What was your upbringing regarding your belief in Satan or the Devil? How were you taught (or scared) growing up about the fallen angel, the demon, the serpent, Beelzebub, and the many other names? In this throwback episode, we will discover where our idea of Demon or Satan comes from and see how your beliefs or ideas about the devil line up with what scripture says.
- Satan in the Hebrew Bible: Numbers 22:22
- Satan in the Garden of Eden as the serpent: Ezekiel 28:12-19
- Where the term “fallen archangel” come from: Isaiah 14:12
Pop-cultural resources about The Devil:
- Inferno by Dante Aligheri
- Paradise Lost by John Milton
- The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
- Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis
A few images depicting Satan
- Florence Baptistry mural
- Detail of Satan from Hans Memling’s Triptych of Earthly Vanity and Divine Salvation
- Devilish propaganda
- William Blake’s depiction of Lucifer in Paradise Lost
Resources:
- Join our online community at Sanctuary Collective Community
If you want to support the Patreon and help keep the podcast up and running, you can learn more and pledge your support at patreon.com/queertheology
This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions.
(10s):
Welcome to the Queer Theology Podcast. I’m Brian G Murphy. And I’m father Shannon, T l Kearns. We’re the co-founders of Queer Theology dot com and your hosts From Genesis, revelation. The Bible declares good news to LGBTQ plus people, and we want to show you how tuning Each week on Sunday for conversations about Christianity, queerness and transness, and how they can enrich one another. We’re glad you’re here. Hey Friends, and welcome back to Queer Theology Podcast. You know, we’ve been doing this work for a really long time and over the years we’ve amassed just a trove of episodes. And so we are gonna throw it back today to one of our favorite episodes, which is part of a larger series, which is called The Scary Things Series, scary Things You Might Have Learned in Church.(53s):
And today’s episode is The Devil and His Many Names we’ve found from lots of talking to lots of folks over the years that a lot of people are really afraid of Satan and the devil and demons and have heard a lot of different things about those entities. And so we wanted to tackle them and talk about them and talk about why you might not need to find them. So scary. So thanks for tuning in and enjoy this throwback episode. Welcome to the second episode of Scary Things that You might have been taught at church. Today we are gonna be looking at Satan and I did all the research on this episode.(1m 34s):
And so this episode is sort of, I’m Coplay as the host of You’re Wrong About Maintenance Space. Two of my favorite podcasts Shay has. Normally we have, we both know what we’re talking about, but I’ve, I’ve given Shay no information and I’m going to take us on a journey And I will either be very excited at how this goes or it will be a dumpster fire train wreck. So hopefully, hopefully this goes. Well, Shay, before we get started, there’s this famous quote, the greatest trick the devil, devil devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. Do you know who said that?(2m 16s):
CS Lewis from screw tape letters. That is what I thought. It is not in CS Lewis’s screw tape letters. Oh, interesting. So actually where it is most popularly, I that’s exactly what I thought so too, it’s from the Usual suspects. Kaiser Soce says it in the 1995 film, but actually it was first said in Quakerism Explains by John Wilkinson in 18 36, 1 of the artifices of Satan is to inducement to believe that he does not exist. And then a number of other people throughout the years said different versions of it. And eventually it ended up in the 1995 film, the Usual Suspects, and then it got implanted into bor and MA’s memories as being by CS Lewis.(3m 6s):
So today I, I feel like there was a, there was a, like, there was an element of Yeah, Screwtape letters that is, is around that concept. If it’s not the exact quote, if I’m remembering Screwtape letters correctly, yes, There is something about also like, sort of like distracting people with church work and busyness and idleness rather than trying to like be sort of bold allegiances to the devil. So in over the course of this episode, we are going to set out to convince you that life along with the devil, but the devil does not exist. And So just sort of tip our hat.(3m 45s):
Shay, what do you know about Satan devil, et cetera? Well, I think there’s two questions there, right? There’s the what was I taught? Sure. And so very much what I was taught was that Satan was a fallen angel, was Lucifer, right? That the two were the, were intertwined that Satan was definitely a like being that existed, that was personified and was an individual, right? Yeah. That it, it wasn’t a, a conglomerate that Satan was a, that’s a thing that Satan could tempt and lead people astray, but that Satan couldn’t be in more places than one.(4m 38s):
So Satan could only be in a singular place, but he had minions and demons that were doing his bidding and that Satan couldn’t get inside your head, right? So if you thought, thought Satan didn’t have access to them, if you prayed silently, Satan didn’t have access to that. But if you prayed out loud, Satan could hear that. Yeah. So that was like, and that we were really like, we should definitely be afraid of Satan and demons because they were trying to tempt us and get us to stray.(5m 18s):
