St. Cecilia’s College – Cebu, Inc.

LASSO Supervised School

Natalio B. Bacalso South National Highway
Minglanilla, Cebu
Tel. No. 032-268-4746/032-490-0767
SY 2021-2022
2nd Semester

Senior High School Department

Midterm Module in
Religious Education 4

The Lord’s Prayer and Demonology

Name of Student: _____________________ Quarter: _____________________

Grade Level/Section: __________________ Time Frame: __________________

_____________________________

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 Lesson 2: Demonology
Since time immemorial, the problem of evil has been already discussed and recorded in the
old manuscript and debated among some theologians and philosophers. Evil is the lack (or
privation) of good that should be present in a thing. For example, blindness is a physical evil
because it is the absence of the ability to see, which is proper to a human being. In moral terms, sin
is the absence of a particular virtue in a person. As such, evil is not something that exists in itself;
it is merely the absence of the good (see Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraphs 309, 314).
This classical definition, formulated by St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century, was the
result of centuries of thought and the refinement of complex formulas into this simple, objective
explanation.

The reality of sin

Sin is present in human history; any attempt to ignore it or to give this dark reality other
names would be futile. To try to understand what sin is, one must first recognize the profound
relation of man to God, for only in this relationship is the evil of sin unmasked in its true identity
as humanity's rejection of God and opposition to him, even as it continues to weigh heavy on
human life and history.

Only the light of divine Revelation clarifies the reality of sin and particularly of the sin
committed at mankind's origins. Without the knowledge of the revelation that God has given to us,
we cannot recognize sin clearly and are tempted to explain it as merely a developmental flaw, a
psychological weakness, a mistake, or the necessary consequence of an inadequate social structure,
etc. Only in the knowledge of God's plan for man we can grasp that sin is an abuse of the freedom
that God gives to created persons so that they are capable of loving him and loving one another.

The Fall of the Angels

(Latin angelus; Greek aggelos; from the Hebrew for "one going" or "one sent";
messenger). The word is used in Hebrew to denote either a divine or human messenger. A Greek
version of the Hebrew Bible (Septuagint) renders it by aggelos which also has both meanings. In
the Latin version, it denotes the divine or spirit-messenger from the human, rendering the original
in the one case by angelus and in the other by legatus or more generally by nuntius. In a few
passages the Latin version is misleading, the word angelus being used where nuntius would have
better expressed the meaning like of that in Isaiah 18:2; 33:3-6.

Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God,
which makes them fall into death out of envy. Scripture and the Church's Tradition see in this
being a fallen angel, called "Satan" or the "devil". The Church teaches that Satan was at first a
good angel, made by God: "The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by
God, but they became evil by their own doing."

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 Scripture speaks of a sin of these angels. This "fall" consists in the free choice of these
created spirits, who radically and irrevocably rejected God and his reign. We find a reflection of
that rebellion in the tempter's words to our first parents: "You will be like God." The devil "has
sinned from the beginning"; he is "a liar and the father of lies".

It is the irrevocable character of their choice, and not a defect in the infinite divine mercy
that makes the angels' sin unforgivable. "There is no repentance for the angels after their fall, just
as there is no repentance for men after death."

Scripture witnesses to the disastrous influence of the one Jesus calls "a murderer from the
beginning", who would even try to divert Jesus from the mission received from his Father. "The
reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil." In its consequences the
gravest of these works was the mendacious seduction that led man to disobey God.

The power of Satan is, nonetheless, not infinite. He is only a creature, powerful from the
fact that he is pure spirit, but still a creature. He cannot prevent the building up of God's reign.
Although Satan may act in the world out of hatred for God and his kingdom in Christ Jesus, and
although his action may cause grave injuries - of a spiritual nature and, indirectly, even of a
physical nature- to each man and to society, the action is permitted by divine providence which
with strength and gentleness guides human and cosmic history. It is a great mystery that
providence should permit diabolical activity, but "we know that in everything God works for good
with those who love him."

Freedom Put to the Test gifted

God created man in his image and established him in his friendship. A spiritual creature,
man can live this friendship only in free submission to God. The prohibition against eating "of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil" spells this out: "for in the day that you eat of it, you shall
die." The "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" symbolically evokes the insurmountable limits
that man, being a creature, must freely recognize and respect with trust. Man is dependent on his
Creator, and subject to the laws of creation and to the moral norms that govern the use of freedom.

