1. OF EVODIUS, ON THE FAITH AGAINST THE MANICHAEANS. One God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, invisible, incomprehensible, ineffable, inviolable, undefilable, who alone has immortality and dwells in light inaccessible. He himself is the true light, life and truth, good, supreme, and whatever the human tongue can declare about him: which things, however, are given by him, so that they may in some way be spoken. From whom are all things, through whom are all things, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; and all things were created through him and in him, as is manifested in both Testaments to the humble and to those who seek piously. To him be glory throughout the ages of ages. Amen.
To this One Mani says there is an adversary, some prince of the nation of darkness, whom he also asserts to be unbegotten and to have no author by whom he was created. And surely if he is unbegotten and not created, he is immortal through himself. And if he is immortal through himself, he will not be God who alone has immortality, and the apostle will now be a liar, who says concerning God that he alone has immortality. But because the apostle is not a liar, God alone has immortality. And therefore he alone has the power to grant immortality to souls and to whatever bodies he wills. It is false therefore that Mani asserts that some nature of evil with its prince has no author but is unbegotten.
Furthermore, if God is unbegotten, and the nation of darkness is also even now unbegotten, then the unbegotten and the unbegotten will not be contrary, nor the seeing and the seeing, nor the reigning and the reigning, nor the living and the living, nor the eternal and the eternal. And if evil is contrary to good, then in some part good will be at variance with evil; but in much it will be joined and concordant, and it will no longer be pure evil, having so many good things in common with God. But if they say: it is unbegotten in its own kind, they say nothing. For the unbegotten and the unbegotten, the eternal and the eternal—insofar as they are unbegotten and eternal—were never contrary.
For is it that, because an emperor is great in his power and a menial is contemptible in his work, therefore the menial will not be a man, because the emperor is a man? But if anyone asks what evil is, let him hear the apostle saying: The root of all evils is covetousness, which some coveting have wandered from the faith and have entangled themselves in many sorrows. But covetousness in each man is not natural but voluntary, and therefore he said "which some coveting." For what is had by coveting, if it were not coveted, would not be had. For the Lord also, showing that it is in man's power, says: Either make the tree good and its fruit good; or make the tree evil and its fruit evil.
Also in the acts written in silence, which they themselves receive, it is thus written: For indeed beautiful figments and feigned ostentation and the compulsion of visible things does not proceed even from its own nature, but from man, who through himself has been made worse by seduction. Mani himself also could not but confess that souls—even those which he says pertain to the substance of God—sin by their own will. For thus in the second book of the Treasure he says: But those who through their negligence have in no wise permitted themselves to be purged from the stain of the aforesaid spirits, and have too little obeyed the divine commands in their integrity, and have refused to keep more fully the law given them by their liberator, and have not, as was fitting, governed themselves, and so forth.
Likewise in the Epistle of the Foundation he speaks thus concerning those souls: which by love of the world have suffered themselves to wander from their former luminous nature and have become enemies of the holy light and have openly armed themselves to the ruin of the holy elements and have given themselves over to the fiery spirit. By their hostile persecution they have also afflicted the holy Church and the elect established in it, the observers of the heavenly precepts, and they are barred from the blessedness and glory of the holy land. And because they suffered themselves to be overcome by evil, they shall persevere in the same stock of evil, that peaceful land and the immortal regions being forbidden to them. And this shall befall them because they so bound themselves by wicked works that they should be made strangers to the life and liberty of the holy light.
