The Little Red Blog

Saturday Lecture: A War Against All Rivals

{At the risk of seeming irreverent: It could be said that Christianity began as a kind of spiritual insurance company. Believers in the resurrected Christ received (limited) protection from evil powers as well as a promise of eternal life. As long as believers kept their premiums up to date via regular worship, participation in the eucharistic meal, and tithing, then, like a good neighbor, Jesus was there.}

Ramsay MacMullen:

Ancient religion(s), including Christianity, addressed a universe that we today happen not to believe in. Back then, everyone knew that whatever could go wrong in the world, from floods to rebellion, was the work and sign of some of those certain Beings that are bad, legions of which are ubiquitous and actually immanent in our very selves, and are well known to be so from their being driven out of catechumens by baptism and out of the possessed by exorcism before the very eyes of the most reliable witnesses; while at the same time other Beings, which are good, manifest themselves in the driving out, and in other beneficent acts, or inflict merited punishment on wrong-doers. 

The one point in which Christianity differed from the general context of opinion around it was the antagonism inherent in it—antagonism of God toward all other supernatural powers, of God toward every man and woman who refused allegiance, and of those who granted their allegiance [to God] toward all the remaining stubborn unbelievers. It was not the church’s liturgy, nor morals, nor monotheism, nor internal organization that seemed to non-Christians at all blameworthy; rather, Christianity presented a kind of polarization to its audience, a polarization that pricked or alarmed the observer. Christianity presented ideas that demanded a choice, not tolerance.

Moreover, the Christian God was pictured as being at war against all rivals, ranged with his angels in combat against Satan. Saint Paul issued a summons to join the struggle against the powers of darkness, a duty preached later by others such as Justin and Tatian. For non-Christians, such a view “impiously divides the kingdom of god and makes two opposing forces.” That a divine being would extend his wrath even beyond this dualism and send down suffering upon human beings simply for their failure to offer him regular worship seemed an even more blasphemous idea. As Livy put it, “People even attack the gods with headstrong words; but we have never heard of anyone on that account being struck by lightning.”

Jesus’ authority over the fiercest infestations of satanic power, making them do whatever he wished by a mere word of command, he passed on to his disciples, with instructions to use it. They did. The author of the Acts of Peter dramatized a Christian’s superiority over demonic power through a sort of ‘shoot-out’ scene in the forum of the capital; in faraway Pontus, the story circulated of Gregory the Wonder-worker’s exploits in a demon’s temple—just by routinely saying prayers there, where he had taken shelter from the dark, he made it forever uninhabitable by its former owner. The manhandling of demons—humiliating them, making them howl, beg for mercy, tell their secrets, and depart in a hurry—made visible the superiority of the Christian’s God over all others. One and only one Power was God; the rest were ‘daimons’ demonstrably, familiar to the audience as nasty, lower powers that no one would want to worship anyway.

Justin boasted, “How many persons possessed by demons have been exorcized by many of our Christian men?” Irenaeus asserted that “Some people incontestably and truly drive out demons, so that the very persons possessed often become believers.” Tertullian issued the challenge, “Let a man be produced who, it is clear, is possessed by a demon, and that spirit, commanded by any Christian at all, will as much confess himself a demon.” Cyprian declared that demons in idols, “When they are adjured by us in the name of the true God, they yield forthwith, and confess; they are forced to leave the bodies they have invaded, and you may see them, by our summons and by the workings of hidden majesty, consumed with flames.”

Stories of wonders wrought by other deities certainly circulated as well, making believers in and new devotees of Sabazius, Jupiter, Mithra, and so forth; but Christian converts, from the moment of believing, denied the name and very existence of other gods. In religious usage, a miracle is any event in which one knows one is dealing with God. The motive underlying the giving of allegiance was to avoid the horrors of divine punishment or to gain the benefits, in this world if not in the next, that were promised to loyal adherents.

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Ramsay MacMullen - Wikipedia

 

Saturday Lecture: The Devil's Birth Certificate

{Seriously, I am done with the Devil after this...}

Gerald Messadie (from The History of the Devil):

Some four millennia ago, hordes of horsemen from the south of present-day Russia descended through the passes of the Caucasus to settle on the fertile plains of Iran. They exchanged the shores of the Black and Azov seas for those of the Caspian and the Persian Gulf; some of their tribes headed for Greece and Anatolia, while others pushed toward southern Scandinavia and Finland and, eventually, around 2000 BCE, reached the British Isles.

Among the baggage they carried with them was one of the most volatile explosives ever imagined. It was nothing at first, a few beliefs symbolized in the form of little statues and amulets, but it bore the seeds of the Devil. These emigrants, a collection of warriors and shepherds known today as the Kurgan people (from the Russian word for ‘barrow’), were to found the first religion in the world that pitted a unique Devil against an equally unique God.

These people have come to be called the Indo-Europeans, after the community of languages, all related to Sanskrit, they spoke. All the cultures that today we call ‘Western’ arose out of the Indo-European invasion. Many of the systems we rely on to interpret the world, including our deities, would not exist if the Kurgan people had not seized the Near and Middle East (as well as almost the whole of Europe). The Indo-Europeans were probably the most significant factor in the development of ancient religions, the greater number of Eastern and eastern Mediterranean ones having been influenced by both the geographical expansion that ensured the civilization’s safety and by its advanced political organization. Indo-European influences can be found, for instance, in Greek Orphism. Post-exilic Judaism, the various strains of Jewish and Christian Gnosticism, Christianity and Shiite Islam all bear its mark to some degree.

It can be argued that much of the monotheistic theology that founded modern cultures was formed within the Iranian matrix; our Jewish, Christian, and Islamic angels and archangels, and consequently our Devil, were born there. Pre-Zoroastrian Iranian Vedic belief revolved around two main groups of supernatural entities, the ‘ahuras’ or higher deities and the ‘daevas’ or lesser ones. These groups were ruled by two principal gods, Ahura Mazda and Mithra, who together governed the course of the sun, the moon, and the stars. There was no known counter-god or demon comparable to the Devil.

