CHAPTER VIIL— THE RELATION OF MANICH^ISM TO CHRISTIANITY.
Far more superficial are the relations of Manichaeism to Christianity than to any of the heathen systems to which we have adverted. In fact no Christian idea has been introduced into the system without being completely perverted. If Christian language is used, it is utterly emptied of its meaning. If Christian practices are introduced, a completely different motive lies at the basis. Indeed the wildest of the Christian Gnostic systems kept immeasurably nearer to historical Christianity than did the Manichaeans. While he blasphemed against the historical Jesus, Mani claimed to believe in Christ, a purely spiritual and divine manifestation, whose teachings had been sadly perverted by the Jews. It is scarcely possible to determine with any certainty what view Mani actually took of New Testament history. That he claimed to be a follower of Christ, and the Paraciete whom Christ had promised to send, or at least the organ of the Paraclete, Eastern and Western authorities agree. Mani is said, by Augustin, to have begun his Fundamental Epistle as follows: " Manichaeus, an Apostle of Jesus Christ, by the providence of God the Father. These are wholesome words from the perennial and living fountain." So also in \h& Act. Archel., Mani is represented as introducing a letter: " Manichaeus, an Apostle of Jesus Christ, and all the saints who are with me, and the virgins, to Marcellus, my beloved son: Grace, mercy, and peace be with you from God the Father, and from our Ford Jesus Christ." There can be no doubt but that Mani and his followers, whether from designed imposture or from less sinister motives, attempted to palm themselves off as Christians, nay, as the only true Christians. It is certain, moreover, that in this guise they gained many proselytes from the Christian ranks. As previously remarked, Mani and his followers professed to accept the New Testament Scriptures, yet they treated them in a purely subjective manner, eliminating as Judaistic interpolation whatever they could not reconcile with their own tenets. Their adherence to the New Testament, as well as their adherence to Christ, was, therefore, virtually a mere pretence. In common with Christianity, Manichccism laid much stress on redemption, yet there was nothing in common between the Christian idea of redemption through the atoning suffering of Jesus Christ and the Manichcean notion of redemption through the escape of imprisoned light. Manichaeans and Christians were at one in advocating self-denial and the due subordination of the flesh. It need not be pointed out how radically different the Christian view was from the Manichgean view, already expounded. Yet pagan ascetical ideas had already invaded the Church long before the time of Mani, and many Christians were in a position to be attracted strongly by the Manichaean theory and practice. The later asceticism as it appeared in the hermit life of the fourth and following centuries was essentially pagan and had much in common with the Manichaean.
Still more manifest is the anatagonism between Manichaeism and Christianity on the great fundamental principles of religion. The Manichsean and Christian ideas of God are mutually contradictory. Christianity holds fast at the same time to the unity, the omnipotence, the omniscience, the perfect wisdom, the holiness and the goodness of God. If He permits sin to exist in the world it is not because He looks upon it with complacency, nor because He lacked wisdom to provide against its rise or power to annihilate it at once when it appeared, nor because He did not foresee its rise and its ravages, but because the permission of sin forms part of His all-wise plan for the education of moral and spiritual beings. If the forces of nature are under certain circumstances hurtful or destructive to man, Christianity does not regard them as the operations of a malevolent power thwarting God's purposes, but it sees underneath the destructive violence purposes of goodness and of grace; or if it fails to see them in any given instance it yet believes that God doeth all things well. Christianity admits the existence of evil in men and in demons, yet of evil that ministers to the purposes of the Most High. Christianity is the only religion that has been able to arrive at a perfectly satisfactory theology, cosmology, anthropology, and eschatology, and this is because Christianity alone has a true and satisfying soteriology. It is God manifest in the flesh that meets all the conditions for the solution of the problem of human existence. Manichaeism openly antagonized Christianity in its adherence to Old Testament revelation, including the Jewish and Christian monotheism. The good God could not, they maintained, be the creator of this world and of the universe of being. That God should be looked upon as in any sense the creator of the devil and his angels, and of the material world, was in their view an absurdity — a monstrosity. The unchristian character of the Manichaean view of matter, leading to unchristian asceticism, has already been sufficiently indicated. The reader will only need to compare the principles and practices of Manichaeism, as delineated above, with those of Christianity as they are delineated in the New Testament and in the evangelical churches of to-day, to be impressed with the completely anti- Christian character of the former.
