Augustine Against the Manicheans

Manichaeanism was part of the Gnostic current of the time, yet unlike some esoteric Gnostic sects, it also was a universal religion spread by proselytizing. Its founder Mani (216- 277) broke away from his father’s Gnostic community in Babylon, which was probably the Jewish-Christian Elchasite sect. Mani first preached his new religion in India, then returned to preach throughout Persia. By the fourth century the religion had spread to North Africa, Europe and Asia Minor. Manichaeanism hung on for centuries. In Central Asia and China it survived until the fourteenth century, and likewise in Europe, where a tenth-century Bulgarian variant of Manichaeanism known as the Bogomil heresy eventually spread into Europe as the Albigensian heresy. Even today there is a Manichaean tendency in Western spirituality.2

A syncretistic religion, Manichaeanism borrowed Zoroastrian, Gnostic, and Christian elements. The sect seems to have presented itself under the name of any one of these religions while in reality being a heresy of them all. It was vehemently opposed by Zoroastrians, Christians, Moslems, Buddhists, and Jews alike. Mani had official permission to preach throughout the Persian empire, for instance, until the Christian elements of the religion became known.3 In China an imperial edict issued in 732 prohibited further proselytizing by the Manichaeans, whose doctrine "is through and through a perverted creed. Falsely it takes the name of Buddhism and deceives the people."4 And Augustine’s polemic, of course, is due to its perversion of Christian doctrine.

What was it about Manichaeanism that appealed to Augustine in the first place? The problem of evil preoccupied Augustine, and drove him to the Manichaeans. Either God is not all-good because He created evil as well as good, or God is not really all-powerful because He is not able to stop evil. The appeal of the Manichaeans lies in the fact that they seem to have solved the problem by attributing evil to another principle equal in power to God.

Most likely Augustine was also attracted to the comprehensiveness of the Manichaean religion. As ludicrous as the details may strike us now, Manichaeanism is a complete system that explains the whole of reality by a chain of causes and effects, and as such almost resembles a scientific explanation of the world.5 It offers answers for the eternal questions, claiming to be able to account for the condition of man, the conflicts we experience between body and soul, and the origins and purposes of everything that comes into existence. From the phases of the moon to the vegetables in the garden, everything has its particular role to play in the final liberation of souls from evil. Augustine names two factors that attracted him to the Manichaeans. One was "a certain false semblance of goodness," which was no doubt derived from the ascetic practices of the sect, and the other was the inability of Christians to explain their own faith. Augustine was "almost always noxiously victorious in arguing with ignorant Christians." The more disputations he won with Christians, he says, the more he loved the Manichaeans and accepted their doctrines, "not because I knew it to be true, but because I wished it to be."6 The Christians he met could not explain the reasonableness of their doctrines, but the Manichaeans could explain how everything in the world fit into their system. Also at the time he was a Manichaean, Augustine was not able to distinguish sensible from intelligible things,7 the very concept he uses in his anti-Manichaean writings to disprove their teaching on two souls.

Even in its bare outlines, the Manichaean mythology cannot be explained simply, but some kind of summary is necessary in order to show what kind of thinking Augustine was contending with. The Manichaeans held that two supreme principles had existed from the beginning. The kingdom of light in the North was inhabited by the supreme good they called God (or the Father of Greatness or various other names), and his twelve sons. God was essentially identical with the light itself. The realm of darkness in the South was the realm of evil and matter. The Prince of Darkness and his powers were impelled by the disorderly nature of matter toward the frontier of the light. When they saw how desirable the kingdom of light was, they decided to conquer it.

There are three major epochs in the conflict between darkness and light.

In typical Gnostic fashion, God does not create, but projects emanations from his own substance. In the first epoch, the Father projects from himself the Mother of Life, and she in turn projects the Primordial Man. The Primordial Man and the Prince of Darkness go to battle. The Primordial Man has five "sons," identical with the five elements of the light: air, wind, light, water, and fire. His evil counterpart the Prince of Darkness is armed with the five elements of evil: smoke, flame, obscurity, pestilential winds and clouds. The Primordial Man and his five sons are defeated and devoured by the elements of darkness, which is how the elements of light got mixed up with the elements of darkness.

