, his first missionaries in Egypt, and his two principles, God and matter.
Against the Manichaeans 3Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander reports the Manichaean myth: matter attacks God's realm, God sends soul into matter, and the Demiurge makes the world to free it.
Against the Manichaeans 4Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander reports the Manichaean teaching on the moon and sun as vessels of souls, the making of man, Christ as Mind, and the abstinence of the Elect.
Against the Manichaeans 5Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander notes the Manichaeans' use of Greek myths and explains why refuting a teaching with no accepted premises is hard, unlike arguing with Christians who appeal to inspired Scripture.
Against the Manichaeans 6Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander argues that Mani's definition of matter as disorderly motion leads to more principles than two and makes no sense.
Against the Manichaeans 7Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander examines which kind of motion Mani's matter could be and shows that none fits.
Against the Manichaeans 8Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander argues that alteration cannot make matter evil, and that neither as bodies nor as incorporeals can God and matter be the only two principles.
Against the Manichaeans 9Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander argues that matter could not have risen to God's region by itself, and that its desire for the good would not have been evil or a reason for God's jealousy.
Against the Manichaeans 10Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander says the Manichaean war of matter against God outdoes the myths of the poets and wrongly ascribes envy and anger to God.
Against the Manichaeans 11Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander asks whether the power God sent was equal or inferior to God, and whether matter's powers are equal or inferior to matter, finding both answers absurd.
Against the Manichaeans 12Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander answers the claim that the divine power is gradually overcoming evil by pointing out that evils have not lessened since Cain, as had been answered to Zeno's conflagration.
Against the Manichaeans 13Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander shows that the heavens are orderly and that, on Manichaean principles, disasters and wars would be goods because they free the divine power.
Against the Manichaeans 14Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander mocks the conclusion that destructive animals and men would deserve honour, and says education and law, not Manichaean myth, answer vice.
Against the Manichaeans 15Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander argues that pleasure and desire belong to sensation and bodily need, not to an evil principle, and that man can master them.
Against the Manichaeans 16Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander argues that if anyone can become good all can, so education and wisdom matter, and praises Jesus for bringing ordinary working people to God and the good.
Against the Manichaeans 17Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander argues that every account of where the divine power came from, and how it was mixed with matter, contradicts the Manichaean system.
Against the Manichaeans 18Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander denies that matter can perish when the divine power leaves it, and asks by which part of himself Mani could have learned his doctrine.
Against the Manichaeans 19Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander finds the sending of a second, creative power as absurd as the first and asks why God needed two powers.
Against the Manichaeans 20Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander argues that if sun and moon are made from divided parts of the divine power, the divine power is itself matter.
Against the Manichaeans 21Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander argues that since the Manichaeans hold the divine power to be alike throughout, they cannot explain why the sun and moon remained pure while the rest was tainted.
Against the Manichaeans 22Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander uses astronomy to refute the Manichaean idea that the moon's phases come from souls being collected and passed to the sun.
Against the Manichaeans 23Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander argues that the divine power cannot be lessening if all stays the same, and that the Manichaean account of man as a work of matter modelled on an image in the sun is incoherent.
Against the Manichaeans 24Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander attacks the Manichaean doctrine of Christ as Mind and contrasts their view of the cross as a demonstration with the church's teaching that Christ gave himself for the forgiveness of sins.
Against the Manichaeans 25Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander mocks the Manichaean abstinence from meat and marriage and contrasts their literal myths with allegorical readings of the Giants and of the angels and the daughters of men.
Against the Manichaeans 26Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander argues that the dark fire outside the world is simply matter, and that it can neither destroy nor be destroyed as the Manichaeans claim.
Against the Manichaeans 27Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander concludes that the outer fire, being of the same nature as matter, could not destroy it.
Church History 7.31.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Mani arose, claiming to be the Paraclete and choosing twelve disciples like Christ.
Church History 7.31.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Mani's doctrines spread from Persia, and the Manichaeans still flourish.
Acts of Archelaus 5Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century · Mani’s letter to Marcellus attacks belief in one principle and in Christ’s birth from Mary.
Acts of Archelaus 7Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century · Turbo’s summary of Mani’s myth: two gods, the First Man, the creation of the world, the docetic Christ, and the ferrying of souls by sun and moon.
Acts of Archelaus 9Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century · Mani’s myth of the alluring Virgin of Light as the cause of rain, plague, and death.
Acts of Archelaus 10Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century · Mani’s teaching on transmigration, the elect and catechumens, and the ban on work.
Acts of Archelaus 11Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century · Mani’s teaching on paradise, the prophets, the elect’s anointing, and Sabaoth.
Acts of Archelaus 12Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century · Mani’s teaching that Adam and Eve were made by evil rulers and that the God of Moses is the ruler of darkness.
Acts of Archelaus 13Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century · Mani’s teaching on the end of the world and the mission of his three disciples.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 4Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Manes hears of Marcellus and sends Turbo, a disciple of Addas, with a letter; Turbo is turned away at every inn until he mentions Marcellus.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 14Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Manes arrives at Carchar in strange Persian dress; Marcellus convenes a public debate between him and Archelaus before four pagan judges.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 18Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · The judges define change; Archelaus argues that two unchangeable natures could not be told apart, while changeable ones imply a single unbegotten principle, and demands to know against whom evil acted before creation.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 23Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · The judges rule that body and soul have one maker; Archelaus argues that the Lord's Prayer is addressed to the Father in heaven, not to the maker Manes posits.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 24Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Archelaus argues from Jesus' woe on the Pharisees that the maker of the outside also made the inside, and that God confined to a fixed place would be less than human rulers.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 26Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · The judges award the point to Archelaus; he presses Manes to say who built the wall dividing the kingdoms of light and darkness, and what the other was doing meanwhile.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 29Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · The judges reject Manes's parable: a shepherd who hands his lamb to the lion could not justly punish it, and they award the point to Archelaus.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 30Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Archelaus turns from the two natures to Manes's claim to be the Paraclete, and tells a parable of a man who comes to a sealed storehouse without keys or seals and is driven off as a thief.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 43Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · The crowd drives Manes away; the narrator notes that the debate was written down at Marcellus's wish; Turbo is ordained deacon, and Manes flees to the village of Diodorus, whose presbyter writes to Archelaus.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 62Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Archelaus traces Manes's teaching to Scythianus, a Saracen who learned the wisdom of Egypt, had four books written, and died in Judea, leaving his disciple Terebinthus.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 63Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Terebinthus flees with Scythianus's books to Babylonia, calls himself Buddas, claims a virgin birth, and is accused of lying by Parcus and Labdacus.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 64Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Archelaus continues: a widow inherits Scythianus's books and leaves them to her freed slave Corbicius, who renames himself Manes, rewrites the books, sends out disciples, and is imprisoned after failing to cure the king's son.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 66Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Manes flees again, is later captured and executed by the Persian king, and Archelaus adds the account of his death to the record of the disputation.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 68Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Archelaus closes by tracing Manes's teaching through Basilides to Scythianus; the work ends with Hegemonius's signature and a short appended catalogue of heresies down to the Apollinarians, Novatians, Montenses, and Luciferians.
Demonstration 3.9Aphrahat · 337-345 · The fasting of Marcionites, Valentinians, and Manichaeans earns no reward, since they deny the true Maker.
Oration II Against the Arians 39Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Scripture speaks of God's “words” only as commandments given through the one Word; it knows no second Word or Wisdom, which the Arians invent as the Manichees invent another god.
Oration II Against the Arians 40Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · The only unoriginate Wisdom coexisting with God is the Son; even Asterius, writing against pagans, confessed one Word and one Wisdom, contradicting himself.
Oration IV Against the Arians 23Athanasius of Alexandria · 4th century (disputed) · The author argues that if the Word became Son only at the incarnation, no one could have known the Father before, and rejects the claim that the Son is later because the Old Testament speaks of the Word.
Catechetical Lecture 6.18Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Valentinus degrades Christ, the Wisdom of God, into a fallen female Aeon; Cyril then turns to Manes, who gathered other men’s errors into one heresy.
Catechetical Lecture 6.19Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The Manichaean heresy began with Scythianus of Alexandria, author of four books; he died of disease in Judea.
Catechetical Lecture 6.22Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Manes claimed to be the Paraclete, promised to heal the Persian king’s son by prayer, and caused his death by dismissing the physicians.
Catechetical Lecture 6.24Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Archelaus refuted Manes in public debate; Manes fled, was caught and flayed by the Persian king. Cyril warns against the Manichaeans’ Gospel of Thomas, their teaching on food, their curses on the Creator, and their rites.
Catechetical Lecture 6.25Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The Manichaean myth of rain is absurd; the Church, with its order, purity, marriage, and virginity, is the opposite. Former Manichaeans may be saved if they renounce the error from the heart.
Catechetical Lecture 14.21Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Against the Manichaean claim that the resurrection was only apparent, Paul's testimony and the list of witnesses in 1 Corinthians 15, including James, Jerusalem's first bishop, establish it.
Catechetical Lecture 16.9Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Mani's claim to be the promised Paraclete is refuted by the apostles' reception of the Spirit at Pentecost, two centuries before him.
To the Bishops of Egypt 16Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 356 · Athanasius likens the Arians to the Manichees, who name a God without works, and rejects their claims that the Son is one power among many and does not know the Father or himself perfectly.
On the Trinity 6.10Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · By condemning Mani's “part of the substance,” the Arians try to deny the one substance; but the church rejects any portion and confesses whole God from whole God.
To Justinus the Manichaean 1Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author opens a letter to Justin, a Manichaean, promising to answer his question whether contrary things can come from one principle, and wonders that Justin hates the flesh yet venerates plants.
