Review of The Devil

Russell also wrote "Dissent and Reform in the Middle Early Ages," "A History of Medieval Christianity: Prophecy and Order," "Medieval Civilization," "Medieval Civilization," "Religious Dissent in the Middle Ages," "Witchcraft in the Middle Ages." Perhaps you have read one of them. In any event, this book was one of a series Russell wrote and had published through Cornell University. Russell taught at Notre Dame in Indiana.

This rare book will be very difficult to find. However, if you do happen upon a copy, be certain to purchase the copy.

"The Devil" is the history of the perception of evil through out history. From Set through Arihman to the New Testament Satan, Russell traces the development of the personification of evil.

Russell defines evil as -- among other things -- the infliction of suffering upon entities capable of perceiving that suffering. As such, it is not evil to take an axe to a tree, but it would be evil to take an axe to a person. He also points out how at one point or another every one has suffered.

"The existence of evil requires no further proof: I am; therefor I suffer evil." Jeffery Burton Russell, The Devil.

Russell's stance is that there is most definitely evil at work in our world. Be it moral evil of young boys putting a cat in a bag and setting the bag on fire, or a natural evil such as a mother loosing her only child to cancer, evil does exist. More over Russell states that people have a tendency to both externalize evil and to personify evil. It is not a part of them, but it does have an active and malicious conscious. Russell calls this personified external force "The Devil" for the sake of simplicity.

He also takes pains to point out his book is a work of history, not theology. He deals with how Christianity and Judaism perceive evil with thoroughness yet grace and delicacy. He points out both these religious are viable options for modern people.

The perception of the Devil in contemporary times is not a modern invention, but the result of thousands of years of theistic and sociological development.

"Seldom in myth is anything seen as wholly evil, for myth is very close to the unconscious, and the unconscious is ambivalent." Jeffery Burton Russell, The Devil.

Russell's earliest example is Egyptian, with Set and Ra and company. Russell asserts that the Egyptian did not perceive Set a purely evil entity, as modern society thinks of the god. Egyptian religion was polytheistic and monistic. That is to say that there was a host of gods, yet they were ambivalent in nature, much like nature itself. They were capable of good and evil, benevolence and malevolence, but ultimately inscrutably and often capricious. This was the most common perception of the gods in a pantheon in ancient cultures, be it Egyptian, Iranian Zoroastrian, or Greek. Modern conventions of Hades and, again, Set, as wholly evil, are just that: modern. Hecate may have been largely goddess of shadow and disturbing magic, but she had her positive moments. Likewise, regional cults perceived Zeus -- a leader and a creator of order -- as quite malevolent.

A change came in the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, with a reform in Iranian religion and essentially the beginning Gnosticism. This more or less began western dualism. The Iranian prophet Zarathushtra said that there was a Penultimate Supreme Being, who created a lesser beings and these lesser being made the world. As time went on by Zarathushtra's heirs modified this was to say that the enemy of one of first entity created by the Penultimate Supreme Being made the world. The implication is that matter, and the rest of the world, because it was created by an evil being, is evil.

This tradition of perceiving matter, the world around us, our bodies, and all things sensual, as evil would because a part of both Judaism and Christian traditions.

As did the entity, sometimes called Ahriam, who created the world and matter. This was once of the first personifications of non-ambivalent and unadulterated evil entity.

"It is dangerous to offend the gods, that is clear, but it is not at all clear why one thing and not another should offend them." Jeffery Burton Russell, The Devil.

The Greek, according to Russell, where some of the first to examine evil in a philosophical, rational, and consistent fashion. This did effect they way they viewed their pantheon of gods, because several of their philosophers, poets and so forth argued that the laws that apply to man also applied to the gods. Other Greek philosophers and poets and the like argued the exact opposite. It is from the Greeks -- and their attempts to understand the gods and world around them -- which much of Western philosophy descends.

Ultimately the Greeks began to develop the philosophy of moral evil, the evil of men inflicted upon them selves and each other. Before much of the perception of evil, including that of Egypt, Zorostrianism, and even the philosophy of Zarathushtra, focused on natural evils and the way the world ground people under it's proverbial heel. Moral evil was defiance of the will of the world, of the will of the gods. It was the imbalance caused by human actions the caused them to suffer, to be punished. This philosophy gradually caused the realm of Hades to shift from a gray and wasting place to an underground land of punishment and torment. Assigned to Hades as time went were tones that were more malevolent.

While Greek thought did not add as much per sea to the image of the Devil, the ideas that the moral transgression was the cause of punishment did pass into Judaism and Christian tradition. As did the idea of an afterworld of punishment.

In addition Greek iconography of Pan, Hermes and so forth, when combined with Zarathushtra anti-materialism had a strong impact of Hebrew Apocalyptic thought and obvious Christian thought. The underworld became a place of hell, and darkness associated with evil.

"The universe is not a thing; it is alive; it pulses with godness." Jeffery Burton Russell, The Devil.

