The Literal Meaning of Genesis
BOOK ELEVEN 157 and the crown of beauty. You were in the delights of the Paradise of
God, you were adorned with every precious stone,79 and so forth. Now these words are applicable not so much to the spirit who is the prince of evil as to his body.
The Church is called paradise according to the words of the Canticle of Canticles, A garden enclosed, a fountain sealed up, a well of living water, a paradise of pomegranates.®° From here have fallen all heretics, either by public and physical separation, or by a hidden and spiritual separation in which they appear to be united with the body of the Church. All those who are separated have returned to their vomit,®! although after the remission of all their sins they had walked for a short time in the way of justice. Jt would have been better for them not to have known the way of justice than know1ng it to have turned back from the holy commanament delivered to them.®? This is the wicked generation that the Lord describes when He says that the evil spirit goes out of a man and returns with seven other spirits, and that finding the house cleaned he dwells there, so that the last state of that man becomes worse than the first.83 It is to this class of men, who are already constituted as the body of the Devil, that these words can be applied: From the day when you were created with the cherubim®* (that is, with the throne of God, which is translated
"the fullness of knowledge'"'),8° and He placed you on the holy mountain of God (that is, in the Church, as in the Psalms, He heard me from His holy mountain);8° you were in the midst of sparkling stones (that is, saints fervent in spirit, living stones); you went blameless in your days, from the day you were created until iniquity was found in you. These words could be more thoroughly examined, and perhaps it could be shown not only that this is a possible meaning but that really there is no other.
CHAPTER 26
Conclusion regarding the fall of the Devil and his angels.
33. But that would be a major undertaking and would require a treatise devoted to that subject alone. For the present, it should be sufficient to conclude with the following possible alternatives: either (1) from the moment of his creation the Devil by his unholy pride fell from the beatitude he would have received if he had willed it; or (2) there are certain angels assigned to inferior tasks in this world, in whose company he had lived, sharing their special kind of beatitude without knowledge of the future, and from whose company he fell through pride and impiety, a kind of archangel along with angels under his leadership (if this hypothesis can be advanced—and it would be strange if it could); or (3) certainly a reason should be sought to explain how all the holy angels, if the Devil lived with them for a period of beatitude with his angels, did not themselves yet possess with certitude a foreknowledge of their unending happiness but acquired it after his downfall; or (4) a reason must be given to show how the Devil with his companions before their sin deserved to be marked off from the other angels, so that he would be ignorant of his impending fall, while they would be certain of their perseverance.®'
Nevertheless, let us not entertain any doubt that the angels who sinned were driven into the prison house of the misty air that surrounds our earth, according to the teaching of the apostles,88 to be detained there for punishment on the day of judgment; and that in the celestial beatitude of the holy angels, eternal life is not uncertain, nor will it be uncertain for us, according to God's mercy and grace and faithful promise, when we shall be joined to them with these bodies of ours transformed after the resurrection. In this hope we live, and in the grace of this promise we are re-created.
There are other questions about the Devil: why God created him knowing what he would become, and why the Almighty does not turn the Devil's will to good. We discussed these problems when we were treating the same question in relation to sinful men,8° and we leave the reader to seek what may be understood or believed or even newly discovered as a better explanation.