Augustine in His Own Words
other than having the truth? Namely, that what is able to be corrupted is a created substance, for the uncreated (what is the supreme good) is the incorruptible, and that corruption itself (what is the supreme evil) cannot be corrupted since it is not a substance. If, however, you want to know what corruption is, look and see the state to which it tends to bring whatever it corrupts. For it affects things that are corrupted. By corruption, all things cease to be what they were and are brought to non-permanence, to non-being. Being, after all, implies permanence. Therefore, what we call "the supreme and highest being" is so called because it is permanent in its very self. . . . Some things change for the better and in so doing tend toward being. They are not said to be perverted by the change, but rather reverted and converted, turned round and turned right. Perversion, after all, is opposed to setting in order. But those things which tend toward being thus tend toward order, and, in attaining order, they attain being so far as it can be attained by creatures. Order brings about whatever it orders to a certain fittingness. To be, however, is nothing other than to be one. And so, to the extent that a thing acquires unity, to that extent it has being. Unity, you see, brings about the fittingness and harmony by which composite things have their measure of being. Simple things exist in themselves because they are one. But those that are not simple imitate unity through the harmony of their parts and, in the measure that they achieve their harmony, they exist. From all of this, we can conclude that order produces being, and disorder, which is also called perversion or corruption, produces non-being. . . .
(7.9) But the goodness of God does not permit a thing to be brought to this point [of non-being]. Goodness disposes all things that fall away so that they occupy the place most suited to them until, by an ordered movement, they return to that from which they fell away. And even the rational souls that fall away from Him, although they possess that immense power of free choice, are placed in the lower ranks of creatures, where such souls ought to be. And thus, by the divine judgment, they are made to suffer since they are ranked in accordance with their merits.26
Unde Malum?
In the passage above, Augustine notes how Manichean evangelists used the question "Where does evil come from?" (Unde malum?) to draw in hearers and bring them over
26. De moribus 2.2.2–7.9 (CSEL 90:89–95); my trans. based on Gallagher and Gallagher, FOTC 56:66–71. On this aspect of Augustine's worldview and its difficulties, see Rowan Williams, "Insubstantial Evil," in Dodaro and Lawless, Augustine and His Critics, 105–23.