How then, it may well be asked, could Manichseism succeed as it did in fascinating so many intelligent members of the Catholic Church during the third, fourth and fifth centuries? In attempting to answer this question it should be premised that the later Western Manichaeism took far more account of historical Christianity than did Mani and his immediate followers. In the West, at least, Manichaeism set itself up as the only genuine exponent of Christianity. The Jewish-Alexandrian philosophy, and Gnosticism its product, had done much towards discrediting the Old Testament Scriptures, and the moral and religious teachings therein contained. Devout Jewish and Christian thinkers who had adopted this mode of thought, had attempted by means of the allegorical method of interpretation to reconcile the seeming antagonism between Judaism and philosophy. But the process was so forced that its results could not be expected to satisfy those that felt no special interest in the removal of the difficulties. Marcionism represents a stern refusal to apply the allegory, and a determination to exhibit the antagonism between Judaism and current thought, and especially the seeming antagonism between Judaism and Christianity, in the harshest manner. Marcionism was still vigorous in the East when Manichaeism arose, and through this party unfavorable views of the Old Testament were widely disseminated. Many Christians doubtless felt that the Old Testament and its religion were burdensome and trammelling to Christianity. The very fact that Mani set aside so summarily every element of Judaism that he encountered in the current Christianity, doubtless commended his views to a laree and influential element in the East and the West alike. Mani claimed to set forth a spiritual religion as o])posed to a carnal. The asceticism of Manichaeism was in the line of a wide-spread popular ascetical movement that was already in progress, and so commended it to many. The question as to the origin of evil, and as to the relation of the good, wise and powerful God to the evil that appears in the world, in man and in demons, was never asked with more interest than during the early Christian centuries, and any party that should advance a moderately plausible theory was sure to receive its share of public attention. Mani professed to have a solution and the only possible solution of questions of this class, and however fantastic may have been the forms in which his speculations were set forth, the)^ were doubtless all the more acceptable on this account in that semi-pagan age to many intelligent people. The fact that these forms satisfied so able a thinker as Mani undoubtedly was, would guarantee their acceptance by a large number both East and West. There was in the West at this time, and had been for centuries, a hankering after Oriental theosophy, the more extravagant the better. The wide-spread worship of Mithra was an excellent preparation for the more complete system of Mani. Manichaeism and Neo-Platonism antagonized the Christianity of the fourth and fifth centuries from opposite sides, and those minds for whom Platonism had no charms were almost sure to be attracted by the theosophy of Mani. " How are we to explain," asks Harnack,' " the rapid spread of Manichaeism, and the fact that it really became one of the great religions? Our answer is, that Manichaeism was the most complete Gnosis, the richest, most consequent and most artistic system formed on the basis of the ancient Babylonian religion.., What gave strength to Manichaeism was.. that it united its ancient mythology and a thoroughgoing materialistic dualism with an exceedingly simple spiritual worship and a strict morality.
On comparing it with the Semitic religions of nature, we perceive that it retained their mythologies, after transforming them into doctrines, but abolished all their sensuous cultus, substituting instead a spiritual worship as well as a strict morality. Manichaeism was thus able to satisfy the new wants of an old world. It offered revelation, redemption, moral virtue, and immortality [this last is very doubtful, if conscious immortality be meant], spiritual benefits on the basis of the religion of nature. A further source of strength lay in the simple, yet firm social organization which was given by Mani himself to his new institution. The wise man and the ignorant, the enthusiast and the man of the world, could all find acceptance here, and there was laid on no one more than he was able and willing to bear."