Since the evil elements have devoured the elements of light, matter now has some of the divine substance in it. The second epoch in history is characterized by this commingling of good and evil. In this epoch the Father projects from himself the Living Spirit (also identified with Mithra and with the Demiurge). The Spirit rescues the Primordial man and creates our material world from the demons that he has killed. Our earth is polluted, being actually composed of the flesh and excrement of demons. Light that escaped contamination by the darkness was made into the sun and the moon, and light that was slightly less pure was made into the stars.

The earth still contains divine particles of light trapped inside matter. To rescue the contaminated particles of light and restore them to their homeland, the Father projects a third emanation from himself and the third epoch begins. The Third Messenger lives on the sun, and "Jesus the Splendor" lives on the moon. When particles of light are rescued, they rise up from the earth to the moon during the first two weeks of the month, which accounts for the waxing of the moon. During the second two weeks of the month, the moon wanes as the particles of light travel on to the sun, from whence they will finally return to the kingdom of light.

There are still other particles of light that had been swallowed by demons and imprisoned in their se men. These divine sparks stay trapped in matter as long as the demons propagate. The female demons give birth to abortions. The strategy of the good powers (hard as it is to remember who is good) is to recapture those particles of light from the demons. To this end the Third Messenger appears in a pro vocative form to the demons, causing all their semen to fall to the ground, which in turn causes all the plant and vegetable species to come into existence. So now the particles of light, instead of being inside the male demons, are inside the plants. This is where the Manichaeans come in. The elect who are properly purified in their religion are able to liberate the divine particles by eating the plants.

In an attempt to hold on to the last remaining particles of light, two demons devour all the abortions that the female demons have been producing. These two demons then produce their own offspring, the first human couple, Adam and Eve. Adam does not know of the divine light within him, since his body is created from evil. The human drive to reproduce is actually a demonic strategy to keep the divine light trapped in matter by transmitting it from body to body.

The human race becomes the object of redemption, since the greatest quantity of divine substance is now concentrated in Adam and his descendants. A savior, identified with Jesus or Ohrmizd, and who is also a manifestation of the Third Messenger, is sent to teach Adam about the light within him and how it should be returned to the realm of light. Evidently Adam did not listen, however, because a whole series of other manifestations has to be sent to his descendants. Mani is the final such manifestation.

Since divine light is concentrated in the sperm, every infant who enters the world is responsible for keeping the divine substance captive in matter and delaying the final redemption. Matter is evil, and reproduction perpetuates that evil. New human life is to be avoided at all costs. The Manichaean religion is radically anti-life.

Manichaeanism has a teleological view of history. After a final war the world will be purified in a conflagration lasting 1468 years. Then the last particles of light will be gathered together and ascend back to their original kingdom. Matter will be sealed up in a pit and never again threaten the kingdom of light.

Augustine takes on the whole Manichaean system, including their unauthorized use of Scripture, their moral hypocrisy, and the many inconsistencies in their system. He also brings to light some of the atrocities that result from their philosophy that part of God’s substance is imprisoned whenever conception takes place and must be set free by being eaten.

[I]f a part of their God is fettered by the copulation of males and females which they profess to liberate and purge by eating it, the necessity of this unspeakable error compels them to not only loose part of God from bread and vegetables and fruits, which alone they are seen publicly to partake of, but also from that which might be fettered through copulation, if conception should take place. That they do this some are said to have confessed before a public tribunal. . . .8

Our focus here, however, will be on the question of evil. At the basis of all duelist systems is the idea that good and evil are two equal and supreme principles. Augustine undoes the whole Manichaean system by refuting the notion that there can be a supreme evil nature, and in the process he solves the philosophical problem of evil once and for all. He proves that evil is not a positive, but a deficiency; not a nature or something in nature but rather something lacking in nature. Three related themes are interwoven in Augustine’s arguments: why evil cannot be a supreme principle, why evil cannot be a material substance, and why evil cannot even be a spiritual substance.

Augustine begins his first anti-Manichaean treatise, On the Morals of the Manichaeans (388), by defining God as an immutable essence:

[T]he chief good is that which is properly described as having supreme and original existence. For that exists in the highest sense of the word which continues always the same, which is throughout like itself, which cannot in any part be corrupted or changed, which is not subject to time, which admits of no variation in its present as compared with its former condition. This is existence in the true sense. For in this signification of the word existence there is implied a nature which is self-contained, and which continues immutably.9

Immutability is possible only for "the supreme and original existence" itself. The key idea here for Augustine’s philosophy of evil is that because God is existence itself, nothing that exists can be contrary to God. The only thing contrary to existence is non-existence, so there can be no nature contrary to God. Therefore no nature is evil. That is Augustine’s whole argument, and the remainder of the treatise simply breaks down this explanation into smaller steps.