My church didn’t really go in for the idea of like demon possession. Like that wasn’t really a thing. We didn’t really do exorcisms. I, but, but there was de there was a sense that like a demon or Satan could persuade you to do things and could even do that to Christians. Like if you weren’t, if you were backslidden at the moment. So that was definitely a huge source of fear for me. I mean like my whole childhood was like not, not only do you have to like believe, but you have to like do it really, right?(5m 59s):
Yeah, Yeah, yeah. There was a lot of fear and anxiety. Yeah. Yeah. So that is all very similar to what I had learned as well. There’s different names that people have used for Satan, Satan, Lucifer, Biba, Diablos also referred to as belly, prince of Darkness, prince of demons, angel of the abyss, father of lies, accuser, adversary, evil, one destroyer slanderer and ancient serpent. And much like you, I was sort of taught that all of these different various ideas were like one person. It’s just like different, different personas or different figures, but like there was like one like ruler of like, there was like one arch villain, right?(6m 47s):
And so we’re, over the course of this episode, we’re going to sort of explore where our ideas about Satan, the devil, et cetera, come from. So the Hebrew Bible, there’s a few references to Satan or Haitin. The word Satan actually only appears twice. And both times it’s in the story of Baalam, the seer who is asked by the Moabite King Bach to curse the Jews. And Is that the one with the talking donkey? Yes, I believe so because there’s a, I wish I had the longer, I wish I had the full quote pulled, but there’s a, I have a 14 page outline, so I just pulled one quote.(7m 38s):
So this is like numbers 22, 22, would you read it for us? And God’s anger was kindled because he went and the angel of the Lord stood in the way for an adversary against him. Now he was riding upon his ass and his two servants were with him. Yeah. So here it’s just this adversary, right? It’s not this epic mythical creature. It’s, you know, Can I ask a question? Yeah. So is the language used for angel of the Lord an adversary? Those are two different Yeah, it’s the adversary is words. The words. Yeah. So oftentimes Satan just means adversary or accuser, right?(8m 20s):
And then only twice in the Hebrew Bible. So this is like an adjective, right? Like it’s a, it’s a, a general sort of like an adversary or an accuser. And then only twice in the Hebrew Bible does Satan appear as like a specific figure. Ha Satan, like the Satan. And one is a brief reference in the book of Zacharia where the high priest is described as standing before a divine angel while Satan stands at his right to accuse him. And the other is in the Book of Job where Satan was like the, has that sort of like central role in the story as a, the well in the story of job, right? That like Satan and God sort of argue about what to do with job.(9m 4s):
And the book of job is sometimes cited to support the claim that the, the Jewish view of Satan is different than the Christian view. Because in this story like Satan only inflicts suffering with God’s permission. Like Satan is very much subordinate to him and like argues with him. But like ultimately not like in Christianity where it’s viewed as this sort of like wrestling match and like God’s gonna prevail but think Satan like thinks that he is more powerful or could possibly be, right? So that is Satan in the Hebrew Bible, obviously we’re not Jewish folks But we share up some of our scripture together.(9m 49s):
And so Christianity, early Christians, Catholic church, Protestantism, since then, all of that obviously like references are shared common interest or in ancient Judaism. And so some of our ideas about who Satan is or like what the devil does reference back to the the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament. I know that for me one of the things that I was taught was that the devil was the serpent in the Garden of Eden story. But if you like actually read the text of the Garden of Eden story with Adam and Eve, like it’s just a serpent, right?(10m 32s):
That that that the Hebrew Bible itself isn’t making these connections from the serpent there to Satan, a sort of general accuser to Haan this specific figure. And one of the thing, one of the pla reference points for this idea that Satan, the devil, et cetera, is the serpent comes from Ezekiel 28 19 which many Christians interpret as sort of like pointing back to the devil in the garden of Eden. And so this is Ezekiel 28, 12 through 19 You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.(11m 15s):
You were in Eden, the garden of God, every precious stone adorned you, cornelian, crystalite and emerald topaz, onyx and Jasper Laos, zuli, turquoise and barrel. Your settings and mountings were made of gold on the day you were created. They were prepared. You were anointed as a guardian cherub for so I ordained you, you were on the holy mount of God, you walked among the fiery stones, you were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you through your widespread trade. You were filled with violence and you sinned. So I drove you in disgrace from the mounts of God And I expelled you guardian cherub from among the fiery stones. Your heart became proud on account of your beauty and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor.(11m 60s):
