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Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, The Bewitched Man, a scene from El Hechizado por Fuerza (‘‘The Forcibly Bewitched’’), 1798. Oil on canvas, 42.5 × 30.8 cm. The National Gallery, London, United Kingdom.
Anonymous, The Monstrous Spirit, 5000 to 3000 B. C. Tassili-n’Ajjer, Algeria.
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Satan is already partly formed, but he attains the fullness of his being only in Christianity, the religion that claims to seek the fulfillment of that Judaism from which it sprang, yet in so large a measure denies it. Here we find ourselves confronted by a maze and tangle of moral causes and historic causes, all of which have the effect of ever exalting, colouring and enhancing the sinister figure of Satan. On the other hand, Jehovah is transformed into a God incomparably milder and kinder, into a God of love, who necessarily rejects, as non-assimilable, every Satanic element; and when Christ also shall have been raised to the godhead – the gentle, radiant figure of the deity who for love of men himself became man, who for their sake shed his blood and suffered ignominious death – , by this very contrast he will bring out in altogether new relief the grim and gloomy figure of the Adversary. The human tragedy, fused with the divine tragedy, will reveal the inner causes of his miraculous progress, awakening in the minds of men new moral concepts, new images of things, a new picture of heaven and of earth. It is true, then, that Satan led our first parents to sin and, by virtue of the offence provoked by him, robbed God of the human family and of the world in which it lives. How great must be his power, how firm his usurped dominion, if in order to ransom the lost it is necessary that the very Son of God shall sacrifice himself, shall give himself up to that death that entered the world precisely through the agency of the Enemy! Before God set his hand to the work of redemption, Satan could rest secure in his possession; but now that this redemption is completed, even before it is completed, will he not be bound to exert his power to the utmost in order to contest with the victor the fruits of victory and to regain, at least in part, what he has lost? Yes, he even dares to tempt the Redeemer himself, and the apostle pictures him as a roaring lion in quest of prey that he may devour.[13]
Nor did this come about through any simple error of judgment, through any logical contradiction. Evil has been printed in the book of our life in such characters that no mere religious doctrine, no dream of faith and love, is able to erase it. The discouraging spectacle of a world in dissolution presented itself on every side to the eyes of the new believers; the delicate, fragrant flower of Christ’s teachings unfolded in the midst of Satan’s midden. Was not the work of the eternal prevaricator to be seen in that multicoloured polytheism that had so charmed and seduced men’s spirits? Were not Jove and Minerva, Venus and Mars, and all the gods that peopled Olympus, incarnations of him, or servants of his will, executors of his designs? That lusty, joyous civilisation of paganism, those flourishing arts, that bold philosophy, those riches and honours, those scenes of love and idleness, those boundless debaucheries – were not all these his inventions, his tricks, forms and instruments of his tyranny? Was not Rome’s empire the empire of Satan? Yes, in fact: Satan was worshiped in the temples, lauded at the public festivals; Satan sat on the throne with Caesar; Satan ascended the Capitoline with the Triumphatores. Who knows how often the devout faithful, gathered in the Catacombs, hearing the roar and turmoil of that life passing over their heads, trembled lest the diabolic tempest should engulf the bark of Christ, and in the very arms of the Cross felt themselves threatened and overwhelmed.
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