The Quest for the Historical Satan (Miguel A. De La Torre and Albert Hernandez)

In 2001, the mayor of Inglis, a small town in Florida, issued an eviction notice to “Satan, ruler of darkness, giver of evil, destroyer of what is good and just.” The town placed a written proclamation that commanded “all satanic and demonic entities to cease their activities and depart,” on new posts at each of the village's entrances (1–2). In 2003, Army Lt. General William Boykin famously characterized the War on Terror as pitting the United States—a “Christian nation”—against Islam, proclaiming that “the enemy is a spiritual enemy ... the enemy is a guy named Satan” (15). More recently still, in 2010, the television evangelist Pat Robertson credited an earthquake that devastated Haiti to an eighteenth-century pact with the Devil. Satan, it seems, is alive and well in Christendom—particularly in the United States. And this is the starting point for Miguel De La Torre and Albert Hernandez in their Quest for the Historical Satan.The book is at its best as a history of how ideas about personified evil have developed in the Western Christian worldview, and in its treatment of how these ideas have come to inform the interaction between peoples. These, of course, are far from new themes. However, where other scholars have identified this ongoing problem—for example, Regina Schwartz found monotheism's insistence on a fundamental opposition between good and evil to be the foundation of intolerance—De La Torre and Hernandez endeavor to posit a solution by asking “how should Satan be imagined?” (16). From this starting point, they set out to demonstrate that ideas of Satan have historically been quite malleable, and claim that “rediscovering how Satan was originally envisioned and developed can provide modern-day Christians with insights for comprehending the ambiguities of right and wrong and perhaps for living a more balanced moral life” (11).The authors, both professors at the Iliff School of Theology in Colorado, have set up the text as something of a personal quest, one in which their own religious sensibilities play an important role. Hernandez, a historian, identifies himself as “a deeply religious man who grew up Roman Catholic in the Cuban exile community of Miami” (x). There he saw the pernicious effects of ideology as Cuban immigrants divided themselves into factions over the issue of Communism. By contrast, De La Torre, an ethicist, was raised within a “hybrid spirituality” where it was possible to be “a good Catholic boy who prayed the rosary by day and a faithful Santeria devotee by night” (xi). As part of his Santeria practice, he offered sacrifices to Elleggua, the trickster santo. Later, though, De La Torre became a Southern Baptist, dismissing his previous Catholicism as idolatry and all the santos he had venerated as demons—in his new life, Elleggua became Satan himself (xi). Over time, he admits, he came to reject this view as well, reconfiguring himself as a “Baptecostal Catholic Santero” (xi). De La Torre's spiritual journey is central to the character of the volume, for just as he feels comfortable holding a faith that borrows from multiple traditions, he thinks that a Christian understanding of Satan could learn much from the Santero image of Ellegua—that is, construing Satan not as the incarnate of evil, but in the context of a trickster figure.Hernandez and De La Torre begin the work with an overview of the state of Satanic involvement in the modern American imagination. They describe Lucifer's appearances in various aspects of popular culture, but usefully they also describe how Satan is construed in Catholic, Christian “Fundamentalist,” “Liberal Christian,” and even Satanist circles. The second chapter, titled “The Birth of Satan,” takes the subject through Satan's “conception” in the Hebrew Bible; his “childhood,” during which he appropriated various Persian (Zoroastrian) ideas during the Babylonian captivity; his “adolescence” as described in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha; and his “early adulthood” in the New Testament, the early Church fathers, and the Qur'an. Chapter 3, “Satan Through the Ages,” demonstrates how early Christians used their conception of Satan to comprehend the deities of their pagan oppressors. This theme is further developed in the next chapter, “Satan Comes of Age.” Here, the authors examine how the idea of Satan developed after Christianity's emergence as a political force when it became the state religion of the empire, and then, later, in the Middle Ages. This section ends with a brief discussion of how late medieval diabolism informed colonialism, particularly with respect to how Europeans came to construct the Native “Other” in the New World. For Hernandez and De La Torre, it is clear that this colonialist heritage has yet to be exorcised from America's soul, for both Cold War and War on Terror propaganda have persistently endeavored to exploit this same binary opposition.This treatise concludes in a theological vein, and