Manichaeans are correct when they say evil is contrary to nature, says Augustine, but in that statement is the overthrow of their whole doctrine, because to be contrary to nature is to be no nature. Augustine shows that evil is not a substance but the falling away from a substance (nature, essence). A complete falling away from an essence would be non-existence, and for this reason there can be no complete or supreme evil. How could evil be contrary to nature if it itself is a nature? In order to be a supreme evil, the Manichaeans’ race of evil would have to be absolute in its opposition to nature. It would have to destroy its own nature, which would then cease to be.10 To be supremely evil is synonymous with not to exist.

The Manichaeans constructed their whole grandiose mythology to explain where evil comes from. But Augustine says we first need to ask what evil is, rather than where it comes from. If we define evil as that which is hurtful, we see that hurt can only mean the diminishment of some good. Augustine shows that neither the supreme good nor the supreme evil could be hurt, but only creatures. The supreme good cannot be hurt because it is good intrinsically. Being good in itself, it cannot fall away from good. Nor could a supreme evil be subject to hurt, because to be hurt is to lose some good, and if this evil is supreme, it has no good to lose. It is only creatures that are subject to hurt. They possess the good and participate in the good, but are not good intrinsically as God is. Therefore they are liable to hurt by falling away from the good. God gives creatures their goodness, but He is not the author of their falling away.11

Augustine uses a similar argument to show that evil cannot exist as a positive if we define evil as corruption. Neither the supreme good nor the supreme evil can be corrupted, the supreme good because it is impassible, and the supreme evil because there is nothing good in it to corrupt. Corruption that takes nothing away does not corrupt. Corruption is not a thing by itself, but the perversion of something or the loss of order in something. The supreme race of darkness cannot be corrupted because it has no good in it to be perverted or lost.12

The supreme good is impassible because it is simple. Simple things are not compound and therefore cannot change; they cannot break down into their components. The unity of simple things is that they are one and uncompounded. The unity of compound things is in the arrangement or order of their parts. Created things, having parts, can change either toward the better, towards more order, towards more existence (which Augustine calls conversion) or toward the worse, by a loss of order among their parts. This tendency toward disorder is called corruption or perversion. The uncreated substance cannot corrupt because it has no parts to break up into and no parts that can become disordered. So God, the supreme good, could not be corrupted, that is, commingled with evil or trapped in evil substances as the Manichaeans say He is.

Likewise there could be no such thing as supreme evil because a supreme evil would be simple, not compound, and therefore could not be corrupted, which is the same as to say it could not be evil. Also, corruption tends toward non-existence. So far as a thing is corrupt, it has lost existence. For a supreme corruption to exist would be the negation of existence.13 This is well illustrated in another treatise by the image of corrupting flesh: once corruption has totally consumed a dead body there is no nature left, for there is nothing more that corruption may corrupt.14

In Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental (397), Augustine takes up the theme of corruption again. Corruption implies previous good. A continued corruption implies the continued presence of a good of which something may be deprived. Corruption is the loss of a good such as beauty or health or strength or virtue or symmetry or order. The natures dwelling in the kingdom of darkness must either have been corruptible or incorruptible. If they were incorruptible they were in possession of the highest good, for if corruption is evil, incorruptibility is good. But if the evil natures were corruptible, that means they were deprived of the previous possession of some good, and if they once possessed this good they cannot be supreme evil and the whole Manichaean story is a falsehood.15

Having established that corruption or evil is not nature, but a diminishment of nature, we can then ask where it comes from. Corruption is possible because natures capable of corruption are not begotten of God but created by Him out of nothing. They are good, since they are made by God.16 But they are not perfectly good, that is, not incorruptibly good like God. How ever, just because created things are inferior to God does not mean they are not good.17 Even though corruption does not come from God, it is still subject to God’s government and ordered for the punishment of the wicked and the testing and instruction of those who are converted to God. God did not make corruption but rules it and overrules it, "in accordance with the order of inanimate things and the deserts of his intelligent creatures."18

