Do we make other people into Hell?
Alan Wall
THE ORIGIN OF SATAN by Elaine Pagels Penguin, f20, pp. 214 The title of this book is somewhat mis- leading. This is no monograph on the early life of Satan, either in terms of iconography or theological speculation about him, but is rather an account of how Christians came to use their notion of the demonic to demonise others — Jews, pagans and the deviant Christians who were called heretics. The wealth of this material some- times exceeds the coherence of the argument in which it finds itself.
Elaine Pagels has of course written before on related areas, particularly how the Gnostics came to be suppressed during the consolidation of orthodox Christianity, and she demonstrates a considerable sym- pathy for those (often exuberant) texts which were marginalised or censored into obscurity. It is not difficult to see why — of the 52 texts discovered at Nag Hammadi, some (like the Gospel of Thomas) are beguiling.
In one sense, Pagels' book is the story of how, in defining its canon and early theolo- gy, what we now call the Christian Church fell out with significant groups of people, with greater or lesser degrees of unpleas- antness. If one has a criticism of her book it is that she does seem to suggest, though in very subtle ways, that this was somehow avoidable. Much of it might well have been, but without the arguments there would be no Christianity now to speak of at all. One might lament the anathemas, but without the disputes there could have been no coherent elaboration of belief.
First off, the early followers of Jesus had to decide whether to remain faithful to orthodox Jewish practice. The Jerusalem Church, centred around James, favoured this course. Paul famously did not and Paul won out. Had he not done so then Elaine Pagels' book would never have been writ- ten, since the Jesus Church would have merely vanished as one more footnote in the turbulent history of first-century Judaism in Palestine. The mission to the Gentiles was accepted as constituting the core identity of the early Church, and a process began which was to have appalling repercussions in the following 20 centuries: the demonising of the Jews as deicides. The part the Romans played in the execution of Jesus was played down, and the role of the Jewish authorities exaggerated. The ludi- crous portrayal of Pontius Pilate dithering pacifically before the man Jesus was the central icon here. All we know of Pilate tells us that this portrayal is simply not credible. He was a man avid for torture and judicial murder, so much so that even the authorities in Rome grew uneasy with his casual brutality.
Satan, it was said, had acted through Judas Iscariot to betray the Lord, then Satan acted through the High Priests to condemn him. The next step was to say that Satan motivated all the children of Israel who wouldn't accept Jesus as the Christ. By the time of John's gospel the term 'the Jews' is often used to denote sim- ply those opposed to Jesus and his mission, as though the man from Nazareth had not actually been one himself. These passages, read out from countless Christian pulpits through the centuries, have done incalcula- ble damage.
Soon enough the main persecutors of the early Christians were Romans and pagans and it was now seen that Satan operated as effectively through that source as he had through the other, though Jesus had point- ed out that the cost of discipleship was to find oneself unwelcome in this world. When the accommodation with Rome was effected it left more time to turn on those whom Pagels calls 'the enemy within', namely the false apostles who distorted the truth of Christian teaching and led would- be followers astray. Heresy was seen to be in some ways the subtlest of Satan's strate- gies, for it did not attack outright and make martyrs, but rather confused and sowed seeds of darkness in the very place of light. In a little while the Church would see fit to restore the agents of darkness to the light by making bonfires of their bodies.
Much of this Pagels puts across with a winning lucidity. She could probably have emphasised even more (as E. P. Sanders `I'm tired o' running, Martha.' has done eloquently in Jesus and Judaism) that the pharisaism so luridly denounced in the New Testament probably did not belong primarily to the Pharisees of histo- ry, whose belief had hardly shrivelled to a desiccated husk, and whom Jesus probably did not see as his enemies. She captures well, as one would expect her to, the gnos- tic impulse to recover Jesus as the trouble- some, rebellious spirit of love — to reconcile Auden's 'weeping anarchic Aphrodite' with the codified and often uniformed Agape that emerged from the early centuries of Christianity. The Church has constantly institutionalised Jesus and tended to forget in the process how anti- institutional he so often was. Even now some of the more troubling periscopes in the gospels — let the dead bury their dead, for example — should give us pause for thought. The devout of his time denounced him as a wine-bibber and a glutton. One wonders how many of the celebrants at London's two grand cathedrals during their splendid services would really settle down to table fellowship with prostitutes with the same grace as the Lord whom they wor- ship.
And yet there's something missing at the heart of this book. It is only touched on very briefly in the introduction where the author says, 'I invite you to consider Satan as a reflection of how we perceive our- selves and those we call "others" '. She has no interest then in what we might call the personhood, or from a strict Thomist posi- tion the non-personhood, of Satan. All the same, Jesus gives the impression of believ- ing himself to be in combat with a power of darkness, of appalling strength, though not ultimately victorious. It seems to be one of the conditions of our modernity that we find it unimaginable that we are not the first here. It's a short step then from that to saying that we must be the only ones here. What we cannot examine in our own speci- fied conditions does not exist. And if Satan is no more than a projection onto others of what is darkly shadowed in ourselves, then why not God too?
It is, however, a melancholy fact that too much brooding on Satan does nobody much good — never has done and never will. The saintly Padre Pio, recipient of fre- quent visits, recommended ridicule to send the proud malign spirit howling from the room. But then Padre Pio was saintly, so ridicule did not constitute the entirety of his world. And when Christians remember Judas they should not seek his sectarian identity, nor the riddled psychology of his motivation, but remember only the grace with which Jesus accepted his kiss. Perhaps all believers of any sort should have permanently engraved on their hearts those words of Sir Stephen Runciman: the real sin against the Holy Spirit (the only one we're told will not be forgiven) is to persecute others and then claim that such persecution has been in the name of the Lord.
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