Evil and its origin in the early church

Where evil comes from, whether it has substance, and why God permits it. Part of God.

Sentences of Sextus 114Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · God is the author of no evil.
Sentences of Sextus 440Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Count nothing that is evil as belonging to God.
Oration to the Greeks 17Tatian · ca. 165–172 · Magic and amulets work only as signals the demons have agreed to answer; God made nothing for evil use.
Against Heresies 2.17.10Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · If the Father could later remove the Aeons' ignorance, he could have prevented it, so the Valentinians make him the author of evil.
Against Heresies 4.37.7Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The kingdom is won through struggle, and God permitted man’s apostasy so that man, schooled by contrast and contest, might grow to maturity and see God.
Against Heresies 4.39.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Man learned good and evil by experience, so that, knowing the bitterness of disobedience, he might choose obedience to God with firm judgment.
Miscellanies 1.17.82Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Against critics who say God is the cause of evil because he did not prevent it, Clement argues that a cause acts, while the one who does not prevent does nothing; otherwise the shield, not the arrow, would be blamed for a wound.
Against Hermogenes 2Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Hermogenes argues that God could not have made the world from himself, since God is indivisible and unchangeable, nor from nothing, since the evil in the world would then come from God; so it must have come from pre-existing matter.
Against Hermogenes 9Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · If God used eternal matter, he used it either as its lord (and so he permitted its evil), or by leave, or by force, all of which are unworthy of God.
Against Hermogenes 10Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Positing eternal matter does not clear God of evil: a God who tolerated evil matter for ages and worked with it is either weak or evil.
Against Hermogenes 11Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · If matter is eternal it cannot be evil, and if evil were eternal it could never be overcome; but Scripture promises an end of evil, so evil has a beginning.
Against Hermogenes 12Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · If matter is evil by an eternal nature it cannot change; yet God made good things from it, so on Hermogenes' own principle his theory contradicts itself.
Against Hermogenes 13Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · If evil matter produced good things, it must have held good within it; then good and evil alike belong to matter, and God is merely its servant.
Against Hermogenes 14Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Making things from matter would make God a slave to necessity; it is worthier of God to create freely from nothing, and even on Hermogenes' terms the good must come from nothing.
Against Hermogenes 15Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Whether good comes from matter, from God, or from nothing, Hermogenes' scheme breaks down, and God still appears as the author of the evils he made from matter.
Against Hermogenes 16Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Whether good and evil are assigned to God, to matter, or to both, matter fails to clear God of evil; so the reason for positing it falls, and creation from nothing remains.
Against Hermogenes 37Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Calling matter “neither good nor evil” while arguing both ways contradicts itself; and if God could not change evil matter, Hermogenes subjects God to it.
Against Marcion 1.2Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcion, troubled by the problem of evil and misreading Jesus' saying about good and bad trees and Isaiah's “I create evil,” split God into an evil Creator and a new good god revealed in Christ.
Against Marcion 2.14Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · When God says “I create evil,” he means the evils of punishment, which are just, not the evils of sin, which come from the devil; the flood, the plagues of Egypt, and other judgments were deserved.
Against Marcion 2.28Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Tertullian turns Marcion's method back on him: every charge made against the Creator — ignorance, change of mind, repentance, fraud, cruelty — can be made against Marcion's own god.
On Flight in Persecution 4Tertullian · ca. 208–213 · Because persecution comes from God, it is good in itself, even when it seems evil to those it harms, and so it ought not and cannot be escaped by flight.
On First Principles 2.9.2Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Being created and changeable, rational beings fell more or less from the good by their own movements, and this gave the Creator the causes of the world's variety.
Fragments on Genesis, column 53Origen · ca. 220-254 · Fatalism makes God the author of vice; those who posit a higher good God beside the creator cannot escape the problem either.
PG 12:1647 (Ps 133–135 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Psalm 135 (LXX 134) and the opening of Psalm 136 (LXX 135): the Lord great above all gods, evil not made by God's will, clouds and lightnings as rational natures and spiritual teaching, and the divine presence in the temple.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.26.14Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Evil began when Elohim rose to the heights of heaven, leaving the earthly Eden below.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.19.8Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · They teach that evil is only a convention of the world-making angels and expect the world's dissolution.
Fragment 3 on John 1:5Origen · ca. 226-254 · On John 1:5: the darkness cannot overtake the light because it is dissolved at its approach, as in Paul and the repentant robber; God permitted evil so that the greatness of virtue might be shown.
Commentary on John 2.92Origen · ca. 230–248 · “All things” cannot include vice and sin, which did not come to be through the Word.
Commentary on John 2.93Origen · ca. 230–248 · Some interpret “nothing” as evil, which has no real existence.
Commentary on John 2.94Origen · ca. 230–248 · “Nothing” and “what is not” are synonyms, and Paul calls evil things “things that are not.”
Commentary on John 2.96Origen · ca. 230–248 · God, who is, is the good; so evil, the opposite of good, is what is not.
Commentary on John 2.99Origen · ca. 230–248 · Vice is the “nothing” that came to be without the Word.
Commentary on John 20.202Origen · ca. 230–248 · If the devil were evil by nature, the blame would fall on his Creator, which is absurd.
Homilies on Numbers 14.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · God did not make evil but uses it, as with Joseph's brothers, Balak, Judas, and the devil, to test and crown the virtuous, while each person by free choice becomes a vessel of honor or of dishonor.
Homilies on Numbers 18.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Balaam’s claim to “know the knowledge of the Most High” means that all skill and knowledge, from craftsmanship to medicine and divination, originates in God, though men and demons can turn it to evil, as Balaam did.
Homilies on Psalms 36-38 2.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Wickedness is willed malice, distinct from other sins, as the devil is “the evil one”; the land promised to those who wait for the Lord is the true land, of which the earth bears only the name, and the Lord himself is our patience.
Homilies on Jeremiah 2.1Origen · ca. 240 · God did not make death or evil; he planted every soul as a good vine in his image, and it is our own sin that turned it bitter and foreign.
Homilies on Jeremiah 18.7Origen · ca. 240 · God “forms evils” against Judah like a potter shaping clay, so that by repenting they may make those evils fall from his hand and be remade as good.
On the Trinity 4Novatian · ca. 240–250 · God alone is good, so evil comes not from him but from man's free turning away; he is unchanging, one, infinite, beyond any proper name, immortal and incorruptible.
Commentary on the Song of Songs 3.225Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · The soul's fig tree and vine are its first virtues; the rain 'gone away to itself' shows that sin has no substance and vanishes when the Word appears.
Against Celsus 4.62Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus claims the amount of evil in the world never changes, paraphrasing Plato's Theaetetus, but Plato's Timaeus implies that evils diminish after the earth is purified by flood.
Against Celsus 4.63Origen · ca. 248 · Origen rejects Celsus's claim that the amount of evil is fixed, citing Chrysippus's history of how prostitution spread step by step into the cities.
Against Celsus 4.64Origen · ca. 248 · Though the nature of the universe is one, its states vary, as a man's moral state varies, so evils increase and decrease, and providence cleanses the world by flood and fire.
