Can a leopard change its spots? In the 420s, Julian of Eclanum clearly suggested a negative answer to this rhetorical question.Footnote 1 The metaphorical leopard at hand was, of course, Augustine. The ‘spots’ under consideration were the marks left by Augustine's roughly ten-year sojourn as a Manichaean Hearer. Julian's claim is that, despite Augustine's best efforts to remove the scars of his Manichaean past, the cosmetic procedure had proven to be a failure. Instead, Augustine had carried the latent philosophical/theological seeds of the Manichaean heresy into his new life as a Catholic Christian. Those very seeds had now sprouted, infecting his mature theology in disastrous ways. Julian has not been alone in this assessment. Over 1500 years later – at the turn of the twenty-first century – one finds a similar claim being made in certain quarters of Augustine scholarship. Wallace Matson speaks, hyperbolically perhaps, for a growing number when he suggests that ‘it would at least be a half truth to say that . . . Augustine converted the Church to Manichaeism’.Footnote 2
The central question to be explored here is this: does this charge of ‘Augustine as crypto-Manichaean’ – beyond its obvious rhetorical and polemical dimensions – have any force to it, and if so in what ways and to what extent? This exploration will unfold in three sections. First, a brief summary will be offered of some of the main philosophical and theological tenets of Manichaeism, with an emphasis on those elements that will be important for assessing the Augustine question. Second, the history of the accusation that the Christian Augustine remained, in important if unconscious ways, a crypto-Manichaean will be traced. This section will represent the bulk of the study, given that this charge has a 1500-year history, ranging from Petilian's polemic not long after Augustine's conversion to the typically nuanced claims of a variety of scholars today. Finally, one methodological direction in which an eventual resolution to this long-standing question may lie will be considered.
A word on Manichaeism
Mani, the founder of this Gnostic religion, was born on 14 April 216 in the land of Babylon, in southern Mesopotamia, not far from present-day Baghdad. For many years scholars speculated upon the question of what influences led to the establishment of this new, aggressively missionary religion which Mani presented as both divinely revealed in nature and universal in its intended scope.Footnote 3 The eventual consensus through the mid-twentieth century, fuelled by the work of the Old Religionsgeschichtliche Schule, was that Manichaeism was essentially a Gnostic, dualistic Persian religion, closely tied to Zoroastrianism. With the discovery and eventual publication of the Cologne Mani Codex (CMC) in the mid-1970s, however, new light was shed upon Manichaeism's murky origins.Footnote 4 Under the illumination of the CMC, the former consensus has been decisively overturned.Footnote 5 The CMC – in terms of actual dimensions, the smallest parchment codex found to date – is written in Greek (though it is most likely a translation from a Syriac original), and is entitled ‘Concerning the Origin of his Body’. It appears to contain Mani's own autobiographical comments amidst later redactional elements. It reveals that Mani grew up in a Jewish-Christian Elchasaite baptist sect.Footnote 6 While Mani certainly reacts against certain aspects of his religious upbringing, he also retains much of its general orientation. Thus, it appears that the generative matrix of Mani's new religion is to be identified as a complex amalgam of apocalyptic Jewish-Christian asceticism with Gnostic-dualist and esoteric elements.Footnote 7 Not surprisingly, the Manichees, like the Gnostics, rejected most of the Old Testament and its creator God, as well as what it considered to be corrupt Jewish interpolations into the New Testament. It has been established that the Manichees gravitated most strongly to the Gospels and, especially, the letters of Paul – particularly those passages that can be read as supporting a strong anthropological dualism.Footnote 8 In fact, as W. H. C. Frend has noted, ‘African Manichaeism is almost a Paulinist heresy’.Footnote 9
According to the standard rendition, the central Manichaean myth revolves around a radical dualism, the cosmic conflict between two co-eternal powers: the Good Principle and the Evil Principle. The Good Principle, or Father of Greatness, rules over the kingdom of light, and is the source of truth, goodness, beauty, tranquillity and soul. The Evil Principle, or King of Darkness, rules over the realm of darkness and is the source of wickedness, falsehood, hostility, matter and, thus, body. At some point in the past, the King of Darkness, in league with his demonic hosts, perceived the realm of light, desired it and sought to invade and vanquish it. The result is the world as we know and experience it today, a world wherein light and darkness, good and evil, blend in a seemingly inextricable mixture. What is true for the cosmos at large is true for humanity in particular. One of the most ingenious and tragic strategies of the Lord of Darkness eventuated in the creation of human beings. In an attempt to ensure that the captured particles of pure light could not escape the bonds of evil materiality, two demons mated and produced our first parents, Adam and Eve.Footnote 10 Thus, humans are not the creation of the Good God but rather of the Evil King. Each human being is a complex mixture of light