Scotus Academicus, Tomus quintus: De Creaturarum Corporalium et de Homine

Note 1. That Moses, the chief interpreter of things divine and human, delineated the encounter of the devil with the First Parents in chapter 3 of Genesis, in these words: But the serpent was more subtle than all the beasts of the earth which the Lord God had made, etc. Or as the Septuagint render it, the serpent was the most prudent of all the beasts which were upon the earth: or as the Chaldean has it, the serpent was wiser than all the beasts of the field: in which words three things are above all signified: First indeed, that the devil used the serpent as an instrument for assailing and deceiving the first men. Second, that the demon infected the serpent itself, and thrust himself into its body, in such wise that through the mouth and tongue of the beast, as through an organ, he might emit voices, and hold converse with the first woman. Whence St. Augustine, book 11. De Civitate, chapter 11. writes: The devil chose the serpent in Paradise, a corporeal one, that is, a slippery animal, mobile in tortuous windings, and suited to his work, through whom he might speak: and him, subjected to himself by his angelic presence and his pre-eminent nature of spiritual wickedness, abusing as it were an instrument, he uttered his deceit in speech to man. Thirdly, finally, that serpent is said to have been more subtle than all the beasts of the earth: by which is designated that he was a true, and not a masked serpent, inasmuch as he is compared with other earthly beasts; otherwise the account would altogether limp, and that comparison would be utterly incongruous.

Note 2. That although the devil was the sole architect of this lamentable temptation: nevertheless Moses prudently called the tempter, not the devil, but the serpent; namely, that he might take away from the Jewish people — rude indeed, and of a grosser genius — every occasion of idolatry: since heretics have not been wanting who, judging that all knowledge of good and evil had been suggested to the first parents by the serpent, held and worshipped it as a Divinity, whence they were called Ophites: perhaps also there would not have been wanting some of the Jews who would have held the devil, endowed with spiritual nature, as a divinity; seeing that by his own prudence, even against the will of God, he had drawn over the First Parents to his party, as Anastasius Synaita learnedly observes, book 10. Hexaemeron. If you ask, he says, why God then did not speak this nakedly, but named the serpent in place of the devil: learn openly, that when speaking with much and wanton indulgence, he would not open to Israel either those things which pertain to the Angels, nor those which pertain to Satan, who trampled Eve underfoot, lest they should conspire with him and adore him as stronger than God, he who by his own prudence had been able to draw the first-formed men away from God to himself. — Another reason is subjoined by Severianus Gabalitanus, bishop, oration 6, namely that Moses undertook to relate the deeds done at the beginning of the world in a ruder style and popular narration, because he was undertaking to instruct not only the unlearned vulgar in hidden matters: but that was the age of the nascent and yet infantile Church, which could not yet receive a deeper doctrine. Nothing therefore absurd, if he fed them with milk who for that time were as it were infants. The Apostle used a like precaution, 2. ad Cor. chapter 11, when addressing virgins he writes: For I fear lest, as the serpent seduced Eve by his subtlety, so your senses should be corrupted. Whence Severianus: Paul indeed, he says, as a faithful minister and guardian of the sacred Scriptures, did not invert the diction, but indicated the sense. But who lay hid under the serpent and breathed into him, Christ manifested when addressing the Jews. John 8. he said they were sprung from their father the devil, who was a murderer from the beginning; namely, that he lethally wounded the whole human race in the first parent, and led it into the death of sin.

Note 3. From the Seraphic Bonaventure in 2. dist. 20. art. 1. q. 2. that that manner of tempting was not from diabolical election, as St. Augustine says, book 11. de Genesi, chapter 5, but also from divine permission: for it was not lawful for the devil to tempt in every manner that he wished, and could; but in that manner in which the Lord would permit: moreover divine wisdom (which orders, and governs, and permits all things) granted that the devil should tempt man under the likeness of a brute animal, and not of any whatsoever, but of a serpent: for thus did the congruence of order require. For > man to be tempted by the devil under the likeness of a brute animal was congruous: both in respect of the work; and in respect of the end; and also in respect of the divine judgment. 1. In respect of the work, because man was born to be inclined to good at that time chiefly on the sensible and brutish side, and therefore it was congruous that he be tempted under the likeness of a brute animal. 2. In respect of the end likewise it was similarly congruous, because the temptation was ordered to this, that man should be made like a brute animal, when, having despised the immutable good, he should adhere to a changeable good, and rest therein: and therefore to insinuate this, he ought to be tempted in the species of a brute animal. 3. In respect of the divine Judgment also it was congruous, since the Lord just and faithful does not permit man to be tempted beyond that which he can bear: and therefore he suffered the devil to lie hidden in the temptation in such wise that nevertheless he could be detected by man, and therefore he did not suffer the devil to tempt man altogether in a similar species, namely in the human species or likeness, but rather in a brutish one.

