Fragments to Turbantius — Book 6

6.1.1Foolishness is the mother of all vices.

‘God loves no one except the person who lives with wisdom’ (Wisdom 7:28).

The good of an unviolated and blameless nature.

6.1.2Those who either neglected to learn what ought to be known, or are unafraid to condemn what they do not know.

In the noonday of discovered truth, without the shadow of ignorance, you rave through envy of me.

Envy immediately torments the very author from whom it arises.

One and the same vice cannot be both sin and punishment for sin.

6.2.3God is the creator of human beings.

Augustine reports Julian inferred from his language about being born for the world that everything belonging to the world must belong to the devil.

6.3.6The grace of Christ’s mysteries is rich in many gifts.

Rather, he shows them to be his own by raising what he made in them through additional benefits, before their own obedient exercise of will.

6.4.8Christ died for infants too.

Augustine reports Julian understood ‘while we were still sinners, Christ died for us’ as excluding infants from the description ‘sinners’ (Romans 5:8).

6.5.11Augustine reports Julian represented the transmission of forgiven parental guilt to offspring as something Augustine said could ‘neither be comprehended by reason nor explained in speech.’

6.6.15Examples give no support to something that cannot be defended in itself.

6.6.16Albinus affirms that among all animals the crocodile alone moves its upper jaws; and fire, though destructive to everything else, is a plaything for the salamander.

Natural characteristics are not changed by an accidental occurrence.

A parent cannot transmit to offspring what the parent does not possess.

6.7.17Curiosity usually wonders less at what it has understood. Against this, divine provision arranged that many things should arise from the earth, distinguished by countless properties.

6.7.18By the nature of things, parents cannot be shown to hand on what they are believed to have lost. If they hand it on, they have not lost it.

6.7.20By the nature of things, people cannot be shown to hand on what they are believed to have lost.

Augustine reports that Julian argued at length for the wild olive’s goodness as God’s creation.

6.8.22You tried to stir up the crowd against me.

Forgetting our single combat, you took refuge in the crowd.

With a treaty offered, it was agreed to settle the war, so that our contest would decide everyone’s battles.

6.8.23Seated craftsmen.

Once I begin to show them, they will become more bitter toward you.

Augustine reports Julian accused him of making those people the devil’s property, assigning marriages to the devil, calling the devil the maker of the genitals, the arouser of men, the one who makes women fertile, and the creator of infants.

6.9.24Explain how sin can justly be charged to a person who neither wished nor was able to sin.

How can an act of choice be mixed into the condition of reproductive seed?

In what way did it happen?

6.9.25Always busily working for his enemy’s profit.

6.9.26The devil and God have made this agreement between them: God is to claim whatever is washed, and the devil whatever is born. But on this condition: God, by a power subject to another, is to make fruitful the very sexual union that the devil established.

6.9.27Augustine reports that Julian and his party do not admit those who have been born into God’s kingdom unless they are washed in baptism.

6.10.28No human sin can exist without an act of free choice.

One person is not held liable for another person’s sins.

6.10.29We must all appear before Christ’s judgment seat, so that each may receive what belongs to his own body, according to what he has done, whether good or evil. (2 Corinthians 5:10)

6.10.30Sexual desire is not wholly rebellious against the mind.

Let God be called the creator of infants who are such as befit God’s hands—that is, innocent infants.

6.10.31Explain how the devil dares to claim as his own infants created in Christ—that is, in his power.

6.10.32When God grants the glory of regeneration to infants who have deserved neither good nor evil by anything of their own, he teaches by that very act that they belong to his care, his right, and his dominion: he anticipates their will with the lavish gift of an inexpressible benefit.

6.10.33Where the apostle says ‘by nature children of wrath,’ it can be understood as ‘truly children of wrath.’ (Ephesians 2:3)

6.11.34‘Students attending lectures’ will shout against you, ‘What times! What morals!’ (Cicero, Against Catiline 1)

Augustine reports Julian’s allegation that he thinks the genital part of the body comes from a different source than the whole body.

6.11.35Even in a worn-out body, lust cannot be restrained.

6.11.36Augustine reports Julian’s allegation that his opponents hold that the evil infants inherit at birth can exist, or has at some time existed, without a substance in which it exists.

