Against the Doctrines of Mani 1–14

The philosophy of the Christians is called simple. It gives the greatest care to the forming of character, and speaks only in hints about the more exact doctrines concerning God; the chief point of its concern with these matters everyone would reasonably accept, for there they set the efficient cause as the most honoured and most ancient, and the cause of all things that exist. In ethics, too, they pass over the more laborious questions, such as what ethical and logical virtue is and all that is said about dispositions and passions, and they spend their time on the part that gives precepts. They do not give the elements for acquiring each virtue, but heap up rather plain precepts as they come; and the great mass of the people, hearing these, makes great progress in decency (as one can learn from experience), and the stamp of piety settles into their characters, rekindling the disposition formed by such habit and leading them little by little to the desire of the good. But when this philosophy was divided into very many parts by those who came after, many questions arose, as among the eristic schools. From these it came about that some became more adroit than others and more given to inquiry, as one might say, and some even made themselves heads of sects. Through these the formation of character, now obscured, withered away, since those who claimed to lead the sects did not attain precision in argument, and the great multitude was set at strife against itself, with no rule or laws underlying it from which to find a solution to the questions. And just as in other matters ambition, once it falls into excess, spoils everything,

so also in these matters each, eager to outdo his predecessor in the novelty of his opinions, has thrown this simple philosophy into an endless business. So did the one called Manichaeus, a Persian by race, who in my judgment surpassed everyone in telling marvels. His innovation did not spread long ago: the first expounder of the man's doctrine to come to us was one named Papos, after him Thomas, and some others after them. He himself is said to have lived under Valerian, to have campaigned with Shapur the Persian, and, having offended him in some way, to have perished. Some such report of his doctrine reached us from the man's acquaintances. He posited as principles God and matter: God is good, matter evil; but God exceeds in good more than matter in evil. By matter he does not mean what Plato means, that which becomes all things when it takes on quality and shape (which is why he calls it the all-receiving, the mother and the nurse), nor what Aristotle means, the element with which form and privation are concerned, but something different from these: the disorderly motion in each of the things that exist, that he calls matter. Other powers are ranged with God, like handmaids, all good, and others likewise with matter, all evil. The bright, the light and the above are all with God; the dim, the darkness and the below are with matter. God also has desires, but these too are good; and matter likewise, but all evil.

Matter, then, once came to desire to reach the upper region; and having arrived, it marvelled at the brightness and the light that was with God, and wished to seize this rule for itself, thrusting God aside. God wished to punish it, but was at a loss for an evil with which to punish it, for there is no evil in the house of God. So he sent a power, the one we call soul, into matter, to be mingled with it throughout; for the later separation of this power will one day be the death of matter. Thus by God's providence the soul was mingled with matter, an unlike thing with an unlike. But in the mixture the soul suffered along with matter: as what is held in a poor vessel often changes with it, so in matter the soul too suffered something of the kind, and was lessened from its own nature into a share of evil. God pitied this, and sent another power, which we call the Demiurge. When it arrived and set about making the world, that part of the power which had suffered nothing amiss from the mixture was separated from matter, and the sun and the moon came into being first; what had fallen into a moderate evil became the stars and the whole heaven. The part of matter from which the sun and the moon had been separated was driven out of the world, and that is fire, burning but dark and without light, like night. In the other elements, and in the plants and animals in them, the divine power is carried about, mingled unevenly. That is why the world came into being, and in it the sun and the moon, which by births and deaths continually separate the divine power from matter and send it on to God.

For after the Demiurge another power came down upon the light-like substance of the sun and has managed these things; and the matter is plain and, as one might say, clear even to a blind man. In its waxings the moon receives the power that is being separated from matter and is filled with it for that time; and when it is full, in its wanings it sends it up to the sun; the sun lets it go to God; and having done this it awaits again the migration of soul to it from the next full moon, receives it likewise, lets it pass of itself to God, and labours at this continually. An image is seen in the sun such as is the form of man; and matter, vying with it, made man out of itself through the mixture of the power with all of it, so that he too has something of the soul. Yet the form contributed much to man's sharing in the divine power more than the other mortal animals, for he is an image of the divine power. Christ is Mind: having come at some time from the upper region, he freed very much of this power and sent it to God; and at the last, being crucified, he gave knowledge in this way, that the divine power too has been fitted into matter, crucified in it. Since, then, it is God's decree that matter be destroyed, they abstain from all living things and feed on vegetables and on everything without sensation; they abstain from marriage, sexual intercourse and the begetting of children, so that the power may not dwell longer in matter through the succession of the race. But they do not take their own lives in contriving the cleansing of the harm the mixture with matter has done to the power.

