I've gone without saying much here about Milton's Paradise Lost.
I first read Milton as a senior in high school. And, I have to admit, as a literary character, I was impressed with Milton's depiction of Satan. Not heavily biblical, mind you, but he casts a long shadow down the literary tradition. So any talk about evil and the demonic has to deal with this tradition.
Some of our greatest modern characters (e.g. Melville's Ahab) are in fact precisely reincarnations of Milton's Satan.
But my own favorite contemporary incarnation of Milton's Satan is found not in literature, but in the 1997 film Devil's Advocate. The Satan-character in this film (a lawyer named "John Milton") is modelled very closely on Paradise Lost, and he is brilliantly brought to life by Al Pacino. Like Milton's Satan, this lawyer is above all a rhetorician -- he loves to make long, egocentric speeches. He's self-important and long-winded about his self-importance. He's fascinated by himself and by his own unique place in the cosmos: "I'm the hand up Mona Lisa's skirt. I'm a surprise, Kevin. They don't see me coming".
Like Milton's Satan, this Satan-figure is a champion of human rights and freedoms: "I've nurtured every sensation man's been inspired to have. I cared about what he wanted and I never judged him. Why? Because I never rejected him. In spite of all his imperfections, I'm a fan of man! I'm a humanist. Maybe the last humanist". Yep, this Satan is one hell of a nice guy.
That's because, like Milton's Satan, he's a tempter, always whispering in someone's ear. He's always enticing us with the temptation of becoming like God. "You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire; you build egos the size of cathedrals; fibre-optically connect the world to every eager impulse; grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green, gold-plated fantasies, until every human becomes an aspiring emperor, becomes his own God -- and where can you go from there?"
The big difference, however, is that Al Pacino's Satan is a rapacious womaniser, whereas Milton's Satan is (more profoundly) a sexually impotent voyeur who is tormented by the sight of Adam and Eve's lovemaking. And Devil's Advocate would have been a much better film if Satan had turned out to be impotent.
The thing that most struck me about Devil's Advocate, though, the most creative and most insightful aspect is that, while Milton's Satan was depicted as a heroic parliamentary leader, Al Pacino's Satan is the head of a big New York law firm. He is a lawyer through and through, "always negotiating". Indeed, he's nothing less than a pure embodiment of law itself.
Thus this Satan tells his son: "The law, my boy, puts us into everything. It's the ultimate backstage pass, it's the new priesthood, baby! Did you know there are more students in law school than lawyers walking the earth? We're coming out, guns blazing! The two of you, all of us, acquittal after acquittal after acquittal -- until the stench of it reaches so high and far into heaven, it chokes the whole fucking lot of them!"
Now that's what I call good theological irony. Theological irony with the most Miltonic twist. We've now identified Satan -- the biblical embodiment of disorder, disobedience and lawlessness -- with a direct identification with law and order.
I don't know about you, but I think that was precisely Paul's point in Galatians. Even God's own law can become one of the demonic "cosmic elements" (Galatians 4.3, 9), which result in the satanic enslavement of human thriving.
Which is something mirrored so well in our own post-Enlightenment American society. Our "rights" and "freedoms" now function as a cosmic Law whose sole aim is to reduce us to the status of consumer-slaves. In other words, is there not here, too, a precise identity between Law and the demonic?
See, what I've been getting at is that these "principalities and powers" -- these "cosmic elements" -- all wear the mask of something spiritual, but it's covering over something very, very embodied.
I'm struck this morning -- since it's Saturday, and Saturday was always cartoon day as a kid -- by a parable of these "powers and principalities" that lots of us grew up watching: Scooby Doo.
Hear me out on this.
In his book A Secular Age, Charles Taylor talks about how, over the last 500 years, the world moved from enchantment to disenchantment. Five hundred years ago the world was full of supernatural forces, witchcraft, and ghosts. A world full of thin places, where the border between this world and the Other world was porous and leaky. Five hundred years ago people could be demon possessed or afflicted by witches. The night was full of occult menace and magic. Black cats were bad luck.
Things are much different today. We live in the aftermath of the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason. We are moderns, where science, technology, and skepticism now rule. With electric lighting the dark forces of the night have been banished. There's no room for monsters. Medicine and psychiatry have pushed witchcraft and demon possession offstage. Worrying about black cats is just superstitious and irrational. And ghost stories are just that -- fictional tales to scare the kids around the campfire.
Neil Gaiman gets a lot of traction out of this movement in his novel, American Gods. If you've not read it, you should. It's the perfect biblical-like parable to how enchanted the world is. Milton knew it. Devil's Advocate demonstrated it. Heck, every Saturday morning, I watched it as a kid on Scooby Doo -- and anyone can see it, if they have the eyes to watch for it.
The Scooby Doo episodes are all the same formula: They begin with enchantment, with a supernatural monster, specter, ghoul or ghost. But as the kids investigate they get suspicious, reason asserts itself and the monster -- the agent of the demonic -- is eventually revealed to be Mr Jenkins the greedy banker, etc. The story ends with disenchantment. The supernatural was simply a "cover" for workaday greed, theft and corruption.
But then I start thinking about money, about its power over us. In biblical terms, a power created for good, but fallen nonetheless. A power the love of which becomes demonic. A power that's idolatrous, because it has us worshipping at the altar of Mammon.
Money, in most Scooby Doo episodes -- like in Devil's Advocate and in Milton's Paradise Lost -- is the satanic Power behind human evil.
All of which makes me wonder: Is our world really as disenchanted as we think? We like to throw around terms like "secular" to describe us. But are we? Could Gaiman be right? Might these very old gods be calling the shots from behind the scenes, and yet be losing their power because newer gods have stepped in?
All of which leads me to admit, there really are spiritual powers at work in the world, but they aren't the spooks and ghouls that Hollywood wants us to fear.
No, the real world is enchanted alright. But with far more tangible and tempting fallen powers. Like money. Or the internet (think of the explosion of porn websites!).
So as I sit here on a Saturday morning, I have to wonder. In the long line of literary and cultural edifices like books, cartoons and movies, have I been seeing this stuff all along, but just didn't have the biblical imagination enough to see it with understanding? Could I really be right? Is the issue a hermeneutical one?
I think so.
Perhaps our world isn't disenchanted after all. Perhaps there are really good stories of the demonic that we tell ourselves, and they're not The Exorcist or This Present Darkness. Perhaps they're Milton. They're Devil's Advocate. They're Scooby Doo.
We've just lost the ability to see it. And hence we've lost the ability to name it.
We moderns think the world has been rid of the dark forces -- the ghouls, ghosts, demons and monsters. But these occult forces of evil haven't been expelled, expunged or exorcised. They still haunt and torment. We're still possessed by them, just in ways we don't recognize.
Just watch Scooby Doo or Devil's Advocate today if you don't believe me.