Explaining Evil (three volumes)

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Explaining Evil

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Kamila Blessing

E XPLAINING E VIL VOLUME 1

Definitions and Development

J. Harold Ellens , Editor

Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality

Copyright 2011 by ABC-CLIO, LLC All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Explaining evil / J. Harold Ellens, editor. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-313-38715-9 (hard copy : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-38716-6 (ebook) 1. Good and evil. I. Ellens, J. Harold, 1932– BJ1401.E97 2011 214—dc22 2010041383 ISBN: 978-0-313-38715-9 EISBN: 978-0-313-38716-6 15

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This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. Praeger An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

These volumes are dedicated to three gentlemen who constructively influenced my life in very substantial ways. Professor Henry J. Stob of Calvin College inspired me to think creatively despite the crimped and doctrinaire community from which both of us derived. Professor Seward Hiltner taught me how to savor the flavor of freedom, in the thoughtful quest for truth, the careful cherishing of people and an honest pastoral passion for those in need. Dr. Jeffrey Zaks of Providence Medical Center Department of Cardiology saved my life repeatedly; and gave me reason to believe that after four heart attacks, two open heart surgeries, and two minor strokes, life was still worth while and still held great possibilities. All of my significant published scholarship came about after that. These men not only cared for me. They loved me and I loved them.

Contents

VOLUME 1 D EFINITIONS AND D EVELOPMENT Series Foreword

xi

chapter 1

Introduction: Setting the Course J. Harold Ellens

1

chapter 2

The Psychology of Evil Ralph W. Hood Jr.

chapter 3

The Sociology of Evil: A Comparison of Modern and Ancient Societies Richard K. Fenn

33

Depersonalization and the Psychobiology of Evil Patrick McNamara and Paul M. Butler

50

chapter 4

chapter 5

Evil Experienced by One Who Was There: Exodus—From Bondage to Deliverance and the Promised Land Virginia Ingram

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64

viii

Contents

chapter 6

A Biblical Theology of Evil J. Harold Ellens

79

chapter 7

Evil as a Pastor Sees It F. Morgan Roberts

93

chapter 8

Assessing Evil: Two Clinical Cases Raymond J. Lawrence

109

chapter 9

Demonic Beings and the Dead Sea Scrolls Loren T. Stuckenbruck

121

chapter 10

Evil in the Hebrew Bible, Mishnah, and Talmud Ilona Rashkow

145

Evil in the New Testament and Its Greco-Roman Context J. Harold Ellens

162

chapter 11

chapter 12

The Theologian as Diagnostician: Jeffrey Dahmer and (D)evil as a Theological Diagnosis Nathan Carlin

chapter 13

Gnosticism and Evil Ronald Reese Ruark

chapter 14

Evil in Film: Portrayal and Biblical Critique Nicolene L. Joubert and Zelmarie E. Joubert

172 196

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chapter 15

Narcissism as Evil Deb Brock and Ron Johnson

237

chapter 16

Experience of Evil in Everyday Lives Suzanne M. Coyle

254

chapter 17

Roots of Human Violence and Greed: A Psychospiritual Perspective Stanislav Grof

266

Contents

chapter 18

chapter 19

The Three Faces of Evil in Jungian Psychology: The Shadow Side of Reality Wayne G. Rollins Are We Basically Good or Evil, Fallen or Underevolved? J. Harold Ellens

ix

294

314

Index

323

About the Editor and Advisers

335

About the Contributors

337

Series Foreword

The interface between psychology, religion, and spirituality has been of great interest to scholars for a century. In the last three decades a broad popular appetite has developed for books which make practical sense out of the sophisticated research on these three subjects. Freud expressed an essentially deconstructive perspective on this matter and indicated that he saw the relationship between human psychology and religion to be a destructive interaction. Jung, on the other hand, was quite sure that these three aspects of the human spirit, psychology, religion, and spirituality, were constructively and inextricably linked. Anton Boisen and Seward Hiltner derived much insight from both Freud and Jung, as well as from Adler and Reik, while pressing the matter forward with ingenious skill and illumination. Boisen and Hiltner fashioned a framework within which the quest for a sound and sensible definition of the interface between psychology, religion, and spirituality might best be described or expressed.1 We are in their debt. This series of general interest books, so wisely urged by Praeger Publishers and vigorously sought after by its editor Deborah Carvalko, intends to define the terms and explore the interface of psychology, religion, and spirituality at the operational level of daily human experience. Each volume of the series identifies, analyzes, describes, and evaluates the full range of issues, of both popular and professional interest, that deal with the psychological factors at play (1) in the way religion takes shape and is expressed, (2) in the way spirituality functions within human persons and shapes both religious formation and expression, and (3) in the ways that spirituality is

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shaped and expressed by religion. The interest is psycho-spiritual. In terms of the rubrics of the disciplines and the science of psychology and spirituality this series of volumes investigates the operational dynamics of religion and spirituality. The verbs “shape” and “express” in the above paragraph refer to the forces which prompt and form religion in persons and communities, as well as to the manifestations of religious behavior (1) in personal forms of spirituality, (2) in acts of spiritually motivated care for society, and (3) in ritual behaviors such as liturgies of worship. In these various aspects of human function the psychological and/or spiritual drivers are identified, isolated, and described in terms of the way in which they unconsciously and consciously operate in religion, thought, and behavior. The books in this series are written for the general reader, the local library, and the undergraduate university student. They are also of significant interest to the informed professional, particularly in fields corollary to his or her primary interest. The volumes in this series have great value for pastoral settings in congregational ministry, in clinical settings, and in the development of treatment models, as well. This series editor has spent his professional lifetime focused specifically upon research into the interface of psychology in religion and spirituality. This present set of three volumes, entitled Explaining Evil, is an urgently needed and timely work, the motivation for which is surely endorsed enthusiastically by the entire religious world today, as the international community searches for strategies that will afford us better and deeper spiritual selfunderstanding as individuals and communities as we struggle with palpable forms of violent evil in our world. This project addresses the deep psychosocial, psychospiritual, and biological sources of human nature which shape and drive our psychology and spirituality. Careful strategies of empirical, heuristic, and phenomenological research have been employed to give this work a solid scientific foundation and formation. Never before has such wise analysis been brought to bear upon the dynamic linkage between human physiology, psychology, and spirituality in an effort to understand the irrepressible and universal human quest for meaning, which this work defines as spirituality. For 50 years such organizations as the Christian Association for Psychological Studies and such graduate departments of psychology as those at Boston College, Fuller Graduate School of Psychology, Rosemead Graduate School of Psychology, Harvard, George Fox, Princeton, Emory, and the like, have been publishing important building blocks of research on issues dealing with psycho-spirituality. In this present project the insights generated by such patient and careful research are explored in three categories. The first volume treats evil itself while the second volume describes its role and dynamics in the church and society, and the third volume addresses the psychodynamics

Series Foreword

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at play in countering evil and the psychosocial efforts to contain, control, and cure it in persons and society so as to guarantee or facilitate healthy social psychology and religion, thus affording us wholesome psycho-spirituality. These volumes employ an objective and experience-based approach to our spiritual life and growth as we pursue the quest for explaining evil. Some of the influences of religion upon persons and society, now and throughout history, have been negative. In 2004 we published in this series four volumes entitled The Destructive Power of Religion. That set of volumes analyzed the biblical metaphors which infect our psychological archetypes with destructive forces that prompt humans to utilize our capacity for violence in the name of God. Such biblical metaphors as a cosmic conflict in which God is a warrior in mortal competition with the power of evil, and God’s inclination to solve his ultimate problems with ultimate violence, prompt humans to behave in the same way. Such pathogenically evil images of idealized divine and human behavior are reprehensible and must be done away with. Those biblical myths have wreaked havoc upon our world for 3,000 years or more. Surely that must end now. On the other hand, much of the impact of the great religions upon human life and culture has been profoundly redemptive and generative of great good. It is urgent, therefore, that we discover and understand better what the psychological and spiritual forces are which empower people of faith and genuine spirituality to open their lives to the transcendent connection and give themselves to all the creative and constructive enterprises that, throughout the centuries, have made human life the humane, ordered, prosperous, and aesthetic experience it can be at its best. Surely the forces for good in both psychology and spirituality far exceed the powers and proclivities toward evil. These volumes are dedicated to the greater understanding of Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality, and thus to the profound understanding and empowerment of those psycho-spiritual drivers which can help us (1) transcend the malignancy of our earthly pilgrimage, (2) open our spirits to the divine spirit, (3) enhance the humaneness and majesty of the human spirit, (4) empower our potential for magnificence in human life, and (5) illumine us with an understanding of the problem of the evil with which we contend. J. Harold Ellens Series Editor

NOTE 1. L. Aden and J. H. Ellens, Turning Points in Pastoral Care: The Legacy of Anton Boisen and Seward Hiltner (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1990).

ch apter 1

Introduction: Setting the Course J. Harold Ellens

Donald Meekhof and I were the first two babies baptized by the Reverend John L. Shaver in the Lucas Christian Reformed Church, three miles outside of the little village of McBain, Michigan. It was July 1932. They tell me Don was first and I was second. Apparently that was the sort of thing to remember in that little Dutch-German immigrant community in those days. I do not remember it. There were lots of babies then, and they were all baptized as soon after birth as possible. I do remember rather vividly, however, two things about baptism from witnessing many other children baptized in my childhood years. First, the rather long and stuffy baptismal liturgy covered the theological waterfront with all the biblical and quasi-biblical ideas you could stuff into a 20- or 30-minute read. Second, there was one great line that stuck with me to this day, and probably saved my sanity many times over. At the point that the liturgy tried to signify the particular meaning of baptizing infants (who would never remember a thing of it, of course), the preacher read that infant baptism was a sign on the child’s forehead that God covenanted with that child “to avert all evil or turn it to our profit.” That sounded like a good deal. I latched onto that assurance very early—long before I was 5 years old, as I recall. I fervently hoped it was true. I have spent the rest of my life trying to figure out just in what way that great line is operationally real and authentic. I grew up in a grateful, pious family and community in a time of great suffering. The Great Depression and World War II shaped my formative socialization, intellectual development, and spirituality. Moreover, it was a time when children were dying all around me: two Warsen girls, the Sheppers

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Explaining Evil

twins, my very best friend Esther just across the country road, my brother Gordon Henry, my sister Fenne, a Scholten boy, the Sickema son, the Owinga child, and a veritable host of others. Talk about evil! I was quite sure it was all around me, and God did not seem to be averting it from a lot of little baptized kids. Moreover, once they were dead, how could God turn it to their profit? Each time another child died, evil seemed to be sneaking up on me and getting too close for comfort! “God will avert all evil or turn it to our profit.” So what the hell is evil, then? I would not say my life has been exactly preoccupied with evil, but I have always been consciously curious about its nature and source. I suppose this is an enigma in the mind of every thoughtful human being. I believe I came rather early to wondering whether evil is an abstract force or personified agent, something cosmic or of this world, anonymous, abstract, or personal. I remember John Kromminga, my church history professor in seminary, saying that pastors should be well acquainted with evil but not participate in it. I thought that was as enigmatic and mysterious as the line from the baptismal liturgy. The Encyclopedia Britannica declared confidently that evil is “a theological problem that arises for any philosophical or religious view that affirms the following three propositions: (a) God is almighty, (b) God is perfectly good, and (c) evil exists. If evil exists, it seems either that God wants to obliterate evil and is not able to—and thus his omnipotence is denied—or that God is able to obliterate evil but does not want to—and thus his goodness is denied” (“The Problem of Evil,” 1974, p. 1017). I was sure from the outset that God wanted to avert all evil or turn it to our profit, and that the matter was much more complicated than the rather slick statement in the encyclopedia seemed to suggest. Of course, some faith traditions such as Vedanta Hinduism, Christian Science, and Greco-Roman Stoicism tried to craft their systems of thought in terms of the denial that evil exists at all. We only imagine it—or, to put it more accurately, evil is just a semantic construct, a set of words, that we make up in our heads. William James, the famous psychologist and philosopher of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, solved the enigma by denying that God is omnipotent. He was sure God is genuinely good but has limited power. Mainstream Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have tended to live precariously with the tension between the goodness of an omnipotent God and the fact that evil not only exists but also often seems rampant in the world. Leibnitz, a 17th-century German philosopher, said that God can only do what is logical, and the illogical always exists in the best of all possible worlds—and that is evil. Aurelius Augustine, a Christian theologian who lived in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, had a greater influence upon shaping all subsequent Western thought about evil than anyone else, except perhaps Thomas

Introduction

3

Aquinas. St. Augustine (1948) was sure that evil does not exist as a cosmic force or agent, or as an objective entity in this world. He argued that evil is only the absence of the good (Vol. 1, pp. 100–104). That sounds nicely benign and definitive, but as soon as you ask him what he means by that, things get complicated. Did he mean merely what Edmund Burke is reported to have said, “The only thing that is necessary for evil to triumph, is that good men do nothing”? Thus, if we do not act for good we create a vacuum that is evil or that propagates evil. That still leaves us wondering what that is that gets in the cracks where we are not doing good. It also leaves us as mystified as before about where it comes from and how it operates. An entire chapter is devoted later in this work to Aquinas’s view of evil. His view is treated there at length by Dr. Eppens. So I will only allude to it here. Aquinas was the greatest medieval theologian and philosopher. He treats the problem of evil at length in the second volume of his Summa (1945, Vol. 2, pp. 9–25). He argues relatively clearly that, as Augustine had contended, and contrary to Aristotle, evil is the unintentional consequence of a good act that proves inadequate or incomplete. Evil is that lack of the good, and the consequence that arises because of that deficit. Evil has no essential existence, according to Aquinas, and is not an objective force that acts in time and space, much less an ontological agent, that is, an evil being. Evil is what we experience when we do some good but do an inadequate degree of good in the world. Gilson puts it precisely: “What is called an evil in the substance of a thing is only a lack of some quality which ought naturally to be there. . . . Evil is . . . negation. . . . It is not an essence, not a reality. . . . Evil is not a being” (156). Jacques Maritain, with Gilson one of the greatest modern scholars of medieval theology and philosophy and a stellar Aquinas interpreter, holds for essentially the same perspective on evil throughout his book on Aquinas’s view of the problem of evil. Samuel Johnson laid the foundation for modern research regarding evil in his Free Inquiry Into the Nature and Origin of Evil. He debated the view that has become the theological perspective of evangelical Christianity in the last two centuries since its development out of the philosophy and psychology of Jonathan Edwards. Johnson generally disagreed with the notion that evil is a force in life and history that derives from the actions of an evil agent, such as Satan, who opposes God and his intentions for this world. Evangelicalism and fundamentalism are strongly persuaded that the Bible requires such a worldview. This outlook is essentially a heretical idea borrowed from Zoroastrianism by the Jews in exile in Babylon during the sixth century bce. It was then developed elaborately in Second Temple Judaisms that proliferated during the five centuries between the exile and the births of Jesus, Philo, Josephus, and Paul. Those apocalyptic forms of Judaism included the theology of the Essenes, an extreme form of which characterized the people of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran. Much of Christian orthodox theology

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Explaining Evil

has been tempted to follow that line ever since, deriving its unbiblical theology of providence and evil from Essene determinism. It supposes that evil is the product of a rebellion in heaven that set Lucifer or Satan against God in a cosmic war, the battlegrounds of which are history and the human heart. In the chapters in these present volumes that treat evil in the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament (NT), this issue will be explicated in detail. Much of Christian thought to the contrary throughout the last 17 centuries, as well as my position explicated in these volumes and in many of my earlier publications, is a broadside critique of that fundamentalist evangelical way of interpreting the Bible. There is no empirical, phenomenological, heuristic, biblical, or rational data or human experience on the basis of which to conclude that God is up against a challenging adversary in a cosmic battle, the outcome of which, at history’s end, remains to be seen. That is a Zoroastrian notion and neither Judaic nor Christian. Not all the contributors to this three-volume work will work from the same perspective as I. This project on Explaining Evil is intended to bring to the issue many different outlooks and worldviews for the better illumination and informed reflection of the seriously interested reader. It will be my intention in the chapters I write to develop the claim that evil is not an objective force and that the evil we experience in life has no cosmic source. There is nothing “out there” in the otherworldly realm except God, the God of providence and grace. God’s grace is unconditional, radical, and universal. No devil or satanic agent is lurking around the corner of anyone’s life, or beyond the screen between time and eternity. There is no such thing as devils, fallen angels, hell, or ultimate alienation from God. As John’s gospel makes eminently clear, God intends to save all humanity and, indeed, all creation—“the world”—and God’s purposes will not fail. Of course, there are those who will immediately raise the question as to how to explain the problem of pain and suffering, the curse of evil human deeds, and the references in the Bible to “sheep and goats,” “Gehenna,” “being cast into outer darkness,” and even Jesus’s own references to hell. To raise such questions is legitimate, honest, and important. Providing definitive answers in each case is imperative. Let me attempt to do just that. There is no reference in the Hebrew Bible to a place called hell. There are references to the afterlife, but those always use the Hebrew word, Sheol. “Sheol” is a term that refers to an undifferentiated state after death that is very much like that in Greek mythological references to Hades, the underworld. Neither Greek, nor Roman, nor Hebrew tradition invests the terms “Hades” or “Sheol” with any indication that it is a place of punishment of the wicked or blessed reward of the righteous. It is simply a shadowy place of undifferentiated existence of the good, the bad, and the ugly. It is interesting that in both Greek and Israelite traditions, in the millennium before the birth of Jesus, Josephus, and Philo Judaeus, there was some

Introduction

5

reflection or speculation about the possibility of heroic persons of special quality being delivered from Sheol or Hades and somehow absorbed into the world of the gods. Hercules (Herakles in Greek) was a character in Greek mythology who perpetrated terribly evil deeds in his youth and was cursed by the gods to a destiny of hard labor. This was his punishment to compensate for his early murderous behavior toward his family. Hercules rose to the occasion, accomplished all the labors assigned him, and so sufficiently justified himself as heroically obedient to the gods that at his death he was delivered from Hades and turned into a deity. In a certain sense a similar moment of exalting expectation is evident in the life of David, at least in his hope for the ultimate outcome of his afterlife. In Psalm 18:4–6, David imagines himself in Sheol, entangled in the “snares of death” or the “cords of Hades,” from which he cried out for divine rescue. Psalm 116:8 seems a kind of follow-up on this anguish for it celebrates God’s deliverance from Sheol, and in Psalm 16:9–11 David thanks God that God will not leave his holy ones in Sheol, or in the metaphoric equivalent of the city cesspool or dump—the Pit. These sentiments of the Psalmist are referenced in Acts 2:27 and 2:31, applying them to the resurrection of Jesus, the Christ: Thou wilt not abandon my soul to Hades, Nor let thy Holy One see corruption.

The Hebrew Bible, also known as the Old Testament (OT), does not know an afterlife of torture of the wicked and blessing of the righteous, except that some special holy ones may be taken up into the realm of deity or into the bosom of Abraham or of God. Nor does the Hebrew Bible know of a devil or a satanic counterforce to God. Satan is referred to in Job 1–3, but in that narrative he is one of God’s cabinet ministers with a high level of esteem and responsibility, probably what today we would call God’s chief of staff or secretary of state. He is a comrade of God and is referred to as one of a number of the lesser gods, “Elohim,” who provide God (El) with counsel and guidance. Even in Genesis 6, where evil in the world is explained by angels cohabiting with women and producing a generation of rather rambunctious giants, the angels are not referred to as “fallen.” They are described as perhaps having made a mistake, but an understandable one considering the seductive force of sexuality—presumably a new experiment for those unfortunately deprived residents of heaven. In any case, it is not the angels who raise hell on earth, but the giants. Moreover, throughout, the angels are referred to as “sons of God,” a term meaning “righteous persons” in Hebrew tradition. Besides, this entire story is merely a rewrite of an old myth borrowed from Mesopotamian lore, or perhaps Zoroastrian sources.

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Explaining Evil

When the Israelites were exiled in Babylon, they had it so good there that when Cyrus the Great turned them loose to return to Palestine in 537 bce, only about 10% of them wanted to leave Babylon. There they lived in a sophisticated suburb especially set up for them. They were on a rather luxuriant royal dole, and they had the status of counselors to the king himself, as in the case of Daniel and his friends. They had it made, and all the moaning about this exile was mainly typical self-pity on the part of those who thought they were “the chosen of God” who deserved special treatment, and were now being put through the discomfort of moving from their middle-class life in stuffy and irrelevant Jerusalem to first-class life in the capital of the empire. Bitching and moaning are just the style of some people. Upon being rather well established in Babylon, the Israelites produced a prodigious amount of scholarly work, mostly devoted to their national tradition. This led them to incorporate into their master story a lot of material borrowed from Mesopotamian mythology and Zoroastrian theology. They believed they had relatively good memory of the roots of the people who became the Israelites. They remembered their traditions back to Abraham, and they had some records from Moses, the conquest of Palestine, their genocide of the Canaanites under Joshua, and the annals of the kings for about 500 years. What apparently perplexed them was the absence of any story that led back from Abraham to the creation of the world. That is, they could put together fairly well everything from Genesis 12 forward, but they had to make up the stories of Genesis 1–11. They took the easy way out. They copied existing Babylonian, Chaldean, and Zoroastrian legends, myths, and religious explanations of Creation (Gen 1 and 2), the Fall (Gen 3), Cain and Abel (Gen 4), Seth to Methuselah (Gen 5), the sons of God cohabiting with women and producing giants and causing evil (Gen 6), the flood (Gen 7–10), and the Tower of Babel creating the various nations of the earth (Gen 11). Thereafter, the Hebrew Bible focuses on the nation of Israel. While they were busy with all this interesting leisure activity and living luxuriantly off the royal dole, they got heavily into Zoroastrian explanations of the problem of evil as well. They not only devised the sexy story in Genesis 6 but also brought in the Zoroastrian dualism that gave rise to notions about a cosmic conflict between the good God, whom they called Yahweh, and an evil god they called the “prince of darkness” or the like. From there, such Zoroastrian influences sneaked into the New Testament. The main theological problem the Israelites pondered in Babylon was how they, the special people of God, could have lost the dominant role in Palestine and in the western Fertile Crescent that they had during David’s kingdom. How could God have allowed some pagan nation to overrun them? How was God in history—particularly in their history? What was the relationship between their suffering and their failures as the people of God? Zoroastrianism had an entire system that provided ready answers.

Introduction

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Zoroastrianism worshipped Ahura-Mazda, the god of light. It proposed that all of reality is divided into the dualism between the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness. On one side was the god of light, and the god of darkness was on the other. They had two competing and approximately equivalent gods. So the forces in history were god and devil, good and evil, light and darkness, righteous and unrighteous. The cosmic battle between these two kingdoms is ongoing and fought out on the battlegrounds of human history and the human heart. The job of humans is to make sure on which side we stand. This line of thought heavily influenced the Jewish answer to their central questions. It is interesting how that happened. As a result of the rich ferment in the scholarly Jewish community in Babylon, a great variety of Judaisms developed during the 500 years between the exile and the birth of Jesus. Some strains of those Judaisms developed along a line of rather rationalistic philosophy and theology, not heavily influenced by Zoroastrianism. That school of thought eventually produced the Sadducees and Pharisees of whom we read in the NT. By the time of the establishment of the official Christian Church in the fourth century ce, that form of Judaism produced the Babylonian Talmud and what we now know as Rabbinic Judaism. That line of Judaism insists that it follows the original traditions that go back to Moses and Abraham. Perhaps in some ways and to some degree, that is so! However, a host of other Judaisms proliferated after the exile, during the time between the end of the OT and the beginning of the NT. Josephus mentions a number of them. They include the Maccabees, the Essenes, the Zealots, the people of the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran, and apparently many others. Most of these were apocalyptic sects of one sort or another. They believed that evil was a cosmic force that would eventually pitch a huge catastrophic war with God and his minions. That war would end in a cataclysmic termination of history. When that happened, if God were lucky, he would win and exterminate all the wicked and all the cosmic forces of darkness, and gather into his kingdom all the righteous. This solved a central problem for the Israelites who followed this trajectory. It meant that the good God, Yahweh, is justified in causing or allowing Israelites to be exiled and their kingdom reduced to irrelevance. They were unrighteous, and so they had to live with the consequence of that. They had found themselves on the wrong side of the cosmic battle. However, that immediately gave rise to another central problem. How did they get on the wrong side, because they had always been sure they were the special people of Yahweh, the only true and living God? They dreamed up many different answers. Some Jews, like the Essenes of Qumran, were sure that God had decided before creation which group of humans would be the company of the righteous, escaping Sheol at death, and destined for eternal bliss with God. God had decided at the same time which crowd of humans

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would be unrighteous, perhaps escaping Sheol but condemned to eternal Zoroastrian torture in the kingdom of darkness. If you asked what you could do to make sure you were in the company of the righteous in the end, the answer was enigmatic. Some said you could not do anything about that. You were stuck with what God had decreed before all time. Others said you could try to live the life of the righteous, and if it worked for you that probably meant you were among those elected for righteousness. If it did not work, you were stuck with the destiny of eternal damnation. Still others said that the door was not slammed that tightly shut. You could affect your ultimate destiny by working hard to be righteous, because the divine decision is taking place in time all the time. On the other hand, there were those who held to the original position that God had made the decision before time began, but those whom God foreknew would try to be righteous he decided to elect to the company of the saved. Those he foreknew would not choose to try for righteousness, God chose to damn. It was this great variety of apocalyptic Judaisms that created the culture out of which came Jesus, the Jesus movement, and the NT writings. Consequently, because Jesus was a real man, whatever else the NT claimed him to be, he was ensconced in the culture, language, and metaphors of his day. He was an apocalyptic Jew, as the gospels clearly indicate. He spoke the language of the common people, with the common people, in the word pictures that were common to them. Thus we have Jesus using such words as “the righteous and unrighteous”; those who are “sheep or goats”; those who suffer “Gehenna, where their worm never dies and their fire is never quenched”; and those who are “children of the light” and in God’s company, versus those who are “children of darkness” and who find themselves in “outer darkness.” These are, of course, not terms taken from what was the Bible in Jesus’s day (i.e., the Hebrew OT). They are not OT religious language and proper Judaic ideology. They really have nothing to do with what would have been biblical tradition for Jesus. These are all from Zoroastrian religious language and ideology. If you are familiar with the King James Version of the NT, or even some of the modern versions, you will have noted that the gospels report Jesus, on one occasion, telling a story about a rich man who was in hell and who requested that Lazarus, whom he had abused in life, come to put a drop of water on his tongue. Bible readers readily conclude that Jesus believed there was such a place as hell. There are two problems with this. The first problem is that the story is only a metaphoric story that does not prove that Jesus believed in the kind of three-story universe that is depicted in that parable. However, the second factor is even more telling. The word in the original Greek language of that parable does not say the rich man is in hell. It says he is in Hades, Sheol, the undifferentiated underworld that is life after death—a world of shades and shadowy existence that is not quite life and not quite

Introduction

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extermination. We know that no such place as the Greek underworld exists. Nobody proposes such a theology today. The Bible nowhere uses the word “hell” or ever refers to a place called “hell,” or an afterlife of eternal punishment and torment. Some passages in that very strange book of the Apocalypse of St. John might be cited as an exception; however, the entire book is such a wild and churned set of ethereal metaphors that nothing ontologically substantive can honestly be derived from it. Unfortunately, the King James Version, which has so heavily influenced English culture since 1611 ce, translated the Hebrew Sheol and Greek Hades as hell in nearly every case at which they appear in scripture. From that came the erroneous English Puritan and American fundamentalist evangelical claims that there is a place called hell and that the unrighteous are damned to that eternal place of punishment, down there in some ethereal netherworld. That is a completely unbiblical notion, a heresy. Now, someone will raise the point that Jesus used all those Zoroastrian apocalyptic terms listed above, which seem to hint at a place for the wicked that is separated from God. Look at those texts more carefully. When Jesus speaks of the goats, those in outer darkness, those in Gehenna where their suffering is like a worm that never dies or a fire that is never quenched, he never once speaks of those terms as substantives. They are always terms that describe contingent states. Those are things people suffer who are not yet in full communion with God and are not consoled and forgiven by accepting God’s grace. They are in a state of having fallen short until now, missed the mark, and not yet attained communion with God’s saving grace. That is the reason for the gut ache that feels like a fire that will not go out, and the anxiety eating out their insides like a worm that will not die. On the other hand, when Jesus and Paul refer to heaven, they always speak of it as a substantive reality, an actual state of being that is an experience of “going to the Father,” or “going to be with the Lord.” Moreover, Paul repeatedly says throughout his epistles that in the end, presumably in the moment of transition from this life to eternal life, “every eye shall see God, every knee shall bow before him, and every tongue shall affirm the embrace of God’s grace, to the glory of God.” This conforms with John’s gospel, the last word written in the NT. John’s gospel declares that God will save the entire world (Jn 3:13–18), and that the judgment day took place before history when God judged that he would save the whole world. John’s gospel, in consequence, has no second coming, no return on the clouds with the angelic host, no judgment day, no cataclysmic extermination of the ungodly or special treatment of the godly, and no end to history. Instead, John proclaims that Jesus simply went to heaven where he belongs. He eliminated all the unrighteous from history by forgiving them all in advance, before they were born—before creation. Neither Jesus nor

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Explaining Evil

God will judge anyone negatively or witness against us, no matter how much evil we perpetrate. If we feel under judgment, it is merely our own consciences correctly or incorrectly judging ourselves (Jn 3:18–21; 5:27–47). In the NT, there is no hell except the anguish we suffer here and now from our fear, guilt, and shame, even though God has thoroughly removed it from the equation of our relationship with God. There is no cosmic evil and no divine threat hanging over the world or our personal lives. There is no devil out there, only the God of grace and acceptance of us. There is no biblical, rational, empirical, phenomenological, or heuristic basis for any notion of a cosmic battle with evil in this world, or for the devil, demons, or hell. That leaves us with a rather simple and concrete question about the nature of evil. The question is best formulated in this way. Because evil is confined to the experience humans have of undesirable or uncomfortable aspects of this world of time and space, how shall we define “evil,” and what is its scope? A summary statement is sufficient here. The rest of these three volumes elaborate most of the important detailed aspects and implications of the matter. There are only two kinds of evil: those destructive things that we do to each other, ourselves, or God’s created world, by our bad will and bad intention; and that which we do to ourselves, each other, and the universe by ignorance and neglect. Those destructive things we do by bad will and intention fall into two categories also: those that are a result of unnecessary calculated intention to do harm, and those we do because of psychopathology. Of the former, we are morally and ethically culpable. Of the latter, we are not but should do our best to get help. The destructive things we do from ignorance and neglect fall into two categories: the actions of which we could have been informed and responsible, and those of which we had no way of being informed and hence responsible. Of the former, we are culpable. Of the latter, we are not culpable, but we should make ourselves as informed and responsible as we possibly can. These volumes address all the various sides of these issues. One final matter remains to be addressed here. Someone will surely ask, “What of God’s responsibility for the evil of deadly natural disasters?” Why does he allow or cause mudslides that wipe out Colombian villages, volcanoes that destroy Pompeii and Herculaneum, earthquakes that wreck entire civilizations or spoil the aesthetic artifacts that creative humans have devised, and tsunamis that wreak havoc over wide sections of our planet, at great cost of life and treasure? Why does a microbe infect a cow’s milk and kill children in India? God has designed and created this world in such a manner that everything functions with a total freedom within the confines of its own nature. That is true of inorganic as well as organic reality. It is equally true of the electron in orbit in the atom as it is true of a wife choosing to cherish or abuse her

Introduction

11

husband. The natural order has its own structure and patterns, and each element is free to conform to that pattern or fly out of it and wreak havoc. When a cell chooses to go wrong, we have cancer. When an electron chooses to leave its orbit, it creates another kind of molecule that may be constructive or destructive. When a human chooses good or ill, it has consequences. Regardless of the developments in any of these areas, God does not intervene to pay his world off every Saturday night, nor does he straighten us out every week. The reason for God to allow this freedom to percolate along according to the inherent nature of things, even when humans make bad choices, is because God takes the natural cause-and-effect processes in the universe so seriously, and he takes the developmental dynamics of our growing personalities so seriously, that he will not intervene. God will not compromise the freedom for growth and constructive change that he has built into the created universe. Now, in such a world of total freedom, if there are no mistakes, destructive inadvertencies, and errors, there is not freedom. God has not created a clockwork orange, as we all know. When mountains erupt volcanically, mudslides kill people, and earthquakes destroy, God does not prevent that. If Colombians are not to be killed by mudslides, we need to take responsibility for informing them of the danger, persuading them to place their villages on safer ground, and helping them when we can. The Pompeians knew that Vesuvius erupts every 1,000 years. They should have taken account of that when they built their village. At least they should have placed it on the typical upwind side of the mountain. Those destructive events are not evil. We call them “evil” only because we have a kind of imperial attitude that assumes everything in the world is supposed to operate in a way that is comfortable and congenial to human beings. When Vesuvius, Mount St. Helens, or the Icelandic volcano erupts, that is a highly successful achievement for the natural forces in the tectonic plates and the quite amazing dynamics of the planet’s crust. In our imperialist attitude, we sometimes call this evil and a destructive act of God. It is not so. We say that only because it makes us uncomfortable to have airline flights cancelled, stranding many humans in our busy pursuits. We are inconvenienced, and so we call it evil. That is really quite ridiculous. Similarly, when a microbe hatches in the soil, climbs up a blade of grass to have its lunch, is inadvertently ingested by a cow that decided to have that blade of grass for its lunch, and then sets up housekeeping in the fermenting big paradise in the ruminating cow’s stomachs, that entire enterprise is a great achievement for the microbe. Now, if it is a parasitic microbe that has evolved especially for this very scenario, because it is designed to attach itself to the stomach lining of the cow and infect the entire organism, including the cow’s milk, that is a great victory for this particularly little bug.

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Explaining Evil

When a child drinks that milk, is infected by that bug’s numerous progeny, and dies, we call it evil. Surely it is a tragedy for us humans. It is a great sorrow, loss, grief, discomfort, and inconvenience for the persons affected. But it is not evil. It is the natural life of the microbe, following the freedom and necessity of its own destiny. If we do not like it, we must do something terrible to the microbe. Is that less evil than what the microbe does to us? It is interesting that Albert Schweitzer got to that point at his hospital in Lambaréné, Gabon, Africa. He was totally ambivalent about that point— almost to the point of being unable to act against the tropical diseases he confronted. He was not sure humans had any more right to kill bugs than the bug has to kill people. He saw it as a natural contest of life. Once when I was an army officer overseas, a number of officers in my hospital unit prepared a ship full of medical supplies and antibiotics to send to Schweitzer’s hospital in Lambaréné. Schweitzer refused to accept the medical supplies and medicine. He had come to the point of believing in and using only natural processes for the treatment of diseases. That meant that if the natural process meant that the bug was stronger than the patient, the patient died. If the patient was stronger than the source of the disease, the patient lived and the bug died or was accommodated somehow. The physician’s task was to enhance the patient’s ability to triumph over the bug. There is no such thing as natural evil in this world. The only evil that exists in the world is the damage that humans do to each other. We surely do not need to make up myths about demons and devils causing evil in God’s world. We are all perfectly capable of creating more than enough of it on our own. That is what these volumes are about, and they are about what to do with all this evil humans instigated, and with the pain and suffering we inflict upon each other.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Aquinas, T. (1945). Basic writings of St. Thomas Aquinas (Ed. Anton C. Pegis, 2 vols.). New York: Random House. Augustine, A. (1948). Basic writings of St. Augustine (Ed. Whitney J. Oates, 2 vols.). New York: Random House. Gilson, E. (1956). The Christian philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Johnson, S. (1757). Free inquiry into the nature and origin of evil, a critical review in literary magazine of Soames Jenyns’ book by that title. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maritain, J. (1942). St. Thomas and the problem of evil. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press. The problem of evil. (1974). S.v. in Encyclopaedia Britannica, Micropedia (15th ed.). Chicago: Helen Hemingway Benton.

ch apter 2

The Psychology of Evil Ralph W. Hood Jr.

I shall die, but that is all I shall do for death. —Edna St. Vincent Millay It is perhaps more a mark of hubris than anything else to claim to write of the psychology of anything, much less than of such a powerful topic as evil. With some postmodern sympathies, the smacks of a totalization that is at best premature and at worst impossible. Better is to claim to write a psychology of evil, but even here the preliminary problems are immense. It may be that, as Belzen (2010) has said of religion, evil is not a psychological but is rather a cultural phenomenon. However, evil is surely experienced as a malevolent force acting intentionally to inflict pain on a human being. In many cultures this force is personified and evil becomes (D)evil. We concur with Russell (1977) that the existence of evil requires no further proof. “I am; therefore I suffer evil” (p. 17). Psychologically, the phenomenology of evil must be noted lest we flounder in attempting a too restrictive definition of evil. “Evil is grasped by the mind immediately and felt by the emotions; it is sensed as hurt deliberately inflicted” (Russell, 1977, p. 1). If we accept this elegantly simply reflection, we need not try to unpack definitions that would endlessly relativize evil, making one person’s or culture’s evil another person’s or culture’s good. This is the error of psychologists who would assert the “myth of pure evil” (Baumeister, 1997, pp. 60–96). We accept that no person is purely evil. Thus, the myth of pure evil balances another myth, that of pure innocence. There are no pure innocents either. This is part of the reason why the

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Explaining Evil

major historian of evil, Russell, finds Jungian psychology so congenial to his understanding of evil personified or the D(evil). Individuals, like Jung’s God, must gradually differentiate evil and good in the process of development. To deny one’s evil nature can easily lead to repression, causing the growth of one’s shadow, often projected onto another and providing the psychological mechanism for the myths of pure evil and innocence. However, if the Jungian process of individuation is completed, good and evil are both recognized and held in balance. Jung’s speculative views have a depth that challenges Christianity Trinitarian views with a Quaternitarian view in which the Devil emerges into bright light as but the shadow of God exposed and acknowledged. This development of the imago of God we shall discuss below. Our task in this chapter is not to seek a metaphysical domain for evil or to tackle the considerable theological issues involved with seeking a justification for evil given an omnipotent God (theodicy), or to explore theological traditions in which independent forces of evil contest those of good. This would be to tackle problems that psychology can only acknowledge but not provide satisfactory answers for. What shall be our task in this chapter is to provide a theory of evil, psychologically based in a distinction that denies that one must define evil by content or belief but instead defines evil by the process by which beliefs are held. Thus, our focus is not upon what is evil, but rather how is evil possible at all.

THREE SOCIAL SCIENTIFIC MODELS OF (D)EVIL It is to social scientific models that we shall turn for our initial exploration of (D)evil. We shall seek not simply a psychological but a social psychological explanation for (D)evil. Social psychology is crucial for it is a discipline situated at the intersection between two sister disciplines, psychology and sociology. Ironically, the efforts to create this hybrid discipline began with the most widely adopted social psychology textbook of the 1960s, which teamed a psychologist (Paul F. Secord) and a sociologist (Carl W. Backman). They tried to create an interdisciplinary social psychology, noting that “social psychology can no longer be adequately surveyed by a person trained in only one of its parent disciplines” (Secord & Backman, 1964, p. vii). Often, the parent disciplines had been pitted against one another, with psychologists arguing for intrapsychic determinants of behavior while sociologists argued for situational and interpersonal determinants of behavior. In terms of the intention to inflict pain upon another, social psychologists seek to navigate between the Scylla of a purely psychological explanation of (D)evil and the Charybdis of a purely sociological explanation of (D)evil. The path is as difficult for contemporary social psychologists as it was for Homer’s Ulysses. A schematic illustration of the options can be illustrated in the simplified schema in Table 2.1. P stands for person, S for situation, and yes or

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no indicates the presence or absence of D(evil). The first option attributes (D)evil to intrapsychic factors, locating evil within the person. The second option attributes (D)evil to situational factors, locating evil in social or cultural factors. The third is a social psychological option in which individuals interact with situations to produce (D)evil. In these options, the psychology of (D)evil (1) is indicated by person 1 being evil in both situations 1 and 2, so the (D) evil overrides situational determinants. Likewise, person 2 is not (D) evil, regardless of situation. Here the major determinant is the person, and the assumption is that only evil persons do evil deeds. The second model is situational: Both persons do not do evil in situation 1, but both do evil in situation 2. Hence, situational factors rather than personality factors produce evil. Although many who work outside of the field of psychology assume individuals to be responsible for acts of evil, social psychologists refer to this as a fundamental attribution error (FAE) (Ross, 1977; Ross & Nisbett, 1988). The error is based upon studies indicating that individuals tend to underestimate the influence of situational factors and to overestimate the influence of personality in behavior. In the situational model, evil deeds are not produced by evil persons, but rather by persons who do evil in a particular situation. In option 3, we have a truly interactive model. Person 1 is (D)evil in situation 1 but not 2, whereas person 2 is (D)evil is situation 2 but not 1. In the interactional model evil persons produce evil deeds only under specified situations. Furthermore, the specified conditions may vary for different individuals. Hence, personality and situations interact to produce evil; neither alone is sufficient. The three models are more ideal types than isolated empirical realities. What is important is the relative weight given to personality and situational factors in producing evil. Because we are concerned with a social psychology of evil in this chapter, our emphasis will be upon models 2 and 3. Model 1 essentially reduces to a model of psychopathology in which (D)evil deeds are done by (D)evil persons. Insofar as the researcher focuses exclusively upon genetic, physiological, or psychological factors, the preferred term is “psychopath,” but nevertheless the traits and behaviors that describe (D)evil deeds are identical even if the deeds themselves lead some to label the doer a Table 2.1. Three Models of Evil: (D)evil (Yes or No) 1. Personal

2. Situational

3. Interactional

S1

S2

S1

S2

S1

S2

P1

Yes

Yes

P1

No

Yes

P1

No

Yes

P2

No

No

P2

No

Yes

P2

Yes

No

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Explaining Evil

“sociopath” (Tangney & Stuewig, 2004, p. 327). Our concern in this chapter is not to be concerned with (D)evil as psychopathology because that denies the intentionality and commonality of (D)evil that we wish to explore. Simply put, we deny that pathology is itself capable of (D)evil just as natural occurrences cannot appropriately be conceived as producing evil. Thus, in what follows we can simply indicate (D)evil as evil, with the reader aware that evil is always an intentional act of a person, not an unfortunate occurrence that simply happens.

Nazi Germany as an Exemplar In order to focus upon the situational and interactional models of evil, we will use as a reference point Nazi Germany. There are several reasons to do this. First, the Holocaust is a fairly recent historical event for which there is extensive documentation. It occurred in an advanced culture, the seat of great art, music, literature, and science. Although Nazi Germany is not the only genocidal culture (one can document mass murders in many advanced cultures), few would deny that genocide and mass murder deserve to be identified as evil regardless of the culture in which they occur. Nazi Germany is simply a more recent historical example of the historical and cultural expression of the existence of evil that we agree with Russell requires no further justification. Second, the Holocaust sanctioned by Nazi Germany has spawned arguably the two most intense and extensive research traditions in American social psychology. First is that identified as the authoritarian personality tradition associated with the classic book by that title (Adorno, FrenkelBrunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950). The second are the famous obedience experiments associated with the programmatic research of Stanley Milgram (1963, 1974).

The Authoritarian Personality Tradition The authoritarian personality tradition is important for the psychology of evil for it is the strongest candidate for an interactional model of evil. However, it is usually presented as a purely psychological model in which evil is a personal attribute, as in model 1. It is closely related to two of the four root causes of evil identified by Baumeister, idealism and threatened egoism (Baumeister, 1977; Baumeister & Vohs, 2004). Furthermore, idealism can be linked with another root cause of evil, instrumentality or the means–end distinction we explore more fully in this chapter. However, the focus on root causes should not be personal, as in model 1 above. Perhaps only sadism, the final root cause of evil identified by Baumeister, is appropriately linked to model 1. However, sadism is less an act of evil than a pathological expression

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lacking the crucial element of conscious intent that we identify with evil, as noted above. The authoritarian personality tradition thesis is best identified with our model 3. Here, as we shall see, idealism is linked to threatened egoism influenced heavily by classical Freudian theory. However, for now it is only important to note that this authoritarian research tradition began as an explicit response to the Holocaust, when members of the American Jewish Committee teamed up with scholars at the University of California–Berkeley to attempt to understand how the Holocaust happened. Equally important, this research program desired to understand if it could occur again in other cultures with others as the targets for extermination. The literature on authoritarianism runs to thousands of studies, and the initial book summarizing research findings was itself a focus of an entire volume dedicated to methodological critiques of the research (Christie & Jahoda, 1954). However, our concern is not with the minutiae of detail, but with robust findings that have both survived criticism and proven to be replicable by other researchers in a research tradition that is now over a half century old. The model proposed by the authoritarian personality researchers was simple. First a measure of anti-Semitism was devised based upon Nazi propaganda. Included in this measure were five subscales referencing the intrusive and exclusive nature of Jews, their presumed defective nature deemed offensive to culture, and generalized negative attitudes toward Jews. These subscales clustered together suggesting that anti-Semitism was an ideology or an organized system of beliefs. Further scale development focused upon other social groups common in the United States but excluding Jews. This resulted in a measure of ethnocentrism that included subscales measuring negative attitudes toward blacks (“Negroes” in the original), women, and other minority groups. It also contained what would prove to be a controversial subscale, one to assess patriotism. The ethnocentrism scale correlated with the anti-Semitism scale, broadening the claim that prejudice is ideological. The patriotism subscale correlated with other subscales, suggesting that patriotism was a specific expression of a more general ethnocentrism consisting of a heightened acceptance of one’s own group combined with a heightened rejection of others. This led to a measure of political and economic conservatism considered as a single measure indicating a commitment to conservative economic and cultural values combined with a resistance to radical social change. With some methodological caveats we can ignore here, the conservatism measured correlated with both ethnocentrisms and anti-Semitism, completing the empirical claim that antiSemitism is not simply opposition to Jews but also part of a larger ideological cluster in which others different from oneself are stereotyped as different and rejected. The question then became “What type of person would accept such an ideology?”

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Explaining Evil

The crux of this research tradition was the development of a personality measure, the California F Scale. It became widely referred to as the “Fascism” scale, although that term was never used by the original researchers. The personality measure was heavily influenced by classical Freudian theory and essentially identified nine subscales, of which three survived as the now standard measure of authoritarianism: authoritarian aggression, authoritarian submission, and conventionalism (Altemeyer, 1981, 1988, 1996). The identification of a personality type, the authoritarian personality, was crucial for three reasons. First, both survey research using the various measures noted above, and in-depth clinical interviews with those scoring high and low on the California F Scale, supported the claim that it was authoritarian personalities who were accepting of an ideologically based prejudice. Second, demographic data and survey results using the various measures, combined with clinical interview data, indicated that authoritarian persons were likely to be less intelligent, less educated, from lower socioeconomic situations, and, crucially, politically and economically conservative. Indeed, the persistent claim is that there is no general measure of authoritarianism, but rather authoritarianism is a “right-wing” phenomenon (Altemeyer, 1981). Finally, a model of the development of prejudicial attitudes was developed in which psychodynamically understood children raised in difficult circumstances, likely by authoritarian parents who lack both education and intelligence, respond to authoritarian parenting styles (including physical punishment) by uncritically submitting to authority and seeking to relieve their frustrations by scapegoating others. Hence authoritarian submission fuels aggression toward others, especially minorities and those who tend to oppose the conservatism of the culture. Thus, the authoritarian tradition returned to the initial concern, how to explain the Holocaust. The answer is as elegant as it is limited. Prejudice is a matter of belief, not behavior. It is an ideology that justifies discrimination. Discrimination is the actual differential treatment of others requiring situational or cultural support. Prejudices are beliefs held by persons whose own psychodynamically understood deficiencies lead them to stereotype, demonize, and demean others. However, whether they will act on such beliefs is largely situational. Nazi Germany simply fueled the fires of anti-Semitism, long a part of European culture, and the rise of Hitler finally allowed individuals to express their prejudices in ultimate acts of discrimination. Thus within a decade, millions of Jews and perhaps an equal number of other demonized individuals were exterminated. And, of course, it could occur again given the model noted above. Anti-Semitism is not about Jews; it is about those who hate Jews as an expression of their own inadequacies. Such hatred can be triggered into action (discrimination) by appropriate situational, cultural, and historical conditions. There is much to criticize in this theory, but for now we need note only one major concern before moving on to Milgram’s obedience experiments.

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The concern will be the basis for our own model of evil, to be discussed at the end of this chapter. Our concern is the claim that inevitable belief content follows from a presumed psychological process. In other words, the demonization and denigration of outsiders (the basis of scapegoating) occur only among authoritarians, who, as noted above, are “right wing.” The claim that there is no authoritarianism of the left is more than a little suspicious. In fact, insofar as prejudice is partly demonizing and demeaning others seen as distant from one’s own self, it is perhaps more than a little curious that researchers who are highly educated, intelligent, and often rooted in liberal political and economic philosophies found the problem of evil to be situated in the less educated and intelligent who adhere to political and economic conservatism! We shall return to this issue when we develop a theory of evil that does not exclude the possibility that the political left can be as evil as the political right. Outside of World War II, there have been at least as many mass murders from Mao’s Cultural Revolution and the Stalinist purges as occurred in the Holocaust of Nazi Germany (Baumeister & Vohs, 2004, pp. 93–94).

The Milgram Obedience Experiments In 1963 a mere eight-page article, perhaps the most influential article in American social psychology, was published in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. The initial article had not only been rejected by the journal in which it was eventually published but also had been rejected by the more prestigious Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The study itself was part of a programmatic research effort, eventually including almost 20 studies summarized in Milgram’s Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (1974). Strictly speaking, Milgram’s research program was not experimental, and no statistical analyses were conducted (Burger, 2009; Hood, 1987). Furthermore, the immediate ethical critiques of Milgram’s research continue to be discussed by social psychologists and have resulted in the likelihood that Milgram’s research will never be permitted again, surely not in any research institute that follows the American Psychological Association’s ethical guidelines for research with human participants (Baumrind, 1964; Burger, 2009; Hood, 1987; Milgram, 1964). As with the authoritarian personality research, Milgram’s research resulted in a critical text, part of which was devoted to a methodological critique of Milgram’s research program to explore obedience in a laboratory context (Miller, 1986). However, unlike the Christie and Jahoda volume critical of the research methodology of The Authoritarian Personality, Miller’s volume was largely laudatory of Milgram’s methodology. What links Milgram’s obedience experiments to the authoritarian personality tradition is the immediate discussion of the presumed relevance

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of Milgram’s research to the Holocaust. Milgram explicitly suggested this linkage in his original article and in subsequent publications. Furthermore, in a television interview summarizing his programmatic research on obedience, Milgram responded to Mr. Sacer’s reference to the Holocaust and the possibility of its occurrence in the United States as follows: I would say, on the basis of having observed a thousand people in the experiment and having my own intuition shaped and informed by these experiments, that if a system of death camps were set up in the United States of the sort we have seen in Nazi Germany, one would be able to find sufficient personnel for these camps in any medium-size American town. (CBS News, Sixty Minutes, March 31, 1979, as quoted in Blass, 1999, pp. 955–956)

However, the explanation offered for the Holocaust is not the same proposed by the authors of The Authoritarian Personality. It is our model 2, noted above. Milgram was later to explicitly acknowledge that the evil done as an act of obedience is almost entirely situational. Evil persons do not do evil deeds under specific historical or situational conditions; rather, evil deeds occur from simple acts of obedience, when a person in authority orders another to harm a third person. It is just this simple! Hannah Arendt published her influential work Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil in the same year (1963) that Milgram published his initial study. The banality of evil echoed the situational model and asserted, against the psychopathological or personal model (model 1) noted above, the simple fact that Eichmann and others like him “were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifying[ly] normal” (Arendt, 1963, p. 276). In the book-length summary of his own programmatic work, which went on to be published in 11 languages, Milgram (1974) adopted the situationist view and explicitly referred to Arendt’s thesis: “I must conclude that Arendt’s conception of the banality of evil comes closer to the truth than one may dare imagine” (p. 6, emphasis in original). The scope and breadth of Milgram’s research are impressive. A single research paradigm was employed for almost a decade. Over 1,000 participants participated in just under 20 different studies all focused on conditions of obedience. Milgram had been a student of Solomon Asch and modified his work on conformity to include conformity to instructions to harm another. His concern was to focus on the process of obedience to authority and not on the content of what the authority required. Despite minor variations, the basic scenario of Milgram’s obedience studies is simple, and various summaries are readily available (Burger, 2009, p. 1; Hood, 1987, pp. 841–842; Milgram, 1974; Miller, 2004, p. 195). A participant and a confederate of the experiment were told that they were to be involved

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in a paired association task when the “learner” was to be punished with electric shock for any errors made. In an elaborate staging, a rigged drawing was staged so that the “teacher” was always the real subject, whereas the “learner” was always the confederate. The participants were shown an elaborate shock generator with 30 switches clearly labeled by 15 volt increments (15 to 450 volts). The “teacher” was to administer the lowest level of shock for the first wrong answer, and move up by 15 volt increments for each subsequent error. The teacher was administered a 45 volt shock as a demonstration before the actual study began. In reality the learner, sitting in another room and responding (in most versions) via intercom, received no real shocks for the numerous scripted errors made. Enough errors were made to allow all 30 switches to be used. At the 150 volt level, the confederate emitted cries of protest and claimed to be experiencing excessive pain, to have a heart problem, and to desire to quit the study. From that point on (until 330 volts), each time the confederate was shocked he yelled in pain and requested the study to be discontinued. After the 330 volt level, the confederate no longer responded. The experimenter, near by the “teacher,” encouraged with four specific sequenced prods for the “teacher” to continue the experiment and to administer the next level of shock. The actual study was intended to explore disobedience by identifying the level at which participants would refuse to obey and to continue to administer shock to a person in pain and requesting to exit the study. The results, however, surprised many. Overall, over 60% of the participants continued to administer shock until the last switch was administered, presumably 450 volts. Most persons do not ever disobey. In all studies, there was what Burger (2009, p. 2) has called the 150 volt solution. This is the crucial point when the confederate acknowledges pain and asks to be excused from the experiment. In almost all cases, the true participant pauses and looks to the experimenter for guidance. This is when the experimenter responds with the first of four verbal prods, all essentially asking in varying degrees of explicitness that the “teacher” should continue the experiment. Milgram ran his studies with sets of 40 true participants and simply indicated the number who stopped at various voltage levels. The most consistent generalization is that a bit more than 10% of the true participants (6 or 7) stop at or before 150 volts. Of those who continued past 150 volts, a similar percentage drops out at various levels before 450 volts. However, approximately 80% who continue past 150 volts administer all possible levels of shock. These data are from experiment 5, but similar variations occur across most studies. Thus, in the recent only partial replication of Milgram’s obedience scenario, Burger (2009) was able to obtain permission to study individuals under the condition that if, at the 150 volt level, the participant wished to continue even after all four prods, when he or she used the next switch the experimenter stopped the experiment.

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Burger could then use the 150 volt criterion and compare this with Milgram’s data while apparently avoiding the more serious ethical considerations associated with administering higher levels of shock. Overall Burger’s results parallel closely Milgram’s, suggesting a positive answer to the subtitle of his article, “Would People Still Obey Today?” It is important to note that Milgram’s situational explanation for obedience is made in the absence of any personality assessment of participants. Milgram focused almost entirely on the situation. In his summary text, he argued that obedience is a fundamental psychological process in which a person told by legitimate authority to harm another individual simply obeys. He never assessed individuals on any personality dimensions. He did explore gender differences (as have others) and found none (Blass, 1999, pp. 967–969). He then explicitly linked his obedience paradigm to Nazi Germany. “The situation confronted both our experimental subjects and the German subject and evoked in each a set of parallel psychological adjustment” (Milgram, 1974, p. 177, emphasis mine). The situationist perspective, along with Arendt’s banality of evil thesis, spawned a massive literature on the willingness of Germans to simply be obedient and hence to be merely following orders even if they meant the extermination of millions (Goldhagen, 1996; Sandley, 1998). As we did with the authoritarian personality tradition above, we shall not indulge methodological critiques of the obedience experiments. Suffice it to say that there are critical dissenters who refuse to use the obedience experiments to explain the Holocaust (Berkowitz, 1999; Fenigstein, 1998; Hood, 1987). Furthermore, if no assessment is made of personality, then the interaction model is not given a fair test. All we know is that, ignoring personality factors, certain situations produce obedience. However, as Berkowitz (1999) has emphasized, evil is more than banal; it is seldom simply obedience. Obedience is accentuated when the target is stereotyped, demeaned, and demonized. Similarly, Fenigstein (1998) has noted that although we may be disappointed by the outcome of the obedience studies, the parallel to the Holocaust is unwarranted. The Holocaust was preceded by a long tradition of demonizing and demeaning Jews, and the terms that suggest the evil of the Holocaust are not captured by terms such as “banality” but terms such as “atrocity” and” inhumanity” (Fenigstein, 1998, p. 7). Milgram ignored the insights of the authoritarian personality research tradition in his obedience studies and the fact that their explanations for the Holocaust were more complementary than competing.

TOWARD AN INTERACTIONIST MODEL OF EVIL: THE INCONGRUITY OF MEANS AND ENDS We suggest that one can no more ignore the situation within which a person exists than one can ignore that a person is in a given situation. Thus,

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an interactionist model of evil is intuitively credible. We shall present such a model by an appeal to what we suggested is an apparent bias implicit in the authoritarian personality research. By unmasking this bias, we shall then propose a model of evil that identifies the basic psychological process that sustains evil to be identified as all-pervasive and the recognition of which suggests a way out of the situationist dilemma.

Rokeach and the Shift to Dogmatism Milton Rokeach (1960) was among the most vocal social psychologists to argue that authoritarianism may characterize the left as well as the right. The error as he saw it of research on authoritarianism is that it confused the content of belief with the process of belief. Thus, in Rokeach’s model, knowing the content of belief gives us no sure information regarding prejudice. The issue is how one believes. Rokeach dropped the term “authoritarianism” in favor of “dogmatism.” Dogmatism is identified by the acceptance of absolute authority often sustained by a sacred text that is self-authenticating. This is the basis of the intratextual model of fundamentalism we have recently developed (Hood, Hill, & Williamson, 2005). However, dogmatism is more than simply intratextual; it is also connected with the conditional rejection of others based upon belief incongruity. The fact of belief incongruity rather than ethnicity is the ideological basis of prejudice. In this sense, prejudice can be prescribed by submission to an absolute authority that provides a meaningful frame for the denigration of others, as with some fundamentalist religious groups. The Dogmatism Scale functions much like measures of authoritarianism on the political right, but uniquely identify similar processes on the political left (Vacchiano, Strauss, & Hochman, 1969). Not surprisingly, academics have challenged Rokeach as he, so to speak, tars them with their own brush. Although the political left may not be authoritarian, they can be dogmatic. Here we are not concerned to develop further Rokeach’s theory but only to point out that it assumes what we think is crucial for any understanding of evil: that it can be omnipresent, that it does not privilege one particular social group, and that it is not absent in the intelligent and highly educated. Furthermore, it privileges the process of belief over the content of belief, a position consistent with our intratextual view of fundamentalism (Hood et al., 2005; Kirkpatrick, Hood, & Hartz, 1991) The advantage of this is that we can look to the process of acquiring evil beliefs and the conditions under which such beliefs can be acted upon, in an interactional model.

Means and Ends If we now focus upon process rather than content, we can define “evil” as a disjunction between means and ends. There is a long tradition in the

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psychology of religion in which Allport made the theoretical distinction between two types of religiosity based upon the motivation for, rather than the content of, belief. One, extrinsic religiosity, uses religion as a means to achieve something else desired. The other, intrinsic religiosity, has no ulterior motive. Religion is an end itself, not a means. A scale to measure these differing motivations, the Religious Orientation Scale, has generated a massive and contentious literature too extensive to review here (Allport & Ross, 1967; Hood, Hill, & Spilka, 2009; Krauss & Hood, in press). However, the important theoretical issue is that intrinsic religious orientations do not support prejudices as do external religious orientations (Krauss & Hood, in press). And thus one can argue that psychological processes not based upon deficiency motivations or dependent upon psychological defense mechanisms (as in both authoritarian and dogmatic research traditions) do not lead to belief content that demeans, demonizes, or requires conditional acceptance based upon belief. These caveats will now allow us to explicitly develop our model of evil. If we return to our definition of evil as acting intentionally to inflict pain on a human being, we see that evil is inherently entangled with violence. Psychologists are more likely to speak of aggression than violence, and theories of aggression abound. Within the authoritarian tradition, aggression is a secondary response to frustration, elicited when the submission to authority belies frustration and anger than are transposed toward others who are scapegoats. Although some psychologists have argued that the proximate cause of evil is the failure of self-control of aggressive impulses (Baumeister & Vohs, 2004), evolutionary psychologists tend to find violence as having adaptive value (Duntley & Buss, 2004). This would make aggressive evil a means to survival, something our model of evil opposes. Integral to our concern is that there can be no distinction between means and ends. Our model places nonviolence at the core of opposition to evil, and it thus must have some evolutionary support.

Evolutionary Nonviolence In an often reported Los Angeles Times article, an epidemiologist (Scott Layne) and a political scientist (Michael Sommer) emphasized that that humankind now possesses the power to produce its own extinction at a cheap cost. What have been called “weapons of mass destruction” include any and all means to produce evil insofar as the intentional destruction of large segments of humanity is prima facie evidence of evil. The ability to produce weapons of mass destruction is made more widespread with the movement from nuclear weapons (estimated to cost $1 million for each person killed) to chemical weapons (estimated to cost $1,000 for each person killed) to a mere $1.00 per person killed by biological weapons. Miles’s (2004) quip regarding

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this article is precisely on target: “As $1 million shrinks to $1.00, the means for Armageddon are miniaturized and democratized” (p. 134). The task for eradicating this evil potential (and a potential often historically actualized) must be a commitment to nonviolence. Further, there is an evolutionary base to this if we considered what evolutionary psychologists have referred to as “evolutionary preadaptation.” Evolutionary preadaptation is expressed in faith traditions that model nonviolence. In the Western Judeo-Christian tradition, this is associated with the Marcion heresy integral to Jung’s (1973) analysis of the Book of Job. In his analysis of Job, Jung develops what has become in purely psychology terms the empathy-induced altruism hypothesis (Batson, Ahmad, & Stocks, 2004). The essence of the Marcion heresy is that the Christian Bible forced the merger of two gods, the Jewish god, a warrior god demanding the obedience and worship of his people, and the Christian god, remarkable in his refusal to endorse violence and in his willingness to die for humankind’s salvation. Jung’s analysis suggests that as the answer to Job, Christ is the self-realization of the Jewish god from whom Job demanded justice while affirming unconditional love. Job’s innocence in the sense of not deserving pain and suffering from God is mirrored when god as Christ (truly innocent) can understand via empathy Job’s own experience. In Miles’s (2004, p. 138) own similar view and response to Marcion, there are not two gods, but one God that has repented and changed. Although Jung’s and Miles’s analyses are not without controversy, they are supported by a masterful reading of scripture, partly through the lens of evolutionary theory. As Miles (2004) noted, “Or, as we may now choose to put it, God adapted” (p. 134). The key exemplars that Miles notes are the contrast between the Jewish God’s actions in 2 Kings 1 and those of Jesus in Luke 9:54–56 (Miles, 2004, p. 126). I will use the same examples as Miles but quote from the King James Bible. Responding to King Ahaziah’s appeal to a rival god, Beelzebub, Yahweh sends his prophet Elijah to rebuke Ahaziah. In the process, Elijah confronts Ahaziah’s army: And Elijah answered and said unto them, if I be a man of God, let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And the fire of God came down from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty. (2 Kings 1:12)

In Luke, Jesus responds to his disciples (James and John) who ask Jesus in the face of religious opponents if they should follow Elijah’s precedent: And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did? (Luke 9:54)

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However, God has changed. Yahweh is now the Son of Man, who denies violence: But he turned, and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them. And they went to another village. (Luke 9:55–56)

If insight into nonviolence, modeled in the Christian tradition by Yahweh’s transformation, is acknowledged, it can be seen as an example of preadaptive evolution. The pivotal issue is that evolutionary preadaptive traits developed in one environment prove to be adaptive in unanticipated future environments. Although we are not exclusively committed to an evolutionary model, it is useful in that it highlights that nonviolence may be a necessary adaptation for humankind’s survival. If nonviolence is seen as preadaptive, we can seek exemplars in modern history in such figures as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Both actively opposed evil, and each demanded the use of nonviolence, refusing to make a distinction between the means used to eradicate evil and evil itself. Perhaps this is most evident in Gandhi’s commitment to satyagraha, a concept with no easy English equivalent but one perhaps best summarized as the force of nonviolence. Hence, satyagraha is far from passive, seeking to eradicate evil by means that themselves are not tainted with evil (Bondurant, 1965). Perhaps in Western Christianity, the Quakers have most expressed this view. It is over 300 years since the Quakers declared to Charles II of England, “We utterly deny all outward wars and strife, and fighting with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretense whatever; this is our testimony to the whole world” (quoted in Olson & Christiansen, 1966, p. 141). The commitment to nonviolence as an evolutionary preadaption whose time has perhaps not quite yet come can be illustrated by a simple empirical study in which we contrasted American college students’ evaluations of two cultural icons of the American civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X (Hood, Morris, Hickman, & Watson, 1995).

Martin and Malcolm as Cultural Icons The simplest contrast between Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X is distilled in Malcolm’s phrase, “by any means necessary.” Whereas Martin’s commitment to nonviolence was unflinching, Malcolm argued that one could, if need be, use violence to achieve the goals of the civil rights movement. The assumption, implicit in most conflict resolution, is that among those committed to justice and the eradication of evil, the claim is that use of violence may be both necessary and justified. Hence, evil (violence) can be used to eradicate evil (violence), a contradiction that believers committed to nonviolence refuse to accept. Our suspicion is that among individuals

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actually opposed to civil rights, Martin’s nonviolence was preferable to Malcolm’s willingness to use violence precisely because of the assumption that nonviolence is a tool of the weak and incapable of succeeding in the face of superior force. Our use of the phrase cultural icon is meant to suggest a subjective reaction to culturally influential public figures that is less grounded in explicit ideological terms than in the affectively shaded meanings that such figures have for individuals. To test our hunches, we established the reliability of two rating scales used in an empirical study. One was an evaluative scale, and the other was a scale as to assess potency or power. Our hypothesis was that both African American males and White males would rate Malcolm as more potent or powerful than Martin. This was indeed the case. However, we also predicted that White males would rate Martin more positively than Malcolm precisely because his nonviolence was presumed to be indicative of a lack of threat. On the other hand, we predicted that African American males would rate Malcolm more positively precisely because his willingness to use violence made him a great threat to the establishment. Our point here is simply that the use of violence is perceived by many to be effective in achieving ends that nonviolence presumably cannot. As the United States once again is at war as this chapter is written, it is perhaps ironic that in his acceptance speech upon receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, the first U.S. president of color acknowledged Martin while siding with Malcolm.

How Noble a Prize Is Peace? Our discussion of Martin and Malcolm is paralleled by recent events. President Barack Obama was for many a surprise recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. In his acceptance speech he made explicit reference to Martin Luther King Jr.’s own Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, delivered December 10, 1964. A day before his acceptance lecture, Martin explicitly acknowledged that the Nobel Peace Prize “is a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time—the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression” (King, 1964, p. 1). President Obama ignored King’s acceptance speech but referenced his Nobel acceptance lecture several times. President Obama acknowledged Gandhi’s and King’s commitment to nonviolence but argued, “There will be times when nations—acting individually or in concert—will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified” (Obama, 2009, p. 4). The irony of President Obama echoing Malcolm X in praise of Martin Luther King Jr. repeats what many accept as the common sense of historical reality: Violence is necessary under certain conditions to fight evil. The means justify the end. To quote President Obama once more, “For make no mistake: evil does exist in this world. A non-violent movement

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could not have halted Hitler’s armies” (Obama, 2009, p. 4). Such a statement seems obvious but perhaps masks a counterintuitive claim.

Is Obedience Really Counterintuitive? Martin Luther King Jr. received the Nobel Peace Prize one year after Milgram published his first study of obedience and a decade and a half after the publication of The Authoritarian Personality. Both these studies were motivated by an effort to understand the Holocaust and both offered limited explanations, each assuming that psychological processes and situational contexts could elicit a willingness to harm others. Commenters on Milgram’s research have made much of the counterintuitive nature of his research, noting that even 40 psychiatrists had assured Milgram that virtually none would exhaust all the shock options and leading Milgram to comment in a letter to H. P. Hollander in September 24, 1962, “The psychiatrists—although they expressed great certainty in the accuracy of their predictions—were wrong by a factor of 500” (quoted in Blass, 1999, pp. 963–964). Blass argued that it is this counterintuitive fact of underestimation of actual rates of obedience that accounts for the influence of Milgram’s research. However, as Mixon (1971, p. 28) has noted, the dominant methodology of American social psychology has been to create a unique situation to produce unknown outcomes. Social scientists gain reputations by demonstrating phenomena that are counterintuitive. Milgram’s obedience experiments are a perfect exemplar of this phenomenon. Mixon’s use of role playing rather than deception has demonstrated that with proper descriptions, role-playing schemes can uncover the determining features of a situation whose outcome is known in advance. Thus, persons should be able, given the proper description, to predict what others see as counterintuitive; Mixon (1972) replicated Milgram’s 1963 study with a careful description of the procedures employed and found that 50% of his participants correctly predicted perfect obedience. Likewise, in a second scenario parallel to one of Milgram’s later studies, Mixon demonstrated that when the experimenter was described as having increased levels of agitation and worry as additional shock were administered, participants correctly predicted lower obedience rates. Thus, either in actual experimental studies or in role-playing analogues, conditions that alter obedience can be correctly predicted. Perhaps participants in a scientific experiment approved by a prestigious American university simply do not believe the cover story that is the basis of the obedience paradigm.

CONCLUDING COMMENTS ON THE MEANS–END INTERACTIONAL MODEL OF EVIL Our interactive nonviolent model of evil makes a first step at identifying a universal dimension to evil—that it is present whenever means and

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ends are disjunctive. If one accepts that evil is the intentional act of harming, maiming, or killing another, no act using violence is free from evil. The recognition of this is a first step toward empirical work isolating the conditions under which violence can be refused. We know many of these conditions already from both the authoritarian and obedience research traditions. Hitler’s armies could have been stopped, and in some conditions were. There are good studies of nonviolent resistance to Nazism in such countries as Norway and Holland (Schwartz, 1959). Likewise, Evelyn Wilcock (2005) documented that nonviolent dissent rescued Jews in the Holocaust, and she provided her own counterintuitive claim that Jews and the Holocaust in no sense provide evidence to the impossibility of nonviolence even in the face of horrendous evil. Thus, although we claim no current programmatic research tradition to support our model, we do insist that the first step in exploration is to unmask the myth of evil. That violent means can be used to eradicate evil assumes that the use of evil itself can eradicate evil. If we deny this, we can begin to seek to explore psychological processes and situational contexts in which evil is denied its dominance. Many of these conditions are already known— the research traditions surrounding authoritarianism and dogmatism have unmasked the conditions that foster degradation and demonization of others in which violence begets violence. A rich conceptual debate continues on the obedience experiments and why so few refuse to be disobedient. Fundamental issues of the disjunction between means and ends in the very methods used in social psychology have been raised since Mixon’s (1972) role-playing alternatives to Milgram’s actual deception, and are integral to most experimental social psychological research placing the distinction between ends and means at the very heart of methods that would seek to understand evil that itself is a disjunction between means and ends. The first step in any future programmatic research strategy ought to be to find means to study evil that are not tainted with evil and to note that the conditions that produce persons susceptible to evil and the situations known to produce evil are themselves possible of eradication. To know what end is desired may require refusal of any means that are incongruent if we are to understand, much less eradicate, evil. The personal dimension to evil, (D)evil, identifies all of us that use means that deny the ends we seek to achieve.

A PARTING THOUGHT ON NONVIOLENCE To question the efficacy of nonviolence by an appeal to the necessity of violence in the face of great evil is to fail to treat nonviolence as a genuine empirical option. In the Quaker-sponsored experiment in nonviolent civilian national defense, the authors of Thirty-One Hours: The Grindstone Experiment placed as a colophon to the print edition the following quotation from an

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American Friends Service Committee document: “Is there a method for dealing with conflict that does not involve us in the betrayal of our OWN beliefs, either through acquiescence to our opponent’s will or through resorting to evil means to resist him?” (Olson & Christiansen, 1966, p. 141, emphasis in the original). The answer for Quakers is in the effectiveness of love as an alternative to evil, not simply as an end but as the means by which evil is, if not overcome, at least held at bay. It is a hopeful sign that social scientists have begun to study this alternative to evil under the rubric of godly love (Lee & Poloma, 2009; Poloma & Hood, 2008). Perhaps the poetic refusal to do nothing more for death is a prolegomenon for future social scientific work not trying to elicit violence in staged situations, but trying to actually eliminate it from human history.

REFERENCES Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper & Row. Allport, G. W., & Ross, J. M. (1967). Personal religious orientation and prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5, 432–443. Altemeyer, B. (1981). Right-wing authoritarianism. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press. Altemeyer, B. (1988). Enemies of freedom: Understanding right-wing authoritarianism. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Altemeyer, B. (1996). The authoritarian specter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. New York: Viking Press. Batson, C. D., Ahmad, N., & Stocks, E. L. (2004). Benefits and liabilities of empathyinduced altruism. In A. G. Miller (Ed.), The social psychology of good and evil (pp. 359–385). New York: Guilford. Baumeister, R. F. (1997). Evil: Inside human violence and cruelty. New York: Freeman. Baumeister, R. F., & Vohs, K. D. (2004). Four roots of evil. In A. G. Miller (Ed.), The social psychology of good and evil (pp. 85–101). New York: Guilford. Baumrind, D. (1964). Some thoughts on the ethics of research: After reading Milgram’s “behavioral study of obedience.” American Psychologist, 19, 421–433. Belzen, J. A. (2010). Towards a cultural psychology of religion: Principles, approaches, and applications. New York: Springer. Berkowitz, L. (1999). Evil is more than banal: Situationism and the concept of evil. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3, 246–253. Blass, T. (1999). The Milgram paradigm after 35 years: Some things we know about obedience to authority. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 29, 955–978. Bondurant, J. V. (1965). Conquest of violence: The Gandhian philosophy of conflict. Berkeley: University of California Press. (Originally published in 1958)

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Burger, J. M. (2009). Replicating Milgram: Would people still obey today? American Psychologist, 64, 1–11. Christie, R., & Jahoda, M. (Eds). (1954). Studies in the scope and methods of the authoritarian personality. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Duntley, J. D., & Buss, D. M. (2004). The evolution of evil. In A. G. Miller (Ed.), The social psychology of good and evil (pp. 102–123). New York: Guilford. Fenigstein, A. (1998). Were obedience pressures a factor in the Holocaust? Analyse & Kritik, 20, 1–20. Goldhagen, D. (1996). Hitler’s willing executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Knopf. Hood, R. W., Jr. (1987). Review of A. G. Miller, the obedience experiments: A case study of controversy in social science. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 37, 840–845. Hood, R. W., Jr., Hill, P. C., & Spilka, B. (2009). The psychology of religion: An empirical approach (4th ed.). New York: Guilford. Hood, R. W., Jr., Hill, P. C., & Williamson, W. P. (2005). The psychology of religious fundamentalism. New York: Guilford. Hood, R. W., Jr., Morris, R. J., Hickman, S. E., & Watson, P. J. (1995). Martin and Malcolm as cultural icons: An empirical study comparing lower class African American and white males. Review of Religious Research, 36, 382–388. Jung, C. G. (1973). Answer to Job. In Collected works (Trans. R. F. C. Hull, Vol. 11). Princeton, NJ: Bollingen. King, M. L., Jr. (1964). Noble Peace Prize acceptance speech. Retrieved from http:// nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-acceptance.html Kirkpatrick, L. A., Hood, R. W., Jr., & Hartz, G. W. (1991). Fundamentalist religion conceptualized in terms of Rokeach’s theory of the open and closed mind: New perspectives on some old ideas. In M. L. Lynn & D. O. Moberg (Eds.), Research in the social scientific study of religion (Vol. 3, pp. 157–179). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Krauss, S., & Hood, R. W., Jr. (In press). A new approach to religious orientation: The commitment-reflectivity circumplex. New York: Rodopi. Lee, M. T., Poloma, & M. M. (2009). A sociological study of the great commandment in Pentecostalism: The practice of godly love as benevolent servitude. Lewiston: Edwin Mellon Press. Miles, J. (2004). The disbarment of God. In J. H. Ellens (Ed.), The destructive power or religion: Violence in Judaism, Christianity and Islam: Vol. 1. Sacred scriptures, ideology and violence (pp. 123–167). Westport, CT: Praeger. Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67, 371–378. Milgram, S. (1964). Issue in the study of obedience: A reply to Baumrind. American Psychologist, 19, 848–852. Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. New York: Harper & Row. Miller, A. G. (1986). The obedience experiments: A case study of controversy in social science. New York: Praeger. Miller, A. G. (2004). What can the obedience experiments tell us about the Holocaust? Generalizing from the social psychology laboratory. In A. G. Miller (Ed.), The social psychology of good and evil (pp. 240–268). New York: Guilford.

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Mixon, D. (1971). Behaviour analysis treating subjects as actors rather than organisms. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 1, 19–31. Mixon, D. (1972). Instead of deception. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 2, 145–177. Obama, B. H. (2009). Nobel Prize acceptance lecture. Retrieved from http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washOlson, T. &U Christoington/2009/12/barack-obamapeace-prize-speech Olson, T., & Christiansen. G. (1966). Thirty-one hours: The Grindstone experiment. Toronto: American Friends Service Committee. Retrieved from http://www. civilresistance.info/grindstone. Poloma, M., & Hood, R. W., Jr. (2008). Blood and fire: Godly love in a Pentecostal emerging church. New York: New York University Press. Rokeach, M. (1960). The open and closed mind. New York: Basic Books. Ross, L. D. (1977). The intuitive psychologist and his shortcomings. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 10, pp. 173–220). New York: Academic Press. Ross, L. D., & Nisbett, R. E. (1988). The person and the situation: Perspectives of social psychology. New York: McGraw Hill. Russell, J. B. (1977). The devil: Perceptions of evil from antiquity to primitive Christianity. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Sandley, R. R. (1998). Unwilling Germans? The Goldhagen debate. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Schwartz, E. (1959). Paths to freedom through nonviolence. Vienna: SensenVerrlag. Secord, P. F., & Backman, C. W. (1964). Social psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill. Tangney, J. P., & Stuewig, J. (2004). A moral-emotional perspective on evil persons and evil deeds. In A. G. Miller (Ed.), The social psychology of good and evil (pp. 327–355). New York: Guilford. Vacchiano, R. B., Strauss, P. S., & Hochman, L. (1969). The open and closed mind: A review of dogmatism. Psychological Bulletin, 71, 261–273. Wilcock, E. (2005). Impossible pacificism: Jews the Holocaust and nonviolence. In R. L. Holmes & B. L. Gan (Eds.), Nonviolence in theory and practice (2nd ed., pp. 194–204). Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.w

ch apter 3

The Sociology of Evil: A Comparison of Modern and Ancient Societies Richard K. Fenn

In this chapter, I intend to arrive at a notion of evil that fits a world in which contingency and temporariness become the media in which people live and move and have their own being. What can we learn about evil from sources that assumed that evil was part of the created order, however much it remained an invisible or unexamined part of human nature? What can we learn from antiquity, where evil resulted in and emanated from the most illicit forms of coupling between men and women? What can we learn about evil from a world that believed, as we do, that the passage of time could lead to the fall of great cities and the raising up of those that previously had been of no account, but that also regarded history as a source of providential responses to primitive forms of desire and aggression? The passage of time, with all the changes and uncertainties that it brings, used to be an expression of providential disdain for the evil that causes wars and the destruction of great cities such as Troy. In discussing Herodotus as a writer within the Hellenistic wisdom tradition, the historians Marek Wecowski and Benedetto Bravo allow that Herodotus criticizes literalminded or simplistic accounts of wars that find their source in violence against women. However, Herodotus does not dismiss, for instance, the idea that the Trojan War originated in the rape of Helen but finds in that rape an offense against the Creator of the world: an offense that over time could only be punished. His argument, then, is fundamentally theological. Time undermines what was formerly great, and brings to prominence what previously was of little account: an idea that finds important echoes in the biblical tradition about the relation of the first to the last (Bravo & Wecowski, 2004, p. 155). It

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is in that same framework, then, that we are to understand that the passage of time is in itself a fate that reflects the consequences of illicit or illegitimate forms of coupling. What form, then, can evil take in a world in which the passage of time, with its continuous changeability and frequent crises, its constant alteration of fates and transformations of both individuals and the social order, is taken as routine? Even in early modern England, it was understood that it is in the midst of flux, of changes over time, of innovations and the violation of the social order, that time asserts itself as the medium though which evil and providential punishments of human vanity assert themselves. In the midst of the conspiracies and threats of the early 17th century, the English aristocracy was reading the classical Stoics; they would understand Herodotus’s insight that history and the passage of time itself, by raising up things that were small and making small things that once were great, are providential expressions of judgment on evil. Cromwell often spoke of the special blessings that his armies received from a providential God who had no trouble discerning who was on His side. Others found it difficult to know precisely on whose side anyone might be and that time was not always on the side of the good, or the good themselves immune from evil influences. Lord Essex, writing in a time of Jacobean intrigue, may have been the author of a document that cited an ancient authority on evil thus: In Galba thou mayest learn that a good prince governed by evil ministers is as dangerous as if he were evil himself; by Otho that the fortune of a vain man is torrenti similis, which rises at an instant and falls in a moment; by Vitellius that he that hath no virtue can never be happy, for by his own baseness [he] will lose all which either fortune or other men’s labors cast upon him; by Vespasian that in civil tumults an advised patience, and opportunity well taken, are the only weapons of advantage. In them all, and in the state of Rome under them, thou mayest see the calamities that follow civil wars, where laws lie asleep and all things judged by the sword. (Salmon, 1989, p. 210)

Where temporality is accepted as the medium in which alone we live and move and have our being, what possibility is there that, by coupling oneself to the eternal, one can avoid a fate so common as to be universal? It is not only wars and unscrupulous civil servants who may alter the fate of the great and bring them low; evil has more indirect but equally divisive and disturbing outlets in revealed religion. Like civil wars and insurrections, the claims of a new revelation may introduce distinctions between the self and the social order, between individual and social status, between appearance and reality: distinctions that undermine faith that the individual’s being is grounded in a sacred order that, in its turn, is deeply rooted in the cosmos itself. Special

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revelations, like violence itself, may dissolve conventional boundaries between significance and insignificance, the sacred and the mundane, the specialized and the ordinary. The loss of these boundaries creates a demand for the very teachings and reassurances offered by much of the Wisdom tradition and by Stoicism: a demand for a notion of reason that transcends both the self and any particular social order. Both found evil in a sense of absence and of emptiness, of mourning for a lost connection with the source or guarantor of one’s own being; and, secondly, in terror of a power that undertakes to destroy the people and places, objects and symbols that have seemed necessary for one’s own being. In a complex, constantly changing modern society, in which individuals are also constantly revising not only how they present themselves to others but also how they sense and define their own selves, what resonance will there be for an antique notion of evil as representing a threat to their very being? In modern societies, the psyche of the individual is more or less differentiated from that of any social order, although perhaps least so from the most intimate and enduring of relationships. Although apocalypticism is alive and well in modern societies, its threat more often translated to the existential and perennial. That is, demonic expressions of aggression and desire, whether or not they are acted out in rape or incest, are pervasive, perennial aspects of human nature. Still invisible though they may be, these sources or aspects of evil are as ordinary as the human unconscious. The demonic is simple human nature, whether in the form of existential doubts about one’s place in the universe, psychic doubts about the strength of one’s most important and intimate connections, or tendencies toward aggressive and dismissive emotions such as jealousy, envy, and anger. In antiquity, where no clear line was drawn between corporate and personal psyches, what afflicted groups and communities, even peoples and nations, could also undermine the very being of the individual. Entire communities devoted themselves to warding off the threat, for instance, of a terrifying absence, emptiness, or darkness, in which the individual’s psyche is no longer able to maintain itself and simply dissolves or evaporates. Buddhist communities exhaustively dug out caves, for instance, in which the figure of the Buddha emerges momentarily only once a year in the light from the sun at the winter solstice; this would be a site in which this particular threat of nonbeing would be overcome, as would burial chambers created in Neolithic societies, into which the light of the sun at the winter solstice finally penetrates, if only for a moment on one day of the year. This is not to say that in antiquity, there was no awareness of evil as inhabiting the inner recesses of the human psyche. Rather than a loss of a sense of one’s own being coming from exposure to nothingness, individuals may find themselves being destroyed from within by spiritual forces. As Loren Stuckenbruck points out in his superb contribution to this volume of

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essays, in first-century ce Israel, some individuals and communities understood themselves to be living in danger of being inhabited by such spirits, and the devout commentaries on the life of Jesus presented him as one who could restore individuals to themselves. As Loren Stuckenbruck reminds us, evil is very hard to domesticate; demons turn the house of one’s own psyche or soul into their own dwelling place. What is at stake is the recovery of one’s own being in time. Evil, as Stuckenbruck wisely points out, is “ongoing and cannot be wished away.” But communities could mount defenses for the individual psyche by relocating evil outside the social order; it could be wished upon others. An entire society could pray that the angel of death would destroy the firstborn of the Egyptians; they might also have seemed better for an evil spirit to destroy the swine of the Gadarenes, even though the relief would only be temporary, and the final destruction of evil would have to await the end of time. It would be difficult to distinguish between psychic and ethnic cleansing. If Stuckenbruck is right about demons, then, variability is built into the nature of evil itself. Evil is a socially constructed variable that may take a wide variety of forms under an even wider variety of conditions and be understood in even more various ways according to the ideas, symbols, and traditions available in any particular culture. Some demons cause afflictions but do not cause the soul to lose the ground of its own being; that is, they have to do with the way the person exists in this world, with more or less affliction and suffering. Other demons, however, have to do with the way in which a person loses touch with the ground of his or her own being; they take over the soul, and make it their own dwelling place. The demon can speak of the person’s soul as “my house.” Despite these more obvious differences between ancient and modern societies, there are sources in antiquity that suggest that evil is somehow part of human nature, and not merely of the human condition; the demonic is utterly human. Take, for example, a verse from a sixth-century poem attributed to Columbanus: Our first two parents having been assailed and led astray,\the devil falls a second time, together with his retinue,\by the horror of whose faces and the sound of whose flying\frail men might be dismayed, stricken with fear, unable to gaze with their bodily eyes on those\who are now bound in bundles in the bonds of their prisons.\Driven out from the midst, he was thrust down by the Lord;\the space of air is choked by a wild mass\ of his attendants, invisible\lest, tainted by their wicked examples and their crimes\—no fences or walls ever concealing them—\folk should sin openly, before the eyes of all. (Altus Prosator Stanzas G and H, in Clancy & Markus, 1995, p. 47)

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To imitate the hitherto invisible demonic spirits is to become more like them than we already are. The choice is one’s own, and the question is how to choose the object of one’s own passions. Even in the sixth century, then, the miracle of being left humans with a sense of their own contingency. Not only did their being depend on the participation in the created order, but also who they were to become depended on their own will; they could express, choose, imitate, and thus couple with the demonic, or like the angels they could give “thanks to the Lord\not by any endowment of nature, but out of love and choice” (Altus Prosator Stanzas G and H, in Clancy & Markus, 1995, p. 47). The question of evil, then, turns out to be a question of the fundamental tendency in the soul; however, that fundamental tendency is not one with which we are endowed by nature or the Creator; it turns out to be a matter of choice, driven by the passions associated with the demonic or by love itself. To understand Columbanus’s viewpoint, we might turn to a recent treatment of German philosophy: Fred Dallmayr’s discussion of Schelling and Heidegger. In Schelling’s treatise (as well as in Heidegger’s commentary), the transition from capability to living reality is guided neither by arbitrary whim nor by external compulsion but by a kind of inclination or bent (Hang) inclining human conduct in one way or another. (Dallmayr, 2006, p. 180)

God is driven by love and choice, too, in a desire to couple with humanity, and thus God implants in human nature a desire for coupling with the divine. However, humans cannot be counted on always and everywhere to ground their being in the cosmos in and through a love of God. Their desire to protect themselves from the terrors of nonbeing may lead them to couple themselves with others in ways that have demonic consequences. That is, they may couple with other humans as demons do, whether through seeking possession of others’ beings, through aggressive actions that cause affliction to others, or through both affliction and possession. There is nothing uniquely Christian or biblical about such a sense that coupling lies at the heart of what is both good and evil in human history, and that both kinds of coupling have their origins in a created order: one kind of coupling being demonic in its consequences and an offense against the creation itself, and the other kind of coupling being out of love and choice. Sociologists do try to understand the world through the eyes and hearts of those whom they are studying, but it is very hard for them to diagnose the underlying tendency or direction of a person, or of a society’s being. In the case of people along the Mediterranean, the very innermost being of humans, the soul, was miraculous. As Cicero put it,

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[I]t is when the body sleeps that the soul most clearly manifests its divine nature; for when it is unfettered and free it sees many things that are to come. Hence we know what the soul’s future state will be when it has been wholly released from the shackles of the flesh. Wherefore, if what I said be true, cherish me as you would a god. (“De Senectute,” xxii.81, in Henderson, 1923, p. 89)

Of course, not all beings were equally miraculous. The nobility, as Weber reminded us, tended to be regarded as having beings that were underived and hence not conditional on anyone’s favor. Lesser beings perhaps took part in mystery rites in order to possess, like a seed that they would hold up at the end of the rite, a sense of their own being as inherently miraculous and a vital presence. Others sensed their being as miraculous because they lived in a world contested between good and evil spirits, where the soul was the site of spiritual struggle between invisible forces, with Satan ranged on one side, and the company of heaven on the other. As we have seen, Columbanus found a parallel universe inhabited by Satan and his retinue of the demonic. That is, the creation itself harbors terror; in its midst there is a presence that is in itself terrifying, and it can provoke individuals to a kind of fury, a madness, as they stare into the presence of evil. The questions were, then, “Whose side are you on? What is your inner direction, your basic intention?” In modern societies, that question is sometimes framed in terms of the unconscious: the hidden, motivating, often dominating, and occasionally terrifying presence as unseen and unbeknownst to the individual as Columbanus’s demonic presences. If the unconscious were to be directly encountered, it could drive one mad, in the sense that one would lose a sense of one’s own being and be consumed by its passions. That is why demonic spirits, to quote Columbanus once more, “are invisible lest\—no fences or walls ever concealing them—\folk should sin openly, before the eyes of all.” There is simply no doubt that evil was part of the created order, and that humans, if they were not protected from them by their own ignorance, might all the more willingly make common cause with evil spirits. The question, then, was whether one would live out of anxieties and passions, the longings and the drives characteristic of the demonic—or whether one would, like the angels, live out of love and choice. The last-ditch defense against evil still takes place in the soul, which is at once most vulnerable to terror and the passage of time, and yet the only place where transcendence may be sought over terror. As Cicero proclaimed, Nor indeed would the fame of illustrious men survive their death if the souls of those very men did not cause us to retain their memory longer . . . the soul alone remains unseen, both when it is present and when it departs. (“De Senectute,” xxi. 78 ff., xxii 81 ff., in Henderson, 1923, pp. 91, 93)

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Thus, in reassuring us that the soul of the illustrious and venerable dead remains present to the living, he is reconnecting the living with the dead, the extraordinary with the ordinary, the sacred with the mundane. He is closing the gaps into which terror seeps, along with the flood of time, into the inner reaches of the individual psyche. He is recoupling presence with absence, the human with the superhuman, the natural with the supernatural. In reaffirming the importance of sacred people and objects, who embody what they express and convey, and who, like the divine soul that permeates the cosmos, synthesize agency with presence, Cicero is answering the question of what side he is on, and what should be the underlying and central tendency of our beings. We therefore live in the face of threats to our own being, threats that arise from our own existence: death and destruction, the loss of our inner wholeness and vitality, a sense of being dominated by spiritual forces beyond our ken and control, suffering and anguish beyond the point of human bearing, and a sense of loss of our own being in the absence of any other being whose presence is vital to and can confirm our own. From Stuckenbruck, I take the point that the question of demonic possession and evil is far too important to be left to discussions of apocalypticism or to dogmatic reflections on the Incarnation. Evil is too mundane for such talk; besides, as Stuckenbruck points out, some demons are more evil than others. Evil is thus what sociologists would call a variable. New Testament narratives are therefore best understood when translated outside of their original mythological language into the existential concerns of ordinary speech or the parlance of secular humanists who think that evil may be a social construction or that the Sabbath, too, may have been made for man. Some demons may be more like the Stoic god whose presence permeates the entire cosmos and makes happen everything that does happen. Such a god can only be opposed by an evil whose presence and effectiveness are commensurate with the divine. Demons, as we have noted, may be more or less evil, of course: The more evil they are, the more able they are to be effective by their mere presence, and the more they permeate the cosmos. Other demons, therefore, may be less capable of causing affliction by their mere presence: less capable of possessing the psyche from within. They have to act upon the human soul from without. That is, it is in the nature of the created order to suffer a split between presence and activity, between possession of the ground of one’s own being and the experience of being subject to contingency, to the resistance of others and of objects, and to the passage of time itself. Demons are thus notably not self-possessed. They seek to couple with others, to take possession of others, precisely because they are not fully grounded in their own beings. They seek a ground for their being, just as humans do who try to anchor their beings in the cosmos by building circles out of stones that embody the passage of time or, conversely, stop time in its

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tracks. Demons are as unsure of the ground of their own being as are humans who seek that ground by entering into covenants with a God who prefers them to others, or by following a law that has been revealed to have its source in the divine, by building one temple after another, or by taking possession of a land that they believe to have been promised to them from the beginning. Speaking of this inclination to ground one’s being as a source of evil, Fred Dallmayr wrote, In the case of evil, Schelling traces this bent to a “contraction of the ground” (Anziehen des Grundes), that is, to a self-enclosure of particularity which terminates indecision, but in such a way as to provoke divisiveness and disjuncture. On the other hand, goodness follows the attraction of spirit or existence, which in its most genuine form is the attraction of eros or love (Liebe). “Love,” Heidegger states, “is the original union of elements of which each might exist separately and yet does not so exist and cannot really be without the other.” However, love is not simply unity or identity but rather a unity in difference or a unity that lets otherness be . . . including the contraction of the ground and the resulting disjuncture. As he adds: “Love must condone the will of the ground, because otherwise love would annihilate itself. Only by letting the ground operate, love has that foil in or against which it can manifest its supremacy.” (Dallmayr, 2006, p. 180)

Evil, then, is the desire to seek a ground for one’s own being at the expense of other’s being able freely and completely to ground their own being outside the sphere of one’s own psyche. It is the primordial attempt to couple the psyche to the cosmos, to bind the temporal aspects of the self to what is everlasting. Evil underlies the formation of the sacred: the coupling of the passage of time in rock that endures while yet embodying the flow of time itself. It is evil that underlies the search for transcendence and the couplings of heaven and earth, of the temporal with the eternal, that are the perennial forms of the sacred. No wonder Columba rejoices that demons live in the world of the invisible; otherwise, as he points out, we might imitate them. I am grateful to Stuckenbruck for another insight. He is careful to remind us that, despite the apocalyptic language of the passages concerning evil spirits and the danger of demonic possession, the threat is ubiquitous and in a sense quite ordinary. In much the same way, Stuckenbruck points out that the miraculous nature of the exorcisms attributed to Jesus may serve, for the devout, to emphasize his extraordinary powers. I infer Stuckenbruck to be saying that for any original audience these accounts, one’s own being, as part of what Stuckenbruck calls “the created order,” is in itself something of a miracle. That awareness opens the door to acute forms of existential anxiety as well as to a primitive joy: anxiety that one’s own being may be snuffed out

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or taken away by passions, or demons, beyond one’s awareness or control; joy that one’s being is sustained in the face of invisible forces. I have suggested that the sheer existence of the human being, as part of “the created order,” was itself miraculous, if only because each soul, created in the divine image, might never have been and at any time might not be. Such an understanding of the human being as essentially miraculous carries with it, however, the awareness that one’s own being is utterly vulnerable to nonbeing. Emptiness and absence, darkness and the unknown, may swallow up the soul; so may demonic presences that inhabit and may destroy the psyche. The popular vision of everyday life was, as Berger put it some years ago, “precarious”; their universe, in Weberian terms, was all the more precarious for being enchanted. Therefore people needed powerful friends, like Jesus, whose spiritual strength was more than sufficient to offset even the most evil of spirits. Such a sense of being, even human being, as miraculous may have been lost in a modernity that considers selfhood to be achieved despite being neurologically and sociologically conditioned. However, it is not clear that individuals in modern societies are any less aware of their vulnerability and mortality; the threat of evil is still widespread. If it were not for religion, therefore, we would not have any clear notion of evil and we might have terror without being terrified by something, such as evil, which we imagine to have a uniquely, even supernaturally, potent and destructive form of presence and agency. Religion creates the conditions for evil by tying together, or binding, the various forms of reality, both the sacred and the profane, the significant and insignificant, the interpretation of signs by specialists from the reality that is open to inspection by ordinary people. Religion integrates particular times and places within the sacred calendar with times and places that are clearly profane. The ethic of the sanctuary and of the marketplace is articulated in religious law; priesthoods instruct on ritual performance as well as on times and places for getting and spending, working and resting, playing and celebrating; religious elites distinguish between the significant and the insignificant, the adiaphora; and religious prophets and mystics discern the distinction between appearance and reality. In the interests of full disclosure, of course, I must say that none of this seems to be anything other than ordinary Christian insight about the nature of evil as being a side effect of religion and the sacred. As I have noted, it was Jesus, after all, who urged his followers not to resist evil. After all, he had dispensed with the sacred by announcing that the Sabbath was made for man, and he was at liberty to heal the sick, forgive sins, and feed his disciples however and whenever he wished to. He even refused to sacralize himself, by saying that there is no one good but the Father. As for religion, he had several ways of dispensing with it by announcing a new dispensation. He urged his followers to forget what Moses had said and to listen to him; he

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told them that God could raise up children from Abraham out of the stones of the streets; and as for the temple, he could make a new one without lifting a finger. If even a sparrow did not fall without the careful oversight of the deity, who needed a covenantal history, a revealed law, or a temple to anchor their beings in the cosmos? If his followers were afraid of enemies who might destroy them, they should be more afraid of harming the soul of the least powerful and significant, the “little ones.” It would be better for them that they be subject to eternal torment than to be the source of harm to a vulnerable soul. Evil itself was both quotidian and mundane, unless one happened to be the source of it oneself. Its effects on one’s own soul would be everlasting. Of course, not all forms of contemporary religion fit this description. Various kinds of fundamentalism mount a rear guard attempt to hold on to the more particular, specific, and local forms of loyalty, attachment, and belonging that are undermined in complex societies and replaced by more abstract and generalized beliefs and values. Talcott Parsons used to speak of the need to control the “motivational commitments” of individuals, by replacing these local loyalties and attachments with more abstract and generalized ones (e.g., professionalization). But there abstractions offered little in the way of assurance that the soul was anchored to the cosmos: little defense against either existential terror or the fear of mortal adversaries. Similarly, apocalypticism seeks to recouple the earthly with the heavenly, the natural and the social with the supernatural, and the individual with the cosmos. Both apocalypticism and fundamentalism know evil, even when they do not see it (Fenn, 2009, pp. 87–88). In modern societies, individuals are to be held responsible for their own psyches, albeit on occasion with therapeutic or analytic help in demystifying the unconscious, making it more visible, and enabling the individual, out of love and choice, to decide whether to imitate these hitherto unconscious passions or to ground his or her own being in the cosmos in some other way. Although people seek religion and the sacred as defenses against evil or as cures for it, they inevitably cause or intensify apprehension that evil may afflict or even dispossess and destroy the soul. That is, religion and the sacred may seem to offer guarantees for the agency of the human soul, for its vital connections, or for a presence that will undergird the soul’s sense of its own being, but they also pose a threat to personal agency, to a sense of connection with others, and to the soul’s sense of its own being. This threat may materialize in at least two ways. On the one hand, the very coupling of the soul of the individual to a person or power of superhuman or divine power may be tenuous, unreliable, disappointing, and a source of anxiety; the devout still pray that their God will not leave them. However, the fact that Alcoholics Anonymous seeks to couple each soul with a higher power as the beginning of personal transformation is enough of an indicator that such coupling is

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still an essential aspect of human well-being in modern societies, and those who inhibit or destroy that coupling are the source of untold agony. On the other hand, the very presence of such a divine power or agency may undermine the individual’s confidence in his or her own being. Furthermore, religious institutions and movements often attack the people, the places, the objects, and the practices that have given individuals in the past some sense of their own being and their connection with reassuringly vital and effective presences. A sacred history, a religious “narrative of progress,” can undermine “the sureness of living people’s own powers” by attributing true agency to God, if the narrative of progress is religious, or if it is secular, to “false gods” or idols. Indeed, religious ideologies that stress conversion and a rejection of the past, like modernizing ideologies, can make people distrust—even fear as evil—their own language and tradition, or to reject objects to which they have become attached; their own practices and traditions can be made to seem to undermine their own agency and presence. By distinguishing appearance from reality, or accident from substance, religion may attack such objects and practices by revealing them as agents of some evil presence like Satan, who will in the end deprive the individual of his or her own soul (Keane, 2007, p. 134). Consider the case of reformist iconoclasm, in which religious movements destroy objects and symbols that, because they are sacred, seem to endow individuals with an enhanced sense of their own agency (Keane, 2007, p. 135). Evil may thus be practices stigmatized by any religion interested in offering protection from them or even a cure through the assistance of more or less divine, supernatural, or charismatic helpers. By exploiting the difference between accident and substance, appearance and reality, however, religion may be doing something more than conjuring up an evil from which it can then offer rescue and protection. That is, these distinctions may inhere in the sacred itself. Take, for example, the sacrament of the Eucharist, which in some Christian traditions offers the substance of divinity under the accident of bread and wine, or the reality of the Christ’s presence under the appearance of a wafer and a chalice filled with wine. The fleeting and the insubstantial are thus indissolubly coupled with the enduring and the solid: very much in the same way that for Neolithic peoples, the sacred can be found in rocks whose solidity and shape reflect the effects of water over time. Just as Christians have sacralized water poured into a hollowed-out stone to make a cure for sin and mortality, Neolithic peoples coupled water and rock, the fluid and the substantial, the fleeting and the enduring, in ways that promise a coupling of the living with the dead, and of time with the eternal. If it were not for the sacred, then, there would be no threat to be encountered from the uncoupling of water and rock: no evil force that could allow the waters to issue forth from the mountains and engulf the world; no destructive power that could destroy the ground of our being; no uncoupling

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of the solid and enduring from the transient that could, at the very least, undermine the soul by creating an empty space or a darkness devoid of any presence in relation to whom the soul could be sure of its own. Without the sacred there would be no demonic embodiment of the destructive but invisible passions that, were they to become visible, might inspire humans to imitate them. Without taboos there would be no passions that, as Freud pointed out, not only attract people but also threaten to destroy those who approach them carelessly or too closely. To put it another way, were there no resistance to evil in the form of the sacred, there would be no evil to resist. Evil comes from the partial, incomplete, ambiguous differentiation of time from space, the living from the dead, the conscious from the unconscious, the human from the superhuman or the subhuman, the heavenly from the earthly, and the present from the absent. Thus, as Freud pointed out on the subject of taboos, even by making something or someone sacred, one can only be partially removed or protected from the danger. Taboos only partly disguise the unconscious motives underlying the prohibition of close encounters between powerful figures like chieftains and their followers. Because the powerful and the relatively weak still pose a danger to each other even when authority is sacralized, dangers still arise from the passions underlying the taboo. The connection between the weak and the powerful is not strong or trustworthy enough to make certain that the passions that bring them together, like desire and anger, Eros and Thanatos, will not be sufficiently inhibited or safely expressed. The same caveat applies to prohibitions on private encounters between older men and their young female relatives. Granted that something as sacred as a taboo is indebted to be unconditional and therefore timeless, its very existence suggests that something sufficiently momentous may happen that will undermine its claim to timelessness. Like the Christian cross, which “towers over the wrecks of time,” the sacred also marks a moment that radically changes the passage of time itself. To paraphrase a remark attributed to Anatole France: Lovers may seek to pack all of eternity into a kiss, but they love all the more intensely because they know that death will part them. Coupling is never perfect enough, never sufficiently complete, to avoid the trauma of time. Passions may erupt that destroy the allegiance of the people to the king or the devotion of followers to their leader. The sacred, being perennially true, present, effective, and therefore beyond and above the passage of time, is always marked by time itself. Like the waterstones that mark sacred Neolithic sites, the stones themselves have been marked by the passage of water over many centuries. The stones therefore either seek to freeze the passage of time or to carve time in, well, stone. Take, for example, Steve Vinson’s (2004) account of “the commemoration of the return of morality and proper order to ancient Egypt.” In an

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article aptly entitled “The Accent’s on Evil,” Vinson describes a monument celebrating “the restoration by Tutankhamen of legitimate rule” after an insurrection that had interrupted the cult of Amun in Egypt. A timeless order had been broken into by time itself. After the restoration of legitimate rule, Tutankhamen raised the Restoration Stela, which, according to Vinson, lifted the historical event entirely outside of the passage of time. Although often treated as a historical text . . . that is, as a witness to the historical fact that the cult of Amun was restored some point early in the reign of Tutankhamun . . . the Restoration Stela is in fact pure topos. It is almost completely devoid of any specifics or any chronological references, and instead describes the events of the Amarna period in the same timeless terms as any other example of pessimistic literature, from the Prophecy of Neferti . . . down to the Lamb of Bocchoris . . . and even the Hermetic Asklepios. (Vinson, 2004, p. 33)

The restoration becomes a return to timelessness as if the taboo against timelessness had never been broken, but marks a moment that interrupts a timeless order. In the case of an insurrection, we meet the several faces of evil. A taboo has been broken, and the flood of time begins again to wash away an order once thought to have been coupled with the cosmos. Order has been destroyed by desire and aggression: by the desire of unmediated and total access to the sources of life and power, and aggression toward the institution that stands in the way of such immediacy. However, what gave evil its opportunity was the sacralization of a social order: a sacralization renewed or recreated by Tutankhamen in the Restoration Stela. Without such a claim neither the intrusion of the temporal nor the desires and aggressiveness that violated the sanctity of the old order would bear the taint of evil, however disturbing they may have been. Nonetheless, we also have to allow for the experience of the ordinary person, who may or may not have viewed the social order as sacred, but who in the midst of the insurrection and its aftermath may well have experienced terror. That is, even for Columbanus, a universe that bears the imprint and carries the presence of divinity also harbors the seeds of apocalypse and the last judgment. Terror is always a possibility, even in the heart of a created order. Modernity and the more abstract, generalized forms of religion in complex societies, as well as missionary forms of religion in colonial societies, increase the terror of individuals by depriving them of a sense of their own autonomous and effective presence. Many occupations, for instance, require high levels of inner, subjective, and emotional participation of their workers; stewards and stewardesses, waiters and waitresses, actors and actresses are required to perform themselves within their roles on behalf of their customers, clients, or audiences, regardless of the reality and promptings

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of their own inner beings. The priesthood of all believers makes it legitimate for employers to require that their employees regard their jobs as their vocations, at the same time as the social contract between employers and employees has become increasingly temporary and contingent on a variety of factors. Employees are increasingly encouraged to regard themselves as responsible for their own professional development and future employment. On the one hand, they are subjectively at the disposal of their employers; if they are an effective presence, it is only within the guidelines of the occupational role in question. On the other hand, they are relatively defenseless against downgrading and downsizing and exposed to the market both for their level of compensation and for the future of their own employment. In this sense, they are exposed to influences that Stuckenbruck has identified as demonic: Some deprive the psyche of effective presence, and others cause a variety of job-related afflictions. Both religion and the secular thus make existential terror more mundane by undermining the sacrality of the immediate, local, particular forms of social life in which the individuals seek certainty and security and in which they live, move, and have their being. Secularization is often described as a process that undermines a society’s capacity for sustaining fundamental or primitive sources of personal agency and identity, as well as the continuity, renewal, and transformation of communities and entire societies. Roles supply limited opportunities for individual initiative and personal responsibility; communities are undermined by mobility as unfamiliar people move in and friends, family, and neighbors move out or around. The sectors of life, such as work and play, family and community, and the public and private, become increasingly separated from each other; bureaucracies replace more personal forms of administration and problem solving with policies and procedures. Laws get in the way of customary or personal notions of what is fair or just, right and wrong. Religion loses touch with the demands and circumstances of everyday life. Professionalized versions of religious belief and practice compete with and may trump or even supplant the traditional or ordinary devotions of individuals and communities. Traditions and popular culture give way to official or institutionalized beliefs and practices. The past becomes a matter of record rather than of living memory, a source of legal precedent rather than a model for heroism or justice, and the future becomes a matter far more of projection and prediction based on extrapolations from present trends rather than a time or place nourished with opportunities and dangers by a lively cultural imagination. Scenarios replace utopias and apocalyptic visions. The present goes on and on into an infinite number of moments without any natural, organic, essential, spiritual, or moral connection with each other. You might say that the way people live, the conditions in which they become human or experience their own humanity, become increasingly separated from the grounds of their being.