Against Celsus 4.65Origen · ca. 248 · Against Celsus's claim that philosophers can explain evil, Origen says its origin can be known only by God's revelation, including the fall of the devil and his angels.
Against Celsus 4.66Origen · ca. 248 · Evil does not come from God, but neither from matter: the only true evil is the vice each person's own mind produces, and the deeds that flow from it.
Against Celsus 4.70Origen · ca. 248 · God may use the wicked for the good of the whole, as a city uses condemned criminals for public works, but they remain blameworthy, as Paul's vessels of honor and dishonor show.
Against Celsus 6.43Origen · ca. 248 · Origen replies that the Bible, older than all the Greek writers, already taught about the fallen evil one: the serpent of Genesis, the destroyer of Exodus, Azazel, Belial, Satan in Job, and the figures lamented in Ezekiel and Isaiah.
Against Celsus 6.44Origen · ca. 248 · Only God is good by nature; creatures who neglect the bread of life fall, and Satan, the “adversary,” is the first being who fell from blessedness, as Ezekiel describes.
Against Celsus 6.53Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus confuses the church's arguments against Marcion with Christianity itself, and then charges Christians with making God the author of evil, a charge that applies equally to his own views.
Against Celsus 6.54Origen · ca. 248 · In Scripture, good and evil in the proper sense are virtue and vice of the soul, as the Psalm “Turn away from evil and do good” shows.
Against Celsus 6.55Origen · ca. 248 · Scripture sometimes calls hardships “evils” sent by God, but God does not make moral evil; at most, some evils follow incidentally from his good works, as shavings fall from a carpenter's work.
Commentary on Matthew 13.23Origen · ca. 246–248 · Origen explains in what sense stumbling-blocks are “necessary”: wickedness precedes virtue in human beings and evil powers work through people, but the stumbling-blocks arise from free will, not from nature or from God.
Commentary on Romans 2.6Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Paul says God 'will render' eternal life but does not say he renders wrath, because punishment comes from sinners' own deeds as sickness comes from intemperance, not from the doctor; contention is the worst sickness of the soul, and the narrow heart is the devil's lair while the enlarged heart is God's dwelling.
Commentary on Romans 6.5Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Origen explains servitude to sin and to righteousness, the fruits of each, why evil fruits are not “ours,” and the meanings of “eternal” in Scripture.
Commentary on Romans 8.13Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · Israel, an enemy as regards the gospel but beloved for the fathers, will obtain mercy after the fullness of the Gentiles; God permits evil, even from its origin, so that others may profit from it, and Paul's cry 'O the depth' and 'from him, through him, in him' points to the Trinity, whose counsels no creature can search.
Against the Manichaeans 3Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander reports the Manichaean myth: matter attacks God's realm, God sends soul into matter, and the Demiurge makes the world to free it.
Against the Manichaeans 11Alexander of Lycopolis · ca. 280–320 · Alexander asks whether the power God sent was equal or inferior to God, and whether matter's powers are equal or inferior to matter, finding both answers absurd.
Against Porphyry, fragment 5Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Evil is unlikeness to and ignorance of God; good is likeness to him, conversion, and faith.
On Free Will 3.6Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · He asked where evils come from, unwilling to make God their author.
On Free Will 3.7Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · God, being good and forbidding evil, cannot be its maker.
On Free Will 3.8Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · God cannot have made evil, nor ever have delighted in it.
On Free Will 3.9Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The Valentinian concludes that uncreated matter coexists with God and that evil flows from its unformed dregs.
On Free Will 4.1Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The Orthodox speaker sympathizes with the Valentinian’s reasoning about the origin of evil.
On Free Will 4.2Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Some have made matter eternal to avoid making God the author of evil; others made God its author; both erred.
On Free Will 8.1Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The Valentinian holds that evils are qualities and that matter was without qualities.
On Free Will 8.2Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · If God made the qualities and evils are qualities, God would make evil; the speakers agree to begin again.
On Free Will 8.9Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Therefore evils, being activities, are not substances.
On Free Will 8.15Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Evil acts have a beginning, so evil is neither eternal nor unbegotten.
On Free Will 9.3Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · He holds that matter always had qualities and that evil flows from it.
On Free Will 11.1Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · If God improved matter’s qualities, where do evils come from?
On Free Will 11.2Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The Companion holds that God left the evil qualities unchanged and ordered only the indifferent ones.
On Free Will 11.3Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · If God could have removed evil qualities but did not, he is responsible for them.
On Free Will 13.1Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Whether evils among humans are species or parts of evil, evil turns out to have a beginning; it lies in human choice, not substance.
On Free Will 14Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The dialogue on evil begins: both speakers agree God is good and does no evil; just punishment is not evil, and evil is an accident tied to free choice, not a substance.
On Free Will 19Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The devil was created good and became devil by his own envious choice, as Scripture's name apostate shows; God foreknew his fall but created him so that free will and God's goodness in forgiveness might be made known.
Against the Nations 1.8Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius suggests possible natural causes of evils and notes that what harms us may not be evil for the world as a whole.
Against the Nations 1.11Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Things harmful to human beings, like cold, heat, poisons, and wild beasts, are not therefore evils in nature.
Against the Nations 2.44Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · If souls came of their own will, God, who foresaw their fall and did not prevent it, would still be responsible for their sins.
Against the Nations 2.45Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · It is monstrous to believe that the almighty God begot such fickle souls and sent them into bodies to suffer and do all these evils.
Against the Nations 2.46Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · It is impious to think that the good and perfect God made man, a wretched creature, or is the cause of any evil.
Against the Nations 2.54Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius sets out the dilemma of evil: if all happens by God's will, he causes evil; if not, evil happens against his will or knowledge; and evil cannot be denied.
Against the Nations 2.55Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius declines to explain why God permits evil, holding only that nothing harmful comes from God, who does only what is good.
Acts of Archelaus 5Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century · Mani’s letter to Marcellus attacks belief in one principle and in Christ’s birth from Mary.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 16Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Manes sets out his doctrine of two natures and two places and argues from the variety of human faces that man was made by the rulers and matter, not by God.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 18Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · The judges define change; Archelaus argues that two unchangeable natures could not be told apart, while changeable ones imply a single unbegotten principle, and demands to know against whom evil acted before creation.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 19Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Archelaus presses Manes on the fruits of the evil tree: if they are human sins, men would be the tree, and evil could cease when men stop sinning or perish.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 20Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Manes says the evil one was always evil; Archelaus argues that the serpent became evil only after man, that the law given to man is God's, and that man could not be the work of a witless evil principle.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 25Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · The judges argue that light fills the world; Archelaus explains darkness as the shadow cast by created bodies, chiefly the earth, so that it is not unbegotten.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 27Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Manes says the good God set the firmament as a wall; Archelaus argues that a walled God is weak, and that whoever threw the wall down, God or the evil one, Manes's system fails.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 67Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Archelaus argues that Manes did not invent his dualism but took it over, and quotes the thirteenth book of Basilides's treatises on light and darkness as an earlier witness to it.
