The Devil

Satan, I know thy strength, and thou

know'st mine,

Neither our own, but given . . .

--Paradise Lost

When the Devil comes up in conversation, modern Christians have a tendency to tuck up their skirts and scurry to the shelter of safer doctrinal topics like the brotherhood of man or the Sermon on the Mount. In a book called Satan (Sheed & Ward; $5.50), newly published in the U.S., a group of scholars under the editorship of Father Bruno de Jesus-Marie, a French Carmelite, have made a frontal attack on the question of what the Devil is and what he should mean to a Christian.

The 30 essays in the book jump from the theological aspects of evil to the psychology of witchcraft and demonic possession. Tolerantly and patiently written, they draw in their sum an interesting picture of a basic Christian doctrine which has had more than its share of rough handling.

The idea of an Evil Being is as basic as belief in a supreme God. Devils were a keystone of belief among the Aztecs, the Assyrians and the ancient Chinese. In the Buddhist scriptures, the Devil Mara appears at the head of an army of demons with "bodies of flame . .. with the skin of oxen, asses, boars . . . spitting snake venom--and swallowing balls of fire."

The Christian view of Satan is no less fanciful. In Dante's Divine Comedy he is meticulously described as a giant with three heads (colored red, yellow and black respectively). In the hands of Milton and Goethe, he became successively a tragic hero and a debonair, reasonable-seeming man of the world. At 20th century masquerade parties and in subway headache ads, the Devil generally wears a red union suit and wields a large pitchfork.

Holes in a Sponge. This popularization has only made his real nature more obscure. Satan, as his current biographers believe, is literally "a fallen angel," a pure spirit without a body who tempts man to sin. He is not the principle of Evil, since Evil is itself a negative quality, i.e., merely the lack of Good in God's imperfect creatures. As French Historian Henri-Irenee Marrou explains it, it is like the holes in a sponge. "Evil," he continues, "is something that need not have existed ... It reveals in all its depth and ambivalence the mystery of liberty . . . Satan, an angel, is the free being who first chose to move away from the Source of all being and towards the nothingness from which he had been drawn."

True to this idea, early Christian art portrayed the Devil as a fine-looking angel, with only a slightly dark coloring to suggest his fall from grace. The reason for this characterization: "True Christianity's . . . refusal to give a positive character to evil."

Up to modern times, Catholics and Protestants generally kept up a lively acquaintance with the Devil. The 16th century Catechism of St. Peter Canisius mentions the Devil more often than it mentions Christ. Martin Luther thought of Satan as a very personal antagonist--one real enough to hurl an inkpot at, as legend has it he did.

The authors of Satan see no reason to doubt the historical evidences of the Devil's existence--from witchcraft to the temptations of the saints. Writes the late Father Herbert Thurston, S.J., in his essay: "That such a thing as witchcraft exists or has existed in the world no Christian can deny who believes his Bible to be the inspired Word of God. It is impossible to suppose that the story of the witch of Endor [7 Kings 28: 7-25], of Simon Magus* [Acts 8: 9-24] ... are to be understood merely as allegories."

Exorcists & Psychiatrists. While sticking up for the existence of demonic possession, the authors readily concede that many people reportedly "possessed by the Devil" probably belong in the psychiatrist's consulting room, not the chapel. The frantic witch burnings of the 16th century, furthermore, in which Protestants and Catholics participated with equal zest, are explained in Satan largely as the products of their times. This heyday of witch burnings, black Masses (i.e., profane renderings of the Catholic Mass) and Devil worship, writes Belgian Scholar Emile Brouette, represented "the dawn of the false empire of Satan in a Europe gripped by religious and moral crisis and a prey to social unrest and political insecurity."

Nowadays, there are few cases of Satan's direct "interference" in human affairs. The rite of exorcism is still authorized (in the Greek Orthodox as well as the Roman Catholic Church) for the purpose of driving out the Devil from a possessed person. But almost no cases of a real "possession" occur. Contributor Joseph de Tonquedec, S.J., designated as the Grand Exorcist of the Archdiocese of Paris, has not come across a case of pure possession in 20 years.

Has the Devil disappeared? Answers Father Thurston: "His tactics must be expected to change as the tone of men's minds changes . . . When the belief in God was too firmly rooted to be assailed with any hope of success, it may have suited the, Devil's purpose best to inflame the passions ... by the arts and illusions of witchcraft. In our own day, when faith is fast decaying and the greed of knowledge is keen, it may pay him better to foster such vague cults as Theosophy and Spiritualism."

Louvre Curator Germain Bazin adds his own comment on Satan in the 20th century: "Never before has Satan had such powerful means at his disposal: he now has his death factories, laboratories of suffering in which human nature can be tortured, disfigured and degraded . . . Dispossessed of nature, his former kingdom, Lucifer now seems to have installed himself at the very center of human intelligence, which has been far too ready to put itself on a level with God, playing with the forces it has mastered without having the humility to admit that the total chain of cause and effect must always remain beyond its comprehension."

* In the King James version: Simon the Sorcerer.

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