Sophia Scriptura

Against the Manichaeans

Adversus Manichaeos · Κατὰ Μανιχαίων

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Contents

Reading pages: 899–921 · 915 · 923

  1. 899Serapion opens by praying that Christ the truth will expose deceit, as he warned against wolves in sheep's clothing.
  2. 901Even small deceits must be resisted; heretics bear Christ's name while fighting him, like Valentinus and Marcion.
  3. 903Mani's heresy surpasses all others; evil is not a substance but an act of a sick choice, as self-controlled bodies show.
  4. 905Scripture calls bodies temples; members serving reason and the conversion of the licentious show bodies are not evil by nature.
  5. 907Converted sinners like Rahab prove bodies follow choice; God's call to offer bodies as sacrifice shows they are his good creation.
  6. 909Elisha's bones and Peter's shadow show saints' bodies honoured; the Manichaean split of evil body and good soul collapses when bodies are chaste and souls sin.
  7. 911The prodigal son, Paul, and the apostles changed from sinners to saints, so the soul is free and not determined by nature.
  8. 913Converts remain the same in substance but change their ways; the members' simple movements are natural, their moral quality is from choice.
  9. 915A second, poorer reading of the same text as PG 40:913: converts keep their substance but change their ways.
  10. 917The same soul exhorts itself to good or evil, as Demas, Gehazi, and Judas fell, so souls are not of two natures.
  11. 919Peter's call, rebuke, denial, and restoration show that the soul's state depends on choice, not nature.
  12. 921Scripture records the saints' sins so they are not thought sinless by nature; Christ's presence in the soul makes all else vanity.
  13. 923Christ knocks patiently at the mind; heretics imitate or break in, so we must guard our minds with knowledge and watchfulness.

About this work

Author
Serapion of Thmuis
Attribution
authentic · Transmitted under the name of Serapion of Thmuis; accepted as his. Serapion is known as a friend of Athanasius and Antony.
Standing
Honoured by the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. Honoured as a saint or in a church calendar by: Catholic, Orthodox.
Date
ca. 340-362 (approximate) · Serapion was bishop of Thmuis in the Nile Delta from about 339 and died after 360; the works cannot be dated more closely.
Written at
Thmuis, Egypt (probable)
Language
Greek
Genre
treatise
Reference system
Migne column (PG 40:899-924): Migne's Greek text carries no chapter numbers (only the Latin version has CAP. I-...); each reference is the left column of one printed page and covers the page's two columns.
SBL abbreviation
Man.Not yet checked
Clavis
CPG 2485 (not yet checked)
Text from
J.-P. Migne, ed., Patrologiae cursus completus, series Graeca, vol. 40 (Paris, 1858), Serapion of Thmuis (cols. 899-941 here); Greek text separated from the Greek-Latin two-column page in the OCR of the Bavarian State Library copy (the page for cols. 915-916, missing there, read from the page image by Tesseract); Migne's Latin version and notes not reproduced (Printed edition in the public domain; text transcribed from library OCR)
Critical editions
Serapion of Thmuis, Against the Manichees, ed. R. P. Casey (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931) (cited only; not used) (cited, not reproduced)