Homilies 3.5Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter explains that the false passages were permitted at the evil one’s demand, since the evil one, loving God, seeks the destruction of the impious while the good one seeks their healing.
Homilies 18.23Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter tells Simon he is a servant of wickedness; Simon asks where evil comes from, the question is put off till the next day, and Simon's followers repent and are received by Peter.
Homilies 19.3Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter refuses to speculate beyond Scripture about the devil's origin, but Simon insists that reasoning can settle whether the evil one was originated or unoriginated.
Homilies 19.4Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Simon lists every possible way in which the evil one could have come into existence, so as to trace him to a blameworthy cause.
Homilies 19.5Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter answers that whether the evil one was made by God or always existed, God is not to be blamed for making, tolerating, or being unable to change him.
Homilies 19.8Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter reluctantly agrees to examine the devil's origin, on the rule that the view most reverent toward God must be chosen, and promises to show God blameless.
Homilies 19.9Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter restates the possible origins of the evil one, and answers Simon's first argument with the example of good parents who have bad children, like Adam with Cain and Abel.
Homilies 19.12Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter explains that God put forth the four elements, which, mixed outside him by his will, became a living being meant to destroy the wicked, so that evil comes neither from another source nor from God's own nature.
Homilies 19.13Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter argues that the evil one's disposition arose by God's will in mixing the elements, since nothing living and ruling can arise by chance.
Recognitions 3.16Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter shows that Simon's question was badly put and denies that everyone agrees evil exists.
Recognitions 4.23Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter answers the question why God made evil beings by asserting that nothing is evil by substance.
Recognitions 8.48Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Evils entered the world through human sin, as shown by the chaste Seres, who keep purity laws and live long without disease, while believers suffer among the wicked in hope of what is to come.
Recognitions 8.51Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Disorder in the world comes from unbelief and sin: when humans shed blood and sacrificed to demons, the elements were corrupted and passed that corruption on to them.
Recognitions 8.52Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · God appointed two princes, one over the ordered good and one over disorder and evil, so that every good thing in nature has an opposing evil since human will turned to wickedness.
Recognitions 8.56Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Evil did not always exist and comes from rational creatures who exceed God's laws, not from God; what we will be judged on is simply not doing to others what we would not suffer.
Recognitions 10.5Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Faustinianus presents the Greek view that nothing is good or evil by nature—not murder, adultery, or theft—and Plato's teaching that friends should hold all things, even wives, in common.
Recognitions 10.9Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Using astrology's own terms, Clement shows that adultery, murder, and theft come from the same malign stars as fevers and fires, so by the old man's own principles they are evil.
Recognitions 10.49Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · God did not make evil; creatures fell by disbelieving judgment, and God's patience delays punishment for the sake of conversion, offering baptism to wash away sins of ignorance.
Divine Institutes 2.8.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Envy of the first-born Son is the source of all evils.
Divine Institutes 2.17.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God permits evil so that good may be tested, and he will judge the living and the dead at the end.
Divine Institutes 5.7.5Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God allowed evil so that virtue could exist.
Divine Institutes 5.7.6Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God lets the wicked be strong and many so virtue is tested and rare.
Divine Institutes 5.7.8Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Virtue needs evil to fight against.
On the Anger of God 13.13Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · The true answer: God made man in his image and gave him wisdom, which needs both good and evil to discern between them.
On the Anger of God 13.16Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Without evils to guard against, wisdom would have nothing to do.
On the Anger of God 13.20Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · This also answers Epicurus's dilemma: God either wills to remove evil and cannot, or can and will not, or neither, or both.
On the Anger of God 13.21Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Each option seems to make God weak or envious, except the last, which raises the question where evil comes from.
On the Anger of God 13.23Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · God can remove evil but does not, because he gave wisdom, which leads to knowing God and to immortality, the highest good.
On the Anger of God 15.2Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · God permits evil so that good may shine, since opposites define each other, as the world itself is made of opposites.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.47Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Evil originates only in the soul's free turning aside from the natural, straight way.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.54Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Fatalism makes God the cause of blasphemy, unnatural acts, and murder.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.55Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · If God made the stars to compel sin, he is the cause of sin.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.6.56Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Either way, fatalism makes God, not man, the sinner.
Preparation for the Gospel 6.11.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Blaming a separate Creator for evil cannot make him just.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.22.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · If matter is in God, God becomes the place of evil, the very thing the theory meant to avoid.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.22.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Maximus turns to the origin of evil, the real motive for positing eternal matter.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.22.20Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The opponent agrees evils are qualities of substances.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.22.21Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Then God would be the creator of evils, so positing matter does not help.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.22.22Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The opponent asks to redefine evil; Maximus welcomes the honest inquiry.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.22.23Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The opponent now holds that evils are substances; Maximus examines what substance is.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.22.28Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · So evils, being activities, are not substances.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.22.29Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Murder is an act of a substance, not itself a substance.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.22.30Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · A person is called evil from his acts, as a physician from medicine, without the acts being his substance.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.22.31Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Even the devil is called evil from his acts, which are not his substance.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.22.33Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Evil names come from acts, not from substance.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.22.34Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Evil had a beginning, so it is not unbegotten.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.22.47Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · If God improved matter's qualities, evil is unexplained, or God caused it.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.22.49Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · If God could remove evil but did not, he is its cause.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.22.50Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · By fashioning part of matter and leaving part evil, God would be to blame.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.22.51Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Ordered matter now suffers evil it could not perceive before.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.22.52Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Creating man would only have made matter able to suffer evil.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.22.53Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · If God cannot remove evil, he is weak or subject to a stronger power.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.14.53Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Natural disasters are by-products of the elements, not works of God, who causes no evil.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.29.14Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Evil cannot be destroyed; it haunts mortal nature.
Preparation for the Gospel 12.30.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Scripture too says evil belongs to this earthly life.
Preparation for the Gospel 13.3.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The good cannot harm and so cannot cause evil.
Preparation for the Gospel 13.3.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · God, being good, is not the cause of evils.
Preparation for the Gospel 13.3.14Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Poets who make the gods causes of evil are rejected, including Aeschylus.
Preparation for the Gospel 13.3.38Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses calls all God’s works good; Scripture teaches that God is not the cause of evils.
Preparation for the Gospel 13.3.39Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The vine passage shows evil comes from free choice; God’s punishments are remedies like a physician’s.
Preparation for the Gospel 13.3.40Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Scripture’s “evils from God” are beneficial discipline, as both Plato and Proverbs teach.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 24.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Why does God permit evil and why did he make the devil?
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 24.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Virtue needs vice to overcome, so good cannot exist without evil.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 24.4Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Chrysippus rejected the idea that God made good but not evil.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 24.5Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Gellius reports the argument that evils disprove providence.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 24.6Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Chrysippus replies that goods cannot exist without evils.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 24.10Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Good and evil cannot exist apart.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 24.11Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · God allowed evils as a contest in which the virtuous win immortality.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 63.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Plato said God made the world because he is good, yet there are evils in it.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 63.2Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · A cynic could reply that God is evil; Plato blames evil on matter.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 63.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · If evil is eternal matter and good was made, evil would be stronger.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 63.4Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Plato's view would make God both good and evil.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.10.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The angels of the nations could not prevent humanity’s freely chosen fall, and a deep sickness of evil gripped the world.
