The Devil and Bishop Barron

I think Bishop Barron goes off the rails a bit in this consideration of the Devil. Unsurprisingly—as he explains, the Devil was not even considered real in his seminary formation. The modern church has lost touch with its own teachings here. As a result, he is more or less forced to wing it, and draw his own conclusions. The gap can too easily be filled by pop culture beliefs floating in through the Overton window.

The Bishop notes that the old Hebrew term “satanas,” Satan, means “the accuser.” He concludes that we are doing the Devil’s work when we accuse anyone of sin.

The Holy Spirit, he explains, is always affirming. Negative feelings about ourselves or others must come from the Devil.

 If so, Jesus himself regularly did the Devil’s work, as he regularly accused the scribes, Pharisees and others of sin. John the Baptist was an agent of the Devil, when he accused Herod Antipas of adultery and incest. And, of course, the Catholic Church is an agent of the Devil for making an unholy fuss over abortion.

It is obviously wrong as an interpretation; but it conforms to our “non-judgmental” postmodern ethos.

My own formal religious education understood this title, “the accuser,” or “the adversary,” as a survival of an older Jewish conception of Satan as a kind of prosecuting attorney, declaring our sins before the throne of God. His conduct in the Book of Job is supposedly an example.

Satan in the Book of Job: Blake.

But this too is not quite right. God would have no need of such a functionary being; He is omniscient. This usual mythological explanation thus requires us to believe that the original conception of the Hebrew God was either polytheistic, gnostic, or badly thought out—“primitive.”

And it does not actually fit the Book of Job. In Job, Satan is not pointing out Job’s sins; Job has not sinned. Satan claims Job reveres God only because he has been rewarded, and, if he faces suffering, will turn away from Him. This is an accusation, but it is a false accusation—for it is accusing Job of a sin he has not committed.

This is an important distinction. That is a different matter from merely judging others. That is, in a word, “prejudice”—pre-judging others. Significantly, judging others is not condemned in the Ten Commandments; “bearing false witness against your neighbour” is.

This is what Satan apparently does.

Bishop Barron misses it, remarkably, even though he immediately then notes that the Devil is called “the Father of Lies.” And this is just how lying is defined in the Ten Commandments.

Another part of Bishop Barron’s treatment also does not quite ring true.

John’s Gospel calls the Devil “a murderer since the beginning.” The Bishop takes this as meaning only that the Devil is behind a broad “culture of death.” He cites as confirming evidence the mass murders of the Twentieth Century, suggesting they can only be explained by the existence of an independent spirit that seeks murder.

But this doesn’t really work. In principle, the difference between one murder and a million is only one of scale, not of kind. So the difference in itself does not seem to require us to postulate the action of an independent spiritual being. And this reading does not explain why murder is singled out as coming from the Devil, and not the other sins--other than lying, which is also repeatedly singled out.

And there remains that phrase “since the beginning.” Why is it there?

The mass killings of the Twentieth Century are in no sense primordial, at the beginning of something. There seems to be something else here, that Bishop Barron is not addressing.

Let’s look at the phrase in context:

Jesus therefore said to those Jews who had believed him, "If you remain in my word, then you are truly my disciples. You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." They answered him, "We are Abraham's seed, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How do you say, 'You will be made free?'" 

Jesus answered them, "Most certainly I tell you, everyone who commits sin is the bondservant of sin. A bondservant doesn't live in the house forever. A son remains forever. If therefore the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are Abraham's seed, yet you seek to kill me, because my word finds no place in you. I say the things which I have seen with my Father; and you also do the things which you have seen with your father." 

They answered him, "Our father is Abraham." Jesus said to them, "If you were Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham. But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth, which I heard from God. Abraham didn't do this. You do the works of your father." They said to him, "We were not born of sexual immorality. We have one Father, God.” 

"Therefore Jesus said to them, "If God were your father, you would love me, for I came out and have come from God. For I haven't come of myself, but he sent me. Why don't you understand my speech? Because you can't hear my word. You are of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and doesn't stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks on his own; for he is a liar, and its father. But because I tell the truth, you don't believe me. Which of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? He who is of God hears the words of God. For this cause you don't hear, because you are not of God."

Jesus is making a distinction here between one’s physical parent and one’s spiritual parent. His listeners are Abraham’s “seed,” but Abraham is not their true father. Everyone is the child of only two fathers: God or the Devil.

And he is making a distinction between those who sin—who are thereby bondservants to the Devil—and those who consciously throw in their spiritual lot with the Devil, becoming his children.

The Devil shown in a 15th century manuscript.

And when he comes to calling the Devil a murderer, again we see the issue of false accusation: “When he speaks a lie, he speaks on his own; for he is a liar, and its father. But because I tell the truth, you don't believe me. Which of you convicts me of sin?”

This is apparently how, according to John’s passage, the Devil murders: he murders with false accusations.

False accusations “from the beginning.”

Which most naturally implies, from the victim’s earliest childhood. Hence too perhaps the reference to parentage, fatherhood. This seems to conform with his role in Job: a young child, below the age of reason, is incapable of sin. So any such accusations in early childhood must be false.

This seems to mesh in turn with something else Jesus says in the Gospels, about the gravity of misleading children:

“but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for him that a huge millstone should be hung around his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depths of the sea.” (Matthew 18:6) 

“It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, rather than that he should cause one of these little ones to stumble.” (Luke 17:2)

The word translated “stumble” here is open to interpretation; it suggests either sin or error, being misled.

Technically, however, once again, it cannot refer to sin, because a young child is incapable of stumbling in this sense.

It would seem to fit the case of a child wrongly told they had sinned when they had not; misled about their sinfulness.

And this might be said to murder their soul.

At least, to complete the Christian message, were it not for Jesus, who sets such bondservants of the Devil free, even raising them from the dead.