To Justinus the Manichaean 2Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author argues that the sun, the stars and the whole world refute the Manichaean doctrine of two unbegotten principles, and presses Justin on the Manichaean denial that Christ's flesh came from Mary.
To Justinus the Manichaean 3Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author argues that the Manichaean account of Christ's heavenly flesh and of a flesh-maker hostile to God is incoherent, and professes one creator of all things, light, truth and the whole.
To Justinus the Manichaean 5Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author argues that an infinite God cannot coexist with another kingdom, and that the Manichaean war between light and darkness implies that the defeated darkness has perished, so the flesh belongs to the victor.
To Justinus the Manichaean 6Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author mocks the Manichaean picture of a victorious God troubled by his captives, arguing that two eternal, self-existent principles cannot be conquered or subjected without contradiction.
To Justinus the Manichaean 7Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author argues that neither light nor darkness could have started the Manichaean war without absurdity, dismisses dualism as a Persian notion, and names Mani, Zoroaster and Buddha as teachers who deceived many.
To Justinus the Manichaean 8Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author concludes that contraries do not require two principles, that the one Creator of the world is his maker, and he calls the flesh to rejoice that, redeemed by the cross, it will be clothed with immortality.
To Justinus the Manichaean 10Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author explains that darkness, like ice from water, is not a substance but appears only through the act of another and perishes when light shines, so that it cannot be a second principle.
To Justinus the Manichaean 11Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author argues that the one almighty God is the infinite whole, beside whom “nothing” has no substance and no place, so that a rival principle would make space itself greater than God.
To Justinus the Manichaean 12Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author argues that two coeternal, warring principles involve absurdities about priority, greatness and defeat, and concludes that there is one unbegotten Lord from whom all things come.
To Justinus the Manichaean 13Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author compares evil to a shadow, which has no substance but depends on a solid body, and urges Mani's follower to confess that nothing exists that is not from the one eternal Lord.
To Justinus the Manichaean 14Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author argues that no evil can dwell in the highest heavens, that a conquered power cannot be a principle, and that there cannot be two infinites, so God alone is the one principle.
To Justinus the Manichaean 16Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author traces sin to the soul's misuse of free will, exposes the contradictions of Manichaean docetism about Christ's death and burial, criticizes Manichaean fasting, and urges Justin to confess God as creator of soul and body.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.1Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Titus contrasts the church’s way of clearing God of blame for sin, by blaming ourselves, with Mani’s doctrine of an eternal evil principle opposed to God.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.2Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Mani’s second principle makes sin seem incurable, encouraging despair and robbing virtuous effort of true praise.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.3Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · The Manichees call nearly all creation evil, including wild animals, which Titus promises to show are useful.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.6Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Titus quotes Mani’s statement of the two opposed, unbegotten principles.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.13Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Opposition belongs to qualities, not to substances, and God, who is simple, has no qualities; two unbegotten beings cannot be opposite.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.17Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Titus summarizes Mani’s myth of matter’s assault on the light, the swallowed power, the making of the world, and the moon that carries souls back to the good.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.18Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Matter’s supposed disorder, growth and late uprising are incoherent whether matter is rational or irrational.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.19Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Mani says the offspring of matter devoured one another until they saw the light; Titus replies that evil destroying itself would be good order.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.21Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Mani’s book says the powers of darkness desired the light; Titus argues that desire for the good is praiseworthy, so the myth contradicts itself.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.22Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · The myth of the powers of darkness making war on a light they did not know, and the notion of a “land of the good” before creation, are self-contradictory.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.23Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · If darkness saw the light, it must share a nature with it; sight implies likeness, so the opposition of the two principles collapses.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.24Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Matter’s seeing and loving the power of God would prove kinship with it, since sight implies likeness and desire for the good is a mark of goodness.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.29Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Human sins presuppose body and soul joined in a world, so by Mani’s own myth the mixture of good and evil produced evils that matter alone never had.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.40Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · The doctrine that the light is slowly being freed and matter will finally be burned into a clod is incoherent and contradicted by the unchanged order of the world.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.13Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Thinking of both good and evil shows natural moral knowledge, not two natures; action is decided by choice, and upbringing matters greatly.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.31Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Darkness is not a substance but the absence of light, like a shadow; the sun exists at night, but darkness does not exist by day.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.39Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Wild animals and Mani’s irrational evil alike cannot be evil, since evil requires knowledge, as the pardon given to the delirious shows.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.50Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · The four elements are each simple and dangerous when unmixed, so they cannot be divided between good and evil principles.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.54Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · The sun is a kind of fire, beneficial at a distance and harmful near; being visible and bodily, it cannot be of God’s substance as Mani claims.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.55Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Mani contradicts himself by honouring the sun while condemning the fruits of the earth that the sun nourishes.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.56Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Titus defends rain and the fruits of the earth against Manichaean slander and accuses the Manichees of cursing their bread, rejecting childbearing, and using means to prevent or end pregnancy.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.60Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Mani’s claim that stones and wood have souls, because they make sounds, is absurd, since sound comes from bodies striking air, not from souls.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.63Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · The harmony of heaven and earth, sun and seasons, day and night, sea and land shows one law and one Creator, not two warring principles.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 3.1Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Book 3 begins: Titus turns to refuting Mani from Scripture, since Mani misleads Christians by using the name of Christ and calling himself the Paraclete and an apostle of Jesus Christ.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 3.2Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Mani rejects the Old Testament as from evil and keeps only parts of the New Testament, cutting out what does not suit him.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 3.5Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Titus quotes a Manichaean text: the rulers of matter made human bodies, beginning with Adam, to trap the souls of light.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 3.8Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Titus reports Manichaean objections to Genesis: the commandment to Adam, the serpent as an angel of the good, God’s words in Gen 3:22, Abel’s murder and the flood.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 70Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · The demons know Christ and beg not to be sent into the abyss, which shows they are rational, not blind by nature, and not akin to the place of punishment.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 72Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Degrees of wickedness among demons show choice, not nature; Titus begins to restate the Manichaean myth of the two separated realms in order to refute it.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 73Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Against the Manichaean doctrine of two roots bearing good and evil fruit, Titus points to the apostles, who changed from bad to good, as proof that rational creatures act by choice.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 74Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Pharaoh’s requests for prayer and Nebuchadnezzar’s recognition of God show that even the worst men had some good, which refutes the idea of evil natures sprung from an evil root.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 76Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Scripture speaks of Satan as fallen from a former height, so he was not evil by nature; and the Manichaean myth of light snatched by darkness makes God passible and Satan impassible.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 77Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · If the light could be changed and made forgetful of itself, it was not unbegotten; and if change is possible, God should have changed evil to good rather than allow the good to be captured.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 78Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Titus turns to the Manichaean treatment of the Law and the Gospels, which they cut and supplement; then, after a break in the text, he argues that no middle wall or void could separate the two principles.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 79Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · The myth that wickedness destroyed itself and then swallowed the light contradicts its supposed unbegotten nature; after a break, Titus returns to the Manichaean rewriting of the Gospel.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 99Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · True opposites cannot coexist, yet soul and body form one harmonious person who loves and feels with the body, so they cannot come from opposite principles.
Hexaemeron 2.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Darkness over the abyss is not an evil power opposed to God, as Marcionites, Valentinians, and Manichees claim; evil is not a substance but the soul's falling away from the good.
Hexaemeron 8.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · The earth brings forth living souls not from a soul within it, as the Manichees say, but by God's gift; land animals have a fuller soul-life than fish.
Commentary on 1 Timothy 4:1–5Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · The Spirit foretold heretics, such as the Marcionites, Patricians, and Manichees, who deny Christ’s birth, forbid marriage, and reject foods, though everything God made is good when received with thanksgiving.
Commentary on 2 Timothy 3:6–7Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Heretics who creep into houses and capture gullible women are above all the Manichees, hypocrites whom Diocletian’s edict describes as recently arrived from Persia.
Commentary on Galatians 1:1Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Paul's apostleship comes from Christ, God and man, which refutes both the Manichees and Photinus; Christ raised himself, yet by the Father's power.
Question 3, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Moses wrote the creation account only when Egyptian teaching, later followed by Marcion and the Manichees, ascribed the world or man to a lesser maker; his miracles confirm that God made both.
Question 127, section 18Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Manichaeans, who reject marriage, need bodily birth for their own scheme of the soul’s liberation, and their show of holiness hides impurity condemned by imperial edicts.
Letter 49.2Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome denies that his books against Jovinian condemned marriage and quotes his own preface ranking virginity, widowhood, and marriage as the hundredfold, sixtyfold, and thirtyfold yield.
Letter 116.6Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine warns that admitting that the apostles wrote falsehoods would give the Manichaeans the weapon they lack when they claim the Scriptures were corrupted.
Letter 131.7Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Augustine recalls treating four views of the soul's origin in On Free Will against the Manichees, and asks Jerome which of them is true.
Letter 133.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome traces the Pelagian claim of sinlessness to Manichaeans, Priscillian, Evagrius, the Sentences of Sextus, Origen, and Jovinian.
Letter 133.9Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome denies holding the Manichaean view of an evil nature, appealing to Paul on the frailty of the flesh and to God's inscrutable justice.
Ancoratus 33.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · Eating and drinking refutes the Manichaeans; also the Lucianists and Arius.
Ancoratus 48.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · The Manichaean view of souls merging into one column is foolish.
Ancoratus 107.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374 · They refute Manichaeans and Marcionites.
On the Christian Faith 2.13Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose imagines the Arian, the Photinian, the Sabellian, and the Manichaean pleading before Christ the judge, each condemned by his own denial, and ends with his own plea for mercy.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 123Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Macrina leaves aside how creation happened, saying only that God’s will becomes reality at once; bodies are a concurrence of qualities that are themselves intelligible, so an intellectual God can produce them.