Augustine asks why, if God has made nature, corruption can take from nature what God has given it. He answers that corruption takes nothing away without God’s permission. This is what he means when he says that God does not make corruption but still rules it. Corruption is the falling away from nature and existence, but God works even corruption into the order of the world. By the fact that things are corruptible, they are transient and tend toward non-existence. We are distressed at the loss of things when they pass away, but even in the lowest form of transient natures Augustine sees great beauty and design. This falling away toward non-existence is in fact what gives things their distinctiveness, just as our words passing away into silence is what distinguishes one word from the other and makes speech possible. "And if our sense and memory could rightly take in the order and proportions of this beauty, it would so please us, that we should not dare to give the name of corruptions to those imperfections which give rise to the distinction."19

If evil were a nature, it would be good, because all natures, insofar as they are natures, are good. It is the falling away from their nature that is evil. Evil in the Manichaean universe is conceived of as a material substance. Augustine proves that these evil natures concocted by the Manichaeans really have a lot of good in them. Five natures supposedly make up the region of darkness (the five "sons" or instruments of the prince of darkness). They seem to be located one inside the other, like concentric circles. Each has its own species of inhabitants: first there is boundless darkness inhabited by serpents, then muddy turbid waters inhabited by swimming creatures, then violent winds where flying creatures live. Next comes the fiery region, which is inhabited by quadrupeds, and inside all this is a place of smoke and gloom inhabited by bipeds resembling men, who are ruled over by the Prince of Darkness. No matter how ferocious and terrible the Manichaeans try to make these denizens of darkness sound, it is impossible to call them pure evil. On the contrary, there is much good in these infernal regions. To speak of these things as having no connection with God is to lose sight of the excellence of their ordering, says Augustine. The beings have form, classification, arrangement, harmony, and unity of structure. They are nourished by and perfectly adapted to their respective environments. Who gave the number, the qualities, the forms, the life? asks Augustine. For all these things in themselves are good.20

What the Manichaeans picture as evil is described by Augustine as accidental form, although he does not use that terminology. If you take away the thickness and muddiness from the waters, he says, pure clear water remains, one of the elements of the good kingdom. Take from the winds their ferocity, and you’ll be left with gentle winds, another weapon of the good. "The disagreeable things mentioned are additions to the nature; and when they are removed, the natures remain better than before. This shows that the natures, as far as they are natures, are good, for when you take from them the good instead of the evil, no natures remain." You can take the ferocity out of the wind, so ferocity is just an addition, an accident. But you cannot take away the wind without taking away the substance. If you take away the ferocity of the evil prince, continues Augustine, many excellent things still remain: his material frame, the symmetry of his members, the orderly adjustment of the mind as ruling and animating and the body as subject and animated, the agreement of parts in each nature, and so on.21

Here Augustine seems to be talking about evil as addition to a nature. Does this contradict his own definition of evil as a lack or deficiency in a nature? Not at all. Augustine would not call the mud in the muddy waters evil; he is just working within the Manichaeans’ own presuppositions to show that even if you define those accidents as evil, it will lead to contradictions. Even if mud (flame, smoke, hurricanes) were evil, you can take away the objectionable parts and see that what remains is good.

In his Manichaean days, Augustine sometimes heard neophytes object to the teaching that evil is a substance. The leaders would mock these doubters by saying, in effect, let’s put a scorpion on his hand and see if he still thinks evil is not a substance. Using their own example of the scorpion, Augustine shows that evil is not a substance but something contrary to or inharmonious with a particular nature. The scorpion’s poison injected into a man would kill a man because it is contrary to man’s nature. But it is not contrary to the scorpion’s nature. In fact, a scorpion would die without its poison, because that would be contrary to its nature. So in each case the evil is not the substance itself. The actual poison inside the scorpion is not evil. Evil is something disagreeable to a nature. In a similar vein Augustine names plants that are sometimes used as food, sometimes as poison, and sometimes as medicine. Dung is useful in fertilizing fields; we die in the water but countless animals live in the water. The sun, which the Manichaeans worship, hurts our eyes when we gaze on it, and so on.22