and darkness, good and evil, soul and body. Each human being represents the Evil Lord's attempt to retain its hold on pure light, imprisoning it within the dense confines of body (i.e. matter). Since the spiritual state of each human being is directly tied to the particular mixture of light and darkness that constitutes them, Manichaeism – like other Gnostic expressions – naturally depends upon a strong soteriological determinism, wherein libertarian free will has no logical place. One of the most obvious effects of the evil impulse in humanity – one that both emanates from, and leads toward the further production of, material body – is the libido, the sexual impulse. The libido, irrational and aggressive, stirs within the human body, disrupting its tranquillity. Like the demonic realm from which it emanates, it hungers for gratification and, in the process, strives to invade and disrupt the ‘pure light of a good and clear consciousness’.Footnote 11
It was into this state of confusion and corruption that the Father of Greatness launched his salvific recovery operation. The celestial bodies – sun, moon, planets – were constructed as collector stations, designed to attract and absorb the dispersed particles of light and direct them back to their source, the heavenly realm of light.Footnote 12 Jesus was sent from the realm of light to reveal true knowledge – the secret gnosis – of what, in fact, humanity is and how they may participate in the recovery of light and the defeat of darkness. Enter Manichaeism, the product of this divine gnosis revealed. At the heart of Mani's religion is the committed core of ardent, ascetic followers – the Elect. The Elect were expected to maintain rigorous schedules of prayer and fasting. They were allowed neither marriage nor sexual activity. They were to abandon both family ties and all material possessions. Of vital importance was their diet. The Elect were called to a strict vegetarianism, which included the prohibition of ‘killing’ – that is, the harvesting and preparing – of the produce that they ate. And all of this prepared them for their single, most important soteriological task – digestion.
The centrepiece of the Manichaean salvation plan involves an ironic soteriological twist. In his grand scheme to liberate the imprisoned light-particles from the material cellblocks that hold them, the Father of Greatness uses the material bodies of the Elect as instruments of salvation. As they live lives of rigorous asceticism, distancing themselves from all involvement in the things of darkness, they literally become human receptacles within which the distillation and liberation of light occurs. The process is as simple as it is ingenious. As the Elect eat and digest their vegetarian diet, the very food that they eat – like all things, composed of a complex mixture of imprisoned light and imprisoning matter – is broken down, and, in the process, its constituent light is extracted and liberated. This theory of ‘salvation via metabolism’ is not merely a graphic, physical metaphor for a more literal, spiritual phenomenon. On the contrary, this physical, digestive soteriology is a concrete and fundamental instantiation of the cosmos-wide liberation of light, instigated by the Father of Greatness himself.Footnote 13
Many Manichees, the vast majority in fact, could not live the life of the Elect. This was not a problem, since one was either born a member of the Elect or one was not. In terms of sheer numbers, the majority of Manichees lived within the rank of ‘Auditors’ or ‘Hearers’. The Hearers were not called to the same rigorous standards as the Elect. They were, for example, allowed to work and own property. They were allowed to marry, though procreation was discouraged. Given these areas of licence, it was expected that they would pray and fast less than the Elect. Still, they were expected to avoid murder, theft, adultery and lying. And, most importantly, they were expected to participate in a form of ritual ‘killing’ of sorts, a killing that enabled the Manichaean salvation plan to unfold. A central religious duty of the Hearer was to harvest and prepare the produce that would constitute the diet of the Elect. If they were faithful in their predestined role as Hearers, they could expect eventually to be reincarnated within the ranks of the Elect, and in this way would become eligible for salvation. According to his own report, it was within this world of the Manichaean Hearer that Augustine lived for roughly a decade.
The Christian Augustine as crypto-Manichaean: the history of an accusation
The Christian Augustine never hid the fact that he had been a Manichaean Hearer for the better part of his third decade of life. While it seems he tried to understate the length of time he was among the Manichees – claiming in several writings that it was for a nine-year period when, in fact, there is good reason to think it was actually at least a ten year stint, running from his nineteenth to sometime in his twenty-ninth yearFootnote 14 – he nonetheless is clear about his former Manichaean connections. Just as clearly, Augustine exhibits what appears to be first-hand and generally accurate knowledge of Mani's religion.Footnote 15 This is not the place to explore the complexities of what exactly led Augustine into and out of Manichaeism, nor whether and/or to what degree he continued to consider himself a Catholic catechumen during his Manichaean sojourn.Footnote 16 What are important to note in this regard are the following two observations.