So I threw you to the earth, I made a spectacle of you before kings by your many sins, a dishonest trade. You have desecrated your sanctuaries. So I made a fire come out from you and it consumed you And I reduced you to ashes on the ground in the sight of all who are watching all the nations who knew you are appalled at you. You have come to a horrible end and will be no more. Yeah. So at first blush because of you know, the serpent being there in the garden, it sounds like if you just sort of like took this on face value out of context, it might sound like this, you is the serpent or the devil, right? He’s talking about devil. And so like you the devil were there like in the garden.(12m 42s):
But actually if you just back up 18 verses, eel 28 opens by saying the word of the Lord came to me, son of man stage, the ruler of tire. This is what the sovereign Lord says. And so that whole passage that you read is not directed at the devil, it’s directed at this king in at the time of Ezekiel. And like, so obviously it’s a callback to Genesis and it’s using like it’s playing with the imagery from the garden to talk about how this person is like bad. But it’s not talking about Satan, it’s talking about like an actual literal ruler. I mean, so this is like another one of those cases where like context matters both like if you like know the historical context of like what was going on at that time, but also if you just move, like scroll back up the page 18 verses, it tells you who this U is and it’s the U is not actually the devil.(13m 37s):
So that’s one person. And then sometimes you might have heard Lucifer being one of the names for the devil. Do you know where that I like name comes from There. There is a, there is a passage that it’s like, And I saw Lucifer fall from heaven, but I don’t actually, yeah, Yeah, yeah. And I know it’s in the Hebrew scriptures, but I don’t actually know where it’s Good job. It comes from a certain passage in Isaiah 14, how you have fallen from the heavens, oh mourning star, son of the dawn, how you have been cut down to the earth, you who conquer the nations and Isaiah’s writing about the king of Babylon. Like again, this is like one of those things where it’s like Isaiah’s writing about the king of Babylon, but some Christians are like, no, actually this is the devil one.(14m 22s):
It’s like very clearly not. And the person who was addressed as oh morning star is a reference to the planet of Venus, which at the time was like thought of as a, looked like a star and sometimes was called a star. And the Romans called Venus Lucifer, which means light bringer. And so that is how we got that because in the King James version it reads, oh, how are you falling from having Lucifer son of the morning? How you are cut down to the ground. So look at you Shay put that seminary degree to work. So that is a brief history of both like the actual appearances of the word Satan ha and has Satan in the Hebrew Bible and some of our misguided ideas about where Satan does or does not show up in making Hebrew scriptures.(15m 14s):
And now let’s turn to the devil in the New Testament. What do you know about the devil showing up in the New Testament? Well, some folks have said that the devil shows up in the gospel of Luke when Jesus is in the wilderness, there are references right? To people being possessed that I think that’s where we get some of the Beelzebub stuff. And Jesus is like, and they accused Jesus of possessing people and he is like, that’s ridiculous.(15m 56s):
House divided against itself cannot stand. And then I’m sure Paul makes some kind of references though, probably not as many as we think. And then I would assume that a lot of it comes from the book of Revelation. Great, great, great, great. So the word like the devil as opposed to like Satan is kind comes from Satan and Hasan from the keeper Bible, the devil comes from the Greek word diablos, which just gets translated as devil. That word appears 36 times in the Christian scriptures.(16m 38s):
It’s usually about the devil, but it’s not always in first Timothy three 11 Diablos is translated as slanders. And in second Timothy three, three it’s translated as false accusers. And in both of those passage us, it’s like definitely talking about groups of humans, not actual like, not like a mythical devil. So like it’s again this, like this word has some nuanced meaning of an archetypal sort of evil figure and also just like literal people doing bad stuff, right? Like you, you are right.(17m 19s):
Like it’s also de is also used in both Matthew and Luke when Jesus is in the wilderness. And then there’s also these like demons, right? That like are possessed by by that, that Jesus encounters. And I think like that’s really interesting because in Mark 15, in mark five, the collective name of the demons being driven out by Jesus’s actually Legion, which, And when we do our series on Mark, I got, I have a whole thing on the garrison demonic and the herd of pigs and it’s gonna be juicy. So stay tuned for that.(18m 0s):