One fundamental Vedic belief, however, was that of salvation, an entirely new idea in the history of religions which suddenly came to assume great importance. The Devil would find fertile ground in this idea—because if you say ‘salvation’ you also say ‘damnation,’ and once you’ve said ‘damnation’ you’ve already said ‘the Devil’. The concept of salvation inherently entails that of sin. The salvation theme appears even more clearly in the myth of Mithra, a savior who, like the Christian one, is announced by prophets and whose birth, recalling that of Jesus, takes place in a cave, with the miraculous arrival heralded by the appearance of a mysterious star. Mithra is the celestial intermediary between two antagonists, Ahura Mazda (the Good One) and Ahriman (the Bad One), the governors of the universe. 

The Iranian religion, which remained in existence until the third century CE, did far more than any other religion to mold the Devil. Iranian polytheism made up a centralized celestial government that, like earthly government, hinged upon a provisional balance between Good and Evil, and promised to disappear only after the ultimate victory of Good in an envisioned future.

And then came Zoroaster (c. 628-551 BCE). Anticipating the temptation of Jesus in the desert by more than six centuries, it was said that Satan tried to entice Zoroaster into abandoning his faith; after a struggle with demons, Zoroaster triumphed and drove them away. The books that speak of him are filled with tales of wonder and miraculous healings. Both in his own day and over later centuries, Zoroaster was considered not just a prophet but a supernatural being, which has led some to call him a myth—the fate of many a prophet.

We know enough about Zoroaster to sketch out a portrait of the man: a poor and temperamental poet, nonviolent, sensitive, perhaps a shaman, and someone who bore grudges. He hated cruel aristocrats, and he attacked with particular virulence those who engaged in bloody sacrifices, even though such rites traditionally characterized men’s cults. The religion which Zoroaster shaped had to distinguish itself, through its rigor and simplicity, from the polytheisms of the day. It had to impose itself not by the magnificence of its rites, its sacrifices, or the power of its adherents, but by its inner hold on the individual—and, to create that, it had to foster a feeling of urgency about what was at stake: the entering of or exclusion from Heaven, salvation or eternal disgrace.

Zoroaster’s restructuring of Iranian Vedic religion began as a reform, seemingly moderate and conciliating. It was only later that it became an outright revolution, with monotheism well and truly established. Ahuru Mazda became the one and only god worthy of veneration as the creator of Heaven and Earth, of the spiritual and material worlds. He was the sovereign, lawmaker, supreme judge, master of day and night, the center of nature, and the inventor of moral law. The relationship among Zoroaster’s Mazdaism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is obvious.

Ahura Mazda’s twin brother, Ahriman (the Bad One), became the God of Evil, whose worshipers were the ‘followers of the lie,’ led astray by untruth. Iran thus witnessed the first appearance of the Devil, a specific and unambiguous God of Evil. Ahriman was the peer of Ahura Mazda, and the two were destined to battle mercilessly. In some apocalyptic texts, it was foretold that a great war would come to pass during which Heaven would send down Mithra the Savior to destroy the forces of Evil by fire and sword.

In Zoroaster’s modified religion, the great prophetic tenets of monotheism appeared for the first time. Good and Evil became transcendent principles, and the ambiguities associated with older, pragmatic interpretations of existence vanished. Zoroaster made the dualism of Good and Evil official; both were immanent and preexisting, and their conflict was not to be resolved until the end of time.

Zoroaster’s conception of the world was so close to Christianity that one wonders if the church Fathers had perhaps read the Iranian texts: life is only a passage in which each thought, word, and action determines the individual’s fate in the hereafter, where the God of Good will punish the wicked and reward the virtuous. At the end of time, the dead will be resurrected; the Last Judgment will condemn the bad to Hell, while the good will live in Paradise for all eternity.

Under Zoroaster, the framework of the three ‘Abrahamic’ monotheisms had been erected. The Devil’s birth certificate was filled out by an Iranian prophet.

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Know Your Enemy (Part Four)

{Let us conclude (for now) our brief inquiry into Satan, this time by means of excerpts from Albert Reville’s 1877 work, The Devil: His Origin, Greatness, and Decadence}

In the late 19^th century, Albert Reville surveyed for his readers the havoc which Satan waged upon God’s good creation:

Satan sought to spoil the work of creation and waged war on men whose innocent happiness was insupportable to him. It was he who introduced death with all its horrors.  A multitude of diseases, those especially which through their singularity and the absence of external symptoms defied natural explanations, as madness, epilepsy, St. Vitus's dance, dumbness, certain forms of blindness, &c., were attributed to his agents. Millions of fiends, obedient to his commands, were supposed to stream constantly from the depths of hell, and like the night demons of the old faith preferred, for their haunts, deserts and wildernesses. But there they grew weary, they were thirsty, they wandered about and found no rest; and their great resource was to take up their abode in a human body, that they might absorb its substance and refresh themselves with its blood. Sometimes many of them would occupy the same frame. Hence the demoniacs and the possessed of whom we read so often in the gospel narrative.

Reville, known as an ‘extremist liberal’ theologian, pointed out one of the peculiarities of Christian doctrine: though Satan had been conquered by Christ, he was still running amok and raising, well, hell on earth. As Reville noted:

Nothing did more to increase fear of Satan than vague descriptions of the immensity of his power, and of the risk run by exposure to his attacks; especially as, by a singular contradiction from which the ancient theology never succeeded in extricating itself, the devil, although declared vanquished, overthrown, and rendered powerless by his victor Christ, did not the less maintain his infernal sway over a large majority of mankind. The saints alone could count themselves safe from his ambushes; and, according to the legends which now began to spread, great was the prudence and energy they required to escape him. Everything turned upon this constant state of watchfulness. Baptism dwindled into an exorcism. To become a Christian, was to renounce the devil with his pomps and works. Expulsion from the fold of the Church, whether for immoral behavior or for heterodoxy, was being "delivered over to Satan."

