To Florus — Book 5

5.1The dangers of every age have shown that respect for uncorrupted judgment flourishes among few people. Devoted to the pursuit of knowledge and eager for virtue, they can investigate the truth or dare to defend it once found. Or, as the apostle says, ‘They have their senses trained to distinguish good and evil’ (Hebrews 5:14). No storms of adversity break them, for they hear from the same teacher that they must resist sins to the point of shedding blood (Hebrews 12:4). These wise people, whom crowds of fools make appear few, therefore pursue knowledge and courage equally. Neither without the other attains either fruit or honor. Courage, unless directed by knowledge toward the best things, breaks out into contemptible madness. Conversely, the thoroughly tested laws of justice, unless enclosed by the wall of greatness of soul, will immediately lie open to plunder and be carried off into slavery to crimes. In different ages, therefore, very few have existed who cultivated, yoked, and drove this two-horse team, without which the world’s errors cannot be conquered. The pursuit of knowledge is impeded both by avoidance of labor and by the variety of worldly cares; steadfastness is shaken by fear of the troubles wicked people stir up. Faithful and wise minds indeed overcome these forms of assault. Yet they are so rare that among crowds of the insane they seem insane because they do not rage.

5.3The defender of natural evil attacks my books’ labor devoted to these matters. With what strength and how consistent an answer he does so, I have taught more than sufficiently in the preceding volumes’ discussion. I do not doubt that reading them makes this plain to every discerning person—the sort of person I have testified in this preface is rare: truth’s enemy strives only to make sport of simpler people’s ears, and thinks he has escaped if he merely appears to have answered somehow.

5.4Although it is established that we have achieved this abundantly, our work nevertheless grows long. Let the wise reader understand that brevity was indeed desirable to us, but the needs of the case demanded that error spread more widely by the world’s favor be defeated by a broader battle line of truth. Our discourse therefore extends for a reason. With Christ’s help, I trust that no part of the impiety against which we contend will be judged carelessly investigated, insufficiently discovered, or only moderately battered. We therefore neither can nor should despair that, as time advances, the storm that has arisen may subside and the authority of the wise correct the cowardly crowd now making its uproar. But our wish matters less than our settled judgment. Whatever outcome the state of affairs receives, our grounds of goodwill and faith will stand. We do not depend on the outcome of popular success. We know the declaration of the three young men in Babylon. When a most arrogant king tried to compel them to worship a statue, they resisted with complete faithfulness, undeterred by the panting furnace lit to devour the devout. They answered as faith and steadfastness required: ‘Our God is able, O king, to free us from this furnace. But even if he does not free us, know that we do not worship your gods or adore the statue you have set up’ (Daniel 3:17–18). How reverently they mingled desire with judgment, without letting desire weaken the weight of their resolve! They neither cast faith’s courage down through despair nor suspend it on craving. They include their wishes, but do not abandon the proper order; they comfort endurance, but subordinate gentler outcomes to just ones. ‘It is certain,’ they say, ‘that our God can free us; whether he wills to do so is uncertain. Therefore, amid the uncertain outcome of events, the devout hold to a certain resolution: to reject idols and endure punishments. Let God consider what good our deliverance may bring to others. Meanwhile,’ they say, ‘let undefeated faith preserve our true happiness.’ One whose adversity trades for his glory has no excessive need to indulge easier outcomes. From this discipline left by illustrious teachers, we too understand that we must maintain moderation in our wishes for prosperity, but permanence in our decisions about the doctrines of faith. We desire, with the swelling of persecution restrained, to help the peoples too. But if that does not happen, our resolution stands: to endure every bitterness of insult and danger rather than fail to reject Manichaean filth and pollution.

5.5But let us now approach the case. In both my earlier work and the present one, it has become clear that natural sexual desire, without which the union of the sexes cannot occur, was instituted by God, the creator of both human beings and animals (compare Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.25). Even by my opponent’s admission, this is so decisive that natural sin cannot possibly be maintained without blaming that desire—bodily sexual desire—and slandering sexual union.

5.6Since we have demonstrated this with the ability truth supplied, the discerning reader should have no further doubt about it. Wherever this appears in the writings of the advocate of inherited sin—who nevertheless cannot open his mouth without it—let it neither disturb listeners nor do anything except testify to its author’s shame. We will henceforth touch on it, if the matter compels us, with the brevity required. He attacks my statement: ‘This union of bodies, created by God with its heat, pleasure, and seed, is shown to be praiseworthy according to its own measure’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.25). But he passed over what I added: ‘Concerning something instituted by nature which sometimes also becomes a generous gift to the devout, even the devil does not dare to claim anything for himself with your effrontery.’

5.7Passing over these points, then, he accuses me of not saying ‘with lust.’ He adds, as befits his doctrine’s sharpness: ‘The fruitful production of children is a gift to the devout, not the shameful union of bodily parts. A healthy nature would not have had this in begetting children, but that same nature, now corrupted, does have it. Consequently, the one born from it needs to be reborn’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.25). How consistent it all is! He calls children’s existence a gift to the devout, but places under the devil what he affirms God gives: the children. Sexual desire, however, which is in the shameful union of bodily parts, he calls diabolical. He does not deny its presence in the parents, yet acquits them of guilt. Would you say this man was born of a human being? What the parents do, he says, is diabolical, yet they are not guilty. What the children are by being born is God’s work, yet they are guilty. And he still thinks he has fought the demon rather than God! Those who think sin is natural thoroughly deserve to suffer this madness.

5.8That Adam was to unite with his wife in no other way than the practice that developed is testified by the form of the organs, by God’s blessing pronounced no differently upon animals than upon human beings (Genesis 1:22, 28), and by the history itself, which shows bodily nature formed but does not declare it altered. Nothing against this universal testimony is found in God’s law—only in Mani’s books, which invent the claim that this sexual desire was poured in by the prince of darkness (Genesis 1:22) (Genesis 1:28).

5.9By both our practice and our speech, we testify that everyone must be reborn through baptism. But this benefit is not bestowed so that people seem to have been kidnapped from the devil’s rightful possession. Rather, those who are God’s works become God’s children; those born in a lowly condition, but not a guilty one, are reborn at great worth, but without a false accusation. Those who come forth from God’s institutions are advanced by God’s mysteries; those who bring nature’s works receive grace’s gifts. Their Lord, who made them good by creating them, makes them better by renewing and adopting them. You must therefore confess that it is rightly said that the natural sin Mani invented, which you call original sin with a change of name, has perished. Nor does the catholic faith handed down from ancient times believe it: that faith does not doubt that infants are made by God and that nothing evil is made by him. Consequently, it does not pronounce God’s works guilty or place them under the devil’s jurisdiction, through a prejudgment against nature, before they exercise free will.

