The Moral Theology of the Devil

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

(New York: New Directions, 1972), 90–7

The devil has a whole system of theology and philosophy, which will
explain, to anyone who will listen, that created things are evil, that men are
evil, that God created evil and that He directly wills that men should suffer
evil. According to the devil, God rejoices in the suffering of men and, in
fact, the whole universe is full of misery because God has willed and
planned it that way.
Indeed, says this system of theology, God that Father took real pleasure
in delivering His Son to His murderers, and God the Son came to earth
because He wanted to be punished by the Father. Both of them together
seek nothing more than to punish and persecute their faithful ones. As a
matter of fact, in creating the world God had clearly in mind that man
would inevitably sin and it was almost as if the world were created in order
that man might sin, so that God would have an opportunity to manifest His
justice.
So, according to the devil, the first thing created was really hell—as if
everything else were, in some sense, for the sake of hell. Therefore the
devotional life of those who are “faithful” to this kind of theology consists
above all in an obsession with evil. As if there were not already enough
evils in the world, they multiply prohibitions and make new rules, binding
everything with thorns, so that man may not escape evil and punishment.
For they would have him bleed from morning to night, though even with so
much blood there is no remission of sin! The Cross, then, is no longer a
sign of mercy (for mercy has no place in such a theology), it is the sign that
Law and Justice have utterly triumphed, as if Christ had said: “I came not to
destroy the Law but to be destroyed by it.” For this, according to the devil,
is the only way in which the Law could really and truly be “fulfilled.” Not
love but punishment is the fulfillment of the Law. The Law must devour
everything, even God. Such is this theology of punishment, hatred and
revenge. He who would live by such a dogma must rejoice in punishment.
He may, indeed, successfully evade punishment himself by “playing ball”
with the Law and the Lawgiver. But he must take good care that others do
not avoid suffering. He must occupy his mind with their present and future
punishment. The Law must triumph. There must be no mercy.
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This is the chief mark of the theology of hell, for in hell there is
everything but mercy. That is why God himself is absent from hell. Mercy is
the manifestation of his presence.
The theology of the devil is for those who, for one reason or another,
whether because they are perfect, or because they have come to an
agreement with the Law, no longer need any mercy. With them (O grim
joy!) God is “satisfied.” So too is the devil. It is quite an achievement, to
please everybody!
The people who listen to this sort of thing, and absorb it, and enjoy it,
develop a notion of the spiritual life which is a kind of hypnosis of evil. The
concepts of sin, suffering, damnation, punishment, the justice of God,
retribution, the end of the world and so on, are things over which they
smack their lips with unspeakable pleasure. Perhaps this is because they
derive a deep, subconscious comfort from the though that many other
people will fall into the hell which they themselves are going to escape. And
how do they know they are going to escape it? They cannot give any
definite reason except for the fact that they feel a certain sense of relief at
the thought that all this punishment is prepared for practically everyone but
themselves.
This feeling of complacency is what they refer to as “faith,” and it
constitutes a kind of conviction that they are “saved.”

The devil makes many disciples by preaching against sin. He convinces them
of the great evil of sin, induces a crisis of guilt by which “God is satisfied.”
And after that he lets them spend the rest of their lives meditating on the
intense sinfulness and evident reprobation of other men.

The moral theology of the devil starts out with the principle: “Pleasure is
sin.” Then he goes to work it the other way: “All sin is pleasure.”
After that he points out that pleasure is practically unavoidable and that
we have a natural tendency to do things that please us, from which he
reasons that all our natural tendencies are evil and that our nature is evil in
itself. And he leads us to the conclusion that no one can possibly avoid sin,
since pleasure is inescapable.
After that, to make sure that no one will try to escape or avoid sin, he
adds that what is unavoidable cannot be a sin. Then the whole concept of
sin is thrown out the window as irrelevant, and people decide that there is
nothing left except to live for pleasure, and in that way pleasures that are
naturally good become evil by deordination and lives are thrown away in
unhappiness and sin.
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It sometimes happens that men who preach most vehemently about evil
and the punishment of evil, so that they seem to have practically nothing
else on their minds except sin, are really unconscious haters of other men.
They think the world does not appreciate them, and this is their way of
getting even.
The devil is not afraid to preach the will of God provided he can preach
it in his own way.
The argument goes something like this: “God wills you to do what is
right. But you have an interior attraction which tells you, by a nice warm
glow of satisfaction, what is right. Therefore, if others try to interfere and
make you do something that does not produce this comfortable sense of
interior satisfaction, quote Scripture, tell them that you ought to obey God
rather than men, and then go ahead and do your own will, do the thing that
gives you that nice, warm glow.”

