Against Secundinus the Manichaean 1–9

Your goodwill toward me, which appears in your letter, is welcome to me. But as much as I ought to love you in return, since you love me, so much am I saddened that you have clung tenaciously to false suspicions, partly against me, partly against the truth itself, which cannot be changed. What you think untruly about my mind I easily disregard; for what you think, even if I do not recognize it in myself, can still happen in a human being. So even if you are mistaken about me, you are not mistaken in such a way that your opinion removes me from the number of human beings, since you believe of me what can happen in a human mind, even if it has not happened in mine. So there is no need for me to try hard to take this suspicion away from you. For your hope does not hang on me, nor will you be unable to be good unless I am. Think of Augustine whatever you like, provided only that my conscience does not accuse me in the eyes of God. For, as the apostle says, “to me it is a very small thing to be judged by you or by any human day.” But I will not repay you in kind by daring to think anything ill of your mind, which I cannot see. Nor do I say that you wished to wound me craftily; I think of you only as much as you show of yourself in your words. Therefore, although you have suspected things of me that are not good, namely that I left the heresy of the Manichaeans from a fleshly fear of some harm that might befall me from your fellowship, or from desire for the honor I have obtained in the catholic Church, nonetheless, not thinking ill of you in return, I believe your suspicion is well-meant, and I think you wrote this not in order to accuse but out of zeal to correct. But if you granted me the goodwill of believing me, since you are charging the hidden places of my mind, which I certainly cannot bring out before your eyes and show, you would easily change your view about it and would no longer wish to assert rashly what you do not know.

For I admit that I left the Manichaeans out of fear, but out of fear of those words spoken through the apostle Paul: “The Spirit,” he says, “says plainly that in the last times some will depart from the faith, paying heed to seducing spirits and teachings of demons, in the hypocrisy of liars, having their conscience seared, forbidding marriage, abstaining from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by believers and by those who have known the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected that is received with thanksgiving.” Although with these words he may perhaps have described other heretics too, still he described the Manichaeans above all, briefly and plainly. Out of this fear, then, when, after the mind of boyhood, I came late to wisdom, I tore myself away from that fellowship. I also admit that I burned with love of honor so as to depart from there, but of that honor of which the same apostle says: “But glory and honor and peace to everyone who does good.” And who will try to do good who thinks that evil lies not in a changeable will but in an unchangeable nature? Hence the Lord himself said to those who thought they spoke good things while they were evil: “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad.” And to the evil now changed into good the apostle says: “For you were once darkness, but now light in the Lord.” But if you will not believe me about my mind, think as you like; only take care what you think about the truth itself. “Let no temptation take hold of you but what is human.” For it is a human error to believe that what could have happened in my mind has happened, even if it has not happened; but when you think that a sacrilegious Persian fable, not only utterly false but utterly deceitful, woven and made up with most defiled lies not about just any human being but about the highest God, is the truth, this must not be passed over in this way, nor such a death of the soul disregarded. For there is something that can be done with you, since it is not as with my mind, about which I can say nothing more than that you should believe me, and if you will not, I find nothing to do. So too, when you think something false about that very light of minds which rational minds behold the more calmly the purer they are, it can be shown to you, if you listen patiently, how very far from the truth is what you think. For just as I cannot perceive the sensation of your eye, nor you that of mine, but we can only believe or not believe each other about this, while we can show each other the appearance that lies visible before the eyes of us both: so about the affections of our minds, which we have as our own, let us believe each other if we please, and if we do not please, let us not; but the reasoning of truth, which is neither mine nor yours but set before both of us to contemplate, let us attend to together, with the fog of obstinacy laid aside and our minds made clear.