Did the first followers of Jesus consider baptism to have been an exorcism? It was a washing away of sins; it was a public repentance; and it was an infusion of Christ’s Spirit that would start the believer on the path to holiness and immortality. Pauline Christians, though, insisted that Satan ruled the world and held men and women captive from birth, the consequence of Original Sin. Satan therefore had to be evicted from the soul before Christ’s pneuma would deign to enter.

At this point, Albert Reville has had enough of what he sees as theological and doctrinal nonsense:

The truth is that the devil is ridiculous. That being who is presented to us as so cunning, so malicious, so cleverly selfish, who strives unceasingly to carry on the troublesome business of corrupting men's souls, turns out to be very foolish. When, brought down from the heights where poetry and mystery have sometimes succeeded in placing him, he is subjected to close inspection and confronted with plain truth, Satan becomes a mere absurdity; and ever since this has been clearly seen it has become impossible to honor him by acknowledging his real existence.

Like his fellow Frenchman Gerald Messadie, Reville admits the historical influence of the Devil while denying the reality of such an entity. He cites modern cosmologies as having ruled out, once and for all, Satan’s existence:

Ever since a true knowledge of the constitution of the universe has dissipated the allusions which formed an indispensable frame to the picture of the Satan of olden time—a fixed dome above, an earth in the midst, and a hell under the earth—ever since we have been compelled to see God's presence live and move in all things, there is no more room left in the world for the devil. Satan is still tolerated as an expression, a type, a symbol which the language of religion has sanctioned; and this is all. But to allow him any place in civil or domestic codes, to admit him into actual life, this is now quite out of the question: non possumus, “we cannot”.

In other words, if, as the gospels tell us, Jesus defeated Satan, it was an empty victory over an imaginary enemy. Evil remains and will always be with us, as Reville reminds us:

This doctrine of the devil did not solve the problem of the origin of evil; the truth is that it solved nothing. It carried into heaven the problem that seemed insoluble on earth. The mainstay of faith in the devil, or the one constituent of that faith, is the power of evil in and around us.

If, as many believe, God is a projection of our ideals, then Satan is a projection of our dark impulses; both the Deity and his rival, the anti-Deity, are no more than spiritual phantoms conjured from our own imaginations. Maybe, suggested Reville, it's time we stop scaring ourselves to death.  

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Albert Réville - Wikipedia “Albert Réville (1826—1906) was a distinguished French Protestant theologian, known for his ‘extremist’ liberal views.”

Boo!

Wednesday with Pascal: Know Your Enemy (Part Three)

{Pascal the existential Russian blue cat is eager to jump on the ‘Let’s talk about the Devil’ bandwagon. As an antidote to the somewhat smug perspective of C.S. Lewis, Pascal has turned to the late Gerald Messadie’s polemical ‘History of the Devil’.}

Gerald Messadie had no doubt about what the Devil represents, and he was not shy about calling him out on his poor character:

The Devil represents bread without sweat; he has become the god of effortless gain through speculation, drug trafficking, smuggling, prostitution, and theft. At the most fundamental level, he is thus the god of laziness, of sin, of incompetence, and of indifference. He is the secret god of presidents and ministers who consult their astrologers to see what tomorrow will bring. He is the god of businesspeople who rely on insider trading to earn profit.

For Messadie, the Devil seeks to undermine the work ethic, reversing, as it were, the punishment which God inflicted upon Adam and his progeny in Eden. “Bread without sweat” recalls the incident, recounted in the Christian gospels, when Satan tempted Jesus to prove his power by turning stones into bread, which Jesus refused to do either because it would have been too easy or because he wanted to show that Satan wasn’t the boss of him. ¹

For all the opprobrium he heaped upon him, though, did Messadie believe that Satan is real, or does he merely personify behaviors and attitudes that Messadie disliked? ²

Satan has become, at the most elevated level, the inspirer of systematic deconstruction, of derisiveness, of ‘the Void,’ of philosophers who say that reason has been abolished and of aesthetes who say that talent is inferior to the lack of talent (and who, wanting to provoke but succeeding only in revealing the truth about themselves, say that a bicycle wheel is equal to an Attic masterpiece, that a series of recorded door squeaks is equal to a Beethoven quartet—even that a blank canvas is equal to a Veronese.) Satan is the god of nihilism and despair. This is where true Satanism lies—not in the hypocrisies of California sects but in those of the elite.

Messadie here associated Satan with postmodern deconstructionists, cynics, and cultural relativists, which would surely have endeared him—Messadie, not Satan—to conservative culture critics. But, um, again—is this Satan real?

As it turns out, not exactly:

In a singular inversion of roles, after having been born as the defender of the absolute power dreamed of by the Zoroastrian priests, the Devil became the ultimate antisocial agent. The pillar of Christian theologies, he became by his very existence the destroyer of democracies and the precursor of totalitarianism. Having created the figure of Satan, then having that mythology appropriated by modern philosophers, Western religions now find themselves in the position of the sorcerer’s apprentice. They are maintaining a fundamentally pagan myth which was once a totalitarian tool and is, today, an essentially nihilistic portent of revolution. Religions upholding the myth of Satan are sawing through the worm-riddled branch they themselves are supported by—that is, the social order.

