28. Augustine, Literal Meaning of Genesis, bk. 8, ch. 2, 33. Elizabeth A. Clark, “Heresy, Asceticism, Adam and Eve: Interpretations of Genesis 1–3 in the Later Latin Fathers,” in Genesis 1–3 in the History of Exegesis: Intrigue in the Garden, ed. Gregory Allen Robbins (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1988), 99–133, notes that Augustine himself was simultaneously drawn toward and suspicious of allegorical interpretations of the first three chapters of Genesis. For a brief overview of Augustine’s exegetical practice, Thomas Williams, “Biblical Interpretation,” in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, ed. Elenore Stump and Norman Kretzman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 59–70.
29. Origen, Contra Celsum, trans. Henry Chadwick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), bk. 4:39, 214.
30. Augustine, Literal Meaning of Genesis, bk. 8, ch. 1, 34.
31. Luther, Lectures on Genesis, ch. 1, 4.
32. Luther, Lectures on Genesis, ch. 3:1, 144.
33. Guillaume de Saluste Sieur du Bartas, The Divine Weeks and Works of Guillaume de Saluste Sieur du Bartas, vol.1, ed. Susan Snyder and trans. Joshua Sylvester (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 316.
34. John Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. Merritt Y. Hughes (New York: Odyssey Press, 1935), bk. 9, ln. 220–25.
35. Genesis 3:1.
36. Kugel, The Bible as It Was, 72–75.
37. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis, homily 16 (4), 209. On the Jewish origins of this identification and Chrysostom’s innovation, see Evans, Paradise Lost, 32–35 and 88–89.
38. Augustine, Literal Meaning of Genesis, bk. 11:4, 135–36.
39. Calvin, Commentaries on Genesis, ch. 3, 141.
40. On Nicholas’s life and his approach to biblical commentary, see Deeana Copeland Klepper, The Insight of Unbelievers: Nicholas of Lyra and Christian Readings of Jewish Text in the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 1–60.
41. Luther, Lectures on Genesis, ch. 3:14, 184.
42. Nicholas of Lyra, Postilla, cap. 3, cols. 87–90. Another tradition, with roots in The Book of Watchers and Philo of Alexandria and culminating in seventeenth-century writings of the German mystic Jacob Boehme, suggests that the serpent seduced a lust-filled Eve. See Almond, Adam & Eve, 173–77, and Vita Daphna Arbel, Forming Femininity in Antiquity: Eve, Gender and Ideologies in the Greek “Life of Adam and Eve” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 17–37.
43. Nicholas of Lyra, Postilla, cap. 3, col. 88.
44. Peter Lombard, The Sentences: Book 2, On Creation, trans. Giulio Silano (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2008), dist. 21, ch. 6, 95. For Hugh of St. Victor’s formulation see On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith (De Sacramentis), trans. Roy J. Deferrari (Cambridge: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1951), bk. 1, pt. 7, 9, 124.
45. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis, homily 16 (3) and (4), 208–9.
46. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis, homily 16 (5), 210.
47. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis, homily 16 (5), 210.
48. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis, homily 16 (4), 209.
49. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis, homily 16 (6), 210.
50. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Genesis, homily 16 (9), 212.
51. Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will, trans. Anna S. Benjamin and L. H. Hackstaff (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1964), bk. 3, ch. 25, 146.
52. Hugh of St. Victor, On the Sacraments, bk. 1, pt. 7, 4, 122.
53. Hugh of St. Victor, On the Sacraments, bk. 1, pt. 7, 4, 122.
54. Nicholas of Lyra, Postilla, Genesis, cap. 3, col. 90.
55. Augustine, Literal Meaning of Genesis, bk. 11, ch. 30 (38), 161–62.
56. Augustine, City of God, bk. 15, ch. 13, 608.
57. Augustine, Literal Meaning of Genesis, bk. 11, ch. 30 (39), 162. William S. Babcock, “The Human and Angelic Fall: Will and Moral Agency in Augustine’s City of God,” in Augustine: From Rhetor to Theologian, ed. Timothy D. Barnes (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1992), 133–49, discusses the theological and philosophical significance of this problem for Augustine. It is worth noting that there was considerable discussion among the early Church fathers concerning the relation between envy and pride, not only in Adam and Eve, but in the character of Satan himself. See Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe, “The Diabolical Problem of Satan’s First Sin: Self-Moved Pride or a Response to the Goads of Envy,” Studia Patristica 63:11 (2013): 121–40.