5.10After this he passed over the whole continuous discussion of Abraham and Sarah, who received a son as a gift when their bodies were already as good as dead (Romans 4:19; Genesis 21:1–2). Even an ordinary reader, not only a wise one, understands how strongly their example supports the truth. He passed it over by saying it carried little weight against him. At least this statement, framed as follows, should have recalled him from such shamelessness: ‘To bring this argument’s main (Romans 4:19) point to a brief conclusion: if the child whom God promised was given through sexual desire, then what fulfilled God’s pledge was undoubtedly good. If he was given without sexual desire, desire cannot harm the offspring, since it was present neither when he was conceived nor when he was born.’ (Genesis 21:1–2)

5.11This new natural philosopher therefore passes over those points and declares false what we said: ‘Just as the clay taken up at the beginning was the material of the human being, not his maker (Genesis 2:7), so now that power of pleasure which produces and mixes the seed does not perform the role of God’s activity. Rather, from nature’s storehouses it offers God the material from which he deigns to make a human being.’ He testifies that I said this correctly, except for my statement that seed is produced by the power of pleasure. He philosophizes as follows: ‘That pleasure of fleshly desire does not produce seed. The seed is already in bodies, created by the true God. It is not made by pleasure, but is stirred and emitted with pleasure’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.26).

He plainly said this not through fraud but through failure to understand. By ‘the power of pleasure’ I meant the very constitution of the male body, which I had to call virility. This virility—to use a word we have now made familiar—consists in the structure and health of the genitals and internal organs. It supplies the powers of both appetite and performance, and I called it the power of pleasure and desire. I preferred ‘power of pleasure’ to simply ‘pleasure’ precisely to indicate the whole ardor felt both before and during the act. Those disabled in their genital organs, namely eunuchs, do not possess seed, although certain embers of the extinguished fire still stir them. Because a particular disability has deprived them of the strength of the parts by whose service seed is produced from internal fluids, they are incapable of generation. God therefore established a power in the body which, unfolding at the proper time and provided health is present, reaches the capacity for fertility. Seed is consequently produced in bodies with the help of mature puberty. That is why premature pleasure stimulates the immature, but without the laws of age its kindling spark remains sterile.

That seed is mixed with pleasure, yet that one pleasure floats upon the senses while another lies deeper within the organs and closer to the result, is discussed at great length in medical writers. Hence even the Mantuan poet, more knowledgeable about nature than the Carthaginians’ little philosopher, notes that cattle should be made lean: when familiar pleasure first draws them toward mating, they should be kept from leafy fodder and springs. Often people shake them up by running and exhaust them in the sun, when the threshing floor groans under grain heavily pounded and light chaff is carried away on the breeze. This is done so that excessive abundance does not make the generative field less responsive or clog its sluggish furrows; instead the inner parts should experience a certain dryness, and thus thirstily seize the mating fluid and store it more deeply within (Virgil, Georgics 3.130–137). But it is enough to have noted the man’s sharpness even in these matters, which are not greatly needed for the case.

5.12Yet everywhere I marvel at our debater’s consistency. He declares that seed is created by the true God, who also creates bodies, although it is emitted with pleasure. He therefore confesses that God makes the seed in which he says diabolical evil exists. And he is not ashamed to believe that God makes an evil to be imputed to the innocent.

5.13Sexual desire, he says, has nothing to do with seed, because it was made by the devil. Married people serve this desire, while God makes seed and infants from seed. Yet the parents, who do the devil’s work, are neither guilty nor punished, he says. The infants whom God created, however, are assigned to crime and punishment. What the devil made—sexual desire—goes unpunished; it is thereby shown to be good, since it deserves no punishment. But what God makes is accused and condemned; it is thereby shown to be criminal, since not even respect for its maker can protect it from punishment. Divinity is to be believed to do something which even the most abject slavery could not endure. Such is the end of those who wage war on truth: they say nothing that is not impious and insane. Meanwhile, it is clear that no argument defends the innocent’s condition so well as the irreverence of their accusers does.

5.14After this he tries to attack the point we established through the apostle Paul’s testimony: that God makes a human being from seed. He argues that I acted fraudulently by applying to this subject words admittedly spoken about grain. As though I had either broken the apostle’s statement in pieces there, as he imagines here, or recalled that testimony for any reason other than to demonstrate its conclusion: God must be believed to form every kind of seed. For after blessed Paul supported faith in the resurrection through examples of daily multiplication, he added something applicable to all nature: ‘But God gives it a body as he wills, and to each of the seeds its own body’ (1 Corinthians 15:38). That is, he assigns every seed the body its particular nature requires. I therefore did not intend words spoken about grain to be understood as about a human being. Rather, I seized upon the statement that God the maker gives each seed its own body to destroy your position, since your doctrine denies it. Therefore I certainly did not mention that statement needlessly, as you suppose, or use it fraudulently, as you falsely allege. Nor do you believe, despite your false oath, that God makes a human being from human seed. I affirm this not by conjecturing, but by understanding your creed.

5.16But let us proceed to what remains. After avoiding Abraham’s example, which I had put forward, he tried to maintain the following about Abimelech. Abimelech is reported to have been healed with his women when Abraham prayed, so that he could return to the work of generation from which a plague had suspended him (Genesis 20:17–18). Augustine says the closing of the women’s wombs may be understood as some pain, rather than removal of sexual desire (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.15.30). As though we were urgently insisting that their natural appetite must appear restored! In those testimonies I was content to prove only this: intercourse, which could not occur without sexual desire, was prevented through God’s anger and restored through God’s mercy, whether by obstacles being removed or by the usual stimuli being restored. It is therefore not shown diabolical, but by this very fact belongs to God’s activity. Among the body’s functions it is an ordinary but innocent instrument, wrong not in its kind or proper measure, but only in excess.

5.17Since enough has been said about this, let us hasten to the arguments Mani once cleverly advanced concerning natural evil—although, as I shall prove, he was deceived by tangled questions. First, however, let us briefly examine what Augustine replied to the apostle’s testimony. I had said that blessed Paul’s testimony proved most clearly that God, the creator of bodies, instituted the familiar activity of the sexes. Denouncing the shameful acts of those whose madness had plunged them even into intercourse with the male sex, Paul says: ‘Abandoning the natural use of the female, they burned in their own desires’ (Romans 1:27). I inferred, with the apostle as witness, that intercourse with the female is shown to have been naturally instituted.

In response this man writes: ‘The apostle did not say “marital use” but “natural use.” He meant that which takes place with organs created so that the two sexes can unite through them for generation. Consequently, when someone unites with a prostitute using the same organs, it is natural use, yet not praiseworthy but blameworthy. This term, “natural use,” therefore did not praise marital union. It identified acts more unclean and criminal than if they had used women unlawfully but nevertheless naturally’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.20.35). That is: this intercourse with the female which the apostle called natural is not understood as marital, so as to be shown good and lawful. Rather, he says, it is called natural because it indicates that the difference of sex was instituted to prepare both for union and for birth. Since these exertions gained him nothing, why did he spend so long on them? Certainly only so that his followers might think a point answered merely because they saw it touched. A brief argument will show how he said nothing. The apostle says intercourse with the female was naturally instituted; he did not commend some different union originally ordained. Discussing the intercourse in which he knew sexual desire had flourished at every period, he called it natural.