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There is something very modern about Columbanus’s insight that, if we should discover demonic presences, we might start imitating them. The crowds in Munich saluting Hitler by torchlight come to mind; so do legions of priests whose superiors collude with them in avoiding disclosure and punishment for the sexual abuse of children. The very ground of our being is sustained by a cosmos that conspires to keep us from knowing ourselves too deeply. To put it another way, were we to see the demonic realm that surrounds us, we might become like it and so fulfill a potential that is already embedded within our own psyches and could become our own central tendency, our bent or Hang. Otherwise, why would Columbanus himself fight off his own desires, his own tendencies to envy and anger, with such rigorously ascetic self-discipline? Evil is sustained by any social context that conspires to keep us from knowing ourselves too deeply. The question of our underlying, central tendency has been raised for modern societies by no one more pointedly than Freud. He argued that to know our central tendency, we would have to lift the veil of repression of the unconscious, and we might indeed be alarmed by what we see there. It is repression that deprives us of a sense of our being, and so causes us to couple ourselves with others from whom we can acquire vicariously a sense of our being, our own presence, and our own vitality. In such coupling we avoid experiencing existential terror at the prospect of our own nonbeing. In order to avoid anxiety, frustration, or despair, we seek to immerse ourselves in another’s being and thus fulfill the desire for fusion and the end of the boundaries that separate our being from the world around us. However, we also make ourselves vulnerable to doubts about the depth and permanence of our connection with the other with whom we are most deeply coupled, and to the anger we may feel at even a momentary frustration of our desire for unconditional and continuous connection. Such forms of coupling are like the demonic possessions of which we read in the New Testament, where the evil spirit seeks to domesticate and possess the soul of another. What we have lost in modern societies is a sense of the miraculous nature of all being, including our own. It is a sense that can be acquired, however, only in the face of the terror of nonbeing and of the knowledge, therefore, that we might never have been, might not be now, and will someday die. Given a sense of our radical contingency and dependence, a sense of the possibility that our being may or may not survive the presence of emptiness and darkness, we may yet live like one of Columbanus’s angels: out of love and choice. In antiquity, as in Freud’s notion of the Oedipus complex, it is unconscious forms of illicit coupling that underlie evil and cause a plague to destroy the city. It is, furthermore, those least aware of their own tendencies, the most “innocent,” who are the most destructive, whether they are calling out a plague on the enemies of the people of God, the Islamicists and the feminists,

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the gays and the civil libertarians, the detractors of the clergy and the papacy, or whether they are the rivals of the king of Thebes. Indeed, if there is a modern metaphor for evil that unites us with antiquity, it is the plague. Like the one that afflicted the people of Thebes in Sophocles’s drama Oedipus Rex, the plague is invisible, pervasive, wantonly and indiscriminately destructive, part of the natural and created order, and capable of exposing the inner direction and underlying tendency of the individual soul. Such a form of evil, under modern conditions, appears in Camus’ novel The Plague. Camus’ character of the doctor, like one of Columbanus’s angels, lived each day in a city filled with radical and fatal contagion, without selfprotection and without illusions of safety, but chose for the sake of love to care for those afflicted with the plague. In choosing that exposure without seeking to gloss it with ultimate meaning or self-justification, he is contrasted with the demonic figure of Camus’ priest, who insisted that people continue, as children lay dying, to praise God not out of love or choice but from obedience and fear. To the view of this priest, and of those countless clerics who have protected the Church from accusations of abuse, we might oppose the work of psychiatrists who have written extensively of what they call “soul murder”: the abuse that places some part of the child’s soul permanently beyond recovery. As one writer puts it, of her long experience as an educator of young children, “I pray unendingly for the children I know. In an environment that satisfies their natural drive for growth and change, they will become transfigured. . . . Depriving a child of the miracle of his or her own being is the closest thing to evil that I know.”1

NOTE 1. In the interest of full disclosure, I wish to add that these words are part of a manuscript in preparation for eventual publication by my wife, Juliana McIntyre, for many years an educator of young children in the Princeton, New Jersey, area.

REFERENCES Bravo, B., & Wecowski, M. (2004). The hedgehog and the fox: Form and meaning in the prologue of Herodotus. Journal of Hellenic Studies, 124, 143–164. Burkett, W. (1983). Homo Necans: The anthropology of ancient Greek sacrificial ritual and myth (Trans. Peter Bing). Berkeley: University of California Press. Clancy, T. O., & Markus, G. (1995). Iona: The earliest poetry of a Celtic monastery. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Dallmayr, F. (2006). An end to evil? Philosophical and political reflections. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 60(1–3), 169–186. Douglas, M. (1960). Purity and danger. New York: Praeger. Douglas, M. (1973). Natural symbols. New York: Random House. Fenn, R. (2009). Key thinkers in the sociology of religion. New York: Continuum.

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Henderson, J. (Ed.). (1923). Cicero on old age; on friendship; on divination (Trans. W. A. Falconer) (Loeb Classical Library, Cicero XX). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Keane, W. (2007). Christian moderns: Freedom and fetish in the mission encounter. Berkeley: University of California Press. Salmon, J. H. M. (1989). Stoicism and Roman example: Seneca and Tacitus in Jacobean England. Journal of the History of Ideas, 50 (2), 199–225. Vinson, S. (2004). The accent’s on evil: Ancient Egyptian “melodrama” and the problem of genre. Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, 41, 33.

ch apter 4

Depersonalization and the Psychobiology of Evil Patrick McNamara and Paul M. Butler

INTRODUCTION Theologically, the problem of evil in the world (theodicy) has traditionally been addressed in one of the following forms: (a) self- and soul-construction, (b) libertarian free will, (c) and natural law. The theodicy of type (a) attempts to explain and justify (given the assumption of a just and loving God) the existence of evil in the world as a character-building locomotive force (Hick, 1966/1978). From this perspective, spiritual growth occurs when one attains the moral goodness required to resist temptations by habitual navigation of difficult circumstances or proper handling of evil influences or events when they come. Under this interpretation, a supernatural agent (usually a supreme god) designed our nature and environment to include evil for the ultimate purpose of human moral growth and achievement. Several iterations of type (b) theodicy exist. One common instantiation suggests that human free will, unfettered by the influences of metaphysical agents, furnishes the best of all possible worlds. A physical world filled with biological automata acting out predestined behavioral responses precludes the possibility for true spiritual depth and greatness (Lewis, 1940/1996; Plantinga, 1974). Free will provides humankind with the constant, recurring occasion to choose to either increase pain, suffering, and evil in the world or attempt to seek that which is true, good, and praiseworthy. Besides libertarian human will and choice, other sources of evil include natural processes like earthquakes or immaterial sources, such as immoral supernatural beings. Another common theodicy, type (c), propounds that evil is an

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emergent property of the entities that exist in the natural world. Whether by the intentional design of a god-creator or fine-tuner of physical constants, a blind watchmaker, or simply abstract selective forces, the natural world we inhabit obeys immutable and fundamental natural laws. Natural laws provide the constancy for stable processes to emerge, and evil is either a by-product or a necessary shaping force of the physical entities filling this space–time continuum. In this chapter on the biology of evil, we will take our cue from type (c) theodicy—natural law but with an awareness of the crucial role that free will (types a and b) plays in the generation of evil and good. As scientists, we approach the issue of evil as methodological materialists. With the tools of modern neuroscience and evolutionary theory, we address proximal causes of moral impulses and evil choices as constrained by the biology of human nature and social interaction. The neurophysiologist, chemist, and physicist might well extend our proximate explanations with distal biophysical explanations of evil including discussions on subatomic forces, chemical interactions, forces of natural disaster, probabilities of imminent earthly demise by meteor showers, imploding stars or universes, pluriverses, or entropy and the laws of thermodynamics. Attempts to understand proximate and distal biophysical causation are intended to deepen rather than constrain the ineluctable intuitions that human beings experience through the metaphysical or ontological imagination. In addressing the biology of evil, surely a topic deserving a several-volume series in its own respect, we constrict our attention within the biological sciences to the neuroscience and psychology of human morality and potential for evil. We then turn our discussion toward a human psychobiological process, termed deindividuation or depersonalization, which we suggest to be a major source of evil.

THE NEUROSCIENCE OF MORALITY AND THE SELF A fundamental tenet of jurisprudence is that criminal acts do not necessarily define guilt, but the intention-system produced by the mind-brain must also be guilty. We pardon unintentional or accidental harms and proscribe failed attempts to harm. A wrongdoer or evil power is one that intends to do harm to another. This is assumed to be intuitively true by virtually all; a universal moral sense founded on implicit abilities to cognize intention, motivation, and action is, albeit conditioned by local mores and cultural practice, inextricable from the biology of human nature (Abarbanell & Hauser, 2010; Hauser, 2006; Nisbett & Cohen, 1996). Understanding intentions, attributing mental states to others, and presuming motivations are distinctly human abilities quickly becoming elucidated by social and cognitive neuroscience. Evil acts, whether perceived

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by a given culture as minor peccadilloes or monstrous atrocities, presume that (1) a distinct “self ” agent exists separately in intention, motivation, and action from other selves; (2) this self perceives itself as a moral agent; and (3) this self exists in a social space with great capacity for social attachment or aversion. Human moral cognition is about an intuitive sense of fairness, concern for others, and observance of cultural norms. Moral sentiments run the gamut of deeply felt visceral reactions to propositions resultant from ratiocinations divorced from context or felt emotional reaction. If we take evolutionary theory as the probable force that shaped our biology, then our brains make possible moral cognition because a strong adaptive element for social cohesion and cooperation was selected for in the environment of evolutionary adaptation (Darwin, 1871/1977). Prerequisite to any moral sentiment is the presence of a distinct “self ” set off from other agents aware of its own behavior as the author of this behavior. Sense of agency, or the subjective experience of being the cause of our own actions or attributing agency to the actions of others, is deeply bound to the human moral experience (Moll et al., 2007). Sense of agency is fundamental to the human experience of intentionality, perspective taking, and feeling personal responsibility for one’s actions. Although humans share basic emotions with some mammalian species, the panoply of moral emotions is most expansive in our species, including guilt, anger, regret, indignation, shame, contempt, awe, jealousy, rage, embarrassment, pride, and gratitude (de Wall, 1998; Haidt, 2001; Moll et al., 2007). For instance, one can feel a sense of pride following an impressive public demonstration of some skill or talent, namely, because that individual experienced a felt sense of agency as the author of his or her actions, an understood sense of how other agents in the public domain appreciated or neglected the show of skill, and a subsequent linking up of the perceived response of other agents with one’s sense of agency in the form of felt pride. Agency cannot be reduced, however, to the simple linking up of embodied emotions with a given self-generated experience. Sense of agency can be constructed at varying cognitive and neural levels (Damasio, 1994, 2003; Decety & Sommerville, 2003). A widely distributed brain network undergirds moral sentiments: sections of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), such as the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) and anterior PFC, anterior temporal poles, superior temporal sulcus (STS), temporo-parietal junction (TPJ), and limbic-subcortical structures, such as the hypothalamus, basal forebrain, and ventral striatum (Moll, Oliveira-Souza, & Eslinger, 2003; Moll, Zahn, Oliveira-Souza, Krueger, & Grafman, 2005; Young et al., 2010; Young, Camprodon, Hauser, PascualLeone, & Saxe, 2010). Strikingly, neuroimaging studies that identify brain activation patterns during tasks that probe agency and intentionality recruit an overlapping brain network with regions responsible for moral cognition (Blakemore & Frith, 2004; Frith & Frith, 2005). A recent study by Moll et al.

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(2007) teased apart the varying neuroanatomical and functional activation of emotions, sense of agency, social agency, and intentionality. Agency- and intentionality-based tasks were primarily mediated by frontotemporal networks (PFC and STS, and TPJ), whereas emotional and motivational aspects involved limbic and paralimbic structures in conjunction with anterior PFC and anterior temporal cortices. Social attachment and affiliative behaviors for prosocial emotions and empathy activate the basal forebrain, ventral striatum, medial OFC, and subgenual area, whereas aversive emotions and aggression are mediated by the amygdala, dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, and lateral OFC (Kringelbach & Rolls, 2004; O’Doherty, Kringelbach, Rolls, Hornak, & Andrews, 2001). The role of evolutionarily ancient brain systems of motivation and emotion is fundamental to human moral sentiments. Ancient limbic-neurohumoral systems are more than evolutionary remnants or functionless “vestigial tails” for the purpose of human moral cognition. Rather, these systems that govern affiliation versus detachment from a social group are tightly intertwined with cortical and neocortical (evolutionarily modern) brain systems (Moll & Schulkin, 2009). Attachment and affiliation promote parent–offspring care, cooperation amongst asymmetrically related kin, social reciprocity, and altruism. The other pole of the neurohumoral motivation–emotion axis is aversion, which engenders blame, group fragmentation, and prejudice against outgroup members. A critical developmental step in the evolution of the human moral brain was likely the linking up and/or parallel coactivation of the more ancient neurohumoral attachment–aversion systems (deep-brain subcortical and hypothalamic structures) with the newly evolved neocortical systems that facilitate social cognition, larger semantic memory for symbols and abstract concept manipulation, and cultural learning (Han & Northoff, 2008; MacLean, 1990; Moll & de Oliveira-Souza, 2008; Moll & Schulkin, 2009). Moral cognition can powerfully activate and dictate human behavior. Moral sentiments can lead groups to enact punishment on noncooperators, free riders, or other saprophytic members of a group strong in affiliative connection. Many lines of evidence within the emerging neuroscience of morality, social psychology, and anthropology demonstrate that groups can drive the behavior of their constituents along the attachment–aversion continuum with minimal ratiocinative justification (Bechara, Tranel, & Damasi, 2000; De Quervain et al., 2004). That is, taking on the moral ideology or behavior of a given group or role can powerfully draw out either a “Jekyll or Hyde” from within (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973; Zimbardo, 2007). Rational moral judgment and decision can often dissociate with actual behavior in the case of both normal people and patients with brain lesions or psychiatric disturbance. This can result from a disconnection of the autonomic nervous system (e.g., the stress-mobilizing “fight or flight” branch

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of the nervous system) from moral cognitive decision networks or from emotional processing in general (Cima, Tonnaer, & Hauser, 2010; Damasio, 1994; Eslinger & Damasio, 1985). Deep-visceral experiences, such as disgust or profound embarrassment, shape moral cognition and behavior, but calm emotional detachment can often be the case during moral judgments. As previously mentioned, at the center of all of these neurobiologic contributors to the moral sense is the Self. The Self, of course, is yet another complex, socially constructed, but biologically constrained entity. The Self is defined by sense of agency, intentionality, and decision-making processes. The sense of Self as “agent” appears to draw on several psychological and neuropsychological domains such as autobiographical memory, emotional and evaluative systems, self-monitoring, bodily awareness, subjectivity or perspectivalness in perception, and so on. But the two processes most implicated in agency per se is Will or the sense of being the cause of some action, and goal-directed choice or the sense of choosing among alternatives and aiming for one of those alternatives. These two processes, will and goaldirectedness, lie at the heart of the historical-philosophical problem of free will. The conscious experience of “free will” undergirds our conceptions of the dignity and autonomy of the human personality as well as the responsibility of each person as he or she interacts with and affects, for better or ill, the lives of others. Depersonalization, on the other hand, is a state that indicates loss of personal autonomy and choice. Slaves are depersonalized by their slave owners, and enemies are depersonalized by combatants. We now turn our attention to the process of depersonalization. The importance of the issue of free will is acknowledged by most philosophers, theologians, and scientists, but there has been a consistent thread of “free will skepticism” that has run through the intellectual history of reflection on this phenomenon. The skeptical vein of thought has only intensified in the modern age as science has increasingly led to skeptical pronouncements on the issue of free will. But if we equate free will with a strong executive self or agent, then the skeptical stance is less necessary as there is plenty of scientific evidence concerning this executive self.

BIOLOGICAL AND COGNITIVE ROOTS OF THE EXECUTIVE SELF The “executive self ” (McNamara, 2010) refers to the ability to facultatively inhibit powerful impulsive and related free rider behavioral strategies when seeking to cooperate with, or become a member of, a particular group or association. It follows that the human mind-brain had to develop powerful inhibitory capacities around the suite of impulsive appetitive behaviors that motivate the free rider behavioral strategy. This inhibitory capacity is

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precisely one of the best-established and major functions of the anterior temporal and frontal lobes. The content and experience of this central executive self are manifested as free will, which is the control we have over our own acts, plans, and thoughts. The experience of Self and agency underwrites the experience of free will. Even when we do not move a muscle in our body, but instead inwardly give a nod of assent to a proposition or some other image or idea, the feeling of agency still obtains and is fundamental to the cognitive moment of assent. Although the experience of the Self underlies will and assent, it itself is both a biological and a social entity. The Self is embedded within a social group, and the interaction of the Self with the social group is the process where all kinds of evil phenomena, including the process of depersonalization, emerge. It is to that interaction we turn next. One of the major sources of evil in the world is the lack of empathy for another’s suffering. Whence comes that lack of empathy? A minority of the population, so-called sociopaths or psychopaths, do not experience empathy as easily as most of us do. These psychopaths exhibit muted autonomic nervous system (ANS) responses when they witness the sufferings of others. Some psychopaths appear to have brain abnormalities in the orbitofrontal cortex—an area of the brain that regulates the ANS as well as emotional responses. Perhaps this brain disorder contributes to psychopathic inability to experience empathy for others. How else can we explain the cold-blooded murder of innocents? Psychopathic murderers are known to kill not out of hate, passion, impulsivity, or criminality. Often they kill merely for convenience’s sake or because there is something fascinating for them in the act itself. Many psychopaths prey on people who cannot effectively fight back (i.e., women, children, and the elderly). This is not due solely to cowardice. Instead, it again is due to convenience. To have to engage in a struggle would detract from the intellectual satisfaction of the kill. These psychopaths, however, represent only a tiny percentage of the population. It would be absurd to think that they are a major source of the world’s evil. Their basic inability to experience empathy for others, however, can give us a clue as to a major source of the world’s evil: deindividuation. Depersonalization is the loss of individual awareness, autonomy, and selfcontrol and the transference of basic functions of the Self, such as empathy and intercourse with others, over to a group. In short, there is a reduction in self-awareness and an increase in group or social identity. Typically the transfer of Self is to a group that the individual identifies with. It is, to use a technical term, a highly entitative group. The group carries much of the individual’s identity such that the individual is comfortable adopting the group’s actions as his or her own. If the group stigmatizes some other outgroup as noxious, so too will the individual once deindividuation occurs. If the group acts with a kind of herd mentality, moving with fads or waves of irrational

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attachments to various salient “ideas,” so too will the individual once depersonalization occurs. If the group decides that violent elimination of other groups or of selected individuals is necessary, the individual member of the group will produce rationales to justify the violence—once depersonalization occurs. How, then, does depersonalization occur? This is where psychobiology can make a contribution to the theory of evil. Before detailing the process of depersonalization and its capacity to engender evil, we will first briefly consider the neuroscientific and psychological structure of the distinctly human magnitude for moral sentiments.

THE PROCESS OF DEPERSONALIZATION Depersonalization is the loss of individuality via the transferral of the Self and its functions over to a group entity. Of course, that transfer is always temporary. No one can function for long in a completely deindividuated state. But regular or frequent collapses into a depersonalized state are likely for most people. Once depersonalization occurs, once that transfer of Self from the individual to the group is made, serious evil becomes possible. Social psychologists have made significant contributions to our understanding of the process of depersonalization. Deindividuation, as distinct from depersonalization, is commonly understood to involve a reduction in self-awareness and a resultant social anonymity such that responsibility for behavioral acts is diffused throughout the group (e.g., Zimbardo, 1969). Unlike the case of depersonalization, however, deindividuation may not be associated with a concomitant increase in social identity. Instead of a merging of Self with the group, the individual who is deindividuated seems to just drift or to become powerless. Whereas both deindividuation and depersonalization harm the individual psychically, depersonalization is fraught with greater potential for evil, and that is because depersonalization involves not just a decrease in personal awareness but also a replacement of personal identity with a group identity—a merging of the Self with the group. Instead of a person we get a group entity, a kind of machine. Now the person functions not in pursuit of his own aims but in pursuit of the group aim. The group calls the shots, and the individual loses self-control and personal autonomy as well as his capacity to feel the suffering of others. At the basis of the biology of evil, therefore, lies the phenomenon of the group.

GOOD AND BAD GROUPS The reason why evil becomes possible with depersonalization is because only an individual can experience empathy for the suffering of another individual. The infliction of suffering on a person or persons is more likely to

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stop if someone present at the event can feel the suffering that the person is undergoing. Groups cannot do that. They act only to increase their weight, density, influence, and power. Now it should be noted that there are two major forms of groups: “civil” and “enterprise” associations (Oakeshott, 1975/1991). In civil associations, individuals rule, under some agreed upon law or contract. In enterprise associations, managers rule and individuals exist for the purpose of the enterprise, whatever it is. Of course, there is a place for both types of groups, and both types of groups can harm people in various ways, but enterprise associations are by far more dangerous in terms of potential for evil. It should now be clear why that is the case: Enterprise associations are highly entitative groups that demand surrender of individual aims and identities so that the group purpose can be accomplished. Every human group varies in the extent to which it is civil or enterprise. Religions and political entities tend to be enterprise associations and thus fraught with high potential for evil. Religions in particular exhibit both tendencies. On the one hand, most religions encourage personal growth and transformation as well as self-control and individual autonomy. On the other hand, many religions also emphasize ethnic and group allegiances that tend to demand a sacrifice of personal autonomy. Military groups exhibit a similar dichotomy. On the one hand, obedience and discipline are required to win battles, but, on the other hand, the history of warfare has repeatedly demonstrated that slavish and blind obedience loses battles (witness the Persians versus the Greek hoplites) and individual initiative and courage give an army the edge in certain types of battle. In short, the story is complex, but it seems safe to say that depersonalization in the context of highly entitative “enterprise associations” carries the greatest potential for evil. In The Bacchae, the great tragedian Euripides seemed to intuit this potential for evil. The play begins with reports that the Bacchae, the female worshippers of Dionysus, the god of wine and ecstasy, are acting up again. They have been appearing in public with snakes in their hair, and suckling wild wolves and gazelles. The women rove in bands, and one band of drunken or crazed women descended on a herd of cows, ripping them to shreds with their bare hands. Thus the bizarre conduct of the cult’s members has led to destruction of property, and the king must act. King Pentheus appears, therefore, to be acting reasonably when trying to rein in the maenads’ destructive practices. But the god Dionysus refuses to see his cult suppressed, and he lays a plot to destroy Pentheus. So he goes to Pentheus in disguise and talks Pentheus into self-destruction. The god knows that Pentheus is secretly fascinated with these ecstatic rites. The stories he is told about the women involved seem fantastic. His own mother, Queen Agave, is a devotee of Dionysus and apparently participates in the maenads’ frenzied rites. Even Pentheus’s grandfather, Cadmus, speaks enthusiastically about the cult.

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Thus the god disguised as a stranger bringing news of the maenads’ ecstatic practices uses Pentheus’s curiosity and deep desire to see the ecstatic women to lead Pentheus to his own self-destruction. Once he has Pentheus identified with this self-destructive desire to see and perhaps participate in the cultic rites, the god then proceeds to systematically strip the king of dignity and rationality. The god decides to humiliate Pentheus by having him dress as a woman. He convinces the king to dress as a female maenad to avoid detection by the other maenads and thus be able to observe the rites without molestation. Dionysus balks at this further humiliation: “Nay; am I a woman, then, And no man more?” Dionysus points out that if he is seen by the maenads to be a man, they will kill him: “Would ye have them slay thee dead? No man may see their mysteries” . . . and live. Pentheus then consents to being dressed as a woman and a maenad, and in doing so is led inexorably to his own destruction. The king is depersonalized and then begins the process of submerging his identity with that of the group. We will see that this will lead to his personal destruction. Dionysus dresses Pentheus as a woman and gives him a thyrsus and fawn skins, then leads him out into the streets to be mocked. Pentheus begins to see double, and then hallucinates two bulls (Dionysus often took the form of a bull) leading him. The scene switches back to the palace, where a messenger reports to Cadmus that Pentheus has been killed. He recounts the story of what happened to the tragic king: When the stranger and the king reached Cithaeron, the site where the rites were underway, the blond stranger helped the king climb atop a tree to view the rites. Then the stranger manifested as the god in all his glory, and Dionysus called out to his followers that a man was watching them. This, of course, drove the maenads wild with rage, and they pulled down the trapped Pentheus and ripped his body to pieces. After the messenger has relayed this grievous news to Cadmus, Agave arrives carrying the head of her son. She thinks that the head is the head of a mountain lion. She had killed the “lion,” she boasts, with her bare hands and pulled his head off. Then, in the most macabre and tragic scene imaginable, she proudly displays her son’s head to her father Cadmus, the grandfather of the slain son, believing it to be a hunting trophy. She is confused when Cadmus does not delight in her “success” and hunting prowess. By that time, however, Dionysus’s possession of Agave is beginning to wear off, and as Cadmus reels from the horror of his grandson’s grisly death at the hands of his own mother, Agave slowly realizes what she has done, and then she is destroyed as well.

WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM THE BACCHAE First the play tells us that to the degree the sense of personal agency is impaired, the individual is in danger of submerging his identity into that

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of the group, and if that occurs destruction follows (assuming the group is cultic like an enterprise association). The emotion of ecstasy is a key component of ecstatic cults and very often involves bloodcurdling destructive acts like those engaged in by the maenads. Ecstasy, when it occurs in the context of a religion that is seeking to promote self-control and self-transformation into a saintly or even a godlike state, is a good. In that case, ecstasy leads to a self-transcendence into something larger, better, and paradoxically more individual. When, however, ecstasy leads to a self-transcendence into something that is lower, smaller, less individual, less unique, and more group-like, with less individual autonomy and self-control, then it is an evil. The Bacchae also suggests that evil can be studied as a phenomenon of inheritance or an intergenerational transmission of proclivities, behaviors, and “sins.” Generation 1, represented by Cadmus the grandfather, is fascinated with the maenads and their rites. Generation 2, represented by Agave, actually participates in the rites. Generation 3, represented by Pentheus, pays the price of that participation. Pentheus is even more fascinated with the rites than is Cadmus, but Pentheus becomes the sacrificial victim to the rites. Inheritance can be construed as a group phenomenon like any other. If the family line is considered something better than an individual’s autonomy, then it will function like a highly entitative group with all the destructive consequences that follow. In summary, depersonalization in the context of highly entitative, enterprisetype associations or groups carries great potential for evil. What, then, in biological terms leads to depersonalization and fusion into the group?

THE BIOLOGY OF DEPERSONALIZATION Depersonalized states have long been associated with temporal lobe lesions, but when one examines the cases that describe depersonalized states, it soon becomes clear that what is being described here is really deindividuation rather than depersonalization. The individual loses personal awareness but does not become fused with a highly entitative group. When, however, depersonalization moves toward the experience of self-transcendence, we get closer to depersonalization and fusion into the group entity. A recent paper by Cosimo Urgesi, Salvatore M. Aglioti, Miran Skrap, and Franco Fabbro (2010) described a group of patients who underwent surgical procedures to control brain cancer. Patients with selective damage to left and right inferior posterior parietal regions induced an increase in selfreport scores on the Self-Transcendence (ST) scale of the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI). Self-Transcendence scores measure the extent to which subjects feel connected to or drawn toward an experience beyond their individual lives. People with high levels of self-transcendence often report frequent feelings of “boundlessness” or the loss of awareness of

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themselves as separate beings. Urgesi et al. (2010) looked for brain correlates for changes in the felt experience of ST by studying scores obtained before and after surgery to remove brain gliomas (a type of cancer affecting neural brain tissue) using advanced lesion-mapping procedures. The authors asked what happens to self-reports of ST before and soon after surgical ablation of tissue in specific brain regions. They predicted that “selective damage to frontal and temporoparietal areas decreased and increased ST, respectively,” and that is what they found. The results showed that both anterior and posterior lesions had effects, and those effects were opposite, with anterior lesions decreasing ST and posterior lesions increasing ST; however, the posterior lesions had the most pronounced effects overall. ST scores in patients with meningioma involving the anterior or posterior areas revealed no significant effect. The analysis of a set of recurrent glioma patients who had undergone previous operations several months before testing showed that enhanced ST induced by posterior cortical ablation persisted. Voxel analysis revealed that the main sites responsible for effects on ST were located in the left inferior parietal lobe and in the right angular gyrus whose damage was associated with a significant ST increase. Presurgical interviews with patients, furthermore, revealed that a greater number of patients with posterior than anterior lesions judged themselves as being religious persons. The 59 patients who judged themselves as religious also showed higher ST scores before surgery. In sum, these results demonstrate pretty clearly that ablation of two sites within posterior cortical regions (the inferior parietal lobe and the angular gyrus) has an enhancing effect on the subjective experience of selftranscendence. Why should that be? Certainly nonspecific effects of the surgery itself (craniotomy) can be ruled out, as no changes in ST were associated with meningioma surgery itself. Could some cognitive or emotional effect associated with the surgery be driving the results? The authors claim that this is not the case, as neuropsychological scores did not change in association with surgery except in expected ways. They also argue against the influence of mood as the TCI scales of harm avoidance and self-directedness (which are altered in cases of depression) were not altered by the surgery. This, however, is not an entirely satisfactory explanation. The authors should have assessed mood directly instead of relying on the TCI. In any case, the authors rule out mood and cognitive changes as inducers of the enhanced ST effect. So what is driving the enhanced ST after removal of tissue in the parietal lobes? Urgesi et al. (2010) argued “that interindividual differences in spirituality may reflect differences in the ability to transcend the spatiotemporal

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constraints of the physical body” and that “dysfunctional parietal neural activity may underpin altered spiritual and religious attitudes and behaviors.” They noted that lesions in parietal lobes are associated with distortions of bodily awareness and that dysfunction in parietal lobes may plausibly also alter self-awareness and self–world boundaries. Although this explanation is certainly plausible, the authors did not adequately address the rest of their data. Perusal of their tables shows a consistent diminution of ST scores in the anterior group. Although the effects are not large, they are consistent across patient groups. Lesions in the anterior cortex produce a diminution of ST. Now, when you combine this fact with the other finding of lesions in posterior regions producing an increase in ST, you get what appears to be a kind of double dissociation: Lesions in area x produce a decrease in behavior a, and lesions in area y produce an increase in behavior a. Now couple this consideration with the spate of functional neuroimaging studies on religious practices, most of which converge on the finding that religious practices are associated with activation in the ventral prefrontal cortex, among other brain sites. All of these data taken together suggest that the crucial site for support of religious experiences and practices is the prefrontal cortex. The authors do not endorse this conclusion, but it is a reasonable one. So why does ablation of the parietal cortex induce enhanced ST? It has long been known that the parietal lobes are in mutual inhibitory balance with the frontal lobes—when you lesion one, you release the other from inhibition and then the behavior you see is behavior mediated solely by that “released” region. So when you lesion the parietal cortex, you get disinhibition of frontally mediated behaviors. Among those frontally mediated behaviors, it now appears, is self-transcendence. In short, personal autonomy is a product of the mutual inhibitory interplay of the anterior prefrontal cortex with posterior parietal cortex. When this balance is destroyed via surgical intervention or injury in either site, personal autonomy is compromised. We suggest that something similar happens functionally speaking with the fusion of self into a highly entitative group. The mutual inhibitory balance between anterior and posterior brain sites is impaired, thus making dissolution of the self and the merging of the individual into the group entity more likely. This conclusion implies that anything we can do to improve prefrontal functions and to more generally improve the sense of an executive Self or the sense of agency will strengthen the individual’s ability to resist the lure of the group.

REFERENCES Abarbanell, L., & Hauser, M. D. (2010). Mayan morality: An exploration of permissible harms. Cognition, 115, 207–224.

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Bechara, A., Tranel, D., & Damasi, H. (2000). Characterization of the decisionmaking deficit of patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex lesions. Brain, 123 (Pt. 11), 2189–2202. Blakemore, S. J., & Frith, U. (2004). How does the brain deal with the social world? NeuroReport, 15, 119–128. Cima, M., Tonnaer, F., & Hauser, M. D. (2010). Psychopaths know right from wrong but don’t care. Scan, 5, 59–67. Damasio, A. (1994). Descartes’ error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain. London: Papermac. Damasio, A. (2003) Looking for Spinoza: Joy, sorrow, and the feeling brain. New York: Harcourt. Darwin, C. (1977). The origin of species and The descent of man. New York: Modern Library. (Original work published in 1871) Decety, J., & Sommerville, J. A. (2003). Shared representations between self and other: A social cognitive neuroscience view. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 527–533. De Quervain, D.J-F., Fischbacher, U., Treyer, V., Schellhammer, M., Schnyder, U., Buck, A., et al. (2004). The neural basis of altruistic punishment. Science, 305 (5688), 1254–1258. de Wall, F. (1998). Chimpanzee politics: Power and sex among apes. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Eslinger, P. J., & Damasio, A. R. (1985). Severe disturbance of higher cognition after bilateral frontal lobe ablation: Patient EVR. Neurology, 35 (12), 1731–1741. Frith, C., & Frith, U. (2005). Theory of mind. Current Biology, 15, R644–R646. Haidt, J. (2001). The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 108, 814–834. Han, S., & Northoff, G. (2008). Reading direction and culture. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 9 (12), 965. Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison. International Journal of Criminology and Penology, 1, 69–97. Hauser, M. D. (2006). Moral minds: How nature designed our sense of right and wrong. New York: Ecco/HarperCollins. Hick, J. (1978). Evil and the god of love. New York: Harper & Row. (Original work published in 1966). Kringelbach, M. L., & Rolls, E. T. (2004). The functional neuroanatomy of human orbitofrontal cortex: Evidence from neuroimaging and neuropsychology. Progress in Neurobiology, 72, 341–372. Lewis, C. S. (1996). The problem of pain. San Francisco: HarperCollins. (Original work published in 1940). MacLean, P. D. (1990). The triune brain in evolution: Role in paleocerebral functions. New York: Plenum Press. McNamara, P. (2010). The neuroscience of religious experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moll, J., & de Oliveira-Souza, R. (2008). Extended attachment and the human brain: Internalized cultural values and evolutionary implications. In J. Braeckman, J. Verplaetse, & J. De Schrijver (Eds.), The moral brain: Essays on the evolutionary and neuroscientific aspects of morality. New York: Springer Scientific.

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Moll, J., de Oliveira-Souza, R., & Eslinger, P. J. (2003). Morals and the human brain: A working model. NeuroReport, 14 (3), 299–304. Moll, J., de Oliveira-Souza, R., Garrido, G. J., Bramati, I. E., Caparelli-Daquer, E. M. A., Paiva, M. L. M. F., et al. (2007). The self as a moral agent: Linking the neural bases of social agency and moral sensitivity. Social Neuroscience, 2 (3–4), 336–352. Moll, J., & Schulkin, J. (2009). Social attachment and aversion in human moral cognition. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 33, 456–465. Moll, J., Zahn, R., de Oliveira-Souza, R., Krueger, K., & Grafman, J. (2005). The neural basis of human moral cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6, 799–809. Nisbett, R. E., & Cohen, D. (1996). Culture of honor: The psychology of violence in the South. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Oakeshott, M. (1991). On human conduct. New York: Oxford University Press. (Original work published in 1975). O’Doherty, J., Kringelbach, M. L., Rolls, E. T., Hornak, J., & Andrews, C. (2001). Abstract reward and punishment representations in the human orbitofrontal cortex. Nature Neuroscience, 4, 95–102. Plantinga, A. (1974). God, freedom, and evil. New York: Harper and Collins. Urgesi, C., Aglioti, S., Skrap, M., & Fabbro, F. (2010). The spiritual brain: Selective cortical lesions modulate human self transcendence. Neuron, 65 (3), 309. Young, L., Bechara, A., Tranel, D., Damasio, H., Hauser, M., & Damasio, A. (2010). Damage to ventromedial prefrontal cortex impairs judgment of harmful intent. Neuron, 65, 845–851. Young, L., Camprodon, J. A., Hauser, M., Pascual-Leone, A., & Saxe, R. (2010). Disruption of the right temporoparietal junction with transcranial magnetic stimulation reduces the role of beliefs in moral judgments. Proceedings for the National Academy of Science. Retrieved from http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/ pnas.0914826107. Zimbardo, P. G. (1969). The human choice: Individuation, reason, and order versus deindividuation, impulse, and chaos. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 17, 237–307. Zimbardo, P. G. (2007). The Lucifer effect: Understanding how good people turn evil. New York: Random House.

ch apter 5

Evil Experienced by One Who Was There: Exodus—From Bondage to Deliverance and the Promised Land Virginia Ingram

This chapter is a personal odyssey. My story is best seen through the biblical lens of the Exodus narrative, and the biblical Exodus narrative is best understood when seen through the lens of such real-life experiences as mine. The Exodus story is so much a part of the bloodstream of Western culture as it has unfolded over the last 3 millennia that it shapes and illumines the sense of self and destiny for all individuals and communities of faith, quite regardless of whether or not we are consciously aware of it. Exodus is not just an archetypal story in an ancient book. It is the real-life story of each of us every day. We rehearse it in all our fears and hopes and celebrate it in the symbols of the sacraments. If we miss its relevance to our daily experience, we miss the opportunity for understanding the entire essential biblical message of the Old Testament and the New, and we miss the meaning of our own personal odysseys. Growing up, I had a belief in God that was not fostered in a faith community. Consequently, my understanding of religion and spirituality was confused. I thought of God as an uncompromising disciplinarian whose control I did not welcome. However, the father motif was so important to me, as a child from a broken home, that I persisted in trying to establish a relationship with the God of my youthful misinterpretation. In my rebellious years I sought an independence from God, which I will later argue is a path to death and destruction; and broke as many rules as I could, trying all of the things I was told to stay away from. Unfortunately one of these things was heroin. I was easily seduced by the good feelings it gave me, even though I realized they were manufactured and there was a price to pay.

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I soon developed an addiction and lived a desperate life with my partner, who eventually hung himself in a time of great hopelessness. When I discovered his body hanging in the garage, the overwhelming feeling I had was of intense fear. I could sense an oppressive evil in the air, and I believed that if I stayed in the house overnight I would be at risk of taking my own life. The following personal narrative is about the psychospiritual journey of a person captured by evil. Psychology is traditionally defined as a behavioral science that studies the functions of the human mind as it relates to the world. The term was originally translated from Greek to indicate the investigation of the psyche or spirit. As too readily happens with the sciences, we can divorce the spiritual aspect from the original perspective that is an inherent part of the function of the psyche. It is my perspective that psychology is a holistic study that must incorporate the understanding of the human spirit as it is expressed physically and mentally. In reference to the following story, I hope to show the correlation of the spirit–body–mind function in a unique setting that was my own life course. More saliently, I have chosen not to shear off the spiritual aspect of my life from the mental and physical, but to integrate all in that illumining place where we meet God and the divine spirit. Spirituality, as I see it, is the universal irrepressible human hunger for that illumining experience with the divine spirit (Ellens, 2008, p. 1; see also Ellens, 2009, p. xvi). This is in line with Gerken (1984), who presented psychology and spirituality as the two universes of discourse, perspectives, and quest trajectories for dealing with the same domain, the living human document (p. 20). In retrospect, I suspect I was so shocked by the realization that Ray had freely made the decision to end his life that I could only process the event as an oppressive agent that forced him to commit suicide. Now, I know it is not uncommon for evil to give off an aura that pervades a space; however, that aura is a by-product, and not the cause, of evil actions (J. Harold Ellens, e-mail correspondence to Virginia Ingram, April 12, 2010). Seeking safety I went to stay with my father and his partner, who urged me to “get off ” heroin. My father’s partner is a deeply religious man who stuck an icon of St. George on the wall of their spare room, and prayed next to the bed as I tried to withstand the pains of withdrawal. I did not understand what he was trying to achieve at the time, yet I found myself entering into it and can conclusively say that something happened to me in that room, though I cannot articulate the experience. All I can say is that I know it was the prelude to and preparation for my confession of discipleship; and the beginning of my conversion experience, whereby I was taught how to identify evil, and the means I would have to take to thwart it. Sadly the pains of withdrawal were too great for me, and I went back to my life, defeated yet armed. Before I left, my father and his partner gave me a crucifix on a rope, which I accepted and wore around my neck. It was one

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of the few possessions I had when I was captured a few months later, and incredibly it is still with me. The Bible has few explicit references to addiction. In the letters of Titus and Timothy, we are told a bishop should not be addicted to wine (Tim 3:3; Tit 1:7), which would indicate addiction is not close to godliness, although we are not told why. It is only later in Titus (2:3) where we find the answer. Addiction makes a person a slave to the object of the disorder, and if “No one can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24), then the addicted person cannot put God in his rightful place, and is a slave to evil instead. In terms of addiction, it is difficult to speak of choice. The addict is certainly free to choose before the addiction takes hold, yet after that time any choice is suspended until the addict reaches “rock bottom.” When that time comes, the addict is moved to either choose death or cry “life” with a full heart. Little did I know my lowest point would arrive shortly after leaving my father’s house. I began living on the streets, and did whatever I had to in order to sustain my addiction, including acts of prostitution. One day, when I was very desperate for heroin, I was approached by a woman who told me she could take me to a place where I would be given drugs, as long as I promised to work in a brothel that evening and pay off the money in the morning. I said I would do it. The place she took me to was a factory in an industrial area that had been barely converted for prostitution. There were no rooms to speak of, only partitioned areas with beds. My instincts told me this was not a place I wanted to be, but I felt the pains of withdrawal starting and I decided I would take the drugs that were offered, pay off the money that was due, and leave as soon as I could. My first impression of Tony, the man who would come to shape the next few years of my life, was of a man who understood the evil effects of addiction and who was consciously prepared to exploit those effects for his own personal gain. Yet, this was not unfamiliar. He just fit the drug-dealing stereotype. He gave me the drugs I needed, and then sent me out with the other girls to work on the street as a gang of young boys supervised us in bringing the men back into the factory. After working the agreed 18-hour shift, I was told it would be OK if I slept on one of the beds until I wanted to leave. I was very tired and accepted the offer, yet I was intent on leaving when I awoke. Here I am reminded of Bonhoeffer’s (2001) statement that “evil can be disguised as light”; because although I felt it was a kind offer, my sleep was interrupted by Tony coming into the room, raping me and telling me I was now his girlfriend. My choice to say no and assert my will had been ignored; and I found myself in a situation where my body had been taken by the evil intent of another. Yet, Tony’s act of rape was not only a violation of my physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being, but also a direct affront to God’s self-giving

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creative energy. This sex was not creative of love and unity but rather a violent expression of degradation and ownership: violence and violation (Ellens, 2006, p. 142). Evil is intimately concerned with submitting the beauty of life to the utmost degradation and perversion. Unfortunately, our sexuality, which is at the core of our spiritual life force (Ellens, 2006, p. 142), is left vulnerable to fiendish people. We find that, historically, sex has been used as a tool to oppress, violate, and humiliate. We are all too familiar with the dehumanizing acts of sexual torture that were committed at the Abu Ghraib detention center, precisely typical of the horrible abuses that have characterized brutality, apparently since time began. Tragically the powers that oppose God almost won in demonizing sex, or rather infecting societal conscience. When we consider the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, a story of the violation of the ancient law of hospitality, we are confronting a story that also includes depredation and violent sexual intent; yet the ongoing evil effect rendered by the misinterpretation of this narrative is judgment against homosexuality, and the vilification of homosexual persons. What is more beautiful than people seeking enmeshing sexual relations, creative of love and unity, regardless of their gender, as determined by God’s own gift of inborn orientation and design? Frighteningly, this illustrates that the effects of evil can be felt by large groups of people far removed by thousands of years from the initial act of degradation and violence in the biblical narrative and its misinterpretation (Ellens, 2006, pp. 103–106). Yet evil and its effects will not go away of their own accord. Evil is capable of adversely affecting a person years after an event, and can have a generational impact, when family patterns of abuse are repeated. However, the grace of God is unending, and not only heals the effects of evil but also can transform the most brutal situation into a place of great beauty. When I heard him leave the building, I dressed to go. Yet, as I did I was confronted by one of the gang members, who seemed to be guarding the front door and said, “You can’t leave; you’re Tony’s girlfriend now.” A more accurate understanding of this expression would be “You can’t leave, because Tony wants you as his possession.” Suddenly I realized there was a life on the other side of the door that was being taken away from me. In retrospect, I believe I had abandoned the world on the other side years earlier; and the evils of drug addiction that had enslaved me subjectively were about to have an objective force, whereby my life was to be lived out in the confinement of pure objective evil. This may seem to be a strong thing to say, but when one is contending with group dynamics and a hierarchy of evil control, an intensity of evil is easy to develop. Robert J. Lifton described a phenomenon he called “doubling” in relation to mob mentality and the officers at Auschwitz. He posited that many of the officers were caring and upstanding men when they were at

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home with their families, and seemed to turn into monsters only when they were in the camp (Lifton, 1986). Strikingly, I was told by one of the gang members there was something about the factory that turned men evil, and in his experience this change occurred as soon as a person walked over the threshold. I view this less as the phenomenon of a double self and prefer the work of Lars Svendsen, whereby he identified only a single self that interprets itself differently within the prison and outside (Svendsen, 2010, p. 163). Yet, I struggle with this proposition also. From my experience, although the girls who were captive did not create a loving bond and pitted themselves against each other for favors from the gang leaders, this was purely an instinctive reaction and I could not have imagined one of the girls holding a gun to the head of another purely for pleasure; as the gang members did. Thereby, I am less inclined to represent my captors and their gang members as men who were themselves of a demonic evil that possessed them and took away their choice and control. This is a misunderstanding of evil. Rather, they were men who had permission to commit evil within the factory and not outside. This is somewhat akin to a brutal person who abuses his or her family behind closed doors, yet abides by societal norms otherwise, even being a prominent leader and exemplar in church and society. The factory became a place where they sought to go, because they wished to be evil. I cite the example of the volunteer brigade, Police Battalion 101, who viciously murdered 38,000 Jews. Astoundingly, the men were told they might withdraw from the operation with impunity after they were informed they were required to kill men, women, and children at close quarters and in mass numbers; and, indeed, a small percentage of the men did. However, the majority took part in the massacre of their own free will; and as time went by and the permission to commit evil was well known, there were more volunteers for Police Battalion 101 than were needed for the operation. These men are widely thought of as ordinary men (Browning, 1998). In one way, it can be seen as a sad indictment on the human condition that these men can be called ordinary, a keen reminder that we must always strive to be extraordinary. However, from another perspective the statement is revealing of the sobering truth that evil comes from within us. Evil does not have an external ontology that overtakes those who are unlucky. If that is the case, it is not something to be overly worried about; after all, I do not know of anybody personally who has been possessed by a demon, and it was not Tony’s legal defense (Svendsen, 2010). Yet, this primitive symbolic understanding of evil seems to be the overriding view of evil. Too frightening is it for us to think evil is a possibility that lies not only in our own heart but also in our spouse, our neighbor, and our government. When we understand evil in this way and not as a personified

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creature that in no way resembles us, the dimensions and implications are terrifying. Identifying the genesis of evil is the first step in establishing responsibility. So when John said to me that as soon as a person walked across the threshold of the factory they became an “asshole,” I believe that was the truth; however, he was intimating that there was some kind of absolved responsibility and they were powerless to the evil surroundings. I posit that they came to the factory because in the factory existed the opportunity to do evil without reproach. I cite the case of John as evidence for their free will. John had told me he was a family man, teacher, and soccer coach in Lebanon when the civil war struck. He said that the village knew an attack was imminent and that the men of the village would practice warfare in preparation, although inside themselves they never really thought it would eventuate. The symbol that realized all of their fears was of the priest handing machine guns to 14-year-old boys. He said they knew there was no escaping the horror then because the most peace-loving man in the village had resigned himself to the bloodshed. Tragically, John witnessed his soccer team and his 5-year-old child being killed. Tony was John’s cousin, who assisted John to come to the safety of Australia and looked after him with the proceeds of the factory. He reasoned to John that although he was participating in sexual slavery and widespread drug dealing, it was all for the greater good, as he was sending some of the proceeds to a guerrilla group in Lebanon. John doubted Tony’s motive and maintained Tony was there to serve his evil heart. As a result, John not only left the factory but also left the country to put as much distance between Tony and himself as he could. The reason I have devoted so much space in telling John’s story is because it demonstrates that although there was an oppressive feeling of evil in the factory, it did not take away the will of those who walked into it; and furthermore, the reason the men became evil as soon as they walked through the door was of their own desire. Although John participated in some of the activity at the factory, he realized it was wrong and walked away. What if all of them had realized it was wrong and walked away? What if none of the men of Police Battalion 101 could have pulled the trigger? Then they would have become heroic and their lives would have had meaning. There was a thick malevolent feeling in the factory, as it took on the form of a place that was personified with evil. It was the place where evil was acted out, and evil intentions and desires became concrete realities. Therefore, in the factory these men were completely personified by evil, and the auras that surrounded them were so pervasive they seeped out of their bodies and filled the space around them (J. Harold Ellens, e-mail correspondence to Virginia Ingram, April 12, 2010).

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I find it interesting to note that the Bible represents an evil that is so concentrated and intense as Satan (Hebrew for adversary); and I am starkly reminded of Tony’s catchcry, “Fuck God—I am God.” From a psychological perspective, this statement is the mark of a man with a grandiosity indicative of a borderline personality; theologically speaking, it is also the expression of Satan, who seeks to do battle with God and take over his power. Tragically, people who channel a satanic energy do it because they seek an ultimate power with which to serve themselves. The only power that is independent of God is that which harms others and leads to tendentious or absolute destruction. Paradoxically Tony attributed destructive power to creative energy, and the more he destroyed the more he felt a heroic self-image. Yet, his broken victims are a constant reminder of the destruction wrought by the evil that came from him and worked through him. In this way, the weak and powerless valiantly stand as the moral arbiters of the world calling for divine justice. Moreover, earthly tyranny devoid of the sanctifying grace of God can only lead to death and finality. Yet, the evildoer is deceived into believing that evil acts grant the doer supreme freedom. There is no absolute freedom in the temporal world. The only act of absolute freedom was the singular event that brought forth the Creation. Furthermore, it is not possible to live an independent state of being, and when we speak of free will, it is only a freedom to choose right or wrong (Svendsen, 2010). The evildoer is never independent; he or she comes forth from the mother’s womb and the Creator’s handiwork, but, more strikingly, evil is distinctly relational in its desire to subvert the needs of another person or the bonds of Creation. Yet, there is a spiritual freedom, which can never be taken away or imposed upon, and in situations of physical incarceration the spiritual dimension develops unconsciously (Simon, 1979, p. 46). The Bible recounts numerous examples of spiritual growth in times of physical restriction. In the Exodus account, it is the Hebrews’ “groanings” that create the necessity of God’s response; also the Babylonian exile engenders spiritual creativity. New Testament accounts are equally plentiful, most saliently in the Passion of the cross, as Christ is completely immobilized and nailed to a tree. My lack of freedom turned me to God, because I needed some softness in a world that was hard. However, the first thing I had to do was reassess my vision of God. The God of my youth could not help me in this situation, and I was forced to radically trust in the benevolence of God for the first time. Yet I had always trusted in the power of good to triumph over evil, and I sincerely believe an encounter with evil can never be ambivalent. Evil entreats a person to either choose destruction or choose life. This is the point of the Book of Job. If we are to abandon God, what is the alternative? It can only be to embrace destruction. So no matter how much pain and suffering we go through, we must still have faith in God, because when God tells Satan

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to spare Job his life (Job 2:6), we know when we are contending with the “satans” of the world, they cannot steal our eternal existence. Like Job’s friends, one of the gang members grabbed me and shook me when he caught me praying, and yelled, “Where is your God? Your life is shit.” At the time, I responded by merely saying God was in my life; but if I were asked now, I would borrow my friend Harold’s line and say, “God is going to turn that horse manure into fertilizer, and beautiful flowers are going to grow.” Looking back, I am shocked at how devoted I was. I think because of my lack of formal religious education I felt as though my understanding of God was poor. Yet, I remember in the early mornings just before we were about to go to sleep, I would pray next to my bed in the silence, and cry myself to sleep with the cross pressed against my face. I know my prayers were the girls’ prayers, because the lack of privacy ensured that we shared the brutality, the degradation, and the humiliation and became in some ways a single unit of pain and suffering. The day of the murder was particularly ominous. I was extremely agitated, and I believe I had sensed I was on the precipice of death. When one of the gang members came into the factory vacant and bloodied, my fear intensified. Yet, in the midst of my extreme anxiety I distinctly remember a feeling of awesome calmness and the awareness of a protecting presence. This phenomenon of a sensed presence in extreme and unusual environments is not uncommon, and is ordinarily attributed to a “religious figure, friend, acquaintance or relative” (Suedfeld & Geiger, 2008), yet I would suggest that regardless of the projected image, any of these helpers manifest themselves from the divine spirit within us. The afternoon moved slowly, until all the gang members arrived at the factory with guns and machetes. The rival gang arrived with premeditated intent and began by opening fire on the factory before they made their way in. Together they were a wall of evil, and I knew somebody was going to die that afternoon. I thought it might be Tony as he struggled to keep another man with a gun away from him. Yet, in the office which was next to me, I saw where the fever pitch of evil had situated itself. The shooter Joe (who was a young gang member) had an expressionless face with eyes focused on death. I have heard soldiers recount of knowing the intent to kill by the look in a person’s eyes. It is a reflection of fierce, uncompromising determination, and the response can only be one of resignation. Then in the space of a minute, he had fired the gun and murdered a man. As I sat in the recess with my arms wrapped around my legs, with bullets flying around me and a man who had been shot lying on the office floor, I was instantly and instinctively thrown into prayer. I remember saying to God, “If you save my life, I will give my life to your service.” This is in fact a rather

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common form of bargaining that people resort to in the face of impending death. Yet, at the time I felt it was quite a bargain, because I could not think of anything worse than living the religious life. However, as the shooter paced up and down surveying his destruction and me, his only witness, there was never a moment I sought to reason with him; he had seemed so intent on living out his violent fantasy. Thereby, the only other avenue available to me was to pray constantly to God, as a declaration of my choice to live, regardless of the shooter’s will. When we call on God, we call on eternal life, and evil knows it is thwarted. Yet, the thing I find interesting about Joe is that before the shooting he looked somewhat possessed by evil, and I do not mean he looked like a man who was taken over by evil, but a man who had given himself completely to this evil desire. His mind appeared to be so fixed on murder, and as he pointed the gun at Stephen and pulled the trigger, it was almost as if the taking of Stephen’s life was a huge release of demonic energy. Afterward he did not appear to be a smooth calculated killer, but maybe an ordinary man who regretted what he had done. I do not know why Tony didn’t shoot me; there would be too many variables to consider, and in terms of my confession of faith to God this is irrelevant anyway. My conversion was not based on a belief that God granted my wish. That would ignore the depth of communion I felt at that time. Otherwise, how would I know? It could have been just a coincidence. Yet, the strength of the moment for me was stripped of any distractions, I was in absolute destitution and poverty with no personal freedom, living dangerously on the precipice of finality, where there is only one choice to make: Do you want to live or die? At that moment my mind, my will, and my heart turned to the source of all life, and even if I had been shot dead in that moment, I would have commended myself to God’s eternal Spirit. This was the moment in my life when I really turned to God, and said, “I am with you.” My cry was the cry of life and discipleship, in stark contrast to Tony’s, which was a call for death and dominance. I think the fundamental spiritual question for a person who is under the control of evil forces is not what is the nature of evil, but what shall I do about it? If we cannot overcome it by force and free ourselves from its grasp, the only solution is to accept it. Yet, accepting evil on the face of it is a difficult thing to do, and can result in the victim joining the ranks of evil in order to give some purpose to the trials. When we accept the reality of suffering as a part of life that we can get through with faith, then it ceases to be able to own and destroy us. Furthermore, these moments in time that mark our lives become sacred moments, but not other-worldly. They are humanizing times because they are the cries through which we can experience divine and sustaining grace-if we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.

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When we commit ourselves to God in faith, our life story is not only punctuated by evil and suffering, but also enveloped in eternal glory; this means we still feel the pain of our mortal lives, but we interpret it in our eternal existence. Thereby, stories of martyrs and confessors who feel no pain whilst being tortured and murdered can only be seen as mythological. If this were not the case, we would have to imagine Christ felt no pain on the cross, and if that were so we would have to think God was cheating us and taking the easy way out. To be truly human is to feel pain and suffering and also to experience profound grace. The biblical model and the psychological authenticity require that we face the reality of suffering head-on and honestly if we are to find the grace in it. I was not tortured, and only a victim of physical violence a minority of the time because I learned to “behave” in order not to be harmed. Yet, I was the victim of extreme degradation and humiliation that affected me for years to come. In a medical and psychological report done close to the time, the conditions from which I was suffering were a direct result of the harm that I endured. According to confidential medical and psychological reports, I was diagnosed with epileptic seizures, “fearfulness, anxiety, insomnia, agitation, restlessness, a sense of depersonalisation, panic, sense of loss of self, depression, agro-phobia, rumination, low self-esteem, insecurity, and hypervigilance.” Today this would be described as a complex type of PTSD. Yet, wonderfully in the psychological report, it is also written, “Virginia experiences a sense of surreal calmness when she feels exposed to danger.” As I stated earlier, I sensed this calmness on the day of the murder, which I directly attribute to a sensed presence of God. Yet, God did not remove my pain; to do that would have been artificial, and a denial of my human experience. God affirms my humanity by allowing me to be human, and by being with me in my time of trial; and in knowing God is with me, I feel comforted. I am comforted by God, in the knowledge of a man who was full of the Holy Spirit enduring unspeakable pain and suffering. Thereby, as God walks with us He knows our suffering and comforts us, but he also orients us to our own resurrection and the life eternal. Had it not been for my circumstances, I may not have come to God as conclusively as I did. Yet, the majesty of God determines that all roads lead to Him eventually, as God is both omnipotent and merciful. St. Paul declares that every eye shall see him, every knee bow, and every tongue profess this one day (Rom. 14:11). When we speak of Jesus Christ, it is important to emphasize he was a person, and a person not unlike ourselves. He shared our bodily existence and everything that entails. He would have coughed and blown his nose, and like us he would have had to eat and drink. Very much like my friends and me, he was at times accused of being a drunkard and a glutton (Matt 11:19). He would also have felt pain and suffering, as is clearly evident in his profound expression of grief alongside Lazarus’s dead body (John 11:35).

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Yet, we are sometimes told that Jesus’s thoughts and feelings are not important, and we must seek the spiritual message from the Gospel rather than the historical figure. However, we deceive ourselves in doing so, because it is in Jesus’s ordinariness that he helps us. He was an exceptional human being, but an ordinary one at that. In being the ordinary person, he becomes the perfect counter for the ordinary person who commits evil. It is not God’s intention that we follow Jesus in dispassionate awe, but that we realize the possibilities that lie within us, by Jesus’s example, and we follow him in emulation and transformation. It is our responsibility to acknowledge Jesus was like us. However, it is all too easy for us to set Jesus apart as the divine man, rather than a man who was not only full of the Holy Spirit but also possessing of a Spirit that poured out of him into the entire world for all time. In the first instance, we interpret Jesus as someone so unlike us that there is no point even trying to be like him. Why should we? We are not God, so it is a futile exercise, we may say. Furthermore, we believe in Christ so we are saved; thereby, we do not have to do anything else. If he is the divine man, why do we not just sit back and adore him? The reason we cannot view Jesus in this way is because it is idolatrous. It is even anti-creational in some regards, because it means we deny the Creation as a dynamic work of art. Why worship the Creator, and deny the artist’s expression of himself as is put forth in the Creation? To deny the possibilities of ourselves is to deny God. To affirm God is to trust in the goodness within ourselves; and the power of grace to assist and transform us until we are so graced it spills forth into the lives of the people we encounter. There is no great secret: God is transparent. We do not even have to ask for grace, and it is given to us; but if we do ask, it is never refused. Furthermore, God gives love freely, so it is never a burden to ask. When Joe walked out of the factory, I screamed Stephen’s name at the top of my lungs, and there was a moment of silence before the shooters ran out of the factory. I then walked into the office with another girl, and we agreed Stephen had gone to a better place. There is no other thought to have when confronted with a dead body: the empty shell of a person and the absence of a life force to ignite the imagination. A poetic account I wrote closer to the time spoke of God crying because it was raining the day Stephen was murdered. There is no sense in this, but it contrasted starkly with the reality of myself and the other girls, who were beaten by Tony if we cried in his presence. Thereby, our time in his company was completely manipulated, right down to the expression of our emotions. Given this, it is not difficult for me to see how I had become a psychological captive of Tony’s evil. After some time in absolute captivity, we were granted a degree of freedom. I remember taking Tony’s German shepherd, who guarded the factory,

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for a walk around the block on some occasions and going to the local shops. This “freedom” is always a curse for victims, and becomes the greatest source of shame and guilt when the question arises, “Why did you not just run away?” Without going into psychological models such as the Stockholm syndrome, which does not adequately describe my case, I think it can easily be said, after being a victim of and witnessing such violence, that even the thought of Tony could control me from afar. His criminal network was wide, and in the end it became enough for him just to threaten me with murder if I left. Thereby evil plays on itself, and can control the victim with the revelation of the possibility of evil of unimaginable proportions. The only foreseeable way I could ever leave the factory, Tony, and his gang members was if I was physically extricated. By the grace of God, that happened. After the murder, Tony was arrested in his car with drugs and a handgun. He informed us there would come a point where we were going to be interviewed by the police, and he told us what we should say; yet when the time came for us to sit in the witness box, and swear to the tell the truth on a Bible in the presence of God, all our fear had lifted, and Tony’s reign of evil was exposed passionately. As my time in the factory drew to a close, I began to bond with the gang member who had asked me where God was. He was very different from the others, and never participated in the heavy violence. One day he came to the factory, grabbed me, and told me to get into his car. I did not know what was happening, but I felt I could trust him. He told me that Tony was planning to kill me and he was protecting my life. I cannot help but think it is ironic he questioned the whereabouts of God to me earlier when he had shown himself to be an agent of God in this world, risking his life to care for others. We did not talk a great deal, but at one point he turned to me and without further explanation said, “It is a war on drugs.” It must be a war if evil is an adversary. He then asked me where my life would be if I had never touched drugs. His nature was very determined as he took me to a house where he said I would be safe, and gave me some money to look after myself. I never saw him again, and I am forbidden to mention his name, but I did track down his phone number and made a nervous phone call to say thank you. He sighed, was silent, and then hung up. As the court trial loomed, feelings of extreme anxiety and fear began to surface. It was brought to my attention that Tony and his gang had most probably been involved in the murder of four sex workers in the area, and that bugging devices had caught them devising a plan to murder me so I would not testify. It is a sickening feeling to know somebody is actively trying to kill you, and I was staving off having a complete mental and physical breakdown, as I was told I would only be safe once they were all behind bars permanently.

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The 2 years waiting for the trial were almost as bad as the 18 months I spent at the factory, and a team of people including a doctor and a psychologist were assigned to me to ensure I could cope with the task. In that time, one of the girls was found dead of an overdose at the house of one of the gangsters. There was only one sanctuary for me, and that was the Anglican Cathedral in Sydney. I did not understand the differences between Christian denominations at that time; it was just in a convenient location and a beautiful building. As soon as I walked into the cathedral, I was overcome with a pervasive sense of peace and joy and knew nobody would hurt me there; so I spent most of the days waiting for the trial sitting in the church talking to God. I did not know how to pray, but I started by saying, “So here I am,” and the conversation just flowed by the grace of the divine spirit. Those conversations (although I don’t remember much of the content) remain very dear to me, because God became my friend, and I began to enjoy going to the cathedral to be with my friend, although I felt a little bit self-conscious when the priest asked me if I needed to talk. I would always tell him I did not want to talk, so he would ask me if I would mind if he prayed next to me. Then one day as I left, he gave me a Bible. Throughout this time, I gave evidence in a few different court cases that resulted from my time in the factory, until the day came when all of the gang members were behind bars. Tony, the ringleader, received two life sentences, which was a record sentence for these offenses in New South Wales (NSW), and the judge in her submission wrote, I accept the Crown’s submissions that his conduct in the commission of these offenses involved wickedness of the highest order and that there is no better expression of the misery and depredation inflicted upon human life by the illicit trade in hard drugs. (Confidential Sentencing Report, NSW District Court)

Life then became somewhat normal. I stopped going to the cathedral, but I decided I would read the Bible. It was a labor of love and I did not understand it at the time, yet after further reading I decided to enter into full communion with God and be baptised. Much has happened since my baptism; most noticeably, I have moved to the other side of the country and am seeking ordination in the care of St. George’s Anglican Cathedral in Perth. However, there would be a problem with ending the story here. The difficulty with situations of great evil and brutality is finding a space for forgiveness. There is a challenge which comes with being a victim, and that is to see the perpetrator as deserving of God’s love. If we do not, we bring hate into our lives and into the world. For when we can love the person who has harmed us the most, we can love anybody and everybody; this is God’s will.

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St. John of the Cross says, “where there is no love, put love and there will be love.” In conclusion, it’s too easy to say, “The things that happened in the past make me what I am today, and I do not regret a thing.” I regret a lot, and if I had a magic wand I would erase not only the experience of this tragedy but also its perpetual presence in my life story. Yet, this is not the case, so the only option I have is to keep reconsidering the events, gleaning them for meaning. The meaning I find is that I am a human being in an Exodus odyssey, and a human being who longs for God in all of that. Therefore, I am not unlike everybody else struggling to find their way in the world, but like everybody else I am also unique. My life is not perfect like a Hollywood script played by flawless actors. It is challenging and more like the biblical story. Like the story of the Exodus, it is an iconic narrative of all of Christian life and liturgy. God heard my groanings, and like the ancient Israelites came to me in the aid of heroic people who were prepared to help me on my way. It lifts that ancient story out of its ancient setting and places it firmly in this moment for this person. As I was waiting for the trial, I complained endlessly in the wilderness of my quandary. Yet the people around me who were working with God’s love kept drawing me forward despite my protestations; and this is still the case today as I seek ordination. At first, I was sure I could never get over this horrific trauma. Now I am discovering that it is true. I can never get over it, but I have discovered that I do not need to get over it. I am able to live with it by the grace of God, and it is becoming my Exodus odyssey. It is seasoning me, as I am being teased forward toward the Promised Land of ministry.

REFERENCES Bonhoeffer, D. (2001). Discipleship. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress. Browning, C. R. (1998). Ordinary men: Police Reserve Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: HarperCollins. Ellens, J. H. (2006). Sex in the Bible. Westport, CT: Praeger. Ellens, J. H. (2008). Understanding religious experience: What the bible says about spirituality. Westport, CT: Praeger. Ellens, J. H. (2009). The spirituality of sex. Westport, CT: Praeger. Gerken, C. V. (1984). The living human document: Re-visioning pastoral counselling in a hermeneutic mode. Nashville, TN: Abingdon. Haaretz.com. (2010, May 21). Pope Benedict XVI. Retrieved from www.Haaretz. com. Lifton, R. J. (1986). The Nazi doctors: Medical killing and the psychology of genocide. New York: Basic Books. Simon, U. (1979). A theology of evil. Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press.

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Suedfeld, P., & Geiger, J. (2008). The sensed presence as a coping resource in extreme environments. In J. H. Ellens (Ed.), Miracles: God, science, and psychology in the paranormal (3 vols.). Westport, CT: Praeger. Svendsen, L. (2010). A philosophy of evil (Trans. Kerri A. Pierce). London: Dalkey Archive Press.

ch apter 6

A Biblical Theology of Evil J. Harold Ellens

The ancient Israelites, who present themselves as the core of the biblical narrative, arose as a self-conscious people around the middle of the second millennium (1500) bce. Their story continues as the story of the Hebrew Bible until 500 bce. For that 1,000 years, they seem to have had little interest in devising an explanation about how evil got into the world. Not until they encountered Babylonian and Zoroastrian mythic philosophy about such issues as creation and the problem of evil did they attempt to add such accounts to their literary heritage. Then they borrowed their explanations from Mesopotamian myths and rewrote them into stories in which their own God, Yahweh or Elohim, figured as the primary mover and shaker. That all happened as they were trying to formulate the legends that explained their concept of history from Abraham back to the beginning of the world. Thus, during their sojourn in Babylon during the sixth century bce, they began to work out these kinds of problems and record them near the beginning of their sacred scriptures. Before 500 bce, they seemed to have had some kind of code for their behavior but no formal explanation of evil. They certainly noticed that some people did not follow the established or idealized code of conduct for Israelites, but that really only prompted them to scold each other a lot. The kings scolded the people, and the people scolded each other and the kings when they thought they could get away with it. The prophets scolded everything that moved, so to speak, and they kept right on doing it until the Lord shut their mouths about 500 bce. Moreover, prophets were constantly scolding each other; and everybody who was scolding anybody constantly appealed to God as their judge; and if we can take the

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prophets at their word, God was scolding everybody who did not seem to be getting enough scolding already. Sometimes God outright threatened the daylights out of people who were thought to be misbehaving. Sometime at or after the turn into the fifth century bce, as they developed their proliferating notions of apocalyptic Judaism, the Jewish scholars made a couple of early attempts to explain the theology of evil. Both proved in the end to be false starts, but they remained in the official canon of sacred scripture nonetheless. As intimated in Chapter 1, the earliest one appears in Genesis 6 and is an old legend that appeared in many forms and places in the ancient Mesopotamian world. The second one to be developed is placed earlier in the Bible, in Genesis 3. It too is simply copied from an ancient fertility cult story and turned into the explanation of how things got wicked in God’s good world. It is interesting that God’s people needed to borrow some pagan stories to solve the problem of the source of evil. The first story blames God, and the second story blames humans. That is probably why there are two. There were two different general strains of apocalyptic theology developing in Second Temple Judaism in the fifth century, and they both wanted to get their oar in on this exciting speculation about the origin of evil. That first story, in Genesis 6, claims that evil came into this world, rather benignly, from the heavenly realm. The Elohim—that is, demigods or angels—descended to earth, saw how beautiful and sexy human women are, and took them as wives. Seems like a rather natural thing to do. The result was pregnancy and the birth of a race of giants who taught men how to devise implements of agriculture and war, while teaching women the use of cosmetics so as to be even more seductive. This apparently produced a great deal of conflict and turbulence on earth. God was so upset by all this that eventually the answer was to kill a lot of people with the flood. Analyzing this explanation of evil gives the impression that there were two issues that turned a rather understandable drama into a source of evil. First, the heavenly beings apparently lusted after the women, that is, there is something about sex that can get you into trouble. Second, the heavenly beings crossed a boundary that is supposed to be inviolable (i.e., the boundary between things divine and things human, the heavenly and the earthly). In any case, it is clear that the humans are essentially without fault and not the source of evil. Evil comes from a decision and act of God’s heavenly agents according to this line of thought. They fouled up this planet with their lust and irresponsibility. God and his minions are to blame for evil. That is the full explanation and that is all there is to it, according to Genesis 6. Obviously, there were those Jewish scholars at and after 500 bce who were inclined to defend God against this accusation. They wanted to protect God at all cost, sort of like an abused child wants to protect the parent at all cost, because if the parent is bad what does the child have left? That means that where

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he or she is plugged into the universe, things are flawed. Hence, it shapes the child’s own image of self. The scholars trying to protect God wanted to write a theodicy that kept God pristine and perfect, even if they needed to blame humans, indeed themselves, for the rise of evil in this world. So they found an old fertility myth in Babylon and turned it into the fall story in Genesis 3. What a really dumb idea, because that does not get God off the hook. Either the omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent God, who is the creator and cause behind everything, caused evil or he let it happen. He willed it or did not will its prevention. He permitted it, at least. There are no other options. In either case the issue goes all the way back to God. As President Harry Truman said, “The buck stops with the big guy.” The mythic story of the fall of human beings into the prideful sin of disobedience, presented by the Hebrew Scriptures in Genesis 3, is intensely intriguing from many points of view. Whether it is understood literally, metaphorically, mythically, or symbolically, the story provokes a spontaneous and universal sense of its authenticity. It is one of those stories that carries with it such archetypal quality that we sense at once how it touches at the center, a generic truth of obvious humanness and of vital personal experience. It speaks of the radical and tragic distance between what we can imagine as our finest potential as persons, and what we know as our often defeating and dissonant experiences in real life. The story says we are broken, and life’s experience makes that seem like a deep and central truth, whether God caused it or God permitted it, or our willful pursuit of bad courses of action is just typical of us apparently flawed humans. One reason this story is always intriguing arises from the way the archaic Mesopotamian sources of this legend are woven into a narrative about Israel’s God. The formal elements present here, derived as they are from the much more ancient primordial myth, include the role of the virgin, the tree, the fruit, the phallic serpent as tempter, and the like. These are all imported with little alteration from ancient fertility literature. Though the story is not explicitly sexual, as we find it in the Hebrew Bible, it is the story of a contest between two potential lovers for the allegiance of the virgin: God and God’s Adversary. Thus we have a double seduction. The phallic serpent seduces Eve, and Eve seduces Adam. This framework for the story carries the sexual overtones of the original story in Genesis 1:27 over into Genesis 2–3. In Genesis 3, of course, the narrative includes the response of guilt and shame regarding sexual vulnerability. The story is equally intriguing for the manner in which the Hebrew editors attempted to adapt it for use in their religion. Their key difference from the Mesopotamian myth is the obvious literary effort invested here to make the story fit into Israelite theological ideology, and to make it reveal something essential about the manner in which Israel’s God, Yahweh, relates to the impaired universe and the fractured human community.

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THE FUNCTION OF THE STORY Related to this is the implication in the story of the general problem of evil. Clearly, this foreign literary material is inserted into the fabric of the Hebrew scripture to service Israel’s theology. It establishes a baseline for dealing with the problem of evil as humans suffer it. The claim is unquestionably made here that a hubristic egotism led humans beyond their appropriate domain and landed them in such an erroneous perspective that God’s design for nature, for our sense of the presence of God, and for interpersonal relationships seemed seriously disturbed. The flowering shrubs began to look like thorn bushes, the walks with God began to look dangerous and something to hide from, and the complexity of human relationships began to look like thickets of unsortable confusion and pain. The fall story tries hard to account for the problem of human pain and universal disorder in the world. It attempts to explain why humans can conceive of aesthetic ideals but can hardly create them, can long for a perfect world but not fashion one, can hope for genuine love but seldom express or experience it, and can remember and anticipate paradise yet sense that it always eludes us. This is an intensely pathetic story of loss, grief, guilt, and shame. The pathos of the story is significant in revealing the essential nature of the universal human predicament, whether the story is understood as history or as myth. The literary characteristics clearly establish, of course, that it should be viewed as a mythical section of the Bible. It is so invested with confessional theological content that it is profoundly true in what it says about our fractured humanness. Myth is a confessional statement that is usually truer than mere historical reporting could ever possibly be. The truth it articulates is that of the general state of the flawedness and incompleteness of human nature and the material world. It describes the sense of the wrongness of things within and between us as humans. We all experience this. It is expressed in the pervading dysfunction and anxiety that afflict us all. So the story is a theological myth, imported into the sacred canon from pagan sources by the Hebrew believers, for the purpose of describing the psychological state of affairs they perceived to afflict humanity. They saw themselves and the human race as alienated, orphaned, and diseased. They were, of course, quite correct. St. Paul described it succinctly: “We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). The story depicts a cosmic paradigm for general human psychological development. It describes a crucial stage in human growth from the childlikeness of Eden to mature work in building God’s reign of love and grace in this world. This narrative represents the adolescent move from human naïveté to humans taking social and cultural responsibility in God’s world. It is not a story about a fall down, but of humans stumbling up the stairs to a new level of maturation and functionality. In that growth process, the

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story describes, for the human race, the development equivalent to the individual growth process of birth and adolescent disengagement. It tells us how humankind decided to grow up, from the cradle of the Garden, to move forward to building the Holy City. The personal separation experiences of birth and adolescence are normally fraught with a good deal of anxiety. That anxiety is also evident in the story of the fall, as we observe the reaction of Adam and Eve. There is significant anxiety there, regarding the presence of the forbidden tree, the perception of the possibility of making a wrong decision, the appearance of the sexual symbol of the tempting serpent, the offer of the seduction of Eve, her offer of seduction to Adam, the threat of death, and the guilt and shame of cutting loose from God. The whole fabric is expressive of intense adolescent anxiety. In fact, the most interesting element is the plain implication of an important and dangerous state of anxiety existing in the life and spirit of Adam and Eve before the fall, when paradise was presumably still intact. The recognition of significant anxiety before the fall is crucial for insight into essential human nature as seen by the ancient Hebrews. It implies the need in Adam, as he was created, for an anxiety reduction mechanism that would make it possible for him to cope and to open up the door of his primitive and childlike life to real growth. He experienced this need in terms of his growth-oriented nature and destiny. As soon as God announced the presence and import of the forbidden tree, a state of anxiety existed in terms of Adam’s perception that his potential destiny was open-ended and required decision making by him and Eve. He recognized that he possessed the potential for change and for negative or positive growth. The anxiety increased in intensity as the story recounts Adam and Eve struggling with the essential decision about their unknown and challenging future. Moreover, the pressure of that anxiety is further increased as they contemplate, quite correctly, the possibility of being like God, knowing both good and evil. It should not surprise us that the story describes Eden as anxiety laden. Nor should we shrink from the implied fact that anxiety is not a part of our brokenness but an essential element of our natures, and of the fact that we are not fully evolved. Thus, the problem of evil becomes significantly more complex. Stress in the pre-fall state, as described in this theological myth, is already evident much earlier. Adam is described as finding himself alone in the garden in a state of sufficient disequilibrium that he looked for a mate or companion among the animals. He found none adequate or appropriate. God noted the stress and anxiety, and intervened by creating Eve as a help appropriate to his neediness. Obviously, that means that she filled out some condition of lack and anguish in Adam and thereby reduced his stress and anxiety.

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One can imagine that Adam had considerable stress from numerous directions in Eden: from the pressure of responsibility to keep the garden, to find companionship that was appropriate, to name the animals, and to fashion a meaningful relationship with his wife, who ultimately chose a liberation course of independence from him and then seduced him into following her, presumably lest he lose her. Then he had anxiety about his responsibility to obey and love God in a world where the manner of doing that held considerable ambiguity. So what is the source of evil? If it is the evil that humans do to each other, is it not preset by the way God fashioned humans and their world? The man was under pressure. His anxiety is not a consequence of his sin. It is clearly the consequence of his being a person with unexplored potentials and possibilities. It is inherent to his nature and all human nature. It is inevitable to human existence, because of the nature of the potential for growth, and of the unfolding unknown that is inherent to growth. The Hebrews saw that and related it to the potential in the world for the problem of evil. So they told the old Mesopotamian story in a new way and captured so precisely a truth generic to our existence that when we read the story 5,000 or 6,000 years later, we find it touching the center of our predicament in some fundamental ways. The story urges that all this stress and anxiety that Adam experienced were finally culminated in the enigma of what to do about the possibility of being like God. The story of the fall, as the Hebrews understood it, describes the event and the decision as Adam’s anxiety reduction move, designed to free his psyche for further function, coping, and growth. The critical question, therefore, must be raised as to whether the event was a constructive or destructive anxiety reduction procedure for Adam and the human race, as the Hebrews saw it. How does that relate to the onset of the problem of evil? Is evil merely human dysfunction, and does that arise exclusively out of the choices we make in reducing the stress of life? We ask the same question when we consider whether the painful process of birth and adolescent disengagement is a constructive or destructive anxiety reduction experience. It is important because it will give us some clues as to whether we are to look at human alienation, pain, and anxiety and their consequences as difficult but inevitable stages in the evolution of persons and the human race, or as an unfortunate aberration of a sinful, destructive type of behavior, and the source of the problem of evil, as the Hebrews suggested.

SAYING NO AND YES TO GOD I am persuaded that the story of the fall is a metaphor of the human process of maturing to individuality and responsible agency as individuated

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persons. The story is a report on the human psychological process of asserting the will of the human person against the will of God. To do so is a necessary act for humans because saying “yes” to God has no meaning or content if it is impossible to say “no” to God. To be a committed biblical believer and a builder of God’s kind of world, one needs to be an independent agent who can commit to that kind of vocation. It is no different for the human race than it is for a child moving through adolescence in relationship to his or her parents. Adolescence is supposed to be a time for individuation from parents, disengagement from dependency, and assertion of one’s own ego, so as to test and find one’s own authentic identity and personal style. Maturity for humans requires the ego strength and will that forge the power to disengage from authority, in order to give significance to the intent and behavior of commitment to freely chosen relationships. The story of the fall in Genesis 2–3 assumes that adolescent disengagement requires a willful aggressive act, testing one’s own strength over against one’s parents, against general authority, against God’s requirements, or against any pressures toward conformity. This is necessary so that the person can authentically choose, as an independent agent, to conform willingly to God’s will and way. Without this adolescent disengagement, there can be no growth and no later adult refusion with parents or authorities as friends, peers, colleagues, or compatriots. This is as true in our relationship with God as it is with our parents. Childhood is a stage of fusion with parents. It moves progressively toward differentiation of individual persons, and moves toward that contest and contrast in adolescence. Once the differentiation is successfully established and genuine individuality is achieved, there follows a process of return toward union, commitment, cherishing, and a new kind of fusion. In this sense, the myth of the fall represents a growth step of such disengagement, in preparation for devoted commitment to godliness. It is of great interest that the ancient Hebrews saw this transitional process as a very precarious stage in which the act or the style of the act could produce the problem of evil and alienation from God and the good. If Adam and Eve were not wrong in declaring their independence, they were wrong in doing it as a revolution rather than as a maturing evolution, the Hebrews thought. So also with adolescents in our human processes! Thus, it is not quite clear whether the story of the fall is intended to describe a step taken in the best possible manner, even if it was a necessary step. Human development, individually and communally, is a continuum of evolutionary process and progress. What are usually thought to be negative aspects of human development are often constructive stages of maturing. In this perspective, the fall story can be seen for just what it is: a mythic or analogic story. Although it comments in interesting and entertaining metaphors upon glitches in the evolutionary process of maturation, it does not comment

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in any meaningful way upon the real steps of that human process. What it does say is that the human odyssey is a tragic adventure and the source or matrix for the problem of evil. In this model, humans move more or less consistently along the growth line from primitivity, or childhood, to maturity, without the sort of negative psychological and historical discontinuity that the fall story is usually taken to represent. It is depicted as a revolutionary break from our divinely intended style and destiny. The admittedly painful adolescent disengagement is inherently necessary to achieving responsible individual agency. That is how persons take constructive action in life. The fall was not down, but upward to the status of builders of culture, history, and a godly world. This myth moves the process of this planet from a nursery in the mythic garden of Eden to the achievement of the Holy City, a myth about the maturation of the historical process. It is useful, nonetheless, to ask whether, as a character in a mythic story, Adam might have done it in a better way. Was his anxiety reduction process really constructive or destructive, pragmatically considered? Does humanity, or do persons, need to express so much disjunction and experience so much alienation and loss in order to achieve personhood and growth—a sense of our true selves? Or does this inevitably produce the problem of evil and human suffering as its consequence? It is tempting to say that Adam chose the best course and, in view of his limited knowledge and experience, the only one he really had available. If this produced a problem of evil or suffering, it was simply inherent and inevitable to the natural process. Agreed. That is a way of saying that the loss and alienation we all experience in the expulsion from the womb and in adolescent individuation are virtually inevitable. Its problems and pain are built into the system. That suggests that the consequent internal and social distortions these bring, which drive our sickness and our sin, are not wholly avoidable in real life. As we grow, we have limited knowledge, inadequate experience, and immature levels of wisdom. These frequently cause us to choose painful and alienating courses. Our decisions often alienate us from others, from God, and from our own clear sense of our selves. So our dysfunction and the interpersonal or social damage it brings are part of the process of growth in a world that God created free. That suggests that God is not the cause or the problem of evil, but that the evil humans do to each other is the price God was willing to pay to insure that the world was free to grow. Growth and change come mainly by exploration and experimentation. Where there is freedom, there will be errors. In a system where there are no errors, there is no freedom. This model manages most of the real-life data rather well. It implies that humans are in the process of evolving. That implies that at any given

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moment, we are inadequately evolved, individually and communally. Therefore, change is the objective toward which we drive. Change always brings the pain of losing what was before. Hence, pain is inevitable. No alternative ever existed, nor can ever exist. The choice of being responsible agents, shaping our own painful evolution, could not have been different for Adam in the story and cannot be different for us today in real life. This is the best of all worlds, because it is a world in which we are free to become our full true selves. There is no other way out of our primitive childlike naïveté in the Eden womb into the growth and maturation of whole personhood. Some persons get stuck in the transitional alienation phase. This may result from genetic, biochemical, or situational reasons. Such folks do a lot of damage to the rest of us. Social psychology research on prison populations, for example, demonstrated that 80% of the prisoners suffer from some form of genetically inherited psychotic or schizoid disorder. It is interesting, therefore, and very clear, that the formulators of the ancient Hebrew story intended to explain the problem of evil and human disorder by asserting that humanity made a bad choice in the Garden of Eden. They were sure it had a permanent and pervasive effect. This does not imply that some decisive act by Adam to move him from naïveté to maturity was not necessary. Neither does it mean that nothing constructive toward real growth came out of Adam’s decision. It only contends that his decision was a transitional act unnecessarily fraught with a self-defeating price: rebellion and alienation. The Hebrews saw it as a destructive anxiety reduction mechanism, insofar as they sensed it in those terms. One can posit the notion, as the ancient Hebrews did, that the fall story represents such a destructive move that paradigmatically explains the disorder and alienation in humans. Then the story describes an essentially destructive and self-defeating response to the generic anxiety of birth and differentiation. That would represent it as a dysfunctional response to our responsibility for choosing our personal destinies. Even so, that would not erase the fact that the fall has constructive, freedom-affording results for humankind. Similarly, adolescence may be handled unnecessarily rebelliously by some teenagers but lead out to a growth process that results in profoundly healthy relationships with parents, authorities, and traditions later on. Paul seems to imply something of this regarding humanity when he ties the naïve primordial state of human bliss in Eden to a continuum that leads from paradise to fallen humanity in Genesis 3, and then on to fruition in the believer as a new person in Christ. Paul believed that to be the true destiny of all humanity. The fall story represents one option for implementing the necessary and inevitable differentiation process of self-actualization. If the Hebrews thought of it as a destructive option and the source of evil in the world, the implication is that Adam might have exercised an equally growth-inducing act of will and ego strength had he chosen, for independent and personal

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reasons, to affirm God’s will and value system, and not eat of the tree of knowledge. Would that have been as initiatory, independent, and effectively disengaging an act toward growth as disobedience proved to be? Would it have had adequately self-affirming, though less self-defeating, consequences? If so, the paradigmatic import for human history is that the distortion, pain, alienation, and sickness with which humans have responded to our choice of destiny throughout history were not inevitable elements of the growth process of the race. That is apparently what the ancient Hebrews thought. However, what should this mythic figure, Adam, have done about the choice of facing the issues of both good and evil in life? Adam, of course, symbolizes each of us. How can we move beyond naïveté to face reality if we shut our eyes to the problem of evil? Adam marched forward boldly and took it on. Good for him. Humans have made many bad decisions: in the way we have apprehended God’s real disposition toward us, in the way we have responded to the quandary and ambiguity of life, and in the degree of finesse with which we have processed our own psychological dynamics, development, and destiny. The ancient Hebrews were claiming in their story that such decisions can be made more wisely, redemptively, and faithfully, and with healthier consequences. Evil is the damage we do to each other and ourselves by our distance from God’s will and way. Perhaps so, but I think the pain of life is just an inevitable consequence of the experiment of human development in a system built on the grace of free choice. Comparably, it is possible, I suppose, that the disengaging adolescent can achieve health and growth while choosing, as an independent act of will and ego, to affirm and follow the healthful values of parents, authority, and traditions toward constructive conformity. Indeed, that course, when expressing rather than compromising the child’s own authenticity, may be far less self-defeating, inefficient, erosive of health, and painful than disengagement that strains relationships or maximizes confrontation, alienation, and griefloss. However, when I get a family into my clinic that has two children in midadolescence, and bitterly complains that one of the two is a troublesome child, self-defeating and disobedient, whereas the other one has always been a perfect child, the one I worry about most is the perfectionist child who is not engaging in the experiment of finding out who he or she is as an individual. The story of the fall is theological mythology that confesses the meaning of human pain and disorder, as humanly induced, in the face of a gracious and provident God, who generously created and sustains us in freedom and forgiveness. However, our differentiation from a womblike relation with God is absolutely necessary. It appears that the Hebrews were correct in implying that the disengagement could be more or less self-defeating. The story suggests that such individuation could probably be done in a way that affirms the perspective and value system that heals. It need not be a decision that

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aggravates generic human anxiety and sickens us. However, it seems like those are more correctly on the right track who deemphasize the cataclysmic and alienating dimension of human fallenness while placing all the emphasis on the freedom for growth that humans as independent agents need and possess. Losing paradise in the ancient story freed Adam and Eve. They accepted the price they had to pay and the blessings that they earned: sexual awareness and fruitfulness, progeny, and generations of creative farmers and city builders. That growth model handles the data of human perplexity in a way that implies that the fall story speaks of a revolution and that, however paradigmatic that may be of actual human experience, humankind always has the alternative option of an evolutionary growth response to our generic human anxiety. It is intriguing to consider the possibility of humanity in general, and our children in particular, developing through a peaceful adolescence, a relatively nonturbulent exploration of the possibilities of being like God or like parents, knowing good and evil. My initial outlook in wrestling with the fall story was to conclude that Adam had no alternative. I was strongly inclined to the notion that a turbulent and alienating process is inherent to adolescence and its disengagement, as it is inherent to the rather violent and painful business of being born. However, I am indebted to many years in clinical work and pastoral care for being teased out into rethinking that. The fall story, as it stands, really does represent an unnecessarily self-destructive form of adolescent rebellion. Presumably Adam’s growth and differentiation could have developed tranquilly and evolved constructively to maturity, as in healthy and cherishing adolescents. That seems clearly to be what the authors of the myth intended to say. What urged me to take a new look at the matter was the increasing success I discern in some thoughtful and considerate adolescents who assiduously refuse to give up a course of evolutionary rather than revolutionary disengagement. It seems possible for them constructively to explore the growth and maturation process with a genius for humor and humaneness, even when their parents are, betimes, less than helpful to their wholesome development. Disengagement by evolutionary and constructive anxiety reduction seems to work for them. It struck me in thinking of this that the odyssey of Jacques Cousteau’s son seems to be a good illustration of this kind of growth. Instead of running away to sea, so to speak, literally or figuratively, as so many adolescents do, he “went down to the sea in ships” with his father and found wisdom and a beautiful new world. The metaphor is somewhat tortured by his untimely death in the ocean deep. It is intriguing, in any case, to contemplate how things might have been in human history if the state of affairs in the human psyche and spirit were such as to permit and prompt a different mythic story in Genesis 3. What if the

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story could have represented humanity as reaching forward within the will of God, for individuality, maturity, and wisdom; and for knowledge of being like God in comprehending the world inside out, in knowing God as he now knows us? Cooperative growth with God and exploration of the possibilities of human destiny in tranquility do not comprise a story that rings true to the human experience of dissonance, alienation, and dis-ease. However, growth in joyful faith and trust suggests a redemptive alternate model that might have been from the beginning, if we were not so badly distorted by generic anxiety. However, the human race was set upon the course of its experiment with destiny, without an adequate database, without adequate experience, and without a vote in the matter of our own existence in the first place. We did not choose to exist, or to launch ourselves in primitivity and ignorance, or to pursue our destiny without a light to see the next step. We did not choose to be inadequate to the responsibilities of life and the challenges of godliness.