58. Ambrose, Paradise, ch. 12 (54), 333. J. Patout Burns, “Creation and Fall According to Ambrose of Milan,” in Augustine: Biblical Exegete, eds. Frederick Van Fleteren and Joseph C. Schnaubelt (New York: Peter Lang, 2001), 71–97, discusses the overall structure of Ambrose’s exegesis of Genesis.
59. Bonaventure, Sententiarum, II, dist. 21, art. 1, quaest. 3, sed contra 3, 496.
60. Ambrose, Paradise, ch. 12 (54), 333.
61. Ambrose, Paradise, ch. 12 (58), 338. Neil Forsyth, The Satanic Epic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 45–49, provides historical context for the identification of Satan with heretical readings of scripture in the early church.
62. Ambrose, Paradise, ch. 12 (55), 335.
63. Revelation 22:18–19.
64. Ambrose, Paradise, ch. 12 (55), 334. On the Devil as sophist, see Eric Jager, The Tempter’s Voice, 115–23.
65. Ambrose, Paradise, ch. 13 (61), 342.
66. Ambrose, Paradise, ch. 13 (62), 342–43.
67. Augustine, Literal Meaning of Genesis, ch. 31 (39), 162. On Augustine’s warnings against reading the literal as figurative or the figurative as literal, see Jager, The Tempter’s Voice, 75–82.
68. Ambrose, Paradise, ch. 6 (32), 310.
69. Augustine, Literal Meaning of Genesis, bk. 6 (12), 42.
70. Ambrose, Paradise, ch. 6 (34), 312.
71. Augustine, Literal Meaning of Genesis, bk. 11, ch. 30 (39), 162.
72. 1 Timothy 2:13–14.
73. Nicholas of Lyra, Postilla, Genesis, ch. 3, col. 94.
74. Hugh of St. Victor, On the Sacraments, bk. 1, pt. 7, ch. 10, 125.
75. Bonaventure, Sententiarum, II, dist. 22, art. 1, quest. 2, resp. 519.
76. Ambrose, Paradise, ch. 13 (65), 344. On the significance of clothing in Genesis, Edgar Haulotte, Symbolique du vêtement selon la Bible (Paris: Aubier, 1966), 186–90.
77. Luther, Lectures on Genesis, ch. 4, 237.
78. For a general contrast between medieval and reformed readings of Genesis, Crowther, Adam & Eve, 9–51. Reformation emphasis on sola scriptura, and the literal sense of scripture tends to be overstated. See, for example, David C. Steinmetz, “Divided by a Common Past: The Reshaping of the Christian Exegetical Tradition in the Sixteenth Century,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27:2 (Spring 1997): 245–64.
79. Luther, Lectures on Genesis, ch. 3:1, 146.
80. Luther, Lectures on Genesis, ch. 3:1, 146–47.
81. Nicholas of Lyra, Postilla, Genesis, ch. 3, col. 90.
82. Thomas Aquinas, Summa of Theology, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947), II-II, quest. 163, art. 1, reply 4, 1463.
83. Nicholas of Lyra, Postilla, Genesis, ch. 3, col. 93.
84. Hugh of St. Victor, On the Sacraments, bk. 1, pt. 7, ch. 8, 123–24. The first part of this translation is mine, rendered freely and a bit more clearly. See De sacramentis Christianae fidei, in Patrologiae Latinae, vol. 176, 289: “Primum enim promissam excellentiam per superbiam appetiit; deinde promissam abundantiam (et qualis talem excellentiam decebat) per avaritiam concupivit.” Peter Lombard, The Sentences, bk. 2, dist. 21, ch. 5, 6, 95, attributes this analysis incorrectly to Augustine. For a prominent later version of this analysis, see Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Morale (Venice: Dominic Nicolini, 1591), lib. III, pars II, dist. XI, 168v–169r.
85. Bonaventure, Sententiarum, II, dist. 21, art. 2, quest. 1, 3, 499.
86. Luther, Lectures on Genesis, ch. 3:1, 148.
87. Luther, Lect
ures on Genesis, ch. 2:9, 94.
88. Luther, Lectures on Genesis, ch. 3:1, 146.
89. Luther, Lectures on Genesis, ch. 3:1, 152.
90. Calvin, Commentaries on Genesis, ch. 3, 148.
91. Luther, Lectures on Genesis, ch. 3:6, 162.
92. Calvin, Commentaries on Genesis, ch. 3, 161.
93. Luther, Lectures on Genesis, ch. 3:12, 177.
94. Luther, Lectures on Genesis, ch. 3:10, 175.
95. Susan Schreiner, Are You Alone Wise? The Search for Certainty in the Early Modern Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 79–129.
