On the Christian Struggle

Contents

Reading pages: 1–20 · 21–35

1. 1The Christian's crown is won by conquering the devil, whom Christ conquered by taking our nature, and who is cast out of the hearts of those who renounce love of the world.
2. 2The invisible devil is conquered within us when we conquer the desires through which he rules; the sinner who is 'earth' becomes the serpent's food.
3. 3The 'heavenly places' where the spiritual forces of wickedness are found means the air, not the highest heaven, from which the devil fell.
4. 4Augustine sets out the Manichaean myth of God's war with the race of darkness as sacrilegious, and warns that Manichaeans lure the simple with obscure passages such as Eph 6:12.
5. 5The devil is 'prince of the power of the air', though 'in the heavenly places' may also refer to believers whose way of life is in heaven.
6. 6Following Paul, we fight the invisible powers by disciplining our bodies and renouncing the world's delights.
7. 7All creatures serve God's providence, the good freely by doing what the law commands and the evil by necessity in suffering its penalties.
8. 8The sufferings of the righteous do them no real harm, while the wicked, like a fish that swallows the hook, are destroyed by the goods they love; even evil men and angels serve providence unknowingly.
9. 9Providence governs everything, even sparrows, but God cares for rational souls directly and governs the rest through them.
10. 10If we cannot yet understand God's governance, we can at least taste his sweetness through the Spirit and long for the fountain of life.
11. 11Our weakness comes from our own sinful will, not from God, who made man with free choice; the unchangeable Son took up this weakness in the incarnation.
12. 12Augustine answers those who ask why the Wisdom of God had to become man and suffer: the incarnation is the medicine that heals every vice and honors both men and women.
13. 13People of every kind now hope for eternal life; the few who still oppose the church (false Catholics, heretics, Jews, pagans) cannot harm it, and it leaves the separation of chaff and wheat to its proper time.
14. 14Faith subjects the soul to God and must come before understanding, since no one living wickedly can know the truth.
15. 15The church's brief creed teaches faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God and an eternal Trinity of one substance.
16. 16Augustine rejects those who say the Father alone exists and is merely called Son or Spirit.
17. 17Augustine rejects those who resent the refusal to worship three gods, because they picture God's substance like three separate bodies.
18. 18Augustine rejects the teaching that the Son was made from nothing and the Spirit after him, with three different substances, because it pictures divine generation by earthly images.
19. 19Augustine rejects those who say Christ was only a righteous man called Son of God.
20. 20Augustine rejects the teaching that Christ had only an apparent body, noting that its holders themselves say the sun's rays are not defiled by what they touch.
21. 21Augustine rejects the teaching that Christ had a human soul and body but no human mind.
22. 22Christ was not merely made wise by God's Wisdom like the saints; he bears the person of Wisdom and is head of the church, as the head is to the body.
23. 23Augustine rejects the teaching that the Word took only a body, without a human soul.
24. 24Christ was truly born of a woman, not given a body like the dove at his baptism; both bodies were real, and his birth from a woman honors both sexes.
25. 25Christ's suffering does not make the Son a changeable creature: he suffered in the humanity he took up, as martyrs die in body but not in soul.
26. 26Christ rose in the same body that was buried, as his words 'Handle me and see' show; his entering through shut doors no more disproves it than his walking on water.
27. 27Augustine answers the objection from John 3:13 that Christ's body could not ascend: the Lord ascended and took his body up with him, like a man who goes up a mountain clothed.
28. 28The Father's 'right hand' is not a bodily side but the everlasting happiness promised to the saints, as the catch on the right side and the sheep at the right hand signify.
29. 29Augustine answers those who deny a day of judgment on the basis of John 3:18: 'judgment' there means condemnation, and Scripture often speaks of certain future events in the past tense.
30. 30Augustine rejects the claims that the promised Holy Spirit came in Paul, in Montanus and Priscilla, or in Mani, since Luke and Acts show that he came at Pentecost.
31. 31Augustine rejects the Donatist claim that the true church survives only in Donatus's party in Africa, citing the prophecies of a worldwide church and the Donatists' own divisions.
32. 32Augustine praises the Luciferians for not rebaptizing but condemns their schism, which arose from their refusal of the church's forgiveness to bishops who had yielded to the Arians.
33. 33Augustine rejects those who deny that the church can forgive all sins and who condemn remarried widows as adulteresses, against Paul's permission.
34. 34The resurrection of the flesh is not denied by 1 Cor 15:50, because the risen flesh will be changed into a heavenly body.
35. 35Nourished by the simple faith, believers grow in love, which shuts the doors of desire and fear through which the devil enters, and so win the crown of victory.