I will bring forward no other proofs by which Mani's error appears than from your letter. You write that you give thanks to the ineffable and most sacred Majesty and to his Firstborn, the King of all lights, Jesus Christ. Tell me, of what lights is Jesus Christ king? Of those he made, or of those he begot? For we say that God the Father begot the Son equal to himself, but created through him, that is, founded and made, a lower creation, which is certainly not what he is who made it and through whom he made it. And so, since he made the ages through him, he was rightly called by the apostle King of the ages, as higher than the lower and powerful to rule, ruling the things that need rule. But when you call Jesus Christ King of lights: if he begot them, why are they not equal to the one begetting? And if you say they are equal, how is he their king, since a king must rule, and it can in no way happen that the things ruled are equal to the one by whom they are ruled? But if he did not beget these lights but made them, I ask from what he made them. If he propagated them from himself, why then are they lower? Why have they degenerated? But if not from himself, tell me from what? Or perhaps he neither made nor begot the lights over which he reigns? Then they have their own origin and nature, but certainly a weaker one, so that they either allow themselves or desire to be ruled by a more powerful neighbor. If that is so, do you not recognize that, apart from the race of darkness, there are now two natures, one needing the help of the other, but neither depending on the other's principle? This opinion you will surely reject, since it is utterly opposed to Mani, who tries to persuade people not of two natures, the King of lights and the lights that are ruled, but of two natures, the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness. You will take refuge, then, in saying that these lights were begotten. When I ask there why they are weaker, you will perhaps try to maintain that they are equal. But when I reply, “What is the reason they are ruled?” you will deny that they are ruled. To this I will answer: “Why do they have a king?” Here I do not see what remains for your candor except to regret having put such a door in your letter, through which you yourself cannot get out. But even when you have regretted it and said that Mani ought not to be thought defeated because you put something rather incautiously in your letter, I will read out countless passages from Mani's books where he calls it the kingdom of light, which he established as naturally contrary to the kingdom of darkness; and not kingdom, but kingdoms, since in that very letter of the ruinous Foundation, when he was speaking of God the Father, he says: “no one in his kingdoms being needy or lowest.” But where there are kingdoms, who is so blind as not to understand that kings can in no way be equal to those over whom they reign? What, then, is so close at hand, if you would notice it, and so fitting to the honesty of your heart, as not to regret having put that in your letter? For Jesus Christ is most truly the King of lights that are in no way equal to him but subject to him, and the ruler of those blessed ones. But rather regret that you were a Manichaean, all of whose deceiving devices the truthful front of your letter overturns with a single battering blow. For since Christ is King of lights, and did not beget from himself lower beings to be king over, nor take to himself neighbors to reign over which he neither begot nor made (lest there be two kinds of good, neither of which is from the other, nor one needing the other, which is foreign to the path of truth), it remains that God did not beget the lights over which he reigns, which are certainly good, because they are lower, nor usurp them, because they are their own, but made and founded them.

If you wish to ask from what he made them, and begin to imagine the help of a matter which he himself did not make, so that the Almighty would not seem able to make what he wished unless something he had not made helped him, you will again suffer inextricable fogs of error. But if the prophetic sayings are joined, by a sober stroke of understanding, most fittingly to the sublime and ineffable Majesty, “He spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created,” you will thus see in what sense it is said in the catholic faith that God made all things very good out of nothing. For if he made them from something, then certainly either from himself or not from himself. But if from himself, then he did not make but begot. Why, then, did he beget lower beings? For unless they were lower he could not be their king. If not from himself, then certainly not from something which he himself did not make; otherwise he made them from something foreign, and there was already a good which he himself had not made, out of which he might establish a kingdom for himself. If that is so, he begins not to be the creator of good works, since there was a good which he had not created; for he would not produce the lights over which he would reign from a foreign evil. It remains, therefore, that even if he made them from some thing, he made them from that which he himself had already made.

So it follows that we must admit that God made the first origins of the things to be founded out of nothing; unless perhaps, since you said that Jesus Christ is the Firstborn of the ineffable and most sacred Majesty, not according to his taking on of a human being, in which he deigned to have brothers called by adoption, as the apostle says and as the catholic faith believes, to whom he would be firstborn, but rather according to the very excellence of his divinity you want him understood as firstborn, so that those lights in which he reigns are his brothers, not made by the Father through him but begotten by the Father after him, so that they are later-born and he firstborn, yet all of the Father's own and same substance. If you believe this, you first contradict the gospel, where he is also called only-begotten (“and we saw,” it says, “his glory, as of the only-begotten of the Father”), which would in no way be said truly if his eternal power and divinity too, by which he is consubstantial with the Father and is before all creation, had brothers of the same substance. And so, since the divine words testify that he is both only-begotten and firstborn (only-begotten, because without brothers; firstborn, because with brothers), you will not find how to understand both of him according to the same nature of divinity. But the catholic faith, which distinguishes between creator and creature, suffers no difficulty of understanding in these two names, taking him as only-begotten according to what is written, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” and as firstborn of all creation according to what the apostle says, “that he might be the firstborn among many brothers,” whom the Father begot for him into brotherly fellowship not by equality of substance but by adoption of grace. So read the Scriptures: nowhere will you find it said of Christ that he is Son of God by adoption. But of us it is read very often: “You have received the Spirit of adoption as sons”; “awaiting the adoption, the redemption of our body”; “that we might receive the adoption as sons”; “he predestined us to adoption as sons”; “a holy nation, a people for adoption”; “he called you through our gospel to the adoption of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ”; and whatever such texts occur to one who remembers or reads. For it is one thing to be the only Son of God through the Father's excellence, another to receive through merciful grace the power to become sons of God by believing in him. “He gave them,” it says, “power to become sons of God.” So they were not so by nature, since they received the power to become so by believing in him whom, the only one, he did not spare but handed over for us all, so as to make him only-begotten with himself and firstborn toward us. By the fact, then, that he is only-begotten, he was born not of flesh, not of blood, not of the will of a man nor of the will of the flesh, but of God; but by the fact that he was made firstborn among brothers in the Church, the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. We too, insofar as we were by nature children of wrath, that is, children of punishment bound by the chain of mortality, although by his creating and establishing, who without doubt disposes and forms all things from the highest to the lowest in measure and number and weight, were nonetheless born of flesh and blood and of the will of the flesh; but insofar as we have received power to become sons of God, we too are born not of flesh and blood nor of the will of a man nor of the will of the flesh, but of God, not by a nature that makes us equal, but by a grace that adopts us.

