Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 21 part 2/3

Now the stronger harm the weaker, for none overcomes another except in so far as he is more powerful. Yet these unjust princes are themselves weaker than they would be if they had remained in their pristine state and in righteousness. But it matters whence one is stronger than another: whether in body, as horses are stronger than men; or in the nature of the soul, as the rational than the irrational; or in disposition of mind, as the just than the unjust; or in the order of power, as an emperor over a soldier or a provincial. And power is believed to be given altogether from the supreme power of God — often even to the worse over the better, that is, to the unjust over those who either already hold righteousness or strive to attain to holding it.

For it is given to this end: that those who are approved through patience may be made manifest, either to themselves for hope, or to others for imitation. "Knowing," says the Apostle, "that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, probation; and probation, hope." Of this kind is the contest, when a faithful man wrestles against the principalities and powers of the transgressor angels and against spiritual wickedness, since they receive the power of tempting, and he receives the precepts of endurance; whence it comes about that in the lower thing they are overcome, in the more powerful they overcome: for the most part they overcome the weaker body, and are overcome by the firmer mind.

For against their violence one fights with patience, against their snares with prudence, so that they may neither bend us by compulsion nor deceive us by fraud into a ruinous consent. But since Christ is the power and wisdom of God, through whom all things were made, therefore in the things that were made, when the higher decline toward the lower — wherein lies all sin and all that is called evil — violence imitates power and fraud imitates wisdom; whereas when the things that had declined run back and return, then magnanimity imitates power and doctrine imitates wisdom. Even God the Father Himself sinners imitate by impious pride, the just by devout liberality. Finally the Holy Spirit the lust of the wicked imitates, the charity of the upright imitates:

yet both alike depart from the imitation of God — from whom and through whom and in whom the natures themselves were made — the one, however, in a vicious manner, the other in a praiseworthy manner. Nor is it any wonder if, whenever those who advance and those who fall away clash, the imitation of the falling is overcome by the imitation of the advancing; for the former are cast down by exaltation, the latter rise up by humility. But if it moves you why those who are stronger in mind should be weaker in body, it is no wonder that those set free by the remission of sins should be exercised by the mortality of the body, with whose immortality they shall be crowned. For punishment is not easily escaped, unless he who is released from it has conquered by his merits. Whence the Apostle:

"But if Christ be in you, the body indeed is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised up Christ from the dead dwell in you, He who raised up Jesus Christ from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwelleth in you." Therefore the mind, bearing a flesh made mortal because of the punishment of sin, if it be changed for the better, so that you live not according to the mortal flesh, both changes that flesh for the better and shall deserve to have an immortal body — yet this at the end, when death the last enemy shall be destroyed, when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption; not by that fabulous globe of yours, but by that transformation of which he speaks:

"We shall all rise again, but we shall not all be changed." For when he had explained it, saying, "And the dead shall rise incorruptible, and we shall be changed," then, weaving it together, he added, showing what kind of change he meant, and said: "For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality." For he was treating a question about the body of those who rise, which he had thus put: "But someone will say: How do the dead rise? and with what body do they come?" Read therefore that whole passage with devout care, attentive and not disturbed by obstinate contention; and, with God helping your understanding, without desiring any expositor, you will find nothing other than what I say:

And then recall your mind to that which we had set out to treat, and now see, if you can, that I do not say the just fight against nothing, but against those substances which have fallen away by not standing in the truth. But to fall away is not yet to be nothing, but to tend toward nothingness. For when those things that exist more decline toward those that exist less, it is not the things toward which they decline, but the things that decline, that fall away and begin to be less than they were — not indeed becoming that toward which they have declined, but becoming less according to their own kind. For when the mind declines toward the body, it does not become body; yet by a certain defective appetite it in some manner becomes bodily.

So too a certain angelic loftiness, when it was more delighted with its own dominion over itself, inclined its affection toward that which is less, and began to be less than it was, and according to its own degree tended toward nothingness. For the less each thing is, the nearer it is to nothing. But since these defections come about voluntarily, they are rightly reproved and named sins; and since there follow upon these voluntary defections certain inconveniences, troubles, sorrows, and adversities, all of which we suffer against our will, sin is rightly punished either by penalties or purged away by exercises. And if you are willing to look upon these things with a serene mind, you will surely cease to accuse natures and to arraign substances themselves as guilty.

