The Prince of This World

Adam Kotsko

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781503600218
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The most enduring challenge to traditional monotheism is the problem of evil, which attempts to reconcile three incompatible propositions: God is all-good, God is all-powerful, and evil happens. The Prince of This World traces the story of one of the most influential attempts to square this circle: the offloading of responsibility for evil onto one of God's rebellious creatures. In this striking reexamination, the devil's story is bitterly ironic, full of tragic reversals. He emerges as a theological symbol who helps oppressed communities cope with the trauma of unjust persecution, torture, and death at the hands of political authorities and eventually becomes a vehicle to justify oppression at the hands of Christian rulers. And he evolves alongside the biblical God, who at first presents himself as the liberator of the oppressed but ends up a cruel ruler who delights in the infliction of suffering on his friends and enemies alike. In other words, this is the story of how God becomes the devil—a devil who remains with us in our ostensibly secular age.

PART I

GENEALOGY OF THE DEVIL

CHAPTER 1

THE HEBREW BIBLICAL TRADITION

THE PARADOX OF MINORITY MONOTHEISM

In order to account for the origin of the devil, we need to answer two questions. First, why should the one and only God, creator of the heavens and the earth, have a rival? Second, why should that rival be regarded as morally evil? Both questions present significant difficulties. In the first case, it would seem that no meaningful rivalry against God is possible—he is in a category all his own, completely unsurpassable within the created world. Indeed, there are well-known forms of philosophical monotheism in which no possibility of rivalry can arise. Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover, for instance, is so absorbed in his self-satisfaction that he neither knows nor cares that the universe exists. Although everything in the world is striving to emulate him to the extent possible, there is no sense in which they are trying to replace him. In these terms, even if we grant that the idea of rebelling against God could enter one’s mind, it seems just as plausible—if not more so—to regard such an attempt as futile rather than evil and therefore to pity or scorn God’s woefully unconvincing rival rather than revile him.

The God of the Hebrew Bible did not emerge from abstract philosophical reflection, however. He is the product of the concrete historical experience of a particular ancient Near Eastern people, an experience that produced a range of partly overlapping and partly contradictory traditions about their God and his place in the world. In some texts in the Hebrew Bible, for instance, it can appear that the Israelite God is merely one local god among others, albeit one with an unusual intolerance for theological promiscuity among his worshippers. The commandment “you shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3), for instance, could seem redundant if there simply are no other gods available.

Over time, however, the view emerged within the Hebrew biblical tradition that the God of Israel was also in some sense the God of all nations and that all the other purported gods were laughably inferior to him, if not entirely nonexistent. Even so, God remained very much the God of Israel, and his historical interventions on behalf of Israel—most notably the events of the Exodus, during which he liberated the Israelite slaves from oppression—were still central to his identity, arguably even more so than the greater, but less Israel-specific, achievement of creating the heavens and the earth. The Israelites did not somehow “transcend” their narrowly particular conception of God and embrace a more universal image of the divine. The God of all the universe was the God of their historical experience. To emphasize the contrast with the universalism of a philosophical monotheism like Aristotle’s, then, the monotheism of the Hebrew biblical tradition can be characterized as a minority monotheism.

This short circuit of a local tradition with universal significance could appear to be an arbitrary self-assertion on the part of Israel, but the biblical authors attempt to vindicate their bold theological claim by highlighting the distinctive features of their God. On what we would regard as the more purely “religious” level, they frequently highlight the foolishness of worshipping idols (sculptural images of the gods), as in this classic statement from Isaiah:

All who make idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit; their witnesses neither see nor know. And so they will be put to shame. Who would fashion a god or cast an image that can do no good? Look, all its devotees shall be put to shame; the artisans too are merely human. Let them all assemble, let them stand up; they shall be terrified, they shall all be put to shame. (Isaiah 44:9–11)

The text then spells out in detail the physical process of creating the statue of the god, a process that makes use of the same materials with which the human artisan fulfills his own daily needs (44:12–16). A portion of this indifferent material “he makes into a god, his idol, bows down to it and worships it; he prays to it and says, ‘Save me, for you are my god!’” (44:17). In these terms, idol worship is an absurd and delusional practice. In contrast to idols, which are merely human productions, the God of Israel transcends any form that we human beings can grasp (see Deuteronomy 4:15–16). For the biblical authors, it is therefore clear which God is truly worthy of worship.

More decisive in establishing the superiority of the God of Israel, however, is the fact that he is a God of justice. In contrast to the petty rivalries and arbitrary whims of the gods in other mythological systems, the God of Israel has consistent expectations that largely align with human intuitions about what is fair and proportionate (or at least the authors expect us to see him in that way). In principle, those standards apply to all nations, which are frequently presented as being subject to God’s punishment for long-standing defiance of divine justice. This holds not only for Egypt but also for the nations of Canaan whom the Israelites are displacing in the Promised Land, nations that God claims to be “dispossessing” due to their “wickedness” (Deuteronomy 9:4).

