RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Development Devil
Created one of the angels, be became an apostate (John viii. 44), and fell from heaven (Luke X. 18; Jude 6). He is the indefatigable adversary of the kingdom of good, but will ultimately be overthrown, and cast into everlasting fire (Matt. XXV. 41). No hope is set forth in the Scriptures of his redemption. He endeavored to seduce Christ himself (Matt. iv. 1), worked among the apostles (John xiii. 2), and worketh in the children of disobedience (Eph. ii. 2). Conversion is the passage and deliverance from his kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light (Col. i. 13). He is restlessly sowing seeds of error and doubt in the Church (Matt. xiii. 39), blinding the eyes of them that believe not (II Cor. iv. 4), goes about as a roaring lion (I Pet. V. 8), and has the power of death (Heb. ii. 14). Christ has given a more definite description of him (John viii. 44) as a " murderer and liar." His chief characteristics are power and craft. He is as a " strong man " (Matt. xii. 29), and his subtlety (cf. Gen. iii. 1) is exhibited in treacherous snares (II Tim. ii. 26), wiles (Eph. vi. 11), and devices (II Cor. ii. 11), and the delusive shift of transforming himself into an angel of light (II Cor. xi. 14). The Book of Revelation is a sublime drama in which Satan is one of the chief figures.
It was to undo the desolation, and destroy the works of Satan that the Son of God was manifested (I John iii. 8). It has been attempted to make him out to be a mere personification of evil, and to show that evil exists only as it is found in the human heart. Schleiermacher thinks that Jesus accommodated himself to the ideas and language that then prevailed in Judea, but did not himself regard Satan as a real and living person. Objection is made to this view that, if he
were not a distinct personality, Christ 2. The would hardly use so strong language Belief of in speaking of him and would not bid Jesus. the disciples beware of his craft and
power. In the exposition of the parable of the tares Christ makes the didactic statement that the enemy who sowed them was the devil. Another view adopted by advocates of a humanitarian christology is that Jesus shared the ignorance of his age in ascribing certain maladies to demoniac influence and asserting the personality of the devil. A remark of Bernard Weiss is here apposite (Die Religion des Neuen Testaments, p. 121, Stuttgart, 1903): " The deeper the sense of sin IS the more confidently is the supernatural power of sin, by which man is deceived and dominated, ascribed to a superhuman adversary of God, for sin can not be traced back to God. The Scriptures and Jesus take this fact for granted and give it the weight of their authority."
III. The Church Teaching: The Fathers agreed in representing Satan as an apostate angel. According to Origen the fallen angels, who sinned less grievously, are of most subtle constitution. The stars belong to them. The devil and the demons, who sinned most grievously, inhabit the air (F. Ijoofs, Leitfaden zum Studium der Dogmengeschichte, P- 127, Halle, 1893). At last even the devil will return to God and thus the " restoration of all
things " (Gk. apokatastasis panton, Acts iii. 21; see Apocatastasis) be accomplished. The fall, however, may be repeated again in the
1. The course of the eons. In the develop- Fathers. ment of the doctrine of the atonement
(q.v.) from Irenaeus on (cf. Schaff, Christian Church, ii. 585 sqq.) the satisfaction of Christ was regarded as a payment made not to God, but to the devil, who through the disobedience of our first parents acquired a right to us. Origen says sinful man is the devil's property (Loofs, p. 129). John of Damascus expressly rejected this theory (Loofs, p. 186). The second part of his system of theology devotes much space to the devil, and is in this respect a precursor of the medieval systems. In the West Augustine represented Christ's work as a redemption from the devil rather than as a reconciliation to God (Loofs, p. 220), but he gave the impulse to the later doctrine enunciated by Anselm. He pronounced the pagan gods demons {De civitate Dei, v. 12, xviii. 18). Like the good angels, the bad spirits have bodies and by God's permission have power to stir up storms and blast harvests, and they cohabit with men and women. They have no power to create new substances, but they have power to accelerate the growth of seeds and germs, and the development of potencies hidden to men, but known to their own shrewd senses. Gregory the Great (d. 604) went even to greater lengths than Augustine in giving experiences of demonic and diabolic influence. Harnack (Dogmengeschichte, iii. 235) has called him the " Doctor of angels and the devil." The popular belief in the devil and his immediate influence in antagonizing holy aspirations and practises had a copious illustration in the weird experiences of the hermits of the Thebaid and Chalcis. St. Anthony and other ascetics thought they had frequent encounters with him, and their cells were often turned into pandemonium by the shrieks and howls of the demons whom they imagined Satan called forth to torment them in their lonely solitude (cf. Schaff, Christian Church, iii. 147 sqq.; Charles Kingsley, The Hermits, London, 1868).
In the Middle Ages the devil and demonology were among the subjects which received most elaborate treatment. The leading schoolmen devote long sections filled with Scriptural quotation and argumentative reasoning to show the origin, the mode of existence, and the influence of the devil and the evil spirits. To these disquisitions of the study are added the popular stories which fill the pages of some of the most interesting talewriters of all times. To schoolmen and compilers must be added another class of writers,
2. The men of liberal culture like Wajter Mapes Middle and John of Salisbury and Etienne de Ages. Bourbon of France (ed. A. Lecoy de la
Marche, Paris, 1877). Mapes treats Ceres, Bacchus, Pan, the satyrs, and the fauns and dryads as fallen spirits, and represents the devil as himself bearing witness to the truth of this view (De nugis curialium, ed. T. Wright, ii. 14, London, 1850). John of Salisbury has no doubt about the fell alliance of demons with men and women and
Devil Devotion