The Manichaeans claim to be able to know what things have more of God’s substance trapped in them on the basis of what is appealing to the senses: bright colors, pleasant tastes and odors, and so forth. The moon and sun are beautiful and bright, so they must be made up of these divine particles. A field of flowers obviously has more of the divine substance in it than a dead goat, because it is more beautiful. At first glance the Manichaean scheme might appeal to many people precisely because we are attracted to certain things in nature by their pleasant odors and colors. But Augustine shows how subjective these natural attractions or aversions are in determining what is good and what is evil. The rays of the sun the Manichaeans worship have no smell or taste at all. The red in a rose is pleasant, while they condemn the same color red found in blood. The whiteness in lettuce is a sign of God, but not the whiteness in milk (presumably because it is from an animal). Though a peacock is flesh, which they abhor, one of its feathers is more beautiful than a whole meadow of flowers, says Augustine. The excrement of an infant has a better color than lentils, so how can color indicate the presence of God? And in Augustine’s opinion, roasted goat tastes better than the plants it once fed upon. He apologizes for having to speak to his adversaries as though they were cooks and confectioners instead of educated men. The Manichaeans believe that plants and trees are superior to our bodies because human bodies originate in sexual intercourse. Even based on their own criteria, there is an inconsistency here that Augustine pounces upon: "But if you dislike flesh because it springs from sexual intercourse, you should be pleased with the flesh of worms, which are bred in such numbers . . . without any sexual intercourse."23

The Manichaeans will not eat wine or meat, and if they do they consign themselves to hell. Augustine shows the hypocrisy of abstaining from meat and wine while regularly gorging on mead and vegetarian meals to "liberate" the substance of God that is in these foods. He himself has known cases where boys were force-fed until they died. And while some are stuffing themselves to death, beggars are sent away empty-handed. Not being purified like the elect, beggars would not be able to "liberate" God when eating the food. Manichaeans also will not pick fruit from trees, because they believe that trees have rational souls, but they send their servants to pick the fruit instead.24

In these arguments Augustine is concerned with proving that evil is not a material substance. Rather it is a deficiency in, or something contrary to, a particular nature. Whatever the Manichaeans can conceive of as pure evil is actually good insofar as it has any nature at all. Its form, order, arrangement, and above all its existence, which is its chief endowment, prove that it comes from God. In other arguments Augustine proves the same thing with regard to immaterial souls.

The Manichaeans held that there were two kinds of souls, neither created by God. The good kind of soul is not created, but is actually part of God’s substance, and the other kind is pure evil, having no connection to God at all. At one time the two kinds of souls were distinct but have become commingled. In his treatise On the Morals of the Manichaeans (388), Augustine demonstrates that the only way a soul could be part of God would be on the analogy of gold being part of gold, or light being part of light. The soul cannot be part of God in the way that a leg is part of a man, because God does not have a jointed body. God is not made out of parts. But even the first alternative, the soul being part of God as gold is part of gold, is impossible. The soul cannot be the same substance as God if it has any needs or deficiencies at all. Even within their own system, where souls are considered part of God, it is inconsistent and blasphemous to believe that the nature of evil could be powerful enough to change any part of God, that the Highest Good could be corruptible and violable. Yet the Manichaeans say the soul is corrupted and in need of salvation. If the soul is part of God it can have no needs; conversely, if there are no needs of the soul, then there is no need for Christ.25

In a later treatise, On Two Souls, Against the Manichaeans (391), Augustine demonstrates that there can be no such thing as evil souls. He has already demonstrated that all natures have God as their author. Here he is talking more specifically about the natures of living things. Souls have life and all life has God for its author. He sets up a hierarchy of being, with anything living being superior to anything without life, and anything known only by the intellect being superior to sensible objects.

He stresses that the superiority he talks about is between natures, between kinds. "Not everything we praise is to be preferred to everything we find fault with. For in praising the purest lead, I do not therefore put a higher value upon it than upon the gold that I find fault with."26 Even the demons, insofar as they have souls, are greater than all the inanimate things in the world. A nature that is more excellent even though corrupt may be better than an inferior nature which remains incorrupt. Thus, corrupted gold is better than incorrupt silver. A rational spirit, though corrupted, is better than an irrational spirit, and any spirit whatever, though corrupt, is better than an incorrupt body. For the nature which furnishes a body with life—the soul—is superior to that nature it furnishes.27 Even evil souls (not insofar as they are evil, but insofar as they are souls) are grander than the grandest inanimate thing in the world. Even brute souls, inasmuch as they are alive, are more excellent than light.