On the Making of Man 23Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · Whoever accepts that the world had a beginning must accept its end; just as we believe by faith that God made matter, against those who make matter eternal, we believe he will bring the world to its appointed end.
Book of Heresies 61.2Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The Manichees teach two warring gods.
Book of Heresies 61.4Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Archelaus defeated the Manichees in debate.
Eleven Tractates 1.26Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · Christ truly suffered; heretics have mixed lies into the Scriptures; Priscillian anathematizes Mani and his followers, whose worship of sun and moon and whose crimes have been exposed even in civil courts.
Eleven Tractates 2.47Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · They condemn the Ophites, the Novatians, and above all the Manichaeans, whom they know only by report.
Second Apology of David 27Ambrose · ca. 384-397 · Against Manichees and Valentinians, who deny Christ’s flesh, Matthew calls him son of David: Son of God by divine substance, son of David by the flesh.
Second Apology of David 70Ambrose · ca. 384-397 · Heresies converge: the Arians, by dividing Father and Son, end up like the Manichees, who split the God of the two Testaments.
Catechetical Oration 7Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · Against the Manichaeans, Gregory argues that God is not the cause of evil: evil is the privation of good and arises from the will, and bodily pain is wrongly judged evil by those who measure good by pleasure.
On the Duties of the Clergy 1.25Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · Ambrose explains why he teaches by the forefathers’ examples rather than by definitions, and shows the four virtues in Abraham, Jacob, and Noah.
Exposition of Psalm 118 1.8.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · One must walk the way to its end, Christ; Jews stop short and Manichees reject the law, but the true faith goes on.
Exposition of Psalm 118 5.16.2Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Preaching the crucified Christ wounds the church with love; the Manichee denies the cross, the Christian confesses it.
Letter 25.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Paulinus asks Augustine for further writings against other heretics and describes his conversion from worldly learning.
Letter 55.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine turns to the moon's phases, ridiculing the Manichaean doctrine that the moon fills with liberated particles of God.
Letter 55.36Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine condemns the view that meat is unclean as contrary to the faith, while upholding abstinence for self-control.
Letter 79.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine challenges a Manichaean teacher either to answer the question that defeated his predecessor Fortunatus or to leave Hippo.
Letter 82.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine warns that admitting deliberate falsehood in the apostles would hand the Manichaeans an argument against Scripture.
Letter 236.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine informs Bishop Deuterius that Victorinus, an aged subdeacon of Malliana, has confessed to being a Manichaean Hearer.
Letter 236.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine describes Manichaean Hearers and Elect and their doctrines: docetism, rejection of the Old Testament, the soul as part of God, and God's mixture with darkness.
Letter 236.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine asks Deuterius to depose Victorinus from clerical rank and to admit him to penance only if he names other Manichees in the province.
Homilies on Matthew 16.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Forbidding anger safeguards the law against murder; against the Manichees the law of an eye for an eye is shown to be an act of mercy and both covenants to have one lawgiver; anger is permitted only for others’ good, and even small insults are forbidden.
Homilies on Matthew 26.5John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · No one standing should be confident and no one fallen despair, against the Manichaean claim that wickedness cannot change; David’s adultery and murder are set out in full to show the greatness of his recovery.
Homilies on Matthew 51.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Christ sets aside the food laws gently, from the nature of things, defends God’s law against the Pharisees’ traditions (against the Manichaean reading of the uprooted plant), rebukes the offended disciples, and teaches that defilement comes from the heart; Chrysostom applies this to worshipers who wash hands but not souls.
Homilies on Matthew 55.6John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The monks’ hymn ends and begins again in doxology like Paul’s letters, thanks God even for food against the Manichaeans, asks for the Spirit and to escape shame at the judgment; Christians in cities and households, like the apostles’ converts and the married prophets, can share their wisdom.
Homilies on Matthew 58.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · The child is a pattern of natural virtue, refuting the Manichaeans; receiving the humble is receiving Christ, and harming them deserves worse than drowning with a millstone; arrogance, the devil’s captivity, makes men pride themselves even on their ancestry, whether noble or humble, though every lineage contains both.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.30Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Evil is not a creature of God but arises from human changeableness; the dualist heresies are wrong.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.32Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Against Manichees, Photinians, and Eunomians, Ambrose argues from Gen 1:26 that the Son is co-creator and equal to the Father.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine explains that this book answers the two Manichaean lures, their attacks on the Scriptures and their show of chastity, by setting out the catholic teaching on life and morals from both Testaments.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine shows that the command to love God and Paul's text on being reckoned as sheep for slaughter both come from the Old Testament, and rebukes the Manichaean claim that such passages are interpolations.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine replies that the catholic Church does not read the Old Testament as describing a repenting, envious, cruel, or bodily God, and that it leads believers from childish to mature understanding of God.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · The God of both Testaments is one; the Manichaeans misuse Scripture's humble and figurative language, while true understanding comes through love, as Christ's “ask, seek, knock” and the Wisdom of Solomon both teach.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine, once a Manichaean hearer himself, urges them to see the harmony of both Testaments in stirring up the love of God, and to listen to catholic teachers as he once listened to them for nine years.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Temperance turns love away from visible things, so the Manichaean worship of the sun and moon is not Christian; God alone is to be loved, and the world only used for life's needs.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Discipline heals the mind by fear and love, the Old Testament stressing fear and the New love; the two great commandments the Manichaeans praise come from the Old Testament, which they therefore cannot consistently reject.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.29Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Since Christ says the whole Law and the Prophets hang on the two commandments of love, the Manichaeans cannot dismiss the passage as an interpolation without producing an uncorrupted manuscript, which they never do.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.34Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine challenges the Manichaeans to compare their life with that of true catholics, not with nominal Christians, such as those who venerate tombs and pictures or feast over the dead, whom the Church condemns and tries to correct until the final separation.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.35Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine answers the Manichaean charge that baptized Christians should not marry, beget children, or own property, citing Paul's words on the body, marriage, and continence in 1 Corinthians 6–7, and closes the first book.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Asking first what evil is, Augustine argues that evil is what is against nature, a falling away from being toward non-being, so that no nature or substance is evil and God, the author of all natures, is not the author of evil.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · If evil is what harms, and harm is loss of good, then in the Manichaean system evil can harm neither the kingdom of darkness, which has no good, nor the kingdom of light, which is inviolable.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · If evil is corruption, it exists only in a good substance that it corrupts, so the Manichaean race of darkness, lacking all good, could not be corrupted.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Evil is not a substance such as a scorpion's poison but the unsuitability between things, as shown by poison, food, salt, the elements, and even the sun the Manichaeans worship, all helpful in one relation and harmful in another.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine shows that the Manichaean kingdom of darkness, with its five caverns and their animals, as they describe it, is full of goods such as strength, sight, speech, fruitfulness, order, and life, and so cannot be the highest evil.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine examines the Manichaean “three seals” of mouth, hands, and breast, and shows that the division cannot consistently cover all sins.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · The Manichaean seal of the mouth forbids blasphemy, yet by calling the soul a part of God they make God corrupted, changed, needy, weak, wretched, and enslaved, worse than any blasphemy; even the laws of number are more inviolable than their God.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine recalls the unanswered question that troubled him as a Manichaean, why God fought the race of darkness if it could not harm him, and refutes two evasions, one of them heard recently at Carthage.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · The worth of abstinence depends on its end; Augustine contrasts a frugal man who takes a little lard and wine with a Manichaean Elect who feasts on costly vegetarian delicacies, showing the absurdity of judging holiness by meat and wine alone.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine sets out the Manichaean reason for abstaining from meat: particles of the divine substance, trapped in plants, are freed by the Elect's eating, while meat is the filthy residue left when the divine has escaped.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine ridicules the Manichaean claim that the divine part in plants is detected by color, smell, and taste, shows that time, cooking, and handling often improve food, and exposes the cruelty and absurdity of their food rules, their refusal of bread to beggars, and their forcing of children to eat leftovers.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · On the Manichaean seal of the hands, Augustine argues from Christ's cursing of the fig tree and the herd of swine that we share no bond of law with plants and animals, and exposes the cruelty and inconsistency of rules that forbid plucking fruit for a dying man yet let Hearers do the plucking and allow the killing of vermin.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine argues that by treating procreation as worse than intercourse and urging the avoidance of conception, the Manichaeans in effect forbid marriage, as 1 Tim 4:3 foretold, and their doctrine of freeing souls from seeds through eating invites grave suspicion.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine recounts what he saw and heard in his nine years as a Manichaean Hearer at Carthage: Elect breaking their rules, harassing women in the street, an assault at a vigil, mutual accusations of adultery, theater-going, and a teacher who seduced a consecrated virgin and excused himself by Mani's teaching on Adam.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine tells how a wealthy Manichaean Hearer at Rome gathered the Elect into his house under a bishop to live by Mani's rule, until quarrels exposed their crimes and the bishop fled; he concludes that the Manichaeans cannot fairly judge the catholic Church by its worst members.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 1.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine explains that he writes in plain language so that even the unlearned can answer the Manichees' attacks on the Old Testament, and that God permits heresies to rouse believers to study Scripture.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 1.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine answers the Manichaean question about what God did before creation: the beginning is Christ, time itself was created, and God's will, the cause of all things, has no prior cause.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 1.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine explains that the earth God made was at first invisible and unformed, and that the light in which God dwells is not the sun the Manichees worship but the true light that enlightens every person.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 1.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine argues that darkness, like silence or nakedness, is not a thing but an absence, and so the Manichaean myth of a race of darkness is empty.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 1.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine explains that the Spirit was borne over the waters by power, not by place, and that “heaven and earth” and “water” name the formless matter God first created.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 1.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine answers the objection that “God saw that it was good” implies ignorance: like a craftsman approving a finished work, God's approval shows the work pleased him, and Scripture speaks to our weakness.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 1.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine answers objections to the creation of sun, moon and stars on the fourth day: the evenings and mornings before them mark the completion and beginning of works, and the lights were made to mark times and to rule day and night.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 1.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine answers the objection that many animals are useless or harmful: like tools in a workshop, all have their place in the beauty of the universe, which shows measure, number and order from God.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 1.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Against the Manichaean mockery of God's image as bodily, Augustine argues that Scripture's bodily language about God is figurative and that man is God's image in his inner self, reason and understanding, shown also by his upright posture.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 2.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · God's breathing into Adam does not mean that part of God became the human soul, as the Manichees hold; Scripture shows the soul and spirit of man were made, and their changeableness proves they are not divine.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 2.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Every Christian bears the person of Christ and receives his commandment; the serpent prophetically signifies the heretics, above all the Manichees, who promise knowledge, say the soul is God, and worship the sun.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 2.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · The Manichees, who despise bodies and hold that the serpent was Christ and the commandment the work of a god of darkness, are prefigured by the serpent; their error deceives the proud, the lustful, and the curious, while Paul shows that both the ruling and the ruled parts of man are from God.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 2.29Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine closes by setting the Manichaean doctrine that God's own nature suffers, sins, and is changed against the catholic doctrine that a nature made from nothing fell by its own will, that no nature is evil, and that God is unchangeably good.