THE IMAGE OF GOD IN FALLEN HUMANITY If we think of the fall story and of human distortion as destructive anxiety reduction dynamics, a final significant question regarding human nature arises. In what sense do humans image God in choosing self-destructive or self-defeating courses? The human behavior of will and ego over against power and authority reflects and is possible because of an essential dimension of God’s nature in humans: the function and attribute of being independent creators and independent agents of our own destiny. In the story of the fall and in the real human experience of pain, disorder, distortion, and disease, humans act as independent creators gone awry and as independent agents choosing self-defeating destinies. Those choices free us to be persons and to grow, but they decrease the focus, efficiency, and gratification of that freedom. They increase the dissonance, conflict, and erosive sense of alienation. God, as independent agent, could also act in self-defeating ways but apparently does not because he decides not to do so. That is a credit to God’s moral character as an independent moral being, not a result of his essential nature, as if he had no alternative. This reminds me of the cynic’s joke: “Can God create a rock that is so heavy that God cannot lift it?” The joke has greatly entertained the superficial and cynical secularist and unduly troubled the Christian philosopher. It is to the credit of the superficial Christian and the secular philosopher, perhaps, that it troubles neither of them much, both thinking it quite absurd. It is, however, a profound question. The answer is not the one that Christian philosophers have given, namely, that God cannot create a rock too heavy for God to lift, because that is out of keeping with God’s true character. The answer, I judge, is rather that God can very well create such a rock. He can

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do anything like that, or any other sort of self-defeating thing, if he chooses to do so. Moreover, he can do it without ceasing to be God, contrary to the view of some Christian philosophers. He would, of course, turn out to be a bad God in the moral sense of that term as well as in the social sense of the term. But he would not be a bad God in the ontological sense. He would still be God, and that is all that counts ontologically. In that sense, it is not different for God than for humans who are bad morally and socially because they choose self-defeating behavior but remain humans in every ontological sense. The crucial issue here, however, is that God has not created a rock too heavy for God to lift, so to speak, and has chosen not to engage in other selfdefeating behavior because he has apparently chosen to behave with inviolate moral integrity. He has chosen to be true to his own nature and destiny. He is not merely locked into an inevitable moral quality because of his essence. He is free to choose, grow, explore, experiment, decide, and fail. He has chosen not to do so, not because of his essence, but because of his moral integrity. Therefore, because all morality is ultimately aesthetics, he has made this choice because of his aesthetic integrity, and his sensitivity to what is beautiful, comporting well with authentic coherence in his world. Hence, God decides against self-defeating behavior. That is a matter of appropriateness and proportion. He is trustworthy, not merely as a being defined by logical or ontological inevitability, but by moral agency: a being who is psychologically committed to holiness in the sense of wholeness. The God of the Bible is not a Greek God in a pantheon of abstract qualities personified in archetypal figures, but a God who chooses, acts, could err as Jesus could have in the wilderness temptations, and decides not to do so. He decides to be moral, gracious, and aesthetically appropriate. Humans reflect the image of God in our nature by the integrity of our choices. In that, we are independent choosers; we image God and reflect his nature and moral quality. We spoil the clear quality of that imaging process when we choose inappropriateness and disproportion, and when we defeat ourselves in our growth endeavors or needs by being aesthetically inappropriate. Such was the case of Adam, as the Hebrews saw it and reported it in the myth of the fall. Such is the case in our daily failures to make sound, wholesome, and healing choices, when we have adequate information, ability, and genetic disposition to make such choices. When we make such good choices, we usually create good results. When we make bad choices because we have inadequate information, lack of ability, or genetically preset dysfunction, we are not evil, even if our choices create pain. When we willfully inflict damage or pain while having adequate information, ability, and genetic health to prevent it, we are the sources of the only evil that happens in the world. Humans recapitulate the fall story daily.

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That is undoubtedly why we so spontaneously perceive the authenticity of that ancient myth. God is not the source of evil just because God created a world that is free, intending human and animal experimentation to pursue our potential destinies.

An early form of sections of this chapter, in which the argument was carried out in a slightly different direction, was previously published in J. Harold Ellens and Wayne G. Rollins (Eds.) (2004), “From Genesis to Apocalyptic Vision,” in Psychology and the Bible: A New Way to Read the Scriptures (Vol. 2, Chap. 3, pp. 23–42). Westport, CT: Praeger. Copyright © 2004 by J. Harold Ellens and Wayne G. Rollins. All rights reserved. Used with permission of ABC-CLIO, LLC, Santa Barbara, CA.

ch apter 7

Evil as a Pastor Sees It F. Morgan Roberts

It is only as a pastor that I can address the question of evil. Even though my seminary education acquainted me with the disciplines of theology and biblical scholarship, my more than half-century career in ministry was spent almost entirely in congregations and not as a teacher of theology or biblical studies. Even when, toward the end of my active ministry, I served on a seminary faculty, my work was focused upon congregational ministry. Thus, it is only within that context that I can discuss the subject of evil. So let me begin with words addressed to a congregation by the Apostle Paul. Writing to the congregation of Christians at Rome, Paul offered them this audacious challenge: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21). I believe that we can assume, without elaborate exegesis, that he was urging them to do something that he believed to be possible. My experience in the church, however, indicates that a majority of Christians have never believed in such a possibility. It took me many years to arrive fully at the realization of this fact; however, it did begin to dawn upon me by the time I was seven years into my journey in ministry. It was at this point that I began to realize that my ministry was being carried on in two very different churches within the same congregation, and that the radical difference between them was whether they believed that Paul’s challenge to overcome evil was possible. One church believed that it was possible and was involved in making the possibility a reality. The “other church” did not believe that victory over evil could ever be conclusive. It may be helpful to label these two churches the overcoming church and the surviving church.

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One part of the surviving church was doing its best to endure the “world, the flesh, and the devil,” as it awaited its future life in heaven. Another constituency was watching as a guilty bystander, while still another was even aiding and abetting the victory of evil in the world. The lines between all of these distinctions were not clear; indeed, a pastor or church member can be living partially in both churches, or even in all four camps, without being aware of what is happening. I wish I could say that I made a clear choice to carry on my ministry in the overcoming church, but I now realize that it would take many years to realize all of what was involved in being a pastor in the overcoming church. Even then I realized that in every part of that mixed multitude that constitutes Christ’s church in the world, there were always dear people who somehow lived closer to God than I did, despite the bad influence of the kind of church to which they belonged. So in what I will say as we talk about evil, I want to speak both with humility and gratitude to all those saintly souls who were always better than their church and so wonderfully kind to me along the way of my journey. What I do remember is the day when I could begin to articulate the existence of these two radically different churches. It was in 1965 when I came upon these words: Within the strange, sprawling, quarrelling mass of the churches, within their stifling narrowness, their ignorance, their insensitivity, their stupidity, their fear of the senses and of the truth, I perceive another Church, one which really is Christ at work in the world. To this Church men seem to be admitted as much by a baptism of the heart as of the body, and they know more of intellectual charity, of vulnerability, of love, of joy, of peace, than most of the rest of us. They have learned to live with few defenses and so conquered the isolation that torments us. They do not judge, especially morally; their own relationships make it possible for others to grow. It does not matter what their circumstances are, what their physical and mental limitations are. They are really free men, the prisoners who have been released and who in turn can release others. (Furlong, 1965, p. 22)

By the time I reach the end of my sojourn in ministry, I hope that I will be able to say that I have given myself, heart and soul, to the service of such a church. Indeed, what a different world it would be if what Monica Furlong describes could be said of the entire church. Sadly, it is not, but I would like to begin by describing my vision of what just one congregation might be like if the pastor and the people sought to realize the overcoming reign of God in the world. In my vision of a congregation that is alive with a spirit of goodness, I see a gathering of common people who live with a vibrant sense of personal, Godcreated worth. I see excitement in their experience of the Creator Spirit’s

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ongoing work of creation in their lives as they engage in the realization of the unique possibilities that God intends for every life. This is not to be confused with fuzzy “possibility thinking” or the pop gospel of “be all you can.” Their hope is not about getting anything as a reward for their faith, whether the reward is prosperity in this world or heaven in the world to come. In fact, “getting” is an entirely foreign word in the faith vocabulary of this congregation because of their realization of having already received more than an abundance of the spiritual health and wealth of God’s radical grace. Because of this, their worship service does not begin with the kind of general confession in which they bewail the past week’s sins and the depraved, fallen condition of their sin-sick souls from which their daily sins supposedly arise. Concerning the obvious imperfection of human nature, they “prefer the theory that He is not done making it yet” (MacDonald, 1867, p. 32). They accept themselves as works in progress, knowing that a loving Heavenly Father shares their sadness when growth is slow, but also rejoices at their every little attempt to let the Spirit fill their lives to the full with the Divine Presence, just as that same Spirit filled the life of Jesus. One glance at this congregation tells you that they practice radical hospitality. They welcome all persons, “regardless of race, ethnic origin, worldly condition, or any other circumstance not related to the profession of faith” (First Presbyterian Church, n.d.). Because of this, those attending worship will be dressed in various ways, reflecting individual taste or material condition. As a newcomer, you may notice these differing styles, but the members are hardly aware of such superficial differences of dress because they have learned to look beyond the packaging of every life. Sexual orientation does not exclude anyone from full participation in membership or leadership in the congregation, and special care assures that worship is accessible for those with handicaps or special needs. Newcomers will probably be puzzled at first in trying to categorize what kind of church this is because it will turn out to be neither a flocking together of predictably affluent, educated “culture vulture” liberals, nor will it look like “the Republican Party at prayer,” a charge often leveled at traditional Presbyterian congregations. In other words, the members will draw their life justifying proof texts from neither the New York Times nor the Wall Street Journal. Even the parking lot will look different to those coming to worship for the first time. There will be a conspicuous absence of new and expensive cars, a striking contrast to one of my former churches in which older members boasted of past times when a long line of chauffeured limousines lined the street during worship. The parking lot, instead, will reflect the simple lifestyle of the church’s members, whose plain living and stern stewardship make possible the giving of unbelievable sums of money to support the mission outreach of this congregation. Even the location of the church facility will reflect such stewardship. The members will have chosen to build their

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church where it is accessible by bus to those who cannot afford cars, rejecting the policies of denominations that squander valuable resources upon developing new congregations in affluent suburbs or gated communities so as to acquire their market share of the new wealth, and also to insure that such isolated and insulated congregations need never fear that the penniless Nazarene and his little friends will ever disturb their suburban Sabbath solitude. It will become obvious that the message from the pulpit plays a determining role in shaping the uniquely gracious atmosphere of this congregation, because every message will be steeped in the proclamation of God’s radically universal, unconditional, inescapable, and unlimited grace. Never a Sunday will pass without the worshippers being reminded of that amazing grace that is greater than all our sin. This gospel of grace will be made operationally genuine by caring strategies in which both pastor and laity demonstrate the reality of Jesus’s healing presence in our midst today. This pulpit will not be preoccupied with defending such postbiblical doctrines as original sin, the infallibility of scripture, the virginal conception or birth, the substitutionary atonement, the bodily resurrection as the only possible interpretation of the Easter message, or the second coming of Christ, particularly as it has been hijacked by “rapture racketeers.” In both preaching and teaching, no one will ever be asked to mouth creedal shibboleths that force upon the heart what no honest mind could ever affirm. Instead, the quality of the message from this pulpit will create a deep love and hunger for the grace-filled heart of scripture. People will be carrying their Bibles to worship on Sundays, no longer as repositories of proof texts, but because the pastor’s penetrating preaching and informed teaching will have led them into an exciting rediscovery of the Bible and a rebaptism of their imagination. This same fearlessness of the truth will guide the education of children and youth. Teaching materials will recognize that a rating system needs to govern the teaching of the Bible’s story, especially for young children. “Strong content” and stories of violent, vengeful warfare will not be “colored friendly.” Characters like Samson will not “make the cut,” and the precious time of teachers and children will no longer be wasted upon making tedious models of the Tabernacle and explaining its sacrificial system, as though the killing of any animal should ever be made appealing to any child. Teachers will cease from “finding Christ” in Old Testament stories as though Hebrew scripture does not clearly, with careful interpretation, contain the prophetic proclamation of the God who “delights in steadfast love . . . and will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (cf. Micah 7:18, 19). In both preaching and teaching, there will be no fear of the truth as though the minds of the laity are too fragile to wrestle with the questions raised by biblical scholarship. Likewise, there will be no fear of science, no attempt to place blinders on the minds of young people lest they be led astray by the “godless theory” of evolution. Regarding the origins of our world, the young

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will receive that gentle wisdom that Professor Bruce Metzger offered to his teenage son, “There had to be a push and a pull,” thus stating that both God and nature were involved in the process (Metzger, 2003). The same fearlessness will characterize the thinking and relationships of this congregation with persons of other faith traditions. Convinced that they can follow Jesus faithfully without rejecting the possibility of God’s presence along other pathways, they will seek dialogue with other religious groups and engage in ways of working together for the health and welfare of their community and world. Following the way of Quaker George Fox, they will “walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in every one” (Jones, 1976). Freed from all the fears that cripple heart and mind, these people will find ways to reach out to those whom others fear and neglect. Members of this church will find ways to visit prisoners and reach out to those migrant workers who are the victims of modern-day slavery in the United States. In the same spirit, they will find effective ways to speak out against injustice and oppression, and will reject all of the ways in which “the myth of redemptive violence” invades every level of our life from national policy to children’s television (cf. Wink, 2007). It will be clear that these people are determined to follow Jesus wherever they find his footprints in our world. When they celebrate the sacrament of baptism, they celebrate God’s gracious acceptance of all the children of the world. At the Lord’s Table, instead of looking backward upon a blood atonement, they look forward to the great banquet of the kingdom when people will come from east and west, north and south to sit at table in the kingdom of God. As they have learned from their pastor’s sermons, they will talk much about Jesus, but speak seldom of Christ because, after all, neither did Jesus. For them, discipleship is not about believing, but about following, not about affirming creeds, but about abiding in the life-giving presence of Jesus. Perhaps in this sense, it may be helpful to think of the two different churches with which we began our discussion as the following church and the believing church. Instead of those church bulletin boards that define a church as a “Bible-believing church,” this church will advertise itself as a “Jesusfollowing church.” After such a vision, some reader will surely wonder if such a church could ever become a reality. The truth is that such a church has, indeed, always been secretly present in our world. Indeed, the kinds of people described in my opening quotation who seem to “know more of intellectual charity, of vulnerability, of love, of joy, of peace, than most of the rest of us” have always been present in small numbers in all of my congregations. Across the years, it has been my privilege to have known people who have followed Jesus in some rather radical ways. Women who might have remained in the comfort of their suburban homes have visited women in

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prison, cared for them lovingly upon their release, and hoped and believed in such outcasts despite the ways in which drugs and prostitution had destroyed their humanity. I have known a couple whose retirements from medicine and banking could have taken the usual course of world travel and leisure but who, instead, travelled to places of need, ministering to medical needs, and employing financial skills to raise millions of dollars for the rebuilding of hospitals and for raising venture capital that has enriched the lives of poor people who might otherwise have had a dismally deprived existence. All of these adventures were not my idea! I simply stood by and marveled, proud to be the pastor of such noble souls—and there are other pastors from other times and places who could also tell such stories. What is even more intriguing is that such saintly souls, without the advantage of much biblical scholarship, seemed to know instinctively how to interpret scripture in a positively critical manner. They were somehow able to filter out of the gospels those harsh words placed upon Jesus’s lips by a later generation that attributed to him their own apocalyptic nightmares, making Jesus seem delusional. Instead, these people seemed led by the Spirit to the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount, the Jesus who made that longest of all journeys, across the doorsteps of the very poor in Galilee, the Jesus who promised to be incarnate in the sufferings of the least of his brothers and sisters. It is because I have known such saints that I feel sure that my vision of a church that overcomes evil with good is a possibility. I believe that we can build again such a church because their lives demonstrated God’s power to overcome the evils of ignorance, superstition, arrogance, greed, sexism, homophobia, injustice, disease, hunger, and violence.

DEFINING EVIL The perceptive reader will surely by now have anticipated my definition of evil, the outlines of a theology of hope in the God who is overcoming evil, and the quality of a community of faith in which such healing of evil is operationally realized. Let me try a few simple sentences to express and enlarge upon my definition of evil: • Evil is the bad stuff that people do to themselves and one another. • Evil is the destructive manner in which people treat themselves and one another when they cannot trust in a benevolent God. • Evil is overcome when people believe that their life is in good hands, so that they are empowered to bear not only their own burdens but also the burdens of others. • Evil is overcome when people, believing in the kindness of God’s providential care of their lives, begin treating themselves and one another with similar kindness.

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In these simple definitions, it is obvious that I have not dealt with the problem of natural evil. How does a pastor deal with evil as people experience the destructive power of nature in storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, or epidemics that claim the lives of millions, or in the death of a child or the premature death of any loved one? To address this question with thoroughness would require another entire chapter (or book?), so I can share only my experience of caring for those who have suffered from the destructive whims of nature, which include the inexplicable illnesses of our natural body. My experience is certainly not unique; almost every pastor is called upon to answer such questions as “Why did God create a world in which such destructive acts of nature can happen?” or “Why did this happen to our family?” There are, of course, no satisfying answers. I think, however, that a faithful pastor will be careful to identify the wrong answers. In such harrowing situations, people need to know what is not happening to them. To do this, a pastor must state unequivocally that God does not send natural disasters or illness upon people as punishment for their supposed sins. To claim that the recent earthquake in Haiti was sent by God upon the people of that country for their alleged alliance with the devil is pastoral malpractice at a theologically criminal level. Likewise, to attribute such disasters to cosmic evil, suggesting that those who have suffered are helpless victims of a cosmic battle that is raging in the universe, in the course of which some are randomly chosen as victims by the devil and his minions, is to substitute biblically responsible pastoral practice with superstitious gibberish. A responsible ministry will deal with the mysteries of natural disaster and unexplained illness ahead of time by a teaching ministry that prepares people to live with the inherent ambiguity of an uncertain world. Some of the subjects for discussion will include the following.

THE ESSENTIAL GOODNESS OF CREATION The world as the creation of God is still to be celebrated as “very good.” The natural order of events is, overall, reliable. The sun comes up every morning, and seedtime and harvest continue according to the ancient promise. Although some traffic accidents happen as a result of the law of gravity (e.g., cars careening off mountain highways), gravity is still a benevolent law of nature, insuring that things will remain in the place where I left them. Although a sudden rainstorm may spoil my daughter’s outdoor wedding, the same rain will benefit the crops of many farmers, assuring our food supply. We cannot tame the earth, but we can learn to live prudently with its irregularities, building better houses that will withstand earthquakes or planning indoor weddings, as the wise and caring pastor will have counseled us to do anyway.

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However, when our best planning cannot ward off the whims of natural disaster, such events are not evil, and to classify them as such is to deny the goodness of God’s creation. As J. Harold Ellens has often declared, If a microbe sets up housekeeping on a leaf of grass, and a cow who eats that leaf contracts a serious disorder that infects its milk, and a baby drinks that milk and dies, it is not an evil inflicted by God upon us. It is an enormous grief, an overwhelming discomfort, a terrible inconvenience for us. It is a temporary illness for the cow. But it is a great achievement for that parasitic microbe. God has given us a world in which all things are totally free to act according to their own nature. That makes God’s world a wonderful world for all things, as well as for us, though our freedom in life, growth, and development has a certain risk of which we do well to be as cautious as possible.

Beyond our best scientific knowledge, the earth may be caring for its health by tectonic shifts or changing temperatures, so let us treat it with reverence and common sense as the only Mother we have at present.

THE ESSENTIAL GOODNESS OF THE HUMAN BODY Our bodies are remarkable creations. Even if I object to the teaching of intelligent design in science curriculums, the marvelous capacity and durability of my body and my mind are some of my strongest personal reasons for believing in God. Twenty years ago, when I was in my early 60s and still jogging, during a late afternoon run at a retreat center I came upon an abandoned steam locomotive on a country railroad siding. Fascinated with steam engines since my boyhood, when I listened to the haunting sounds of night trains from the tracks below our home, I climbed into the cab of the engine and discovered a rusted plate that identified the date when it was made. It emerged from a famous locomotive factory in Ohio and was put into service in 1928, the very year of my birth! Upon returning home, I went to a T-shirt store and had one made for me with lettering that stated, “Made in 1928, and still running.” With all of the aches and pains of my aging body that keep me from running as fast as I could in my teens, God has still done a better job in making my body than the manufacturers of that abandoned locomotive. Of course, it is not always so. The hardest task of any pastor is to minister to a family in which a child is dying prematurely of some ravaging disease. To endure the death of one’s own child is the greatest test of faith that I can imagine. However, the physical suffering and untimely death of children are the exceptions, not the rule, of human experience. Despite the abuse that our bodies sustain from our own poor stewardship of our health, our bodies are remarkably durable, demonstrating what amazing creations they are.

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Thus, I cannot think of my wrinkling skin and stiff joints at age 82 as evidence of the presence of any element of evil or flawed workmanship in God’s good work of creation. It is not an evil thing that I am going to die someday. My body has served me more faithfully than I deserve, and I am hoping for something better anyway when, at last, my remains are scattered upon the earth from which I came. Natural disasters and illnesses are not evidence of evil in the very good creation of God. Even if the worst natural disasters and illnesses should yet befall me, I can still believe in the possibility of a community of faith in which I will receive kindly support, and in which also real evil is being overcome by faith in a gracious and loving God. We can overcome evil with good.

GOD, PLEASE SAVE ME FROM YOUR FOLLOWERS! Those were the words of a bumper sticker given to me by a friend who was dying of AIDS. When he ought to have received support from the church, what he received instead was the unhelpful harassment of true believers who pestered him with tracts proclaiming the plan of salvation by believing in which he would, at least, be saved from the eternal damnation to which his perverted sexuality had doomed him, in their view. Indeed, these were not followers of Jesus, but instead “believing Christians” for whom the Christian life bore more resemblance to the behavior of those who condemned and would have stoned the woman taken in adultery (Jn 8) than to the way of compassion demonstrated by Jesus’s forgiveness of that woman and his embrace of outcast lepers. What has hindered the church from becoming a community of radical grace in which people, believing in the kindness of their Heavenly Father’s providential care, begin treating themselves and one another with kindness? Sadly, it is the church itself that has been the major roadblock in the realization of God’s vision of the beloved community, of the One Body and the One Spirit. By its selective interpretation of scripture and the construction of its creeds, the church has replaced God’s vision of the kingdom with the church’s own controlling, imperial goals. By its doctrines of original sin and substitutionary atonement, the church has taken control of our salvation, proclaiming and pushing the church’s version of a future heaven instead of God’s vision of a kingdom of love and justice on earth. What a morbid mess confronts us when we review the prospectus of the church’s insurance plan for our salvation. “In effect, the church has created the ultimate spiritual franchise, a kind of salvation monopoly. We are pronounced bad by birth and given only one possible cure by the same entity that provided the diagnosis” (Meyers, 2009, p. 97). We are diagnosed as having been born with an incurable disease called sin that we inherited from our original parents in the Garden of Eden. Because

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of their alleged disobedience when tempted by the devil, disguised that day as a snake, God’s wrath was kindled against them and all their descendants thereafter. Thus, even though we did not ask to be born, we were born guilty, incapable of pleasing God because of our flawed and sinful nature. The penalty for having been born is that, unless a way could be found to appease God’s wrath, we would be sent to hell, the devil’s headquarters, and tormented forever because of our spiritually useless condition. Because it was unthinkable that those dying in infancy would be damned forever, one branch of the church invented a middle region for unbaptized infants called limbo. Being neither heaven nor hell, limbo gave relief to grieving parents who had lost a little one. But what slim comfort this must have been to bereaved relatives on the Roman Catholic side of my family; they would never see their baby in heaven, although that would be better than having it burning in hell. If all of this sounds like spiritual nonsense, God’s purported solution, as seen by such churches, becomes more mystifying. To relieve God’s pent-up anger over the mess created by our bad decision to disobey one of the garden regulations (mind you, it was God’s idea in the first place to make us creatures of choice), on one day when God just could not “hold it any longer,” the decision was made that God would relieve his wrath by killing his own son as a substitute, even though God had previously outlawed the idea of child sacrifice. So Jesus died in our place for our sin so that, if we accept him as our savior and scapegoat, God will no longer be furiously mad at us, and we will be admitted to his heavenly mansions upon our death. Lest this plan seem too simple, some other details of the plan need to be understood. In order to be a perfect sacrifice for our sin, Jesus had to be a sinless, sexless substitute. None of the angels could qualify for the job. Only Jesus, God’s son, could do what needed to be done, the church claims. However, being human was not enough. He had to be born of a virgin so as to escape the contamination caused by sexual intercourse, a nasty compromising animal activity, in that view, created by God for the perpetuation of the human race. In such a perspective, most of Jesus’s life was spent waiting around to do his real job. Having been born of the Virgin Mary, there wasn’t really much for him to do but await his confrontation with Pontius Pilate. What he did during some of those years of waiting was filled in by some of his friends, who told stories about his superhuman miracles and wise sayings. Those sayings, however, are seldom emphasized as being of the greatest importance. They are sure that “[t]he central thing is the Cross on the Hill rather than the Sermon on the Mount” (Manson, 1949, p. 9). They say that Jesus’s real mission was that of being a blood sacrifice for our sins. Because of this, the main business of the church that he left behind has been that of getting people to buy into this insurance plan so that they can escape hell and gain

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admission to heaven. Additional wrinkles were added to the plan when some churches disagreed about certain details. Some theologians argued that we actually never had a decision to make about the plan, but that God had decided ahead of time who would be saved and who would be lost. Others maintained that the decision was solely ours to make. A very few others, deemed by the church to be “crazies,” said that none of the above was true, that the entire plan made no sense, that God did not need to kill anyone in order to forgive us, that God had decided to save all of us, and that Jesus’s death was the ultimate demonstration of how nothing can change God’s universally loving attitude toward all of his children, however bad, good, or imperfect they may be. The “crazies” have always been a minority in the church; many of them are not even considered to be Christians, and some have even been driven out of the church. Thus, the no-choicers and the free-choicers have run the main insurance agencies for the plan of salvation. Despite their differences, however, they have agreed that, finally, time will run out and the window of opportunity for buying into the insurance plan will be closed. At some moment Jesus will return to earth, descending on the clouds, just as he ascended many years ago. Some say it cannot be known when, whereas others have set an exact date. The final whistle (Gabriel’s horn) will sound and the game will be over, with the winners going to heaven and the losers heading into eternal torment. There will be no final handshakes between the winners and the losers (nothing like the good sportsmanship during NCAA March Madness). No more Mr. Nice Guy stuff from Jesus. Shockingly, Jesus will have taken on some of his Father’s meanness. Gone will be the humble donkey upon which he rode, mocking the pomp and pretense of Pilate. Instead, just like Pilate, he will now be riding a white war horse (Rev 19:11), judging and making war. The lowly Jesus will, strangely, have been Romanized! The kingdom vision of love and justice will have given way to the church’s version of empire. Please note that I do not single out the Roman Catholic Church as principal purveyor of this plan. It is peddled by all kinds of churches, denominational and nondenominational, although with slightly different add-ons. But let the buyer beware! In whatever form, it is the major hindrance to the creation of a church in which the good news of radical grace overcomes the power of evil.

THY KINGDOM COME, THY WILL BE DONE ON EARTH! One of my morning prayers is that I may live more nearly as I pray. Would that it were so for the church that, while it has prayed for centuries for the coming of God’s kingdom, has frittered away its life, for nearly 2 millennia, upon the careful management of its franchise as the sole purveyor of a cheap,

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otherworldly salvation. Ever since the fourth century, when the successors of an original band of unlettered but doctrinally unfettered fishermen became bishops, wining and dining at Constantine’s table, the exhilaration of real discipleship has been lost. If this is all that the church has to offer, I am left asking, “Is this all there is?” The church’s cherry-picking of scripture as the basis for its creedal formulations has left me with nothing that could excite a soul’s highest aspirations. Instead, it has left me with:

A God I Cannot Love How could I possibly enjoy a passionate, personal relationship with a God who is subject to fits of violent anger? A God whose anger for his errant children is so intense that it can be discharged only by killing his only son is a God who cannot be loved. Why would any decent person long to be in a heaven where the winners live with the knowledge that those who have not embraced the tenets of the Shorter Catechism are finally getting their just desserts, and where one of the principal forms of entertainment is that of looking down with delight from heaven’s balcony upon the torments of the damned? How could I harp and hallelujah forever with people whose tastes for such exquisite violence exceeds the crudity of the Roman gladiatorial contests?

A Church I Cannot Respect The need to be in constant control is an inherent element in the church’s traditional plan of salvation. When salvation resides in the church’s doctrinal monopoly, there must always be oversight, lest some newcomer opens a window by mistake, letting the uncontrollable winds of the Spirit blow all the carefully kept balance sheets off the table. Because the ongoing business of such a theology must always be that of reducing God to a manageable proposition, constant quality control must always be the order of the day. Nothing can be left to the free-flowing breezes of grace that waft in from Calvary. Temptations to absolute corruption by absolute power are constantly present, whatever the form of church government. Whether we have a church run by a bishop, presbyter, or televangelist, the need for control is written into the manual of operations.

A Jesus I Cannot Follow A Jesus garbed in the church’s garments of perfection is someone I cannot follow. We must admit that such a removal of Jesus from our common life begins in two of the gospels in which he is virginally conceived; from birth, he is already on the way to becoming a sinless, sexless Superman. For many

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modern believers, Jesus is none other than a biblicized version of Superman, actually the Gnostic Jesus whose humanity was only a temporary costume. His sinless divinity locates him beyond my limited humanity and places no demand upon me to let my humanity be filled with the presence of God as was his. His sexlessness offers a lesser level of discipleship to married disciples, elevates celibacy, and forever taints our sexuality with shame. I cannot possibly be like him, nor can I aspire as did the early martyrs to follow him even unto death. Because his death is an atoning death, it is a death that only he can die and becomes, therefore, my draft exemption from ever having to die in his service on any spiritual battlefield.

A Self I Cannot Value What inducement for my personal growth can ever be derived from the dismal doctrine of original sin? What kind of joyful worship can follow a general confession in which we must confess that “there is no health in us”? I have often arrived at worship, having “won some and lost some” during the previous week, hoping for sermon or song in which I will be given a spiritual workout, only to be dragged down in a confession of sins that I did not commit. Sometimes I want to return later that afternoon to place a quarantine sign on the door of such a church, warning others to stay away lest they be infected by such enervating worship. The church does us no service when, from the opening moment of worship, it treats us as invalids. Such a spirit can even infect preaching. I have not returned to worship at a particular church in which the preacher speaks to us as though our minds cannot process tough truths, and instead jollies us with Readers Digest–level humor, as though we are nursing home patients. Instead of speaking to me like someone on the edge of the grave, challenge me to climb steep mountains. Say to my soul, So let me draw you to the great forgiveness, not as one above who stoops to save you, not as one who stands aside with counsel. Nay! But as one who says, “I too was poisoned with the flowers that sting, but now, arisen, I am struggling up the path beside you. Rise, and let us face these heights together.”

A Neighbor I Cannot Embrace If the only business of the church is that of getting people to believe certain things so that they will escape hell and gain heaven, I cannot have a grace-filled relationship with my neighbor. When the mission of the church is reduced to such alternatives, I must size up every person as either saved

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or lost. How can I possibly sleep, knowing that my neighbor may slide into eternal torment during the still watches of the night? How can I have casual backyard conversations with someone who is living on the brink of hell? How can I enjoy a friendly cookout with lost souls? The church’s bad news gospel forces me to divide my world up into black–white, yes–no, saved– lost, good guy–bad guy categories. Such a binary mind-set is destroying our world because it has no reality. The truth lies in an intriguing koan-like statement: “You see, dear, I think there are two types of people in the world. Those who divide the world up into two kinds of people . . . and those who don’t” (Hendra, 2004, p. 190). Radical grace means that all of our neighbors are just people, people like ourselves, already loved, accepted, and justified by grace. My neighbor is already—and has always been—a child of God. My only mission is to embrace and love my neighbor into being what he or she already is.

A Future I Cannot Fathom What helpful meaning can be derived from the apocalyptic promises in the Synoptic gospels of Jesus’s coming again? Except for members of the Flat Earth Society, how can Christians in a post-Copernican world find meaning in the promise that Jesus will return upon the clouds so that “every eye shall see Him”? I have often wondered what nourishment for daily living can be taken away from worship services in which participants stand to affirm, “And he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead.” Then, too, what additional complications have been festooned upon the doctrine of the Second Coming by those who have fastened upon a few words of Paul to the Thessalonians and, supplying some other unrelated texts, have pieced together an entire scenario to create the idea of the Rapture, a word never found in scripture? How much confusion could the church have been spared if we had recognized that, whatever Paul may have meant by his words to the Thessalonians, he later abandoned such apocalyptic prophecies and saw instead that, for the Church as the Body of Christ, the future is always in the Eternal Now. Clearly, we must not fasten upon him [Paul] the eschatology of Thessalonians which he manifestly discarded and which was never more than a secondary and temporary element in his thinking. We must embrace the concept of the one Body and one Spirit by which he replaced that erroneous idea, and which is plainly his mature and dominant conviction. (Raven, 1961, p. 130)

When we read the last word from the early church upon this matter as it comes to us from the fourth and final Gospel of John, we notice that the risen

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Jesus makes no promise of returning, but instead breathes upon his disciples the Holy Spirit, fulfilling his Maundy Thursday promise to send the Spirit to guide, teach, and equip all future followers for service in the world. How ironic that the church, stuck upon the apocalyptic visions of the Synoptics, has waited centuries for the return of One who is already vibrantly present and available. Jesus did not leave us to live as orphans in God’s world. When he died saying, “It is finished,” he meant exactly that—that God’s judgment had been signed, sealed, and delivered—and the verdict is that God has decided to save the entire world (Jn 3:16–17)! And that, indeed, is the kind of good future that we can fathom.

PLEASE COME HOME—WE MISS YOU I’ve been trying to come up with a sign to place on the front of the new church I wish we could build, one that would be inspired by God’s vision for the church, a church that would no longer surrender to the evil that results when the church abandons its true message of radical grace. Maybe the one above this paragraph would work. I saw one like it on the outskirts of Toledo many years ago, inviting people to come home to St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church. It would work as a good sign for any church that wants to embrace God’s vision because I believe that all kinds of people are waiting to come home to the kind of church that grew out of that ragged band of men who followed Jesus. If we kept the message simple, asking people not to believe, but to follow Jesus, I think we would be surprised by the kind of people who showed up. At first, the group would be small, but when the word got around it would be hard to keep people away from such a church. The attraction would not be that the real good news is easy. To be saved by grace is never easy. It means surrendering all my pride and pretense in the realization that I did not do anything to deserve God’s acceptance. It means that I did not discover anything, but that I was found out by God—and still loved. We are all a bit uneasy about being found out; in every life there are buried secrets; but the good news is that we don’t have to worry any longer because God has found us out and loved us anyway. The tough part for all of us is “coming out,” letting go, and realizing that we owe everyone in the entire world that same acceptance. That can fill every hour of every day for the rest of my life. It will demand my time and my money. It could even demand my life if I really let go; but I think that there are still people in the world looking for something not only to live for but also worth dying for. It is probably too late for me to talk with bravado about such heroic challenges. At age 82, I can promise to follow Jesus to the end of the world only if there are restrooms every 20 minutes along the way. However, I can hope that someone with a younger bladder will read these words

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and consider living, or maybe even dying, to make the church into what it is meant to be. I believe that there are people who are tired of a safe church that offers only a safe heaven. Many years ago, I came upon an advertisement that the explorer Ernest Shackleton allegedly placed in the London Times, seeking recruits for his 1914 Antarctic Expedition. The ad read, “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months in complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful.” The response was overwhelming, with more applicants than needed. Maybe that is another good idea for my church sign: “Safe Return Doubtful.” But what an adventure it would be to follow Jesus again as did those first fishermen who left their nets behind to follow the blood-stained footsteps of the Man of Nazareth. Any takers?

REFERENCES First Presbyterian Church of Birmingham, Michigan. (N.d.) Inclusion policy statement. Birmingham, MI: Author. Furlong, M. (1965). With love to the church. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Hendra, T. (2004). Father Joe: The man who saved my soul. New York: Random House. Jones, R. (Ed.). (1976). The journal of George Fox. Richmond, IN: Friends United Press. MacDonald, G. (1876). Annals of a quiet neighborhood. New York: Harper & Brothers. Manson, T. W. (1949). The sayings of Jesus. London: SCM Press. Metzger, J. M. (2003, June 15). [Tribute to J. M. Metzger’s father Bruce Manning Metzger, New Testament professor emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary, presented during Dr. Metzger’s 90th year]. Princeton Seminary Bulletin. Meyers, R. (2009). Saving Jesus from the church. New York: HarperCollins. Raven, Canon C. E. (1961). St. Paul and the Gospel of Jesus. London: SCM Press. Wink, W. (2007). The myth of redemptive violence. In J. Harold Ellens (Ed.), The destructive power of religion: Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (pp. 161–179). Westport, CT: Praeger.

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Assessing Evil: Two Clinical Cases Raymond J. Lawrence

Sometime in the early 1930s in Germany, a group of theologians was discussing the rise of Adolf Hitler and the question of whether he might qualify for the label of Anti-Christ. He was cruel, ruthless, and murderous, and he quickly consolidated political power in his own person. He was a tyrant who had gathered full political power in a short space of time. The discussion of Hitler’s qualifications as Anti-Christ concluded with the judgment by Tillich that he did not qualify. According to Tillich, he lacked one essential characteristic: the appearance of goodness. Neither the thinking nor the unthinking public in this mostly post-Christian world is seeking any Anti-Christ, except perhaps for a few fundamentalists. Nor was Tillich. Nevertheless, the discussion continues to be relevant, and the wisdom of Tillich needs to be remembered. He raises the bar of critical thinking on matters of good and evil. He promotes the importance of suspicion in ethical analysis and cautions against gullibility in relation to those who succeed in creating for themselves a benign public image. Tillich’s analysis of Hitler is an essential benchmark to keep in view whenever we attempt to measure good and evil. The essential principle is this: The most profound evil lies not with pickpockets, streetwalkers, and drunks, nor with persons who are otherwise easily associated with troublesomeness. More significant evil should be sought among the well-dressed, the reputable, and especially the seemingly beneficent. This means that assessing good and evil requires a suspicious and penetrating mind. The most powerful and effective perpetrators of evil will take measures to assure that they have a

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beneficent public image. In assessing data, a readiness to take the data at face value will not lead to a coherent or reliable analysis of good and evil. I present two clinical cases in which a gullible acceptance of the superficial combined with a failure of suspicion resulted in serious misjudgment and consequently poor, even sadistic treatment of two medical patients. In each case, the misjudgment was a result of the wider public having been deceived by the appearance of goodness on the part of the decision makers.

THE CASE OF CARDINAL JACKSON The medical ethics journal Second Opinion bills itself as Park Ridge Center’s (located in Chicago) “journal of intelligent opinion.” In April 1992, the journal published a case entitled, “House Calls to Cardinal Jackson.” It was written by the patient’s physician, David Schiedermayer, MD, associate professor of medicine and associate director of the Center for the Study of Bioethics at the Medical College of Wisconsin. This was part of a series of case studies edited by Stephen H. Mills and Kathryn Montgomery Hunter. Responses were provided by Stanley Hauerwas and Elizabeth M. Johnson. Cardinal Jackson was the pseudonym of a 79-year-old African American woman who for 10 years had been lying in bed motionless and nonresponsive, a victim of dementia that was a consequence of Alzheimer’s. Other than the fact that her eyes were open and that she sometimes seemed restless, she appeared to be in a prolonged persistent vegetative state. As her physician himself then reported, “The lights are on, but nobody’s home.” Jackson was fed by a gastric tube. Her diapers were changed regularly. She was plagued with diarrhea. A catheter received her urine. She was regularly turned, wiped, and washed by family members. Her hair was often fixed for her, and she was consistently well cared for by family members and professional visitors. A visiting nurse came three times a week. Her physician made regular house calls. He notes in his write-up that he smelled the greens cooking in the kitchen as he gave Jackson his careful examinations. She was given Tylenol and other unspecified pain medication, potassium, antibiotics, and antidiarrheal medications. She was given annual flu shots. She was taken to the hospital about once a year for life-threatening pneumonia. (Pneumonia traditionally was called “the old man’s friend” because it carried away those too debilitated to live a life worth living.) Jackson’s bed was situated in the living room, occupying a large part of the space. A sofa and the family television kept her company. Jackson’s daughter, her son-in-law, and an unspecified number of grandchildren lived with her. The house was located on a well-cared-for block in an undesirable inner-city neighborhood where troublesome groups loitered at the corners, and near where prostitutes worked the traffic curbside.

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Jackson’s physician was deeply invested in her, he reports. He was also ambivalent. On the one hand, he described her predicament as “blessed.” On the other hand, he suggested five times to the family that they consider stopping the feeding of the patient. The response from the family each time was a shocked and adamant refusal to consider such a thing. Curiously, when the physician then presented the Jackson case to his medical ethics class for discussion, he defended the family’s decision to keep her stable and living. He reported that he could not explain why. Perhaps, he said, it was all those years of knowing her. He felt perhaps that the race issue played a role here, with the generations of discrimination and abuse. Or, he confesses, he “can’t stand to think of the fire dying in those green eyes.” He was fixed on those eyes. They symbolized his urgency to keep her alive. They were as “wild as a girl’s . . . green as a Georgia hill, humid, warm, smoky, full of wonder and mystery.” They were as “full as the moon, luminous and sweet.” Elizabeth M. Johnson, a nurse and health educator in graduate school, was first respondent to the case. She expressed her approval of the physician’s care. She hoped that someone like him would be around if she ever became demented and bedridden. She does have questions, too many questions. More than 50 of them. And some are pointed, such as the question of who is paying the bills here. She wonders about the impact of the class distinctions in this case, such as that between the family and the physician. She points out that Schiedermayer’s driving around in a rusted, 15-year-old Dodge, wishing he had a new Toyota, does not resolve for Johnson the curious class distinctions in this case. It does seem to be a case of protesting too much when a physician and faculty member of a major medical center suggests he cannot afford a new Toyota. Maybe there is more here than meets the eye, and Johnson is correct to raise this question. But she does not follow through. Johnson also expresses suspicion that gender or class bias might be at work in the case when Cardinal Jackson’s granddaughter expresses her hopes to become a physician. Schiedermayer repeatedly emphasized to the granddaughter how hard both the study and the work are. Johnson questions whether he would have responded similarly had he been talking with a male or to a woman of the upper classes. The lower classes are typically quite accustomed to hard work and study if they are ambitious. Johnson’s critique is potent but diffuse. She raises important questions, but she raises so many questions that it is impossible to see what she considered most important. The second respondent was Stanley Hauerwas, a well-known and respected ethicist and professor at Duke University Divinity School. He has a reputation for pointed and significant observations and ethical assessments. In responding to this case, however, he was not in good form. The title of his response was “The Eyes Have It.” He is approving of Schiedermayer’s attention to Jackson’s “wild, green eyes.” He judges that the

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physician, in observing Jackson’s eyes, has paid attention to details that give Jackson dignity. The patient’s eyes, and the smell of greens cooking, are the kind of attention to details that keep the physician’s work with this patient humane, according to Hauerwas. He applauds Schiedermayer for declining to be swayed by “medical ethics principles and the bureaucratic character of medical care.” Hauerwas seems to put the full weight of his ethical position on the lovely, wild, green eyes of Cardinal Jackson. But as far as anyone could tell, the patient was not even dimly conscious during the past decade. Both Schiedermayer and, to an even larger extent, Hauerwas were invested in their own dreamy projections about the patient, projections that do not seem even slightly rooted in fact or experience. This appears to be some sort of romanticism carried to bizarre extremes. It is understandable if the physician and family experience grief at the demise of an important and well-loved woman, but wishful thinking will not bring her back to life, or even bring her a minimal amount of consciousness. Neither Schiedermeyer nor Hauerwas ask hard questions. Each seems bereft of serious questions. Each is seemingly seduced by the appearance of extraordinary care given to a person who for all intents and purposes is now a dead body maintained in a vegetative state. After all, brain dead is really dead. Perhaps Schiedermeyer and Hauerwas hold to the view, though they don’t say so, that persons in a vegetative state must be maintained at all costs. If so, they should at least own up to the tremendous medical cost incurred while at the same time others in the neighborhood go without. They should at least question the motivation of the family, who may be exploiting a financial jackpot of government and insurance payments. The focus on Cardinal Jackson’s wild green eyes as if she is a sensate human being is a kind of bizarre Gnosticism without a shred of data to support it. The entire critique is founded on the misguided assumption that the continuing care to this brain-dead old woman is a noble act. The aura of gracious and loving care masques what is likely a form of abuse that is disguised by wishful thinking. After all, what can be more noble than consistent, continuing care and attention to a sick old woman? Some of the hard questions that were not pursued are as follows: 1. Is the 10 years of extensive care given to this brain-dead woman an appropriate use of scarce public resources, especially given the other needs in this slum community? 2. Is there a hidden agenda at work here, namely, is the family milking disability insurance and Social Security payments that will discontinue when the patient dies? 3. Is the physician’s possible class guilt motivating him to drive an old wreck of a car and invest considerable time in house calls to a patient who arguably does not benefit from his care?

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Two even more troubling questions are “Was Cardinal Jackson actually abused under the cover of loving care?” and “Was her treatment evil masquerading as good, the worst kind of evil, as Tillich would say?” We should note that not one of the experts in the case asked the question of what presumably the patient might want in her dire circumstances. There was no clear attempt to imagine the patient’s own desires. The physician comes close when he recommends the cessation of feeding, but he gives up quickly in the face of family objections. Cardinal Jackson has been lying motionless for a decade in that bed, unable to communicate in any way with the world around her. In spite of those “lovely green eyes,” she has been unconscious as far as current medical examination can determine. But let’s suppose those lovely green eyes are aware of her surroundings, even dimly. That would certainly account for the wild look in her lovely green eyes. The most troubling ethical question in this case is whether and to what extent Cardinal Jackson may have been suffering what could be classified as torture. Torture under the guise of medical care is still torture. If she had been to any degree conscious those past 10 years, she must have become completely insane. Who would agree to a decade of lying immobile with a total inability to communicate? A truly chilling thought is that the wild look in those green eyes might have been the look of a woman who was trapped incommunicado for a decade and had consequently gone mad. Who could tolerate 10 years of the television with no ability to turn it off, and no ability to communicate in any respect whatsoever? If Cardinal Jackson were conscious to any degree, we have to conclude she had been subjected to 10 years of torture. In summary, neither the medical team nor the family nor the respondents were really identifying with the patient. They are focused principally on their own agenda. A key principal of ethics in the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian traditions— the Abrahamic faiths—is the requirement to consider the plight of the other person. As Rabbi Hillel (30 bce–9 ce) put it, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor.” Jesus is remembered to have said about the same thing in Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31. What rational person would want to accept even one more day of Cardinal Jackson’s predicament? Surely death is better than her recent decade of life. Even more astonishing is the fact that a sophisticated medical ethics journal could publish such an article and in summary leave the impression that the care of Cardinal Jackson was on balance a humane example of medical care. In fact, the last 10 years of Cardinal Jackson’s life were a violation of humane principles on several counts. The case is a stunning example of the failure to search for corruption hidden beneath an account that purports to be humane treatment. This is an example of what Tillich alluded to. Pickpockets, pimps, and hoodlums in the street are easy to label as evil. The care of Cardinal Jackson is a worse evil because it is able to parade under the presumption of great benevolence.

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THE BUBBLE BOY CASE The infamous Bubble Boy case was also a medical case with the aura of human benefaction that was in reality a story of evil, a second illustration of the axiom that the worst abuse parades as an act of benevolence. I had some limited involvement personally in the Bubble Boy case. In addition to my own involvement, I became a close friend with the woman who was the Bubble Boy’s most significant relationship. I happened to be the director of pastoral care and education at St. Luke’s– Texas Children’s Hospital in the early 1970s. The so-called Bubble Boy was David Vetter, who was born in 1971 and lived for 12 and a half years, most of that time in Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH). The public media, informed by the hospital’s public relations department and David’s medical team, cultivated a misleading public picture of David. They implied, though not explicitly, that David was a boy who was saved from certain death by advanced medical science. This drew sympathy for David and approbation for the medical team. In fact, David was a terrible victim of modern science and medicine. The failure of serious thought and consultation on the part of the medical team led to the extraordinary abuse of a human being. David lived his entire life in what was essentially a large test tube, never able to have physical contact with any other living thing. And the medical team assessed this as his fate. He was the only human being in history who was bred to live his entire life in a laboratory, a true human guinea pig. Furthermore, the medical team considered his predicament limited and unfortunate but certainly tolerable. In fact, it was neither his fate, nor was it tolerable. This was a story of horrendous abuse parading as beneficence. The story began with a scientific team of gnotobiologists in place at TCH in 1970. (Gnotobiology is the science of sterile conditions, and it was a new and arcane scientific discipline.) Naturally, the team was on the lookout for children needing its services. In the fall of 1970, an infant was admitted to TCH dying of severe combined immune deficiency syndrome (SCID). This meant the child was born with no functioning immune system. His name was David Vetter, the first of two David Vetters, and he died on November 21 of multiple infections against which his body had no defense. The gnotobiology team approached the Vetter couple and informed them of the possibility of treating any future child of theirs who may also carry the SCID syndrome. (The mother is the carrier of this inherited disease, and 50% of her male children will be symptomatic.) One of the serendipitous aspects of this story is that the putative leader of the gnotobiology team was Rafael Wilson, who was not a medical doctor but a PhD, and also a Roman Catholic monk. The Vetters were conventional practicing Roman Catholics. The trust between the Vetters and Wilson was quick, deep, and long-lasting, mostly because of their mutual religious commitments.

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The Vetters took up the offer and were carrying their next child barely a month after burying their only son, the first David. They were very eager to have a viable son. (They already had a daughter.) Later testing revealed that the embryo was male, though whether it was symptomatic with SCID was unknown during the pregnancy. Nevertheless, as a precaution, the second David Vetter was delivered September 22, 1971, by caesarian section directly into a newly constructed sterile chamber, an isolator popularly labeled the Bubble. The delivery itself was performed under the most severe sterile conditions possible. The physicians communicated with hand signals so as not to spew microorganisms into the air. From a scientific perspective, it was a great success. For 12-and-a-half years, David was free from the multitude of microorganisms that could kill him. A very few microorganisms did manage to enter the Bubble, but those that did were innocuous. I personally did not have occasion to meet David until the fall of 1974, when he was 3 years old. I approached Wilson, who was the team leader of David’s case, and Wilson graciously took me to visit David. He was a dark and beautiful boy, and related somewhat like an adult, which was understandable because his relationships were almost entirely with adults. I must say that I was deeply disturbed to observe another human being in such confinement, and never having physical contact with any living thing. My immediate thought was that this isolation could not be sustained indefinitely. I did not express my personal reactions to Wilson. I did visit David several times subsequently. However, Wilson made it clear that he was David’s religious adviser and was already teaching him religion. Though I thought this dual role of religious adviser and medical authority on the part of Wilson inadvisable, I knew I would not likely be effective should I voice such concerns. That subsequent winter, the renowned ethicist Joseph Fletcher was spending several months in residence as a visiting consultant at Houston Medical Center’s Institute of Religion. I approached both Wilson and David’s primary physician, John Montgomery, MD, and asked if they might consider having me invite Fletcher in for an ethics consultation on David. They readily agreed, probably in part because never before had there been any multidisciplinary ethical discussion on this case, and Fletcher was of course a big fish in the field. And he charged no fee for this. The ethical case conference took place in February 1975. There were about 30 persons present: the two primary physicians, several nurses, social workers, chaplains, and public relations personnel. I chaired the meeting. Wilson opened with a long history of the case. In summary he presented a sanguine picture of a healthy, intelligent, lovable boy who was doing quite well in his confinement. Wilson raised no alarm, nor did he express any fears or concerns about David’s future. The medical team was waiting for a wellmatched bone marrow transplant to be made available that would provide

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David with an immune system and permit him to leave the Bubble. For three years, none had been found. There was certainly no urgency expressed, and no estimate as to how long David may have to wait in confinement. In summary, Wilson’s review of the case was upbeat, positive, and optimistic. The chaplains under my direction had already discussed the case to some extent, and they, like me, had some serious questions about how long David could live in his sterile chamber. So after some general discussion, the chaplains raised the question directly to the medical team. Wilson was decisive and clear. David was well adjusted, had a good mind, and could live to be 80 in the sterile chamber if necessary. Chaplain Robert Main then boldly asked how the medical team would deal with puberty, and whether David might break out of the bubble when he became an adolescent. This question threw the meeting into some amount of chaos. Some of the women started crying. The physicians and Wilson became defensive. In fact, they were on the defensive. The chaplains predicted that David could not be sustained indefinitely in such isolation. Fletcher commented at the end that sometimes the flame is not worth the candle. The meeting broke up in some disarray. That is to say, there were some raw feelings all around. Six months later, I left the hospital. By a peculiar twist of fate, the hospital electrician, Tom Langford, and I had invested in a small apartment building. He came to me shortly after I left the hospital, proposing that he sell his interest in the apartment building to a Mary Murphy. The exchange was made, and I met Mary, whom I did not know previously. However, to my surprise I found that she was then working with David, and that she had been in attendance at David’s ethical case conference. She was a Ph.D. in psychology and a lecturer at Baylor College of Medicine, and had just been assigned to be David’s psychologist. Subsequently, Mary and I became very good friends. Mary first met David when he was three, about the same time I did, and during one of his brief times at home. She was sent to do a psychological workup on him. On that visit she brought a small cutting from a tree in the yard to show David a leaf close-up. She became for David from that point “the lady with the leaf.” David had a duplicate sterile chamber at his family home in Conroe, some hour’s drive north of Houston. A sterile transporter was created that fit in a van, and he was able to be moved. In his early years, he spent brief amounts of time at home. As he got older, his time at home was increased. Mary was on good terms with David’s family, and she would typically spend Friday nights at the family home when David was in residence there. The relationship between Mary and David evolved naturally from the psychological testing to become arguably the most important relationship in David’s life. The relationship evolved serendipitously. Mary simply filled a staff vacuum, becoming David’s “go-to” person. Soon after the lady with the leaf encounter, when David was back at the hospital, he was at one point being

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extremely uncooperative and the nurses were frustrated. At their wits’ end, the nurses called for assistance from Mary as the psychologist. In response, Mary found a bowl of goldfish and took it to David for him to see. His misbehavior disappeared instantly. She had a facility for engaging him that was a special talent. Officially, Mary was never more than staff psychologist, but her unofficial role was that of “hospital mother and best friend.” David spent more time with her than he did with his own mother. One of the first initiatives Mary undertook was to call for privacy sheets to be hung in the Bubble. Up to then David did all his toileting in full view of whoever was in the area. She taught him modesty and privacy. For the rest of David’s life, Mary was central to his existence. She dealt with his bad behavior. She comforted his fears. She explained the world to him. Mary was a divorcee with one grown child who lived in Asia. David became her surrogate child. She saw him several times every day. When he was fearful, she slept all night on a cot next to his bubble, embracing him through the plastic arms. In fact, Mary got criticized by some of the medical staff for getting too close to David. One of the physicians referred to her as “an old hen with one chick.” It was a fairly accurate characterization, though Mary thought it was meant to be demeaning. She was old, and he was her one chick. Truth is that it would be hard to imagine how David would have survived as well as he did without some close and consistent attention from someone as caring and as wise—and available—as Mary was. As David grew older, he became more of a companion to Mary. She shared with him her private life. He met her family and friends. They discussed her stocks and bonds. (She was and is financially well off.) Mary owned an apartment complex that she managed herself. By the time David became old enough to use the phone, a plastic insert was made in the Bubble that enabled David to use the telephone. He became Mary’s apartment manager, taking calls from tenants and doing such chores as calling the plumber. David was sometimes a prankster. When he got phone access, he was known to have made random calls to strangers announcing that he was the Bubble Boy, among other kinds of less cordial telephone pranks. That may have been his only creative means of preadolescent defiance, trapped as he was in his sterile chamber. Though David had some visits from children his own age, he was barred from any significant peer relationships because of his physical isolation. At one point, he was connected by audiovisual technology to a school room at his grade level. Although this gave him some degree of peer connection, it also dramatized both the uniqueness and alienation of his predicament. NASA built a space suit for him that enabled him, until he outgrew it, to take brief walks outside his Bubble. These were always grand events, with media people, staff, and family. In his last space suit walk, done at home in Conroe, he delighted in turning the garden hose on reporters and bystanders.

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But the walks were also traumatic events. No one was more conscious of germs than David. The process of dressing in the space suit within the sterile chamber, with no one inside to help, was nerve-wracking. It was a major undertaking, and he only did a few “walks.” As the years passed, David became more starkly aware of his unique plight, and he became more and more troubled. He complained verbally that he was caged like a wild animal. By the time he was 8, he was exhibiting alarmingly erratic behavior. He picked sores on himself. He developed a tic. He stimulated himself sexually in view of others. He would sometimes beat on the walls of his Bubble as if to break out, though at the same time he was terribly frightened of the consequences of contact with the microorganisms outside that he clearly understood would kill him. As the years passed, he increasingly resented both his confinement and his utter dependency on others. When he wanted or needed something, he must ask someone to fetch it for him. Then he would have to wait for it to be sterilized. He could of course not receive anything that could not be subjected to extreme sterilization processes. This took time, sometimes a couple of weeks. All his food had to be sterilized. Most of his life, he lived on baby food. David’s behavior deteriorated to the point where a child psychiatrist was called in for a consult “to find out what was bothering him.” As if only a psychiatrist might know. David got word of this impending consult, and when the appointed time arrived he posted a sign on his isolator reading, “Get the Hell Out of Here!” David’s mother came in from Conroe and forced him to apologize to the psychiatrist. David developed some peculiar perceptual deficits as a result of his isolation. One of the most striking was his inability to conceive of the threedimensional buildings that he could see out of his hospital suite window. He was convinced that they were simply two-dimensional. Nor could he visualize what was under the surface of the earth or under the surface of a body of water. Mary brought potted plants to demonstrate “underground.” She pulled them out by the roots to demonstrate what is under the earth’s surface, but he would not hear of it. A similar perceptual distortion occurred in one of his “space walks,” the one at his home in Conroe. When he proposed to go from his own front yard to his backyard, he insisted that the direction was across the street. By the time David was eight years old, the original medical team had left for other positions in distant cities, and a new set of physicians took over David’s care. They quickly saw that David was going to be more and more of a problem to himself and others as he got older. They proposed that the wait for a perfect bone marrow transplant was unrealistic, and that the time had come to take some risks in order to get David out of the Bubble. The family objected. They contacted the original triumvirate of Wilson, Montgomery, and Mary Ann South, who, alarmed, came to Houston uninvited

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to confront the current medical team. It was a testy meeting. The original team accused the new team of endangering David’s life. “Killing the patient is not an option,” said Mary Ann South. The medical team backed down. For another year, the status quo held. Then the medical team decided that David had no need to live most of his time in the hospital. They ordered him sent home, reducing his time in the hospital to a regimen of twice a year for a week, for checkups. He went home August 1, 1981. He was almost 10. Mary saw much less of him during the next year and a half. She did have frequent phone contact and many Friday overnights at the Vetter home. After a year and a half at home, David’s family approached the medical team confessing that they too had reached the conclusion that David could not continue in his sterile chamber. They finally came around to the conclusion that the status quo was untenable. Something must be done. The medical team decided that the best—though long shot—option was to donate David’s sister’s bone marrow in an attempt to jump-start his own immune system. When David was 12, in the fall of 1983, he received by injection his sister’s marrow. It contained a virus—mononucleosis—unbeknownst to the medical team, and by February David was dead. In an ironic twist, some experts in the field have said that such a bone marrow transplant very early in David’s life, when his system was malleable, would have cured him. This is assuming, of course, that no hidden viruses were transmitted. As could be expected, following David’s death there was little space for critique or dissident opinion. A year after David’s death, I wrote a criticism of the case entitled “David, the Bubble Boy, and the Boundaries of the Human.” It was published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (Lawrence, 1985). I was excoriated by the medical team and the family. Mary Murphy received permission to write her own decade-long saga with David, and was given permission to do so by both Baylor College of Medicine and the family. She wrote a true account from her perspective, warts and all. It was in fact a love story between an aging woman and a young boy. She felt she was fulfilling a promise she made to David. He had asked her to write “the story of their private world” after he died. It was to be, in his own words, the story of “the boy in the isolator and the woman who never touched him.” It is a beautiful and touching account of a real love affair between the two. When the family saw the page proofs, they reacted with rage, threatened a lawsuit, and enticed Baylor to withdraw its permission for Mary to publish. So the account collects dust now, waiting someday to be published. The evil in the case of David, the Bubble Boy, was the cavalier assumption that a person could live a full life physically separated from other human beings. The chaplains were correct in their prognosis, that it would become an intolerably dehumanizing burden. The medical team was blind to the ramifications of such isolation. They were partly informed, or misinformed,

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by Catholic notions of monasticism and the nobility of a life without sex. David was deprived of any opportunity for sexual experience, but more than that, he was deprived of any form of physical touch. It seemed that Wilson was creating his little monastery for David and saw no impediment to his potentially lifelong imprisonment. “He has a good mind,” said Wilson at the ethics consultation, as if the mind matters and the body does not. Wilson also compared the Bubble to an iron lung, which was hardly apt, because iron lung patients can be touched and usually can leave the machine for certain periods of time. What was done to David Vetter was evil, and it was the kind of evil that carried every appearance of good. The public and the media lauded the wonderful physicians who provided David with 12 years of life. They saw David as someone rescued from death by modern medical science. The public rejoiced at David’s life and saw the medical team as benefactors. The truth was that medical science foisted a horrible injustice on David, something that should never have been done and should never be done again. David was the one and only human laboratory animal in history. It was a cruel burden to place on a human being.

REFERENCE Lawrence, R. J. (1985). David, the Bubble Boy, and the boundaries of the human. Journal of the American Medical Association, 253, 74–76. Schiedermayer, D. (1992, April). The case: House calls to Cardinal Jackson. Second Opinion, 35–40.

ch apter 9

Demonic Beings and the Dead Sea Scrolls Loren T. Stuckenbruck

INTRODUCTION This chapter is about demonic beings in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Although this may sound like a relatively small focus, the merits of the discussion are enhanced by the number of basic issues that come into focus. Any broad topical study of the Dead Sea Scrolls is not as straightforward as would have been assumed by many from the time of their discovery among 11 caves in 1947–1956 until the rapid publication of numerous materials during the last 20 years. Although many of the previously unknown Hebrew documents were often attributed by default to authorship related to a movement of “Essenes” thought to have settled at Khirbet Qumran, there is some recognition that some of these documents do not show telltale or obvious signs of such an origin.1 This suggests, in turn, that the Dead Sea Scrolls, taken as a whole, preserve works that reflect traditions that circulated more broadly in Hebrew- and, of course, Aramaic-speaking Judaism of the Eastern Mediterranean world. Lest one have the impression that the present topic is ubiquitous in the Scrolls, it is important to note from the start that many of the texts have little or nothing specifically to say about the demonic world. The absence of any explicit reference to demonic beings in the texts does not in each case have to be interpreted as an ideological avoidance of language when dealing with the question of evil. When demons are not mentioned, this may simply have to do with the genre of a given work or with the one-sided purposes of their composition—for example, a strict focus on topics such as heavenly liturgy (Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice), wisdom instruction (e.g., 4QInstruction and Ben Sira), halakhic instruction (e.g., 4QMiq ․seh Ma‘aseh ha-Torah),

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and interpretation and reconfiguration of sacred tradition (e.g., Temple Scroll, Reworked Pentateuch, Tan ․humim, and pesharim) and the calendrical texts (see, e.g., 4Q317, 319–326, 328–330, 334, 337). In recognition of the complex nature of the Dead Sea materials, the following outline of the demonic world among the Scrolls will nevertheless attempt to be diachronic. I shall, where relevant, begin with what may be regarded as earlier, often Aramaic, traditions that show little sign of having been produced by the Qumran community (Ya’ad). A further group of texts, mostly in Hebrew, likewise cannot be assigned to the Qumran community but to varying degrees may anticipate ideas found among some of the more “sectarian” texts. Finally, the discussion will take up the Hebrew literature of the Ya’ad itself. At the risk of being overly confident at “knowing too much,” such an approach may allow us to entertain possible lines of development in relation to ideas and practices without assuming that these developed in a linearly, traceable social continuum. In anticipation of the discussion to follow, we should note several points about which to remain cautious. First, we may expect the texts, as a whole, to present us with a complex web of traditions that wove their way in and out of any number of pious Jewish groups whose relationship to each other sometimes cannot be easily discerned. Second, it should be clear that the developments or shifts one might trace should not be confused with what was going on in all parts of Judaism generally during the Second Temple period. The voices of each text need to be heard and not imposed onto other texts if connections with them are not evident. Third, it is possible, if not likely, that a number of logically incompatible ideas could have coexisted in a single, sociologically definable group. In other words, different ideas do not always have to be traced to different groups. I am nevertheless convinced that certain developments regarding attitudes toward demonic powers can be upheld within the literature and that some of these attitudes can be associated with particular groups. One of the observable shifts in profile, for example, emerges between ideas and practices in unambiguous Ya’ad and less clearly non-Ya’ad texts. Moreover, to some degree, we shall notice a broad difference between traditions about demonic beings among the writings preserved in Aramaic, on the one hand, and those coming to us in Hebrew, on the other. The crucial period for these shifts will be the second century bce, a period of major change not only in the way Jews were responding to incursions of Hellenistic culture under the Seleucids but also in the way Jewish groups began to form while openly staking out distinct religious claims in response to one another.

DEMONIC ORIGINS IN THE ENOCHIC TRADITION AND ITS EARLY INFLUENCE In the present section, I can only briefly summarize what other publications have discussed in more detail; we note especially those of Philip Alexander

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(1997; 1999, pp. 337–341), Esther Eshel (1999, pp. 10–90, “The Origin of the Evil Spirits”), Archie Wright (2005, esp. pp. 96–177), Kelly Coblentz Bautch (2007, 2009), and myself (2003, 2004). Also, see Collins (1997), Lyons and Reimer, (1998), and Kister (1999). Fragmentary Aramaic texts recovered from the Dead Sea caves, such as those belonging to the Book of Watchers of 1 Enoch and the very fragmentary Book of Giants, attribute the origin of evil to a club of rebellious angels and their offspring, the giants, who in these texts are held responsible for deteriorating conditions on earth before the Great Flood. The brief tradition from Genesis 6:1–4 is paralleled in the Enochic literature by a more elaborate scheme that blames fallen angels (and less so human beings, who are at most represented as complicit) for much of the sin and violence committed on the earth during antediluvian times. The Flood tradition, as well as internecine fighting amongst the giants, is then presented as a divine response to these catastrophic events (cf. 1 En. 8:4–10:16; Book of Giants at 4Q530 4Q530 2 ii + 6–7 i + 8–12). The storyline of these early Enochic traditions not only is concerned with the very ancient past but also serves to explain what the writers wished to emphasize about the presence and effects of demonic evil in their own times (cf. 1 En. 15:8–16:1). At least two main purposes can be discerned in the telling of the story about fallen angels in 1 Enoch chapters 6–16. First, the story functions as a way of condemning expressions of culture associated with foreign impositions, perhaps in the wake of the conquests of Alexander the Great and his successors.2 Thus, the rebellious angels are said to have introduced to humanity the making of weaponry, jewelry, techniques of beautification, and all kinds of “magical” arts (1 En. 7:3–5, 8:3). The reprehensible practices and instructions in 1 Enoch 7–8 can be traced back to a strand of tradition according to which ‘Asa’el was the leading mutinous angel. Second, the story provides an etiology, or explanation, for the origin of demonic spirits (1 En. 15–16). This etiology focuses primarily on the giants, the offspring of the angels who have breached the cosmic order by mating with the daughters of humanity; this storyline was primarily associated with the angel Shemiazah. The deeds committed by the giants before the Flood include the agricultural enslavement of humanity to grow and produce food to satisfy their appetites, the killing of sea and land animals, the destruction of birds, and even cannibalism. Divine intervention against these giants comes about when (a) the giants turn against and kill one another; and (b), as apparently stressed in the Book of Giants, when they are destroyed by the Flood. Either way, it is significant that the giants are by nature half angel and half human, and as such are regarded as an illegitimate mixture of spheres that should have been kept separate (1 En. 15:8–16:1; cf. 10:9, where they are called “bastards”—Cod. Pan. μαζηρους = mamzerim). Divine punishment thus only brought them physical death, after which they continued to have a disembodied existence

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as spirits. We may infer that, being jealous of humanity who have survived the cataclysm with their bodies intact, these spirits instinctively attempt to reclaim a corporal existence that they once had and so are especially inclined to afflict by attacking or entering the bodies of humans (15:12). Although only a partial punishment of evil, the Flood’s significance is clear: God’s decisive intervention in the past against the angels and especially the giants demonstrates that powers of evil in all their forms are, in effect, already defeated and that their final annihilation is assured (16:1). The implication of this is that measures to be taken against them in the present, such as exorcism or other methods of warding and staving them off, are to be regarded as temporary expedients that portend God’s ultimate triumph. A number of traditions that survive from antiquity adapt this Enochic etiology (not least the exorcistic tradition preserved for us in Jesus’s tradition), including several documents preserved among the Dead Sea Scrolls (see, e.g., Alexander, 1999; Wright, 2005). However, despite the influence of the Enochic accounts, the names of the chief angelic perpetrators of evil are conspicuously absent outside the Enoch tradition.3 What does survive outside the Enoch tradition is a few references to the term Nephilim, a designation for the giants based on Genesis 6:4.4 However, Nephilim, if a proper name, does not designate any of the giants individually, nor is there any mention of giants’ names from the Book of Giants to be found elsewhere in Second Temple literature,5 that is, until we get to the much later rabbinic, Manichaean, and medieval Jewish sources. Nevertheless, the examples of Enochic influence on demonology among the Dead Sea texts are significant, not only in specific details but also in the overarching eschatological framework within which they negotiate the persistence of and triumph over evil. The fragmentary Hebrew document that has been given the title “Songs of the Maskil” (4Q510–511 and 4Q444) lists at several points a series of demonic beings called demons, Lilith, hyenas, howlers, jackals, and mamzerim (so 4Q510 1.4–8; 4Q511 10.1–4; 35.7; 48–49+51.2–3; 121; cf. 4Q444 2 i 4).6 The last-mentioned mamzerim, which occurs in 1 Enoch 10:9 (mentioned above), is a designation for the disembodied spirits of the giants. These beings, though considered operative during the present age (designated in Songs of the Maskil as “the age of the dominion of wickedness”),7 can be managed in the present in anticipation of their final punishment. The tension in the Enochic tradition between God’s triumph over evil in the past (i.e., during the time of the Great Flood) and the complete annihilation of evil in the future has contributed to at least some of this (see Stuckenbruck, 2007, pp. 94–95, which provides a comment on 1 En. 93:4c and related texts). In addition, it is possible that one of the demonic beings denounced in an “in]cantation” (la h ․aš) is addressed directly in the second-person singular in 11Q11 and may be called “offspring from] Adam and from the seed of the ho[ly one]s” (v 6) (for a discussion of the alternative

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reconstructions of the lacuna, see Wright, 2005, pp. 183–184 and n. 66). If this restoration of the text is correct, then it may be taken as a reference to a demonic being whose nature is ultimately a mixtum compositum (a hybrid— i.e., angelic and human—creature), as is the case with the Enochic giants.8 The only other obvious place where the tradition’s impact within the Dead Sea Scrolls can be observed is the Book of Jubilees, originally composed in Hebrew. The evil spirits who afflict Noah’s grandchildren following the Flood are identified as the spirits that emerged from the giants’ bodies when they were destroyed (Jub. 10:5).9 In Jubilees these spirits, however, come under the rule, not of one of the named fallen angels in the Book of Watchers (cf. 1 En. 6:7) and Book of Giants, but under Mastema (see below), whose origin is not specified. As in the Enoch tradition, they are given temporary leave to afflict humanity, their ultimate destruction is assured, and measures given to Noah to neutralize some of their malevolent effects are temporary expedients (cf. Jub. 10:10–14).

“DEMONS,” “SPIRITS,” AND “ANGELS” IN THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS It is outside the scope of the present discussion to discuss all demonic beings that are mentioned in the Dead Sea texts. Here we shall focus on several general designations applied to such entities that occur in both Aramaic and Hebrew texts. These are (a) š¯ed (i.e., “demon”), (b) rua ․h (in this context, “spirit”), and (c) mal’ak (“angel”).

“Demon” (š¯ed) The word demon is preserved six times in the Hebrew texts. Four of these occurrences are found in the above-mentioned small text of 11Q11,10 which, as noted, shows signs of having been influenced by the Enochic fallen angels tradition. In addition, there is one occurrence of the term in Songs of the Maskil (at 4Q510 1.5), where the plural form (š¯edim) is placed within a list of malevolent beings that includes the “spirits of the mamzerim.” As 11Q11, this document also shows signs of influence by the Enochic tradition. The only other reference to “demon” surfaces in a manuscript called 4QPseudoEzekiel in 4Q386 1 iii 4, the context of which suggests that Babylon is being referred to as “a dwelling place of demons.” The manuscript contains no language that is characteristic of either the Ya h ․ad or of a community that is precisely defined other than “the children of Israel” (4Q386 1 i 3). With respect to the far less numerous Aramaic materials from the Dead Sea, the term demon is preserved eight times among fragments from three documents. In five cases, we have to do with the Book of Tobit (4Q196 14 i 5, 12; and 4Q197 4 i 13, ii 9 and 13). Each of these comes from Tobit chapter 6.

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In one of these texts, the term occurs as part of a recipe for getting rid of a demon that probably circulated apart from the book and has been reproduced here (6:8) (as I have argued in Stuckenbruck, 2002). In the other four instances, the term directly refers to Asmodaeus (Tob. 6:15–17), who in the story attempts to prevent Sarah from marrying and threatens her divinely preordained marriage to Tobias. Significantly, in the later Testament of Solomon, Christian in its present form, Asmodaeus is identified as one of the giants, that is, as an offspring of a fallen angel and a human woman (T. Sol. 5:1–11, esp. v 3). The second Aramaic document, which refers to demons in the plural (šedim), is designated Pseudo-Daniel in the overlapping texts of 4Q243 13.2 and 4Q244 12.2.11 This overlapping text from two manuscripts claims that “the children of Israel chose their presence (i.e., the presence of other gods) more than [the presence of God and sacr]ificed their children to demons of error.” By attributing such a practice to Jews, the text reflects an idea that is developed within the Enochic tradition and in the Book of Jubilees (see below in this section). The term demon is not extant among the Dead Sea Scrolls Aramaic fragments corresponding to 1 Enoch. However, in the Book of Watchers at 1 Enoch 19:1, we have a reference to people offering sacrifice “to demons as gods until the great day of judgment” (Cod. Pan.—τοιϛ δαιμονιοιϛ μεχρι τηϛ μεγαληϛ κρισεωϛ). Significantly, this activity of sacrificing to demons is blamed on the fallen angels’ spirits, which have led humans astray. This text, which may be a facile allusion to Gentile idolatry, influences the Epistle of Enoch at 1 Enoch 99:7: The sinners “will worship evil spirits and demons and every (kind of) error” (so the Eth.; Grk. of the Chester-Beatty Michigan papyrus: “worship [phan]toms and demons [and abomina]tions and evi[l] spirits and all (kinds of) errors.”12 Here the motif of demon worship is more explicitly associated with idolatry. The text of the Epistle probably not only describes what Gentiles do but also has in mind those whom the writer regards as faithless Jews. This association of “demons” with idolatry, of course, may have been shaped by texts such as Deuteronomy 32:16–17 and Psalm 96[95]:5 (where the Grk. δαιμονια corresponds to Heb. ‫אלילים‬, “idols”). However, the accusation that other Jews are engaged in idol worship, as we find in PseudoDaniel and probably the Epistle of Enoch, is more developed than in the biblical texts. The Book of Jubilees deals with the motif in much the same way as the Epistle of Enoch: Because the Gentiles can be labeled as those who “offer their sacrifices to the dead, and . . . worship demons” (Jub. 22:17),13 the force of attributing this to Jews who are disloyal to the covenant is not lost: God instructs Moses to write down the message of the book because, in the future, his posterity, as a consequence of serving the gods of the nations, will “sacrifice their children to demons and to every product (conceived by)

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their erring minds” (1:11). The influence of “demons” on Israel is otherwise seen in the immediate aftermath of the Flood, when Noah petitions that his grandchildren be delivered from the “demons” (in this case, the disembodied spirits of the dead giants) who are leading them astray (10:1–14). Unfortunately, none of these texts from Jubilees are preserved amongst the Hebrew Dead Sea fragments. Keeping in mind that we do not have—and never will have—access to all the materials originally deposited in the Qumran caves, we can only observe that, for the most part (except for the identification of Babylon as a dwelling place for demons in 4QPseudo-Ezekiel), those texts that refer to “demons” bear a certain affinity with different parts of the Enoch tradition. Furthermore, in no case does any document that uses the term for demon draw on language that is characteristic for the Ya ․had literature related to the Qumran community.

“Spirit” (rua ․h) Unlike the term for demons—which can operate as a category or classification of beings on its own—the term spirit, whether in the singular or plural, is never applied in the absolute sense; it is always qualified through the addition of a further word. In particular, the references to malevolent beings as “spirits” (the plural form, ru h․ot or ru h․im) abound. Here, something can be made of the distinction between Aramaic and Hebrew literature. In the Aramaic texts, the term rua ․h, when it is applied to an evil being, occurs only eight times. In these cases, it is always in the singular: Genesis Apocryphon (1Q20 xx 16, 17, 20, 26, 28—the afflicting spirit sent by God against Pharaoh Zoan, king of Egypt) Tobit 6:8 (at 4Q197 4 i 13—“evil spirit” functions as a synonym for “demon”) 4Q538 1+2.4 (the “evil [s]pirit”) 4Q560 1 ii 5, 6 (the “spirit” that is adjured)

In the Hebrew materials, however, the term, when used for malevolent power, occurs mostly in the plural. These instances are itemized below: Damascus Document in CD xii 2 (“spirits of Belial” par. 4Q271 5 i 18) Serek ha-Ya h․ad (Community Rule) in 1QS iii 18, 24 (spirits of the lot of the Angel of Darkness) Serek ha-Mil ․hamah (War Rule) in 1QM xiii 2 and 4 (spirits of the lot of Belial) 1QM xiii 11 (spirits of his [Belial’s] lot, the angels of destruction) 1QM xv 14 (spirits of wick[edness])

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Hodayot (Thanksgiving Hymns) in 1QHa iv 23 (perverted spirit rules over a human being) 1QHa xi 18 (spirits of the serpent) 1QHa 5.4 (spirits of wickedness) 1QHa 5.6 (spirits of iniquity that lay waste for mourning) 1Q36 (spirits of transgression) 4QCatena A (=4Q177) 1–4.7 (spirits of Belial) 4Q177 12–13 i 9 (God’s great hand will help them from all the spirits of [Belial]) Songs of the Maskil in 4Q444 1–4 i+5.2 (spirits of dispute) 4Q444 1–4 i+5.4 (spirits of wickedness) 4Q444 1–4 i+5.8 (“spirits of the b]astards”) 4Q449 1.3 (rule of the spirits of his [Belial’s?] lot) Serek ha-Mil ․hamah in 4Q491 14–15.10 (spirits of [his] lot; no par. in 1QM) Songs of the Maskil in 4Q510 1.5 (all the spirits of the angels of destruction) Songs of the Maskil in 4Q510 1.5 (the spirits of the mamzerim, the demons, Lilith, the howlers, and the jackals) Songs of the Maskil in 4Q511 1.6 (spirits of wickedness) 4Q511 15.5 (spirits of vanity- ․hebalim) 4Q511 35.7 (spirits of the mamzerim) 4Q511 43.6 (spirits of vanity- ․hebel) 4Q511 48–49+51.2–3 (“spirits of] the mamzerim) 4Q511 182.1 (“spirit]s of the mamzeri]m”) 11Q11 ii 3 (11QApocryphal Psalms) (“sp]irits [ ] and demons”) 11QMelchizedek (=11Q13) ii 12 (against Belial and the spirits of his lot); and 11Q13 ii 13 (“from the power of] Belial and from the power of all the s[pirits of his lot”)

Although the examples listed here show an affinity with the Enochic tradition (cf. “spirits” of the giants in 1 En. 15:8–16:1; and recall the association of “spirits” in Songs of the Maskil with mamzerim and in 11Q11 with demonic hybrid beings), they demonstrate a growing association of the spirits with a figurehead called Belial who acts as their leader. Moreover, the predominant occurrence of this connection in the Damascus Document, Serek ha-Ya ․had, Serek ha-Mil ․hamah, Hodayot, and 4QCatena A (4Q177) suggests that this association with Belial flourished in a sectarian context,14 whereas the connection of “spirits” with mamzerim did not. Less clear is whether, as Philip Alexander has argued, “the angels of destruction” refers to the fallen angels and their association with the “spirits” under Belial, which amounts to a demotion and subordination of them into a more clearly structured hierarchy with only Belial at the top;15 after all, like Belial, such spirits can be said to “rule over” human beings (so the Damascus Document in CD xii 2 par. 4Q271 5 i 18).

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Given the frequency of the plural form for spirit to denote evil beings in the Hebrew texts, it is instructive to note, in the Hebrew texts, how the singular form is used, including when it denotes single beings. To be sure, expressions like spirit of perversity (rua ․h ‘awlah), promiscuous spirit (rua ․h zanut), spirit of wickedness (rua ․h reša’/riš’ah), spirit of impurity (rua ․h niddah), spirit of error (rua ․h ha-to‘ah), and twisted spirit (rua ․h na’awlah) function less as references to invasive spirits than as ways of describing the human condition. There are, however, a few exceptions to this. First, in the Treatise on the Two Spirits (cf. 1QS iii 13 – iv 26), the phrase the spirits of truth and of deceit does not refer to two collectives of opposing spirits, but rather to the two contrasting beings, each of which is called, respectively, the Prince of Lights (1QS iii 20) and the Angel of Darkness (iii 20–21) and to which are assigned further cohorts that cause the children of light to stumble (iii 24). Second, in fragmentary text of 4QBerakot (=4Q286), a curse is pronounced against “the ange]l of the pit and [the] spiri[t of dest]ruction” (4Q286 7 ii 7), where the spirit stands at the head of the cohort of spirits just cursed in the text (4Q286 7 ii 3). Third, it is possible that in the Songs of the Maskil at 4Q444 1–4 I + 5.8, “the spirit of uncleanness” (rua ․h ha- ․tum’ah) is listed alongside the mamzerim and thus is treated as a demonic being, perhaps even as a leading member of the fallen angels whose corruption of humanity (see 1 En. 9:8; 15:4; and Book of Giants at 4Q531 1.1, “they [i.e. the fallen angels] defiled [‘a ․tmyw]”) is represented by a more generic designation. Fourth, and following on the last example, the writer of a “Prayer of Deliverance” in 11Q5 petitions God, “[D]o not let Satan/a satan or a spirit of uncleanness (rua h․ ․tum’ah) have authority over me” (xix 15). The coupling of this impure spirit with “satan” suggests that the spirit is being treated as an external power that threatens the human being. These exceptional occurrences of the singular “spirit” in the Hebrew texts are revealing. Apart from possibly 4QBerakot, they are not found in an obviously Ya ․had or sectarian context; instead, they reflect more closely ideas that can be said to have developed out of the Enochic traditions. In this connection, it is instructive to consider the Book of Jubilees in Ethiopic texts that probably derive from an originally lost Hebrew text that did not survive among the Dead Sea materials. In Jubilees, with the exception of two texts (cf. Jub. 2:2; 15:32), the term spirits occurs almost always in a negative sense; this holds, for example, in 10:3, 5, 8, 11, 13; 11:5; 12:20; and 15:31–32. The storyline makes clear that, as in the early Enochic traditions, these “spirits” represent the afterlife of the giants who rule over the Gentiles (15:31–32), on the one hand, and who plague Noah’s offspring (chapters 10–11), on the other. In the book, they are subordinate to a chief being called Mastema (10:8). Alongside this, “spirit” (Eth. manfas) can apply to a topranked malevolent force. In his prayer near the beginning of the work, Moses petitions God not to let “the spirit of Belial” rule over Israel so as to bring charges against them (1:20). The reference to a single spirit at the top is,

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when compared with the Enochic traditions, innovative. The combination of “spirits” derived from the giants and “the spirit of Belial” within the narrative world of Jubilees anticipates what will develop within the sectarian literature into a lack of any specific mention of the giants’ spirits as well as the use of spirit, as we have seen, in senses (e.g., the human condition, and spirits of Belial) that depart from the Enochic tradition.

“Angel” (mal’¯ak) As with spirit, the term angel, when referring to an evil power, never occurs as an absolute noun unless it is combined with other words. For the malevolent use of this term, a similar picture emerges among the Hebrew texts that we have observed for spirit: the predominant usage is plural, most often in combinations such as angels of enmity or angels of Mastema (mal’¯ake mas ․tema/h—PseudoJubilees at 4Q225 2 ii 6 [mal’¯ake ha-ma(s ․temah]; and 4QPseudo-Ezekiel at 4Q387 2 iii 4, 4Q390 1.11 and 2 i 7 [mal’¯ake ha-mas ․temut]), angels of destruction (mal’¯ake h․ebel—CD ii 6; 1QS iv 12; 1QM xiii 11; 4Q495 2.4?; and 4Q510 1.5, ruh․e mal’eke h․ebel), and angels of his [Belial’s] rule (mal’¯ake mam¡alto, 1QM i 15). In one text, the so-called Ages of Creation, the plural denotes the fallen angels who are mentioned together with ‘Azaz’el as having sired giants (4Q180 1.7–8). There are also several occurrences in the Hebrew texts of the singular “angel”; these are in the Treatise on the Two Spirits (“the Angel of Darkness,” 1QS iii 20–21), Damascus Document (“the angel of enmity/Mastema,” CD xvi 6 pars. 4Q270 6 ii 18, 4Q271 4 ii 6), and Serek ha-Mil ․hamah (“the angel of enmity/Mastema,” 1QM xiii 11). Both the Damascus Document and Serek ha-Mil ․hamah use the plural and singular together in relation to the term enmity or Mastema. I will have more to say about Mastema in the “‘Mastema’ and ‘Belial’” section of this chapter. Before we turn our attention to “angel(s)” in the Aramaic texts, it is again instructive to look at the Book of Jubilees. Significantly, there is little general use of this term for malevolent beings; when referring to demonic beings, the term spirit, whether in the singular or plural, is the preferred designation. The term for angel (Eth. malak, Heb. mal’¯ak) is never employed in the singular for a being obedient to God. However, the plural angels (Eth. mal¯a’ekt, Heb. mal’¯akim) is made to designate the fallen angels twice. In Jubilees 4:15 they are called “the angels of the Lord” who “descended to earth to teach mankind and to do what is just and upright upon the earth,” whereas in 5:1 they are called “his [i.e., God’s] angels whom he had sent to the earth.” In both these cases, the nomenclature reflects the tendency in Jubilees to apply the appellation to angels who are subordinate to God (which is expressly recognized as the fallen angels’ original state). Within the Hebrew texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, then, the introduction of the singular angel to designate

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an evil being is first preserved in proto-Ya h ․ad works such as the Damascus Document and perhaps within the editorial growth of Serek ha-Mil ․hamah. Now the lean use of angel to designate an evil being in Jubilees is interesting when we note the complete absence of this among the preserved materials in Aramaic, where each interpretable context has in view “angels” or an “angel” subordinate to God or acting on God’s behalf (Genesis Apocryphon at 1Q20 xv 14 and 4Q157 1 ii 3; Tobit at 4Q196 13.2, 17 i 5 and 4 i 5; Aramaic Levi Document at 4Q213a 2.18 and 4Q529 1.1, 4; Book of Giants at 4Q531 47.1; Visions of Amram at 4Q543 2a–b.4, 4Q545 1a i 9, 17; 4Q552 1.5; 4Q553 2 ii 1; and 4Q557 2; and Targum Job at 11Q10 xxx 5). In the Enochic Book of Watchers, no single fallen angel is actually referred to as an “angel,” whereas the “sons of heaven” are collectively referred to as “angels” on a number of occasions (so 1 En. 6:2, 8; 10:7; 19:1–2; 21:10; cf. Birth of Noah in 1 En. 106:5–6, 12, though in the Epistle of Enoch of 1 En. 92:1–5 + 93:11–105:2 there is no reference to these beings). Thus, in avoiding the term angel for a demonic being, Jubilees follows what we know from the early Enoch tradition. In introducing a single figure at the top of the malevolent hierarchy, Jubilees adopt other terminology (see below). The main words used to designate the fallen angels in the Aramaic literature (including the Enoch texts) are, instead, “watcher(s)” (‘irin—extant in Genesis Apocryphon 1Q20 ii 1, 16; Book of Watchers at 4Q202 1 iv 6 and 4Q204 1 vi 8; Book of Giants at 4Q203 7a.7, 7b i 4, 4Q531 1.1, 36.1?, and 4Q532 2.7; Visions of Amram at 4Q546 22.1) and, more rarely, “holy ones” (qadišin—so Genesis Apocryphon 1Q20 ii 1 and vi 20; and Book of Watchers at 4Q201 1 i 3). The term watcher (‘ir) is picked up in Jubilees and several of the Hebrew Dead Sea texts (Damascus Document in CD ii 18 par. 4Q266 2 ii 18 and Pseudo-Jubilees at 4Q227 2.4, which probably echoes terminology of the now lost Hebrew portions of Jubilees [cf. 4:15, 22; 7:21; 8:3; and 10:5]). By contrast, the term holy ones is arguably only applied to the rebellious angels in 11Q11 v 6, a text that we have seen is influenced by the Enochic tradition.

CHIEF DEMONIC BEINGS Over against the Enoch tradition that, in its early received form, presented both Shemi h ․azah and ‘Asa’el as leaders of rebellious angels, many of the writings among the Dead Sea Scrolls draw demonic forces together under a single figure. It is not clear how much the widely divergent texts allow us to infer that any of the writers identified a figure designated by one name with a figure designated by another. Moreover, we cannot assume that when single figures are referred to, their designations always function as proper names rather than as descriptions. In what follows, I briefly outline the material and organize my observations around the names or designations

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that actually occur in the texts. Here I focus on the five main ones: (a) Melkireša‘, (b) “Angel of Darkness,” (c) “S/satan,” (d) Mastema, and (e) Belial.

Melki-reša‘ This designation, which means “king of wickedness,” occurs twice, once in an Aramaic source and once in a Hebrew text. In the Aramaic Visions of Amram (4Q544 2.13), Melki-reša‘ is mentioned as one of two angelic beings who strive against one another to have authority over the patriarch. His association in the passage with “darkness” and with its “deeds” is contrasted with the association of his counterpart (probably Melchizedek) with “light” (4Q544 2.13–16). The dualistic framework within which Melki-reša‘ participates is not one of predeterminism, as is found in the Treatise on the Two Spirits (cf. 1QS iii 13—iv 26).16 Instead, it is the patriarch, Amram himself, who is asked to choose between these opposing angels and to decide which one may have authority over him (see “‘Angel of Darkness’ (mal’¯ak ha- h․ošek),” below). In the Hebrew text of 4QCurses (=4Q280) 1.2–7, Melki-reša‘ is expressly cursed in terms that are reminiscent of the denunciation in Serek ha-Ya ․had that is pronounced against “all the men of the lot of Belial” (1QS ii 5–9; see under “‘Mastema’ and ‘Belial,’” below).

“Angel of Darkness” (mal’¯ak ha- h ․ ošek) The scholarly attention devoted to this figure is disproportionate to the two times he is mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls. This is because this angel is presented as the negative counterpart to the Prince of Lights in the wellknown Treatise on the Two Spirits (1QS iii 20, 21), which, in turn, has frequently, though misleadingly, been regarded as the core or pinnacle of the Qumran community’s theological perspective.17 As such, the Angel of Darkness is further identified as the “spirit . . . of deceit” (iii 18–19, rua ․h . . . ha-‘awlah), one of opposing “two spirits” placed within human beings until the eschatological time of visitation (iii 18). Parallels, of course, have been noted between the dualistic duo in the Treatise and that involving Melkireša‘ in the Visions of Amram; for example, the opposition between the beings are expressed cosmologically in terms of darkness and light. Fuller comparison, however, cannot be undertaken due to the fragmentary text in Visions of Amram. Nevertheless, one difference does appear to lie in the existence, activities, and outcome of the activities of the “two spirits” in the Treatise; unlike the Visions of Amram, their influences on humanity are from the start predetermined by “the God of knowledge” and are unalterable (iii 13–16). The selection of one angel or another by the patriarch in Visions of Amram comes closer to the implicit exhortation underlying the description in the Treatise of the two ways in terms of virtues and vices correlated,

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respectively, to “the spirit of the sons of truth” (iv 2–8) and “the spirit of deceit” (iv 9–14, rua ․h ‘awlah). Although the Angel of Darkness initially appears to be an external force under the auspices of God the creator of all, the association of the “spirit of deceit” in 1QS iv with vices for which human beings are held responsible suggests a close association between such a figure and a notion of theological anthropology that renders the angel’s influence as part of the human condition. Until the eschatological visitation of God destroys all evil, it is taken for granted that an invasive force of evil within every human being will persist.

“Satan” (sa ․tan) As is well known, the term sa ․tan means “accuser” or “one who brings charges against.” There are five occurrence of the term in the Hebrew Dead Sea texts. In two, perhaps three, of these instances, the word is preceded by the adjective all or, with the negative, any (kol sa ․tan; cf. 1QHa 4.6, 45.3; 1QSb i 8?). In this case, we do not have to do with “satan” as a proper name, but rather with a figure that could as well include a human as an angelic adversary. The same may also be inferred from the negative that precedes it in Words of the Luminaries at 4Q504 1–2 iv 12: “and there is no satan or evil plague” (wa-’eyn sa ․tan wa-pega‘ ra‘). Jubilees offers a similar picture: The little apocalypse in chapter 23 anticipates that in the end of days “there will be neither satan nor any evil who [or better: which] will destroy” (23:29), in which sa ․tan generically denotes someone—anyone—who destroys by cutting short the life of human beings. Less clear is Jubilees 10:11: The angels of the presence are made to say that “[a]ll the evil ones [i.e., the spirits from the giants] who were savage we tied up in the place of judgment, while we left a tenth of them to exercise power on the earth before the satan.” Here, “the satan” refers to the chief of the evil spirits who has just previously been mentioned by name as Mastema; the expression, then, describes a function associated with Mastema. In the one remaining occurrence, the “Prayer of Deliverance” mentioned above (see “ ‘Angel of Darkness’ mal’¯ak ha- ․hošek”), the word may function as a proper noun. The petition for divine help, in 11Q5 xix 13–16, reads, Forgive my sin, YHWH, and cleanse me from my iniquity.

Bestow upon me a spirit of faithfulness and knowledge. Do not allow me to stumble in transgression (ba-‘awyah). Do not let Satan or a spirit of uncleanness have authority over me; Let neither rain nor evil purpose take hold of my bones.18 The interpretation of “satan” in the text may be sharpened when we consider it alongside the only other occurrence of the word among the Scrolls:

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the older Aramaic Levi Document at 4Q213a 1 i 10, which is also preserved in a much later Greek manuscript from Mt. Athos (Athos Koutloumous no. 39) to the Testament of Levi and therefore can be restored with some confidence as follows:19 And do n]ot let have authority over me any satan [to lead me astray from your path. (wa-’al tišla ․t bi kol sa ․tan [la’at’ani min ’or ․heka])

In this text, the placement of kol before sa ․tan leaves little doubt that a proper name is not in view. Furthermore, both texts, as argued by Armin Lange, show a striking affinity to Psalm 119:33b: “and do not let any iniquity rule over me” (cf. Lange, 2003a, p. 262). If the “Prayer of Deliverance” in 11Q5 is aware of these traditions, then the absence of kol may suggest that a more specific malevolent being is in view, that is, one called Satan. A move in this direction, though without involving the designation Satan, is also at work in Jubilees. In chapter 1:19–20 of Jubilees, Moses pleads that God not deliver Israel “into the hand of their enemy, the gentiles, lest they rule over them” and that God “not let the spirit of Beliar rule over them to accuse them before you and ensnare them from every path of righteousness so that they might be destroyed from your face.” As in the petition in the “Prayer of Deliverance” of 11Q5, this text in Jubilees contains no equivalent for kol (“any” with the negative); perhaps by analogy, an abstract term (such as “iniquity” from Ps 119:33b) or a generic designation (such as “satan” from Aramaic Levi Document) has been replaced in Jubilees by “spirit of Beliar,” whose activity involves bringing accusations against God’s people. For similar adaptations of this tradition in Jubilees, see Noah’s prayer for his grandchildren in 10:3–6 (“do not let evil spirits rule over them . . . let them not rule over the spirits of the living . . . do not let them have power over the children of the righteous now and forever”); and Abraham’s prayers in 12:19–20 (“save me from the hands of evil spirits which rule over the thought of the heart of man”), 19:28 (“may the spirits of Mastema not rule over you and your descendants”), and 15:30–32 (Israel, over whom God “made no angel or spirit rule”).

“Mastema” and “Belial” Both terms are treated together here, as the texts provide evidence that they can be associated with one another and because neither word is necessarily a proper name. Both are only preserved among Hebrew texts of the Scrolls. Not counting Jubilees, the Hebrew scroll fragments of which do not preserve either word, mas ․tema occurs 18 times and beliya‘al occurs 88 times. Although mas ․tema as a noun or substantive can denote “enmity” or “animosity” in the abstract, beliya‘al can represent a noun meaning “worthlessness.”

