On the Faith against the Manichaeans 32–49

All the apostles, all rational tongues proclaim that Christ the Lord suffered; every sound faith confesses that Christ suffered for us; and Mani asserts that demons endured all those sufferings. For he does not say they suffered because the Lord triumphed over them and taught us to triumph over them through patience, but because they deny that Christ the Lord had mortal flesh. To them we say: If he did not have mortal flesh, what was it that the Jews seized? What was it that hung on the cross? What was fixed with nails to the wood? What was pierced with the spear, from which blood and water flowed? For if these things only seemed to be done and were not done, they will be a phantasm, which it is wicked to believe.

But if these things really were done, yet not in mortal flesh, and you say they were done in the divine substance itself, you are saying that the divine substance is changeable, visible to fleshly eyes, palpable to fleshly hands, and capable of being wounded by iron; which again it is wicked to believe. And so, since Mani fears to say that these things were not done, and fears again to say that they were done in the divine substance, and will not confess, because he could not even understand, how the Son of God, through whom all things were made, took on a man with flesh without any change or defilement of his divine substance, he was forced to say that not Christ, but the prince of darkness with his companions suffered all those things. Wretched people! Do you not fear that it will be said to you at the judgment: "I set you free, for whom I suffered: go, let him set you free to whom you ascribe my sufferings"?

You say, in great error, but you say it nonetheless, that Christ is born daily, suffers daily, dies daily. Is it perhaps in those who believe and suffer tribulations and death for his name? "No," they say, "but in gourds and leeks and purslane and other such things." What great absurdity, what great blindness! Above it was by the sufferings of demons, here by the sufferings of vegetables that human beings are freed from sins.

Again, when we say to them, "What was the race of darkness going to do to God if he had been unwilling to fight with it?", they say: "Nothing could happen to an incorruptible God. For if, for example, someone wished to tear a solid glass sphere with his nails, the fury of his nails would never do anything to it." But if these people even imagined the divine substance to be such that all the fury of the race of darkness were toward it as the nails of one tearing are toward a glass sphere, Mani's god would not be suffering mourning today over the cutting off or loss of his part. Of that part they say that when it is in fruits or herbs, that is, in a melon or beet or such things, it knows its beginning and middle and end, but when it comes to flesh it loses all understanding; and that a teacher was sent to human beings for this reason, because the part of God in them has become foolish, and that one was not sent to melons for this reason, because they have a wise soul.

Who could believe that such things could ever be said by human beings, or among human beings? But how does the substance of your god suffer no evil, when it is bound in apples and blinded in flesh, or when, wishing to return, it is cast down to the earth by the race of darkness? But if no evil happened or happens to it, then everything is false that Mani said in the Fundamental Epistle, which is the head of all vain fables, or in the Thesaurus, which is a treasury of all shamefulness and blasphemies, or in all his other books, in which with so much talk he asserts nothing but the misfortune of God's substance, which he says is mixed with the princes of darkness, and sadness in the divine powers because of their great anxiety that it be set free. For in truth the substance of God could not and cannot suffer any evil, nor does it have any enemy that could corrupt its unbegotten part; but human beings are enemies to God, or rather to themselves, by not obeying God's commands and corrupting themselves, not God, by their desires.

If you were willing to look with a single eye, O Manichees, you would very easily see the harmony of the two Testaments. For you rush furiously at what is written: "The Spirit of God was borne over the water," and "God saw that it was good," and "Adam, where are you?" and "a jealous God," and "a devouring fire," and "my sword," and other such things. You do not consider that, if someone else were so blind as to wish to find fault with what the Lord said in the Gospel, "You shall not swear by heaven, for it is the throne of God, nor by the earth, for it is the footstool of his feet," he might say what you with astonishing madness are accustomed to say: "Where was God before heaven and earth existed?" Or what is written: "And Jesus marvelled," since no one marvels except at something unknown to him; whereas to see that something is good is not a sign of ignorance but that what he made pleased him. Or what is written of the Lord saying, "Who touched me?" and of Lazarus, "Where have you laid him?" and "I came not to send peace on earth but a sword," and "I came to cast fire on the world," and "I came that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind," and "Sell your goods and buy yourselves swords," and the apostle: "I am jealous for you with the jealousy of God," and "The wrath of God will be revealed from heaven against all ungodliness," and countless other things said or done by the Lord himself or by the apostles, which people who do not understand could most insanely accuse. For the greedy or the wicked could take otherwise what the Lord says, that if anyone gives up what he has, he will receive sevenfold or even a hundredfold in this age; or someone might wish to put away a wife, a maidservant, or even harlots for the Lord's sake, and do it in hope of that multiplication, not from love of righteousness. Those who understand badly could also shudder at what he says: "Unless one eats my flesh and drinks my blood, he will not have life in him." And as for his saying, "Whoever says to his brother 'Fool' will be liable to the Gehenna of fire," if foolish people say, "Look, Gehenna is threatened for an insult; this is the one you call merciful in forgiving sins!", do they not show they do not know where their head is, and yet think they are saying something? Or that he handed over so many souls to be killed by demons in the swine, though you say the souls of swine are such as those of human beings? Or that by his word he made the tree wither on which he found no fruit, because it was not the season, a tree you say has an intelligent soul?

