On the Divination of Demons

1One day during the holy days of the octaves, when many lay Christian brothers had been with me in the morning and we had sat down in our usual place, a discussion arose about the Christian religion, set against the presumption and the supposedly wonderful and great knowledge of the pagans. I thought this discussion, once remembered and completed, should be committed to writing, without naming the persons who raised objections—though they were Christians and seemed to be asking, more by way of contradiction, what ought to be answered to pagans. So when the question of the divination of demons came up, and it was asserted that some person or other had predicted the overthrow of the temple of Serapis, which took place in Alexandria, I answered that it was not surprising if the demons were able both to know and to predict that this overthrow was threatening their temples and idols, just as they can know and foretell many other things, to the extent that they are permitted.

2And when it was reported to me: “Then divinations of this kind are not evil, and they do not displease God—otherwise the Almighty and the righteous God would not permit such things to happen, if they were evil and unjust”—I answered that these things should not for that reason be considered just, because the most almighty and most righteous God permits them to happen. For many other things are also done most manifestly unjustly, such as murders, adulteries, thefts, robberies, and others of this kind. Although these things, because they are unjust, without doubt displease the righteous God, yet the same Almighty permits them to happen by a sure reckoning of his judgment—not at all with impunity, but for the damnation of those by whom are done the things that displease the righteous God.

3But then someone argued the other side: there is no doubt that God is the Almighty and the righteous God, but these human sins—the ones committed against human society—he does not care about while they are happening. That is why they can happen. They certainly could not happen if the Almighty had not allowed them. But the things that pertain to the worship of religion itself—those we must not believe he despises in any way. Therefore they could not have happened unless they had pleased him, and so they should not be considered evil.

To this I also replied: so now they displease him, when temples and idols are overthrown and the sacrifices of the nations, if they have been performed, are punished. For just as it is said that those things could not have happened unless they had pleased God, and therefore they should be considered good because they please the righteous God, so it can be said that they could not have been forbidden, overthrown, and punished unless they displeased God. And so if they were rightly done back then because they were shown to please the righteous God by the fact that he allowed them to happen, then now they are wrongly done, because they are shown to displease God by the fact that he either commands or permits them to be overthrown.

4Against this it was said that these things are indeed unjust now, but not evil. They are unjust because they are done against the laws that forbid them, but they are not evil because, if they were evil, they would never have pleased God. And if they had never pleased him, they would never have happened when he was not allowing it—he who can do all things, and who would not disregard such things when they are so great that they are done against the very religion by which God is worshiped, if they were being done evilly.

At this point I said: If they are not evil for the reason that they are shown to please God by the fact that the Almighty allows them to happen, how will it be good that they are forbidden and overthrown? But if this is not good—that they are overthrown—then the Almighty would not allow it to happen, because this too is done against the religion by which God is worshiped, if the things that please God are overthrown by human beings. But if the Almighty permits this when it is done evilly, then those other things should not be considered good simply because the Almighty permitted them to happen.

5The reply came back that we must concede that these things are rightly not done now—indeed, that they are no longer done at all precisely because they now displease the Almighty—but that they did please him when they were done. We simply do not know why they pleased him then or why they displease him now, but this much is certain: they could not have been done then unless they had pleased the Almighty, and they would not have ceased now unless they had displeased the Almighty.

To this I said: Why, then, do such things still happen secretly even now—things that either stay hidden forever or are punished when they are detected—if the Almighty permits nothing to happen unless it pleases the righteous God, and what is unjust cannot please the righteous God?

The reply came back that such things are not done at all now. Those sacred rites, they said, are not performed—the ones written down in the pontifical books. Those were rightly done then, and they were shown to please God then by the very fact that the Almighty and righteous God allowed them to be done. But if any of the now-forbidden sacrifices is performed secretly and unlawfully, it is not to be compared with that pontifical kind of sacrifice. Rather, it is to be counted in the same category as what is done at night, since it is certain that all these unlawful things are forbidden and condemned by the pontifical books themselves.

