24. De libero arbitrio 1.2.4 (CCL 29:213); trans. Russell, FOTC 59:75. (continued)
Against the Manichees
plucked up and purged, and this fragment, supposedly, is the soul to whom Your Word comes to the rescue, making the enslaved free, and the contaminated pure, and the corrupted whole. But [in Manichean myth] Your Word is itself corruptible because it comes from the very same substance as the soul. Thus if one says that You—whatever You are, that is, the substance You are—are incorruptible, the whole thing becomes false and execrable; but if corruptible, then from the outset this all would be false and abominable. So this argument should have been enough to refute these people whom I should have vomited out from my bloated stomach, for they had no way of escaping the horrible sacrilege in heart and tongue present in thinking and speaking those things about You.25
Insubstantial Evil
In his earliest anti-Manichean treatise, On the Catholic and the Manichean Ways of Life, begun in Rome around 388, not long after his baptism, Augustine discusses his breakthrough insight about the nature of evil. Where the Manichees spoke of evil as something opposed to God, Augustine came to see evil not as a thing in itself, but as nothing, a privation of being, an unmaking of the good that God had made. This breakthrough came, in part, from his reading of those "books of the Platonists" while in Milan. The following passage on the metaphysics of evil is not an easy one and may need to be read aloud to savor its logic. From On the Catholic and the Manichean Ways of Life, Book 2:
(2.2) You Manichees often, if not always, ask those whom you are working hard to win over to your heresy where evil comes from. Suppose that I had just met you for the first time. And here, if you don't mind, I request a favor: that you lay aside for the time being the impression that you already know the answer, and that you approach this great question as an untrained mind would do. You ask me where evil comes from, and I, in turn, ask you what evil is. Who is asking the right question? Those who ask where evil comes from, although they do not know what it is? Or the person who thinks he must first ask what it is so as not to perpetuate what is absurd, namely, seeking the origin of an unknown thing? You are quite correct in asking who is so blind mentally as not to see that evil for any species is whatever is contrary to its nature. But once this is established, your heresy is turned upside down, for evil is no nature if it is what is contrary to nature. Yet you claim that evil is some sort of nature and substance. Moreover, whatever is contrary to nature
25. Conf. 7.2.3 (CCL 27:93–94); my trans.
opposes nature and attempts to destroy it, seeking to make whatever exists cease to exist. For a nature is nothing other than what a thing is understood to be in terms of its species. And just as we call what a being is by the new word "essence" or, more often, "substance," so the ancients who did not have these [terms] used the word "nature." And, therefore, if you are willing to put aside all obstinacy, you will see that evil is that which falls away from essence and tends to non-being.
(2.3) When the Catholic Church declares that God is the author of natures and substances, those who understand what this means understand at the same time that God is not the author of evil. For how can He who is the cause of the being of all things be at the same time the cause of their not being—that is, of their falling away from being and tending to non-being? That is what the most accurate reasoning declares evil to be. But how can that evil kingdom of yours, which you like to call "the supreme evil," be contrary to nature, that is, to substance, when you claim it to be a nature and a substance? For if it acts against itself, it deprives itself of its own being, and if it were even to succeed completely in this, it would then arrive at the supreme evil. But this will not happen, inasmuch as you choose, not only to have it exist, but to exist eternally. Therefore, it is not possible that the supreme evil be considered a substance. . . .
(3.5) Let us, therefore, pursue this question more carefully and, if possible, more clearly. I ask you once again: What is evil? If you say it is what is harmful, you would not be inaccurate. But I ask you to pay attention, to stay alert, to put aside partisan spirit, and seek the truth in order to find it, not fight it. Whatever is harmful deprives what it is harmful to of some good. For if no good is taken away, no harm is done. What, may I ask, could be more obvious than this? What could be plainer or easier to understand by a person of even ordinary intelligence, provided he not be stubborn? Once this is granted, however, it seems to me that the consequences become obvious. Surely, no harm can come to anything in the kingdom you think of as "the supreme evil" since there is nothing good there. If, as you claim, there are two natures, the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness, and since, as you admit, the kingdom of light is God—to whom you concede a simple nature with no part inferior to any other—then you must grant something irreconcilably opposed to your position, yet unavoidable: You must grant that this nature [of God], which you do not deny to be the supreme good (and, in fact, vehemently proclaim to be so), is immutable, impenetrable, incorruptible, and inviolable. Otherwise, it would not be the supreme good. The supreme good, after all, is that than which there is nothing better. But such a nature can in no way be harmed. Now, if to harm is to deprive of good, as I have shown, then the kingdom of darkness cannot be harmed because there is nothing good in it, and the kingdom of light cannot be harmed because it is inviolable. To what, then, can the evil you speak of do harm?
(4.6) Since you are unable to extricate yourself from this difficulty, see how easily the problem is solved according to Catholic doctrine. It teaches that there is one good in itself and in the highest sense, that is, by its own nature and essence and not by participation in some other good, and that there is another good that is good by participation, deriving its goodness from the Supreme Good, which, however, continues to be itself and loses nothing. We say that this [derived] good . . . is a creature to whom harm can come by defecting, by unmaking, but God is not the author of such defect, such an unmaking, since God is the author of existence and, so, of being. It becomes clear, then, how "evil" is to be spoken about, for it is properly applied not to essence, but to privation. Now it is apparent that nature can be harmed. The supreme evil cannot itself be a nature from which some good can be stripped away. Nor can it be the supreme good, since it can fall away from the good, not because it is good in its own being, but because it has goodness. And no thing which is spoken of as being made can be good by nature, since to be made means to receive goodness from another. So God is the supreme good, and things He has made are all good, although they are not as good as the One who made them. For it would be madness to demand that works be equal to the workman, that creatures be equal to the Creator. What more do you Manichees want? Do you wish something even clearer than this?
(5.7) Then let me ask you a third time: What is evil? You will perhaps answer, "corruption." And who would deny that this belongs to evil in general since corruption does not exist in itself? It exists in some substance, which it corrupts, for corruption itself is not a substance. Therefore, the thing it corrupts is not corruption, is not evil, for what is corrupted is deprived of integrity and purity. That which has no purity that it can be deprived of cannot be corrupted, while that which has purity is good by participation in purity. Furthermore, what is corrupted is perverted, and what is perverted is deprived of order. But order is good. Therefore, what is corrupted is not devoid of good, and it is for this very reason that it can be deprived of good in being corrupted. Thus, if the kingdom of darkness were devoid of all goodness, as you say it is, it could not be corrupted, for it would not have anything that corruption could take away, and if corruption takes nothing away, it does not corrupt. Now try to say, if you can, that God and the kingdom of God can be corrupted, when you have not even found a way in which the kingdom of the devil, as you describe it, can be corrupted.
(6.8) What is the Catholic light on this issue? What do you suppose it is,