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The Victorious Sacrifice
From St Augustine's ‘De Trinitate’ (Bk IV, c. 13 and 14)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 August 2024
Extract
The Lord also presented himself to be tempted by the devil, in order to be our Mediator in overcoming his temptations by giving us not only the strength of his help but also the encouragement of his example. But Satan's first attempts after Christ's baptism to steal into the inner citadel of his mind by every possible entry were foiled, and every form of seductive temptation was used up in the desert without success; he, the spirit of death, had failed to overpower spiritual Life, and so he turned himself, avid for any sort of human death, to procuring the death that he was able and permitted to inflict on that mortal part which the Mediator of life had received from us. And it was precisely here, where he was able to achieve something, that he suffered total defeat; the moment he accepted the power to slay the Lord's flesh from without, the power by which he held us from within was itself slain.
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- Copyright © 1960 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 It was the common view in antiquity that spirits, whether good angels or wicked demons, were not wholly immaterial beings—that was thought to be God's privilege alone—but had bodies as men do, though less gross, more subtle and tenuous, and made of some airy, ethereal incorruptible substance.
2 The whole context of this passage is a comparison of Christ's genuine mediation of lift with Satan's deceitful mediation of death under the cloak of false promises. Both mediations are effected by sacrifices—Satan's by the idolatrous sacrifices of paganism, which were a sort of parody of the one true sacrifice of Christ. While primitive paganism was on the wane in Augustine's time, there was much fashionable dabbling with the occult by means of sacrificial rituals, which were favoured by the name of ‘theurgy in sophisticated neo-Platonic circles. These were ‘the proud men’ he had in mind.