1. For a decade of his life – during what were (as John O'Meara reminds us) Augustine's ‘impressionable and formative twenties’ – Augustine moved within the Manichaean thought-world.Footnote 17 Given this fact, a good number of scholars have surmised that the Manichaean philosophical influence upon Augustine was both significant and persistent – perhaps, as J. A. Mourant suggests, ‘far more persistent’ than has traditionally been accepted.Footnote 18
2. It was most likely during this decade that Augustine experienced his first serious exposure to the writings of the Apostle Paul – understood, of course, through a Manichaean hermeneutical lens.Footnote 19 This would mean, as Roland Teske has argued, that Augustine's request to ‘study the Bible’ in the early 390s is really a request to restudy the Bible in order to de-Manichaeise his prior formative reading.Footnote 20 More broadly, his prior Manichaean study of the scriptures would also explain the post-conversion negative reaction he had to certain Old Testament books of the Catholic Bible.Footnote 21 Both of these points will provide fuel for the claim that, even after his Christian conversion, Augustine remained in some way a crypto-Manichaean.
The crypto-Manichaean charge during Augustine's lifetime
According to Sir Leslie Stephen, ‘Manichaeism may be disavowed in words’ but ‘it cannot be exiled from the actual belief of mankind’.Footnote 22 This very sentiment, personalised to Augustine, was repeated by his opponents from soon after his conversion until his dying day. No one can seriously question whether Augustine eventually rejected the religion of Mani and converted to Christianity in its fourth-century, North African Catholic form. There is no disputing that Augustine went on to become the most ardent and influential critic of the Manichaean religion that the Christian tradition has ever produced. His anti-Manichaean writings, largely penned during the 390s, are numerous and well-known.Footnote 23 Included among them is his Confessions, a text that, thanks to the work of Van Oort and others, we can now recognise, beyond its autobiographical and doxological aspects, as most likely an intentional anti-Manichaean polemical treatise.Footnote 24 What is in question, however, is the extent to which Augustine was able to purge himself of certain unconscious remnants of his former Manichaean worldview.
Tracing the history of this question is as fascinating as the search for its answer. To begin, we can certainly speculate as to whether Ambrose's request that the newly converted Augustine read the book of Isaiah was motivated by a suspicion concerning the sincerity of Augustine's conversion and/or a desire to expose any lingering, residual Manichaeism.Footnote 25 But speculation is all it would be. The first documented suspicion that Augustine remained a crypto-Manichaean can be traced to a letter written in 395/6 by Megalius, the Catholic primate of Numidia to Valerius of Hippo, when the latter was about to install Augustine as his co-adjutor.Footnote 26 While we have no extant copy of the letter, it is clear that many copies were circulating in Augustine's lifetime; both the Donatists and Augustine testify to its existence. This letter was eventually used by the Donatist Petilian of Constantine to challenge Augustine's ordination at Carthage in 411. An even more damaging piece of evidence is offered by Petilian, namely an extract of a letter written by Augustine himself – one which many theorise is to be equated with Augustine's letter to Paulinus of Nola in 396.Footnote 27 Here, Petilian interpreted the letter as saying that, during the time he was a candidate for episcopacy, Augustine had taken bread that had been contaminated by its use in Manichaean eucharistic rites and sent it to his Catholic constituents. Augustine eventually faced similar charges from other Donatists, including Primian and Cresconius. Even the Catholic monks of Gaul would come to wonder whether or not Augustine had completely shaken off the fatalism of his Manichaean past.Footnote 28 The general charge derived its persuasive force from the state of affairs in the North African church at the time. We have clear evidence that a number of individual Manichees and Catholics were mutually attracted to each other's religious views in a way that Donatists never were. Beyond this, there is evidence suggesting that ‘a certain amount of secret Manichaeism persisted in the Catholic Church’, sometimes even penetrating the ranks of clergy.Footnote 29
Whatever aggravation the Donatist charge caused Augustine, it is safe to say that it paled in comparison to that caused by the onslaught of Julian of Eclanum, Augustine's Pelagian nemesis of his twilight years.Footnote 30 There is little debate that Julian represents the most formidable theological adversary of Augustine's long polemical career.Footnote 31 The decade-long debate between these two men reveals that Julian was well-trained in rhetoric and dialectics. He was among the eighteen Italian bishops who refused to sign Pope Zosimus’ condemnation of Pelagianism, and was himself eventually condemned and banished. He went on to find refuge in the East, where he wrote his eight-volume To Florus, largely in response to Augustine's Marriage and Desire. The final two volumes of To Florus have been lost to time. But thanks to Augustine's method (in his Unfinished Work in Answer to Julian) of quoting Julian's text as he responds to it, it appears that we have the first six volumes of To Florus preserved in their entirety.
It is interesting to note that Petilian's earlier charge does not appear to be linked to Augustine's theology per se. With Julian, however, Augustine's theology is precisely what is under suspicion. Julian minces no words when it comes to his assessment of Augustine's crypto-Manichaeism beliefs: ‘You and Mani’, he writes, ‘have one and the same faith, but he is less impudent than you’.Footnote 32 Throughout their running battle, Julian suggests a number of points at which Augustine's theology betrays Manichaean influence. His arguments present at least five areas of concern:Footnote 33
1. Augustine's use of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo to explain the rise of the evil will. Here, Julian suggests we have something very similar to the Manichaean doctrine of two co-eternal principles – namely God (the source of good) and ‘nothing’ (the source of evil).
