Gabbin’ About God, in which Mallory uses her religious background to explain things to Nicole, most recently featured atonement theory.
Mallory, can we talk about the Devil today? I was thinking about the Old Scratch because of Scalia’s constant need to advocate on his behalf, and I’d love to know a little more about how he fits into Christian theology. Why is God supposed to have created him in the first place, how did it go pear-shaped, did God not know it was going to go pear-shaped, and what is the etymology of “pear-shaped”? Also, is the Devil to blame for things like the Holocaust, and does he talk to us and try to influence us, and why does EVERYONE talk about The Screwtape Letters constantly?
I believe the preferred nomenclature is Ol’ Scratch, as the Devil is a very folksy person. Down-to-earth, you might say (just a little hell-geography humor, there). I’m going to do my very best to unscramble the Luciferian saga of the Bible from the early bits of The Silmarillion, but I can’t promise I won’t get mixed up at some point, especially if I start talking about the music of the spheres.
A lot of what we think of as canonical Devil traits have been developed out of post-Biblical literature – Faust and Paradise Lost and The Inferno (the Sayers translation, please) and so on. The Christian Old Testament isn’t generally as focused on the Devil or Hell as the New; there’s the serpent in the garden in the book of Genesis, of course, but that creature isn’t associated with the Devil for hundreds of years. I think the Book of Revelation conflates the two, but that’s simply ages later. (Which, incidentally, may have something to do with the fact that the Devil never really looms as large in Jewish theology as it does in Christian cultures)
The earliest mention of the Devil in the Bible that I can think of comes from the book of Job (which is actually one of the oldest books in the Old Testament, even though it’s buried somewhere toward the middle, which I think is rather unfair), and there’s very little of the Devil that we know today in him. He’s God’s weird, murdering ombudsman, and spends the entire narrative trying to convince God that Job (and by extension, humans) don’t really love him unless they get what they want. And that’s it! He doesn’t get punished or thrown out of heaven at the end. He’s like Ralph and Sam, that wolf and sheepdog who spend a whole episode trying to kill each other, then punch out their time cards at the end and have a coffee break together.
Then there’s Ezekiel 28, which starts out as a rebuke to the King of Tyre but…you know how sometimes when you’re in a fight with a current romantic interest, and things escalate emotionally, and all of a sudden you’re a foaming, raging harridan trying to tear them to shreds for all the shit your last romantic interest did to you, only you don’t realize it until you hear yourself shouting Previous Romantic Interest’s name and most egregious faults? It’s kind of like that. It starts out reasonably enough:
By your wisdom and understanding
you have gained wealth for yourself
and amassed gold and silver
in your treasuries.
By your great skill in trading
you have increased your wealth,
and because of your wealth
your heart has grown proud.
But it pretty quickly devolves into “okay, who is this really about” territory:
You were the seal of perfection,
full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
You were in Eden,
the garden of God;
every precious stone adorned you:
carnelian, chrysolite and emerald,
topaz, onyx and jasper,
lapis lazuli, turquoise and beryl.
Your settings and mountings were made of gold;
on the day you were created they were prepared.
You were anointed as a guardian cherub,
for so I ordained you.
You were on the holy mount of God;
you walked among the fiery stones.
You were blameless in your ways
from the day you were created
till wickedness was found in you.
Through your widespread trade
you were filled with violence,
and you sinned.
So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God,
and I expelled you, guardian cherub,
from among the fiery stones.
Traditionally, it’s been interpreted as Lucifer’s origin story: a creation of God that was once as bright and as beautiful as it is currently The Worst. This was a pretty serious influence for Paradise Lost, which focused on Lucifer’s envy of humans and his desire to rule creation in his own right as his fundamental sin.
And then, of course, there’s the New Testament! You have your book of Revelation with its lakes of fire and bowls and lamps and beasts and so on; very devilish. He’s very much the Dark Link to Jesus’ Regular Link, always promising him dominion over the earth and roaring like a lion and filling innocent passersby with demons.
I mean, the development of the character of Satan had, I think, a lot to do with the rise of dualism in the Roman world — this widespread belief that the world was ruled by two equal and opposing forces, one good and one evil. The basic Christian worldview (this is a gross oversimplification, obviously, see also: Cathars) is that the divine creative force that is God is the first and final supernatural power in the universe; the Devil is never God’s equal in the way that, say, Rhita Gawr is the Dagda’s.