But if you desire something more copious and more fully explained on this matter, read our three books which are entitled "On Free Will," which you will be able to find in Campania at Nola, in the keeping of Paulinus, that noble servant of God. Now, however, I ought to remember that I am replying to your letter — though with one much longer, yet a letter. For this reason I have not kept silent about certain other matters, lest I be compelled everywhere to say the same things. But I had promised to persuade you from your own letter how false are the things you have believed, and how true is the assertion of the catholic faith. For certainly the whole difference between us is not merely that you say a certain substance is evil. We, indeed, say that evil is not a substance, but an inclination away from that which exists more, toward that which exists less. Hear, then, this very point.

For you put in your letter and say concerning the soul, that it is led to sin by the commixture of the flesh, not by its own will; and there at once, I believe — when you saw that, if this were so, help must utterly be given by almighty God to every soul, and that absolutely none ought to be condemned, since it would not sin by will (which being established, that opinion would be overturned which Mani thunders forth so terribly concerning the punishments of souls, even of those coming from the part of light) — most vigilantly you added, saying: "But if, when it has come to know itself, it consents to evil and does not arm itself against the enemy, it has sinned by its own will." Well indeed, that you at some point confess it can come about that the soul sins by its own will; but to what evil, pray, is it that, if it consents, it sins by its own will?

Surely to that which you say is a substance. But I now see three things; you too, as I suppose, see them with me. For the soul consenting to evil, and the evil itself to which consent is given, are two. But the third is the consent itself; for you do not say that this also is a soul, but a soul's. Of these three, then — behold — the soul is a substance; that evil also, to which the soul by consenting voluntarily sins, is by your opinion a substance. I ask therefore what the consent itself is: whether you say it is itself a substance, or is in a substance. For if you say it is a substance, you will now suppose not two substances, but three. Or is it two, because the soul's consent, by which it consents to evil, is of the same substance as the soul itself?

Now then I ask, whether this consent is evil or good. If it is good, the soul certainly does not sin when it consents to evil. But not only does truth cry out, but you too write, that then the soul sins by will. This consent, therefore, is evil; and by this it is also a substance of the soul, if it is both a substance of the soul and both are one substance. Do you see to what you have been forced — that you must maintain the soul and that evil to be not now one substance good and another evil, but two evil substances? Here perhaps you will attempt to attribute the culpable consent not to the soul, which consents,

but to the evil itself to which it consents, so that in this way there may be two substances, one good, the other evil: since the soul is said to be of the part of good, while its consent by which it consented to evil, and the evil itself to which it consents, are together constituted on the other side, and both are reckoned to the evil substance. Who could rave more absurdly? For the soul does not consent, if the consent is not its own; but it does consent: therefore the consent is its own. Further, if the consent is its own, and this consent is evil, this evil is its own. For if this evil belongs to that evil to which the soul consents, then it had no need of this evil before the soul consented to it.

What kind of good, then, is the soul, by whose coming that evil is either doubled or — to put it more mildly — increased? Next, if this consent, which is agreed to be evil, is a substance, we find it to be within the soul's power that some evil substance either exists or does not exist, since this consent is within the soul's power. For if it is not, then it does not consent by its own will. But you have said that in place of this consent the soul sins by its own will. The soul therefore has, as I have said, in its power that some evil substance either exists or does not exist. But what else is substance than nature? There will therefore be some nature which is neither natural to the soul — since, if the soul be unwilling, it will not exist — nor to that evil to which the soul consents by will;

for you cannot say that it is the natural evil of the race of darkness, since it is there instituted by an alien will, that is, by the soul's will. To what nature, then, will this nature be assigned — that is, this consent, if it is a nature — which is natural neither to the soul nor to the race of darkness, unless, so that you may dispute against Mani, you say there are not two but three natures? For even if there were once two, yet now, after this consent has arisen, there have surely become three. This third, indeed, which was born from the consenting soul and from the evil to which it consents, you are compelled to call, as it were, the daughter of both;