Here I responded: Why, then, does God permit even such things to happen, if he does not despise any of the evil deeds that are committed against religion—especially since those who hold the pontifical books in high esteem are forced to concede that God cares about these things, because they assert that what is forbidden in those books is forbidden by divine authority? How are they forbidden by divine authority unless they displease God? By forbidding them, he shows not only that they displease him but also that he cares about them and does not despise them at all. From this it follows that God, as the righteous God, disapproves of something and yet, as the Almighty, permits it.

6When these things had been said, it was conceded that something is not for that reason to be thought just and good because God, while he takes care to forbid it, nevertheless allows it to happen. It must also be admitted that even those evils which are committed against the religion by which God is worshiped both displease the righteous God and are permitted by the Almighty by the reason of his judgment. But another question now had to be treated: where divinations come from—whether from demons or from whatever beings they are whom the pagans call gods. For it had to be seen whether these things should not be thought good because the Almighty permits them to happen, but rather because they are so great that they seem to be attributable only to the power of God. I promised that I would respond to this later, since the hour for going out to the people was already pressing on us. And I did not delay when time was given for writing, both to unravel those earlier arguments and to append these new ones.

7The nature of demons is such that the sense of an airy body easily surpasses the sense of earthly bodies, and because of the superior mobility of that same airy body they incomparably outstrip in speed not only the running of any human beings or wild animals, but even the flight of birds. Endowed with these two things, as far as the airy body is concerned—keenness of sense and swiftness of movement—they foretell or announce things known long in advance, which human beings marvel at because of the slowness of earthly sense. Demons have also gained, through the very long time over which their life extends, a far greater experience of things than can come to human beings because of the brevity of life. Through these capacities, which the nature of an airy body has obtained, demons not only predict many future things, but also perform many wonders. Since human beings cannot say or do these things, some people judge the demons worthy to be served and to have divine honors conferred on them, urged on especially by the vice of curiosity because of the love of false happiness and of earthly, temporal excellence.

But those who cleanse themselves from these desires and do not allow themselves to be carried off and seized by them, but instead seek and love something that is always the same, by sharing in which they may be blessed—these people first consider that demons should not be placed above them because they prevail with a keener sense of body. That is, because they belong to an airy, that is, a subtler element. For they do not think that even among earthly bodies the beasts should be placed above them, though beasts perceive many things more keenly. Take the keen-scented dog: because it finds a hidden wild animal by its sharpest sense of smell and offers a kind of guidance to a human being for catching it, not by a wiser intellect of mind but by a keener sense of body. Or the vulture, because it flies to a corpse thrown out from an unforeseen distance. Nor the eagle, because flying high it is said to see from so great an interval a fish swimming beneath the waves and, striking the waters heavily, to seize it with outstretched feet and talons. Nor many other kinds of living creatures, which wander about among grasses harmful to their health while feeding and do not touch any of them by which they would be harmed, though a human being has scarcely learned to avoid them by experience and fears many harmless things because they are untested. From this it is easy to infer how much keener sense can be in airy bodies. Yet no prudent person would judge that demons, who are endowed with it, should therefore be placed above good human beings.

I would say the same about swiftness of body. In this excellence too human beings are so surpassed not only by birds but also by many four-footed animals that in comparison with them they should be considered leaden. Yet people do not think these kinds of living creatures should be placed above them, creatures whom they rule over—capturing them, taming them, and reducing them to the use and convenience of their own will—not by force of body but by reason.

As for that third power of demons, that by long experience of things they have learned how to know and foretell many things in advance—those who vigilantly take care to discern these things from the truth of the truest light despise it so much that they do not think wicked old men, who have experienced more and are therefore, so to speak, more learned, excel upright young people. Nor do they think physicians, sailors, or farmers whom they see to be of depraved will and unjust character should be preferred to themselves, because those men foretell many things about illnesses, those about storms, those about the kinds of trees and fruits, so that to someone inexperienced in these matters they seem to divine.

