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Augustine turns Sirach's Latin image of losing one's insides into losing one's inner life in Confessions 7, using it to explain evil as a choice to turn away from God.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Sirach 10:9
Ben Sira, Ecclesiasticus
Deuterocanon
7 Arrogance is hateful to the Lord and to mortals, and injustice is outrageous to both. 8 Sovereignty passes from nation to nation on account of injustice and insolence and wealth. Nothing is more wicked than one who loves money, for such a person puts his own soul up for sale. 9 How can dust and ashes be proud? Even in life the human body decays. 10 A long illness baffles the physician; the king of today will die tomorrow. 11 For when one is dead he inherits maggots and vermin and worms. 12 The beginning of human pride is to forsake the Lord; the heart has withdrawn from its Maker.
Augustine, Confessions 7.16
Early Christian
And I saw and found it no marvel that bread which is distasteful to an unhealthy palate is pleasant to a healthy one; or that the light, which is painful to sore eyes, is a delight to sound ones. Your righteousness displeases the wicked, and they find even more fault with the viper and the little worm, which you have created good, fitting in as they do with the inferior parts of creation. The wicked themselves also fit in here, and proportionately more so as they become unlike you—but they harmonize with the higher creation proportionately as they become like you. And I asked what wickedness was, and I found that it was no substance, but a perversion of the will bent aside from you, O God, the supreme substance, toward these lower things, casting away its inmost treasure and becoming bloated with external good.
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Notes and References
“... Manichaean claims about the nature of evil is introduced through
the discussion of Nebridius’ argument (it questions the role of the realm
of darkness in Manichaean cosmology) in 7.2.3 and resolved in 7.11.17–
7.16.22 as the following quotation from 7.16.22 indicates:
Et quaesivi quid esset iniquitas et non inveni substantiam, sed a summa substantia,
te deo, detortae in infima voluntatis perversitatem, proicientis intima sua et tumescentis
foras
[I inquired what wickedness is; and I did not find a substance but a
perversity of will twisted away from the highest substance, you O God,
towards inferior things, rejecting its own inner life (Ecclus 10:10) and
swelling with external matter]. ...”
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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