Depending on how materialistic (I don’t mean that in the consumerist sense, obviously) a society one lives in, it can be more or less helpful to visualize the Devil as a metaphor for the constant, inchoate pervasive existence of evil or as an actual, sinister, embodied presence. The point of the Devil has always been, at least it seems to me, the following: evil exists, it is pervasive, it is intelligent, it is random and persistent and targeted, it can come to entirely dominate a human being, but it is not the reason the universe exists and it is not the ultimate authority.
Modern Western society, for obvious reasons, is less focused on evil than others have historically been! This is, I think, why talk of the Devil can strike us as “silly,” when to someone from another place and time it’s not silly at all: we spend a great deal of time and energy on self-improvement, on increasing our personal wealth, on staving off death, on nebulous and pleasant spiritualism. (This is not to say any of us should START thinking about the Devil, this merely serves as helpful cultural context.)
Oh God, I need to wrap this up. I think part of the reason The Screwtape Letters is so popular (and I give C.S. Lewis a great deal of [deserved] shit, but it’s a legitimately interesting book) is that there has been very little written about the Devil by a materialist in the last hundred years. The twentieth century did not see many writers taking both the Devil and modernism seriously (they were too busy inventing Imagism and Beat poetry). So something like this:
I wonder you should ask me whether it is essential to keep the patient in ignorance of your own existence. That question, at least for the present phase of the struggle, has been answered for us by the High Command. Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves. Of course this has not always been so. We are really faced with a cruel dilemma. When the humans disbelieve in our existence we lose all the pleasing results of direct terrorism, and we make no magicians. On the other hand, when they believe in us, we cannot make them materialists and sceptics.
At least, not yet. I have great hopes that we shall learn in due time how to emotionalise and mythologise their science to such an extent that what is, in effect. a belief in us (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the enemy. The “Life Force,” the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis may here prove useful. If once we can produce our perfect work—the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls “Forces” while denying the existence of “spirits”—then the end of the war will be in sight. But in the meantime we must obey our orders. I do not think you will have much difficulty in keeping the patient in the dark. The fact that “devils” are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of some¬thing in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you.
Is memorable mostly because there aren’t a lot of other writers making any sort of attempt to make sense of the Devil (or the existence of concentrated evil or what have you) in a modern context. Thus endeth my begrudging acknowledgement of something good C.S. Lewis has done, and also my rambling attempt to contextualize over 2000 years of belief in a blog post.
What should we talk about next? You tell me. Don’t tell me I spent most of college reading St. John Chrysostom for nothing.
Tags: advice, begrudging respect to c.s. lewis, gabbin about god, god, nicole and mallory, ol’ scratch, paradise lost, religion, the devil
This reminded me why I switched (one of) my major(s) to religious studies in university.
Totally loved this.
Hey wasn’t there that time when Satan rolled up to Jesus all “hey, if you’re really so powerful, do something cool” and Jesus was all “I don’t need to prove how hard I roll” and it was EXACTLY like every fucking scene in Harry Potter where you’re just waiting for Dumbledore to pull out all the stops and he just says something cryptic and disappears and makes Harry learn or some shit.
KIND OF, which I mentioned tangentially in the “promising dominion” part. It’s his big scene!
Now I’m going to spend the afternoon reading the Wiki page about Satan. Doesn’t the word “satan” actually mean adversary? Also, At what point in Christian tradition does the Devil and the present idea of Hell become a dominating feature of the faith? Is it right to assume sometime between Constantine and the Middle Ages?
I talked about this last time, but the idea of Hell was basically what prompted my loss of faith to begin with.
Can we talk about predestination plleeeeeaaaaaseee?
YES, in the book of Job his title is something like “ha-satan” or “The satan,” which basically means THE ACCUSER, which is a cool name. So Satan was more of a title than a name, to begin with!
“Durand de Huesca, responding to a Cathar tract c.1220 indicates that they regarded the physical world as the creation of Satan.”
!!!!
I really wish my church had been a little bigger on Satan so I’d have some more religious context for him personally.
Yeah, like Mallory says it’s like a legal designation – basically he’s God’s in-house public prosecutor, the implications of which are amazing.
I LOVE GABBIN’ ABOUT GOD. There, I said it. I would quote you my favorite lines but it would basically be the entire piece over again.
What do I want to hear about next! Ummm. I voted for liberation theology before and want to vote for it again; if that’s too specific, I’d like to generally hear about glittering megachurches and the early American (?) idea of worldly success as an indicator of divine virtue, and maybe how that contrasts or interferes with the idea to give alms and care for the less fortunate. Just maybe talk about God and success and money and how they all seem to get conflated.
If that doesn’t fit in, I’d love to hear more about Revelation, and end times prophecy, and whether people actually believe that God’s chosen people are going to disappear en masse someday a la the beginning of the Left Behind series?