but since it was born from two natures, one of which is good and the other evil, I ask why something neither of the two was not born. For just as that which is born from a horse and an ass is neither horse nor ass, so that which is born from a good and an evil nature, if it too is a nature, ought to be neither good nor evil. But you confess the consent to be evil; for you say that then the soul sins by its own will when it consents to evil. Or do you perhaps suppose the good nature and the evil nature to be like two sexes, masculine and feminine, so that, just as from a male and a female nothing neuter but either a male or a female is begotten,

so from good and evil you would contend that not some third thing, which would be neither good nor evil, but another evil, is born? But if it is so, where is that victorious nature of the soul? Is it so separated that another good was not rather born? Furthermore, do you not see that you are now speaking of diverse sexes, not of natures? For if between good and evil there were a diversity of natures, there would arise from the two nothing but some third thing, which could be neither good nor evil; or else the very commixture would be sterile, and no third substance would be brought forth thence. For if from those animals which I mentioned above, when they are mingled with one another, nothing else than a he-mule or she-mule is begotten,

which is neither the one nor the other, how much more ought it to have happened thus in so great and supreme a diversity of good and evil? Or if no new nature would arise from their commixture, it would not be evil, even though it could not be good. It remains, therefore, that we cannot avoid such incredible ravings unless we confess that consent, which is agreed to be evil and culpable, to be not a substance, but say that it is in some substance. Then let us most diligently inquire in what substance it is. And yet to whom is it not manifest that, just as persuasion does not come about except in one who persuades, so consent does not exist except in the consenting nature? When therefore the soul consents to evil, it is itself a substance, but its consent is not a substance.

Now you discern, as I think, in what substance it is — that is, you surely see that this consent is in the soul; and this consent you do not doubt to be sin, and by this to be evil. From which you now understand that it can come about that in a good substance, such as the soul is, there may be some evil which is not a substance, such as this consent is; and from this evil the soul too is called evil. For she is certainly evil as a sinner; but she sins when she consents to evil. One and the same thing, then — that is, the soul — in so far as it is a substance, is good; but in so far as it has something of evil which is not a substance, that is, this consent, so far it is evil. For it has this consent not from advancement, but from defection.

For it falls away when it consents to evil, and now begins to be less, and therefore to be worth less than it was worth while, consenting to none, it stood firm in virtue: worse indeed by so much as it verges away from that which exists in the highest degree toward that which exists less, so that it too may exist less; and by so much as it exists less, by so much surely does it become nearer to nothing. For that which also becomes less tends to this, that it exist not at all: to which, although it does not arrive so as to be nothing by utterly perishing, it is nevertheless manifest that any defect whatsoever is the beginning of perishing. Open therefore now the eyes of your heart and behold, if you can, that any substance whatsoever is some good, and that therefore the defect of a substance is evil, because it is good to be a substance:

nor yet is every defect culpable, but only the voluntary, whereby the rational soul, having forsaken its Creator, declines its affection toward those things which are created below it; for this is what is called sin. But the other defects, which are not voluntary, are either penal — that sins may be punished by the supreme justice which governs and orders — or they occur by the measures of the lowest things, so that things preceding may give way to those succeeding, and thus all temporal beauty may be accomplished in its own turns and after its own kind.

For just as speech is accomplished by syllables, as it were dying and rising, which are drawn out through certain intervals of duration and, their spaces being fulfilled, pass away in an ordered succession of those that follow, until the whole discourse is brought to its end — and it is not in the running sounds themselves, but in the regulation of the speaker, that it is placed how far a syllable be lengthened or shortened, or by what form of letters each keep the measures of its own places, while the very art which makes speech neither resounds with sounds nor is rolled about and varied by times — so by the rising and setting, the passing and succeeding of temporal things, along fixed and defined courses, until it runs back to the appointed terminus, temporal beauty is woven together.

