Section XVII: Evil Angels
SECTION XVII: ON THE EVIL ANGELS
Whether the devil knows the future.
§ 75. The question arises: Can devils foreknow and foretell the future? We respond. On the basis of their keen nature, the experience of time, and the revelation of superior powers, they can know and foretell some things. However, because God often hinders natural outcomes, the devil deceives and is deceived “quite often and foretells a great many things in lying fashion in order to mislead people” (Augustine, De civ. Dei, bk. 9, ch. 22). Christ ordered the demonic spirit to keep silent even as it spoke the truth and thereby warned against hearing even the truth from it [cf. Mark 1:25]. (See Theophylact, on Mark 1.) The devil can foretell things that depend on human will with even less certainty, for he can conclude something only from the nature of [a man’s] temperament [ex temperamenti constitutione]. On the other hand, clearly, what God has established within His own personal authority, the devil can by no means foreknow or foretell, just as he cannot know the recesses of our hearts nor the hidden thoughts of our minds. For “God alone knows the hearts of the sons of men” (2 Chron. 6:30).
Whether the devil can perform true miracles.
§ 76. The question arises: Can the devil perform miracles? We respond. He has an extremely accurate understanding of natural causes and thus can perform many marvelous and deceptive things. Yet those devilish miracles are not miracles, properly speaking. You see, just because something happens outside the order of a particular nature or outside the ordinary way of doing it, that does not make it a miracle. Rather, something is a miracle properly speaking because it happens outside the order of the entire creation. Through the unexpected application of natural causes [activa naturalia] to passive things, devils do many things that appear to us to be miraculous and that even trick people with their deceits. Also, we should note well that true miracles are arranged for good purposes; but false miracles are aimed to deceive and ruin people. From this it is correct to conclude that “all the miracles of the devil are false” (Chrysostom, on Matthew 9, homily 29).
The power of the devil.
§ 77. We should note this about the power of the devil in general: though it is indeed great, it is limited and subject to the power of God. Gregory is correct in writing (Moral., bk. 2): “The devil has from himself the will to harm, but his power to harm is from the Lord. What he hungers to do unjustly, God lets happen only justly. He does what he can with God’s permission. He does not do what he can if God forbids it.” For this reason Augustine (De civ. Dei, bk. 11, ch. 1) correctly calls it “an empty power.” Gerson (Cons. theol., bk. 3, prosa 4) writes: “God keeps the lion of hell tied up, lest he rage as he wills. We must not beseech him, but Him who keeps him bound.”