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Although there is little doubt that in Jubilees, “Mastema” represents a proper name for the chief demonic power that has jurisdiction over a contingent of evil spirits (see below), the function of the term in a number of the Qumran texts as well as its relation to Belial are unclear. We cannot, for example, assume that Mastema and Belial are but different names for the same figure, as the narrative world of Jubilees might lead one to infer (Jub. 1:19–20 and 10:5–6). For example, according to 4QBerakot in 4Q286, a curse is pronounced against Belial “in his inimical plan” (ba[ma h․]šebet mas ․temato), so that mas ․tema functions here as a feature of Belial’s activity (see the parallel expression 1QS iii 23, where a similar phrase—“and the times of their troubles are in his inimical dominion [ba-mamšelet mas ․temato]”—applies to the “Angel of Darkness”). A couple of interesting examples illustrate how both can appear alongside each other, with some ambiguity as to whether both refer to different beings. This seems to be the case in the fragmentary text from Pseudo-Jubilees at 4Q225 2 ii 14: the Prince of An[im]osity/Mastema, and Belial listened to[

The text does not preserve sufficient context for us to decide how the Prince of Animosity/Mastema and Belial are related; Belial’s activity of listening does not necessarily imply subordination (as Dimant, 2010, has recently suggested). In any case, it is not even clear that we should be comparing Mastema with Belial to begin with; the text could instead be drawing a comparison between the Prince (i.e., of Animosity or Mastema)20 and Belial. A final example occurs in the Serek ha-Ya ․had at 1QM xiii 10–12. This text, formally part of a lengthy prayer, declares that God “made Belial for the pit, an angel of mastema; and in dark[ness is] his [rule] and in his counsel is to bring wickedness and guilt about; and all the spirits of his lot are angels of destruction; they walk in the statutes of darkness.” Here the equation, as Dimant (2010) rightly argued, is not between Belial and Mastema, but between Belial and an “angel of mastema,” where “mastema” either characterizes the kind of angel that Belial is or is the proper name of the angel with whom Belial is being identified. It is possible that in the Damascus Document, in which the expression “angel of mastema” (mal’¯ak ha-mas ․tema) occurs by itself, we may not have to do with a proper name such as “the angel of/from Mastema” (i.e., the angel under Mastema’s jurisdiction) or “the angel Mastema” (so that Mastema is identified as an angel). The text in CD xvi 2–5 (pars. in 4Q270 6ii 18 and 4Q271 4 ii 6) reads. And the precise interpretation of their ages with regard to the blindness of Israel in all these things, behold, it is defined in the book of the divisions of

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the periods according to their jubilees and in their weeks. And on the day in which a man takes upon himself to return to the Torah of Moses, the Angel of Animosity/Mastema (mal’¯ak ha-mas ․tema) will turn away from him if he sustains his words. This is why Abraham circumcised himself on the day of his knowledge.

In this passage, the construction, in which mas ․tema is attached to the definite article as the nomen rectum, is telling; one would not expect a proper name to require an article the. By analogy, in Pseudo-Jubilees at 4Q225 2 ii 6, the plural expression “angels of Animosity” (mal’¯ake ha-mas ․tema) describes those beings who were anticipating that Abraham would indeed sacrifice Isaac. The episode in this incomplete text is initiated by “the Prince of A[ni] mosity” (sar ha-ma[s] ․tema), with whom these “angels of Animosity” are aligned (the same form of the expression occurs also in 4Q225 2 ii 13–14), whereas in Jubilees itself the account mentions only the presence of the “Prince of Mastema” (Jub. 18:9). Essentially, the malevolent figures are the Prince (sar) and the angels (mal’¯akim), not M/mastema him- or itself. If this is correct, then the three occurrences of the phrase mal’¯ake ha-mas ․temut in 4QPseudo-Ezekiel (4Q387 2 iii 4, 4Q390 1.11 and 2 i 7), which are “angels of Animosity” (the form of the noun, mas ․temut, is abstract) who rule over the disobedient of Israel, may be a variant that makes the linguistic possibility of an abstraction inherent in ha-mas ․tema more explicit. Unfortunately, not a single text in Jubilees (in which mas ․tema occurs 12 times) is sufficiently preserved from the Scrolls for us to know whether Mastema was affixed to a definite article. The most frequent expression is “Prince of Mastema/Animosity” or, better translated, “Prince Mastema” (11:5, 11; 18:9, 12; and 48:2, 9, 12, 15); as the context suggests, the Prince is to be identified with Mastema, who is introduced as the leader of the spirits requesting permission for a tenth of their number to carry out their work after the Flood. In this way, “prince” seems to be a title given to Mastema rather than the main designation itself. As such, Prince Mastema is written into the storyline: He is the initiator of the testing of Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (17:16; cf. 18:9, 12), he is the force behind an attempt to kill Moses (48:2–4, where Mastema encounters Moses, contra Exodus 4:24–26, where it is YHWH [MT] or an “angel of the Lord” [LXX]), he is behind the work of Pharaoh’s magicians to counteract Moses (48:9, 12), and he foments the Egyptians to pursue the Israelites in the wilderness (48:15–18). Finally, it is “all the forces of Mastema” that are sent to kill the firstborn in the land of Egypt (cf. Exodus 12:29, where the subject of the verb “to strike,” hikkah, is the Lord). In each of these passages where Prince Mastema is mentioned, the narrative of Jubilees makes clear that his activities happen only under the terms of allowance granted him and his reduced entourage in chapter 10.

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As the statistics indicate, Belial is by far the most frequent designation used for an evil being in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Like Mastema, there must have been a close connection between the figure and the meaning of the name, in this case “worthlessness.” However, unlike Mastema, the word Belial never appears in a text affixed to the definite article, even in the position of nomen rectum. Therefore, phrases such as “dominion of Belial,” “lot of Belial,” “army of Belial,” “spirits of Belial,” “congregation of Belial,” and “child” or “children of Belial” and “men of Belial” all suggest that, in many cases at least, we have to do with a term that has become a proper name. On the other hand, when Belial is preceded by kol (“any”), then we are dealing with the same linguistic phenomenon that we have observed in relation to satan (see 1QHa xi 28, which refers to “the time of anger against any belial”). Most of the extant occurrences of Belial are to be found among the sectarian, that is, the proto-Ya ․had texts (i.e., Damascus Document) and Ya ․had documents (Serek ha-Ya h․ad, Serek ha-Mil h․amah, Hodayot, pesharic interpretations, and 4QCatena, 4QBerakot, and 11QMelchizedek). Belial only occurs in Jubilees twice (1:20 and 15:30–33), though in 1:20 it is in a prominent position as part of Moses’s initial petition that future generations of Israel not be ruled by “the spirit of Beliar” (so the Eth. spelling), whereas in 15:33 it is the unfaithful of Israel who are branded “the people of Beliar” (something not said of Mastema). It is possible, however, that in both these phrases we are dealing with beliar (derived from Belial) as a descriptive, rather than as a proper noun. In any case, among the sectarian writings, Belial comes to be associated in the most immediate sense with faithless Jews (though it certainly would have included Gentiles as well). The striking development here is, of course, that under the name Belial, a number of the motifs associated with other malevolent beings found in the Aramaic and Hebrew texts are brought together. There are two important examples of this. First, Belial—and those errant Jews associated with Belial (1QS ii 11–18 pars. 4Q257 ii 1–7; and 5Q11 1.2–6)—is denounced (cf. 1QS ii 4–10 par. 4Q256 ii 12–iii 4), just as other malevolent beings are directly addressed and denounced in earlier apocalyptic literature.21 There is a difference, however: in relation to Belial the curse formula, which is more fixed and ritualized, is pronounced by a priestly figure or by the worshipping congregation. A second example that illustrates how language about Belial is indebted to earlier tradition relates to his rule or dominion in the present age (1QS i 23–24, ii 19; 1QM xiv 9–10 par. 4QMa = 4Q491 8–10 i 6–7; cf. further 1Q177=4QCatena A iii 8). This is, of course, a motif in the Enochic tradition in which the present—that is, the time between now and the eschatological visitation of God—demonic evil appears to hold sway. Like the Enochic tradition and those traditions that took it up, the texts hold unequivocally that Belial’s dominion is temporary; moreover, like the apocalyptic traditions, it is possible to manage or neutralize demonic power in anticipation of its final destruction.

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Again, however, there is a difference in the Belial texts: whereas the Enochic tradition itself could be compatible inter alia with the practice of exorcism, no such measures are appropriated against Belial. During the time of Belial’s dominion, the community’s curses and blessings, based on Numbers 6:24–46, which petition for protection and according to Serek ha-Ya ․had are to be spoken year on year (1QS ii 19), function as the predominant means (cf. 1QS i 16–iii 11). See similarly the Serek ha-Mil h․amah at 1QM xiv 9–10 par. 4Q491=4QMa 8–10 i 6–7 and 4QCatena A at 4Q177 iii 8. In other words, the chief power is cursed, not exorcised. Traditions that are pivotal in receiving Enochic tradition and paving the way for the Ya ․had way of dealing with Belial may be seen in Jubilees, on the one hand, and Songs of the Maskil, on the other. The Book of Jubilees presents demonic activity under the leadership of Mastema as an inevitable characteristic of this age until the final judgment (ch. 10). Thus, in Jubilees not only do angels reveal remedies to Noah (and his progeny) for warding off or neutralizing the effects of evil spirits (Jub. 10:10–13), but also the patriarchs—Moses (1:19–20), Noah (10:1–6), and Abraham (12:19–20)—are made to utter prayers of deliverance against them. There is no formal denunciation or curse against any of the malevolent powers. In Songs of the Maskil, the language of dominion by evil powers in the present age comes closer to later Belial texts, without actually pronouncing curses at the demonic beings themselves (at least, this is the absence among the extant texts). In one of the songs, the sage initially declares the splendor of God’s radiance: [I]n order to terrify and fr[ighten] all the spirits of the angels of destruction, and the bastard spirits, demons, Lilith, owls and [jackals . . .] and those who strike suddenly to lead astray the spirit of understanding and to cause their hearts to shudder. (4Q510 1.4–6a par. 4Q511 10.1–3a)

This proclamation of divine majesty, which Armin Lange has described as a “hymnic exorcism,”22 is then followed by an address to “righteous ones” in which the sage states, You have been put in a time of the dominion [of] wickedness and in the eras of the humiliation of the sons of lig[ht] in the guilt of the times of those plagued by iniquities, not for an eternal destruction, [but] for the era of the humiliation of transgression. Rejoice, O righteous ones, in the God of wonder. My psalms (are) for the upright ones. (4Q510 1.6b–8; par. 4Q511 10.3b–6)

The Maskil’s declarations about God, told in the third person (i.e., they are not in the form of a second-person prayer addressed to God), are here presumed to be sufficiently potent to diminish or counteract demonic powers that

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are at work in the present order of things (“the dominion [of] wickedness”). Although the text does not furnish a prayer for divine protection against these demons, it reflects a framework that holds two concurrent things in tension: (a) the existence of a community of those who are unambiguously “righteous” and “upright,” and (b) the characterization of the present age as “a time of the dominion [of] wickedness.” Analogous to the pronouncement of a benediction in the yearly covenant renewal ceremony in Serek ha-Ya h․ad, the song addressed by the Maskil to those who are righteous functions as an expedient measure that neutralizes the threats associated with demonic powers until the present age of wickedness is brought to an end. The pronouncements against Belial and his lot bring together and merge several evolving features that in their specificity are partly lost yet whose conceptual framework is preserved within a new form. The eschatological framework in the Enochic pronouncements of doom against the fallen angels, prayers for deliverance we have observed in other texts, exorcisms, and hymnic forms of protection, is retained in the community’s treatment of Belial. However, the various means of dealing with Belial are formally replaced by curses that adapt language from the Aaronic blessing (Num. 6:24–27) and should be understood in relation to the larger context of covenant blessings and curses found in Deuteronomy (cf. Deut. 28–30).

CONCLUSION Our survey of language used for the demonic world in the Dead Sea Scrolls yields several conclusions. First, the texts, especially the earlier ones in Aramaic, apply a wide variety of terms to designate the demonic: demon, spirit, angel, watcher, and even holy ones. In addition, in at least the Enochic traditions of the Book of Watchers and Book of Giants, a range of demonic beings—leaders and sub-leaders of the fallen angels and their giant sons— are also referred to with proper names to which, no doubt, some significance was attached. A corollary to the diversity of terms and use of proper names is an interest in the texts in different classes of evil beings. Here, mostly in the Aramaic literature, we have early representatives of a tradition, to be more fully developed at a later period, which itemized and classified malevolent powers and dealt with them in accordance with their particular functions and characteristics (so 1 En. 15:8–16:1; Asmodeus in Tob. 6–8; 4Q560; 11Q11 v; see the later demonic classes in T. Sol.; Sefer ha-Razim; incantation bowls; cf. already Mk. 9:29, “this kind [of demon]”). Second, this chapter has also highlighted some distinctions that can be made within the literature. An overall shift in thought and approach can be discerned if we distinguish between (a) Aramaic documents and (b) literature composed in Hebrew. Allowing for instances of occasional overlap

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and genetic development, this shift in language corresponds to the difference between (a) earlier “nonsectarian” and (b) later “sectarian” literature. Third, the most important witnesses to the shifts between earlier and later trends can be found in three works: Jubilees, Treatise on the Two Spirits, and Songs of the Maskil. The authors who composed each of these writings were pivotal to developments that followed. They gathered up and reformulated ideas from the literature and traditions they inherited and recast them in ways that were eventually picked up in the liturgical life of the Qumran Community. Fourth, “demons” and other lower-class beings tended to attract responses that regarded them as powers to be “managed” or “relocated” by various means. The afflictions, illnesses, other evils, and human sins they were thought to have caused could be effectively dealt with or at least addressed with confidence through exorcism, prayer, recitation of hymns, and other acts of piety. The matter was different for a chief of demons—for example, Mastema, Belial, Satan, the Angel of Darkness, or Melki-reša‘. These demonic bosses, catapulted into a position at the top (whether they were chiefs of other demons or simply organizing principles that represented evil as a whole), are not managed or neutralized in the same way. The Qumran Community, for example, resorted to the formal reciting of curses. However, whether by small-scale activities or community liturgy, the means undertaken to deal with the demon functioned as “temporary expedients” in recognition that the evil powers that malign human dignity and distract from faithfulness to God will indeed come to an end. Fifth and finally, the present review of demonology in the Dead Sea Scrolls lays the groundwork for drawing a series of distinctions that are crucial to understanding and interpreting the demonic world as it is dealt with in the New Testament and in early Christian literature. These are threefold and overlapping: (a) the distinction between the nature of evil (which distorts the cosmos as created by God) and humanity (whose essential dignity within the created order remains intact); (b) the distinction between the present “era of wickedness” (in which evil can never be extinguished and persists as a reality) and the eschatological annihilation of evil; and, in practical terms, (c) the distinction between matters of “salvation” (to draw on the Christian sense of the term) and “the management of evil powers.” It remains for further studies to work out the theological implications coming from each of these points.

NOTES 1. This awareness is the product of numerous efforts to distinguish between “sectarian,” “proto-sectarian” (e.g., the Damascus Document), and “nonsectarian” documents among the scrolls. The most important of these discussions include Newsom

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(1990), Dimant (1995), Lange and Lichtenberger (1997), and the contributions by Lange and Hempel (2003, pp. 59–69 [“Kriterien essenischer Texte”) and pp. 71–85 [“Kriterien zur Bestimmung ‘essenischer Verfasserschaft’ von Qumrantexten”]). 2. Some interpreters argue that the fallen angels and their gargantuan progeny simply refer to the Seleucid overlords in the wake of Alexander the Great’s conquest of Judea-Palestine or to an elite priesthood that did not observe purity regulations with regard to marriage and other practices; see, e.g., Nickelsburg (1977, 2001, p. 170) and Suter (1979), who takes 1 En. 10:9 as his point of departure (on this text, see immediately below). An oversimplified and reductionistic reading that decodes the traditions in this way is, however, misleading (see Stuckenbruck 2009b, 191–208). 3. See only, possibly, the mention in 4Q180 1.7–8 of ‘Azaz’el (so, the approximate spelling of the chief angel’s name in the later Ethiopic texts of 1 En.; cf. 8:1 and Cod. Pan. to 6:7, Αζαλζηλ); and see Wright (2005, pp. 107–114). 4. So the Aramaic. See Genesis Apocryphon in 1Q20 ii 1 and vi 19, which is clearly influenced by the fallen angels story; Jubilees 5:1 (Heb.) in 11Q12 7.1 (where the Eth. text has “giants”); and 1Q36 16.3, a broken text difficult to interpret. 5. For a discussion of the etymologies and possible significance of these names as they occur in the Book of Giants (they include Hahyah, ‘Ohyah, ․hobabish, and Mahaway) see Stuckenbruck (2003, bibl. in n. 5). 6. A further reference to mamzerim in 1QHa xxiv 12 is isolated and without sufficient context to determine its precise meaning (i.e., whether it is a label applied to a class of sinners or functions as a designation for demonic beings per se). 7. See 4Q510 1.6–7 (“and you [viz., the demonic beings] have been placed in the age of the dominion of wickedness and in the periods of subjugation of the sons of ligh[t]” (par. 4Q511 10.3–4). In the Ya․had texts, this era is referred to as the time of “the dominion of Belial” (e.g., 1QS i 18, 23–24; ii 19). 8. Another text in which an evil being who has entered into the human body is directly addressed and adjured is preserved in 4Q560 (two small fragments). Although the text shows no obvious influence of the Enochic tradition, its understanding of the relation of the demonic to the human body is consistent with it. 9. This may be inferred from Jub. 5:8–9 and 10:1–6, passages that are conceptually influenced by 1 En. 7:4, 10:9, and 15:9. On the influence of the Enoch tradition on the understanding of evil and demonology in Jubilees, see Stuckenbruck (2009a, pp. 298–306). 10. 11Q11 i 10; ii 3, 4; v 12—the term is restored and may be an equivalent for the being who is denounced at the beginning of the song in v 6. 11. For the edition, see Collins and Flint (1996), combined text beginning on p. 132. 12. For the text, translation, critical notes, and commentary on the versions, see Stuckenbruck (2007, pp. 393–395, 399–403). 13. The English translation of Jubilees, here and throughout this chapter, is taken from VanderKam (1989). 14. The Treatise on the Two Spirits in 1QS may not be a Ya․had composition; see Jörg Frey, “Different Patterns of Dualistic Thought in the Qumran Library”, in eds. M. Bernstein, F. García Martínez, J. Kampen, Legal Texts & Legal Issues (STDJ, 23; Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp. 275–335. Thus Belial does not occur in the Treatise, and the reference to “the spirits of his lot” in 1QS iii 24 has to do with the dominion of “the Angel of darkness”. Nevertheless, the phrases “spirits of his lot”, “lot of ” (1QS ii

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4–5), and “dominion of ” (1QS i 17, 23–24; ii 19) are overwhelmingly applied to Belial in the sectarian texts. 15. Alexander, “The Demonology of the Dead Sea Scrolls”, pp. 343–344. 16. For a summary of scholarship on the Treatise, see Levison (2006). 17. So e.g., Charlesworth (2006, p. 11). This assumption is rightly questioned inter alia by Lange (1995, pp. 126–130) and Frey (1997). 18. My translation. 19. For the presentation of these texts, see Drawnel (2004, esp. pp. 98–101). 20. Linguistically, a parallel problem of choosing between “Prince Mastema” and “Prince of Mastema” presents itself in Jubilees; cf. Jub. 11:5, 11; 18:9, 12; and 48:2, 9, 12, 15. However, the macro-context, in which Mastema is initially introduced as the chief of demonic beings and continues to act in the narrative, suggests that “Prince” is simply used here as a title; see below. 21. As against the fallen Watchers who have corrupted the earth, who are denounced with the formula “you will have no peace” (1 En. 12:5 Cod. Pan.—“there is no peace for you,” with third person in Eth.; 13:1—against ‘Asa’el, Cod. Pan. Azael, Eth. Azazel; and 16:4; cf. also Book of Giants at 1Q24 8.2 and 4Q203 13.3), which not only influences pronouncements against the human wicked in 1 En. 5:4 and in the Epistle of Enoch (98:11, 16; 99:13; 101:3; 102:3; and 103:8), but also carries over into formulae that adapt the language of the Aaronic blessing in Numbers 6:24–26; see 4Q480 2.2 (a curse against Melki-reša‘). For other denunciations of the demonic in the Scrolls, see 4Q410 1.5, 4Q511 3.5 (against demonic spirits), and 11Q11 v. 22. See Lange (1997, pp. 383, 402–403, 430–433), who also applied this classification to Genesis Apocryphon at 1Q20 xx 12–18, and Jub. 10:1–14 and 12:16–21. On the problem of categorizing the passage from Genesis Apocryphon in this way, see Stuckenbruck (2005, pp. 60–62).

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Collins, J. J. (1997). Seers, sibyls and sages in Hellenistic-Roman Judaism. Leiden: Brill. Collins, J. J., & Flint, P. W. (1996). 4Q423 (4QpsDana). In G. Brooke et al. (Eds.), Qumran cave 4. XVII: Parabiblical texts, part 3 (DJD XXII, pp. 95–152). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Dimant, D. (1995). The Qumran manuscripts: Contents and significance. In D. Dimant & L. H. Schiffman (Eds.), Time to prepare the way in the wilderness (STDJ, No. 26, pp. 23–58). Leiden: Brill. Dimant, D. (2010). Between Qumran sectarian and non-sectarian texts: The case of Belial and Mastema. In A. Roitman, L. H. Schiffman, & S. Tsoref (Eds.), The Dead Sea Scrolls and contemporary culture (pp. 235–256). Leiden: Brill. Drawnel, H. (2004). An Aramaic wisdom text from Qumran (JSJ Supp., No. 86). Leiden: Brill. Eshel, E. (1999). Demonology in Palestine during the Second Temple period [in modern Hebrew]. Ph.D. dissertation, Hebrew University. Eshel, E. (2003). Genres of magical texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls. In A. Lange, H. Lichtenberger, & K. F. D. Römheld (Eds.), Die Dämonen—Demons. Die Dämonologie der israelitisch-jüdischen und frühchristlichen Literatur im Kontext ihrer Umwelt (pp. 395–415). Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Frey, J. (1997). Different patterns of dualistic thought in the Qumran library. In M. Bernstein, F. García Martínez, & J. Kampen (Eds.), Legal texts and legal issues (STDJ, No. 23, pp. 275–335). Leiden: Brill. Hempel, C. (2003). Kriterien zur Bestimmung “essenischer Verfasserschaft” von Qumrantexten. In J. Frey & H. Stegemann (Eds.), Qumran kontrovers (Einblicke, No. 6, pp. 71–85). Paderborn: Bonifatius. Kister, M. (1999). Demons, theology and Abraham’s covenant (CD 16:4–6 and related texts). In R. A. Kugler & E. M. Schuller (Eds.), The Dead Sea Scrolls at fi fty: Proceedings of the 1997 Society of Biblical Literature Qumran Section meetings (EJL, No. 15, pp. 167–184). Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature. Lange, A. (1995). Weisheit und Prädestination: Weisheitliche Urordnung und Prädestination in den Textfunden von Qumran (STDJ, No. 15). Leiden: Brill. Lange, A. (1997). The Essene position on magic and divination. In M. Bernstein, F. García Martínez, & J. Kampen (Eds.), Legal texts and legal issues (STDJ, No. 23, pp. 377–435). Leiden: Brill. Lange, A. (2003a). Considerations concerning the “spirit of impurity” in Zech 13:2. In A. Lange, H. Lichtenberger, & K. F. Diethard Römheld (Eds.), Die Dämonen— Demons. Die Dämonologie der israelitisch-jüdischen und frühchristlichen Literatur im Kontext ihrer Umwelt (pp. 254–268). Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Lange, A. (2003b). Kriterien essenischer Texte. In J. Frey & H. Stegemann (Eds.), Qumran kontrovers (Einblicke, No. 6, pp. 59–69). Paderborn: Bonifatius. Lange, A., & Lichtenberger, H. (1997). Qumran. Die Textfunde von Qumran. In G. Müller et al. (1997), Theologische Realienzyklopädie (36 vols., Vol. 28, pp. 45–79). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Levison, J. R. (2006). The two spirits in Qumran theology. In J. H. Charlesworth (Ed.), The Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls (3 vols., Vol. 2, pp. 169–194). Waco, TX: Baylor University Press. Lyons, W. J., & Reimer, A. M. (1998). The demonic virus and Qumran studies: Some preventative measures. DSD, 5, 16–32.

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Newsom, C. A. (1990). “Sectually explicit” literature from Qumran. In W. Propp, B. Halpern, & D. N. Freedman (Eds.), The Hebrew Bible and its interpreters (pp. 167–187). Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns. Nickelsburg, G. W. E. (1977). Apocalyptic and myth in 1 Enoch 6–11. JBL, 96, 383–405. Nickelsburg, G. W. E. (2001). 1 Enoch 1: Hermeneia. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Stuckenbruck, L. T. (2002). The Book of Tobit and the problem of “magic.” In H. Lichtenberger & G. S. Oegema (Eds.), Jüdische Schriften in ihrem antikjüdischen und urchristlichen Kontext (JSHRZ Studien, 1, pp. 258–269). Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus. Stuckenbruck, L. T. (2003). Giant mythology and demonology: From the ancient Near East to the Dead Sea Scrolls. In A. Lange, H. Lichtenberger, & K. F. D. Römheld (Eds.), Die Dämonen—Demons. Die Dämonologie der israelitisch-jüdischen und frühchristlichen Literatur im Kontext ihrer Umwelt (pp. 318–338). Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Stuckenbruck, L. T. (2004). The origins of evil in Jewish Apocalyptic tradition: The interpretation of Genesis 6:1–4 in the second and third centuries b.c.e. In C. Auffarth & L. T. Stuckenbruck (Eds.), The Fall of the Angels (TBN, No. 6, pp. 87–118). Leiden: Brill. Stuckenbruck, L. T. (2005). Pleas for deliverance from the demonic in early Jewish texts. In R. Hayward & B. Embry (Eds.), Studies in Jewish prayer (JSS Supp. No. 17, pp. 55–73). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stuckenbruck, L. T. (2007). 1 Enoch 91–108 (CEJL). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Stuckenbruck, L. T. (2009a). The Book of Jubilees and the origin of evil. In G. Boccaccini & G. Ibba (Eds.), Enoch and the Mosaic Torah (pp. 294–308). Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Stuckenbruck, L. T. (2009b). The Eschatological Worship by the Nations: An Inquiry into the Early Enoch Tradition. In Karoly Dobos et al. (Eds.), Wisdom as a Robe: Festschrift in Honour of Ida Fröhlich (pp. 191–208). Sheffield: Phoenix. Suter, D. (1979). Fallen angels, fallen priests. HUCA, 50, 115–135. VanderKam, J. C. (1989). The Book of Jubilees (CSCO, No. 511). Leuven: Peeters. Wright, A. T. (2005). The origin of evil spirits (WUNT, No. 2.198). Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

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Evil in the Hebrew Bible, Mishnah, and Talmud Ilona Rashkow

INTRODUCTION In essence, the Jewish principle of good and evil, as reflected in the Hebrew Bible, Mishnah, and Talmud, emphasizes “good” and is based on God’s words in Genesis 1:10: “God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together He called Seas. And God saw that it was good.” In the traditional Jewish texts, God appears to be concerned with the human ability to separate the good from the evil and act in accordance with certain guidelines. According to biblical thought, God gives us a list of 613 rules, which tell us what to do and what not to do (mitzvoth), and by following all 613 of them we can either prevent doing evil or make retribution for it. Evil is not man’s ultimate problem. Man’s ultimate problem is his relation to God. . . . The biblical answer to evil is not the good but the holy. It is an attempt to raise man to a higher level of existence, where man is not alone when confronted with evil. (Heschel, 1987, p. 376)

With regard to the concept of evil, the Torah (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) deals primarily with broad rules and regulations for his followers to obey rather than the problem of the existence of evil in the world. Indeed, of the 389 times the words evil or evildoer are used in the entire Hebrew Bible, only 29 occur in the Torah. In comparison, of the 451 times the word good appears in the Hebrew Bible, 86 occur in the first five books. In the later books, however, when the focus shifts to the individual

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vis-à-vis God, the issue of good and evil in a world governed by a benevolent and omnipotent God becomes more evident. Jeremiah, Isaiah, Job, and the Psalms question the prosperity of the wicked and the adversity of the righteous. Various answers are given, many of which were elaborated upon by the Talmudists1 and the philosophers, but the idea of a heavenly reward for good or eternal damnation for evil does not appear to be offered in the Bible as a possible solution. Despite the lack of a sustained discussion of evil in the Torah, there is a biblical basis to the idea of the existence in human nature of an instinctive tendency or impulse that, left to itself, would lead to one’s undoing by acting contrary to the will of God (yezer ha-ra, or “inclination to evil”). Gen 6:5 reads that “every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts [humankind] is only evil continually,” and this is reinforced in Gen 8:21, “for the inclination of the human heart is evil from his youth.” The doctrine of two inclinations (or drives) is a major feature of Jewish thought. According to the rabbis,2 humans were created with two opposing inclinations or tendencies, one toward the good and the other toward evil, as discussed below. To confuse matters further, according to the Talmud, despite the fact that our natural inclinations are “evil,” they are given by God and thus should not be eliminated completely. These basic impulses are the impetus for marriage, procreation, and our very livelihood. However, when our thoughts turn to “evil” rather than “sanctioned” desires, the Talmud instructs that the study of the Torah is an effective antidote (Kid 30b). Again, according to the Talmud, unless the ye ․zer ha-ra is checked and controlled, it will grow out of control. To quote, R. Simeon b. Lakish stated, “The Evil Inclination of a man grows in strength from day to day and seeks to kill him . . . and were it not that the Holy One, blessed be He, is his help, he would not be able to withstand it.” (Suk 52b)

According to the rabbinic writings, the evil inclination is an entirely earthly phenomenon: “In the world to come there is no eating or drinking, procreation or barter, envy or hate” (Ber 17a). However, the ye ․zer ha-ra can be considered as having originated by other than humans—in Genesis 3, the serpent seems to exhibit an evil inclination when it tempts humankind to eat the forbidden fruit. The apparent contradiction of the existence of “evil” in a “good” world that God created poses a conundrum: attempts to reconcile belief in a deity who, after creating the world, “saw that it was good” (Gen 1:10) with the same deity who says in Isa 45:6–7, “I make peace, and create evil.” Why create evil? The Talmudists begin their explanation with an analysis of the creation of evil. For example:

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R. Akiba said: Four directions were created for the world, and they are east, south, west, and north. East is the direction from which light emerges for the world. South is the direction from which dews of blessing and rains of blessing emerge for the world. West (is the direction) wherein the treasuries of heat and cold are situated. North is the direction from which darkness comes forth for the world, and it is the habitation of harmful entities, spirits, and demons, and it is from that direction that evil emerges into the world, as scripture attests: “Evil will initiate from the north” (Jer 1:14). (Mann, 1971, p. 13)

Baba Bathra gives a more elaborate form of this same tradition. There God deliberately leaves the northern quadrant “unfinished” and invites all those entities who think they are “gods” to replicate his creative activities. None is able to meet this challenge, and so the “north” becomes the domicile of demons, spirits, and various natural disasters: The northern quadrant (of the world): from there darkness issues forth onto the world, and it is there that specters, devils, demons, spirits, and horrors have their abode, and it is from there that an evil spirit comes out into the world. While the Holy One, blessed be He, was responsible for creating the northern quadrant, He did not finish it. Why did He not complete it? He reasoned: “Unless there should come some entity styling himself ‘god’ to the world and who claims ‘I am God!!’ [If that happens], then he can finish the quadrant, (and) then everyone will know that he is truly God!” (Pirqe R El §3)

Another problem for the rabbis was the issue of a lack of a just distribution of good and evil to the righteous and wicked respectively. One particularly problematic verse is Exod 33:19: “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” Once again, the Talmud offers possible solutions. Based on the biblical reference “Neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers” (Deut 24:16), R. Johanan stated, A righteous man who prospers is a perfectly righteous man; the righteous man who is in adversity is not a perfectly righteous man. The wicked man who prospers is not a perfectly wicked man; the wicked man who is in adversity is a perfectly wicked man.

On the other hand, R. Meir quoted Exod. 33:19 as follows: [O]nly two [requests] were granted to him [Moses], and one was not granted to him. For it is said: “And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, although he may not deserve it, And I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” (Ber 7a)

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Meir interpreted “although he may not deserve it” to mean that “God’s ways therefore cannot be known” (Ber 7a). Genesis Rabbah blames evil on Satan in a rather circuitous interpretation of why Jacob had to dwell in Egypt: R. Aha said: “When the righteous wish to dwell in tranquility in this world, Satan comes and accuses them: They are not content with what is in store for them in the Hereafter, but they wish to dwell at ease even in this world! The proof lies in the fact that the Patriarch Jacob wished to live at ease in this world, whereupon he was attacked by Joseph’s Satan; and Jacob dwelt in the land.” (Gen R 84:3)

While recognizing the ambiguities in conflicting biblical passages regarding evil and suffering, the rabbis make a concerted effort to emphasize that God and His creation are good. Ber. 60b, for example, stated, “It was taught in the name of R. Akiba: ‘A man should always accustom himself to say “ ‘Whatever the All-Merciful does is for good.’ ” Ber. 60b then elaborated. Indeed, one should “bless for the evil in the same way as for the good . . . we have learnt: for good tidings one says, who is good and bestows good: for evil tidings one says, blessed be the true judge?”—Raba said: “What it really means is that one must receive the evil with gladness” . . . Where do we find this in the Scripture? “I will sing of mercy and justice, unto Thee, O Lord, will I sing praises,” (Ps 60:1) whether it is “mercy” I will sing, or whether it is “justice” I will sing. “In the Lord I will praise His word, in God I will praise His word” (Ps 61:11). “In the Lord I will praise His word”: this refers to good dispensation; “In God I will praise His word”: this refers to the “dispensation of suffering.” R. Tanhum said: “We learn it from here: ‘I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord’ (Ps 66:13); I found trouble and sorrow, but I called upon the name of the Lord (Job 1:21).”

Even a Jewish burial service encompasses God’s perfection and the goodness of God’s creations: Once the grave is completely filled with earth, the prayer of Tzidduk HaDin ( )—justification of the Divine decree—is recited. With this moving prayer, the mourners declare their acceptance of the Divine decree and pray to God to have mercy upon the living (Lamm 60).

SATAN Perhaps one of the most difficult concepts in trying to understand the concept of “evil” in traditional Jewish texts is the identity and entity of Satan. English Hebrew Bible translations are not consistent in their word choice when translating . Occasionally, they view as a proper name; in other

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places, the word is translated as “adversary” and refers to either (a) a human adversary, as in 1Kings 11:14, “And the Lord raised up an adversary against Solomon, Hadad the Edomite; he was of the royal house in Edom” (Revised Standard Version); or (b) God’s adversary, as in Job 2:6, where is clearly a proper name: “The Lord said to Satan, ‘Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life’ ” (New Revised Standard Version). Although the word (“Satan”) appears approximately 30 times in the Hebrew Bible, used either as a proper name or as “adversary,” it is not as prominent in the Mishnah or the Tosefta (a supplement to the Mishnah), and, as discussed above, they refer generally to a being who accompanies the wicked man. For example, Tosefta Sha Mas. Baba Bathra at 17 (18):3 stated, “If you see a wicked man setting out on a journey and you wish to go by the same route, anticipate your journey by three days or postpone it for three days, because Satan accompanies the wicked man.” References to Satan in the Talmud are much more numerous. There are almost 90 Talmudic references to Satan as an entity, and his identity is clearly adversarial—either as a foe of humans (where Satan upon occasion is the victor) or as God’s nemesis (where Satan is always vanquished). As man’s adversary and accuser, he is without independent power—Satan’s power must be derived from God. In Talmudic writings, Satan is identified with the evil inclination and with the angel of death: “Resh Lakish said: Satan, the evil prompter, and the Angel of Death are all one. He is called Satan” (Mas. Baba Bathra 16a). And perhaps as a throwback to the Genesis 1 narrative, when Satan does appear to humans he is often in the form of a seductress. For example, one Talmudic text states, “One day Satan appeared to him as a woman on the top of a palm tree. Grasping the tree, he [a man] went climbing up: but when he reached half-way up the tree he [Satan] let him go, saying ‘Had they not proclaimed in Heaven, “Take heed of R. Akiba and his learning,” I would have valued your life at two ma’ahs’ ” (Mas. Kiddushin 81a). Another says, “A Tanna taught: ‘[Satan] comes down to earth and seduces, then ascends to heaven and awakens wrath; permission is granted to him and he takes away the soul’ ” (Mas. Baba Bathra 16a). Not surprisingly, Jews make relatively few references to Satan during worship. During the evening worship service (Ma’ariv), the concluding prayer (Hashkivenu)3 says, Enable us, O Lord our God, to lie down in peace . . . save us quickly for your name’s sake, protect us, remove from us the adversary ( ), the pestilence, the sword, the famine, the anxiety. . . . Blessed art thou, O Lord, who guards His nation Israel eternally.

(It should be noted, however, that Sephardic prayer books omit the Hebrew word for Satan on the Sabbath on the holidays. Otherwise, Satan is back in.)

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The High Holidays prayer book (Mahzor) contains references to Satan: six Biblical verses, the initial letters of which form the acrostic “Kerah Satan” (“tear Satan”) are recited; one of the purposes of the blasts of the Shofar on the High Holidays according to Rabbi Isaac is to confound and confute Satan (Mas. Baba Bathra 16a); and in the Hinneni prayer (the prayer of the Hazzan [cantor] before the Musaf Amidah), there is a sentence in which he pleads, “And rebuke Satan that he accuse me not.”

ADAM ’ S DEMONIC FAMILY Despite the fact that there is only one biblical reference to Lilith (“Wildcats shall meet with hyenas, goat-demons shall call to each other; there too Lilith shall repose, and find a place to rest”; Isa 34:14), she is perhaps the most famous “evil” female in Jewish demonology. Although the biblical reference is in connection with what horrendous things will happen on the day of vengeance, Lilith’s presence in later writings is more pronounced. Midrash Numbers4 describes her as “Lilith who, when she finds nothing else, turns upon her own children” (Midrash Num 26:16). Midrash Avkir graphically describes the relationship of Adam and Lilith: Our teacher Asi said: Adam the protoplast was wholly righteous, and when he saw that death had been decreed [as punishment] through his fault, he gained control over himself with fasting, kept away from his wife, and slept alone. A lil¯ıtu-demon named P¯ızn¯a came across him and became enamored with his handsomeness, for his handsome appearance was comparable to [that of] the solar disc. She slept with him [and eventually] gave birth from him to demons and lilû-devils. The name of the first-born son of Adam the protoplast was Agar¯ımus. Agar¯ımus went and married a lil¯ıtu-demon [named] Imr¯ıt, [and] she bore him 92,000 myriads of demons and lilû-devils. The name of the first-born son of Agar¯ımus was Abelmus. He went and married G¯ofr¯ıt the lil¯ıtudemon, and she bore him 88,000 myriads of demons and lilû-devils. The name of the first-born son of Abelmus was Akr¯ımus, and he went and [married] Af¯ızn¯a, the daughter of P¯uzn¯a the lil¯ıtu-demon who was dwelling . . . [in] the mountain, and she bore him 3,000 myriads of demons and lilû-devils . . . the entire universe became filled with them . . . the Angel of Death, and he strikes dead anyone who encounters him. (Gaster 48–49)

The Talmud states that she is a danger to women in childbirth as well as to men who sleep alone (Shab 151b). The Testament of Solomon5 quotes Lilith as saying, [B]y night I sleep not, but go my rounds over all the world, and visit women in childbirth. And divining the hour I take my stand; and if I am

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lucky, I strangle the child. But if not, I retire to another place. For I cannot for a single night retire unsuccessful. For I am a fierce spirit, of myriad names and many shapes. And now hither, now thither I roam. And to westering parts I go my rounds. (Testament of Solomon 58)

Another Talmudic version is less detailed: R. Yermiyah b. El’azar said, “All those years that Adam the protoplast spent in banishment he was engendering spirits, demons, and lilû-devils, for scripture states and Adam lived for 130 years, and then he engendered one in his image and in his likeness” (Gen 5:3). It follows that up to that point (i.e., year 130) he had not engendered any in his likeness! They (the assembly) objected: R. Meir used to say, Adam the protoplast was a great Hasid: when he saw that death had been decreed (as punishment) through his fault, he sat fasting for 130 years, kept away from his wife for 130 years, and wore clothes made of fig-leaves for 130 years. (b. ‘Erub 18b)

The most famous tale of Lilith originates in a medieval work called The Alphabet of Ben-Sira, a work whose relationship to the conventional streams of Judaism is tenuous. Although the idea of Eve having a predecessor is also not new to Ben Sira, and can be found in Genesis Rabbah, those traditions make no mention of Lilith, and, in fact, do not mesh well with Ben Sira’s version of the story: After God created Adam, who was alone, He said, “It is not good for man to be alone” (Gen 2:18). He then created a woman for Adam, from the earth, as He had created Adam himself, and called her Lilith. Adam and Lilith began to fight. She said, “I will not lie below,” and he said, “I will not lie beneath you, but only on top. For you are fit only to be in the bottom position, while I am to be in the superior one.” Lilith responded, “We are equal to each other inasmuch as we were both created from the earth.” But they would not listen to one another. When Lilith saw this, she pronounced the Ineffable Name and flew away into the air. Adam stood in prayer before his Creator: “Sovereign of the universe!” he said, “The woman you gave me has run away.” At once, the Holy One, blessed be He, sent these three angels to bring her back. Said the Holy One to Adam, “If she agrees to come back, fine. If not, she must permit one hundred of her children to die every day.” The angels left God and pursued Lilith, whom they overtook in the midst of the sea, in the mighty waters wherein the Egyptians were destined to drown. They told her God’s word, but she did not wish to return. The angels said, “We shall drown you in the sea.” “Leave me!” she said. “I was created only to cause sickness to infants. If the infant is male, I have dominion over him for eight days after his birth, and if female, for twenty days.”

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When the angels heard Lilith’s words, they insisted she go back. But she swore to them by the name of the living and eternal God: “Whenever I see you or your names or your forms in an amulet, I will have no power over that infant.” She also agreed to have one hundred of her children die every day. Accordingly, every day one hundred demons perish, and for the same reason, we write the angels’ names on the amulets of young children. When Lilith sees their names, she remembers her oath, and the child recovers.

EVIL SPEECH Generally speaking, lashon ha-ra ( ) is the prohibition against slandering, slurring, or defaming one’s fellow Jews, even when the derogatory remarks are true (Lev 19:16). However, there is an exception: Defaming individuals who constantly cause strife and dissension is permissible (Pe 1:1, 16a). The sages constantly stressed the severity of this prohibition, asserting that slander destroys three persons: “he who relates the slander, he who accepts it, and he about whom it is told” (Ar 15b). They recognized the power of the spoken word to build or ruin human relationships, and considered the tongue the “elixir of life” (Lev R 16:2) and the primary source of good and evil (Lev R 33:1). It was even considered forbidden to spread discreditable comments that the slanderer would have told to the person himself (Tos to Ar 15b). The Bible and the Talmud have many examples of righteous and wicked individuals who violated this rule, but this is not surprising because virtually every character in the Hebrew Bible violated rules! Sarah is accused of slandering Abraham when she spoke about his advanced age and inability to beget children (Gen 18:12–15; Pe 1:1, 16a). Joseph was punished for the “evil reports” he spread about his brothers (Gen 37:2; Pe 1:1, 15d–16a). Miriam was punished by God for slandering Moses (Num 12:1–15). The spies were punished for their reports concerning Israel (Num 14:36–37). The division of the kingdom of David is attributed to his listening to slander (Shab 56a–b). On the other hand, Jeroboam king of Israel (I Kings 12:20) was worthy of being counted together with the kings of Judah (Hos 1:1) because he did not listen to slander against Amos (Amos 7:10–11; Pes 87b). The murder of Isaiah by Manasseh was considered divine retribution for Isaiah’s slurs against the Jewish people (Isa 6:5; Yev 49b). Haman was considered the most skillful of all in engaging in Lashon ha-ra (Meg 13b). Indirect slander was also forbidden, and the sages cautioned against speaking in praise of a person to prevent mentioning the person’s bad deeds and qualities (Mas. Baba Bathra 164b). Equally objectionable under this heading is the implicit form of slander exemplified by the statement, “Do not speak of him; I want to know nothing about him,” in which one expresses a disinclination to listen, not because of a distaste for slander, but because of the implied

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unworthiness of the subject (see Maim. Yad, De’ot 7:4). Although the hearer was cautioned not to believe slander, he still was permitted to safeguard himself cautiously in case the reports prove true (Nid 61a). The rabbis often emphasized the rigorous punishments for those engaging in “evil speech.” They are immediately chastised by plagues (ARN 19), and rain is withheld because of them (Ta’an 7b). Croup comes to the world on account of slander (Shab 33a–b), and whoever makes derogatory remarks about deceased scholars is cast into Gehinnom (Ber 19a). Slanderers will not enjoy the Shekinah (Divine Presence; Sot 42a), and a bearer of evil tales is considered as denying God (Ar 15b). Within this narrow concept, slander is used generally to describe defaming an individual by either true or untrue statements. Evil speech is generally used in the sense of defaming someone by spreading false tales. Whoever relates or accepts slander deserves to be cast to the dogs (Pes 118a) and stoned (Ar 15b). (Slander is generally an untrue statement made that is implied to be factual; lashon ha-ra is more general.) The Talmud delineated the repentance for those wishing to atone for this sin. Scholars were advised to engage in Torah study, whereas simple persons were urged to humble themselves (Ar 15b). The robe of the high priest and the incense aided in achieving atonement for this sin (Zev 88b). Mar, the son of Ravina, on concluding his daily prayer added the following: “My God, keep my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking guile” (Ber 17a), a formula that has been added at the end of the Amidah.

EVIL EYE According to the Mishnah, the “evil eye” ( ) (ayin ha-ra), expresses the idea that there are some people who, merely by looking at a victim, can cause harm—both bodily and financially. Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers)6 has three references to the “evil eye”: He said to them: Go and see which is the evil way which a man should avoid. Rabbi Eliezer said, an evil eye. (Pirkei Avot 2:14) Rabbi Joshua said: The evil eye, the evil desire and hatred of his fellow creatures put a man out of the world. (Pirkei Avot 2:16) Whosoever possesses these three qualities belongs to the disciples of Abraham our father: a generous eye, a humble spirit, and a meek soul. But he who possesses the three opposite qualities—an evil eye, a proud spirit, and a haughty soul—is of the disciples of Balaam the wicked. (Pirkei Avot 5:22)

The Talmud has several references to the “evil eye.” For example, in Gen. Rabbah 45:5 Sarah uses her evil eye on Hagar, causing her to be banished

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to the wilderness; Gen. Rabbah 84:10 explains that because of the evil eye cast upon Joseph by his brothers, Joseph was taken to Egypt; and Num. Rabbah 12:4 explains the breaking of the first tablets of the law as having been caused by an “evil eye.” There are a number of superstitious practices to ward off the harmful effects of the evil eye, for example, spitting out three times when a person seems to be at risk. Even today some people, when praising others, will add, “[L]et it be without the evil eye” (in the Yiddish form, kenenhora), meaning I do not intend my praise to suggest that I am enviously casting a malevolent glance.

AMULET An amulet is a small object that a person wears, carries, or offers to a deity because he or she believes that it will magically bestow a particular power or form of protection. The conviction that a symbol, form, or concept provides protection, promotes well-being, or brings good luck is common to all societies: even today, some people carry a favorite penny or a rabbit’s foot. In 1979, two silver amulets dating to the late seventh to sixth centuries bce were discovered in a burial cave in Ketef Hinnom, outside of Jerusalem. The smaller of these amulets reads, “Blessed be [he or she] by Yahweh, the helper and dispeller of evil. May Yahweh bless you (and) protect you, and may he cause his face to shine upon you and grant you peace.” The larger amulet mentions “the covenant” and Yahweh’s “graciousness to those who love him,” refers to Yahweh as “our restorer,” and concludes with the benediction “May Yahweh bless you and protect you, may he cause his face to shine” (this blessing is a slight variant of the priestly benediction in Numbers 6:22). The tiny rolled-up scrolls were no doubt intended to be worn as amulets to safeguard their owners. The prophylactic nature of the two tiny scrolls to prevent sickness and disease is evident from the words bless and keep. Apparently, all humans, whether “great” or “small,” are spiteful and vain—and, as history has demonstrated, the more “important” the individual, the greater the likely these tendencies are to manifest themselves. The Ketef Hinnom amulets must have been regarded as having an apotropaic or ritual observance that is intended to turn away evil effect, as is emphasized in the smaller amulet by a reference to the deity as the “rebuker of evil”: “May he/she be blessed by YHWH, the warrior and the rebuker of Evil” (Barkay, Vaughn, Lundberg, & Zuckerman, 2004; see also Barkay, Lundberg, Vaughn, Zuckerman, & Zuckerman, 2003). Although many Jewish homes have a mezuzah7 on the doorpost, a mezuzah is not considered an amulet. Rather, it fulfills a biblical injunction to have God’s word be a sign on your doorpost (Exod 11:7,13). Similarly, Tefillin8 (prayer phylacteries) are not amulets; they too fulfill the commandment in Deut 6:8 that they are to be a “sign upon the heart and upon the hand.”

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Many contemporary Jews wear jewelry that could be regarded as amulets. For example, a Star of David, which is worn often as a pendant on a chain, contains a six-pointed star. The six points symbolize that God rules over the universe and protects us from all six directions: north, south, east, west, up, and down. King David used this symbol in the battlefield on his shield as an omen from God. Another piece of jewelry that can be viewed as an amulet is a hamsa (also known as the “hand of Miriam”). The hamsa serves as an ancient talismanic way of averting the evil eye and providing a “protecting hand” or “Hand of God.” The hamsa often appears in stylized form, as a hand with three fingers raised, and sometimes with two thumbs arranged symmetrically.

REPENTANCE The phrase “Repentance, prayer, and charity remove a bad decree” sets the tone to the days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur9 more than any other in the High Holy Days prayer book. Indeed, of the three, repentance is probably the most significant because the period of time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is called the “Ten Days of Repentance.” Within this context, repentance occurs once a person realizes that he or she has sinned, acknowledges the error, and takes a personal oath never to repeat the sin again. In this manner the person is in effect changing and becoming a new person. In the Hebrew Bible, (teshuvah, literally “return”) is the term used for repentance, and the Bible states that repentance brings pardon and forgiveness of sin. Apart from repentance, no other activities, such as sacrifices or religious ceremonies, can secure pardon and forgiveness of sin (“Let the wicked forsake his way, and the man of iniquity his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have compassion upon him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon”; Isa 55:7). The Torah (five books of Moses) distinguishes between offenses against God and offenses against another human. In the first case, the manifestation of repentance consists of confession of one’s sin before God (Lev 5:5; Num 5:7), the essential part being a solemn promise and firm resolve not to commit the same sin again; and making certain prescribed offerings (Lev 5:1-20). Repentance of a sin against God generally leads to the deity’s forgiveness. In some cases, individuals or nations repent of their sins and are spared God’s judgment (Gen 4:7; Lev 4, 5; Deut 4:30, 30:2; I Kings 8:33, 48; Hosea 14:2; Jer 3:12, 31:18, 36:3; Ezek 18:30-32; Isa 54:22, 55:6-10; Joel 2:12; and Jonah 2:10). Offenses against another human require, in addition to confession and sacrifice, restitution in full of whatever has been wrongfully obtained or withheld from the aggrieved, with, in effect, a 20% interest penalty (Lev 5:20–26). If the injured party has died, restitution must be made to the heir; if there is

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no heir, it must be given to the priest, who officiates at the sacrifice made for the remission of the sin (Num 5:7–9). There are other examples of repentance mentioned in the Bible. These include pouring out water (I Sam 7:6); prayer (II Sam 12:16); self-affliction, such as fasting (Ezra 9:5; Neh 1:4, 9:1; Esth 4:3; Ps 35:13, 69:10, 109:24; Isa 58:4; Dan 6:18, 9:3; Joel 2:12; and Neh 9:1); wearing sackcloth (although there are over 40 instances of wearing sackcloth in the Hebrew Bible, only one occurs in the Torah: Gen 37:34, “Then Jacob tore his garments, and put sackcloth on his loins”); and sitting and sleeping on the ground (I Kings 21:27; Joel 2:13; Jon 3:5). However, the prophets criticized these forms of repentance as basically self-aggrandizing and focused on a change in the sinner’s mental and spiritual attitude (“Rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy, and repenteth him of the evil” (Joel 2:13). Many rabbinic sources state that repentance is an essential aspect of the existence of this world, and was one of the seven provisions that God made before the Creation (Pes 54a; Ned 39b; Genesis Rabbah 1). Sincere repentance is equivalent to the rebuilding of the Temple, the restoration of the altar, and the offering of all the sacrifices (Midrash Leviticus Rabbah 7; Sanh 43b). According to Jewish doctrine, repentance is the prerequisite of atonement (Mishna Yoma Chapter 8, 8). Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, derives its significance only from the fact that it is the culmination of the 10 penitential days with which the Jewish religious year begins. It is of no consequence without repentance. However, repentance and the Day of Atonement can only absolve one from sins committed against God; sins against another person are absolved only when restitution has been made and the pardon of the offended party has been obtained (Yoma 87a; Mishneh Torah Teshuva 2:9). Jewish doctrine holds that it is never too late, even on the day of death, to return to God with sincere repentance: “as the sea is always open for everyone who wishes to cleanse himself, so are the gates of repentance always open to the sinner” (Midrash Deut Rabbah 2.; Midrash Psalms 43)—the hand of God is continually stretched out to receive a sinner (BM 58:2). Indeed, one Talmudic tractate states that one who has repented is more worthy than one who has never sinned (Ber 34b).

CONCLUSION Abraham J. Heschel wrote in God in Search of Man, “The world is in flames, consumed by evil. Is it possible that there is no one who cares? . . . [367] . . . What have we done to make such crimes [the Holocaust] possible? What are we doing to make such crimes impossible?” [369]. Perhaps the Bible and the Talmudic sources provide a starting point. The New Testament quotes Jesus giving a solution: “In everything, do to others

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what you would want them to do to you. This is what is written in the Law and in the Prophets” (Matt 7:12), and “Do to others as you want them to do to you” (Luke 6:31). The Sage Hillel, an elder contemporary of Jesus, used a negative structure to express the same basic sentiments. When asked by a potential convert to sum up the entire Torah concisely, he answered, “What is hateful to you, do not to your neighbor: that is the whole Torah, while the rest is the commentary thereof; go and learn it” (Shab 31a). Perhaps the essence of “evil in the Hebrew Bible, Mishnah, and Talmud” is the last part of Hillel’s answer to the potential proselyte: “[T]he rest is the commentary thereof; go and learn it.” In other words, avoid doing evil because God said, “It is good.”

Abbreviations of Tractates Ar

Arakhin

ARN

Avot de-RaMas. Baba Bathra i Natan

Avot

Avot

AZ

Avodah Zarah

Mas. Baba Bathra

Bava Batra

Bekh

Bekhorot

Ber

Berakhot

Betz

Betzah

Bik

Bikkurim

BK

Bava Kamma

BM

Bava Metzia

De

Demai

DER

Derekh Eretz RaMas. Baba Bathra ah

DEZ

Derekh Eretz Zuta

Ed

Eduyyot

Er

Eruvin

Ger

Gerim

Git

Gittin

Hag

Hagigah

Hal

Hallah

Hor

Horayot

Hul

Hullin

Ka

Kallah (continued)

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Abbreviations of Tractates Kel

Kelim

Ker

Keritot

Ket

KetuMas. Baba Bathra ot

Kid

Kiddushin

Kil

Kilayim

Kin

Kinnim

Kut

Kutim

Maas

Maaserot

Mak

Makkot

Makh

Makhshirin

Me

Meilah

Meg

Megillah

Men

Menahot

Mez

Mezuzah

Mid

Middot

Mik

Mikvaot

MK

Moed Katan

MSh

Maaser Sheni

Naz

Nazir

Ned

Nedarim

Neg

Negaim

Nid

Niddah

Oh

Ohalot

Or

Orlah

Par

Parah

Pe

Peah

Per Sha

Perek ha-Shalom

Pes

Pesahim

RH

Rosh ha-Shanah

Sanh

Sanhedrin

Sem

Semahot

Shab

ShaMas. Baba Bathra at

Shek

Shekalim

Shev

It

Shevu

Shevuot

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Abbreviations of Tractates Sof

Soferim

Sot

Sotah

ST

Sefer Torah

Suk

Sukkah

Ta

Taanit

Tam

Tamid

Tef

Tefillin

Tem

Temurah

Ter

Terumot

Toh

Toharot

TY

Tevul Yom

Tz

Tzitzit

Uk

Uktzin

Yad

Yadayim

Yev

Yevamot

Yoma

Yoma

Zav

Zavin

Zev

Zevahim

NOTES 1. The Talmud, a central text of mainstream Judaism, is a compilation of rabbinic discussions of Jewish law, ethics, customs, and history. It has two components: the Mishnah (c. 200 ce), the first written compendium of Judaism’s Oral Law; and the Gemara (c. 500 ce), a discussion of the Mishnah and related writings that ventures often onto other subjects and expounds broadly on the Tanakh. 2. The term rabbis is used throughout this chapter when referring to the Talmudic writings. 3. Hashkivenu ( ) (“cause us to lie down”) is the initial word of the second benediction after the Shema of the daily evening prayer. This prayer for protection during the night is mentioned in the Talmud (Ber. 4b). 4. Midrash (literally, “to investigate” or “to study”) is a Hebrew term referring to the not exact, but comparative, method of exegesis of biblical texts. The term midrash can also refer to a compilation of homiletic teachings on the Tanakh, in the form of legal and ritual parts (Halakhah) and legendary, moralizing, folkloristic, and anecdotal parts (Haggada), and is a valuable source of Jewish interpretations of the Bible.

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5. The Testament of Solomon is a pseudepigraphical work, the authorship of which is ascribed to King Solomon. It describes how the Archangel Michael gave Solomon a magical ring that allowed him to control demons and build the Temple. 6. Pirkei Avot (“Ethics of the Fathers”) is a compilation of the ethical teachings in the Mishnaic tractate of Avot (“Fathers”), the second-to-last tractate in the order of Nezikin in the Talmud. 7. A mezuzah ( ) is a parchment scroll attached to the doorpost of most rooms in a Jewish home (any room that has two doorposts and an overhead lintel requires a mezuzah, so bathrooms, closets, laundry rooms, boiler rooms, and so forth do not require a mezuzah). The original meaning of the word mezuzah is “doorpost” (cf. Ex. 12:7), but a mezuzah has come to also mean the parchment on which the verses of the Torah are inscribed: “and ye shall write them (the words of God) upon the mezuzot of thy house and in thy gates” (Deuteronomy 6:4–9, 11:13–21) as well as the case or container in which the parchment is enclosed. The mezuzah consists of a piece of parchment, made from the skin of a clean animal, on which Deuteronomy passages are written in square (Assyrian) characters, traditionally in 22 lines. The parchment is rolled up and inserted in a case with a small opening. On the back of the parchment is the word , which means “Almighty”; in addition, the letters stand for the initial letters of “Guardian of the doors of Israel.” The parchment is so inserted that the word is visible through the opening. It is affixed to the right-hand doorpost of the room, house, or gate, where it is obligatory, in the top third of the doorpost and slanting inward. 8. Tefillin ( ), usually translated as “phylacteries,” are two black leather boxes containing scriptural passages that are bound by black leather straps on the left hand and on the head by men for the morning services on all days of the year except Sabbaths and scriptural holy days. Four passages of the Bible (Ex. 13:1–10 and 11–16; Deut. 6:4–9 and 11:13–21) require Jews to put “these words” (of the Law) for “a sign upon thy hand and a frontlet between thine eyes.” 9. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement ( ), is one of the “appointed seasons of the Lord, holy convocations,” a day of fasting and atonement, occurring on the Tenth of Tishri. It is the climax of the “Ten Days of Penitence” and the most important day in the Jewish liturgical year.

REFERENCES Barkay, G., Lundberg, M. J., Vaughn, A. G., Zuckerman, B., & Zuckerman, K. (2003). The challenges of Ketef Hinnom: Using advanced technologies to reclaim the earliest biblical texts and their context. Near Eastern Archaeology, 66, 162–171. Barkay, G., Vaughn, A. G., Lundberg, M. J., & Zuckerman, B. (2004). The amulets from Ketef Hinnom: A new edition and evaluation. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 334, 41–71. Dan, J. (1999). Samael and the problem of Jewish Gnosticism. In Jewish mysticism (Vol. 3, pp. 382–385). Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson. Ginzberg, L. J. (2003). Legends of the Jews. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America.

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Heschel, A. J. (1987). God in search of man: A philosophy of Judaism. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson. Lamm, M. (2000). The Jewish way in death and mourning. New York: Jonathan David. Maimonides, M., Pines, S., & Strauss, L. (1974). The guide of the perplexed (Vol. 1). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Mann, J. (1971). The Bible as read and preached in the old synagogue: Vol. 1. The Palestinian triennial cycle: Genesis and Exodus. New York: Ktav. Neusner, J. (2006). The Babylonian Talmud: A translation and commentary. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson.

ch apter 11

Evil in the New Testament and Its Greco-Roman Context J. Harold Ellens

In the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament, or OT), there is a persistent tension between the notion that God is the source of evil (Gen 6) and that evil derives rather from human unintentional or willful dysfunction (Gen 3). In the New Testament (NT), there is virtually none of that ambivalence. In the NT, evil is a product of human misbehavior and the damage and pain it inflicts. Paul’s letters were the first NT documents to be written and are interesting especially for two reasons. First, he took the narrative of Jesus’s life and ministry and fashioned from it a theology of radical, unconditional, and universal divine grace (Rom 8). The story itself was apparently communicated to him orally by Peter and James. Second, he locates the source of evil in human behavior, particularly the conduct that arises when the lower passions of humans dominate their higher passions. This is a strictly Greek idea and could not be further from the essential Hebrew model one would have expected to be Paul’s normal Jewish outlook on life. It is easy to notice in the Hebrew Bible that the ancient Israelites saw a close connection between evil, sin, sickness, suffering, and the will of Yahweh. Human pain was seen as suffering from the chastisement or punishment inflicted by God if you made him angry. This was supposed to produce growth or refinement, as gold is refined in fire. The pain–pleasure, health– illness continuum was really the simple equation of life–death. So suffering was associated with the effects of evil in a person’s life. The ancient Israelites did not understand that illness represents a temporary stage in the process of health and growth to self-actualization, and is not part of an equation of evil and its consequences. Illness, in fact, can

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sometimes bring a person to greater growth and spiritual maturity. Job and his book in the Hebrew Bible return ancient Israelite thought to an authentic theology about evil and about God. Job’s argument with God establishes the fact that human suffering is not an element in the equation of how God and evil stand toward each other or relate. That scripture makes it clear that we are unable to sin ourselves out of God’s grace, unable to squirm out of his long embrace. In the direst of human circumstances, God is not seen as the problem but as the shepherd of human growth, the source of human survival, and the energy behind human thriving and flourishing. However, those facts of grace in God’s disposition toward us do not eliminate evil or its consequences, whether that evil is personal, social, or institutional. There is also another side to the Hebrew understanding of humans carrying on life before the face of God. Humans are not split in two, as the Greeks thought. The theological theme and pattern in the Hebrew Bible (OT) and in Jesus’s ministry as reported in the NT depict human life as a dynamic line of growth. The outcome is full personhood and self-realization in interaction with God. On that growth continuum, suffering and shalom are temporary interactive states, enhancing life as a means toward eternal life. On that trajectory, growth is a total-person experience. It is not a Greek notion of the godlike higher passions of mind and psyche gaining dominance and control over the evil lower passions of the “animal appetites”: sex, avarice, anger, addictions, narcissism, and gluttony. Surely that comprehensive and theologically oriented perspective or model is valuable in constructing a responsible understanding of the way evil is conceived. However, Paul’s thought on evil is ambiguous because his notion of human nature is ambivalent. He sees humans caught in the struggle of the higher passions over the lower passions. At the same time, he has in the back of his mind the Hebrew notion of the unity of the human person. Paul’s manner of viewing human persons is constructed on a continuum of three states of development, as noted above: primordial persons, as in the story of paradise in Genesis 1–3; fallen persons who are alienated from God; and whole persons in Christ. This is a continuum of growth leading to God’s ultimate destiny for us all, namely, our fulfillment as persons. This implies our self-realization and self-actualization as image bearers of God and God’s compatriots in bringing in his reign of love and grace on earth. However, Paul remained confused throughout his life and work about the relationship of his Greek tendencies as a Hellenized Jew, and the Hebrew roots of his theology. The historic Hebrew notion of a person (Hebrew = nephesh, or body, mind, and spirit) is that humans are unitary beings. There is no such thing as a separation between various parts or functions of a person. The ancient Israelites saw the entire person as a unity made in the image of God, genitals and all. “God made humans in God’s own image, male and

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female” (Gen 1:27). Paul’s Greek worldview shaped his theology in terms of the notion that persons are made of three or four parts. These were all in tension with each other. Paul used the four terms to speak of the four facets of human personhood. In sound Greek fashion, he spoke of the body (soma), our fleshly nature (sarx), our soul and mind (nous), and our spirit natures (psyche). To use Freudian terms that apply here, Paul always struggled to describe how the psyche and nous (ego and superego—the higher passions) adequately disciplined the soma and sarx (id—the lower passions) to insure that the person did not do evil. In the end, the Hebrew theology of grace triumphed in his theology. We cannot sin ourselves out of God’s grace (Rom 8), but the function of our lower passions is, nonetheless, what introduces evil into the world, in Paul’s view. Our bodies (soma) are not the whole of our fleshly nature (sarx), but they are the source and center of it, and the dangerous root of evil in human behavior. Paul thought our appetites were inherently evil or led us into evil. Likewise, our souls and minds (nous) are not the whole of our spirit (psyche), but they are its source and center, and thus the wellspring of shalom that triumphs over evil in this world. By the time of Socrates, the Greeks differentiated markedly between the spiritual and psychological issues, on the one hand, and the physiological matters, on the other. This was a corollary of their perception that human physical nature and drives were essentially animalistic and subhuman. These lower passions were to be subdued and held in check by the higher passions in so far as possible, namely, by the intellectual and psychological powers. They were sure that ideal humanness resided essentially in the psyche and the nous. The Hebrew outlook was different in the very revealing ways just suggested. By viewing human nature in a thoroughly unified manner, they perceived the whole person as made in the image of God’s ethereal and mundane characteristics. Our spiritual and physiological functions equally reflect the divine imprint upon us. The Hebrews discerned no inherent tension between the physiological and the psychological, no conflict between body and soul. There was little compartmentalization of the various facets and functions of persons until the debate between the Pharisees and Sadducees about the resurrection of the soul and its survival after death. Prior to that, a human being was discerned to be inherently unitary, rendering absurd the Greek idea of a division between soma and psyche. These two traditions are the primary roots of our present Western JudeoChristian view of the human sources of evil. The Greeks thought evil comes from the uncontrolled and often unconscious function of the lower passions of humans, whereas the Hebrews thought that evil comes from a willful choice by humans to act contrary to the will of God. Both contribute important elements to our present way of viewing the question.

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In the Synoptic Gospels, Mark, Matthew, and Luke-Acts, the picture of evil in the world is a derivative of the various apocalyptic forms of Judaism that were afloat in Jesus’s world at the time of the writing of the NT documents. The type of apocalyptic Judaism that influenced the NT was one that held evil to be a result of human misbehavior prompted by evil powers from a realm outside of this world. These gospels present a worldview in which the devil and demons exist in the form of agents who have rebelled against God and are busy trying to wreck God’s world and God’s intentions for this world. In this model, Jesus is opposed by the devil and his angels, who cause suffering and evil throughout the human race and human world. Jesus’s avowed objective in those stories is to put down these evil powers, overcome the evil forces at work in this world, and ultimately triumph over them and exterminate them. According to the first three gospels, this will be a work completed when he returns on the clouds of heaven with all the holy angels, in the power and glory of God the Father. When he returns in that dramatic parousia, he will set in motion a cataclysmic judgment day, a termination of history, and an end of all evil. The Synoptic Gospels are a form of apocalyptic Judaism that explains the source of evil by deriving it from a rebellion of the wicked angels in heaven. Those demons invaded God’s world here on earth to corrupt it. They did so by tempting humans to behave contrary to God’s law, word, and will. Evil comes from the other world, according to the Synoptic Gospels, but is implemented in the world by humans who allow themselves to be agents of the devil and his minions. John’s Gospel is very different from the Synoptic Gospels, in virtually every way. In this fourth gospel there is no end to history, there is no judgment day, there is no extermination of the wicked or eternal punishment of evildoers. There is also no second coming in John. Jesus, the Christ, is in John the carrier of the Logos from heaven. He came down to reveal the divine mysteries of the salvation of the whole world by God’s grace (Jn 3:13–18, esp. 16–17). He then returned to heaven, his true home, to stay there for all eternity. In John the judgment took place before the world was created. God was the judge, and he judged in that pre-creation act that he would create this world and that he would utterly save it. Evil in John is only the actions of human beings who do not identify with and commit themselves to Jesus as the Christ, the Son of Man, as Jesus called himself. Such persons judge themselves in the sense that light has come into the world and they have preferred the darkness. That darkness comes from ignoring the divine mysteries of grace in Christ. Nonetheless, in the end all evil will be removed from the world progressively in each generation by the fact that God absolutely forgives it all in advance. John’s Gospel was the last item in the NT to be written, so we ought to take seriously this final word from God, so to speak. The

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evil perpetrated in the world is always caused by humans, according to John’s Gospel, either by not being adequately conformed as yet to the ways of God revealed in Jesus the Christ, or by willful rejection of God’s way for humans. John’s Gospel is universalistic in its view of the ultimate elimination of evil (e.g. 3:16–17), just as is Paul’s theology of divine triumph over all evil in the world (e.g., Rom 8). For both of these authors, evil is produced by humans rejecting God’s will and way for his world. Both also assert that in the end, God will triumph over evil by forgiving it in God’s radical, unconditional, and universal grace. The difference between John and Paul lies in the fact that in the fourth gospel, the model of human beings is the Hebrew model of persons as unified in nature, so choosing evil is a choice made by the whole person, whereas in the Pauline epistles the choice to do evil is the influence of the bodily and animal instincts and not of the spiritual side of the person. This model leaves room for believing that I did not really intend to do evil, but my God-given lower passions made me do it. The “devil in me” made me do it. It is interesting that Paul actually says of himself, “The good that I would do, I do not, and the evil that I would not, that I do.” Here we see not only the tension in Paul between his Hebrew and Greek worldviews but also the tension between the notions of evil as caused by God and evil derived from human disorder, dysfunction, and disobedience. Even so, at one place in Romans 1:18–32 Paul says that people had an evil mind (nous). However, even there he declares that “God gave them over to an evil mind.” The Greek model removes the cause of evil one step of abstraction from the center of responsibility of the person’s self. Paul declares in that passage, The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse, for although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. . . . Therefore, God gave them up to the lusts of their hearts, to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie. . . . For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions . . . since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a base mind and improper conduct. They were filled with all manner of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Though they know God’s decree . . . they not only do them [evil things] but approve those who practice them.

It is interesting that Paul clearly sees humans as divided between the “lusts of their hearts” (nous and psyche); the lusts of “their bodies” (soma and sarx); “dishonorable passions”—presumably, lower passions or animal instincts

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(soma and sarx); and “base minds” (nous and psyche) that lead to “improper conduct” (i.e., doing evil). This is a Greek model of how humans are constructed and function. Nonetheless, all the way through this passage Paul gets his categories mixed up. One has lust or animal passions not only of the body (soma and sarx) but also of the mind (nous and psyche). Evil conduct comes not only from the soma and sarx but also from “base minds” (nous, at least, and probably psyche [spirit] as well). So all through Paul’s Greek model, there is a stream of Hebrew ideology that tries to get the whole person, not just the lower passions, involved in the production of evil. He had his own struggle to do the good his real self (nous and psyche— mind and spirit) wants to do, and against doing the evil the “devil” (soma and sarx—fleshly passions) in him does. Paul has this to say in Romans 7:13–25: Sin was working death in me . . . so that sin might be shown to be sin. . . . We know that the law is spiritual (of the nous and psyche); but I am carnal (soma and sarx), enslaved under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For what I (nous and psyche—the real me) want to do, I do not, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. So then it is no longer I (nous and psyche—the real me) that do it, but sin which dwells within me (soma and sarx—that opposing force). For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh (soma and sarx—the enemy). I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For the good that I would, I do not, and the evil that I would not, that I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I (nous and psyche—mind and spirit) that does it, but sin which dwells within me (soma and sarx—the enemy opposed to the real me). So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self (nous and psyche—mind and spirit), but I see in my members (penis—soma and sarx) another law that is at war with the law of my mind (nous) and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members (soma and sarx— genitals?). Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body (soma and sarx) of deadliness? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of myself (nous and psyche—my real self) serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh (soma and sarx—that thing out there that stands over against my real self) I serve the law of sin.

It is amazing to what extent Paul is willing to cut himself up into pieces in order to get himself off the hook for being responsible for evil. He affirms that his higher passions are really him, but that his lower passions are not him. He has separated himself from everything below the belt. What was the evil that he was having such a hard time dealing with, acknowledging, and accepting responsibility for? Was his “thorn in the flesh” the fact that he was an obsessive masturbator and his mother had caught him at it as a pubescent boy, shamed him unmercifully, and so left him with a permanently negative view of the sexual appetite?

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Paul prided himself in being a Hebrew of the Hebrews, and, as touching the law, a Pharisee. So it is not surprising that his Hebrew traditions and mind-set kept breaking through his learned Hellenistic Judaism. However, when we consider the context in which he was working, it is not surprising that he was constantly thinking in terms of the model and language of his Greek or Hellenistic perspective. Paul lived at the time of Philo and the Hellenization of the Jewish world. It was the time that Middle Platonism was sliding into Neo-Platonism. Platonism held that a radical divide existed between the ethereal or heavenly world and the mundane or earthly sphere of existence, and thus between the world of the spirit (psyche) and the material or physical world (soma and sarx). This cosmic split also split humans at the beltline. Neo-Platonism developed this idea further and created an ideology in which a hierarchy of God and the lesser gods was devised. It was designed to explain the distance between the flawed material or physical world and the pure and ineffable world of the spirit and the divine. God is pure spirit, transcendent and ineffable. Therefore, God could not have created the flawed world in which evil exists. Hence, one of the demigods must have done it. The big problem for Neo-Platonism was to discern how far down the ladder from the high God of pure spirit the evil creator god needed to be in order to protect God from culpability for the evil in this world. These were the kinds of issues with which Paul was already struggling, though Neo-Platonism would not become fully formed for a couple more centuries, with the rise of Plotinus and Porphyry. As we saw in previous chapters, Zoroastrianism had heavily influenced the apocalyptic Judaisms of Paul’s time. That ideology taught that there was a radical split between the kingdoms of light and darkness. The soul of humans was considered an element of the light but entangled in the roots and tentacles of the darkness. Manichaeanism was a second-century form of Christianity that taught this Zoroastrian model, claiming that Jesus Christ was the redeemer who enabled the particles of light to escape from the darkness and return to their ethereal realm. This was, for most Christian thinkers who followed Pauline thought, an inadequate explanation of the problem of evil. Nonetheless, it combined with the Greek model of human nature to influence the Church’s interpretation of the NT. The Platonist and eventually the Neo-Platonist perspective seemed to line up with Pauline NT theology much more precisely than Zoroastrian Manichaeanism. In Neo-Platonism, there is only one reality (i.e., God), from whom the material world came forth as a series of emanations. So from absolute unity came multiplicity, the many aspects of the material world. Also from the transcendent God arises self-conscious mind (nous) and spirit (psyche). Soul and life derive from the universal mind, and soul is the bridge between the two spheres of our spirituality and physicality.

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The material world is the most degraded of the reality encompassed in the supreme unity. Within the unity of all reality in God, the material and fleshly world is the farthest distant from God’s pure spirit. Universal soul provides the structure to the material world and rules it from above, much like the function of the divine Logos in Philo’s thought. The immanence of soul within the universe, Plotinus thought of as nature—the indwelling principle of life and growth. It produces all material bodies. This makes the material world, and our fleshly existence, the source and ground of evil—the world of darkness. Plotinus thought, in keeping with Plato, that the material world is not inherently evil: He strongly maintained its goodness and beauty as the best possible work of Soul [at the material level of existence]. It is a living organic whole, and its wholeness is the best possible (though very imperfect) reflection on the space-time level of the living unity [divine] in [the] diversity of the world of forms in Intellect [nous]. It is held together in every part by a universal sympathy and harmony. In this harmony external evil and suffering take their place as necessary elements in the great pattern, the great dance of the universe. Evil and suffering can affect men’s lower selves [soma and sarx] but cannot touch their true, higher selves [nous and psyche] and so cannot interfere with the real well-being of the philosopher [who ignores his or her body and lives in his or her mind]. (Armstrong, 1974, p. 541)

According to Neo-Platonism, as humans we can choose to place ourselves on any level of the universal soul. We can ascend in the spiritual realm to universal soul itself and so become the complete entity we always have the potential of being. In doing this, we participate in the perfect realm of the mind (intellect) and spirit. On the other hand, we may choose to place ourselves on the lower level, imprisoning ourselves in the lusts, longings, tastes, concerns, and experiences of the lower level of mere material existence and animal appetites. The body and material existence weigh a person down; but conversion empowers one by a concerted act of intellect, will, and moral effort to rise above the life of the body and awake to the spiritual way of seeing. All of us have the potential, but few use it. This is the mystical union with God that is the ideal of experience and existence. It is readily apparent how extensively the Pauline writings, and the NT in general, were shaped by the early stages of this kind of Middle Platonist and Neo-Platonist ideology. The NT never really gets back to its Hebrew roots, but reflects a world that has moved on into the Hellenistic perspective that spread over the whole world after the conquests of Alexander the Great four centuries before Paul. Woven through this as well was the Zoroastrian apocalypticism that came back from Babylon with the returning Jewish exiles. Thus, except for the Gospel of John, the NT is largely caught up in a

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mind-set in which evil is the product of the flawed or inferior nature of the material world. This is reflected in the physical nature of the human body with its fleshly drives. Thus evil is some other force than the real human person, but it works within the person, causing wreckage within that person and in society. Humans can rise above this by sheer force of will, but cannot eliminate evil. Only the radical act of divine grace can do so. In the NT, only Paul in his better moments (Rom 8) and the author of the Gospel of John really saw this clearly. Even so, Paul remained enmeshed in the unresolvable perplexities of his psychological, theological, and spiritual splitting. John transcends this perplexity. One of the large background problems regarding how the entire Bible handles the problem of evil is the frequent temptation to link and confuse suffering with evil. This has been the human proclivity throughout history. However, to identify human suffering as evil is to resort to a kind of human imperialism that assumes that human life is supposed to be comfortable and if it is not, that raises a question about God’s goodness. This is absurd. Obviously this world is created as a matrix of total freedom with the specific purpose that everything is designed for growth. Growth inevitably brings change. Change inevitably brings the pain of loss of the old and adjustment to the new. This pain inevitably brings suffering. Additionally, freedom means experimentation, chance, errors, accidents, and bad choices. This is true on the cellular level, and so cancers arise. It is true on the genetic level, so some of us are born with a proclivity to heart disease. It is true on the level of life forms everywhere in the food chain of existence. It is true on the level of humans in relationship to our selves and each other. In a free world of individuals questing for growth and meaning, interests on the part of each will not always be mutual interests. Thus conflict is built into creation, and how we resolve it is dependent upon how well we are motivated to care about shalom (Feikens, 2001). The Bible, in neither the OT nor the NT, has a satisfactory biblical theological resolution of the problem of evil or the problem of pain. In the end, Paul gasps that he is persuaded in the face of everything that neither evil derived from some rebellion in heaven, nor evil derived from the unresolvable problem within our own natures, nor evil as the product of willful destructive choices can stand against God’s ultimate triumph of grace. He declares in Romans 8:37–39, In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, neither angels nor constituent structures of the creation nor divine decrees, neither things present nor things to come, nor things from above [bad angels] nor things from below [demons or the devil within us], nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Jesus Christ our Lord.

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The author of John’s Gospel would resoundingly agree. They never quite got the problem figured out, but they surely found the solution.

REFERENCES Armstrong, A. H. (1974). Plotinus and Neo-Platonism. S.v. in Encyclopaedia Britannica, Macropaedia (Vol. 14, p. 541). Chicago: Helen Hemingway Benton. Feikens, J. (2001). Conflict: Its resolution and the completion of creation. In Seeking understanding: The Stob lectures 1986–1998 (pp. 343–372). Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

ch apter 12

The Theologian as Diagnostician: Jeffrey Dahmer and (D)evil as a Theological Diagnosis Nathan Carlin

Nevertheless, in some of these perversions the quality of the new sexual aim is of a kind to demand special examination. Certain of them are so far removed from the normal in their content that we cannot avoid pronouncing them “pathological.” This is especially so where (as, for instance, in cases of licking excrement or of intercourse with dead bodies) the sexual instinct goes to astonishing lengths in successfully overriding the resistances of shame, disgust, horror or pain. But even in such cases we should not be too ready to assume that people who act in this way will necessarily turn out to be insane. —Sigmund Freud, (1905, p. 161)

INTRODUCTION There are certain persons whom one must deal with when defining evil, or when giving an account of the history and development of evil—what, in other words, volume 1 of this work sets out to do. One historically recent example would be Jeffrey Dahmer. According to his lawyer, Dahmer believed that he was the devil (Boyle, 2003). And there is reason to believe Dahmer. Indeed, he was one of the most brutal serial killers in history, admitting to murdering 17 boys and men. Although there are others on record as having committed more actual murders (Donald Leroy Evans, for example, claims to have murdered some 60 people), it is not so much the number of Dahmer’s victims that lends credence to his claims of devilry (Davis, 1991, p. 169), but, rather, it is the graphic nature in which Dahmer described his sexuality, his

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necrophilia (which involved having anal intercourse and engaging in fellatio with dead bodies), his cannibalism, his enjoyment of ritually dismembering human corpses, and his masturbation on severed heads and with internal organs that confirms for most everyone that Dahmer was in fact evil. If all of these heinous acts were not enough, the fact that he would call the families of his victims—announcing to them that he had killed their loved ones or pretending to be their loved ones, saying things like “Help me, Help me, Help me!” (Davis, 1991, pp. 111–112, 120)—should convince any doubters, as should the fact that he would perform a number of lobotomies on his unconscious victims in an attempt to create human zombies so that he could have a permanent sexual partner whom he could completely control. There is also the firsthand experience of Tracy Edwards, the man who escaped and brought Dahmer to the attention of the police, who said, “It was like I was confronting Satan himself ” (quoted in Ratcliff, 2006, p. 41). And then, too, there was the fact that Dahmer had plans to build a “power center” in his apartment out of human skeletons (O’Meara, 2009, p. 47). There is indeed reason to believe Dahmer’s claims to be the devil, and I suggest that we take the claims of this expert witness—that is, Dahmer’s own testimony—seriously.

THE ARGUMENT AND LAYOUT OF THIS CHAPTER In The Minister as Diagnostician, Paul Pruyser (1976) argued that pastors have a special body of knowledge, just like every other profession, and that pastors ought not to give up their tradition and their language when they are dealing with cases and problems that, in recent years, have been taken up by other professions, such as psychiatry. In this book, Pruyser did not attempt to integrate pastoral theology and clinical psychiatry, but, rather, he wanted to bring them into “thoughtful apposition” (p. 17). This chapter, as the title suggests, follows in Pruyser’s tradition, and I suggest that the theologian, like the minister, has diagnostic tools as well. Recently I have used psychology to diagnose God both with melancholia and with gender confusion (Carlin, 2009, 2010); here I use theology—specifically, Origen’s (1973) On First Principles and a contemporary interpretation of the deadly sins tradition (Capps, 2000)—to diagnose Dahmer as a devil. No theologian, as far as I am aware, has addressed the topic of evil as it might apply to Dahmer. This is curious because virtually every commentator raises the issue of evil when discussing Dahmer (see, e.g., Bauman, 1991; Davis, 1991; Jaeger & Balousek, 1991; Schwartz, 1992; Tithecott, 1997). I argue that a theological diagnosis deepens the psychological diagnosis of Dahmer, though I am not suggesting that theology ought to replace psychology—the task is, as Pruyser put it, apposition, not integration. This chapter is divided into three basic parts. The first part provides the reader with an overview of the life and crimes of Dahmer, and I draw on the

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major journalistic accounts about Dahmer, Lionel Dahmer’s account of his son’s life, and scholarly literature on Dahmer. The second part of this chapter deals with the clinical literature on Dahmer, and the third part offers my theological diagnosis of Dahmer.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION Jeffrey Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960, to Lionel and Joyce Dahmer. He grew up in Bath Township, Ohio. Dahmer seems to have had a relatively normal childhood—nothing to suggest that this boy would become a mass murderer. Indeed, Richard Tithecott (1997) described Dahmer as a “white boy with a privileged background, from an industrious, well-educated family” (p. 69). “So many of us wanted to believe that something had traumatized little Jeffrey Dahmer,” Schwartz (1992) wrote, “otherwise we must believe that some of us give birth to monsters” (p. 39). Yet, in retrospect, there has been some material for journalists and psychologists to contemplate. Ann Schwartz (1992) noted that Dahmer’s first grade teacher wrote on his report card that he seemed to feel “neglected” (p. 38). This was just months after his younger brother, David, was born. Dahmer’s father also claimed that Dahmer was sexually abused by a neighbor at the age of 8, though Dahmer denied this, and the claim was never substantiated. In elementary school, Dahmer became interested in chemistry—his father was a chemist—and he played with chemistry sets. As a boy, he began experimenting on insects, and, when he got older, he began experimenting on dead animals. Lionel also remembers a time when Dahmer played “fiddle sticks” with the bones of a dead animal. His father wrote, In the last few years, I have often thought of my son as he looked that afternoon, his small hands dug deep into a pile of bones. I can no longer view it simply as a childish episode, a passing fascination. It may have been nothing more than that, but now I have to see it in a different way, in a more sinister and macabre light. (Dahmer, 1995, p. 53)

In retrospect, one can impose impending doom, and perhaps we are compelled to do so, despite the fact that many children go through similar experiences and have similar fascinations but do not grow up to be mass murderers. Dahmer’s father, as a chemist, was somewhat distant from the family. Dahmer’s mother suffered from anxiety and depression. And they did not have a loving marriage. In the second half of the 1970s, things became very heated between them, and they divorced in 1978. Lionel Dahmer remarried the same year on Christmas Eve to Shari Shinn Jordan. All of this, to be sure, was very hard on young Dahmer, and, as a teenager, he would often go out into the woods hitting trees to express his anger. He also became an alcoholic.

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Dahmer attended Revere High School. He took up a number of extracurricular activities: He played the clarinet for a year, he played tennis for a few years, and he worked on the school newspaper for a year. Most of his high school friends noticed that something was off about Dahmer—that he liked dead animals, that he was a loner, and that he drank heavily—but, in any case, he seemed to be well liked because of his humor and pranks. In the 1978 Revere High School yearbook, for example, Schwartz (1992) noted that “Dahmer showed up for the National Honors Society photo even though he was not a member. His face was blocked out before the books went to press” (p. 41). One day Dahmer would have his revenge: His face would appear in hundreds of newspapers, which could not be blotted out because of his own literal blotting out of faces. Dahmer bounced around a bit after he graduated from high school in 1978. He attended Ohio State University for one semester the following fall. But he dropped out after one semester because of poor grades, which were likely the result of his heavy drinking. On December 29, 1978, Dahmer joined the U.S. Army. He signed up for 3 years. He trained as a medical specialist, and he held a post in Baumholder, Germany. In 1981, just months before fulfilling his contract, he was discharged from the army on account of his drinking. He moved to Florida for a little while, but he eventually moved in with his paternal grandmother, Catherine Dahmer, in West Allis, Wisconsin. Once Dahmer moved to Wisconsin, his life slowly came apart over the period of a decade. Although Dahmer committed his first murder in 1978— shortly after his high school graduation and shortly before his parents’ divorce became final—he did not kill again until 1987. He would kill two times in 1988, one time in 1989, four times in 1990, and eight times in 1991. His killing became considerably more frequent after 1988 because he moved into his own apartment then: in the now infamous Oxford Apartments, formerly on 924 North Twenty-Fifth Street in Milwaukee. One exception to this downward spiral is the fact that, in 1985, Dahmer took a job at Ambrosia Chocolate Company in Milwaukee. Although Dahmer was not able to stay in school or in the army, or to hold down any other job, he was able to work at the chocolate factory. He made a considerable amount of money for a bachelor, and he received a number of raises over the years. His former boss noted, [H]e had no problems with Dahmer whom he described as “polite.” “He was quiet. He had no problems reacting with others.” Further, his boss thought Dahmer did “a satisfactory job.” One of the facts that came out at trial was that Dahmer was able to mix almost five hundred distinct chocolate recipes during his time there, indicating his ability to perform and be paid for complex tasks. (O’Meara, 2009, p. 50)

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This success at the chocolate factory enabled Dahmer to buy drinks for men on the weekends and to offer boys money for posing nude in his apartment. The expendable income also enabled him to buy tools to dismember bodies—saws to cut up bones and drums of acid to take flesh off of bodies. Dahmer had a couple of run-ins with the police—both involving sexual behavior with minors. In 1982, Dahmer was charged with indecent exposure at the Wisconsin State Fair. In 1988, he was arrested for molesting a 13-year-old boy. He was sentenced to 5 years probation and 1 year in workrelease program, though he was released 2 months early from work release program on account of good behavior. His next major interaction with the police occurred on May 27, 1991, involving yet another minor. This episode will be discussed in detail below. Dahmer was finally arrested for murder on July 22, 1991—he had lost his job at the chocolate factory about a week before this—and his trial began in Milwaukee on January 22, 1992.

THE MURDERS There are two murders, and an attempted murder, that are most commonly discussed with regard to the 17 murders that Dahmer committed. They include his first murder; a murder in which Dahmer should have been caught; and the attempted murder in which Dahmer was caught. He committed his first murder in 1978, shortly after his high school graduation. He picked up 18-year-old Steven Hicks, who was hitchhiking his way back from a music concert. Dahmer suggested that they go back to his parents’ house to party, and Hicks agreed. Dahmer said that they had an enjoyable evening, but when Hicks said that he wanted to go—he was trying to make it back home for his father’s birthday—Dahmer struck Hicks on the head with a barbell and strangled him to death in front of the bookshelves in the den. He dismembered the body with a large knife, peeled the flesh off of the bones, and smashed the skeleton into pieces with a sledgehammer. He eventually scattered the parts around town, leaving some parts in his own backyard (Davis, 1991, pp. 37–43). Hicks’s parents filed a missing persons report, but the case went unsolved until Dahmer confessed to the murder years later. The forensic evidence matched Dahmer’s story, despite the fact that the details of Dahmer’s story changed a number of times (O’Meara, 2009). On May 27, 1991, a 14-year-old boy, Konerak Sinthasomphone, lost his life at the hands of Dahmer. This murder constitutes the second murder that is universally discussed when talking about Dahmer’s murders. Ironically and tragically, Sinthasomphone’s older brother also suffered at the hands of Dahmer a few years earlier. In 1988, Dahmer lured this boy into his apartment by offering him $50 to take nude pictures of the then 13-year-old boy. The boy ran away and told the police, and Dahmer was arrested.

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In 1991, Dahmer lured Sinthasomphone into his apartment, apparently with the same kind of technique that he used on his older brother. He drugged the boy, as he normally did to his victims. Sinthasomphone passed out, and, while he was unconscious, Dahmer raped him. Afterward, Dahmer went out to buy some beer. While he was away, Sinthasomphone, naked and traumatized, escaped from the apartment. Because he was drugged and traumatized, Sinthasomphone was having trouble walking and talking. But he eventually stumbled upon two young women: Nicole Childress and Sandra Smith. Dahmer was only a little ways behind, and he spotted the three and attempted to take back the boy. The young women would not let him take Sinthasomphone, and they called 911. Within minutes, police officers and firefighters were there. They covered Sinthasomphone, who was bleeding from the rape, with a blanket. The police wanted this situation to be handled quietly, so they escorted Dahmer and Sinthasomphone back to Dahmer’s apartment, against the wishes of the young women. Dahmer, being calm and respectful, convinced the police officers that he and Sinthasomphone were lovers, that Sinthasomphone is much older than he looks, that they had had drunken fights like this before, that they were sorry, and that this would never happen again. Sinthasomphone surely was horrified about what was transpiring before his eyes, but he was unable to speak because of the trauma and the drugs. The police left the boy with Dahmer, and Dahmer strangled him. Dahmer would kill five more times after this. When these details about the case came out after the fact, tensions rose in Milwaukee concerning racism and homophobia. If, many citizens reasoned, a black man were trying to take a white boy back to his apartment after the police were called, the police would have been much more thorough. They would have run background checks. If they had, they would have discovered that Sinthasomphone was only 14 and that Dahmer had been convicted of second-degree sexual assault on a minor. Put simply, Sinthasomphone’s life would have been spared. Two other factors about this incident made the Milwaukee Police Department look very unprofessional and incompetent. The first was that, after returning Sinthasomphone to Dahmer, the police made jokes on the radio about the affair. Davis (1991) relayed the recording: “Intoxicated Asian, naked male, was returned to his boyfriend.” On a tape recording of the call, laughter was audible. “My partner is going to get deloused at the station,” the reporting officer said. There was more laughter. (p. 12)

Another embarrassing incident for the police involved Glenda Cleveland, the mother of Sandra Smith and aunt of Nicole Childress—the two young women who found Sinthasomphone naked. After Sinthasomphone was returned to

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Dahmer, the young women went to Cleveland’s house and told her what had happened. Cleveland then called 911 to find out what was going on. She was eventually transferred to the Milwaukee Police Department. She even spoke with a police officer who was at the scene. The phone call was recorded: It was an intoxicated boyfriend of another boyfriend. Well, how old was this child? It wasn’t a child. It was an adult. Are you sure? Yup. Are you positive? Because this child doesn’t even speak English. My daughter has dealt with him before, seen him on the street, you know. Officer: Yeah. No, uh, he’s uh, he’s. . . [i]t’s all taken care of, Ma’am. Cleveland: Isn’t this . . . I mean, what if he’s a child and not an adult? I mean, are you positive this is an adult? Officer: Ma’am. Ma’am. Like I explained to you, it’s as positive as I can be. Cleveland: Oh. I see. Officer: I can’t do anything about someone’s sexual preferences in life, and if . . . Cleveland: Well, no, I’m not saying anything about that, but it appeared to have been a child, this is why. . . Officer: No. Cleveland: No? Officer: No, he’s not. (Davis, 1991, pp. 50–51) Officer: Cleveland: Officer: Cleveland: Officer: Cleveland:

A few days later, a missing persons report appeared in the newspaper regarding Sinthasomphone. Cleveland next phoned the FBI. The FBI got in touch with the Milwaukee Police Department, and Davis wrote that “since no evidence existed that a federal crime had been committed, [they decided] the local authorities should handle the matter” (p. 51). As it turned out, Cleveland’s efforts, as noble as they were, still would not have made a difference. Davis wrote, “Dahmer, in discussing the matter, told investigators that as soon as the door closed and the three police officers walked back downstairs, he had strangled the drugged Laotian boy until he was dead” (p. 52). Davis continued, “Dahmer said he then had sex with the corpse, took some photographs to add to his horrible collection, and began the long process of dismembering the body. As a trophy, he chose to keep the teenager’s skull” (p. 52). The only man to have escaped Dahmer is Tracy Edwards. Edwards offered, then, the only firsthand account of what Dahmer was like in his murderous rage. Richard Jaeger and William Balousek (1991) offered a summary of Edwards’s account. They noted that Dahmer approached Edwards and Edwards’s friend—Jeffrey Stevens—in the Grand Avenue Mall, asking

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them if they wanted to come over to party. Stevens actually recognized Dahmer because they lived in the same neighborhood. Edwards went back to Dahmer’s apartment. Dahmer gave Stevens, who was going to pick up some other people for the party, the wrong address—one of Dahmer’s standard tricks. Edwards had no idea he was walking into a trap. When they got back to Dahmer’s apartment, Edwards said, “It smells like somebody died in here” (Jaeger & Balousek, 1991, p. 110). Dahmer chuckled and explained, “It’s a problem with the sewer” (p. 110). They went into the living room, which was spotless, and they had a few beers. They talked for a while, mostly about Chicago. But then the smell was really getting to Edwards, and he began to wonder where the others were. He said to Dahmer that they should leave and find out what happened to the others. Dahmer instead made him another drink, this one with his special potion, and he told him to take a look at the fish tank. Dahmer said he liked the fish because one of them would eat the others. As Edwards was looking at the tank, Dahmer placed a handcuff on Edwards, and he pulled out a knife, saying, “Do exactly what I tell you” (p. 111). Dahmer took Edwards back to his bedroom and turned on the movie The Exorcist III—Dahmer’s favorite movie (Dahmer also liked the Star Wars movies, as he identified with the evil Emperor in the movie and even purchased yellow contact lenses to have the same eye color as the Emperor for his nights out on the town). Dahmer made Edwards sit on the bed, and he pulled out a human head from a filing cabinet, saying, “This is how I get people to stay with me. . . . You’ ll stay with me” (p. 111). Edwards was shocked and horrified, and he was very drowsy, struggling to stay awake, but he knew that he had to or else he would die. Dahmer also taunted Edwards by showing him a pair of human hands hanging in the closet. Dahmer eventually tried to get the other handcuff on Edwards, but he was unable to do so. After some wrestling, Edwards managed to overpower Dahmer—Dahmer was going in and out of trance states every fifteen minutes or so, Edwards testified, and Edwards punched Dahmer when he was in one of these odd states, enabling him to escape. Edwards stumbled out into the street to search for the police. He found them, led the police to Dahmer’s apartment, and Dahmer was arrested. It was finally over; Dahmer would never murder again.

WAS DAHMER SICK OR EVIL—OR BOTH? In the literature on Dahmer, there has been a considerable amount of discussion over whether Dahmer was sick or evil—or both. This framing of the discussion derives from Dahmer’s own words. At the close of the trial, he said, Your honor, it is over now. This has never been a case of trying to get free. I didn’t ever want freedom. Frankly, I wanted death for myself. This was a

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case to tell the world that I did what I did not for reasons of hate. I hated no one. I knew I was sick or evil or both. Now I believe I was sick. The doctors told me about my sickness, and now I have some peace. (Quoted in Schwartz, 1992, pp. 216–217)

Before the trial, it seems that Dahmer was leaning toward being evil, rather than being sick. In a statement to the police, Dahmer said that “I have to question whether there is an evil force in the world and whether or not I have been influenced by it” (quoted in Tithecott, 1997, p. 20). He went on, “Although I am not sure if there is a God, or if there is a devil, I know as of lately I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about both, and I have to wonder what has influenced me in my life” (p. 20). What is interesting is that Dahmer is offering two kinds of subtle rationalizations for his crimes here: If he were sick, then, in some sense, he is not fully accountable for his crimes, and if he were evil, this would have been on account of the fact that some evil force (perhaps the devil himself) made him do it—or at least considerably influenced him and, therefore, deserves at least some of the blame. After the trial, and after he was baptized in prison, Dahmer retrospectively interpreted his crimes in a religious light: If a person doesn’t think that there is a God to be accountable to, then what’s the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing, and I’ve since come to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is truly God, and I believe that I, as well as everyone else, will be accountable to Him. (Quoted in Ratcliff, 2006, p. 55)

Here Dahmer shifts some of the blame to evolution—what Dahmer came to see as a faulty worldview. This subtle rationalization is not so much about being sick or evil, but simply about being mistaken. It is as though Dahmer accounted for his actions by saying to himself, “If I had only known that evolution was incorrect, then I would not have committed these crimes.” Roy Ratcliff, Dahmer’s pastor, seemed to agree with this interpretation, and he may have encouraged Dahmer in this regard. Ratcliff (2006) wrote, I think it is faith in God that makes us care about others. When God is ignored, and we live our lives as if He doesn’t exist, there is a profound effect on our actions and psyche. This is not to say that all atheists become murderers, but it is to say that not believing in God allows us to justify the most evil treatment of other people. (pp. 157–158)

This, of course, has a ring of truth to it, but believing in God also allows many to justify the most evil treatment of other people (cf. Pagels, 1996).