Tractate 10.1 on Matthew 5:31–32Chromatius of Aquileia · ca. 388–407 · Chromatius explains Matt 5:31–32: Christ removed the Mosaic licence of divorce and restored the indissoluble law of marriage, condemning those who put away chaste wives to remarry, while permitting a husband to put away an adulterous wife.
On True Religion 9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine says the work is aimed chiefly at the Manichaeans, whose doctrine of two warring substances and two souls he summarizes, and attributes any truth in it to God and any error to himself.
On True Religion 49Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Curiosity and the love of spectacles are a distorted desire for truth; the mind's own light shows the falsehood of materialist and Manichaean fantasies and leads to the eternal being of God.
On Two Souls 1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Restored to the catholic Church, Augustine laments that he did not see that every soul, being alive, must come from God, the source of life, and through Christ, who is the life.
On Two Souls 3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Augustine sets out the argument he should have pressed on the Manichaeans: souls are known by the mind, the sun and moon by the eyes, so even the “evil” soul is better than the light they worship.
On Two Souls 8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · If the Manichaeans grant that whatever shines is from God, they must grant that whatever lives is from God, for souls are souls by living, and life is never a cause of failing.
On Two Souls 11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Augustine explains that friendship with the Manichaeans and easy victories in debates with untrained Christians kept him long among men who preferred a shining straw to a living soul.
On Two Souls 16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Applying the definitions: if the Manichaean evil souls had no will they were innocent, and if they willed and sought the good they already had knowledge of good, even the sight of God, so their “highest evil” is full of goods.
On Two Souls 17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Since God justly condemns only souls that sin, and sin requires will, souls evil by nature cannot sin and so cannot exist; the Manichaeans' evil kind of souls is nothing.
On Two Souls 18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Since the Manichaeans admit that sins exist and are forgiven, and their evil souls cannot sin, they must ascribe sin to the souls they call God's substance, which refutes their claim.
On Two Souls 19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Wavering in deliberation shows not two souls but one soul drawn by carnal and spiritual goods, both from God; the struggle comes from habit and the penalty of sin.
On Two Souls 21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Wavering thoughts can have many causes and prove nothing about two souls; the plain truths about will and sin suffice to show the Manichaean heresy false.
On Two Souls 22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · The Manichaeans admit that repentance is useful, but neither a soul incapable of evil nor one incapable of good can repent, so their two kinds of souls are refuted.
Sermon 1.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Augustine pays a promised debt: a reply to the Manichees, who claim that the openings of Genesis and of John contradict each other.
Sermon 12.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against the Manichee Adimantus, who argued from Job that the impure devil saw God, Augustine shows that Paul never said what Adimantus claims, and that "the princes of this world" are the proud or the devil, prince of sinners.
Sermon 12.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Manichees falsely claim Scripture says the devil saw God, while they themselves hold that Christ, who is God, appeared to people without a real body.
Sermon 12.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · If the devil saw Christ when tempting him, either Christ had a real body or the devil saw the divine substance; and if the body was a mere appearance, God deceived the devil. Angels too appear in real bodies.
Sermon 12.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ's visible body was either a deceitful phantom or the divine substance itself, both impossible; the Manichees would make the unchangeable Word changeable.
Sermon 12.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Manichees, who worship the sun though the devil and the wicked see it, are forced to admit that Christ took a body; yet they would rather derive it from the race of darkness than from the Virgin's womb.
Sermon 12.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · All bodies are from God, and Christ took flesh from a woman to restore both sexes; as the sun lights mud without being dirtied, the Word took mortal flesh without being changed or defiled; the Manichee myth itself has the race of darkness seeing God.
Sermon 37.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Church’s double cloak for Christ is praise of him as both God and man; the Photinians, who call him only man, and the Manichees, who call him only God, weave false single cloaks.
Sermon 50.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Manichees set Haggai’s “Mine is the gold and mine is the silver” against the Gospel’s “mammon of iniquity” and Paul’s warning against avarice, to make the two Testaments contradict each other.
Sermon 50.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Gold in a merciful man’s hands does great good; blaming gold for greed is like blaming the sun, which the Manichees worship, for quarrels over light.
Sermon 50.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · In context Haggai speaks not of earthly metal but of the gold and silver of which Paul speaks, the treasure of the Church foretold by the prophet.
Sermon 50.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The old Scriptures everywhere condemn greed for gold; the Manichees deceive the unskilled by setting excerpts against each other, a method that could make any book seem to contradict itself.
Sermon 116.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Heretics like the Manichees, who deny that Christ had a real body, make him a liar; but he showed his hands and feet and said that a spirit has no flesh and bones.
Sermon 151.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · It would be better to have no evil desire at all, as the Law commands, and in the resurrection it will be healed away, since it is our own sickness, not another nature as the Manichees claim; for now we must not follow it.
Sermon 152.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The conflict of spirit and flesh does not prove two natures from two principles, as the Manichees claim; both are from God, and the conflict is a sickness deserved by sin, to be healed into concord.
Sermon 152.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against the Manichees, Paul calls the Law holy, just, and good; it worked death only by making sin appear and exceed measure through transgression, so that the sinner might turn to grace.
Sermon 153.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Manichees use Rom 7:5 to claim that the Law of Moses is evil and not from God; anyone who reads the context will find the apostle praising the Law.
Sermon 153.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Manichee charges that Rom 7:5–6 condemns the Law; Augustine asks him to read on, since Paul foresaw the objection and answered it himself.
Sermon 153.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul himself raised the Manichee’s objection, “Is the Law sin?”, and answered “Far from it,” so whoever appeals to his authority must accept that answer.
Sermon 153.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · No one, not even a debauched man, would call “You shall not desire” evil; a Manichee who does so wants to desire with impunity.
Sermon 153.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · After defending the Law in a word, Paul goes on to praise it openly as holy, just, and good, against the Manichees.
Sermon 154.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The evil present to Paul is not a second substance, as the Manichees hold, but a sickness of his own flesh being healed like the half-dead man by the road.
Sermon 155.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against the Manichees, Augustine insists that “cannot” refers to a vice, the prudence of the flesh, not to a second evil nature; the same man is healed and becomes light in the Lord.
Sermon 182.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · John commands believers to test the spirits because of false prophets, and gives the test: every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ come in the flesh is from God; so the Manichees, who deny it, must be rejected.
Sermon 182.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against the Manichaean argument that a spirit not from God proves a second nature, Augustine answers that the error is not from God but the man is: the spirit's vice must be healed, not its nature separated, since only the Trinity is immutable and creatures are good but changeable.
Sermon 182.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against the Manichaean claim that the soul is part of God, Augustine argues that the soul errs and sins, which the divine nature cannot do; so we pray “Deliver us from evil,” that is, from our evil selves.
Sermon 237.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The disciples who thought the risen Christ a spirit anticipated the Manichees, who deny his true flesh and so empty the whole work of redemption.
Sermon 238.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against the Manichees and Priscillianists, who deny Christ's true flesh, the Church holds what Christ himself showed: he is the Word, a human spirit, and true flesh without sin.
On the Profit of Believing 2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Augustine states his aim: to show that the Manichaeans wrongly attack Catholics for believing before understanding, and recalls how their promise of pure reason drew him and Honoratus.
On the Profit of Believing 3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Augustine rejects the Manichaean saying that the light has left those who abandon them, pointing out that he lived worldly while among them and austerely now.
On the Profit of Believing 4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Augustine explains that the Manichaeans win the unlearned by attacking the Old Testament and professes his sincere purpose and his own weakness in beholding the truth.
On the Profit of Believing 7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Augustine rejects the Manichaean claim that the Scriptures were corrupted and explains their rejection of Acts by their claim that the promised Spirit came through Mani.
On the Profit of Believing 12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Augustine asks in which kind of error the Manichaeans place the Catholic church and affirms his belief that the Old Testament writers were great and divine and that the law was given by God.
On the Profit of Believing 13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Augustine declares the Old Testament wise and holy and argues that he and Honoratus rashly learned its meaning from its enemies, unlike the good will shown to Virgil.