Messadie concluded that Satan is in every way the worst possible being imaginable, his only saving grace being that he does not exist. Messadie seemed satisfied that the evidence, or lack thereof, confirmed the mythical nature of the Devil:

Should we believe, then, in the reality of Satan, of demonic possession, of the so-called ‘paranormal’ phenomena that are so abundantly (and smugly) described by Satanists, exorcists, and supernaturalists of every ilk? To consider the supernatural as such: can immaterial forces manifest themselves, and, if so, do they include evil powers? To this day, there is not a single piece of concrete proof for the intervention of such forces, benevolent or malevolent, into history; the most famous historical incidents can be explained without recourse to the supernatural.

Whereas C.S. Lewis suggested that demons had been responsible for a good deal of history, Messadie insisted that “Human beings are responsible for history, and the intrusions of religion into history have all, from the Crusades on, been disastrous. Believing that one defends one’s God with the sword, humanity has spilled oceans of blood—it has done Satan’s work and offended, as deeply as possible, the God of mercy and life. Every religious war is essentially Satanic, as is every act of exclusion. In fact, it is profoundly Satanic to believe in the Devil.” ³

In concluding, Messadie issued a blunt challenge:

We live under the sign of a nonexistent deity cobbled together twenty-six centuries ago by power-hungry Iranian priests. We live under the sign of Satan. Is this our destiny? Are we to let an imaginary monster devour us forever? ⁴

Well--are we? Or should we keep praying to an imaginary Savior to rescue us?

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Gerald Messadié - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

¹ Yet, later in the gospels, we learn that Jesus miraculously fed a crowd of thousands from a few loaves of bread and a handful of fish, thus conceding, despite having told Satan that “Man does not live by bread alone,” that bread, and some fish, were not entirely unnecessary; also conceding, at least implicitly, that he wasn't above the occasional bit of showy magic.

² “We are all someone else’s devil,” wrote Messadie.

³ You see what he did there, right?

⁴ The next band I form will be called Imaginary Monster.

Please allow him to introduce himself...

Know Your Enemy (Part Two)

{In our quest to better understand the Old Enemy, we now turn to one of the great diabologists of recent times, Mr. C.S. Lewis. Lewis' knowledge of demons was displayed most famously in his book 'The Screwtape Letters,' although, sadly, Lewis never revealed his sources.}

“Of devils, Lewis said that there are two equally serious errors: disbelief in them and an “excessive and unhealthy interest in them.” (Bruce Edwards)

C.S. Lewis was one of the most influential Christian apologists of the 20th century, as Bruce Edwards made clear:

The September 8, 1947 cover of Time Magazine improbably depicted the demure C. S. Lewis accompanied by a fiercely impish devil poised on his left shoulder, a caricature of Lewis’ infamous fictional protagonist, Screwtape, AKA, Senior Tempter of Hell. Such was the notoriety and impact of Lewis. Few people in 1947 were writing about demons and their ilk, and still fewer believed in them enough to bother speculating on this question: What if we could see what the temptation of our souls looks like through the eyes of the other side? In other words, what if we could interview a demon? ¹

So far as I know, Lewis did not literally interview a demon, much less Satan himself; but he did offer some perspective on the spiritual Adversary against whom each and every one of us must struggle. For one thing, Lewis reported that “The Devil is a deceiver whose first deception was self-deception. Over time Satan has fallen deeper in delusion, a victim of his own lies and deceptions, and seeks only to devour those who would similarly choose to believe his lies and the lies about themselves that he plants and nurtures.” To be honest, this revelation was old news, at least for Christians, since Jesus had outed Satan as a liar long ago. Did Lewis have anything more interesting to offer?

Well, for one thing, Lewis debunked the notion that Satan was God’s adversary. “Satan is not God’s nemesis,” Lewis explained, because God, as the supreme eternal being, can have no nemesis, no rival. Instead, according to Lewis, Satan was at best an antagonist “of Michael the archangel,” in addition to being the chief source of mankind's woes. 

While Satan's supposedly rebellious nature has earned him admirers (e.g., Saul Alinsky and Hillary Clinton), Lewis insisted that any such admiration would be misplaced: “To admire Satan is to give one’s vote not only for a world of misery, but also for a world of lies and propaganda, of wishful thinking, of incessant autobiography. Yet the choice is possible. Hardly a day passes without some slight movement towards it in each one of us.”

But if Satan is so insignificant and, compared to God, so powerless, what is his appeal? What does he have to offer, and why are so many of us so quick to sign (even in blood) on the dotted line? Perhaps Satan knows us better than we know ourselves, although why that should be the case is unclear; why would God allow Satan access to our hearts and to our hearts' desires? Regardless, in Bruce Edwards’ rephrasing of Lewis, “Temptation is essentially a campaign of distortion, exaggeration, manipulation, lies that tempt the individual one way or another to focus on the self, to become selfish, self-important, preoccupied with one’s own appearance, one’s own standing, a constant appeal to vanity—the beginnings of hell on earth.” 

Lewis’ Satan, then, is not so much terrifying as he is annoyingly and persistently manipulative, less given to cinematic demonic possession than to clever nudges and insinuations, late-night pillow talk, and random acts of temptation. He is sly, perhaps, in that he only offers us what we already want; whether he can deliver it, of course, is the point. Bob Dylan seemed to grasp Satan’s allure: “He's a great humanitarian, he's a great philanthropist / He knows just where to touch you, honey, and how you like to be kissed / He'll put both his arms around you, you can feel the tender touch of the beast / You know that sometimes Satan comes as a man of peace.”

Think of Satan as inflicting damnation by a thousand paper cuts. If that is his strategy, C.S. Lewis believed it has been surprisingly effective:

Demons’ effect on human history has been far greater than that of microbes, though, of course, equally unrecognized. In the light of what we now know, all history will have to be rewritten. ² The real causes of all the principal events are quite unknown to historians; that, indeed, is why history has not yet succeeded in becoming a science.

Demons and microbes are both invisible to the naked eye; the latter, however, can at least be seen through microscopes. In any case, if demons are somehow running the human show, as Lewis suggested, then it's a wonder we have survived this long.  

