Against the Manichaeans 1 part 4/4

For, it is said, he 'calls the things that are not as though they were.' Now if, on account of goodness, he ought not to have made those who would be punished, then rather, on account of surpassing goodness, he ought both to have made them and not punished them, but instead have forgiven them their sins;

for he himself is Lord of both — both of making and of forgiving.

But if it is just that sinners be punished, then it was also just that they should come to be.

For God sees the things that are not as though they were, and he judges not from the outcome of events, but from his foreknowledge of things that shall be.

Since indeed he does not know from the outcome of what comes to pass, but foreknows the things that shall be, and according to his foreknowledge he predestines.

And how could he foreknow what would not come to be? For if he foreknew the one who would sin, and yet did not make him, it would not have been foreknowledge, but error;

for just as knowledge is of things that exist, so too foreknowledge is of the things that shall certainly come to be.

Let us not, then, judge God;

for we do not know his counsel.

'For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become his counselor?' For he has not revealed to us all of his counsel,

but only what was expedient for us to know;

but what was not expedient for us to know, he has hidden.

Let us not, then, call God to account;

for he himself is the judge, and he himself is the fountain of good things, and there is no good except what he himself wills, just as there is no light except that which springs from the sun.

God himself, then, being by nature good and compassionate, does not will sin, does not will the death of the sinner, nor does he delight in the destruction of the living, nor is he seized by the passion of wrath when he punishes, but he pours forth good things upon all.

He who desires receives, and the good man obtains good things;

and in this present life there is a certain dispensation and governance and ineffable providence, calling sinners to conversion and repentance; but after death there is no longer any turning, no longer any repentance — not because God does not receive repentance, for he cannot deny himself, nor does he cast off compassion, but because the soul is no longer capable of turning.

Therefore, even if someone should do all righteous deeds, and then turn back and sin, and depart this life still desiring sin, he shall die in his sin.

Likewise, if the sinner repents and dies in his repentance, his sins shall not be remembered.

For just as the demons, after their fall, do not repent, and the angels now do not sin, but both have attained immutability, so also men after death possess immutability; and the righteous, desiring God and having him, ever rejoice in him, while sinners, desiring sin and not having the materials of sin, are punished as though being devoured by fire and worm, having no consolation.

For what is punishment, if not privation of what is desired? According to the proportion of desire, then, those who desire God rejoice, and those who desire sin are punished;

for indeed, those who obtain what they desire rejoice in proportion to their desire, and those who fail to obtain it grieve in proportion to their desire.

What is 'Almighty'? Surely, he who has power over all things;

but it is God who has fashioned all things. How then is God 'almighty' if he does not have mastery over matter and evil? Or how is he Creator, if he himself did not create matter? Or how is he God, being imperfect and having deficient power? For why did he not destroy and subject matter, but instead allowed it to remain in rebellion, even until the very tipping-point of the appointed time? If it was because he was unwilling, he is not good;

for it is not the mark of one who is good or just to remain passively at ease toward those who sin.

But if it was because he was unable, then an impotent God would not be God at all;

For you cannot say, as we said concerning the coming-to-be and existing of the devil, that his very existing is good.

For we, since we hold that his existence was given him from the Good, might rightly say that his existing is good;

for that which is given from the Good is good.

But you, since you do not hold that existence was given to matter from the Good, but rather call it evil, evil by nature, and wholly without share in the good, will not be able to say that its existing is good.

Therefore, according to you, God is either not good or not powerful, since he did not remove it from the beginning.

If all things are from the substance of the good and the substance of evil, then neither the good one nor the evil one is a creator, but rather they are fathers of the things that exist.

If evil is opposed to the good as being to being, and principle to principle, and substance to substance, and — to use your terms — god to god, then it is within our power to do the good or the evil, it is within our power to give the victory to the good or to the evil, and we are the cause of the prevailing of each.

For we say there is one God — good, just, creator of all, ruler of all, almighty, able to do whatever he wills — and that by him all things were created, both visible and invisible, not from his own substance, but out of non-being into being.

for whatever the Lord willed, that he did — and we call good that which he wills;

for the things made do not judge the one who made them.

But neither do we know the reason of his providence;

for who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has become his counselor? If his counsel and his will were known, he would be neither God nor wonderful.

For just as his substance is incomprehensible, so also are his will and his providence.

For if no one knows the affairs of men except the spirit of each that is within him — and yet each of men does not even know all his own affairs, for he does not know the future, nor does he know what he wants, or what he will want and decide tomorrow — how then will he know the will of God and his counsel, he who often even comes to forget what he himself had decided? God provides for all things according to his own foreknowledge.