On the Profit of Believing 20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Augustine recounts his doubts after leaving the Manichaeans, the influence of the bishop of Milan, and his decision to remain a catechumen, and urges Honoratus to follow Catholic teaching.
On the Profit of Believing 36Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Augustine urges Honoratus to entrust himself to Catholic teachers and to pray, rejects the Manichaean account of evil and their charges against the Old Testament, and closes the book.
Acts of the Debate with Fortunatus the Manichaean 1Augustine of Hippo · 28–29 August 392 · Augustine opens by charging that Manichaean doctrine makes God violable, and Fortunatus asks him, as a former member, to testify to the Manichaeans' way of life.
Acts of the Debate with Fortunatus the Manichaean 3Augustine of Hippo · 28–29 August 392 · Augustine says that as a Hearer he saw nothing shameful at Manichaean prayer and insists on discussing faith; Fortunatus states the Manichaean profession about God and the Savior.
Acts of the Debate with Fortunatus the Manichaean 7Augustine of Hippo · 28–29 August 392 · Augustine states his dilemma (if God could not be harmed he sent souls here without cause; if he could, he is not inviolable), and Fortunatus answers with Philippians 2 as a pattern of the soul's descent.
Acts of the Debate with Fortunatus the Manichaean 11Augustine of Hippo · 28–29 August 392 · Augustine argues that the soul, which sins and changes, cannot be God's substance; Fortunatus maintains that the soul is from God and presses Augustine for his own view.
Acts of the Debate with Fortunatus the Manichaean 14Augustine of Hippo · 28–29 August 392 · Fortunatus argues from the opposition of light and darkness, truth and falsehood, that there are two substances.
Acts of the Debate with Fortunatus the Manichaean 18Augustine of Hippo · 28–29 August 392 · Fortunatus states plainly the Manichaean teaching of two substances, light and darkness.
Acts of the Debate with Fortunatus the Manichaean 19Augustine of Hippo · 28–29 August 392 · Augustine cites Romans 1:3–4 on Christ's descent from David according to the flesh; Fortunatus rejects it, the first day breaks up after he says the Word of God is bound in darkness, and on the second day he restates that evils are foreign to God.
Acts of the Debate with Fortunatus the Manichaean 37Augustine of Hippo · 28–29 August 392 · Augustine says this unanswered question led him out of Manichaeism; Fortunatus promises to consult his superiors and, if they cannot answer, to consider the catholic faith.
On Illustrious Men 72Jerome · 392–393 · Archelaus recorded his disputation with Mani.
On Illustrious Men 99Jerome · 392–393 · Serapion of Thmuis, friend of Antony, wrote against Mani and on the Psalms.
On Illustrious Men 102Jerome · 392–393 · Titus of Bostra wrote against the Manichees.
Against Jovinianus 1.3Jerome · 393 · Jerome mocks Jovinian's style and states his own position: marriage is good and honorable, but virginity, born of marriage, is better, as the hundredfold fruit surpasses the thirtyfold.
Against Jovinianus 1.5Jerome · 393 · Jerome summarizes Jovinian's first argument: from Genesis onward God blessed marriage, and the patriarchs, prophets, and apostles were married.
Against Jovinianus 2.29Jerome · 393 · Jerome argues that the temple and body of Christ have many parts and degrees, and that believers are one with God by grace, not by nature, through the sacrament and the Spirit.
Against Adimantus, a Disciple of Mani 10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 394 · Against the claim that God's tabernacle contradicts Christ's words that heaven is God's throne, Augustine sets Isaiah 66:1 against Christ's cleansing of the temple to show that both Testaments say the same.
Against Adimantus, a Disciple of Mani 22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 394 · Augustine answers the contrast between the Sabbath-breaker stoned in Numbers and Christ's Sabbath healing, and turns the Manichaeans' belief in plant souls against them with the withered fig tree.
Historia monachorum, chapter 9Rufinus of Aquileia · Greek original ca. 394-395; Rufinus's Latin ca. 404-406 · The presbyter Copres tells of Patermuthius, a robber turned monk whose prayer stopped the sun and raised the dead, and of his own miracles: blessed sand for barren fields, a fire ordeal with a Manichee, and stolen vegetables that would not cook.
On Continence 14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Augustine surveys excuses for sin (fate, fortune, the devil) and rejects the Manichaean excuse that blames a defiled divine nature.
On Continence 18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Against the Manichaeans, spirit and flesh are both good; their conflict is a sickness caused by sin, forgiven in baptism and healed by continence.
On Continence 22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Paul's command that husbands love their wives as their own flesh refutes the Manichaean claim that the flesh comes from an evil race of darkness.
On Continence 23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · The three ordered pairs of Christ and church, husband and wife, spirit and flesh are all good, against the Manichaean teachings on Christ's flesh, the body and the sexes.
On Continence 24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Augustine answers Manichaean teachings on Christ's flesh, the church, the sexes and the body with Paul's own words.
On Continence 26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · Continence that springs from a false faith, from sin, or from injustice (such as refusing the marriage debt) is not the true continence that God gives.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 2Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · If Mani's prince of darkness were unbegotten he would be immortal, contradicting the apostle's statement that God alone has immortality.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 5Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · Scripture, the Leucian Acts, and Mani's own Thesaurus and Fundamental Epistle all show that souls sin by their own will.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 6Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · Evodius lists Mani's own phrases that admit voluntary sin.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 11Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · Mani contradicts himself: God's kingdoms cannot be shaken, yet ruin from the darkness threatens them.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 12Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · Mani's god, compelled by necessity, sent a part of himself into battle, where it was corrupted and mixed into all bodies.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 13Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · According to Mani's Thesaurus, his god mourns behind a veil over the corruption of his lost part.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 14Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · Evodius quotes Thesaurus book 7 on the Father's powers appearing as boys and virgins to arouse and so dissolve the hostile powers.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 15Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · The quotation continues: the arousal of the hostile powers releases the living soul to rise to the luminous ships.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 16Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · The quotation ends: what is still stained descends into plants, and the power in the ship of living waters works the same way on the cold powers.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 17Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · Evodius denounces the teaching that God's substance is freed by arousing the lust of demons.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 18Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · If the race of darkness could do nothing to God, why did he fight, and why is his part now captive and mourned?
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 24Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · Mani himself had flesh; God's purity is not defiled by contact, so Christ's birth from a virgin shows rather than threatens his purity.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 26Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · Christ took a true humanity and suffered, died and rose by his own will and power, not by necessity.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 37Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · The Manichees attack Old Testament expressions that have equally striking parallels in the New Testament; read with goodwill, the two Testaments agree.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 38Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · The Manichees allow figurative reading of the New Testament but not the Old, yet accept the Acts of Leucius, with its story of Maximilla deceiving her husband.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 39Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · The Old Testament already contains the miracles and moral precepts the Manichees admire in the New; they should accept all the canonical Scriptures.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 40Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · Against the Manichaean denial of the resurrection of the flesh, Evodius cites Paul: the body will be changed, not discarded.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 47Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · Evodius contrasts Mani's god, oppressed, ignorant, cruel, changeable and corrupted, with the catholic God.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 49Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · Evodius concludes: human beings are God's works, not his parts, and Mani's system leaves even God helpless; the Manichees should flee to catholic truth.
On the Christian Struggle 4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Augustine sets out the Manichaean myth of God's war with the race of darkness as sacrilegious, and warns that Manichaeans lure the simple with obscure passages such as Eph 6:12.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Only those who do not know how hard it is to find the truth and escape error should be harsh with the Manichaeans.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Augustine refuses to accept Mani’s claim to be an apostle: he believed the Gospel on the authority of the Catholic Church, which forbids him to believe Mani, and the Gospel and Acts name no such apostle.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Mani calls himself apostle of Jesus Christ rather than of the Paraclete because he wanted to be taken for the Paraclete himself, as the man Christ was taken up by the Son of God.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · By leaving the Holy Spirit unnamed Mani implies that he is the Spirit, and the Manichaeans honor the Bema, the day of Mani’s death, far above the Pasch of Christ.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Mani’s letter promises certain knowledge about the origin of Adam and Eve but begins with an incredible story of a battle before the world was made.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Mani describes the kingdom of light ruled by God the Father, and Augustine asks how Mani could prove or know any of it.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Mani promises knowledge but demands belief; if belief is required, Augustine would rather believe what the Church, confirmed among all peoples, teaches, and then come to understanding through faith.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Mani’s account of the land of darkness bordering the land of light treats God’s nature as a body in space, which is false.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Mani’s phrase “beside one part and side” implies other sides and limits to the land of light, which the Manichaeans deny.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Two lands joined at their sides must both be bodies, and Augustine describes the Manichaean picture of the land of darkness wedged into the land of light.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Simple Catholics who picture God in human form think better of him than the Manichaeans, and can grow in the Church to understand Scripture’s bodily language spiritually; the Manichaeans claim Mani spoke without figures and so cannot reinterpret his picture.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Whether the land of light is of God’s nature, begotten, alien, or made from another substance, the Manichaean account leads to absurdity unless God made it from nothing.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · If God can make good things from nothing, the Manichaeans should learn in the Catholic Church that all natures are good in their degrees; whatever shape they give the two lands, Mani’s own words remain.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Whether the two lands met along a crooked, curved, or straight line, the result is either ugly or, if straight, a harmony that contradicts their supposed enmity.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Making a straight side crooked removes beauty but no substance, which shows that evil is not a substance but a loss of good; even the straightness of the dark land’s side is a good from God.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Mani divides the land of darkness into five natures (darkness, waters, winds, fire, smoke), each with its own kind of inhabitant.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · In each of Mani’s five dark natures Augustine praises the goods (health, fruitfulness, form, harmony, life) that Mani’s own description implies.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Mani borrowed his five dark natures and their creatures from things seen in this world, but arranged them absurdly, as the examples of serpents, geese, sparrows, fire, and smoke show.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 33Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Every nature, insofar as it is a nature, is good: remove the evils and the nature remains better, remove the goods and nothing remains.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 34Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · The goods in natures can be thought of without their evils but not the reverse; Mani, like a man frightened by a lion, saw only what displeased him and missed the goods that come from God.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 43Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Augustine closes by rejecting the Manichaean heresy, which spreads God through space and gives evil a place, and promises to refute its other errors in further books.