They will not therefore be able to be received into those peaceful kingdoms, but they shall be fixed in the aforesaid horrible globe, to which also it is necessary that a guard be set. Whence those same souls shall cling to those things which they loved, left behind in that same globe of darkness, acquiring this for themselves by their own merits. For neither did they take care to know these future things, and from these very things, when time was given, they did not separate themselves. I ask you: where these words are heard, do you still doubt that Mani was driven to confess that there is a sin of one's own will? For he said not one word about it, but so many words that he might rouse even one held by heavy sleep. He said: by their negligence; he said: in no wise permitted; he said: too little obeyed; he said: refused to keep; likewise he said:
they obeyed; he said: they suffered themselves to be overcome; he said: they bound themselves; he said: acquiring this for themselves by their own merits; he said: for neither did they take care to know these future things, and from these very things, when time was given, they separated themselves. And do you still doubt to say that one sins by one's own will? Again he himself says in the same epistle: but the secondary portion of light, that is, the sinning souls—and do you not say that they sin, but only the nation of darkness? But why should I speak about this man, who, although he erred, nevertheless by the most evident truth tried to say this? Whereas you are unwilling to understand our Lord Jesus Christ himself, saying that fire has been prepared for sinners and for the devil and his angels, all of whom he wished to be understood as sinners;
for there is no injustice with God, that he should condemn those who have sinned in nothing. For what else is it to sin except not to stand in the precepts of truth or in the truth itself? And if sinners do this not by their own will, they are judged unjustly. But that angels too pertain to judgment, the apostle shows, saying: Do you not know that we shall judge angels? But they would not pertain to the judgment by which they are judged, if they did not pertain to the sin by which they are made guilty and might deservedly be judged. For just men are not going to judge concerning just angels, to whom they shall be like, but assuredly concerning sinners. Each one therefore is the author of his own wrongdoing through covetousness. It is therefore in his power that covetousness should exist: and therefore evil too is in his power.
It is therefore within our power to do what ought not to be in our will; for evil cannot be a nature, nor a substance, nor a life, since these things are good insofar as they exist. But even if we call some people evil by nature, we say this on account of the origin of the old sin, into which our mortality is already born. And so, the whole of what is called evil in human beings is sin and its punishment. Sin is committed by the rational soul, which has free choice of the will; and punishment is inflicted by the justice of God, who does nothing unjustly. Against these truths the Manichaeans bark with their accustomed blindness; and when they are refuted, shown that nature is not evil but that it lies within a person's power to do well or ill, they say that the soul has no free will, and they do not see their own blindness.
For who would not cry out that it is foolish to give commands to one who is not free to do what is commanded, and that it is unjust to condemn one who had no power to fulfill what was ordered? And these wretches do not understand that they are ascribing such injustices and iniquities to God. But what is true except that the Lord both gives commands, and that souls are of free will, and that nature is not evil, but that evil is a turning away from the commands of God, and that the judgment of God is just, by which He condemns those who sin? Meanwhile, this same Manichaeus says that God abounds in all good things, with nothing in His kingdoms being eminent yet wanting or set in a lowly state, and likewise that His most splendid ages were so firmly founded that they could never be shaken or moved by anything.
In another place, a little after, he adds and says: "But the Father of the most blessed light, knowing the great ruin and devastation that would rise up out of the darkness to threaten His holy ages, unless He should set against it some excellent and illustrious power, mighty in strength, by which He might overcome and at once destroy the stock of darkness; and when it was extinguished, rest would be prepared for the inhabitants of the light." Surely, then, the kingdoms of the Manichaeans' god could never have been shaken or moved by anyone. For if they could, he lied in saying that those kingdoms could not be shaken by anyone. And if they were shaken by necessity or by fear, then He will not be God who could be so shaken.
For we see that the god of Manichaeus, according to Manichaeus himself, was pressed by the evil of necessity, since ruin and devastation threatened his ages and he had nothing else he could do, so that he gave a part of himself to the battle, in order that even in this way he might procure rest for the inhabitants of the light. But that very part of him—that is, light from light, good from good, holy from holy, eternal from eternal, God from God, omnipotent from omnipotent—was corrupted, was put to death, was mingled throughout all the bodies of the world, from the highest to the lowest, from heaven down to dung, so that even harlots in the theaters and in baser places have within themselves an oppressed god, baser still, who perhaps cannot be set free.
For he says at the end of that letter, from which we have already cited one chapter, that this very part of God which has been mingled cannot wholly be recalled to its former liberty. Behold the victory, behold the triumph, such as the god of Manichaeus has achieved! For after losing his part he is in mourning, as Manichaeus himself says: he holds a veil before himself to temper his grief, lest he behold the corruption of his part. For today the divine substance which he mentions lies subject to the race of darkness, like clay to the potter. This is written in their first book, the Treasury. Meanwhile, what sort of foulness, which he wrote in that same Treasury among other foul things in the seventh book, speaking thus:
"Then that blessed Father, who has the shining ships as His lodgings and dwellings according to their magnitudes, out of the clemency innate in Him brings aid, by which He is unclothed and set free from the impious fetters and constraints and torments of His living substance. And so by His invisible nod He transforms those powers of His which are held in this most brilliant ship, and makes them appear to the hostile powers which are set in order throughout the several regions of the heavens."