96. George Gyfford, A Discourse on the subtill Practices of Devilles by Witches and Sorcerers (London: Toby Cooke, 1587), E2. Jeffrey Burton Russell, The Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil and the Power of Good in History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988), 167, suggests that the Devil “reached the height of his power just at the time when the intellectual structure supporting him began to crumble,” that is, during the sixteenth century. Heiko Oberman, Luther: Man between God and the Devil, trans. Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 102–6, briefly summarizes Luther’s relationship with the Devil. On the general concern over the Devil and diabolical illusions during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Stuart Clark, Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 123–60, and Russell, The Prince of Darkness, 167–85.
97. Luther, Selected Psalms III, in Luther’s Works, vol. 14, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and trans. Edward Sittler (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1958), 288. Luther is quoting 2 Corinthians 11:14.
98. Luther, Catholic Epistles, in Luther’s Works, vol. 30, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan and trans. Walter A. Hansen (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1967), 240.
99. Luther, The Sermon on the Mount, in Luther’s Works vol. 21, ed. and trans. Jaroslav Pelikan (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1956), 212 and 251.
100. John Farrell, Paranoia and Modernity: Cervantes to Rousseau (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), 200.
101. James Simpson, Burning to Read: English Fundamentalism and Its Reformation Opponents (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 118–22.
102. Acontius, Satans Strategems, unpaginated prefatory material. Spelling and punctuation have been silently updated.
103. Acontius, Satans Strategems, 3. Random capitalizations and italicization found in the original.
104. On Acontius’s life see W. K. Jordan, The Development of Religious Toleration in England: From the Beginning of the English Reformation to the Death of Queen Elizabeth (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1932), 303–17, Gary Remer, Humanism and the Rhetoric of Toleration (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 112–15, and Aart de Groot, “Acontius’s Plea for Tolerance,” in From Strangers to Citizens: The Integration of Immigrant Communities in Britain, Ireland and Colonial America, 1550–1750, ed. Randolph Vigne and Charles Littleton (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2001), 48–54.
105. Acontius, Satans Strategems, 8.
106. Acontius, Satans Strategems, 15.
107. Acontius, Satans Strategems, 16.
108. Acontius, Satans Strategems, 83–84. The literature on this debate is immense. For an introduction, see Jaroslav Pelikan, The Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300–1700) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 189–203.
109. Acontius, Satans Strategems, 85. Put differently, Acontius believes that most religious controversies arise over adiaphora (inessential interpretive details). In this he has something in common with other Northern Humanists interested in healing divisions within Christendom. See Gary Remer, “Hobbes, the Rhetorical Tradition, and Toleration,” Review of Politics 54:1 (Winter 1992): 5–33, here, 25.
110. Acontius, Satans Strategems, 60.
111. Cited in Remer, Humanism and the Rhetoric of Toleration, 122 and, more generally, 118–22, for a good discussion of these topics in Acontius. See Jordan, Development of Religious Toleration, 351–56, on the value of inquiry and skepticism in Acontius.
112. I suspect this facet of Acontius’s writings accounts for the debate concerning whether or not he even accepts the Devil’s existence. For opposed positions in this admittedly very minor controversy, see De Groot, “Acontius’ Plea for Tolerance,” 50, who takes issue with Jeffrey Burton Russell’s Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986).
113. Milton, Paradise Lost, bk. VIII, ln. 560–70. The classic discussion of this thesis is Millicent Bell, “The Fallacy of the Fall in Paradise Lost,” PMLA 68:4 (September 1953): 863–83, and her contributions to Wayne Shumaker and Millicent Bell, “The Fallacy of the Fall in Paradise Lost,” PMLA 70:5 (December 1955): 1185–203, especially 1187–95. Compare with Forsyth, Satanic Epic, 265–68, who connects Eve’s misreading of scripture directly with her conversation with the serpent.
114. Milton, Paradise Lost, bk., IX, ln. 253.
115. Milton, Paradise Lost, bk. IX, ln. 364–65.
116. Milton, Paradise Lost, bk. IV, ln. 635–38.
117. Milton, Paradise Lost, bk. IX, ln. 322–36.
118. Milton, Paradise Lost, bk. IX, ln. 372.
119. Augustine, City of God, bk. XIV, ch. 13, 610.
CHAPTER TWO. GOD
1. Augustine, De symbolo ad catechumenos, ed. R. Vander Plaetse, in Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 46 (Turnholt: Brepols, 1969), 185–86.