Confessions 3.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine recounts falling in with the Manichees, who spoke constantly of Truth and of the divine names but fed him with material fantasies about the sun and moon instead of God.
Confessions 3.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine judges the Manichaean myths worse than the poets' fables, since he believed them, and confesses that he sought God through the senses rather than the mind.
Confessions 3.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine explains that the Manichees won him over with questions about the origin of evil, God's form, and the conduct of the patriarchs, because he did not yet know that evil is the privation of good and that God is spirit.
Confessions 3.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine recalls the Manichaean belief that particles of God are trapped in fruit and released only when the elect eat it, which led him to value fruit above hungry people.
Confessions 4.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine summarizes nine years of deceiving and being deceived, pursuing fame through rhetoric while serving the Manichaean elect in hope of purification.
Confessions 4.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine confesses the pride of believing, as a Manichee, that his soul was of God's nature, preferring to make God changeable rather than admit his own free sin.
Confessions 5.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine recalls the arrival at Carthage of the Manichaean bishop Faustus, when he was twenty-nine, and how he had come to find the philosophers' account of the world more probable than the Manichaean myths.
Confessions 5.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine found that Mani's writings on astronomy did not agree with the verified calculations of the philosophers.
Confessions 5.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine argues that Mani's false astronomy exposed his sacrilegious claim to speak with the full authority of the Holy Spirit.
Confessions 5.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine distinguishes the harmless scientific ignorance of ordinary Christians from Mani's culpable error in claiming divine authority for false teaching.
Confessions 5.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Disillusioned by Faustus, Augustine lost all hope of progress among the Manichees, though he did not yet leave them, while God worked through his mother's tears.
Confessions 5.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Recovered from his illness, Augustine still associated with the Manichees at Rome, clinging to their doctrine that some other nature in us sins, which spared his pride.
Confessions 5.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine was impressed by Elpidius's scriptural arguments against the Manichees, whose claim that the New Testament had been falsified seemed weak, but his materialist thinking still held him captive.
Confessions 5.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Doubting everything like the Academics, Augustine decided to leave the Manichees and to remain a catechumen in the catholic church until he found certainty.
Confessions 7.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine recalls Nebridius's decisive argument against the Manichaean myth of God's war with the kingdom of darkness: either God could be harmed and is corruptible, or there was no reason to fight.
Confessions 7.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Though he still could not explain the origin of evil, Augustine was sure it must not be explained by making God changeable, as the Manichees did.
Confessions 7.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine recalls how dissatisfaction with creation led him into Manichaean dualism and a spatial idea of God.
Confessions 8.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Against the Manichees, Augustine argues that the conflict of wills shows not two natures but one divided soul, punished for Adam's sin.
Confessions 8.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine shows that the Manichaean theory of two natures breaks down when both choices are bad or both are good.
Confessions 13.45Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · The Manichees, who say creation was made from conquered enemies or by a hostile power, do not see God's works through his Spirit.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 1.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine introduces Faustus the Manichaean, whom he knew, and explains that he will answer his book point by point.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 2.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine mocks the Manichaean myth of the First Man, armed with five elements against the five elements of darkness, as incoherent.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 2.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine sets Paul’s first man, Adam, and second man, Christ, against the Manichaean First Man, who fought by deceit.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 2.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine contrasts the Manichaean Christ bound in stars and food with the star of the magi, which served Christ’s birth rather than ruling it.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 2.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that the account of Christ’s birth is good news, while the Manichaean myth of God’s captured and lost substance is bad news and false.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 3.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that Christ was born of a woman in the form of a servant, not in his divine nature, and turns the charge back on the Manichaean doctrine of divine substance bound in all wombs.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 5.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that Christ, Son of God and Son of Man, promises eternal life to those who believe in him as he truly is, including as the Son of Man born of David’s line.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 5.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that Manichaean renunciation is worthless without true faith and love, and that Faustus himself lived in luxury, as the failed community of Constantius at Rome showed.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 5.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine turns each beatitude Faustus claimed against him, showing how Manichaean doctrine contradicts poverty of spirit, meekness, peace, purity, mourning, and hunger for righteousness.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 6.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine defends circumcision as a fitting figure of the circumcision of the heart and turns the charge of impurity against the Manichaean belief that God’s substance is bound in human flesh.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 6.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that Christ’s teaching that food does not defile, which Adimantus cited against the Old Testament, also refutes the Manichaean abstinence from meat.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 6.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine refutes the Manichaean reasons for holding meat more unclean than plants, including their myth that animals descend from aborted offspring of demons fallen from the sky.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 7.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that Christ is Son of God and of David, that renouncing kin was an example to disciples, and that the apostles were better witnesses than Mani, born centuries later.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 10.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine turns the question back: the Manichaeans cannot answer for the New Testament, which they claim is falsified, and their own God coveted the land of darkness.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 11.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine shows that Faustus rejects Paul’s teaching on Adam and Christ, on Christ’s birth, death, and resurrection, and on the resurrection of the body, despite claiming to accept the apostle.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 12.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that Christ needs no prophetic testimony, since the Father and his works testify to him, and that the Hebrew prophets lived unworthy lives.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 12.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine says the Manichaeans, like unbelieving readers of Moses, have a veil over their hearts, and, as Christ’s parable warns, do not believe in his resurrection because they reject Moses and the prophets.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 12.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine reads the mark of Cain as the Jewish law, which has kept the Jewish people distinct and preserved under pagan and Christian rulers, and applies Cain’s wandering also to the Manichaeans.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 12.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine sees the blessing of Shem and Japheth fulfilled in the church of the nations dwelling in Israel’s heritage, and places Jews and heretics, including the Manichaeans, with Ham as unwilling servants of the church.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 13.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that the Hebrew prophets are of no use to Gentile converts, who come to Christ through his own fame, not through Jewish testimony.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 13.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine asks on what authority the Manichaeans believe Mani, a late self-styled apostle, and notes that the apostles' books speak against him.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 13.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that report, if trusted, testifies against the Manichaeans and for the Christ of the scriptures, whose authority rests on the churches' succession and fulfilled prophecy.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 13.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine says the Manichaean myth fails as reason at its beginning, middle and end, and calls them back to the Christ foretold through the Hebrew nation.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 13.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine shows that Faustus could not convert his imagined Gentile either, since Manichaeans win only people already believing in Christ, by claiming Mani is the promised Paraclete.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 13.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine replies that by Faustus's logic all books, including the gospel and Mani's own, would be useless, and mocks the Manichaean books as prisons of their god; Christians read both Testaments for faith, hope and love.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 15.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus says the Manichaeans reject the Old Testament because the church, Christ's bride, needs nothing from the God of the Hebrews, whom he portrays as a poor and deceitful lover.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 15.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine rejects the Manichaean claim to be Christ's chaste bride and, recalling his own years among them, urges the Catholic Church's little ones not to be drawn away.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 15.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine turns on the Manichaean community, mocking its myth of Splenditenens and Atlas and its hymn to the flower-crowned king and twelve aeons as a worship of many gods.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 15.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine contrasts the Trinity with the Manichaeans' many gods, explains that biblical images of delight are figures, and mocks the Manichaean claim that Mani spoke plainly while they believe in fantastic deities.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 15.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine goes through the Ten Commandments to show how Manichaean teaching, on Christ, the Sabbath, parents, marriage, food, theft and oaths, contradicts each of them.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 15.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains Adonai and other Hebrew and Greek words the church uses, turns Faustus's hippocentaur against the Manichaean mixed world, and charges them with taking the serpent for Christ.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 16.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine replies that everything Moses wrote concerns Christ, and turns Faustus's image of fish and sea water against Manichaean food laws.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 16.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine says Faustus misses everything in Moses because he reads with hostility, and that by his own admission a professed Christian is bound by the gospel to believe Moses wrote of Christ.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 16.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine exposes the gap in Faustus's argument: he never showed that no other passages of Moses concern Christ, and many have been given, so the Gospel saying stands.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 16.31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine refutes the claim that Christ forbade meat to his disciples, citing Christ's eating and drinking and quoting Matthew 15 in full, where he explains privately to the disciples that food does not defile.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 17.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that Mani was present at nothing he says of Christ, that Matthew could learn from John or from Christ, that John omitted much, and that John's Gospel itself affirms the prophets.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 17.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine shows that writers commonly speak of themselves in the third person, as Moses, John and Christ himself do, so Matthew's “he saw a man named Matthew” proves nothing.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 18.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that the tares are evil men, not interpolations, that Catholics use reason against Manichaean error, and that by love and fulfilled prophecy they keep the law Christ came to fulfil.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine notes that Paul swore oaths, mocks Manichaean swearing by the light and by Mani, and plays on Mani’s name as meaning madness.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine reconciles “hate your enemy” with “love your enemies” by distinguishing the vice, which is hated, from the human nature, which is loved, and turns the precept against the Manichaean myth of the race of darkness.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 19.26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains that the Mosaic certificate of divorce was meant to delay and discourage divorce by sending the husband to the scribes for counsel, and asks why Manichaeans, who reject procreation, object to divorce.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus sets out the Manichaean creed: one deity, the Father in the highest light, the Son’s power in the sun and wisdom in the moon, the Spirit in the air, and the suffering Jesus hanging from every tree.