5.18This is what we understood. Speaking about nature’s institution, we brought forward what the apostle plainly meant. What, then, did you accomplish by replying that he calls it natural rather than marital use? Or with what mouth do you add: ‘When someone unites with a prostitute using the same organs, it is natural use, yet not praiseworthy but blameworthy’ (Romans 1:27)? Let us show here too what we have often disclosed: you utter not even one sentence that does not count strongly against you. If the use involved in fornication is called natural, yet not praiseworthy but blameworthy because it is intercourse with a prostitute, you will undoubtedly confess marital intercourse, because it is honorable and lawful, to be not blameworthy but praiseworthy (compare Romans 1:27).

5.19Where, then, is your diabolical crime, which you tried to attach to it through the argument from shame? Sexual desire itself is no longer being condemned—the desire felt by nature’s own constitution in both forbidden and permitted intercourse—if only its distortion, straying toward what is unlawful, is blamed.

5.20To ask closely and briefly: when the apostle Paul called it the natural use of the female, do you think he indicated both its possibility and its propriety, or only its possibility? In other words, by ‘natural’ did he mean an act that could and should occur, or one that could occur but should not? If you say, ‘One that could occur, although it should not,’ (Romans 1:27) as happens in adultery, then that other shameful act will not be contrary to nature either, since it is performed with natural organs. But if, recoiling in alarm, you reply with the truth—that the apostle called natural an act directed toward offspring, which could and should be performed honorably because naturally, with the bodies of one woman or several as permitted according to the circumstances of the time—you will undoubtedly confess your argument foolish. By ‘natural use,’ blessed Paul indicated not fornication, as you thought, but the honorable and legitimate union of bodies arranged for fertility.

We therefore rightly defend in general what the Manichaean accused in general. You say this pleasurable union of the sexes was instituted by the devil, is the cause of original sin, and necessitates all crimes. You thus accuse nature itself. What could we more consistently have done than, with the Teacher of the Gentiles as witness, defend on the general ground of nature, and assign to God’s work, what you called naturally evil? Thus, to refute you, we proved that what you call diabolical was naturally instituted. This is the proper and learned way to answer: defend in particular what is accused in particular, and vindicate in general what is accused in general. Mani understood this too. You equal him in crime but not in intelligence. That is why he assigns the whole substance of bodies to the devil; you assign not all of it but, as we said in the preceding book, the better part. Truth has therefore triumphed, surrounded by sacred defenses. Proving through the apostle that married people’s activity is natural, and therefore belongs to God as nature’s creator, it has shattered the inventions of you who swear it comes from transgression, not nature (compare Romans 1:27).

5.22But we speak this way to show where your creed ends. The point founded by the preceding discussions remains unshaken: nothing is evil except the act of a will committing what justice forbids; nor can what is natural be proved evil. This tower therefore stands unshaken, and from its height the brigandage of different errors is repelled.

5.23Let us now pursue what the passage requires. It is clear, most subtle debater, that you have exalted one and the same thing—human nature—with great praises, but stained it with still greater accusations. Just as these cannot occur together at one time, in one work, and under one intention, so natural reason cannot admit them even as alternating opposites. Nature always possesses one full valuation, namely goodness. It is never attacked for evil—which its institutions, because of its maker’s dignity, do not admit—except by the utterly filthy teeth of the Manichaeans.

Having completed this point, I ask what wisps of marriage you think you should pursue. If you confess that the cause of a human being is not marriage but nature, and the cause of sin too is not marriage but nature, then the marriage you were praising has entirely vanished. To what effect is it assigned if it is the cause of neither your evil nor my good? You remove the human being from marriage’s honorable activity lest you be compelled to attribute him to fornication too. You remove sin from marriage’s necessary activity lest you appear to condemn marriage. What remains worthy of praise in marriage’s possession? Why fear to violate with a word what you have utterly demolished by argument? Of what will it be called the cause if it shares in neither natural evil nor natural good? Do the name and honor of marriage now accomplish nothing in human affairs?

But you are choking, and painfully. We must therefore help the panting old man. Something remains you can give marriage, without which nothing else is found: say that marriage stands guard at the door, allowing no report of obscenity to burst in upon the partners’ pleasure, but claiming honor and modesty for that activity under its own title. Your attempt to corrupt marriage’s integrity with deceitful praise was therefore pointless. It is more hostile to no one than to you. It drives you utterly away and does not allow Manichaean tongues to creep in and lacerate the union entrusted to its protection. ‘They have brothels worthy of their doctrine,’ it says, ‘where they may satisfy themselves at night.’ Marriage’s watch guards the pleasure of modest people; crimes are barred and the honor of decency admitted. The privileges the apostle granted defend honorable marriage and undefiled beds; ‘but God will judge fornicators and adulterers’ (Hebrews 13:4). Where, then, is the criminal union, if the authority of the marriage you praised serves its activity and privacy?

5.24With these matters resolved, I will briefly show how deeply you lie in ignorance, although until now you were considered most subtle and acute. You say you attribute to nature, not marriage, the crime that passes to offspring, just as, on the other side, you attribute human beings to nature, not to a shameful act. You therefore pretend to praise marriage, to avoid being openly detected as a Manichaean, while criticizing nature, in which you confess evil exists and from which evil is propagated. Could you never hear the rules of argument and the principles of thoroughly sound reason? In every category, genera encompass more than species; subordinate genera also arise in this way. Species encompass more than individuals. Genera contain species, and the lowest species contain individuals. Shaking the lower things, then, does not shake the higher; but the higher things, by their own collapse, carry down everything they encompassed.

For example, ‘animal’ is a genus. In the breadth of its meaning it includes different species, such as human being, horse, ox, and others. If one species perishes, the genus does not suffer destruction. Suppose the nature of oxen disappears from existence: the genus is certainly not destroyed, since the nature of other animals remains. Conversely, if what ‘animal’ means is removed from existence, every species included under that genus undoubtedly perishes. No species of animate creature will remain once animal life is entirely destroyed. The higher things therefore share their fortunes and characteristics with the species they encompass. The reverse does not occur: the higher are not altered by the variations of their species as though by binding relationships.

To apply the example to the case: human nature in its generality is a kind of genus for the arrangements situated within it. It has, as it were, species in bodily position, organs, orders, movements, and other such things. It therefore shares its quality with all its subordinate species, but does not bind itself so as to share the risks of things lower than itself. If nature, then, is condemned and believed guilty and subject to the devil, marriage beneath it, fertility, and the whole substance will also be condemned. Marriage, which follows nature, cannot therefore be praised if nature itself is criticized. The beauty of severed shoots must die together with its root. To put the thing more plainly: the business of marriage cannot be called good if natural union is accused, since what is devalued in the genus to which it inseparably belongs cannot be honored in the species.

But when an evil will uses natural instruments for shameful acts, that power of pleasure and seed—which never varies according to the partners’ will—shares no part in the crime. It supplies material to God as he works, and the shameful act condemns only the adulterer’s deserving conduct, not nature’s. Since we were discussing natural things, your condemnation of nature alongside praise of marriage was exceedingly dull-witted. It is irrefutably established that a genus shares whatever it receives with its species. Therefore either the use the apostle calls natural will be judged good and legitimate, marriages will be honorable, and there will be no natural sin; or, if nature is believed diabolical so that original sin can exist, marital intercourse too will be declared condemnable. This is to embrace the Manichaeans’ doctrine, not soberly, but openly. Since that doctrine is deadly, and they possess nothing of truth, honor, or faith, while the theory of natural sin can belong to no others, it is established that we are catholics and you Manichaeans (compare Romans 1:27) (Romans 1:27).

