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What soundness!What elegance in a debater! ‘Evil arose in a human being,’ he says, ‘not because he was made by God, but because he was made from nothing’ (Augustine, Marriage and Desire 2.28.48).We have already shown the sharpness by which immense power is assigned to this nothing.Now I point out what the preceding debate also made clear: not even the first evil was undertaken by the sinner’s will if the condition of an origin from nothing required its birth.
O sanitatem, o elegantiam disputantis! Non ideo, inquit, malum exortum est in homine, quia a Deo factum est, sed ideo quia de nihilo [n71] . Ostendimus iam acumen, quo vis maxima huic nihilo subrogata est; nunc illud admoneo, quod etiam superior conflictus fecit intellegi, nec primum malum peccantis fuisse voluntate susceptum, si illud nasci conditio venientis de nihilo stirpis exegit.