Against the Heathen 2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Evil did not exist at first: God made humanity in his image through the Word, to contemplate him in purity, as Adam did in paradise.
Against the Heathen 4Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The soul, free and always in motion, mistook pleasure for the good and turned the body’s members from their proper uses to evil.
Against the Heathen 6Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Against Greeks and heretics who give evil its own existence, Athanasius argues from Scripture and reason that there is one God, Lord of heaven and earth.
Against the Heathen 7Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Two opposed first principles are impossible; evil is not a being but the soul’s self-made darkness when it shuts its eye to God.
On the Incarnation 4.5Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Turning to evil, which has no real being, humans lose their hold on being itself and remain in death.
Letter to Marcellinus 18Athanasius of Alexandria · uncertain, after 335 · Psalms for the persecuted, the newly baptized, common worship, rescue from enemies, rejecting the heretics' claim that evil is natural, warning against envy of the wicked, mercy to the poor, and remembering God's past benefits.
Catechetical Lecture 6.13Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Cyril refutes the doctrine of two unbegotten principles: they cannot coexist, and a good God who cannot or will not prevent evil is no God.
Catechetical Lecture 6.24Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Archelaus refuted Manes in public debate; Manes fled, was caught and flayed by the Persian king. Cyril warns against the Manichaeans’ Gospel of Thomas, their teaching on food, their curses on the Creator, and their rites.
To Justinus the Manichaean 9Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author contrasts Babylonian magic with Christ's raising of buried flesh, insists that Christ was born of a virgin, died and rose in real flesh, and argues that darkness and evil have no being of their own but arise from the act of another, as cold from wind.
To Justinus the Manichaean 10Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author explains that darkness, like ice from water, is not a substance but appears only through the act of another and perishes when light shines, so that it cannot be a second principle.
To Justinus the Manichaean 13Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author compares evil to a shadow, which has no substance but depends on a solid body, and urges Mani's follower to confess that nothing exists that is not from the one eternal Lord.
To Justinus the Manichaean 14Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author argues that no evil can dwell in the highest heavens, that a conquered power cannot be a principle, and that there cannot be two infinites, so God alone is the one principle.
To Justinus the Manichaean 15Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author argues that the Almighty is not bound by the rule that created things produce only their like, that evil in the proper sense is a demon, an angelic creature, and that other evils have no substance.
Tractates on the Psalms 53.10Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The innocent may trust God's help in persecution and death; God is not the author of evil but turns punishment on the wicked while sparing the righteous.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.1Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Titus contrasts the church’s way of clearing God of blame for sin, by blaming ourselves, with Mani’s doctrine of an eternal evil principle opposed to God.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.15Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · If evil is corruption, it cannot be an eternal, incorruptible substance.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.16Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Titus promises to show that the supposed disorder of the world is the highest order and that so-called evils are either deeds or not evil at all.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.18Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Matter’s supposed disorder, growth and late uprising are incoherent whether matter is rational or irrational.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.29Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Human sins presuppose body and soul joined in a world, so by Mani’s own myth the mixture of good and evil produced evils that matter alone never had.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.31Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Whether God wished the world or was compelled, Mani’s account makes God the cause of the evils that came with the world.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.2Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Titus states his thesis: all things are very good and each has its purpose in the whole; only human injustice is truly evil.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.8Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Freedom to sin is a benefit, because virtue among men consists chiefly in refusing evil that one could do; God alone is good by pure beneficence.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.10Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · God’s inability to do wrong is the perfection of his will, not weakness; in men evil exists only when done.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.31Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Darkness is not a substance but the absence of light, like a shadow; the sun exists at night, but darkness does not exist by day.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.39Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Wild animals and Mani’s irrational evil alike cannot be evil, since evil requires knowledge, as the pardon given to the delirious shows.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 75Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Nebuchadnezzar’s confession of God after the furnace shows that even the wicked can know the good; evil is not a substance but a sickness, and Satan is fallen, as Isaiah and Christ testify.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 77Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · If the light could be changed and made forgetful of itself, it was not unbegotten; and if change is possible, God should have changed evil to good rather than allow the good to be captured.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 88Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Paul calls the Law holy and spiritual; it opposes every one of the four kinds of vice, and where it is obeyed evil loses its power.
Oration 40.45Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory writes on the hearts of the candidates a “new decalogue” of faith: creation from nothing, evil not created by God, the incarnation, death, resurrection, ascension and return of the Son, judgment, and good works; the rest is taught after baptism.
Hexaemeron 2.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Darkness over the abyss is not an evil power opposed to God, as Marcionites, Valentinians, and Manichees claim; evil is not a substance but the soul's falling away from the good.
Hexaemeron 2.5Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Evil is chosen, not a nature; the darkness of Genesis 1:2 is the shadow cast by the newly made heaven, which shut out the light in which the spiritual creation already lived.
Hexaemeron 5.4Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Poisonous plants are not a charge against the Creator: they feed some animals, serve medicine, and can be avoided by reason.
Homilies 9.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Basil argues that God is not the author of evil: true evil is sin, arising from free will; sufferings are medicinal or corrective; Scripture's 'evils from the Lord' mean chastisements or refashioning; evil has no substance of its own but is the privation of good, and death came from Adam's turning away from God.
Commentary on 2 Timothy 2:21Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · Since anyone can purge himself and become a vessel for honor, the heresy that some souls are evil by nature is refuted.
Question 1, section 3Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Since God made all things good, evil is no nature but the will’s transgression of good, doing what is not allowed or doing what is allowed out of order, as with a prostitute rather than a wife.
Question 1, section 6Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Things called evil, like poison, darkness, or lead, are evil only relative to us or by comparison, and each is good in its place.
Question 2, section 8Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · Scripture condemns the devil to Gehenna because he knew and could do good yet chose evil; so no nature is evil, and all evil comes from the will.
Question 34, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · “Good and evil, life and death are from God” means that God judges: punishment is “evil” to those who suffer it, and death is from sin, God being its judge, not its author.
Letter 133.9Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome denies holding the Manichaean view of an evil nature, appealing to Paul on the frailty of the flesh and to God's inscrutable justice.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 24.6.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Basilides' error began with the question of the origin of evil.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 24.6.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Evil has no substance; it exists only in those who do it.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 24.6.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · God made all things very good; evil began with human choice.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 24.6.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Evil depends on choice and has no root of its own.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 27.4.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They teach that nothing is evil by nature.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 64.30.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Evil is the misuse of free will, not God’s work.
On Paradise 8Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · The tree of knowledge serves the whole, as gall serves the body: without knowledge of evil we could not know the excellence of the good.
On Paradise 40Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · Against heretics who distinguish the good God from a maker of sinful man, Ambrose shows that their own premises lead to contradiction.