And to us, who know neither the things to come, nor the things that have already happened, nor even all the things now present, his governance seems irregular; but in reality it is regular, and good, and just.

For foreknowing the things in our power as though they were already the things that will be, he judges justly, as he himself wills and determines;

for God does not see as man sees.

For man looks upon the outward appearance, but God looks upon the heart. We often see as unjust what is judged just by all, on account of a preconceived notion of wickedness, and because the same thing is not pleasing to everyone;

for the same thing is not pleasing to all, but different things to different people.

But God judges not out of repentance or after-knowledge, but out of foreknowledge.

For God, having foreknown all things before their coming to be, predetermined for each — justly, providentially, and beneficially — the things not in our power, in correspondence with the things that are in our power.

For knowledge is one thing, foreknowledge another, after-knowledge another, decision another, and predetermination another.

For knowledge is the knowing of the things that are or that are coming to be; foreknowledge is the knowing of the things that will be, before their coming to be; after-knowledge is the true knowledge that arises after a false knowledge;

and decision is a judgment and pronouncement concerning things that have happened, while predetermination is a judgment and pronouncement concerning things that will be.

God, therefore, foreseeing the things that will be done by us of our own will — that is, the things in our power, I mean virtue and vice — predetermines the things not in our power.

And the foreknowing power of God does not have its cause from us; but his foreknowing what we are going to do has its cause from us;

for if we were not going to do it, he himself would not have foreknown that which was not going to be.

And God's foreknowledge is true and inviolable, but it is not itself the cause of the future thing's coming to be absolutely; rather, because we are going to do this or that, he foreknows it.

He foreknows many things that are not pleasing to him, and he himself is not the cause of these.

Just as a physician is not the cause of a disease, if he foreknows that someone is going to fall ill, but the falling ill has its cause from something else that produces the disease, while the physician's foreknowledge has its cause from the skill within him;

so also that which is going to be done by us does not have its cause from God, but from our free will;

and free will is not evil, provided that we use it as it was given to us and for the purpose for which it was given.

And God's foreknowing belongs to his foreknowing power.

But neither do our punishments have God as their cause.

For the judge is not the cause of the wicked man's punishment, even though he himself judges willingly; rather, the one who has offended is the cause of his own punishment, while the judge is the cause of justice;

for although he judges willingly, it is not according to his antecedent will, but according to his consequent will.

The antecedent will, then, is that which someone wills of himself, while the consequent will is that which arises from the cause of things that come to pass;

for God, in the first instance and of himself, wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth;

but when we sin, he wills that we be disciplined for our benefit.

And the antecedent will of God belongs to his goodness, while the —

— consequent will belongs to his justice.

That God predetermined all things according to his own foreknowledge, we shall come to know as follows:

The divine is immutable, and it judges not out of after-knowledge, but out of foreknowledge.

If, then, he judges and decides day by day, he would be learning day by day what is happening, and, as some say, he even repents and adds years to life — they not knowing what they are saying.

For if he repents and adds, then both his will and his knowledge are subject to change, and this is unworthy of God.

But if it is said, according to Scripture, that he added years to Hezekiah, he did not add them in ignorance, nor without having predetermined them; rather, he himself both foreknew and predetermined the things concerning Hezekiah;

but he arranged it providentially, administering the dispensation of our salvation, in order to show how great a power repentance possesses.

He is said to "repent" in the manner of things pertaining to us.

For Scripture speaks of God in a more human manner, in accommodation to the immaturity of its hearers.

"Why do you sleep, O Lord?" — yet God does not sleep; rather, Scripture has called his forbearance and long-suffering, and the deferral of his help, "sleep";

for among us, those who are asleep do not help — and so likewise with "repentance":

for we, when we give someone wealth and he makes wicked use of it, repent of having given it.

Thus, when God made man, and anointed Saul as king, and they sinned, he is said to "repent" — not that God repented, for he had foreknown what would happen — but because they had done deeds worthy of repentance.

Let us strive, then, to do the good and to become good, so that we may be among those foreknown as good and predetermined unto eternal life.

But it must be known that the good is the best order, preserving for each thing what is proper to it according to nature — and this is the same as virtue — while evil is the dissolution of order, that is, disorder.

"Good" is spoken of in two ways:

either the truly good, as the order just described, or the apparently good — the pleasure according to sensation, contrary to the aforesaid order — which is not good but rather evil.

And "evil" likewise is spoken of in two ways:

either the truly evil, that is, that which comes to be contrary to the natural order and contrary to the law of the Creator, according to one's own private will — for the natural order is obedience to the Creator, and disorder is disobedience — or the apparently evil, that which is grievous according to sensation and burdensome to us, such as discipline, which is rather good and beneficial, restoring us to the order according to nature.