5.25To avoid the odium of this name, your mention of various heresies is entirely futile. You say: ‘Just as Arians call catholics Sabellians, although catholics distinguish the persons clearly while preserving their common nature, so you impose the Manichaeans’ name on us, although we do not say marriage is evil, as Manichaeans do, but say evil passes into all human beings as a condition of nature’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.23.38). I have no doubt the wise will laugh at these arguments. Arians falsely call catholics Sabellians, since we distinguish the persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit without any confusion or change of substance, while they very stupidly slander us as though one and three were no different. Likewise, catholics most rightly declare you Manichaeans, because your creed compels us to say so.

Manichaeans assert natural sin; you say it is natural. They say the devil planted bodily desire; you confirm this through extended argument. They contend that evil cannot be avoided through free will because it is natural. With the same words you too invent a free will through which evil can be done, but evil cannot be abandoned. Mani says seed is cursed; you try to prove it by scriptural authority. Mani says wickedness cannot be changed; you shout that it is so. But you say Adam alone possessed a better nature. Mani too, writing to Patricius, says Adam should be believed better than those who followed, as though formed from the flower of the first substance. You say intercourse is diabolical because of its natural movements, and human beings are rightly plucked by the devil like fruit from a shrub he planted. Mani says this too: he is, indeed, the one from whom you learned to believe and affirm it. Mani says both nature and marriage are evil. You say marriage is good but nature guilty. You are not more religious here; he is more intelligent.

Just as it is false when Arians say catholics are Sabellians, then, it is entirely true when catholics say advocates of inherited sin are nothing other than Manichaeans. The illusory distinction between you arises not from your creed but from your ignorance. You and Mani therefore hold one faith, but he proves less shameless than your distinguished self. For one does not readily meet either a Manichaean or another Melitides who says he condemns human nature without slandering marriage.

5.26But enough has been said against these absurdities. Let us come to the exceedingly tangled question I mentioned above, whose subtlety deceived your teacher himself. You tried to meet our objection not by explaining it but by putting forward another, more difficult one. I had taught that in adults who work evil by their own will, nature’s innocent beginnings are praised while the deviations of their actions are rightly blamed. There are two things, therefore, to which opposite judgments can apply. In infants, however, there is only one thing, nature, since there is no will. That one thing must be reckoned either to God or to the demon. I concluded that, if nature exists through God, original evil cannot be within it; but if nature is transferred to the devil through inborn evil, nothing remains by which the human being can be vindicated as God’s work. When you reached these passages, you replied with your usual good faith that my conclusion was true, but that infants too have two things: nature and sin. Yet sin, to recall the previous definitions, is nothing other than the will to retain or commit what justice forbids and from which one is free to abstain. With sin thus established as nothing other than the choice of an evil will, you replied, Epicurus of our age, that infants possess sin but no will. How disgraceful that is, the fourth book has already shown.

In these passages I said, ‘If sin comes from will, the will producing sin is evil; if from nature, the nature producing sin is evil.’ You tried to confront me with a question plainly not invented by you. Some years ago, when we were in Carthage, a certain Honoratus, a friend of yours and equally a Manichaean—as your letters indicate—put this same question to me. I mention this only to make clear that this is the question which deceived Mani and Marcion so many centuries ago. Against my statement, ‘If sin lies in nature, the nature producing sin is evil,’ you speak as follows:

‘I ask him to answer if he can. Just as plainly all evil deeds arise as fruits from an evil will as from an evil tree, so whence does he say the evil will itself arose—the evil tree bearing evil fruits? If from an angel, what was that angel but God’s good work? If from a human being, what was that human being but God’s good work? Rather, since the angel’s evil will arose from the angel, and the human being’s from the human being, what were these two before those evils arose within them, except God’s good work and a good and praiseworthy nature? See, then: evil arises from good, and there was absolutely nothing from which it could arise except good. I mean the evil will itself, preceded by no evil—not evil works, which arise only from an evil will as from an evil tree. Yet the evil will could arise from good not because the good was made by the good God, but because it was made from nothing, not from God. Why, then, does he say: “If nature is God’s work, the devil’s work is not permitted to pass through God’s work”? Did not the devil’s work, when it first arose in the angel who became the devil, arise in God’s work? Therefore, if an evil that existed nowhere could arise in God’s work, why could an evil already existing somewhere not pass through God’s work? Are human beings not God’s work? Sin therefore passed through human beings—that is, the devil’s work through God’s work. To say the same thing another way: the work of God’s work through God’s work’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.28.48).

These many words I have quoted from you have fully disclosed the very head and fountain of the ancient error. You have offered nothing sharper in your statements, nothing more intricate in argument. Driven across the whole field of debate, and expelled by hostile truth’s weapons from every place where you tried to stand, you have at last reached the cave Mani dug among the shadows of difficult questions. You testified to this question’s difficulty by saying, ‘I ask him to answer if he can.’ Since we both agree that the point is difficult, I urge the reader to attend with his whole mind. Let him follow the distinctions, subtle as the matter requires—distinctions which I trust Christ’s help will make substantial—first attentively and then confidently. You asked, then, where evil comes from. I ask what evil you mean, since this name is shared by guilt and punishment. Punishment, however, is called evil only in an extended sense, since the gravity of the judgment imposing it justifies it. You reply that you mean sin, not punishment.

5.27You therefore ask where this evil comes from which rightly deserves the name evil: sin. I reply that it is exceedingly unskilled to ask the origin of something whose definition has not yet been established. Let us first see whether it exists, then what it is, and last where it comes from. I did this in the first book of the present work, but there I proceeded with some points already secure. Let us now question whether evil exists.

5.28Repeated vices and severe judgments testify that it does. It is therefore established that sin exists. We ask what it is: whether it is some body visibly composed of many elements, or some single thing, like one element considered in thought apart from its combination with the others. But it is none of these. What is it, then? An appetite of free will which justice prohibits. Or, to use the earlier definition: the will to do what justice forbids and from which one is free to abstain. Consider, then, whether sin can be found outside the boundaries of this definition, lest what we suppose contained be wandering elsewhere. Let us consult the judge’s justice, so that its testimony too may establish whether every kind of sin has been properly enclosed by these limits.

Does God impute what he knows cannot be avoided? That would be no justice, but the greatest disgrace. Indeed, if this occurred, sins would not be punished but increased. A just judge ordinarily punishes guilt. If guilt invaded the judge himself through the corruption of justice, it would have taken vengeance upon the judge, not been punished. Justice therefore imputes nothing as sin except what one is free to avoid. But nothing can be called free unless, without any unavoidable compulsion of natural forces, it lies within the authority of a will possessing its own freedom. The definition is therefore excellent and complete: sin is the will to do what justice forbids and from which one is free to abstain. With these points resolved, let us ask where it comes from—a question asked in great disorder before these definitions. Where, then, does sin come from? I answer: from the doer’s free will.