These things thus premised, two things are here above all to be resolved: First, why the devil took up the serpent as the instrument of temptation: Second, why he made use of it in that temptation.

First Conclusion. — The devil congruously took up the serpent as the instrument of his temptation by divine permission.

This truth the Seraphic Doctor proves in the place cited, by a threefold reason: First indeed, he says, by the reason of the work: for since the temptation was being wrought, and the ingress of suggestion, which enters into the heart after the manner of a serpent, and there diffuses the venom of sin, from which man has spiritually to die, therefore, that the exterior likeness might answer to the interior work, it was congruous that man be tempted by the devil under the likeness of the serpent, whose property it is to creep, and to diffuse poison, and by diffusing it to destroy man. — 2. In respect also of the end it was likewise congruous: for since the devil intended to turn the face of man, and the head, and the higher mind downward, and to prostrate the whole, and thus by prostrating to lead him to an evil end, proposing to himself some delightful reward, therefore it was permitted that he tempt in the serpent, which according to its whole body has the earth cleaving to it in its going. — 3. It was also congruous in respect of the divine judgment: for since from that temptation the divine judgment ought to raise up enmity between the tempted and the tempter, therefore the temptation of man ought to be made in the serpent, whom he dreads exceedingly after the Fall, and who lies in wait above all by his subtlety, that he may harm man. Such are the words of Bonaventure. — Nor however ought we to opine, says St. Augustine, book 11. De Genesi ad litteram, that the devil swallowed the serpent, whom he persuaded to be the prey through which he would tempt: but since there was in him, by reason of a perverse and infirm will, the cupidity of deceiving: he could not except through that animal through which he was permitted to be able: for the cupidity of harming can be proper even to his own spirit: but power is not except from God, and this in hidden and lofty justice, since there is no iniquity with God. Moreover the Master of the Sentences teaches, dist. 21. that if the demon had been permitted, perhaps he would have come more gladly in the form of a dove: For the devil, he says, has the cupidity of harming, but the faculty only such as is given him, either for subverting and destroying by cause of wrath, or for humbling or proving by cause of mercy. But God did not permit, says our Lyranus, man to be tempted by the devil in a gracious and noble species, through which he could more easily deceive: but rather in a horrible species, in which the deceitfulness of the demon could the sooner be detected; or, as Moses Bar-Cepha says, book De Paradiso, chapter 27, the devil was permitted to abuse no other animal for deceiving the woman; partly that there might appear therein the vileness, and abjection of the demon: partly also that by the aspect of the tortuous and malignant animal, Eve might the more easily detect the fraud. St. Thomas the Angelic Doctor adds in his commentary on Genesis that God permitted the devil to tempt in the species of the serpent for this reason, that by this, that it is a foul and venomous animal, Eve might somewhat detect his deceit; that namely the temptation might be less violent, and if she fell, Eve might be less excusable. Whence God seems thereby also to have provided for himself, lest afterwards the woman, having collapsed into sin, should allege some grave violence which she could not easily have withstood, impelled to the deed by another animal, or one more potent for deceiving, inciting by bulk of body, or beauty of mouth; and should thereupon cast back the whole cause of her fault upon God, for not resisting so great and so strong an adversary.

You will say. The more hidden a temptation is, the more efficacious it is for deceiving: therefore it seemed more congruous that man be tempted by some spiritual temptation than in a corporeal species, whereby namely his observance toward God might the better be proved. Moreover, the more efficacious is a temptation, the more affable the tempter is in suggesting: but a temptation, and speech, had it been made in an assumed human species and likeness, would have been far more affable than that which was touched upon through the serpent: therefore this seems less to accord with the intention of the tempter. Finally, the greater a species of sanctity the tempter assumes, the more he prevails in tempting: but there are many animals which by their properties present sanctity more than the serpent, as for instance the dove and the lamb: therefore it seems that the devil the tempter ought to have assumed those very animals. — I answer, these forms indeed perhaps the devil would have assumed, if it had been permitted him by God; for he could attempt nothing except what was permitted: but why God did not permit the temptation to be made in any other than the serpentine species we have already said; namely, that the temptation might be lighter, and that serpentine species would the more easily draw away the woman from the tempter.

