384–430

Augustine against the Manichees: Creation out of Nothing, Evil as Privation of Good, Free Will

For nine years Augustine was a Manichaean "hearer": he was attracted by the promise of a rational explanation of the universe and by the solution of the problem of evil through two eternal principles. In Milan, having read the Neoplatonists, he came to see that evil is not a nature or a substance but the absence or corruption of good; all that exists is good, for it has "measure, form and order". After his conversion he wrote thirteen works against the Manichees: sin is not created by God and is not eternal but arises from the misuse of free will by rational beings – angels and humans – so that God is the Creator of all but not the author of evil. The triune God created the world out of nothing – not from His own substance and not from eternal matter; the ideas of things exist eternally in the Word, and the six days of creation are not to be taken literally.