5.29Let us see, however, whether what the preceding definition established is confirmed by everyone’s agreement. Certainly no wise person or catholic can doubt this: nothing is sin except what can be avoided, and no justice exists except that which charges a person with what he himself committed by free will, although he could have avoided it.

5.30These points no longer slip from our grasp, but the Manichaean and the advocate of inherited sin reject them with equal determination. Let us see, then, what they themselves say. Mani writes that sin is natural. Augustine agrees that sin is natural. Both therefore dissent from the definition we gave, and form an association in calling sin natural. Let us also see what they say about the kind of sin—what they regard as the sin both affirm to be natural—lest perhaps they disagree at the next step. What does Mani write to his daughter? That fleshly desire, and the pleasure appointed for the work of fertility, is proved diabolical because its act avoids public view. What does Augustine say? Exactly the same: ‘That fleshly desire is the devil’s shrub, the cause and law of sin, which everywhere avoids observation and seeks privacy through shame’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 1.7.8; 1.23.26). Thus they differ neither in their first nor their second account of evil.

What is the third point? When asked where evil comes from, Mani says, ‘From the eternal nature of darkness.’ What does Augustine say? ‘My teacher goes too far in thinking evil never began. It began through the first man’s will—or rather, already through the will of a higher nature, the angelic—but from that time it became natural.’ His teacher naturally beats him and drags him to court with great authority. How will a catholic judge between them? Mani is undoubtedly exceedingly foolish in thinking sin natural; but compared with Augustine’s intelligence, he looks very acute. They agree that sin is natural, confess that this sin is of one kind, and think it possesses the entire human race. Yet afterward the pupil dares to say that in one person alone it was not natural, although he confesses it innate in everyone else! After disgracing him with a schoolboy’s beating, they will place him under his teacher, whose blasphemy is more consistent. But they will expel both pupil and teacher together from the assembly of the devout. See, then, what we allow you. You dislike Mani’s statement that evil is natural. Say, then, that no one is born guilty, and you have escaped—by denying original sin, of course. But you do not say this. You therefore confess that you wish neither to leave your teacher nor to join the catholics.

5.31You thought it a powerful objection to ask where an evil will arose in the first man himself, or in the devil who had been created an angel. Yet you say it arose in God’s work—that is, in an angel or a human being—not because he was God’s work, but because he was made from nothing. Take care, then, that by different paths you too do not say the necessity of evil was eternal. If the cause of evil’s arising in God’s work was that the work had admittedly been made from nothing, then before what exists was made, this nothing always was. That is, before what exists was made, nothing had ever existed; what never existed is said to have been nothing. From eternity, therefore, what did not exist before being made by God—whose substance alone has no beginning—never existed. This emptiness, then, this nothing, always was before the existence of things brought it to an end. This nothing was not made; creatures were made, and the nothing ceased to be.

In a creature made from nothing, however, you invent the claim that evil arose precisely because it was made from nothing. You have therefore attributed the evil arising in a human being to his origin; and you say that origin—nothing—was sin’s cause. For you say: ‘Evil arose in a human being not because he had been made by God, but because he had been made from nothing.’ If evil therefore arose because the condition of the preceding nothing required it, and that nothing was eternal, you have fallen by altered paths and now hang entirely in your teacher’s snare: both of you confess evil to be from eternity. But here too he is more intelligent. Introducing natural sin, he said an eternal substance of darkness existed which compelled this evil to be present without the sinner’s will. He therefore gave an author to the thing he made necessary, so that the evil invading substances would appear to have something forcing it. You, however, with the unbearable leadenness of your mind, affirm the necessity of evil but deny an author of that necessity. As with infants, so with the very first doer of sin, you leave the deed in place, and say that some great mystery can be understood: that this nothing had immense power, although it was nothing.

5.32For you affirm that this nothing, from which all things were made, was sin’s cause. The power of this nothing therefore accomplishes as much for you as the prince of darkness does for Mani. Both of you say that even the first evil arose by necessity. But he supplies something solid, although evil; you supply emptiness, equally evil. He therefore says there is a violent substance; you say there is something equally violent, but nothing. See, then, the conclusion of your syllogism. When nothing had yet been created, ‘nothing’ indicated eternal emptiness. But this very nothing—that is, emptiness—was brought to an end when creatures arose: it ceased to be nothing when something began to be. Thus even when this nothing was, it was not, since it is understood to have been only when nothing yet existed. After things were made, this indication of emptiness—nothing—lost even its name, just as it had never possessed substance. Thus what had never existed in reality lost even its name. You invent the claim that by its violence evil arose in both angel and human being. What could be more insane?

5.33You say that a thing which did not exist possessed great power for the sole reason that it had never existed, but that it began to have immense power just when it lost even its name. This nothing gained a great dominion after even its designation had perished!

5.34Well done for your mighty wisdom! By the rules of a new method of argument first invented by you, you embrace conclusions by denying their premises, and assemble bodies severed from their heads. We do not envy your subtleties. Rather, with Christian kindness we pity you: you have found an ending worthy of your doctrine, departing from accusations against the innocent and arriving at nothing.

5.35What soundness! What elegance in a debater! ‘Evil arose in a human being,’ he says, ‘not because he was made by God, but because he was made from nothing’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.28.48). We have already shown the sharpness by which immense power is assigned to this nothing. Now I point out what the preceding debate also made clear: not even the first evil was undertaken by the sinner’s will if the condition of an origin from nothing required its birth.

5.36You have therefore supplied a nature for even the first evil, emptier than Mani’s, but equally eternal. There is no need to fight further about this. It is entirely clear that a pact remains between you, bound by the chain of natural and eternal evil.

5.37I have certainly proceeded as the honesty of debate required. Careful investigation by reason has crushed what your argument established: that the evil will arose in God’s work because the human being had been created from nothing. It has shown that, with changed terms, you said the same thing Mani invented and believed: that the first sin too was generated by the violence of eternal darkness.

5.38But lest, seeing yourself exposed, you try to break out by replying that you did not say, ‘Evil arose in God’s work because it was made from nothing,’ but rather, ‘Evil could arise because it was made from nothing,’ we must show how much more tightly the snares bind you. If you say that you attributed evil’s possibility, not its necessity, to the powers of that eternal nothing, we reply: the fact that an evil will could arise in a human being is certainly nothing other than free will. An evil will could arise precisely so that a good will could arise too. This is the freedom in which reason exercises itself, on account of which the human being is declared made in God’s image, and by which he excels other creatures (Genesis 1:26–27). If, then, the possibility of an evil will’s arising in a human being is nothing other than freedom of will, and this is so great a thing that its distinction makes him surpass the other living creatures, you who profess that this possibility existed in him not because he was made by God but because he was made from nothing declare, by a new monstrosity of doctrine, that nothing—ancient emptiness—is the cause of so great a good as free will.

To make the matter clear with a brief question: you said, ‘The evil will could arise not because the human being was made by God, but because he was made from nothing.’ This very possibility of the will’s arising, I ask, do you believe it good or evil? That is, do you judge the capacity for a will to arise, which you attributed to nothing, good or utterly evil? If you call it good, then God is not the cause of the good: nothing is. But if, seeing this to be completely insane, you declare it evil—since you say it should be attributed not to God but to nothing—you will testify that we reached no deceitful conclusion against you, but with honest debate overthrew your doctrine’s evil faith. Our result therefore stands unshaken: you and Mani have attributed even the first man’s evil will to the necessity of an eternal origin.

