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Devil in Augustine of Hippo, part 4

Herein we continue, from part 1, part 2, part 3, considering info on the Devil 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.

Devil in Augustine of Hippo’s The City of God, Books XVII-XIX.

Book XVII
Chapter 16 Her enemy is the city of the devil, Babylon, which is interpreted “confusion.” Yet out of this Babylon this queen is in all nations set free by regeneration, and passes from the worst to the best King,— that is, from the devil to Christ.

Chapter 18 For the Saviour Himself was not ignorant of him concerning whom He had already said before, “One of you is a devil.”

Chapter 20 But I think that more worthy of quotation from this book which relates to both cities, the one of the devil, the other of Christ, and to their kings, the devil and Christ: “Woe to you, O land,” he says, “when your king is a youth, and your princes eat in the morning! Blessed are you, O land, when your king is the son of nobles, and your princes eat in season, in fortitude, and not in confusion!” He has called the devil a youth, because of the folly and pride, and rashness and unruliness, and other vices which are wont to abound at that age; but Christ is the Son of nobles, that is, of the holy patriarchs, of those belonging to the free city, of whom He was begotten in the flesh.

Book XVIII
Chapter 41 Nor does it matter to the devil, its king, how they wrAngel among themselves in contradictory errors, since all alike deservedly belong to him on account of their great and varied impiety.

Chapter 50 …the people of the nations, believing in Him who was crucified for their redemption, might venerate with Christian love the blood of the martyrs which they had poured forth with devilish fury, and the very kings by whose laws the Church had been laid waste might become profitably…

Chapter 51 But the devil, seeing the temples of the demons deserted, and the human race running to the name of the liberating Mediator, has moved the heretics under the Christian name to resist the Christian doctrine, as if they could be kept in the city of God indifferently without any correction, just as the city of confusion indifferently held the philosophers who were of diverse and adverse opinions…And thus the devil, the prince of the impious city, when he stirs up his own vessels against the city of God that sojourns in this world, is permitted to do her no harm.

Book XIX
Chapter 13 And therefore there is a nature in which evil does not or even cannot exist; but there cannot be a nature in which there is no good. Hence not even the nature of the devil himself is evil, in so far as it is nature, but it was made evil by being perverted…The good imparted by God to his nature did not screen him from the justice of God by which order was preserved in his punishment; neither did God punish the good which He had created, but the evil which the devil had committed.

Chapter 23 Besides, their praise of Christ is so contrived that whosoever believes in Him as thus represented will not be a true Christian but a Photinian heretic, recognizing only the humanity, and not also the divinity of Christ, and will thus be precluded from salvation and from deliverance out of the meshes of these devilish lies.

In the next segment, we will consider more on the Devil in Augustine of Hippo.

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