Yeah. And so some foreshadowing here that like yes, demon, but legion is also very clearly a nod to the Roman army and the Roman occupiers, right? And so this is one of those moments where you sort of are mixing political and religious language and using metaphor because like you can’t say we should drive out the Roman army, but but you can, you can drive out this like spiritual demon and it’s, but it’s not saying that our faith should not be political, it should only be spiritual. But that like we use spiritual metaphors to make political claims, which I’m so excited for your series, our series on Mark coming up next month.(18m 50s):
But so this is another, another one of those moments where like there we, my my childhood Sunday school imagination of all of the demons that Jesus drove out, it was like literal demons that were sent from the devil. And the idea that it could actually be a very blatant political metaphor was like, like was never, was, never taught to me. But now looking at it, it’s like, oh, that’s definitely what this, what this is what’s happening here Happen. And it’s, it’s also a bit like, you know, our conversations about original sin, right? That it’s that we are born into systems that are unjust and like there is a, there is an element of this demon possession of like systems that we are a part of Yes.(19m 43s):
That get into our heads Yes. That we have to fight against that, but that aren’t like literal demons that are but are systems. Yeah. But that have spiritual impact, right? I think that that’s important. Yeah. And I think it, this is a, a tricky part or like a a a complicated part to name, but it feels important that Jesus’ death in John’s gospel was sort of attributed to the Jews who can never attribute salvation because they are children of their true father, the devil in some translations is how it is put. And so like we just like need to name that like some parts of the Christian writings are like super anti-Semitic and Especially the gospel of John.(20m 34s):
So like, let me just have a yeah. Rant about the gospel of John. It is not surprising to me that evangelical’s favorite gospel is the gospel of John. It is the latest of all of the gospels written though they will tell you that it’s the first that is incorrect. It’s the most theological and it’s the most antisemitic. And I think that like those three things are important. They’re intertwined and it’s like why evangelicals love the gospel of John. Yes. And I’m sure, And I do not, I’m sure we will get into Mark versus the other gospels next month. And then also, I believe it’s in May, we’re doing a whole month long series with rabbis and Jewish leaders and content creators, which we’ve already recorded some of them and it’s so good.(21m 25s):
And a few of them sort of touch upon antisemitism within Christianity and what to do about that. So stay tuned. But one of the places that the devil quote unquote shows up is John accusing the Jews, the Jews of being children of the devil. And so last week we reference, we, I think I referenced the Carmen of the Carmen song about the the Champion. I’m, I’m also, I’m really sorry to anyone who wasn’t familiar with Carmen and who then watched that and or Googled Carmen and watched any of his other videos.(22m 5s):
Just, I’m sorry. But so I think that on behalf of, I think that Carmen’s song sort of like symbolizes is indicative of an idea that Christian, some Christians, many Christians our childhood, but the adulthoods of lots of Christians have about sort of like what’s going on with God slash Jesus and the devil. And so can you sort of like summarize how the devil and God slash Jesus are sort of like, how do those relate to those figures? These like big archetypical figures like relate to each other cosmically? Yeah, I mean there’s this idea that like God and Satan are in a battle for the souls of people that Jesus’ death is the thing that will eventually put down Satan, but that like Satan is allowed to run rampant in the world.(22m 57s):
And then also when, you know, we talked last week about the end times when the rapture and the end times come, Satan will be given even more power until finally Satan is bound and thrown into a pit for a thousand years and we have peace, but then Satan comes back again and then it’s Armageddon I think, and then, and then we like really get rid of Satan forever. But the, you know, the Carmen video was very much about like this boxing match almost between Jesus and Satan. So this idea that like Satan has a lot of power, but also that like, that’s with God’s permission, which always seemed a little sketchy to me now seems a real sketch.(23m 45s):
And I do think, I think this is also another moment to say that I think so much of our conception of Satan comes from Christian pop culture. Like I’m thinking of Carmen right now, I’m thinking of Frank Pereti and all of his this present darkness books I’m thinking of, you know, the left Behind series. Yeah. Like all of these things that are like presumably amusing air quotes like based on scripture, but like aren’t Yeah, they’re, they’re just not. Yeah. So I think this idea of like the boxing match gets, gets pulled from, so in acts of the apostles, Luke makes the claim that even like Hades or shale, which we will get into next week when we talk about conceptions of hell could not hold the crucified Christ.(24m 35s):
