Fallen Angels: Soldiers of Satan's Realm

CHAPTER THIRTY Epilogue

Epilogue • • • 239 it not be a ridiculous impertinence for him to try to tempt the Savior? Yet no Christian can admit the existence of an evil deity on a par with God the Father—that would be Manicheanism. Martensen therefore described evil as an impersonal principle in the cosmos, the origin of which is not clearly explained. This evil tendency is in a sense unreal, but it is striving after reality and, above all, after personality. Evil first entered into the free personalities of certain angels, just as later it took possession of human souls: by this means impersonal evil becomes personal. The Satan of Scripture is the being who is so completely identified with the cosmic principal of evil as to have become its perfect embodiment and expression.12 Such a doctrine seems to a non-Christian to be, if not Manichean , at least decidedly Gnostic. Yet Bishop Martensen's ideas met with considerable respect and some acceptance.13 Such speculations, however, had a limited vogue prior to World War I and were entertained by individuals rather than by schools of thought. For most Protestants, the choice was between a literal, Scriptural Devil and a theology in which he played no important part. CHAPTER THIRTY Epilogue T: 'his book was begun as a purely scientific inquiry into the beliefs of an earlier age. But as the study progressed, I became more and more aware that the issues involved are still current. Our world is not only wrestling with the problems treated herein, but is increasingly turning back to the old solutions of these problems. My presentation would therefore be incomplete if I did not indicate its present-day implications . But here the rigorous objectivity for which I have striven will no doubt be breached. One cannot be cool and detached about living issues. What follows is admittedly colored by personal convictions. Our historical study has yielded definite findings. Jewish thinkers, in seeking an answer to the problem of evil and suf- 240 • • • Fallen Angels fering, have from time to time experimented with dualistic myth. They suggested that sin and pain originated in the revolt of angelic beings against the authority of God. But such explanations have not been accepted as authoritative in Judaism. The classic expositions of the Jewish faith have implicitly or explicitly rejected the belief in rebel angels, and in a Devil who is God's enemy. The enormous influence of the rabbis of the Talmud and of the medieval Jewish philosophers is on the anti-mythical side. The Hebrew Bible itself, correctly interpreted, leaves no room for belief in a world of evil powers arrayed against the goodness of God. Even the Cabalists, some of whom adopted a rather extreme dualistic position, usually declared that the emergence of the destructive forces was somehow part of the divine scheme; and this dualism had been largely liquidated by the Hasidic teachers even before modern influences had undermined the prestige of the Cabala. Historical Christianity, on the other hand, has consistently affirmed the continuing conflict between God and Satan. A doctrine which Jews took up hesitantly and which was repudiated by their most respected teachers, has been universally upheld by the Church, often in radically mythological forms. The Church, moreover, acted on the logical consequences of this notion by executing witches; and its consciousness of diabolic powers made even more horrible the hatred and persecution of the Jews. The issue of belief in a malignant Devil may therefore be regarded as one of the basic differences between Judaism and Christianity. Seventy-five years ago this distinction might have seemed relatively unimportant. True, Christian fundamentalists, both Catholic and Protestant, still clung to the belief in the Devil; but they did so defensively, by uncritical adherence to the traditions of the past; and most of them had ceased to draw practical consequences for conduct from the doctrine. Enlightened rationalism had discarded such ideas; historical scholarship had shown them to be survivals of pagan mythology. The more advanced and liberal among Protestant thinkers had quietly disregarded the concept of the Devil, where they had not explicitly rejected it. This was the heyday of optimistic faith in progress through science, technology and education. Men looked to the future with assurance and hope. But the twentieth century has disap- Epilogue • • • 241 pointed the rosy expectations of the nineteenth. Science, far from opening the way to salvation, has given mankind the instruments of...