5.39Not content to win in only one way, I will expose the falsehood of the argument whose impiety I have revealed. When you wrote, ‘An evil will could arise in God’s work not because it was made by God, but because it was made from nothing’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.28.48), you should have seen how powerfully the examples of other creatures argue against you. They too were brought forth from nothing, yet are incapable of an evil will. Indeed, the elements themselves, which truly were made from nothing, can have no consciousness of any will, so as to attest through evil movements the necessity of their origin. Living creatures, however, and the other things filling the world, came forth not from nothing but from something already existing. Where, then, is the power of ancient emptiness that compelled an evil will to exist, when it is clear that no being except a rational creature can sin?

5.40Since this great point was so plain, what persuaded you to believe that the violence of ancient nothing was the cause of an evil will? Certainly it was so that we could understand that you believe everything made from nothing guilty and enslave the whole world to the devil. Since it has become clear to me that your ancient doctrinal agreement remains, I now answer you and Mani together. You ask me, who deny that evil has a nature, to answer if I can: where could the evil will itself arise in the first human being? I reply that you do not understand what you are saying. For will is nothing other than a movement of the mind under no compulsion.

5.41You therefore seek a necessity behind something that cannot exist if it is subject to necessity. If a cause older than the movement itself is assigned to this free movement of the mind, active without compulsion from its origin, the will is not produced at all: it is removed. The very name ‘will’ means nothing other than that the movement does not owe its occurrence to matter. Therefore, when you ask where the will arose, seeking something older than the will itself, you seek not its beginning but its destruction. It cannot be understood to exist if it is attributed either to darkness or to nothing. Nor can that be called will which can exist only as a movement of the mind under no compulsion. If someone compels it, there is indeed a movement, but no will. The will’s force is completed by the definition’s second part: ‘under no compulsion.’ If will is nothing other than a movement of the mind under no compulsion, it is entirely wrong to ask the origin of a thing whose defining condition perishes if something precedes it. Weigh, then, what you ask: ‘Whence could the evil will itself, like an evil tree, arise in the first human being?’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.28.48). In asking this you confess that will came about through an origin. But will is a movement of the mind under no compulsion. All natural causes compel what follows to exist. If will is compelled by preceding causes, it immediately ceases to be will: by receiving such an origin, it loses its defining condition.

5.42Since will is well defined as ‘a movement of the mind under no compulsion,’ why do you seek earlier causes which the definition of will has excluded? Weigh what will is, and you will stop asking where will comes from. Will is a movement of the mind under no compulsion. If you try to go so much as half a fingernail beyond this, you immediately overthrow what has been established. What does Mani say? ‘This movement arose because the human being was made from the nature of darkness.’ What do you say? ‘Because the human being was made from nothing.’ Thus one says, ‘The will is evil because the human being was made from nothing’; the other, ‘The will is evil in a human being because he was made from darkness.’ Both of you deny what completes the will’s definition: ‘under no compulsion.’ If nothing had as much power as something, and that power compelled this will to exist, it excluded the will’s own condition, expressed as ‘under no compulsion.’

But it has equally driven away evil’s disgrace. What does not come from a free movement of the mind is not sin. Thus, at the expense of truth, all the odium of evil perished. Evil’s nature vanished when the will’s guilt vanished; the will’s guilt vanished when the definition of will was cut apart. It has therefore become clear that the condition of both sin and will is such that, if attributed to preceding causes, it loses both its freedom and its guilt. Where, then, will evil’s nature be, once it is established that no evil exists?

5.43For what is evil, that is, sin? The will to pursue what justice forbids and from which one is free to abstain. What is will itself? A movement of the mind under no compulsion. If sin therefore arose from will, and will from a movement of the mind under no compulsion, neither the condition of nothing nor that of darkness caused this movement to exist. It is compelled by no one precisely so that it can exist under no compulsion. Consequently, there is no natural sin and no original sin. These two names indicate one thing: sin that is not voluntary. But truth has ruled that sin cannot exist unless voluntary. Therefore whoever calls evil what is admittedly innate does not prove that sin exists in nature; he shows himself guilty through a perverse judgment. Here is the answer to what you thought could not be answered. The question you regard as invincible was altogether clever foolishness.

5.44I point out, however, that in your writings you too habitually say darkness is not a creature, but that obscurity remains through the absence of light: darkening is nothing other than the exclusion of brightness. What is excluded you call a creature; what remains you call darkness. This view is indeed widespread among philosophers. I am not now asking whether it should be regarded as true or false. I press this point: you say darkness is nothing other than nothing. Yet you argue that evil arose in a human being, God’s work, because he was made from nothing. You therefore affirm that this nothing was evil’s cause, and you also call this nothing darkness. You thus say the necessity of evil descends from the condition of darkness. Even in this you do not differ from your teacher, since both of you attribute an evil will to eternal darkness.

5.45But just as truth has exposed and overthrown you both, so consideration of our duty requires us to explain what made this now-disarmed question obscure. Everything that occurs is said to arise either from necessity or from possibility. By ‘necessary’ here I mean not what we ordinarily call useful, but what is compelled by stronger causes. We therefore call necessary not what lies within the will’s authority, but what is subject to a force requiring its existence. We call possible what undergoes no necessity on either side, either to exist or not to exist, but in definite ways can exist and can fail to exist. Let our reader hold firmly to what we mean here by necessary and possible.

To begin with great examples: God’s making the world arose from possibility, not necessity. That is, his almighty power made it possible to create what he formed, but not necessary. No one compelled him to make it; he made it because he willed to, and certainly would not have made it had he not willed to. Yet what belonged to the maker as a possibility became a necessity in the work. The world, commanded to exist by the Almighty, did not have the possibility both of existing and not existing: it was compelled to exist, since the Almighty commanded its being.

5.46What came from the creator’s possibility therefore passed into the creature’s necessity. He also made different natures and different species within natures, preserving the order flowing from things’ beginnings: some things were necessary, others possible. Whatever creatures possess naturally, then, they received on the side of necessity.

5.47But what they experience as they go on does not always come from necessity: much comes from possibility. This can be seen in every body, though it would require a longer discussion. Let us give a few examples. Bodies by nature grow together through combination and break apart through division. Those subject to destruction are therefore capable of injury. Their capacity to be wounded comes from necessity; their actually being wounded comes from possibility. Thus the nature of a possibility comes from necessity, although the realization of that possibility is not necessary. For example, a horse, an ox, and similar living creatures have a vulnerable nature, and necessarily possess the capacity for harm. Yet it is not always necessary that they be wounded. If their keepers’ care protects them from blows, they can remain unwounded; if they are not guarded, they can also be wounded. There is therefore a great difference between what arises from possibility and what arises from necessity. Unless this distinction is preserved, countless errors follow.