I would also like a Liberation Theology piece! Maybe look at various interpretations of wealth/poverty as they relate to modern Christianity as a series of 2 posts?
> whether people actually believe that God’s chosen people are going to disappear en masse someday a la the beginning of the Left Behind series
People really believe this! Many, many people (in the USA at least). Ask an evangelical (any evangelical, really) about the time they woke up and the house was empty and they freaked out and thought they missed the Rapture.
Mallory, a post on Left Behind / Rapture-mania / premillenial dispensationalism would be amazing! Although I guess the Slacktivist has a lot of that ground covered.
(But…but….Mallory, Till We Have Faces also exists!)
I can’t say enough good things about The Screwtape Letters.
Oh, I love Till We Have Faces.
The point of the Devil has always been, at least it seems to me, the following: evil exists, it is pervasive, it is intelligent, it is random and persistent and targeted, it can come to entirely dominate a human being, but it is not the reason the universe exists and it is not the ultimate authority.
This is SO INTERESTING, and so much more coherent than a millennium of hysterical literature trying to make a point about The Nature of Good and Evil.
I have to say- my favorite part of the whole mythology of Satan in Western culture is how fucking CAMPY and FABULOUS he is. Paradise Lost and his half-dozen costume changes as he works his way down the spiritual food chain; hanging out in the desert with Jesus with the wind blowing through his demonic tendrils as he tempts the Son of Man; three giant faces in Inferno and each one chewing a sinner while he cries as the frozen asshole of the world; riding to the world’s end with four different colored horses including one that’s specifically a PALE HORSE- not white, but like, literally “sick looking horse that’s still walking despite all evidence to the contrary.” TAKE THEE TO VEGAS, SATAN, BUT WITH MORE FEATHERS- THE BELLAGIO, PERHAPS?
He’s the best part of Paradise Lost, really.
He’s the Achilles to Adam’s Aeneas: a big dramatic glorious pouty memorable manchild to a plodding moral weasel of a man.
He’s a man of wealth and taste!
Also, the fact that in The Inferno the demons are all loud and unapologetic farters.
How about his appearance as Woland in Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margurita”? Popping up in the USSR and causing general havoc while partying it up with a demonic ball. It’s one of my favorite representations of Ol’Scratch, next to Paradise Lost.
Woland is my favourite Satan! That old devil.
MALLLLLORY, can we still do Denomination Day? I am really curious about how different denominations see each other, currently in the US and historically post-Protestant Reformation. Like, do fire-breathng hardcore evangelicals going to non-denominational megachurches think squishy reconciling Methodist congregations with trans* ministers are actual heretics bound for hell, or just Christians with a different point of view? How about back in the day (“the day” being, say, the 18th and 19th century) — did Methodists and Anglicans and Lutherans and etc. think that each denomination had a monopoly on Christian truth? And did they think all Catholics were hellbound?
Adding my vote in favor of Denomination Day!
Yes, yes, and yes to all these.
Signed, a squishy reconciling Christian whose fundamentalist mother thinks she’s eternally screwed, along with all the Catholics and Orthodox Christians (and Jews, and Muslims, and Buddhists, and atheists, etc. ad nauseum).
If people pitch us things about their denominations, then YES.
Episcopalian reporting. What sort of thing are you looking for? (For the record, the church I grew up in is generally liberal and accepting, but I’m not sure how much of that is just self-suppression. When we got a far-right rector, there were suddenly a lot more people around talking about the Anglican realignment and being vocally opposed to the Right Reverend Gene Robinson. That was not a good time.)
YOU TELL ME.
Will think on it and get back to you?
I can tell you a thing or two about the American Baptists.
Well, I was raised in the Southern Baptist Church in Texas, so I could talk a lot about crazy Southern fundamentalists and my mother, who seems pretty sane now but once thought that allowing me to read horror books with ghosts and witches would mean allowing me to commune with the Devil.
Also, I attended a Bible study that’s main focus was pretty much “everyone else is going to hell.”
Oh man, I worked at the Southern Baptist Seminary for a few years. The stories I could tell. THE STORIES! I’m actually a member of an SBC church right now but it’s pretty unrecognizable to the fundies, seeing as we devote an entire week every year to how much we love lady pastors.
I wonder if a conversation comparing ABC and SBC would be interesting to anyone?
I think an actual conversation would be interesting. Like, “my church believes THIS” and “oh really because MY church believes THIS THING” and meanwhile all the secular people are wondering why it matters…
Comin’ at ya.
