Herein we continue, from part 1, part 2, part 3, part , part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, 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 The City of God, Books XVIII-XIX.
Book XVIII Chapter 18 For this prophetic precept is to be understood spiritually in this sense, that by going forward in the living God, by the steps of faith, which works by love, we must flee out of the city of this world, which is altogether a society of ungodly Angels and men…
But it is to be most firmly believed that Almighty God can do whatever He pleases, whether in punishing or favoring, and that the demons can accomplish nothing by their natural power (for their created being is itself Angelic, although made malign by their own fault), except what He may permit, whose judgments are often hidden, but never unrighteous…But because the companions of Diomede were of a sudden nowhere to be seen, and afterwards could nowhere be found, being destroyed by bad avenging Angels, they were believed to have been changed into those birds, which were secretly brought there from other places where such birds were, and suddenly substituted for them by fraud.
Chapter 23 Sounding the Archangel’s trumpet shall peal down from heaven, over the wicked who groan in their guilt and their manifold sorrows.
Chapter 35 For He moved the heaven by the testimony of the Angels and the stars, when Christ became incarnate…”…For the Priest’s lips shall keep knowledge, and they shall seek the law at His mouth: for He is the Angel of the Lord Almighty”…Nor is it to be wondered at that Christ Jesus is called the Angel of the Almighty God. For just as He is called a servant on account of the form of a servant in which He came to men, so He is called an Angel on account of the evAngel which He proclaimed to men. For if we interpret these Greek words, evAngel is “good news,” and Angel is “messenger.” Again he says of Him, “Behold I will send mine Angel, and He will look out the way before my face: and the Lord, whom you seek, shall suddenly come into His temple, even the Angel of the testament, whom you desire. Behold, He comes, says the Lord Almighty, and who shall abide the day of His entry, or who shall stand at His appearing?”…But what he says, “The Lord whom you seek, and the Angel of the testament whom you desire,” just means that even the Jews, according to the Scriptures which they read, shall seek and desire Christ…Now what he here calls the testament, either above, where he says, “My testament had been with Him,” or here, where he has called Him the Angel of the testament, we ought, beyond a doubt, to take to be the new testament, in which the things promised are eternal, and not the old, in which they are only temporal.
Chapter 47 …taught by bad Angels, who, as we know, even confessed the present Christ.
Chapter 52 …when the Apostle Peter was imprisoned to be killed, and was set free by the Angel; when the brethren were driven away and scattered from Jerusalem.
Book XIX
Chapter 3 …as the nations bound in common human brotherhood; or in the universe itself, comprehended in the heavens and the Earth, as those whom they call gods, and provide as friends for the wise man, and whom we more familiarly call Angels.
Chapter 9 The philosophers who wished us to have the gods for our friends rank the friendship of the holy Angels in the fourth circle of society, advancing now from the three circles of society on Earth to the universe, and embracing heaven itself. And in this friendship we have indeed no fear that the Angels will grieve us by their death or deterioration. But as we cannot mingle with them as familiarly as with men (which itself is one of the grievances of this life), and as Satan, as we read, sometimes transforms himself into an Angel of light, to tempt those whom it is necessary to discipline, or just to deceive, there is great need of God’s mercy to preserve us from making friends of demons in disguise, while we fancy we have good Angels for our friends; for the astuteness and deceitfulness of these wicked spirits is equalled by their hurtfulness.
Chapter 23 But that God, whom the Hebrew sages worshipped, forbids sacrifice to be offered even to the holy Angels of heaven and divine powers, whom we, in this our pilgrimage, venerate and love as our most blessed fellow citizens.
In the next segment, we will consider more on Angels in Augustine of Hippo.
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