Next, even if I were now to grant that Christ Jesus is not the only Son of the Father according to a divinity of the same substance, but has brothers born after him, to whom he would be firstborn, how can he be their king? I ask you, would you dare to say that he was born stronger because born earlier? You would certainly be ashamed to think so. But you do not think so. What then do you think? Make your mind gentle and yourself open to considering the truth without obstinacy. For I will ask this of you too: how do you understand Jesus Christ as firstborn in that divine, best, and eternal substance? Was he begotten first in time, so that we are to understand those to whom he is firstborn as born at a later time in that kingdom (and though we could not say by how many hours or days, months or years, the one who arose first is older, we should still think these generations separated by some interval and span of time); or are we to take him as firstborn not in time but in the very excellence of a certainly more sublime majesty, by which he also earned to be king to his brother lights, as if begotten into some sovereignty? If you answer that he is earlier and older than his brothers in time, so as to maintain that kingship over his brothers was conferred on him because he preceded them in being born, and at some time existed when they did not yet exist, what are you saying, brother? Will you hurl your heart over this cliff of impiety, so as to think that the changeableness of time befalls that divine and highest nature, and to believe that something exists there which did not exist before? Or, because the lights had to go forth from there against the race of darkness, do you call those goings-forth themselves “generations,” which you think took place in time, so that the fighting might take place in time? Could not one light, then, have sufficed to carry out that whole business of war by divine power? Or if many were needed, are we to think this of spiritual beings, that the entrance was so narrow that they could not go out at the same time, so that because one of the brothers went out first, he earned both to be called firstborn and to be made king over the rest? I will not pursue each point in detail, lest I be too burdensome to your able mind, which sees everything from a few things. So raise the keen gaze of your mind, wipe away the clouds of contention, and you will surely see that no movements according to places or times, no goings-forth, risings, settings, or any changes can take place except in a changeable creature; and yet unless that creature were from God, its craftsman and founder, the apostle would not have said: “And they worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever.”

In this saying, then, there are two things above all that are necessary, which I ask you to look at with me: first, that if the creature were foreign to God, God would not be called its creator by the apostle; second, that if creator and creature were of one and the same substance, those who served the creature rather than the Creator would not be rebuked, since whichever they served, they would not have departed from the same nature and substance. For just as no one can serve the Son who does not also serve the Father, because the substance of both is one, so no one could serve the creature without serving the Creator, if the substance of both were one. Hence, if you now discern and understand, you would see that there is a very great difference between creator and creature. And you must understand that the offspring of the Creator is not a creature; for if it were, it would not be lower but equal and of the same substance, and so whoever worshiped and served it would at the same time offer worship and service to its creator and father as well. But since those who worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator are rebuked by the apostle and held detestable, it is shown well enough that the substances of the one and the other are different. For just as the Son cannot be seen, that is, understood, unless the Father is understood in him (for he himself says, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father”), so the Son cannot be worshiped unless the Father is worshiped in him. And so, if the Son were a creature, he would not be worshiped without the Creator, nor would those be condemned who worshiped the creature rather than the Creator. So you now see, I think, that it does not suit you to call Jesus Christ the Firstborn of the most hidden and ineffable Majesty and King of all lights unless you cease to be a Manichaean, so as to distinguish the creature from the Creator; so that Jesus Christ is both only-begotten, according to his being the Word of God, God with God, equally unchangeable and equally eternal, not thinking it robbery to be equal to God, and firstborn of all creation, according to the fact that in him all things were founded in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. For you recognize, I suppose, the words of the apostle to the Colossians.