To make this clear by comparison: some opponents of medicine went astray, arguing that this art has no usefulness. They argue as follows: ‘Does medicine help those who will die or those who will live? If those who will die, it accomplishes nothing; if those who will live, its effort is pointless. Those who were going to die will die despite its labor; those who were going to live could have remained safe without its benefit.’ What a neat and polished conclusion! But medicine’s defenders dissolve it as follows: ‘This art helps neither those who will live nor those who will die by necessity, but those for whom either outcome is possible. Medicine does not help someone who will undoubtedly die, because it cannot make him immortal. Nor does it assist someone who will undoubtedly remain unharmed. It assists someone who can be in danger if untreated, but can be rescued if treated.’ Thus, just as the trained art cannot help someone destined to live or die by necessity, it can help those who may live or die as a matter of possibility. Those earlier critics of medical effort therefore closed with necessity an argument begun from possibility. This form of argument extends to countless matters.

For example, the law forbids homicide. It also forbids providing an occasion of negligence through which people fall into danger, as with a goring bull (Exodus 21:28–32) and the parapets of houses (Deuteronomy 22:8). Someone can say: ‘Does this care help a person who will live or one who will die? If one who will die, it accomplishes nothing; if one who will live, it takes needless precautions’—if these opposite outcomes necessarily follow whether obstacles are present or not. But that is false. Mortals are most rightly protected so that, through the resources of care, they escape what they could have suffered without care. What comes from possibility is therefore one thing; what comes from necessity is another.

Let us now show how these preliminaries help us. God made a human being with free will and a good nature, but one capable of virtues he could acquire for himself through a mind possessing its own freedom. This free will could not stand otherwise than by possessing also the possibility of sinning. A person therefore possesses freedom necessarily, while a particular act of will arises as a possibility. He cannot fail to be free, but cannot be compelled toward either will. A possible effect is thus produced by something necessary. In the possible sphere one can sin; in the necessary sphere one cannot. In the necessary sphere, the one assessed is not the actor but the creator himself: whatever the human being is capable of comes wholly from God. In the possible sphere, however, the actor himself is weighed.

5.48He therefore does both evil and good from his own will. Yet he owes his good to God also, who supplies this side not with a predetermined outcome, but with help.

5.49This distinction has such force that, if through ignorance we conclude in necessity what begins from possibility, every crime returns to God. Mani saw this and invented darkness as sin’s author, since he could not distinguish possibility from necessity. Everything a human being possesses naturally, therefore, he has received on the side of necessity, because he could not be otherwise than he was made.

5.50The evil he does, however, he does from possibility.

5.51Unless the capacity had existed necessarily, its possible result would not have existed. That a person can do evil and good is therefore necessary; his doing evil, however, is owed not to his necessity but to his possibility. Where either side is possible, neither is necessary. Thus sin is nothing other than the will to do what justice forbids and from which one is free to abstain. If will is nothing other than a movement of the mind under no compulsion, then just as God possessed the possibility of making the world, while the world itself received existence under necessity, so something similar is understood in God’s image. A person is not compelled to possess the will he chooses; it comes to him from possibility. The evil he has done, however, carries the necessity of guilt. Thus a crime necessarily incurs its abhorrence, although it arose not from the doer’s necessity but from his possibility. The work of possibility therefore testifies to a free living being.

5.52Blame for this does not pass back to the necessary things, because whatever reaches necessity strikes the creator himself.

5.53Just as what comes from necessity cannot be attributed to my possibility, so what comes from possibility cannot be attributed to necessity. That is, the nature of my body and mind cannot be assigned to my will, as though I were this way because I willed it, since I could not will before I existed. Likewise, the will’s evil cannot be attached to nature, mixing the works of possibility into necessity.

5.54Failing to perceive this subtle distinction, Mani produced swarms of advocates of inherited sin for us. He argues as follows: ‘Where does evil come from? From will, of course. Where does evil will come from?’ He answers, ‘From a human being. Where does the human being come from? Through God.’ He concludes: ‘If evil comes from a human being, and the human being through God, evil therefore comes through God.’ Then, as though religiously avoiding making God criminal, he supplies a nature of darkness to which we should attribute evil. Augustine follows: ‘Where does evil come from? From will. Where,’ he asks, ‘does that will itself come from? From a human being, who is God’s work.’ He concludes: ‘If evil comes from will, will from a human being, and the human being is God’s work, evil therefore comes through God.’ As though trying to solve this without appearing to call God criminal—which his doctrine of transmission affirms—he offers us, in God’s place, an equally violent nothing: that is, darkness, to which we should attribute this evil. ‘For evil arose in a human being,’ he says, ‘not because he was God’s work, but because he was from nothing’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.28.48).

As though truth could not answer: with what shamelessness does your God first lie that a human being has a will, and then condemn him, when God knows this evil, sin, arose from the necessity of darkness—that is, ancient nothing? I have declined ‘nothing’ through its grammatical cases to display the prowess of the advocate of inherited sin, who places his hope in nothing. But see the weakness of the God he introduces. He could not overcome even nothing. Having made a human being from nothing, he could not free him from the condition of evil that came from nothing. Instead, embittered by the difficulty of affairs, he accuses the human being for his own faults and condemns nothing’s offenses by destroying his own image. Old Mani treats him more kindly, saying that the race of darkness did not ravage him completely. The advocate of inherited sin introduces so great a weakness in God that he invents the claim that God was defeated by nothing.

5.55All who declare war on truth suffer this disgrace. Let us gather our result. The question is where that first evil will arose in a human being. We answer: from a movement of the mind under no compulsion. The objection asks whether it appeared in God’s work. We agree that this is true. We are asked how we do not deny that, although we deny natural sin. We answer: because this sin exists in God’s work from possibility, not necessity. Natural things, then, are necessary; possible things are voluntary.

5.56Consequently, just as we assign sin to a free movement, so we assign nature to God the creator. Human nature is therefore God’s good work. Freedom of will—that is, the possibility either of wrongdoing or of acting rightly—is equally God’s good work. Both come to the human being from necessity; neither is the cause of evil. But those necessary things extend only this far. Will now arises within them, but not from them. They possess the capacity for will, but are not filled with it. They do not produce but receive the differences in moral desert.

5.57The good capacity for evil and good therefore does not compel will to arise, but permits it. No one is good merely because he is endowed with free will: many people are equally free yet utterly evil. Nor is anyone evil because he has free will: many equally share this freedom yet are excellent. A human being is thus neither good nor evil because he is free, but could be neither good nor evil unless he were free. This capacity, indicated by the name freedom, was so established by the supremely wise God that without it there cannot be what is not compelled to exist through it. Its single capacity for opposites protects it from predetermination toward either. That is, it cannot be called the cause or necessity of either an evil or a good will, since it receives both without compelling either to exist. Necessary things therefore have a single course and, as it were, one thread: like geometry’s length without breadth. Its unity cannot be divided. As long as it extends singly, it retains the force of its own nature; but where it meets something divided toward different directions, that necessity immediately ends. That is: the good God made the human being good.

5.58A substance’s beginning, and its good beginning, are governed by the unity of necessity. The human being also receives freedom of will, still within the line of necessity. But here necessary things end; from this point wills divide into opposites. The nature of division does not belong to necessity’s unity. Thus we are compelled to possess the capacity, but not compelled to use that capacity either well or badly. The capacity to sin is therefore capable of good and evil, but voluntary good and evil, because it could not be capable of a person’s own good unless it were capable of wrongdoing too.

