Annotation CCXCVIII

”That [it] might be made known to the principalities, and powers.” — Ephesians 3:10

Whether the demons are to be restored.

Ambrose, in the commentaries, elucidating this clause, writes thus: “SO WELL did God think concerning this [man], namely Paul, that he not only gave this master to the nations, but also that through him the truth of Christ might be made known to the spirits in the heavenly [places], who are principalities and powers. [They are called] ‘powers,’ therefore, because they are more powerful among the other spirits; but ‘principalities,’ because they hold princedom over the powers — that, recognizing through the Church (which has been drawn to life in manifold [ways]) the mystery of the one God to abide in Christ, they may cease from error. For this is the [thing] transacted: that the ecclesiastical preaching may profit even these, and [that] they may forsake the assent of the tyranny of the devil, wherewith it armed itself, with impious presumption, against the faith of the one God. Which sense is prescribed [set down beforehand] in the twenty-third Psalm: where God, the lord of the universe, is shown, the Spirit of God saying through David:¹ ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof, the round world, and all who dwell in it.’ And among the [things] following: ‘Lift up the gates of your prince, and be lifted up, ye eternal gates, and the king of glory shall enter in. Who is this king of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the king of glory.’ It is said, therefore, to these princes, who are in error in the heavenly [places], or to his [the devil’s] ministers on earth, that they take away the gates of their prince — that is, of the devil — from their minds, through which the error of asserting many [false things] entered in.” An anonymous scholiast of Origen, in the scholia on the first book of the Peri Archon, noted that Ambrose in this place does not dissent from the dogma which Origen wrote in the sixth chapter of the same book — affirming that certain angels, who are not irremediably removed from the state of beatitude, can again be recalled to their pristine felicity, and restored, through ecclesiastical preachings and salutary admonitions. But this dogma the Catholic Church condemns.