Blabbering inspired by 'The Devil' by Jeffrey Burton Russell:
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| From movie 'Legend' |
If I think about the devil the first things that come to mind are contemporary
movies, literature (Inferno, Faust, Master and Margarita, Paradise Lost) and
Medieval Art. If I am asked for his origins I would have to stop for a second
before saying New Testament and then think hard if there is a devil or a devil
like figure in the Old Testament to remember Satan in the Book of Job. As for
ancient polytheistic faiths, they usually have rulers of the underworld but such
divinities were not The Devil per se.
But then so isn’t Satan in Job, if anything he resembles God’s pub buddy with
whom God makes a drunken bet. Its far later that we come to the sinister Devil,
and the devil found in contemporary popular culture has close to nothing to do
with the Bible. So how does the devil come in to being?
In short and liberally paraphrasing J.B. Russell’s (JBR) argument: we
created him because we could not come to terms with god being Good and Evil at the
same time (from my point of view this is a testimony to human egoism and self-righteousness,
after all we created god in our image or he created us in his, either way if
God is Good and Evil it makes humans Good and Evil, and for some reasons we
find it hard to come to terms with the darker side of our nature).
JBR argues that the Devil is a personification of Evil then traces how evil
became personified. It’s a fascinating story how polytheistic faiths and
Judaism at its earliest stages could deal with the idea that god is good and
bad in Isaiah 45:7 God proclaims that he created both Good and Evil:
I form light and create darkness,
I make weal and create woe;
I the Lord do all these things.
Yet as a religion developed there raised a need to explain evil and usually
part of the explanation was differentiating it from God. It happened in the early
Near Eastern religions, it happened in Egypt, and Greece, and Judaism. Reading thought
JBR’s account is like watching trees lose their leaves in autumn. It happens so
gradually that you don’t notice until one day you wake up and the trees stand
in the nude.
Dualistic thinking comes gradually; slowly grey is divided in to white and
black, a human into flesh and spirit. First God is both: good and bad, then
there is an angel/god/semi-god/god’s minion who does his dirty work (for some reason
I always think of Matt Damon in Dogma)
and before you know it you have two opposing powers.
What I personally find interesting is how Christianity allows the devil to
exist, because it is in the Devil that it finds its end. When the Devil was
created a grave was dug up for every monotheistic faith. If the Christian God
is wholly Good and the Devil is wholly Bad it puts God and the Devil as
different sides of the same coin meaning that it ceases to be monotheistic and becomes
dualistic. It is not only one God but God and Devil and this is the end of
monotheism.
And now I cannot wait to get my hands on theological works to see elaborate
arguments filled with ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ that try to keep Christianity
monotheistic while proclaiming the reality of the Devil. Any suggestions where
to start?
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