On Paradise 41Ambrose · ca. 375-378 · God is not unjust in permitting evil, since he left remedies through repentance, and grace returns more richly to the one who recovers what he lost.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 61Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · The passions were not given for evil: like iron they can be shaped by free choice into tools of virtue or vice; ruled by reason they serve virtue, but when reason drops the reins they make man brutish.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 101Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Evil, existing only in choice, will vanish when every choice is in God. Gregory fears long suffering; Macrina urges keeping sins few and curable, since, as the Gospel’s debtors show, each will pay in torment until all is paid, and then be free.
On the Soul and the Resurrection, Migne page 103Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–380 · Freed from vice, all will be in God, who will become “all in all”: everything we now need will be supplied by God himself, and therefore evil will no longer exist at all.
Homily 2Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–394 · Gregory reads Eccl 1:12–2:3 of Christ the true Ecclesiast who came to seek out evil under heaven, denies that God gave evil (the abuse of free choice is the cause), and expounds Solomon’s testing of wisdom, laughter and pleasure as a search for the lasting good, which he identifies with the work of faith.
Homily 5Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 379–394 · On Eccl 2:12–26 Gregory treats departure from vice as the beginning of the virtuous life, identifies true Wisdom with Christ and vice with the privation of the good, reads “the wise man’s eyes are in his head” of eyes fixed on Christ the head, and answers the objections that death makes wise and fool equal and that eating and drinking are the good.
On the Making of Man 12Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · The mind is not housed in the heart or the brain but touches the whole body, as a musician uses an instrument; when the nature turns from the good toward matter, beauty is lost and evil arises.
On the Making of Man 20Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · The forbidden tree bore a “mixed” fruit: evil disguised as good, attractive to sense but deadly; by tasting it man, God’s image, became like vanity.
On the Making of Man 21Gregory of Nyssa · 379 · Because evil has a limit while the good is infinite, the ever-moving human nature, having run through evil, must turn back to the good; so the restoration of paradise and the image is to be expected.
Book of Heresies 79.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Colluthus and his opponent disputed whether God makes evils.
Book of Heresies 79.2Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Isaiah and Amos speak of God creating evils.
Book of Heresies 79.3Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Such evils are punishments that God permits for sin.
Book of Heresies 79.4Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Genesis and Wisdom show that God made nothing evil by nature.
Book of Heresies 101.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Some say God sends evil kings and false prophets.
Book of Heresies 101.3Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · God permits the evil to destroy the evil but does not send them.
Catechetical Oration 5Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · God, who is Word, Wisdom, and Power, made man out of love in his image, good and free; evil is not from God but is the absence of good, arising when the free will turns away from it.
Catechetical Oration 7Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · Against the Manichaeans, Gregory argues that God is not the cause of evil: evil is the privation of good and arises from the will, and bodily pain is wrongly judged evil by those who measure good by pleasure.
On the Life of Moses 345Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · The plagues of blood and frogs figure the corruption of faith by false teaching and the filthy “amphibious” life of the licentious, which shows itself in house, table, and secret life; the hardening of Pharaoh raises the question of God’s part in evil.
On the Life of Moses 347Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · God does not cause vice: being “given up” to passion or “hardened” means that whoever refuses to know God falls by his own choice, as one who will not look at the sun falls into a pit; the frogs die when Moses stretches out his hands, a figure of Christ on the cross.
Exposition of Psalm 118 16.18.3Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · The “evils” God creates are corrective punishments; the law restrains the guilty.
Letter 264.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine tells Maxima that heresies troubling her province were foretold and that God uses the evil of the wicked to prove and train the good.
On Order 1.1Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Augustine introduces to Zenobius the problem of order: how God can govern the world when so much perversity fills human affairs, a problem that tempts men to deny either providence or God's goodness.
On Order 1.16Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · As Augustine rejoices at Licentius's turn to philosophy, Licentius exclaims that both good and evil are within order.
On Order 2.2Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Licentius qualifies his definition: where all is good, as with God, there is supreme equality and no need of order, but order governs good and evil together.
On Order 2.12Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Augustine illustrates how evils find a place in the order of the whole with the executioner in a well-ordered city, prostitutes in society, the unseemly members of the body, and the defeated cock.
On Order 2.22Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Augustine asks whether God was just before evil existed; Monica sees the difficulty, and Trygetius answers that God was always just, as Cicero's virtues existed before Catiline gave them occasion to act.
On Order 2.23Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Augustine shows that if evil arose before order or by order, either something happens outside order or God is the author of evil; Monica answers that evil did not arise by God's order but that his justice brought it into the order it deserved.
On Order 2.46Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Augustine advises Monica to keep the faith she received in the sacraments and lists the hard questions about God, evil, and creation, including the Manichaean view that evil harmed God and that the soul is of God's substance, which should be approached only through the order of learning.
Soliloquies 1.1Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Reason urges Augustine to write down what he finds, and he opens with a long prayer to God as the source of truth, wisdom, life and happiness, asking to be healed and to return to him.
Homilies on Matthew 59.2John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · God did not make Adam or anyone wicked; we ourselves show that sin comes from choice when we blame others only for what they could control, and since men change from good to bad and back, wickedness is not of nature; evil is neither from God nor unbegotten.
Homilies on Matthew 59.3John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Evil is not unbegotten, a blasphemous doctrine, but comes from our willing to disobey God, as everyone’s alternating virtue and vice shows; our blaming and praising of others prove that no one is wicked by necessity, and the “woe” falls only on those wicked by choice.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.28Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · The earth was unformed because it was flooded and unadorned; the darkness was the absence of light, not evil powers.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.30Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Evil is not a creature of God but arises from human changeableness; the dualist heresies are wrong.
Hexameron (Exameron) 1.31Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Evil is not a substance but a perversion of the will; we are its cause, and outward misfortunes are not true evils.
Hexameron (Exameron) 3.38Ambrose · ca. 387-390 · Harmful plants no more discredit the creator than bad men or fallen angels discredit creation.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 1.48.4Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · Evil is an accident in the soul, burned away by repentance; the soul's nature is precious.
On Free Choice of the Will 1.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Evodius asks whether God is the author of evil; Augustine distinguishes evil done from evil suffered and argues that evil cannot be learned, since learning and understanding are good.
On Free Choice of the Will 1.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Augustine recalls that this question drove him to the Manichaeans and sets out the faith from which the inquiry starts: one good, almighty Creator, who is not the author of sin, and his begotten Son.
On Free Choice of the Will 1.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Testing why adultery is evil, Augustine rejects the law, the golden rule, and condemnation by courts as the reason and locates the evil in lust (libido), which makes even the unfulfilled desire guilty.
On Free Choice of the Will 2.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · The will's turning from God is a defective motion that comes from nothing and not from God, since every nature with measure, number, and order is from God; man fell of his own will but can rise only by Christ, God's right hand.
On Free Choice of the Will 3.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Sins done by the will of sinners cannot be attributed to the Creator; even one who says he would rather not exist than be miserable still wills to exist, and whatever misery follows is either just or will not happen.
