Herein we continue, from part 1, part 2, part 3, part , 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, Book IX.
Chapter 5 For the holy Angels feel no anger while they punish those whom the eternal law of God consigns to punishment, no fellow-feeling with misery while they relieve the miserable, no fear while they aid those who are in danger.
Chapter 6 Deferring for the present the question about the holy Angels, let us examine the opinion of the Platonists, that the demons who mediate between gods and men are agitated by passions.
Chapter 13 They would be intermediate if they held one of their qualities in common with the one party, and the other with the other, as man is a kind of mean between Angels and beasts—the beast being an irrational and mortal animal, the Angel a rational and immortal one, while man, inferior to the Angel and superior to the beast, and having in common with the one mortality, and with the other reason, is a rational and mortal animal.
Chapter 14 Certainly, if they are blessed, they envy no one (for what more miserable than envy?), but seek with all their might to help miserable mortals on to blessedness, so that after death they may become immortal, and be associated with the blessed and immortal Angels.
Chapter 15 Good Angels, therefore, cannot mediate between miserable mortals and blessed immortals, for they themselves also are both blessed and immortal; but evil Angels can mediate, because they are immortal like the one party, miserable like the other…And those who separate are numerous, because the multitude of the blessed are blessed only by their participation in the one God; of which participation the evil Angels being deprived, they are wretched…For in delivering us from our mortality and misery, He does not lead us to the immortal and blessed Angels, so that we should become immortal and blessed by participating in their nature, but He leads us straight to that Trinity, by participating in which the Angels themselves are blessed. Therefore, when He chose to be in the form of a servant, and lower than the Angels, that He might be our Mediator, He remained higher than the Angels, in the form of God—Himself at once the way of life on Earth and life itself in heaven.
Chapter 18 Who would not rather choose that way whereby we escape the contamination of the demons, and are cleansed from pollution by the incontaminable God, so as to be associated with the uncontaminated Angels?
Chapter 19 But as some of these demonolators, as I may call them, and among them Labeo, allege that those whom they call demons are by others called Angels, I must, if I would not seem to dispute merely about words, say something about the good Angels. The Platonists do not deny their existence, but prefer to call them good demons. But we, following Scripture, according to which we are Christians, have learned that some of the Angels are good, some bad, but never have we read in Scripture of good demons; but wherever this or any cognate term occurs, it is applied only to wicked spirits…Why, then, are we to subject ourselves to the necessity of explaining away what we have said when we have given offense by using the word demon, with which every one, or almost every one, connects a bad meaning, while we can so easily evade this necessity by using the word Angel?
Chapter 21 But He made Himself known not as to the holy Angels, who know Him as the Word of God, and rejoice in His eternity…His power, and evidences of His mysterious presence, which were more easily discerned by the Angelic senses even of wicked spirits than by human infirmity…He was ministered to by the Angels who are good and holy, and therefore objects of terror to the impure spirits, He revealed more and more distinctly to the demons how great He was, so that, even though the infirmity of His flesh might seem contemptible, none dared to resist His authority.
In the next segment, we will consider more on Angels in Augustine of Hippo.
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