Benjamin John’s Reviews > Satan: The Early Christian Tradition > Status Update

The slightly hysterical lamentations of the failure to reform "perversity" is very funny. Little does he know, writing from 1980, crime will drop radically over the next few decades. I imagine that would be no comfort to him, he would be upset by WAP on the internet. I do admire his confrontation of the real problem of evil, attempting, though not thoroughly, to re-examine the fundamental properties ascribed to God.

What is most striking about Augustine is despite his importance and influence, he doesn't appear to have constructed a particularly more coherent diabology or soteriology than any of the previous authors. This sows mistakes into the fabric of Christianity requiring into keep struggling against its own contradictions and fallacies.

Want to learn more about Manicheism, if only to just be able to blurt about specifics about it when someone calls something Manichean when they mean some sort of cosmological dualism. The desert fathers seem crucial to this topic because they provide a more granular and experiential telling about demons, contrasted with philosophical approaches we have been concerned with.

There is a lot of splitting hairs between the power of the Devil over us and a lot of seemingly inconsistent ideas. We cannot be forced, but we can be promoted? And God sends the devil in some sense, or even empowers him, to tempt, it presumably so we can resist because we aren't forced.

And here it seems that the notion of the devil not only corrupting this world, but holding us in opposition to God.

There is a lot of splitting hairs between the power of the Devil over us and a lot of seemingly inconsistent ideas. We cannot be forced, but we can be promoted? And God sends the devil in some sense, or even empowers him, to tempt, it presumably so we can resist because we aren't forced.

There is a real focus on original sin, of humanity or the devil, which does surface the question 'why' in Iraneus. How can an entity simply generate evil in its own? Seems very much like emanations, where evil is seperated from the God.

As I mentioned before, you always need to be aware of whether scholars are practising because then you aren't as surprised when they lament moral quality of cinema in 1980.

Hadn't previously thought about it enough to realise the inherent problem of some Gnostic theology, rather than actually seperating God from evil he still retains the same responsibility as any mononism. The view of the devil is becoming more detailed but it doesn't appear that the problems have become conscious yet, the story becoming more ornate but featuring a significant plot hole.

A divergent branch of opinions based upon the unfortunately limited sources we have available. It's is interesting that while there seems to be a basic agreement about the world as it is and the power of the devil in the attempt to sway human beings. Unfortunately there is just not enough material to say anything but fairly basic things about these writers opinions.

Largely a rehash of the first chapter of The Devil and a brief summary of some key points from the rest of that book.