On Free Choice of the Will 3.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Every nature, insofar as it is a nature, is good, since corruption makes it less good; every substance is God or from God, and blaming a rational creature's fault, which is against its nature, praises both its nature and its Maker.
On Free Choice of the Will 3.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · No nature is corrupted by another's fault without its own consent unless it is weaker; only faulty corruption is blameworthy, and blaming a fault praises the nature it damages.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Asking first what evil is, Augustine argues that evil is what is against nature, a falling away from being toward non-being, so that no nature or substance is evil and God, the author of all natures, is not the author of evil.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · If evil is what harms, and harm is loss of good, then in the Manichaean system evil can harm neither the kingdom of darkness, which has no good, nor the kingdom of light, which is inviolable.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Catholic teaching distinguishes God, good by his own nature, from creatures, good by participation and able to fall short; evil is a privation, not an essence, and God is not its author.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · If evil is corruption, it exists only in a good substance that it corrupts, so the Manichaean race of darkness, lacking all good, could not be corrupted.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Corruption is not a substance but a falling away from being toward non-being; being means order and unity, and the highest evil would be the non-being toward which corruption tends.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · God's goodness orders all failing things, including souls that fall by free choice, so that nothing reaches non-being; Isaiah's “I create evil” means God orders, not makes, what is failing.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Evil is not a substance such as a scorpion's poison but the unsuitability between things, as shown by poison, food, salt, the elements, and even the sun the Manichaeans worship, all helpful in one relation and harmful in another.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine shows that the Manichaean kingdom of darkness, with its five caverns and their animals, as they describe it, is full of goods such as strength, sight, speech, fruitfulness, order, and life, and so cannot be the highest evil.
On True Religion 11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine argues that all life and all bodies, insofar as they exist, come from God and are good, while wickedness is the soul's voluntary turning from God toward bodies and so toward nothingness.
On True Religion 13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine explains that the devil is evil not by nature but by his own will, having fallen through pride by loving himself more than God.
On True Religion 19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine argues that whatever can be corrupted is good, since corruption harms only what has some soundness, and that only God is the incorruptible good.
On True Religion 20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine explains that evil is not a substance but the soul's disordered will in preferring lower goods, illustrating with the tree of paradise, a stylus, and the sun, and warns against imagining God as boundless bodily light.
On True Religion 23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 389–391 · Augustine concludes that no nature is evil, that the restored soul will possess the world rather than be possessed by it, and that the universe remains beautiful through the condemnation of sinners, the testing of the just, and the perfection of the blessed.
On Two Souls 10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · To the question “where does evil come from?” Augustine would have answered that one must first know God, the highest good, and that the Manichaeans wrongly trust the eyes over the mind.
On Two Souls 16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Applying the definitions: if the Manichaean evil souls had no will they were innocent, and if they willed and sought the good they already had knowledge of good, even the sight of God, so their “highest evil” is full of goods.
Sermon 38.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · In this world goods and evils fall alike on good and bad; those who serve God for earthly reward lose heart when the wicked prosper, and so lose eternity.
Sermon 48.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Even now it goes badly with the wicked, because they suffer their own evil selves; riches are goods to do good with, but only judgment and justice make a person good.
Sermon 80.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Bad times are made by bad people; God lets evils abound so that the world may not be loved, and the good must bear with the bad until the harvest.
Sermon 96.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The world is evil only in its lovers who prefer it to God; God made their nature, not their fault.
Sermon 182.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Against the Manichaean argument that a spirit not from God proves a second nature, Augustine answers that the error is not from God but the man is: the spirit's vice must be healed, not its nature separated, since only the Trinity is immutable and creatures are good but changeable.
Sermon 214.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God's almightiness is not defeated by the wicked, for he uses their evil deeds well, as he used the betrayal and crucifixion for our redemption.
Sermon 297.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Good days are not found in this life; we make our days bad, since most evils come from people; pray to be delivered from the evil man, oneself, for then no other evil man can harm you.
Sermon 297.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Paul, once an evil man to himself, was delivered from himself on the Damascus road; afterward the evil men who persecuted and killed him could not harm him, but only gave occasion for his crown.
Sermon 301.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The wicked, like Antiochus, have a place in this world, since God, as a painter uses black, uses evil people well: through Antiochus he tested his people and crowned the martyrs, and through the devil and Judas he brought about our redemption.
Sermon 301.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Those who live by faith should grieve at the false happiness of the wicked; as in Psalm 73, the puzzle of the wicked prospering and the good suffering is solved only by entering God’s sanctuary and understanding the last things.
On the Profit of Believing 36Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391–392 · Augustine urges Honoratus to entrust himself to Catholic teachers and to pray, rejects the Manichaean account of evil and their charges against the Old Testament, and closes the book.
Acts of the Debate with Fortunatus the Manichaean 15Augustine of Hippo · 28–29 August 392 · Augustine explains evil as voluntary sin and its just punishment, made possible by the free choice God gave the soul.
Acts of the Debate with Fortunatus the Manichaean 19Augustine of Hippo · 28–29 August 392 · Augustine cites Romans 1:3–4 on Christ's descent from David according to the flesh; Fortunatus rejects it, the first day breaks up after he says the Word of God is bound in darkness, and on the second day he restates that evils are foreign to God.
Acts of the Debate with Fortunatus the Manichaean 20Augustine of Hippo · 28–29 August 392 · Augustine argues that a faith in an incorruptible God whose creatures sin by free will is worthier than one that makes God's own part suffer; Fortunatus replies that we sin unwillingly, compelled by a hostile substance.
Acts of the Debate with Fortunatus the Manichaean 21Augustine of Hippo · 28–29 August 392 · Augustine traces evil to sin and desire, the 'root of all evils', and presses the Manichaean on repentance; Fortunatus answers that desire in us is only a small part of an evil that pervades the world.
Acts of the Debate with Fortunatus the Manichaean 36Augustine of Hippo · 28–29 August 392 · Augustine asks why souls must suffer so long if God could not be harmed, and Fortunatus has no answer.
On Illustrious Men 47Jerome · 392–393 · Maximus wrote on the origin of evil and the creation of matter.
Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis 1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393 · Augustine begins by insisting that obscure matters in Genesis be treated by inquiry, not assertion, within the bounds of the catholic faith, which he then summarizes: creation from nothing by the Trinity, evil as sin or its punishment, and redemption through Christ.
Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis 5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 393 · Augustine explains that God's “Let there be light” was spoken ineffably, distinguishes created light (bodily, sensory, or rational) from the begotten Wisdom of God, and treats darkness as a privation which God orders but does not make.
Against Adimantus, a Disciple of Mani 26Augustine of Hippo · ca. 394 · Augustine explains Amos 3:6 (“no evil … which the Lord will not do”) as evil suffered, that is, just punishment, which is good fruit of God's justice, and reads the good and bad trees of the gospel as people who can change their will.
Against Adimantus, a Disciple of Mani 27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 394 · Augustine reads Isaiah 45:7 (“I make peace and establish evils”) through Romans 11:22 as God's goodness and severity, and shows that each Testament contains what the Manichaeans praise and blame in the other.
