Herein we conclude, from part 1, part 2, part 3, part , part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12, part 13, part 14, considering info on Angels in Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD). The fuller complete result consists of quotations of those sections within the text that refer to Angels, Cherubim, Seraphim, Devil, Satan, demons, serpent and dragon. The point is not to elucidate these references but to provide relevant partial quotations and citations. See my section on Angels here, Cherubim and Seraphim here, Satan here and Demons here.
Angels in Augustine of Hippo’s On Christian Doctrine.
Preface
6 Let us beware of such dangerous temptations of pride, and let us rather consider the fact that the Apostle Paul himself, although stricken down and admonished by the voice of God from heaven, was yet sent to a man to receive the sacraments and be admitted into the Church; and that Cornelius the centurion, although an Angel announced to him that his prayers…And without doubt it was possible to have done everything through the instrumentality of Angels, but the condition of our race would have been much more degraded if God had not chosen to make use of men as the ministers of His word to their fellow-men. For how could that be true which is written, “The temple of God is holy, which temple you are,” if God gave forth no oracles from His human temple, but communicated everything that He wished to be taught to men by voices from heaven, or through the ministration of Angels?
7 And we know that the eunuch who was reading Isaiah the prophet, and did not understand what he read, was not sent by the apostle to an Angel, nor was it an Angel who explained to him what he did not understand, nor was he inwardly illuminated by the grace of God without the interposition of man; on the contrary, at the suggestion of God, Philip, who did understand the prophet, came to him, and sat with him, and in human words, and with a human tongue, opened to him the Scriptures.
Book I
Chapter 23:22 Those things which are objects of use are not all, however, to be loved, but those only which are either united with us in a common relation to God, such as a man or an Angel, or are so related to us as to need the goodness of God through our instrumentality, such as the body.
Chapter 30:31, 33 There arises further in this connection a question about Angels. For they are happy in the enjoyment of Him whom we long to enjoy; and the more we enjoy Him in this life as through a glass darkly, the more easy do we find it to bear our pilgrimage, and the more eagerly do we long for its termination. But it is not irrational to ask whether in those two commandments is included the love of Angels also…But now, if every one to whom we ought to show, or who ought to show to us, the offices of mercy is by right called a neighbor, it is manifest that the command to love our neighbor embraces the holy Angels also, seeing that so great offices of mercy have been performed by them on our behalf, as may easily be shown by turning the attention to many passages of Holy Scripture.
Chapter 33:36 For if we find our happiness complete in one another, we stop short upon the road, and place our hope of happiness in man or Angel. Now the proud man and the proud Angel arrogate this to themselves, and are glad to have the hope of others fixed upon them. But, on the contrary, the holy man and the holy Angel, even when we are weary and anxious to stay with them and rest in them, set themselves to recruit our energies with the provision which they have received of God for us or for themselves…And the Angel admonishes the man who is about to worship him, that he should rather worship Him who is his Master, and under whom he himself is a fellow-servant.
Book II
Chapter 23:35 For they are deluded and imposed on by the false Angels, to whom the lowest part of the world has been put in subjection by the law of God’s providence, and in accordance with His most admirable arrangement of things.
Book III
Chapter 30:42 As, for example, he inquires what we are to understand in the Apocalypse by the seven Angels of the churches to whom John is commanded to write; and after much and various reasoning, arrives at the conclusion that the Angels are the churches themselves.
Chapter 37:55 For, although the devil sends his Angels to all nations, yet it is his body, not himself, that is ground down on the each, except that he himself is in his body, which is beaten small like the dust which the wind blows from the face of the Earth.
Book IV
Chapter 16:33 Wherefore though holy men be our helpers, or even holy Angels assist us, no one learns aright the things that pertain to life with God, until God makes him ready to learn from Himself, that God who is thus addressed in the psalm: “Teach me to do Your will; for You are my God.”
Chapter 18:36 And when the apostle spoke about trials in regard to secular affairs (and what were these but matters of money?), he says: “Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints? Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? And if the world shall be judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Do you not know that we shall judge Angels?…”
Chapter 20:39, 43-44 And because it might possibly occur to the hearer to ask, If there is no inheritance by the law, why then was the law given? He himself anticipates this objection and asks, “Wherefore then serves the law?” And the answer is given: “It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by Angels in the hand of a mediator…”…And he treats this subject with both power and beauty: “We know,” he says, “…For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor Angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord”…Again, in writing to the Galatians, although the whole epistle is written in the subdued style, except at the end, where it rises into a temperate eloquence, yet he interposes one passage of so much feeling that, notwithstanding the absence of any ornaments such as appear in the passages just quoted, it cannot be called anything but powerful: “…And my temptation which was in my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected; but received me as an Angel of God, even as Christ Jesus…”
Chapter 21:46 St. Ambrose also, though dealing with a question of very great importance, the equality of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son, employs the subdued style, because the object he has in view demands, not beauty of diction, nor the swaying of the mind by the stir of emotion, but facts and proofs. Accordingly, in the introduction to his work, we find the following passage among others: “When Gideon was startled by the message he had heard from God, that, though thousands of the people failed, yet through one man God would deliver His people from their enemies, he brought forth a kid of the goats, and by direction of the Angel laid it with unleavened cakes upon a rock, and poured the broth over it; and as soon as the Angel of God touched it with the end of the staff that was in his hand, there rose up fire out of the rock and consumed the offering…When the Angel, then, stretched out his staff and touched the rock, and fire rose out of it, this was a sign that our Lord’s flesh, filled with the Spirit of God, should burn up all the sins of the human race. Whence also the Lord says ‘I have come to send fire on the Earth.’”
In the next segment, we will consider Demons in Augustine of Hippo.
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