5.59The difference between possibility and necessity is as great as that between fullness and emptiness. A capacity is shown empty of the thing it can receive; if it were not empty, it could not receive it. Who would receive what he already had? Necessity, however, indicates not emptiness but fullness. It cannot receive as though empty what it already compels to exist as though full. Necessary things differ from possible things, therefore, as packed things from empty things. The capacity is protected from predetermination toward either quality, for which it is equally capable, precisely by receiving opposites. It possesses in nature the necessary good that reflects its maker’s honor: innocence naturally mixed with no evil, receptive of its own acts, both the distinct merit of good and the blame of evil.

A sinner can wound what comes to him from his own activity; he cannot discolor what he received from God’s work. The valuation of natural goodness therefore remains even in evil people. It will never be evil to have been capable of doing good and evil. But it will not benefit the person who, without actually condemning the institutions of his necessary nature, has compelled them to be of no benefit to himself. In a human being whose freedom is already developed, therefore, when he sins we assign evil to will, but nature to God its creator. If, however, an infant who has no exercise of will and displays nothing except nature’s institutions is said to be full of crime, possessing by necessity the evil another receives by possibility, the one accused as crime’s author is undoubtedly nature’s author.

5.60But why turn to infants, when the Manichaeans’ question does not allow even an adult to sin by will? If evil arose in a human being because he was made from nothing, and he necessarily received his making from nothing, he undoubtedly received evil from necessity, not possibility. Although lengthy argument has destroyed this, let us discuss the same point a little longer, so that repetition makes it increasingly clear. You ask where the evil will itself existed in the first man. I answer: from a movement of the mind under no compulsion. You ask where that movement itself came from. I answer: what are you asking? Where it could come from, or from what it was compelled to exist? If you say, as you also wrote, ‘From what it was compelled to exist,’ I reply that your words are inconsistent and contradictory. You ask who compelled something that cannot exist except under no compulsion. This dissolves through its own contradiction; a question without order has no force.

You therefore ask with great foolishness where the evil will itself comes from. By ‘where,’ you ask not its occasion but its origin, that is, its nature. Yet, as discussed above, if it receives a nature, it loses its own definition, which says ‘under no compulsion’; if it retains its definition, it excludes predetermination by birth. The human being therefore sinned not because he was made from nothing, not because he was made by God, not because he was made from darkness, and not because he was made with free will. He sinned because he willed: that is, he had an evil will because he willed.

5.61Will, then, which is nothing other than a movement of the mind under no compulsion, owes its possibility to nature and its result to itself. It arose within nature, but from possibility, not necessity. If someone says here, ‘But a nature capable of an evil will is evil,’ I answer, ‘But a nature capable of a good will is good.’ It would therefore be called excellent and utterly evil at the same time. Yet the nature of things does not permit one and the same thing at one and the same time to be filled with opposing moral qualities. If it is thought evil because it could do evil, let it be believed good because it could do good. ‘Why,’ he asks, ‘could the nature that did good also do evil?’ I answer: because this good called virtue could not belong to the person as his own unless it were voluntary. It would not be voluntary if it carried the necessity of good; it would have suffered the necessity of good if it had not possessed the possibility of evil. Therefore, to preserve the right of good, the possibility of evil was admitted.

5.62But this can be twisted in the opposite direction: ‘Nature was suited for evil. Since evil could not be voluntary if evil were necessary, the possibility of good was given so that evil could belong to the person as his own.’ This is indeed clever, but insane. Everything is assessed from its better side. Added to this is the dignity of its maker, God: he did not make a free living being for the things he would punish, but gave the possibility of opposites for the things he would reward. Nevertheless, I do not want to fight over this. I allow something to the false objection by declining to settle anything through the maker’s authority. What necessarily follows, however, is that this capacity to do good and evil must be distinguished from the actual result of either will. It is consequently proved to be the necessary cause of neither virtue nor vice.

Even if we insult honorable things by treating their contest with the wicked as grounds to attribute to this capacity neither the merit of a good will nor that of an evil one, it retains the testimony of its freedom: it is innocent because it is full of neither good nor evil—that is, voluntary good or evil. Attribute the possibility of will to nature, then, but attribute neither good nor evil will to nature. The invincible conclusion is that an evil will indeed arose in God’s work, but from possibility, not necessity. This cannot be imputed to the giver of the capacity, but to the one directing that capacity.

5.63Let the discerning reader therefore hold firmly in mind the great difference between what comes from possibility and what comes from necessity. Let him assign all natural things to the necessary, all voluntary things to the possible, and conclude every question on the same side on which it began. If he wanders blindly through both, almost every word plunges him into countless errors. Since this has been made sufficiently clear, you plainly groped in deep darkness when you concluded: ‘Just as evil which existed nowhere could arise in God’s work, so evil already existing passed naturally through God’s work.’ See the error entangling you. You say sin conceived by the first will, which comes from possibility, was changed into something necessary: just as a free movement of the mind could arise, so without a free movement it could pass into the necessity of natural things.

Understand, however, that God is the author of necessary things. If God does in natures what the mind did in sins, he must be guilty in the same way as the one whose will he accuses. Indeed, more guilty: as necessity exceeds possibility, so engendering sin is more criminal than committing it. Although the nature of things does not admit this, I have shown here that your opinion of God is much worse than Mani’s. At least sudden wars mutilated Mani’s God; ancient and multiplied crimes corrupted yours. Consequently, you differ from catholics not merely over a question but over God himself. You do not worship the one whom we venerate in the Trinity as supremely just, supremely powerful, and inviolable.

A matter of will therefore could not pass through nature. We rightly said that the devil’s work is not permitted to pass through God’s work. The devil’s and an evil human being’s work is sin, which can exist in no one without a movement of free will. This work has come and comes to devil and human being from possibility. God’s work, however, is nature, in which a human being exists not by possibility but by necessity. This nature exists for long periods without will, since will’s power is felt at a particular age. As long as nature exists without will, it is solely God’s work; it cannot possess a sin it has not committed. It was therefore said irrefutably that the devil’s work is not permitted to pass through God’s work.

Your statement, ‘The work of God’s work passes through God’s work,’ is as false as it is impious. It amounts to saying, ‘God sins too, because the human being God made sinned.’ For sin exists nowhere except in a human being’s action. When a human being sins, nothing is added to his substance so that sin can be seen projecting there. The evil deed committed from an evil will simply acquires evil desert for the doer too, so that the one who did evil is called evil. Likewise, if your God made evil in his work, nothing is added to his substance, just as nothing is added to a human being’s; but he acquires the most disgraceful desert and is called evil by doing evil. Even then, however, the infant is proved not guilty, since he possesses evil by necessity, whereas even the devil could not be guilty unless he possessed it by possibility. But the true God of Christians does not do evil. Before the determination of its own will, an infant possesses nothing except what God has made within it. No natural sin can therefore exist. Since we have most carefully broken open the ancient error’s caves and nothing about this question remains hidden, let the attentive reader retain the distinction between necessity and possibility. He will laugh at the inventions of Manichaeans and advocates of inherited sin alike.