suggests that Satan might profitably be reconceived by Liberal Christians to “unseat” the all-too-pervasive notion that absolute evil lies in one's religious, political, or cultural opponents. Instead, they suggest that Satan/evil might—ironically—be a force for good if he is conceived in terms of the structures that oppress people. Coming full circle, this is a conception of Satan as a stumbling block—something that must be overcome—that can be found in the Old Testament (e.g., as the Angel of Yahweh, who stands in the road as a satan against Balaam in Numbers 22.22) and has much in common with the trickster figures that predate our current understandings. It is here that the work is perhaps at its most original—but it is an insight that may let down those readers who came into the volume expecting a more traditional history.The epilogue makes explicit what has been implied throughout. Put succinctly, the authors find that Satan as he is conceived by Christians—especially American Christians—is a result of Christianity's dysfunctional interactions with other faiths over the centuries. To them, it comes as something of an embarrassing shock to have to admit that the story of Satan was so persistently derived from Christianity's interaction with the religious beliefs of others (218–19). Thus, they end their personal quest by finding Satan in the mirror: “We have seen Satan, and much too often over the past twenty centuries he had been us Christians” (220–21).Scholars of history, the social sciences, or folklore will probably not find many uses for this text in their classrooms. Much of this is well-trodden territory; if one were looking for a basic text to provide an overview of the Prince of Darkness's reception by Western peoples, there are many other works that would provide students with a more academic synthesis. Instead, the book might be best placed in a philosophy or religious studies course on the problem of evil, although I would suggest that even in this capacity, its argument might need to be tempered against the views of others. It might be useful, for instance, to have students juxtapose it against M. Scott Peck's People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil (New York: Touchstone, 1998) or a similar work, arguing for the social and psychological benefits of the category of evil.Speaking as a historian, I would note that, like many in the academy, I prefer social and cultural histories to moral and confessional ones; however, De La Torre and Hernandez have given me reason to pause. Compared to the work of Jeffrey Burton Russell, who seems very aware of the problem of demonization but offers no alternatives, these two theologians boldly offer their two cents on the matter. Their open and opinionated handling of the subject matter is refreshing, and stands in stark contrast to the moral disgust that often lurks, unspoken, just below the surface of so many other works on diabolism.Although De La Torre and Hernandez published this work with an academic press, I suspect that it was partially intended with an informed Christian audience in mind, rather than a general scholarly one. For this reason, it is possible to forgive major lapses in citations. However, it is worth noting that there is a burgeoning academic literature on the study of evil. Although some of these titles are listed in De La Torre and Hernandez's bibliography, it is unfortunate that they are almost never examined in the text itself. The use of postcolonial theory and identity formation could and, in my opinion, should have included positioning the authors alongside the work of Edward Said, Regina Schwartz, and others who have specifically dealt with these issues in the Americas. And in this capacity, the omission of Fernando Cervantes's Devil in the New World: The Impact of Diabolism in New Spain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997) is perhaps the most glaring.To be sure, this is not a work that significantly advances the academic study of diabolism. There is nothing new offered in the way of social science that alters our conception of how Americans and Christians have configured and used Satan. As historians, De La Torre and Hernandez bring the narrative up to the present with the use of popular culture, which is a strong and worthwhile contribution. However, I am left with the opinion that The Quest for the Historical Satan is largely a theological endeavor and perhaps a popularization of decades of (rarely referenced) scholarship. Appreciation for this volume will come from religious philosophers, theologians, and confessional historians, as they wrestle with the proper way to understand evil in a modern, pluralistic society. From the perspective of a “dispassionate” scholar, though, I envision the long-term importance of this work as an insightful source for future studies about how some “Liberal” Christian thinkers were addressing the “problem of evil” in the first part of the twenty-first century

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