On Continence 15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · God does not take pleasure in sins, though he permits them; his almighty goodness brings good out of evil by pardon, healing, martyrdom and just punishment.
On Continence 21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 395 · The conflict of flesh and spirit is a division of one nature caused by sin, not a mixture of two natures; evil is not a substance and will be wholly removed.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 3Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · Two unbegotten, eternal principles would share so much that evil could not be the pure contrary of good.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 4Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · The apostle names desire as the root of all evils.
On the Faith against the Manichaeans 9Evodius of Uzalis · ca. 400-424 · Evil is not a nature but sin and its punishment; sin comes from the free will of the rational soul.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Making a straight side crooked removes beauty but no substance, which shows that evil is not a substance but a loss of good; even the straightness of the dark land’s side is a good from God.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · In each of Mani’s five dark natures Augustine praises the goods (health, fruitfulness, form, harmony, life) that Mani’s own description implies.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 31Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Even the prince of smoke has the goods of an ordered soul and body; Mani’s dark natures are the lowest goods, and evil is the absence of good.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 33Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Every nature, insofar as it is a nature, is good: remove the evils and the nature remains better, remove the goods and nothing remains.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 34Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · The goods in natures can be thought of without their evils but not the reverse; Mani, like a man frightened by a lion, saw only what displeased him and missed the goods that come from God.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 35Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · All evil is corruption, which is not a nature but against nature; whatever is corrupted loses some good, so Mani’s dark natures cannot be the supreme evil.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 36Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Mani asked where evil comes from before asking what it is; corruption arises because creatures were made by God from nothing, not begotten of him.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 38Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Natures are from God, their corruptibility from the nothing from which they were made; God orders corruption to punish sinners and train those returning to him.
Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental 40Augustine of Hippo · ca. 396–397 · Growth in form moves a thing toward being and corruption toward not being; so form is from God, who supremely is, and corruption from nothing, and no nature is contrary to God.
Confessions 3.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine explains that the Manichees won him over with questions about the origin of evil, God's form, and the conduct of the patriarchs, because he did not yet know that evil is the privation of good and that God is spirit.
Confessions 4.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine recalls how, thinking only in bodily images, he conceived of good and evil as two substances, a Monad and a Dyad, not knowing that evil is no substance.
Confessions 5.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine describes his former Manichaean conception of good and evil as two infinite material masses, which also made him deny that Christ truly took flesh from the Virgin Mary.
Confessions 7.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Though he still could not explain the origin of evil, Augustine was sure it must not be explained by making God changeable, as the Manichees did.
Confessions 7.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine began to see that the free choice of the will is the cause of sin, yet he still asked where an evil will could come from if God, who is wholly good, made him and the devil.
Confessions 7.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Picturing creation as a finite sponge within the infinite sea of God, Augustine asked in anguish where evil could come from if a good God made all things good, while still holding to the faith of Christ in the catholic church.
Confessions 7.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Freed from astrology but still anguished over the origin of evil, Augustine held firm to faith in God, Christ, and Scripture, while his pride kept him bound to bodily images.
Confessions 7.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Whatever exists is good; evil is not a substance but a loss of good.
Confessions 7.19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Things that seem evil fit the lower parts of an ordered universe, and the whole creation praises God.
Confessions 7.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Wickedness is not a substance but a will that turns away from God toward lower things.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 20.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that the Manichaeans misuse the Greek term hyle, which philosophers use for formless matter, by making it a forming mind and the principle of evil.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 21.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine says the Manichaeans invent an evil god because they cannot see that one God shows both mercy and judgment, goodness and severity.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 21.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that the Manichaean Hyle, as maker of bodies, is in effect a second god, and that they judge good and evil only by what pleases or offends the senses.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 21.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine shows that Faustus’s pairs of opposites cannot be divided into good and evil, since black olives are sweet and heat brings fever.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 21.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that sweetness and poison depend on what suits each body, so Faustus’s comparison of God and Hyle to antidote and poison fails.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 21.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that by the Manichaeans’ own account the kingdom of darkness had real goods and their God had evils, so the two cannot be pure good and pure evil.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 21.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine argues that in the Manichaean myth their God harms his own members more than the race of darkness does, condemning part of himself to the final globe, so that the supposed antidote is worse than the poison.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 25.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Faustus argues that the Catholic prayer to the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” makes God limited, and that the existence of evil proves God is not infinite.
Against Secundinus the Manichaean 11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine defines evil as a voluntary falling away of a being from what is more to what is less, and refers Secundinus to his three books On Free Choice, available from Paulinus at Nola.
Against Secundinus the Manichaean 13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine analyzes the soul's consent to evil: it must belong to the soul, so on Manichaean premises the soul itself would be evil, or else its coming would increase evil.
Against Secundinus the Manichaean 14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine argues that if the soul's evil consent were a substance, the soul could create evil natures and there would be three natures, not Mani's two; so consent is not a substance but exists in a substance.
Against Secundinus the Manichaean 15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine concludes that evil consent is not a substance but a voluntary falling away within the good substance of the soul, and compares the passing of temporal things to the ordered succession of syllables in speech.
Against Secundinus the Manichaean 16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine argues that what the soul consents to in sin is good in its own kind but loved wrongly, illustrating this with the sun, which the Manichaeans worship, loved so immoderately that a man wrongs his neighbors.
Against Secundinus the Manichaean 18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine argues from Secundinus's own admission that the soul sins by consenting: both the persuader and the one who consents are good natures made evil by sin, so there is no nature of evil.
Against Secundinus the Manichaean 19Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine asks where the soul's capacity to be corrupted came from before any contact with evil; if it is God's substance, God would be changeable, so evil must be the free will of a creature made from nothing.
On the Nature of the Good 2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine addresses those who, troubled by evil and mortality, posit a second nature not made by God, and starts from their own admission that every good is from God.
On the Nature of the Good 4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Evil is nothing but the corruption of a nature's measure, form, or order; a corrupted nature is good as nature and evil as corrupted.
On the Nature of the Good 7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Rational spirits cannot be corrupted unless they will it; if they abandon obedience they are corrupted willingly by sin and unwillingly by punishment, which is justice.
On the Nature of the Good 12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Those who posit another nature would avoid their blasphemies if they held to their own admission that all goods, great and small, come only from God.
On the Nature of the Good 17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · No nature is evil as nature; evil is the diminishing of good, and if all good were removed no nature, including the Manichaean one, would remain.
On the Nature of the Good 18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Formless matter (hyle) is not evil, since its capacity for form is a good and it too comes from God; Mani's hyle, a former of bodies, amounts to a second god.
On the Nature of the Good 28Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · “All things from him” means natures, not sins, which vitiate nature and come from the will of sinners, as Rom 2:3–6 shows.
On the Nature of the Good 37Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · If all natures kept their measure, form, and order there would be no evil; those who misuse goods do not defeat God, who uses their evils well by ordering them justly in punishment.