See how much wicked and blind people could say against the divine oracles, just as you, in ignorance, rush at the things done or said mystically in the old books, so as rashly to accuse what you do not understand. Yet when such things from the New Testament are put to you, you say they signify divine and spiritual things; but you deny that the holy writings of the Old Testament can be taken figuratively, although the Lord himself said certain things figuratively from them, and the apostle Paul writes that all things happened to that people in figure. Indeed he himself, showing the rule, expounded many things from it. But perhaps you will say, with your usual vanity and dull heart, speaking against the authority of the Lord and of the apostle, that the sayings of the Old Testament cannot be expounded at all, and only the New can be expounded in such matters. And you do not consider that you would have nothing to say if other impious people told you that it is rather the Old that can be expounded and the New that cannot. A sound mind, however, considering both Testaments, will without doubt declare in the one whatever it finds admits of exposition in the other. Your ignorance, or rather your malice, is very evident. Look in the Acts of Leucius, which he writes under the name of the apostles, at the kind of things you accept about Maximilla, the wife of Egetes. When she was unwilling to render the marital debt to her husband, though the apostle said, "Let the husband render the debt to the wife, and likewise the wife to the husband," she substituted her maidservant, named Euclia, for her husband, adorning her, as it is written there, with hostile allurements and paint, and putting her in her own place by night, so that he, unaware, slept with her as with his wife. It is also written there that when this same Maximilla and Iphidamia had gone together to hear the apostle Andrew, a certain handsome little boy, whom Leucius wants to be understood as either God or at least an angel, commended them to the apostle Andrew and went to the praetorium of Egetes, and entering their bedchamber counterfeited a woman's voice, as if Maximilla were complaining of the pains of the female sex and Iphidamia answering. When Egetes heard these conversations, he went away believing they were there. What do you say to this, I ask you? Why did Maximilla not fear, by the most shameful procuring of her maidservant, to bind souls in flesh? And since you believe that little boy lied so shamefully, who would believe you when you speak, when, if you lie, you say you are imitating the Lord?

But you, full of rashness, still rush at the old books, toiling to accuse rather than to learn what you do not know. Consider what miracles are there, if you delight in the miracles of the New Testament: there the dead were first raised, there lepers were first cleansed, and many other things become known to those who seek diligently and reverently, for the building up of faith. If you delight in good precepts, there were first written those two precepts about loving God and neighbour which the Lord so sublimely praises; there home, parents, children and the rest are to be left for the Lord's sake; there evil is not to be returned for evil; there one is to pray for enemies; there an enemy is to be forgiven; there the cheek is to be offered to receive a blow; and whatever precepts are in the New Testament are not only commanded there but also fulfilled with all vigilance by holy men. Will your malice be able to say even this, that whatever good and magnificent things are written there are false and inserted, and that only those things which, not understanding, you think evil are true? You ought to consider that other impious people could do the same with the New Testament, finding fault with whatever there, not understanding, they have thought evil, saying that only these things there are true, and that all those things that are openly extolled there are false and inserted by lovers of the Lord, so that not everything should seem worth fleeing. Then both you and they, struck with such blindness, already judged and condemned, would be fled from. Wake up at last, cease from blasphemies, and receive the authority of all the holy canonical Scriptures, if you mean to be Christians, and do not accuse what you do not understand, but rather desire to understand it.