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Dahmer, then, offered three subtle defenses or rationalizations of his crimes: (a) He was sick (mentally ill), (b) he was influenced by evil forces, and (c) he held a mistaken worldview (evolution). I will focus on the question of evil in this chapter, but first I want to focus on the issue of mental illness.

PSYCHOLOGICAL DIAGNOSIS Dahmer has been given a number of psychiatric diagnoses. George Palermo, a psychiatrist who worked on Dahmer’s trial, diagnosed Dahmer for the court as “having a mixed personality disorder with sadistic, obsessive, fetishistic, anti-social, necrophilic features, typical of what has been called the organized, nonsocial, lust murderer” (Jentzen et al., 1994, p. 291). Martens and Palermo (2005) later stressed that loneliness contributed to Dahmer’s antisocial personality disorder; however, Silva, Ferrari, and Leong (2002) noted that, although many clinical experts agree that Dahmer had antisocial tendencies, there is widespread agreement that he did not have a fullblown disorder (p. 1355). Silva et al. (2002) argued that Dahmer suffered from Asperger’s syndrome. These authors also noted that a case could be made for Dahmer as having schizoid personality disorder or a personality disorder not otherwise specified with schizoid and schizotypal traits (Silva et al., 2002, p. 1355). Dahmer’s father thought that he suffered from shyness or social phobia (Silva et al., 2002, p. 1348). Jeffrey Jentzen, George Palermo, Thomas Johnson, Khang-Cheng Ho, Alan Stormo, and John Teggatz (1994), forensic experts involved with the Dahmer case, characterized Dahmer’s psychiatric problems as “destructive hostility.” Judith Becker suggested that Dahmer’s necrophilia was the central issue that led him to kill as he did (O’Meara, 2009, p. 45). Others, however, have doubted Becker’s argument because Dahmer seemed to have preferred live sexual partners—he was, after all, trying to create a zombie (O’Meara, 2009). Dahmer also had severe drinking problems, and he was treated for depression (Davis, 1991). Here I want to present two of these diagnoses; there is simply not space to review all of these arguments. The first that I want to present is the diagnosis of the forensic team, because these experts had the most and closest access to Dahmer. I also want to present Silva et al.’s (2002) diagnosis because it is the most recent clinical article, and, furthermore, these articles contrast quite nicely in terms of methodological approach. Jentzen et al. (1994) offered a psychoanalytic explanation for Dahmer’s behavior. The bulk of the article discusses the forensic evidence of the case, but the article also discusses the emotion of hostility. The authors suggested that hostility is “the common emotion behind any violent criminal act,” and that, among those who commit violent criminal acts, “one may find feelings of dependence, passivity, helplessness, a need to be loved frustrated in

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childhood, or a wish to control or dominate—a reaction formation against dependency and passivity” (p. 283). They also noted that one may find the fear of abandonment, avoidance of close relationships, and sudden bursts of aggression toward persons for whom they feel ambivalence. “Some hostile, aggressive people,” they wrote, “go through a life of neurotic, repetitive behavior, trying to avoid fantasized or real injuries to the ego” (p. 283). Jentzen et al. (1994) suggested that “[a]ggressive, violent individuals may feel engulfed by a world that they sense to be hostile,” and “[t]herefore, their hostile conduct has a primary unconscious aim[:] the end of any possible fusion with people around them and the reaffirmation of a distinction between the self and others” (p. 284, italics in original). These persons hate their loneliness but nevertheless engineer it themselves. “Their explosive or often programmed methodical, violent conduct,” they wrote, could be seen as a recurrent, neurotic, repetitive behavior that channeled into what can be thought of as a primary instinct of aggression, and short of incorporating and fusing with the loved person, destroys it on the altar of ambivalence, driven by repressed hostility accumulated through years of injury to the ego. (p. 284)

These authors suggested that Dahmer’s ambivalent sexuality expressed itself in sadism because he expected to be rejected (p. 288). They wrote, His destructive behavior and his fetishistic memorabilia are an obvious expression of his deep ambivalence about his own homosexual behavior, and his profound mixed hostility and love toward the objects of his interest. Regardless of his expressed loving feelings for them, his victims were not treated as persons but as objects that he disposed of as a child does with his toys, taking them apart to see what makes them the way they are, taking them apart to show who was in power and in control, and possibly unconsciously that he was not always the passive, dependent individual he feared himself to be. (p. 289)

They argued that “[o]ne explanation for his abhorrent conduct is that he was driven by a compulsive hostile aggressivity and that his violence was so profound as to cause him to kill, cut, dismember, and dissect in an obsessive, sadistic way” (p. 290). He did this, perhaps, “to get rid of his inner emotional torture and unwanted attraction” (p. 290). These actions, they suggested, actually could have prevented Dahmer from committing suicide: “His sadism could be viewed as the exercising of power and violence upon another for self-assertion and self-preservation” (p. 291). The upshot of this article, then, is that these authors believed that Dahmer’s basic problem was primary unconscious feelings of hate that were

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channeled into sadistic sexuality. There are, however, a couple of problems with this interpretation. The first is that this view does not square with Dahmer’s own self-understanding, as Dahmer said in his closing statement to the court: “This was a case to tell the world that I did what I did, not for reasons of hate. I hated no one” (quoted in Schwartz, 1992, pp. 216–217). It is possible, of course, that Dahmer simply was not conscious of his feelings of hate—the authors, after all, argued for primary unconscious feelings of hate—but this nevertheless remains a problem, leaving the interpretation to seem forced. Another problem with the interpretation is that Dahmer’s sexuality seemed to have less to do with violence or aggression than it did with control. He was, after all, trying to create a zombie so that he would not have to go through the violent act of killing again, and, as he stated numerous times, he disliked killing and needed to be drunk in order to do so (cf. Phillips, 2006). The chief contribution of this article, which I take to be accurate and insightful, is that Dahmer craved intimacy but nevertheless found it threatening and therefore engineered his own loneliness—a genuine expression of ambivalence. In “The Case of Jeffrey Dahmer: Sexual Serial Homicide From a Neuropsychiatric Developmental Perspective,” J. Arturo Silva, Michelle Ferrari, and Gregory Leong (2002) took another approach, one rooted in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR). They argued that Dahmer suffered from Asperger’s disorder. They listed the criteria for Asperger’s disorder from the DSM-IV-TR, and they offered the following evidence from Dahmer’s life, all of which is congruent with the DSM-IV-TR criteria for the Asperger’s diagnosis: • Dahmer, from an early age and throughout his life, had troubled social interactions. • Dahmer demonstrated awkward body kinetics. • Dahmer demonstrated repetitive and eccentric interests. • These characteristics presented themselves from about age 3.

The authors also noted some exclusionary criteria for Asperger’s disorder as well, criteria that also apply to Dahmer—namely, he did not have any language problems or delays; he had an average or even a high IQ; and he did not seem to have any pervasive developmental disorders, including schizophrenia. Silva et al. (2002) were attempting to provide a general theory of sexual serial killing—they believed Asperger’s disorder is often a common denominator—and they used Dahmer as a single case study to support this thesis. They suggested that the strength of their thesis—namely, that there is a connection between Asperger’s disorder and sexual serial killing—is that it “provides a better explanation regarding the origin of sexual fantasy as an antecedent in serial killing behavior,” and “that intrinsically [Asperger’s

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disorder] tends to promote isolation, resulting in a relative inability to test fantasy formation against the backdrop of the surrounding social world” (p. 1351). They continued, “Arguably, the foremost advantage of the proposed pervasive developmental disorder paradigm for serial sexual killing behavior is that it may provide a central insight into the specific psychological causes for serial killing in association with specific underlying neurobiological events” (p. 1351). In any case, whatever one makes of the thesis suggesting a correlation between Asperger’s disorder and sexual serial killing, the diagnosis of Asperger’s disorder does provide a compelling explanation for Dahmer’s fetishistic sexuality. Silva et al. (2002) noted that one can often observe in persons with Asperger’s disorder fetishistic behavior such as stamp collecting or eccentric interests like memorizing the names of persons who died on the Titanic. With Dahmer, this fetishistic behavior manifested itself in collecting animal bodies and, later, human cadavers. The upshot here is that Dahmer’s problem was not fundamentally sexual, nor was it aggression or “destructive hostility.” The fundamental issue, rather, was Asperger’s disorder, which created for him certain social problems in life and also contributed to his need for control and his obsessive collecting. Other developmental factors contributed to his sexuality, which merged with his Asperger’s disorder tendencies. That is to say, his needs for control and collecting, which themselves were eccentric (e.g., a fascination with dead animals), became sexualized, and, further, because he was not able to form friendships or relationships, also on account of his Asperger’s disorder, he turned to killing to satisfy both his sexual needs and his needs for control and collecting.

THEOLOGICAL DIAGNOSIS Although I neither want to dispute the many psychological and psychiatric diagnoses listed in this chapter, nor do I want to weigh in on which diagnosis fits Dahmer the best, I do, however, want to offer a theological diagnosis. My theological diagnosis draws, as noted, from two sources: Origen’s (1973) ontology and a contemporary interpretation of the deadly sins tradition (Capps, 2000). Although the deadly sins tradition continues to be seen as relevant—books continually are written about them (see, e.g., DeYoung, 2009)—Origen’s ontology is something that has fallen by the wayside, as many of his ideas were disavowed by orthodox Christianity (cf. Pagels, 1996). Recently, Donald Capps and I have rescued the concept of limbo from being left behind in the scrapheap of theological ideas (cf. Capps & Carlin, 2010), and here I do the same with regard to Origen. Origen’s ontology provides a general framework for understanding evil, and the deadly sins tradition provides a contextual understanding of sin—taken together, these

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theological tools offer a compelling interpretation of Dahmer that deepens the psychological diagnoses.

ORIGEN ’ S ONTOLOGY In the introduction to Origen’s On First Principles, G. W. Butterworth (1973) noted that, despite the fact that many of Origen’s (b. circa 185 ce) ideas have been discarded as heretical and misguided, “It never occurred to him that he was anything but an orthodox defender of the faith” (p. liii). Origen was simply marching into uncharted territory, asking questions that no one else had yet dealt with in a systematic way: How can suffering be accounted for, or evil? Why does the world exist? How are we saved? Will everyone be saved? Do human beings have free will? Origen’s system can be described as follows. In the beginning, there was God. God created a number of souls in a condition where they had free will— they could either travel closer to God or move away from God. All souls were equal, Butterworth noted, “and apparently identical” (p. lv). But some souls fell away, and, as they fell, they became heavier. Some souls became bright stars; other souls were not so bright. Some souls became even heavier and therefore required bodies so as to not fall into nonbeing. Butterworth wrote, In this way the various orders of angelic beings arose and below them the daemons; for all are of one original nature and ascend or descend in accordance with their own wills. From one class of these spirits the human race was constituted, and the qualities of each human soul and the environment into which it is born are due to its merits or demerits in previous existences. (p. lv)

This might be described as a Christian form of reincarnation. The value of this system is that it explains (a) the creation of the world, (b) the cause of suffering, and (c) how suffering might be overcome. The system is very dynamic, so much so that Jerome criticized it by stating that “according to Origen angels might become devils and the devil an archangel” (p. lvi). Butterworth noted that this process could, logically speaking, continue indefinitely. However, Origen argued that eventually God would overcome the fall and that one day God would bring all souls back to Godself—Origen’s system, then, was universalistic. And the means by which God the Father would accomplish this is through God the Son, who suffers for all. This system, though highly creative and rooted in scripture, came to be rejected by orthodox Christianity because it was highly pessimistic: Creation exists only because of the fall, and all of human history is, in some fundamental way, a mistake. It would be hard in this system to affirm the Jewish and Christian

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notion of the good creation (cf. Genesis 1). Other Christian traditions, such as those of Augustine and Calvin, also would have a problem with Origen’s emphasis on free will. And, further, Origen’s theology is fundamentally antibody. As Origen (1973) himself wrote, “[F]or wherever bodies are, corruption follows immediately” (p. 247). Despite fundamental flaws in Origen’s theology, theologians, like scavengers, should nevertheless feel free to hunt and peck through his theology to grab and apply what seems to be useful and life giving. As Robert Dykstra (2005) put it, “[T]he pastoral theologian . . . must scavenge unapologetically, rummaging about resolutely in what others individually or collectively discard” (p. 9). And, in this case, this means scavenging through Origen’s theology.

DAHMER AS FALLING AWAY Despite the many possible critiques of Origen, I suggest that one of Origen’s ideas is nevertheless still particularly useful—namely, his idea of the falling away of souls. If we take this idea out of context—both out of historical context and out of the original Christian context—we can apply it to life on this side of the grave and in our own culture. Origen described how souls fall away by means of an analogy. He noted that men who become skilled in certain areas, such as geometry or medicine, gain their skills over time with much practice. When they go to sleep at night, and afterward in the morning, they still have the same skills. “If, however, he loses interest in these exercises and neglects to work,” Origen writes, “then through this negligence his knowledge is gradually lost, a few details at first, then more, and so on until after a long time the whole vanishes into oblivion and is utterly erased from his memory” (p. 40). This, too, is how souls fall away from God, Origen suggested: “All rational creatures who are incorporeal and invisible, if they become negligent, gradually sink to a lower level and take to themselves bodies suitable to the regions into which they descend” (pp. 40–41). Origen, then, described a process of descending into evil: Some souls can fall so far that they can become devils or demons. This, I suggest as a theological diagnosis, is what happened to Dahmer—that is, he gradually descended during his life to become a devil. I do not mean this literally but, rather, existentially. The fact that he recognized himself as the devil is not a delusion but, rather, an expression of his existential condition. He gradually became more selfish, more disregarding of others, and, finally, more evil, as his world became increasingly more destructive, hostile, full of lies, and lonely. A biblical example of this can be observed in Jesus’s own words, where he described Judas as a devil (John 6:70). An unlikely place where one can observe Dahmer’s progressive falling away involves, interestingly, his discomfort with passive anal intercourse. He

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reported that he had had passive anal intercourse only once or twice in his life, and that he experienced it as very uncomfortable. He preferred what he called “light sex,” such as oral sex and mutual masturbation. When engaging in anal intercourse, what he called “heavy sex,” he preferred to be active, that is, the one penetrating. His anxiety around “heavy sex,” apparently because he was afraid of being expected to be on the receiving end of anal intercourse, seemed to have led him to have problems achieving erections in such situations. He needed his partner to be unconscious the vast majority of the time in order to achieve orgasm (cf. Dahmer, 1995, p. 220). Initially, Dahmer seemed to be satisfied masturbating with a male mannequin that he kept in his closet while he was living with his grandmother. But when his grandmother found the mannequin, she told his father, and he forced him to get rid of it. Dahmer’s next solution to his anxiety concerning passive anal intercourse was to drug men in bathhouses, ensuring that sex would happen on his terms in the ways that he preferred. When the owner of a given bathhouse figured out that Dahmer was drugging men, he was banned from the bathhouse (Davis, 1995, pp. 81–82). What he wanted was a body that he could control. So his next step, because he was no longer allowed in the bathhouse, was to take a man to a hotel room so that he could have more privacy. He did this, but he “accidentally” killed a man while doing this, and so, from this point on, he decided to take men back to his apartment, because it was too difficult and too risky to remove dead bodies from hotel rooms (Phillips, 2006). One wonders if Dahmer’s deviant behavior was directly connected to his anxiety concerning passive anal intercourse—if, in other words, he were able to be comfortable with passive anal intercourse, or if he were able to communicate his anxiety about this sexual act to other men, would he have needed unconscious or dead bodies in order to ejaculate? In any case, Dahmer’s various strategies to avoid passive anal intercourse and his efforts to maintain control over his sexual interactions all failed: his masturbation with a mannequin, his drugging of men in bathhouses, his drugging of men in hotel rooms, his murdering of boys and men in his apartment, and his attempts at creating a zombie. My main point here is that Dahmer’s killing over the years became more frequent—and, if Dahmer’s account of his own deviance is to be believed (cf. O’Meara, 2009), he became more deviant in order to satisfy his sexual urges (he went from necrophilia to cannibalism to experimental lobotomies)—and that one can thus observe Dahmer falling away. It is not, however, that Dahmer’s urges became more deviant and that this deviance marks his falling away. It is, rather, his growing disregard for others—his objectification of the human body—and his need to have greater and greater control over others that mark his falling away. Perhaps an early step of his objectification of the human body was indicated by his choice of playing the clarinet as a boy, if the clarinet is viewed as a phallic symbol and if playing the instrument is viewed

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as a substitutionary form of fellatio. In any case, at some point it wasn’t enough for him to have control of an unconscious body; he had to have a part of the body to keep forever. Next, it wasn’t enough for him to just have a part of a body; it had to become a part of him by means of ingestion. And, finally, it wasn’t enough to consume another; he had to have permanent control of a living human being in the form of a passive zombie. It was his lust for sexual control and literal objectification and complete disregard for others, I suggest, that led to his becoming a devil.

DAHMER ’ S DEADLY SIN: LUST FOR SEXUAL CONTROL So far, I have used Origen to provide a theological framework for understanding how Dahmer fell and for how one might think about evil as a theological diagnosis with regard to Dahmer, and I have suggested that Dahmer’s lust for sexual control contributed to his becoming a devil. I now want to turn to a contemporary discussion of the deadly sins tradition for insight into the particular nature of Dahmer’s sin. In Deadly Sins and Saving Virtues, Donald Capps (2000) defined sin as an orientation that is harmful in several ways: (a) to the human community, (b) to God’s intentions for the world, and (c) to the individual (pp. 1–2). Capps wrote, By emphasizing that sin is an orientation to life, we avoid the suggestion that sin is purely a matter of action or behavior. Any orientation to life may range from a relatively permanent disposition to life, to an attitude that is relatively amenable to change, to a transitory impulse, which is the most unstable orientation of all. Actions issue from all three sorts of orientation. (p. 2)

Capps’s main point of the book is to show that “the basic forms of the disposition to sin are directly related to the stages of the life cycle,” and “thus, that dispositions to sin follow a developmental pattern or sequence” (pp. 2–3). The developmental theory that guides Capps’s work is Erik Erikson’s life cycle stages. Although Erikson’s life cycle stages do seem to be relevant to Dahmer—the fact that Capps links lust to Erikson’s intimacy versus isolation stage seems especially fruitful—I do not want to explore this theme here. Rather, what I want to convey here is Capps’s analysis of sin, as this analysis can shed more light on the nature of Dahmer’s fall. Capps noted that the traditional deadly sins are pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust. He also noted that other lists had eight deadly sins, with pride being the root of all sin, and that the logic was that the seven deadly sins followed from pride (melancholy, Capps pointed out, is the major sin that has been omitted from the traditional list of seven). Capps suggested that there may have been a couple of reasons that the list contained seven

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sins. One is that seven is a sacred number. Another reason is that there are seven days of the week, meaning that one could focus on resisting a particular sin each day. This means that lust, the seventh sin, would be Saturday’s sin—the sin of the weekend. This seems strangely appropriate for Dahmer, as he committed his murders on the weekend because this was when he could pick up his victims in malls, bars, and bathhouses. Capps located the deadly sin of lust in young adulthood, in Erikson’s stage of intimacy versus isolation. This, too, fits with Dahmer, as he committed all of his murders during these years of his life. Capps described lust as “1) a desire to gratify the senses; 2) a sexual desire, often implying the desire for unrestrained gratification; or 3) an overmastering desire, as a lust for power” (p. 53). Dahmer’s lust had all three of these qualities, especially as his lust manifested itself in rape. A major problem with lust is that often it becomes all consuming in terms of one’s interests and activities, and, as Dahmer said himself in interviews, his life became obsessed with and ordered around his sexual killing—everything was done for the sake of lust (Phillips, 2006). Capps described several major ways in which lust is particularly destructive. One is that, as Capps wrote, “Lust is an enemy of intimacy and is also a very destructive form of isolation” (p. 55). In lust, although one might be with another physically or sexually, one still remains separate emotionally and relationally, and, in this sense, lust is a form of self-subjugation, as one is all consumed with bodily pleasure but remains emotionally isolated. Dahmer’s life was one of isolation without intimacy: He never had a romantic relationship, and he had no close friendships. He replaced love with lust and intimacy with isolation—he was self-subjugated by his desires. Another major way that lust is destructive is that, as Capps pointed out, lust disregards others (p. 56). This disregard for others can easily and disturbingly be observed in Dahmer’s exploitation of and cruelty toward others, as he literally reduced others to objects such as food and decorations. Still another way that lust is destructive is that lust is socially irresponsible. Capps wrote, “The major difficulty with lust from the social point of view is that it inhibits our capacity to perform our social roles and to carry out our social responsibilities” (p. 54). Dahmer, of course, was extremely socially destructive, neglecting virtually all of his social responsibilities. Indeed, he was able to perform only one socially responsible activity—namely, his work at the chocolate factory. But even here, this social task was carried out for the sake of enabling his lust; that is, he maintained a job so that he could afford rent (so as to have a place to commit his murders and have sex) and so that he could have expendable income (so as to have a means to lure boys and men into his apartment by, for example, offering them money to pose nude for cash). Origen’s notion of falling away provides a framework for understanding how Dahmer could become evil, and even how he could become a devil, and

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Capps’s articulation of the deadly sins tradition provides insight into the particular way that Dahmer fell away: lust. Capps, as noted, described sin as an orientation to life, not merely as an action or a behavior. Impulses can become attitudes, attitudes can become dispositions, and actions and behaviors derive from all three of these orientations (Capps, 2000, p. 2). Combining Origen’s and Capps’s perspectives, then, Dahmer can be seen as first acting on an impulse, but, over time, he began to act out of an evil attitude, which justified his actions, and then an evil disposition, which consumed his life, and this disposition toward a lust for sexual control marked his falling away.

TWO CRITIQUES OF EVIL DISCOURSE Some intellectuals are resistant to calling Dahmer evil, and for good reasons. Maier (1991), for example, was critical of the fact that someone such as “Dahmer can be perceived as Satan, or a devil, and left at that, be cast out of humanity as bad, or worse, mad and bad” (p. 204). He suggested that this tendency derives from what he considers to be a mistake in Western theology—namely, the separation of good and evil in God. Maier wrote that “the satanic side of God has been cast into the shadow of the unconscious where it erupts into existence randomly because we do not know how to celebrate the two sides of God” (p. 206). He continued, “For me, Dahmer has been a reminder that I need to become more responsible for the parts of myself that live in my shadow, waiting for the right external circumstances to emerge” (p. 206). “[T]he criminal mind,” he suggested, “is not some exotic distortion, but my everyday mind and your everyday mind. It is this identification that can help prevent the doubling process from taking grotesque proportions” (p. 206). Maier’s point, then, is that we ought not to separate Dahmer from ourselves, and that we, too, are like Dahmer or could become Dahmer. This perspective is grounded in psychiatry and psychoanalysis, particularly in the thought of Carl G. Jung (1969). Tithecott (1997), too, was critical of the rhetoric of evil surrounding Dahmer, though his critique was grounded in a Foucauldian perspective. The discourse of evil, Tithecott suggested, surrounds Dahmer because “[t]he horror evoked is beyond the reach of psychiatry, [and] is indicative of a madness which cannot be treated, and consequently imprisonment or execution (as opposed to hospitalization) are perceived as the state’s only suitable response” (p. 15). Dahmer or other such serial killers, courts so often conclude, may have this or that psychological disorder, but, whatever the diagnosis, the perpetrator is still figured as evil, because not everyone with the given disorder has committed such brutal actions. Tithecott continued, “Central to such discourses is the idea of evil, the widespread acceptance of which, I suggest, allows those who protect society from its monsters to once again assume an aura of priestly authority” (p. 15). Tithecott wanted

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to challenge the discourse of evil because, as Maier suggested, it tends to separate Dahmer from us, but Tithecott went further to point out that this separation often provides grounds for disciplining those whom we construct as serial killers. If they were merely “sick,” they might be treatable, but if they are “evil,” then they can be imprisoned or executed.

WHAT DOES A THEOLOGICAL DIAGNOSIS ADD? These critiques of the discourse of evil are valuable, especially as they challenge the distinction between normal and abnormal. However, I think that we ought not to give up the theological category of evil, because without a theological diagnosis, our interpretations of Dahmer and other such individuals would remain too shallow. Psychological or other contextual interpretations never seem quite satisfying enough; the existential questions of why such evil exists and how any person could do such a thing still remain, because these are ultimately theological questions. It is as though we need the power of the language of myth and of religion to come to terms with such questions. As Pruyser (1976) wrote, “I believe that problem-laden persons who seek help from a pastor do so for very deep reasons—from the desire to look at themselves in a theological perspective” (p. 43). Dahmer himself raised the issue of theological diagnosis when he wondered if he were sick or evil or both, and, as noted, virtually every commentator has done so as well. Such horrible acts require us to ask theological questions—what do these acts mean, and where is God in all of this? And theologians, especially pastoral theologians, should not be afraid to offer these diagnoses, especially when society seems to be crying out for them, not unlike the problem-laden person who goes to see a pastor for help. And if theologians—those who are professionally trained to speak about God—do not offer such diagnoses, others in our society—most likely journalists—surely will offer such commentary to fill this collective need. A theological diagnosis, I suggest, can add to various psychological or other diagnoses by helping to account for a wider range of data that are usually overlooked or regarded as unimportant. Dahmer, for example, believed that he was the devil. It is unclear whether he believed this literally, but, in any case, this point is rarely, if ever, taken seriously. Origen’s thought would suggest that we take Dahmer’s experience seriously, especially because he did not seem to be psychotic or delusional. Furthermore, the only eye-witness account that we have of Dahmer in the act of murdering comes from, as noted, Edwards, and he described Dahmer as “the devil” and as “a madman who intended ‘to cut my heart out and eat it’” (Jaeger & Balousek, 1991, p. 17). This, perhaps, was a glimpse of Dahmer at his worst—at his “farthest” point away from God—after he had murdered 17 people and was attempting to murder Edwards.

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Dahmer, as noted, has been widely regarded as evil by the general public and has been often described as Satan or the devil. This rhetoric describing Dahmer—and other serial killers—has been criticized, rightly, by some on the grounds that it separates the serial killer from normalcy. Origen’s thought, however, would serve as a corrective here, placing Dahmer on a continuum—any one of us could become a devil. And Origen’s thought would also contest the idea that Dahmer was evil “by nature” and would further suggest that there was and is hope for Dahmer—any one of us can rise again. That is, even when one becomes a devil, one is not condemned to being a devil forever, and, indeed, even the devil will be saved, according to Origen. Origen’s thought, finally, allows us to take seriously the possibility of Dahmer’s rehabilitation and his subsequent religious conversion in prison, though one cannot help but wonder if this conversion was Dahmer’s final prank, a prank against God, a way to sneak into heaven like he snuck into the yearbook picture of the National Honors Society.

CONCLUSION In the movie Silence of the Lambs, which was playing in theaters for the first time while Dahmer was on his killing spree, Hannibal Lecter, the serial killer and cannibal, reflected on his own violent behavior: Nothing happened to me, Officer Starling. I happened. You can’t reduce me to a set of influences. You’ve given up good and evil for behaviorism, Officer Starling. You’ve got everybody in moral dignity pants—nothing is ever anybody’s fault. Look at me, Officer Starling. Can you stand to say that I am evil? (Quoted in Tithecott, 1997, p. 136)

Interestingly, Dahmer made a similar claim in an interview: “The person to blame is the person sitting across from you. Not parents, not society, not pornography. These are just excuses” (Tithecott, 1997, p. 136). In this chapter, I have made the case that we should in fact say that Dahmer was evil. I have argued for evil—specifically, Origen’s conceptualization of falling away—as a category of theological diagnosis, and that the deadly sin of lust was the primary contributor to Dahmer’s falling away. This theological diagnosis, following Pruyser (1976), is not meant to replace psychological diagnosis, but to deepen it. It does so by helping to answer Dahmer’s own question of whether he was sick, evil, or both: The answer, I suggest, is both. Dahmer did have mental and emotional problems, but the court was right to give a ruling of sane to this man who would wear condoms when having sex with lifeless bodies and body parts, who would only pick up boys and men on the weekends so he had time to dismember them, and who would only target boys and men who did not have cars because it was hard enough

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to get rid of bodies, let alone cars. Freud, as the epigram for this chapter suggests, would have likely ruled the same as the court did in fact rule: sane, but obviously perverted. Although, as I suggested above, there are good reasons for critiquing evil discourse, Origen’s theology goes beyond these critiques by maintaining that Dahmer is not fundamentally different from us, even though he happened to become a devil and experienced himself as such. We should not let go of evil discourse, because these metaphors seem to be necessary to make sense of malevolence in more satisfying ways than psychology or other social sciences can offer. Indeed, as Carl Goldberg (1996) noted, “[T]he public tries to come to terms with malevolence through the media and popular books, perhaps because psychiatry and the behavioral sciences have failed to do so” (p. 2). It is as though the public needs to be able to say that Dahmer was evil so that the depth of underserved suffering can be recognized. The language of evil, which is theological, provides a framework for speaking about such suffering. Lecter and Dahmer were evil. But, following Origen, this does not mean that they were essentially evil, only accidentally evil. And this does not mean that they were evil once and for all. What I am suggesting, following Origen and Capps, is that sins, particularly the deadly sins, can lead to a disposition toward evil, so much so that one can even become a devil. But there still is always hope for the devil and the worst of fallen souls. As Dahmer said in his closing statement to the court, quoting the Bible: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life. (1 Timothy 1:15–16)

Perhaps Dahmer was genuine in this statement. Or perhaps, as a devil, he meant to taunt Christians with their own scriptures. Or maybe he had some other motive. In any case, this fallen soul never had the chance to commit his favorite deadly sins again, and, perhaps for this reason, one hopes that his soul traveled a little closer back to God.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Kattie Basnett and Donald Capps for reading and commenting on previous drafts of this chapter, as well as Ryan White, who got me interested in the topic.

REFERENCES Baumann, E. (1991). Step into my parlor: The chilling story of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Chicago: Bonus.

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Boyle, G. (2003, December 23). Interview with Court TV. Retrieved from http:// news.findlaw.com/court_tv/s/20031223/23dec2003164734.html. Butterworth, G. W. (1973) Introduction. In On first principles (pp. xxiii–lxi). New York: Peter Smith. Capps, D. (2000). Deadly sins and saving virtues. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock. Capps, D., & Carlin, N. (2010). Living in limbo. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books. Carlin, N. (2009). God’s melancholia. Pastoral Psychology, 58 (2), 207–221. Carlin, N. (2010). God’s gender confusion: Some polymorphously perverse pastoral theology. Pastoral Psychology, 59 (1), 101–124. Dahmer, L. (1995). A father’s story: One man’s anguish at confronting the evil in his son. New York: Time Warner. Davis, D. (1991). The Jeffrey Dahmer story: An American nightmare. New York: St. Martin’s. DeYoung, R. (2009). Glittering vices: A new look at the seven deadly sins and their remedies. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press. Dykstra, R. (2005). Images of pastoral care: Classic readings. St. Louis, MO: Chalice. Freud, S. (2001). Three essays on the theory of sexuality. In J. Strachey, The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 7, pp. 123–245). London: Vintage. (Original work published in 1905.) Goldenberg, C. (1996). Speaking with the devil: Exploring senseless acts of evil. New York: Penguin. Jaeger, R. W., & Balousek, M. W. (1991). Massacre in Milwaukee: The macabre case of Jeffrey Dahmer. Middleton: Waubesa Press. Jentzen, J., Palermo, G., Johnson, L. T., Ho, K. C., Stormo, K. A., & Teggatz, J. (1994). Destructive hostility: The Jeffrey Dahmer case: A psychiatric and forensic study of a serial killer. American Journal of Forensic Medical Pathology, 15 (4), 283–294. Jung, C. G. (1969). Answer to Job (Trans. R. Hull). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published in 1951) Maier, G. (1991). Afterword. In R. Jaeger & W. Balousek (Eds.), Massacre in Milwaukee: The macabre case of Jeffrey Dahmer (pp. 203–206). Middleton: Waubesa Press. Martens, W. H. J., & Palermo, G. B. (2005). Loneliness and associated violent and antisocial behavior: Analysis of the case reports of Jeffrey Dahmer and Denis Nilsen. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 49(3), 289–307. O’Meara, G. (2009). “He speaks not, yet he says everything; what of that?” Text, context, and pretext in State v. Jeffrey Dahmer. Berkley Electronic Press. Retrieved from http:// works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=greg_omeara. Origen. (1973). On first principles. New York: Peter Smith. Pagels, E. (1996). The origin of Satan. New York: Vintage. Phillips, S. (2006). Inside evil: Jeffrey Dahmer [Interview]. MSNBC. Retrieved from http://www.itunes.com. Pruyser, P. W. (1976). The minister as diagnostician: Personal problems in pastoral perspective. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press. Ratcliff, R. (2006). Dark journey, deep grace: Jeffrey Dahmer’s story of faith. Siloam Springs, AR: Leafwood.

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Schwartz, A. E. (1992). The man who could not kill enough: The secret murders of Milwaukee’s Jeffrey Dahmer. New York: Citadel. Silva, J. A., Ferrari, M. M., & Leong, G. B. (2002). The case of Jeffrey Dahmer: Sexual serial homicide from a neuropsychiatric developmental perspective. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 47 (6), 1347–1359. Tithecott, R. (1997). Of men and monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer and the construction of the serial killer. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

ch apter 13

Gnosticism and Evil Ronald Reese Ruark

One encounters few religious movements as fascinating as Gnosticism, a movement that flourished in the ancient Mediterranean in the second and third centuries ce. Gnosticism is a fascinating phenomenon because it illustrates the nature and dynamics of religion.1 It is the quintessential religious movement, using god-talk to define itself, to locate itself in the world, to distinguish itself from competing religious movements, to assert itself socially, and to create new worlds.2 The concept of evil that is so basic to Gnostic thought illustrates how socially expedient theology can be. This chapter will concentrate on one particular Gnostic text, the Secret Gospel According to John (SBJ), also known as the Apocryphon of John. It is not dependent upon any theory of Gnostic organization, though it does assume that a social reality of some kind exists behind this particular religious text, as difficult as it might be to define it.3 A conception of evil lurks in the background of many Gnostic texts, including SBJ. SBJ was a widely used Gnostic text that reflects a Gnostic worldview; it is therefore characterized as a “classic” Gnostic text.4 As much as any other Gnostic text, it comprises a handbook of Gnostic theology. This makes it an ideal text for examining the Gnostic idea of evil, or at least one Gnostic idea of evil. Our task is not simple, because any discussion of the concept of evil in ancient Gnosticism immediately presents three problems. First, Gnosticism is difficult to define, not only because it is a diverse movement5 but also because the definition of Gnosticism usually depends upon a definition of “normative”6 Christianity in the first 3 centuries (see the discussion in King, 2003, pp. 5–19). Gnosticism flourished7 in the second and third centuries ce,

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establishing itself as a competing ecclesiastical movement. Eventually it attracted the attention of ecclesiastical competitors, most notably Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, but it remains an elusive social movement, at least to the modern interpreter.8 Harnack considered Gnosticism the Hellenization of Christianity. Even though Harnack wrote in the 19th century, when scholars were perhaps overly enthusiastic about Greek influences on Christianity, his emphasis upon the secularization of Christianity is not far off the mark.9 In the second and third centuries, many Christian traditions were distancing themselves from Judaism. Nonetheless, Gnosticism has both Jewish and Christian features, and Gnostic theologians gleaned their truth wherever they happened to find it—Persian dualism, Platonic philosophy, Hellenistic mystery cults, Babylonian astrology, as well as Judaism and Christianity. It was syncretistic, opportunistic, and elitist. It was also a broad historical phenomenon, existing in most of the major cities of the Roman Empire and throughout the ancient Mediterranean, from Rome to Mesopotamia, from Anatolia to Egypt, and exercising a substantial influence on many streams of early Christianity. It reflects secret traditions of the church, which Gnostic theologians used to their own aggrandizement.10 The historian does not consider Gnosticism a heresy, because the concept of heresy, like the concept of canon, is a theological creation, used by a religious person or group to condemn rival groups with whom they are competing. Social condemnation is the task of religionists, not historians, and anytime a historian resorts to terms such as mainline or heretical, a nonhistorical agenda emerges.11 The writings of the heresiologists12 as well as the Nag Hammadi texts demonstrate that Gnosticism was a diverse movement in the early centuries of the Christian era that generally interpreted religious texts from a Platonic perspective. That may be as specific as the historian can get. For just as there were many Judaisms at the turn of the era, and many Christianities in the first few centuries, so there existed several streams of Gnosticism. Because of its alleged lack of uniformity, Gnosticism is in danger of becoming an overgeneralized and overused historical category, and at least one scholar rejected it as a “dubious category.”13 Admittedly, it is difficult to lump together all so-called Gnostics in the first three centuries ce into one theological stream or homogeneous social group. Perhaps it’s impossible to posit a social reality behind Gnostic texts at all.14 The second problem is that the Gnostics (so called) spent little time overtly philosophizing about evil, at least in any direct way, though they were clearly concerned about it and they were willing to exploit it for its social utility. Like many religionists, the Gnostics believed that they were good, and their ecclesiastical adversaries evil. Writing in the second century and addressing matters of life and death, heaven and hell, in the context of

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fierce ecclesiastical disputes, they lacked the detached flexibility that modern scholars usually appreciate but often fail to emulate. The author of SBJ offers neither a consistent theological evaluation of evil nor an apologetic that will satisfy the minds of his readers. The concept of evil is rather an underlying assumption upon which the author bases a theological understanding. But the world he creates15 reflects his preoccupation with evil and the need to protect his community and theology from it, and ultimately to escape it.16 To the extent that a major goal of SBJ is defending the integrity of “the God and Father of all,” the author is engaged in theodicy. A third problem involves the concept of evil itself. Defining evil is as slippery as defining Gnosticism. Evil appears to have a social component, but it is an ambiguous one. The large majority of modern people believe that the Holocaust was evil, probably the greatest social evil in the last 100 years. They’re more evenly divided on contemporary social issues such as capital punishment, human genetic engineering, health care disparities, and abortion. From the social standpoint, evil is closely connected to not just social values but also social perspectives. The Gnostics considered themselves aliens in an evil world. “I hid from them because of their evil and they did not recognize me” (SBJ 30.20–21).17 This is more than just theological speculation on the incarnation; it reveals as much about the situation and mentality of the Gnostics as it does about any divine being. The incarnation suggests that the Gnostics considered their environment hostile. I entered the midst of the darkness and the interior of Hades, striving for my governance. And the foundations of chaos moved, as though to fall down upon those who dwelt in chaos and destroy them. (SBJ 30.25–29)

The Savior doesn’t merely provide a social model for the Gnostics to emulate; their theology of the incarnation reflects an essential Gnostic orientation. Like their Savior, the Gnostics dwelt in the midst of evil, and considered their opponents as evil. “Be on your guard against the angels of poverty and the demons of chaos and all those who are entwined with you” (SBJ 31.16–19). If knowledge (gnosis) is redemptive in Gnostic thought, those lacking gnosis lack redemption. In the end, those who end up communing with God are good, and those who end up elsewhere are evil. They dwell in darkness and chaos, and their ultimate end is destruction. The primary orientation of Gnosticism is social. The study of Gnosticism begins with the social reality that the Gnostics were outsiders looking into the ecclesiastical edifice. It is this social reality that moves Gnostic theology along.18 The Gnostics concluded that their social environment was evil because they didn’t fit into their world. So they dubbed it evil and moved along, forming their own communities along the way.

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When we talk about the origin of evil in Gnosticism, we must keep this social orientation in mind. From the theoretical standpoint, evil may derive from a supernatural being, the inherent depravity of people, a catastrophic event, or a combination of them. In the Secret Book According to John, the world was evil because a rupture existed between it and the divine gnosis. But theory does not exist in a theological vacuum. Our theories invariably conceal our social situations. If our environment is hostile to our social agenda, an easy way to approach the problem is to call it evil.19 A primary theological burden of SBJ is to demonstrate how “the God and Father of all” remains pure in spite of rampant evil in the physical world.20 That’s an overt agenda. The covert agenda of rationalizing the Gnostic place in the world is much more subtle but much more fascinating from religious and historical perspectives.

GNOSTICISM IN GENERAL Gnosticism is the marriage of Platonism and the Judeo-Christian tradition. “The formulation of the gnostic myth ultimately drew on Platonist interpretations of the myth of creation in Plato’s Timaeus, as combined with the book of Genesis” (Layton, 1987, pp. 5ff.). Teachers such as Basilides, Valentinus, and Heracleon led the movement, which was sufficiently influential to attract the attention of ecclesiastical opponents who viewed it as a theological and social threat. The widespread written attacks that the Gnostic threat generated, not to mention these attacks’ vitriolic nature, are cogent proof of the ubiquity of the Gnostic movement. The writings of Christian teachers such as Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian, who considered Gnosticism a perversion of the truth, contain summaries of Gnostic theology from a hostile point of view. Until the discovery of the Nag Hammadi texts in 1945, scholars were almost exclusively dependent upon the heresiologists for information about Gnosticism.21 The Nag Hammadi discovery revolutionized the academic discussion. Today we have the advantage of possessing actual Gnostic texts that can be mined for firsthand information about the movement. As far as describing Gnosticism is concerned, we begin with the general observation that Gnosticism, being Platonic in orientation, is dualistic. This is a basic insight that binds together all Gnostic groups, though perhaps no more so than it binds together other religious movements. The Gnostics viewed reality in polarities: Everything is black and white, darkness and light, flesh and spirit, order and chaos, life and death.22 “The cardinal feature of gnostic thought is the radical dualism that governs the relation of God and the world, and correspondingly that of humanity and its world” (Jonas, 1958, p. 42).23 This Gnostic dualism is grounded, as mentioned, in Platonic philosophical speculation, which was rampant in the second and third centuries ce.24 The dualistic orientation of Gnosticism lent itself to sharply defined conceptions of good and evil.

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Judaic religious traditions influenced the Gnostics as well, in spite of the fact that the author of SBJ was actively distancing himself from Judaism.25 Theological antagonists invariably leave their fingerprints on their adversaries. The great monotheistic traditions of the sixth century bce were well known to Gnostic authors. Second Isaiah, the great progenitor of monotheism, is radically dualistic in orientation. Once the theologian adopts a universe controlled by one omnipotent being, radical dualism becomes a foregone conclusion, given the human need to identify with a Supreme Being that validates human existence. Indeed, dualism is so endemic to the human conceptual universe that it would be mistaken to assume that it originates in any one source. Dualistic ideas are rampant in other Judaic traditions that predate Platonic philosophy. Within the Pentateuch itself, complete by the sixth century bce, we can discern several groups—Yahwist, Elohist, Priestly, and Deuteronomic—all of them approaching reality from a dualistic orientation. The Deuteronomic perspective especially was socially grounded in temple elitism; the elite who controlled society were blessed by God, leaving the rabble under a curse. The Judaic creation myth in Genesis 1 is based upon fundamental dualities such as light–darkness, good–evil, order–chaos, and life–death. The New Testament is largely Judaic and monotheistic in orientation, and reflects the same dualistic approach to religion. Therefore, when the Gnostic author of SBJ sat down to write, there was no shortage of theological and philosophical traditions, all of them dualistic in orientation, which could have influenced the author. But there is a basic distinction between the dualism of Gnosticism and the dualism of many other religious traditions. Gnosticism creates a radical bifurcation between two overarching worlds—an essentially evil material universe and a good divine realm. It is this radical dualism that marks off Gnosticism as a Platonic sect.26 This pervasive dualism in Gnostic texts probably reflects a strong sense of group identity. The Gnostics were composed of groups, disjointed groups perhaps, but groups nonetheless. Layton considered this group identity one of the cardinal features of classic Gnostic texts. Referring to the Gnostic creation myth of origins, Layton (1987) stated that it “expresses a strong sense of group identity, which is backed up both by genealogies and by psychological analyses of humanity, with the conclusion that there are two essential types of human being, gnostic and non-gnostic” (p. 9). An “us-versus-them” mentality characterized much of Gnosticism, just as surely as it characterized much of the broader ecclesiastical world. Gnosticism was the product of ecclesiastical and social conflict as well as philosophical speculation. Recognizing a group of some sort behind the Gnostic texts reflects a basic insight into how religion works. Religious ideas emerge out of intense social conflict. Religious insight and religious creeds are not so much the product of individual creative geniuses but the result of social tensions. Even an

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innovative religious thinker like the apostle Paul was influenced by group dynamics. He grew up in the context of groups. Paul’s Pharisaism, apocalypticism, ideas about redemption, and theology of the cross and resurrection and justification emerged in the context of infighting and social conflict. He learned these ideas at the feet of teachers who were representatives of Jewish groups in the early first century. Likewise, the author of SBJ articulated religious ideas in the context of groups competing for ecclesiastical authority and dominance. Religious authors are fighting not just for their religious ideas but also for social position, social control, social influence, and social resources. The existence of a group behind SBJ is most evident in the ritual of baptism, a technique used by Gnostics and other religious groups to solidify group identity and to remove their converts from active participation (spiritual, mental, physical, and financial) in the society at large, whether that society is ecclesiastical or imperial. The religious impulse is usually exclusive, rejecting large segments of society. In SBJ John, having heard the criticisms of the Pharisee Arimanios, “turned away from the temple and went to a mountainous and barren place” (SBJ 1.17–20). The language indicates a conscious rejection of a Jewish way of life for what the author considers a more satisfying path. The practice of baptism reinforces the break with competing religious groups. Having penetrated the veil that separates the perfect world from the imperfect one below, the Savior sealed human recipients of gnosis in the baptismal waters. The language of baptism in SBJ is evocative: “I raised and sealed the person in luminous water with five seals, that death might not prevail over the person from that moment on” (SBJ 31.22–23). The word raised suggests more than a social elevation. As the officiant raised the person out of the water, a fundamental break with competing social groups and their social ideas, all of which are viewed as evil, occurred. The symbolism of Romans 6 may provide part of the conceptual background of the religious significance of baptism, and in that text we sense a fundamental break with the outside world. The word sealed also has social ramifications, reinforcing the break with the outside world, which is identified with death. The word luminous suggests illumination. Therefore, prior to the baptismal moment, the convert was mired in darkness, chaos, death, and evil. Another basic characteristic of this Gnostic group(s) is their idea of salvation acquired via knowledge. Gnosticism by definition is gnosis, an esoteric knowledge available to an elite group that identified the group as “elect.” The Gnostics craved gnosis of the way things really were, not only on this earth but also beyond it. They wanted divine knowledge so that they might participate in divine realms. Gnosis is a body of knowledge and an orientation. The Gnostics wanted to know the nature of metaphysical reality, but they also wanted to know how the individual fit into the overall scheme of

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things. Clement of Alexandria (c. 200 ce) has left behind a text (Excerpta ex Theodoto) outlining some of the major inquiries of the Gnostics. Who were we? What have we become? Where were we? Whither have we been thrown? Where are we going? Whence have we been set free? What is birth? What is rebirth? (Cited in Klauck, 2003, p. 431)

As Klauck (2003) pointed out, the questions are thoroughly modern inquiries (p. 431), but they are thoroughly mundane as well, the basic stuff of religious questing. Similar questions are outlined in SBJ, though from a Christian perspective: How indeed was the savior chosen? Why was he sent into the world by his parent who sent him? Who is his parent who sent him? What is that realm like, to which we shall go? (SBJ 1.21–26)

The Gnostics were obsessed with these ideas, especially the relationship between the “parent” and the “savior” because its theological and practical implications were enormous. The Gnostics wanted to know what every other religionist wants to know, and they needed to know what every other human being needs to know—where they fit into the world, where they were going, and why they were superior to competing social groups. The final question concerning a divine realm occupies much of SBJ. This divine realm, as we shall see, is metaphysically superior to the earthly realm below, characterized as it is by such pervasive evil. A final observation that we can make about Gnosticism is that it possessed a generally pessimistic outlook toward earthly life and the physical world as a whole. This was a necessary implication of its world-negation. Unlike many streams of the Judeo-Christian tradition that view the world as harmonious and “good,” Gnosticism contains within itself an essentially pessimistic outlook on the world. This made denunciation and contempt—not just for the world itself but also for those who inhabit the world outside of the Gnostic sphere of influence—hallmarks of Gnostic teaching. The Gnostics’ creation of a new world necessarily involved rejection of the old physical world.

EVIL IN THE SECRET BOOK ACCORDING TO JOHN The Secret Book According to John is a classic Gnostic text containing a myth of creation as well as good and evil.27 Its notions of good and evil flow

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naturally from its idea of creation. Because Irenaeus was intimately aware of SBJ, it dates no later than 180 ce. Several copies of it were found at Nag Hammadi in various versions, always prominently placed in the codex, suggesting that it was a favorite text of many Gnostics.28 The frame story of SBJ, containing a refutation of Judaism and explicit mention of the “Nazarene,” marks it off as a Christian text, although the text itself contains few explicitly Christian features (Pearson, 2007, p. 11). SBJ contains secret teachings revealed by Jesus to John of Zebedee. It has been viewed as an epilogue to the Gospel of John because in it Jesus reveals heavenly mysteries after his ascension into heaven. SBJ is grounded in the Platonic philosophy of the Timaeus. In Platonic philosophy the physical world, the habitation of flesh-and-blood human beings, is evil, and the spiritual world, the world of ideas, good. These are the philosophical ideas that motivate the Gnostic author of SBJ. It will be no surprise, then, to find a preoccupation with evil at the center of Gnostic thought. Gnostic cosmology in SBJ begins with the First Principle, a Being of inexpressible light and perfection.29 SBJ describes God the Father in the following way: The One is a sovereign that has nothing over it. It is God and Father of all, the Invisible One that is over all, that is imperishable, that is pure light no eye can see. (SBJ 2.26–32)

From the onset of the text, the author of SBJ protects God from human contamination. SBJ continues with a lengthy description of this ineffable God, the product of extensive theological speculation. He is remote and hidden. He does not interact with his creation; he is transcendent (beyond creation—not equal to creation) but not immanent (participating in creation). He is insulated from everything that might corrupt him. A majority of the theological energy in SBJ is devoted to preserving the integrity of this First Principle. The author is adamant that “the God and Father of all” is unconnected with the world of human habitation. SBJ illustrates the principle that absolute gods tend to become more and more remote from the world below. From a traditional theistic perspective God, a perfect being, is both transcendent and immanent. Unlike the creation account in Genesis, where the Creator interacts with his creation, and the line between creator and creature is razor thin, the author of SBJ constructs an impenetrable wall between the First Principle and the creation. The god of this Gnostic text does not walk in the garden in the cool of the day (Gen 3:8). He does not even thunder from heaven (John 12:28). The author of SBJ rejects these ideas. “The God and Father of all” is concealed behind a curtain like the great and powerful

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Wizard of Oz. The remoteness of the Gnostic god disturbed their opponents. Tertullian complained that the Valentinians concealed their god in the attics of a high-rise apartment.30 Although this theological move protects the First Principle from the accusation that he is influenced by evil, it does so at the risk of sacrificing God’s sovereignty and love. In SBJ, God is absolute—he does not connect with anyone. He is called sovereign, but in reality he is not. A sovereign controls something; in SBJ God does not connect with anything. It is the primary task of the theologian(s) behind SBJ to protect “the God and Father of all” from any insinuation that he is responsible for this present evil world. That responsibility is reserved for the God of the Jews and Christians. The thought of the Perfect One becomes active and produces a “First Power,” called Barbelo,31 whom the Father impregnates “with a gaze, with the pure, shining light surrounding the invisible Spirit” (SBJ 6.10ff.). This is as active as “the God and Father of all” gets in SBJ. “Barbelo conceived . . . a ray of light that was similar to the blessed light but not as bright” (SBJ 6.12–13). This ray of light is the Christ, the product of Barbelo and the Father, and it is altogether good. “The Father anointed it with goodness until it was perfectly and completely good, for the Father anointed it with the goodness of the Invisible Spirit” (SBJ 6.23–24). The author reiterates the essential goodness of the Christ: The holy Spirit brought the self-produced divine Child of the Spirit and Barbelo to perfection. Then the Child could stand before the powerful and invisible virgin Spirit as the self-produced God, Christ, whom the Spirit had honored with divine acclaim. (SBJ 6.23ff.)

This is a Christology created for a Platonic universe. In general, the docetic tendencies of Gnostic theologians had devastating consequences for Christology from the point of view of the church of Irenaeus and Tertullian (Gonzalez, 1970, pp. 132–133). There is no theology of physical incarnation in SBJ, such as we find in the Gospel of John, where Jesus “tabernacles” in the midst of people. The anthropology of the Gnostics condemned such notions. The author of SBJ is distancing his movement from the church centered at Rome, rejecting the material Christology eventually reflected in the Nicene and Chalcedonian creeds where Jesus Christ is the eternal second person of the Trinity (Nicea in 325), fully God and fully human (Chalcedon in 451). The Gnostics could not tolerate a physical Christ. The docetic tendencies of the Gnostics, designed to preserve Christ from an evil physical nature, were considered heretical at both Nicea and Chalcedon. Eventually Sophia appears, several emanations later, in the fourth eternal realm (SBJ 8.16ff.). She is the mother of Yaldaboath, the evil creator of the world. The author carefully explains that Sophia gave birth to Yaldaboath

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without the permission of “the God and Father of all.” This is a prophylactic move. The author of SBJ emphasizes that “the God and Father of all” has no responsibility for Yaldaboath. Not only did the conception of Yaldaboath occur four emanations from “the God and Father of all,” but also it was parthenogenetic. “She produced it without her lover” (SBJ 10.2–4). Sophia was deeply ashamed of her creation, and she named it Yaldaboath. There is a radical contrast here between the Christ, the consensual child of Barbelo and the Father, and Yaldaboath, an essentially bastard “misshapen” child, conceived without the participation and blessing of the Father. Social realities lurk menacingly in the background of this text. The text is implicitly misogynist, reflecting the Jewish tradition in Genesis 3 where the woman is responsible for evil. “In the Secret Book of John all the evils and misfortunes of this world derive from Sophia’s blunder” (Meyer, 2007, p. 114). In SBJ, a female figure creates evil by conceiving Yaldaboath without the participation of a male figure. The product is thoroughly ugly, and the world is doomed. “And out of her was shown forth an imperfect product that was different from her manner of appearance, for she had made it without her consort. And compared to the image of its mother it was misshapen, having a different form” (SBJ 10.2–5).32 Such is the awesome power of myth! With a simple dual allusion to Genesis and Greek mythology, the author of SBJ condemns women and Judaism in a single stroke of world creation. A wholesale rejection of Judaism characterizes the text as a whole.33 Yaldaboath is not just any evil being; in the Gnostic worldview, he is the god of the Old Testament, the creator of the evil world. The framing story of SBJ suggests that the text was written in the context of social tension between a Christian group and a Jewish group. A Pharisee named Arimanios34 warns John that Jesus the Nazarene “has deceived you, filled your ears with lies, closed [your minds], and turned you from the traditions of your ancestors” (SBJ 1.12–13, emphasis added). The final italicized clause suggests that the group behind SBJ had Jewish roots but was distancing themselves from them. This is the social context in which the Gnostics denounced their opponents. Particularly in his account of the creation of the world and Adam and Eve, the author of SBJ distances his own theological viewpoints from the book of Genesis, frequently reminding the reader that “it is not as Moses taught” (SBJ 22.22–23, among others). In this way, theology sprouts from the soil of social tension. Yaldaboath is the creator of our present material world, the physical habitation of humanity. But Yaldaboath is an evil being, unlike the creator in Genesis who is undeniably a good being. “He (Yaldaboath) is wicked because of the Mindlessness that is in him.” This is a severe indictment of Judaism. The author’s implication is that the Jewish people are characterized by “mindlessness” or lack of gnosis, which for Gnostics was the cornerstone of every evil.

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Yaldaboath is a suitable scapegoat for the creation of an evil world. In this way, SBJ posits a gulf between the perfect Being, “the God and Father of all,” and the world of human habitation, the realm of Yaldaboath and other evil beings who eke out their existence in a physical environment. The underlying assumption is that the present world of flesh-and-blood human beings is thoroughly corrupt, too corrupt and evil to be the habitation or product of the “God and Father of all.” This “web of highly structured emanations . . . forms a thick and almost inscrutable barrier between the human world and god” (Layton, 1987, p. 23). Not just inscrutable but also insurmountable. It is an impenetrable brick wall that cannot be breached. Like many religions, Gnosticism promised salvation from the present evil physical world. In Gnostic thought, the physical world of humanity was oppressive and stifling, and people on this physical planet walked around in a cloud of confusion without knowing the ultimate nature of reality. The creation of Adam reflects an essentially Gnostic orientation. Although Adam enjoyed enlightenment, he was also fallen: “Adam became a mortal person, the first to ascend and the first to become estranged” (SBJ 22.12–13). The human race from the beginning was destined to devolve into periods of diminishing enlightenment. From this basic ignorance of the masses of humanity, the Gnostics sought liberation. Psychologically it allowed them to master fear and anxiety. They told themselves that they were the chosen elite, the favorites of the divine realms, and one day they would return there, no matter what kind of rejection they had to endure on earth from their ecclesiastical opponents or their imperial masters. Socially it reflects basic tension between Gnostic groups and competing groups. The Gnostics found themselves out of favor with surrounding political and religious structures. The Gnostic myth reflects intense social alienation. Whether the originating impetus came from Judaism or Christianity we cannot say.35 What we do know is that the Gnostics used religion and theology as a form of social condemnation. The Gnostic Scriptures, which have been called “a supplementary body that constituted a challenge to the proto-orthodox canon” (Layton, 1987, p. xxiii), are evidence of this social tension. It is difficult to say what constituted the “proto-orthodox canon” in the second and third centuries, but presumably it included many texts that eventually were included in the Roman Christian canon, including several texts refuting proto-Gnostic ideas.36 For this reason, evil is a necessary constituent of the Gnostic orientation. Any religion offering redemption necessarily recognizes the existence and pernicious influence of evil. If a person needs redemption, that person must be redeemed from something, usually some kind of evil. Either the person contains the seeds of damnation within, or the person is being influenced by some exterior evil agency, either an evil person or an evil environment or a combination of the two. Evil and redemption are inextricably connected.

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Even if evil does not exist as an ontological reality, it can always be created, and Gnosticism didn’t hesitate to condemn the material world as irredeemably evil and in need of redemption. In other words, the Gnostic purveyors of religion sold the idea of evil as part of the soteriological package, working from the alienation that characterizes humanity to the solution found in divine gnosis.37 In Gnostic thought material reality is especially marked out as evil, and the Gnostics viewed the material world and material bodies as prisons. This view of reality is evident in SBJ’s description of the incarnation contained in the “Hymn of the Savior” at the end of the text:38 “I traveled in the realm of great darkness, and continued until I entered the midst of their prison” (SBJ 30.17). The Gnostics above all else sought liberation from this imprisonment. The appeal to the concept of travel suggests a radical spatial differentiation between themselves and their ecclesiastical opponents. No doubt the Gnostics found their competitive assemblies less and less tolerable. Jesus, the “abundance of light” and the “memory of fullness,” leaves his perfect habitation of light and glory and enters a habitation marked by darkness and servitude. “And I entered the midst of their prison, which is the prison of the body” (SBJ 31.3–4). This is how the Gnostics viewed their physical environment. To descend into the material world was to descend into darkness and chaos. The Savior entered “the midst of the darkness and the interior of Hades” (SBJ 30.35). SBJ views the incarnation as a descent into chaos: “And the foundations of chaos moved, as though to fall down upon those who dwell in chaos and destroy them” (SBJ 30.27). SBJ views the incarnation differently than the canonical gospels, particularly the Gospel of John. In SBJ there is no validation of physical existence on earth. The incarnation functions to confirm the evil nature of the physical world and especially to confirm the inhabitants of the physical world in their evil. Those who reject gnosis are doomed to an existence of darkness and chaos. Again, we see the creative power of myth. One simply condemns as evil what one dislikes. The evil of the material world originates in the work of Sophia, who produced Yaldaboath, but it exists practically and principally as the work of four demonic powers: Ephememphi (associated with pleasure), Ioko (desire), Nenentophni (grief), and Blaomen (fear) (SBJ 18.14–19). Like many other religious texts containing laundry lists of various “passions” (of the flesh), the author of SBJ expends significant energy outlining the evils resulting from these demonic powers: envy, fanaticism, pain, distress, contention for victory, lack of repentance, anxiety, mourning, imperfections, vain boasting, anger, wrath, bitterness, bitter lust, insatiableness, terror, entreaty, anguish, and shame (SBJ 18.20–30). Although these are far too general to shed much light on the Gnostic group behind the text, they reflect the religious tendency to separate the human world into good and evil, one of the key

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functions of myth, whether or not the Gnostics participated actively in the evil they condemned. Thus, the radical dualism of Gnosticism created a consistent view of evil among Gnostic thinkers, resulting from a world-negating myth. The description of human life in the “Hymn of the Savior” is bleak. A strong contrast exists in the Hymn between the divine habitation of light and the dungeon of darkness. The author uses terms such as darkness, chaos, and sleep to describe life on earth. The world itself is evil, the product of an evil creator, the realm of evil beings. The Gnostic treated the mundane (and evil) realities of this present world with contempt or indifference. One approach led to asceticism, and the other led to libertinism. Their view of evil gave the Gnostics a handy tool to denounce their theological opponents as well as their religious institutions such as temples and churches. One naturally wonders how much of Gnostic speculation concerning evil was socially based. References to chaos, darkness, and prisons were not merely conceptual ideas; they reflect the way that the Gnostics viewed their competitors. The Gnostics were social beings, and they had ecclesiastical opponents, people who blocked their access to power structures, their right to ecclesiastical posts, their reputation in ecclesiastical communities, and their possession of all of the accouterments of ecclesiastical power, including its financial benefits. The same could be said for the author of the canonical Gospel of John, the self-acclaimed “beloved disciple,” and the author of any other religious text. The concept of evil is a weapon that is quickly brandished against one’s opponents. Note how effectively Paul uses it in the Epistle to the Philippians: “Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of those who mutilate the flesh!” (Philippians 3:2, NRSV). He could just as easily have said, “Now there are some people who look at the issue differently, but I don’t think they’re right,” but it wouldn’t be nearly as effective. In addition to a social dimension, the concept of evil is psychologically useful to people. We utilize it to make sense of our worlds, to justify our place in the world, to enhance our reputations with colleagues and friends, and to compete with opponents. The radical denial of the present world not only reflects a group challenging the powers that be but also suggests people struggling to make sense of where they are in the world. I do not like to admit that I’m not what I’m supposed to be, that the fundamental currents of my life are flowing against the current of the universe, that I’m out of sync with the cosmic rhythms. So we tell ourselves that we are fundamentally good and others are fundamentally evil. It’s this kind of self-delusion that helps us sleep through the night. Evil also has theological implications, and in the Gnostic religion these are blatant. In SBJ, evil distances God from his creation. God becomes an alien creature, in the words of Hans Jonas (1958) “absolutely transmundane” (p. 42). The social ramifications of this theological idea are enormous. The

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world is left to itself, usually to rot of its own corruption. The Gnostics had little use for this present evil world. For them the world was a harsh reality, filled with ubiquitous evil, capable of great destruction, and beyond redemption. SBJ concludes with a beautiful poem of deliverance, but it provides no redemption for this world (SBJ 30:11–31:27). Pervasive and persistent evil renders it irredeemable. The poem limits redemption from evil to individuals and perhaps groups of individuals. The physical environment is left to rot of its evil disease. In the radical dualistic world of the Gnostics, it was inconceivable that redemption would occur in a physical environment. The Gnostic approach is not unlike the traditional approach of fundamentalist Christians who have abandoned society to rot of its own evil nature, eschewing social reform. Neither contains a theology that supports social involvement.39 Kurt Rudolph, another pioneer in the study of Gnosticism, suggests that the Gnostics followed one of two basic approaches to the concept of evil. The Iranian system (Mandeism and Manichaeism) posited a radical dualism between a kingdom of light and a kingdom of darkness. These two kingdoms existed from the beginning of creation. But the majority of Nag Hammadi texts, including The Secret Book According to John, followed the Syrian-Egyptian system, where evil results from a gradual decline from the divine realm. Evil is not a preexistent principle but a “darkened level of being” (Rudolph, 1983, pp. 65–66). The more removed I am from the First Principle, the darker my experience. That’s a basic corollary of Gnostic theology. On the other hand, the more removed I am from my physical environment, the more enlightened my experience. Hence the need for a radical rejection of material culture. Religions have a tendency to withdraw from human society, a tendency usually resulting from a radical distinction between the sphere or realm of God and the sphere or realm of humanity.40 This tendency is apparent in Gnosticism. Sometimes, as in the Gospel of Luke, human government and divine government are fundamentally opposed to each other. Jesus, the agent of divine government, appears “in the days of Caesar Augustus,” the agent of human government. Many early Christians met together in assemblies for prayer and koinonia (fellowship). The little Christian text of 1 John, perhaps written to refute a primitive form of Gnosticism, extols life apart from the world of evil people. “But our fellowship (koinonia) is with the Father and with his son, Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:7). 41 No matter how one interprets these texts theologically, from the social standpoint they all suggest a reluctance on the part of some religious people to fully participate in human life, which they view in some sense as evil. Churches, synagogues, and mosques are designed as sanctuaries from the harsh realities of a hostile world. The Gnostic approach to life reflects the same tension between a religious group and the outside world.

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Finally, the Gnostic creation myth as it appears in SBJ solves at least two theological problems relating to evil. First, by insulating God with successive walls of emanations, the Gnostics preserved God from the criticism that He created evil and thus is responsible for it. Instead, the reader can blame the Jews. Yaldaboath created evil, and he is responsible for it; therefore, one cannot blame “the God and Father of all” for the presence of evil in the world. That much is clear. “The God and Father of all” didn’t consent to Yaldaboath’s birth, a further indictment of the Jewish god because he has no divine life in him. Neither does “the God and Father of all” participate in the creative act. Theodicy is a primary motivating factor of the Gnostic author, but so is the condemnation of Judaism. Second, the Gnostic theologians preserved God from the criticism that evil influences him. In SBJ, God is absolute; he does not participate in any way with his creation. He dwells in unapproachable light, totally walled off from anything or anyone that might corrupt him. At least four emanations separate God from the evil world. The Gnostic author of SBJ could not conceive of a god who could participate in a presumably evil creation and still remain essentially good. His Platonic tendencies refused to entertain the idea. One detects here the theological seeds of asceticism, or at least a theological rationale for an ascetic lifestyle. To drink deeply from divine gnosis, one must withdraw from an evil world. But the preservation of God and his reputation is only one motivation of the Gnostic theologian. Theology is more than ideas; it organizes heaven and earth. It creates bold new worlds that help us cope with the darker realities of our present world. Gnostic theology has a utilitarian purpose. By removing God to an isolated room, he becomes more and more unknowable, more and more inscrutable, and more and more in need of interpreters. Like many religious specialists,42 the Gnostics were involved in a sophisticated form of job security. They created a God who was shrouded in secrecy, and then they proclaimed themselves the chief revealers, or interpreters, of his mysteries. Knowledge was the key to the divine world, and the religious specialists who were the Gnostic theologians jealously guarded those keys. In effect, they held the keys to the kingdom and salvation, providing them with tremendous social power. They were the sole possessors of truth about God; their theological opponents in Rome and elsewhere lacked real gnosis. This is the common assumption that justifies the need for all professional religious specialists, not just the Gnostics. In many ways, and particularly in this final way, Gnosticism was a thoroughly modern phenomenon.

CONCLUSION The idea that evil is a pervasive presence is both an ancient idea and a contemporary one. Like Anton Chigurh in the superb film No Country for Old

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Men, evil is a constant reality that impacts every corner of our physical environment.43 In the film Chigurh, a relentless and sometimes arbitrary killer, symbolizes the harsh reality of evil that we all must endure. Chigurh’s brand of human evil reflects the reality of physical evil in our environment. Storm clouds, thunder, and lightning appear in the background of the film, suggesting that evil is endemic to our earthly existence. Evil renders the earth hard; the viewer hears it crunch under the boots of people. Evil manifests itself acutely in human affairs, as symbolized by the unstoppable Chigurh. As Uncle Ellis says to Ed Tom, you “can’t stop what’s coming.” The Gnostics viewed evil in the exact same way, except with a more sophisticated ideological underpinning. The physical environment of the Gnostics was essentially evil, the creation of a lesser god, lacking the divine gnosis that originates in “the God and Father of all.” The Gnostic world is permeated with evil because evil is endemic to it, a systemic problem. There is one crucial difference between Gnosticism and the film. In No Country for Old Men, a person can escape evil, but only by being lucky. It depends on the toss of a coin. Ed Tom sits in a dark hotel room at the end of the film, Chigurh hiding behind an open door only a few feet away. Chigurh does not kill Ed Tom, and we’re not told why. Presumably he’s just lucky. The Gnostics escaped evil, too, but they relied on myth, not luck. The author of the Secret Book According to John found a solution in divine gnosis, which becomes a convenient line of demarcation between an elect group of people and the rest of lost, darkened humanity. Myth, that ineluctable creation of the human mind, made the difference.

NOTES 1. On Gnosticism in general, see King (2003), Layton (1987), and Pearson (2007). Two older texts are still helpful: Jonas (1958) and Rudolph (1983). 2. Peter Berger in The Sacred Canopy suggested that religion engages in the enterprise of “world building,” the attempt “to impose a meaningful order upon reality.” Berger, The Sacred Canopy (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969), 22. 3. There are hints of social reality in SBJ texts such as 31:28–30 (“those who are like you in spirit”) as well as the framing story involving conflict between a Jew and a Christian. This is not to suggest that a community always exists behind a text. One would be hard pressed to suggest the existence of a social group behind The Cat in the Hat or Green Eggs and Ham, though both texts may reflect widespread concerns and values in society. There is also the problem of extracting social history from myths. “Determining how to write social history from myth is surely one of the thorniest issues in ancient historiography” (King, 2003, p. 10). 4. See Layton, 1987, pp. 23ff. 5. The diversity of Gnosticism is seen, for instance, in a comparison of the Gospel of Thomas, a composite text that connects early Jesus-Galilean traditions to later Platonic ideas, and the Secret Book According to John, a classic Gnostic text that

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reflects a more consistent Gnostic worldview. On the Gospel of Thomas, see De Conick (2005, 2006). For a more conservative approach to Thomas, see Perrin (2007). 6. The terms normative and mainline are theologically loaded terms. They are used to distinguish a more acceptable and satisfying form of Christianity from a less acceptable and satisfying form. They suggest that a tradition is not what it should be, implying that a tradition is deviant or not as pure as the “normative” tradition. As such, the terms normative and mainline, and all similar religious terms, do not belong in the discipline of history. 7. Irenaeus stated in Against Heresies (1.29.1) that “a multitude of gnostics have sprung up, and have been manifested like mushrooms growing out of the ground.” 8. There is a possibility that gnosticism may have preceded the emergence of Christianity, and that the “orthodox” church with its doctrine of apostolic succession based on historical texts may have emerged as a response to the world-negating philosophy of gnosticism. Among many other scholars, Pagels demonstrates how politically expedient the so-called canonical gospels were. See Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (1979/1989). This revisionist perspective on the history of the early church(es) lies behind much of the current “Jesus didn’t exist” craze. 9. Adolf von Harnack, German church historian, was a leading member of the History of Religions school (Religionsgeschichtliche Schule) in the 19th and early 20th centuries. He argued that “Gnosticism in all its phases was the violent attempt to drag Christianity down to the level of the Greek world” (see Harnack, 1886–1890, 2:3). According to Harnack, Gnosticism “was ruled in the main by the Greek spirit, and determined by the interests and doctrines of the Greek philosophy of religion” (cited in King, 2003, p. 63). Harnack also wrote What Is Christianity? (1901) and The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries (1904–1905). King’s entire discussion of Harnack and the History of Religions school is informative; see King (2003, pp. 55–109). 10. Pseudo-Dionysius refers to “the succession of gnostic masters or spiritual masters, separate from the succession of bishops, who transmit the faith of the Apostles . . . but who continue the charismatic tradition of apostolic times and of the Apostles” (cited in Eliade, 1982/1984, p. 370). Pseudo-Dionysius was much kinder than most opponents of the Gnostics. 11. Ignoring a phenomenon is a subtle form of condemnation. For instance, Wilken (2003) appeared more religious in orientation than historical, because Wilken devoted virtually no space to the existence and presence of Gnostic teachers in the early centuries of Christianity, even though they were widespread. The reader naturally assumes that they didn’t exist or didn’t matter. The same could be said for Urban (1995). Both texts are slaves to canonical restrictions. The problem may also be a lack of appreciation for Gnostic influence. Robin Lane Fox also largely ignored Gnosticism in Pagans and Christians (1989), an otherwise valuable and interesting text. 12. Someone who hunts down and exposes heretics. Irenaeus of Lyon is probably the most famous for his five-volume Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies; Greek title: On the Detection and Overthrow of So-Called Gnosis), written in 180 ce, but many others existed, including Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Hippolytus, and Epiphanius. Irenaeus wrote Against Heresies “to expose and counteract” the “machinations” of the Gnostics (see Book I, Preface). All of the heresiologists considered the

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Gnostics a sufficiently potent social force to require refutation. Irenaeus complained that the Gnostics were “draw(ing) away the minds of the inexperienced and tak(ing) them captive” (see Book I, Preface). 13. Williams (1996) suggested that we replace the term Gnosticism with “biblical demiurgical myth.” Not surprisingly, he has not persuaded a large segment of historians persisting in the study of Gnosticism. 14. Wisse (1981) characterized the Gnostic writings as “frustratingly abstruse” (p. 570). On the social reality behind Gnostic texts, see also Scott (1995). 15. World creation is the heart of the religious enterprise. The religionist is a metaphysician, and metaphysics thrives on the creation of alternative realities. Religion at its core posits a metaphysical reality that helps the religious devotee cope with present realities. 16. See, for example, SBJ 31.24: “So that from henceforth death might not have power over that person. And lo, now I shall enter the perfect eternal realm.” These are boilerplate Gnostic (religious) ideals. 17. The text references throughout conform to Bentley Layton’s (1987) scheme in The Gnostic Scriptures. The translations are from both Layton (1987) and Meyer (2007, pp. 107–132). I generally use Meyer’s translation because it is less technical than Layton’s. 18. For an interesting study of how social reality moved the Gnostics’ opponents along, see Pagels (1979/1989). Pagels’s argument is strengthened if we date the canonical gospel texts another 30–40 years into the future—say, the beginning of the second century—placing them in the context of intense theological debate. 19. One immediately thinks of Ronald Reagan dismissing the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.” 20. This is the great burden of all religions that claim a divine being is behind the physical world. Simply put, if God is behind it all, how did things get so crazy? The problem of evil is the greatest single obstacle to belief in God. One of the clearest and most concise discussions of evil from a staunchly theistic perspective is still Geisler (1978). 21. Many of the standard secondary texts contain helpful introductions to the writings of the heresiologists. See Pearson (2007, pp. 25–50), King (2003, pp. 20–54), and Layton (1987, pp. 159–214, 223–227, 276–302, 420–425). 22. The tendency of Gnostic authors to view reality in polarities is best evidenced in the Gnostic text “The Thunder—Perfect Intellect.” See Layton (1987, pp. 77–85). 23. Eliade (1982/1984) mentioned three fundamental ideas in Gnosticism: (a) the dualism of spirit and matter, (b) the myth of the fall of the soul and its resultant incarnation into the material body or “prison,” and (c) the certainty of deliverance (redemption) by virtue of gnosis (p. 372). 24. Bos (2002) suggested that Platonic dualism in Gnosticism was mediated by Aristotle. Bos conceded that the “call to awaken” is the starting point for Gnosticism (SBJ 31.4—“O listener, arise from heavy sleep”), but he suggested that Aristotle’s distinction between the “sleeping soul” and the “awakened soul” also influenced Gnostic thought (2002, p. 291). 25. In the introduction to SBJ, John goes up to the temple where he meets a Pharisee, who tells John, “This Nazarene really has deceived you, filled your ears with lies,

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closed [your minds], and turned you from the traditions of your ancestors” (SBJ 1.12–16). Significantly, John “turned away from the temple, and went to a mountainous and barren place,” reflecting a movement away from Judaism and toward a Christian wilderness. 26. Two factors should always be kept in mind when discussing the influence of Platonism. First, the Platonic distinction between spirit and flesh, mind and body, was diffused throughout the second and third century world. It is quite possible that many theologians and philosophers did not consider themselves “Platonists”; they merely thought that way. Second, Platonism does not necessarily mean that the material world is evil. It merely subordinates the material world to the non-material world. One is more significant than the other. 27. Layton (1987) referred to SBJ as “one of the most classic narrations of the gnostic myth” (p. 23). Although Layton classified SBJ as a classic Gnostic text, other scholars of Gnosticism classify SBJ as a Sethian text. 28. SBJ exists in four separate Coptic manuscripts, three from the Nag Hammadi codices (2, 3, 4), copied prior to 350 ce, and one from a fifth-century papyrus manuscript (Berolinensis gnosticus). See Layton (1987, pp. 25–26) and also Meyer (2007, p. 103). 29. For an excellent introduction to Gnosticism in general, and the Secret Book According to John in particular, see especially Layton (1987). 30. Tertullian, Against the Valentinians, 7. The reference to insulam feliculam in this text is obscure. It could mean the “apartments of Felicula,” or it could be “apartments in the heavens.” It should be noted that the Romans commonly built apartment buildings (insula) several stories high. 31. The Barbelo myth is more fully explicated in the Gnostic text “The Thunder—Perfect Intellect.” See Layton (1987, pp. 77–85). Unlike “the God and Father of all,” Barbelo, the First Power, interacts with creation. 32. The myth that inspired the story is probably the conception of Hephaestus, the son of Zeus and Hera. Hera conceived Hephaestus parthenogenetically. Hera cast him down from Olympus, perhaps because he was ugly and lame, perhaps out of guilt for conceiving him without the aid of Zeus. The author of SBJ, by alluding to the Greek myth, suggests that Yaldaboath has no more claim to the divine realms than Hephaestus. 33. I would not go so far as to suggest the text is anti-Semitic, because the hostility is only theological. The charge of anti-Semitism is sometimes made too quickly and without support. Just because an author disagrees with the Jewish worldview or Jewish ideas does not make him or her anti-Semitic. The post-Holocaust sensitivity toward Judaism is sometimes unnecessary. 34. Meyer (2007) suggested that the name recalls the evil Zoroastrian deity Ahriman (p. 107). 35. Green (1985) argued that Gnosticism originated in Roman-occupied Jewish Alexandria in the first century. Gonzalez (1970) presented a typical Christian viewpoint that the Gnostics gleaned whatever they could use from Christianity but remained an essentially non-Christian movement, thereby subordinating Gnosticism to the “orthodox” church. Pagels (1979/1989) presented the more intriguing, and possibly more accurate, idea that the “orthodox” church fed off of Gnosticism just as much as Gnosticism fed off of it.

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36. For example, the Johannine literature, the Corinthian correspondence, and Colossians, all of them written toward the end of the first century. Bultmann argued that the Gospel of John attached a Gnostic redeemer myth to the historical Jesus. If so, the text is rather schizophrenic. The pastoral epistles as well, late and deuteroPauline, include references to early Gnostic groups. See 1 Tim 6:20 (“falsely called gnosis”). 37. Gonzalez (1970) in his treatment of Gnosticism emphasized that “Gnosticism is salvation” (pp. 1:130–131). 38. The “Hymn of the Savior” (Layton referred to it as the “Poem of Deliverance”) is found at SBJ 30.11–31.25. 39. At least they did not appreciate those tenets of their theology (the incarnation) that support social reform. In the canonical stream of Christian theology, Jesus leaves a divine realm to participate in this present evil world. That would seem to support redemptive social reforms of all kinds. 40. Jesus’s kingdom of God is an excellent example of this phenomenon. 41. On the social context of 1 John, see Brown (1982), Painter (2002), Perkins (1983, 1993), and Smalley (1984). 42. The term religious specialists derives from the work of Rodney Stark. See Stark and Bainbridge (1987/1996, pp. 89–96) and Stark (2007). 43. The Joel and Ethan Coen film No Country for Old Men, based on the Cormac McCarthy novel, deservedly won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2007. It is a chilling reflection on the existence of evil in the United States.

REFERENCES Bos, A. P. (2002). “Aristotelian” and “Platonic” dualism in Hellenistic and early Christian philosophy and Gnosticism. Vigiliae Christianae, 56 (3), 273–291. Brown, R. E. (1982). The Epistles of John: Translated with introduction, notes, and commentary (Anchor Bible 30). Garden City, NY: Doubleday. De Conick, A. D. (2005). Recovering the original Gospel of Thomas: A history of the gospel and its growth. London: T & T Clark. De Conick, A. D. (2006). The original Gospel of Thomas in translation: With a commentary and new English translation of the complete gospel. London: T & T Clark. Eliade, M. (1984). A history of religious ideas: Vol. 2. From Gautama Buddha to the triumph of Christianity. Chicago: Chicago University Press. (Original work published in 1982) Fox, R. L. (1989). Pagans and Christians. New York: Knopf. Geisler, N. L. (1978). The roots of evil. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. Gonzalez, J. L. (1970). A history of Christian thought: Vol. 1. From the beginnings to the Council of Chalcedon in a.d. 451. Nashville, TN: Abingdon. Green, H. A. (1985). The economic and social origins of Gnosticism (SBL Dissertation Series 77). Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press. Jonas, H. (1958). The Gnostic religion: The message of the alien god and the beginnings of Christianity. Boston: Beacon. King, K. L. (2003). What is Gnosticism? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press/ Belknap. Klauck, H. J. (2003). The religious context of early Christianity. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress.

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Layton, B. (1987). The Gnostic scriptures. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Meyer, M. (Ed.). (2007). The Nag Hammadi scriptures. New York: HarperOne. Pagels, E. (1989). The Gnostic gospels. New York: Vintage. (Original work published in 1979) Painter, J. (2002). 1, 2, and 3 John (Sacra Pagina 18). Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. Pearson, B. A. (2007). Ancient Gnosticism: Traditions and literature. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress. Perkins, P. (1983). Koinonia in 1 John 1:3–7: The social context of division in the Johannine letter. Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 45, 631–641. Perkins, P. (1993). Gnosticism and the New Testament. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress. Perrin, N. P. (2007). Thomas: The other gospel. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press. Rudolph, K. (1983). Gnosis. New York: Harper & Row. Scott, A. B. (1995, Summer). Churches or books? Sethian social organization. Journal of Early Christian Studies, 3 (2), 109–122. Smalley, S. S. (1984). 1, 2, 3 John (Word Biblical Commentary 51). Waco, TX: Word. Stark, R. (2007). Discovering God: The origins of the great religions and the evolution of belief. New York: HarperOne. Stark, R., & Bainbridge, W. S. (1996). A theory of religion. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Urban, L. (1995). A short history of Christian thought (rev. and expanded ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wilken, R. L. (2003). The spirit of early Christian thought. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Williams, M. A. (1996). Rethinking Gnosticism: An argument for dismantling a dubious category. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wisse, F. (1981). Stalking those elusive Sethians. In B. Layton (Ed.), The rediscovery of Gnosticism: Sethian Gnosticism (Vol. 2). Leiden: Brill.

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Evil in Film: Portrayal and Biblical Critique Nicolene L. Joubert and Zelmarie E. Joubert

INTRODUCTION The origin, existence, and expression of moral and natural evil in the world are popular themes in literature, film, and television. Moral evil refers to harmful deeds performed by humans to hurt or destroy others or the environment, whereas natural evil refers to forces in nature that can cause destruction (Schrag, 2006, p. 149). Humans feel compelled to explain, address, and abolish both types of evils, and this drive is clearly visible in film since its birth, which happened, according to Monaco (2000, p. 572), in a brief period between the late 1800s and early 1900s. Throughout the relatively short history of film, audiences have marveled at the extensive variety of characters employed to represent the many facets of moral evil that humans are confronted with. A few names that might come to mind include Captain Hank Quinlan (Touch of Evil, 1958), HAL (2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968), Michael Myers (Halloween, 1978), Freddy Krueger (A Nightmare on Elm Street, 1984), Hannibal Lecter (The Silence of the Lambs, 1991), and Samara Morgan (The Ring, 2002). These memorably evil characters and the films they appear in belong to a diverse variety of genres such as film noir, horror, thriller, and science fiction that deliberately explore, and often exploit, the concept of evil. The emphasis on evil in these film genres indicates how people grapple with the different facets of evil—being both drawn to evil and repulsed by it. Additionally, the emphasis and treatment of evil in film exhibit the potential utilization of film space for the purpose of considering, and also experimenting with, the concept of evil.

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Norden (2000, p. 51) argued that film and television programming are a form of culture that not only reflects reality but is the reality on which many viewers base their ideas and views of the world. Hoorn and Konijn (2003, p. 250) underscored this argument, stating that the conceptual framework that serves as people’s “real-world knowledge” mostly consists of information gathered through stories of people that they have never met or events that they have not experienced. A well-developed understanding of the power of story and character in the shaping of people’s worlds and worldviews provides a necessary basis for the value of the type of exploration and evaluation conducted by the authors. The purpose of this chapter is to explore and evaluate film’s capacity for representing moral evil by looking at four films—M (1931), The Godfather (1972), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), and Funny Games (1997)—and to evaluate these efforts within a biblical philosophical framework.

EXPLORING EVIL IN FILM Media coverage of evil, including in film, is not always viewed as having positive value. It has been frequently condemned in the past as only imitating evil, thus offering no in-depth insight or strategies for addressing and containing evil (Alfred cited in Norden, 2000, p. 51). Such a superficial, sensationalist treatment of evil results in desensitizing society to evil, and it lessens the ability of viewers to distinguish between reality and fiction. Grace (2000, p. 58) reported with concern on the reactions of adolescents watching the re-release of the film The Exorcist, and pointed out that these reactions were to convulse with laughter at the portrayal of a demon-possessed child rather than the expected shock reaction. Grace (2000, p. 58) was furthermore of the opinion that our culture has lost its sense of the numinous and that the portrayal of evil in film may have contributed to this. The critique against depiction of evil in mass media has to be taken seriously and considered in any investigation into the use of film as a tool to develop and test our understanding of evil.

THE VALUE OF FILM AS A MEDIUM IN PORTRAYING EVIL In defense of media coverage of evil, Freeland (cited in Norden, 2000, p. 51) argued that horror films can and do “offer a rich, varied, subtle and complex view on the nature of evil.” Freeland (cited in Norden, 2000, p. 51) is of the opinion that films depicting evil elicit a variety of responses in their viewers ranging from emotional responses such as fear, anxiety, dread, and sympathy to cognitive responses such as contemplating the degrees of evil, internal versus external evil, and natural versus supernatural evil. This

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argument implies that the media coverage of evil can serve a good purpose by helping people to understand the “banality of evil,” a phrase coined by Hannah Arendt (cited in Norden, 2000, p. 51) in her analysis of the crimes committed by Adolf Eichmann during the Nazi regime. Considering both sides of the argument, the hypothesis that film as medium can be effectively used to increase our understanding of the complexity of evil as expressed in society, tested in this chapter, has to be clarified. Not all films utilize film space in a responsible manner, and these films are thus rendered less useful and less effective in dealing with the topic of evil. In response to a question about the 2008 remake of his 1997 experimental film Funny Games, Austrian director Michael Haneke said, I wanted to show the audience how much they can be manipulated. First they think it’s all an illusion, just a film, then I do this rewinding and suddenly you go back. . . . In view of this overriding illusion in movies, it’s a good idea to create a little bit of mistrust in the verité, in the truth of moving pictures. (Quoted in Rich, 2008)

The answer might not lie in the reactionary response of disallowing the making of films with gratuitous violence, even though that might be the ideal, but in educating the audience (ourselves) to be alert and discriminating. The classical German drama-thriller M, released in 1931 and directed by Fritz Lang, was chosen as the central film for this chapter. The selection of M is significant because it was made early in the history of film, and despite being made almost 80 years ago it remains remarkably relevant today in respect to its complex portrayal of the evil at work in society. The story of M revolves around a serial killer of children. According to Lang, Germany was plagued by a few serial killers at the time when he drew on this subject matter (Morris, 2010). The subject matter of this film is thus based on a real-life situation. In Lang’s film, M, the principal character, who is a murderer, embodies both compulsive evil and the self-awareness of evil. The audience first meets this character as an ominous shadow cast against a pillar, talking to a little girl about her ball. Even though the audience has no confirmation of the shadow’s identity at this point, they are aware of a mother anxiously waiting for her child to come home and of a monster preying on kids. Lang sets up this awareness during the opening scenes of the film. The first scene is of little children playing a game and singing a song about a “nasty man” who will chop them up (Lang, 1931). This scene is significant for two reasons, one of which is the establishment of the film’s tone and the other one being the introduction of evil stalking innocence, and eventually destroying it. The children in this scene, as well as every young girl out in the street, are continual reminders to the audience and also to the people in the film world of how fragile and fleeting human innocence is. The opening sequence of M

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illustrates how effective film as a medium can be applied to portray some of the most enthralling facets of evil, id est evil lurking around the corner, stalking the innocent, and creating a silent pervasive fear. Film reflects what humans perceive evil to be, which is undoubtedly that evil is pervasive as well as continuous. These two characteristics of evil are primary themes in M, together with the recurring contemplation of the awareness and recognition of evil, response to evil, and lack of a satisfactory answer to evil.

THE PERVASIVE AND UNDYING NATURE OF EVIL Hans Beckert is the serial killer in the film who hunts and kills little girls. He is portrayed as haunted by himself—his evil self. Sometimes the voice of evil becomes so strong, so unrelenting that he has seemingly little choice but to feed the starving and desperate mouth of evil by killing a young girl, thus temporarily stilling the hunger. In Beckert’s own words, “This evil thing inside me, the fire, the voices, and the torment!” (Lang, 1931). In M, the persistent and endless hunger of evil, which can only be sated momentarily with the shedding of innocent blood, is powerfully captured in the face of the protagonist. When the “thing” in him demands satisfaction, we see his eyes bulging from terror and recognition, and after he has killed his face changes and reflects an inner peacefulness. The audience never actually see the evil operating in M, but in Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) evil is externalized in the form of Count Dracula, who has the spirit of Nosferatu—the undead. This film opens with a shot of a monstrous figure whose face is dominated by a dark open mouth. The open-mouthed figure symbolizes the nature of Nosferatu, who is of an ancient family that feeds on humankind’s blood. In one particular scene, the viewer sees Nosferatu entering Lucy’s bedroom as a shadow whose hunger is reflected in the restless moving of his fingers, and later, when they converse, in his perpetually open mouth that is a powerful recurring sign of his barely controlled, unending appetite. The image of Nosferatu’s hunger can be seen as a dramatic visualization of Beckert’s (serial killer in M) internal evil self. The film figure of Nosferatu is a notable attempt at testing the concept of evil as spirit, who is able to move freely, sometimes operating as a force external to humans and sometimes, frighteningly, entering into humans. Evil in the form of Count Dracula tells of evil’s experience of living without life. Nosferatu is forever trapped in a futile existence in which he longs for death but cannot die. He perceives such an existence as cruel and laments that he must endure the “most abject pain” when he is denied the experience of true love again and again (Herzog, 1979). Nosferatu’s thoughts may be taken as evil’s stream of consciousness and reminds the viewer of the character of Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost when he says,

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. . . aside the Devil turned for envy, yet with jealous leer malign Eyed them askance, and to himself thus plained. Sight hateful, sight tormenting! Thus these two Imparadised in one another’s arms The happier Eden, shall enjoy their fill Of bliss on bliss, while I to Hell am thrust, Where neither joy nor love, but fierce desire, Among our other torments not the least, Still unfulfilled with pain of longing pines. (2000, IV, 502–511)

Nosferatu, like Satan in Paradise Lost, realizes that he will always remain an outsider and unable to partake of the good things that human beings are able to enjoy. He is also doomed, like Satan, to do the only thing he can do, and that is to destroy these good things and bring death. Viewers of Nosferatu the Vampyre come to fear the sound of creaking doors in the night, but the audience watching M comes to dread the sight of a young girl walking alone and the whistled tune of Edvard Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King. They know that those elements together signal yet another possible abduction and killing. It is for this reason that one expects to feel relief at the end of M, when Beckert is captured first by underworld leaders and later by police. Strangely, though, the relief never comes and for one very good reason, which is that by now the audience has witnessed a much more subtle and hidden evil than the one raging in Beckert. The double shock of the evil operating in and through Beckert and the evil operating in societal structures keeps the audience from relaxing at the end and instead aligns audience members more with the mourning mothers in the final scene, feeling that what has been lost can never be regained again—the children and, by implication, humankind’s innocence. M, Nosferatu the Vampyre, and many other films seem to repeatedly return to the theme of loss of innocence and purity. Through these films, viewers often become newly aware of this mysterious loss, and our attempts to fix its origin. Mirror images in M play a major role in highlighting the question of evil, as well as the related question of why it is ours to battle with. In Nosferatu the Vampyre, an ancient unseen predator is put forth as the cause. Just as we are bound to continue our search for the origin of individual and social chaos, so also will we continue to ponder and construct a variety of versions of the Fall and the serpent based on a biblical view of evil (Genesis 3). Nosferatu is a representation of the serpent, contaminating our life blood with the poison of death. The fact that he so readily enters bedrooms at night is symbolic of the fateful decision of Adam and Eve to succumb to temptation. The continuation of evil through generations is often a motif in film. In Nosferatu the Vampyre, Nosferatu is placed within an ancient family reflecting evil as embedded in a transgenerational family context. Likewise, in Francis

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Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972), the perpetuation of evil is placed within a family context confirming the perception of the transgenerational character of evil. Similarly, the presentation of the corrupt societal structures in M reflects the undying and pervasive nature of evil. Toward the end of M, Beckert is caught by a group of criminals and beggars and put on trial in a kangaroo court (a court consisting of the people affected by Beckert’s deeds). Beckert is framed as the evil figure standing trial in a kangaroo court that is an illegal court, thus making the court guilty of committing evil. Schränker, the underworld leader, acts as prosecutor and judge but has himself murdered three people. The complexity of evil as it presents itself in society is clearly portrayed through the staging of this pseudo-trial. When the prosecutor and judge put the following question to Beckert, “Do you say that you have to murder?” he answers with a passionate speech, telling those present of being trapped in his own evil behavior against his will: It is there all the time, driving me out to wander the streets following me silently but I can feel it there. It’s me pursuing myself. I want to escape, escape from myself ! But it’s impossible. I can’t escape. I have to obey. I have to run . . . endless streets. I want to escape, to get away. And I am pursued by ghosts. Ghosts of mothers. And of those children. They never leave me. They are always there, always there. Always, except when I do it. When I . . . Then I can’t remember anything. Afterwards I see those posters and read what I have done. Did I do that? But I can’t remember anything about it. But who will believe me? Who knows what it’s like to be me? How I am forced to act. . . . How I must. . . . Must. . . . Don’t want to. Must! Don’t want to, but must! And then . . . a voice screams. I can’t bear to hear it. I can’t go on. (Lang, 1931)

Beckert presents his intrapsychic process of compulsion to murder as a self-defense. His speech describes how he cannot resist this inner driving force and how he is compelled to murder. Thus, M portrays the driving force behind the evil deeds committed by the evil figure of Beckert as an internal force. The interpretation and explanation of moral evil as a result of an intrapsychic weakness or illness are frequently encountered in psychological theories, and although this approach is valuable to some extent, it unfortunately fails to offer any real hope or solution to the presence of evil that affects society. Beckert enhances his self-defense by contrasting his compulsive behavior with the crimes chosen and committed by Schränker and his group. The question of free will is indubitably addressed in this film. On the one hand, a psychologically imbalanced serial killer is portrayed as a huge threat to the security and happiness of the city’s people. On the other hand, a variety

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of freely chosen illegal actions active in the same society is portrayed, id est falsified identity documentation, theft, murder, and so forth. Through this film, viewers are made aware of the evil inherently part of all humans that persistently undermines the safety and happiness of a society. Film successfully represents the complexity of the pervasiveness of moral evil as it stems from the evil inherent in humankind, fostering an undying cycle of evil. This leads to a heightened awareness of the difficulty to conquer or eradicate evil, which in turn highlights the importance of finding solutions for evil.

AWARENESS AND RECOGNITION OF EVIL Upon viewing films that deal with the topic of evil in one way or another, it emerges that humankind must have knowledge of evil, and can therefore recognize it and portray it in opposition to good. So, we are not ignorant and can distinguish between good and evil—a point that is portrayed with great cinematic flair in M. After all, in Milton’s Paradise Lost, Satan’s strategy to destroy creation is revealed to involve corruption of the mind: “Yet let me not forget what I have gained/From their own mouths; all is not theirs it seems:/ One fatal Tree there stands of Knowledge called,/Forbidden them to taste: knowledge forbidd’n?” (2000, IV, 512–515). In relation to film, it is important for us to examine the depiction of awareness and recognition of evil, but additionally we should ask how films have represented the usefulness of our knowledge in devising effective strategies to eradicate evil. During the trial of Beckert staged by the underworld, it materializes that Beckert is fully aware of the evil that drives him to murder. At first he denies everything, but after he realizes that he has been unmistakably identified as the murderer, he admits to his impulse to kill. He speaks of the torment of having to contend with this evil and its haunting consequences. The verbal admission of awareness is prefigured in the film through striking scenes involving Beckert and mirrors. The first scene of this kind occurs after Beckert has murdered Elsie Beckmann and while the graphologist provides an analysis of the murderer’s personality. In this scene, Beckert is half-smiling and examining his face, first pulling down the corners of his mouth, signaling that he should feel remorse for what he has done, and secondly widening his eyes in mock horror at what he sees reflected. He knows who he is and what he is doing, but feels no real remorse or repulsion, although he tries to simulate it in front of the mirror because he also knows that is what he should feel. Evidently, Beckert knows not only that he has evil inside him but also that evil feels no remorse and will continue. In a later scene, Beckert’s awareness of his evil persona is brought to the surface when he is confronted with his reflection in a mirror and sees that he has been branded with a “M” on his shoulder. The fake horror of the earlier

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mirror scene is replaced by the real horror of coming face-to-face with a murderer, caught in the act of prepping his next victim. The painful selfawareness of Beckert gives him a haunted, stalked air that is as tragic as the similar awareness expressed by Nosferatu as he tells of being a prisoner to evil, doomed to drain life to sustain his undead state and to be forever unable to enjoy good things, like love. Examining viewers’ relationship to film and specifically to film portrayals of evil further elucidates the role of film in exploring evil. In M, one poignant scene involves the viewer in a more provocative way than most others, and like with the mirror scenes, this scene involves reflection. The viewers watch Beckert as he walks through the streets, an ordinary man buying and eating an apple. Then, he stops and looks into the glass of a shop’s window, which brings him almost face-to-face with the audience. The scene seems to say that Beckert is just a human being like all the members of the audience. However, Lang uses the frame-within-a-frame technique to frame Beckert’s face in a diamond-shaped reflection of knives for sale in the shop (Corrigan, 2001, p. 108). The effect is twofold as viewers are once again reminded of Beckert’s evil self but also of the evil self that might be in each audience member, or in each member of society. This scene is thus designed to reflect, and enhance the awareness of, the evil that permeates society. It furthermore reveals that by involving the audience, one moves closer to the discovery and utilization of the progressive potential of film to deal with the issue of evil, not just as a fictional reality but also as a fiction that is reality. Haneke’s film Funny Games (1997) centers on the sadistic and fatal games that two young men play with a wealthy family, the Schobers, for no apparent reason. One of these men, Paul, is a self-aware character that breaks the fourth wall several times to speak to the audience directly, thereby actively involving them in the action that takes place in the film space. This technique allows the director to close the gap between himself, his work, and the audience. In doing so he gains the opportunity to ask questions of his audience, to encourage them not only to think about the topic of the film but also to become aware of how they would like the film to proceed. The effect of this level of observer involvement is to shatter the illusion that there is a definite, unbreakable line between reality and fiction. An idea tested by Funny Games is film’s potential to reach us and moreover to teach us about ourselves and our paradoxical relationship with evil. Mr. Schober asks Paul twice why they are doing this; he responds the first time with a brief “Why not?” and later he responds by providing many versions of the same sympathetic story, for example, he cites divorce, abuse, poverty, drug addiction, and boredom as reasons (Haneke, 1997). Not one of these stories is true, and through this “game” Paul unmistakably demonstrates an important point about audience expectation—that

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it requires a neat and acceptable explanation for the occurrence of the evil deeds. Haneke believed that one cannot imagine a worse fictional event than what occurs in reality (Rich, 2008). Through the figure of Paul, he illustrates that film can also be employed to confront audience expectations and sources of pleasure that will ultimately discourage blind and complacent viewership. Our paradoxical relationship with evil is similarly portrayed in M, when Beckert points out that although he does not have a choice but to murder, the criminals who are participating in the kangaroo court and prosecuting him commit evil by choice. This brings us again to the question of free will and whether humans are truly able to make morally good choices. The decision made by the group of criminals to hunt down the murderer seems like a morally good choice but is motivated by the losses they have suffered as a result of intensified police raids to hunt down the murderer. Although the motive is wrong, the decision to assist in finding the serial killer and putting a stop to his evil deeds seems right. Subsequently, the question arises whether this choice is morally right and the deed truly good. The complexity that is irrevocably part of good and evil as they manifest in the motives, thoughts, emotions, and behavior of humans is portrayed in a thought-provoking way. The difficulty of defining the root of evil is illustrated as the root is shown to be inherently part of the human psyche, expressed in selfish motives to make a morally correct choice. Thus, we assert that film portrays evil not only as recognizable but also as inherently part of humans, resulting in the double bind of being simultaneously drawn to, and repulsed by, evil. This implies a full awareness and self-awareness of evil, and additionally the ability to distinguish right from wrong and take responsibility for wrong choices.