And in one Peter it says that Jesus made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits who disobeyed long ago. And also the gospel is preached even to those who are now dead. And so like by the second century, the church was sort of like starting to fill in the details of like what was going on between Good Friday when Jesus was crucified and Easter Sunday when he was resurrected and like, what about all of the righteous people of the past? Like what happens to ’em and how could they be saved if they had like, never had an opportunity to know Jesus? And so that’s where this idea came started to generate that like Jesus descended into hell and sort of like battled for the souls of the ones of the righteous down there.(25m 24s):
And this is something that perhaps we’ll get into next week that we talk a little bit about in our workshop. You know, like why did Jesus die? Sort of different like theories of atonement, but like Christ is Victor, right? This idea that like Jesus like went down to hell to like bust us all out and had this, had this fight. Like I actually really love, it’s that idea of Christus Victor is like much older than Latino, substitutionary a atonement, which is basically like Jesus, we we’re supposed to be punished and slaughtered. Jesus stands in our place and Jesus got punished and slaughtered instead of us. And so like he’s our punishment substitute. And so the Chris’ Victor idea of like Jesus going and waging war on our behalf is to, to break it out is is older than penal substitutionary atonement.(26m 12s):
And I kind of like, but also like, like this boxing match is maybe taking it a little to the extreme. And then when we get to Jude and Revelation, that’s where we really get to start to see these sort of like epic mythic i ideas about the devil that like maybe aren’t about the devil at all actually, but also a lot of our sort of like popular imagination of the devil gets pulled from stories and revelation. I know Shay you, I think you’re familiar with Revelation. Could you talk a little bit about Revelation?(26m 52s):
Well, I mean it’s weird, right? Like, you know, there’s seven headed beasts rising. There’s a horror of Babylon, there’s Satan, there’s like the four horsemen. There’s Jesus riding in, there’s bloodshed like massive bloodshed up to like the bellies of horses, right? There’s all of this stuff and then we get at the end kind of a new, a new Jerusalem. And I think that like a lot of our conceptions both about the end times about what eternity will be like and about Satan all come from this text that is very much, it’s not a fortune, it’s not, it’s not a fortune telling text, right?(27m 42s):
Yeah. And, and so like, but I think that we have this conception that, that this is a, this is a text that tells us what’s gonna happen in the future. That none of these things have happened yet, but they are like signs and way points that if we just watch Will will experience we’ll, we’ll see what what we’re gonna get. Yeah. So all the stuff that we’ve talked about thus far are a bunch of like scattered references from across lots of different books. The Serpent in the Creation story, these like metaphors talking about the king of tire, about like the Babylonian kings, about Ha Satan, about the Roman Empire, all this like weird mythical stuff that’s a lot of like allegory in in ju revelation.(28m 30s):
And so it’s really easy for us to then like look at all of these like quote unquote like bad people, especially like when we’ve been told by people in power, like, oh, these are all the same person, but like that’s like not actually what the text says. The text never actually makes those connections. And so for all of the homophobic, transphobic, fundamentalist conservative Christians in our comments talking about how we’re doing like is of Jesus, which is like a, just like a doomed like fratty way of saying like, I don’t, I disagree with you, but trying to like make, use the language of academia to disagree is like reading your own sort of like interpretation into the text and sort of like making the Bible say quote unquote, like making the Bible say what you want it to say.(29m 19s):
But really in order to connect all of these people, like the angel that gets in the way, like the adversary that gets in the way of the angel of the Lord in numbers Hasan who accuses a high priest in Zacharia like the Diablos who tempts Jesus in the wilderness. Like those are all three different characters and you have to decide, you have to decide to connect those if. And so I think like one of the points to note, right, is that like, well, where do these ideas come from? And I think like when we think about like what scripture it is and is doing, it’s sort of like the story like of the people of God trying to make sense of themselves and their place in the world and their relationship to God.(30m 6s):