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that the Manichaeans are a sect, not a schism, since they hold two principles (God and Hyle) and worship without altars, temples, images, or sacrifices.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine ridicules the Manichaean teaching that the sun is a ship shining through a triangular window and denounces their myth of beautiful figures displayed to arouse the princes of darkness.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that the Manichaeans can only imagine bodily light, distinguishes the light of the mind from physical light and both from God, and objects that they divide the Trinity among four places.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine mocks the placing of Christ’s power in the sun and his wisdom in the moon, arguing that it divides Christ and makes his wisdom weaker as the moon waxes.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine says the Manichaeans are worse than pagans: pagans worship real things and interpret their myths allegorically, while the Manichaean gods (Splenditenens, Atlas, the First Man, the Mighty Spirit) do not exist at all.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers Faustus’s claim that there are only two sects by showing that groupings shift with the criterion chosen: one God or many, divine providence or none.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine turns the Manichaean “suffering Jesus” born of the earth against their denial of the virgin birth, and asks how many Christs they believe in and how a bodiless Christ could be crucified.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine rejects Faustus’s comparison of the eucharist with Manichaean reverence for food: Christians’ bread and cup become a sacrament by consecration, while the Manichaeans think Christ is bound in all food.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that the Manichaeans misuse the Greek term hyle, which philosophers use for formless matter, by making it a forming mind and the principle of evil.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine asks how a Manichaean can call himself God’s temple when he believes his body was built by the devil and imprisons part of God.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that Manichaean prayers cannot be pure, since their myth makes their God sacrifice his own members to his enemies, so that their prayers accuse him rather than ask forgiveness.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine replies that Christians live differently from pagans because they believe, hope, and love differently, even when using the same things, and that the many bad catholics do not discredit catholic teaching.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 21.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus denies that the Manichaeans believe in two gods: they hold two principles, God and Hyle (the demon), and call the latter “god” only as its worshippers do.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 21.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that 2 Cor 4:4 can be read of the true God, who in justice blinds unbelievers, citing Paul on God’s wrath and mercy.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 21.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that the Manichaean Hyle, as maker of bodies, is in effect a second god, and that they judge good and evil only by what pleases or offends the senses.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 21.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that “God tempered the body” must mean the true Creator, and allows that “the god of this world” may mean the devil only because of its qualifying phrase.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 21.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine mocks the Manichaean myth that the creatures of darkness had harmonious bodies, marriages, and powers of speech before light was mixed with them, so that the mixture of good made them worse.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 21.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that by the Manichaeans’ own account the kingdom of darkness had real goods and their God had evils, so the two cannot be pure good and pure evil.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 21.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that in the Manichaean myth their God harms his own members more than the race of darkness does, condemning part of himself to the final globe, so that the supposed antidote is worse than the poison.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus distinguishes the true moral law from the Jewish precepts of circumcision, sabbath, and sacrifice, which he calls blemishes added by the Hebrew writers.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues at length that even the god Faustus caricatures as the Catholics' is better than the Manichaean god, who sent his own members into darkness under necessity and then condemns them.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.79Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine defends Moses' slaughter of the golden calf's worshippers as loving severity shown by his prayer for them, and turns against the Manichaeans the story in the apocryphal Acts of Thomas of the apostle cursing a man who struck him.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.98Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that even if the patriarchs were as wicked as Faustus claims, they would be better than the Manichaean god, whose particles are mixed into every sin and who finally condemns his own obedient members.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 23.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that Matthew presents Jesus as son of David by birth and Son of God only from his baptism, contradicting the Catholic creed, so either the gospel is not Matthew's or Catholics do not hold the apostolic faith.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 23.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that the incarnation does not confine the Son of God in Mary's womb, since the Word rules all things while taking a human body, whereas the Manichaeans confine their god in every womb from elephants to flies.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 24.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that God makes only the new, inner man born again in faith, not the old man born of bodily generation and lust.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 25.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that the Catholic prayer to the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” makes God limited, and that the existence of evil proves God is not infinite.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 28.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine replies that Faustus’s reasoning leads only to the Manichaean myth of God’s war, contamination, and damnation, and that apparent contradictions in Scripture arise from misunderstanding.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 30.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus replies to the charge from 1 Timothy 4 that Manichaean abstinence is a doctrine of demons by pointing to the food laws of Moses.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 30.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that Catholics, who urge virginity and honour Paul’s persuasion of Thecla and Christ’s praise of voluntary eunuchs, cannot charge Manichaeans with “forbidding to marry”, since they too only exhort and do not compel.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 30.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that the charge of 1 Timothy 4 falls on the Manichaeans because they abstain from meat as evil by nature and blaspheme its Creator, unlike the patriarchs and Catholic ascetics.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 30.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that Catholics praise virginity as better than good marriage, while the Manichaeans truly forbid marriage by condemning procreation, which also explains why they deny Christ’s birth.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 31.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains that “to the clean all things are clean” concerns the goodness of created natures, while the food laws concerned signification, and that nothing at all is clean to the Manichaeans.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 32.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus claims the Gospels were written long after the apostles by unknown men under apostolic names and are full of contradictions, so Manichaeans accept only what suits their faith.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 32.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that the Manichaeans cannot prove their Paraclete from Gospels they call corrupt, and that the Scriptures could not have been corrupted since older copies and versions in many languages would expose any change.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 32.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine interprets the Paraclete texts of the Gospel and 1 Corinthians 13 of the Holy Spirit and of eternal life, and says the Manichaeans reject Gospel passages only because they dislike them.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 32.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine charges that the Manichaeans make each man’s own mind the judge of Scripture, yet accept Mani’s fables on mere authority, and urges submission to the long-attested authority of the gospel.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 32.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine contrasts the apostles’ preaching of Christ’s birth, circumcision, sacrifice, baptism, and temptation with Mani’s myth of God’s divided and defiled substance.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 33.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that because Matthew and Luke place the saying about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in different settings and tell the centurion story differently, it may not have been said by Christ at all.
Tractates 7Gaudentius of Brescia · ca. 397-410 · Against Marcion and Mani, who called the God of the Law evil, Gaudentius defends the law of unleavened bread as a memorial of the Exodus and reads the leaven as corrupting teaching and the bitter herbs as the self-denial of the Christian life.
Against Secundinus the Manichaean 2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine 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.
Against Secundinus the Manichaean 3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine 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.
Against Secundinus the Manichaean 6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine 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.
Against Secundinus the Manichaean 14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine 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.
Against Secundinus the Manichaean 20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine 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.
Against Secundinus the Manichaean 23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine 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.
Against Secundinus the Manichaean 25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine 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.
Against Secundinus the Manichaean 26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine 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.
On the Nature of the Good 17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · No nature is evil as nature; evil is the diminishing of good, and if all good were removed no nature, including the Manichaean one, would remain.
On the Nature of the Good 18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Formless matter (hyle) is not evil, since its capacity for form is a good and it too comes from God; Mani's hyle, a former of bodies, amounts to a second god.
On the Nature of the Good 41Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · The Manichaeans' two natures put many goods in their highest evil (the princes of darkness have life, memory, beauty, order) and many evils in God's own nature, which Christ must heal and free.
On the Nature of the Good 42Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine argues that Mani's teaching that divine souls are bound for ever in the globe of darkness makes God condemn part of himself, and he quotes the Fundamental Epistle to show its contradictions.
On the Nature of the Good 43Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine argues that on Manichaean premises God's nature already contained great evils before any mixture, necessity, a cruel will, ignorance, or misery.
On the Nature of the Good 44Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine reports the Manichaean teaching that the divine substance is bound in all things and freed partly by the seduction of the powers of darkness, quoting at length from Mani's Treasury.
On the Nature of the Good 45Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · The Manichaean elect claim to free the divine substance by eating; since they say it is bound also in seed, their own premises lead to the obscene practice alleged against them.
On the Nature of the Good 46Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine quotes Mani's Fundamental Epistle on the making of Adam: the prince of darkness gathers light by making his companions couple, devours their offspring, and begets the first man.
On the Nature of the Good 47Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine argues that Manichaean doctrine logically requires an obscene ritual that some are reported to have confessed in court, and calls on Manichaeans either to renounce Mani or to admit what his books imply.
Christian Questions to the Greeks 1Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The Christian asks whether God should deliver humanity from ignorance of him, the greatest evil; a Greek answers that no greatest evil exists and that God must keep the world as it is; the Christian refutes the answer point by point and defends the re-creation of the world.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 127–128Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Animals that prey on one another and on men do not prove two creators, as the Manichaeans claim: one good God made them for human service, food, and discipline, and their mortality shows they are not gods; irrational nature cannot be evil.
On the Good of Marriage 26Augustine of Hippo · 401 · Christ ate and drank yet had the virtue of abstinence; so Abraham, though married, had continence in disposition as fully as John the Baptist had it in action.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 7.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Memories of former animal lives are false or demonic; the Manichees are worse than the philosophers, since they make the changeable soul God's own substance.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 8.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine recalls that his early books against the Manichees interpreted Genesis figuratively, quotes his earlier hope for a literal reading, and now attempts it.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 10.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · This view avoids both absurdity and Manichaeism; the question concerns infants, not older children, who sin in many ways, nor the sins of parents, which do not harm children.