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The Devil and Mr. Lewis - Official Site | CSLewis.com

¹ Interviewing a demon sounds almost as interesting as interviewing a vampire! I wonder if Tom Cruise would be interested…

² A fair question for Mr. Lewis would have been, "In the light of what we now know about what?"

Screwtape portrait by AfizethArt at Deviant Art

Know Your Enemy (Part One)

{Diabology--the study of the origins, nature, and purposes of the Devil--is a discipline sadly neglected in modern times. While "rationalists" will consider Satan nothing but a projection of our darker impulses, traditional Christianity insisted on the reality of God's eternal archenemy against whom Jesus battled. The Christian gospels claim that Jesus won those battles; two thousand years of subsequent history suggest, however, that the war is not yet decided. In any case, who among us does not find Satan, real or not, an intriguing figure?}

“The Devil has a considerably greater share in the affairs of the world and of the human spirit than is generally believed.” (Giovanni Papini, The Devil)

“Know your enemy” is a maxim attributed to Sun Tzu, author of The Art of War. If one believes—as did Giovanni Papini—that “the human soul is the daily battlefield between God and Satan,” and if one believes as well that the soul is simultaneously “the dwelling of the Divinity and the target of the Evil One,” then one is well advised to know as much as possible about whichever of the protagonists one considers the Adversary. ¹

With that in mind, Papini’s splendid book The Devil assayed to provide much needed intelligence about Satan (aka Old Nick, Lucifer, the Devil, etc.), the better to combat his wiles. The first thing to understand, wrote Papini, was that the Devil rules over this world and possesses human beings as his slaves, prisoners, and hostages. He cited the theologian Matthias Joseph Scheeben: “Through Adam’s sin, humanity became the prisoner and slave of the Demon. Humanity today is subject to him, belongs to him, and constitutes his kingdom on earth.” Papini admitted that the situation described by Scheeben seems to outrage the conscience—at least, the conscience of those who lack discernment. “It will strike simple minds as unthinkable that a loving and merciful Father should hand over to his Enemy those who were created and destined by Him for salvation. They will be shocked at the thought that the Evil One has received as his absolute property, as slaves and hostages, all the progeny of that man, Adam, who so miserably fell.”

Like it or not, said Papini, we had best face the facts:

The astonishment of simple people carries no weight before the mysteries of inscrutable divine law. Men are prisoners and slaves of the Devil; this world is the Kingdom of Satan. There is no help for it; whoever does not consider and believe himself to be subject to the Demon cannot be called a Christian. For this imprisonment, this enslavement of ours was not entirely done away with by the Redemption; even today, almost all of mankind, including the greater number of so-called Christians, is the slave and prisoner of Satan. This is confirmed a thousand-fold by events happening in the world today, where the heralds and couriers of the Antichrist have already appeared.

“So-called Christians”? To whom was Papini referring? “Among those who call themselves Christians,” he asked, “how many are there who are Christians in name only? The majority of those baptized [as Christians], upon reaching adulthood, do not keep faith with the baptismal promises made in their name; in one way or another, they give in to the blandishments and temptations of Satan.”

And those blandishments and temptations are literally everywhere, like Satan himself:

The Devil is everywhere. Who does not remember the famous lines from the medieval writer Carducci: ‘Does the poor little nun long for a stalk of endive? In that stalk dwells Satan. Is the monk beguiled by a little bird that sings outside his solitary cell? In that song lurks Satan.’ ² If the Devil is everywhere hidden and present, who will be able to save men from contact with him, from his contagion, his poisonous breath? Satan can be nesting even inside the prayer books and in the image painted above the altar.

Papini then reminded the understandably terrified reader that God, too, is everywhere, meaning that “the One and the Other may be side by side, even within the same subject, even within the very soul of man. But,” Papini wondered, “is such a cohabitation of opposites in every part of the universe thinkable, or even possible?” Papini knew that he, like every Christian thinker before him, was treading perilously close to the dangerous ground of metaphysical dualism, espoused by Zoroaster and by the ancient Gnostics, and expressed in modern times by Philip K. Dick: “One Mind there is, but under it two principles contend. The Mind lets in the light, then the dark, in interaction, and so time is generated.”

If, as Scripture says, we are created in the image and likeness of God, can it be that the duality within our souls reflects a fundamental duality within God Himself, and that the battle we wage daily between our good and evil impulses is nothing but a microcosmic reenactment of God’s own existential struggle?

I have encountered stranger notions. 

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Giovanni Pipini, The Devil (1954)

¹ Far be it from me to take sides!

² Full disclosure: I do not remember Carducci’s “famous lines”. For that matter, I have no idea who Carducci was nor any interest in finding out.

Sunday Sermon: The Demonic Factor

{“Mental illness is not funny,” Philip Dick noted somberly in one of his novels. At the same time, explanations for mental disorders are frequently hilarious. In the following excerpt, Rodger Bufford, a Christian psychiatrist, discusses Satan’s role in madness, while dodging the obvious question: what would psychiatry have to say about a patient who claims to be the Son of God and who tells his followers to eat his flesh and drink his blood?}

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“Demonic influence and mental disorders are conceptually distinct phenomena, but in view of the extensive overlap among symptoms, it may be difficult in a given instance to make a firm conclusion regarding which phenomenon is present.” (Rodger Bufford)

Rodger Bufford, from “Demonic Influence and Mental Disorders” (1988):

Demon possession was a widely accepted explanation for disturbed behavior from antiquity through the middle of the nineteenth century. The scientific revolution and the adoption of naturalistic reductionism around the close of the nineteenth century left no room for the supernatural or spiritual. Consequently, what had formerly been viewed as demonic influence became "nothing but" mental illness or mental disorders.