And like this there, it’s this like big looming question of like, why do bad things happen and like what motivates bad people? And so I think that that’s sometimes why we use these like metaphors to describe, you know, like the king of ti the king of Babylon. ’cause it’s like you’re, it’s just like what you’re doing is so terrible. Like it’s hard to imagine that like you’re still human, right? Or like to show my own like modern bias is like Donald Trump, right? Like how are you And I part of the same human family? Like there must be, it’s just like too, too big of words, you know? And so these are the ways that which Judaism and Christianity have sort of like wrestled with why you bad things happen.(30m 49s):
You know, in Greek and Roman mythology there’s like a pan of gods like Buddhism, Hinduism, like various other religions sort of all get at the existence of bad things in their own way. But obviously that’s beyond the scope of this podcast. And so like I wanna share to sort of call back to maintenance phase, and you’re wrong about is like, one of the things that Michael Hobbes often says on maintenance phase is like specifically around like fat phobia and medical quote unquote, like medical science and stuff like that is what ideas are we already willing to believe and what biases allow us to take shortcuts and see things that aren’t really there and to not even bother to dig beneath the surface to see if there’s any evidence to support that claim.(31m 43s):
And I think like while bad things happen, and so like these are the sort of our ideas about Satan and then evil, I think for many of us are sort of the biases that we come to and the things that we’re just sort of like unquestionably like willing to believe. And so this is I hope, an opportunity to begin to scratch beneath the surface a little bit and see like, is there actually evidence there? And when it comes to like biblical support, like there’s really not much evidence to support our ideas about Satan. We’re almost getting done.(32m 24s):
I I do wanna say, yeah, you know, I, I think also the idea of Satan is really easy, right? It’s, And I, I think it’s especially why it, the idea of Satan is really appealing to evangelicals because it gives you this external force to blame things on, right? And so the this idea that, well, it’s Satan’s fault, like I can’t tell you how many times I heard that as a kid or you know, even this idea, even this idea in popular culture like the devil made me do it, right? It’s, it’s this idea of us being able to put off our own guilt and responsibility for things onto this other being that we can then blame and say, well, you know, not only like could we not help it, but also this like super, super powerful being did this to us or did this in the world or is causing these things.(33m 21s):
And like when you take away the ability to do that, you’re faced with the fact that like, oh no, like sometimes I do really shitty things. Yeah. And that wasn’t Satan, like that was just me. And I have to like own up to that and make amends for that. And like that is much more challenging to both face emotionally, but also to like move through the world knowing that you are responsible for your own actions that you can’t blame some mythical being Ugh. Yeah, exactly. And so I think like as you’ve, as we’ve explored thus far, these ideas of sage and the devil that we sort of think of aren’t coming from the Bible necessarily.(34m 5s):
And so where are they coming from? Shaa, like you made reference, like a lot of it’s coming from pop culture And I think it, it like comes a lot of, comes from modern pop culture that we’re just sort of all swimming around in. And I think our modern pop culture rather than actually drawing from the Bible draws a lot on medieval paintings and like medieval and colonial era literature, like the big ones are Inferno by Dante Paradise, Lost by John Milton and the Canterbury Tales by Jeffrey Chauser. And then more modern theologians like CS Lewis pull upon a lot of that to sort like make their case.(34m 44s):
And then like that gets trickled down to us. It’s like, reminds me of that scene in the Devil Wears Prada where she’s got like the two different types of blue and it’s like, oh, you think you’re making a choice, but it’s like it’s not actually coming. The the origin isn’t the, the bible, the origin is like this medieval literature and paintings and they sort of like get money laundered down through the millennia and then like, then it gets presented to us as like it was a game of telephone. It was coming from the Bible. And so we just, I feel like we can’t talk about the, the devil without talking about screw tape, the Screwtape Letters by CS Lewis or just so, so big in the popular imagination.(35m 25s):
And so in letter 22, toward the end of the letter screw tape goes through a transformation and it’s literally from Paradise Lost. Shay, can you, can you read it out? We will make the whole universe a noise in the end. We have already made great strides in this direction as regards to the earth. The melodies and silences of heaven will be shouted down in the end. But I admit we are not yet loud enough or anything like it. Research is in progress. Meanwhile you disgusting little here, the manuscript breaks off and is resumed in a different hand in the heat of composition.(36m 8s):