The question as to the secret of the fascination that Manichaeism was able to exercise even over the most intelligent Western minds, may receive a more concrete answer from the autobiographical account of Augustin's own relations to the party. What was it that attracted and enthralled, for nine years, him who was to become the greatest theologian of the age? In his Confessions (Book III. ch. 6) he gives this impassioned account of his first connection with Manichaeism: "Therefore I fell among men proudly railing, very carnal and voluble, in whose mouth were the snares of the devil — the bird lime being composed of a mixture of the syllables of Thy Name, and of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, the Comforter. These names departed not out of their mouths, but so far forth as the sound and clatter of the tongue; for the heart was empty of truth. Still I Eticyclopeedia Britannica^zxX.. Manichaeism.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 2-1 they cried ' Truth, Truth,' and spoke much about it to me, yet it was not in them, but they spake falsely not of Thee only — who, verily art the Truth — but also of the elements of this world, Thy creatures...O Truth, Truth! how inwardly even then did the marrow of my soul pant after Thee, when they frequently and in a multiplicity of ways, and in numerous and huge books, sounded out Thy Name to me, though it was but a voice. And these were the dishes in which to me, hungering for Thee, they, instead of Thee, served up the sun and the moon, Thy beauteous works — but yet Thy works, not Thyself, nay, nor Thy first works...Woe, woe, by what steps was I dragged down to the depths of hell! — toiling and turmoiling through want of Truth, when I sought after Thee, my God, — to Thee I confess it, who hadst mercy on me when I had not yet confessed, sought after Thee not according to the understanding of the mind in which Thou desiredst that I should excel the beasts, but according to the sense of the flesh."
CHAPTER IX.— AUGUSTIN AND THE MANICH.EANS.
In the preceding Chapter we have given in Augustin's own words some account of the process by which he became ensnared in Manichsean error. In reading Augustin's account of his experience among the Manichjeans, we can not escape the conviction that he was never wholly a Manichsean, that he never surrendered himself absolutely to the system. He held it rather as a matter of opinion than as a matter of heart-attachment. Doubtless the fact that he continued to occupy himself with rhetorical and philosophical studies prevented his complete enthrallment. His mind was not naturally of an Oriental cast, and the study of the hard, common-sense philosophy of Aristotle, and of the Eclecticism of Cicero, could hardly have failed to make him more or less conscious of the absurdity of Manichaeism. The influence of scientific studies on his mind is very manifest from Co?ifessions, Book V. ch. 3, where he compares the accurate astronomical knowledge with which he had become acquainted, with the absurd cosmological fancies of Faustus, the great Manichgean teacher who appeared at Carthage in Augustin's twenty-ninth year. " Many truths, however, concerning the creation did I retain from these men [the philosophers], and the cause appeared to confirm calculations, the succession of seasons, and the visible manifestations of the stars; and I compared them with the sayings of Manichaeus, who in his frenzy has written most extensively on these subjects, but discovered not any account either of the solstices, or the equinoxes, the eclipses of the luminaries, or anything of the kind I had learned in the books of secular philosophy. But therein I was ordered to believe, and yet it corresponded not with those rules acknowledged by calculation and by our light, but was far different."
From this time Augustin's faith was shaken, and he was soon able to throw off completely the yoke that had become too grievous to be borne. But to reject Manichseism was not necessarily to become an orthodox Christian. Augustin finds himself still greatly perplexed about the nature of God and the origin of evil, problems the somewhat plausible Manichgean solutions of which had ensnared him. It was through Platonism, or rather Neo-Platonism, that he was led to more just and satisfying views, and through Platonism, along with other influences, he was enabled at last to find peace in the bosom of the Catholic church. "And Thou, willing to show me how Thou ' resistest the proud, but givest grace unto the humble,' and by how great an act of mercy Thou hadst pointed out to men the path of humility, in that ' Thy Word was made flesh and dwelt among men,' — Thou procuredst for me, by the instrumentality of one inflated with monstrous pride, certain books of the Platonists, translated from Greek into Latin. And therein I read, not indeed in the same words but to the self-same effect, enforced by many and divers reasons, that ' In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the AVord was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made.' "' In other words, Augustin thought that he discerned complete harmony between the prologue of John's gospel and the teachings of the Platonists, and in this teaching, thus corroborated, he found the solution of the problem that had caused him such anguish of soul. In this connection Augustin points out in some detail the features that riatonism and Christianity have in common. Thus Neo-Platonism, not blindly followed, but adapted to his Christian purpose, became not only a means of deliverance to Augustin himself, but a mighty weapon for the combating of iManichsan error.
