84. mor. 2.6.8; Teske, Manichean Debate (I/19), 82; CSEL 90.94. (continued)
Made to be Godly 65 it was perverted to what is worse, that is, because it fell away from its essence. But he who is the author of this essence is not the author of the falling away from this essence. Some things, then, are changed for the better and, for this reason, they tend toward being and are not said to be perverted by this change but to turn back and to be converted.84
We again see how conversion toward God results in the existence and completion of a creature, and how perversion away from God results in a falling away from what something should be. As such, we can see how there are really only two types of existents: goodness per se and participatory goods. All that is, is good, and much to the ruin of Manichaean cosmology, there is no third category of being. Evil is hence revealed as a parasitical corruption of the good. Consequently, there can be no thing which is essentially evil and nothing which is essentially corrupt. Evil is not the rival of the good but its reduction; it is able to be detected only within that which has been spotlessly created by the Good itself. Participation again plays a key role: all existents have goodness because all that exists participates in the Supreme Good so as not to fall back into the nothingness from which all came.
But malice and disorder are nonetheless discernible throughout the created order and Augustine was painfully aware of the havoc evil wreaks in our world. How then is it possible to account for evil and still see God as simultaneously omnipotent and all good? The answer would lie in the misuse of the (otherwise good) will of those made like God. While the Son draws all other creatures into his own adherence to the Father, enabling all of creation to speak of the beauty and goodness and truth of God, non-rational creatures can neither beguile nor disappoint. Only personal beings free to turn away from the Son can corrupt and disorder God's good creation.85 This is the primary way Augustine's break from the
84. mor. 2.6.8; Teske, Manichean Debate (I/19), 82; CSEL 90.94. 85. uera rel. 36.67; Hill, On True Religion (I/8), 74: "Thus falsehood does not arise
66 Made to be Godly
Manichees affected his understanding of evil: unlike the Manichaean account, Christianity cannot admit that non-rational creatures either cause or bear sin. Rather, non-rational creatures can only be the object of an evil inflicted from the outside.
Augustine's understanding of evil is important because it allows us to understand humanity's primal sin in wanting to become "like gods." How is this condemnation of divinization reconciled with the thesis that divinization is at the heart of Augustinian anthropology? While we cannot treat all that could be said about evil and sin in Augustine's thought, by focusing on his exegesis of Gen. 3:5 we see how he situates sin in the innate human yearning to be like God. In explaining humanity's turn away from God, we shall fittingly begin by looking at Gen. 3:5 and Satan's tempting Adam and Eve to be gods as a paradigmatic story in which divine unity is misconstrued and falsely sought. From this fall comes the de-imaging of humanity and we shall next look at the effects of living in a new postlapsarian realm and way of life. Finally, just as we saw how the human body images God, we conclude this section by treating the little Augustine has to say about the corporeal symbols of humanity's newly-chosen mortality, the tunicae pellicae of Gen. 3:21.
As we argued earlier, all created persons were made with the ability not to sin and could have continued to enjoy such a state of bliss, contingent on the proper worship of God alone. Unwilling to receive humbly, however, Satan instead rebelled against God and chose his own self over the divine life God offered him. He sought to be like God not through reliant participation in God but through the autonomous assertion of self. It is in this way that Augustine gave the metanarrafrom things themselves' being deceptive, since all they show the senses is their proper looks, which they have received according to their own grade of beauty"; cf. lib. arb. 2.16.4; en. Ps. 103, exp. 1.