RESPONSE TO EVIL The exploration of evil in film up to this point has revealed that evil permeates all levels of society, and this naturally leads to the consideration of how the various sections of society are depicted as they respond to evil. In M, society looks upon the tragic evil figure of Beckert as lost and doomed. Upon closer investigation of society’s position, we learn much more about the insidious nature of evil than we would have had we only investigated Beckert himself. Lang includes the actions of three large groups in society—the public, legitimate law-and-order institutions, and the underworld. The general populace in M vacillates between complacency and chaos, which hardly assists with the tracking down of a serial killer. Lang points out in an early scene that there might be something amiss in ordinary people’s ability to distinguish between good and evil that is most visible when they are threatened by external evil, like a serial killer. This societal disorder and confusion are not surprising considering that you are asking people, who each have

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their own individual conflict between good and evil, to identify evil and rid themselves of it. Lang portrayed this very well in a scene where members of the public accuse an innocent man of wrongdoing. An old man is talking to a little girl, which leads to suspicion on the part of several people in the vicinity, who then accuse the man of being a killer of children although he is completely innocent of that charge. As the innocent man is stared down by a larger accuser, Lang shows him using an exaggerated high-angled shot that highlights the fragility of innocence. He then switches to a shot of the accuser employing an exaggerated low-angled shot that makes the accuser, a self-designated protector of the innocent, seem menacing. It interestingly opens the way for a further layer of complexity to our understanding of the nature of human recognition and awareness of evil. It seems as if an obviously, compulsively evil character like Beckert is more fully aware of the evil lurking in him than the ordinary man who covers his own with a thin layer of civility and good intentions, thereby repressing any surface awareness of own evil tendencies. Lang further delves into this issue with his treatment of two opposing forces in society—the legitimate and the illegitimate. Frequent police raids designed to flush out the killer have a crippling effect on the city’s organized crime system. Criminal leaders meet to discuss the “evil” that has brought the law to their doorstep almost permanently. While underworld lords meet, their counterparts in government and law enforcement also meet to report on progress and devise new plans to catch the killer. Beckert and the hunt for him function like a mirror in which society is reflected, specifically the motives at the heart of society’s protectors and its criminal element. In effect, Beckert has threatened the status quo of life in the city, and the audience witnesses a frantic rush to restore the balance, which can be summarized as government and police being able to go quietly about their business of governing and policing without undue scrutiny and pressure, and the underworld bosses making money without undue disturbances. Thus, these two forces react to the serial killer situation in such a way as to protect their own interests first and foremost. The criminals’ response is probably the more provocative of the two and enjoys a large amount of screen time. The underworld leader, Schränker, suggests that the criminals form an alliance with the beggars’ union in order to catch the killer. The inherent contradiction of criminals setting out to rid society of an evil element makes the audience sit up and pay attention. Schränker, a murderer himself, believes that Beckert is giving the criminal world a bad name and that he should be eliminated without pity as he has no right to live—a belief shared by many in the underworld. This puzzling distinction made in the underworld between acceptable illegitimate acts and those that go too far is treated at length in Coppola’s film, The Godfather. In a perplexing scene, audiences witness a discussion between the heads of the families about

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whether or not to venture into the drug business. Some bosses are agreeable, but others, including Don Vito Corleone, object but later agree that it would be acceptable as long as it is kept out of schools. This is a remarkable discussion that is not far removed from typical discussions between ordinary people about which evil is the lesser evil; for example, should the audience consider Beckert’s evil impulses to be greater than Schränker’s? Lang masterfully links Schränker with Beckert when he films the shadow Schränker and his fellow criminal leaders cast against the wall after they have successfully hatched their master plan to capture Beckert. Lang seems to pose the question of what the difference really is between those who serve the master of shadows. Indeed, Nosferatu himself tells Harker that he has long since lost interest in the light and now keeps to the shadows, where he can be alone with his thoughts—in the context of M, these “thoughts” can translate as “evil plans” to either kill little girls or kill killers. When Beckert is tried by these crooks, he makes the point that they, the criminals, have no right to condemn him to death and asks to be handed over to the police. The assembly of murderers, thieves, prostitutes, and con artists laughs at him in response because they, of all people, know how hard it is to cure or rehabilitate evil tendencies. Lang goes to great length to show the police and government at work to capture the murderer—a meticulous, systematic, and scientific methodology is employed to ensnare the serial killer. Ironically, it is quite by accident that the police are able to apprehend Beckert in the middle of his “trial.” By implication, it seems that no matter how advanced the science or how thorough the method, evil still eludes capture and continues to roam the city streets looking for its next victim. Spinelli (2000, p. 564) hypothesized that the reaction of society to the media coverage of evil, picking at every morsel to dish it up to a very receptive audience, is indicative of the kinship with those committing the crimes rather than alienation. In support of his hypothesis, Spinelli referred to a quote from Mantel (cited in Spinelli, 2000, p. 564) in a review of Gitta Sereny’s biography of the child-killer Mary Bell: But part of us wants more information . . . to feed our fascination and fear. What is it that we fear? Not the loss to the victim, but the loss of innocence in ourselves; . . . not her loss of control, but the fragility of it in ourselves. We can, as Gitta Sereny suggests[,] “use” Mary, less to confirm our faith in society than to confirm the daily wonder that we believe in society at all. We can, with effort, see Mary not as an alien, but Mary as kin, as a stained and transgressive being like us: with the malady of being human and with no hope of a cure.

The response of society to evil as illustrated in M highlights the eagerness to blame somebody else for the evil. It illustrates the human tendency

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to recognize evil in somebody else rather than the self. Concurrent with this tendency is the tendency to pass the responsibility for dealing with evil to somebody else. In M, this is realized in Inspector Lohmann’s response to the murders that a mother should guard her children—directing blame to the mothers for the disappearance of their little girls. M furthermore expresses the recognition of evil in somebody else. The group of criminals is able to recognize the “evil” in the murderer and take responsibility to rid society of him. Although this decision is largely motivated by the predicament of their illegal activities being curbed by extended police raids, many in the group appear outraged by the pain the murders have caused the mothers of the children. Society is called upon to take responsibility for the disappearance of the children. Thus, it is everybody’s responsibility to address evil and participate in devising strategies to contain societal evil. People’s inherent mixture of good and evil is potently depicted in this film.

NO ANSWER TO EVIL A lone voice, Beckert’s pretend defense “attorney” calls out that the sick cannot be held responsible for their deeds. Beckert is both a symbol of the persistence of evil and a sympathetic figure because he clearly needs help. He needs to be saved, and none of society’s remedies can succeed: Neither killing nor asylums or prisons can truly cure evil or rid humankind of evil. Herzog’s Nosferatu represents both of these elements as well, and we can thus conclude that these are indeed perceived properties of evil. Nosferatu exhibits both the never-ending hunger and also the pitifulness, and the people in Nosferatu the Vampyre react in the same way toward the evil that is affecting them as those in M. They are afraid, suspicious, and unable to propose an adequate solution. The lone voice of Lucy in Nosferatu the Vampyre is just as ineffective as the one in M but arguably more accurate in content. She has researched the evil, and its accompanying death, that has come upon her city and has discovered that sacrifice with a pure heart is one way to vanquish it. She fails to convince the character of Dr. von Hellsing, who insists that the phenomenon must be investigated scientifically. Finally, she goes ahead with the plan by herself—a plan that involves her sacrificing herself to overcome Nosferatu. Lucy is seen running through a square in the city asking those carrying coffins why they do not listen to her as she knows what is plaguing them and how to be victorious over it. In Lucy we have a figure that brings hope, although nobody hears it and we see that ultimately her sacrifice is not enough as evil has already acquired a fresh vehicle in Harker, her husband. Looking at the outcomes of both M and Nosferatu the Vampyre, the viewer is left with as little hope that evil can be overcome as the societies in both films are. The law, prisons, capital punishment, insane asylums, an eye for an eye, and human

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sacrifice are all proposed, considered, and found wanting in dealing with evil in its many varied forms. Still, it is the character of Lucy, who reminds one of John the Baptist, who also called to the people to listen to his message. Matthew 3:1 states that “John the Baptist came, preaching in the Desert of Judea and saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near’” (NIV, 1999). Lucy’s plan that involves pure-heartedness and sacrifice is also reminiscent of Jesus Christ, the one John the Baptist spoke of in Matthew 3:11: “But after me will come one who is more powerful than I” (NIV, 1999). Jesus Christ indeed was pure of heart and died on the cross—a sacrifice that could overcome evil, something no amount of human sacrifice or intelligence can achieve. It is remarkable that we can, through the medium of film, explore not only our notions of evil and its consequences but also our notions of what can save us from its perpetual presence and onslaught. The persistent existence of evil and its consequences in society lead to attempts to rescue victims of evil one way or another. In M, the rescue attempt is made by a group of shady characters displaying rescuer traits although they themselves are perpetrators. The rescuer trait present in humans is referred to by one of the characters in M who says, “In every person there is a mother at heart” (Lang, 1931). This quote indicates that humans, even criminals, possess an internal ability to care about pain, loss, and injustice. It also illustrates the need for a savior that can eradicate or conquer evil. This need is best illustrated in the final scene of the film, when three real judges enter to judge Beckert. The mothers of the murdered children are shown in their state of bereavement. Elsie Beckman’s mother states that no outcome to the trial could bring any of the children back. Her statement elucidates another facet of evil, id est the consequences of evil in society often cannot be rectified, or in reality one does not have the option of rewinding the action and acquiring a more favorable outcome, as demonstrated by Funny Games. Film has the compelling ability to represent how intricate and elusive moral evil can be and how difficult it is for humans to find an effective strategy to eradicate or contain societal evil.

A BIBLICAL PHILOSOPHICAL FRAMEWORK As portrayed in film, the complexity and depth of evil in its different forms—moral, societal, natural, and supernatural—are encountered by humans daily. The feebleness of human attempts to conquer or contain evil is similarly portrayed. Although film may deepen our understanding of evil as presented in society, it falls short of providing a meaningful explanation of, or strategy to conquer, evil. In philosophy, theology, and anthropology, discourses on the origin and nature of evil have been elicited over decades. These discourses aim at deepening our understanding of evil and debate possible solutions for evil.

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Psychological theories, on the other hand, tend to shy away from using the term evil in their explanation of behavior that may be viewed as evil. Spinelli (2000, p. 562) pointed out that it is rare to find in the psychotherapeutic literature any in-depth analysis of the notion of evil. Evil is defined by Spinelli (2000, p. 561) as “the notion of deliberate, thoughtful yet morally indefensible acts of violence towards others.” According to Spinelli (2000, p. 561), the moral and existential dimensions of evil are avoided in psychotherapy by transforming possible evil behavior into psychopathological language. The explanation for evil behavior involves a disease or dysfunction on a physical or psychic level. However, this intrapsychic view on evil fails to explain and address in an adequate fashion interrelational factors of evil (Spinelli, 2000, pp. 564–566). A biblical philosophical framework, based on creation theory rooted in a literal Genesis, provides an explanation of the origin of evil, depicts the inherent moral abilities that humans possess, and portrays a human existence in which the power of evil is broken (Chinitz, 2005, p. 153; Calvin cited in Collins, 1999, pp. 65–70; Purdom & Lisle, 2009, p. 8). Thus, a biblical philosophical framework of evil, rather than a psychological theory, provides us with an interpretative framework suitable for the evaluation of the portrayal of evil presented in film. Consequently, a biblical philosophical framework is applied in this section, with the aim to evaluate the moral and existential dimensions of evil as portrayed in film and discussed in this chapter.

The Pervasive and Undying Nature of Evil The two characteristics of evil focused on in the portrayal of evil in film and discussed in this chapter are the pervasiveness of evil and the undying nature of evil. A biblical philosophical framework explains the origin of evil as embedded in a heavenly being, Satan embodied in the serpent tempting Eve in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3). Satan is described as a fallen angel, without any hope of redemption and only one agenda, which is to oppose God and damage His Kingdom. This explains the undying nature of evil, as Satan is immortal and can be destroyed only by God Himself. The pervasiveness of evil inherently part of humankind and well portrayed in film in its complexity is untangled in the biblical narration of the creation of humans and Adam and Eve’s Fall into sin (Calvin cited in Collins, 1999, pp. 65–66). Humans were created in the image of God, which is reflected in their moral, mental, and social capacities (Farnsworth, 1985, pp. 134–135; Purdom & Lisle, 2009, p. 8). This implies that humans were created with the ability to make moral choices. Adam and Eve’s wrong moral choice (disobeying God’s instruction) to eat the fruit from the tree of Knowledge of good and evil opened their

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souls to accepting evil and marred the image of God (all Good) in them. This resulted in the paradoxical relationship that humans have with evil and explains the pervasiveness of evil as it is transferred from generation to generation. Chinitz (2005, p. 153), a Jewish scholar, outlined the sinful nature of man, with the consequent inability to choose what is good, as one of four options regarding moral choice based on biblical texts from the Old Testament. The first option is based on Gen 8:21, Ps 51:7, and Job 5:5, which project the sinful nature of man, and states that man is inherently evil and therefore finds it impossible to choose good. Gen 8:21: And when the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, the LORD said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (English Standard Version, 2001, italics added). Calvin (cited in Collins, 1999, p. 65) concurred with this option in his argument that man in his fallen condition is deprived of free will and “miserably enslaved” to his corrupt nature. Calvin (cited in Collins, 1999, p. 65) elaborated on this stance by adding that man’s soul consisting of intellect and will and by which he discerns good and evil is only partially destroyed by Adam’s fall into sin and is therefore not in complete darkness. The implication is that man desires to seek the truth. In Mark 10:18, Jesus Christ states clearly that no one is good but God, indicating that man is not inherently good: “And Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone’” (English Standard Version, 2001). The second option discussed by Chinitz (2005, p. 153) presents a theory opposite to the first option. This is based on Gen 4:7 and states that man is inherently good, but it is possible for an outside force to tempt man to do evil. Gen 4:7: “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it” (English Standard Version, 2001). This option includes the stance that it is possible for a human to have victory over evil by making the right moral choice. Calvin (cited in Collins, 1999, p. 65) viewed this option as part of the human’s position prior to Adam’s fall into sin. In his original state, man was created good and had the ability to discern between right and wrong. According to Calvin (cited in Collins, 1999, p. 65) man in his fallen state does not possess a free will and is incapable of making a righteous choice. Regeneration of the soul by Christ is a prerequisite for the restoration of man’s capability to fully discern between good and evil and to make the right choices. Humans have been given the ability through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to discern between good and evil. Likewise, humans have been given the responsibility to exercise discernment and to make right moral

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choices. This does not indicate that humans are purely good, as it is clearly stated in Mark 10:18 that only God is good. Both options as discussed explain the complexity and pervasiveness of evil internally present in humans creating a double bind, as well as evil experienced as an external force tempting humans to make morally wrong choices. These factors contribute to the undying nature of evil.

AWARENESS AND RECOGNITION OF EVIL Film, as discussed in this chapter, portrays evil as something that humans can become aware of and can recognize. Thus, evil has a recognizable face and presents in ways known to humans. This aspect raises the question of the effective implementation of this knowledge in order to freely choose to eradicate evil. The third option for moral choice, outlined by Chinitz (2005, p. 153) and based on Deuteronomy 30, includes the view that the human is a free agent with no inherent tendencies toward good or evil. As a neutral entity, man can choose between good and evil. Consider Deuteronomy 30:15: “See, I have set before you today life and good, and death and evil”; and verses 19–20: I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, which you and your offspring may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days. (English Standard Version, 2001)

The fourth option obtained from Talmudic liturgical language indicates the soul of man as pure and not involved in moral choices (Chinitz, 2005, p. 155). The body chooses between good and evil. This view is clarified by Chinitz (2005, p. 155), who explained that although the soul is pure before entering the body, it becomes contaminated when entering the body and thus the soul–body entity sins. Chinitz (2005, p. 155) concluded that man does have a free will and is responsible for his choices despite the fact that he has a sinful nature and may be tempted by an outside force. God’s command to man is to choose life—to make the right moral choice. This indicates the availability of two or more moral choices and the ability man has to make the right choice. Notwithstanding the fact that these options highlight free will and the responsibility of man for his choices, they do not explain the experience of evil as an inherent drive as expressed by Beckert in M and Nosferatu in Nosferatu the Vampyre. God commands humans to choose life and not death. The question remains whether humans truly have the inherent ability to

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make the right choice. As depicted in film, humans often make the wrong choices or a seemingly right choice but for the wrong reasons, which underscores the realization that although humans have the ability to recognize evil, they do not have the power to rid themselves or society of evil. Calvin (cited in Collins, 1999, pp. 27–29) asserted that knowledge of God and faith in Christ allow for self-knowledge and an understanding and appreciation of the world. The fallen nature of man represents weaknesses in the psyche of man and leads to sinful or evil behavior. It is only through faith in Christ that true self-knowledge can be experienced and evil inherent to the self can be fully recognized.

RESPONSE TO EVIL Film is effective in the portrayal of the response of society to evil as inappropriate and bizarre from a distance, as illustrated by M. It is hypothesized that this kind of response is triggered by our own inherent alignment with evil (Spinelli, 2000, p. 564). This kind of portrayal, though valuable, is limited because it encourages the idea that reality and fiction are separate and therefore that observers may enjoy and indulge their evil fantasies without repercussions. A film such as Funny Games draws attention to this illusion and therein suggests a redefinition of the relationship between the audience and the film, and in turn an increased ability of film to be of value in our common struggle against evil. Humankind’s alignment with evil as depicted in both M and Funny Games implies the lack of pure societal criteria to guide our response to evil, resulting in inappropriate and displaced reactions. Biblical philosophy proposes the exclusion of spiritual and moral relativism and serves as a framework for meaningful responses to evil. Creation theory derived from a literal Genesis provides a foundation for morality and a standard for what is defined as good and what is defined as evil (Bahnsen, cited in Purdom & Lisle, 2009, p. 8). God is not the inventor of evil as He is all good. He created humans with a free will and the option of making the wrong moral choice by disobeying Him. In the creation of a free will and the option of a choice between right and wrong is embedded the possibility of evil. The origin of evil is placed in the fall of one of the holy angels created by God as described in the Bible. The Bible (Job 38:4–7) places the creation of angels before the creation of the earth. One of these angels desired to be like God and rebelled against God. This angel fell from heaven and is referred to as Satan or the devil. Satan personifies evil as an external force tempting humans to go against God’s will. Calvin (cited in Collins, 1999, pp. 27–29) was of the opinion that there is no knowledge without belief, and according to him any mistaken representation of the truth is either a direct result of sin or from not knowing God at all. Truth in self-knowledge and knowledge of God comes only through

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belief in God. Farnsworth (1985, pp. 115–117) supported this idea by stating that the Bible and the person are related to God by their very nature, and to fully know the truth involves all three. Only from a position of knowing the truth about our own sinful nature and knowing God through faith can we truly discern how to respond to evil.

NO ANSWER TO EVIL The feebleness of the human attempt to conquer evil is certainly portrayed in film. No amount of human goodness or innocence seems to achieve the desired results, and society is time and again thrown back into the grip of evil. A biblical philosophical framework interprets this phenomenon in light of the inability of humans to be purely good. Thus, no amount of good deeds can overcome evil. The answer to evil from a biblical philosophical point of view is faith. Faith is defined as trust in God and through Christ by which humans are saved from eternal death as a consequence of their evil nature. It is by faith alone that humans can be saved. The character of Lucy in Nosferatu the Vampyre correctly identifies faith as the faculty that gives humans the ability to believe things not based on scientific proof that can aid in our common struggle against evil. Faith in God and Christ Jesus leads to the regeneration of the soul and enables humans to choose what is right (Calvin cited in Collins, 1999, p. 95). Good deeds performed without faith are still contaminated and cannot abolish evil. Faith provides hope and a way out of evil. The value of applying this framework to the portrayal of evil in film lies in the hope and solution it presents.

SUMMARY The biblical philosophical framework indicates the following important aspects regarding the origin and expression of evil in the world and man’s response to it in film. The experience and expression of evil indicate that it is inherently part of humans as the result of a spontaneous choice by Adam and leads to the realization that evil perpetuates as an internal condition and as part of the fallen state of man. Evil likewise exists interrelationally as it is inextricably part of all humans and expresses itself in relational situations. Evil can be discerned by man in his fallen state because his original pure state reflecting the image of God in him has not been completely destroyed by his sinful nature. Humans hold two opposite poles in their nature—good and evil— and therefore are both the victim and the villain. Human attempts to curb or overcome evil are ineffectual, and internal evil can be overcome only when

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the fallen nature of humans is regenerated by Christ. Further to this evil exists externally from humans in the form of a supernatural force, Satan that can tempt man to commit evil or sinful deeds. A fear of evil overcoming good exists and perpetuates constant attempts to overcome evil. A need for a savior is apparent.

CONCLUSION Media coverage of evil is rightfully critiqued when it portrays evil in a superficial and sensationalist manner that serves to desensitize viewers. Withstanding this usage of film, film as a medium can be effectively applied to portray the complexity and pervasiveness of evil as encountered by humans on a daily basis. Some films have the capacity to educate us about internal and external evil from a largely safe distance. Others have the capacity to open viewers’ eyes to their own relationship with evil, specifically as it is reflected in their expectations of films that include the topic of evil and, moreover, in the pleasure they experience from viewing such films. Thus, film as a medium can be incorporated in our resistance against evil and search for effective strategies to contain evil in society. The application of the biblical philosophical framework in the interpretation of evil as portrayed in film supports film’s capacity to effectively increase our understanding of the origin, existence, and expression of evil and also points out the limitations of this medium thus far. It is not implausible to consider that film may address these limitations in future with a reasonable degree of success.

REFERENCES Chinitz, J. (2005). Four biblical options in moral choice. Jewish Bible Quarterly, 33 (3), 153–156. Collins, O. (Ed.). (1999). Complete Christian classics (Vol. 1). London: HarperCollins. Coppola, F. F. (Dir.). (1972). The godfather [Motion picture]. Los Angeles: Columbia Pictures. Corrigan, T. (2001). A short guide to writing about film (4th ed.). New York: Pearson Education. Farnsworth, K. (1985). Whole-hearted integration: Harmonizing psychology and Christianity through word and deed. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House. Grace, K. M. (2000). Satan on the silver screen. The Report, 58–59. Haneke, M. (Dir.). (1997). Funny games [Motion picture]. New York: Kino Video. Herzog, W. (Dir.). (1979). Nosferatu the vampyre [Motion picture]. Michigan: Starz/ Anchor Bay. Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2001). Crossways Bibles, a division of the Good News Publishers. Holy Bible: NIV. (1999). Seoul, Korea: Christian Publishing.

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Hoorn, J. F., & Konijn, E. A. (2003). Perceiving and experiencing fictional characters: An integrative account. Japanese Psychological Research, 45 (4), 250–268. Lang, F. (Dir.). (1931). M [Motion picture]. New York: Criterion. Milton, J. (2000). Paradise lost. London: Penguin. Monaco, J. (2000). How to read a film (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. Morris, G. (2010). Fritz Lang’s M. Bright Lights Film Journal. Retrieved from http:// www.brightlightsfilm.com/29/m.html. Norden, M. F. (Guest ed.). (2000). Introduction: The changing face of evil in film and television. Journal of Popular Film and Television, 50–53. Purdom, G., & Lisle, J. (2009, Spring). Morality and the irrationality of an evolutionary worldview. Phi Kappa Phi Forum, 8–11. Rich, K. (2008, March 12). Interview: Funny Games director Michael Haneke. Retrieved from http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Interview-Funny-Games-Director -Michael-Haneke-8141.html. Schrag, C. O. (2006). Otherness and the problem of evil: How does that which is other become evil? International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 60, 149–156. Spinelli, E. (2000). Therapy and the challenge of evil. British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 28 (4), 561–567.

ch apter 1 5

Narcissism as Evil Deb Brock and Ron Johnson

The essence of evil is narcissism. We further propose that the essence of narcissism is a lack of self, and that the lack of self is due to a lack of proper early life attachment. In this chapter, we will focus predominantly on psychological and behavioral symptoms of narcissism and the psychological and behavioral symptoms of inadequate attachment, and propose a means for a restoration of self and reduction of narcissism in individuals, relationships, and society at large. In refraining from a concrete definition of evil, we propose that evil surfaces out of the phenomenon of narcissism as a detriment to personal growth and, consequently, relational growth. This lack of growth is, then, a reflection of a lack of goodness, or an inclination toward evil. The term narcissism was coined in the field of psychology as an outgrowth of the Greek mythological figure Narcissus, who was transfixed by his reflection in a pool of water, and as a result failed to move beyond this fascination. As a result of this origin of the term narcissism, the term has come to mean undue self-focus and has become a central concept in the field of psychology. Simply understood, narcissism is selfishness. Narcissistic people are particularly self-oriented and self-inflating. They spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about themselves, as well as a fair bit of time concerned about what other people might think of them. Interestingly, narcissistic people can be quite attractive due to an ability to impress people with an ingratiating nature, or they can be quite the opposite, namely, challenging, angry, and generally quite difficult to live with because of their tendency to express absolute demands. These two extremes of social engagement reflect the two sides that actually exist in narcissism: undue self-absorption and undue awareness of

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others. Their awareness of others, however, is actually a concern for others’ rejection of them, rather than concern for others. The popular understanding of narcissism is that it roughly equates to selfishness. At a deeper level, however, narcissism is selflessness. In other words, when an individual is acting in a “narcissistic” manner or may have a narcissistic personality disorder, this individual acts selfish but, in fact, does not have a good sense of self. It is essential to have this sense of self for adequate emotional and interpersonal functioning. We propose in this chapter that narcissism needs to be distinguished from evil, but that narcissism can lead to, cause, or aggravate evil or evils. We will discuss the possibilities that narcissism is evil, that narcissistic behavior is evil, and that narcissistic individuals are evil. Narcissism is a central figure in understanding humankind. In childhood, particularly in early childhood, it is natural and necessary for the child to be self-oriented and “narcissistic” (if we use that term). There are some natural elements of what we might call positive narcissism in adolescence, but in adulthood narcissism is largely pathological, harmful to oneself and to others. We shall begin our study of narcissism with an examination of natural childlike narcissism.

NATURAL AND HEALTHY NARCISSISM Narcissism can be thought of as a predominately self-oriented means of engaging life. Due to the nature of childhood and the requirement that a child develop both a sense of self and a sense of other people, it is natural and necessary that children be predominantly self-focused, or narcissistic. This means that children of this young age see the world as serving them, and do not particularly worry about serving the world. Furthermore, this self-oriented view of life is extremely important for a child to have so that she may develop a solid sense of self from which she can eventually engage the world. The delicate task of transitioning from childhood through adolescence into the adult world may be thought of as a transition from a self-oriented perspective to an other-oriented perspective of life. This is no easy transition to make, and it is possible only if a child is given sufficient time and experience to be naturally narcissistic. Consider what it must be like for an infant, especially a newborn, to enter into life and (ideally) be completely cared for by the external world. Although we cannot attribute too much cognition to an infant, this infant believes that her needs are not only central but also, in fact, the only needs of the world. If she is hungry or in any discomfort, she naturally cries, and this cry generally leads to a mother-figure meeting her wants and needs. In fact, at this time of life the infant does not distinguish between her wants and needs. For the most part, her wants are, in fact, needs. She needs to be fed when hungry,

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cared for when she is in some kind of discomfort, and comforted when she is distressed. And she needs to be nurtured with physical presence a sufficient amount of time in order to feel secure in life. Importantly, these needs are not perfectly met, nor are they met within the time span (immediately) that the infant wants them to be met. The not meeting of human needs could be considered to be the human condition, that is, we all experience attachment difficulties to some degree. When the above-mentioned imperfect meeting of needs is severe, regardless of the intention of the caregiver, the resulting adult narcissistic condition is primed. A second important understanding of infancy is that the infant does not distinguish between her caregiver and herself. In fact, she does not distinguish herself from much of her environment as least for the first months of life. This lack of distinction leads to what we, as psychologists, consider to be an “unconscious” acceptance of total dependency on the external world as natural. The infant generally does not want to be separated from the caregiver or from the world at large. Psychologists identify this early time of connection as symbiotic; in other words, the infant feels a primary symbiosis with the mother figure and a secondary symbiosis with the world around her. There is no separation; there is no self apart from others; and there is no “other.” The infant, of course, has come from a uterine environment where she was, in fact, unified with her mother physically and symbolically unified with the world. This unification is essential in order for other-orientation to evolve. Any disturbance in this natural symbiosis universally causes profound distortion of self, distortion of the world, and distortion of the self in relation to the world. The term narcissism in reference to infancy and early childhood is used as a positive characteristic because it denotes proper attachment. It is healthy because the child should be self-focused for survival. Survival can occur only if there is proper attachment both physically and emotionally as one with the mother figure. This attachment is foundational for self-development, which then leads to relational development. Attachment to the mother figure gives the infant a sense of safety and completeness. When her needs are met, the infant feels safe and complete. The infant must be complete with her maternal figure before she can become complete with herself in order to eventually become complete with the world. Any inadequacy in this early symbiosis between infant and mother figure causes profound damage in an individual’s sense of safety, which ultimately leads to further damage in life, particularly in relationships. In contrast, if attachment is appropriate, then by the age of 6 the child is safely prepared for and desirous of separation leading to selfidentity and interpersonal activity. The ages of approximately 6 to 12 serve as a transition from natural narcissism to a time when an understanding of other people and relationships become a central operation. These years, generally called latency, are

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hallmarked predominantly by entry and completion of elementary school as well as a departure from home as one’s central field of operation. Children during these ages potentially learn more about the world around them than at any other time in life as their level of knowledge doubles every year. Most of this knowledge has to do with the existence of other people and the larger world. The primary component of this knowledge is that other people have needs and wants, which means that the individual is no longer the primary occupant of the universe. This knowledge of the real existence and significance of other people brings about much joy and grief. It is joyful to learn that there are other people to play with, learn from, and love with. The latency child learns that he is not alone. But it is also sad that the individual needs to come to some understanding that he can’t have all that he wants. This same child can rejoice at learning of the existence of a playmate but not like the sharing of toys and time. He might discover the excitement of the difference in appearance and language of his Chinese neighbors but soon thereafter be disappointed that he is unable to speak Chinese. The world becomes both enlarged and limited at seemingly every juncture. The successful completion of latency brings the child into early adulthood, ideally prepared to relate to other people from a basis of appropriate attachment, appropriate separation, and further development of self and others. In our Western culture, we have added a notion of adolescence to what is, in fact, early adulthood, at least as we understand it in primitive cultures. Unfortunately, there is often an unnecessary exacerbation of natural childhood narcissism during adolescence because the adolescent has not adequately been attached, separated, and developed during his childhood years and is unequipped to begin adult relational activity. A major cause of what we shall now call adult narcissism, perhaps the basis of evil in our conception, is inadequate attachment and detachment in childhood, which limits the individual’s perception of himself in relationship to others. There is a strong tendency for parents who attach well to children to have difficulty detaching from them. These children, as a result, are indulged with too much freedom and insufficient limitation, leading to parental dissatisfaction and consequent shaming. There are also a number of parents who neglect their infants and children, which leads these children to never having a sense of security that evolves from normal attachment. Additionally, there is the unfortunate phenomenon of neglect followed by indulgence followed by shame. This unholy combination is certainly fertile ground for the development of adult narcissism, which we propose to be a mannerism of evil. We, the authors, have the privilege of frequent contact with a naturally narcissistic individual in the form of our 5-year-old grandson. It has been a “grand” opportunity to see narcissism at work. Simply put, grandson Gavin is happy when he gets what he wants and profoundly unhappy when he doesn’t. We can see now, perhaps better than we did when raising our daughters,

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the necessity for attachment, limitation, and detachment. Although we may indeed be some of Gavin’s favorite people, at least by his mother’s report, we are persona non grata when Gavin doesn’t get what he wants or when, for instance, we insist that his beans be eaten at the dinner table. We are absolutely hated in the bean moments. Interestingly, in these moments Gavin wants no connection with us and insists on complete detachment in his hatred. However, when we limit Gavin’s verbal explosions at the dinner table and ask him to depart into the living room, he does so with profound terror associated with this other-imposed separation. It must seem to our little fellow in these moments that there is an irresolvable conflict in both his need and desire for simultaneous detachment and connection. He wants the separation from us that is caused by his refusing to eat his beans while simultaneously wanting the connection to us as loved ones. To us, however, we just want him to eat vegetables. In these significant moments of childhood, Gavin wants two things that are incompatible with each other: He wants his way, that is, separation (from the beans) and connection (with his grandparents). We might say he wants the bean counters but not the beans. It is our contention that the evil that erupts from adult narcissism has its taproot in these formative and profound years, when both child and parents must negotiate these exchanges of connection and limitation (detachment). Simply put, some parents are not able to say “yes” to their children and encourage them in life, but many more parents are not able to say “no” and limit their children. This parental limitation is likely due to the parents’ own inability to attach and detach, which is the result of indulgence and neglect in their own childhood. This lack of parental limitation keeps children in a pseudo-infantile state where they believe that they should have everything they want and also have constant connection when these two phenomena are not compatible. This basic element of adult narcissism shows itself in either grandiosity or dependency based on this early life experience. It is in these years that the psyche comes to believe it must either be connected and totally cared for, or be separated and feel permanently abandoned. Later infancy and early childhood give increasing opportunity to understand the difference between separation and abandonment. Furthermore, a young child begins to grasp the concept of delayed gratification as separate from abandonment. The resolution of adult narcissism is the re-creation of the childhood dilemma of wanting attachment and detachment simultaneously. This recreation of the original loss of proper attachment and the subsequent losses of repeated failures in connection and detachment must become conscious and realistically grieved. To realistically grieve is for the individual to recognize the unavoidable imperfection of life (parents and the environment in which he was raised), and begin the therapeutic task of contending with reallife limitations of both others and himself. Adult narcissism can be resolved singularly through a profound grief that ideally would have occurred during

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the natural narcissistic years in which the child grieves either the loss of his desire for something or the loss of connection.

SYMPTOMS OF ADULT NARCISSISM The current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV), identifies a narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) as one of several personality disorders. Other such disorders include borderline personality disorder (BPD) and antisocial personality disorder (APD). DSM-IV identifies NPD as an individual displaying grandiosity, needing excessive admiration, having a sense of entitlement, being interpersonally exploitative, and lacking in empathy, among other secondary symptoms. A cursory review of DSM-IV definitions and descriptions of the various personality disorders will show, however, that there is a common thread of narcissism in them all. In fact, it is likely that most or all the disorders in the DSM-IV have a narcissistic element at their base. For instance, a case can be made for a strong narcissistic element in the diagnosis of depression, anxiety, addictions, obsessive-compulsiveness, psychosomatic illness, and possibly thought disorders. Our experience of 70 collective years of clinical experience confirms that a strong element of narcissism exists in individuals displaying the symptoms of most, if not all, of the illnesses described in the DSM-IV. We contend that many of the features of NPD identified in the DSM-IV are also present in all psychiatric disorders, albeit often in subtle forms. There is, for instance, a strong narcissistic element in BPD, which is, in fact, much more common than NPD and encompasses the large plurality of humankind, at least in North American society. Certainly, the psychogenesis of BPD is an attachment disorder. What happens in the BPD childhood is a failure to attach to a mother figure and subsequent hunger for that attachment. This hunger ultimately leads to various symptoms and pathologies, including addictions of various sorts, depression, anxiety, and certainly interpersonal failures. In the adult form of BPD, there exists an individual who displays a subtle desperation for attachment even though such attachment is usually quite temporary. This attachment can be to a person, persons, property, an organization, an addictive substance and/or behaviors, or even excessive dreaming or excessive doing. What happens in such individuals is that they attach pathologically to one of the aforementioned elements but are unable to detach unless forced to do so, at which point they subsequently attach to another element. Borderlines never learn how to properly attach and detach, thus never getting what they ultimately need. The basic flaw in the makeup of the borderline individual is that he has not moved successfully away from childlike narcissism. They are, as a result, at least as narcissistic as individuals diagnosed as NPD.

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We would challenge some of the typical symptoms identified in the DSM-IV about NPD, which asserts that narcissists are singularly self-inflating and unduly independent. We suggest that an individual can be narcissistic in undue dependence or undue independence. In other words, adult narcissism shows itself in inappropriate attachment or inappropriate detachment. The problem that exists in adult-form narcissism is an inadequate attachment, which can lead to either inadequate attachment or inadequate detachment. It is important to note that there is a spectrum of narcissism that exists in all of humankind. Individuals, such as borderlines and those with other personality disorders, generally display deeper and more profound narcissistic traits than most other people. Other psychiatric conditions, however, always have a narcissistic element in them. Furthermore, adults without a clinically diagnosed condition may suffer to some degree or another from an element of narcissism. This narcissism in the general population shows itself in less dramatic and pathological ways, although it is still based in undue independence or undue dependency.

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE There are several arenas of literature that we need to examine to do even minimal justice to the matter of narcissism. We want to examine literature related to human development, classical and contemporary psychoanalytic literature, and theological and philosophical literature, as these areas all contribute to a fuller understanding of the concept of narcissism.

Developmental Literature Clearly, we are presenting a format of understanding narcissism that is developmental, namely, understanding this phenomenon as a result of inadequate or arrested development. The primary developmental theorists in the field of psychology are Maslow, Piaget, Erikson, and Adler. Although making valuable contributions to developmental psychology, these theorists do not examine the matter of narcissism with any depth, nor do they examine the intrapsychic mechanisms of infancy. Piaget viewed the early life of the infant as one of “sensory motor” behavior to the large extent, but he did not elaborate on how the young infant feels or perceives the world beyond some cursory observations and examination. Maslow’s understanding of infancy is that it is a time of “physiological existence” and perhaps not particularly psychologically relevant. Erikson (1950) added somewhat to an understanding of the psychological functioning of the infant, describing this time of life as one of “trust or mistrust.” Adler did good work on the matter of community (i.e., how an individual must relate to other people to be successful and happy

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in life), but his work is largely in relation to adult functioning, with but little reference to early childhood or infancy. Bowlby (1969, 1973, 1980) provided for us the first thorough examination beyond that of Freud of the developmental process in infants and young children. His work on attachment, separation, and loss has served as a basis for many more attachment theorists and researchers, perhaps best represented by Ainsworth and colleagues (1978). Bowlby’s contention is that the infant needs a secure attachment to the mother figure to develop a sense of self, a lack of which contributes to lifelong and chronic insecurity and relationship difficulties. Ainsworth and colleagues developed a paradigm, somewhat abridged by several other authors, identifying secure attachment in infancy and ultimately in adulthood in comparison with two or more other forms of insecure attachment. These authors do not deal with the personality disorders and other narcissism-based phenomena and diagnoses, but provide fertile ground for an understanding of the centrality of attachment in infancy and ultimately in adult life.

Classic Psychoanalytic Theory Classical understanding of narcissism is best represented by Fenichel (1945). Fenichel and other classical psychoanalysts referred to “primary” and “secondary” narcissism. Primary narcissism is, as indicated above, a condition where the infant does not distinguish himself from the world, nor from objects in the world, nor is there a distinction between his ego and feelings. Freud (1924) would suggest that the infant does not have a sense of ego until the resolution of the Oedipus complex, occurring about age 6. This classical understanding of infant psychology suggests that the infant is not capable of loving because he does not distinguish himself from objects. There is, however, what psychoanalysts call infantile omnipotence. This phenomenon is also called an oceanic feeling of primary narcissism, which simply means a state of calm based on a fluid connection the infant feels with the world. A secondary feature of primary narcissism in psychoanalytic thought is a phenomenon that occurs in later infancy in which the infant projects his omnipotence to parents (parental figures). This projection occurs because within a few months of life, the infant comes to realize, albeit with primitive cognition, that he cannot have all that he wants immediately. Psychoanalytic thought suggests that the infant projects his omnipotence from himself to his parental figures. This projection suggests that if I am incapable of taking care of myself, someone else must be capable; otherwise, I will die. This conclusion creates the infantile illusion that the parental figure must be perfect. The infant’s “love” consists singularly of taking; he acknowledges objects insofar as he needs them for his satisfaction. He does not have a capacity to give (although some analysts, e.g. Mahler, would suggest otherwise).

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Klein added an interesting twist to this understanding of infantile primary narcissism as it relates to love. In her classical work (1975), Klein suggested that the feeling of envy is intrinsically entwined with gratitude and is the basis for mature love. Thus, when an individual envies something, she is actually appreciating it, albeit with a subsequent desire to have the object. In infancy the individual can only fuse with objects (people), at least during most of this time of primary narcissism, rather than truly love them. Fenichel (1945) described secondary narcissism as the adult narcissism that we have described above. The essence of secondary narcissism is alternating between a feeling of personal omnipotence, on the one hand, and projected omnipotence to other people, on the other hand. In other words, secondary narcissism vacillates between believing that one can have everything she wants and believing that someone external to her can give her everything she wants (i.e., be perfect). Fenichel and others suggested that all forms of mental illness, including depression, addictions, and thought disorders, are flawed attempts by individuals to return to the “oceanic feeling” of primary narcissism. Further understanding of secondary narcissism has to do with self-esteem. The proposal is that secondary narcissism is a faulty or flawed self-esteem based on a flawed understanding of personal omnipotence. Alternatively, narcissism can take the form of equally flawed low selfesteem based on the belief that other people possess the omnipotence to give them what they want.

Contemporary Psychoanalytic Theory As there are many additional classical psychoanalytic authors, there are even more contemporary theorists in this realm. Among the predominant figures are Kernberg (1975), who wrote about the condition he called borderline personality organization, which we should understand as borderline personality disorder (BPD), which we have noted to be narcissistic at its basis. Kernberg’s understanding of this condition or diagnosis is that it is a regressive phenomenon in which the adult operates at the stage between early infancy and toddlerhood, a stage described above as one of alternating omnipotence and projected omnipotence. Symptoms of borderlines include anxiety, “polysymptomatic neurosis,” sexual aberrations, some quasi-psychotic features, lack of impulse control, and addictions. Polysymptomatic neuroses include multiple phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms, psychosomatic illnesses, and paranoid-like symptoms. Kernberg suggested that the underlying feature of BPDs is narcissism, namely, the regression to omnipotence and projected omnipotence. He further suggested that the treatment of borderlines encompasses profound elements of transference and countertransference, or what we might consider to be a patient loving the therapist and the therapist loving the patient. This “love” is perceived by Kernberg as

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being an infantile or primitive experience of fusion between the omnipotent patient and omnipotent therapist. A contemporary of Kernberg with a profound impact on psychoanalysis and psychology is Heinz Kohut. He followed much of classical psychoanalytic thought (1971) in suggesting that there is a normal infantile narcissistic state that ideally is negotiated carefully so that “narcissistic needs” are properly met. He saw the adult form of narcissism in personality disorders as a bridge between psychotic disorders and normal development. Normal development is hallmarked by positive self-esteem and self-confidence compared to the delusional grandiosity displayed in psychotic disorders. Narcissistic (personality) disorders have primarily two forms: an excessive need for attention, which is closer to normalcy, and depression and psychosomatic illness, which are closer to psychosis. Under optimal developmental conditions, the infant moves from a grandiose self through a grandiose (maternal) object to a place of understanding personal limits and limits of the maternal figure. Under the same optimal circumstances, the child experiences gradual disappointment in the maternal figure and simultaneously becomes more realistic in his expectations of her. The desired end product of this normal narcissistic stage is for the infant and young child to withdraw unrealistic expectations of the world around him, thus preparing him for the joys and sorrows of adult life. Kohut (1971) discussed what he referred to a “narcissistic wound,” which is the result of a failure of the maternal figure to provide an adequate balance of nurturance and limitation. This wound causes retention of the grandiose self or the “idealized parent or imago”: “Narcissism, in my general outlook, is defined not by the target of the instinctual investment (i.e., whether it is the subject himself or other people) but by the nature or quality of the instinctual charge” (Kohut, 1971, p. 26). If the child experiences traumatic disappointments in the admired adult, the idealized parent imago is retained in its unaltered form and not transformed into a realistic individual who has limits as well as personal desires. Kohut believed that this narcissistic wound occurs between the ages of 1 and 3, or what Freud has called the anal stage of development. Finally, he suggested that these narcissistic wounds lead to a “general structural weakness” in one’s capacity to feel personally safe and to relate adequately to other people. Lowen (1983) gave a welcome addition to contemporary psychoanalytic understanding of narcissism. He noted, for instance, that narcissism is an “exaggerated investment in one’s image at the expense of the self,” which suggests that narcissistic feelings, desires, and behaviors are antithetical to real self-esteem or what psychologists generally refer to as the “self.” Furthermore, he suggested that contrary to their appearance, narcissists are not actually aware of their deepest feelings. Rather, they are inclined toward explosions of rage on the one hand, or strong declarations of “love” on the other. Lowen’s

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theme in understanding narcissism is that there is a degree of “unreality” in the individual, probably exacerbated by elements of narcissism in the culture. Perhaps Lowen’s best-known contribution to psychology is his belief that there is a physiological substrate to all aspects of emotional disturbances. Specifically, he suggested a paradigm of physical representation in the body of arrested psychological development. His belief is that the narcissist has a body structure that is “upward displaced.” This body structure is typified by the masculine ideal of Western culture, namely, a muscular upper body out of proportion with the mid- and lower-body structure. Lowen’s belief about body structure in relation to psychological development has to do with body “energy,” work developed by Wilhelm Reich (1959). Lowen’s suggestion is that the narcissist holds this energy “up” in his body, thus increasing his capacity to meet his wants, but decreasing his capacity to meet his emotional needs. In contrast to classical psychoanalytic thought, Lowen did not discuss or believe in primary narcissism. Rather, he believed that narcissism stems from a disturbance in the parent–child relationship where the child has been indulged or neglected. He does, however, agree with the classicists in their understanding that all people with personality disorders, including borderlines and others, have a basic element of narcissism. Lowen’s contribution to an understanding of narcissism includes his body representation of the experience and his belief that “the more narcissistic one is, the less one is identified with one’s feelings.”

Theological Analogy of Narcissism as Separation From God In this discussion, we wish to offer a cursory review of literature regarding matters that fall into the categories of theology, philosophy, and sociology. This will encompass examination of the theological concepts of God, sin, grace, forgiveness, and so on. Philosophical constructs include love, understanding, intellectual and emotional development, and interpersonal development. Societal constructs include individuals’ impact on society and society’s impact on individuals. It is obvious that we cannot do justice to any, let alone all, of these concepts in a few pages. Rather, let us briefly examine some literature, primarily from certain Christian writers, followed by a discussion of the matter of evil. There is a paucity of adequate theological work in understanding narcissism. Extant literature includes Johnson (1980), Hood and associates (1990), Watson and associates (1990), and Torrance (1987). Johnson (1980) examined the correlation and similarity between narcissism and a biblical concept of sin. He found that the concept of sin in the scriptures is by no means universal but may be summarized in a Kierkegaardian definition, namely, that sin is the opposite of faith. Other definitions of sin include breaking of the law, alienation (Tillich), and immorality (Niebuhr). Johnson suggested that

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there is a weak correlation between sin and narcissism in that sin, as faithlessness, would naturally lead to personal insecurity, which would lead to undo selfishness or selflessness (i.e., narcissism). Hood and colleagues (1990) and Watson and colleagues (1990) examined “pathological narcissism” finding elements of undo independence and undo independency. They found that both of these conditions are antithetical to biblical Christianity. These authors have provided a fair amount of research into the narcissistic character, especially as it relates to various forms of religiosity. One of their findings is that individuals with an extrinsic religiosity are more narcissistic (Watson et al., 1990). Torrance (1987) represented a Reformed examination of what is currently called a culture and time of narcissism. Torrance argued that Western culture has moved away from a Christian understanding of community to an undo focus on the individual. He collapsed contemporary psychology into what he called an “awareness movement,” where the individual is taught to be self-assertive. Torrance followed Christopher Lasch’s “Culture of Narcissism” in challenging this undo individualism and self-assertion. Torrance proposed that narcissism does not, in fact, develop a genuine self-esteem, but an artificial self-enhancement due to indulgence. He concluded by suggesting that koinonia (community) provides a true context of self-discovery that can free Christians from pride and isolation of self. Our proposition is that when people are in a state of narcissism, they have separated from their (true) selves and are unable to contribute fully to their environment due to either their grandiose perceptions or their projected blame on the environment. As noted above, most classical and contemporary psychologists suggest that there is an inherent factor of narcissism in all personality disorders. We add to those suggestions that all personality disorders are the outgrowth of improper attachment. In considering the lack of proper attachment as the basis for narcissism, we look at how an individual who is in a state of poor attachment of self is unable to properly attach to society as a whole and consequently is unattached to the nature of goodness and maturity, that is, contributing to society in a meaningful and lasting way. We suggest that a gross definition of evil is separation from God, or not being attached to God. We further suggest that “God” is a heavenly or universal maternal figure. If an individual fails to mature, he will subsequently fail to contribute to the environment and remain stagnated at a level of undo self-focus, or narcissism. In a broad sense, development implies maturation that should lead eventually to a more God-like persona. This lack of contribution is, in essence, a separation from God and consequently a separation from doing the work of God, or goodness. Noting that proper attachment leads to individualization, we suggest that maturity occurs when one maintains a cycle of attaching and detaching in conscious awareness of the necessity and value of both of these operations. The mature person becomes increasingly

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aware of the value of any relationship as well as the need to detach from every relationship for a time. It is in this cycle that relationships are solidified. We suggest that this full cycle of personal development is true maturity, the antithesis of evil. If people are immature—that is, narcissistic—they will then lack a basic sense of security from which they make contributions to the world. As noted above in the psychoanalytic understanding of narcissism, an individual will either project a false sense of personal grandiosity or project this grandiosity to the outer world and eventually thrust his infantile anger in the form of external blaming. Both of these projections are functionally dishonest. Theologically and scripturally, God is personified as truth. Therefore, the state of narcissism is a state of dishonesty, or ungodlike behavior. As the infant projects a necessary perfection on the maternal figure, the adult narcissist projects “necessary perfection” on the environment. The difference between the infant and the adult is that the infant has no choice but to believe her caretaker is perfect. The adult narcissistic maintains the infantile projection as a fantasy over the disappointing truths of limitation and imperfection instead of experiencing her true feelings of disappointment and sadness. Scripture instructs that there is freedom in truth. The therapeutic task for the narcissistic is to trust the truth of her feelings. Truth is what matures her, broadens her interpersonal views, and develops a more solid character base. Narcissism can also be considered to be evil by recognizing that a narcissistic individual is functionally greedy, asking or demanding more from the environment than she needs or more than the environment can provide. An individual in this state of demand for care is unable to make contributions to the world. This neediness or greed is anti-good or unlike God—it is the antithesis of God. Again, the correlation is that adult narcissists insist that their world accommodate the infantile fantasy need for total care (i.e., dependency). This infantile dependency in adulthood can result only in greed at best, and paranoia at worst.

RESOLUTION OF NARCISSISM We propose that the resolution of narcissism is grief. Further, we propose that grief, which we identify with uncomplicated sadness, is the central ingredient for success in relationships, success in life, and general maturity. We distinguish grief (or sadness) from depression, the former being a natural state of coping with the necessary losses of life, and the latter a clinical condition that is essentially narcissistic. This statement is a departure from the current understanding that depression is biogenic in origin and biological in its basic form. Thus, we agree with Fenichel and other classic psychoanalysts in the suggestion that depression is to some degree a choice, and to a larger degree a result of failing to grieve.

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There is continual grief in the entirety of life beginning in infancy and continuing through adult life. Certainly, the neonate grieves the loss of a largely perfect uterine environment. The developing infant grieves the loss of nearly constant comfort and nurturance. The toddler grieves the limitations and loss of freedom to go where he wants and do what he wants to do. The preschool child grieves in his transition into the oedipal stage of life, and soon thereafter grieves the loss of oedipal feelings. The school-aged child grieves the loss of regular comfort and nurturance that are largely replaced by cognitive learning and social learning. Furthermore, the schoolaged child (age 6–12) certainly has daily grief over mild or major failures in school, social disappointments, and loneliness. Adolescents have complicated grief because of the lack of freedom and responsibility that they have in Western society, and they experience artificial grief associated with trivial social disappointments. Grief continues through early adulthood in many forms, including academic failure or disappointment, failure in intimate relationships, and failures in entry and maintenance into the world of work. Adults have regular grief over the challenges presented in parenting young children and nurturing them into childhood and adolescence. There are no marriages or relationships that are without relatively regular grief as couples strive to understand themselves and relate to one another. As adults mature into later years, and often beforehand, they experience the loss of loved ones, loss of property, loss of ideas, and loss of ideals. Eventually they face the grief of the loss of their own health or lives. The aforementioned statements of grief that occur over the life span could sound depressing and lead to despair. We would contend, however, that grief is neither despair nor depression, but rather a natural part of life, and something to be enhanced, experienced, and completed. We further propose that much of the distress of life is unnecessary and ultimately narcissistic because individuals and society fail to accept the necessity and ultimate value of sadness and grief. The central notion of this proposal is that grief ends, whereas despair and depression do not. Despair is the failure to accept the truth of life, and it is the maintenance of a childlike (narcissistic) view that “I should get and keep everything that I want.” We can easily see that it is unwise for our children to have everything that they want, and can generally see that our acquaintances don’t need everything that they want. It is much harder, however, to genuinely understand that it is not good for us to have what we want. This kind of understanding can come only with maturity, and maturity comes only by facing the routine and necessary nature of grief. The root of narcissism is that I am perfect or you are perfect. In other words, I can have all I want by my own hand, or someone else can provide me all that I want. The primary narcissism of infancy creates and reinforces this view of life. But it takes at least another 12 years of childhood to transition out of this belief that I will continue to get everything I want. The

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key difference between primary narcissism and the adult form of secondary narcissism is the distinction of wants and needs. Infants do not distinguish between wants and needs. A primary purpose of the extended childhood that humans have, as compared to all other animals, is to experience life and make this distinction. This distinction can be made only by grieving that I don’t get all that I want. True grief is short lived for the most part. Indeed, it may take a year or more to grieve the loss of a loved one, during which time a person recalls the months or years of joy with the person she has lost. But for all other losses of less magnitude, grief should last something between minutes and hours. In fact, the most important losses and subsequent griefs are those of short duration and trivial matters. I can’t find a parking space close to the concert hall. I drop my fork on the floor. My newspaper rips when I open it up. My computer locks up on me. More significant losses and subsequent griefs include misunderstandings among friends, loss of employment, major loss of property, loss of investment, and the like. If we are mature and become true to ourselves and to life, and particularly true to the normal period of sadness, our grief will be short lived. Furthermore, and more importantly, we will come to realize that losses are not generally as significant as we hold them to be. Mature individuals realize that losses are necessary and generally good even though they are always sad and painful. Sadly, there is a convoluted condition that is related to the understanding of the value of loss, namely, masochism. Sadly, masochists seek pain as a way of enhancing loss, probably reflecting early childhood loss that has not been properly grieved. There is a beauty to grieving and sadness that is often overlooked. Shakespeare used the term “sweet sorrow” to capture the essence of this concept. One cannot feel grief or sorrow without first loving something. The infant feels a loss as separation, but not particularly out of love except in a primitive form because an infant does not distinguish himself from his environment. Early forms of love in preschool years are largely those of attachment, need, and pleasure. The grief that we see in infancy and early childhood is complicated predominately by fear in infancy and predominantly by anger in early childhood. Genuine sadness, which is based on love, probably does not occur frequently until the child is beyond the oedipal stage, or at about the age of 6. Ideally, the mature adult loves much. She loves people, property, and ideas with various forms of love. This same mature loving adult will then unavoidably experience frequent sorrow. The hallmark of a mature adult is to be able to face loss and grief honestly and profit from the loss, at least in most situations. We frequently tell our patients, “If you love much, you will grieve much.” The mature or maturing adult becomes familiar and friendly with the experience of sorrow as it increasingly reminds her of the depth and breadth of her love. Furthermore, where there is loss, there is always some kind of

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gain. The fall and winter of the year include the loss of billions of life forms, but then even more billions generate in the following spring. Likewise, in human life, where there is loss, there is always some kind of gain, usually more than the loss. Narcissism in any form is an impediment to grief, which itself then impedes a greater love. Our proposition is that the resolution and possibly cure of narcissism are in the increased awareness of necessary grief: that our parents failed us, that not everyone likes us or approves of us, that choices have to be made, that we have to choose between eating our vegetables or leaving the dinner table, that we try our best but still fail in competition or relationships, that war happens, and that the polar ice cap melts. Our focus has been primarily on individual maturity through grief, but we might suggest that a group or society at large could profit from appropriate grief to cure narcissistic elements that exist within the group or society. Evil, as we conceive of it, is the maintenance of narcissism, to one degree or another, rather than the enhancement of love.

REFERENCES Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss: Attachment. New York: Basic Books. Bowlby, J. (1973). Attachment and loss: Separation. New York: Basic Books. Bowlby, J. (1980). Attachment and loss: Loss. New York: Basic Books. Erikson, E. (1950). Childhood and society. New York: Norton. Fenichel, O. (1945). The psychoanalytic theory of neurosis. New York: Norton. Freud, S. (1914). On narcissism: An introduction. In The collected papers. London: Hogarth Press. Freud, S. (1924). The collected papers. London: Hogarth Press. Fromm, E. (1939). Selfishness and self-love. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 7, 54 Hood, R. W., Morris, R. J., and Watson, P. J. (1990). Quasi-experimental elicitation of a differential report of religious experience among intrinsic and indiscriminately pro religious types. Journal of the Scientific Study of Religion, 29, 417–431. Johnson, R. (1980). Narcissism and sin. Paper delivered at the Christian Association for Psychological Studies, Toronto. Kernberg, O. F. (1975). Borderline conditions and pathological narcissism. New York: Jason Aronson. Klein, M. (1975). Envy and gratitude. New York: Delacorte Press. Kohut, H. (1971). The analysis of the self: A systematic approach to the psychoanalytic treatment of narcissistic personality disorders. New York: International Universities Press. Lowen, A. (1983). Narcissism. New York: Macmillan. Mahler, M., Pine, F., & Bergman, A. (1975). The psychological birth of the human infant: Symbiosis and Individuation. New York: Basic Books. Maslow, A. (1954). Motivation and personality. New York: Harper.

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Piaget, J. (1954). The construction of reality in the child. New York: Basic Books. Raskin, R. N., & Hall, C. S. (1979). A narcissistic personality inventory. Psychological Reports, 45, 590. Reich, W. (1959). Character analysis. New York: Orgon Institute Press. Torrance, A. J. (1987). The self-relation, narcissism, and the gospel of grace. Scottish Journal of Theology, 40, 481–510. Watson, P. J, Morris, R. J., Hood, R. W., & Biderman, M. D. (1990). Religious orientation types and narcissism. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 9, 40–46.

ch apter 16

Experience of Evil in Everyday Lives Suzanne M. Coyle

News of disasters bombards us from every possible venue—phone calls, the Internet, newspapers, TV, and radio. The list seems endless. At some point, we simply absorb too much information and switch off our receivers. Yet, nagging questions come at us. Is there evil in our everyday lives? Are we immersed in a quagmire of relativity? Is evil personified as a being in the devil or Satan? Are we responsible for evil? Is society the ultimately responsible party? And where is God in all of the evil? The exploration of many of these questions will be explored in other parts of these edited volumes of Explaining Evil. My purpose in this chapter is to explore a basic phenomenological query. This query is that, however theoretical or abstract examining evil may remain, the personal effects of evil and our responses to evil are experienced in our everyday lives. While recognizing that evil exists in daily life, our human natures sometimes entice us to push away any possibility of evil in our personal lives. It is more comfortable for us to believe that evil is with someone else or some other place. A haunting memory comes to me of a comment made by one of my supervisors as I traveled the journey toward licensure as a therapist. He said, “Suzanne, your problem is that you do not believe that someone you like is capable of evil.” So any of us may, as I have done, push away evil. The title “Experience of Evil in Everyday Lives” sounds too dramatic to be true. My purpose in this chapter is not to focus on whether evil does or does not exist but how to enable people to identify evil when it occurs in their lives and respond powerfully to it.

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To accomplish this task, I will first offer some definitions of evil. After then determining a useful definition of evil for this chapter, I will present two case studies of people’s experience of evil in everyday life. The first case study is focused on a personal experience and personification of the devil. The second case study is a counselee’s experience of evil in a vague everyday sense that even he did not always recognize as evil. These two case studies will be changed so that no identifying information is given. After a discussion of these two case studies of evil, the chapter will close with a challenge of how most helpfully to address evil in everyday life, with special attention to those of us who are professional caregivers—the clergy and mental health professionals.

DEFINING EVIL Defining evil is a difficult challenge at best. Much of the endeavor traditionally has fallen into distinguishing between two categories of evil— moral evil and natural evil. Moral evil is essentially understood as evil that has malevolent intent with disastrous consequences. Intrinsically, moral evil has at its core ethically reprehensible actions that often have long-reaching societal effects. The Holocaust in Germany is a clear example of this kind of evil. Moral evil can also occur on a familial level such as physical abuse in a family. Natural evil comprises those “naturally” occurring events with bad or painful consequences that do not have a responsible agent who directs the evil. Examples of natural evil include natural disasters such as tornadoes and hurricanes, and catastrophic illnesses such as cancer. Natural evil has only victims or survivors, whereas moral evil has perpetrators. The defining of evil when put in these two categories can often fall into a philosophical debate with little concern for the experience of the evil by humans. Because the purpose of this chapter is to focus on the experience of people’s everyday lives, I am not using these two traditional categories to define evil. Instead, I am focusing on the experience of evil in a phenomenological sense. This approach has several advantages to a more traditional approach of moral and natural evil, which can be limited to a philosophical or even purely religious discussion. The discussion on experiencing evil in everyday life in my viewpoint can be best explored through a phenomenological view when trying to explain the experience of evil in daily lives. In this way, daily life experience can be seen through the disciplines of psychology and religion to get a fuller understanding of what makes the core of evil palpable in everyday life. From these perspectives, evil can be understood most fully in the perception of people as they experience it and name it in their own lives as evil. Evil, then, in this chapter, is thus understood as being both individual and systemic in its origin and effects. This means that evil can originate from an individual, a system, or both. The origin of the evil does not need to be an

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intentional act. It can be passive as well. An illustration of this paradox can be seen in the person who physically abuses a child. Although the abuser acts with intent, it is also true that many times the abuser was abused, which illustrates both individual and systemic acts of evil. In this illustration of individual and systemic evil, the effects also are both individual and systemic. The abuser suffers with the effect of the evil act, as certainly the abused suffers physical, emotional, and spiritual pain. As a result, the effects for both the perpetrator and the victims form a cycle that is repeated until some action from an individual in a system that can effect change intervenes. This example, I believe, shows that at its core, evil is relational. If we understand evil as relational, then evil also speaks to us, particularly in everyday life, about not only that which “others” do but also the potential in all of us to perform evil acts (Swinton, 2007). In deeply understanding evil, it is not only the actual consequences of the evil act but also the victim’s belief that something redemptive can emerge from the evil that gives an adequate picture of how evil affects people in daily life. Daniel Day Williams (1990) wrote, “The power to resist the demonic is not simply a human power but one that grasps us from beyond ourselves so that the experience of being set free from bondage is our experience of power greater than ourselves” (p. 15). Although it is true that the victim and the perpetrator cannot escape the grasp of evil immediately, it is also true that only by anticipating a life that is different in its freedom from bondage, as Williams asserted, can the victim and perpetrator have any realistic hope of living outside the grasp of evil. Thus, evil becomes relational out of necessity. In everyday life, evil is not experienced in the abstract. It is experienced in the here and now with intense emotion and feeling of abandonment. So, although the instinct is to flee when one meets evil, it is only in meeting and knowing evil that it can be overcome (Williams, 1990). How does one “meet and know” evil, then? Do we even want to encounter evil? For most of us, the answer would be a resounding “no.” However, it is at this point in our discussion of defining evil that the very act of defining evil also becomes a way of knowing evil. As we envision past or present struggles with evil, Jacob’s wrestling with the angel evokes the kind of visceral struggle we may have with evil. Granted, the angel is better known as God, not evil. However, Jacob’s palpable fear when he was wrestling is the kind of struggle that we must engage in with evil if the results are to be as redemptive as Jacob’s struggle. We may limp. But, we will be better able to identify evil if we have touched it. So, in this discussion, we come to the point of defining evil from our previous discussion and then sharing case studies that will illustrate essential aspects of evil. Evil understood in this chapter are those acts—whether active or passive—that cause destructive consequences for both individuals and the

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larger systems in which they live. A helpful experiential way of defining evil is not to be fully concerned with every characteristic and category of evil but, rather, to understand the inevitable way in which evil connects people in a systemic web of destruction. Evil’s relational definition can be defined as “that which destroys hope in and love for God” (Swinton, 2007, p. 59). Evil encompasses the effective blocking of any future experience for both the victim and the perpetrator, although their experiences are quite different. For the victim, it is only when that person is able to look forward to future life that the movement from victim to survivor is affected. For the perpetrator, evil blocks the future, and it is only by remaining in the throes of destructive actions that the perpetrator can live. To move into the future would necessitate facing one’s actions. This definition of evil focuses primarily on individuals. A systemic definition of evil also must be articulated. To use our earlier example, the evil of abuse that results in disastrous consequences can clearly be understood in that context. However, a systemic definition of evil (which would include the traditional concept of natural evil) can include those responses to destructive acts that are evil from those who are in society or even a passive response to a disaster. When people do not respond to a natural disaster, it then becomes systemic evil as well, despite no one individual being able to be named as the perpetrator. The definition of systemic evil involves all those people who actively participate in its acts as well as passively ignore the systemic evil. Racism is a clear example of systemic evil. Everyone thinks of the other person as being the one who should act. Also, it is common for people to not see themselves as being a participant in systemic evil. Part of the passive response to evil may lie in our very human nature. We are natural beings and subject to the “wear and tear of matter” (Adams & Adams, 1990, p. 194). So, evil is that which not only causes painful responses but also permeates our very being and wears us down to the point that we are unable to respond. Evil, thus, as defined in this chapter is the individual and systemic perpetration of destructive acts that result in the disconnection of both individuals and systems of relationships between humans and humans with God. Its result is a spiritual barrenness that blocks envisioning the future and finding meaning in life with God. Our definition of evil is thus not concerned with the abstract or theoretical definitions or the fine tuning of methodology in defining a moral concept. All these approaches, of course, contribute to more fully explaining evil in other chapters of this anthology. The definition offered here focuses on how people experience evil and their perceptions of it. So, in explaining evil, I will present two case studies that illustrate the experience of evil. Addie and her personal, family, and community experiences will offer an illustration of how people experience evil as personified by the devil or Satan. Juan and his personal, family, and community experiences will offer an illustration of how people experience a more ambiguous sense of evil.

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ADDIE Addie was a single White woman in her early 40s who lived in a rural area outside an Appalachian county seat. I was offering pastoral counseling in a local church and often met with area ministers. Addie was referred to me by the pastor of a local church that a friend of hers attended. This congregation offered to pay for her counseling sessions because she was not working to due to her emotional and mental distress. Addie did not attend this church. She did attend a neighboring Pentecostal congregation. When I first met with Addie, she presented as anxious and was alarmed at the slightest disturbance. As we first met, I shared some information about my background and how long I had been doing counseling in the area. As a person who did not live in this Appalachian region, I discovered soon that it was important to let counselees know something about me in order to establish trust with them. My self-disclosure seemed to put her more at ease. Addie, in turn, told me that she was tormented by the devil. She said that she found out about me from her friend who attended a non-Pentecostal evangelical church. Addie said that she had attended a revival at the friend’s church. She had responded to the invitation hymn at the end of the service. Everyone in the church prayed that the devil would leave her. Addie said that their concern touched her deeply. At the same time, she still struggled with fighting the devil. Addie said that she had been in counseling at the community mental health center. However, she had stopped going there, she said, because the counselor told her that the devil was not real. Addie frowned deeply and said that she knew he was real. As we talked, Addie described where she lived and how life was difficult for her. She said that she was not able to keep a public job because she had a hard time concentrating. I tried to explore what prevented her from concentrating, but she deferred. My stance changed from questioning to an attentive and affirming mode. As she shared information about everyday life, I affirmed those experiences and emphasized her strengths. Those strengths included the ability to appreciate the world around her as she described the beautiful scenes of the mountains and their creatures. After two sessions, Addie seemed more relaxed. She began to talk about her years of growing up in an abusive family. As she described her family, tears flowed down her cheeks. She talked about how her mother physically abused her and made her do all the housework—even scrubbing the floors on her knees. Sometimes her mother made her stay under the high, open porch where the dogs stayed. Finally, after some difficulty, Addie tearfully recounted a time when her mother sexually abused her with a broom handle while telling her that she was “no good.” The next session, I experienced Addie as more trusting of me. She then told me about the many years of sexual abuse suffered at the hands of her

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father and brother. Addie said that the abuse occurred on a regular basis beginning when she was 8 years old and continuing until she moved out of the house at 16 years old. She then lived with her boyfriend for several years. He, in turn, physically abused her. She then moved out on her own and had not been sexually involved for years. At the next session, Addie talked more about being tormented by the devil. I asked her to say more about her turmoil. As the words tumbled out, she described voices from the devil asking her to doubt her faith and telling her that she was going to hell. She cried for a while, indicating that the devil convinced her to doubt her salvation and tempted her to curse. Addie did not report any temptations to harm or kill herself or anyone else. Through the next few weeks, Addie talked much about hearing the devil trying to lead her into temptation—some temptations being renouncing her faith, and other things being sexual temptations. Mainly, she reported the daily anguish of having the devil talk to her. She added that she had visual images of him but had never seen him in person. To combat the devil, Addie described lengthy prayer sessions. Addie further described her encounters with the devil to have occurred for years. She then talked about the many Pentecostal services that she attended—a church that was close to her trailer in the hollow. Then she attended her friend’s church, whose pastor had referred her to me. She described further her experience at that church. Addie said that she repented of her sins that night because she had “backslid” or not honored her original Christian commitment. Since that night, she said that she continued her battle against the devil. She attended the Pentecostal church and said that she was afraid not to attend that church lest the devil get her. She continued to talk with her friend as well as the pastor at her friend’s church. Still, the devil tempted Addie. After several weeks of counseling sessions, I took a different counseling job. After talking with Addie for several weeks about my upcoming change, I referred her to another pastoral counselor in the area. Months passed, I heard from the counselor who had accepted Addie as a counselee. After months of counseling, Addie no longer reported that she was tempted by the devil. And in her counseling sessions with her counselor, Addie expressed that she wanted to give me a gift in thanks for my support of her. On my next visit to the area, I dropped by the counseling office, where I found a wrapped box for me. I opened a gift box. Inside it were two pillowcases embroidered with the words “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name . . . Give us this day.” A written note inside the gift said that now she could sleep at night—not being tormented by the devil, thanking me, and saying that she prays daily for me.

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ADDIE ’ S EXPERIENCE Addie’s powerful experience is a reminder of the palpable presence of the devil for many Christians for centuries. Believers still report experiencing a personal entity of the devil. However, many times today mental health professionals challenge their clients’ experience of the devil. Instead of focusing upon their experience, the counseling process often focuses on whether the devil is a real entity or not. Such was Addie’s experience. By accepting her experience of the devil as acceptable, I believe I was able to accept both Addie and her experience. Essential in Addie’s steady progress was her being able to experience a counselor who valued her experience rather than criticizing it. Her belief in the devil was consistent with her Pentecostal beliefs as well as consistent with her experience of her family. She was physically and sexually abused by everyone in her family of origin. Addie experienced the personification of evil in her everyday family life. One also finds an interesting parallel in Addie’s experience in terms of the redemptive response of two systems to her battling the devil. Addie was raised in a Pentecostal church and visited her friend’s non-Pentecostal evangelical church. Even though Addie did not attend her friend’s church but remained at her home church, the friend’s church offered to pay for Addie’s counseling session. I find this spirit of support powerful because these two churches often compete for the same pool of church members. Addie, however, had the support of both churches. Intertwined with these parallels between individuals and community systems, the process of referral is a critical part of combating Addie’s experience of the devil. The referral from the pastor to me and from me to another counselor represents the power of faith communities. Despite some differences in beliefs, the overlapping common beliefs enabled the referral process to provide tremendous support for Addie.

JUAN Juan is a married Latino man in his early 30s with no children. He was raised in a modest but honest home with parents who moved to the United States as young children from a Caribbean country. Juan reports that his parents and three siblings did not have much money as he grew up. However, his parents stressed the importance of hard work, and soon they had a small, family-run restaurant. Juan met his wife at the restaurant when she stopped to dine there. His wife, Heather, was the only daughter of a wealthy businessman in a metro area on the east coast. They dated for 2 years and then were married. Heather said she was willing to live on Juan’s modest income from working in the family restaurant.

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Slowly, through the years, Juan and Heather began taking more and more money from her family. Their standard of living was raised. Juan became suspicious of how Heather’s family made millions of dollars in their business, but everything seemed to be in order. Juan was also raised in a Catholic family. Heather’s family did not attend any church when she was growing up. Juan’s beliefs focused on responsible work, family, and church. Slowly, he became accustomed to material advantages through Heather’s family as well as social prominence through their community influence. It seemed like a good life to Juan. All his friends agreed. At our first counseling session, Juan shared all these things with me. When asked what prompted him to come to counseling, he replied that he was feeling that he was drowning in all the affluence of Heather’s family. Clearly flustered, Juan said that he just could not understand why he felt this way. Heather’s father was a well-known philanthropist to worthy organizations. Buildings had his name on them. He helped people. Juan queried about what made him feel so uneasy with their affluence. As we worked through several sessions, Juan questioned his intense uneasiness with the lifestyle he had now embraced since marrying Heather. He now believed that his early suspicions about his father-in-law’s business not being above board were groundless. Yet, his uneasiness about the family lifestyle permeated his being and seemed to cast pallor over everything. Then, during one session, Juan plaintively inquired, “Am I crazy? What’s wrong with me? I should be thankful that things are easier for me now.” We then began to explore what comprised being “crazy” and how that impacted his life. Several stories came together as Juan reflected. Then he said that he remembered how he was impressed growing up about the sacrifices that Jesus made for us. As the stories rolled out during the next few sessions, Juan finally said he realized that for him, work is important to honor the sacrifice that Jesus made for humanity. Further, he said that work was also part of his faith growing up. Juan went on to say that he believed the ease with which he could now live actually raised questions about the faith values he believed in. The emphasis on being successful in Heather’s family, Juan concluded, was “just wrong.” It failed to look at the way you live each day. The value was on the end product—the outcome of secular society, not what was intrinsically spiritual. After naming his struggle, Juan decided to quit counseling.

JUAN ’ S EXPERIENCE Upon first reading, Juan’s experience of uneasiness may seem mild and even rather petulant. Who could complain about living in the lap of luxury?

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Juan is able to work less. He experiences the American dream of being important through his family affiliation. What is the problem? Looking again at Juan’s dilemma, one could argue that the problem exists in a cultural difference or some underlying couple conflict. And both of these scenarios may be possibilities. Yet, Juan’s description of his uneasiness actually describes well a “gnawing” that will not go away. It is something he cannot quite shake, something that is a mist that hangs over everything in his life. I would describe Juan’s experience as evil despite its evasive quality. Our definition of evil contends that evil is that which contributes to “spiritual barrenness,” which is what Juan describes. It permeates his existence and is something that he cannot shake. Juan’s dilemma illustrates clearly the effects of systemic evil upon an individual. Systemic evil is that evil that permeates the culture and makes not participating in it difficult, if not impossible. Some examples of systemic evil can be injustice that most people will condemn, such as racism. The kind of systemic evil that Juan is facing is, however, described by this culture as desirable. This systemic evil can be identified as the American dream of success—financial and influential. Nothing is “wrong” with success on the surface. Some theologies laud material prospering as blessings from God for our faithfulness. Yet, the process of becoming successful in Juan’s description robbed him of experiencing the pleasures of small things in life, such as not appreciating the commonness of God’s creation. Juan experiences the nagging existential dilemma of the evil of success. In his experience of evil, Juan has had the deep meaning of faith and life with which he grew up stripped from him. Yet, because the cultural conversation lauds success as almost always good, Juan finds himself doubting his own spiritual values. As a result, he struggles with what gives his life meaning. Further, he struggles with how he is able to counter a powerful cultural conversation that names success as good and sheds doubt on those who challenge that belief. In many ways, Juan will have a more difficult time than did Addie in confronting his demons. Whereas Addie was able to name and wrestle with a palpable entity of the devil, Juan is left with sand running through his fingers. He is unable to grasp what is a film of deception over the entire culture. Further, it is difficult to have allies in the battle against systemic evil when it has many supporters.

SPIRITUAL AND THEOLOGICAL RESPONSES TO EVIL In reflecting upon Addie’s and Juan’s experiences of evil in their daily lives, it will be helpful to further reflect on the spiritual and theological responses to evil. By basing our reflections on these two case studies, it will be possible

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to understand more fully how evil is actually experienced and how the believers’ responses and their supporters can craft a powerful response to evil. First, let us turn to Addie’s experience. Addie is so worn down and humbled that her position enables her to look to God. Her position is reminiscent of Job’s experience where he exclaims, “Although He slays me, yet will I praise him.” Addie’s position of humbleness has great spiritual significance. Diogenes Allen concurred that “in the very act of being humbled, we can recognize that we are spiritual beings” (quoted in Adams & Adams, 1990, p. 194). As Addie moves toward a sense of being unburdened, she is able to claim an individual triumph as she defeated the devil. This kind of witness is powerful because modern psychotherapy has largely sought to explain the why of behavior with little recognition of the responsibility of the individual (Cooper, 2007). I believe it is Addie’s belief of confessing her sins that enables her to battle the devil, who she believes tempts her. Thus, where some understandings of evil emphasize individual responsibility over and above systems that produce evil, some other understandings of evil emphasize an understanding of systemic evil over and above individual evil. Both individual and systemic understandings of responses to evil interrelating and affecting each other are necessary, as Addie’s progress illustrates. She is able to use the systems in her community to garner support and is able to recognize when one church or system such as her home church is not enough to support her. She accepts the support offered by another community of faith—her friend’s church. In a Pentecostal faith that is often maligned by our culture as well as other churches, Addie skillfully balances individual and systemic responses to the evil personified by her battle with the devil. Juan’s struggle with evil poses a different theological dilemma than does Addie’s struggle. Whereas Addie is able to grapple with a palpable devil, Juan has difficulty even being able to take the essential step of naming the evil he experiences. Jesus named the demonic as he performed miracles. And we must be able to meet and know the evil if we are to overcome evil (Williams, 1990). Juan’s experience of evil in his everyday life on the surface seems less challenging than Addie’s visceral encounter with the devil. However, the amorphous quality of evil in Juan’s world poses formidable challenges. Williams (1990) offered several descriptions of the faces of the demonic in our contemporary world, which are as follows: (a) fascination, (b) distortion, (c) aggrandizement, (d) inertia of established systems of control, and (e) ontological depth (p. 7). Juan’s conversations about his dis-ease follow these theological typologies of how humans often experience evil today. Heather’s family’s familiarity with the success and ease of the world seemed initially like a welcome

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gift. One can imagine Juan relaxing to think that finally he would not need to work so hard. An image of an idyllic Garden of Eden comes to mind. Like Eve, Juan becomes enticed by what material pleasures he gains by inclusion in Heather’s family. And as he becomes more involved in the enjoyment of the material goods, his perception of his original beliefs becomes a little hazy. Gradually values become larger than life, and he feels overwhelmed. He is unable to find a way through the maze of the cultural web of values that threaten to smother him. And whereas the world seems to enjoy all these benefits, Juan’s daily life is impacted by the evil, which causes him to experience an existential anxiety about what is really “real” for him. Further, he struggles to know how he can confront this evil and find a meaningful faith in his life. Although Williams’s typologies should not be understood as sequential, it is instructive to see the incremental progress of evil in Juan’s daily life. As Keller observed, it is in human experience that good and evil are relative (in Bracken, 2005). Whereas Addie’s experience with evil may seem “worse” than Juan’s, is there a true comparison? Juan’s experience with evil pushes him to seek meaning that is counter to what culture prescribes as best for him. It is hard to push back on something that is soft. And culture has made evil soft. Ultimately, Juan’s task is to find a supportive system that can take some of the burden of pushing against evil from him.

IMPLICATIONS FOR SPIRITUAL RESISTANCE As we have visited the daily experiences of evil for Addie and Juan, we are now challenged to respond to evil as people experience it in life. Our definition of evil as encompassing both individual and systemic evil’s impact of spiritual barrenness is critical to our response. As spiritual people encounter evil, we must be quick to understand that the initial appearance of evil often skillfully masks its underbelly. Individual evil can have systemic origins. Conversely, systemic evil can be affected by even one individual. The challenge for us is to be courageous in the face as well as absence of evil. It is only by recognizing our own capacity for evil as well as our friends’ capacity that we are able to not be ambushed by evil. Resistance to evil implies that we fill our lives with the presence of God. Where God is, evil cannot exist. So as we resist evil, we need to pay attention to both individual and systemic evil. We need to realize that any evil is to be resisted. We need to recognize that good overcomes evil. We need to understand the ease of our culture in accepting evil. We need to be validating different experiences of evil—personified or amorphous.

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Resisting evil can be part of our spiritual growth. By experiencing God as present with us, we can experience a fuller presence of the Spirit that gives us hope in the face of despair. Evil triumphs when we are hopeless. But, we triumph when we carry the hope of Christ with us.

REFERENCES Adams, M., & Adams, R. (Eds.). (1990). The problem of evil. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bracken, J. (Ed.). (2005). World without end: Christian eschatology from a process perspective. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Cooper, T. (2007). Dimension of evil: Contemporary perspectives. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Swinton, J. (2007). Raging with compassion: Pastoral responses to the problem of evil. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Williams, D. (1990). The demonic and the divine. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

ch apter 17

Roots of Human Violence and Greed: A Psychospiritual Perspective Stanislav Grof

The study of holotropic states of consciousness has amassed a rich array of observations that have revolutionized understanding of the human psyche in health and disease. The importance of many of these findings transcends the framework of individual psychology; they seem to offer deep insights into the dimensions of the current global crisis, which have so far been neglected, and suggest strategies that might be useful for its alleviation. In this chapter, I will explore these new perspectives with special emphasis on two elemental forces that have driven human history since time immemorial to the present time—the proclivity to unbridled violence and to insatiable greed. Because of the development of weapons of mass destruction, relentless population explosion, escalating plundering of natural resources, and increase of industrial pollution, these two scourges now threaten survival of the human species and other forms of life on this planet.

VIOLENCE AND GREED IN HUMAN HISTORY The number and degree of atrocities that have been committed throughout the ages in various countries of the world, many of them in the name of God, are truly unimaginable and indescribable. Millions of soldiers and civilians have been killed in wars and revolutions of all types or in other forms of atrocities. During his unparalleled military campaign, Alexander the Great destroyed the Persian empire and conquered all the countries between Macedonia and India. Secular and religious ambitions—from the expansion of the Roman Empire to the spread of Islam and the Christian Crusades—found

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their expression in the merciless use of sword and fire. In ancient Rome, countless Christians were sacrificed in the arenas to provide a highly soughtafter spectacle for the masses. Hundreds of thousands of innocent victims were tortured, killed, or burned alive in the autos-da-fé by the medieval Inquisition. In Mesoamerica, countless soldiers of the tribes defeated by the Aztecs, who had not died in the battle, were slaughtered on sacrificial altars. The Aztec cruelty found its match in the bloody ventures of the Spanish conquistadores. Genghis Khan’s and Tamerlane’s Mongolian hordes swept through Asia, killing, pillaging, and burning towns and villages. The colonialism of Great Britain and other European countries and the Napoleonic wars were additional examples of violence and relentless greed. This trend has continued in an unmitigated fashion in the 20th century. The loss of life in World War I was estimated at 10 million soldiers and 20 million civilians. Additional millions died from war-spread epidemics and famine. In World War II, approximately twice as many lives were lost. The 20th century saw the expansionism of Nazi Germany and the horrors of the Holocaust, Stalin’s reckless domination of Eastern Europe and his Gulag Archipelago, and the civil terror in Communist China. We can add to it the victims of South American dictatorships, the atrocities and genocide committed by the Chinese in Tibet, and the cruelties of South Africa’s apartheid. The wars in Korea and Vietnam, the wars in the Middle East, and the slaughter in Yugoslavia and Rwanda are some more examples of the senseless bloodshed we have witnessed during the last hundred years. Human greed has also found new, less violent forms of expression in the philosophy and strategy of capitalist economies emphasizing increase of the gross national product, “unlimited growth,” reckless plundering of nonrenewable natural resources, conspicuous consumption, and “planned obsolescence.” Moreover, much of this wasteful economic policy that has disastrous ecological consequences has been oriented toward production of weapons of increasing destructive power.

DOOMSDAY SCENARIOS THREATENING LIFE ON OUR PLANET In the past, violence and greed had tragic consequences for the individuals involved in the internecine encounters and for their immediate families. However, they did not threaten the evolution of the human species as a whole and certainly did not represent a danger for the ecosystem and for the biosphere of the planet. Even after the most violent wars, nature was able to recycle all the aftermath and completely recover within a few decades. This situation has changed very radically in the course of the 20th century. Rapid technological progress, exponential growth of industrial production, massive

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population explosion, and particularly the discovery of atomic energy have forever changed the equations involved. In the course of the 20th century, we have witnessed more major scientific and technological breakthroughs within a single decade, or even a single year, than people in earlier historical periods experienced in an entire century. However, these astonishing intellectual successes have brought modern humanity to the brink of a global catastrophe, because they were not matched by a comparable growth of emotional and moral maturity. We have the dubious privilege of being the first species in natural history that has achieved the capacity to eradicate itself and destroy in the process all life on this planet. The intellectual history of humanity is one of its incredible triumphs. We have been able to learn the secrets of nuclear energy, send spaceships to the moon and all the planets of the solar system, transmit sound and color pictures all around the globe and across cosmic space, crack the DNA code, and begin experimenting with cloning and genetic engineering. At the same time, these superior technologies are being used in the service of primitive emotions and instinctual impulses that are not very different from those that drove the behavior of the people in the Stone Age. Unimaginable sums of money have been wasted in the insanity of the arms race, and the use of even a miniscule fraction of the existing arsenal of atomic weapons would destroy all life on earth. Tens of millions of people have been killed in the two world wars and in countless other violent confrontations occurring for ideological, racial, religious, or economic reasons. Hundreds of thousands have been bestially tortured by the secret police of various totalitarian systems. Insatiable greed is driving people to hectic pursuit of profit and acquisition of personal property beyond any reasonable limits. This strategy has resulted in a situation where, besides the specter of a nuclear war, humanity is threatened by several less spectacular, but insidious and more predictable, doomsday scenarios. Among these are industrial pollution of soil, water, and air; the threat of nuclear waste and accidents; the destruction of the ozone layer; the greenhouse effect and global warming; possible loss of planetary oxygen through reckless deforestation and poisoning of the ocean plankton; and the dangers of toxic additives in our food and drinks. To this, we can add a number of developments that are of less apocalyptic nature but equally disturbing, such as species extinction proceeding at an astronomical rate, homelessness and starvation of a significant percentage of the world’s population, deterioration of family and crisis of parenthood, disappearance of spiritual values, absence of hope and positive perspective, loss of meaningful connection with nature, and general alienation. As a result of all the above factors, humanity now lives in chronic anguish, on the verge of a nuclear and ecological catastrophe, while in possession of fabulous technology approaching that of the world of science fiction.

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Modern science has developed effective means that could solve most of the urgent problems in today’s world—combat the majority of diseases, eliminate hunger and poverty, reduce the amount of industrial waste, and replace destructive fossil fuels by renewable sources of clean energy. The problems that stand in the way are not of economical or technological nature; their deepest sources lie inside the human personality. Because of them, unimaginable resources have been wasted in the absurdity of the arms race, power struggles, and pursuit of “unlimited growth.” They also prevent a more appropriate distribution of wealth among individuals and nations, as well as a reorientation from purely economic and political concerns to ecological priorities that are critical for survival of life on this planet.

PSYCHOSPIRITUAL ROOTS OF THE GLOBAL CRISIS Diplomatic negotiations, administrative and legal measures, economic and social sanctions, military interventions, and other similar efforts have had very little success; as a matter of fact, they have often produced more problems than they solved. It is becoming increasingly clear why they had to fail. The strategies used to alleviate this crisis are rooted in the same ideology that created it in the first place. In the last analysis, the current global crisis is basically a psychospiritual crisis; it reflects the level of consciousness evolution of the human species. It is, therefore, hard to imagine that it could be resolved without a radical inner transformation of humanity on a large scale and its rise to a higher level of emotional maturity and spiritual awareness. The task of imbuing humanity with an entirely different set of values and goals might appear too unrealistic and utopian to offer any real hope. Considering the paramount roles of violence and greed in human history, the possibility of transforming modern humanity into a species of individuals capable of peaceful coexistence with their fellow men and women regardless of race, color, and religious or political conviction, let alone with other species, certainly does not seem very plausible. We are facing the necessity to instill humanity with profound ethical values, sensitivity to the needs of others, acceptance of voluntary simplicity, and a sharp awareness of ecological imperatives. At first glance, such a task appears too fantastic even for a science fiction movie. However, although serious and critical, the situation might not be as hopeless as it appears. After more than 40 years of intensive study of holotropic states of consciousness, I have come to the conclusion that the theoretical concepts and practical approaches developed by transpersonal psychology, a discipline that is trying to integrate spirituality with the new paradigm emerging in Western science, could help alleviate the crisis we are all facing. These observations suggest that the radical psychospiritual transformation of humanity is not only possible but also already underway. The question is

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only whether it can be sufficiently fast and extensive to reverse the current self-destructive trend of modern humanity.

THREE POISONS OF TIBETAN BUDDHISM Let us take a look at the theoretical insights from the research of holotropic states and their practical implications for our everyday life. Can the new knowledge be used in a way that would make our life more fulfilling and rewarding? How could systematic self-exploration using holotropic states improve our emotional and physical well-being and bring about positive personality transformation and beneficial changes of the worldview and system of values? And, more specifically, how could this strategy contribute to alleviation of the global crisis and survival of life on this planet? Spiritual teachers of all ages seem to agree that pursuit of material goals, in and of itself, cannot bring us fulfillment, happiness, and inner peace. The rapidly escalating global crisis, moral deterioration, and growing discontent accompanying the increase of material affluence in the industrial societies bear witness to this ancient truth. There seems to be general agreement in the mystical literature that the remedy for the existential malaise that besets humanity is to turn inside, look for the answers in our own psyche, and undergo a deep psychospiritual transformation. It is not difficult to understand that an important prerequisite for successful existence is general intelligence—the ability to learn and recall, think and reason, and adequately respond to our material environment. More recent research emphasized the importance of “emotional intelligence,” the capacity to adequately respond to our human environment and skillfully handle our interpersonal relationships (Goleman, 1996). Observations from the study of holotropic states confirm the basic tenet of perennial philosophy that the quality of our life ultimately depends on what can be called spiritual intelligence. Spiritual intelligence is the capacity to conduct our life in such a way that it reflects deep philosophical and metaphysical understanding of reality and of ourselves. This, of course, brings questions about the nature of the psychospiritual transformation that is necessary to achieve this form of intelligence, the direction of the changes that we have to undergo, and the means that can facilitate such development. A very clear and specific answer to these questions can be found in different schools of Mahayana Buddhism. We can use here as the basis for our discussion the famous Tibetan screen painting (thangka) portraying the cycle of life, death, and reincarnation. It depicts the Wheel of Life held in the grip of the horrifying Lord of Death. The wheel is divided into six segments representing the different lokas, or realms into which we can be reborn. The celestial domain of gods (devaloka) is shown as being challenged from the adjacent segment (asuraloka) by the jealous warrior gods. The region of hungry ghosts (pretaloka) is inhabited

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by pitiful creatures representing insatiable greed. They have giant bellies, enormous appetites, and mouths the size of a pinhole. The remaining sections of the wheel depict the world of human beings (manakaloka), the realm of the wild beasts (tiryakaloka), and hell (narakaloka). Inside the wheel are two concentric circles. The outer one shows the ascending and descending paths along which souls travel. The innermost circle contains three animals—a pig, a snake, and a rooster. The animals in the center of the wheel represent the “three poisons,” or forces that, according to the Buddhist teachings, perpetuate the cycles of birth and death and are responsible for all the suffering in our life. The pig symbolizes ignorance concerning the nature of reality and our own nature, the snake stands for anger and aggression, and the rooster depicts desire and lust leading to attachment. The quality of our life and our ability to cope with the challenges of existence depend critically on the degree to which we are able to eliminate or transform these forces that run the world of sentient beings. Let us now look from this perspective at the process of systematic self-exploration involving holotropic states of consciousness.

PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE AND TRANSCENDENTAL WISDOM The most obvious benefit that we can obtain from deep experiential work is access to extraordinary knowledge about ourselves, other people, nature, and the cosmos. In holotropic states, we can reach deep understanding of the unconscious dynamics of our psyche. We can discover how our perception of ourselves and of the world is influenced by forgotten or repressed memories from childhood, infancy, birth, and prenatal existence. In addition, in transpersonal experiences we can identify with other people, various animals, plants, and elements of the inorganic world. Experiences of this kind represent an extremely rich source of unique insights about the world we live in and can radically transform our worldview. In recent years, many authors have pointed out that a significant factor in the development of the global crisis has been the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm and monistic materialism that have dominated Western science for the last 300 years. This way of thinking involves a sharp dichotomy between mind and nature and portrays the universe as a giant, fully deterministic supermachine governed by mechanical laws. The image of the cosmos as a mechanical system has led to the erroneous belief that it can be adequately understood by dissecting it and studying all its parts. This has been a serious obstacle for viewing problems in terms of their complex interactions and from a holistic perspective. In addition, by elevating matter to the most important principle in the cosmos, Western science reduces life, consciousness, and intelligence to

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accidental by-products of material processes. In this context, humans appear to be nothing more than highly developed animals. This led to the acceptance of antagonism, competition, and the Darwinian “survival of the fittest” as the leading principles of human society. In addition, the description of nature as unconscious provided the justification for its exploitation by humans, following the program very eloquently formulated by Francis Bacon (1870). Psychoanalysis has painted a pessimistic picture of human beings as creatures whose primary motivating forces are bestial instincts. According to Freud, if we were not afraid of societal repercussions and controlled by the superego (internalized parental prohibitions and injunctions), we would kill and steal indiscriminately, commit incest, and be involved in unbridled promiscuous sex. This image of human nature relegated such concepts as complementarity, synergy, mutual respect, and peaceful cooperation into the domain of temporary opportunistic strategies or naïve utopian fantasies. It is not difficult to see how these concepts and the system of values associated with them have helped to create the crisis we are facing. Insights from holotropic states have brought convincing support for a radically different understanding of the cosmos, nature, and human beings. They brought experiential confirmation for the concepts formulated by pioneers of information theory and the theory of systems, which have shown that our planet and the entire cosmos represent a unified and interconnected web of which each of us is an integral part (Bateson, 1979; Capra, 1996). In holotropic states, we can gain deep experiential knowledge of various aspects of material reality, of its interconnectedness, and of the unity underlying the world of seeming separation. However, the ignorance symbolized in the Tibetan thangkas by the pig is not the absence or lack of knowledge in the ordinary sense. It does not mean simply inadequate information about various aspects of the material world, but ignorance of a much deeper and more fundamental kind. The form of ignorance that is meant here (avidya) is a fundamental misunderstanding and confusion concerning the nature of reality and our own nature. The only remedy for this kind of ignorance is transcendental wisdom (prajña paramita). From this point of view, it is essential that the inner work involving holotropic states offers more than just increasing, deepening, and correcting our knowledge concerning the material universe. It is also a unique way of gaining insights about issues of transcendental relevance. In the light of this evidence, consciousness is not a product of the physiological processes in the brain, but a primary attribute of existence. The deepest nature of humanity is not bestial, but divine. The universe is imbued with creative intelligence, and consciousness is inextricably woven into its fabric. Our identification with the separate body–ego is an illusion, and our true identity is the totality of existence. This understanding provides a natural

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basis for reverence for life, cooperation and synergy, concerns for humanity and the planet as a whole, and deep ecological awareness.

ANATOMY OF HUMAN DESTRUCTIVENESS Let us now look from the same perspective at the second “poison,” human propensity to aggression. Modern study of aggressive behavior started with Charles Darwin’s epoch-making discoveries in the field of evolution in the middle of the 19th century (Darwin, 1952). The attempts to explain human aggression from our animal origin generated such theoretical concepts as Desmond Morris’s image of the “naked ape” (Morris, 1967), Robert Ardrey’s idea of the “territorial imperative” (Ardrey, 1961), Paul MacLean’s “triune brain” (MacLean, 1973), and Richard Dawkins’s sociobiological explanations interpreting aggression in terms of genetic strategies of the “selfish genes” (Dawkins, 1976). More refined models of behavior developed by pioneers in ethology, such as Konrad Lorenz, Nikolaas Tinbergen, and others, complemented mechanical emphasis on instincts by the study of ritualistic and motivational elements (Lorenz, 1963; Tinbergen, 1965). Any theories suggesting that the human tendency to violence simply reflects our animal origin are inadequate and unconvincing. With rare exceptions, such as the occasional violent group raids of chimpanzees against neighboring groups (Wrangham & Peterson, 1996), animals do not prey on their own kind. They exhibit aggression when they are hungry, defend their territory, or compete for sex. The nature and scope of human violence—Erich Fromm’s “malignant aggression”—have no parallels in the animal kingdom (Fromm, 1973). The realization that human aggression cannot be adequately explained as a result of phylogenetic evolution led to the formulation of psychodynamic and psychosocial theories that consider a significant part of human aggression to be learned phenomena. This trend began in the late 1930s and was initiated by the work of Dollard and Miller.