In exploring the relationship between demonic influences and mental disorders, we must remember that the question is not whether Satan is involved in mental disorders; rather, it is a question of how he is involved. Mental disorders, like any other human malady, came with the Fall and the entrance of sin into the world. All human suffering can be traced, in part, to that momentous event. Satan's role in the Fall, and thus in all earthly ill, must be acknowledged. Discerning the means of his involvement in mental disorders is the issue at hand.

Historically, the predominant view has been that demon possession and mental disorders are alternative explanations of the same phenomena. We need first to ask whether, on the basis of their respective symptoms alone, we can tell the difference between demon possession and mental illness. As we examine the relationship of demonic influence and possession to mental disorders, it is important to keep in mind several considerations. The first consideration must be that of distinguishing among spiritual, psychological, and physical problems.

Second, given our assumption that mental disorders and demon possession both occur, we must realize that a given person may show any of the following conditions: 1) physical disorder alone; 2) demon possession alone; 3) mental disorder alone; 4) a combination of physical disorder, demon possession, and mental disorder. Demon possession is understood to be a spiritual problem, while a mental disorder is a psychological problem.

Third, it is important to remember that Satan was involved in the entrance of sin into our world, and thus in the many changes that resulted. Whether the problem is spiritual, psychological, physical, or a combination of these, Satan is nonetheless involved.

Even in the time of Christ there appears to have been confusion regarding the distinctions between mental illness and demonic influence (and these were both confused with signs of the power of God). [Donald] Bloesch proposes a distinction in terms of the mind and the will. Examination of mental disorders suggests that in some mental disorders the will may be affected; examples include severe depression and perhaps alcoholism and drug dependence. In other mental disorders the primary disturbance is one of affect or emotion, as in the major affective disorders, and most neurotic disorders. In practice, however, people function as wholes, with a continuous interplay among mind, will and emotions in a manner that makes it impossible to sustain the functional distinction required by Bloesch's formulation.

In practical terms we must observe the person who shows disturbed behavior and determine whether or not a demon is present. Demons do not readily reveal their presence for analysis and treatment; if we knew beforehand that the person had a demon, then there would be no difficulty in distinguishing demonic influence from mental disorders. Comparison of the two conditions reveals that virtually all the symptoms associated with demonic influence are duplicated in at least one mental disorder as defined by DSM-111-R.¹ Supernatural knowledge is often claimed by individuals with the hallucinations and delusions of psychotic disorders, especially paranoid schizophrenics. Exploits of unusual strength and endurance may be observed in manic episodes and in catatonic conditions (where normal fatigue reactions seem to be absent). Nakedness or deterioration of dress and appearance is common in [those with] psychotic disorders, especially schizophrenia.

Speaking in a different voice, and even the appearance of two or more distinct personalities are classified as Dissociative Disorders (e.g., Multiple Personality Disorder). Bizarre behavior is characteristic of all the psychotic conditions. Finally, violent behavior is found in certain psychotic conditions, especially Delusional (paranoid) Disorder, as well as in Intermittent Explosive Disorder, Antisocial Personality, and Conduct Disorders of Childhood and Adolescence. Those who are demon-possessed sometimes admit that fact. Claims to be demon-possessed are specifically included as a consideration in the diagnosis of Multiple Personality Disorder. Finally, persons who are demon-possessed often show involvement in occult practices; while this activity is not a defining symptom for any specific mental disorder, it seems likely that it could be observed in persons diagnosed with a number of disorders. ²

In general, it seems safe to presume that demonic influence is relatively independent of biological causes. If this is true, it follows that as evidence of organic cause increases, the likelihood of demonic influence as an explanation for behavioral disturbance is correspondingly decreased. It is noteworthy that those mental disorders that are characterized by the most prominent disturbances of thought and behavior are also the conditions to which biological factors have been most strongly linked. This suggests that psychotic manifestations—mental disorders in which disturbed religious ideation is quite common—are unlikely to be the result of demonic influence because of the high probability of organic causes such as senile dementia. Thus, the deranged person who claims to be Jesus Christ, Napoleon, or Satan is more likely to have a severe organic brain disorder or schizophrenic disorder than a demon.

Two important cautionary notes must be sounded here. First, because all aspects of the person interact, it is possible that malfunction in one of them may result in greater vulnerability to stressors that could interfere with functioning in other dimensions. Just as a physical illness makes a person more prone to depression, depression may make a person more likely to become demonically influenced. The fact that one problem leads to another does not negate the value of distinguishing among the conditions, both for conceptualization and treatment. Second, we have seen that Satan is able to produce even physical disorders, as well as physical healings. Thus, while the presence of physical factors often makes the probability of demon possession seem less likely, it cannot clearly rule out the demonic factor.

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Demonic Influence and Mental Disorders - Chapter 8 of "Counseling and the Demonic" (georgefox.edu)

¹ “DSM III-r” refers to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, often known as “the psychiatrists’ Bible,” possibly because psychiatrists, when dealing with especially difficult patients, will sometimes thrust the DSM at them while chanting “The power of psychiatry compels you! In the name of Freud, Jung, and all the saints, I command you!”   

² Can a demon-possessed person who has been dispossessed by means of an exorcism subsequently be repossessed?

“Does your head sometimes slowly rotate 360 degrees on your neck while you hover three feet above your bed? You might have a demon!”