I was raised Dutch Calvinist (technically CRC), switched to Southern Baptist at 9-10 and (ugh) Independent Baptist at 14 when our family moved down south and there were no CRC churches… and then started dabbling in and eventually converted to Catholicism. Not just parish-down-the-street Catholic though, about 3 years after converting I became super hardcore, Latin-Mass Catholic. Then my family imploded and I moved to NYC and I’ve recently found myself too busy or tired to go to Mass every week, which is cause for much consternation and guilt and I’m trying to find my way back.
How’s THAT for a story?
WAIT WE DEFINITELY STILL HAVE TO DO MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY THOUGH
WHAT DO WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT TOM BROWN’S SCHOOLDAYS
Thank you! I was going to ask because of the previous episode’s “LET’S DISCUSS MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY AND THE FOUNDING OF THE YMCA SOMETIME, YOU AND I.” Let that sometime be soon, please!
YES GOOD. I want to talk about “God’s Gym” t-shirts and bench-pressin’ Jesus.
OH BUT WHAT ABOUT THE MASTER AND MARGARITA! I think the Ruskis did a pretty good job with various incarnations of the personified devil in the most recent century.
Agree, heartily (not surprising, as The Master and Margarita is one of my favorite books in the world). And Woland’s retinue deserves a mention too.
Another interesting devil – Mr. Lockhart in The Seafarer, by Conor MacPherson.
Oooo, I would like to talk about how the central Devil figure has often been scattered and disseminated into belief of a legion of demons and how we all read This Present Darkness (I KNOW you read that one, Mallory), and how a few years ago a pastor blew my mind when he shared his opinion that Jesus casting out demons in the New Testament was actually him curing people of mental health conditions, as “demons” was their only way of understanding disorders like schizophrenia.
Oh, This Present Darkness! Meditation lets in demons and churches accepting preschool vouchers means they come under intense government control. I laugh now, but I was terrified as a young teen.
I soooo love Gabbin about God, as someone who is a far bigger religion nerd than all of her friends, but less of one than Mallory.
I am flirting with the idea of returning to the Catholic Church that I was raised in/schooled in — finally found a loosely liberal one that jives with what I value in the church and what was stressed to me about the church as a kid (I was raised in a highly Jesuit-influenced environment). And so Gabbin about God is giving me an even more fun way to re-examine my beliefs/lackthereof.
Mailer’s The Castle in the Forest deals with this.
I hear he stabbed his wife.
It was for literary reasons, though.
Devil made him do it.
So the hippie New-Age religion I was raised in claims Jesus as one of their spiritual masters, in a long tradition of new religions trying to gain legitimacy by piggybacking on old ones. They claim that during whatever scene in the Bible where Jesus was in the desert getting tempted by the devil, he was actually learning from the masters of [redacted hippie New-Age religion]. God bless that religion for seriously fan-fictioning their way into the Bible in the place of Satan.
So like The Avatar?
I’d like a post on communion! Transubstantiation and consubstantiation and… unsubstantiation (?) I guess. And then I can tell the story of the time a classmate of mine expressed concern that the common cup might be germy to a Greek Orthodox priest.
Better than intinction! Hands are always germier than mouths.
Also, soggy bread really grosses me out.
PREACH. I only do intinction when I’ve got a cold and don’t want to pass it along the communion rail. Although if supergogo is right, I should just drink out of the cup anyway.
But you’re not sticking your hands in the cup during intinction….
As someone who has assisted with serving the elements, I can tell you: fingertips are definitely going below liquid level during intinction.
D: We only had intinction at Christmas and Easter. Otherwise we would just use little plastic shot glasses filled with grape juice. I have never been more glad about that!
My mom’s reasoning is that alcohol kills germs.
To which my sister responded, “Isn’t it actually BLOOD?” Which really turned me off of church wine for a long time.
The priest was with your sister. But apparently the risen body of Christ is anti-microbial, so it’s ok.
That’s some high-tech blood right there.
I went to a Catholic wedding when I was maybe 4 or so and I totally thought people were about to start drinking blood and I was horrified!!
This is only mildly relevant but a pastor friend of mine* studied at St. Andrews in Scotland for a year, and it was his first exposure to a very specific type of communion. He lead a chapel service that nobody attended and was surprised to learn that the onus was on him to drink the entirety of the remaining wine as part of the liturgical ritual. Having skipped breakfast and consumed a significant amount of wine and having hitherto been a teetotaler, he became quite drunk and had to sit through his classes in an inebriated state. BAPTISTS!
*is it disrespectful to refer to a 75 year old man who knows everything as just “friend”? Is there a word that encapsulates “person i respect and admire and have a great deal of affection for but also feel unworthy of knowing sometimes”?