Against Felix the Manichaean 1.1Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · The public debate opens: Felix recognizes Mani's Letter of the Foundation, and Augustine asks him to prove that Mani is an apostle of Christ.
Against Felix the Manichaean 1.6Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Felix asks for an apostle who teaches “the beginning, the middle, and the end”; Augustine offers to refute Mani's letter himself, and Felix answers that every man is a liar.
Against Felix the Manichaean 1.7Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Augustine reads 1 Timothy 4 as a prophecy of those who forbid marriage and certain foods, and asks Felix whether intercourse with a wife is sin.
Against Felix the Manichaean 1.8Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Felix argues that Mani never “departed from the faith” because he belonged to no prior sect; Augustine replies that Mani's teaching has led catholics away and presses his questions again.
Against Felix the Manichaean 1.10Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Augustine argues that Christ promised to make Christians, not astronomers, and challenges Felix, if he has the Spirit of all truth, to say how many stars there are.
Against Felix the Manichaean 1.12Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Felix pleads that he cannot stand against a bishop and the imperial laws; Augustine reviews the debate, denies that Felix faces any coercion, and points to Peter's courage once filled with the Spirit.
Against Felix the Manichaean 1.13Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Felix refuses to give up his law before receiving a better one; Augustine uses the image of a vessel that must be emptied and presses for the reading of Mani's letter.
Against Felix the Manichaean 1.14Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Felix appeals to Mani's five books, especially the Treasure; Augustine refuses proof from Mani's own writings and proposes to show Mani's errors from the Letter of the Foundation itself.
Against Felix the Manichaean 1.16Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · The greeting of Mani's letter is read; Augustine calls it the sheep's clothing of deceit and insists on reading further to judge it.
Against Felix the Manichaean 1.17Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · On Mani's “bright and blessed land,” Felix reads Genesis 1:1–2 as two earths; Augustine explains that verse 2 describes the one earth God made and asks whether the land of light was made, begotten, or coeternal.
Against Felix the Manichaean 1.18Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Felix states that the land of light, the air, the Father, and his offspring are coeternal, unbegotten, and of one substance, and he quibbles over whether the land can be “moved” or “shaken.”
Against Felix the Manichaean 1.19Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Mani's letter describes the Father of light fearing the race of darkness; Augustine asks how it could harm an incorruptible God, Felix replies that otherwise baptism and the Eucharist would be pointless, and asks for time.
Against Felix the Manichaean 1.20Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Felix is granted a delay until 12 December, agrees that flight would mean defeat, chooses a guarantor named Boniface, and both sign the record of the first day.
Against Felix the Manichaean 2.1Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · On the second day (12 December) in the Church of Peace, Felix pleads that his books were confiscated, and Augustine restates his question: why would an incorruptible God mingle part of himself with the darkness?
Against Felix the Manichaean 2.2Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Felix defends Mani's two natures from the two trees, the weeds sown by an enemy, the judgment of sheep and goats, and Paul's sayings on the flesh, the god of this world, and the angel of Satan.
Against Felix the Manichaean 2.3Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Augustine answers that the scriptures speak of sinners, not of two natures: God made every nature, and rational creatures sin by free choice, as even Mani admits.
Against Felix the Manichaean 2.7Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Augustine sets out what he calls the Manichaean beginning, middle, and end — God's substance mingled with darkness, its shameful liberation in the sun, and the final condemnation of what could not be cleansed — and presses his question.
Against Felix the Manichaean 2.15Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Felix concedes that the part of God mixed with darkness is God; Augustine uses John 1:5 to show that Mani, who says the light was comprehended and polluted by darkness, falls under the anathema Felix accepted.
Against Felix the Manichaean 2.19Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Augustine repeats that God begot a Son equal to himself but made the world from nothing, and presses Felix either to anathematize Mani or share his condemnation.
Against Felix the Manichaean 2.20Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Felix likens the polluted part of God to the polluted soul that Christ cleanses; Augustine insists that the soul is God's work, not a part of God, and that Felix must anathematize Mani.
Against Felix the Manichaean 2.22Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · At the end of the debate Augustine and then Felix, each in his own hand, anathematize Mani and his doctrine, and both sign the record.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 1.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Augustine tells how a Catholic annoyed by flies was led step by step by a Manichee to deny that God made man, and so became the devil's 'fly'.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 1.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Augustine discusses the punctuation of John 1:3-4 and rejects the Manichean reading that everything made is alive: what is life is the reason in divine Wisdom by which each thing was made.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 8.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ, born of the Father without a mother and of Mary without a father, did speak these words to his mother; neither the Manichees, who deny her motherhood, nor the astrologers, who claim 'my hour' shows Christ was under fate, may exploit them.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 34.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · “I am the light of the world” does not mean, as the Manichees held, that Christ is the sun; he is the one through whom the sun was made.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 42.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Against the Manichees, who held the devil and our flesh to come from an evil nature, the Jews were the devil's sons by imitation, as Scripture calls Jerusalem a child of the Amorites; the devil himself was an angel who fell by pride.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 42.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · “He is a liar and its father” has been taken by the Manichees to mean that the devil has a father; Augustine sets out their argument.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 42.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Against the Manichees' two natures, the unbelievers were from God by nature and not from God by fault, just as they were and were not Abraham's sons.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 43.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Against the Manichees and Marcionites, Christ shows that the God of the Jews is his Father, whom he knows and whose word he keeps, being himself that Word.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 98.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Solid food is the trained understanding that distinguishes good from evil; without the milk of faith the weak fall into fables like the Manichees', who make evil a substance.
City of God 11.22Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Things harmful to us are good in their place; evil is only the privation of good, and the Manichees err in making evil a nature and the soul a part of God.
City of God 14.5Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The Platonists, less wrongly than the Manichees, still blame the body for the passions; yet their own teaching, as in Virgil, has purified souls desiring bodies, so the passions arise from the soul itself.
On the Good of Widowhood 19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 414 · Continence ranks above marriage and virginity above widowhood, but no true marriage is condemned; ascetics who condemn second marriages are not to be followed.
Letter 3, chapter 1Boniface I, bishop of Rome · 418–422 · Boniface reports the charges of the clergy of Valence against their bishop Maximus, who is accused of Manichaeism and homicide and has repeatedly evaded trial.
On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · Augustine distinguishes the catholic, Manichaean, and Pelagian views of human nature and turns Julian's charge of Manichaeism back on him.
On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.38Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · As the Arians call catholics Sabellians, so the Pelagians call them Manichees; but catholics call marriage good and hold only that an evil passed from the first couple to all.
On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.50Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · Infant exorcism and many Scriptures teaching that all are born under sin are older than Manichaeism and belong to the catholic faith.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 2.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine turns to the letter of the Pelagian bishops to Thessalonica and explains that their condemnation of the Manichees does not make them orthodox.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 2.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine sets out point by point how the Catholic faith refutes both Manichees and Pelagians on creation, concupiscence, free choice, and sin.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 2.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine argues that opposing the Manichees does not make the Pelagians right, since both errors are contrary to the truth.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 3.25Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine shows that the Catholic teaching on creation, marriage, the law, free choice, and the saints refutes Manichees and Pelagians at the same time.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 4.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine sets out the Catholic position on creation, marriage and concupiscence, the law, free choice, and the saints as avoiding both Manichaean and Pelagian errors.
Against Two Letters of the Pelagians 4.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 420–421 · Augustine pictures the infant, silently rebuking both Manichees, who condemn its body, and Pelagians, who deny it needs redemption, and answers each from Scripture.
Retractations 1.6Augustine of Hippo · 426-427 · Reviewing his two books on the morals of the Catholic Church and of the Manichaeans, Augustine corrects arguments built on faulty Latin copies, denies that perfection is reached in this life, and rejects Origen's view that all fallen beings return to God.
Retractations 1.14Augustine of Hippo · 426-427 · Reviewing On the Two Souls, Augustine explains in what sense sin exists only in the will, how infants are guilty by origin from Adam, why he left open the question of souls given to bodily functions, and how even then he prayed for the grace of conversion for his Manichaean friends.
Retractations 1.15Augustine of Hippo · 426-427 · Augustine describes his recorded debate with the Manichaean Fortunatus at Hippo and clarifies three statements in it.
Retractations 1.21Augustine of Hippo · 426-427 · Reviewing Against Adimantus, Augustine says he should have written that “almost” nothing in the New Testament is lacking in the Old, corrects his list of the senses of “son,” and explains that the power to change one's will is given by God.
Retractations 2.7Augustine of Hippo · 426-427 · Reviewing Against Faustus, Augustine explains Joseph's two fathers by levirate adoption as reported by Africanus, and corrects remarks on Ham, the sun and moon, and the shame of the genital members.
On the Gift of Perseverance 11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 428/429 · God helps infants he chose and not some adults who would have believed; mercy and judgment are both unsearchable but just; the case of infants is a valid example for adults; Augustine explains that in On Free Choice he left questions open against the Manichaeans, quoting his Retractations.
Part 13Eutherius of Tyana · ca. 431-440 · The author rejects the argument that the angels' eating at Abraham's table shows that Christ's Godhead could eat without flesh, arguing that the angels only appeared to eat, while Christ truly ate in his flesh.
Commonitory 14Vincent of Lérins · 434 · Christ's 'person' is not a role played like an actor's mask, as the Manichees held, but the Word truly became man.
Chapter 6Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 437-450 · The Son is light from light with the Father, one light, against the Manichaeans and the Arians; if David and Sirach could not comprehend even the soul or the creation, no one can search out God’s Wisdom.
Against Five Heresies 5Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 437-450 · Against the Manichaeans, who deny that the Son of God was born of a woman, the preacher cites the prophets and Paul and argues that the Creator of his mother could not be defiled by being born of her as a virgin.