Since these consist of both sexes, of males and females, He therefore commands the aforesaid powers, partly in the appearance of beardless boys, to appear to the opposing race of females, and partly in the form of shining virgins to the contrary race of males—knowing that all those hostile powers are most easily captured, on account of the deadly and most filthy lust innate in them, by those same most beautiful appearances which appear to them, and thus be enslaved, and in this manner dissolved. Know also that this same blessed Father of ours is one and the same with even His own powers, which for a necessary cause He transforms into the unsullied likeness of boys and virgins. And He uses these as His own weapons, and through them He accomplishes His will.
Of these divine powers, which are set in the manner of a marriage-bond against the infernal races, and which with eagerness and ease accomplish in the very same moment whatever they have conceived, the shining ships are full. And so, when reason demands that these same holy powers appear to the males, at once they display also their own figure in the guise of most beautiful virgins. Again, when they come to the females, setting aside the appearance of virgins, they show the appearance of beardless boys. And by this comely sight the ardor and lust of those powers grows, and in this manner the bond of their most wicked thoughts is loosed; and the soul which was held in their members, freed by this occasion, escapes, and being released, mingles with its own purest air.
There, the wholly cleansed souls ascend to the shining ships, which are prepared for their conveyance and for the passage to their own homeland. But that part which still carries the stains of the opposing race descends bit by bit through the heat and warmth, and is mingled with the trees and the other plantations and all the crops, and is stained with various colors. And in the same way that out of this great and most brilliant ship the figures of boys and virgins appear to the contrary powers which dwell in the heavens and have a fiery nature, so from this comely sight the part of life which is held in their members is released and led down through the heat into the earth.
In the same way also that most exalted power, which dwells in the ship of living waters, in the likeness of holy boys and virgins, through its angels appears to those powers whose nature is cold and moist and which are set in order in the heavens. And indeed to those which are female, in them appears the form of boys, but to the males the form of virgins. By this change and diversity of the divine and most beautiful persons, the male or female princes of the moist and cold stock are dissolved, and that which is living in them flees away; but whatever remains, being released, is led down into the earth through the cold, and is mingled with all the kinds of the earth.
Who would not laugh, or rather grieve and detest this man who utters such horrible and execrable things about the divine substance? So then, according to your error and your fabrication, the substance of eternal light, the part of God in captivity, in calamities, in hardships, in pressures, in filth and uncleanness, could not otherwise be daily relieved unless the blessed Father, who has the shining ships as His lodgings—whom you call the third legate—and the most exalted power should transform their powers into a nature of the opposite sex; powers which indeed you call unsullied, yet which, after the manner of harlots, by their beauty mutually inflame the deadly and most filthy lust of the princes of darkness, all in confusion!
For you have not found the truth, by which you might at some point have stated so great a foulness more honorably. And for what cause do they do this? So that, when these powers have been stirred up to lust, the divine substance may find an occasion for liberation. What else does this amount to, except that the divine majesty should find ways of escape even through the genitals of demons? O great God, come to the aid of souls that believe such foul things, that follow such unspeakable doctrines! Who would not shudder at these things? I ask you. Who is so blind as to believe these things? I ask you. But let at least this be answered to me by those who follow Manichaeus himself: if God is incorruptible, or every nature of the highest good is inviolable, immaculate, unapproachable, unstainable, incomprehensible:
what evil could the nature of evil have done to so great a nature, if it had not wished to fight against it, lest it be led down to such great disgrace? This I have said: what would the race of darkness have done to God, if He had not wished to fight against it? If to me it is said "nothing," I ask, why today is His part—that is, the God of God—set in calamities, in pressures, in captivity, in subjection, so that it is even so shamefully set free, and yet not even thus can it all be set free, nor can the Father Himself, so that he has mourning on account of his aforesaid part—a mourning which Manichaeus most openly proclaims in his books? Someone has said: "Nothing could be done to Him, but in order to show that He had foreknowledge of the thoughts of the princes of darkness, and to demonstrate that He feared nothing, He therefore fought."