Neo-Platonism enters so largely and influentially into Augustin's polemics against Manichceism that it will be apposite here to inquire into the extent and the nature of Augustin's dependence on this system of thought. Much has been written on this subject, especially by German and French scholars. A brief statement of some of the more important points of contact is all that is allowable in an essay like this. Premising, therefore, that Platonism essentially influenced the entire circle of Augustin's theological and philosophical thinking, let us first examine the Neo-Platonic and Augustinian conceptions of God. With Augustin God is absolutely simple and immutable, incomprehensible by men in their present state of existence, exalted above all human powers of thought or expression. All things may be said of God, and yet nothing worthily; God is honored more by reverential silence than by any human voice. He is better known by not being known; it is easier to say what He is not, than what He is. God is wanting in qualities; has no variety and multitude of properties and attributes; is absolutely simple. By no means is God to be called substance, for the word substance pertains to a certain accident; nor is it allowable to think of Him as composed of substance and of accidents. Divine qualities are therefore purely subjective. There is no discrimination in God of substance and accidents, of potency and act, of matter and form, of universal and singular, of superior and inferior. To know, to will, to do, to be, are in God equivalent and identical. Eternity itself is the substance of God, which has nothing mutable, nothing past, nothing future. God makes new things, without being Himself new, unchangeable He makes changeable things. He always works and always rests. The changes that take place in the world do not fall in the will of God, but solely in the things moved by God. God changes them out of His unchangeable counsel.
For nearly every one of these statements an almost exact parallel can be pointed out in the writings of Plotinus, the Neo-Platonic writer with whom Augustin was most conversant.'' It would be eas}' to point out that Augustin here goes to a dangerous extreme, and narrowly escapes fatalism on the one hand, and denial of the true personality of God on the other. But the effectiveness of this type of teaching against Manichoeism is what chiefly interests us in this connection. Readers of the following treatises will have no difficulty in seeing for themselves how confidently and with what telling effect Augustin employs this view of God against the crudities of Manichaeism, which thought of God as mutable, as capable of being successfully assailed by evil, as rent asunder, as suffering miserable contamination and imprisonment by mixture with matter, as painfully struggling for freedom, as suffering with the suffering of plants and animals, as liberated by their decay and by the digestive operations of the faithful, etc., etc.
Again, while still a Manichaean Augustin had thought and written much about beauty. On this point also, the throwing off of Manichaeism and the adoption of a Platonizing Christianity brought about a revolution in his conceptions. The exactness with which he has follo'wed Plotinus in hi's ideas of the beauty of God and of his creatures is remarkable. This we could fully illustrate by the citation of parallel passages. But we must content our- 1 Confessions, Book. VII. ch. 9, vol. I. p. 108, of the present series.
2 See C;. hoK-^QWi- De AiigHsthio Fiotinizante in Doctrina de Deo Disserenda^ Jenac, iSSo. Also, Dorner: Augusthius, Zeller, Ueberweg, RrrTER,and Erumann: Histories 0/ Philosophy, sections on Augustin and Neo-Platonism.
