Sean Hannan: Augustine on Angels, Demons, & Historical Knowledge in City of God IX

Many passages from the first ten books of Augustine's City of God brush up against the boundaries of humanity's knowledge about its own place in history. On the one hand, Augustine is sure that all things are guided by God's secret providence, which lies beneath the events of history and binds them together. On the other hand, Augustine does not think that we ourselves have access to the logic of that providence when it comes to interpreting our own historical moment.
But Augustine's cosmology, of course, leaves room for rational beings that are other than human. As Book IX of the City of God makes clear, angels and demons too take part in their own peculiar modes of historical awareness. But whereas humanity is limited by its own inescapably temporal condition, angels and demons aim to break free of such constraints. This paper, then, will consider how Augustine depicts the access these quasi-temporal beings have to the realm of historical meaning. Whereas angels are stabilized by God to such a degree that they can gaze directly at His Word, in which the providence guiding all things is made plain, demons instead try to read the signs of the times by looking directly to history itself. (IX.xxii) If we are to critically appreciate humanity's awareness of history, then--following Augustine--we will have to position our own brand of historical knowledge somewhere between the angelic and the demonic.