PAGANS AND GNOSTICSmeans of right guidance.^155 Muslims practiced their own kind of ther-
apeutic magic sanctioned by IJadtth, which declared that there was no
harm in a spell used for healing as long as it was not polytheistic.^156
Obviously the belief that demons caused sickness and evil was widely
held. Consequently the practice of redemptive, therapeutic magic was
equally widespread. This belief also had an ethical dimension because
of the equation of sickness with sin. Demons personified the evil ele-
ment in human nature and were the cause of the evil committed by
people. Jews disapproved of irate behavior because it was caused by
the misleader, and if you allowed the misleader to dwell in your heart
it could lead you to idolatry.157 The Talmud also contains the concept
of an evil angel hidden in the heart of a person who tempts him in
this world and bears witness against him in the next.^158 In the terms
of this thought-world, redemption was a matter of expelling the demon
who caused a person to sin, and the Mazdaean Aturpat spoke of
driving the druj from the body to make it a habitation for the yazdan.^159
Similar ideas can be found among Christians. Although Aphrahat
held that people were not entirely sinful by nature, but that Adam had
set a bad example by his sin, he saw grace as an indwelling of the
Spirit of Christ in a believer through baptism. The presence of the
Spirit preserved a believer from the attack of Satan, .increased a be-
liever's ethical awareness, and motivated him to achieve righteousness.
If the Spirit was disappointed, it would leave and rejoin Christ and
accuse the person in whom it had dwelt.16o Theodore of Mopsuestia
opposed original sin and argued that Adam had been created mortal
but that by his fall he increased the human inclination to sin. People
were therefore mortal but were not born as sinners, and sinned through
acts of will. Thus the Spirit increased its operation in believers but
would depart from a sinner. Theodore's doctrines were taken to Na-
sibin by Narsai in the 470s and were incorporated into Nestorian
liturgy in the sixth century. According to Nestorian doctrine, baptism
removed past sins but not the human inclination to sin; sacraments
were therefore still necessary, and the full grace of the Spirit was
155 TabarI, Ta'rikh, n, 19.
156 Guillaume, Traditions, p. 119.
157 Rodkinson, Talmud, n, "Sabbath," 215.
158 Ibid., VIII, "Succah," 80-82.
159 De Menasce, Denkart, p. 210.
160 A. V66bus" "Theological Reflections on Human Nature in Ancient Syriac Tra-
ditions," in The Scope of Grace: Essays on Nature and Grace in Honor of Joseph
Sittler, ed. P. J. Hefner (Philadelphia, 1964), pp. 104-6, 107.