Hahaha. My dad’s a Lutheran (ELCA) pastor and was doing an ecumenical service at an Episcopal church where they have to drink whatever is left in the chalice at the end. My dad asked “so I guess eventually you get really good at telling how much wine you’ll need and only putting that much in the chalice?” And the Episcopal priest went “oh no, we make sure the chalice is full at the end.”
I’ve always sort of loved Neil Gaiman’s Lucifer, hanging on the beach: http://mrbendecorsey.tumblr.com/post/12700654468/… (I can’t find the spread for this.)
Can we get a post on the Apocrypha?
Seconding the Apocrypha!
Ooh, thirding the apocrypha!
Nicole! Now that you’ve made Mallory listen to the Mountain Goats, is there any chance we can employ her expertise towards analyzing the bible verses used as the song titles for The Life of the World to Come? I understand if this is way too niche to be an actual article. (Full disclosure: 90% of my waking hours are spent just looking for excuses to bore people with my adoration for the Mountain Goats, including right now)
I would ALSO love a post analyzing bible verses used in titles of MG songs!
Related, I wonder how hard it’d be to get John Darnielle to write something for the Toast?
I wouldn’t say no to that, although I imagine he’d refuse. I remember reading something (maybe on his tumblr?) a while ago where someone asked him about feminism and he said something about how he doesn’t like to talk too authoritatively on the subject because he doesn’t think it’s beneficial for men’s voices to dominate the conversation? I’m possibly misremembering the quote and mangling his position, slightly.
Just when I thought I couldn’t possibly love him any more!
I get that feeling every time I read about John Darnielle. Here’s him calling out one of his most beloved songs as misogynistic garbage and explaining why he doesn’t play it anymore! http://rachelfershleiser.com/post/39667367736/in-…
Also I met him after a show on his most recent tour and he is EXACTLY as effusive and warm and kind in person as you picture him in your head.
Oh, I am seconding this *so hard*!
I’m wondering if I should tell you guys I didn’t like it.
Taste in music is subjective. It happens! I’m pretty sure we all still adore you. I’ve tried and failed to get my own friends into the Mountain Goats enough times not to have hard feelings about it. (I mean, not that you need our permission to not like a band in the first place.)
Aww, even if I tell you my theory that “1 John 4:16” is someone thinking about The Calming Of The Storm? (It’s ok you can still not like it, but I’m pretty sure I’m right.)
Too bad! You (or someone else) might enjoy this interview where he talks about the bible album though. He used to teach catechism! “One way you can get really close to God is to sin as hard as you can.”
Also, can anyone recommend a website or blog that discusses religion like this (conversational, nerdy, not dogmatic)? I need a more regular fix!
I’m not sure if Slacktivist fits what you’re looking for (the guy who does the Left Behind deconstructions)? He is pretty dogmatic but in an “if you don’t think love and helping-the-needy are the point of this you’re WRONG WRONG WRONG” way, which I am okay with.
Oh, I will definitely check this out, as that sounds pretty close to my own personal dogma.
(quiet vote for the Hollanders’ translation)
I just want to mention that anyone who likes nerding out about this sort of thing will probably adore this writeup of the early history of what came to be the Catholic Church (with many digressions): http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/014…
OH MY GOD Satan as Dark Link. Mallory please marry me.
There should be “begrudging respect to C.S. Lewis” buttons made up. Because I am torn every time between delight in his prose and how interesting he is, and those statements (his views on women’s position in the household relative to their husbands come to mind, but there are many, many others) that make me drop the book and shout “NOPE, SKYRBEAST OUT!”
Well, this seems like as good a place as any to leave this, since I can’t seem to stop watching KITH.
I literally have my chin in my hands while I’m reading this. This is an excellent series and I wish for many many more entries in it.
Songs of Solomon! Lay some sexy on us. With some discussion of the poetry in the context of early Christian repudiation of the flesh.
Or…
The early history of the Bible as Committee work.
Or..
A insightful consideration of the Aprocrypha and their place in the canon. Was it the the Dragon or the women writers? Discuss.
I, for one, would really like to see a post wherein Mallory gives C.S. Lewis shit.
Related to nothing else: Dagda!
Would love to hear a discussion on the Gnostic Gospels. Elaine Pagel’s book is a must read for theology enthusiasts.
Second vote would be for the Apocrypha.
Fun & Fascinating post as always. Looking forward to more.
I vote for Revelations (so bizarre and intense and beautiful and specific and INSANE), apocrypha (gospel of Thomas!) or proto-Christianity and the retconning of various OT passages to support the whole ‘Jesus-as-messiah’ angle.
….now I want a sitcom based entirely on what God and the Devil do in their down-time.