2. Augustine's post-396 rejection of a robust view of human freedom and the Manichaean-like fatalism that results.Footnote 34
3. Augustine's christology, in which he attempts to save Jesus from sharing either our inherently ‘sinful flesh’ or our ‘desire’ for sin. This betrays the signs of a mixture of the Apollinarian and Manichaean heresies.Footnote 35 For Julian, a Jesus without ‘desire’ is a Jesus without the human struggle against temptation. And that Jesus is not ‘a genuinely human Christ but a “Manichean” one’.Footnote 36
4. Augustine's overly negative views of marriage and human sexuality, reminiscent of Manichaeism's disdain for marriage, sex and procreation.Footnote 37
5. Augustine's doctrine of original sin, both with respect to its generally negative assessment of human natureFootnote 38 and, more specifically, his particular theory of the transmission of original sin throughout the human race.Footnote 39 It is with this final point that Julian moves from casting his opponent as Manichaean in rather general terms and, instead, constructs a fairly detailed, precise and sustained argument. In essence, he proposes that Augustine's doctrine of original sin recapitulates the Manichaean philosophy/physiology of human reproduction and the inherent evil therein.Footnote 40 Similar to the Manichees, Augustine argued that, from Adam onward, in the act of sexual intercourse it was the male ‘seed’ that carried and transmitted concupiscence. This concupiscence – involving ‘shameful desire’ – was, itself, the just penalty for sin that was suffered by all post-fall human beings, Jesus excluded.Footnote 41 In Augustine's words: ‘For a man first sows the seed in order for the woman to bear a child, and in that way through one man sin entered into the world (Rom 5:12), because it entered through the seed of generation which the woman received from the man when she conceived a child.’Footnote 42 Augustine is notorious for his refusal to embrace a particular view of the origin of the soul. Nonetheless, Julian points out that, when it comes to his understanding of the transmission of original sin, a traducian theory – similar to that held by Mani – is the only logical candidate. It is precisely this logical connection that Julian identifies and exploits.Footnote 43
To his dying day, Augustine never ceased defending himself against the charge of crypto-Manichaeism. (Nor did he miss an opportunity to turn the tables on Julian, arguing that it was the Pelagians who had become the unwitting allies of the Manichees.Footnote 44) But was Julian's charge really anything more than empty polemic? Was it merely a ‘conventional bogey’, the expected rhetoric of a Pelagian adversary making use of a now-infamous accusation against Augustine that had been forged in the Donatist controversy decades earlier?Footnote 45 Or was Julian on to something? Did he identify at crucial points in Augustine's thought something that, rhetorical hyperbole notwithstanding, revealed that the bishop of Hippo had failed to divest himself entirely of his Manichaean past? In recent years a growing number of scholars have concluded that Julian's charge – as overstated and polemical as it is – reveals that Augustine had, in some important sense, retained elements of his Manichaean heritage, elements whose source even he himself did not recognise.
The crypto-Manichaean charge in contemporary scholarship
Between his death and the end of the nineteenth century, Augustine's reputation was little troubled by allegations of crypto-Manichaeism. But in 1897, Albert Bruckner revived the charge.Footnote 46 Not long after, Paul More argued that Augustine ‘never to the day of his death outlived the effects of this first surrender of his soul’ to Manichaeism.Footnote 47 Within two decades, Luigi Tondelli reiterated the indictment.Footnote 48 By the 1950s, several scholars were arguing that Augustine was never completely successful in escaping the influence of Mani – an influence discernible, for example, in his notion of the ‘two cities’.Footnote 49
In the last few decades, Augustinian scholarship has increasingly realised that to understand Augustine one must first understand Manichaeism.Footnote 50 In the words of Johannes van Oort:
More and more clearly, modern research has revealed the extent to which Augustine's life and works are linked to Manichaeism. His theology and philosophy would be difficult to understand without a basic knowledge of the ‘Religion of Light’, its hymns and prayers, its ethical and dogmatic teaching, its mythology and theology.Footnote 51
One reason for this new awareness is the current renaissance of international Manichaean studies. From the discovery and analysis of the Cologne Mani Codex to the ground-breaking historical spadework of Samuel Lieu to the formation of the International Association of Manichaean Studies, it is a new day for Manichaean research. Another reason for this recent awareness is the growing realisation among early church historians that patristic theology and philosophy, Augustine's included, was typically conducted – and thus must be understood – within overtly polemical contexts. As one example: it makes all the difference whether one reads Augustine's Confessions as primarily a straightforward autobiography of a spiritual pilgrimage on the one hand, or as primarily an anti-Manichaean polemical treatise on the other.