BIOGRAPHICAL SOURCES OF AGGRESSION Psychodynamic theories attempt to explain the specifically human aggression as a reaction to frustration, abuse, and lack of love in infancy and childhood. However, explanations of this kind fall painfully short of accounting for extreme forms of individual violence, such as the serial murders of the Boston Strangler and Jeffrey Dahmer or indiscriminate multiple killings of the “running amok” type. Current psychodynamic and psychosocial theories are even less convincing when it comes to bestial acts committed by entire groups, like the Sharon Tate murders by the Manson family or atrocities that occur during prison uprisings. They fail completely when it comes to mass

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societal phenomena that involve entire nations, such as Nazism, Communism, bloody wars, revolutions, genocide, and concentration camps. In the last several decades, psychedelic research and deep experiential psychotherapies have been able to throw much light on the problem of human aggression. This work has revealed that the roots of this problematic and dangerous aspect of human nature are much deeper and more formidable than traditional psychology ever imagined. However, this work has also discovered extremely effective approaches that have the potential to neutralize and transform these violent elements in human personality. In addition, these observations indicate that malignant aggression does not reflect true human nature. It is connected with a domain of unconscious dynamics that separates us from our deeper identity. When we reach the transpersonal realms that lie beyond this screen, we realize that our true nature is divine rather than bestial.

PERINATAL ROOTS OF VIOLENCE There is no doubt that “malignant aggression” is connected with traumas and frustrations in childhood and infancy. However, modern consciousness research has revealed additional significant roots of violence in deep recesses of the psyche that lie beyond postnatal biography and are related to the trauma of biological birth. The vital emergency, pain, and suffocation experienced for many hours during biological delivery generate enormous amounts of anxiety and murderous aggression that remain stored in the organism. The reliving of birth in various forms of experiential psychotherapy not only involves concrete replay of the original emotions and sensations but also is typically associated with a variety of experiences from the collective unconscious portraying scenes of unimaginable violence. Among these are often powerful sequences depicting wars, revolutions, racial riots, concentration camps, totalitarianism, and genocide. The spontaneous emergence of this imagery during the reliving of birth is often associated with convincing insights concerning the perinatal origin of such extreme forms of human violence. Naturally, wars and revolutions are extremely complex phenomena that have historical, economic, political, religious, and other dimensions. The intention here is not to offer a reductionistic explanation replacing all the other causes, but to add some new insights concerning the psychological and spiritual dimensions of these forms of social psychopathology that have been neglected or received only superficial treatment in earlier theories. The images of violent sociopolitical events accompanying the reliving of biological birth tend to appear in very specific connection with the four basic perinatal matrices (BPMs), which is my name for complex experiential patterns associated with the consecutive stages of the birth process. While

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reliving episodes of undisturbed intrauterine existence (BPM I), we typically experience images from human societies with an ideal social structure, from cultures that live in complete harmony with nature, or from future utopian societies where all major conflicts have been resolved. Disturbing intrauterine memories, such as those of a toxic womb, imminent miscarriage, or attempted abortion, are accompanied by images of human groups living in industrial areas where nature is polluted and spoiled, or in societies with an insidious social order and all-pervading paranoia. Regressive experiences related to the first clinical stage of birth (BPM II), during which the uterus periodically contracts but the cervix is not yet open, present a diametrically different picture. They portray oppressive and abusive totalitarian societies that have closed borders, victimize their populations, and “choke” personal freedom, such as Czarist or Communist Russia, Hitler’s Third Reich, Eastern European Soviet satellites, South American dictatorships, and South African apartheid; or bring specific images of the inmates in Nazi concentration camps and Stalin’s Gulag Archipelago. While experiencing these scenes of living hell, we identify exclusively with the victims and feel deep sympathy for the downtrodden and the underdog. The experiences accompanying reliving the second clinical stage of delivery (BPM III), when the cervix is dilated and continued contractions propel the fetus through the narrow passage of the birth canal, feature a rich panoply of violent scenes—bloody wars and revolutions, human or animal slaughter, mutilation, sexual abuse, and murder. These scenes often contain demonic elements and repulsive scatological motifs. Additional frequent concomitants of BPM III are visions of burning cities, the launching of rockets, and explosions of nuclear bombs. Here we are not limited to the role of victims, but can participate in three roles—that of the victim, of the aggressor, and of an emotionally involved observer. The events characterizing the third clinical stage of delivery (BPM IV), the actual moment of birth and the separation from the mother, are typically associated with images of victory in wars and revolutions, the liberation of prisoners, and the success of collective efforts, such as patriotic or nationalistic movements. At this point, we can also experience visions of triumphant celebrations and parades or of exciting postwar reconstruction. In 1975, I described these observations, linking sociopolitical upheavals to stages of biological birth, in my book Realms of the Human Unconscious (Grof, 1975). Shortly after its publication, I received an enthusiastic letter from Lloyd de Mause, a New York psychoanalyst and journalist. De Mause is one of the founders of psychohistory, a discipline that applies the findings of depth psychology to the study of history and political science. Psychohistorians explore such issues as the relationship between the childhood of political leaders and their system of values and process of decision making, or the influence of child-rearing practices on the nature of revolutions of that

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particular historical period. Lloyd de Mause was very interested in my findings concerning the trauma of birth and its possible sociopolitical implications, because they provided independent support for his own research. For some time, de Mause had been studying the psychodynamics of the periods immediately preceding wars and revolutions. It interested him how military leaders succeed in mobilizing masses of peaceful civilians and transforming them practically overnight into killing machines. His approach to this problem was very original and creative. In addition to analysis of traditional historical sources, he drew data of great psychological importance from caricatures, jokes, dreams, personal imagery, slips of the tongue, side comments of speakers, and even doodles and scribbles on the edge of the rough drafts of political documents. By the time he contacted me, he had analyzed in this way 17 situations preceding the outbreak of wars and revolutionary upheavals, spanning many centuries from antiquity to most recent times (de Mause, 1975). He was struck by the extraordinary abundance of figures of speech, metaphors, and images related to biological birth that he found in this material. Military leaders and politicians of all ages describing a critical situation or declaring war typically used terms that equally applied to perinatal distress. They accused the enemy of choking and strangling their people, squeezing the last breath out of their lungs, or constricting them and not giving them enough space to live (e.g., Hitler’s Lebensraum). Equally frequent were allusions to dark caves, tunnels, and confusing labyrinths; dangerous abysses into which one might be pushed; and the threat of engulfment by treacherous quicksand or a terrifying whirlpool. Similarly, the offer of the resolution of the crisis had the form of perinatal images. The leader promised to rescue his nation from an ominous labyrinth, to lead it to the light on the other side of the tunnel, and to create a situation where the dangerous aggressor and oppressor will be overcome and everybody will again breathe freely. Lloyd de Mause’s historical examples at the time included such famous personages as Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Samuel Adams, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Hitler, Khrushchev, and Kennedy. Samuel Adams, when talking about the American Revolution, referred to “the child of Independence now struggling for birth” (de Mause, 1975). In 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm stated that “the Monarchy has been seized by the throat and forced to choose between letting itself be strangled and making a last ditch effort to defend itself against attack” (quoted in de Mause, 1975). During the Cuban missile crisis, Khrushchev wrote to Kennedy, pleading that the two nations not “come to a clash, like blind moles battling to death in a tunnel.” Even more explicit was the coded message used by Japanese ambassador Kurusu when he phoned Tokyo to signal that negotiations with Roosevelt had broken down and that it was all right to go ahead with the

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bombing of Pearl Harbor. He announced that the “birth of the child was imminent” and asked how things were in Japan: “Does it seem as if the child might be born?” The reply was “Yes, the birth of the child seems imminent.” Interestingly, the American intelligence listening in recognized the meaning of the “war-as-birth” code. The most recent examples can be found in Osama bin Laden’s videotape, where he threatens to turn the United States into a “choking hell,” and in the speech of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who described the acute crisis in Iraq as “birth pangs of New Middle East.” Particularly chilling was the use of perinatal language in connection with the explosion of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. The airplane was given the name of the pilot’s mother, Enola Gay; the atomic bomb itself carried a painted nickname, “The Little Boy”; and the agreed-upon message sent to Washington as a signal of successful detonation was “The baby was born.” It would not be too far-fetched to see the image of a newborn also behind the nickname of the Nagasaki bomb, Fat Man. Since the time of our correspondence, Lloyd de Mause collected many additional historical examples and refined his thesis that the memory of the birth trauma plays an important role as a source of motivation for violent social activity. The relationship between nuclear warfare and birth is of such relevance that I would like to explore it further using the material from a fascinating paper by Carol Cohn entitled “Sex and Death in the Rational World of the Defense Intellectuals” (1987). The defense intellectuals (DIs) are civilians who move in and out of government, working sometimes as administrative officials or consultants, sometimes at universities and think tanks. They create the theory that informs and legitimates U.S. nuclear strategic practice— how to manage the arms race, how to deter the use of nuclear weapons, how to fight a nuclear war if the deterrence fails, and how to explain why it is not safe to live without nuclear weapons. Carol Cohn had attended a two-week summer seminar on nuclear weapons, nuclear strategic doctrine, and arms control. She was so fascinated by what had transpired there that she spent the following year immersed in the almost entirely male world (except for secretaries) of defense intellectuals. She collected some extremely interesting facts confirming the perinatal dimension in nuclear warfare. In her own terminology, this material confirms the importance of the motif of “male birth” and “male creation” as important psychological forces underlying the psychology of nuclear warfare. She used the following historical examples to illustrate her point of view: In 1942, Ernest Lawrence sent a telegram to a Chicago group of physicists developing the nuclear bomb that read, “Congratulations to the new parents. Can hardly wait to see the new arrival.” At Los Alamos, the atom bomb was referred to as Oppenheimer’s baby. Richard Feynman wrote in his article “Los Alamos From Below” that when he was

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temporarily on leave after his wife’s death, he received a telegram that read, “The baby is expected on such and such a day.” At Lawrence Livermore laboratories, the hydrogen bomb was referred to as Teller’s baby, although those who wanted to disparage Edward Teller’s contribution claimed he was not the bomb’s father, but its mother. They claimed that Stanislaw Ulam was the real father, who had all the important ideas and “conceived it”; Teller only “carried it” after that. Terms related to motherhood were also used to the provision of “nurturance”—the maintenance of the missiles. General Grove sent a triumphant coded cable to Secretary of War Henry Stimson at the Potsdam conference reporting the success of the first atomic test: “Doctor has just returned most enthusiastic and confident that the little boy is as husky as his big brother. The light in his eyes discernible from here to Highhold [Stimson’s country home,] and I could have heard his screams from here to my farm.” Stimson, in turn, informed Churchill by writing him a note that read, “Babies satisfactorily born.” William L. Laurence witnessed the test of the first atomic bomb and wrote, “The big boom came about a hundred seconds after the great flash— the first cry of a new-born world.” Edward Teller’s exultant telegram to Los Alamos, announcing the successful test of the hydrogen bomb “Mike” at the Eniwetok atoll in Marshall Islands, read, “It’s a boy.” The Enola Gay, “Little Boy,” and “The baby was born” symbolism of the Hiroshima bomb, and the “Fat Man” symbolism of the Nagasaki bomb, were already mentioned earlier. According to Carol Cohn (1987), “[M] ale scientists gave birth to a progeny with the ultimate power of domination over female Nature.”

Carol Cohn also mentions in her paper an abundance of overtly sexual symbolism in the language of defense intellectuals. The nature of this material, linking sex to aggression, domination, and scatology, shows a deep similarity to the imagery occurring in the context of birth experiences (BPM III). Cohn used the following examples: American dependence on nuclear weapons was explained as irresistible, because “you get more bang for the buck.” A professor’s explanation of why the MX missiles should be placed in the silos of the newest Minuteman missiles, instead of replacing the older, less accurate ones, was “You are not going to take the nicest missile you have and put it into a crummy hole.” At one point, there was a serious concern that “we have to harden our missiles, because the Russians are a little harder than we are.” One military adviser to the National Security Council referred to “releasing 70 to 80 percent of our megatonnage in one orgasmic whump.” Lectures were filled with terms like vertical erector launchers, thrust-toweight ratios, soft lay-downs, deep penetration, and the comparative advantages of protracted versus spasm attacks. Another example was the popular and widespread custom of patting the missiles practiced by the visitors to nuclear

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submarines, which Carol Cohn saw as an expression of phallic supremacy and also homoerotic tendencies. In view of this material, it clearly is quite appropriate for feminist critics of nuclear policies to refer to “missile envy” and “phallic worship.” Further support for the pivotal role of the perinatal domain of the unconscious in war psychology can be found in Sam Keen’s excellent book The Faces of the Enemy (1988). Keen brought together an outstanding collection of war posters, propaganda cartoons, and caricatures from many historical periods and countries. He demonstrated that the way the enemy is described and portrayed during a war or revolution is a stereotype that shows only minimal variations and has very little to do with the actual characteristics of the country and its inhabitants. This material also typically disregards the diversity and heterogeneity characterizing the population of each country and makes blatant generalizations: “This is what the Germans, Americans, Japanese, Russians, etc. are like!” Keen was able to divide these images into several archetypal categories according to the prevailing characteristics (e.g., Stranger, Aggressor, Worthy Opponent, Faceless, Enemy of God, Barbarian, Greedy, Criminal, Torturer, Rapist, and Death). According to him, the alleged images of the enemy are essentially projections of the repressed and unacknowledged shadow aspects of our own unconscious. Although we would certainly find in human history instances of just wars, those who initiate war activities are typically substituting external targets for elements in their own psyches that should be properly faced in personal self-exploration. Sam Keen’s theoretical framework does not specifically include the perinatal domain of the unconscious. However, the analysis of his picture material reveals a preponderance of symbolic images that are characteristic of BPM II and BPM III. The enemy is typically depicted as a dangerous octopus, a vicious dragon, a multiheaded hydra, a giant venomous tarantula, or an engulfing Leviathan. Other frequently used symbols include vicious predatory felines or birds, monstrous sharks, and ominous snakes, particularly vipers and boa constrictors. Scenes depicting strangulation or crushing, ominous whirlpools, and treacherous quicksands also abound in pictures from the time of wars, revolutions, and political crises. Juxtaposition of pictures from holotropic states of consciousness that focus on reliving birth with the historical pictorial documentation collected by Lloyd de Mause and Sam Keen represents strong evidence for the perinatal roots of human violence. According to the new insights, provided jointly by observations from consciousness research and by the findings of psychohistory, we all carry in our deep unconscious powerful energies and emotions associated with the trauma of birth that we have not adequately processed and assimilated. For some of us, this aspect of our psyche can be completely unconscious, until and unless we embark on some in-depth self-exploration with the use of psychedelics or

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some powerful experiential techniques of psychotherapy, such as holotropic breathwork or rebirthing. Others can have varying degrees of awareness of the emotions and physical sensations stored on the perinatal level of the unconscious. Activation of this material can lead to serious individual psychopathology, including unmotivated violence. Lloyd de Mause (1975) suggested that, for unknown reasons, the awareness of the perinatal elements can increase simultaneously in a large number of people. This creates an atmosphere of general tension, anxiety, and anticipation. The leader is an individual who is under a stronger influence of the perinatal energies than the average person. He also has the ability to disown his unacceptable feelings (the shadow in Jung’s terminology) and to project them on the external situation. The collective discomfort is blamed on the enemy, and a military intervention is offered as a solution. Richard Tarnas’s extraordinary book Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New Worldview (2006) added an interesting dimension to de Mause’s thesis. In this meticulously researched study, Tarnas was able to show that throughout history, the times of wars and revolutions have been correlated with specific astrological transits, suggesting the participation of archetypal forces in these phenomena. War and revolution provide an opportunity to disregard the psychological defenses that ordinarily keep the dangerous perinatal forces in check. Freud’s superego, a psychological force that demands restraint and civilized behavior, is replaced by the war superego. We receive praise and medals for murder, indiscriminate destruction, and pillaging, the same behaviors that in peacetime are unacceptable and would land us in prison or worse. Similarly, sexual violence has been a common practice during wartime and has been generally tolerated. As a matter of fact, military leaders have often promised their soldiers unlimited access to women in the conquered territory to motivate them for battle. Once the war erupts, the destructive and self-destructive perinatal impulses are freely acted out. The themes that we normally encounter in a certain stage of the process of inner exploration and transformation (BPM II and III) now become parts of our everyday life, either directly or in the form of TV news. Various no-exit situations, sadomasochistic orgies, sexual violence, bestial and demonic behavior, the unleashing of enormous explosive energies, and scatology, which belong to standard perinatal imagery, are all enacted in wars and revolutions with extraordinary vividness and power. Witnessing scenes of destruction and the acting out of violent unconscious impulses, whether it occurs on the individual scale or collectively in wars and revolutions, does not result in healing and transformation as would an inner confrontation with these elements in a therapeutic context. The experience is not generated by our own unconscious, lacks the element of deep introspection, and does not lead to insights. The situation is fully externalized, and

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connection with the deep dynamics of the psyche is missing. And, naturally, there is no therapeutic intention and motivation for change and transformation. Thus the goal of the underlying birth fantasy, which represents the deepest driving force of such violent events, is not achieved, even if the war or revolution has been brought to a successful closure. The most triumphant external victory does not deliver what was expected and hoped for: an inner sense of emotional liberation and psychospiritual rebirth. After the initial intoxicating feelings of triumph come at first a sober awakening and later bitter disappointment. And it usually does not take a long time before a facsimile of the old oppressive system starts emerging from the ruins of the dead dream, because the same unconscious forces continue to operate in the deep unconscious of everybody involved. This seems to happen again and again in human history, whether the event involved is the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the Communist Revolution in China, or any of the other violent upheavals associated with great hopes and expectations. Because I conducted for many years deep experiential work in Prague at the time when Czechoslovakia had a Marxist regime, I was able to collect some fascinating material concerning the psychological dynamics of Communism. The issues related to Communist ideology typically emerged in the treatment of my clients at the time when they were struggling with perinatal energies and emotions. It soon became obvious that the passion the revolutionaries feel toward the oppressors and their regimes receives a powerful reinforcement from their revolt against the inner prison of their perinatal memories. And, conversely, the need to coerce and dominate others is an external displacement of the need to overcome the fear of being overwhelmed by one’s own unconscious. The murderous entanglement of the oppressor and the revolutionary is thus an externalized replica of the situation experienced in the birth canal. The Communist vision contains an element of psychological truth that has made it appealing to large numbers of people. The basic notion that a violent experience of a revolutionary nature is necessary to terminate suffering and oppression and institute a situation of greater harmony is correct when understood as related to the process of inner transformation. However, it is dangerously false when it is projected on the external world as a political ideology of violent revolutions. The fallacy lies in the fact that what on a deeper level is essentially an archetypal pattern of spiritual death and rebirth takes the form of an atheistic and antispiritual program. Paradoxically, Communism has many features in common with organized religion and exploits people’s spiritual needs, while not only failing to satisfy them but also actively suppressing any genuine spiritual search. The parallel of Communism with organized religion goes so far that Stalin at the height of his power was declared infallible.

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Communist revolutions have been extremely successful in their destructive phase, but, instead of the promised brotherhood and harmony, their victories have bred regimes where oppression, cruelty, and injustice ruled supreme. Today, when the economically ruined and politically corrupt Soviet Union has collapsed and the Communist world has fallen apart, it is obvious to all people with sane judgment that this gigantic historical experiment, conducted at the cost of millions of human lives and unimaginable human suffering, has been a colossal failure. If the above observations are correct, no external interventions have a chance to create a better world unless they are associated with a profound transformation of human consciousness. The observations from the study of holotropic states also throw some important light on the psychology of concentration camps. Over a number of years, Professor Bastiaans in Leyden, Holland, conducted LSD therapy with people suffering from concentration camp syndrome, a condition that develops in former inmates of these camps many years after the incarceration. Bastiaans has also worked with former kapos on their issues of profound guilt. An artistic description of this work can be found in the book Shivitti, written by a former inmate, Ka-Tzetnik 135633, who underwent a series of therapeutic sessions with Bastiaans (Ka-Tzetnik 135633, 1989). Bastiaans himself wrote a paper describing his work entitled “Man in the Concentration Camp and Concentration Camp in Man” (1955). There he pointed out, without specifying it, that the concentration camps are a projection of a certain domain that exists in the human unconscious: “Before there was a man in the concentration camp, there was a concentration camp in man” (Bastiaans, 1955). Study of holotropic states of consciousness makes it possible to identify the realm of the psyche that Bastiaans was talking about. Closer examination of the general and specific conditions in the Nazi concentration camps reveals that they are a diabolical and realistic enactment of the nightmarish atmosphere that characterizes the reliving of biological birth. The barbed-wire barriers, high-voltage fences, watch towers with submachine guns, minefields, and packs of trained dogs certainly created a hellish and almost archetypal image of an utterly hopeless and oppressive no-exit situation that is so characteristic of the first clinical stage of birth (BPM II). At the same time, the elements of violence, bestiality, scatology, and sexual abuse of women and men, including rape and sadistic practices, all belong to the phenomenology of the second stage of birth (BPM III), familiar to people who have relived their birth. In the concentration camps, the sexual abuse existed on a random individual level, as well as in the context of the “houses of dolls,” institutions providing “entertainment” for the officers. The only escape out of this hell was death—by a bullet, hunger, disease, or suffocation in the gas chambers. Two other books by Ka-Tzetnik 135633, House of Dolls and Sunrise Over Hell (Ka-Tzetnik, 1955, 1977), offer a shattering description of life in the concentration camps.

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The bestiality of the SS seemed to be focused particularly on pregnant women and little children, which brings further support for the perinatal hypothesis. The most powerful passage from Terence des Près’s book The Survivor (1976) is, without a doubt, the description of a truck full of babies dumped into fire, followed by a scene in which pregnant women are beaten with clubs and whips, torn by dogs, dragged around by the hair, kicked into the stomach, and then thrown into the crematorium while still alive (des Près, 1976). The perinatal nature of the irrational impulses manifesting in the camps is evident also in the scatological behavior of the kapos. Throwing eating bowls into the latrines and asking the inmates for their retrieval, and forcing the inmates to urinate into each other’s mouths, were practices that besides their bestiality brought the danger of epidemics. Had the concentration camps been simply institutions providing isolation of political enemies and cheap slave labor, maintenance of hygienic rules would have been a primary concern of the organizers, as it is the case in any facility accommodating large numbers of people. In Buchenwald alone, as a result of these perverted practices, 27 inmates drowned in feces in the course of a single month. The intensity, depth, and convincing nature of all the experiences of collective violence associated with the perinatal process suggest that they are not individually fabricated from such sources as adventure books, movies, and TV shows, but originate in the deep unconscious. When our experiential self-exploration reaches the memory of the birth trauma, we also connect to an immense pool of painful memories of the human species and gain access to experiences of other people who once were in a similar predicament. It is not hard to imagine that the perinatal level of our unconscious that “knows” so intimately the history of human violence is actually partially responsible for wars, revolutions, and similar atrocities. The intensity and quantity of the perinatal experiences portraying various brutalities of human history are truly astonishing. Christopher Bache, after having carefully analyzed various aspects of this phenomenon, made an interesting conclusion. He suggested that the memories of the violence perpetrated throughout ages in human history contaminated the collective unconscious in the same way in which the traumas from our infancy and childhood polluted our individual unconscious. According to Bache, it might then be possible that when we start experiencing these collective memories, our inner process transcends the framework of personal therapy and we participate in the healing of the field of species consciousness. The role of the birth trauma as a source of violence and self-destructive tendencies has been confirmed by clinical studies. For example, there seems to be an important correlation between difficult birth and criminality (Kandel & Mednick, 1991; Litt, 1974; Raine, Brennan, & Mednick, 1995). In a similar way, aggression directed inward, particularly suicide, seems to be

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psychogenetically linked to difficult birth (Appleby, 1998). The Scandinavian researcher Bertil Jacobson (Jacobsen et al., 1987) found a close correlation between the form of self-destructive behavior and the nature of birth. Suicides involving asphyxiation were associated with suffocation at birth, violent suicides with mechanical birth trauma, and drug addiction leading to suicide with opiate and/or barbiturate administration during labor. The circumstances of birth play an important role in creating a disposition to violence and self-destructive tendencies or, conversely, to loving behavior and healthy interpersonal relationships. French obstetrician Michel Odent (1995) has shown how the hormones involved in the birth process and in nursing and maternal behavior participate in this imprinting. The catecholamines (adrenaline and noradrenaline) play an important role in evolution as mediators of the aggressive-protective instinct of the mother at the time when birth was occurring in unprotected natural environments. Oxytocin, prolactin, and endorphins are known to induce maternal behavior in animals and foster dependency and attachment. The busy, noisy, and chaotic milieu of many hospitals induces anxiety, engages unnecessarily the adrenaline system, and imprints the picture of a world that is potentially dangerous and requires aggressive responses. This interferes with the hormones that mediate positive interpersonal imprinting. It is, therefore, essential to provide for birthing in a quiet, safe, and private environment (Odent, 1995).

TRANSPERSONAL ORIGINS OF VIOLENCE The above material shows that a conceptual framework limited to postnatal biography and the Freudian unconscious does not adequately explain extreme forms of human aggression on the individual and collective scale. However, it seems that the roots of human violence reach even deeper than to the perinatal level of the psyche. Consciousness research has revealed significant additional sources of aggression in the transpersonal domain, such as archetypal figures of demons and wrathful deities, complex destructive mythological themes, and past-life memories of physical and emotional abuse. C. G. Jung (1964) believed that the archetypes of the collective unconscious have a powerful influence not only on the behavior of individuals but also on the events of human history. From this point of view, entire nations and cultural groups might be enacting in their behavior important mythological themes. In the decade preceding the outbreak of World War II, Jung found in the dreams of his German patients many elements from the Nordic myth of Ragnarok, or the Twilight of the Gods. On the basis of these observations, he concluded that this archetype was emerging in the collective psyche of the German nation and that it would lead to a major catastrophe, which would ultimately turn out to be self-destructive. James Hillman amassed in his brilliant book A Terrible Love of War (2004) convincing evidence that war

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is a powerful archetypal force that has irresistible power over individuals and nations. In many instances, leaders of nations specifically use not only perinatal but also archetypal images and spiritual symbolism to achieve their political goals. The medieval crusaders were asked to sacrifice their lives for Jesus in a war that would recover the Holy Land from the Mohammedans. Adolf Hitler exploited the mythological motifs of the supremacy of the Nordic race and of the millennial empire, as well as the ancient Vedic symbols of the swastika and the solar eagle. Ayatollah Khomeini and Saddam Hussein ignited the imagination of their Muslim followers by references to jihad, the holy war against the infidels. American president Ronald Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as the “evil empire,” and George W. Bush in his political speeches referred to the “axis of evil” and Armageddon. Carol Cohn discussed in her paper not only the perinatal but also the spiritual symbolism associated with the language used in relation to nuclear weaponry and doctrine. The authors of the strategic doctrine refer to members of their community as the “nuclear priesthood.” The first atomic test was called Trinity—the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the male forces of creation. From her feminist perspective, Cohn (1987) saw this as an effort of male scientists to appropriate and claim ultimate creative power. The scientists who worked on the atomic bomb and witnessed the test described it in the following way: “It was as though we stood at the first day of creation”; and Robert Oppenheimer thought of Krishna’s words to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita: “I am become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds.”

BIOGRAPHICAL DETERMINANTS OF INSATIABLE GREED This brings us to the third poison of Tibetan Buddhism, a powerful psychospiritual force that combines the qualities of lust, desire, and insatiable greed. Together with “malignant aggression,” these qualities are certainly responsible for some of the darkest chapters in human history. Western psychologists link various aspects of this force to the libidinal drives described by Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalytic interpretation of the insatiable human need to achieve, to possess, and to become more than one is attributes this psychological force to the sublimation of lower instincts. According to Freud (1955), What appears as . . . an untiring impulse toward further perfection can easily be understood as a result of the instinctual repression upon which is based all that is most precious in human civilization. The repressed instinct never ceases to strive for complete satisfaction, which would consist in the repetition of a primary experience of satisfaction. No substitutive or

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reactive formations and no sublimations will suffice to remove the repressed instinct’s persisting tension.

More specifically, Freud saw greed as a phenomenon related to problems during the nursing period. According to him, frustration or overindulgence during the oral phase of libidinal development can reinforce the primitive infantile need to incorporate objects to such an extent that in adulthood it is transferred in a sublimated form to a variety of other objects and situations. When the acquisitive drive focuses on money, psychoanalysts attribute it to fixation on the anal stage of libidinal development. Insatiable sexual appetite is then considered to be the result of phallic fixation. Many other unrelenting human pursuits are then interpreted in terms of sublimation of such phallic instinctual urges. Modern consciousness research has found these interpretations to be superficial and inadequate. It discovered significant additional sources of acquisitiveness and greed on the perinatal and transpersonal levels of the unconscious.

PERINATAL SOURCES OF INSATIABLE GREED In the course of biographically oriented psychotherapy, many people discover that their life has been inauthentic in certain specific sectors of interpersonal relations. For example, problems with parental authority can lead to specific patterns of difficulties with authority figures, repeated dysfunctional patterns in sexual relationships can be traced to parents as models for sexual behavior, sibling issues can color and distort future peer relationships, and so on. When the process of experiential self-exploration reaches the perinatal level, we typically discover that our life up to that point has been largely inauthentic in its totality, not just in certain partial segments. We find out to our surprise and astonishment that our entire life strategy has been misdirected and therefore incapable of providing genuine satisfaction. The reason for this is the fact that it was primarily motivated by the fear of death and by unconscious forces associated with biological birth, which have not been adequately processed and integrated. In other words, during biological birth, we completed the process anatomically but not emotionally. When our field of consciousness is strongly influenced by the underlying memory of the struggle in the birth canal, it leads to a feeling of discomfort and dissatisfaction with the present situation. This discontent can focus on a large spectrum of issues—unsatisfactory physical appearance, inadequate resources and material possessions, low social position and influence, insufficient amount of power and fame, and many others. Like the child stuck in the birth canal, we feel a strong need to get to a better situation that lies somewhere in the future.

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Whatever is the reality of the present circumstances, we do not find it satisfactory. Our fantasy keeps creating images of future situations that appear more fulfilling than the present one. It seems that, until we reach it, life will be only preparation for a better future, not yet “the real thing.” This results in a life pattern that people involved in experiential self-exploration have described as a “treadmill” or “rat-race” type of existence. The existentialists talk about “auto-projecting” into the future. This strategy is a basic fallacy of human life. It is essentially a loser strategy, whether or not we achieve the goals that we have set for ourselves, because they do not deliver the satisfaction that we expect. When the goal is not reached, the continuing dissatisfaction is attributed to the fact that we have failed to reach the corrective measures. When we succeed in reaching the goal of our aspirations, it typically does not have much influence on our basic life feelings. The continuing dissatisfaction is then blamed on the fact that either the choice of the goal was not correct or it was not ambitious enough. The result is either substitution of the old goal with a different one or amplification of the same type of ambitions. We cannot get enough of what we really do not want or need. In any case, the failure is not correctly diagnosed as being an inevitable result of a fundamentally wrong strategy, which is in principle incapable of providing satisfaction. This fallacious pattern applied on a large scale is responsible for reckless irrational pursuit of various grandiose goals that result in much suffering and many problems in the world. It can be played out on any level of importance and affluence, because it never brings true satisfaction. The only strategy that can significantly reduce this irrational drive is full conscious reliving and integration of the trauma of birth in systematic inner self-exploration.

TRANSPERSONAL CAUSES OF INSATIABLE GREED Modern consciousness research and experiential psychotherapy have discovered that the deepest source of our dissatisfaction and striving for perfection lies even beyond the perinatal domain. This insatiable craving that drives human life is ultimately transpersonal in nature. In Dante Alighieri’s (1990) words, “The desire for perfection is that desire which always makes every pleasure appear incomplete, for there is no joy or pleasure so great in this life that it can quench the thirst in our soul.” In the most general sense, the deepest transpersonal roots of insatiable greed can best be understood in terms of Ken Wilber’s concept of the Atman project (Wilber, 1980). Our true nature is divine—God, Cosmic Christ, Allah, Buddha, Brahma, and the Tao—and, although the process of incarnation separates and alienates us from our source, the awareness of this fact is never completely lost. The deepest motivating force in the psyche on all

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the levels of consciousness evolution is to return to the experience of our divinity. However, the constraining conditions of the consecutive stages of development stand in the way of this experience. Real transcendence requires death of the separate self, dying to the exclusive subject. Because of the fear of annihilation and because of grasping onto the ego, the individual has to settle for Atman substitutes or surrogates, which are specific for each particular stage. For the fetus and the newborn, this means the satisfaction experienced in the good womb or on the good breast. For an infant, this is satisfaction of age-specific physiological needs. For the adult, the range of possible Atman projects is large; it includes, besides food and sex, money, fame, power, appearance, knowledge, and many others. Because of our deep sense that our true identity is the totality of cosmic creation and the creative principle itself, substitutes of any degree and scope—the Atman projects—will always remain unsatisfactory. Only the experience of one’s divinity in a holotropic state of consciousness can ever fulfill our deepest needs. Thus, the ultimate solution for the insatiable greed is in the inner world, not in secular pursuits of any kind or scope. The great 13th-century Persian mystic and poet Rumi made it very clear: All the hopes, desires, loves, and affections that people have for different things—fathers, mothers, friends, heavens, the earth, palaces, sciences, works, food, drink—the saint knows that these are desires for God and all those things are veils. When men leave this world and see the King without these veils, then they will know that all were veils and coverings, that the object of their desire was in reality that One Thing.

TECHNOLOGIES OF THE SACRED AND HUMAN SURVIVAL The finding that the roots of human violence and insatiable greed reach far deeper than academic psychiatry ever suspected and that their reservoirs in the psyche are truly enormous could in and of itself be very discouraging. However, it is balanced by the exciting discovery of new therapeutic mechanisms and transformative potentials that become available in holotropic states on the perinatal and transpersonal levels of the psyche. I have seen over the years profound emotional and psychosomatic healing, as well as radical personality transformation, in many people who were involved in serious and systematic inner quest. Some of them were meditators and had regular spiritual practice; others had supervised psychedelic sessions or participated in various forms of experiential psychotherapy and self-exploration. I have also witnessed profound positive changes in many people who received adequate support during spontaneous episodes of psychospiritual crises.

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As the content of the perinatal level of the unconscious emerged into consciousness and was integrated, these individuals underwent radical personality changes. The level of aggression typically decreased considerably, and they became more peaceful, comfortable with themselves, and tolerant of others. The experience of psychospiritual death and rebirth and conscious connection with positive postnatal or prenatal memories reduced irrational drives and ambitions. It caused a shift of focus from the past and future to the present moment and enhanced the ability to enjoy simple circumstances of life, such as everyday activities, food, lovemaking, nature, and music. Another important result of this process was the emergence of spirituality of a universal and mystical nature that was very authentic and convincing, because it was based on deep personal experience. The process of spiritual opening and transformation typically deepened further as a result of transpersonal experiences, such as identification with other people, entire human groups, animals, plants, and even inorganic materials and processes in nature. Other experiences provided conscious access to events occurring in other countries, cultures, and historical periods and even to the mythological realms and archetypal beings of the collective unconscious. Experiences of cosmic unity and one’s own divinity led to increasing identification with all of creation and brought a sense of wonder, love, compassion, and inner peace. What had begun as psychological probing of the unconscious psyche automatically became a philosophical quest for the meaning of life and a journey of spiritual discovery. People who connected to the transpersonal domain of their psyche tended to develop a new appreciation for existence and reverence for all life. One of the most striking consequences of various forms of transpersonal experiences was the spontaneous emergence and development of deep humanitarian and ecological concerns and the need to get involved in service for some common purpose. This was based on an almost cellular awareness that the boundaries in the universe are arbitrary and that each of us is ultimately identical with the entire web of existence. It was suddenly clear that we cannot do anything to nature without simultaneously doing it to ourselves. Differences among people appeared to be interesting and enriching rather than threatening, whether they were related to sex, race, color, language, political conviction, or religious belief. It is obvious that a transformation of this kind would increase our chances for survival if it could occur on a sufficiently large scale.

LESSONS FROM HOLOTROPIC STATES FOR THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SURVIVAL Some of the insights of people experiencing holotropic states of consciousness are directly related to the current global crisis and its relationship

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with consciousness evolution. They show that we have exteriorized in the modern world many of the essential themes of the perinatal process that a person involved in spiritual quest and deep personal transformation has to face internally. The same elements that we would encounter in the process of psychological death and rebirth in our visionary experiences make these days our evening news. This is particularly true in regard to the phenomena that characterize BPM III, such as destruction, explosions, consuming fire, scenes of violence, and satanic acts. We certainly see the enormous unleashing of the aggressive impulse in the many wars and revolutionary upheavals in the world, in the rising criminality, escalating terrorism, and racial riots. Equally dramatic and striking is the lifting of sexual repression and freeing of the sexual impulse in both healthy and problematic ways. Sexual experiences and behaviors are taking unprecedented forms, as manifested in the sexual freedom of youngsters; gay liberation; general promiscuity; open marriages; the high divorce rate; overtly sexual books, plays, and movies; sadomasochistic experimentation; and many others. The demonic element is also becoming increasingly manifest in the modern world. The renaissance of satanic cults and witchcraft, popularity of books and horror movies with occult themes, and crimes with satanic motivations attest to that fact. The acts of Nazis, Communists, and terrorists, including suicide bombers, resulting in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians certainly qualify for satanic behavior. The scatological dimension is evident in the progressive industrial pollution, accumulation of waste products on a global scale, and rapidly deteriorating hygienic conditions in large cities. A more abstract form of the same trend is the escalating corruption and degradation in political and economic circles. Many of the people with whom we have worked saw humanity at a critical crossroad facing either collective annihilation or an evolutionary jump in consciousness of unprecedented proportions. Terence McKenna (1992) put it very succinctly: “The history of the silly monkey is over, one way or another.” It seems that we all are collectively involved in a process that parallels the psychological death and rebirth process that so many people have experienced internally in holotropic states of consciousness. If we continue to act out the problematic destructive and self-destructive tendencies originating in the depth of the unconscious, we will undoubtedly destroy ourselves and possibly life on this planet. However, if we succeed in internalizing this process on a large enough scale, it might result in an evolutionary progress of unprecedented proportions. As utopian as the possibility of such a development might seem, it might be our only real hope for the future. Let us now explore how the concepts that have emerged from consciousness research, from transpersonal psychology, and from the new paradigm in science could be put into action in the world. Although revolutionary advances in many disciplines have laid foundations of a new scientific

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worldview, the new ideas still form a disjointed mosaic rather than a complete and comprehensive new vision of the universe. Much work has to be done in terms of accumulating more data, formulating new theories, and achieving a creative synthesis. In addition, the existing information has to reach much larger audiences before a significant impact on the world situation can be expected. But even a radical intellectual shift to a new paradigm on a large scale would not be sufficient to alleviate the global crisis and reverse the destructive course we are on. This would require a deep emotional and spiritual transformation of humanity. Using the existing evidence, it is possible to suggest certain strategies that might facilitate and support such a process. Efforts to change humanity would have to start with psychological prevention at an early age. The data from prenatal and perinatal psychology indicate that much could be achieved by changing the conditions of pregnancy, delivery, and postnatal care. This would include improving the emotional preparation of the mother during pregnancy, practicing natural childbirth, creating a psychospiritually informed birth environment, and cultivating emotionally nourishing contact between the mother and the child in the postpartum period. Much has been written about the importance of child rearing, as well as the disastrous emotional consequences of traumatic conditions in infancy and childhood. Certainly this is an area where continued education and guidance are necessary. However, to apply the theoretically known principles, parents themselves must reach sufficient emotional stability and maturity. It is well known that emotional problems are passed like a curse from generation to generation; it is not unlike the well-known problem of the chicken and the egg. Humanistic and transpersonal psychologies have developed effective experiential methods of self-exploration, healing, and personality transformation. Some of these come from Western therapeutic traditions, and others represent modern adaptations of ancient and native spiritual practices. Besides offering emotional healing, these approaches have the potential to return genuine experiential spirituality into Western culture and remedy the alienation of modern humanity. There exist approaches with a very favorable ratio between professional helpers and clients and others that can be practiced in the context of self-help groups. Systematic work with them could return spiritual values into the industrial civilization and facilitate a transformation of humanity that is sorely needed for survival of our species. For this to succeed, it would be essential to involve mass media and spread the information about these possibilities to get enough people personally interested in pursuing them. We seem to be involved in a dramatic race for time that has no precedent in the entire history of humanity. What is at stake is nothing less than the

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future of life on this planet. If we continue the old strategies, which in their consequences are clearly extremely destructive and self-destructive, it is unlikely that the human species will survive. However, if a sufficient number of people could undergo a process of deep inner transformation, we might reach a level of consciousness evolution where we would deserve the name we have so proudly given to our species: Homo sapiens sapiens.

REFERENCES Appleby, L. (1998). Violent suicide and obstetric complications. British Medical Journal, 14, 1333–1334. Ardrey, R. (1961). African genesis. New York: Atheneum. Bacon, F. (1870). De Dignitate and the Great Restauration, vol. 4 of The collected works of Francis Bacon, eds. J. Spedding, L. Ellis, and D.D.S. Heath. London: Longmans Green. Bastiaans, A. (1955). Man in the concentration camp and the concentration camp in man. Unpublished manuscript, Leyden, Holland. Cohn, C. (1987). Sex and death in the rational world of the defense intellectuals. Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 12, 687–718. Dante, A. (1990). Il convivio (Trans. R. H. Lansing, III, VI. 3). New York: Garland. Darwin, C. (1952). The origin of species and the descent of man. In Great books of the Western world. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica. (Original work published in 1859) Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. New York: Oxford University Press. Freud, S. (1955). Beyond the pleasure principle. In The standard edition of the complete works of Sigmund Freud (Ed. J. Strachey, Vol. 18). London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psychoanalysis. Fromm, E. (1973). The anatomy of human destructiveness. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Goleman, D. (1996). Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. New York: Bantam. Grof, S. (1975). Realms of the human unconscious: Observations from LSD research. New York: Viking Press. Hillman, J. (2004). A terrible love of war. New York: Penguin Press. Jacobson, B., et al. (1987). Perinatal origin of adult self-destructive behavior. Acta psychiat. Scand., 76, 364–371. Jung, C. G. (1964). Wotan. In Civilization in Transition, Collected Works, Vol. 10. Bollingen Series XX, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kandel, E., & Mednick, S. A. (1991). Perinatal complications predict violent offending. Criminology, 29 (3), 519–529. Ka-Tzetnik 135633. (1955). The house of dolls. New York: Pyramid. Ka-Tzetnik 135633. (1977). Sunrise over hell. London: Allen. Ka-Tzetnik 135633. (1989). Shivitti: A vision. San Francisco: Harper & Row. Keen, S. (1988). Faces of the enemy: Reflections of the hostile imagination. San Francisco: Harper. Litt, S. (1974). A study of perinatal complications as a factor in criminal behavior. Criminology, 12 (1), 125–126.

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Lorenz, K. (1963). On aggression. New York: Harcourt, Brace. MacLean, P. (1973). A triune concept of the brain and behavior: Lecture I. Man’s reptilian and limbic inheritance; Lecture II. Man’s limbic system and the psychoses; Lecture III. New trends in man’s evolution. In The Hincks memorial lectures (Ed. T. Boag & D. Campbell). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Mause, L. de. (1975). The independence of psychohistory. In The new psychohistory. New York: Psychohistory Press. McKenna, T. (1992). Food of the gods: The search for the original tree of knowledge. New York: Bantam. Morris, D. (1967). The naked ape. New York: McGraw-Hill. Odent, M. (1995, June). Prevention of violence or genesis of love? Which perspective? Paper presented at the 14th International Transpersonal Conference, Santa Clara, CA. Raine, A., Brennan, P., & Mednick, S. A. (1995). Birth complications combined with early maternal rejection at age 1 year predispose to violent crime at age 18 years. Obstetrical and Gynecological Survey, 50 (11), 775–776. Tarnas, R. (2006). Cosmos and psyche: Intimations of a new world view. New York: Viking Press. Tinbergen, N. (1965). Animal behavior. New York: Time-Life. Wilber, K. (1980). The Atman project: A transpersonal view of human development. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing.

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The Three Faces of Evil in Jungian Psychology: The Shadow Side of Reality Wayne G. Rollins

We need more psychology. We need more understanding of human nature, because the only real danger that exists is man himself. He is the great danger, and we are pitifully unaware of it. We know nothing of man, far too little. His psyche should be studied, because we are the origin of all coming evil. —C. G. Jung (quoted in McGuire & Hull, 1977) In the last resort there is no good that cannot produce evil and no evil that cannot produce good. —C. G. Jung (quoted in Jacobi, 1953, p. 234) The meeting with ourselves is one of the more unpleasant things that may be avoided as long as we possess living symbolic figures into which everything unknown to ourselves is projected. The figure of the devil . . . is a most valuable possession and a great convenience, for as long as he goes about outside in the form of a roaring lion we know where the evil lurks. —C. G. Jung (quoted in Jacobi, 1953, p. 239) To this day there is no definitive statement about the nature of evil in the Christian creeds, nor is there any official Christian doctrine of evil. —John A. Sanford (1982)

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INTRODUCTION John Sanford, an Episcopal priest and Jungian analyst, tells a story in the introduction to his landmark work, Evil: The Shadow Side of Reality (1982): I once saw a film in which a disillusioned crusader has returned home and longs to know about God. He hears of a witch who is being burned at the stake and finds her just before the flames are going to engulf her. “Can you tell me where I can find the devil?” he asks. “Why do you wish to find the devil?” the doomed girl replies. The soul-sick knight answers, “Because maybe the devil can tell me about God.” (p. 3)

The story illustrates a truth experienced frequently, whether as believer or militant atheist, that an indelibly wrenching experience of evil can have one of two effects: to obliterate faith and confirm radical cynicism, or give birth to insight. The Book of Job as well as the crucifixion narratives in the Gospels testify to this possibility. The purpose of this chapter is twofold: first, to provide a vignette of Carl G. Jung’s (1875–1961) personal discoveries of three faces of evil that he identified at three different stages in his life—the period from childhood to young adulthood, the period of his career as an analytic psychologist charting the anatomy of the human psyche, and the period of the advent and demise of the Third Reich in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. The second objective is to share the light that John Sanford’s book casts on the application of Jung’s analytical psychology to the “vexing problem” of evil, with soundings on the symbolization of evil in world mythology, in the Old and New Testaments, and in postbiblical Christian and Jewish mythological portraits of the “devil.” Though Sanford makes no claim of solving the “problem of evil,” he does provide a platform for religion and psychology to get their heads together for a deeper understanding of the nature and reality of evil (Sanford, 1982, p. 3).

THE THREE FACES OF EVIL IN THE LIFE AND THOUGHT OF C. G. JUNG 1

1. Jung’s first reflections on the face of evil occurred in his youth, when he attempted to reconcile the “evil” he knew from personal experience in the world of nature and of animals, the sun, the moon, and stars, with what he was expected to think and believe as the son of Johann Paul Achilles Jung, a Swiss Reformed pastor, and his mother, Emilie (née Preiswerk) Jung, member of an established Basel family of theologians and clergy.

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Jung (1963) had once commented that “theology had alienated my father and me from one another” (p. 93). Filled with questions about traditional religion and beliefs, Jung found his father reproving him: “You always want to think. One ought not to think but believe!” But Jung had responded silently within himself, “No, one must experience and know” (1963, p. 43). Jung began to perceive that the religion of his father and of most everyday Christians appeared to be a “theological religion,” a doctrine about God at the expense of the experience of God. Even when his father would preach on such “burning questions” as grace, his sermons sounded “stale and hollow, like a tale told by someone who knows it only by hearsay and cannot quite believe it himself ”(1963, p. 43). In Jung’s judgment, his father “had taken the Bible’s commandments as his guide; he believed in God as the Bible prescribed and as his forefathers had taught him,” but he did not seem to know “the God who stands . . . above his Bible and his church, who calls upon man [sic] to partake of his freedom” (1963, p. 40), whose temple was the whole cosmos, ranging from the rivers and woods to “the darkness of the abyss,” a God whom Jung was later to describe as an “annihilating fire and an indescribable grace” (1963, p. 56). Shortly before his father’s death in 1896, Jung discovered that his father’s resolute refusal to think critically about the church’s dogmas and creeds and his tendency to repeat “the same old lifeless theological answer” led him to grave inward doubts (1963, pp. 92–93). Jung’s mother, on the other hand, seemed bent on pushing Jung beyond the confines of conventional piety, introducing him as a youngster to books on the “heathen” religions of India, and as a young university student to Goethe’s Faust, which was to feed Jung’s lifelong interest in the mysterious role that evil can play “in delivering man from darkness and suffering” (1963, p. 60). It also brought to his attention the irony in the statement of Mephistopheles, who when asked by Faust who he is, replied that he is “part of that force which would do evil, yet forever works the good” (Sanford, 1982, p. 40). In his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung reports a lifelong sense of shuttling between “two persons” with two different ways of experiencing self and world. On the one hand, he saw himself from a “public” perspective as “the son of my parents who went to school, and was less intelligent, attentive, hard-working, decent, and clean than other boys,” but who later became an excellent student, was admitted to the university, and in time made his mark in the field of analytical psychology. He called this self “personality No. 1,” the objective, visible, external self known by parents, teachers, and relatives and recognized by himself as his public image. But he had another side, a “personality No. 2.” This personality was “grownup—old in fact—skeptical mistrustful, remote from the world of people, but

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close to nature, the earth, sun, moon weather and living creatures.” Above all it was close to the night, to dreams. “It seemed to me,” he wrote, that the high mountains, the rivers, lakes, trees, flowers, and animals far better exemplified the essence of God than men with their ridiculous clothes, meanness, vanity, mendacity, and abhorrent egotism—all qualities with which I was only too familiar from myself, that is from “personality No. 1,” the fifteen year old schoolboy. (1963, pp. 44–45)

Between his 16th and 19th years, he found “personality No. 1” emerging as his primary modus operandi, and contrary to expectations, it was “personality no. 1,” the urbane, civilized, and polite one, that led him to consideration of “the problem of evil.” He began reading in the history of philosophy—Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Aquinas, Meister Eckhardt, and Hegel. But it was in the writing of Schopenhauer that he heard the first voice that caught his whole attention, addressing the reality of “suffering of the world, which visibly and glaringly surrounds us, and of confusion, passion and evil,” realities that had in the past been swept under the rug by his No. 1 personality and by conventional religion (1963, 69). Jung wrote, Here at last was a philosopher who had the courage to see that all was not for the best in the fundaments of the universe. He spoke neither of the all-good and all-wise providence of a creator, nor of the harmony of the cosmos, but stated bluntly that a fundamental flaw underlay the sorrowful course of human history and the cruelty of nature. . . . This was confirmed not only by the early observations I had made of diseased and dying fishes, of mangy foxes, frozen or starved birds, of the pitiless tragedies concealed in a flowery meadow: earthworms tormented to death by ants, insects that tore each other apart piece by piece, and so on. (1963, p. 69)

Though not convinced of Schopenhauer’s solution for the problem of theodicy, reconciling an omnipotent, good deity with a creation riddled with evil, Jung was exhilarated by the realization that he was not alone with his questions about evil. “Whereas formerly I had been shy, timid, mistrustful, pallid, and thin . . . I now began to display a tremendous appetite on all fronts, pursuing university and medical degrees” (1963, p. 70), though he would not return to the question of evil in God’s world until the publication of his “Answer to Job” in 1953 (Jung, 1953–1978, Vol. 11, pp. 355–470).

2. Jung’s discovery of a second face of evil occurred later in life with his postulation of a “shadow” personality at work in the human psyche, often

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functioning as a “second personality” at odds with one’s best conscious intentions. The discovery occurred in the process of his development of analytic psychology, a field of inquiry that would never have crossed his mind as a vocational option. But this all changed as Jung, at the age of 24, undertook state examinations in medicine at the University of Basel. Jung had reserved the examination in psychiatry for last. He had found the lectures in psychiatry singularly uninspiring and was not at all convinced this discipline did not deserve the disdain it appeared to enjoy in so much of the medical world at the time. It was with reservation, therefore, that Jung picked up the Textbook on Psychiatry by Krafft-Ebing, wondering what a professional in the field was going to say about this controversial discipline. What he read changed everything. Beginning with the preface, I read, “It is probably due to the peculiarity of the subject and its incomplete state of development that psychiatric textbooks are stamped with a more or less subjective character.” A few lines further on, the author called the psychoses “diseases of the personality.” My heart suddenly began to pound[;] I had to stand up and draw a deep breath. My excitement was intense, for it had become clear to me, in a flash of illumination, that for me the only possible goal was psychiatry. (1963, p. 108)

Two streams of interest, which up to that point in Jung’s life had diverged, now seemed to be converging for him. “Here was the empirical field common to biological and spiritual facts, which I had everywhere sought and nowhere found,” Jung stated. “Here at last was the place where the collision of nature and spirit became a reality” (1963, p. 109). Echoing Goethe’s characterization of his epic poem Faust as his “main business,” Jung wrote, From my eleventh year I have been launched upon a single enterprise which is my “main business.” My life has been permeated and held together by one idea and one goal: namely, to penetrate into the secret of the personality. (1963, p. 206)

In 1902 Jung inaugurated his pilgrimage to chart the nature and anatomy of the human personality. His first step, working at the Burghölzli Mental Hospital, Zurich, was devising his famous Word Association test, news of which brought him to Sigmund Freud’s attention and in time an invitation to travel with Freud to Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the fall of 1909. What did Jung learn from the Word Association tests—reading a list of 100 words, one by one, to a patient and carefully monitoring the patient’s

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response? He uncovered three truths that would be axiomatic for all of his future research. First, certain words or ideas become “feeling-toned” for certain individuals, conveying “an unconscious undertone that colors the idea each time it is recalled,” and occasionally freighted with such profound associations for the individual that it triggers an overpowering emotional response (1971, p. 27). Second, Jung found that the “complex” of words to which a patient responded with extraordinary feeling often led the analyst to the story of the problem or crisis that had precipitated the patient’s illness. And, third, Jung postulated that such “complexes” of feeling-toned words triggering anxiety in the patient’s life were not the product of the patient’s conscious choice, but in fact constituted an autonomous, unconscious “second personality” that welled up beyond conscious control. As Jung was wont to say, “We do not have complexes, rather complexes have us.” The momentous discovery that the Word Association test could provide data that disclosed the “cause” of a patient’s illness led Jung to seek additional routes of inquiry into the unconscious. And in 1903, he returned to Freud’s masterful work on The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), having laid it aside 3 years earlier unable to grasp its meaning. Fifty years later, he praised Freud for rediscovering “dreams as the most important source of information concerning the unconscious processes” (1963, p. 169). What also moved Jung in the direction of dreams was the hunch that hallucinatory images and the bizarre language of schizophrenia might be made of the same stuff as dreams. Over the next 17 years, indeed the next half century, Jung examined some 80,000 dreams with his patients, searching for answers to the question of the etiology and meaning of dreams and dream images, the origin of their storyline, and the clues they might provide to the nature and functions of the human psyche. In 1912, Jung pursued a third route into the secrets of the unconscious, namely, a personal descensus ad inferos, a descent into the depths of his own unconscious to discover the “myth” he was living and to understand better the fantasies that stirred within his patients as well as himself. Jung recounts that he “felt not only violent resistance to this, and a distinct fear,” but he saw there was no other way to come to an understanding of these underground products of the psyche than by letting himself “plummet down, to encounter them directly” (1963, p. 178). So it was that he left his university post to devote himself full-time “in the service of the psyche,” though at the same time maintaining balance in his life with his private professional practice and with the family routine Jung deemed necessary as a “counterpoise to that strange inner world” he was exploring (1963, p. 189). His method was the daily practice of chronicling every image he encountered in his dreams and fantasies as well as in those of his patients. His goal was to understand “every item of my psychic inventory, and to classify them

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scientifically—so far as this was possible” (1963, p. 192). His research records during these years consisted initially of “The Black Book” containing written notes and “The Red Book” containing impressive pictorialized depictions in paintings and sketches. Writing some 50 years later, Jung looked back at this risk-filled period as the most important in his life. “All my works, all my creative activity, has come from these initial fantasies and dreams which began in 1912” (1963, p. 174). Although it would take him 45 years to distill the meaning from the date, he regarded all his later work as nothing more than “supplements and clarification” of those original explorations “into the depths” that provided him with the “prima material for a lifetime’s work” (1963, p. 199). The output of this period of research included a new map of the conscious and unconscious life. He introduced the phrase collective unconscious to the glossary of psychological terms, denoting the wellspring of images across national, geographic, ethnic, and linguistic borders that populate dreams, stories, and art around the world. He also proposed the existence of the two fundamental attitudes of introversion and extraversion in the human psyche, and of the fourfold “functions” of the psyche—thinking, feeling, intuiting, and sensing—all accounting for differences in personality types. Jung also advanced a thesis about the total goal of this psychic process. He called it “individuation,” which means the process of “becoming an ‘individual,’ and, insofar as ‘individuality’ embraces our innermost, last and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies become one’s own self ” (Jung, 1953–1978, p. 173). He saw individuation as a process in two stages. The first stage, extending from birth to midlife, involves the psyche in its main task of forming and consolidating the “ego,” developing a personality type, gaining an identity, choosing a vocation, and gathering a family. The second stage, commencing in midlife, involves the troubling task of “looking under the hood” or “coming to know one’s other side,” which included the “shadow” personality. Jung identified three archetypal personalities operative in the psyche, each staking out its own functional territory: the persona, the “mask” or outer face one adopts to portray oneself to the rest of the world; the animus or anima, the contrasexual images adopted by the psyche; and the dark, hidden side or “shadow” that at its lowest and most ravaging reaches can be transmogrified into the face of evil. The “shadow” is not intrinsically evil, but stands at the threshold, and the threshold is easily crossed when affect is high. John Sanford offered a lucid definition of the “shadow,” as a psychological concept, that refers to the dark, feared, unwanted side of our personality. In developing a conscious personality, we all seek to embody in ourselves a certain image of what we want to be like (“the persona”). Those qualities that could have become part of this conscious personality, but are not in accord with the person we want to be, are rejected and constitute the shadow personality (1982, p. 49). Sanford added Edward C. Whitmont’s (1978) illuminating

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addendum that “the term shadow refers to that part of the personality which has been repressed for the sake of the ego ideal” (p. 160). How did Jung come to the notion of the shadow as a universal human psychic phenomenon? His primary sources were the dreams and analyses of his patients, as well as the rich lode of data gathered in his descent into the depths of his own psychic world from 1913 to 1917. Jung reported a dream that occurred early in the process, dated December 18, 1913. The dream finds Jung in “a lonely, rocky mountain landscape” collaborating with an “unknown, brown-skinned man, a savage,” in the murder of a hero named Siegfried. Later in the dream he lays the blame on the small savage, claiming he had taken the initiative in the kill. Jung soon realized that in exculpating himself and projecting the guilt on the savage, he had come into contact with his shadow, a part of his personality repressed for the sake of his ego ideal (1963, p. 181). Jung reported that reading Goethe’s Faust had struck a chord in me . . . most of all, it wakened in me the problem of opposites, of good and evil, of mind and matter, of light and darkness. Faust, the inept . . . philosopher, encounters the dark side of his being, his sinister shadow. (1963, p. 235)

Jung also found the shadow in the pages, paintings, and statuary of world religions, and in literature, the cinema, and the arts—sometimes in the forms of witches, vampires, monsters, and devils, frequently the projections “out there” of menacing possibilities that were in fact alive within one’s own psychic household. John Sanford commented, “I would surmise that there are few people who at one time or another in their lives have not had the fantasy that their husbands, wives, children, or parents were dead” (1982, p. 62). What can be said about the nature and habits of the shadow? It is an archetypal reality within the psyche and, as such, a universal or essential building block of the personality (Sanford, 1982, p. 55), appearing in dreams as the same gender as the dreamer, personifying “everything that the subject refuses to acknowledge about himself and yet is always thrusting itself upon him directly or indirectly” (Jung, 1963, p. 399). Although it is the psychic repository of qualities whose energy can be reclaimed by the ego and put to constructive use (Sanford, 1982, pp. 51, 79), it is also a constant challenge to the ego, subverting its best-laid plans and seeking domination of the psychic household. Armed with emotion, the shadow and its repressed contents constantly attempt to challenge ego consciousness for dominance. The ego has at least four ways of coping. It can choose repression, keeping the contents of the shadow under lock and key, and covering the multitude of its dark wishes and fantasies with the white gloves of one’s socially acceptable persona. A second

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strategy, tangent to the strategy of repression, is that sleight-of-hand of projection, turning one’s own hidden inferiority into a perceived moral deficiency in someone else. As case in point, Jung cited Hitler’s description of Winston Churchill during World War II, a transparent self-portrait: For over five years this man has been chasing around Europe like a madman in search of something he could set on fire. Unfortunately he again and again finds hirelings who open the gates of their country to this international incendiary. (1971, p. 181)

The third option is internecine warfare between the shadow and the ego, of the sort that Jung found occasionally degenerating into the gross, destructive behavior of Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in which the ego loses control, the shadow wins the day, and, in this instance, the evil deed is done.2 The fourth option is self-knowledge and confession, bringing the dark side to consciousness, setting up a conversation if not full-scale warfare against its intentions, and, if possible, enlisting human community support from souls dealing with analogous shadows (e.g., Alcoholics Anonymous) (Sanford, 1982, p. 109).

3. Jung’s discovery of a third face of evil is documented in a series of works he produced during the rise and fall of the Third Reich in Germany, continuing into the 1940s and 1950s with his psychological commentary on the development of thermonuclear weapons. These essays include “Wotan,” an essay on the German nationalist spirit (1936); “After the Catastrophe” (1945); “The Fight With the Shadow,” first presented as a BBC broadcast (1946); “The Undiscovered Self ” (1957); and the closing section of his last essay, “Approaching the Unconscious” (published posthumously, 1961). Jung identified the crisis in the modern Western world as at root a crisis in the human psyche or soul: The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us today are not elemental happenings of a physical or biological order, but psychic events. To a quite terrifying degree we are threatened by wars and revolution which are nothing other than psychic epidemics. . . . Instead of being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides, and inundations, modern man is battered by the elemental forces of his own psyche. (Jung, 1953–1978, Vol. 10, p. 235)

The age of enlightenment taught us that reason would overcome the human tendency to destroy others and oneself; but in fact, Jung averred, this

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may be our “greatest and most tragic illusion” (1971, p. 101). We must ask ourselves, Jung suggested, “how it is that, for all our progress in administration of justice, in medicine and in technology, for all our concern for life and health, monstrous engines of destruction have been invented which could easily exterminate the human race” (Jung, 1953–1978, Vol. 10, p. 298). The irony, Jung added, is that these “devilish engines” are invented by “reasonable, respectable citizens” who, in many respects, are “everything we could wish.” The new dimension of the shadow that Jung became aware of before, during, and after World War II was the phenomenon of a “collective shadow,” or “mass-mindedness,” which at its worst and most destructive stage takes on the character of a “psychic epidemic.” Mass-mindedness is a common epiphenomenon generated in political, religious, nationalistic, and militaristic movements. As Jung commented, their common stock-in-trade is familiar: “brass bands, flags, banners, parades and monster demonstrations,” combined with propaganda efforts dedicated not only to cultivating true believers but also to portraying their opponents as evil, though at the same time remaining oblivious to the evil cooking in their own psyches. Examples include Protestants versus Catholics in Northern Ireland, Palestinians and Israelis, pro-lifers versus advocates of free choice, or, in Jung’s time, the standoff between the two sides of the Iron Curtain. Writing in the 1950s, Jung commented, “It is the face of his own evil shadow that grins at Western man from the other side of the Iron Curtain” (1971, p. 73). The “success” of mass movements and the psychic epidemics they generate arise from the psychological fact that individuals who are otherwise good, gentle, intelligent citizens on their own find themselves acting in a worse manner collectively than they would as individuals, being carried by society and to that extent relieved of individual responsibility (1957, p. 56). A second psychological factor is the intrusion of the dark motives of one’s unconscious in our decisions, which Jung saw at work in the case of the development of weapons of mass destruction by the physicists who produced “the bomb,” which involved finding a way to give themselves permission to lend a hand in an effort that at its furthest end could result in the destruction of thousands of human beings. They were unaware that “conscious effort alone was not responsible for the outcome of their work, but that somewhere the unconscious, with its barely discernible goals and intentions, has its finger in the pie.” Jung added, “If [the unconscious] puts a weapon in your hands, it is aiming at some kind of violence” (1957, pp. 99–100). The evidence of the middle years of the 20th century demonstrated visibly to Jung that “none of us stands outside his black collective shadow” (1957, p. 96). What is the cure? Where can a change be found? Jung commented that “there are well-meaning theologians and humanitarians who want to break down the power principle—in others.” But, Jung insisted, “[W]e must begin by breaking it in ourselves. Then the thing becomes credible” (1953–1978,

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Vol. 10, p. 228). Jung contended that “the psychopathology of the masses is rooted in the psychology of the individual” (p. 218), and “if the individual is not truly regenerated in spirit, society cannot be either, for society is the sum total of individuals in need of redemption” (p. 276). What is required is “a complete spiritual renewal” (p. 217). In his last essay on “Approaching the Unconscious,” completed shortly before his death in 1961, Jung made this appeal: As any change must begin somewhere, it is the single individual who will experience it and carry it through. The change must begin with an individual; it might be any one of us. Nobody can afford to look around and to wait for somebody else to do what he is loath to do himself. But since nobody seems to know what to do, it might be worthwhile for each of us to ask himself whether by chance his or her unconscious may know something that will help us. (1971, pp. 101–102)

For Jung, the answer to “psychic epidemics,” “mass-mindedness,” and the collective shadow is the “individual human being . . . that infinitesimal unit on whom a world depends, and in whom, if we read the meaning of the Christian message aright, even God seeks his goal” (1953–1978, Vol. 10, p. 305).

SANFORD ON JUNG, EVIL, AND THE SHADOW SIDE OF REALITY John Sanford, a pastoral counselor, Jungian analyst, and former Episcopal priest, is one of the premier interpreters of the life and thought of Carl Jung. He is known internationally for his 16 books that relate psychological insight (especially that of Jung’s analytic psychology and Fritz Kunkel’s “we-psychology”; see Sanford, 1984) to religious experience and biblical interpretation. Though Sanford has devoted his life to counseling, he hoped in Fritz Kunkel: Selected Writings (1984) to take up the ambiguities and metaphysical issues raised in Jung’s discourse on evil, and to focus on “the problem of evil.” His goal was to provide psychological insight into evil as an absurd fact of life and also ironically as the parent of the good and as an answer to the soul-knight’s question of what “the devil can tell us about God” (Sanford, 1984, p. 3). Sanford opened his reflections on “the problem of evil” by challenging the relativist view of evil that maintains evil and good are in the eye of the beholder. For example, the gardener and the crop-destroying gopher would not see eye to eye on the value of the trap the gardener is setting to end the problem. Similarly, the 17th-century Puritan’s expression of prayerful gratitude for the plague that decimated the native Indian population in the territory now called New England would be poles away from the sentiments of

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the victims. The conclusion to which these observations lead is, in the words of Hamlet, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so” (Sanford, 1984, p. 7). Sanford did not agree. In opposition to this view of relative good and relative evil, Sanford argued that not all opinions about good and evil merit equal attention. Drawing from Jung’s analytical psychology, Sanford suggested a better model for evaluating what is good and what is evil, by distinguishing between two levels of maturation in the individuation process: the state of the Ego and the state of the Self. The ego speaks from the solipsistic realm of the individual, or, as Jung put it, from the “petty, oversensitive, personal world of the ego” (Rollins, 1983, p. 38). But the Self, representing another stage of human maturation, speaks out of larger, deeper, broader experience and wisdom in the realization that one’s “story” is not a solo act, but is part of a tale as wide as human and cosmic history and as deep as the memories, dreams, and reflections of the whole human race. Carl Jung defined the Self as the “complete expression” of our individuality when all its dimensions are fully considered. It is the “totality of the human psyche,” the “whole circumference which embraces all the psychic phenomena” in ourselves, “our body and its workings and the unconscious,” the sensate and intuitive, the intellectual and moral, the masculine and feminine, the shadow and the saint (Rollins, 1983, p. 38). In religious language, Sanford told us, it might be called “the Christ Self,” or, as many cultures would describe it, the “Divine Standpoint” (1984, p. 9). A fundamental presupposition of Sanford’s approach is to appeal to the opinions of the Self for insight into the nature of evil and the means of coping with its effects. With this distinction in mind, Sanford turned to a topic fundamental to Jungian psychology, namely, the world of mythology as a seasoned expression of the Self on the nature and meaning of evil. Sanford (1984) told us that for analytical psychology, “mythology is a kind of map of the human psyche, a personification of the archetypal and eternal psychic forces that make up mankind’s [sic] inner universe” (p. 23). What mythology discloses is the universal recognition of “an inevitable dark side to our nature that refuses to be assimilated into our lofty ideals of goodness, morality, and ideal human behavior.” Not only that, but also it warns us that “to try to be good, and disregard one’s darkness, is to fall victim to the evil in ourselves whose existence we have denied” (1984, p. 23). Sanford found two types of mythic depictions of evil. The first is the dualistic type of myth that sees reality as a struggle between the forces of good and the forces of evil. He offered as examples the Norse myth of the evil god, Loki, who destroys the beautiful god Baldur with a shaft of the mistletoe plant; the Egyptian myth of treacherous Seth, who dismembers his brother Osiris; the Persian myth of the all-out warfare between Ahriman, the shadow

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God, and Ahura Mazda, the enlightened; and the myth of Native American religion that pits the Great Spirit against the disturbances and devious plots of theriomorphic spirits and trickster figures. The second is the synthetic type of myth found in classical Greek antiquity that refuses to divide the pantheon into good gods and bad goods, but instead regards each member of the pantheon as capable of turning in either direction, depending on the needs of the moment. From his overview of mythic treatments of evil, Sanford drew two conclusions. The first is the universal recognition of evil as a standard feature of cosmic existence across the mythological spectrum. The second is a truth implicit in the synthetic approach to evil among the Greeks: Only among the Greeks was there no war among the gods . . . for these gods and goddesses were too wise to claim to be good. So psychology suggests that we reject any pretense of being good that forces us to keep our evil hidden from ourselves. We thus follow the example of Jesus who, when he was addressed by the rich young man as “Good Master” retorted, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” (Sanford, 1984, pp. 23–24; see Mark 10:17–18)

Sanford found further confirmation of the universal recognition of evil as an ineluctable feature of life in his overview of evil in the Old Testament and the New Testament. Casual familiarity with the two testaments might suggest that the story of evil in the Bible is essentially dualistic (i.e., a contest between God and Satan). Sanford told us that in the case of the Old Testament, nothing could be further from the truth. He found a “courageous and unflinching monotheism” implicit in all Old Testament commentary on “the problem of evil.” The most striking demonstration of the “unflinching monotheism” of the Old Testament is found in a range of statements that identify God as the one who works both good and evil. Amos 3:6 declares that evil does not befall a city unless the Lord has done it; Isaiah 45:5–7 announces that the Lord makes both weal and woe (Isa 45:7) and produces weapons of war (54:16); and I Sam 18:10 informs us that the evil spirit that rushed upon Saul was God-sent. In the later Old Testament, however, we encounter the face of the “accuser” (Hebrew, satan). Satan appears in the Old Testament in two distinct roles. In his first role, occurring only four times, satan appears as a supernatural figure. He functions as an “accuser” in a divine court (Zechariah 3:11ff.), as a tempter who provokes David to undertake a census using a method contrary to the laws of Moses (I Chronicles 21:1), and, most astonishingly, in Job 1–2 as a quasi-divine figure in God’s court on whom God projects his dark side in assigning him the task of testing Job’s faith with a series of tragic assaults

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on his person and family. In this scenario, God gets off scot-free, with Satan left holding the bag of responsibility. A second Old Testament portrait of satan plays on the secular meaning of the term, namely, “adversary,” referring to someone who opposes someone else’s plan of action. An example is the story of Balaam, sent on a mission by the Moabite King Balak to curse the Hebrews (Numbers 22). En route to this assignment, Balaam and his ass are confronted by Yahweh along the road, who appears as a satan, an “adversary,” that prevents Balaam from performing a task that most certainly would have resulted in his own God-inflicted destruction. Here we learn, surprisingly, that Yahweh as satan has actually served to deliver Balaam from destruction, and that what appears to be evil is transformed into a good. When we turn to the New Testament, we find a worldview informed by the ranks of demons and angels that have surfaced in later Hellenistic-Jewish mythology. The name Satan appears 35 times in the Gospels, the word devil (diabolos) 37 times, in addition to the title Beelzebub (“Lord of the flies”) and in John’s Gospel “the prince of this world,” referring to the devil. The meaning of the word devil (Greek, diabolos) is literally “one who throws something across your path,” implying one who overrides one’s best laid plans or, more seriously, introduces ruin into one’s life, not unlike the trickster of Native American lore. Of what nefarious tricksterism is Satan guilty in the Gospels? The list includes inflicting a daughter of Abraham with a crippling illness for 18 years (Luke 13.16), possessing a man of Gadara with a demon and driving him out of his mind (Luke 8:28–34), entering Judas at the last supper to initiate the plan to betray Jesus (Luke 22:3), and tempting Jesus to turn away from his mission (Luke 4:1–13). How did Jesus approach “the problem of the Devil” and the larger “problem of evil”? Sanford proposed that the parable of the Tares that Satan sows in the wheat field characterizes Jesus’s acceptance of evil as native to the human condition in God’s world. Evil and good grow side by side, not only because it is inevitable in the structure of things but also because it is nearly impossible to tell which of the plants are wheat and which tares (Matt 13:24–30). In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus issues an astonishing command to love one’s enemies, supporting this enjoinder with the “fact” that God sends rain and sun to both the just and the unjust. He also enjoins his followers to pray for those who persecute them (Matt 5:44–45). For Jesus in the Gospels, God does not draw an indelible line between the good and the evil. For Jesus the problem of evil is solved eschatologically, when both the righteous and the unrighteous will hear the surprising news of what the proprietor of the Last Judgment identifies as good and evil (Matt 25:31–46). For the present, however, Jesus calls his disciples to become healers and proclaimers of good news; to join in the battle against evil, its deprivations, and its wounds; and, as the Sermon on the Mount makes plain, to become conscious of the speck of evil that may be unconsciously blocking their own vision (Matt 7:1–5).

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Jesus’s teaching on evil no doubt inspired fourth-century church father Origen to suggest that evil in the end will be swallowed up in divine grace and that even the devil will be saved. Though Origen’s notion was declared heretical at the Council of Constantinople in 553, his ideas continue to sound in the heart of the Gospel that tells us we should even love our enemies in God’s world that allows good and evil to mysteriously coexist. In time, the “monistic” perspective of Jesus that sees evil as an ineluctable part of life will succumb to the development of the radical dualism of the later New Testament, epitomized in the Book of Revelation, lining up the forces of evil against the forces of good and providing program notes for those interested in distinguishing the evil from the good. Luther and Zwingli will both denounce the Book of Revelation as un-Christian. But the continuing church in large part adopted the dualistic approach, which so easily leads to the hubris of inquisition that distinguishes so confidently the evil from the good, a project Jesus was not given to endorse. Having discussed Satan, the devil, and the demonic in the Bible, Sanford (1984) devoted a chapter to “The Devil in Post-Biblical Mythology and Folklore,” reminding us that though the devil does not seem to be alive and active in contemporary theological or cultural discourse, it still appears in plays, monster movies, songs, and cartoons. Sanford helped us understand what is going on in these postbiblical representations. One of the earliest depictions of the devil is the figure of Lucifer, the “light-bearer,” who originally dwelt in the heavens with the Almighty, but fell prey to the sin of conceit and pride, undertaking a rebellion against God, only to be driven from heaven by the Archangel Michael. The story is told in rabbinic circles and is rehearsed by the church fathers.3 Sanford suggested that at the core of the Lucifer–Satan archetype is the “power drive,” which from the psychological point of view can be seen as a “quality of the human Ego that wants to set itself up in place of the Self,” placing the ego in combat with one’s higher self (Sanford, 1984, p. 114). It is precisely this split to which Satan invites Jesus in the story of the temptation in the wilderness, to subordinate the archetypal aspiration to ministry to the archetypal quest for power. The devil comes to represent all those “disagreeable qualities of our nature that we have rejected from consciousness” (Sanford, 1984, p. 117). Accordingly he is depicted in many forms, from a human-like Mephistopheles to a man with cloven hoofs that were borrowed from the depictions of the pagan god Pan, or with a horn in the middle of his brow, borrowed from the imagery of the decadent god of wine, Dionysus. He also can appear as an ape, “a roaring lion, a ferocious dragon, a serpent, a wolf, or black dog,” often accompanied by “bats, rats, mice, vermin, and flies” (Sanford, 1984, p. 116). As such, the devil is a figure to be feared, for he has become the bearer of those qualities that a culture fears in itself. During the medieval period, the

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church used the figure of Satan to represent “human reason,” which, with its scientific method, was challenging the authority of the church. In one instance, the devil was personified as Galileo. Later, for the Puritans, the devil represented art, music, and dancing, which remained closeted in the shadows of the Puritan unconscious (Sanford, 1984, p. 124). And in contemporary international affairs, the devil has often been projected on the enemy as the “evil empire.” The devil, therefore, does not represent “absolute evil,” but a relative evil that depends for its psychological power on the fact that the qualities it represents have been repressed by the community that denounces them. From a psychological perspective, the image of the devil and the contents of one’s own shadow side represent “relative evils,” which in time can lose their opprobrious character and be reclaimed as less frightening than they appeared in the dimly lit cells of the unconscious. In fact, the reintegration of the shadow and of the relative evils projected on our favorite Satan images is necessary for psychological wholeness, in the admission that these are all part of “me” or “us” and on closer inspection may even prove to be the bearers of powers and gifts that can be used to fruitful ends. The anger, fear, outrage, self-indulgence, boiling resentment, vindictiveness, mendacity, arrogance, aggressiveness, fantasies, and impulses—all contain powers that can be rerouted and redeemed. As Sanford observed about the shadow figure for the individual, or about the devil image for a culture: The shadow personality can look like evil, it can even act evil when it is split off too far from the whole. But in itself it cannot be said to be entirely evil, for if made conscious, recognized, and accepted, the Shadow loses its seemingly Satanic character and even has the capacity to add to the stature, strength, and breadth of one’s personality. (Sanford, 1984, p. 127)

CLOSING THOUGHTS ON THE ONTOLOGY OF EVIL IN SANFORD AND JUNG One of the most surprising things we learn about the “problem of evil” from Sanford is that “to this day there is no definitive statement about the nature of evil in the Christian creeds, nor is there any official Christian doctrine of evil” (1984, p. 129). In all probability, the same void holds true for all other religious traditions. The only point at which Christianity came to formal statements on evil is in its theories of atonement that initially relied heavily on the role of the devil. The first was the ransom theory, contending that God offered his son to the devil as a ransom for humankind held captive by the devil from the time of Adam and Eve, who had submitted to the devil’s temptation to disobey

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God. The second is the victory theory, which heralds Christ and his cross as victorious in a cosmic battle with the devil. It was with the third atonement theory of Anselm (1033–1109 ce), however, that the devil disappeared from the contract. Called the satisfaction theory or substitutionary theory, it held that it was not the devil who had to be satisfied, but God’s justice. God offered his son as a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice that had been violated by humankind’s primordial sin. With the disappearance of the devil from atonement theories, theological discourse turned to other theories of evil, of which there are three. The first was never formally adopted but became part of the common turf within Christendom in the form of a Latin statement: omne bonum a Deo; omne malus ab hominem (“All good is from God; all evil from men”). This formulation was unsatisfactory from a theological perspective in two respects. First, it “absolved God of any responsibility for evil,” and detractors were quick to ask, “Who was responsible in the first place for putting the serpent in the garden of Eden?” Second, it placed the full weight of evil on the back of humanity. A second theory, advanced by Irenaeus of Lyon in the second century and endorsed by Origen in the third, was that “God deliberately allowed evil in His creation in order to create a universe in which man’s moral powers would be exercised” and in “which man’s nature could be perfected” (Sanford, 1984, p. 133), reflecting the common medieval expression of felix culpa, or “happy sin.” Thus evil, even in the Garden of Eden, is there by God’s design to serve God’s ultimate purpose. A third theory, formulated in the Clementine Homilies—attributed to Clement, bishop of Rome, in the early second century—held that God in his wisdom is the source of both evil and good in the world, employing both to achieve his purposes. Clement illustrated this with his depiction of God ruling the world with a right hand and a left. The left hand rains punishment and even evil on the impious, and the right hand pours blessing on the righteous. Clement, convinced of the goodness of God, held that whatever evil there is in the present will be redeemed and transformed in the future at the end time. A fourth theory defines evil as a privatio boni, “a privation or absence of the good,” a concept derived from Aristotle and adopted by Origen, Augustine, and Aquinas. It held that the “good alone has substance, and that evil has no substance of its own, but exists by a diminution of the good” (Sanford, 1984, p. 135). The theory of evil as the privatio boni became a cause célèbre in theological and analytical psychological circles, because Jung declared his opposition to it. Jung found fault with the privatio boni definition of evil on two counts. The first is Christological. Jung argued that if evil is thought to be the absence of the good, then Christ, who represents the absolute good in the eyes of many Christians, must be thought of as the exemplification of

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the absence of the dark side, which from Jung’s perspective robs Jesus of the full humanity that even the creeds assign him. Being truly human for Jung means engagement in a process of individuation that calls for the demanding integration of both the dark and light sides, a theme hinted at in the story of Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness and the self-applied description of Jesus as one who came “eating and drinking” (Matt 11:19), and who drove the money changers out of the temple (Mark 11:15–19). For Jung, Christ cannot be a symbol of wholeness if the integration of the dark side is not part of the picture. The second is ontological. To call evil simply the absence of the good is to deny evil its palpable appearance as an autonomous force in places like Rwanda or the gas chambers of Auschwitz. The word evil, when regarded as simply the absence of the good, would fail to capture the horrendous events it was designed to denote. In summary, Jung and Sanford fundamentally concurred in their analysis of the “problem of evil.” In the first place, both are motivated in their research by a profound dissatisfaction over the church’s failure to arrive at a satisfying understanding of evil and the role it plays in the human story; nor does the church supply a psychologically satisfying understanding of the shadow side of the human psyche. Sanford expressed it as follows: The traditional Christian attitude as it has been mediated through the Church has rejected too much. It has refused to accept the Shadow side of the personality, and has rejected the dark side of the Self. It has insisted upon an impossible standard of perfection, and has not acknowledged the necessity, even the value, of a wholeness, that comes about through imperfection, not through perfection. (Sanford, 1984, pp. 153–154)

Second, both Jung and Sanford believed that the main tool we have to deal with, confront, and even heal the shadow and evil is to bring both into fuller consciousness, that part of the psyche that Jung described as our “most important weapon” (quoted in Campbell, 1971, p. 502). Jung spoke of the process of bringing things to consciousness as “integration”; Sanford described it as coming to “wholeness.” In discussing the importance of integration with Mircea Eliade at a 1952 Eranos Conference, Jung commented, The great problem in psychology is the integration of opposites. One finds this everywhere and at every level. . . . I had occasion to interest myself in the integration of Satan. For as long as Satan is not integrated, the world is not healed and man is not saved. But Satan represents evil, and how can evil be integrated? There is only one possibility: namely to assimilate it, that is to say, raise it to the level of consciousness. (Quoted in McGuire & Hall, 1977, p. 277)

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Sanford (1984) closed his book with a thoughtful and helpful description of what “wholeness” and “integration” entail and how they enable confrontation with “evil”: When the Self is realized, there is an invulnerability to the powers of evil; the destructive powers cannot destroy the realized Self. On the human level it means that if a human being is centered, and related to the self, there is a certain protection against evil; and when the center of the personality is established, such a person is supported by a more-than-human strength to resist and overcome the evil powers. . . . We have noted that evil may be necessary if wholeness is to come about since wholeness can only occur when all creatures perform their proper function, and it would seem that human moral and psychological consciousness can only develop in the face of evil . . . yet at the same time we say this, we also say that wholeness does not include evil and that when wholeness is either established or destroyed, evil also ceases to be. (pp. 151–152)

We began our discussion of Jung and Sanford on the “problem of evil” with the story of the soul-sick knight justifying his interest in evil in the hope that “maybe the devil can tell me about God.” The masterful work of Jung and Sanford maintains that bringing the devil, the shadow, and evil to fuller consciousness in effect does “tell us about God,” leading us to recognize the macrocosm in which we live and the grace that enables an integrated wholeness to take place in the human psyche, fortifying it against the assaults of the dark side of the unconscious and raising its sights to the service of the self that transcends the ego, armed with an understanding of evil that, as Jung recognized, “When love stops, power begins, and violence, and terror” (1957, p. 106).

NOTES 1. Portions of this section were published originally in the second chapter of Jung and the Bible (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1983) by Wayne G. Rollins and are reprinted here in revised and updated form with permission. 2. See “The Problem of Shadow and Evil in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (Sanford, 1982, pp. 85–111, Chap. 7), which recounts the story in detail. 3. Following the mode of apocalyptic calculations of the numbers of demons that provide the retinue of the fallen Lucifer, we hear from a theologian named Basel Barrhause that the exact figure is 2,665,866,746,664 (in Sanford, 1984, p. 114).

REFERENCES Campbell, J. (Ed.). (1971). The portable Jung. New York: Viking Press. Freud, S. (1972). Interpretation of dreams (Trans. J. Strachey). New York: Avon. (Original work published in 1903)

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Jacobi, J. (1953). Psychological reflections: An anthology of the writings of C. G. Jung. New York: Pantheon. Jung, C. G. (1953–1978). The collected works of C. G. Jung (Trans. R. F. C. Hull, 20 Vols.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jung, C. G. (1957). The undiscovered self (Trans. R. F. C. Hull). Boston: Little, Brown. Jung, C. G. (1963). Memories, dreams, reflections (Trans. R. Winston & C. Winston). New York: Vintage. Jung, C. G. (1971). Man and his symbols. New York: Dell McGuire, W., & Hull, R. F. C. (Eds.). (1977). C. G. Jung speaking: Interviews and encounters (Vol. 97). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Philip, H. D. (1959). Jung and the problem of evil. New York: McBride. Rollins, W. G. (1983). Jung and the Bible. Atlanta, GA: John Knox. Sanford, J. A. (1982). Evil: The shadow side of reality. New York: Crossroad. Sanford, J. (Ed.). (1984). Fritz Kunkel: Selected writings. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist. Whitmont, E. C. (1978). The symbolic quest. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

ch apter 19

Are We Basically Good or Evil, Fallen or Underevolved? J. Harold Ellens

David Frankfurter has written an impressive book on Evil Incarnate (2008). It deals with rumors of demonic conspiracies and satanic abuses throughout history. Periodically throughout the history of the Western world, there have arisen cults that promoted the idea that satanic forces were prominent manipulators of the human scene and even dominant controllers of government operations. Such cultic panic seems to have swept through human society periodically since the ancient world. It swept parts of the world of early Christianity, then again early modern Europe, equally postcolonial Africa, and, quite surprisingly, the American culture of both the 1730s and 1980s. As an historian of religion, Frankfurter was particularly interested in the fact that these sinister notions show up in strikingly similar patterns and under remarkably similar circumstances, despite widely separate cultures and time frames. For example, the patterns characteristically include, as they did in the United States three decades ago, conspiracy theories about groups who were allegedly abusing children in day care centers, impregnating girls for infant sacrifice, brainwashing adults, and even controlling the government. These same aspects were present in the ancient, medieval, and early modern episodes, and cross-culturally, for example, in Africa, Europe, and the United States. This gives rise to a number of very interesting questions. What causes people, individually and collectively, to envision evil and seek to engage with it and place themselves in league with it; or guard against it and even try to exterminate it? Why does this kind of phenomenon tend to show up in such typical, even predictable patterns? Are we inherently in touch with such

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imagined forces in life because we are inherently evil in ourselves, or because we are basically good and so have a built-in guardedness against evil? Are human beings inherently fallen from some ideal state, or are we flawed and inadequate because we are simply underevolved, and so still on our way to achieving our ideal potential as human organisms? The ancient Essenes of Jesus’s time, and the various types of apocalyptic Judaism that flourished then, were sure that evil was a real objective force in the world, not just a fiction of some overactive and paranoid human imaginations. They conceived the matter in one of two ways, depending upon how conservative or traditional the particular Essene group happened to be. Moreover, which of the two trajectories a person or group chose depended somewhat on whether they were following, consciously or unconsciously, the implications of Genesis 6 or Genesis 3. Genesis 6 said evil came from heaven and infected the human world from the beginning, so God, or at least heavenly forces, were to blame. Genesis 3 blamed humans for the introduction of evil into the formerly perfectly ideal world God had created. These options worked themselves out in ancient apocalyptic Judaisms, particularly in the Essene or Enochic communities, in rather remarkable ways that have influenced Western culture ever since. As suggested in Chapter 11, some of the Enochic devotees believed that evil was pervasive in the world because a crowd of lustful angels had descended to earth in its early stages and impregnated human females, thus producing a generation of giants who taught humans to do evil. Others thought that God imposed on the earliest humans a test of obedience that those humans had failed, thus bringing about the reality of evil. Some in both categories believed that divine punishment for evil was arbitrary in that God had elected some to do evil and to be eternally damned, while electing others to be protected from doing evil and to be eternally saved. Other Enochic Essenes believed the choice was up to individual humans: whether to participate in the evil in the world and be damned eternally, or to refrain from such evil behavior and so be found among the righteous people of God (Boccaccini, 1998). That might seem like a story from some remote and irrelevant past. Nothing could be further from the truth. When I grew up and was ordained in the Christian Reformed Church (CRC), the theological constructs that prevailed in that community were exactly those held by the conservative cloistered Essene Enochians who lived at the village of Qumran and produced the Dead Sea Scrolls. The CRC required that every official in the community, pastors, elders, deacons, and the like, had to sign what was called the formula of subscription. That meant that we were required to commit ourselves to believe, preach, and teach the theological framework and doctrines delineated by John Calvin as interpreted by the Canons of Dordrecht and the Belgic Confession.

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These documents that we were required to endorse taught a fairly rigid form of the double predestination that prevailed at Qumran 2,200 years earlier. So a 20th-century community was promoting the notion that although evil might have a divine or human origin, either one’s participation in it and its drastic eternal consequences were preset by God’s eternal decree, determined before history began; or a human could choose personally to do evil. Either way, his or her eternal destiny was preset. The point here is that those ancient pagan ideas, drawn from Persian Zoroastrianism, are still influential in the world today, particularly in the traditional conservative forms of Christianity. Moreover, there are forms of Judaism and Islam today that hold to the same predestinarian doctrines. Of course, such a mind-set is not biblical. This is readily perceived by any informed, honest, and enlightened interpreter of the Christian Scriptures. However, these ancient ideas do not continue to hang around the human race for theological reasons but for psycho-philosophical reasons. That is, as humans we long for an understanding of the meaning of things in life. So the old questions of where evil came from, what it is really like, how we are involved in it, and what the consequences will be keep coming up in our minds in virtually the same form, century after century. Most of us are quite sure that the God we wish to honor and worship cannot be the source of evil. However, that raises the problem of whether God, then, permits it and why God does not prevent it. We are sure God can prevent it if God so wishes. In Chapters 1, 6, and 11, I argued for ruling out every notion that there exists some evil agent or force out there in the transcendent world. The only thing out there is the God of unconditional, radical, and universal grace. According to St. Paul and the Gospel of John, God has guaranteed from before the foundation of the earth that the entire world of humans, all other creatures, and this entire created cosmos will be saved in God’s unconditional grace toward his whole creation. That radically reduces the urgency of the entire question of the source or origin of evil. It places the focus on the pragmatic question of where evil shows up, and in what form, and what can be done to heal and redeem it. Because God does not cause evil, and there is no satanic force or devil out there producing it, does God somehow permit it or at least refrain from preventing it when God could, and are we then the source of it? Are we inherently evil, or good but ignorant and clumsy, thus causing evil? Are we the problem of evil? If so, is it perversity or pathology? Or is evil just a fiction of our imagination, not a reality at all? If so, where did we get the idea of evil? Moreover, what name should we then give to the intentional abuse and destruction that humans perpetrate upon each other and upon God’s creation? In commenting on the more bizarre images of evil that people have conjured up repeatedly over the last 22 centuries at least, Frankfurter asked,

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Where do these images of extreme evil come from? What is the relationship of such extreme images to the popular wish to expel it so violently from our midst? Why are people’s larger anxieties and traumas expressed in these particular images, with rituals, perversions, cannibalism, and infant sacrifices—how do these kinds of scenarios come to represent evil? . . . What is the nature of the resemblance between this Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) panic, and those in history that alleged that Jews sought out Christian children for ritual sacrifice, that witches engaged in Sabbat atrocities, as well as with those I knew sprouted occasionally in the Roman Empire around Christians and other “ritual” subversives? (2008, pp. xi–xii)

In that last sentence, Frankfurter is alluding to the fact that at the rise of the Christian movement in the ancient world, Christians were often accused of cannibalism in eating the Eucharist, symbolically the body and blood of the Lord. Nonetheless, the question remains why many humans are fascinated by the sinister, the abusive, and the violent, and seem to have an automatic inclination to project (upon the unknown other) images of the bestial, sexually perverse, demonic, and amoral. Do we have an inherent inclination toward imagining the ugly and wicked possibilities of which humans are unfortunately capable? Do we fear those evils in ourselves and therefore project them on others? Is this a form of psychopathology? Most human beings live with the feeling that there is something flawed about us, but not all agree on whether our human frailty or dysfunction is something for which we should hold ourselves morally culpable. That is, many folks simply believe that to be human is to be limited in our capacity to know, understand, comprehend, acquire adequate data, and think things out thoroughly before we are required by life to act. Thus most humans, I suspect, do not hold themselves morally accountable for normal human shortcomings in fulfilling duties, maintaining relationships, or caring for oneself. That is, people do not generally blame themselves as guilty when they evidence normal human faults. When we encounter someone who does so blame himself or herself for normal human frailty or flaws, we sense that they are neurotic and are too hard on themselves. In severe cases in which the neurotic anxiety, fear, guilt, or shame causes significant dysfunction in a person’s life, we all readily agree that such a person needs clinical treatment. The upshot of all this is that people generally do not think of themselves as evil, and most of the time do not think of others as evil unless those others cause intolerable discomfort, danger, or damage. Even then, we consider that evil person an exception to the rule. Some faith communities, of course, have a very negatively structured theological model with an exaggerated sense of sin, and produce in their adherents an abnormal level of fear, guilt, and shame about individual persons being inherently evil. This may be found in such communions as those that emphasize that we are all infected from

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birth with some original sin that misshapes our humanness. That seems to have been the dominant mood and perspective in certain eras of Western history, such as the Church-dominated medieval period. However, one wonders how extensively the real people, down on the ground, actually bought into that official emphasis by the official ecclesiastical powers, particularly when they observed how obscenely the popes and church officials themselves lived, compared to what they officially preached. That brings us back to the question of whether it is really a sensible question to ask whether humans are basically good or basically evil. Is that a necessary and practical issue to consider? A few humans do monstrously evil things. This happens too often to simply write it off as an occasional aberration or accident of personality dysfunction. Frankfurter makes two points in his book that are relevant to this issue. He says, first, that there really are awful evil acts humans do to each other and to the world God created. These are unacceptable and intolerable. We read about them in the newspapers daily: wanton murders, serial killers, child abductions and molestations, the slaughter of children, the sale of children and women as sex slaves, general slavery around the world, guerrilla warfare with its viciously murderous behavior, the abuse and exploitation of human beings by each other, and the like. As I sit here writing this, I am being imposed upon by a news bulletin about that wretched Dutch fellow, Joran van der Sloot, who was enmeshed in the disappearance of the student Natalee Holloway in Aruba, and has been imprisoned and indicted for killing a Peruvian beauty with a baseball bat. Only God knows how many lovely young women he and his father, the late judge, sold into sex slavery to the drug cartels in Latin America; and how many Southeast Asian women they murdered or sold into slavery there. What the law enforcement network does know is that they were active in all these areas doing approximately the same demonic things, whatever those will ultimately be proven to be. Moreover, the operation of sex slavery networks based in the Netherlands has been rumored for a number of decades. As Frankfurter declares in his title, evil does seem to be incarnate in some human beings. The story of that van der Sloot family illustrates the extent of the depravity and wanton evil that humans can perpetrate. Frankfurter’s second point is that even when and where there are no such evils being perpetrated, there are often people, even communities of people, who project images of evil that in turn infect the cultural imagination. Throughout “history people keep conjuring horrific conspiracies at the hands of infanticidal, licentious, cannibalistic, devil-worshipping cults,” for example (Frankfurter, 2008, p. xiii). Frankfurter asks where such images come from and why humans everywhere are always fascinated by such ideas. Why was Disney Enterprises in financial trouble until they began to produce children’s videos that reek of violence and abusive behavior? Why do as

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many or more adults seek them out to watch, as children do? What can we learn from this phenomenon about the psychological or cultural construction of evil and notions of the demonic? What is the significance of the personal and cultural imagination dreamed up about supernatural and interpersonal evil? We come back to the issue. Because evil is definitively not from God or some transcendent demonic agency, is it us who are inherently infected with some original sin? Are we good or evil in nature or function, or are we ignorant and clumsy because we are underevolved? It is time for us to turn specifically to that question in all its implications. Are we then the source or locus of evil? Are we inherently evil, or are we basically good but inadvertently and thoughtlessly causing evil? Are we the problem of evil, either way? If so, is our evil function perversity or pathology—that is, are those of us who do evil maliciously evil by intention, or are they sick? Or, to repeat myself, is evil just a fiction of our imagination, not a reality at all? If so, where did we get the idea, and by what name should we call the damage people do? Let us address these questions that we have raised, one at a time. First, we get the idea of evil from a very pragmatic source. Evil is the name we give the painful experiences of the distance between the ideal world we can imagine and the really flawed world humans create. We expect Joran van der Sloot to behave like a responsible and godly gentleman. When he does maliciously destructive things, he falls short of our expectations and makes us feel pain. He inflicts pain upon, and terminates the lives of, his victims. That is so abnormal a behavior, and so unacceptable in terms of the societal values according to which we expect him, as well as the rest of us, to behave, that we justly call his behavior evil. We may even name him an evil man because his perversity seems so endogenous and perpetually repeated. Second, are we humans the locus of evil, that is, are we the problem? Clearly it is the case that all forms of empirical, phenomenological, heuristic, and rational research and analysis return us every time to the fact that evil is what humans do to each other and to God’s created world. There is reason to conclude that Mr. van der Sloot is illustrative of the paradigm in which all humans function. The spectrum of the serious flaws in our characters, of course, is very wide. It ranges all the way from (a) a thoughtless slight of attention to a tender child, to (b) infractions of thoughtlessness and carelessness like careless driving that causes an accident, to (c) the extremities of the monstrous behaviors of serial killers. Humans are the problem! Third, are we inherently evil or just ignorant and clumsy? I think it is possible to conclude, with sensible moral judgment, that most humans perpetrate only rather ordinary evil that is not viciously intrusive or horrifically damaging to themselves or others. It is a fact that we are called upon, from youth to old age, to make significant decisions every day for which we are not given adequate information. We have a limited database, at best; and we have

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greater or lesser limitations of good sense, reasonableness, and appropriate feeling about things. We are all flawed in the sense of being limited humans. However, that does not mean we are inherently evil. It means we are basically good but ignorant and clumsy. We have a divine responsibility to live ideally in God’s world, but we have only human resources with which to do that. So St. Paul laments that we all fall short of the glorious destiny that God made potentially possible for us, and that most of us can imagine and seek, but never quite achieve. Life is an experiment in trial and error toward growth. That is the way God set it up. That cannot be changed. We can only try to help each other facilitate our way through it. That does not mean we are inherently evil. It only means we are limited and underevolved. So the main issue is not that we are sinners. God forgave all that before history began and decided to embrace us all in his healing grace. The main issue is undertaking to do the best we can with what we have left, at every point in life. That is the essential question from the minute we are conceived in the womb to the moment we transit the permeable screen between time and eternity. Then we shall “see reality whole and face to face, knowing God as thoroughly as God now knows us” (I Cor. 13:12). Fourth, what about the behavior of humans that is monstrous and cannot be explained as simply caused by ignorance or clumsiness? What about serial killers and Mr. van der Sloot? Such behavior is clearly done by malicious intent and is a form of contrived damage to another human and to society. It is so aberrant in both motivation and execution, act and consequence, that there is no name to give it but willful and woeful evil—horrific destructiveness. We can call it demonic, if we mean that in the sense of a qualitative metaphor rather than an otherworldly agent or force. Are Joran van der Sloot and Jeffrey Dahmer inherently evil or sick? Is monstrous human evil pathology? As a clinical psychotherapist with 55 years of experience in treating patients, I have a theory about this. Moreover, I notice that the clinical community and the perspective of the wise ones who create and constantly revise the diagnostic manual for our profession are moving progressively toward agreement with me. It is my perception that approximately 40% of every human community, cross-culturally and cross-generationally, should be diagnosed as borderline psychotic. I consider this a description of a characterological status, not just a personality disorder, as borderline patients have historically been described. Of this 40%, approximately a third are mild, a third moderate, and a third severe. We are all acquainted with each of these categories of persons, though we do not generally have the terminology readily at hand to describe them diagnostically. Mild borderline psychotics, in my model, are those people you see in every community who seem very bright, get your attention for being particularly attractive when “on stage,” and prompt you to think that they

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will go far in life. They may be working in restaurants to support their college degree programs, but you expect a great future no matter what course they choose. You move on in your life, and then you encounter those persons again 10 years later and are stunned by the fact that they are still spinning their wheels, have gained no ground, and are still just managing to sustain life. You wonder why all the brilliance, imagination, congeniality, and social skills have not driven the person forward to greater achievement in life. It is because their concept of reality from birth onward does not align with reality. Borderline psychotics are born with a notion of reality in the back of their minds that is not synchronous with reality as normal people experience it. Consequently, they spend all their psychic energy coping with everyday life. This inborn characteristic can be traced back through a family history generation by generation. There is always an identifiable parent in each previous generation who stands out as the dysfunctional one. They are not brighter than the rest of us, but seem that way because their sense from childhood onward that life just never works for them puts them on full alert. They are using 90% of their gray matter, whereas the rest of us are coasting along on about 10% of our brain power. These folks get by in life so long as no major crisis arises. In crisis they tend to dysfunction overtly, often severely, flipping across the line into active psychosis and needing clinical treatment. Moderate borderline psychotics are more noticeable as being not quite right, though they are usually not identified in society as pathological, except by the people who must live intimately with them. All borderlines consistently have five or six characteristics that cause the rest of us to notice their being a bit strange. They are very narcissistic, somewhat paranoid, generally situation inappropriate, compulsive, incapable of putting themselves into another person’s feeling world, and incapable of standing outside themselves and critiquing themselves, so to speak. Consequently, they never are able to acknowledge that they are at fault for anything and never really apologize. Moderate borderlines are generally tolerated in society but are constantly creating crises and blaming others for them. They are constantly moderately destructive people, tending to create tension and damage in their families and eventually wearing out all their friends. In crises, they are basket cases of overt dysfunction and frequently of psychotic episodes. Severe borderline psychotics are mostly in prison or mental hospitals, or should be. They are the abusive, destructive, conscienceless epitomes of towering narcissism, chronic paranoia, constant situation inappropriateness, compulsiveness to the point of being obsessive, insensitivity to others, and exploitive behavior of everyone and everything they can touch. They really perceive, in their sick minds, that the entire world of persons and things exists for their consumption. They chew it up and spit it out, so to speak, as

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illustrated by serial killers, beastly persons like Adolf Hitler, and persons of either gender who chronically abuse their spouses and children in cruel ways. These severe borderline psychotics often bounce across the line, so to speak, into full-blown psychosis. This is the type of thing that may account for Mr. van der Sloot’s and Mr. Dahmer’s unconscionable behavior and their apparently complete lack of emotion or remorse about it. I understand that 80% of the inmates of our prison systems are severe borderline psychotics. I suspect that is typical of prisons all over the world. That is certainly the reason that rehabilitation in our prisons has such a poor outcome record. These people cannot be changed. They can only be controlled by medication, and forced medication is not possible in our democracy. We must find a solution to that, or we will continue to have societies with monstrous evil perpetrated by the severe borderline psychotics. Fifth, evil is not a fiction of our imagination. It is real, and we should always name it boldly for what it is. However, at least 60% of the human race, though flawed or limited, does not perpetrate what should properly be referred to as evil. Of the other 40%, at least a third do not do much evil, though they can be surprisingly thoughtless and neglectful. Evil is a distinct, identifiable, and chronically evident phenomenon in every society and is a product of a structural flaw in the genetic roots of moderate and severe borderline psychotics. It is high time that society addresses this issue and stops wasting time and treasure on the notion that evil is a product of environments. Bad environments must be corrected. Every human has an inherent right to live decently. However, we will never get gains on the problem of evil until we face the fact that the people who do monstrous things, whether in bad environments or good ones, are sick (i.e., crazy) and must be identified early, constrained, and medicated—for their own good and the good of the rest of us. In Volume 2, Chapter 4 of this set of volumes, Cassandra Klyman, MD, addresses some of the medical and biochemical issues related to this genetically inherited problem as they show up already in children. Perpetuating dumb notions that all humans are evil or that evil derives from original sin is, in itself, a kind of sin against the human race. Let’s get rid of such useless and unreal ideas.

