When Andy Kelly was a young Jesuit seminarian, his intention was to devote his life to God through service and teaching, but instead he dedicated his life to Satan: not exactly in worship to this notorious Biblical personage, but rather in careful epistemological study. How can we know who Satan is, and where do we get our information, he wondered and continues to ask. Kelly, a longtime Palisadian who long ago departed from the Jesuit path to form a family and teach, has been a professor in the Department of English at UCLA for almost 40 years. He has written a dozen books, many of which focus on the devil (“The Devil, Demonology and Witchcraft” and “The Devil at Baptism”). In his new book “Satan: A Biography” (Cambridge University Press), Kelly argues for a new perspective on the devil; that instead of viewing Satan as the malevolent archenemy of the world, the very definition of evil, we should look upon him the way he is introduced to us in the Old and New Testament. Kelly will talk about his original biography of Satan on Thursday, September 28 at 7:30 p.m. at Corpus Christi Parish Hall, 890 Toyopa. The public is invited. “We have to get rid of the post-Biblical idea that Satan is the embodiment of evil,” Kelly says. “But first we must establish what the Satan figure is like in the various appearances in the Old and New Testaments. Then we have to decide if we like that character and if we think that character is part of revealed religion, a literary development or local Hebrew belief. But what we can’t do is take the Satan figure and turn it into an enemy of God, someone whose whole purpose is to corrupt the virtue of human beings. This is totally against what we have in scripture.” Kelly’s fascination with Satan came about while he was pursuing a master’s degree in English at St. Louis University. “In a course on American literature on the witch trials at Salem Village, I became indignant with the Pope for declaring that the devil was screwing around with these women [whose spasmodic paroxysms were the result of alleged devil possession]. “People do go into a trance, this is a naturally occurring thing, encouraged by suggestion,” Kelly says. But he scoffs at the notion that the devil was behind these miracles (pathological symptoms), adding that if that were the case, these “miracles were pretty pathetic.” This prompted Kelly to begin researching the devil and his function in the world, which he believes was recast by the early fathers of the church. Kelly handles his famously fascinating Satan with equal parts academic rigor and his own sly sense of irony. Kelly spent 13 years as a Jesuit seminarian, along the path toward ordination that rivals a physician’s. And during that time, which was spent pursuing a Ph.D. in English at Harvard, he achieved what the Catholic Church called “minor orders,” advancements along the path to priesthood. Among the minor orders, which were finally eliminated in 1972 by Pope Paul VI, were porter, lector, exorcist and acolyte. So, Dr. Kelly is indeed a bona fide exorcist, who wasn’t interested individual devils, but “wanted to exorcise the entire cosmos of devils.” Kelly doesn’t want to let humankind off the hook by agreeing with optimists that human nature is not that bad and therefore bad acts must be the influence of an evil person, the devil. “I’m a pessimist, and I think given all the factors that go into nature’the human condition, inheritance, psychology, genes’we are totally capable of doing all the bad things without a Satan.” In his “biography,” Kelly traces all references to Satan in the Bible and concludes that Satan was a son of God’an angel’, ruler of the world, not the universe, who did God’s bidding in testing humankind. “His main function was in an adversarial position in respect to human beings; he was sent to check up on us,” Kelly says. In the Old Testament, Satan tests Job’s virtue as bid by Yahweh (God). “In the New Testament, Satan should be regarded as a bad cop, guilty of police brutality and violations of due process, as opposed to God the good cop preached by Jesus,” Kelly says. Kelly discusses each of Satan’s appearances in the gospels, e.g., Jesus’ 40-day trial in the desert, Jesus’ test in the wilderness, testing Jesus’ apostles’and reminds readers that Jesus predicted that in the end Satan’s rule would come to an end. “Satan will finally be disbarred and fired for his job as God’s Attorney General and chief prosecutor of earthlings.” Perhaps one of the most startling misconceptions about the devil is that the serpent in Eden, described in Genesis, is the devil. Kelly argues that the identification of Satan and the Eden serpent was made in The Book of Wisdom 2.24 (“Sin entered the world through the envy of the devil”). “The envious devil meant here is not the serpent or Satan but rather Cain, the first murderer. Cain was tested by Satan and committed the first murder.” Kelly believes that these days Satan does not have a high profile, except among fundamentalists and evangelicals. He hopes that the harsh post-Biblical devil gives way to a more Biblically informed assessment, and Satan “will be able to take his real place in the history of the beginnings of Christianity.”
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