To him I said: He who was able to see the thoughts of the princes of darkness and to fear no one, why did He not foresee the mourning that was about to come upon Him from the misfortune of His part, which He suffers today? Which part of His He will indeed not receive back whole, because something remains there—as he himself says—which cannot be purged, and which will be condemned in the lump of darkness for eternity. What great foreknowledge—or rather, what ignorance and what wretched weakness! This is the whole of it, that He feared no one. Surely, if He could not protect Himself in any way, He should have asked that He be spared, lest that integrity and the glory of all His adornments be led down to such great disgrace. Likewise it has been said by a certain one:
"The race of darkness could do nothing to Him, but He Himself was unwilling to endure an evil thing near His own borders, and He sent forth one to wage war on it." To him I said: If it is as you say, then He Himself is rather found to be evil, who wished to destroy a neighboring thing that was doing Him no harm. And just as He was evil toward it, so He was cruel toward His own, or ignorant of its coming calamity. For when He thinks He can accomplish a good thing—namely, to extend His own region into the kingdom of evil, which was doing Him no harm—first He did not foresee the misfortune which daily presses upon that aforesaid part of His; and then that He could never receive it all back into its former liberty. But since no answer can in the least be given to this objection, they bring forward their accustomed ignorance:
"What would the Jews have done to Christ, if He had not wished to suffer at their hands?" Oh, would that they could see what they would easily see, were they not blinded by the mists of contentiousness—what it is to be pressed by the necessity of a threatening evil (which they assert their god suffered), and what it is to be the most kindly office of mercy, which the Wisdom and Power of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, by His will and ineffable power, through the man whom He took from a virgin, deigned to display to the human race, so that to men, through a man, He might show an example of patience. For this was fitting, and this was just:
that men, through the patience of humility, might overcome the difficulty of the weakness of their own flesh, into which they had fallen through the exaltation of pride, just as our Scripture indicates concerning Adam, the first man. Can you also say: "Because there were certain men whom God wished to teach patience, therefore He willed to suffer such great evils at the hands of the race of darkness, just as the Lord did at the hands of the Jews"? Or can you say that God took on some passible nature in which He might suffer at the hands of the race of darkness whatever it could do to Him, yet in such a way that He Himself was in no part changed in His substance, just as the Word of God, who is the Son of God, He too, like the Father, immutable, took on a mortal man?
so that, with His deity whole and inviolate in mortal flesh, He might teach mortals through patience to conquer death, and might show forth, by the resurrection, the future change for the better of that same weak flesh? Therefore, since in Himself He was invisible, He appeared visible in a man, whom He deigned to take from a woman, as we read in the Gospel. The Apostle also says: "made of a woman." And these people say: "Why did he not say 'of a virgin'?"—not understanding that it was said in the customary manner, according to the proper usage of the language of the Scriptures, just as it was said of Eve: "He formed her into a woman," before she was even shown to the man.
Although Mary is not inappropriately called a woman on account of childbearing, yet she is a virgin, because she knew no union with a man, nor was her virginity corrupted in giving birth. And as for what the angel and Elizabeth said to Mary—"Blessed art thou among women"—there is no question, because in truth she is blessed as a virgin among women. But do not say: "Just as the angels appeared, so He had a body, lest He be born of a woman." What then? If it should be said to you: where have you read that Christ came in the flesh? Will you not say: in the Gospel? You are answered, then, that it is written there that Christ was born of a virgin. But with your accustomed foulness you will say that this very Scripture is false.
Nor do you see that some blind man like yourselves could do this very thing—namely, declare false the things which you have called true, and declare true the things which you call false—and so you would open the doors to every error or crime of men, so that each one, just as he wishes or as he is pleased, may accept the divine Scriptures themselves, but reject whatever, not understanding and being offended, he has thought to be evil; and there would be found no rule by which such errors of yours might be corrected. Receive the canonical Scriptures whole, if you desire to be whole. For if you understood, or surely believed, what the Apostle said—that our race was deceived through a woman (for he says: "I fear lest, as the serpent seduced Eve by his cunning,
so also your minds should be corrupted")—you would be able to understand that it was fitting for our race to be set free through a woman, so that, since death came through a woman, life might be recovered through a woman; and thus it might be shown that it is not the female creature itself that is to be blamed (of which God is the Creator), but the will by which Eve sinned. But they are afraid to believe that that unstainable and ineffable power of the majesty was in a virginal womb, lest it be polluted by her blood—although it both has dwelt and now dwells in the apostles and in many worthy women, who certainly have bodies and have blood. For if it could be defiled in Mary, it could be defiled in all of them; but if it could not be defiled in them, then surely it could not be defiled in Mary either.