Greek and Zarathushtra thought strongly influenced Hebrew thought about the Devil. However, according to Russell, Hebrew thought about the Devil changed mostly in an attempt to understand their One God.

The One God religion essentially caused the development of the Devil. Early Jewish thought about the One God was a dynamic, dangerous entity, as capable of drowning the world in a flood as he was capable of blessing the Jewish people. God would withdraw his blessings and punish the faithful, like Job, on seeming whim. In this, God resembled the divine entities of other cultures; God was capable of both good and seeming evil.

However, as time went on and life seemed to become less uncertain for the Jewish people, they desired a more benevolent God, one that was less seemingly ambiguous. Their perception of God, consequently, became more begin. Yet, there were still the harsh, hateful, hostile, and essentially evil aspects of life with which to deal. The Devil was assigned these aspects, a Devil, who in the Old Testament, had many faces and was largely undefined. The Devil was said to have fallen at alternate times, the Devil was both opposed to God and yet did Gods will. The Devil was diametrically opposed to God, yet not God's equal in power. Most of the time the Devil played a secondary roll in the Hebrew world.

"The Devil is the source of lies, of murders, or wars; he tempts us, he accuses us, punishes us; he afflicts us with disease and even possesses us." Jeffery Burton Russell, The Devil.

It was Christian thought during the life of Jesus Christ and about 30 years afterwards that developed the roll, if not the image, of the Devil as it exists today.

The Devil of the New Testament was a synthesis of Greek, Jewish and Zarathushtra thought. The Devil is the master of hell and punishes the souls of men. The Devil is creature of darkness, once created by the Good God but now existing in a fallen state. The Devil tempts men to do wrong, and then denounces man for that wrongdoing. The Devil opposes God and troubles the world with all forms of suffering wantonly and deliberately inflicted upon man.

The Devil is the principle of evil, all that is wrong and hurtful about life, personified.

The Devil also directly opposes the Christ.

Unlike Jewish thought, the Devil plays an active and prominent roll in the New Testament. Christ comes to save the world from the Devil, from suffering, from pain, from evil, and without the Devil then the mission of Christ is meaningless. As such the roll of the Devil in the New Testament, and Christian thought, is essential.

Evil does exist. It has been Christian thought that most codified the image, function and purpose of evil.

Later medieval artwork for the Church borrowed heavily from older iconography to make the Devil have horns, to be black or red, to carry a pitch fork, and so forth.

"The little girl cries out in the darkness: we live in a world in which evil appear to be gratuitous and unceasing. We perceive evil as greater than mere moral ignorance. We perceive it as transcending the individual and possessing unity of purpose and force. Over the centuries, the expression of these perceptions has formed a tradition that posits a principle of evil and according it personality." Jeffery Burton Russell, The Devil.

So what roll does the Devil, this personification of evil, play in the modern world? Russell, to his credit, does not attempt to provide any trite or too-simple answers.

However, that evil exists in our world in inarguable. Any position, religious or atheists, that denies suffering and evil is asinine to the point of being evil itself. Does the Devil exist? At the very least, in so far as evil exists, and people externalize and personify evil, the Devil will always exist.

Does the idea of The Devil help? That is a matter of debate.

"...one child crying out alone in the darkness is worth the whole of creation, in a sense the whole creation. If any world view, theist or atheist, minimizes her suffering, declares it nonexistent, gives it elaborate philosophical justification, or explains it in terms of the greater good, whether the name assigned that good to be God or the People, that world view renders her life, and yours, empty and vain."

Russell's book, "The Devil" is a fascinating and valuable looking into the history of how evil is both perceived and understood. In many ways, it is also the history of western religious thought about evil. Religion is, if nothing else, an organized attempt to transcend the pain of the universe -- or at the very least an attempt to get the cosmos to pull it's punches.

The Dungeons and Dragons world of the Forgotten Realms the gods are pantheistic and dualistic - there are many of them, yet rather than each having good and evil elements they are clearly divided into good and evil. Out of character, this is to provide antagonist for the characters. In character: Has it always been this way, or did the nature of the gods' shift as human perceptions of evil and good shift? Perhaps the old and forgotten gods of the Realms are not evil in an elemental way, but largely ambiguous in nature in a way that would be difficult for current Faerunian to understand. Rather like the Titans of the Greeks who both opposed the gods and helped human.

Russel notes that good does exist, or else the world would be "Lovecraftian." Anyone who makes a passing reference to the Mythos in a college level non-fiction work has to be a good guy. Needless to say in a Cthulu Mythos setting good does not exist, and evil is at best impersonal and at worst personally vindictive.

In the World of Darkness of White Wolf evil exists so strongly that it is at times tangle. Vampires are evil, Werewolves are evil, Mages are evil, Wraiths are evil, Changelings are evil, and the list goes on and on. A principle characteristic is that virtually none of them admits they are evil, yet they all go about wantonly inflicting horrors and pain and misery on everything around them. Each group is wrapped up in a self-righteous myopic vision. It is up to individual characters to work their way out of this endless black cycle.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)