And the truly evil things, the various forms of sin, are called "voluntary evils," while the burdensome things are called "involuntary evils."

God, then, is the cause neither of the one kind nor of the other, as we have shown.

For even though the things called involuntary evils seem to us to be evils — because of their unpleasantness, and because of our own rashness, and because we sin, that is, miss the mark of what is fitting — and though God, by a just reckoning, brings them upon the one greedy for pleasure, disciplining him for his benefit, nevertheless the things called involuntary evils depend upon the voluntary evils;

for the involuntary evils follow upon the voluntary evils.

For punishments and disciplines — that is, calamities for the most part — occur for the sake of correction, and the punishment of the age to come is the complete abolition of evil and sin; or, to state it conversely: for those who long after bodily pleasures contrary to the law of nature, and the sins committed on their account, the punishment — namely, the impossibility of ever making use of such things again — will be an eternal punishment.

For punishment is the failure to obtain what is desired.

For pleasure that is contrary to the law of nature extends all the way to sin;

and this pleasure is twofold, either of the soul or of the body;

the pleasure of the soul is the desire for glory, while the bodily pleasures are eating, drinking, bodily rest, sleep, and intercourse with women.

All these are natural and good when they occur according to the natural order and the law of the Creator, but evil when contrary to the law of the Creator and to the natural order and use.

And the natural order is to desire the glory that is from God, whereas [the disordered kind is] to desire that which is from one another.

to desire glory contrary to nature;

For to God alone, who is by nature worthy of glory, belongs the glory from all his creatures, but for us it is fitting to be humbled before God as our Maker, and before one another because of the law of him who created us.

For this is the proof of love toward God and toward one's neighbor, which is the law of God;

'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself'; and 'everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.'

So then, to love the glory that comes from one another constitutes unbelief.

For, he says, 'you cannot believe in me while receiving glory from one another and not seeking the glory that comes from the only God.' And again:

Bodily pleasure — food and drink and the rest — when taken according to their natural use and the law of the Creator, are good; but when they occur contrary to the law of God, according to our own private judgment and through misuse, they become evil;

for example, food and drink, insofar as they serve life and the sustaining of the body, are good; likewise also sleep, and the use of one's wife — that is, 'to know one's own vessel' — is good; but to indulge food, drink, and women for irrational pleasures indiscriminately, after the manner of irrational animals, is wicked.

Therefore, on account of vainglory and immoderate eating and drinking and fornications, there arises love of money, the support of these vices, and envies, and strifes, and wickednesses, and falsehood, and slanders, and robberies, and murders, and hatred toward one's neighbor.

For 'because lawlessness has been multiplied, the love of many has grown cold' — and by 'many' he meant those who practice lawlessness.

From what is natural, then, come the things contrary to nature, when the devil makes his assault.

Against all these there are for us two greatest means of help: to do violence to ourselves — for this violence is a proof of love toward God — and prayer;

for prayer is a proof of humility.

For recognizing our own weakness, we call upon the power of God.

One must know that not judging also redeems from sin;

for not judging is a sign of humility.

Nothing so summons the help of God as humility.

For, he says, 'behold my humility and the toil of my violence, and forgive all my sins'; and 'behold my humility and deliver me' — evidently from the enemy warring against me, and from my sin and my folly.

Association with the virtuous also contributes to virtue — for man is an imitative creature — as does abstaining from sensory contact with things that provoke the passions;

for as far as a thing is removed from the eyes, so far is it removed from the heart as well.

For it is through these that the memory of sensible things arises in the soul.

It lies before us, then, to separate the mind from the memory of sensible things, so that with a light wing it may fly up to the intelligible sun and be illumined by his unapproachable and inconceivable beauty.

For the mind is thickened by the memory of sensible things, and is dragged down toward them, and is withdrawn from the contemplation and enjoyment of intelligible beauty;

for no one can serve two masters. By habit men perfect every art, and by persistence and by violence to themselves.

Through the violence, then, that comes from love, and the prayer that comes from humility, and the avoidance of sensible things, and fleeing the company of the more negligent, and not judging, and humility, and companionship with the virtuous, and obedience, let us work out our own salvation, not hiding our thoughts and the passions within us.

For everything hidden is base, but what is made manifest is light.

For a serpent does not breed in the sun, but in its lair; nor does seed grow while lying above the earth, but while hidden beneath the earth.

Thus also evil thoughts, when they are not disclosed, bear fruit unto corruption, and the good ones unto eternal life.

May it be granted to all of us to attain this, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom, to the Father be glory, together with the all-holy, good, and

life-giving and consubstantial Spirit, now and always, and unto the ages of ages.