It is within this context that the question of Augustine's crypto-Manichaeism has recently been reawakened. Two interesting – and when juxtaposed, ironic – observations can be made on the current state of the question. First, a growing number of scholars – including some who once denied it – are now concluding that, to one degree or another, Augustine's Christian thought-world was noticeably influenced by his Manichaean past. Second, there is no clear consensus about which areas of his thought reflect this influence.
The first observation is easy to document. While some scholars continue to reject the claim that Augustine's post-conversion thought is in any way tainted with residual Manichaeism, a growing number now argue that Augustine's Christian theology was, in fact, infected to some degree by his former heretical religion. Those within this latter group include scholars of the calibre of A. H. Armstrong, C. P. Bammel, William Babcock, Jason BeDuhn, Peter Brown, Elizabeth Clark, Kevin Coyle, Francois Decret, Leo Ferrari, William Frend, Robert Herrera, Gerald O'Daly, John O'Meara, Johannes van Oort, Gillies Quispel, Kurt Rudolph and Basil Studer. Their identification of Manichaean holdovers in Augustine's Christian thought range from a general mood of pessimism to quite specific philosophical and/or doctrinal formulations. The areas of Augustine's theological and philosophical thought most often identified as crypto-Manichaean – to one degree or another – include the following.
Augustine's general pessimism regarding human nature and free will
Scholars have long noticed the way in which Augustine's thought is marked by an increasing pessimism over his lifetime. Some have attributed it to the cumulative hardening effects of the various polemical battles in which he partook; some to Augustine's own experience of the power of concupiscence.Footnote 52 Others, however, have traced its source to the similar anthropological pessimism within Augustine's former religion.Footnote 53 As long ago as 1917, Buonaiuti suggested that ‘It is therefore not untrue to affirm that his Manichaean fellowship left in the mind of Augustine a pessimistic background which was unconsciously brought to light again by the fervor of Pelagian controversy.’Footnote 54 Others argue that Augustine's radical shift in 396 on the question of human free will and divine grace – first clearly identifiable in his Letter to Simplicianus – can be compared with, and traced to, his Manichaean past. For example, Ludwig Koenen argues:
It was Augustine's personal recognition of his own concupiscence and his Manichaean past which led him to regard free will in human nature only as severely conditioned by the consequences of original sin . . . . It seems that he did not forget that according to the Manichaeans the body is created out of concupiscence and sexual excess.Footnote 55
Augustine's theological complex of the fall, original sin and ‘concupiscence’
Following Julian, by far and away the area of Augustine's thought most commonly identified by contemporary scholars as beholden to his former Manichaean worldview is the nest of theological ideas revolving around his conceptions of sin and the fall, specifically his notion of concupiscence. Again, Augustine conceived of concupiscence as the divine penalty for the original sin, epitomised in the innate human tendency towards ‘shameful sexual desire’.Footnote 56 There is no doubt that Augustine often has been unfairly singled out among the early fathers as inordinately derogatory in his assessment of human sexuality. Peter Brown, among others, has argued that, in the context of what we can call the ‘ascetic paradigm’ of early Christianity, Augustine's views on sexuality were actually relatively positive.Footnote 57
On the other hand, virtually all scholars acknowledge the striking similarities between Augustine and the Manichees with respect to the specific notion of concupiscence. As was pointed out in his own day, Augustine's understanding of the sinful concupiscence and its association with human sexuality is mirrored in the Manichaean religion, as seen in the Letter to Menoch, reportedly penned by Mani himself.Footnote 58 Augustine, of course, vehemently denied any connection. He argued that his views were in concert with earlier fathers, and that – ultimately – they were rooted in the clear teachings of the Apostle Paul.Footnote 59 Today, the obvious similarities not withstanding, some scholars argue that, since the two views derive from significantly different theologies, it is illegitimate to conclude for direct influence.Footnote 60 With Augustine himself no doubt, Marleen Verschoren asks whether the ‘common root looked for between Augustine and the Manichees’ regarding concupiscence might not ‘simply be Paul?’Footnote 61
On the other hand, a sizeable – and seemingly increasing – collection of scholars are willing to draw a direct line of influence from Manichaeism to Augustine at this point.Footnote 62 The work of two particular scholars can serve as representative examples. One of the most detailed, sustained and influential arguments here is that of Elizabeth Clark in her essay, ‘Vitiated Seeds and Holy Vessels: Augustine's Manichaean Past’. Clark notes that, in his controversy with Augustine, Julian of Eclanum eventually moved from a general charge of ‘Manichaeism’ to a very specific charge – one that Clark argues ‘gains a force it is too often denied’.Footnote 63 Specifically, Clark argues that Julian correctly identified in Augustine's notions of original sin, concupiscence, etc. an indebtedness to the pessimistic and corrupting influence of the Manichaean notion of ‘vitiated seeds’, one that can be traced to the Manichean Myth of the Archons’ Seduction. Clark concludes: ‘In sum, although Augustine's general theory of human sinfulness since birth is found in “orthodox” as well as sectarian and heretical authors, the motif of seeds becoming mixed with evil can most likely be linked to his Manichean past.’Footnote 64 The influence of Clark's argument can be measured by the fact that Peter Brown – the definitive contemporary biographer of Augustine – has acknowledged that her essay has forced him to reassess the crypto-Manichaean question.Footnote 65
