More than forty years ago I wrote of the Manichaean faith that it ‘must be reckoned among the strangest and most bizarre of the many strange and bizarre fantasies which the human mind has conceived’. Yet I have an affection for it, and it is with much pleasure that I welcome the first of a projected three volumes on Augustine, first as a Manichee and later as an anti-Manichaean controversialist. BeDuhn has read the primary documents, and a very large quantity of modern material: ‘I do not shy away from using contemporary sociological studies of conversion and apostasy to contextualise aspects of Augustine's story’ (p. 17), including Eileen Barker, Judith Butler, Stanley Fish, Michael Foucault, Harry Frankfurt, G. H. Mead, Michael Polanyi, Darren Sherkat and Sandomirsky and Wilson. He has himself published a great number of Manichaean studies, with the second volume of this trilogy due to appear in 2011. Altogether, no one is better equipped than he to write on Augustine's Manichaean dilemma.

The conviction underlying his investigation is the belief that neither conversion nor apostasy is necessarily absolute. Augustine became a Manichee in 372/373; lost his convictions in 383/4; and was baptised at Milan at Easter 387. At what time did he become a serious convert to Nicene Christianity? ‘We can trace in Augustine's story a series of … self-constituting decisions’ (p. 16), and Manichaeism was, for Augustine, only one commitment among many of this interests. ‘It is essential that we understand this context of ideological and social pluralism in the young Augustine's life, as well as his decision to remain fully engaged in it’ (pp. 96–7). Thus, the De pulchro et apto, Augustine's first publication, demonstrates his strong interest in aesthetics; but none of the individual positions taken by Augustine in that work was uniquely Manichaean: ‘all could find correlates in various forms of popular philosophy of the day’ (p. 102). Augustine would later claim that he never cleaved completely to the Manichaean faith, and always had some mental reservations, and it was here that the Manichaean bishop, Faustus, proved to be a bitter disappointment. Augustine's interest in astronomy and astrology constituted his chief conflict with Manichaeism, and it was here that Faustus who, Augustine was assured, would resolve his problems, failed completely. Rather than offering reason before belief, Faustus was in fact proposing religious practice prior to belief, gradually building confidence and understanding as practice succeeds. Yet for Augustine, this was too much to ask. He needed to have his intellect satisfied, as well as his religious emotion. He did not immediately sever his connections with Manichaeism, ‘but all the ambition that I had to go far in that sect simply collapsed once I had come to know that man’ (conf. 5, 7, 13). They remained friendly, and read classical texts together; but the spiritual influence of Faustus was gone.

There was, however, another factor which may account for Augustine's cooling towards Manichaeism at this time: imperial legislation. Between 380 and 383 the Theodosian regime issued a series of laws against Manichaeism and in 383 Augustine was specifically named as a Manichee. ‘Despite Augustine's later disclaimers, all the evidence [of his journey to Rome from Africa in 383] suggests flight. Regardless of his connections to the Manichaean community, he gave higher priority at the time to his rhetorical career and intellectual pursuits’ (p. 143). Furthermore, his appointment as Public Orator at Milan, through the good offices of his Manichaean friends at Rome, left his secular ambitions in the ascendant, but in a particular way: besides abandoning Manichaeism, and attending Ambrose's sermons in the Milanese basilica, Augustine made a new discovery: Platonic philosophy, which was not necessarily part of cultic Christianity. ‘It was only insofar as Augustine took his commitments to Manichaeism as loyalty to more than a cult … that Platonism presented potential incompatibilities with it’ (p. 186). After Augustine gave up serious belief in Manichaeism, that possibility no longer existed, though Augustine had yet to make the act of Christian faith expressed in baptism. Furthermore, Ambrose's sermons were congenial: ‘We find in Ambrose … an exact anticipation of the combination of free will with a privation theory of evil that Augustine settled on in the years following his conversion’ (p. 183). Yet while Augustine's change from a Manichaean to a Catholic identity has made a tremendous historical impact, it was not inevitable. It is impossible to accept the account in the Confessions as untouched by rhetoric and ideology. In the words of Louis Gourdon, written in 1900, we are ‘in the presence of two conversions and two different men’ and many scholars have been unconvinced by the Confessions. In the words of James O'Donnell: ‘Is Augustine telling the truth?’ On which BeDuhn comments: ‘Rather than thinking of Augustine revealing more of himself in the Confessions, we might consider whether there is more of him to reveal at this later date’ (p. 205). Furthermore, the process of his conversion was a rapid one. Augustine effectively lost his Manichaean convictions in 383 or 384, and was baptised in 387. The climax of his decision seems to have been at Cassiciacum in the autumn of 386, though even here, practical demands of harvesting and tutoring intervened with theological discussion. Furthermore, BeDuhn suggests that, in turning to God, Augustine was turning to Truth – another way of saying turning to philosophia, as his culture understood the term: as a contemplative way of life whose full realisation required withdrawal from public and family affairs (p. 201). The discovery of Aristotle and of the Platonic writings, which inspired his earliest Christian writings – Contra academicos, De ordine and Soliloquia – reveals the degree to which the study of philosophy accompanied Augustine's turning to Nicene Christianity, just as the reading of the Hortensius had earlier turned his mind to God, to be speedily discovered in Manichaeism, which Augustine practised for nine years. Nicene Christianity proved tougher to survive.

There is, however, one detail to be noticed. Augustine remained a Manichaean auditor throughout his time with the sect, and showed no disposition to become an Elect. As a Nicene Christian, he was a bishop, but this was not his original intention. He was forcibly ordained priest at Hippo in 391, when he had planned to spend his Christian life in the quasi-monastic society of Tagaste. In practice, while being very active in the church affairs of Africa, he became a most prolific Christian author, with an astonishing output – a philosophical Christian writer.

What brought about this development? No doubt this will be discussed by BeDuhn in the second and third volumes of his study. In the meantime, we have every reason to remember the legacy of Manichaeism on Augustine's mind, not least the veneration for the name of Christ, which was a mark of that religion, often overlooked in the bewildering mélange of fantastic mythology which so easily overshadows the essence of that sect. Its thought remains bizarre and indeed, in Puech's words, even puerile. Nevertheless, it held Augustine's allegiance for nine years and fascinated him for the rest of his life, down to writing the De haeresibus in 428/9. We may be grateful to BeDuhn and the many other scholars who have investigated it, and its effect on the mind of its most distinguished convert.