Chapter 2 takes as its point of departure angelology, which provides the theological context for examining the devil before, during, and after his fall. Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa drew on traditions of interpretation that understood scripture as speaking of one adversary, an angel – Satan, Lucifer, serpent, and devil – who moves across Testaments, Old and New. While the three theologians agree on who the devil is – a fallen angel – they are not of one mind on how he came to fall from the near presence of God, his defeat, his continued existence, or his ultimate end. By interrogating the nature and purpose of angels, this chapter identifies how the Cappadocians construe the devil as a philosophical, theological, and spiritual problem.

Chapter 3 identifies and explores the devil’s names. While modern theologians have questioned the reality of the devil, premodern thinkers such as Basil and the Gregories felt no need to prove his existence. Instead, they sought to shine a light on the one who operates undercover and in plain sight, tempting and deceiving the human race. This chapter argues that by referring to the devil by his name(s) repeatedly, a practice inherited from Origen, the three leaders teach their communities how to recognise the activity of the enemy of salvation. Our theologians employ at least fifty names for the devil, both new and established. These names for the most part identify the devil’s activities in salvation history and demonstrate that he is antithetical to God and humankind. In effect, I propose, the Cappadocians teach the church to know the devil by his name(s).

Chapter 6 explores how those who do not live according to the way of faith take on the devil’s characteristics to the extent that they are known by him and claimed as his own. As scholarly work on Gregory of Nyssa’s vision of the spiritual life has proliferated, commentators have focused on virtue, participation, and how human beings become like God. In contrast, Chapter Six argues that Gregory’s vision of the spiritual life is concerned not only with how human beings can become divine, but also with how they can become diabolic. Here we come to a central problem with the devil. According to Gregory of Nyssa’s teaching in On the Beatitudes and On the Lord’s Prayer, just as children of the ‘Heavenly Father’ become like God, children of the ‘Subterranean Father’ become like the devil.

Chapter 7 closes the study by focusing on a single source: Gregory of Nyssa’s homilies On the Song of Songs. Through them, he weaves his most comprehensive and sustained account of the history, ontology, and activity of the devil and his army of demons. Only Christ is victorious over this army of hostile powers in the proper sense. Christians participate in Christ’s victory by journeying with Gregory through On the Song of Songs. The way of victory begins with baptism and continues with prayer, pure thoughts, and self-knowing. Like those sources examined in the previous chapters, the homilies undertake a journey toward victory, bringing to the fore the eschatological nature of spiritual warfare. This chapter, along with the previous ones, demonstrates that in addition to his other accolades, Gregory of Nyssa was an erudite homilist and skilled teacher on spiritual warfare.

Chapter 1 challenges the scholarly assumption that the devil, as he appears in early Christian writings, is little more than a useful way of covering a gap in theological reasoning. This widespread misconception undercuts the breadth and complexity of early Christian thought and adopts anachronistically the concerns of eighteenth-century philosophers, gathered up into what is known as the classic ‘problem of evil’. By disentangling the devil from the conceptual webs that surround evil and suffering, this chapter argues that for the Cappadocians, the devil does not resolve the question of why humans experience evil. Chapter One closes by establishing a more suitable theological context in which to study the devil.