In part, the New Testament is a war story between Jesus and the Kingdom of God and Satan as the dark power who controls this world. Satan tempts Jesus; in turn, Jesus drives out devils from those they have possessed. Through his death on the cross, Jesus breaks Satan’s hold over the world but the Devil remains free to tempt the virtuous.
Saint Anthony wrestled with him, Dante visited him, Luther taunted him and Milton fixed him forever in the Western imagination as the antagonist of “Paradise Lost.” Scorned by rationalists, exorcised by psychotherapists and demythologized by theologians, Satan survives. He’s no cherub. “In traditional theology, bad angels can take on any form they want,” warns historian Jeffrey Burton Russell of the University of California, Santa Barbara, who has written three volumes on the origin and development of the Devil. Satan is, after all, the Father of Lies. By all accounts, he still loves company.
