THERE is a black stain on the wall of Wartburg Castle, in
Saxony, where, we are told, Martin Luther, during his stay there,
threw an inkpot at the Devil.
How far Lucifer has fallen since then! In the Middle Ages, he
stalked the earth incarnate, doing all manner of mischief, from
stealing eggs to making women infertile. These days, it seems, the
most he can manage is temptation, spiritual malaise, and breaking
the overhead projector in Charismatic churches in the middle of
"Shine, Jesus, shine".
THE Evil One has changed in character, looks, and M.O. as much
as anyone who has been around for millennia. In his first dealings
with humanity, he seemed to be far from an omnipresent force of
evil. In the Hebrew scriptures, his most notable appearance is in
the Book of Job, where, instead of the sworn enemy of God, plotting
against him from hell, he appears to be a civil servant in the
divine court.
Perhaps his policy advice - the affliction of the righteous - is
of questionable benevolence, but, if so, he has to share that black
mark with the Lord, who follows his advice. If the buck stops
anywhere, it stops there.
Considering his importance to subsequent Christian theology, it
is remarkable how little the Old Testament found for Satan to do.
Its writers seem happy to credit whatever is disagreeable in the
world to God, leaving Satan with a walk-on part. Even his
supposedly epoch-making role in Eden is given not to an infernal
spirit, but to a talking snake.
THE New Testament promoted the Devil to be the opponent of
Christ and the Church, now with an army of angels working under
him; and the experience of the Evil One became vital to Christian
spirituality.
In the Gospels, Jesus talks of the Devil's being responsible for
illness as well as demon-possession, and for tempting people away
from the Good News, often working through his demons. Overcoming
diabolical temptation is Christ's initiation; at its height, he
sees Satan "fall like lightning from heaven", and, all the while,
there is eternal fire prepared for him and his angels. Even here,
though, there are glimpses of Satan's work as a tester on God's
behalf, as when Jesus says: "Satan has asked to sift all of you as
wheat."
In the Epistles, because of their pastoral concern, the main
focus is on the Devil as a tempter. James pictures him as a bully:
resist him, and he will flee. Paul says that he "masquerades as an
angel of light", so that resistance requires not just a good will,
but vigilance and wisdom.
Paul blames the Devil for blocking his travel arrangements, and
for his mysterious "thorn in the flesh", although these things are
ultimately part of God's plan. Equally mysterious is Paul's policy
of handing over a backslider "to Satan for the destruction of the
flesh; so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord".
The appearance that captured Christian imaginations most,
however, is in the Book of Revelation, where Satan comes as a
dragon. He and his angels fight the army of Michael, and are thrown
out of heaven - not into hell, but on to the earth, where they wage
war against the Church.
He sends great beasts to rule the earth, to deceive people into
false worship, and to attack true believers. He is then thrown into
the abyss for 1000 years of peace and truth, before returning for a
final doomed attack, after which he is thrown into a lake of
burning sulphur, to be tormented for ever.
Darren Oldridge, a lecturer in history at the University of
Worcester, and the author of The Devil: A very short introduction
(OUP, 2012), has followed Satan's career closely. He suggests that
the changes in his job description followed changes in people's
perception of God.
"In the period between the Old and New Testaments," he says,
"there emerges the idea of the wholly benevolent God, who is all
goodness and light. So the figure of 'the Satan' in the OT, who
works for God and wants to do good, is transmogrified into an enemy
of God who wants to do bad."
Paradoxically, while the personality and motivation of the Devil
changed so drastically, the part he played in the divine scheme of
things, as someone who works for God, stayed much the same, thanks
to the developing doctrine of providence. "The Devil no longer
wants to work for God," Dr Oldridge explains, "but what he does
cannot happen if God does not permit it - and presumably wish it -
to happen.
"What he does is terrible, because he always wants to harm, and
God allows him to do it - not because God wants to harm, but
because he wants to help, and yet understands that you sometimes
need to use an evil agent to bring about good. It's a beautifully
settled theology that means the Devil and God have a difficult
working relationship."
