Satan is back

It used to be said by Catholic priests back in the 1950s that the Devil was delighted when human beings decided that he did not exist. In those days it seemed unlikely that he would disappear altogether from human consciousness because he was so well known — as Baal or Beelzebub in the Old Testament, the Prince of Lies in the New, as Lucifer in the King James Bible, as Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost, and as Mephistopheles in the legend of Faust; but it has turned out that a subtle move from scripture into myth, folklore and finally literature has been an effective way of becoming unreal. Today we hear his name more frequently in lectures on English literature than in seminars on theology. Films about demonic possession and exorcism still send shivers down the spine, but we know it is make-believe. The precipitous decline in Britain in the number of those who believe in God was long preceded by the disappearance of the Devil even from the cognizance of Christian believers.