8But as for the fact that demons not only predict certain future events but also do certain wonders—on account of the very excellence of their body, why should a wise person not despise this, when many wicked and depraved people so train their bodies and can do such things by various skills that those who do not know these things and have never seen them believe them even when they are merely described? How many wonders have tightrope walkers and other theatrical performers done? How many have craftsmen done, and especially engineers? Are they for that reason better than good people endowed with holy piety? I have mentioned these things so that whoever considers them without obstinacy and without a vain eagerness to resist may at the same time reflect: if from the underlying denser matter of their own bodies or of earth and water, of stones and wood and various metals, certain people can do such things that those who cannot do them often call them divine in amazement by comparison with themselves—though some of the former are more powerful in their skills, and some of the latter are better in their character—how much greater and more wonderful are the things demons can do by the capacity and ease of their most subtle body, that is, their airy body, even though they are unclean and perverse spirits in the depravity of their will, and especially in the arrogance of their pride and the malice of their envy! How much power the element of air, in which their bodies excel, has for invisibly undertaking, moving, changing, and turning many visible things would take long to demonstrate now, and I think it readily occurs to anyone who considers it even moderately.

9Since this is so, the first thing to understand—because the question is about the divination of demons—is that they usually foretell what they themselves are going to do. They often receive power to send diseases, to make the air itself unhealthy by corrupting it, and to persuade wicked deeds to perverse lovers of earthly advantages, men whose character they know for certain will consent to such persuasion. They persuade in astonishing and invisible ways, penetrating the bodies of unaware people through the subtlety of their own bodies and mixing themselves into their thoughts through certain imaginary visions, whether they are awake or asleep.

Sometimes, however, they predict not what they themselves will do but what they know beforehand from natural signs—signs that cannot reach human senses. A physician foresees what someone ignorant of his art does not foresee, but that does not make him a diviner. What is remarkable if, just as the physician foresees future good or bad health in the disturbed or balanced condition of the human body, so the demon foresees future storms in the state and ordering of the air, which is known to him and unknown to us?

Sometimes they also learn with complete ease the dispositions of human beings—not only those spoken aloud but even those conceived in thought—since certain signs from the mind are expressed in the body, and from this they foretell many future things that seem astonishing to others who do not know these dispositions. Just as a more agitated movement of the mind appears in the face, so that even other people recognize outwardly what is happening inwardly, so it should not be incredible that even gentler thoughts give some signs through the body, signs that cannot be known by the dull senses of human beings but can be known by the keen senses of demons.

10By this and similar abilities demons announce many future things beforehand, yet the height of that prophecy which God works through his holy angels and prophets remains far beyond them. For if they announce anything from God's own disposition, they hear it so that they may announce it; and when they proclaim what they hear from there, they do not deceive and are not deceived, for the oracles of angels and prophets are utterly true. But some people take it indignantly that demons also hear and proclaim certain things of this kind, as if it were somehow unworthy that what is spoken precisely so that it may become known to human beings should not be kept silent by the wicked as well as the good. After all, even among human beings we see the precepts of a good life sung equally by the righteous and the perverse, and this does no harm; in fact it even helps the truth become better known and more widely famed when those who contradict it by their perverse conduct still say whatever they know about it. In their other predictions, however, demons are for the most part deceived and deceive. They are deceived because, when they announce their own dispositions, something is suddenly commanded from above that throws all their plans into confusion. It is as if certain people subject to various authorities were to arrange something they thought their superiors would not forbid, and promise they would carry it out—and then those who hold greater power, acting on some higher counsel, suddenly forbid the whole thing that had been arranged and prepared. They are also deceived in natural causes—just as physicians, sailors, and farmers are, though the demons foresee far more keenly and far more excellently according to the more skilled and more practiced sense of an airy body—because these things too are suddenly and unexpectedly changed by angels who serve the supreme God in piety, acting from another disposition unknown to demons. It is as if something should happen to a sick man from outside that kills him, after a physician had promised on the basis of true preceding signs of health that he would live; or as if some sailors had predicted from the observed quality of the air that a certain wind would blow for a long time, and then the Lord Christ, sailing with his disciples, commanded it to be still, and a great calm came about (Matthew 8:26); or as if a farmer, skilled in the nature of the soil and the number of seeds, should promise that a certain vine would bear fruit that year, and then either an unexpected harshness of the sky should dry it up or some command of a higher power should uproot it. In the same way, many things that pertain to the foreknowledge and prediction of demons—things foreseen as future from lesser and more ordinary causes—are impeded and changed by greater and more hidden causes. They also deceive by zeal for deceiving and by an envious will, through which they rejoice in human error. But so that they do not lose the weight of authority among their worshipers, they make sure that the blame is assigned to their interpreters and the conjecturers of their signs whenever they have been deceived or have lied.