And here, if perchance in their confusion they had inquired of me whether I thought that the soul even of a fly surpasses that light, I should have replied, yes, nor should it have troubled me that the fly is little, but it should have confirmed me that it is alive. For it is inquired, what causes those members so diminutive to grow, what leads so minute a body here and there according to its natural appetite, what moves its feet in numerical order when it is running, what regulates and gives vibration to its wings when flying? This thing whatever it is in so small a creature towers up so prominently to one well considering, that it excels any lightning flashing upon the eyes.28

Even the evil soul posited by the Manichaeans would be better than the light they worship. Not only is the soul superior by virtue of its life, it is superior to all sensible things because it is perceptible only to the intellect. Augustine’s premise is that the intellect is immeasurably superior to the senses, so whatever is perceived by the intellect alone is superior to anything perceived by the senses. Vicious souls, however worthy of condemnation, excel the light, not insofar as they are vicious, but insofar as they are souls.29

Augustine now narrows down the question even further. If vice itself (and not the vicious soul) were an object of intellectual perception, would vice then be superior to sensible objects? Augustine answers by using the image of fading sunlight as an analogy. If the light of the sun should ever so gradually decline until it provided no more light than the moon, our eyes would not actually perceive the decline, but rather whatever amount of light was remaining. Virtue is the light perceived by the intellect. A certain decline from this virtue, obscuring the soul but not destroying it, is called vice. Therefore vice cannot be called an object of intellectual perception any more than the loss of light is an object of sensible perception. We do not actually perceive the vice, but rather what remains of the soul. Since intelligible things are more precious than sensible things, the deficit of virtue is more wretched than the deficit of gold.30

Augustine then goes on to define sin, and to show that conflicting passions are not evidence of two souls, as the duelists interpret these conflicts, but rather the willing of two different things, both good in themselves. First Augustine shows that sin can only be a free and conscious movement of the will toward some thing outside of the self. If someone is under duress they do not bear responsibility for what they are forced to do. "Will is a movement of the mind, no one compelling, either for not losing or for obtaining something." The conflicting desires within us are not the commingling of good and evil, as Manichaeans believe. All movements of the will are movements toward the good. Augustine says that the same mind may be both willing and unwilling at once (hence the conflict), but it cannot be both willing and unwilling at once about the same thing.31 Why does a conflict necessarily point to two souls? he asks his opponents. We are not two beings at war, but one being with free will.

Why is not this rather the sign of one soul which by free will can be borne here and there. Swayed hither and thither? For it was my own experience to feel that I am one, considering evil and good and choosing one or the other . . . Nor is it to be wondered at, for we are now so constituted that through the flesh we can be affected by sensual pleasure, and through the spirit by honorable considerations. Am I not therefore compelled to acknowledge two souls? Nay, we can better and with far less difficulty recognize two classes of good things, of which neither is alien from God as its author . . . .32

As he explains in his last anti-Manichaean treatise, Concerning the Nature of Good (405), sin is not the striving after an evil nature but the deserting of a better nature. The tree in the Garden of Eden was not evil. Adam did not choose an evil tree, but deserted the better, namely God’s command. The deed itself is evil, and the deed consists of deserting a better nature. The evil does not consist in the nature which the sinner uses wrongly. When Paul condemns those who "have worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator" (Romans 1:25), he is not condemning the things that are used wrongly, but those who use them wrongly.33

In defining the will as a movement toward the good, Augustine not only shows why evil cannot be a positive, but he also shows why there can be no such thing as supreme evil. If the evil souls had any will at all when they tried to invade the realm of good or when they tried to hold on to the remaining good by creating Adam, then they desired a good or at least what was thought to be good, for otherwise it could not be truly desired. Even if the evil souls desired this good in order to injure it, the argument is still the same, for one does not even injure another except in a desire to attain some good for the self. This supreme evil had some knowledge of good, of what it desired. "There was therefore in them either a knowledge of good or an opinion of good, which ought by no means to belong to supreme evil." And if this good was outside the pure evil, how did the evil manage to know of its existence at all? Even good men have to put their whole energy into knowing the supreme good, says Augustine, and it is only with the greatest labor that the slightest knowledge of God is attained. And yet these evil souls were able to accomplish that without the aid of any good? Ironically he says, "How great good things we find in supreme evil! For if to see God is evil, God is not good, but God is a good; therefore to see God is good, and I know not what can be compared to this good." If the evil souls willed good, they are not pure evil. On the other hand, if the evil they did was not from any movement of the will on their part, then they do not sin. And if they do not sin, but are still condemned, there is no justice. There are no rewards and punishment, no providence, and the world is administered by chance rather than reason, which is to say it is not administered at all.34