Sunday Sermon: "Sympathy for the Devil"

Sympathy for the Devil (The Rolling Stones)

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
I've been around for a long, long year
Stole many a man's soul and faith
I was 'round when Jesus Christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate

Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you is the nature of my game

I stuck around St. Petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the Czar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain
I rode a tank, held a general's rank
When the Blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank

Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name
But what's puzzling you is the nature of my game

I watched with glee while your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades for the gods they made
I shouted out, "Who killed the Kennedys?"
Well, after all, it was you and me
Let me please introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste
And I laid traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reach Bombay

Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name
But what's confusin' you is just the nature of my game

Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails, just call me Lucifer
'Cause I'm in need of some restraint
So if you meet me, have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or I'll lay your soul to waste

Pleased to meet you, hope you guessed my name,
But what's puzzling you is the nature of my game

___________________________________ 

[Written by Mick Jagger & Keith Richards]

Originally released on the album Beggars Banquet

Original: (34) The Rolling Stones - Sympathy For The Devil (Official Lyric Video) - YouTube

Cover #1: (34) The Big Push - Sympathy for the devil (The Rolling Stones cover) - YouTube

Cover #2: (34) Sympathy for the Devil by Erica Blinn - YouTube

Wednesday with Pascal: Refusing Caesar

{Whether because of his Russian heritage or his existential stance, Pascal the existential Russian blue cat is sinking his teeth and his claws into the Great Refusal. Having previously noted that, in Christian tradition, Lucifer had pride of place as the inventor of Disobedience ^TM, Pascal now remarks the irony that the early Christians themselves embraced Disobedience ^TM (civil, of course) as a virtue, thus confirming that the merits of Disobedience ^TM are in the eye of the beholder.} 

If Lucifer was, as Saul Alinsky claimed, “the first rebel,” should we then assume that all rebellion, every non serviam, is demonic?  The sainted apostle Paul explicitly told the members of his ecclesia, “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.” ¹ That would seem to settle the issue, at least for Christians: Do what thou art told. Thou shalt not refuse authority.

Yet Paul, hardly a model of civic decorum himself, referred on more than one occasion to Satan as “the ruler of this world,” and it seems unlikely that Paul expected people to obey Satan; in fact, he stated, “Do not be conformed to this world,” which complicated the idea of submission to the authorities. Military service, holding public office, the payment of taxes, attendance at theater or at other entertainments: all these ways of being “conformed to this world” were questioned by Christians at one time or another.  

Christians were a defiant lot from the start. While claims of widespread Christian martyrdom in the first few centuries CE have been exaggerated, there is ample evidence that, despite Paul’s admonitions, followers of Christ frequently ran into trouble with authorities. Moreover, the trouble was caused in many cases by Christians who stubbornly asserted a form of “Non serviam.”

It is true that, by and large, the first Christians were decent, law-abiding citizens of the various cities in which they resided, dutiful subjects of Rome who, as Paul had instructed, paid their taxes and followed the laws. The “non serviam” issue arose when Christians were called upon (along with their non-Christian neighbors) to participate in civic rituals that involved honoring the Roman emperor, who was, technically, held to be a god. Followers of Jesus refused to take part because (they said) it would have violated their monotheistic beliefs.

Traditionally, Rome had been tolerant of the myriad religious beliefs and practices found within the expansive borders of empire, so long as such beliefs and practices did not disturb the peace or scandalize the citizenry. ² The fact that Jesus had been crucified under Roman law as a criminal inevitably raised suspicions about the loyalties of a cult that worshiped him, rather than the emperor, as a god; even so, Christianity, while being widely reviled, was not consequently outlawed. ³ Christians were allowed to openly proclaim their faith, and to gather for their agape services, despite rumors that such services featured cannibalism and incest; but, like adherents of other faiths, Christians were still expected to demonstrate publicly their loyalty to Rome.

Christians were not averse to affirming their civic allegiance. When pressed, they would verbally insist on their credentials as citizens, pointing to good works they did in the community; but they would not offer the ritual honors to Caesar. Exasperated, the Roman authorities sometimes bent over backwards to accommodate Christian sensitivities; in essence, they would tell Christians that they could offer sacrifice while maintaining mental reservations, or crossing their fingers, or muttering under their breath. ⁴ Weary magistrates implored them, explaining that the ritual was just a formality: Just make the gesture, they said, and be done with it. We would rather not punish you. We don’t care what you really believe.

A significant number of Christians refused the offer, a testament either to their honesty or their obduracy. Their stance was analogous, perhaps, to 21^st-century Americans who refuse to stand for the national anthem, to salute the flag, or to recite the Pledge of Allegiance (worse, to recite it while deliberately omitting the words “under God”). The earliest followers of Jesus were unwilling to compromise on the issue. The Roman authorities, on the other hand, had to consider the potential reaction of the non-Christian masses to this blatant public defiance; in the end, they had to insist, and then they had to enforce that insistence—however cruelly.

What, you may ask, would Jesus have done? Would he have applauded those who suffered (or even invited) torture and execution rather than engage in a perfunctory and meaningless civic ceremony? We cannot know, of course, but we find a clue of sorts in the gospel of Mark:

Some of the Pharisees and Herodians went to Jesus to catch him in his words. They said, ‘Teacher, we know you are a man of integrity…you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay or shouldn’t we?’

‘Why are you trying to trap me?’ Jesus asked. ‘Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.’ They brought him the coin, and he asked them, ‘Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?’

‘Caesar’s,’ they replied.

Then Jesus said to them, ‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.’

For Jesus, tokens of imperial authority were evidently meaningless, and certainly not worth taking a stand over or becoming embroiled in controversy. Would he have felt the same about the mandatory civic rituals and their dutiful gestures of obeisance to Caesar? There is no way for us to know, but Jesus’ followers had no doubt about what was expected of them: nothing short of a Great Refusal would suffice, a non serviam to Caesar, his empire, and his pretensions.

___________________

Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire - Wikipedia

¹ Paul goes on to say (in Romans) that “the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing,” a remark so ostentatiously obsequious (and so unlike Paul) as to suggest that Paul, sending this letter to Rome ahead of his arrival, was trying to scotch rumors that he and his fellow Christians were troublemakers or subversives of some kind. He had adopted a similar tactic in advising believers at Thessalonica to avoid rocking the civic boat: “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders.”   

² Or frighten the horses.

