On the Faith against the Manichaeans

Contents

Reading pages: 1–31 · 32–49

1. 1Evodius opens with a confession of the one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, creator of all.
2. 2If Mani's prince of darkness were unbegotten he would be immortal, contradicting the apostle's statement that God alone has immortality.
3. 3Two unbegotten, eternal principles would share so much that evil could not be the pure contrary of good.
4. 4The apostle names desire as the root of all evils.
5. 5Scripture, the Leucian Acts, and Mani's own Thesaurus and Fundamental Epistle all show that souls sin by their own will.
6. 6Evodius lists Mani's own phrases that admit voluntary sin.
7. 7Mani himself speaks of sinful souls, and Christ's warning of fire for the devil and his angels presupposes real sinners.
8. 8Since angels too are judged, sin must be voluntary, and each person is the author of his own evil through desire.
9. 9Evil is not a nature but sin and its punishment; sin comes from the free will of the rational soul.
10. 10Commands and judgment presuppose free will; evil is a turning away from God's commands.
11. 11Mani contradicts himself: God's kingdoms cannot be shaken, yet ruin from the darkness threatens them.
12. 12Mani's god, compelled by necessity, sent a part of himself into battle, where it was corrupted and mixed into all bodies.
13. 13According to Mani's Thesaurus, his god mourns behind a veil over the corruption of his lost part.
14. 14Evodius quotes Thesaurus book 7 on the Father's powers appearing as boys and virgins to arouse and so dissolve the hostile powers.
15. 15The quotation continues: the arousal of the hostile powers releases the living soul to rise to the luminous ships.
16. 16The quotation ends: what is still stained descends into plants, and the power in the ship of living waters works the same way on the cold powers.
17. 17Evodius denounces the teaching that God's substance is freed by arousing the lust of demons.
18. 18If the race of darkness could do nothing to God, why did he fight, and why is his part now captive and mourned?
19. 19Evodius rebuts the claim that God fought only to show foreknowledge and fearlessness.
20. 20If God attacked a harmless neighbour, he would himself be evil, cruel to his own part, or ignorant.
21. 21Christ suffered freely, out of mercy, to give an example of patience, unlike Mani's god, who suffered by necessity.
22. 22Christ was truly born of the virgin Mary, as the Gospel says; rejecting parts of Scripture at will leaves no rule for correcting error.
23. 23As death came through a woman, life came through a woman; God's power is no more defiled in Mary's womb than in the saints in whom it dwells.
24. 24Mani himself had flesh; God's purity is not defiled by contact, so Christ's birth from a virgin shows rather than threatens his purity.
25. 25Christ's words to his mother teach detachment from earthly kin, not that he had no mother; his showing of his wounds proves a real body.
26. 26Christ took a true humanity and suffered, died and rose by his own will and power, not by necessity.
27. 27An illustration of a prisoner and a visitor shows the difference between suffering by necessity and by will; God acts only by will.
28. 28Mani's Fundamental Epistle says the prince of darkness, not Christ, was crucified, so the Manichees' objection about the Jews does not fit their own teaching.
29. 29The Manichees' objection does not fit their own view of the passion.
30. 30Christ suffered when he willed, though those who sought his death were guilty by their will.
31. 31Christ suffered in the humanity he took and is now held by no one, while Mani's god was devoured in his own substance.
32. 32If Christ had no mortal flesh, his crucifixion and piercing would be a mere phantasm.
33. 33Mani, unable to accept either a phantasm or a suffering divine substance, ascribed the passion to the prince of darkness.
34. 34Evodius ridicules the Manichaean teaching that Christ suffers daily in vegetables.
35. 35Mani's god cannot be like an untouchable glass sphere if his part mourns, and the Manichees even say melons have a wiser soul than human beings.
36. 36If God's substance suffers no evil, all Mani's books are false; it is human beings who corrupt themselves by disobedience.
37. 37The Manichees attack Old Testament expressions that have equally striking parallels in the New Testament; read with goodwill, the two Testaments agree.
38. 38The Manichees allow figurative reading of the New Testament but not the Old, yet accept the Acts of Leucius, with its story of Maximilla deceiving her husband.
39. 39The Old Testament already contains the miracles and moral precepts the Manichees admire in the New; they should accept all the canonical Scriptures.
40. 40Against the Manichaean denial of the resurrection of the flesh, Evodius cites Paul: the body will be changed, not discarded.
41. 41The choice is between a weak god needing matter to free his part and the almighty God who creates by his word.
42. 42Evodius urges the deceived to repent, since even unbelief is a sin and cannot be blamed on the race of darkness.
43. 43If only the darkness sins, the light is sinless and Mani's condemned souls make no sense; and Christ calls sinners, not the righteous.
44. 44A being evil by necessity of nature could not sin; only a rational soul with free will can sin and be justly condemned.
45. 45Evodius urges the Manichees to read his work fairly and return to the catholic church.
46. 46Evodius sets out the catholic faith in the one, unchangeable triune God who creates by will and in mercy restores fallen humanity.
47. 47Evodius contrasts Mani's god, oppressed, ignorant, cruel, changeable and corrupted, with the catholic God.
48. 48Human souls, changeable and sinful, cannot be parts of the unchangeable God; they are his creatures.
49. 49Evodius concludes: human beings are God's works, not his parts, and Mani's system leaves even God helpless; the Manichees should flee to catholic truth.