"Take me to Church"

(You don’t have to read this little paragraph, it’s just for kicks)**My first blog post, how exciting!  So I read about Sorcery in Christendom and Sorcery and the Nature of Evil. Both of these chapters were quite interesting, and slightly long. A lot is going on through these pages. I tried writing everything down. My thoughts are all over the place with these two chapters. I feel like I really need to go to church. lol **
 I am going to start with chapter 3. What I got from it is it kinda disapproves that all sin is caused by the devil or by demons. This chapter really reminds me of philosophy class: stating an argument or idea, providing support, trumping that source, disproving the statement/idea and declare a new statement or opinion. Anyone else feel like that?
In this chapter, two excerpts (phrases) that really fazed me were “to tempt is a sign of ignorance. But the demons know what happens among men. Therefore the demons do not tempt.” The second is “sin dwells in the will. Since therefore the demons cannot change man’s will” (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Second Article, pg. 98). 

So, man has free will and man is ignorant of many things. (Man=humans, mankind, womankind, etc) All this is just a thin layer of the giant cake that represents the ideas behind demons, the devil and their existence. [Note: I am writing this while I am very hungry] Man sins or commits acts of evil through his own free will and ignorance. The devil is not ignorant, and he cannot bend the will of man. Then you have God thrown in the mix. God temps man (pg. 98). He tempts us to test our faith in him or for punishment. [All this talk about God and the devil make me sound like a religious fanatic. Gosh.]

“Not all our evil thoughts are stirred up by the devil, but sometimes they arise from movement of our freewill” (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Third Article, pg. 100).Aquinas made things pretty clear for me. I feel that through everything I just mentioned that the devil and demons alike are only as powerful as you or anyone else makes them out to be. (*shifts eyes left to right to check for any upset demons*) We have all this discussion about how the devil cannot do certain things and how God is almighty. This leads into my ideas about chapter 2.
My discussion leadership project is on this chapter so I won’t go to crazy with my ideas that I will share on Monday. Overall, the chapter makes me believe that “the power of Christ is unconquerable” (Voragine, The Life of Justina, pg 85). You have the story of Justina, for example. By the way, this story was quite funny. You have this guy, a powerful sorcerer, Cyprian who tries to win or obtain the heart of Justina. Now, this guy Cyprian is persistent for sure. He uses all his dark magic to summon demons of all sorts to bring her to him in any manner. No demon was strong enough to face Justina and her unwavering faith in Christ. This is such as ridiculous story makes you wonder if this were true. Now using this story, paired up with the things I pointed out in chapter 3, I got one clear message from it all: that the power of Christ/God/Christianity is all powerful. You don’t mess with Christ. What more can you sum up about these chapters. There is so much mentioned on detailed rituals but the fact of the matter is, you need to find your faith in God. Just from certain aspects of these excerpts, Christianity is the way to go if you don’t want anything bad to happen to you or if you want to truly be happy.