In whose womb the Wisdom of God wrought the taking-on of a body. Certainly they will not deny that Manichaeus himself was born of a father and a mother—whose soul, according to their error, they likewise will not deny to be omnipotent God. He who boasts, with marvelous pride, that he was taken up by his Twin, that is, by the Holy Spirit. And surely, if he is the twin of the Holy Spirit, then he too is the Holy Spirit and he too is omnipotent God, as the Holy Spirit is. Yet this Manichaeus had flesh, in which, if the Holy Spirit was defiled, or his soul the twin of the Holy Spirit, then they worship a defilable god. But if God is nowhere defiled—since even the light of the heavenly bodies reaches down to the earth and is not defiled—
since it is manifest that this very sun, to which they bend the knee, spreads its rays over all dung and stenches and is nowhere defiled by them: let them cease to blaspheme, and let them entreat God that they be set free from error. For the unstainable substance is not undefiled for this reason—that it touches nothing—but because it remains in its own cleanness, whatever sort the thing be that it touches. Just as of an invulnerable or impenetrable body, do we say that it is one that is not struck by iron? No, rather, one that, even when it is struck, is not penetrated.
And therefore it is the more proven that the Son of God cannot be defiled by the blood of a woman, precisely because He was born through a woman—whereas, if He had not been born through a woman and had avoided those members, He would seem to have indicated that He could be polluted from that source, and would be called unstainable by us with less confidence. But He consecrated virginity, because He willed to be born of a virgin, and a mother alone was to be chosen for Him on earth for the taking-on of the man—He who already had a Father in heaven. But they say: "Why then did He deny His mother, when He said to her: 'What is it to me and to thee, woman?' and when, on being told that she wished to see Him, He answered: 'Who is my mother, or who are my brethren?'"
Rather, He reckoned among that affection those who did the will of His Father, because by His own example He was already teaching that earthly parents are to be denied for God's sake. For to one doing the divine works, earthly affection ought not to be an obstruction. For if He had no mother because He denied His mother, then neither did Peter and the other apostles have fathers, because He admonished them, saying: "And call no man your father upon earth; for one is your Father, who is in heaven." What therefore He admonished them concerning the earthly father, He did first concerning His mother. This therefore we say: that the Wisdom of God was not defiled by taking on a man;
but out of mercy, for the salvation of men, He took on a man, so that, as the Apostle says, there might be a Mediator of God and men, the man Jesus Christ. For He who said "I am the Truth" could not lie to His doubting disciple, when He offered the scars of His wounds for him even to touch with his hand. For how could we have faith in Him secure in anything, if He had so lied to His disciple? Far be such blasphemy! And may it not hold guilty for eternity even those very ones who dare to assert or to believe this; but let them at some point awaken and understand by what wicked perversity these things are believed.
But we believe that the Lord Christ took on a true man, and that in him He, the invisible, appeared visibly to men; that in him He dwelt among men; that in him He endured human things at the hands of men; that in him He taught men from whom they should withdraw, what they should endure, whither they should strive. And all this He did under no necessity. Whence He Himself says: "For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself; I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again." Therefore He did not lose it through the necessity of evil.
For He willed that all the things which were done in His passion should be done for the teaching of human nature, not for the guarding of His own. For just as we, who consist of soul and body—since we are invisible according to the soul, but visible according to the body—all the things which we visibly receive, whether of honor or of benefits, or which we suffer of insult or injury, must be referred to the soul, which is invisible,
as to a ruler, since it is the soul that holds rule over the body—for even though according to the soul we are immortal, yet when we have died in body, we are said to be dead—so also the Lord, according to the flesh and the form of a servant which He deigned to take on, is manifested both to have suffered insults and bonds and scourgings, and to have died: