Gaslighting God

God's Monsters: Vengeful Spirits, Deadly Angels, Hybrid Creatures, and Divine Hitmen of the Bible by Esther J. Hamori
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

A rather disappointing book.

That's a personal opinion, of course. I was disappointed mainly because I didn't find what I was looking for, and the author doesn't have any obligation to the reader to provide what they are looking for. But I was also disappointed because what the book did provide, it provided in a very tendentious and rather misleading way.

What was I hoping to find?

I write, and enjoy reading, fantasy books that include various kinds of creatures that could fall under a general heading of "God's monsters" -- angels, demons, dragons and the like. I was hoping to get more insight into their character and activity.

The main aim of the book appears to have been to show that in the Bible God is a malevolent, capricious and extremely violent tyrant, and that the "heavenly host" are nothing more than a bunch of violent thugs employed as enforcers. Anything that doesn't fit this picture is either left out altogether, or twisted until it can be made to fit.

There are occasional useful insights, but they are suffocated by the overarching need to show the malevolent wickedness of God.

One of these useful insights was that Isaiah went to sleep in church one Sabbath, and dreamed about the seraphim. There was a seraph in the temple, which he was probably looking at just before he had his dream. It was called Nechushtan, and was made of brass. It was said to have been made by Moses and when the people of Israel were attacked by a lot of poisonous snakes (seraphim in Hebrew) in the desert, Moses held up the brass seraph and they were healed (Numbers 21:6-9). So this brass seraph quite possibly triggered Isaiah's vision in the temple (Isaiah 6).

But the point Hamori emphasises here is that the cruel and sadistic seraph, servant of a crueller and more sadistic god, deliberately and with malice aforethought literally goes and burns Isaiah's mouth with a burning coal. I thought this was taking literalism too far.

Next come the cherubim.

I think the first mention of a cherub in the Bible is the one that barred the entrance to the garden after Adam and Eve were expelled. Author Esther J. Hamori (correctly in my view) makes the point that cherubim are found all over the ancient Near East as guardians of holy places, but the problem is with what went before the expulsion. The story is twisted into something like its opposite. God deliberately tricks Adam and Eve by lying to them, and the snake tries to help them.

In the moments leading up to God’s deployment of the monstrous guard, he lies to his human creation, promises them a painful future, and gaslights them. No wonder they hide from him behind the trees. After this, stationing monsters at the door looks less like a new security feature warranted by the people’s actions, and more like the next threatening move of a controlling figure whose m.o. now includes bringing in thugs to do his dirty work.

When God stations his hybrid guardian monsters at the gateway to Eden, it’s the culmination of a story of divine danger. The garden of Eden, where the deity strolls among the trees as the human beings hide behind them, contains more danger than the world outside. Even in Eden, there is no Paradise.

 If, however, one takes Occam's Razor to Hamori's interpretation, one can find a simpler explanation. God says Adam and Eve can eat the fruit of any tree in the garden, except that of one tree. They eat the fruit of that tree. Taking what it is not given is theft, and when the thief sees the rightful owner of the stolen goods coming the natural reaction is to hide, not because the owner is inherently dangerous but because of what one has done.

 And the Christian metanarrative (yes, I know postmoderns don't like metanarratives) is that this theft and abuse of hospitality breaks the relationship between man (male and female, should anyone quibble) and God, and, whatever else it is, the cherub at the gate represents the inhuman face of God, which is the result of the broken relationship and how God appears to man after the break, until, in Jesus Christ, God appears again with a human face to restore the relationship.

Hamori says that in this story God gaslights the first humans, but I think in this book Hamori gaslights God.

And the further one reads in the book the more obviously and relentlessly does the author press this Orwellian twist -- freedom is slavery and slavery is freedom, the oppressor is the victim and the victim is the oppressor. 

This becomes more obvious in dealing with the King of Babylon in Isaiah chapter 14. The obvious meaning is that in death the oppressor comes down to the level of those he oppressed -- he has no power in the grave. His victims can say, where is all your power now, with which you oppressed people? But Hamori presents God as the oppressor and the King of Babylon as the victim of oppression by creepy shades roused by God to gloat over his fate. Elsewhere Hamori talks of "monsterising" people we don't like, but here she monsterises the oppressed and presents their oppressor as the victim.

I would, however, be interested in discussing this book with others who have read it, and looking at it especially in terms of all the things that Hamori leaves out.

For example, Hamori must know, but fails to mention in the book, that Christians often interpret the fall of the King of Babylon typologically, as analogous to a fall of Satan. So much so that one of the epithets of the king of Babylon, Lucifer (in the Latin Vulgate) has been taken by some to be the personal name of the satan.

In discussing the book of Job Hamori points out, correctly, that "satan" is not a name but a job description, but then rather disingenuously claims that "Finally, the word becomes a name: Adversary, or Satan. Even then, he’s not the same as the Satan of the New Testament, who’s also called the devil (and a few other choice names). In the Hebrew Bible there’s no devil or hell. None. Zip. Devil-free territory."

Elsewhere Hamori claims that nowhere in the Bible is the satan called an angel. yet the Septuagint version of Job 2:1 says that the angels of the Lord came to stand before the Lord and the devil was among them. "Devil" (Greek diavolos) is the Greek translation of the Hebrew satan, and, like "satan", means adversary or accuser.

In the scene in Zechariah 3, where the high priest Joshua is on trial, Hamori emphasises the injustice done by God to the satan, rebuking the prosecutor for simply doing his job, thus obscuring the main point, which is that God's mercy trumps his justice. And this is clearly because it contradicts Hamori's main point, hammered in just about every paragraph in the book, that God is not merciful, but malevolent, vindictive, cruel and sadistic.

For what it's worth, a Christian metanarrative here is that the satan, who is indeed the prosecutor in the heavenly court, like many human prosecutors, takes his job too seriously. For him the overarching goal is the conviction rate; it is better that the innocent should suffer than that the guilty should escape. He regards the judge as too soft on sinners, and thinks he could do a better job, so aims to take over the judge's job. But he comes short with Jesus, who is found guilty in the magistrate's court (under Caiaphas), and likewise in the high court (under Pilate, even though Pilate has his doubts, he is not prepared to give Jesus the benefit of the doubt), but in the court of ultimate appeal Jesus, the high priest Joshua ("Jesus" is the Greek form of the Hebrew Joshua) is vindicated because the filthy clothes he is wearing are not his but ours -- he put them on at his baptism in the Jordan -- and the ultimate court of appeal not only reverses the verdict of guilty, but it reverses the sentence as well, the sentence of death, and Jesus rises from the dead. Satan not only loses his case, he loses his job and is tossed out of court by Michael, who has become the bouncer (Rev 12:7-12), and there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for their accuser (satan, devil) has been fired.

Hamori's account is more interesting for what she leaves out than for what she includes, and the excluded bits tend to show that throughout the book she is gaslighting God.

 

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The devil made me do it

One of the most curious inversions of Christian theology can be seen in the popular perception of the role of the devil or satan in Christian theology.

Someone is found guilty of a heinous crime, and is reported in the media as having said "The devil made me do it", and the perception is created that the role of the devil is to absolve Christians of responsibility for all the evil things they do.

The reality is the other way round.

Just before receiving communion, Orthodox Christians pray to the Lord Jesus Christ "who came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am first". As Christians the only thing we can say is not that the devil made me do it, but that I let the devil talk me into doing it. What we can, and must say, is "The devil made him do it," or "the devil made her do it."

The primary characteristic of the devil is the making of accusations. In Hebrew the satan is the accuser, the one who makes accusations in a court of law (see Zechariah 3 and Revelation 12:10). In Greek satan is translated as diavolos, from from which the English words devil and diabolical come.

Our Lord Jesus Christ said, "Judge not, that ye be not judged". It is a human tendency to want to judge others for the evil that they do, and to judge others more harshly than we judge ourselves. Actually it is devilish tendency, for the most characteristically satanic activity is the making of accusations, and especially false accusations.

Not judging other people does not mean that we should call evil deeds good. Evil deeds are evil, but we are to judge actions rather than people. We are to love the sinner but hate the sin. The devil came into the world to accuse sinners, but Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am first. If we ask God to have mercy on us, and he does, we ought to cultivate a merciful heart and not judge others more harshly than we judge ourselves. As G.K. Chesterton put it, "In the best Utopia, I must be prepared for the moral fall of any man in any position at any moment; especially for my fall from my position at this moment."

If we use the devil as an excuse for sinful behaviour, then it is always to excuse the sinful behaviour of other people, never our own. It's OK to say "The devil made him do it," but not to say "the devil made me do it."

Perhaps the best summary of the Christian view of the role of the devil in Christian theology comes from a secular anthropologist, whose book Demons and the devil describes the result of a study he made of orthodoxy and orthopraxy on the Greek island of Naxos;

The Orthodox moral world emerges as an arena in which good struggles against evil, the kingdom of heaven against the kingdom of earth. In life, humans are enjoined to embrace Christ, who assists their attainment of Christian virtues: modesty, humility, patience and love. At the same time, lack of discernment and incontinence impede the realization of these virtues and thereby conduce to sin; sin in turn places one closer to the Devil... Since the resurrection of Christ the results of this struggle have not been in doubt. So long as people affirm their faith in Christ, especially at moments of demonic assault, there is no need to fear the influence of the Devil. He exists only as an oxymoron, a powerless force.

The devil in popular culture

John Morehead has an interesting article on Satan in popular American culture on this blog at Morehead's Musings: Satan and America:

W. Scott Poole, an associate professor of history at the College of Charleston. He has written a book titled Satan in America: The Devil We Know (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), and the following essay is adapted from that book. It originally appeared in The Post and Courier.

Quite a lot of the things mentioned in the article have also affected popular South Africa culture, so the article makes interesting reading. The films mentioned in the article, such as Rosemary's baby and The exorcist were also shown in South Africa, and so influenced the perception of the devil in popular culture in South Africa as well.

Back in the 1980s there was an "occult" unit of the South African Police, which dealt with "satanists", very much as perceived in American popular culture, and there were indeed some self-described satanists whose own self-understanding appeared to be shaped by the prevalent images in popular culture.

But the most striking example of the American cultural influence on South African popular culture in my experience was back in 1977, when we were in the Anglican Church in Utrecht, a small mining town in Northern Natal. In the town there was a big Dutch Reformed Church (NGK), and a small Anglican Church, and nothing else, so at the Anglican Church we had ecumenical services on Sunday evenings which were for anyone in town who wasn't white Dutch Reformed. The services were multidenominational and multicultural. There were Anglicans, Assemblies of God, Afrikaans Baptist, and many others, black, white and coloured.

One evening the Assemblies of God evangelist from Newcastle, Piet Joubert, brought a film that that been produced by American Evangelicals, called The burning hell, and this was shown to the congregation. It struck me as a crass materialistic spirituality. Val and I sat at the back and giggled the whole way through, and especially at scenes where middle-class white suburban Americans in dressing gowns were swallowed by holes in the earth in a crude re-enactment of Numbers 26:8-11. The symbolism of the book of Revelation was interpreted in crudely materialistic terms.

But at the end of the film there was an altar call and a very big response, and nearly all the black and coloured teenagers went up, many of them weeping and sobbing. The film had obviously had a profound effect on them in spite of its shortcomings. And it wasn't simply a short-lived one-off emotional response either. Some of those who had come to the church that evening for the first time returned regularly afterwards, and became active in the Anglican youth group. In this way images from American pop religious culture seemed to have considerable influence in South Africa as well.

I was in three minds about it.

First, I was repelled by the crude materialism and bad theology of the film itself. Secondly, I welcomed the enthusiasm that it engendered in the youth in Utrecht. Thirdly, I was concerned that it was entirely disconnected from the experience of other youth in the country who were being treated to the rocky rioter teargas show in Soweto and elsewhere.[1] In those days, the main sphere of demonic activity was in the implementation of the apartheid policy itself, and the white, middle-class American interpretation in the film did nothing to help the youth in Utrecht or elsewhere to understand that.

And then I compare it with Charles Stewart's study of folk theology in rural Greece, Demons and the devil, which has perhaps not been quite so strongly influenced by American popular culture. Stewart summarises his findings as follows:

The Orthodox moral world emerges as an arena in which good struggles against evil, the kingdom of heaven against the kingdom of earth. In life, humans are enjoined to embrace Christ, who assists their attainment of Christian virtues: modesty, humility, patience and love. At the same time, lack of discernment and incontinence impede the realization of these virtues and thereby conduce to sin; sin in turn places one closer to the Devil... Since the resurrection of Christ the results of this struggle have not been in doubt. So long as people affirm their faith in Christ, especially at moments of demonic assault, there is no need to fear the influence of the Devil. He exists only as an oxymoron, a powerless force.

____

Notes

[1] Hopkins, Pat & Grange, Helen. 2001. The Rocky Rioter Teargas Show. Cape Town: Zebra. ISBN: 1-86872-342-9

The Rocky Rioter Teargas Show was the title of a satirical theatre presentation performed by Cape Town students at the time of the 1976 Soweto uprising. The book goes inside the events and their causes, and recreates the drama and excitement of the events. The narrative is illustrated with photographs and documents, many of which have hitherto been secret, such as cabinet minutes giving explicit approval of "more deaths" through police action.

Christian responses to "Satanism" and journalists who write about it

Commercial pressure leads Rapport to scrap column : Mail & Guardian Online: "Afrikaans Sunday newspaper Rapport has scrapped writer Deon Maas's column after his piece on satanism prejudiced the paper's commercial interests, its editor said on Thursday. Following the appearance of the opinion piece on November 4, readers started an SMS campaign calling for a boycott of sales on Sunday, said editor Tim du Plessis in a statement."

The controversy has spilled over into the blogosphere, but in the confusion the points made in the original article have been been lost.

In the original column Deon Maas wrote about a woman who was arrested for possession of heroin and cocaine, but found it disturbing that the police, after searching her bedroom, were now investigating her for Satanism, after finding Satanist documents written in blood, candles, human hair and more.

Maas notes that he had candles in his house, because of Eskom's lack of planning, and wondered why no one had informed the investigating officer that the constitution guarantees freedom of religion. Maas said that he himself was not religious, and that if he were in the market for a religion, Satanism would seem like too much effort, slaughtering peaceful domestic animals, and rising after midnight to practise your faith.

Maas also observes that the Satanist ethic of do to others what they do to you or before they do it to you might not go down too well among those raised in religions with an ethic of turning the other cheek, but that it sounds to him like standard behaviour in the business world of Johannesburg.

So why the storm of protest, threats of boycotts etc.?

What should a Christian response to Satanism be?

In the Christian understanding Satan is an over-zealous public prosecutor who got fired for exceeding his powers. He was the prosecutor in the heavenly court ("satan" is a noun rather than a name, an office; it means "accuser" or "adversary" as does the Greek diavolos, from which the English word "devil" is derived).

Like many human prosecutors, Satan wanted to up the conviction rate, thought the judge (God) was too soft on criminals (sinners) and thought it better that the innocent should be punished than that the guilty should escape (sound familiar?) He brought accusations against the high priest Joshua, representing God's people (Zechariah 3) which Christians see as typologically referring to Jesus ("Jesus" is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Joshua). Jesus was found guilty in the magistrate's court (Annas and Caiaphas), and in the high court (Pilate), but in the supreme court of appeal (heaven) he was acquitted. Not only was the verdict reversed (guilty to innocent) but so was the sentence (death to resurrection). Satan not only lost his case but lost his job, and was thrown out of court (Revelation 12:7-12) and is going around looking for revenge.

Another image of Satan given in the Bible is of a concentration camp commandant. He has turned the whole world into a jail (Luke 11:14-26) but Jesus has come into the jail in the guise of a prisoner, tied up the chief warder, and smashed the gates, asks his followers to go around telling the prisoners that they are free.

That is a very brief and over-simplified account of the Christian understanding of Satan.

And if we look at things from that point of view, the last people Satan is going to be concerned with is Satanists. Far from trying to escape, the Satanists are in the prison voluntarily. Satan doesn't have to worry about them at all.

No, where Satan is most active is among the Christians, and in the churches. He's not worried about the volunteers, he's worried about the conscripts who have deserted. It's in the churches where we need to be concerned about satanic activity, because that is where Satan is most active. And the most characteristically satanic activity of all is the making of accusations, because Satan is, above all else, the Great Accuser.

Christianity and horror

Thanks to Elizaphanian: a Christian perspective on horror for pointing to this very interesting interview: FilmChat: Scott Derrickson -- the interview.

Speaking of film, Derrickson says that the horror genre "distinguishes and articulates the essence of good and evil better than any other genre" and when asked about the fantasy genre, Derrickson said:

The evil within the fantasy genre tends to be threatening to the heroes within the story, but not to the reader -- or not to the viewer, in the case of cinema -- and that's why I think it's more palatable, and something that is more easily embraced for a lot of people. Because it does deal directly with good and evil, but it doesn't serve to actually render feelings of fear and terror within the reader, in the case of literature, or within the viewer, in the case of cinema.

I've enjoyed horror films and horror literature since my youth, a taste perhaps fostered by two English teachers I had when I was about 9-10 years old, Murray Bissett and Wilfred Noriskin, both of whom encouraged creative writing and imagination. Murray Bissett, in particular, read us ghost stories, and the boundary between ghost stories and horror stories is often hard to determine. One of the first stories he read us was The ash tree which sounded considerably more horrific to our ears than the author intended, since we pictured a ghostly undead revenant tree, which had resurrected itself from the ashes in the grate, or a forest fire, and planted itself, grey and ghostly with blackened branches, outside a house to haunt the inhabitants. It was only much later that I learnt that there were living, green and growing trees called "ash".

When I was in high school I discovered a two-volume collection of short stories in a book case at home, edited by Dorothy Sayers, called Detection, mystery, horror. The detection section went unread, the mystery section I read once, but the horror section I read again and again. Two stories in the collection stood out, The Wendigo and Couching at the door..

Not long after that I discovered Dracula, and The devil rides out, by Dennis Wheatley, both classic horror stories of their time. But after leaving school I read very few horror stories, mainly because they were so difficult to come by. There was a film, The innocents based on Henry James's ghost story The turn of the screw.

The genre has various names, or perhaps there are overlapping genres -- horror, supernatural fiction, ghost stories. "Supernatural fiction" seems to cover most of them. And in that category most of Charles Williams's novels seem to fall, with All Hallows Eve and Descent into hell being ghost stories, and Many dimensions having elements of classic horror.

But as I got older, perhaps my taste got jaded, and most of the "horror" stories ceased to horrify. There was a sort of "I've heard it all before" feel. Horror films were even less effective, with too much reliance on special effects and distracting one from the plot with "I wonder how they did that" thoughts.

Of these authors, Charles Williams was Christian, and so was Sayers, though she was an editor rather than an author when it came to horror, and did not write much herself.

Among more recent authors associated with the horror genre is Stephen King, but many of his books are thinly disguised science fiction, where the source of the horror seems to be something that came from outer space (Desperation, It, The tommyknockers). His Pet sematary, Needful things and Salem's lot are closer to classic horror in the sense of supernatural stories. But even these seem to be nihilist rather than Christian, as far as the examination of evil is concerned. The supernatural evil is just there, as in H.P. Lovecraft's Chthulu mythos. The actual struggle between good and evil takes place at a much more mundane and human level, in the lives of the characters. And when one sees it in that way, it can actually throw some light on the Christian understanding of spiritual warfare, as discussed in the recent synchroblog. So, for example, in Pet sematary the family of the protagonist is visited hy evil revenants, but the battle is not fought primarily between the protagonist and these, but within the heart of the protagonist himself. It is the devices and desires of our own hearts that lead us astray.

This can also be seen in Bram Stoker's Dracula. The vampire, for all his evil powers, cannot enter the house and harm the inhabitants unless one of the inmates invites him in. Or, as St Peter puts it, "Resist the devil and he will flee from you."

But for all its value in showing the battle between good and evil, horror is limited, because one becomes sated. Myth and fantasy go deeper, despite Derrickson's reservations. But I would like to issue a challenge to Derrickson: make a film of a Charles Williams novel. That would be a real achievement.



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More thoughts on spiritual warfare

After reading some of the synchronised blogs relating to spiritual warfare I have a few more thoughts on the topic.

There are two points in particular that I want to comment on. One is the desire, expressed by some, to find a different term to replace spiritual warfare.

Related to this is the linking of spiritual warfare to the idea that non-Christian religions are "demonic", and thus the notion that spiritual warfare is warfare against the adherents of other religions.

My view is that the second of these is a dangerous distortion of the Christian understanding of spiritual warfare, but that it will not be corrected by simply substituting one term for another. A rose by any other name will swell as sweet, and a sewer by any other name will smell as foul. The solution is not to change the name, but to correct the misunderstanding.

Some Biblical references

One problem with the idea of finding another term for "spiritual warfare" is that the concept is embedded in the Scriptures and the Christian worldview, and any term we may devise will probably be inadequate, and may give rise to more serious distortions than those it seeks to prevent. Here are just a few of the scriptural references to the concept of spiritual warfare.

• II Cor 10:3-5 - Though in the flesh we do not struggle according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly, but powerful to God for destroying strongholds, demolishing arguments and every high thing that rises against the knowledge of God.
  
• I Peter 2:11 - Brethren, I beseech you as sojurners and aliens to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.
  
• II Tim 2:3-5 - Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier on service gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to satisfy the one who enlisted him. An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.
  

Christians and pagans

The last scripture reference ((II Tim 2:3-5) also relates to Christians and pagans. As the historian Robin Lane Fox has pointed out:

In antiquity, pagans already owed a debt to Christians. Christians first gave them their name, pagani... In everyday use, it meant either a civilian or a rustic. Since the sixteenth century the origin of the early Christians' usage has been disputed, but of the two meanings, the former is the likelier. Pagani were civilians who had not enlisted through baptism as soldiers of Christ against the powers of Satan. By its word for non-believers, Christian slang bore witness to the heavenly battle which coloured Christians' view of life (Fox 1987:30).

This heavenly battle, between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan, is one in which there is no peace and no neutrality (see Luke 11:14-26, esp v. 23, "He who is not for us is against us"). If there is no neutrality, then the pagani, those who have not enlisted as soldiers of Christ, must be soldiers in the army of Satan, whether they know it or not That seems to be a logical conclusion, and yet Christians have adopted different views, and ambivalent views, towards non-Christian religions. The stark opposition in Luke 11 is countered by the different view in Mark 9:38-41, "He that is not against us is for us".

At this point I cannot speak for Western theology, because since Augustine of Hippo, Anselm of Canterbury and Calvin of Geneva the West has tended to have a different understanding of sin, and notably of original sin. Western theology has tended to see original sin as a macula, a stain on the soul, transmitted from generation to generation, original guilt being transmitted along with original sin.

The Orthodox understanding is somewhat different. I was born in South Africa, and so I am a South African citizen by birth. But there is no mark on my soul to say that I am a South African citizen. Similarly, South Africa is part of the world and the world lies in the power of the Evil One, and so I was also a citizen of the Kingdom of Satan by birth, but in baptism I renounced my citizenship of that Kingdom and was born again as a citizen by birth of the Kingdom of God (Heb 12:22-24). Thus Western theology has tended to see original sin as a matter of heredity, while Orthodox theology has tended to see it as a matter of the environment. Western theology has tended to see sin and evil primarily as something God punishes us for; Orthodox theology has tended to see sin and evil primarily as something God rescues us from.

Having made this qualification about sin in general, and original sin in particular one can see that at the Fall, man lost the likeness of God, but not the image of God. Orthodox theology does not accept the Calvinist theory of total depravity. Human beings, and human society, and human religion became corrupt, but did not become wholly, purely and totally evil.

So Christians (or at least Orthodox Christians) approach pagans from a double point of view. If there is a polytheistic society (and Christianity grew up in a polytheistic society, and most of the religions it encountered inside and outside the Roman empire for the first few centuries were polytheistic) then Christians believe that they do not worship God the creator, but lesser deities, created deities. Most of the pagan creation myths speak of the gods being created. A common word for lesser deities in the time of early Christians was daemones. Daemones inhabited the atmosphere, between earth and heaven. Their primary characteristic was not (at that stage) to be evil, but simply to be lesser gods. We can see this in Psalm 82 (LXX 81). And this is the picture given in the New Testament. Pagans worship creatures rather than the creator. They worship underlings rather than the great God above all gods. Nations have gods, national spirits, as described in Deuteronomy 32:8-9, and can be seen in the Orthodox ikon of Babel when contrasted with the ikon of Pentecost.

So in the New Testament the gods of the pagans are described as demons and idols, not so much to indicate that they are purely evil, but to indicate that they are lesser. "I say, 'You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless you shall die like men, and fall like any prince.' Arise O God, judge the earth; for to Thee belong all the nations" (Psalm 82:6-8)

That last verse, "Arise, O God, judge the earth" is sung, accompanied by noisy banging and stamping of feet, by Orthodox Christians on Holy Saturday, and it is a prayer fulfilled by Jesus when he said "Now is the judgement of this world (judge the earth), now shall the ruler of this world be cast out (like any prince), and I, when I am lifted up from the earth (Arise, O God) will draw all men to myself (for to Thee belong all the nations)" (John 12:31)-32).

Later in Christian history the distinction between angels and demons hardened. Angels were good spirits, demons were fallen angels, and strictly evil, to be resisted in spiritual warfare, and yet there is also a sense in which Christians mourn for them and their loss, and even the Archangel Michael did not presume to pronounce a reviling judgment against the devil (Jude 6-10).

So the deities of the pagans are daemones, in the sense of being lesser spirits, creatures rather than the creator, and their cult is, like all human worship, fallen. The deities may be angels or demons, (in the good and evil sense) as well. Human religion is corrupt, but it is not completely corrupt, and in Christian mission is not necessarily to be eradicated, but restored and fulfilled. And even Christian worship, undertaken as it is by sinful men in a fallen world, is likely to become fallen and corrupt itself. So we, as Christians, do not necessarily say to pagans "Your religion is bad and ours is good, therefore abandon your bad religion and join our good one." But we rather say "Come to meet the One who who supersedes all religion, yours and ours, and who calls us to worship in Spirit and in Truth."

Fr Michael Oleksa notes that the teaching of St Maximus the Confessor gave Orthodox Christianity a more positive view of non-Christian religions than Western theology did. "St Maximus the Confessor wrote that the Logos became embodied not just once, but three times - in the creation of the world, in the Holy Scriptures, and finally and most perfectly as a human being" (Oleksa 1992:38).

It was St Maximus's opposition to the monothelitism of his times, and to the Platonic theology of Origen, that laid the foundations for the positive view which Orthodox missions have generally had of traditional societies in central and eastern Europe in the 9th & 10th centuries, and across central Asia and into eastern Siberia and Alaska over the next 800 years. "Orthodox evangelists felt no obligation to attack all the pre-contact religious beliefs of shamanistic tribes, for they could perceive in them some of the positive appreciation of the cosmos that is central to St Maximus' theology. They could affirm that the spiritual realities these societies worshipped were indeed 'logoi' related to the Divine Logos, whose personal existence these societies had simply never imagined" (Oleksa 1992:61).

So when a pagan diviner (in South Africa called a "sangoma") casts out a demon, should we, like those who accused Jesus, say that he casts out demons by the prince of demons, and denounce it as a satanic deception? If we do, we are seduced into making of accusations, and that is the most satanic deception of all.