Europe's inner demons

As in the Jewish Apocrypha, the Devil in the New Testament is aided by multitudes of lesser demons, who both tempt people to reject Jesus and harass them physically. As tempters they operate above all through the official Roman religion. For the gods of that religion are really demons in Satan’s service; Paul is quite clear that “the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to the devils, and not to God”.¹⁷ But at their master’s command demons also “possess” people, i.e. cause such disorders as epilepsy and hysterical paralysis and numbness. Most of the miracles of Jesus consist in curing just such disorders, and are therefore understood as weakening Satan — each miracle an inroad on Satan’s dominion.

There is, admittedly, some uncertainty as to the precise stage which has been reached in the struggle between Jesus and Satan. Sometimes it seems that the crucifixion of Jesus has already effectively overthrown Satan. John makes Jesus say of his impending death, “now shall the prince of this world be cast out”,⁽¹⁸⁾ and “the prince of this world is judged”;

⁽¹⁹⁾ and Paul too holds that through his death Jesus has destroyed the power of the Devil.⁽²⁰⁾ But in other passages Satan is shown as still fully active: “your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour”.⁽²¹⁾

And the Book of Revelation is quite clear that the struggle can never be finally decided until the second coming of Christ; it is only at the Last Judgement that Satan will be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone.⁽²²⁾ Yet these seeming inconsistencies are little more than differences of emphasis; they cannot obscure the great optimism, the overwhelming certainty of victory, which inspired Christians in the first century. It is always clear that Satan and his hosts are utterly subordinate to God and powerless when confronted by the Messiah. It is the faith of a young and militant church.

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Throughout the history of the early church Satan and the lesser demons continued to be imagined very much as they were in the New Testament; save that with the elaboration of a Christian theology, their theological significance became more clearly defined. Gradually they were integrated into the central doctrine of Christianity, the doctrine of the fall of man, original sin, and man’s redemption through the crucifixion of Christ.

Already in the first century before Christ, the Book of Enoch hinted that it was one of a number of “Satans”, conceived as followers of a chief Satan, who had led Eve astray.⁽²³⁾

In the first century after Christ, Satan was at last brought explicitly into relation with the serpent in the Garden of Eden; either the serpent was Satan disguised, or Satan acted through the serpent. The connection was first clearly established in a number of first-century Apocrypha, all of them either Christian in origin or else strongly coloured by Christianity. In particular the Books of Adam and Eve, which were composed in the last quarter of the century, elaborate on the part played by Satan in the fall. To deceive Eve he hung himself on the walls of Paradise, looking like an angel and singing hymns like an angel; and he also persuaded the serpent to let him speak through its mouth.⁽²⁴⁾ This same Satan was once one of the angels of God, but he disobeyed God’s commands and led other angels to disobey; with the result that he and his followers were cast out of heaven.

In the main, this view of the fall of Satan and the fall of man was adopted by the Fathers of the Church, from the second-century apologist Justin Martyr onwards. The only point of dispute concerned the fall, not of Satan himself, but of the lesser angels. Whatever the Books of Adam and Eve might say, most of the Fathers could not overlook the doctrine of more venerable Apocrypha. The Book of Enoch, as we have seen, held that these angels had fallen because they desired the daughters of men; from which it followed that, unlike Satan, they had not fallen until well after the fall of man. But in the third century this difficulty was circumvented by that pre-eminent theologian, Origen. He proclaimed that the passage in Genesis concerning the sons of God and the daughters of men was to be taken allegorically; the true fall of the angels had taken place before the creation of man, indeed before the creation of the world. The Greek Church followed Origen at once; somewhat later St Jerome (c. 340–420) and St Augustine of Hippo (354–430) implanted the same idea in the Latin Church. By the end of the fourth century it was generally accepted in East and West alike that the fall of man was part of a prodigious cosmic struggle which had begun when some of the heavenly host had revolted against God and had been cast out of heaven.