For what of this too, that you deny the resurrection of the flesh? The apostle Paul cries out: "It is sown in corruption, it rises in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour, it rises in glory; it is sown in weakness, it rises in power; it is sown a natural body, it rises a spiritual body." And you cry out against him that human flesh cannot rise and that its author is the prince of darkness, although the apostle says that it is the members of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit. "Do you not know," he says, "that your bodies are members of Christ?" He does not say this, of course, according to the weakness of the present corruption, which comes down from the punishment of original sin, but according to the adoption of the future resurrection, as he also says elsewhere: "And we ourselves groan within ourselves, awaiting the adoption, the redemption of our body." Elsewhere too he compared this same flesh to the church when he was speaking of marriage, saying: "For no one ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church." So when he says in another place, "The flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh," he does not condemn the flesh, so that we should think it an enemy, but rather admonishes us to subdue it to ourselves, so that it may serve the spirit like a wife in conceiving and bringing forth good works; which he says cannot be done except by the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. For it is not the nature of the flesh but its punishment that struggles against us, because by sin we deserved to be mortal. For again he says: "Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit in you." And yet, though this flesh is called grass because of its present weakness, you believe that John made gold out of hay, and do not believe that almighty God can make a spiritual body out of a natural body. For it is because of this change of the flesh that is to come, since God will make a heavenly body out of this flesh when we shall be equal to the angels of God, that the same apostle says most truly: "Flesh and blood will not possess the kingdom of God."

But it is no wonder that you are so blind as to think that these things cannot be done by almighty God, when you even say that God could not have made the world, or all things that were made, except under great and miserable necessity, and unless there were matter that helped him in making the world, so that he could free his part from it. Choose, then, which you wish to follow: a god less powerful and weak, who because of the necessity of his part placed in misery was helped by matter, which he had not made, to make the world; or almighty God, who by no necessity but by his own will and supreme power spoke, and they were made, commanded, and they were created; "who calls the things that are not as though they were."

You, then, who have been deceived by this impiety of Mani, flee, make haste while you may, lest you deserve eternal condemnation from that just Judge. Repent of your sins, if you desire to be set free, and do not listen to the Manichees saying: "We do not sin, that is, the souls of light; it is the race of darkness that sins." For if that is so, why do they frighten us into believing them? For they cannot say that unbelief is not a sin, since it is written: "Whoever does not believe is already judged."

If, then, unbelief is a sin, and none sins but the race of darkness, it follows that the part of light is found free from all sin. So all return to the kingdom, because they do not sin, and no soul has anything to fear, because it does not sin at all; and what Mani says is false, that the cut-off part of the light, that is, the sinful souls, is condemned to the custody of the globe, so that some security might at last be procured for the divine kingdoms placed in danger. It is necessary, therefore, that either the part of light sins or the part of darkness. But if the part of light sins, God sins, which it is wicked to say; and if the part of darkness sins, it is called to the kingdom by him who said: "I came not to call the righteous but sinners, for those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick." That divinity from divinity and light from light, however, degenerating, is joined for ever to the race of darkness.

O detestable error of mind in those who believe such things! Yet I would wish you to pay attention and be willing to see that the one you call the supreme evil by nature cannot be evil. For if whatever he does, he does in such a way that he cannot depart from his nature and act otherwise, he does not sin at all; and if he does not sin at all, he does nothing evil; and therefore, if he did nothing evil, he is certainly not evil. It remains, then, that the part of God, which is understood to be God, which you call the soul, alone is guilty of all sins, and you pour back upon your god all the things which you most insanely think are to be accused. But what does the truth cry out? That a body, when it is lifeless, cannot sin, but sin can be committed through it; that an irrational soul cannot sin, because it can neither receive the precepts of reason nor attain blessedness, but keeps in its own rank the order of nature it received; but that a rational soul, because it can receive the reasonable precepts of right action and by right action attain eternal blessedness, if it refuses this by sinning, is justly condemned to lower things, because nothing separates it from God except a depraved will.

Read, Manichees, and examine these things with all vigilance; read and examine them more and more, but with a fair mind, not a hostile one. Read with this in mind: that this writing will be a witness against you at the future judgment, if, recognizing that what has been said is true, you do not hasten with all speed to the bosom of mother church, the catholic church, which alone teaches the truth.

Judge at last and choose, Manichees, whom you wish to follow: the unbegotten Father, the only-begotten Son, the Holy Spirit common to the Father and the Son in their unity, one God almighty, incorruptible, unapproachable, unchangeable, true, good, holy, merciful, just; who has no parts, because he is one, nor can any portion of him be separated from him, because he is inseparable, nor can anything of him be changed, because he is wholly unchangeable, nor can anything of his substance be corrupted even slightly, because he is wholly incorruptible; who willed, and all things were made that exist, that live, that understand (for he is the supreme substance, the supreme life, the supreme truth); who commanded, and all things were ordered, good in their places and times; who deigned to set the rational creature over all the rest of creation; who, when it had fallen by pride from his laws by its own will and was following visible things, deigned in mercy to speak to it through his ministers and through himself, by certain visible signs and by examples and precepts shown, by which it might be able to rise and be restored to eternal life: the God whom the catholic faith proclaims;

