HKB
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Often appears with: vice as self-harm · the nature and attributes of God · sin, guilt, and repentance · reason and the intellect · platonist physical theology · matter, motion, and cause · justice as good · justice as a virtue · intelligible vs sensible · free will · creation through divine being
Usually: argument (2) · reverence (2) · crisis of belief (1)
“In Scripture they are called God's enemies who oppose His rule, not by nature, but by vice; having no power to hurt Him, but only themselves.” Augustine (Aurelius Augustine), Saint of Hippo, The City of God, Volume I · insight
Augustine expands his view of Platonist “physical” philosophy: God is the unchangeable being through which all changeable bodies and lives exist, live, understand, and are blessed, so nothing made can be God.
invulnerable." In a word, that which is unchangeable can be changed by nothing, so that that which can be changed by the body cannot properly be said to be immutable. 6. _Concerning the meaning of the Platonists in that part of philosophy called physical._
Augustine argues that God’s enemies are enemies by free will and vice, not by nature, and that vice harms only the mutable good it corrupts, never unchangeable God.
enemies of God are so, not by nature but by will, which, as it injures them, injures a good nature; for if vice does not injure, it is not vice._ In Scripture they are called God's enemies who oppose His rule, not by nature, but by vice; having no power to hurt Him, but only themselves. For they are His enemies, not through their power to hurt, but by their will to oppose Him. For God is unchangeable, and wholly pro…