Second Conclusion. — In truth the devil was infused into the body of the serpent, and through the mouth and tongue of the beast, as through an organ, he uttered human voices. So St. Augustine, book 11., De Civitate Dei, chapter 11. and likewise book 11. De Genesi ad litteram, chapter 29. where he says: The devil himself spoke in the serpent, using it as it were an organ, and moving its nature in that manner in which he himself could move it, and it be moved, to express the sounds of words, and bodily signs, through which the woman might understand the will of him persuading her. He did not himself err in the very woman, because she was a rational creature, which by her own motion could use herself to make words, but his operation, and persuasion, though with an occult instinct he aided inwardly what he had wrought outwardly through the serpent. I judge therefore that the serpent, by those little blandishments of motion, and certain quasi gesticulations and sweetly-winding turnings, but wholly poisonous and deadly, the demon moving within, crept into familiarity with the woman, and first offered itself to be looked upon. Nearly all sacred Interpretes agree that that serpent, which as an instrument the devil used, by the varied beauty of its skin enticed the woman to look upon it, that he might the more easily induce her to conversation. But since the kinds of serpents are various, many dream which one it was that was assumed by the demon: for in a matter so uncertain, and most remote from all human conjecture, of which Moses expressed not so much as any trace, who would dare affirm anything for certain? Yet some are found to have been of opinion it was a basilisk: but they seem less congruously to conjecture: for the most loathsome aspect, and most pestilent breath of this serpent would not invite Eve to conversation, but rather avert her: of it Pliny writes, book 8. chapter 21.: The Cyrenaic Province produces the basilisk, of a size of not more than two digits, distinguished by a white spot on its head, as it were a certain diadem: by its hiss it puts all serpents to flight, nor does it impel its body with multiplied flexions, as the rest: but goes along elevated and straight from the middle, it kills shrubs not merely touched, but even breathed upon. It burns up herbs, and breaks rocks, etc. — Some conjecture it to have been a Scytale, led by its beauty and magnitude doubtless: For the Scytale, says Solinus, chapter 30., shines with so great a variety of back, that by the grace of its markings it retards beholders, and since it is slower in creeping, it desires that what it cannot attain, beholders should stand stupefied at the wonder of itself. This description of Solinus Delrio confirms upon the first verse of the third chapter of Genesis, wherein he testifies that he once saw the spoils of a Scytale; which indeed was seven feet long, variegated throughout by the artifice of most beautiful nature, radiant with the splendor of gold and the sheen of silver. — Rupertus asserts that the serpent assumed by the demon was one of those which they say are reported to bear a face like a virgin's; but our Lyranus rightly laughs to scorn that such a serpent was ever seen in the world, as an old wives' fable. Wherefore I should judge it better to say, that that serpent was our common snake, or coluber; whose nature it is to be bloodthirsty, greedy of milk, covered with a bark or shell, shining with variety of back, retarding beholders by the grace of its azure markings. But why that serpent is called more subtle, or more prudent, or wiser than all the beasts of the earth, St. Augustine renders the reason, book 11. De Genesi ad litteram, chapter 2. By transferred speech, he says, it was said most prudent, or as most Latin codices have, most wise, not in the proper sense in which wisdom is wont to be taken in reference to good, whether of God, or of the Angels, or of the rational soul: as if we should say wise bees also, and ants, on account of works as it were imitating wisdom. Although that serpent, not by its own irrational soul, but by another spirit already, that is, a diabolical one, could be called wisest of all beasts. However much the prevaricating Angels by their own perversity and pride have merited to be cast down from supernal seats: nevertheless by nature they excel all beasts, on account of the eminence of reason. What wonder therefore, if by his own instinct the devil, already filling the serpent, and mingling his own spirit with it, after that manner in which the demon is wont to fill the lares, rendered it wisest of all beasts according to the living but irrational soul of the creature? For wisdom is so said in evil after the manner of the name, as astuteness is in good: since properly, and more customarily in the Latin tongue only, the wise are commendatorily called: but the astute are understood as ill-affected.