³ It was sporadically banned, and local persecutions flared up around the empire from time to time. The idea that the earliest Christians were forced into “catacombs” en masse to practice their faith is simply untrue.

⁴ A tactic famously adopted by Galileo, who, having been forced by Church authorities to cease promoting his heretical notion that the earth moves around the sun, was said to have muttered, as he left the ecclesiastical proceedings, “Eppur si muove”: “And yet it [the earth] moves.”

Wednesday with Pascal: "Non Serviam"

{Pascal the existential Russian blue cat, having returned home from an extended (and still unexplained) stay in Montana’s tri-city area, joins our conversation about the Great Refusal.}

“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” (Genesis 1)

“It may be the Devil / or it may be the Lord / but you gotta serve somebody.” (Dylan)

“Non serviam.” (Latin: “I will not serve.” Attributed to Lucifer, but more likely from either Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, or Yogi Berra.)

The first and greatest of all Great Refusals took place approximately a split second after God fashioned Adam, at which point Lucifer promptly opted out. As the sainted Gregory of Nyssa (late 4^th century CE) explained:

“When creation was already in existence, and the Power [God] which rules the universe had assigned to each of the angelic powers a certain activity in the constitution of the universe, there was a certain power [Lucifer] which was appointed to maintain and govern the region about the earth; this power had been equipped for this very task by the Power that governs the universe. Then there was that figure molded of earth, a representation of the supreme Power: this living creature was Man. In him there was the godlike beauty of the intelligible nature, blended with a certain ineffable potency. ¹ That angelic power to whom was assigned the government of the world took it amiss and found it intolerable that, out of the nature subject to him, there should be manifested any being resembling the supreme dignity.” 

It was one thing to serve God, who, after all, had created everything in the first place and thereby earned respect; but Lucifer drew the line at having to serve man. ² St. Paul would later emphasize that homo sapiens, having been redeemed and spiritualized by Christ, would eventually be called upon to “judge angels”; in fact, homo sapiens had been superior to angels from the first, only to forfeit that status at the urging of a talking serpent smuggled into the Garden by Lucifer.

According to the early Church Fathers, the cause of Lucifer’s fall was not pride but envy—envy of man. Irenaeus was the first to charge the motivation of the demonic ambush of the first couple: “The Devil was one of the angels, prince of the air about us; he turned apostate and rebel against divine law when he grew jealous of man.” Tertullian concurred: “The Devil allowed himself to be overcome by impatience when he saw that the Lord had made all creatures subordinate to His image, that is, to man. Satan ensnared man because he envied him.”

Non serviam: “I will not serve.” It was not God to whom Lucifer refused to bend the knee; it was Adam. However, some commentators asserted that Lucifer had been in rebellion even before the creation of man:

Aurelius Clemens Prudentius (4^th—5^th century CE) claimed that the Devil attempted to convince the other Angels that he was author and creator of himself and that he therefore did not owe his existence to God. Indeed, according to Prudentius, he boasted of having created matter, bringing it forth from his own body. From Prudentius’ text, one clearly understands that Lucifer did not believe his own boast; he was neither so dull-witted nor mad. His absurd claims were merely impudent lies to justify both his ingratitude toward God and his subsequent revolt.

Among Church authorities, it was Origen who first affirmed that Lucifer, once a heavenly spirit, had fallen into the pit for having wished to make himself the equal of God. Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, and others less illustrious accepted Origin’s view, and thus Satan—the Accuser—was also called by the name Lucifer, the bringer of light, the bright one. ³

“Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven,” Milton’s Lucifer argued, and he quickly got his opportunity. Whatever his motive and whatever the timing of his “non serviam,” Lucifer fell from God’s favor; he was renamed “Satan” (meaning “the adversary” or “the obstructor”), and his subsequent career has consisted of opposing (refusing) God’s entire creation. It is no longer only Man that draws Satan’s ire, but existence itself; ultimately, Satan’s Refusal is directed against God’s verdict that “all that [God] had made…was very good.” In practice, as Jeffrey Burton Russell puts it, “Satan’s basic function is to say to God, ‘My will, not yours, be done.’”

Over the millennia that have elapsed since his fateful decision, Satan has become the archetypical “bad boy,” the prototype for rebels (e.g., Marlon Brando in The Wild Ones), an icon of Marxists (Saul Alinsky called Lucifer “the very first radical”), an indispensable mainstay of Christian theodicy (“The Devil makes us do it!”), ⁴ and an inexplicably charismatic literary character (e.g., Paradise Lost). In modern times, however, he has become something of a joke, or so it is claimed:

The truth is that the devil is ridiculous. That being who is presented to us as so cunning, so malicious, so cleverly selfish, who strives unceasingly to carry on the troublesome business of corrupting men's souls, turns out to be very foolish. When, brought down from the heights where poetry and mystery have sometimes succeeded in placing him, he is subjected to close inspection and confronted with plain truth, Satan becomes a mere absurdity. ⁵  

Ridiculous or not, Satan set the pattern for the Great Refusal: “Non serviam.” Anyone who wants to blame Karl Marx or Herbert Marcuse for stirring up trouble on earth needs to go back and re-read Scripture. 

______________________

¹ “Godlike beauty blended with a certain ineffable potency” is the most flattering description of a human being I have ever encountered. Who, besides Adonis, could live up to it?

² “It’s a cookbook!” (Twilight Zone, Episode 89)  

³ Giovanni Papini, The Devil

⁴ Not that attributing evil to Satan gets God off the hook. Albert Reville: “This doctrine of the devil did not solve the problem of the origin of evil; the truth is that it solved nothing. It carried into heaven the problem that seemed insoluble on earth.” If anything, projecting “original sin” onto the metaphysical plane intensified the conundrum: how could an angel of God have gone so wrong? Where did Lucifer’s inordinate pride come from? 

⁵ Albert Reville, The Devil