The theology of the devil is really not theology but magic. “Faith” in this
theology is really not the acceptance of a God Who reveals Himself as
mercy. It is a psychological, subjective “force” which applies a kind of
violence to reality in order to change it according to one's own whims.
Faith is a kind of supereffective wishing: a mastery that comes from a
special, mysteriously dynamic will power that is generated by “profound
convictions.” By virtue of this wonderful energy one can exert a persuasive
force even on God Himself and bend His will to one's own will. By this
astounding new dynamic soul force of faith (which any quack can develop in
you for an appropriate remuneration) you can turn God into a means to
your own ends. We become civilized medicine men, and God becomes our
servant. Though He is terrible in His own right, He respects our sorcery,
He allows Himself to be tamed by it. He will appreciate our dynamism, and
will reward it with success in everything we attempt. We will become
popular because we have “faith.” We will be rich because we have “faith.”
All our national enemies will come and lay down their arms at our feet
because we have “faith.” Business will boom all over the world, and we will
be able to make money out of everything and everyone under the sun
because of the charmed life we lead. We have faith.
But there is a subtle dialectic in all this, too.
We hear that faith does everything. So we close our eyes and strain a
bit, to generate some “soul force.” We believe. We believe.
Nothing happens.
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We close our eyes again, and generate some more soul force. The devil
likes us to generate soul force. He helps us to generate plenty of it. We are
just gushing with soul force.
But nothing happens.
So we go on with this until we become disgusted with the whole
business. We get tired of “generating soul force.” We get tired of this
“faith” that does not do anything to change reality. It does not take away
our anxieties, our conflicts, it leaves us a prey to uncertainty. It does not lift
all responsibilities off our shoulders. Its magic is not so effective after all. It
does not thoroughly convince us that God is satisfied with us, or even that
we are satisfied with ourselves (though in this, it is true, some people's faith
is quite effective).
Having become disgusted with faith, and therefore with God, we are
now ready for the Totalitarian Mass Movement that will pick us up on the
rebound and make us happy with war, with the persecution of “inferior
races” or of enemy classes, or generally speaking, with actively punishing
someone who is different from ourselves.

Another characteristic of the devil's moral theology is the exaggeration off

all distinctions between this and that, good and evil, right and wrong. These
distinctions become irreducible divisions. No longer is there any sense that
we might perhaps all be more or less at fault, and that we might be
expected to take upon our own shoulders the wrongs of others by
forgiveness, acceptance, patient understanding and love, and thus help one
another to find the truth. On the contrary, in the devil's theology, the
important thing is to be absolutely right and to prove that everybody else is
absolutely wrong. This does not exactly make for peace and unity among
men, because it means that everyone wants to be absolutely right himself
or to attach himself to another who is absolutely right. And in order to
prove their rightness they have to punish and eliminate those who are
wrong. Those who are wrong, in turn, convinced that they are right … etc.
Finally, as might be expected, the moral theology of the devil grants an
altogether unusual amount of importance to … the devil. Indeed one soon
comes to find out that he is the very center of the whole system. That he is
behind everything. That he is moving everybody in the world except
ourselves. That he is out to get even with us. And that there is every
chance of his doing so because, it now appears, his power is equal to that of
God, or even perhaps superior to it …
In one word, the theology of the devil is purely and simply that the devil
is god.