A second indicator of the growing forcefulness of the concupiscence connection can be seen in the influential work of the noted Augustine scholar Johannes van Oort. In a paper originally presented at a 1986 conference, van Oort was hesitant to connect Augustine's concupiscentia doctrine and his Manichaean past. He noted that Augustine might just as well have taken the idea from a broader Jewish-Christian ascetic tradition. He did note, however, that: ‘it is not impossible that especially in Augustine's emphasis on the concupiscentia sexualis as a motus inordinatus, in which the sinful nature of sexual desire reveals itself prominently, and through which sin is transmitted, we should see a relic of his Manichaean past’.Footnote 66 A year later, in a paper delivered at a 1987 conference, his hesitation has significantly eroded. He writes: ‘But in the repeated stress on the fact that especially in the random motion the sinfulness of sexual desire is evident, and that through this random sexual desire sin is propagated, I can only see a remarkable conformity to Manichaeism.’Footnote 67 Since then, van Oort has consistently affirmed this connection.Footnote 68 Van Oort's shift in perspective is not an isolated case. Two other noted Augustine scholars, Kevin Coyle and Mathjis Lamberigts, appear to have made similar shifts. Where they once seemed quite resistant to the idea of making connections between Augustine and his former Manichaeism, they now acknowledge that the striking similarities must be acknowledged and accounted for.Footnote 69
Augustine's post-396 predestination and grace doctrinal complex
Intimately tied to the last point is Augustine's doctrinal shift vis-à-vis the nature of divine grace and the workings of predestination, as first expressed in the Letter to Simplicianus in 396. Between 394 and 396, Augustine found himself wrestling with certain key Pauline texts – particularly the notorious Romans nine – in three different works.Footnote 70 While Augustine's study of Paul at this time certainly arose, in part, from his own internal motivations, it must also be seen in the context of a wider renaissance of Pauline study in the fourth century.Footnote 71 In the first two works, Augustine's conclusions followed the well-trodden path of all previous orthodox early church fathers – i.e. he maintained a strong doctrine of human freedom, and explained God's election as predicated upon divine foreknowledge of (future) human choices, as opposed to divine preordination.Footnote 72
In 396, however, virtually all agree Augustine's thought underwent a significant shift.Footnote 73 In that year, he wrote a letter in response to several questions about the book of Romans posed to him by Simplicianus, his former mentor and eventual successor to Ambrose as bishop of Milan. In his response, Augustine essentially recants his earlier approach, and moves to a view in which he locates the ultimate reason for the divide between two groups of humanity – the elect and the reprobate – as ultimately residing not within their respective human choices, but rather within the divine will itself. Decades later, Augustine would explain his reversal in his Letter to Simplicianus in these terms: ‘I, indeed, labored in defense of the free choice of the human will; but the grace of God conquered, and finally I was able to understand, with full clarity, the meaning of the Apostle:“ . . . what hast thou that thou hast not received?”’Footnote 74
Augustine scholars have offered a variety of explanations for this fundamental shift in 396. Among the proposed catalytic influences are: Augustine's North African context, his new pastoral orientation, his renewed study of Paul's letters, his own personal experience of sin, the desire to nullify human boasting, a new vision of God's sovereignty, the writings of Tychonius and the list goes on.Footnote 75 For a number of contemporary Augustine scholars, however, his 396 shift on grace and predestination betrays not the embrace of a ‘new’ view so much as a retreat to an ‘old’ one – namely something akin to the pessimistic determinism of his former Manichaean understanding of predestination.Footnote 76 According to T. G. Sinnige, ‘One of the most telling similarities [between Augustine and the Manichees] is the classification of human beings into the very small number of the elect and the great mass of men, who . . . will suffer damnation’. ‘The “pattern of doctrine” here’, Sinnige suggests, ‘reproduces exactly the well-known gnostic one’.Footnote 77 William Frend argues that Augustine's ‘Christian elect came to differ little from the Manichee Electi . . . . If Augustine drove both Donatism and Manichaeism out of sight, he may to some extent have perpetuated the latter in his theology of Grace.’Footnote 78 In a recent dissertation, Edwin Lee has attempted to flesh out this general observation. He concludes: ‘Therefore, in total, we have shown a threefold influence of the Manichaean notion of the Good in Augustine's development of the doctrine of predestination: the context of summum bonum, the framework in ordo, and the deterministic factor exercised by consuetudo and concupiscentia.’Footnote 79
Augustine's ‘two cities’ motif
