To be frank, I haven’t read any of the previous three of Jeffery Burton Russell’s books which together comprise a “history of the Devil” from antiquity through the twentieth century. I started at the end, because the only other volume I own, the third in the series, is packed away in a box somewhere and it didn’t have the chance to catch my eye. The reason why series like these attract me so much is beyond me – maybe I’m just drawn to big, unwieldy reading projects. However, judging from the last volume alone, this seems to be at a superficial treatment, with little to offer someone already interested in the history of religious ideas.

This volume picks up with the beginning of the Reformation, whose emphasis on sola fide revitalized older medieval ideas of diabology. Some interesting, and scary, fragments of Martin Luther’s life are retold, including the tidbit that one of his most important biographers, Heiko Oberman, described Luther’s whole existence as a “war with Satan.” He also uses this section of the book to look at the diabology of John Calvin and sixteenth-century mystic-contemplatives St. John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila.

With the appearance of the Enlightenment, increasing popularity of empiricism, rationalism, and use of the scientific method, people started to take diabology – or at least the possible existence of the Devil – much less seriously (which is hardly a surprise). In this section of the book, Chapter III, the reader gets a plodding, thirty page-long piece of exegesis on Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” which while it is a poem largely about the Devil, seems to consist of too much summary and too much ham-handed literary analysis. Its appearance is abrupt and completely out of place in an otherwise smooth (at least until that this point) history of ideas.

When Russell begins to talk about the Enlightenment and some of its most prominent thinkers, he weirdly and biliously starts tossing around pejoratives, like “propagandist.” He doesn’t seem to except the modern biological consensus position on evolution, stating “new reflections on randomness and time suggest that even in billions of years the information of intelligent life by random processes is virtually impossible,” though he intelligently stops short of trying to argue that a supernaturally intelligent being is responsible for the diversity of life on Earth (p. 151).

He has a particular dislike for Hume, especially his argument against miracles, which Russell again endlessly belabors, attempts to rebut, and fails. He hilariously claims that de Sade is the “logical conclusion of atheism” – an interesting admission concerning an author whose work perhaps more than any other in the eighteenth century confirms the existence of evil in the world. He reads de Sade as an inveterate misanthrope and sexual deviant (which is much too easy) instead of as an ironist who is actually trying to make cogent points about the very real existence of good and evil in society. None of this bodes well for his reading of Goethe’s “Faust” – which is much shorter than his reading of Milton, though just as uninteresting.

The overall tone of this book comes across as a later-day apology for religious ideas which don’t really jibe with modernity, which probably explains his hostility to several facets of it. Russell’s obvious trouble reconciling himself to commonly accepted scientific positions (like evolution), the long, meandering renditions of literary works (of which I only mentioned two, but there are several more of less important writers), and his obvious disdain for the Enlightenment make for a perfect storm which make this book both sad and funny to read. Russell’s specialization is the medieval time period, so maybe I just caught him trying to tie up loose ends in a historical period with which he has little familiarity. This can be forgiven. As soon as third volume finds its way out of a box and onto a bookshelf, I might pick it up. ( )

Jeffrey Burton Russell has, one might say, specialized in the devil. In a series of volumes he has traced the evolution of Satan and evil as perceived in religion, literature and philosophy since the beginning of recorded time. Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World traces modern man's view of the devil beginning with the 16th century to the present.
We are surrounded by different "truth systems." What may be true for science may have different validity in another truth system, e.g. art or history. Science says little about beauty, for example. A tree is a plant, but it may also be a symbol in art, a totem in religion, or the tree on which John Smith was hanged. All are equally true. So it is with the devil and evil, explains Russell. Moral evil cannot be measured by science which can only investigate the physical world.
The devil as a concept was created to help explain evil. During the 16th century as Protestants and Catholics warred with one another, Satan grew in stature. The Pope symbolized the Antichrist for Protestants while Catholics exorcised demons from Protestants. The Devil became an important symbol for religion which philosophically requires evil in order to define good. The Faust legend metaphorically represented the changing attitudes toward evil that occurred during the 15th and 16th centuries. The struggle in medieval times had been homo centric: God vs. Satan, but God intervenes to save and protect man. In Shakespeare and Faust the struggle became more individualistic (society had become more bourgeois and competitive); the struggle a more protestant and personal one. The fight is now between man and the devil. The struggle has also become more pessimistic. In medieval times the devil was depicted as a clown, funny-looking and stupid. The sinner was invariably saved. Now, Faust turns away from God, hardens his heart and is invariably doomed. The increasing ambivalence toward knowledge is apparent. The Faustian sin is to seek ultimate knowledge and the power which comes from this knowledge. (I'm going to have to quit talking about knowledge being power). The tension between religion and scholarship still apparent today was unique to Protestantism according to Russell. The Devil has also become much more introspective and sympathetic toward his victim (The Screwtape Letters ?). The humanization and internalization of the devil became a major theme in 16th and 17th century literature.
Russell traces the changes in perception of evil from the clowning medieval simpleton to the Reformation's introspective and cunning, spiritual lunatic. The more plausible Satan reflected qualities admired by the romantics: individualism, rebellion, ambition and power; a liberator in rebellion against a society who blocks the way toward beauty and love. The Gothic novel portrayed good as a veneer covering up evil and danger. Ironically during the 17th century, belief in the devil declined as those in power became threatened by the witchcraft craze. It was one thing to let the commoners burn each other at the stake, but when the elite felt threatened suddenly it was discovered there was no scriptural basis for sorcery or witchcraft. Theologians also worried that evil had become so prominent as to make the devil virtually independent of God. Russell traces the rise of skepticism and by the late 1700s the much more common view was that God and Satan exist but rarely intervene in the world.
Russell's final chapter is devoted to a discussion of God and the Devil's role in a modern materialistic world. He points out that while science cannot confirm the existence of God neither can it find any evidence against it. He argues that the concept of evil and the devil may be useful because it allows us to conceptualize the reality of non-good (my term.) If it were better understood that a "perceived spiritual voice may come from a power of evil, dangerous cult figures who argue that they speak with the voice of God might win fewer followers." Russell is at his best when dealing with the historical evidence of belief in Satan. His literary illusions become tendentious. Still, a book worth reading. Rather than start at the end of the series you might wish to begin at the beginning with [book:The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity], followed by [book:Satan: The Early Christian Tradition], then [book:Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages]. ( )