This beauty is not evil for the reason that in spiritual creatures we can understand and marvel at better things; but it has its own proper comeliness in its own kind, and it insinuates to those who live well the supreme wisdom of God, hidden in a lofty secret above all the bounds of times, its own fashioner and governor. Come now, attend to that which you were calling evil, to which the soul by consenting voluntarily sins — whether it be some substance, or whether not even there you can accuse a substance. For I ask what allures the consent of the soul, that it rushes into it headlong and is therefore said to consent. Doubtless it is moved by some delight in it toward enjoying it. But if this be so, it does not follow that it is therefore called evil because it is not rightly loved.

For if I show that something is loved wrongly, where the fault is held to lie not in the thing loved but in the one who loves, you will surely confess that the form of any thing is not therefore straightway vicious, because the consent of one desiring it slides viciously into it. How much this helps me will afterward appear. But that I may show what I have promised, what should I rather choose, when an abundance of things flows around me? What, I say, should I rather choose than that which we praise as a heavenly creature, but which you adore as a portion of the Creator Himself? What among all visible things is more resplendent than this sun? Yet if anyone should immoderately covet its light,

he brings upon his own eyes the wars of quarrels, if, having obtained some power by which he might fulfill what he craves, he demolishes the houses of neighbors set against his windows, so that the sun may flood his inner chambers with a more open sky. Is it then the sun's fault, because that man so loved this light that he dared to prefer it to the light of righteousness, and, willing more abundantly to admit the light of his carnal eyes into the dwelling of his body, closed the door of his heart and the gaze of his mind against the light of equity? You see therefore that a good thing can be loved with a love not good.

Wherefore, whereas you call that evil, by consenting to which the soul sins, I call it good in its own kind, but such a good to which it does not befit the soul — being better than it — to consent; for since the soul is itself superior to the body, and has God as its superior, although in its own order the nature of the body is good, yet the soul sins, and by sinning becomes evil, if it joins to the inferior body the consent of that love which it owes to the superior God. But if you say that you do not call it a culpable consent when that thing is loved which does not act so that it be consented to, but that the soul then consents when he to whom it consents persuades something or compels something, and that it is therefore evil because he persuades or urges that some evil be committed:

this is a second question, and in its own order now presently to be treated by itself. But let us here remember first the sin concerning which, as I think, enough has been disputed, and it has become clear that it can come about that some thing good in its own kind be loved wrongly, and that with the lover blamed the thing itself is not reproved. What then? For if the soul, already a sinner and vicious by such love, should persuade another to the same sin, is not she also, who consents to the persuader, depraved by such a vice as that by which she is depraved whom she follows? The first sin, then, is to prefer even a good creature to the Creator in love; the second is also this other, to attempt, either by persuading or by compelling, that another do the same.

For no one wishes to lead another into depravity who has not first himself been depraved. But those who sin wish to lead others to sin either by foolish benevolence or by malicious envy. For who but by loving perversely admonishes his own sons to consider no base gain shameful, but to acquire ample money from any source whatever? Surely he does not hate them, and yet he perniciously persuades them. For by love of such things he himself is already corrupted, since, although gold and silver are not evil — just as that sun of which we treated above — yet the disordered lover of a good thing is in fault. But by envy, when anyone wishes another to sin, he loves honor with immoderate pride, and desires to excel therein and to go before the rest;

and because he sees that man more amply and more truly honored for his virtues, lest he be surpassed in that, he desires that others be cast down from the citadel of equity into the abyss of iniquity. In this way the devil endeavors to persuade or compel to sins. But is honor itself in fault, because the devil, by loving it perversely and impiously, has become impious? Or is the very angelic substance of the same devil, which God created, therefore evil because it is a substance? But when, forsaking the love of Him and turning too much toward his own, he desired to appear equal to Him, he was cast down by the swelling of pride.

Not, therefore, in so far as it is a substance, but because, being made a substance, in so far as it loved itself more amply than Him by whom it was made, it is evil; and it is evil for this reason, that it is less than it would be if it had loved that which exists in the highest degree. A defect, therefore, is evil. Every defect, then, tends away from that which exists, so that it may not exist, just as every advancement tends away from that which exists less, so that it may exist more. For the supreme honor, such as the piety of the religious renders, is surely owed to God. He therefore who loves honor imitates God. But humble souls wish to be honored in Him, the proud before Him. Yet before God the humble become more exalted

above the unjust, while against God the exalted become more lowly than the just — by that dispensation, of course, of rewards and punishments, because the former loved God above themselves, the latter loved themselves in place of God. Now, I think, it is easy for you to understand, from the very words of your letter in which you said that the soul, when it consents to evil, sins by will, that no evil is an evil nature or the love of an evil nature, but, since all natures are good in their own kind, that evil is sin, which comes about by the will of the soul when it loves the creature in place of the Creator Himself — whether by its own impulse, when it is evil, or by another's persuasion, when it consents to evil.