I find that I have in inadvertently allowed myself to assume the form of a large centipede. I’m accordingly dictating the rest to my secretary. Now that the transformation is complete, I recognize it as a periodical phenomenon. Some rumor of it has reached the humans and distorted account of it appears in the poet Milton with the ridiculous edition that such changes of shape are a punishment imposed on us by the enemy. And I just like, I read this And I was like, I can’t believe I used to like think the CS Lewis was this like titan of faith, but he is like, oh, let me like, I don’t know, copy John Milton’s Paradise lock.(36m 49s):
It’s also, it’s also very kafkaesque, right? With guy waking up as a cockroach. Like it, it feels very derivative of that as well. I don’t know what the timing is on that, but Yeah, I dunno either. But I also thought of Kafka and that and that as well. And also just like it reminds me that like it’s, yeah, CS Lewis is all sort of the Chronicles of Narnia. There’s something very sort of like juvenile about this whole story. And so it’s just sort of like CS Lewis not is like sort of like tipping his hand to like a lot of his ideas about Satan are coming not from the Bible but from John Milton and Paradise Laws. I’m like, yes, he’s critiquing it, but like you, he is also sort of like very much informed by it.(37m 31s):
And so I just like want to go on a journey of representations of of the devil. We’ll put a link to all of these in the show notes for this episode, which you can find at Queer Theology dot com slash 4 2 4. Shay, can you describe to me what you are seeing? This is a mural by Florence and from the Florence Baptistry in 1260 by Kapo de Markal. We’ve got a horned being a naked horned male being with a, oh yeah, you could see his penis Half, Yes, half, half in and out of his mouth.(38m 22s):
There’s like a two-headed snake coming out of his ears and he’s also maybe sitting on a two-headed snake, unclear if that’s part of his body or if he’s sitting on it. And all of the snakes are are eating the peoples. Yeah, it’s wild. And then I’m gonna send you another one Again. We’ve got a like partially horned but also maybe just funky ears, some fur on the face of this one, but also a face in the stomach area, talons on the feet, which are like standing on and gripping a human.(39m 6s):
But then it’s also in like a, a mouth of a serpent like oh yeah. Faced guy Yeah. Is standing on a human and all of them are in the mouth of a, of a serpent. And then there’s a banner that says like inferno redemption, something else above, above the fuz fuzzy faced guy. Yeah. So this is some like medieval era imaginations of the devil. And then in the like 15 hundreds we start getting some propaganda that sort of like mixes the devil with some propagated What, what was going on sort of around the 15 hundreds.(40m 4s):
I was homeschooled, my history is not great. You, you’re gonna have to help me out. Okay, so around then as the like church of as like the reformation was happening. Oh yes, We started to get some, some, some anti-Catholic propaganda. I wish you could see shade’s face right now. I don’t even know how to describe this. It’s like a, it’s a bird looking thing is the Satan figure, but like playing bagpipes that are made out of the pope’s head, I’m assuming, I’m assuming that’s a pope.(40m 47s):
Yeah, well the pope or a mon priest. Yeah, something like that. That’s Excellent. Yeah. The the, like the Catholic church in this depiction is like a literal instrument of Satan, right? And so good times, good times. And so then we start to move on to a more like enlightened devil. You know, this is like where like John Milton sort of like a more complex portrait of Lucifer in the Paradise Lost. And so here’s like some enlightenment era. It’s like very much ripped eight pack white dude with arms up raised, right?(41m 37s):
Like very human looking kind of ideal body type, ideal quote, unquote. Yeah. As, as, as Michael Hobbs would say, there’s just like a marketably attractive like the, the the type of body that you use to sell like shaving cream, right? Yes. And that also, this is William Blake’s depiction of Lucifer in Paradise Lost, like rallying his rebel angels from 1808. Like, he’s like, he’s, you know, he could be an Insta, right? Like he’s very fu attractive. And so I think like you, it’s really this progression. If you go to the, to, to the show notes of this episode, again, Queer Theology dot com slash 4 24, you’ll see like there’s real progression from like totally wild out there in the 12 hundreds.(42m 31s):
And it starts to get more and more like we understand the devil today from going from this sort of like wild colors horns to this more sort of like fiery version to then this like version that is associated with like political enemies. And then finally to this sort of like cunning smart shapeshifting and can’t take any form, like sort of enlightened the devil. And I, I think about like other like really recent pop culture where it’s like Satan in a business suit, right? Like he’s a businessman with like a rich tailored suit and fancy cars and yeah.(43m 14s):
Moves through skyscrapers, right? Like we’ve, that progression just keeps on going. Yeah. And so this is a little bit of for so, so Shea, I guess like what do we, what do we do with all of this that we’ve covered sort of like, okay, like, so this is like the history of Satan. This is like Satan in the Hebrew Bible, this is Diablo and the Christian Bible. This is sort of like our popular pop culture conceptions and where it all comes from, like, so cool, like now I’ve got all this data, right? Like what does this mean for us as like modern people at faith, sort of like going about our lives and our spiritualities?(43m 57s):