The question of the inspiration behind Augustine's City of God – particularly the notion of two antithetical cities – has long intrigued scholars. Augustine himself points to scripture as the generating matrix. While biblical concepts such as the two kingdoms and two types of people no doubt exerted an important influence, a number of scholars have concluded that ‘it is doubtful that Scripture is his one and only source’.Footnote 80 One commonly identified source is the renegade Donatist Tychonius. In the 1950s, however, several scholars argued that the originating impulse behind Augustine's ‘two cities’ motif was to be traced to his former Manichaeism.Footnote 81 There is no doubt that the Manichees referred to a heavenly kingdom – even a heavenly city – and the kingdom of darkness, or kingdom of this world. Even the language with which Augustine describes the two cities is reminiscent of the Manichaean descriptions.Footnote 82
Perhaps the most extensive study of the sources behind Augustine's ‘two cities’ motif is van Oort's 1991 Jerusalem and Babylon: A Study into Augustine's City of God and the Sources of his Doctrine of the Two Cities. Here, he argues for a multi-source theory, emphasising that one does not have to turn to Manichaeism to account for it. Rather, the Jewish-Christian ‘two ways’ motif is a sufficient explanation, and that probably it influenced both Mani and Augustine independently.Footnote 83 In an article on the matter, written six years later, he still holds to the same conclusions.Footnote 84 However, in an article published the next year – in 1998 – he appears quite open to the possibility of direct Manichaean influence. He writes:
there are many similarities between Augustine's famous and very influential doctrine of the two cities or kingdoms and the dualistic Manichaean view of the two realms, cities, or kingdoms . . . . These similarities in thought and even terminology seem to give some justification to the perception of direct influence here.Footnote 85
Van Oort has continued to argue in this direction.Footnote 86
While these four areas represent the primary doctrinal contexts within which most contemporary scholars identify Augustine's unconscious crypto-Manichaeism, several others have been suggested as well. These include (1) Augustine's construal of the imago dei;Footnote 87 (2) his formulation of creation ex nihilo (a development of the charge already levelled by Julian);Footnote 88 (3) his notions of ‘the Good’ and ‘Order’;Footnote 89 (4) his articulation of God's Justice;Footnote 90 (5) certain aspects of his christology;Footnote 91 (6) his communal sensibilities;Footnote 92 (7) his use of specific imagery;Footnote 93 and (8) Augustine's own personal approach to the spiritual life.Footnote 94 Concerning the last point, van Oort writes:
Probably [the] most important field of [Manichaean] influence seems to be Augustine's spirituality . . . . When reading Augustine's Confessions, for example, one is more than once reminded of the Manichaean Psalms . . . . In some essential features of Augustine's spirituality we may perceive one of the most important channels through which the Gnostic religion of Manichaeism has exercised a lasting influence on western culture.Footnote 95
Augustine as crypto-Manichaean: toward an assessment of the charge
According to Edwin Lee, scholarly research into the question of Manichaeism's lasting effects upon Augustine's thought is ‘still a virgin land of research’.Footnote 96 One of the most obvious signs of its fledgling state it that, thus far, there has been little in the way of a robust methodological proposal – including the requisite criteria – by which to make the type of judgements that are necessary. For example, it is far from clear when and how one is to judge a proposed point of comparison between Manichaeism and Augustine's thought as a significant parallel that betrays influence, on the one hand, or a misleading instance of ‘parallelomania’, on the other.Footnote 97 Typically, for example, there is little methodological reflection on the question of how to distinguish an instance of direct Manichaean influence upon Augustine from a case where a prior common source had influence upon them both.Footnote 98
There is, however, one area of methodological development that should be noted. Several scholars have begun to refine the question of Augustine's crypto-Manichaeism in terms of the types of influence we might consider. Here, the rather simple and generally unnuanced theory of Augustine's ‘borrowing’ – consciously or not – from his Manichaean past is viewed as only one of several options. It is supplemented with other, more complex, models of influence. The final section of this article will briefly explore one example of this type of nuanced claim of crypto-Manichaeism within Augustine's thought today.
The specific issue in question is the aforementioned 396 shift in Augustine's thinking about divine grace, election and human freedom. The type of influence proposed is more subtle than a direct borrowing, conscious or otherwise. Instead, it suggests that in Augustine's polemical engagement with Manichaeism, he allowed his erstwhile co-religionists to set the terms of the debate in a number of important ways.Footnote 99 Perhaps the most significant of these ways, for the case at hand, involves the fact that Augustine allowed his Manichaean opponents to dictate certain exegetical approaches and hermeneutical parameters for specific biblical texts that would prove to be crucial to the debate. The result was delayed but decisive: Augustine would eventually adopt conclusions on divine grace and human freedom not unlike the very Manichaean views he initially set out to destroy.