Man's first sin (The Devil)

Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents, Scripture and Church Tradition see
imaged in “the serpent” (Gn 3:1-5), an evil force called “Satan” or the “devil.” Jesus himself was
tempted by the devil (Mt 4:1-11) whom he called “murderer from the beginning, a liar and the
father of lies” (Jn 8:44). “The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by
God, but they became evil by their own doing”. Scripture gives witness to the disastrous influence,
of these created personal beings called also “fallen angels.” Their power is limited by the
providence of God who “makes all things work together for the good of those who have been
called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28). In rebelling against God, man and woman destroyed
their original harmony with: • each other (“they realized they were naked”), • others (Cain’s
murder of his brother Abel), • the community (Tower of Babel), • nature (“cursed be the ground . .

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.”). Finally, since man and his wife were now excluded from partaking of the fruit of the tree of
life (cf. Gn 3:22-24), death will be theirs, “For you are dirt, and to dirt you shall return” (Gn 3:19).

Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his
freedom, disobeyed God's command. This is what man's first sin consisted of. All subsequent sin
would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness.

In that sin man preferred himself to God and by that very act scorned him. He chose
himself over and against God, against the requirements of his creaturely status and therefore
against his own good. Constituted in a state of holiness, man was destined to be fully "divinized"
by God in glory. Seduced by the devil, he wanted to "be like God", but "without God, before God,
and not in accordance with God".

Scripture portrays the tragic consequences of this first disobedience. Adam and Eve
immediately lose the grace of original holiness. They become afraid of the God of whom they have
conceived a distorted image - that of a God jealous of his prerogatives.

The harmony, in which they had found themselves, thanks to original justice, is now
destroyed: the control of the soul's spiritual faculties over the body is shattered; the union of man
and woman becomes subject to tensions, their relations henceforth marked by lust and
domination. Harmony with creation is broken: visible creation has become alien and hostile to
man. Because of man, creation is now subject "to its bondage to decay". Finally, the consequence
explicitly foretold for this disobedience will come true: man will "return to the ground", for out of
it he was taken. Death makes its entrance into human history.

After that first sin, the world is virtually flooded by sin there is Cain's murder of his brother
Abel and the universal corruption which follows in the wake of sin. Likewise, sin frequently
manifests itself in the history of Israel, especially as infidelity to the God of the Covenant and as
transgression of the Law of Moses. And even after Christ's atonement, sin raises its head in
countless ways among Christians. Scripture and the Church's Tradition continually recall the
presence and universality of sin in man's history:

What Revelation makes known to us is confirmed by our own experience. For when man
looks into his own heart he finds that he is drawn towards what is wrong and sunk in many
evils which cannot come from his good creator. Often refusing to acknowledge God as his
source, man has also upset the relationship which should link him to his last end, and at the
same time he has broken the right order that should reign within himself as well as between
himself and other men and all creatures.

The Consequences of Adam's Sin for Humanity

All men are involved (share) in Adam's sin, as St. Paul affirms: "By one man's
disobedience many (that is, all men) were made sinners": "sin came into the world through one
man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned." The Apostle
contrasts the universality of sin and death with the universality of salvation in Christ. "Then as one

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man's trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man's act of righteousness leads to acquittal
and life for all men."

The whole human race is in Adam "as one body of one man". By this "unity of the human
race" all men are implicated in Adam's sin, as all are implicated in Christ's justice. Still, the
transmission of original sin is a mystery that we cannot fully understand. But we do know by
Revelation that Adam had received original holiness and justice not for himself alone, but for all
human nature. By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin
affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state. It is a sin which will be
transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is, by the transmission of a human nature deprived
of original holiness and justice. And that is why original sin is called "sin" only in an analogical
sense: it is a sin "contracted" and not "committed" - a state and not an act.

Although it is proper to each individual, original sin does not have the character of a
personal fault in any of Adam's descendants. It is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but
human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it,
subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to
evil that is called concupiscence". Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ's grace, erases original
sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to
evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.

The Church's teaching on the transmission of original sin was articulated more precisely in
the fifth century, especially under the impulse of St. Augustine's reflections against Pelagianism,
and in the sixteenth century, in opposition to the Protestant Reformation. Pelagius held that man
could, by the natural power of free will and without the necessary help of God's grace, lead a
morally good life; he thus reduced the influence of Adam's fault to bad example.