FOOD FOR THOUGHT   21 February 1988
When I was leaving for Rome to begin my training for the priesthood, my Dad gave me an old book entitled “Spiritual Combat.” I was not very grateful. I thought its title was a bit alarming and I left it at home. I still have not read the book, but ten years on, I can better understand its title, “Spiritual Combat.”
Combat implies an enemy. Certainly one enemy is our selfish desires and sinful tendencies. However, through these and beyond them, one becomes aware of an enemy which is not merely human — a deeper evil, a more vicious malevolence, a persistent obstruction to all man’s attempts to be good and do good.
By God’s grace, man can rise higher than the angels, becoming hero and saint. But by giving in to the subtle temptations of the dark powers, he can sink lower than the beasts — to child brutality, nuclear extermination, callous indifference to the starving, sexual violence.
Is this evil only a force, spiritual and impersonal? Think about It. Good or evil intentions come only from a free Will. Will cannot exist separate from Personality in some form. Moral good and evil come forth from persons, spiritual beings with will and intelligence.
We stand here on the edge of a strange and terrible mystery, the ‘mystery of iniquity’. Scripture gives us glimpses of a great conflict in the angelic realms outside of the time — the revolt of a brilliant spirit, called Lucifer, the light-bearer, against his Creator.
		A catastrophe in heaven.
The Archangel Michael drove the rebel angels from God’s presence. They plunged into hell. In the proportion that they had previously been beautiful and intelligent, they now become foul and perverted.
Man then was born onto a stage where a conflict was already in progress. He is on a battlefield, and he has to choose his side. The devil and the rebel spirits wish to revenge themselves upon God by tormenting and destroying man, the creature made in God’s image.
They try to lure and seduce man from the glorious destiny God has promised to those who love Him.
God and Satan are no equals. That would be dualism, not Christianity. The devil is a defeated but dangerous enemy. His time is coming to an end. He wishes to drag as many down with him to destruction as he can. Like Hitler’s armies in 1944—the decisive battle had been lost, but they could still inflict grievous injury and death on the unwary.
‘The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8) The whole purpose of Christ’s mission climaxed in defeating Satan on Calvary. If the devil did not exist, Christ’s life would have been an empty pantomime. If there were no Enemy, no Destroyer, we would not need a Saviour. If we did not stand in danger of hell, why did Christ need go to the Cross for us?
Few credit the devil
Surveys suggest that only 20% of the British population believe in the devil and hell. Unfortunately, that does not stop Satan’s activity.
C.S. Lewis writes: “The devil’s first great victory is to make men think that he does not exist.’ For then, they relax their guard against sin and evil. They surrender to his ideas and temptations, fondly imagining them as their own bright ideas and inventions.
The Gospels too cease to be an awesome drama of redemption or damnation to come to every human soul. They become merely a nice story, a moral tale, “take-it-or-leave-it,” rather than the marching orders for a life-or-death struggle.
Satan’s other trick is to preoccupy people with horror stories of possession and exorcisms, a very rare phenomenon. Let them forget that for every soul lost by possession, a thousand are lost by temptation.
Talking about the devil is unpleasant and unpopular. It is a part of Christian doctrine we might wish was not there. However, it is part of Revelation and we have to face up to it. Some writers have tried to explain it away as an out-dated Jewish way of talking adopted by Jesus.
The 1976 Vatican document on demonology warns against this kind of rationalization. The devil and evil spirits really exist in the way that the New Testament writers describe them — they are not just a literary device, a personification of evil influences.
Jesus did not accept the language about the devil and demons uncritically from the culture of his time. There was no universal belief. The Sadducees did not believe in any spirits. Jesus perceives Satan as a personal enemy in a much sharper way than the prevalent Pharisaic belief about evil spirits.
He developed the doctrine and translated it into practice by his exorcisms. because it was essential to the nature of the salvation He brought.
To suggest the devil is only a personification of the ideal of evil implies that the Lord was suffering from a gross delusion and inconsistency.
What evil is not
Listen to Pope Paul VI in a general audience of 1972:
‘What are the greatest needs of the Church today?
Do not let our answer surprise you as being over simple or even superstitious and unreal: one of the greatest needs is defence from that evil which is called the devil.
Evil is not merely a lack of something, but an effective agent, a living spiritual being, perverted and perverting
It is a departure from the picture provided by biblical and Church teaching to refuse to acknowledge the devil’s existence or to explain the devil as a pseudo-reality, a conceptual, fanciful personification of the unknown causes of our misfortunes.
We are dealing not just with one devil, but with many.
Let us finish with a prayer:
‘Holy Michael Archangel, defend us in the day of battle, be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil. And do thou, Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust down to hell Satan and all the wicked spirits who wander through the world for rum of souls. Through Christ our Lord. Amen