These are the chief points of what they say. They honour above all the sun and the moon, not as gods but as the way by which one can reach God. When the divine power has been completely separated, the outer fire, they say, will fall in and burn up both itself and all the rest, whatever is left of matter. The more refined among them, who are not unacquainted with Greek learning, remind us of things from our own tradition: from the mysteries, Dionysus cut to pieces by the Titans, which they apply to their doctrine that the divine power is divided into matter; from the poems, the battle of the giants, to show that the poets too were not ignorant of the revolt of matter against God. I would not say that these things are unable to beguile those who accept the teaching without examination, since such deceit of argument has even won over to itself some of those who studied philosophy with me. But when I set myself to examine how the matter stands, I am at a loss how to proceed. For their hypotheses do not rest on any recognized arguments by which we could conduct the inquiry, nor are there any principles of demonstration, so that we might see what follows from them. It is truly a windfall with those who are said to philosophize simply: they lay down the writings they have, old and new, taking them to be divinely inspired, and draw their own opinions from them, and they think themselves refuted only if something said or done by them is found not to agree with these; and what for those who philosophize in the Greek manner are the principles of demonstration, the immediate premises, with them is the voice of the prophets. Here, however, all these are thrown out, and the things I mentioned before are asserted without any proof. Since it is necessary to make the answer with reasons, and not to set out other things more plausible and better able to beguile, the approach is harder and harder still, because the arguments must be varied. For if they are more exact, they will pass unnoticed by those whom these men have already captured without any proof; if they are made to beguile, they will fall into the same hold, for they will seem to have come from the like. Much and great care is therefore needed, and God in truth, who will lead the discussion.

He posits two principles, God and matter. If he does this to separate what comes into being from what is, the hypothesis is not so bad, provided that matter neither makes itself and admits the account given of contraries, nor, as making, is regarded as an efficient cause, things perhaps not even right to say (though God has no need of matter for his works, since all things can come into existence in relation to that Mind). But if, as he seems rather to say, matter is the disorderly motion of the things that exist, then first he fails to notice that he is positing another efficient cause, an evil-working one; and he does not see the consequence either, that if one must posit both God and matter, another matter will be posited for God, so that each of the efficient causes has its underlying matter. Instead of two, then, he will be shown to make four principles for us. Strange too is the opposition he sets up. If God for him is what the good is, and he wishes to set an opposite to him, why does he not oppose evil to him, as some of the Pythagoreans do? It is more tolerable as they put it, that there are two principles, the good and the evil, continually at strife, but that the good prevails; for if the evil were to prevail, all things would perish. For in general matter by itself is neither body nor strictly something incorporeal nor simply a particular thing, but something indefinite which, taking on form, becomes defined: the pyramid becomes fire, the octahedron air, the icosahedron water, the cube earth. How then is matter the disorderly motion of the elements? By itself it does not subsist, for motion is in what is moved; but matter does not seem to be such a thing, but rather the first substrate, without shape, from which all else comes. Since, then, matter is the disorderly motion, was it always with what is moved, or was it ever separated from it? If it was ever by itself, then it would not exist, since there is no motion without something moved; but if it was always in what is moved, again two principles will be posited, the mover and the moved. For which of them does he cast his vote, that we may posit it as first along with God?

Moreover, the word 'disorderly' is dragged along with their account and should be banished altogether; for it could only fairly be said when there is no motion. And which of the motions is matter? Motion in a straight line, circular motion, motion by alteration, or motion by coming to be and passing away? But circular motion is so orderly that it is assigned to the order of the universe; and on their own account it is not to be blamed, since the sun and the moon, which alone of the gods they say they revere, move in it. Is it then straight-line motion? But this too has a limit, the reaching of its own place. For everything earthy stops moving whenever it reaches the earth, and every animal and plant stops growing whenever it reaches its own limit, so that the coming to rest of these would more reasonably be the death of matter than the endless end they weave for it. Motion by coming to be and passing away cannot even be conceived as suiting this hypothesis, for in their view matter is ungenerated. If they ascribe to it motion by alteration (and they seem to say this above all, since they say that through matter come changes of character and vices in the soul), it is worth considering how they say even this. Altering itself, it will always begin from a beginning, take hold of the middle as it goes on, and so reach the end; but on reaching the end it will not stop, if alteration is its essence, but will turn back through the same stages to the beginning, and likewise from there again to the end, and will never cease doing this. For example, if the line ΑΓ is being altered, with Β as its middle, the change will go from Α to Β and from there to Γ; then, turning back again from the extreme Γ to Β, it will at length reach Α, and this will go on for ever. So it is with change from black: the middle is grey and the extreme white; and back again from this to grey and likewise to black; and again from white begins the alteration, the same course. If, then,