And nonetheless it thus also becomes evil by the punishments that follow, so that all things may be disposed according to merits by the Creator, supremely good, in a creature that is good but not supremely good — because He did not beget it of Himself, but made it out of nothing. But you have set up two natures, one of which you would have to be good, the other evil, or rather one of good, the other of evil; for the evil nature comes to be from a good one even by sinning. Yet you confess that the nature which you say is good does evil by consenting to evil, that is, sins by will. But I assert that both are good, but that one of them does evil by persuading, the other does evil by consenting. And just as the consent of the one is not a nature, so neither is the persuasion of the other;

and just as the one, if it should not consent, will remain good, guarding the integrity of its own nature, so the other, if it should not persuade, will be more amended; but if it also does not itself commit the sin which it does not persuade, both would be equally whole and praiseworthy in their own kind. For even if the one sins twice, which both commits and persuades, and the other once, if only it consents to the doing of evil, yet they become evil by sins, they are not by nature evil. Or if this nature is evil on account of persuasion, so also is the other on account of consent. But if it seems to you worse to persuade than to consent, let this be evil, that one worse; yet let there not be so great a respecting of persons, so unjust a favoritism in judging, that, though both sin — one

more grievously, the other more lightly — the one be called a nature of evil, the other of good; and not rather that either both be good, but that one better which sins less, or both be evil, but that one worse which sins more. "But whence," you say, "came the evil deed that is called sin, if there is no nature of evil?" Tell me, whence comes that evil consent in that nature which you concede and proclaim to be good. For whatever suffers so as to consent to evil would surely not so suffer unless it could suffer. I ask therefore whence it has this very ability to suffer; for it would be better if it did not have it. It is not, then, from the nature of the supreme good, than which something could be better. Next, if it has in its power either to consent or not to consent, then it does not consent as one conquered.

I ask therefore whence it has this evil consent, with no contrary nature compelling it. But if it is compelled to consent, so that it is not in its power to do otherwise, then it does not, as you were saying, sin by will, since it does not consent by will. But I still ask further whence there is in it the possibility of being deceived, if it is deceived. For before it was deceived, unless it were in it that it could suffer this, it would surely never suffer it. And yet in no way does it consent except by will: but if it is compelled, it must be said to yield rather than to consent. But by whatever name you call this, I ask of you — a sharp and skillful man, and, as you boast, of Roman genius — whence this good nature has the ability to suffer what it suffers, so as to consent to evil.

For just as in wood, before it is broken, there is inherent a fragility which, if it were not inherent, it could not be broken at all — and yet the wood is not therefore not fragile, if no breaker approaches — so I ask whence in this nature there is a certain fragility or flexibility, before it is either broken to an evil consent by force or bent by persuasion. Or if, by the nearness of evil, there was already a fragility — just as bodies are wont to be corrupted by the exhalation of a nearby marsh — then it was already corruptible, if the pestilential contagion of that nearness could corrupt it. I ask therefore whence that corruptibility. I pray you, attend to what I say, and yield to the perspicuous truth.

For I do not ask whence comes corruption — for you will answer "from a corruptor," and you will contend that this same corruptor is some prince, I know not what, of the race of darkness, so wrapped in fabulous coverings that you can scarcely unwrap and hold him — but I ask whence comes corruptibility, even before the corruptor approached: which, unless it existed, either no corruptor would exist, or the approach of any corruptor whatsoever would do no harm. When therefore you have found whence in a good nature there is this corruptibility, before the contrary nature corrupts it — or, if you are unwilling to say it is corrupted, whence certainly this mutability, before it were changed by that hostile adversity — for a nature is indeed changed for the worse which becomes foolish from wise and which forgets itself;