As Goethe's Mephistopheles puts it: "I am part of that power
which eternally wills evil and eternally works good."
IN THE Early Church, Satan took on a great deal of work.
Theologically, he bore the title "the author of evil". He became
the custodian and authorised torturer of the damned, again doing
God's dirtiest work for him, despite the fact that the Book of
Revelation says that the flames of hell are for the destruction of
the Devil and his angels themselves.
He became central to the story of salvation: the cross was seen
as God's payment of a ransom to the Devil for human souls.
Throughout, the mainstream Church has taught that the power of
the Evil One is limited. It was heretical groups, such as certain
Gnostics, and later the Cathars, who went further, and made him
equal and co-eternal with God, his darkness as fundamental a part
of reality as God's light. For the orthodox, he was a created
being; he had a beginning, and his downfall was certain.
But the theologians underestimated the power of iconography and
imagination. Art - and perhaps human experience - demands a truly
threatening enemy. Medieval churchgoing meant being confronted each
week with a graphic depiction of what was to come: a ladder up to
heaven on one side, the jaws of hell on the other. It is no wonder
that dualism took hold then, and has never released its grip.
The Devil's assaults on the saints became spectacular.
Athanasius's biography states that, when St Antony went to live as
a hermit in the Sahara, he faced three Satanic onslaughts: sexual
temptation; physical beating; and, finally, attacks by wild
animals. Christ's threefold temptation had escalated into physical
assaults.
But, again, Satan's machinations ended up only serving the
purposes of God. After 20 years, just like Job, St Antony emerged
from solitary confinement to heal, teach, and lead fellow monks.
But guess which episode in his life the artists chose to
portray.
DR OLDRIDGE sees another change of direction at start of the
Reformation period: the spiritualisation of the Devil's work, which
again mirrors changes in Christians' experience of God. "The
Reformation introduced a more intimate relationship with God," he
says, "and with that came a more intimate relationship with the
Devil.
"Especially in Puritanism, there's the idea that the Devil makes
his nest in the human heart, and tries to exploit all our
weaknesses. He ceased to be the grotesque figure you see in the
paintings of Giotto, with a great consuming mouth, jamming the
bodies of sinners inside it. He became pre-eminently a tempter,
disguising wicked thoughts as good."
In the secular West today, of course, the Devil has a much less
significant position. Partly, this is because God himself is less
regarded, but Dr Oldridge reckons that Satan has declined further
and faster. He suggests that it may be because God is a universal
figure, recognised by diverse religions and by those with no
religion in particular, and does not require a Christian framework,
whereas the Devil is a specifically Christian character. You can
have God without a Devil, but it does not work the other way
round.
OF COURSE, the Evil One survives in popular culture. The 1970s
was a boom time with films such as The Omen and The Exorcist, and
the rock band Black Sabbath. He is still a stock character in
cartoons, perched on the shoulders of those he is tempting, or
pitchforking bankers in the hereafter. But this makes him a rather
risible figure, a far cry from the days of his leading roles in
such serious dramas as Paradise Lost and Faust.
There is some evidence that belief in the Devil may be
recovering - in the United States, at least. In Gallup surveys
throughout the 1990s, between 52 and 65 per cent of respondents
said that they believed in the Devil; in the past decade, the
figure has risen to between 68 and 70 per cent. (One caveat: in the
1990s, the question was asked in the context of belief in witches,
reincarnation, and ghosts; since 2000, it has been asked alongside
questions of belief in God and heaven, perhaps making it more
plausible by association.)
Today, even Christians are less likely to give the Devil his due
than in the days when church leaders threw inkpots at him. Rudolf
Bultmann declared: "Now that the forces and the laws of nature have
been discovered, we can no longer believe in spirits, whether good
or evil." C. S. Lewis, who emphatically did believe in the Devil
and demons, noted that their existence was not the subject of any
creeds, and was thus inessential to the faith.