In disproving the Manichaean notion of a supreme evil principle, Augustine solved the problem of evil once and for all. It is not supreme, it is not a material substance, and it is not even a spiritual substance. It is not a thing but a lack or a loss. All natures are good because their existence is from God. In the course of refuting the materialistic view of evil held by the Manichaeans, Augustine so vehemently defends the goodness of all that exists that he does not sound much like a Platonist at all. Even the housefly is to be marveled at because of the life that moves its little legs and makes its little wings vibrate. But the most excellent creatures of all are rational spirits. They are so great a good that there is no good by which they may be blessed except God.35 The refrain throughout all of Augustine’s anti-Manichaean writings is that nature is good insofar as it is nature. Evil is a falling away from that nature, but what remains is good. Our wills are moved only to good, and the evil or sin consists in choosing a lesser good and falling away from the greater good. Sin does not change our nature but diminishes us. And what is diminished in the soul when it falls away from nature is life. Insofar as a soul is defective, by so much is it severed from life.36

Having explained what evil is, Augustine also explains why God allows it. The fact that lower creatures cease to be does not degrade the order of the universe. In fact, there is a certain temporal beauty in the very rhythm of things dying, being born, and succeeding one another.37 Though evil is non-existent as a substance, God still rules it by ordering it. Augustine, a professional rhetorician, finds an analogy in the periods of silence built into a well-composed speech. Silence is a non-thing, and yet it is used in the ordering of speech. In the same way evil experienced by rational beings is used by God for teaching and justice. Evils—a loss or disharmony in a nature—are a punishment to rational creatures precisely because they are not conformable to our nature. If we sin by willingly choosing corruption, we will be punished by unwillingly suffering corruption. The punishment is contained in the very choice of something against our nature, because anything contrary to our nature is experienced as an evil.38 Although evil is a non-thing, a privation of good, God fashions even this non-thing into order, and even this non-thing brings him praise. Invoking the song of Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah in the fiery furnace (Daniel 3:72), Augustine concludes: "Whence also in the hymn of the three children, light and darkness alike praise God, that is, bring forth praise in the hearts of those who well consider."39

Constance Woods has a Ph.D. in Russian Literature and has previously contributed to The Catholic Faith.

End Notes

1. Augustine, On the Nature of Good, Against the Manichaeans, 44 in Philip Schaff, ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), 4:363.

2. Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, Vol. 2, From Gautama Buddha to the Triumph of Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 395.

3. Philip Schaff, "Preface to the Anti-Manichaean Writings," in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 4:33.

4. Jack Finegan, Myth and Mystery. An Introduction to the Pagan Religions of the Biblical World (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1989), 307.

5. Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, vol. 2, From Gautama Buddha to the Triumph of Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 393.

6. Augustine, On Two Souls, Against the Manichaeans, 9.11 in 4:101.

7. Ibid., 9.12 in 4:101.

8. On the Nature of Good, 47 in 4:364.

9. Augustine, On the Morals of the Manichaeans, 1.1 in 4:69.

10. Ibid., 2.2-3 in 4:69-70.

11. Ibid., 3.5- 4.6 in 4:70-71.

12. Ibid., 5.7 in 4:71.

13. Ibid., 6.8 in 4:71.

14. On the Nature of Good, 20 in 4:355.

15. Augustine, Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental, 35.39-40 in 4:147.

16. Ibid., 36.41 in 4:148.

17. Ibid., 37.43 in 4:148.

18. Ibid., 38.44 in 4:149.

19. Ibid., 41.47 in 4:150.

20. Ibid., 29.32 in 4:143.

21. Ibid., 33.36 in 4:145.

22. On the Morals of the Manichaeans, 8.11-13 in 4:73.

23. Ibid., 16.49 in 4:82.

24. Ibid., 16.52-55 in 4:83-84.

25. Ibid., 11.21-22 in 4:75.

26. On Two Souls, 5.5 in 4:97.

27. On the Nature of Good, 5 in 4:352.

28. On Two Souls, 4.4 in 4:97.

29. Ibid., 5.4-5 in 4:97.

30. Ibid., 6.6-7 in 4:98-99.

31. Ibid., 10.14 in 4:103.

32. Ibid., 13.19 in 4:105.

33. On the Nature of Good, 34-36 in 4:358-359.

34. On Two Souls, 12.16-17 in 4:104.

35. On the Nature of Good, 7 in 4:352.

36. On Two Souls, 6.8 in 4:99.

37. On the Nature of Good, 8 in 4:353.

38. Ibid., 7 in 4:352.