The background for this case is Augustine's two-day public debate with the Manichaean spokesperson Fortunatus, held in Hippo in August of 392.Footnote 100 As noted above, a variety of factors have been identified as the cause of Augustine's 396 shift. The view under consideration would not necessarily discount the fact that a number of these factors were in play. It would, however, place Augustine's debate with Fortunatus – and its eventual effects upon his thinking – at the top of the list. For centuries, common wisdom has had it that Augustine decisively won the debate. On the standard view, Fortunatus was effectively defeated by Augustine's use of the ‘Nebridian Conundrum’, which forces the question: if God cannot be harmed by evil, how do the Manichees justify their claim that He ‘consigned a part of himself to combat with evil’.Footnote 101
The view under consideration would argue that this bit of common wisdom is long overdue for a reassessment. Yes, it may be the case that by the end of the second day – politically and rhetorically speaking – Augustine had won the debate.Footnote 102 Augustine tells us that he reduced his opponent to silence, with Fortunatus finally exclaiming, ‘What then am I to say?’Footnote 103 However, as Jason BeDuhn notes, the standard view cannot easily account for three pieces of counter-evidence: (1) Fortunatus dodges the force of the Nebridian Conundrum by an appeal to several key Pauline texts that seem to support Manichaeism on this point; (2) Fortunatus effectively turns his own version of the Conundrum back upon Augustine;Footnote 104 and most important of all: (3) within a few years, Augustine had given up the interpretation of key Pauline texts that he argued for during the debate, and embraced an interpretation very much in line with Fortunatus’.Footnote 105
It is this last point that is most crucial for our purposes. Three brief observations can be noted:
1. It appears that it was through Manichaeism in general – and now Fortunatus in particular – that Augustine was exposed to a reading of Paul that emphasised a view of divine grace that set it at odds with the robust (i.e. libertarian) exercise of human free will.Footnote 106
2. We must not forget that the first day of the debate ended with Augustine on the exegetical defensive, an embarrassing conclusion to the first round and one not quickly forgotten by Augustine. Somehow, Fortunatus had turned Paul into an ally of the Manichaeans.Footnote 107
3. Although, practically speaking, Augustine won the debate, the humiliation of the first day seems to have lingered with him. For not long after the debate, Augustine begins several years of intense study of Paul, and particularly of some of the very passages with which he was bested by Fortunatus. In fact, in both his Propositions from the Epistle to the Romans and the third book of On the Freedom of the Will, each written around 395, we find Augustine combining certain Pauline texts in precisely the same way that Fortunatus did. In short, Augustine has begun the process of giving up his robust doctrine of human freedom. He now concedes that, while the first man enjoyed unimpeded freedom, all of his progeny have been ‘plunged into necessity’ by the force of habit.Footnote 108
As BeDuhn notes:
Augustine combines Romans 7:18–19 with Ephesians 2:3, just as Fortunatus did in the debate . . . . [H]e combines Romans 7 with Galatians 5:17 – again, exactly as Fortunatus did in the debate. In other words, the system of internal exegesis of Paul that Augustine adopts is heavily influenced by Fortunatus. Augustine resists complete capitulation to Fortunatus’ reasoning for some time. But by the end of the decade, he has swung entirely to Fortunatus’ reading of Romans 7, and proceeds to go even further into a deterministic stance than that held by the Manichaeans. We can see, then, that Augustine opposes Fortunatus with a free will position he begins to abandon immediately after the debate.Footnote 109
Thus, ironically – at least in terms of certain points of Pauline exegesis – the very Manichaean approach that Augustine consciously sought to undermine subtly shaped his own hermeneutical conclusions. It would not be the first or last time in Christian history when, in the context of a polemical engagement, the thought of one interlocutor was decisively influenced by the very conceptual world he was attempting to undercut.Footnote 110
In conclusion: can a leopard change its spots? This analysis of Augustine suggests that, theologically and philosophically speaking, yes it can. There is no question that, after his conversion, Augustine fundamentally rejected the dualistic worldview of the Manichaeans and embraced the orthodox Catholic conception of God and creation ex nihilo. To the very end, he defended his explication of evil as he had laid it out in On the Freedom of the Will, locating its origin, not in God, but in the innate human capacity for free will. However, to side against Julian with respect to this rhetorical trope is not necessarily to dismiss his concern about Augustine's crypto-Manichaeism. Can a leopard change its spots? In Augustine's case, yes. But, as the case of Augustine also demonstrates, the erstwhile spots can also – and forever – change the leopard.Footnote 111