But the theological writer Theo Hobson argues that, even for
liberal Christians, the reality of the Devil is - or should remain
- a central part of the faith. "The rhetoric of war against the
Devil is pretty basic to the message of Jesus," he says. "It's one
of the hardest things to interpret rationally, but because of that
it anchors you in the ritual/cultic otherness of Christianity, and
stops you drifting into rational humanism."
Similarly, Dr Oldridge sees the idea of Satan as a sophisticated
understanding of the problems of life, containing insights that we
lose at our peril: "One is that we are not free agents. We might
feel that we are, but our choices are influenced by forces outside
our control, and it is possible to live in an evil environment that
can make us do terrible things. The Devil uses not just
supernatural agency, but the things of this world.
"The other is that Satan comes as an angel of light. He doesn't
tempt people to do bad because they want to do bad; his preferred
method is to make people do bad things because they think they're
doing good."
Even for people who would scorn the idea of the Devil, Dr
Oldridge notes, a similar idea persists, but is transferred to
fellow humans. "The narrative role of 'The Enemy of All That's
Good' is one that people still seem to need. We like to imagine
that there is a power that is opposed to us merely because it is
wicked.
"Terrorists are typically depicted by the media, with wild
implausibility, as people motivated purely by the desire to cause
destruction. You just have to think for a moment about what
motivates terrorism - the desire to bring about political change -
to see that that understanding is so wide of the mark you have to
wonder: where on earth did it come from? I'd say it's to do with
the survival of the idea of the malevolent figure. We might call
that the Devil, or we might call it al-Qaeda, but, either way, it
persists powerfully."
THE Church of England continues to keep an eye on the Devil,
although the part he plays here today is as ambiguous as anywhere.
The Litany of Common Worship has dropped the prayer against "the
crafts and assaults of the Devil", but keeps the one against "the
deceits of the world, the flesh, and the Devil", as well as the
baptismal vow to "reject the Devil and all rebellion against
God".
There is, discreetly, a deliverance-ministry adviser in every
diocese. But if this suggests that the Church is unfashionably
vigilant about demonic possession and ghostbusting, the truth is
that this is in response to demand from the public, and the Church
has had to find a safe and sound way of dealing with that
demand.
The Bishop of Monmouth, the Rt Revd Dominic Walker OGS, has had
35 years of experience in deliverance ministry. He co-chairs the
Christian Deliverance Study Group, and is the author of The
Ministry of Deliverance (DLT, 1997).
"People turn up on the vicarage doorstep, looking for help, for
a variety of reasons, just like at a GP's surgery," he says. "They
might feel possessed or cursed, might have experienced a ghost or
some paranormal activity, might have been involved in the occult.
The Church's job is to interpret that psychologically, spiritually,
and theologically. As the guidelines say, this is always done in
the context of prayer, and sacraments, and continuing pastoral
care, by authorised people."
The diocesan team includes psychologists, and, conversely,
psychologists call in the Church when they encounter clients who
need spiritual help. They might work with GPs, too. The
multidisciplinary approach has been carefully worked out after an
inter-denominational exorcism in Barnsley in 1974: immediately
afterwards, the subject murdered his wife.
Exorcism does happen, but, Bishop Walker says: "It is a last
resort, after considerable preparation and consultation. It's very,
very rare." Even then, it can just as easily be understood as a
rite of psychological healing as the dispossession of demons.
"I've seen everything over 35 years," he says. "Often it's very
straightforward, such as seeing the ghost of a loved one following
a bereavement. People can project their problems on to a building,
and see, out there, what is going on inside them. And, sometimes,
it is more difficult to explain."
So, does he believe in the Devil? He does not want to be pinned
down: you can understand evil and exorcism in New Testament terms
or modern psychological terms, he says. But he is sure of one
thing: "Evil is very real. There is a dynamic of evil that is
greater than the people involved, just as there is a dynamic of
love that is greater than the people involved; so the Church takes
that very seriously.
"I would avoid the term 'evil spirit' though. I don't think that
clarifies anything."
The Devil: A very short introduction by Darren Oldridge (£7.99
(£7.20); 978-0-19-958099-6).