2. René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, “First Meditation,” in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 2 vols., vol. 2, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 14.
3. Descartes, Meditations, “Third Meditation,” 35.
4. Augustine, De symbolo, 186. Descartes, Principles of Philosophy, in Philosophical Writings, vol. 1, 1.40, 206.
5. Nicholas of Lyra, Postilla, Genesis 3, 87.
6. Augustine, Literal Meaning of Genesis, vol. 2, bk. 11, ch. 13, 145. Neil Forsyth, The Old Enemy, 421–34, discusses Augustine’s Genesis commentaries in connection with his struggles against Manichaeism. On Augustine’s actual experience with and rejection of Manichaeism, see Jason David BeDuhn, Augustine’s Manichaean Dilemma, I: Conversion and Apostasy, 373–388 C.E. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).
7. Augustine, Literal Meaning of Genesis, vol. 2, bk. 11, ch. 11, 143–44.
8. Lombard, Sentences, lib. I, dist. XLVI, cap. 3.11, 316.
9. Calvin, Commentary on Genesis, 94.
10. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 1, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), bk. 1, ch. 18, 228–35.
11. The Aberdeen Bestiary, Aberdeen University Library MS 24, 7r–7v. The entire bestiary is reproduced with transcription, translation, and commentary at http://www.abdn.ac.uk/bestiary/intro.hti.
12. Isidore of Seville, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, and Oliver Berghof (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), bk. XII, ch. ii.5, 251.
13. Physiologus, Robert Curley, trans. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979), 3–4.
14. The Aberdeen Bestiary, 7v. On later medieval bestiaries, see Debra Higgs Strickland, Medieval Bestiaries: Text, Image, Ideology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
15. Augustine, On the Trinity, ed. Gareth B. Matthews and trans. Stephen McKenna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), bk. 13, ch. 14 (18), 124–25. For a now standard account of the Devil throughout history, see the three volumes by Jeffrey Burton Russell, The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), and Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World.
16. Augustine, “Sermon 263,” in The Fathers of the Church: Saint Augustine, Sermons on the Liturgical Seasons, trans. Mary Sarah Muldowney (Washington, D.C.: Catholi
c University of America Press, 1959), 392.
17. Augustine, “Sermon 261,” in The Later Christian Fathers: A Selection from the Writings of the Fathers from St. Cyril of Jerusalem to St. Leo the Great, ed. and trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 222. The metaphor of the mousetrap has a double history. While Augustine used it to describe the cross as a trap for the Devil, a slightly earlier tradition uses it to describe how the Devil traps mankind through various, often sexual, temptations. On this prior tradition, see Paul G. Remly, “Muscipula Diaboli and Medieval English Antifeminism,” in English Studies (1989): 1–14.
18. Gregory of Nyssa, in The Later Christian Fathers, 141. Nicholas P. Constas, “The Last Temptation of Satan: Divine Deception in Greek Patristic Interpretations of the Passion Narrative,” Harvard Theological Review 97:2 (April 2004): 139–63, here, 139–49, situates Gregory’s theory within the context of Arian and Stoic thought and traces the imagery of the fishhook to several biblical passages.
19. Gregory of Nyssa, in The Later Christian Fathers, 142. On Gregory’s theory of redemption via deception, see David Satran, “Deceiving the Deceiver: Variations on an Early Christian Theme,” in Things Revealed: Studies in Early Jewish and Christian Literature in Honor of Michael E. Stone, ed. E. G. Chazon, D. Satran, and R. A. Clements (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2004), 357–64.
20. Eugene Teselle, “The Cross as Ransom,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 4:2 (1996): 147–70, analyzes the differences and similarities among the various “ransom” theories of redemption in the early Church.
21. C. W. Marx, The Devil’s Rights and Redemption in the Literature of Medieval England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995), 7–15, offers a lucid explanation for God’s just dealing with the Devil in early Christian writings.
22. Cyril of Alexandria, A Commentary on the Gospel According to S. Luke, trans. R. Payne Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1859), homily 12, 54.
23. Ambrose, Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam, in Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, vol. XIV, ed. M. Adriaen (Turnholt: Brepols, 1957), 113.
24. See, for example, Tyrannius Rufinus, Expositio symboli, in Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, vol. XX, ed. M. Simonetti (Turnholt: Brepols, 1961) 20, 14, 151–52, which dates to the first decade of the fourth century, and Leo the Great, Letters and Sermons of Leo the Great, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 12 (New York: Christian Literature Co., 1895), 130–21.
The Devil Wins: A History of Lying from the Garden of Eden to the Enlightenment Page 31