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY INTRODUCTORY ESSAY selves with remarking that Augustin himself acknowledged his indebtedness, and that his idea of beauty was an important factor in his polemics against JNIanichaeism. According to Augustin (and Plotinus) God is the most beautiful and splendid of all beings. He is the beauty of all beauties; all the beautiful things that are the objects of our vision and love He Himself made. If these are beautiful what is He? All beauty is from the highest beauty, which is God. Augustin follows Plato and Plotinus even in neglecting the distinction between the good and the beautiful. The idea of Divine beauty Augustin applies to Christ also. He speaks of Him as beautiful God, beautiful Word with God, beautiful on earth, beautiful in the womb, beautiful in the hands of his parents, beautiful in miracles, beautiful in being scourged, beautiful when inciting to life, beautiful when not caring for death, beautiful when laying down his life, beautiful when taking it up again, beautiful in the sepulchre, beautiful in Heaven. The beauty of the creation, which is simply a reflection of the beauty of God, is not even disturbed by evil or sin. Beauty is with Augustin (and the ' Platonists) a comprehensive term, and is almost equivalent to perfect harmonv or symmetry of parts, perfect adaptation of beings to the ends for which they exist.
It is patent that this view of the beauty of God and His creation is diametrically opposed to the crude conceptions of Mani, with reference to the disorder of the universe, a disorder not confined even to the Kingdom of Darkness, but invading the Realm of Light itself. So also Augustin's Platonizing views of the creation must be taken into consideration in judging of his attitude towards Manichseism. It goes without saying that from Augustin's theological point of view, to account for creation is a matter of grave difficulty. How can there be a relation between the infinite and the finite? Any substantial connection is unthinkable. The only thing left is a relation of causality. The finite, according to Plotinus, is an accident, an image and shadow of God. It is constituted, established, sustained, and nourished by the Divine potency, and is therefore absolutely dependent upon God, The power that flows from God permeates each and every finite thing. God as one, whole, and indivisible, is perpetually present with his eternal process, to everything, everywhere. When Augustin teaches that God of his own free will, subject to no necessity, by His own Word created the world out of nothing, this statement might be taken in connection with his view of the absolute simplicity of God and the consequent denial of distinction between being,willing, doing, etc. The easiest way to get over the difficulty involved in creation was to maintain the simultaneous creation of all things. The six days of creation in Genesis are an accommodation to human modes of thinking. In some expressions Augustin approaches the Platonic doctrine of the ideal or archetypal world. Finite things, so far as they exist, are essence, i.e., God; so far as they are not essence they do not exist at all. Thus the distinction between God and the world is almost obliterated. Again, whatever is finite and derivative is subject to negation or nothingness. Thus he goes along with Plato and Plotinus to the verge of denying the reality of derived existence, and so narrowly escapes pantheism.
It is easy to see how effectively this conception of creation might be employed against the Manichsean notion of the creation as something forced upon God by the powers of evil, and as a mere expedient for the gradual liberation of his imprisoned elements. The Manichaean limitation of God and his domain by the bordering Kingdom of Darkness, was in sheer opposition to Augustin's view of the indivisibility of God and his presence as a whole everywhere and always. Augustin's theory that nature or essence, as far as it has existence is God, is quite the antithesis of Mani's dualism, especially of.his supposition that the Kingdom of Darkness is essentially and wholly evil. Augustin argued that even the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Darkness, and the King of Darkness himself, according to iviani's own representations, are good so far as they have essence or nature, and evil only so far as they are non-existent.
With Augustin's Platonizing view of creation is closely connected his theory of evil and his doctrine of divine providence. Evil with him, as with the Platonists, has no substantial existence. It is only privation of good. It is wanting in essence, substance, trutli — is in short mere negation, and so cannot have God for its efficient cause or author, or be referred to God. God would not have permitted evil unless by His own supreme power he had been able to make good use of it. He attempts, with some success, to show the advantages of the permission of evil in the world. God made all things good from the angels of heaven to the lowest beasts and herbs of the earth. Augustin delighted, with the Platonists, in dwelling upon the goodness of nature as shown in the animal and vegetable worlds, as well as in the great cosmical phenomena. Each creature of God has its place, some a higher, some a lower, but all so far as they conform to the idea of their creation, or to their nature, are good. So far as they fall short of this idea they are evil.