11What wonder is it, then, that when the overthrow of the temples and idols was already at hand—the overthrow that the prophets of the most high God had predicted so long before—the demon Serapis disclosed it to one of his worshipers just before it happened, so as to commend his own quasi-divinity by departing or fleeing, as it were?

For these demons are put to flight, or even bound by higher commands and dragged away and removed from their places, so that concerning the things over which they ruled and for which they were worshiped, the will of God may be done. God predicted this long before throughout all the nations, and commanded that it be accomplished through his faithful ones.

But why should the demon not be allowed to predict this, since he already foresaw that it was imminent? For this prediction would both bear witness to the prophets by whom these things were written down, and give the wise an opportunity to understand how watchfully one must beware the deceit of demons and flee their worship. They had kept silent in their temples for so long a time about these future events, which they could not have been ignorant were predicted by the prophets. But after these events began to draw near, they wanted to predict them, as it were, so that they would not be thought ignorant and conquered.

Since it had been predicted and written down so long before—to pass over other things for now—what the prophet Zephaniah says: “The Lord will prevail against them and will exterminate all the gods of the nations of the earth, and all the islands of the nations will worship him, each from his own place” (Zephaniah 3:9)—either those who were worshiped in the temples of the nations did not believe these things would happen to them, and for that reason did not want to spread them through their own seers and fanatics—as their poet introduces Juno not entirely believing what Jupiter had said about the death of Turnus: “Now a heavy end awaits the innocent man, or I am deceived about the truth. Would that I might rather be mocked by false fear, and that you, who are able, might turn your undertakings to the better!”—or the demons, that is, the airy powers, doubted that these things predicted by the prophets could happen to them, and therefore did not want to celebrate their prediction—and from this one may understand what sort of beings they are—or, since they knew with complete certainty that these things would come, they kept silent in their temples so that they would not begin even then to be abandoned and despised by people of understanding, because the prophets who forbade worshiping them bore witness to the future overthrow of their temples and idols.

But now, after the time has come when the prophecies of the prophets of the one God are being fulfilled—the God who calls these false gods and most vehemently commands that they not be worshiped—why should they not also be allowed to predict the fulfillment itself? From this it would appear more clearly that they had either not believed these things before, or had feared to announce them to their worshipers, and that at the end, as if having nothing more to do, they wanted to display their divination even there, where they are now exposed as having long pretended divinity.

12But what the remaining worshipers of them say—that these things were foreknown and are contained in certain books of their own—although these must be thought fabricated from fulfilled events, even though, if they were true, they ought to have become known to their peoples in their temples so long before, just as our Scriptures are recited as most ancient and most widely known not only in our churches but also—which carries weightier testimony against all enemies—in the synagogues of the Jews. Nevertheless, even those things which are hardly ever and secretly brought forward by them ought not to move us, if it was extorted from some demon to reveal to his worshipers what he had learned from the utterances of the prophets or from the oracles of angels. Why should that not happen, since this is not an attack but an attestation of the truth? For the one thing that alone should be demanded from them—and they have never brought it forward before, nor will they ever attempt to bring it forward afterward except perhaps as something invented—is that their gods dared to predict or say anything through their own seers against the God of Israel. About this God, their most learned authors, who were able to read and know all those things, sought rather to learn who this God was than were able to deny God. Moreover, this God—whom none of them dared to deny is the true God, and even if anyone did deny it, he would not only be subject to due punishments but would also be convicted by certain effects—this God, then, whom no one of them, as I said, dared to deny is the true God, predicted through his own seers, that is, the prophets, with open denunciation that those gods are false and must be utterly abandoned and their temples and idols overthrown; he commanded it with open power; he fulfilled it with open truth. Who, then, would be so foolish as not to choose rather to worship him whom those he used to worship do not forbid him to worship? When he begins to worship him, he will certainly not worship those whom the one he worships forbids him to worship.