matter is an evil-working cause by way of alteration, it is shown in this way to be no more evil-working than good-working. Let the alteration begin from evil: then it passes from this through the indifferent things to the good; or let it begin from the good: then again its beginning passes through the indifferent things; whether the motion goes toward this extreme or the other, the argument is the same. And this is said beyond what is needed; for all motion has to do with quantity, while quality governs vice and virtue, and we know that these are distinguished even in genus. Are God and matter the only principles, or is something else left lying between them? If there is nothing, they remain unmixed with each other (for it is well said that for extremes to be mixed there must be something in the middle to bind them together); but if there is something else, it must in turn be either incorporeal or body, so that a third principle has been brought in. Again, are God and matter both wholly incorporeal, or is one body and the other incorporeal, or are both bodies? If both are incorporeal, neither is in the other, unless as grammar is in a soul (but it is absurd to think this of God and matter); or as in a void, as some say the void is poured round the universe, but then the other again has no existence, for the essence of the void is nothing; or as accidents, but first this is impossible, for having no share in substance they can be nowhere, since substance is, as it were, the vehicle placed under accidents. If both are bodies, both must be heavy, or both light, or intermediate, or one heavy and the other light or intermediate. If both are heavy, they must in that case be wholly together, and the same holds for the light and the intermediate; if they differ, the one will be wholly separated from the other. For the heavy has one place, the intermediate and the light another: the one has the above, the other the below, the other the middle. But of every sphere the below is the middle, for from it the distance to everything aloft, up to the upper surface, is equal on every side, and all heavy things in turn are borne toward it from every side. That is why I could not help laughing when I heard that matter, moving in disorder (for this is natural to it), came into the region of God, which is light and brightness and all such things. If one is body and the other incorporeal, first, only what is body can be moved; then, if they are unmixed, each is apart according to its own nature; but if the one is mixed with the other, it would be either soul, or mind, or an accident, for only in these ways can incorporeal things be mixed with bodies.

But how was it carried into the region of God, or for what cause? For by nature the below and the darkness belong to it, as they say, while the above and the light are contrary to its nature; so its motion at that time was contrary to nature, and it suffered something like what happens if one throws a stone or a clod of earth upward. That is why such things, lifted for a little by the force of the one who threw them, after being in the air are carried down to the same place. Who, then, lifted matter into the upper region? Of itself and from itself it could not move with this motion, since it is contrary to its nature; it must undergo force to be raised into the upper region, like the stone and the clod. But they leave nothing else with it except God. The consequence of the argument is plain: on their account God, by force and compulsion, raised it up toward himself. Moreover, if matter is evil, its desires too must surely be such; and the desire of evil is base, the desire of the good most excellent. If matter desired the brightness and the light, the desire is not base, just as it is not if someone living in vice should later come to desire virtue. The opposite is what deserves blame, that someone excellent should come to desire the base; as if they were to say that God longs for the evils that belong to matter. For the goods of God are not to be thought of as things like wealth, much land and much gold, of which the owner has less when they pass from him to another. If we must think of any image of them at all, one might fairly compare wisdom and the sciences. As, then, neither wisdom nor knowledge is lessened, nor those who possess them, when another partakes of them, so it is not reasonable that God should have begrudged matter its desire for the good, if indeed on their account it desired it.

They have far outdone the myth-makers, who cut off the genitals of Uranus, or compose the plots of his son against Cronus so that he might seize the rule, or again make Cronus swallow his sons and then be cheated by the stone image. For how are their own sayings not of this kind, when they describe outright a war of matter against God, and do not even say these things with a hidden meaning, as Homer in the Iliad makes Zeus rejoice at the war of the gods with one another, hinting that the world is made up of unlike things fitted to one another, conquering and conquered? I have said this because I know such people: when they lack demonstrations, they gather things from the poems from every side and make of them a defence of their own opinions. They would not have fallen into this if they had ever read them with any care. Moreover, all evils have been driven away from the divine chorus, and jealousy and envy above all; but these men leave them with God, when they say that he organized the plot against matter because it desired the good. And with which of the things he had did God wish to punish matter? To say that God is simple is, I think, more exact than their account, and setting out the conception of him is not easy as it is with other things; for it cannot be shown simply by a word, but only through much training and labour. But this at least we all know, that anger and the desire to punish matter are passions arising in one who is so disposed; and these passions would not arise even in a good man, much less in the Good itself.

