▾
Augustine of Hippo, Concerning the Nature of Good, Against the Manichæans
⎗←→⎘
▾
Concerning the Nature of Good, Against the…
Concerning the Nature of Good,
Chapter 2.—How This May Suffice for Correcting the Manichæans.
Chapter 3.—Measure, Form, and Order, Generic Goods in Things Made by God.
Chapter 4.—Evil is Corruption of Measure, Form, or Order.
Chapter 6.—Nature Which Cannot Be Corrupted is the Highest Good That Which Can, is Some Good.
Chapter 7.—The Corruption of Rational Spirits is on the One Hand Voluntary, on the Other Penal.
Chapter 8.—From the Corruption and Destruction of Inferior Things is the Beauty of the Universe.
Chapter 9.—Punishment is Constituted for the Sinning Nature that It May Be Rightly Ordered.
Chapter 10.—Natures Corruptible, Because Made of Nothing.
Chapter 11.—God Cannot Suffer Harm, Nor Can Any Other Nature Except by His Permission.
Chapter 12.—All Good Things are from God Alone.
Chapter 13.—Individual Good Things, Whether Small or Great, are from God.
Chapter 14.—Small Good Things in Comparison with Greater are Called by Contrary Names.
Chapter 15.—In the Body of the Ape the Good of Beauty is Present, Though in a Less Degree.
Chapter 16.—Privations in Things are Fittingly Ordered by God.
Chapter 17.—Nature, in as Far as It is Nature, No Evil.
Chapter 18.—Hyle, Which Was Called by the Ancients the Formless Material of Things, is Not an Evil.
Chapter 19.—To Have True Existence is an Exclusive Prerogative of God.
Chapter 20.—Pain Only in Good Natures.
Chapter 22.—Measure in Some Sense is Suitable to God Himself.
Chapter 23.—Whence a Bad Measure, a Bad Form, a Bad Order May Sometimes Be Spoken of.
Chapter 25.—This Last Expression Misunderstood by Some.
Chapter 26.—That Creatures are Made of Nothing.
Chapter 27.—From Him And Of Him Do Not Mean The Same Thing.
Chapter 28.—Sin Not From God, But From The Will of Those Sinning.
Chapter 29.—That God is Not Defiled by Our Sins.
Chapter 30.—That Good Things, Even the Least, and Those that are Earthly, are by God.
Chapter 31.—To Punish and to Forgive Sins Belong Equally to God.
Chapter 32.—From God Also is the Very Power to Be Hurtful.
Chapter 33.—That Evil Angels Have Been Made Evil, Not by God, But by Sinning.
Chapter 34.—That Sin is Not the Striving for an Evil Nature, But the Desertion of a Better.
Chapter 36.—No Creature of God is Evil, But to Abuse a Creature of God is Evil.
Chapter 37.—God Makes Good Use of the Evil Deeds of Sinners.
Chapter 38.—Eternal Fire Torturing the Wicked, Not Evil.
Chapter 39.—Fire is Called Eternal, Not as God Is, But Because Without End.
Chapter 40.—Neither Can God Suffer Hurt, Nor Any Other, Save by the Just Ordination of God.
Chapter 42.—Manichæan Blasphemies Concerning the Nature of God.
Chapter 44.—Incredible Turpitudes in God Imagined by Manichæus.
Chapter 46.—The Unspeakable Doctrine of the Fundamental Epistle.
Chapter 47.—He Compels to the Perpetration of Horrible Turpitudes.
Chapter 48.—Augustin Prays that the Manichæans May Be Restored to Their Senses.
Chapter 26.—That Creatures are Made of Nothing.
Because therefore God made all things which He did not beget of Himself, not of those things that already existed, but of those things that did not exist at all, that is, of nothing," the Apostle Paul says: "Who calls the things that are not as if they are."19 Rom. iv. 17. But still more plainly it is written in the book of Maccabees: "I pray thee, son, look at the heaven and the earth and all the things that are in them; see and know that it was not these of which the Lord God made us."20 2 Mac. vii. 28. And from this that is written in the Psalm: "He spake, and they were made."21 Ps. cxlviii. 5. It is manifest, that not of Himself He begat these things, but that He made them by word and command. But what is not of Himself is assuredly of nothing. For there was not anything of which he should make them, concerning which the apostle says most openly: "For from Him, and through Him, and in Him are all things."22 Rom. xi. 36.