This principle Augustin applied with great force to the confutation of the Manichsean view of the substantiality and permanence of evil. This may be regarded as the central point in Augustin's controversies with the Manichseans. He evidently felt that the Manichsean view of evil was the citadel of their system, and he never wearied of assailing it. It would be beyond the scope of the present essay to inquire whether and how far Augustin himself became involved in error, in his efforts to dislodge the Manichaeans. Far less satisfactory than his confutation of the fundamental principles of the Manichsean system were his answers to the Manich^an cavils against the Old Testament. If we may judge from the prominence given in the extant literature to the Old Testament question, this must have been the favorite point of attack with the Manichasans. The importance of the questions raised afid the necessity of answering them was fully recognized by Augustin. His principal reliance is the allegorical or typological method of interpretation. It would be hard to find examples of more perverse allegorizing than Augustin's Anti-Manichaean treatises furnish.
It will not be needful to adduce instances here, as readers of the treatises will discover them in abundance. Nothing more wearisome and disgusting in Biblical interpretation can well be conceived of than certain sections of The Reply io Faustus, the Manichcean. Yet Augustin did not fail entirely to recognize the distinction between Old Testament times and New, and he even suggests the theory "that God could in a former age and to a people of a lower moral standard, give commands to do actions, which we should think it wrong to do now...There was a certain inward want, an unenlightenment, a rudeness of moral conception, in those to whom such commands were given; otherwise they would not have been given. God would not have given a command to slaughter a whole nation to an enlightened people. ''' Yet with all the defects of Augustin's polemics against the Manichsans, they seem to have been adapted to the needs of the time. Well does Canon Mozley declare Augustin to have been " the most marvellous controversial phenomenon which the whole history of the Church from first to last presents...Armed with superabundant facility of expression,— so that he himself observes that one who had written so much must have a good deal to answer for, — he was able to hammer any point of view which he wanted, and which was desirable as a counteracting one to a pervading heresy, with endless repetition upon the ear of the Church; at the same time varying the forms of speech sufficiently to please and enliven.'' Certainly he was one of the greatest debaters of any age. He doubtless deserves the credit of completely checking the progress of Manichieism in the West, and of causing its gradual but almost complete overthrow. His arguments were probably more effective in guarding Christians against perversion by Manichsean proselytizers, than in converting I See J. R. Mozley's Ruling Ideas ifi Early Ages, art. The Manichseans and the Jewish Fathers. The sentence quoted above is Mozley 's.
those that were already ensnared by Manichaean error. Other controversies of a completely different character, especially the Pelagian, caused Augustin to look to other aspects of truth and so led to certain modifications in his own statements, nay led him on some occasions to the verge of Manichsean error itself. But we are chiefly interested at present in knowing that his earnest efforts against the Manichaeans from a.d. 388, the year of his baptism, to a.d. 405, were not in vain.'
CHAPTER X.— OUTLINE OF MANICHAEAN HISTORY.^ In the East Mani's followers were involved in the persecution that resulted in his death, and many of them fled to Transoxiania. Their headquarters and the residence of the chief of the sect continued to be Babylon. They returned to Persia in 661, but were driven back, 908-32. They seem to have become very numerous in the Transoxiania. Albirun?, 973-1048, speaks of the Manichaeans as still existing in large numbers throughout all Mohammedan lands, and especially in the region of Samarkand, where they were known as Sabeans. He also relates that they were prevalent among the Eastern Turks, in China, Thibet and India. In Armenia and Cappadocia they gained many followers, and thence made their way into Europe. The Paulicians are commonly represented as a Manicliaean party, but the descriptions that have come down to us would seem to indicate Marcionitic rather than Manichaean elements. Yet contemporary Catholic writers such as Peter Siculus and Photius constantly assail them as Manichaeans.