The argument, carried round, comes again to other points. Since they say that God sent a power down into matter, it is worth considering whether this power was less good than God or equally good. If it was less, what is the cause? For none of the things with God had any share in matter, and he presents only God as good and only matter as evil. If it was equal, why did the one give orders like a king while the other endured this unwilling labour? With matter, too, it will be asked whether its powers are equal to it in evil or less. If they are less, they are surely less in vice; then they would be so by a share in the good, for when there are two evils, the lesser is such surely by partaking of the good. But they leave nothing good in matter. So again there is another difficulty: if some other power exceeds the ruling matter in evil, that one is the more fit to rule, for the more evil would lead the rule in their scheme.

That God sent down a power upon matter is asserted without any proof, and it is not plausible in any way; yet it too must be given the arguments proper to it. They say the cause of it is this: 'So that nothing should be evil and all things good, the power had to be mingled with matter, like wrestlers who overcome their opponents by grappling with them, so that, having mastered evil, it might make it cease to be.' But it would be far more venerable, I think, and worthy of God's supremacy, to have done away with matter at a single thought from among the things that are. I suppose they did not accept this because some evil still exists now, which they say is matter. But things are no more able to cease being what they are, even if one grants that some of them do not change for the worse; there ought to have been some perception of this, that they have been lessened in some measure, so that we might also have better hopes for the future. Well was it said against the argument of Zeno of Citium, who said 'the whole will be burned up', arguing: 'everything burning that has fuel will burn it all up; the sun is fire, and will it not burn up what it has?', from which he concluded, as he thought, that the whole would be burned up. To him one of the wittier men is said to have replied: 'But I saw yesterday, and a year ago, and before that, and I see likewise now, that nothing has suffered from the fire of the sun; it ought to have happened little by little over time, so that we might believe that the whole will one day be burned up.' And to the argument of Manichaeus, asserted without any proof, the same answer applies, I think: 'These things have not been lessened at all; they were there before, at the first man who came into being, when brother killed brother, and they are still here now; the wars are the same and the desires more varied. They ought, if not to have ceased, at least to have lessened, so that we might take courage that they will one day cease in the course of time. But since they are the same from then until now, what ground is there for confidence about the future?'

What, then, does he say the evils are? He leaves none about the sun and the moon. Whether he says there is anything of the kind about the heaven and the stars, and what it is, it is reasonable to ask next. For them disorder is evil, and disorderly motion; but these heavenly bodies always keep the same course in the same way. He will not accuse any of the planets of choosing to stay in a sign of the zodiac beyond the appointed time, nor any of the fixed stars of not keeping to the same seat and not going round with the revolution of the whole, moving one degree toward the following signs in a hundred years. On earth, if he blames the wildness of some regions, or if steersmen find fault with storms at sea, then first, on their own account, such things belong to the portion of the good. For if nothing grew on the earth, all living things would perish very quickly; and this could send on to God much of the power shut up in matter, and many moons would be needed to hold so many souls arriving all at once. The same holds for the sea: to perish there is a windfall, so that those who perish may set out at once on the road to God. Wars on earth, famines and everything destructive are, on their account, held in highest honour; for whatever causes good is to be honoured, and these cause good, since from the destruction that results they send on to God the power that is being separated from those who perish.

We were ignorant, it seems, that the Egyptians rightly honour the crocodile, the lion and the wolf, since these, being the strongest of all animals, consume the others, feeding on them and destroying them in every way; and the eagle and the hawk, since these too destroy the weaker creatures in the air and on the earth. Perhaps on their account man is held in the highest honour for this reason, that more than all others he subdues most of the animals by his devices and his arts; and, so that he himself may not miss out on this good, he becomes food for others. Again, births are absurd on their account, producing something enormous from a small and chance seed; and in their view it would have been much better for God to have abolished them, so that the divine power might have been released quickly from its sojourn here. But what will Manichaeus say, one might ask, about licentiousness, injustice and everything of that kind? Have not education and the law been given as helpers against these? Education takes care that nothing of the kind should happen among men, and the law punishes the one caught in some wrongdoing. Next, what is the charge against the earth (if a farmer neglects to tame it), that the rule of God, which is according to justice, has been diminished, when some places are fruitful and others not, or when winds blowing for some other cause benefit some people while others suffer things they would not wish? They ought not to have been ignorant of the nature of the contingent and of the necessary; for then they would not have told such marvels.