On the Nature of the Good 41Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · The Manichaeans' two natures put many goods in their highest evil (the princes of darkness have life, memory, beauty, order) and many evils in God's own nature, which Christ must heal and free.
On the Nature of the Good 43Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399 · Augustine argues that on Manichaean premises God's nature already contained great evils before any mixture, necessity, a cruel will, ignorance, or misery.
Christian Questions to the Greeks 1Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The Christian asks whether God should deliver humanity from ignorance of him, the greatest evil; a Greek answers that no greatest evil exists and that God must keep the world as it is; the Christian refutes the answer point by point and defends the re-creation of the world.
Christian Questions to the Greeks 6.3Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Nothing is opposed to God, against Plato's eternal evil; and matter, which is no particular thing, has no being of its own.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 46Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Nothing in creation is evil by nature; abstaining from or using the goods of life is praiseworthy when done rightly and blameworthy when not, and evil arises only from misuse by free choice.
Questions and Answers to the Orthodox 73–74Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · Evil is a turning from the good, not its necessary contrast, and what preceded the world was simply nothing; and paganism cannot return as true religion did, since the end is the judgment by fire through Christ, whose kingdom is everlasting, and persecution only strengthened Christianity.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 8.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · The forbidden tree was not evil in itself; the prohibition showed the good of obedience and the evil of disobedience as such, since sin sought escape from God's dominion.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 8.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Adam learned good and evil by the experience of disobedience; evil is the loss of good, and Christ alone chose the good without experience of evil, the singular example of obedience.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 8.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · The unchangeable Trinity orders all natures and wills: natures without will are subject to those with will, in an order of subordination, and evil wills are punished by their own wickedness.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine confesses he cannot fathom why God allowed the temptation, but suggests that a virtue never tested would win little praise, and that God rightly uses even evil wills.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · God foreknew but did not cause the evil will of the wicked; he made them knowing what good he would bring out of their evil.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · The punishment of some corrects many, as everyone sees in his own household; God, not the author of evil, creates the wicked for the benefit of the good.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Against heretics who give the devil a separate evil principle, Augustine holds that his nature is good as God's creature and that he fell by proud and envious will.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 11.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · The view that the devil was created evil contradicts the goodness of creation and divine justice; it is his own will, not his nature, that is punished.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 27.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · God, supremely good, uses evil well, as he used Judas's betrayal for our redemption and Satan's persecution for the martyrs' crowns; the twelve remained twelve when Matthias replaced Judas.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 98.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Solid food is the trained understanding that distinguishes good from evil; without the milk of faith the weak fall into fables like the Manichees', who make evil a substance.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 110.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · God's love is unchanging: he loved us before the world and before reconciliation, hating our sin while loving his own work in us.
City of God 11.17Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Vice is contrary to nature and proves the goodness of the nature it harms; God uses even the devil's evil will for the good of the saints.
City of God 11.18Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · God orders even evil beings into the beauty of history as a poem is adorned by antitheses, as Paul's rhetoric and Sirach show.
City of God 11.22Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Things harmful to us are good in their place; evil is only the privation of good, and the Manichees err in making evil a nature and the soul a part of God.
City of God 12.1Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Good and evil angels share one good nature; they differ only by will, the good cleaving to God and the evil turning from him, and their fault itself shows how good that nature is.
City of God 12.3Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · God's enemies are so by fault, not nature; fault harms only a good nature, so evil can exist only in something good.
City of God 12.6Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The good angels are happy by cleaving to God, the evil wretched through pride; an evil will has no efficient cause, and arises not from nature but from a nature's having been made from nothing.
City of God 12.7Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · An evil will has no efficient cause but only a deficient one; its origin, like darkness or silence, is known only as a privation.
City of God 19.13Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine defines the peace of body, soul, household, city, and the heavenly city, and of all things as “the tranquillity of order,” showing that even the wretched and the devil remain within God's order, and that temporal peace, rightly used, leads to eternal peace.
Apologetic Book 29.3Orosius · ca. 415–416 · Pelagius accuses the catholics of calling nature evil.
Apologetic Book 29.4Orosius · ca. 415–416 · Anathema to anyone who calls God's creation evil.
Apologetic Book 29.5Orosius · ca. 415–416 · Human nature is weak, not evil.
On Marriage and Concupiscence 2.48Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–421 · Original sin comes from the will of the first man; evil wills arose in good creatures because they were made from nothing, and God works good even from evil.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Evil, well ordered, sets off the good, and God permits it because he can make good out of evil; evil is nothing but the privation of good.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Every nature is good, and corruption, which is evil, can destroy the good only by destroying the nature itself.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · There is no evil without some good in which it exists, so an evil man is an evil good: good as a man, evil as unrighteous.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · Unlike other contraries, good and evil exist together, for evil arises from and exists only in what is good.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · That evil arises from good does not contradict “a good tree cannot bear evil fruit,” for from man's good nature either a good or an evil will can spring.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · The cause of all good is God's goodness, and the cause of evil is the will of a changeable creature, first angel then man, falling away from the unchangeable good.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · The whole human race was a condemned mass under God's just wrath, sustained by his goodness; God would have been just to abandon it forever, but chose to show undeserved mercy.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 96Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · God does well even in permitting evil, since he permits it only by just judgment; otherwise he would not be almighty.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 101Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · A good will may differ from God's and an evil will coincide with it; God fulfills good purposes even through evil wills, as in Christ's death and Paul's sufferings.
On Grace and Free Will 2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 426 · Augustine proves from the commands and prohibitions of Scripture, Old and New, that man has free choice of the will and cannot blame God for his sins.
On Grace and Free Will 20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 426 · God has the wills of men in his power, turning even evil wills by a hidden but just judgment to punish sin or to help the good, as with Ai, Shimei, Judas, and Absalom.
Retractations 1.15Augustine of Hippo · 426-427 · Augustine describes his recorded debate with the Manichaean Fortunatus at Hippo and clarifies three statements in it.
The Conferences 6.2John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The question troubles those who expect the saints' reward in this life; to avoid blaming God, we must learn Scripture's definition of good and evil.
The Conferences 6.4John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Since only sin is evil, God never allows real evil to befall the saints; the devil could strip and torture Job but could not make him sin.
The Conferences 6.5John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Germanus cites Scripture passages that say God creates evil.
The Conferences 6.6John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Scripture calls afflictions “evils” loosely, as a patient calls surgery an evil; the killing of a holy man is not an evil for him but an indifferent thing that brings rest and reward.
The Conferences 8.6John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · God created nothing evil by nature, as Genesis says all he made was very good; the demons were not created evil.
Instructions 1.4Eucherius of Lyon · ca. 428-434 · “The world lies in the evil one” means that the vices of people in the world are evil, not that God made it so.
Objection and reply 10Prosper of Aquitaine · ca. 431-432 · If some have not heard the Gospel, this is by God's incomprehensible judgment; and God compels no one to sin, but justly abandons those whose sins deserve it.