6.12.37Augustine reports that Julian accuses Zosimus, bishop of the Apostolic See, of betraying his position.

6.12.38Augustine reports that Julian describes the Roman people’s dispute over the appointment of a bishop as ‘God’s vengeance.’

6.12.39You yourself have also changed your views: at the beginning of your conversion you held the same view that I do.

6.13.40The baptized are only partly cleansed. This is more clearly apparent from your own words.

Grace does not make a person completely new.

6.14.41The flesh is said to desire because the soul desires in a fleshly way.

The baptized person has nothing left to put to death.

6.14.43Augustine reports that Julian treats it as incredible that a human being should be formed in the womb of a baptized woman, whose body is God’s temple, and yet be destined to remain under the devil unless reborn from God for God.

6.14.44People are not renewed through baptism, but only supposedly renewed; not freed, but only supposedly freed; not saved, but only supposedly saved.

Augustine reports that Julian compares this position to Epicurus’s teaching that the gods have not a body but something like a body, not blood but something like blood.

Whatever is done in the present age deserves blame.

6.15.45That resurrection does not forgive anyone’s sins, but sifts each person’s deserts. For it renders to each person according to his works.

6.15.46None of the righteous there will any longer bruise his body and bring it into subjection. No one will humble his soul with a hard bed and bodily filth.

No one will expose his blessed disregard for shame to insults, his cheeks to slaps, or his back to lashes. Nor will he strive to forge strength out of weakness. Frugality will not struggle with poverty, nor greatness of soul with grief, nor patience with pain.

6.15.47No one hates his own flesh. (Ephesians 5:29)

Augustine reports that Julian nevertheless teaches that the flesh should be broken down by strict discipline. He quotes Julian’s phrases: ‘bruising the body,’ ‘bodily filth,’ and ‘breaking down the flesh.’

6.16.49Do not be mistaken: neither the sexually immoral nor those who serve idols will possess God’s kingdom. (1 Corinthians 6:9–10)

And that is what you were; but you were washed, but you were sanctified. (1 Corinthians 6:11)

If sexual desire were an evil, the person who is baptized would be free of it.

6.16.50Augustine reports that Julian approves the school of Dinomachus, which joins moral goodness and pleasure. He also reports Julian’s distinction between unlawful pleasure and lawful pleasure.

6.17.51Augustine reports that Julian attacks his words ‘its liability to guilt has already been removed’ as though Augustine meant that sexual desire itself was released from guilt through baptism.

Of infants Julian and his party say: ‘To their natural good, let the good of sanctification be added.’

6.18.53You have changed your position: forgetting your entire book, you have declared that lust is a substance.

6.18.54The third kind of quality is a passing state and an enduring quality of feeling. A passing state is placed among qualities because it is a starting point of qualities. To it are also assigned the experiences of mind or body that come and go in a moment. An enduring quality of feeling, however, arises from more powerful causes and clings to everyone in whom it occurs so firmly that it can be removed only with great efforts—or cannot be removed at all.

6.18.56Closing Aristotle’s wrestling school, let us return from it to the sacred Scriptures.

Sexual desire, then, is a sensation, and it is not an evil quality. Therefore, when sexual desire is diminished, sensation is diminished.

6.18.57Augustine reports that Julian interprets the following words differently from him: ‘He forgives all your iniquities; he heals all your illnesses.’ (Psalm 103:3; LXX/Vulgate Psalm 102:3)

6.19.58Augustine reports Julian’s allegation that he has called the devil the author of human nature and the maker of the very substance of which a human being consists.

6.19.60You cannot imagine in what dialectical treatise I found that all opposites can be reversed.

In no dialectical treatise can it be found that all opposites can be reversed.

6.19.61Everything belonging to this class can be demonstrated by this one example. If someone has sacrificed to idols once, he can be burdened by the impiety of what he has done until he obtains forgiveness: the act has ended, but its guilt remains. But it is absolutely impossible for the act to remain and the guilt to depart—that is, for him to go on sacrificing to demons and yet be regarded as free from profanation.

6.19.62When the act has passed away, its guilt remains in the conscience of the person who sinned until it is forgiven.

6.20.63The same pattern observed in the devil ought also to have been observed in an evil human being: no one should be condemned except for the faults of his own will. Therefore there is no original sin. Otherwise the work of him who created even the devil good cannot be approved.

