The History of the Devil, Part II: the continuation of a clear,
competent, but rather dry survey. In his first volume, Russell
(Univ. of California, Santa Barbara) followed the supreme symbol of
evil from antiquity to the beginning of the Christian era. He now
traces Satan through the first four centuries, up to and
culminating in the "diabology" of St. Augustine. This period shaped
much of subsequent Christian thought on the Devil, and Russell's
study handily summarizes this important chapter of Western
intellectual history. He notes, for example, the long shadows cast
by Tertullian's doctrine that paganism and heresy are directly
inspired by Satan. This means that the apparently good lives of
infidels (Jews, witches, etc.) are in fact diabolical evil, a
notion future Inquisitors took to heart. Like many other church
fathers, Origen too had demons on the brain: he popularized the
theme of human life as the setting of a psychomachia between good
and evil angels. And Augustine grimly argued that, "The human race
is the devil's fruit tree, his own property, from which he may pick
his fruit. It is a plaything of demons." Russell's book should
prove a gold mine for students of religion, though they'll need
Greek to understand his footnotes. And many of them will wish he
had devoted more time to the early iconography of Satan and less to
the logical conundrums posed by Satan's existence (why does God
allow evil spirits such power over humanity? etc.). Yet, for all
the withering critical fire Russell trains on diabology, he still
thinks the devil, whether personal reality or mere personification,
can serve to explain the existence of evil. Perhaps. But even
Russell's atheistic readers will admit his contention that, given
the horrors of the 20th century, we won't be able to get the devil
off our minds for a long time yet. A valuable piece of scholarship.
(Kirkus Reviews)
Undeniably, evil exists in our world; we ourselves commit evil
acts. How can one account for evil's ageless presence, its
attraction, and its fruits? The question is one that Jeffrey Burton
Russell addresses in his history of the concept of the Devil—the
personification of evil itself. In the predecessor to this book,
The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive
Christianity, Russell traced the idea of the Devil in comparative
religions and examined its development in Western thought through
ancient Hebrew religion and the New Testament. This volume follows
its course over the first five centuries of the Christian era. Like
most theological problems, the question of evil was largely ignored
by the primitive Christian community. The later Christian thinkers
who wrestled with it for many centuries were faced with a seemingly
irreconcilable paradox: if God is benevolent and omnipotent, why
does He permit evil? How, on the other hand, can God be
all-powerful if one adopts a dualist stance, and posits two divine
forces, one good and one evil? Drawing upon a rich variety of
literary sources as well as upon the visual arts, Russell discusses
the apostolic fathers, the apologetic fathers, and the Gnostics. He
goes on to treat the thought of Irenaeus and Tertullian, and to
describe the diabology of the Alexandrian fathers, Clement and
Origen, as well as the dualist tendencies in Lactantius and in the
monastic fathers. Finally he addresses the syntheses of the fifth
century, especially that of Augustine, whose view of the Devil has
been widely accepted in the entire Christian community ever since.
Satan is both a revealing study of the compelling figure of the
Devil and an imaginative and persuasive inquiry into the forces
that shape a concept and ensure its survival.
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