I’m glad, too. Augustinian theology is a terrific source for discussion. For later, we should also talk about his controversies with the Palagians which is a conversation I think we’re still having today, pretending its resolved.
I don’t remember the Cathats (other than Willa) but Arianism is relevant to a conversation we’ve been having on this site: whether (Mitt’s) Mormonism is a Christian sect or a non-Christian sect, since some of the objections to the LDS religion that are most offensive to traditional Christians would not have been offensive if Arianism had prevailed.
In the save-for-later-discussion is whether Augustine’s controversy with Pelagius has ever been settled. I think that question, whether an individual can choose not to sin is still raging among American Christians and may be the central issue dividing us today.
A last comment, is that we should not miss when talking about heresies past that these matters were settled, such as it is, centuries after the scriptural time. To me that’s a cause to be humble and be wary from talking about “eternal Christian truths.” Much of what we now believe was established as doctrine with a great deal of controversy centuries after Revelations was added to the Canon.

(Editorializing follows…)
Matter is not good or evil. In itself, it’s neutral. The strong safe that protects my important documents in a fire is good, in my opinion; the same safe that falls out the window and kills me is bad, as far as I’m concerned. But in and of itself, the matter that is the safe has no moral dimension.
Of course in Gnosticism and I suppose in Neo-Platonism, quite a different view is taken. All this confusion seems to arise out of the theodicy problem, ever the stumbling block of theists of all stripes.
If Satan is lord of this world, and in control of everything, it seems to me the Lord God is slipping in the omnipotence department.
If Jesus thought all sickness originated from Satan and his demons, this hardly shows that Satan and his demons can affect natural processes. What it shows is that Jesus was a typical peasant of the pre-scientific ancient world.
Athenagorus view that Satan was a kind of corrupt subcontractor for God is novel, and today more humorous than convincing, but hardly seems to reflect well on God. (I couldn’t quickly find this particular bit in Athenagorus. Very likely assorted Gnostic arguments were being combated.)
Genesis repeatedly says “And God saw that it was good.” That reflects at least a healthy attitude. God looked at the universe and in general liked what he saw. Me too. But I don’t pretend that my opinion about what I see is a property of the thing itself. Goodness, like beauty, lies in the mind, not in some objective property of the external world.

Who rules this world? God? Satan?
How about the almighty $$$$$$$$?

Re: the Cathars. Think the Albigensian crusade. Happened in Southern France where the Catholic Church declared a crusade against the Cathars from 1209-1229. One of the Cahtolic generals when laying seige to a town was asked should they let those people who were true to the church escape famously said “Kill them all. God will know his own.”
The view that Satan is “the god of this world” and “lord of this world” and “in control of everything” and the one who holds the key to death is not a hersey, for this is what the New Testament says about him (2 Cor. 4:4; Jn 12:32; 14:31; 16:11; Heb 2:14).
This is consistant with Marchonism – a heresy that flourished around the same time as Arianism. It’s basis is that God as portrayed in the Hebrew scriptures is inconsistant with the God of the New Testament and that since the Hebrew God created the world, that was the evil deity. And those scriptures were used to justify the persecution of Jews and served as one of the basis for things like the blood libel myth.
You see, there is a danger when we humans started trying to put evil into nature or declaring certain parts of nature as corrupt. According to scripture – Adam and Even are the ones who sinned and were judged. They are the ones who ate of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Not the snake, not the scorpion, or the rat, or the cockroach or the cat. Humans. We impose our standards of good and evil on nature, but other species did nothing wrong. And what does it say about what we think of God that we believe he would punish the innocent for the action of only one? (which is what orginally sin is all about, isn’t it?)
I’m off track here, I know. But Skipchurch hit on a few salient points – one of which is that REGARDLESS of how we insist that we are just going by scripture, much of the common understanding of Christianity is actually based upon the Greek intellectural worldview.

“This whole area is one of those vitally important and regularly untouched areas of everyday theology. I’m glad we’re having this conversation.”
With Boyd’s clarifying comments, added to his last ones, now I’m starting to think he goes further than I can believe/accept.
But for discussing theology, it still beats The Da Vinci Code hands down …

But for discussing theology, it still beats The Da Vinci Code hands down …
Come on, Larry – you are setting the bar WAY too low.

I don’t care who rules the world or who is right or wrong in this argument. I just want to have a good ol’ fashioned heretic burning and I believe David Kuo qualifies. After all, didn’t he abandon the God’s Own Party? I predict that by the time we get the straw bales, the rope and the petrol assembled at the foot of the Washington Monument this Friday night at 8 pm, somebody will have found something more by which we can justifiably, um, toast Dave.
Don’t forget the marshmallows for after we dispense with Dave.

The satan (adversary) is the ego, the intimate enemy, the deceiver.
We deceive ourselves in so many ways. We tell ourselves lies to protect the delusion that the ego is existent, to justify actions that are projections of egoic fear and desire. Hell and Heaven are just fear and desire written in epic scale.
So what is God?
God is that which is in itself, where the shadows of the ego do not fall, because the ego is nothing/absent in the presence of God. The ego ends with death, and of course it is death that is one of the ego’s greatest fears. Death can be physical or it can be as Plato describes in his analogy of the cave. It is a great pity that many do not understand this, since it is profoundly liberating. Mystics of the various traditions get this. They get it because they have experienced it.

Charity — LOL …

David: “This whole area [of sin's manifestation on nature] is one of those vitally important and regularly untouched areas of everyday theology. I’m glad we’re having this conversation.”
I think it’s untouched largely because it’s a bit of a dead horse. The topic was beaten to death by theologian years ago.
Greg Boyd was previously quoted: “This, I argue, is why the animal kingdom is so full of violence – despite the fact that God originally created the world entirely free of violence, according to Genesis 1 (vs. 30). It also in part explains why nature often acts in massively destructive ways.”
Where’s the data that the world was created ‘free of violence’ or that nature didn’t act in massively destructive ways prior to man’s appearance and fall? There is none, and plenty of evidence that the world have behaved pretty consistently over the ages. Why is there disease in the world? Probably because it’s natural outcome of biology. You want a world without death or destructive events? Change the laws of physics or move to another universe.

God is that which is in itself, where the shadows of the ego do not fall, because the ego is nothing/absent in the presence of God. The ego ends with death, and of course it is death that is one of the ego’s greatest fears.
In other words – I Am that I Am
I also agree with Unsympathetic reader in that there really is no evidence that our utopian vision of Eden actually existed, even in the belief of the scribes who first wrote down the story of Gensis. If violence is part of the defination of Evil, how can we say Jesus the Christ was without sin when he took a scourge to the money changers in the Temple? Or destroyed a whole herd of pigs by casting the demons who were Legion into them?
And that’s not even touching on the things that the God of the old testament had done or ordered done in his name….
I think we base our belief of some violence free Eden on the promises of the Kingdom to Come – with swords beaten into plowshares and the lion laying down with the lamb.

Thanks Dave for referencing the Bible for the answer to this question. So often it is debated but it need not be, the Bible makes it clear that Satan is the ruler of the current system of things. Jesus is to come and remove him from power in the time of the end, at which time his Kingdom will be on earth as it is in heaven (I think that’s how it goes).
The animosity I felt reading some of the comments was scary.

the spirit of the lord is everywhere.