Therefore, when I ask you from what the whole creation was made, which, though good in its own kind, is nonetheless lower than the Creator and changeable while he remains unchangeable, you will find nothing to answer unless you admit that it was made out of nothing. And so that creature can incline toward nothing when it sins, the portion of it which can sin, not so as to be nothing, but so as to have less vigor and be less firm. For if you carry having less vigor and less strength in thought to its end, nothing remains. So it loves vanity of its own accord when, abandoning the solidity of truth, it follows things of opinion, that is, changeable things. But when it pays the deserved penalties for this, it is subjected to vanity not of its own accord, as it is subjected in a sinning human being. For hence the apostle says: “Every creature has been subjected to vanity, not willingly,” because every creature is also in the human being. For there is in the human being something invisible according to the soul and something visible according to the body; and every creature is partly visible, partly invisible; but not every creature is in a beast, in which there is no intellectual mind. He says, indeed, that it was subjected in hope, because of the mercy of the one who sets it free through the forgiveness of sins and the adoption of grace. But if you will not admit that creation was made out of nothing by the Father through the Son in the goodness of the Holy Spirit (which Trinity remains always consubstantial, eternal, and unchangeable), good indeed but unequal to the Creator and changeable, you will certainly be forced to utter sacrileges: that God begot from himself something which is not equal to the one begetting and can be subjected to vanity; or, if you say it is equal, both will be changeable. What greater impiety than to believe and say this, and to prefer by perverse opinion to change God for the worse rather than to change oneself for the better by corrected reason? But if you fear to say that God is changeable, because it is truly a great and most manifest impiety, and say instead that the creature is unchangeable, so as to make it equal to the Creator and of one and the same substance, your own letter will answer you again. For where does that soul come from which you place in the midst of the spirits, to which you say its nature gave victory from the beginning, and to which you set a law and condition: that if it acts as one with the spirit of virtues, it will have eternal life with it and will possess that kingdom to which our Lord invites us; but if it begins to be drawn away by the spirit of vices and, after consenting, feels repentance, it will have a fountain of pardon for these defilements? When you recognize these words of your letter, you certainly recognize at the same time that you have made the nature of the soul changeable. For at one time to consent to the spirit of vices and again to feel repentance, what is that but to be changed now for the better, now for the worse? And the most manifest truth compelled you to say this. For your very soul, if you wished to pretend otherwise, would press you to notice its changeableness, and, having been changed so many times since you were born through various wills, teachings, forgettings, and consents, would become its own witness and would seek no proofs from outside.

Unless perhaps you think it helps you to say that the soul is unchangeable, because you added: “For it did not sin by its own will, but by the leading of another; for it is led by its mingling with the flesh, not by its own will.” In this statement you perhaps want it understood that the soul is unchangeable in its own nature but changeable in its mingling with another nature; as if the question were why it is so, and not that it is so. In this way the bodies of Hector and Ajax, and indeed of all human beings and animals, would be called invulnerable, if the blows and accidents by which a wound could be inflicted on them were absent. But surely the body of Achilles alone, whether by poetic fiction or by some more hidden power of things, was called invulnerable because it was not pierced even when weapons fell upon it; and in the part where it could be pierced, there it was certainly not invulnerable. So, if the soul were unchangeable, it would be changed by mingling with nothing, just as a body that is invulnerable is wounded by the touch or attack of nothing. So we, because we call the Word of God undefilable even when he took on mortal and vulnerable flesh, in order to teach us to despise both death and any bodily harms, are not afraid to believe that he was born of the Virgin; but you, because with impious perversity you believe the Son of God defilable, are afraid to entrust him to flesh; and yet, declaring that the nature of the soul is his substance, you assert that it is so mingled with flesh that you do not hesitate to think it changed even for the worse. Choose, then, what you want: either to say or believe that God is changeable, so that you likewise believe that changeable offspring was begotten from the substance of a changeable father (how great an impiety that is you certainly perceive); or to say that God is unchangeable, but that he nonetheless begot changeable offspring from his substance (and you see how impiously and absurdly that too is said); or else confess God unchangeable in such a way that what he begot from his substance is likewise not changed, and is equally the highest and most excellent good, and holds that same highest being in the same way with inviolable permanence; while the other, lower goods, which we call creation, he made not from himself (for then they would be equal), but, since they are good, he himself made them, and since they are not equal, out of nothing. If you believe this, you will not be impious; you will forget the Persians and you will be ours.