Yet the divine claim to represent justice is intensified and elaborately articulated in God’s relationship to Israel in particular, insofar as that relationship comes to be based upon an explicit covenant. In the Book of Deuteronomy, which concludes the Pentateuch and is presented as a long speech of Moses in which he recapitulates the historical narratives and legal codes of the previous books, the Israelites are faced with a stark choice:

See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today; and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn from the way that I am commanding you today, to follow other gods that you have not known. (Deuteronomy 11:26–28)

This scheme became more elaborate in the encounter with historical experience, most notably in light of the apparently unpredictable time lag between acts of injustice and God’s punishment. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that it provided the basic frame of reference for the retelling of Israel’s history found in the Deuteronomistic history (the segment of the Hebrew Bible made up of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 1–2 Samuel, and 1–2 Kings).

In this paradigm, God’s relationship to Israel bears all the marks of direct political leadership. He secures a territory for them, he promulgates the law, and in the view of the Deuteronomistic historian, he also enforces that law. Thus, the God of all nations is in practice the ruler of one particular nation—and a fairly marginal nation at that. The possibility of a rival to God emerges out of this contradiction between the God of Israel’s claim to rule all the world and his often tenuous hold on power even within Israel itself. And from this perspective, it is no accident that the first great rival of the God of Israel is not a theological opponent but a political one: namely, Pharaoh.

The Pharaoh of Exodus is very clearly unjust. In ignorance of the Israelite patriarch Joseph’s decisive contributions (Exodus 1:8)—not only to Egypt’s power but to its very survival in the face of a seven-year famine—he comes to view the Israelites sojourning in Israel as a threat and begins oppressing them. First he enslaves them (1:11), and when their population continues to increase, he mandates that all male infants born to the Hebrews should be killed (1:22). Hence Pharaoh not only violates his predecessor’s agreement that the Israelites can settle in Egypt (Genesis 47:4), but he subjects them to slavery and attempted genocide. The contrast with God’s trustworthiness and justice could not be more stark.

Hence I propose that Pharaoh, who is presented as unambiguously evil and who is a clear rival to God for control of the Israelites, is the most relevant biblical antecedent for the devil. Neither of the other main candidates, the serpent in the Garden of Eden and Job’s accuser, seem to fit the bill. The serpent is too lowly a creature to be God’s rival, and even though his actions have destructive effects, his motives are too unclear to designate him as evil (without anachronistically identifying him as Satan). As for Job’s accuser, he is apparently a permanent part of God’s entourage, whose cynical outlook God specifically seeks out. At no point does he emerge as a rival to God, for Job’s loyalty or in any other way.

At the same time, Pharaoh is not yet the devil. In the terms set by the minority monotheism of the Hebrew biblical tradition, God’s wicked rival can only be a rival king—but the devil is more than a worldly king. He is a cosmic rival, a spiritual power, not a mere human being. Nevertheless, the political charge of the concept of an evil rival to God will never be fully eradicated. The devil is not merely a theological symbol but a political-theological one. And as we will see, he emerges in the midst of a political crisis that is immediately and irreducibly a theological crisis.

THE PROBLEM OF EVIL AND THE PROBLEM OF THEOCRACY

As noted in the Introduction, God’s defeat of Pharaoh carries with it massive “collateral damage” to the people of Egypt. By the same token, his plan to settle the Israelites in the Promised Land necessarily entails a campaign of mass murder. In both cases, however, the biblical authors expect us to view these actions as just and necessary—not due to an arbitrary preference for Israel but due to the evil and injustice of the nations affected. Though God is merciful in allowing time for repentance, there comes a point when enough is enough and divine justice demands retribution. And even if their relationship with God is undoubtedly unique, the Israelites are ultimately every bit as subject to the divine justice as any other nation.

This political-theological scheme can be read as an initial attempt to account for the problem of evil within the terms of the historical experience of Israel. Suffering here is interpreted as deserved punishment. Up to a certain point, this punishment serves as a spur to repentance, but God’s mercy has its limits—if the Israelites persist in rejecting God’s blessing, they will be subject to his curse.

I call this solution to the problem of evil the Deuteronomistic paradigm, after the biblical book in which it is most clearly articulated. In principle, this paradigm is very robust. God inoculates himself against certain forms of protest by openly claiming responsibility for the very kinds of events—war, disease, famine—that in other schemes might destroy his credibility. And since the majority of Israelites at any given moment apparently tended to keep their religious options open rather than give sole loyalty to God and his law, there were ample grounds for finding Israel to be in violation of the covenant and hence deserving of punishment.