or that god who is falsely called incorrupt, since afterwards he is found oppressed by the evil of necessity; fearful, since when ruin and devastation threatened he was driven to war; full of ignorance, if he could not see what might happen to his part; cruel, if he foresaw the future misery of his part and, though he could have rested secure with it, nevertheless sent it into a miserable battle; evil, if, though nothing could be done to him by the nature of evil, he nevertheless tried himself to destroy it; rash, since he dared to engage with that by which his part would be both held captive and stained for ever; changeable, since he has already been changed in part; corruptible, since he has already been corrupted in part; in part playing the harlot, in part lying, in part blaspheming, in part committing every crime, since he is mixed in part with all these; mourning, covered with a mournful veil; subject to demons like clay to the potter, and brought by necessity even to a shameful role, so that, transformed into boys and virgins, he should kindle the lust of demons: the god whom Mani proclaims. Or else, if your conscience can, let it deny, with the true eternal God as your witness, who will judge all, one of these things; deny it to yourselves.

But if what we say is true, look back at last, see at last in what death you are placed. Be humble, if you wish to be set free, and do not say proudly and impiously that you yourselves are almighty God; for that is what you say when you assert that your souls are parts of him, for God is not greater in one part and lesser in another. Rather say to yourselves: God is unchangeable, we are changeable; God is incorruptible, we are corrupted by our desires; God cannot be defiled, we are defiled by our sins; God is wisdom itself, we are fools striving to attain wisdom; God is eternal and blessed life itself, we are wretched through our sins and long to become blessed: therefore we are not part of his substance. For if you are his parts and suffer such things, it follows that he too already suffers all these things in part, and could have suffered more, as happened to his part, had he not provided for himself through your misery. See, then, what you are. If you are his parts, you are God; if you are begotten by him, you are likewise God: why are you defiled by such corruption of sins? But if you were made by him, confess it, and you will no longer be Manichees.

For Mani says there are two natures, one good and the other evil: the good, which made the world, and the evil, from which the world was made. But if God made us, Mani does not find what God made us from. For if he made you from himself, you are what he is; so you ought not to be defiled by such corruption of sins, as has already been said. But if he made you from something alien, you do not belong to him, because he made you as he made the world. But if he made you neither from himself nor from something alien, but simply willed it by his omnipotence and you were made, say this to Mani and renounce his error. For thus it befits the Almighty to make what he wills, as the catholic faith says: "He spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created." Say to yourselves: We are not his parts, but we are his works. Say to yourselves: If God suffered necessity and could not escape otherwise than by suffering the loss of his part, who will ever be able to be freed from such necessities? Or who will there be to protect a God unable to protect himself? Or when will he be able to free me from this necessity of captivity, who could not keep me in his kingdoms while they were whole? For he did not send me out from there because I sinned, but sent me into sins themselves. Or when will he be able to help me, placed miserably among alien things, who, to help himself, gave me over to such ruin, so that he should not have to fight? If God himself is incorruptible, what was that nature of evil going to do to him if he had been unwilling to fight with it, so that I should not now be tortured like this? Or what injustice is this, that I am condemned to the globe, while he, so that he may be somewhat secure for now, lets me endure such things here? Surely, since I too am what he is, since I am his part, "with nothing lacking or set at the lowest in his glorious kingdoms", let us suffer this misery by turns, so that I too may rest a little and those kingdoms may be at peace without danger. And yet it is to be feared that this nature of evil cannot be kept shut up even in the globe itself. For if it corrupted incorrupt kingdoms and violated the inviolate substance of God, how will that part of light, that is, the sinful souls, which, damaged, sick and weak, are fixed in the globe to guard it, not be swallowed up by it, so that it throws those divine kingdoms wholly into confusion again, with no one now able to resist? For who would now dare to go out to war, when that part which went out was treated so unjustly that, for the sake of its fellow citizens' rest, it was condemned to the everlasting custody of the globe? Or if it cannot break through the globe so as to reach that luminous covering of condemned souls, what need is there for it to be covered by the condemnation of divine members? But if it can break through the globe, who, being wounded, will resist it, when it wounded those who were whole? Far from us be so grave and so abominable a blasphemy. Do not admit this iniquity to your ears; do not entangle yourselves in such a deadly business. Flee Mani and fly with all longing to the breasts of catholic truth.