13I recalled a little earlier, and I repeat it now, that the prophets of God foretold that the nations would worship him after the false gods they once served had been exterminated. “The Lord will prevail against them,” he says, “and will exterminate all the gods of the nations of the earth, and they will worship him, each from his own place, all the islands of the nations” (Zephaniah 2:11). And not only the islands, but all the nations—so much so that even all the islands of the nations are included—since elsewhere he does not name islands but speaks of the whole world: “All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations will worship before him, for the kingdom is the Lord’s, and he will rule over the nations” (Psalm 22:27, Septuagint Psalm 21:27). That these things were to be fulfilled through Christ is clear enough both from many other testimonies and from the very psalm from which I quoted this. For when a little earlier he himself spoke through the prophet about his coming passion, saying, “They dug my hands and my feet; they counted all my bones. They looked and stared at me. They divided my garments among themselves, and over my clothing they cast lots” (Psalm 22:16-18, Septuagint Psalm 21:16-18), a little later he brings in what I cited: “All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord,” and the rest. And indeed the testimony I used first, where it says, “The Lord will prevail against them, and will exterminate all the gods of the nations of the earth,” shows clearly enough in the word “prevail” that this too was foretold: that the nations would first attack the church and persecute the Christian name as much as they could, so that, if possible, it would be entirely wiped from the earth. And because he was going to overcome them by the patience of the martyrs, the greatness of miracles, and the faith of the peoples that would follow, it was said this way: “The Lord will prevail against them.” For it would not say “he will prevail against them” unless they were resisting him by attacking. So it was prophesied in the psalm: “Why did the nations rage, and the peoples meditate empty things? The kings of the earth stood by, and the rulers gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ” (Psalm 2:1-2). And a little later it says: “The Lord said to me: You are my son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance and the ends of the earth as your possession” (Psalm 2:7-8). This is why it was said in the other psalm I quoted above: “All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord.” By these and similar prophetic testimonies it is shown that what we see being fulfilled through Christ was foretold: that the God of Israel, whom we understand to be the one true God, would be worshiped not only in that one nation called Israel but among all the nations, and that he would remove all the false gods of the nations both from their temples and from the hearts of their worshipers.

14Let them go now and still dare to keep defending their old vanities against the Christian religion, against the religion of the true God, so that they may perish with a crash. For this too was foretold about them in the Psalms, where the prophet says: “You sat on the throne, you who judge with equity. You rebuked the nations, and the wicked perished; you blotted out their name forever and ever. The swords of the enemy failed utterly, and you destroyed their cities: their memory perished with a crash. But the Lord remains forever” (Psalm 9:5-8 LXX / 9:4-7 Heb). So all these things must be fulfilled. And we should not be disturbed that the few who remain still dare to display their empty-talking doctrines and mock Christians as most unskilled, while we see being fulfilled in them the very things that were foretold.

For this very thing—the apparent unskillfulness and foolishness of Christians, which to the humble and holy and to those who diligently study Him appears exalted and the only true wisdom—this very thing, I say, this apparent foolishness of Christians, is what reduces them to such a small number. For as the apostle says, “God made foolish the wisdom of this world” (1 Corinthians 1:19). Then he adds something marvelous, if anyone understands it, and continues: “For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to the nations, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:21-25).

So let them mock as much as they can, as if at our unskillfulness and foolishness, and let them boast of their doctrine and wisdom. This I know: these mockers of ours are fewer this year than they were last year. For from the time when the nations raged and the peoples plotted vain things against the Lord and against his Christ (Psalm 2:1), when the blood of the saints was being poured out by them and the church was being laid waste, up to this present time and from now on, they are daily diminished.

But against their insults and proud mockeries, the oracles of our God make us most strong—oracles which we see and rejoice are being fulfilled in this very matter as well. For thus speaks the prophet: “Hear me, you who know judgment, my people, in whose heart is my law; do not fear the reproach of men, and do not be overcome by their disparagement, nor consider it a great thing that they despise you. For like a garment they will be consumed in time, and like wool they will be eaten by the moth; but my righteousness remains forever” (Isaiah 51:7-8). Let them read these things of ours, if they deign to. When their objections reach us, we will answer as the Lord helps us.