Well, I mean, I think it’s really important. I I think this is why it’s so important to know your history, right? To understand how these different conceptions got passed down, where they came from, And I, and like what we talked about in the deconstruction series, like this is a moment to like hold each card up to the light and see what stands right? And to, and to also, like you said, instead of looking at Satan and the devil as like a full deck of cards, right? We have to look at these different cards are not necessarily connected, so we have to pull them apart.(44m 42s):
And then I think it’s also about thinking through, okay, what purpose did each of these different ideas serve in their individual forms, right? Like, what was the author of Job trying to say? What is, you know, the book of the author of Revelation trying to say and do What was Milton and CS Lewis trying to do, right? Like, these are all, people are writing things because they’re trying to make a point. And I think we can examine what’s underneath the point and figure out if, if that holds for us without having to like believe in a conception of Satan in a boxing match with Jesus, right?(45m 32s):
I, And I do think that this is a moment to say this package deal that we’ve been sold about Satan in our, specifically in our evangelical churches, but in other churches as well that was used to like scare us into towing the line is like not something that we have to be afraid of. Yeah. And just like, you know, I now, I can’t remember if it was on the podcast or inside of Sanctuary Collective, but talking about like original sin, right? As this package that I was taught that I, I ultimately found like mostly unsupported by scripture and kind of like uncompelling, but then sort of came back around to like, oh, but there are ways to understand original sin that do make sense.(46m 16s):
Like systemic injustice. Systemic racism. Like, oh yeah, like this thing that happened before I was born that I had no control over, but that like, even at the moment of my birth, like impacted me and that I impacted and that like, while I didn’t like create it back in the day, I sort of end up with the responsibility to do something about it. I’m like, oh yeah, like that does work. And so you don’t have, like, this is a little bit of like what, when you were saying shit like examining each card and like what’s underneath it and like what are they trying to get at? And like finding, looking at the ways in which what they’re trying to get at is like antisemitism. Like maybe you wanna discard that deck, that card.(46m 57s):
But there there are some things like what do we do with evil and where does it come from and how do we resist it? And there probably are some really powerful ideas in there. And then how does that affect your theology? And so to sort of underline that sort of thought right there, and to close us out, I’m gonna share a portion of a quote from Desmond Tutu’s book Made For Goodness, which he wrote in 2010, which I read, and it, it blew my mind. And it’s a longer quote that I, I think I’m gonna save part of either for the hell episode or for the eternal damnation episode. But, but I will start it. And so we’ll stop to keep looking to the series to find out the rest of the rest of this passage.(47m 39s):
But this is from Desmond Tutu’s Meg for goodness, God’s Pursuit of the Sinner is a risky gamble, but it is not a futile one. God is no fool. God would not risk everything on a gamble that was doomed to fail. In fact, the early Christian theologian origin would maintain that the odds are in God’s favor and time is on God’s side. Origin believed that God’s love is so irresistible that heaven will ultimately win us all. He scandalized even his contemporaries by asserting that at the end of time, even Satan would abandon hell to worship God in heaven. And so I just love this idea of like even Satan, this medieval that there’s, there’s room in like God’s transformative love for all of us, but not that we, not that we get to stay in our prejudices and evil, that it transforms us, but that, like I think about, you know, in Sanctuary Collective recently someone was talking about like, well, what do we do about like, people who do really awful things, or I think about like, you know, Donald Trump or you know Fred Phelps, sort of like these people that are devils of our time.(48m 44s):
And I think the question of what happens to the devil? What happens to the people who do really bad things? What happens to you and me? What happens to people who don’t pray to, to pray to God and accept Jesus? All of these questions are things that we will be addressing in hell and in eternal damnation. So stay tuned. The Queer Theology Podcast is just one of many things that we do at Queer Theology dot com, which provides resources, community, and inspiration for L-G-B-T-Q Christians and straight cisgender supporters. To dive into more of the action, visit us at Queer Theology dot com. You can also connect with us online on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram. We’ll see you next week.(49m 25s):
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