6.20.64‘Greater’ and ‘lesser’ belong to the defined category of quantity. But quantity is not only incapable of receiving contraries—which it has in common with quality and other categories—it also has no contrary, which it has in common with the definition of substance. Good and evil, however, are contraries.

6.20.65If something properly ordered belongs to God, and something belonging to God is good, then being subject to the devil is good, since the order established by God is preserved in this way. It follows that rebelling against the devil is evil, since resistance disturbs the order established by God.

6.21.66The devil’s work is not allowed to pass through God’s work.

The root of evil cannot be placed in God’s gift.

The order of things does not allow evil to be produced from good, or anything unjust from what is just.

Sins are not born from something free from sin.

Guilt cannot be born from this work, which has no guilt.

6.21.67That man was cast into these miseries not by nature as a mother, but as by a stepmother.

No fuller’s cleansing herb cleanses me of the Manichean stain — as you say.

6.22.68Augustine reports that Julian presents his words as meaning that the serpent had physical sexual intercourse with Eve.

6.22.69Throughout your whole argument you have crushed — as you boast — my assertion about the evil of sexual desire and original sin.

Augustine reports that Julian claims the teaching of Basil of Caesarea and John of Constantinople agrees with his party’s views.

‘A conspiracy of lost men.’

‘The people’s murmur’ is the only thing set against you by us — as you say.

6.23.70You understand the apostle’s words differently from the way that entire passage ought to be understood: ‘I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh,’ through ‘Miserable man that I am! Who will free me from the body of this death?’ (Romans 7:18–24)

Augustine also reports that Julian acknowledges the glorious struggles the saints undertake against the movements of fleshly desire.

6.23.71It is contradictory for the person who says, ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me,’ also to say, ‘I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh.’ (Galatians 2:20; Romans 7:18)

You make the apostle say these things as though he meant that, despite his resistance, some hand of deadly pleasure dragged him off to prostitutes.

6.23.72Augustine reports that Julian refers these words to ‘the Jews’ pride,’ as though the apostle had represented in himself people who despised Christ’s gifts as unnecessary for them.

They despised those gifts because he offered forgiveness of sins that they themselves had avoided through the law’s admonition.

6.23.73The apostle emphasizes the power of habit.

Through the good law and the holy commandment, the minds of the wicked had become more savage, because no instruction could instill virtue without their own willing participation.

The law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Has what is good, then, become death for me? Certainly not! But sin, so that it might appear as sin, worked death in me through what is good, so that sin might become sinful beyond measure through the commandment. (Romans 7:12–13)

6.24.75The expression ‘in whom all sinned’ is used as though it said ‘because of which all sinned,’ just as it says, ‘By what does a young man correct his way?’ (Romans 5:12; Psalm 119:9, LXX/Vulgate Psalm 118:9)

Augustine reports Julian’s interpretation: all people are not to be understood as having sinned originally in one man, together as though united in a single mass. Rather, they sin because the first man sinned—by imitating him, not by being born from him.

6.24.76By what does a young man correct his way? By guarding your words. (Psalm 119:9; LXX/Vulgate Psalm 118:9)

Moses fled at this word. (Acts 7:29)

6.24.77But if he was speaking about the transmission of sin by descent, nowhere would it have been more appropriate for him to say, ‘Sin passed to all for this reason: because all were begotten through married people’s pleasure.’ He would have added, ‘It passes in this way: they flowed from the decaying flesh of the first man.’

6.24.80‘Many’ was said so that ‘all’ would not be understood.

Augustine reports that Julian refuses to identify the ‘many’ mentioned later with the ‘all’ mentioned earlier. (Romans 5:12,18–19)

6.25.82The proverb will no longer be used which says that parents ate sour grapes and their children’s teeth were set on edge. A son will not die for his father’s sin, nor a father for his son’s sin; the soul that sins will itself die. (Ezekiel 18:2–4,20)

6.26.83Augustine reports Julian’s two main claims in his four books: original sin should not be believed, and sexual desire cannot be blamed without condemning marriage.

He also reports Julian’s claim that he has undertaken war against the ungodly and stands with the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, and priests. Julian alleges that a company of Manicheans is defeating him.