There are, however, two primary points of tension in the Deuteronomistic paradigm. The first is the aforementioned paradox that the ruler of all the nations is apparently the ruler of only a single marginal kingdom. Though that contradiction will prove decisive for later developments, it did not emerge as central as long as the Israelites enjoyed self-rule. Under those circumstances, the more urgent source of tension was the necessary role of human intermediaries in making possible the rule of a human kingdom by a God who was beyond all human form.

Even during the Exodus itself, when God’s presence among the people is most palpable (in the form of the pillar of fire by night and the pillar of cloud by day), God nonetheless relies on human intermediaries, most notably Moses and Aaron. The text repeatedly emphasizes the fact that Moses and Aaron are simply God’s mouthpieces, delivering messages on his behalf. In case their subordination to God is unclear, the author implicitly reiterates it by setting up direct rivalries between Moses and Pharaoh’s magicians—the proper rival to Moses is not Pharaoh himself but Pharaoh’s underlings. Looking to the future, the Book of Deuteronomy envisions the possibility of a just king who serves as something like a faithful functionary for the divine ruler, submitting fully to the divine law:

When he has taken the throne of his kingdom, he shall have a copy of this law written for him in the presence of the levitical priests. It shall remain with him and he shall read in it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, diligently observing all the words of this law and these statutes, neither exalting himself above other members of the community nor turning aside from the commandment, either to the right or to the left, so that he and his descendants may reign long over his kingdom in Israel. (17:18–20)

Yet that same book also concludes with the death of Moses (chap. 34), who has been forbidden to enter the Promised Land due to an infraction whose precise nature the various strains of tradition gathered in the Pentateuch cannot seem to agree upon.

Even the most exemplary prophet of God cannot manage to live up to the necessary standard, it seems, so it is perhaps unsurprising that the remainder of the Deuteronomistic history is considerably less optimistic about the prospects for a faithful ruler. Moses’s close associate Joshua, who leads the initial invasion of Canaan, appears to pass muster, but after his death, Israel goes through a long period without any stable human leadership at all. As related in the Book of Judges, this time was characterized by the appointment of ad hoc leaders of varying moral caliber, tasked with solving immediate crises.

Perhaps understandably, the Israelites grow impatient with this arrangement and clamor for the last of these temporary leaders, Samuel, to appoint a king for them. When Samuel consults God, God makes it clear that he regards the proposed Israelite king as a rival:

Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you. Now then, listen to their voice; only—you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them. (1 Samuel 8:7–9)

The regime that Samuel then describes sounds less like the optimistic image of the submissive divine functionary and more like Pharaoh:

These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day. (1 Samuel 8:11–18)

In the eyes of God and of Samuel, the Israelites’ request, far from being a prudent political calculation, represents a repetition of the repeated pleas of their ancestors, who grew tired of the rigors of their long journey and begged God to allow them to return to Egypt. It is a rejection of their covenant with a God of liberation and justice in favor of a return to oppression and slavery. God has rescued the Israelites from Pharaoh once before, Samuel is claiming, but they should not expect him to do so again when they subject themselves to a new Pharaoh after having tasted freedom.

After this point, the relationship between Israel’s king and its God becomes the crucial point at which the Deuteronomistic solution to the problem of evil is played out—in other words, the problem of evil becomes a problem of political theology. In practice, things are not as uniformly dire as Samuel predicts, and after a false start with the ill-fated King Saul, Israel is led by the legendary King David, “a man after God’s own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14). While the tradition is surprisingly frank about David’s many moral failings, he is nonetheless held up as the exemplary faithful king, perhaps the closest Israel would ever come to Deuteronomy’s model of the king as divine functionary. The majority veered dangerously close to Samuel’s prediction, however, particularly in the northern kingdom that emerged (and retained the name Israel) when Israel was split in two after the reign of David’s son Solomon. There essentially all kings were unfaithful to God, while in the southern kingdom (known as Judah, from which the term “Jew” derives), at least a handful tried to return to the right course.

The most common accusation against the purportedly “evil” kings of Israel and Judah is that they lead the people astray to worship idols. We should not conclude from this that the idols themselves are God’s primary rivals, however. While worshipping them constitutes a serious violation of the divine covenant, in the Deuteronomistic history it is the king who incites this behavior in the people and who bears primary responsibility. Even when we seem to be dealing with a purely “religious” conflict, then, the “political” rivalry between God and the king is the decisive element. As the Deuteronomistic history unfolds, however, it is often difficult to square the historical facts with the expectations of the Deute...