REFERENCES Boccaccini, G. (1998). Beyond the Essene hypothesis: The parting of the ways between Qumran and Enochic Judaism. Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans. Frankfurter, D. (2008). Evil incarnate: Rumors of demonic conspiracy and satanic abuse in history. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Index

abandonment, 256 Abrahamic faiths, 113 Abu Ghraib detention center, 67 abuse, evil of, 257 acquisitive drive, 286 Adam, 81; demonic family, 150–152 Adams, Samuel, 276 addiction, 66 Addie, 258–259; experience of, 260 Adler, 243 adolescence, 87, 240 adolescents grief, 250 adult narcissism, 240–241; symptoms of, 242–249 afterlife, 4 Agave, Queen, 57 agency, sense of, 52–53 aggression, 35, 284, 273; in authoritarian tradition, 24; biographical sources of, 273–274 Aha, R., 148 Ahaziah, King, 25 Ahura-Mazda, 7 Ainsworth, M. D. S., 244 Akiba, R., 147, 148 Alcoholics Anonymous, 42, 302 Alexander, Philip, 122, 128

Alexander the Great, 169, 266, 276 Alighieri, Dante, 287 Allen, Diogenes, 263 American Revolution, 276 Amram, 132 amulet, 154–155 anal stage of development, 246 ancient Rome, 267 angel (mal’a¯ k), in the dead sea scroll, 130–131 Angel of Darkness (mal’a¯ k ha- ․hošek), 129, 132–133 anti-Christ, 109 antiquity, evil during, 35, 36 anti-Semitism, 17, 18 antisocial personality disorder (APD), 242 anxiety, 83 apocalypticism, 35, 42 Aquinas, Thomas, 3, 297, 310 Aramaic Levi Document, 134 Aramaic texts, 122, 123 archetypal images, 285 Ardrey, Robert, 273 Arendt, Hannah, 20, 219 Arimanios, Pharisee, 201, 205 Aristotle, 310

324

Index

Armageddon, 285 ‘Asa’el, 123, 131 asceticism, 208, 210 Asmodaeus, 126 Asperger’s disorder, 183 Atman project, 287, 288 atomic test, first, 285 attaching and detaching cycle in conscious awareness, 248 attachment, 239, 242 Augustine, 2–3, 186, 310 Auschwitz, 310 Authoritarian Personality, The, 19–20, 28 authoritarian personality tradition, 16–19 auto-projecting, 287 autos-da-fé, 267 Avkir, Midrash, 150 Avot, Pirkei, 153, 160n6 awareness and recognition of evil, 223–225, 232–233 awareness movement, 248 axis of evil, 285 Aztec, 267 Baba Bathra, 147, 149 Babylon, 6 Babylonian Talmud, 7 Bacchae, The, 57–59 Bache, Christopher, 283 Bacon, Francis, 272 bad environments, 322 Balaam story, 307 Balousek, William, 178 banality of evil, 20, 219 baptism, 97, 201; in SBJ, 201 basic perinatal matrices (BPMs), 274–275 Basilides, 199 Bastiaans, A., 282 Bautch, Kelly Coblentz, 123 beauty to grieving and sadness, 251 Becker, Hans, 220, 221–222 Becker, Judith, 181 Beelzebub, 25, 307 being, threat to, 39 Belgic Confession, 315 Belial, 128, 134–139 believing church, 97 Ben Sira, 151 Bible, 8–9, 152, 156, 170, 233

Bible-believing church, 97 biblical philosophical framework, 229–232. See also film biblical theology of evil, 79–92; God, saying no and yes to, 84–90; image of God, 90–92 bin Laden, Osama, 277 biographical determinants of insatiable greed, 285–286 biographical sources of aggression, 273–274 birth fantasy, 281 birth trauma, 283 Blaomen, 207 blood sacrifice, 102 bodily resurrection, 96 body–ego, 272 Book of Giants, 123, 125 Book of Job, 295 Book of Jubilees, 125–126, 129, 130, 133, 134, 136–137, 138 Book of Revelation, 308 Book of Tobit, 125 Book of Watchers, 123, 125, 126, 131 borderline personality disorder (BPC), 242 borderline psychotics, 321–322 born guilty, 102 Bowlby, J., 244 brain systems, ancient, 53 Bravo, Benedetto, 33 Bubble Boy (David Vetter) Case, 114–120 Buddhism, 35; Tibetan (Mahayana) Buddhism, 270–271, 285 burial cave, Ketef Hinnom, 154 Burke, Edmund, 3 Bush, George W., 285 Butterworth, G. W., 185 California F Scale, 18 Calvin, John, 186, 231, 233, 233, 315 cannibalism, 173, 317 Canons of Dordrecht, 315 Capps, Donald, 184, 188 catecholamines, 284 categories of evil, 10 Chalcedonian creed, 204 Chinitz, J., 231, 232 Christendom, 310

Index Christianity, 2, 3–4, 41–42 , 168, 184, 185, 196–197, 206, 248, 309, 314, 316, Christian Reformed Church (CRC), 315 Christology, 204 Cicero, M. T., 38–39 civil associations, 57 Clementine Homilies, 310 Clement of Alexandria, 199, 202, 310 Cohn, Carol, 277–279, 285 “collective shadow,” 303, 304 collective unconscious, 274, 283, 284, 289, 300 collective violence, 283 Collins, J. J., 123 colonialism, 267 Columbanus, 36–37, 38, 45, 47, 48 Communism, 274, 281–282 concentration camps, 282–283 concentration camp syndrome, 282 confession, 302 congregation, 94, 95 conscious awareness, attaching and detaching cycle in, 248 consciousness, 112, 220, 272, 282, 284, 286 conservatism, 17, 18 content of belief, 23 Coppola, Francis Ford, 221–222, 226 cosmic evil, 99 cosmic unity, 289 Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New Worldview, 280 cosmos as a mechanical system, 271 Count Dracula, 220 Cousteau, Jacques, 89 crazies, 103 “created order, the,” 40, 41 Cuban missile crisis, 276 Cyrus the Great, 6 Dahmer, Lionel, 172, 174; background information, 174; deadly sin, 188–190; as falling away, 186–188; sick/evil, 179–181 Dallmayr, Fred, 37, 40 Damascus Document, 128, 130, 135 David, King, 155 Davis, D., 177–178 Dawkins, Richard, 273 Day of Atonement, 156, 160n9 Deadly Sins and Saving Virtues, 188

325

Dead Sea Scrolls, 121, 123, 131, 315; angel (mal’¯ak), 130–131; chief demonic beings: Angel of Darkness (mal’¯ak ha-․hošek), 132–133, Mastema and Belial, 134–139, Melki-reša‘, 132, Satan (sa․tan), 133–134; complex nature of, 122; demon (š¯ed), 125–127; spirit (rua․h), 127–130 death of children, 100 defaming, 152 defense intellectuals (DIs), 277 defining evil, 98–99, 255–257 deindividuation, 51, 56 de Mause, Lloyd, 275–276, 279, 280 Demon (š¯ed), in the Dead Sea Scroll, 125–127; association with idolatry, 126 demonic origins in the Enochic tradition, 122–125 demonic powers, 122, 320 demonology, 150 demons, 39–40, 124; form, 165 depersonalization, 51, 54, 55; biology of, 59–61; process of, 56 depression, 249, 250 desire, 35 despair, 250 des Près, Terence, 283 destructive hostility, 181 destructive power of nature, 99 Deuteronomy, 126, 160n7, 200, 232 devil, 307, 309 Dionysus, 57, 58 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition. See DSM-IV disasters, 99 discipleship, 97, 104 discrimination, 18 disobedience, 20–21, 81 Divine Presence, 95 divine responsibility, 320 doctrine of two inclinations, 146 dogmatism, 23 doomsday scenarios, 267–269 “doubling,” 67 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 302 DSM-IV, 242; DSM-IV-TR, 183 dualism, 200 dualistic type of myth, 305 dying: of AIDS, 101; in infancy, 102 Dykstra, Robert, 186

326 dysfunctional patterns in sexual relationships, 286 earthquake in Haiti, 99 economic conservatism, 17 ecstasy, 59 Edwards, Tracy, 173, 178 ego, 301, 305 Eichmann, Adolf, 219 Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, 20 Eliade, Mircea, 310 Elijah, 25 Ellens, J. Harold, 100 Elohim, 5, 79, 80, 200 emotional problems, 291 empathy, 55 Encyclopedia Britannica, 2 endorphins, 284 enlightenment, 302 1 Enoch, 123, 126 Enochic Essenes, 315 Enochic tradition, 123–126, 138, 315; demonic origins in, 122–125; etiology, 124 enterprise associations, 57 entire church, 94 envy, 245 Ephememphi, 207 Epistle of Enoch, 126 Eranos Conference, 310 Erikson, Erik, 243; life cycle stages, 188 Eshel, Esther, 123 Essenes, 3, 315 essential goodness, of creation, 99–100; of the human body, 100–101 Essex, Lord, 34 ethical discussion, 115 ethical question, 113 ethics, 111 ethnocentrism, 17 evangelicalism, 3 Evans, Donald Leroy, 172 Evil: The Shadow Side of Reality, 295 evil discourse, critiques, 190–191 evil eye, 153–154 Evil Incarnate, 314 evil inclination, 146 evil speech, 152–153

Index evolution, 86–87 evolutionary nonviolence, 24–26 “evolutionary preadaptation,” 25 “executive self ”; biological and cognitive roots of, 54–56 existentialists, 287 Exodus, 64–77, 136, 147 exorcism, 40, 124 Exorcist, The, 218 expansionism, 267 experience of evil, 255 experiential knowledge, 272 experiential psychotherapies, 274, 288 experiential self-exploration, 286–287, 288 extrinsic religiosity, 24 Faces of the Enemy, The, 279 faith, 95, 234 faith communities, 260, 317 fallen angels, 125–126, 129 fallen nature of man, 233 fallen persons, 163 Farnsworth, K., 234 fascism, 18 Faust, 298, 301 fearlessness of the truth, 96–97 Fenichel, O., 244, 245, 249 Ferrari, Michelle, 181, 183 fetishistic behavior, 184 fiction, and evil, 322 film, 217; exploring evil in, 218; value in portraying evil, 219–220 First Principle, 203, 209 Flat Earth Society, 106 Fletcher, Joseph, 115 following church, 97 formula of subscription, 315 4QBerakot, 129 4QCatena A, 128 4QPseudo-Ezekiel, 125 Fox, George, 97 France, Anatole, 44 Frankfurter, David, 314, 316–318 freedom, 10–11, 70, 74–75, 170 Freeland, 218 free will, 50, 54, 55, 69, 232, 233 “free will skepticism,” 54

Index Freud, Sigmund, 44, 164, 172, 244, 246, 272, 285–286, 298, 299; superego, 280; unconscious, 284 Fritz Kunkel: Selected Writings, 304 frustrations, 274, 286 fundamental attribution error (FAE), 15 fundamentalism, 3, 23, 42 Funny Games ( film), 219, 224, 229 Furlong, Monica, 94 future, 106–107 Gandhi, M. K. (Mahatma), 26, 27 Genesis, 80, 81, 85, 87, 123, 231 genesis of evil, 69 Genesis Rabbah, 148, 151 genocide, 16 Gentiles, 126, 129 genuine sadness, 251 gnosis, 201 Gnosticism, 196; diversity of, 211n5; dualism of, 200; in general, 199–202; and salvation, 201, 206 God, 2, 98; absolute, 210; grace, 95, 96, 164, 316; image in fallen humanity, 90–92; integrity of, 91; perspective of elemental freedom, 10–11; saying no and yes to, 84–90; and source of evil, 162 God and Father of all, 210 Godfather, The, 222, 227 God in Search of Man, 156 “godless theory” of evolution, 96 Goethe’s Faust, 298, 301 Goldberg, Carl, 193 Gomorrah, 67 good and bad groups, 56–58 Gospel of John, 316 Grace, K. M., 218 Great Flood, 123 greed, in human history, 266 Greek model of human nature, 168 Greeks, 162, 164, 167 grief, 249–250 Grieg, Edvard, 221 Gulag Archipelago, 267, 275 “Hades,” 4–5, 8 HaDin, Tzidduk, 148 hamsa, 155

327

Haneke, Michael, 219, 224 Harnack, Adolf von, 197, 212n9 Hashanah, Rosh, 155 Hashkivenu, 159n3 Hauerwas, Stanley, 110, 111 haunting memory, 254 heaven, 9 Heavenly Father, 95, 101 Hebrew Bible (Old Testament, or OT), 4–5, 79, 145, 149, 155, 162, 163 Hebrew texts, 127–129 hell, 4, 8–9 Hellenistic culture, 122 Hellenistic-Jewish mythology, 307 Hellenistic Judaism, 163, 168 Heracleon, 199 Hercules, 5 Herodotus, 33 Herzog, Werner, 220 Heschel, Abraham J., 156 High Holidays prayer book (Mahzor), 150 High Holy Days prayer book, 155 Hillel, Rabbi, 113 Hillel, Sage, 157 Hillman, James, 284 Hinneni prayer, 150 Hiroshima, 277, 278 Hitler, Adolf, 109, 276, 285, 322 Ho, Khang-Cheng, 181 Hodayot, 128 Hollander, H. P., 28 Holloway, Natalee, 318 Holocaust, 16, 17, 19–20, 22, 255, 267 holotropic states: of consciousness, 266, 269, 288; for psychology of survival, 289–292 Holy Spirit, 231 Hood, R. W., 248 Hoorn, J. F., 218 House of Dolls, 282 howlers, 124 human destructiveness, anatomy of, 273 human development, 85–86 human greed, 267. See also greed, in human history humanity, 124 human moral cognition, 52 human nature, evil as, 36 human propensity to aggression, 273

328 human sources of evil, 164 human suffering, 162–163, 170 human unintentional or willful dysfunction, 162 Hunter, Kathryn Montgomery, 110 Hussein, Saddam, 285 hyenas, 124 hymnic exorcism, 138 “Hymn of the Savior,” 208 iconoclasm, 43 idealism, 16, 17 ignorance, 272 illnesses, 101; ancient Israelites’ understanding, 162–163 indirect slander, 152 individuation, 300 industrial pollution, 268 infallibility of scripture, 96 infant grief, 250 infantile omnipotence, 244 inheritance, 59 inner driving force, 222 inquisition, 267 insatiable greed, 287. See also greed, in human history; perinatal sources of, 286–287; transpersonal causes of, 287–288 insatiable human, 285 insatiable sexual appetite, 286 instinctive, 146 insurance plan, 103 integrity, 91 intellectual history of humanity, 268 interactional model of evil, 15, 16, 22–29 internecine warfare, 302 interpersonal relationships, 270 Interpretation of Dreams, The, 299 interpreter of the Christian Scriptures, 316 interpret scripture in a positively critical manner, 98 In the Hall of the Mountain King, 221 intrinsic religiosity, 24 Ioko, 207 Irenaeus of Lyon, 197, 199, 212n12, 310 Iron Curtain, 303 Isaac, son of Abraham, 136 Isaac, Rabbi, 150

Index Islam, 2 Israelites, 6–7 Israelites, ancient, 79 jackals, 124 Jackson, Cardinal, 110–113 Jacobson, Bertil, 284 Jaeger, Richard, 178 James, William, 2 Jentzen, J., 181, 182 Jesus Christ, 8, 25, 41, 73–74, 98, 102, 104–105, 165, 307–308 Jesus-following church, 97 jewelry, 155 Jews, 3, 7, 17, 18, 22, 29, 122, 126, 137, 155, 204, 210 Johanan, R., 147 John’s Gospel, 9, 77, 165–166 Johnson, Elizabeth M., 110, 111 Johnson, R., 247–248 Johnson, Samuel, 3 Johnson, Thomas, 181 Jonas, Hans, 208 Journal of the American Medical Association, 119 Juan, 260–261; experience of, 261–262 Judaism, 2, 7, 80, 122, 197, 315 Judeo-Christian tradition, 25 Jung, Carl G., 190, 284, 294; ontology of evil, 309–312; three faces of evil in the life and thought of, 295 Jungian psychology, 14 kapos, 282, 283 Ka-Tzetnik 135633, 282 Keen, Sam, 279 Kennedy, John F., 276 Kernberg, O. F., 245–246 Ketef Hinnom, 154 Khan, Genghis, 267 Khirbet Qumran, 121 Khomeini, Ayatollah, 285 Khrushchev, Nikita, 276 Kierkegaard, Soren, 247 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 26–27 Kippur, Yom, 155, 156, 160n9 Kister, M., 123 Klauck, H. J., 202 Klein, M., 245

Index knowledge of God, 233 Kohut, Heinz, 246 Konijn, E. A., 218 Krafft-Ebing, 298 Kunkel, Fritz, 304 Kurusu, 276 Lakish, Resh, 149 Lang, Fritz, 219, 227 Lange, Armin, 134, 138 Langford, Tom, 116 Lasch, Christopher, 248 lashon ha-ra, 152 latency child, 239–240 Layne, Scott, 24 Layton, B., 200 Lecter, Hannibal, 192 Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 2 Leong, Gregory, 181, 183 libertinism, 208 Lifton, Robert J., 67 Lilith, 124, 150–151 limbic-neurohumoral systems, 53 limbo, 102 locus of evil, 319 Logos, 169 Lorenz, Konrad, 273 love, 40 Lowen, 246–247 LSD therapy, 282 Luke-Acts, 165 lust, 189 Lyons, W. J., 123 M (film), 219–223 MacLean, Paul, 273 Mahayana Buddhism, 270 Maier, G., 190 Main, Robert, 116 Malcolm X, 26–27 malignant aggression, 274, 285 mamzerim, 124 Manichaean, 124 Manichaeanism, 168 Marcion heresy, 25 Mark, 165, 231, 232, 306, 311 Maslow, A., 243 mass-mindedness, 303 mass murders, 16, 68

329

Mastema, 129, 133, 134–139 masturbation, 173 material world, 169 Matthew, 165, 229 maturity, 85, 252 McKenna, Terence, 290 means and ends, 23–24, 28–29 media coverage of evil, 218, 235. See also film meeting of needs, 239 Meir, R., 147, 148, 151 Melki-reša‘, 132 Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 296 Mesoamerica, 267 Metzger, Bruce, 97 mezuzah, 154, 160n7 Michael, Archangel, 308 Middle Platonist, 169 Midrash, 159n4 Midrash Numbers, 150 Milgram, Stanley: obedience experiments, 19–22 military groups, and obedience, 57 Mills, Stephen H., 110, 273 Milton, J., 220, 223 Minister as Diagnostician, The, 173 miraculous soul, 37–38, 41 Mishnah, 145, 149, 153, 157 misjudgment, 110 mixtum compositum, 125 modern consciousness research, 287 modern science, 269 Monaco, J., 217 monistic materialism, 271 Montgomery, John, 115 moral choices, 232 moral cognition, 53 moral evil, 217, 255 morality, neuroscience of, 51–54 moral sentiments, 53 Morris, Desmond, 273 Moses, 136 Mount Athos, 134 murders, 16, 19, 172, 176, 189, 228, 273, 318 Murphy, Mary, 116, 119 myth, 82 mythic depictions of evil, types, 305

330

Index

Nag Hammadi texts, 197, 199 Napoleon, 276 Napoleonic wars, 267 narcissism, 237; classic psychoanalytic theory, 244–245; contemporary psychoanalytic theory, 245–247; developmental literature, 243–244; natural and healthy, 238–242; resolution of, 249–252; as separation from god, theological analogy, 247–249 narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), 242 “narcissistic wound,” 246 natural disasters, 101; imperialist attitude towards, 11–12 natural evil, 99, 217, 255 natural law, 50–51 natural order, 99 Nazi Germany, 16, 18, 267, 274 necrophilia, 173 neglect, 240 neighbor, 105–106 Nenentophni, 207 Neo-Platonism, 168, 169 Nephilim, 124 neurohumoral attachment–aversion systems, 53 New Testament (NT), 156, 162, 165, 169–170, 200, 307 Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm, 271 Nicene creed, 204 Nobel Peace Prize, 27–28 No Country for Old Men, 210–211 nonviolence, 24–27, 29–30; evolutionary, 24–26 Norden, M. F., 218 Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), 220, 221, 228 nous, 164 nuclear warfare and birth, 277 Numbers, 138 Obama, Barack, 27 obedience, 20–22, 28, 57 oceanic feeling of primary narcissism, 244 Odent, Michel, 284 Oedipus Rex, 48

offenses, 155 Old Testament. See Hebrew Bible omnipotence, 245 150 volt solution, 21, 22 On First Principles, 173 Oppenheimer, Robert, 285 Origen, 310; ontology, 184–186; theology, 193 original sin, 96, 101 origin of the evil, 255–256 origins of our world, 96–97 overcoming church, 93–94 overcoming evil, 94, 98 overindulgence, 286 oxytocin, 284 Pagels, E., 213n18 pain, 73, 88, 170 Palermo, George, 181 Paradise Lost, 220–221 Parsons, Talcott, 42 pastors, 93, 99, 173 pathological narcissism, 248 patriotism, 17 Paul the Apostle, 9, 82, 93, 106, 163, 201, 316, 320; Greek worldview, 164; Paul’s letters, 162; theology, 166–168 Pearl Harbor, 276 Pentateuch, 200 Pentecostal faith, 263 Pentheus, King, 57, 58 perinatal experiences, 283 perinatal level of the unconscious, 289 perinatal roots of violence, 274 perinatal sources of insatiable greed, 286–287 personal model of evil, 15 pervasive and undying nature of evil, 220, 230–232 Pharisee, 168 Piaget, Jean, 243 Plague, The, 48 plan of salvation, 104 Plato, 199 Platonism, 168, 214n26 Plotinus, 168–169 political conservatism, 17 Polysymptomatic neuroses, 245 porphyry, 168

Index positive narcissism, 238 possibility thinking, 95 practical knowledge and transcendental wisdom, 271–273 Prague, 281 “Prayer of Deliverance,” 129, 133 prejudice, 18 Presbyterian congregations, 95 preschool child grief, 250 Priestly, 200 primary narcissism, 244, 250–251 primordial persons, 163 “prince of darkness,” 6 Prince of Lights, 129 privatio boni, 310 projected omnipotence, 245 projection, 302 prolactin, 284 proto-Ya ․had texts, 137 Pruyser, Paul, 173, 191 Psalm, 126 Pseudo-Daniel, 126 Pseudo-Dionysius, 212n10 Pseudo-Jubilees, 135, 136 psyche, 164, 241, 279, 284, 287, 35, 36 psychedelics, 279 psychoanalysis, 272 psychobiology of evil, 50–61; Bacchae, The, 58–59; depersonalization: biology of, 59–61, process of, 56; “executive self,” 54–56; good and bad groups, 56–58; neuroscience of morality, 51–54; and The Self, 54 psychological diagnosis, 181–184 psychological theories, 230 psychology, 13–30, 65; authoritarian personality tradition, 16–19; interactional model of evil, 15, 16, 22–29, evolutionary nonviolence, 24–26, King, Martin Luther, Jr., 26–27, Malcolm X, 26–27, means and ends, 23–24, 28–29, Nobel Peace Prize, 27–28, obedience, 28, Rokeach and dogmatism, 23; Milgram obedience experiments, 19–22; Nazi Germany, 16; nonviolence, 29–30; personal model of evil, 15; situational model of evil, 15, 16 psychopath, 15; and empathy, 55

331

psychopathology, 280 psychospiritual death, 289 psychospiritual roots of global crisis, 269–270 psychospiritual transformation, 270 punishment of evil, 123–124 Puritans, 309 Quakers, 26, 29–30 Qumran, 132, 315 Qumran community (Ya’ad), 122 Rabbinic Judaism, 7 rabbis, 146–148, 159n2 race, 111 racism, 257 radical cynicism, 295 radical dualism, 200, 308; of Gnosticism, 208 radical grace, 106 radical hospitality, 95 radical intellectual, 291 radical psychospiritual transformation of humanity, 269 ransom theory, 309 Reagan, Ronald, 285 Realms of the Human Unconscious, 275 real transcendence, 288 real-world knowledge, 218 rebirth, 289 redemption, 206 redemptive response, 260 regeneration of the soul by Christ, 231 regressive experiences, 275 Reich, Wilhelm, 247 Reimer, A. M., 123 reincarnation, 185 relational, evil as, 256–257 religious conversion, 43 Religious Orientation Scale, 24 repentance, 155–156 repression, 47, 301 resistance to evil, 44 response to evil, 225–228, 233–234 Restoration Stela, 45 revolution, 280, 281 Rice, Condoleezza, 277 “right wing” phenomenon, 18, 19 Rokeach, Milton: and dogmatism, 23

332

Index

Romans, 170 Roosevelt, F. D., 276 Rudolph, Kurt, 209 Rumi (poet), 288 Rwanda, 310 sacrifice, 102 sadism, 16–17, 182–183 sadness, 250 salvation, 101, 103, 104 Sanford, John A., 294, 300–301; on Jung, evil, and shadow side of reality, 304–309; ontology of evil, 309–312 sarx, 164 Satan (sa ․tan), 5, 70, 133–134, 148–150, 233, 306–307 satisfaction theory, 310 satyagraha, 26 Savior, 198, 201 Schiedermayer, David, 110 school-aged child grief, 250 Schwartz, Ann, 174, 175 Schweitzer, Albert, 12 second coming of Christ, 96, 103–107 Second Opinion, 110 Second Temple period, 3, 80, 122 Secret Gospel According to John (SBJ; Apocryphon of John), 196; evil in, 202–210; poem of deliverance, 209 sectarian context, 122, 128–129, 137 secularization, 46 selective interpretation of scripture, 101 Seleucids, 122 Self, The, 54, 105, 305. See also “executive self ” self-/soul-construction, 50 self-actualization, 163 self-destructive behavior, 284, 292 self-exploration, 279, 283, 287, 291 selfish genes, 273 selfishness, and narcissism, 238 self-knowledge, 233, 302 self-realization, 163 self-transcendence, 59–60 sense of agency, 52–53 Serek ha-Mil ․hamah, 128, 130, 138 Serek ha-Ya ․had, 128, 135, 138 serial killers, 172, 190–193, 322 Sermon on the Mount, 307

seven deadly sins, 188–189 severe combined immune deficiency syndrome (SCID), 114 sex slavery, 318 sexual abuse, 67 sexual experiences and behaviors, 290 sexual impulse, freeing of, 290 sexual repression, lifting of, 290 sexual violence, 280 Shackleton, Ernest, 108 shadow, 190, 219–220, 227, 279–280, 294, 297, 300–305, 309, 311 Sharon Tate murders by the Manson family, 273 Shemi ․hazah, 131 Sheol, 4–5, 8 Shivitti, 282 Silva, Arturo, 181, 183 Simeon b. Lakish, R., 146 situational model of evil, 15, 16 slander, 152–153 social psychology, and evil, 14–22 sociology of evil, 33–48 sociopaths, 16, 55 Socrates, 164 Sodom, 67 soma, 164 Sommer, Michael, 24 Songs of the Maskil, 124–125, 129, 138 “sons of God,” 5 “sons of heaven,” 131 Sophia, 204 “soul murder,” 48 souls, 185; fall away, 186; miraculous, 37–38, 41 South, Mary Ann, 118–119 Spinelli, E., 227, 230 spirit (rua ․h), in the Dead Sea Scroll, 127–130 Spirit, 95, 98, 104 spirit of goodness, 94 spiritual and theological responses to evil, 262–264 spiritual discovery, 289 spiritual freedom, 70 Spiritual intelligence, 270 spirituality, 65 spiritual resistance, implications for, 264 spiritual symbolism, 285

Index SS, 283 Stalin, J., 267 Star of David, 155 Stevenson, Robert Lewis, 302 Stoicism, 2, 35 Stormo, Alan, 181 strategic doctrine, 285 stress, 83–84 Stuckenbruck, Loren, 35–36 substitutionary atonement, 96, 101 substitutionary theory, 310 suffering, 73, 162 suicide, 283 Sunrise Over Hell, 282 superstitious gibberish, 99 surviving church, 93, 94 Survivor, The, 283 Svendsen, Lars, 68 Synoptic Gospels, 165 synthetic type of myth, 306 systemic evil, 257, 262 taboos, 44 Talmud, 145–147, 149, 150, 152, 153, 159n1, 232 Tamerlane, 267 Tares, 307 Tarnas, Richard, 280 technologies, of sacred and human survival, 288–289 Tefillin, 154, 160n8 Teggatz, John Judith, 181 Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI), 59–61 Terrible Love of War, A, 284 Tertullian, 199, 204 Testament of Levi, 134 Testament of Solomon, 126, 150–151, 160n5 Textbook on Psychiatry, 298 theological diagnosis, 184–185, 191–192 Thessalonians, 106 third atonement theory of Anselm, 310 Third Reich, 295, 302 Thirty-One Hours: The Grindstone Experiment, 29 threatened egoism, 16, 17 Tibetan Buddhism, 285; three poisons of, 270–271 Tillich, 109, 113

333

Timaeus, 199, 203 time, passage of, 33–34, 45 Timothy, 66 Tinbergen, Nikolaas, 273 Tithecott, Richard, 174, 190 Titus, 66 toddler grief, 250 Torah, 145–146, 153, 155 Torrance, 248 Tosefta Sha Mas, 149 transcendental wisdom, 272 transcendental wisdom and practical knowledge, 271–273 transpersonal, 274 transpersonal causes of insatiable greed, 287–288 transpersonal origins of violence, 284–288 transpersonal psychology, 269 traumas, 274 traumatic disappointments, 246 Treatise on the Two Spirits, 129–, 130, 132 Trojan War, 33 true grief, 251 true identity, 288 Truman, Harry, 81 Tutankhamen, 45 understanding of infancy, 239 uneasiness, 261 unflinching monotheism, 306 universal recognition of evil, 306 unlimited growth, 269 unmotivated violence, 280 Valentinus, 199 van der Sloot, Joran, 318–319 Vedanta Hinduism, 2 “vexing problem” of evil, 295 victory theory, 310 Vinson, Steve, 44–45 violence, 24; in human history, 266; perinatal roots of, 274; transpersonal origins of, 284–288 virginal conception or birth, 96 Virgin Mary, 102 Visions of Amram, 132 voxel analysis, 60

334 war, 280 war superego, 280 Watson, P. J., 248 weapons of mass destruction, 24 Wecowski, Marek, 33 Western Judeo-Christian, 164 Wheel of Life, 270–271 Whitmont, Edward C., 300 whole persons, 163 Wilber, Ken, 287 Wilhelm, Kaiser, II, 276 Williams, Daniel Day, 256, 263 Wilson, Rafael, 114 women, 97–98 Words of the Luminaries, 133

Index World War I, 267 World War II, 267 worship, 95 Wright, Archie, 123 Ya ․had, 129 Yahweh, 6, 7, 25, 26, 79, 81 Yahwist, 200 Yaldaboath, 205–206, 210 Yermiyah b. El’azar, R., 151 ye ․zer ha-ra, 146 Zoroastrian apocalypticism, 169 Zoroastrianism, 3, 6, 7, 8, 168, 316

About the Editor and Advisers

EDITOR J. Harold Ellens, PhD, is a research scholar, a retired Presbyterian theologian and ordained minister, a retired U.S. Army colonel, and a retired professor of philosophy, theology and psychology. He has authored, coauthored and/ or edited 185 books and 167 professional journal articles. He served 15 years as executive director of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies, and as founding editor and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Psychology and Christianity. He holds a PhD from Wayne State University in the Psychology of Human Communication, a PhD from the University of Michigan in Biblical and Near Eastern Studies, and master’s degrees from Calvin Theological Seminary, Princeton Theological Seminary, and the University of Michigan. He was born in Michigan, grew up in a Dutch-German immigrant community, and determined at age seven to enter the Christian Ministry as a means to help his people with the great amount of suffering he perceived all around him during the Great Depression and WWII. His life’s work has focused on the interface of psychology and religion.

ADVISERS Donald Capps, PhD and Psychologist of Religion, is Emeritus William Hart Felmeth Professor of Pastoral Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. In 1989 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Uppsala, Sweden, in recognition of the importance of his publications.

336

About the Editor and Advisers

He served as president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion from 1990 to 1992. Among his many significant books are Men, Religion and Melancholia: James, Otto, Jung and Erikson and Freud; also The Freudians on Religion: A Reader; also Social Phobia: Alleviating Anxiety in an Age of SelfPromotion; and Jesus: A Psychological Biography. He also authored The Child’s Song: The Religious Abuse of Children, and Jesus, the Village Psychiatrist. Zenon Lotufo Jr., PhD, is a Presbyterian minister (Independent Presbyterian Church of Brazil), a philosopher and a psychotherapist, specializing in Transactional Analysis. He has lectured both to undergraduate and graduate courses in universities in São Paulo, Brazil. He coordinates the course of specialization in Pastoral Psychology of the Christian Psychologists and Psychiatrists Association. He is the author of the books Relações Humanas [Human Relations]; Disfunções no Comportamento Organizacional [Dysfunctions in Organizational Behavior] and co-author of O Potencial Humano [Human Potential]. He has also authored numerous journal articles. Dirk Odendaal, DLitt, is South African, born in what is now called the Province of the Eastern Cape. He spent much of his youth in the Transkei in the town of Umtata, where his parents were teachers at a seminary. He trained as a minister at the Stellenbosch Seminary for the Dutch Reformed Church and was ordained in 1983 in the Dutch Reformed Church in Southern Africa. He transferred to East London in 1988 to minister to members of the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa in one of the huge suburbs for Xhosaspeaking people. He received his doctorate (D.Litt.) in 1992 at the University of Port Elizabeth in Semitic Languages and a Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology at Rhodes University. Wayne G. Rollins, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at Assumption College, Worcester, Massachusetts, and Adjunct Professor of Scripture at Hartford Seminary, Hartford, Connecticut. His writings include The Gospels: Portraits of Christ (1964), Jung and the Bible (1983), and Soul and Psyche, The Bible in Psychological Perspective (1999). He received his PhD in New Testament Studies from Yale University and is the founder and chairman (1990–2000) of the Society of Biblical Literature Section on Psychology and Biblical Studies.

About the Contributors

Deb Brock, MDiv, PhD, is a clinical psychologist practicing in Madison, Wisconsin, together with her psychologist husband, Ron Johnson, a practice they have had together for 30 years. Dr. Brock’s background includes both theological and psychological study in addition to advanced study in EMDR, gestalt, focusing, and other forms of therapy. Her interests center around resolution of trauma and integration of the disciplines of psychology, philosophy, and theology. She has published in the Journal of Psychology and Christianity and elsewhere. Paul M. Butler, MTS, is a MD–PhD candidate completing his dissertation research under the guidance of Dr. Patrick McNamara at Boston University School of Medicine. His research covers a diverse array of topics. A recent publication assesses religious semantic network activation in patients with Parkinson’s disease. The work highlights the importance of right fronto-striatal networks to sustain religious cognition. Forthcoming publications investigate the role of dopamine 4 receptor (DRD4) polymorphisms and novelty-seeking behavior in human migration patterns out of Africa in the Late Pleistocene, epigenetics and Parkinson’s disease susceptibility, a genetically testable diagnosis for the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, a medical biography of Henry Ingersoll Bowditch, and explorations of the self in religious cognition. Nathan Carlin, PhD, is an assistant professor in the John P. McGovern, M.D. Center for Humanities and Ethics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. He also holds an appointment in the Department

338

About the Contributors

of Family Medicine in the University of Texas Medical School at Houston. Dr. Carlin, the son of a steel mill worker, grew up in Western Pennsylvania, some 30 miles north of Pittsburgh. He graduated with college honors in history from Westminster College in New Wilmington, PA; he holds a master of divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, NJ, where he concentrated on pastoral theology; and he holds master of arts and doctor of philosophy degrees in religious studies, with a specialization in psychology of religion, from Rice University in Houston, TX. Carlin has published over 40 essays and numerous book reviews. He serves as book review editor for Pastoral Psychology, a leading and historic journal in the fields of psychology of religion and pastoral care, and he also serves as subeditor for Religious Studies Review. He gives talks and presentations in a variety of settings and places. And he teaches at times for the Continuing Education School at Rice University. Carlin draws on his training in psychology of religion and pastoral theology to do work in the field of medical humanities. Suzanne M. Coyle, PhD, is assistant professor of pastoral theology and marriage and family therapy at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, where she also serves as the executive director of the Counseling Center and director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Program. A diplomate in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors and an approved supervisor in American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, she has many years of experience as a pastor, therapist, consultant, and educator. Dr. Coyle holds a MDiv and PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary. J. Harold Ellens, PhD, is retired from his roles as professor of philosopher and psychology, executive director of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies, founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Psychology and Christianity, U.S. Army colonel, and Presbyterian (PCUSA) theologian and pastor. He continues in private practice as a licensed psychotherapist and as an international lecturer. He is the author of 180 published volumes, mainly on the interface of psychology and spirituality, and of 167 professional journal articles and reviews. He is the father of seven children. He and his wife have been married for 56 years. Richard K. Fenn, PhD, recently retired from Princeton Theological Seminary after 25 years on the faculty teaching the sociology of religion. His interests include the sociology of time, of the sacred, and of crisis. Stanislav Grof, MD, is a psychiatrist with more than 50 years of experience in research of nonordinary states of consciousness. He was principal investigator in a psychedelic research program at the Psychiatric Research Institute in Prague, Czechoslovakia; chief of Psychiatric Research at the

About the Contributors

339

Maryland Psychiatric Research Center; assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University; and scholar-in-residence at the Esalen Institute. He is professor of psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco. He conducts professional training programs in holotropic breathwork and transpersonal psychology, and is a founder and chief theoretician of transpersonal psychology, as well as founding president of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA). Among his publications are over 150 articles and the books Beyond the Brain, LSD Psychotherapy, The Cosmic Game, Psychology of the Future, The Ultimate Journey, and When the Impossible Happens. He is the recipient of the Vaclav Havel Prize, Vision 97. Ralph W. Hood Jr., PhD, is professor of psychology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He is a former president of the Division of the Psychology of Religion of the American Psychological Association and a recipient of its William James Award as well as its Distinguished Service and Mentor Awards. He is a former editor of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. He was one of the founders and coeditors of The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion and is a current coeditor of the Archive for the Psychology of Religion. Virginia Ingram is a graduate of the SCD in Sydney, Australia, specializing in biblical Hebrew, with advanced studies in Hebrew language and literature in Rome, and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is currently studying to become an Anglican priest with the Archdiocese of Perth, Australia. Ron Johnson, MDiv, PhD, is a clinical psychologist, therapist, and author. His interests and expertise are in the psychology of men, positive psychology, neuropsychology, and the integration of psychology with other philosophical disciplines. He has written the books Friendly Diagnosis, Seen and Not Heard, Mantalk, and others, as well as several journal and chapter articles. He lives and works with his psychologist wife in Madison, Wisconsin, and does specialty work in Newfoundland, Canada. Nicolene L. Joubert, PhD, is professor of psychology at the Afrikaans Protestant Academy and founder and head of their Institute of Christian Psychology. She is a registered counseling psychologist and a trained biblical counselor with 27 years of experience. She has completed her PhD thesis on the topic of biblically based systemic therapy, and her vision is to develop the field of Christian psychology in Africa. She is founder and chairperson of the South African Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. Her life’s work has focused on applying biblical principles to relieve suffering in her community and country. She has authored and coauthored various publications in the field of Christian psychology.

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About the Contributors

Zelmarie E. Joubert obtained her BA honors degree in psychology from the University of South Africa and has been involved with the Institute of Christian Psychology as lecturer and course developer for the past decade. Her interests include the development of noneconomic language promotion plans and the impact of popular culture on the individual. She is currently preparing for masters degree research into language strategies for crosscultural counseling. Raymond J. Lawrence, DMin, is a clinical pastoral supervisor, pastoral psychotherapist, and social critic. He is the author of The Poisoning of Eros: Sexual Values in Conflict (1989); Sexual Liberation: The Scandal of Christendom (2007), also published in Vienna as Sexualitat und Christentum: Geschichte der Irrwege und Ansatze zur Befreiung (2010); and numerous book chapters and journal articles on subjects in the areas of pastoral counseling, supervision, and social ethics. His opinion pieces have appeared in various journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association, Second Opinion, Christianity and Crisis, and many major newspapers in the United States. For 15 years until recent retirement, he directed the Pastoral Care Department and Chaplaincy Training Program at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. He is now general secretary for the College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy. Patrick McNamara, PhD, is the director of the Lab of Evolutionary Neurobehavior at Boston University School of Medicine and cofounder of the Institute for the Biocultural Study of Religion. His research contributes to the scientific study of religion, Parkinson’s disease, the evolutionary significance of mammalian REM/NREM sleep states, language pragmatics, and historical consciousness. Recently, he has edited a three-volume series on the scientific study of religion, Where God and Science Meet (Praeger Press, 2006), in addition to a landmark book, The Neuroscience of Religious Experience (Cambridge University Press, 2009). His research pioneers the exploration of the role that human frontal lobe function serves for religiosity. Over the past 20 years, his publications have advanced our understanding of the human condition from a neuroscientific and evolutionary psychological perspective. Ilona Rashkow, PhD, has a primary interest in psychoanalytic literary theory, particularly as applied to the Hebrew Bible. Among her publications are Taboo or Not Taboo: The Hebrew Bible and Human Sexuality (2000); The Phallacy of Genesis: A Feminist-Psychoanalytic Approach (1993); Upon the Dark Places: Sexism and Anti-Semitism in English Renaissance Biblical Translation (1990); and numerous chapters in books, encyclopedic articles, and journal articles. She is professor emerita at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and teaches regularly at New York University.

About the Contributors

341

F. Morgan Roberts, DD, served as a pastor in the Presbyterian Church (USA) for over 50 years. Upon retirement, he was named pastor emeritus of the Shadyside Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh. Following retirement, he served several congregations as an interim pastor, and ended his ministry as interim director of field education and adjunct professor of ministry and homiletics at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Dr. Roberts was educated at Colgate University and Princeton Theological Seminary, and has received five honorary doctoral degrees. He is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature. Wayne G. Rollins, PhD, is professor emeritus of biblical studies at Assumption College, Worcester, Massachusetts, and adjunct professor of scripture at Hartford Seminary, Hartford, Connecticut. He has also taught at Princeton University and Wellesley College, and served as visiting professor at Mount Holyoke College, Yale College, College of the Holy Cross, and Colgate Rochester Divinity School. His writings include The Gospels: Portraits of Christ (1964); Jung and the Bible (1983); and Soul and Psyche, The Bible in Psychological Perspective (1999). He coedited four volumes of essays with J. Harold Ellens, Psychology and the Bible: A New Way to Read the Scriptures (2004), and a volume on Psychological Insight into the Bible: Texts and Readings (2007) with D. Andrew Kille. He received his PhD in New Testament studies from Yale University and is the founder and chairman (1990–2000) of the Society of Biblical Literature Section on Psychology and Biblical Studies. Ronald Reese Ruark, PhD, is a graduate student at the University of Michigan, where he studies Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity under the supervision of Gabriele Boccaccini. He is a graduate of Bryan College (BA, 1980), Dallas Theological Seminary (ThM, 1984), and Marquette University School of Law (JD, 1991). He is a practicing attorney in Wayne, Michigan, where he resides with his wife Nancy. Loren T. Stuckenbruck, PhD, is Richard J. Dearborn Professor of New Testament Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary, having previously held the B. F. Westcott Chair in Biblical Studies at Durham University, UK. The author of several academic monographs, he has edited a number of books and is the author of over a hundred academic articles. He is chief editor of Commentaries on Early Jewish Literature (Walter de Gruyter), senior editor of Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, and on the editorial board of Journal of Biblical Literature, Dead Sea Discoveries, and Zeitschrift f. die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft.

Explaining Evil

Recent Titles in Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality

J. Harold Ellens, Series Editor Where God and Science Meet: How Brain and Evolutionary Studies Alter Our Understanding of Religion, 3 volumes

Patrick McNamara, editor Sexual Liberation: The Scandal of Christendom

Raymond J. Lawrence The Destructive Power of Religion: Violence in Christianity, Judaism and Islam, Condensed and Updated Edition

J. Harold Ellens, editor The Serpent and the Dove: Celibacy in Literature and Life

A.W. Richard Sipe Radical Grace: How Belief in a Benevolent God Benefits Our Health

J. Harold Ellens Understanding Religious Experiences: What the Bible Says about Spirituality

J. Harold Ellens Miracles: God, Science, and Psychology in the Paranormal, 3 volumes

J. Harold Ellens, editor Speaking of Death: America’s New Sense of Mortality

Michael K. Bartalos, editor The Invisible Church: Finding Spirituality Where You Are

J. Pittman McGehee and Damon Thomas The Spirituality of Sex

J. Harold Ellens The Healing Power of Spirituality: How Faith Helps Humans Thrive, 3 volumes

J. Harold Ellens, editor Families of the Bible: A New Perspective

Kamila Blessing

E XPLAINING E VIL VOLUME 2

History, Global Views, and Events

J. Harold Ellens, Editor

Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality

Copyright 2011 by ABC-CLIO, LLC All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Explaining evil / J. Harold Ellens, editor. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-313-38715-9 (hard copy : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-38716-6 (ebook) 1. Good and evil. I. Ellens, J. Harold, 1932– BJ1401.E97 2011 214—dc22 2010041383 ISBN: 978-0-313-38715-9 EISBN: 978-0-313-38716-6 15

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This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. Praeger An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

These volumes are dedicated to three gentlemen who constructively influenced my life in very substantial ways. Professor Henry J. Stob of Calvin College inspired me to think creatively despite the crimped and doctrinaire community from which both of us derived. Professor Seward Hiltner taught me how to savor the flavor of freedom, in the thoughtful quest for truth, the careful cherishing of people and an honest pastoral passion for those in need. Dr. Jeffrey Zaks of Providence Medical Center Department of Cardiology saved my life repeatedly; and gave me reason to believe that after four heart attacks, two open heart surgeries, and two minor strokes, life was still worth while and still held great possibilities. All of my significant published scholarship came about after that. These men not only cared for me. They loved me and I loved them.

Contents

VOLUME 2 HISTORY, GLOBAL VIEWS, AND EVENTS Series Foreword chapter 1

chapter 2

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Introduction: Is Terrorism a New Evil or a New Political Option? J. Harold Ellens

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Perspectives on Evil in Ancient Egyptian Sources: A Work in Progress Edmund S. Meltzer

12

chapter 3

Evil in the Time of Thomas Aquinas Alfred J. Eppens

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chapter 4

Where Is the Locus of Evil? Cassandra M. Klyman

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chapter 5

Evil in America: Manipulating Wealth and Power in an Oligarchy Myrna Pugh

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The Evil of Christian Anti-Semitism in America Jack Hanford

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chapter 6

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chapter 7

chapter 8

chapter 9

Contents

Patriotism Today: Altruism or Narcissism? Good or Evil? Rafael Chodos

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Evil as a Socioeconomic Disconnect: Israel and the Somali Pirates Maija Jespersen

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Heauton Timoroumenos: On the Evil That We Cause Ourselves Zenon Lotufo Jr. and Francisco Lotufo Neto

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chapter 10

Evil in Africa Dirk Odendaal and Yvette Odendaal

chapter 11

The Concept of Evil in African Christian Theology Xolani Sakuba

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Evil in Australian Aboriginal Religious Perspectives Suzanne M. Coyle

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Evil in the Three Contemporary Abrahamic Faiths J. Harold Ellens

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Evil, Sin, and Imperfection: Ethics in Practice Philip Brownell

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chapter 12

chapter 13

chapter 14

chapter 15

chapter 16

Combating Evil: Human Rights, International Law, and the Global Community Saul Takahashi Evil in the Shadow: What Carl Jung Can Teach Us About Evil Steven A. Rogers and Deborah A. Lowe

chapter 17

Evil and the Death Instinct Zvi Lothane

chapter 18

The Deletion of Will from Freud’s Theorizing Dan Merkur

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Contents

chapter 19

Conclusion: Is There Really an Evil Force Out There? J. Harold Ellens

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Index

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About the Editor and Advisers

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About the Contributors

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Series Foreword

The interface between psychology, religion, and spirituality has been of great interest to scholars for a century. In the last three decades a broad popular appetite has developed for books which make practical sense out of the sophisticated research on these three subjects. Freud expressed an essentially deconstructive perspective on this matter and indicated that he saw the relationship between human psychology and religion to be a destructive interaction. Jung, on the other hand, was quite sure that these three aspects of the human spirit, psychology, religion, and spirituality, were constructively and inextricably linked. Anton Boisen and Seward Hiltner derived much insight from both Freud and Jung, as well as from Adler and Reik, while pressing the matter forward with ingenious skill and illumination. Boisen and Hiltner fashioned a framework within which the quest for a sound and sensible definition of the interface between psychology, religion, and spirituality might best be described or expressed.1 We are in their debt. This series of general interest books, so wisely urged by Praeger Publishers and vigorously sought after by its editor Deborah Carvalko, intends to define the terms and explore the interface of psychology, religion, and spirituality at the operational level of daily human experience. Each volume of the series identifies, analyzes, describes, and evaluates the full range of issues, of both popular and professional interest, that deal with the psychological factors at play (1) in the way religion takes shape and is expressed, (2) in the way spirituality functions within human persons and shapes both religious formation and expression, and (3) in the ways that spirituality is

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shaped and expressed by religion. The interest is psycho-spiritual. In terms of the rubrics of the disciplines and the science of psychology and spirituality this series of volumes investigates the operational dynamics of religion and spirituality. The verbs “shape” and “express” in the above paragraph refer to the forces which prompt and form religion in persons and communities, as well as to the manifestations of religious behavior (1) in personal forms of spirituality, (2) in acts of spiritually motivated care for society, and (3) in ritual behaviors such as liturgies of worship. In these various aspects of human function the psychological and/or spiritual drivers are identified, isolated, and described in terms of the way in which they unconsciously and consciously operate in religion, thought, and behavior. The books in this series are written for the general reader, the local library, and the undergraduate university student. They are also of significant interest to the informed professional, particularly in fields corollary to his or her primary interest. The volumes in this series have great value for pastoral settings in congregational ministry, in clinical settings, and in the development of treatment models, as well. This series editor has spent his professional lifetime focused specifically upon research into the interface of psychology in religion and spirituality. This present set of three volumes, entitled Explaining Evil, is an urgently needed and timely work, the motivation for which is surely endorsed enthusiastically by the entire religious world today, as the international community searches for strategies that will afford us better and deeper spiritual self-understanding as individuals and communities as we struggle with palpable forms of violent evil in our world. This project addresses the deep psychosocial, psychospiritual, and biological sources of human nature which shape and drive our psychology and spirituality. Careful strategies of empirical, heuristic, and phenomenological research have been employed to give this work a solid scientific foundation and formation. Never before has such wise analysis been brought to bear upon the dynamic linkage between human physiology, psychology, and spirituality in an effort to understand the irrepressible and universal human quest for meaning, which this work defines as spirituality. For 50 years such organizations as the Christian Association for Psychological Studies and such graduate departments of psychology as those at Boston College, Fuller Graduate School of Psychology, Rosemead Graduate School of Psychology, Harvard, George Fox, Princeton, Emory, and the like, have been publishing important building blocks of research on issues dealing with psycho-spirituality. In this present project the insights generated by such patient and careful research are explored in three categories. The first volume treats evil itself while the second volume describes its role and dynamics in the church and society, and the third volume addresses the

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psychodynamics at play in countering evil and the psychosocial efforts to contain, control, and cure it in persons and society so as to guarantee or facilitate healthy social psychology and religion, thus affording us wholesome psycho-spirituality. These volumes employ an objective and experiencebased approach to our spiritual life and growth as we pursue the quest for explaining evil. Some of the influences of religion upon persons and society, now and throughout history, have been negative. In 2004 we published in this series four volumes entitled The Destructive Power of Religion. That set of volumes analyzed the biblical metaphors which infect our psychological archetypes with destructive forces that prompt humans to utilize our capacity for violence in the name of God. Such biblical metaphors as a cosmic conflict in which God is a warrior in mortal competition with the power of evil, and God’s inclination to solve his ultimate problems with ultimate violence, prompt humans to behave in the same way. Such pathogenically evil images of idealized divine and human behavior are reprehensible and must be done away with. Those biblical myths have wreaked havoc upon our world for 3,000 years or more. Surely that must end now. On the other hand, much of the impact of the great religions upon human life and culture has been profoundly redemptive and generative of great good. It is urgent, therefore, that we discover and understand better what the psychological and spiritual forces are which empower people of faith and genuine spirituality to open their lives to the transcendent connection and give themselves to all the creative and constructive enterprises that, throughout the centuries, have made human life the humane, ordered, prosperous, and aesthetic experience it can be at its best. Surely the forces for good in both psychology and spirituality far exceed the powers and proclivities toward evil. These volumes are dedicated to the greater understanding of Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality, and thus to the profound understanding and empowerment of those psycho-spiritual drivers which can help us (1) transcend the malignancy of our earthly pilgrimage, (2) open our spirits to the divine spirit, (3) enhance the humaneness and majesty of the human spirit, (4) empower our potential for magnificence in human life, and (5) illumine us with an understanding of the problem of the evil with which we contend. J. Harold Ellens Series Editor

NOTE 1. L. Aden and J. H. Ellens, Turning Points in Pastoral Care: The Legacy of Anton Boisen and Seward Hiltner (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1990).

ch apter 1

Introduction: Is Terrorism a New Evil or a New Political Option? J. Harold Ellens

INTRODUCTION Terrorism is not a new phenomenon, nor is today’s terrorism a new evil. Von Clausewitz (2003) declared that war is a pursuit of politics by other means. He also thought that the only moral way to go to war was to make it total war, that is, against enemy forces but also against enemy populations and sources of economic support for the war effort. He considered this the moral imperative because it would accomplish the objectives quickest and with the lowest loss of life, time, and treasure. Today’s terrorism is an alternate political option chosen by a community of persons who justify their behavior on the basis of conservative religious values, but who are in fact using that ruse to cover their political strategies and objectives. The Arabs who lead and largely populate the forces of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, in its various iterations, do not have histories of being particularly religious or devoted to Islam. They have distinctive histories of ambition to raise paramilitary action against the United States for political purposes. The leaders of these movements are appropriately described as fundamentalists, but that does not mean they are particularly religious fundamentalists. They are, however, rigid conservatives in their political objective of permanently excluding Western influences from the Umma, the Arab world, and expanding the Umma to as great a territory on this planet as they can. Moreover, they have hijacked Islam in the sense that they are willing for the world to think their cause represents the general cause of Islam in the world and that it is universally supported by the entire Arab community. They are

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Explaining Evil

willing to employ references to the Qur’an and quotations from the Qur’an to support their behavior and to ground their fatwas against persons and forces of the Western world. Thus, they wish to fly under a religious flag but are political in intent and viciously destructive in method. Their fundamentalism is more a state of mind than a form of religion, more a psychological than a spiritual matter. As a psychological state of mind, fundamentalism is always pathological. Wherever it appears and in whatever form or context, it is psychopathology. It is destructive to the health and function of the fundamentalist and dangerous to those around him or her. This is the new thing about this political movement of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. It is a state of mind bent upon destruction. Fundamentalism appears with surprising frequency in every form of profession, ideology, religion, and facet of human society. Engineers can be fundamentalist about engineering, attorneys about the interpretations and practice of law, and politicians about their views of statesmanship. It surfaces in every worldview and social system, every profession and human form of operational practice: in ethical, theological, political, and social systems; in scientific perspectives; and in the manner in which a significant percentage of persons in every type of human community carry out their life and craft. Throughout their history, it has been a prominent characteristic of some facets of every type of religion on the face of this planet. Fundamentalism is a psychological outlook in which rigid adherence to regulation, strict constructionist interpretation of principles and standards, and stringent methods of control of function and behavior take priority over freedom, flexibility, and creative imagination. This psychological pattern seems to characterize the Taliban and Al Qaeda revolutionaries and terrorists. The emphasis is upon maintaining a static political-social power system, rather than growth, freedom, and the risks of change. These militants are fundamentalist in their quest for truth and in their crafting of the formulae or constructs in which reality must be defined and described. This inflexibility in theory and method produces a system and procedures that will prove counterproductive in the end. Fundamentalism is a mode of operation that is driven and shaped by obsessive-compulsive forces in the human psyche. It insists upon predictable structures, and affords people who manifest it or adhere to it little capacity for coping with ambiguity. Because the ability to deal with ambiguity with a reasonable degree of comfort and efficiency is crucial to healthy life, the psychopathology of fundamentalism is particularly evident in this obsessive characteristic. This dysfunctional characteristic is further evidenced in the virtually inevitable tendency of any fundamentalism to produce an orthodoxy in whatever field it arises. In the case of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the orthodoxy championed is a political-social mind-set in which all non-Arabic values

Introduction

3

are evil and a unified militant Caliphate encompassing the entire Umma is the unquestionable imperative. The implication of this is that all alternative influences and value systems must be countered and destroyed. Because orthodoxies of any sort paint a static and ossified picture of reality, a picture that does not give room for the dynamism of growth and change or critique and response, the system inevitably becomes delusional. It manufactures an altered state of mind and false sense of reality out of the rigid ideology of that particular form of fundamentalism at play in any given situation or system of thought or practice. Because it is, therefore, untrue to reality, fundamentalism is always and inherently a radically destructive force in its world, and is ultimately self-destructive. Orthodoxy, which claims to be orthodox precisely because it dogmatically insists that it is the one and only possible formulation of the truth, is always, therefore, exactly the opposite of what it claims. It is fundamentally unorthodox, that is, untrue! It is always an erroneous formulation of purported truth and can never be anything other than that because it refuses to be open to any new insight that might be generated by the ongoing, open-ended human quest for understanding. The pathology of orthodoxy-producing fundamentalisms arises from the wellspring of prejudice, an insidious part of the unconscious strategies for survival and meaning, inherent in every human psyche. Prejudice has a bad reputation. It should have. It is everywhere and always destructive. Prejudice prevents an objective and sympathetic view of, or address to, anything. It is uniformly and consistently uncongenial with the best interests and quality of human life. Most human beings, I am quite sure, find prejudice reprehensible, but all of us are afflicted by it. We disapprove it, but we do it nonetheless. In his “Notes on Prejudice,” Henry Hardy (2001) quoted at length Isaiah Berlin’s “hurried notes for a friend.” Hardy described Berlin’s intense observations as “somewhat breathless and telegraphic,” conveying “with great immediacy Berlin’s opposition to intolerance and prejudice, especially . . . stereotypes, and aggressive nationalism.” The wisdom of Hardy’s selection of this material for the New York Review of Books is obvious when we note that its date is just one month after the World Trade Center tragedy. There, venomous religious and cultural prejudice wreaked havoc on our entire nation— indeed, upon the entire world. One might summarize Berlin’s passionate expression in one sentence: Few things have done more harm than the belief on the part of individuals or groups (or tribes or states or nations or churches) that he or she or they are in the sole possession of the truth, especially about how to live, what to be, and what to do—and that those who differ from them are not merely mistaken but also wicked or mad, and need restraining or suppressing. It is a terrible and dangerous arrogance to believe that you alone are right and have a magical eye that sees the truth, and that others cannot be right if they disagree.

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Explaining Evil

Moreover, no one in our world today, except apparently fundamentalists of every kind, needs much persuasion to agree that the rigorist mind-sets of the orthodoxies that have taken the world by storm in our time are productive of immense real and potential evil. Whether they are the orthodoxies of the American Christian religious right that support Zionism for the purpose of hurrying the cataclysm of Armageddon, or of the Islamic terrorists whose dogmatism breeds suicide bombings and World Trade Center assaults, or of the Israeli framers of preemptive defense who do not desire to negotiate for peace, the sick psychology is in every case the same. The prejudices and delusions that substitute for truth are very much the same. All are caught up in ridiculous apocalyptic notions of cosmic conflict and the fight against cosmic forces of evil, none of which are real. The product of such worldviews is always violence. Whether it is violation of the truth or of persons, property, and appropriate procedures for social and juridical order, it is violent evil. Whether it destroys persons, the necessary conditions of healthy human existence, or useful understandings of the real world, it is violent evil. Whether it corrupts freedom, constrains legitimate liberty, or fouls the human nest with mayhem and bestiality, it is violent evil. Whether it oppresses persons or communities with the force and power of empire building, represses hope and the resilience of the human spirit with mass casualty fears and intimidation, or terrorizes the tranquility of children with media reports of those kinds of mayhem, it is phenomenally destructive and violent evil. It would be of interest to know whether such inflammatory leaders as Osama bin Laden, who have created isolationistic groups of followers with the objective of wreaking violence upon the world or upon others within their own world, may be persons with the genetically preset biochemistry clearly implicated in the research on violence-inducing problems with the MAO-A molecule, and other personality-distorting inherited biochemistry. This would be interesting information because it would provide for a rational understanding of the horrid phenomena with which the world is faced in such persons as Osama bin Laden. These are people for whom early resort to massive violence as the ultimate solution to all major problems seems to be an addiction. We ought to know why they resort to radical violence as the ultimate solution to every major problem or sociopolitical impasse, not only so that we can see these kinds of characters coming on the world scene, but also so that we can anticipate the destructive forces of their fundamentalist orthodoxies. Psychobiology may be our hope for the future. In 1996, Elizabeth Young-Bruehl published a superb analysis of this fundamentalist affliction of human psychology and society. She called it the anatomy of prejudices. Her superior work has not been superseded. Her general assessment of the psychodynamics of this psychosocial malady leads us

Introduction

5

to an appreciation of the similarities that all forms of prejudice manifest. She describes the distinctive characteristics of each type, and the subtle and blatant forms of their social expression. From the slightest slur to the stupid joke to the violent act and even war, prejudice functions like the sophisticated computer virus that adapts its own structure as it goes along. It eats up all the resources available and uses the wholesome qualities and energies of any system or community by turning them on their heads, and redirecting their trajectories to create evil. What were growth-inducing insights are turned into malevolent analyses and defensive-aggressive reactions, filled with and generating paranoia and hate. This produces the violent evil of terrorism. I am constantly amazed by the way in which Al Qaeda can take the data of any world situation and interpret it in a way remarkably opposite to the way in which the entire sane world sees it. Their sense of reality seems completely out of synchronicity with reality as the rest of us experience it. Prejudice is primarily a defensive-aggressive psychological phenomenon rooted in ignorance or bad information about the person or community against which the prejudice is directed. It is generated by the primal human urge to survival combined with the paranoia that lack of accurate information produces. It expresses itself as an intention to devalue, disarm, and extinguish the relevance of the object of the prejudice. None of us is free of it. Fundamentalism and its orthodoxies, in whatever field they appear, are inherently violent. It is a psychopathology that insists addictively that its view of reality and truth is the only authentic one, and is the whole truth. Therefore, any other perspective is willfully false, ignorant, and dangerous to the truth. In this logic, it is for the good of the nonfundamentalists (i.e., the Western world) that the fundamentalist’s truth (i.e., that of the Taliban and Al Qaeda) be imposed upon that world. As it then wreaks unacceptable havoc upon the human race, it is an alternative political operation that is evil incarnate in its methods and objectives. It flies under the flag of a supposed divine imperative. This particular form of political fundamentalism, marching under the flag of religion, thinks it is the will of God, and a favor to all humankind, to bring humanity under the umbrella of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. So it is their imperative to impose their model of the truth upon all others, by force if they have the predominating power, or by seduction and intimidation if they do not. Therefore, those who resist or who threaten it with repression or opposition must be neutralized by isolating, demeaning, or destroying them. Stirling and McGuire explicate the model of René Girard for explaining how specific persons or groups become identified in or by a society as the object of prejudice and its social consequences (2004). They develop Girard’s essentially psychoanalytic understanding of the way isolation, alienation, devaluation, and extermination work toward victimizing an “enemy.” He

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Explaining Evil

employs the metaphor of the scapegoat. This is, of course, an old metaphor, already prominent in ancient Israelite religion and in its Hebrew Bible. It is carried over in formative ways into the New Testament and into Islam’s sacred scriptures, the Qur’an. Girard’s point comes down to the psychoanalytic insight that the scapegoat, whether it is an individual or another society, becomes a projection of the shadow side of the source or enactor of the prejudice, the victimizer. Prejudice always generates and is generated by an “us-versus-them” mindset. The circumstances of life often produce realistic situations in which there arises a real-life “us-and-them” setting. For example, my family and I live in North America. There are many other humans who do not, including a number of my relatives for whom I have great affection and who live in Germany. If we should discuss the geography of Greenland, it is inevitable that their perspective will be that of those who must look westward toward Greenland and ours that of those who must look eastward. That may seem irrelevant, but psychoanalytic psychologists know that this simple difference makes a discernible psychological difference in the way we and they think of Greenland. On the infinitely more complex and serious matter of Near East policy, the differences in perspective will inevitably be much more remarkable. We may even have the same basic facts and principles in mind, but we will see the implications of them differently if our primary unconscious interest is American and theirs is German. With some significant conscious and rational thoughtfulness, we may be able to place ourselves in each other’s shoes and gain more global views that might be almost identical, but even then certain flavors and tastes, so to speak, will still make our feelings about the matter distinctive to each of us. We can, of course, have important differences without resorting to evil. We may take a gracious, thoughtful attitude that empowers us to understand a wide range of views on a matter without feeling less passionate about the one we support. We may be able to allow the others to have their point of view as a legitimate alternative way of looking at things. Or we may feel strongly that the facts are such that they really have no moral right or rational justification to hold to such an ill-informed outlook. However, even then, it is not necessary for us to devalue or damage the other person or community because of the positions they take, the attitudes they evince, or the behavior they act out. Prejudices that produce destructive behavior are the irrational, unconscious devaluation of another for no other reason than that the “other” is different. These attitudes increase with ignorance and the paranoia that ignorance generates. Prejudice identifies, isolates, and alienates its object. The further this process develops, the easier it is to project upon that “other” those things we hate in ourselves. We always hate most in others what we

Introduction

7

cannot stand in ourselves. Our own flaws, distortions, iniquities, self-defeating habits, and failures that we believe we see in others we unconsciously attack, knowing we should extinguish them from ourselves. Therefore, those things that we cannot face in ourselves—our shadow side, for which we cannot forgive ourselves—we make into the reasons for devaluing or destroying others. If those dysfunctions in ourselves that we cannot stand, cannot deal with, cannot correct, or cannot forgive in ourselves happen to be religiously and morally laden, we will see our attack upon them in others to be justified by God, even God’s command. We may feel called by God, in such instances, to wreak havoc upon those others, who are the “legitimate” objects of our prejudice. To the extent that Al Qaeda and the Taliban make religious claims for their crusade, this seems to be one of their justifications. This surely was the motive and mind-set of the terrorists of the 9/11 tragedy. One wonders what evil shadow is inside of Osama bin Laden that prompts and justifies the evil he projects upon the United States, and the consequent violent evil that he wreaks upon all humans associated with Western cultures. Under circumstances of significant conflict regarding cherished values, humans tend to operate with the certainty that there is only one worthy goal for one’s self or humanity. We readily assume that there is only one true answer to the central questions that have agonized humankind. We tend to conclude that it is worth risking all for a final solution, no matter how costly. We tend to be particularly willing to accept exorbitant costs in loss and suffering, particularly if it is mainly the enemy’s loss and suffering. This seems clearly to be the case with the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda seems to believe that its ultimate problems can be solved by early resort to ultimate forms of violence, as in the behavior of the Warrior God of the Hebrew Bible. The evil perpetrated by such a perspective remains incurable until the perspective is defeated or changed. Holding to such a perspective, in the meantime, leads to the delay of earlier, safer, and saner resolutions of misunderstandings and collision courses of policy or ambition. We tend toward the psychological certainty that if all else fails, which it surely will in such an irresponsible model, there is always the option of resorting to violent evil action. Humans seem to be inherently addicted to cataclysm. This seems to be the case for Al Qaeda, to a rather exaggerated degree. In the end, it will lose disastrously. Its guerrilla warfare is a death wish. The completion of this contest will be catastrophic for Islam and the Arabic nations. Surely they must intuit that already. During the last decade of the 20th century, Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum edited a series of psychosocial studies entitled Contemporary Issues. These amounted to a series of handbooks on various topics related mainly to legal and ethical issues in social management. One particularly useful monograph in the series is entitled Bigotry, Prejudice and Hatred: Definitions, Causes

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Explaining Evil

and Solutions (1992). Two chapters in this volume proved to be particularly helpful. Chapter 10 by Elliot Aronson investigated “Causes of Prejudice.” Pierre L. van den Berghe wrote Chapter 11, “The Biology of Nepotism.” Both of these relate directly to this particular phase of our discussion here, in that they paint a picture of a Girardian take on hate prejudice. Aronson led off with the following paragraph: [O]ne determinant of prejudice in a person is a need for self-justification . . . if we have done something cruel to a person or a group of people, we derogate that person or group in order to justify our cruelty. If we can convince ourselves that a group is unworthy, subhuman, stupid, or immoral, it helps us to keep from feeling immoral if we enslave members of that group, deprive them of a decent education, or murder them. We can then continue to go to church [or synagogue or mosque] and feel . . . good . . . because it isn’t a fellow human we’ve hurt. Indeed, if we’re skillful enough, we can even convince ourselves that the barbaric slaying of old men, women, and children is a . . . virtue—as the crusaders did when, on their way to the holy land, they butchered European Jews in the name of the Prince of Peace. . . . [T]his form of self-justification serves to intensify subsequent brutality. (p. 111)

Al Qaeda seems to have perfected this syndrome. Sociological studies tend to suggest that the more the security of one’s status and power is jeopardized, the more prejudiced one tends to be and the more violently one tends to behave. Van den Berghe, who published The Ethnic Phenomenon (1987), makes a cogent argument for finding the roots of prejudice in nepotism. His basic argument is that ethnic and racial sentiments are extensions of kinship sentiments. Ethnocentrism and racism are thus extended forms of nepotism—the propensity to favor kin over non-kin. There exists a general human behavioral predisposition to react favorably toward other organisms to the extent that these organisms are biologically related to the actor. The closer the relationship is, the stronger the preferential behavior. (p. 125)

Blood is still thicker than water, apparently! This interprets much of the drive of Al Qaeda as an evil force. It is interesting, of course, that humans are seldom cannibals, and if they are it is generally with great revulsion and in extremity. Most humans are willing to consume other mammals, birds, and creatures lower on the evolutionary tree such as fish. Even many of those who argue for a vegetarian diet on the grounds that one ought not to eat “meat” will, nonetheless, eat chicken and fish. Chicken is presumably from the dinosaur line, and fish more closely related to reptiles, both a long way from our human branch of the evolutionary tree.

Introduction

9

Those vegetarians who also avoid chicken, fish, and dairy, vegans, who wish only a strictly vegetarian diet, are usually mystified when I ask them how they can possibly tolerate killing these living things they eat, the poor lettuce leaf, celery stalks, beautiful carrots, and the like, which I can just imagine screaming silently as they are ripped from their roots. Such vegans tend to respond that these are short-lived forms of life anyway, are planted for harvesting, and have no consciousness or feelings. Well, that is a very relative and imperialistic statement, besides being particularly illogical. I doubt the lettuce leaf would agree, should he or she or it be honestly “inquired of.” Of course, there is a significant debate about whether plants have no consciousness or feelings. There seems to be adequate evidence that plants respond to what seems comparable to our central nervous system stimulation. However, when all is said and done, the argument boils down to the fact that plants are so far down the evolutionary tree as to be hardly worth considering as a life form in the sense that humans are life forms. Van den Berghe’s claim is confirmed by this rather simple human tendency to care more for those organisms most like us and care less for those most unlike us. Adorno and Horkheimer were sure that the patriarchal family is the nexus of prejudice by reason of its authoritarian socialization of the family members (1950). Perhaps this applies to Osama bin Laden. This is basically the “frustration-aggression” model for explaining violence and rage displaced upon a scapegoat and forming the foundation for such models as that of Girard. There are similarities at work in the many different Al Qaeda–types of violent evil. They include the following factors. First is the difficulty humans have in living with the unknown and the very different. Second is the human tendency to make dogmatic claims that a difference of values and styles means the moral inferiority of the other. Third, the human fear of that which is different produces defensive-aggressive responses. Fourth, humans have a need to justify our feelings and our behavior by demonizing the cause of our fears. Fifth, we tend to isolate, alienate, devalue, degrade, disempower, and exterminate what we demonize, whether this is a person or a community. Sixth is the human inclination to believe there is a single and final solution to the impasse of difference and conflict. Seventh, humans are willing to pay any price for the ultimate cataclysm that will resolve the tension, stress, and burden of our impasse of fear or conflict, particularly if that cost is mainly at the expense of the enemy. This is a death wish, a failure of nerve that unconsciously hopes for relief of the present problem by a final cataclysm that exterminates all conflict by destroying all life. Herein is the epitome of Al Qaeda as evil incarnate. Al Qaeda apparently subscribes to the erroneous apocalyptic worldview that a cosmic conflict between God and the powers of darkness rages everywhere and at all times on the battlefields of history and the human heart. It is a conflict between cosmic forces of good and evil, between the righteous

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Explaining Evil

and the infidel. This takes the practical and operational form of a terminal conflict between Al Qaeda and the infidels of the West. It is easy to find proof texts in the Qur’an to support this worldview and violent strategy. This perspective seems to claim that the community of humans is divided into two camps, namely, the righteous and the unrighteous, and that the temporal blessing and the eternal destiny of each community depend upon the degree to which it conforms to the law of God. Al Qaeda expects that ultimately Allah will win the cosmic conflict and subdue all infidels. That will terminate history in a cataclysm that will damn the unrighteous to eternal hellfire and embrace the righteous into a blissful heaven. We have been made profoundly aware in recent years of the intimate links between radical Islam and worldwide terrorism. The Taliban and Al Qaeda operations are not merely political programs adopted as alternate options to negotiation and compromise. Rather, they are incarnations of evil in the world. Their ideology is evil, their objectives are evil, their violent methods are evil, and their horrific consequences are evil. As with countering all strategies of organized violence, the greatest challenge is to defeat it without resorting to its own tactics and thus being dragged down to its own immoral level. To counter evil with evil makes the terrorist and counterterrorist equally evil. It is crucial that we find our way without triumphalism or a resort to the arrogance of power. Power properly and humanely applied is one thing. Arrogant power is quite another. Ignorant arrogance is the worst of all. It is the source of the incarnate evil that is Al Qaeda.

REFERENCES Adorno, T., & Horkheimer, M. (1950). The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper. Aronson, E. (1992). Causes of prejudice. In R. M. Baird & S. E. Rosenbaum (Eds.), Bigotry, prejudice and hatred: Definitions, causes and solutions (Contemporary Issues Series). New York: Prometheus. Baird, R. M., & Rosenbaum, S. E. (Eds.). (1992). Bigotry, prejudice and hatred: Definitions, causes and solutions (Contemporary Issues Series). New York: Prometheus. Hardy, H. (2001, October 18). Notes on prejudice. New York Review of Books. Jomine, Baron A. H. de. (1992). The art of war. London: Greenhill. McGuire, C. (2004). Judaism, Christianity, and Girard: The violent messiahs. In J. Harold Ellens (Ed.), The destructive power of religion: Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Vol. 2). Westport, CT: Praeger. Pin, S. (1995). Military methods of the art of war. New York: Barnes and Noble. Stirling, M. C. (2004). Violent religion: René Girard’s theory of culture. In J. Harold Ellens (Ed.), The destructive power of religion: Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (Vol. 2). Westport, CT: Praeger. Tzu, S. (1963). The art of war. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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van den Berghe, P. L. (1987). The ethnic phenomenon. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. van den Berghe, P. L. (1992). The biology of nepotism. In R. M. Baird & S. E. Rosenbaum (Eds.), Bigotry, prejudice and hatred: Definitions, causes and solutions (Contemporary Issues Series). New York: Prometheus. von Clausewitz, C. (2003). Principles of war. New York: Dover. Young-Bruehl, E. (1996). Anatomy of prejudices. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

ch apter 2

Perspectives on Evil in Ancient Egyptian Sources: A Work in Progress Edmund S. Meltzer

Ancient Egyptian mythology and ideology seem to abound with conflicts that to the modern Western sensibility seem to exemplify good versus evil—the murder of Osiris by Seth or Set, the revenge of Horus against Seth, the defeat of Apophis by the sun god and his minions, the defeat of foreign enemies by the king, and the punishment of the enemies of the gods in the underworld. These conflicts are not, however, normally expressed in Egyptian as an opposition of good versus evil, and they do not enable us to identify and differentiate unambiguously an Egyptian concept or category that clearly or self-evidently means evil. A good deal of what I say in these pages is methodological, albeit perhaps in a nondogmatic and explorative way. Major commentators on ancient Egyptian religion have addressed the issue of evil, as well as the limitations and preconceptions involved in our attempts to characterize it, and I shall describe some of their approaches. When attending the annual meeting of the American Research Center in Egypt in Oakland, California, toward the end of April 2010, I first saw a very recent book-length study titled The Question of Evil in Ancient Egypt (Kemboly, 2010), which is valuable for both the history of research it contains and the ideas it puts forward, including a detailed consideration of many text passages. One of the major problems in grappling with the identification and characterization of a concept such as evil is the danger of imposing a category from the investigator’s own background or conceptual framework, in this case primarily biblical or Christian, rather than following the articulation of a concept in the native framework of the target culture. (I hesitate to say Judeo-Christian,

Perspectives on Evil in Ancient Egyptian Sources

13

because the Jewish concepts are often quite different, a fact that many people both lay and scholarly do not sufficiently appreciate, and the subsuming or co-opting of Jewish concepts into a homogenized “Judeo-Christian tradition” often at least verges on theological and intellectual imperialism. Thus, for instance, Kemboly’s statement about “Satan or the Adversary in JudaeoChristian anthropology” (2010, p. 3) would not be recognized by most Jews. Kemboly recognizes the danger of being influenced by one’s own conceptual framework and enjoins that “one should endeavor to avoid it or control it as much as possible” (2010, p. 2). He also affirms, “It is acknowledged that views and definitions of what is evil or considered as such vary from one culture, society or social group to another, even from one person to another” (2010, p. 3). He proposes: . . . to deal with the problem of the existence of evil only in Egyptian terms by letting Egyptian evidence speak for itself. . . . For heuristic purposes, however, I consider as evil anything which disrupts Maat or divine rule, or interferes with it. (2010, p. 3)

We shall return at length to Maat and the types of oppositions he describes. At this point, however, we have two principal observations. The first is that the idea of evidence “speaking for itself ” when that evidence is translated from a dead language, and belongs to a tradition with no direct descent to the present day who could act as living informants, is problematic to say the least. There are ancient Egyptian revivalist religious groups, some led by scholars of Egyptian and comparative religion who strive for authenticity, as well as individuals who follow ancient Egyptian religion without group affiliation such as the late Dorothy Louise Eady (aka Omm Sety), but they are not ancient Egyptians raised in an ancient Egyptian environment, and they are themselves in danger of importing or imposing concepts from other traditions and perspectives. The second is that Kemboly seems to take for granted the existence of a discrete concept or category that can be labeled evil. On this more fundamental level, Terence DuQuesne has very strong warnings: Many Egyptologists are unaware that they often try anachronistically to impose such ideas on the Egyptians, as if concepts of good and evil were similar and universal, which any reputable student of comparative religion knows is far from being the case. (1995, p. 107)

So far, he seems to be on the same page as Kemboly. In another publication, however, DuQuesne has a more detailed cautionary note: According to the Egyptian view, two countervailing principles operate in the universe: ma’et, meaning order, and isft, signifying chaos or disorder.

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Explaining Evil

One could say that they parallel the findings of modern physics and especially of chaos theory. Under no circumstances can the two concepts be translated as “good” and “evil,” which would be to ascribe the values of other traditions to the Egyptian view. (2003, p. 19)

This, too, seems at first sight to overlap significantly with Kemboly’s heuristic definition of evil. But the question of whether the label evil is in fact appropriate hangs over this entire discussion. There are a number of lexical items that Egyptologists habitually translate as evil and others that we render as good, and we shall discuss some of these below, but I am not sure whether the effort to define these has entirely extricated itself from preconception and circularity. Convenient translation equivalents do not always provide a rigorous semantic or philosophical road map, and the choice of translation equivalents has an element of arbitrariness and indeed of polysemy. Thus the word evil does not have a consistent meaning in such phrases as an evil stench, an evil genocidal dictator, and an evil grin. What are the implications, if any, of translating to foul or bad or wicked in given cases, rather than evil? It would certainly eviscerate the practice of lexicography if we were forced always to translate a given lexeme by the same lexeme every time. Also, when dealing with synonyms or apparent synonyms, it should be borne in mind that many scholars of semantics and stylistics reject the concept of absolute synonymy (Meltzer, 1995, p. 135). The question of isolating and defining a concept of evil in ancient Egypt is exacerbated by the fact that, although the ancient Egyptians had philosophical ideas, they did not write philosophical treatises, though the tip of the iceberg can certainly be seen inter alia in hymns, wisdom literature, and literary narrative (cf. DuQuesne, 1994, 1995, p. 107, with literature; Allen, 1988). Another important methodological consideration is whether a concept such as evil, which is not denoted by a single lexeme or root in the ancient Egyptian language, is in Levi-Straussian terms an unité artificielle and not a cohesive concept at all—and thus a category that, according to one popular term in recent academia, should be deconstructed. Here I run the danger of violating the principle that “what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,” because I have strongly asserted the existence of an ancient Egyptian concept of grace that is likewise not represented by a single lexeme or root (Meltzer, 2006, 2007) and have treated the relevant lexicon as a semantic domain, an approach that I have also followed with the concept of sacred (Meltzer, 1987, 1988, 1990, commenting on Hoffmeier, 1985a, 1985b). Therefore, it cannot a priori be ruled out that the word evil might prove to be such a category as well, though in my perspective it remains an open question whether the term evil will end up as the best choice for a label. A major reason why I proceeded in the way that I did with grace is that it seemed and still seems to me to be a unified concept from the phenomenological point of view.

Perspectives on Evil in Ancient Egyptian Sources

15

Most Egyptologists have approached labels and categories of the type we are discussing from a lexical perspective, starting out with word studies. My teacher Don Redford had a long list of dissertation topics hanging in his office, and many if not most of them were word studies. Analogously, my colleague Terry Miosi (also a student of Redford) remarks in one publication, “After the fashion of most Egyptologists, the writer immediately referred to his word index to see if it contained any pertinent entries” (1973, p. 2). A lexical study, that is, the technical meaning of terms or words, including many words with negative connotations and some from what would generally be regarded as the semantic domain of evil, has been published by Zandee (1960); the most relevant sections are the sections headed “Terms for Sin” (pp. 41–44) and “Punishment” (pp. 285–294, the part including a number of words translated as “evil” and “sin”). Sin is a category that runs a strong likelihood of being influenced by a Christian or biblical mind-set; I thank Terence DuQuesne (personal communication, March 2010) for reminding me that Professor Zandee was a Dutch Reformed churchman. I have translated one of these words (tryt) as “guilt” rather than “sin” (Meltzer, 1996). Words included by Zandee that I shall discuss below are Dw, bin, xbn, and isft. The lexical and etymological approach to terms with moral meaning is not merely Egyptological idiosyncrasy or whimsy but has a significant precedent in the work of Nietzsche (1887), who was professor of Greek at Basel and a Classicist and Indo-Europeanist. In his monograph referred to above, Kemboly (2010) deals at length with many texts, including many extensive passages in transliteration. It is surprising, however, how little he focuses on lexicography, and it is at least as surprising that, though he cites Zandee’s Death as an Enemy and other works of that scholar, he never once refers to Zandee’s lexicographical discussions. The English index compiled for Faulkner’s Dictionary (Shennum, 1977) lists the following words that Faulkner defines as meaning evil (51): bin, bint, sbt, sDb, Dw, Dwy, and Dwt, in addition to irr, isfty, and nik for “evildoer” and Dw and nbd for the “Evil One” (also Zandee 1960, p. 208, analogous to or perhaps a reference to Apophis). Faulkner (1962, p. 320) also defines Dw as “sad” and Dwt as “sadness,” as well as “dirt encumbering ruin.” The Wörterbuch, in a substantial entry for the adjective Dw (Erman & Grapow, 1926–1931, hereafter, Wb.; pp. V 545–547), translates it mainly as “schlecht,” and the nouns Dwt and Dw mainly as “das Schlechte,” and also “das Böse.” The adjective bin (Wb. I 442f) is rendered as “schlecht u.ä,” and the impersonal construction bin n.i as “es ergeht mir übel”; sometimes “böse” is also used. The compound expression bw bin is given as “Böses.” The noun bin (Wb. I 443) is “der Böse” (referring to a being or individual), and the abstraction bin (Wb. I 444) is translated as “das Böse,” and bint as “das Schlechte, das Böse.”

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Wb. notes that both Dw and bin (and derivatives) are often juxtaposed with nfr (and derivatives), most typically translated “good” (cf. Zandee, 1960, p. 41). Examining the latter, we find (Faulkner, 1962, p. 131) that it can refer to “good” character, “good” deeds, or being “kind” or “lawful,” and that it is used in the compound expression bw nfr “goodness.” It expresses the idea of “happy, happiness” as an antonym of Dw, which can have the sense of “sadness.” Nfr also is taken to denote “good (quality), “beautiful, fair,” “well,” and “in good condition.” Especially in recent decades, there is a strong tendency to translate it as “young, youthful, fresh” and “perfect, complete,” ideas that do not seem to be clear counterparts to bin, Dw, and their derivatives. Some Egyptian terms are sometimes or frequently translated by the word evil or phrases including it, such as nbD and nik, rendered the “evil one.” NbD (see above) is a lexeme also found in the expression nbdw-qd, translated as “those of bad character,” referring to the enemies of Egypt (Faulkner, 1962, p. 130); whereas nik seems to signify “the one who is, or is to be, punished” (Wb. II 205; Zandee, 1960, pp. 282–284). One frequent epithet is Xs(y), feminine Xst, found after the names of foreign countries and often translated as “vile” or “wretched” (Faulkner, 1962, p. 204). The basic meaning seems to be “weak, feeble,” and as a substantive Xst has the senses “cowardice” and “impurity.” David Lorton has suggested that as a descriptor of foreign countries or enemies, this word should be understood as “defeated” (Lorton, 1973). Redford has suggested that the Greek word ase:moi (I employ, with : as the linguistic notation for a long vowel) used by Manetho to characterize the Hyksos “means simply ‘vile, ignoble,’ which is surely only a rendering of the common Egyptian hsy ‘vile,’ which in Egyptian texts of all periods characterizes foreign peoples” (1992, p. 100). Coptic is the most recent form of the ancient Egyptian language, often identified with but not restricted to Christian texts. It presents a distinctive situation: vocabulary replacement and semantic change from earlier stages of the language, though not complete change of course. Coptic aligns mainly with Late Egyptian and Demotic rather than Old and Middle Egyptian. It illumines Christian or biblical references of many texts, the nature of many texts as translations of Greek originals, and the use of Greek loan words along with, or in some cases in preference to, native Egyptian words. The Coptic words translated as “evil” include boone, from Egyptian bint (Cerny, 1976, p. 23; Crum, 1939, p. 39); hoou, fundamentally meaning “putrid,” from Egyptian HwA (Cerny, 1976, p. 304; Crum, 1939, p. 731); and gons, usually translated “might, violence, iniquity,” from Egyptian gns “violence, injustice” (Cerny, 1976, p. 332; Crum, 1939, p. 822). Greek words such as pone:ros are used (Crum, 1939, p. 39), and Greek words such as pone:ros, kakos are translated into Coptic (Crum, 1939, pp. 39, 457). As both Kemboly and DuQuesne indicate, the major focus of what one might call the lexical moral compass of ancient Egypt is provided by Maat

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(mAat), the right and intended order of the cosmos—natural, political, social, and spiritual—and the contrast with those forces, beings, or entities that are opposed to or outside of Maat. Thus one sees, as already noted, the opposition in mAat-isft “Order-Disorder/Chaos,” mAat-grg “Truth-Falsehood,” and the adjectives mAa-aDA “True/in the right–False/guilty/in the wrong.” The opposite of mAa-xrw “True of Voice,” often translated as “justified” or “triumphant,” the ubiquitous epithet of the blessed dead who have successfully come through the posthumous judgment, is xbn-xrw (Faulkner, 1962, p. 187; Zandee, 1960, p. 42) “distorted/crooked/wrongful of voice, guilty” (cf. xbnt “crime”). I disagree with Zandee’s etymology of isft as “flimsy, worn thin”; I think it derives from the root sf “cut up, cut off ” (Faulkner, 1962, p. 224), the root of sft “knife,” Coptic se:fe (cf. Arabic seif). A key instance and illustration of Maat and non-Maat or Maat-rejecting behavior is provided by the mortuary text passages dealing with the eating and drinking of bodily waste, which the deceased must strongly reject as a demonstration of the commitment to the proper order of the moral cosmos (Meltzer, 1994, with literature), which Gerald E. Kadish insightfully elucidated using the work of Mary Douglas. Those who ally or align themselves against Maat are rebels, traitors, and grievous offenders against, and enemies of, the king and the deities, those who are represented in the New Kingdom (and later) underworld literature as being punished in the Duat (Hornung, 1990). The opposition between mAat and grg is dramatized in the Late Egyptian story generally known as “Truth and Falsehood” or “The Blinding of Truth” (Simpson, 2003, pp. 104–107, refs. 593–594). Interestingly, although “Truth” is named Maat in the story, the character is male. One set of threats or challenges against Maat comes from Seth, the “god of confusion” and disorder, and his territory, the Red Land or desert, and his affinity with storms and other tumultuous forces. Yet when the succession question is decided in favor of Horus, Horus and Seth are reconciled to represent the balanced unity of the Two Lands, even both holding the heraldic plants of Upper and Lower Egypt that are tied around the smA or “Unity” sign; Seth can be co-opted, and his power constructively channeled to defend Re and defeat the serpent Apophis, who at other times is associated or identified with Seth himself. One wonders if there is an implication that when Seth’s power is constructively directed, he achieves self-mastery or is victorious over his own most destructive impulses. This is the situation until Seth becomes demonized and persecuted in the post–New Kingdom period (Wilkinson, 2003, pp. 197–198). Even then, Seth remains positively venerated in the Oases and especially the Hibis Temple (Klotz, 2006, p. 90; Wilkinson, 2003, p. 199). This illustrates one of the reasons why the Egyptian material resists a clear and simple dichotomy between “good” and “evil”; the same deity can

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have both hostile and benevolent functions and aspects, and they are often inextricably related or complementary, as is the case with the undisciplined power of Seth that is harnessed to defend against a more terrible enemy. This type of dynamic is common in what we may call the non-Abrahamic traditions; as DuQuesne (2003) notes, “The divine principle which an Egyptian would call Sakhmet, the savage but healing goddess, would be known to a Hindu as Kali” (p. 18). Another key item of this discussion, also a locus of great ambivalence, is the uncreated void of Nun, both preceding and surrounding the created cosmos—the realm referred to in Egyptian as iwtt, “the nonexistent” or “that which is not.” “The nonexistent” is the source of creation and renewal but is itself uncreated; in it, Maat does not hold sway. Although necessary to the existence of “that which is” (ntt), and to the creation and continuation of existence, “the nonexistent” is a potential source of anti-Maat and is dangerous. This includes a sense in which it is morally problematic, something that people are wary of and want to distance themselves from (Hornung, 1982, pp. 172–185; Meltzer, 2003, p. 58). As Kemboly recapitulates (2010, pp. 22–32), the “nonexistent” is a major theme cited to identify “evil” as “preexistent” in the Egyptian worldview. Paradoxically, the rebels against and enemies of Maat, spawned or powered by “nonexistence,” ultimately receive the punishment of being consigned to that same realm of “nonexistence” (Hornung, 1990, pp. 149–164). Another approach to the origin of what most scholars refer to as “evil” in ancient Egypt focuses on the rebellion of humankind against the sun-god’s rule, which resulted in the withdrawal of the sun-god and other deities to heaven and the “splitting of the world.” Jan Assmann, who maintains this view, insists that what is involved is a separation, not a “fall” (Kemboly, 2010, p. 10). The theme of rebellion and disobedience is expounded in the Instruction for Merykare, the Coffin Texts, and the Book of the Heavenly Cow (e.g., Assmann, 2002, pp. 189–193). This is amplified by the powerful metaphor of the origin of human beings from the tears wept by the (temporarily) blinded eye of the creator (Hornung, 1982, pp. 149–150). In light of this, one wonders whether the blinding of Maat in the story of Truth and Falsehood referred to above might be understood as highlighting the limitation or vulnerability of Maat itself when encompassed in this world. Kemboly himself rejects the association of Nun, or the primeval waters and pre-creation state, with evil and finds no support for the “pre-existence of evil” argument (2010, p. 357). For him, responsibility for the origin of evil must be shared by the “children” of the sun-god, that is, all created beings: human beings, deities, and Apophis, whom Kemboly regards as created and not truly primeval or preexistent (2010, pp. 355–361). A great deal of what Kemboly says is very clearly and reasonably presented. I think that he has not dealt sufficiently with the lexical material (which I fully realize that I

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have only touched on here) and that he has underestimated the ambiguous and problematic nature of the “nonexistent.” Perhaps this is of a piece with a tendency to see “evil” in terms of a clear dichotomy, rather than focus on the ambivalent, and as it were bipolar, nature of so many of the constituents of the ancient Egyptian universe. Regarding evil per se, which I never have succeeded in delineating in an ancient Egyptian context, I have to concur with Kemboly’s conclusion that it cannot be encompassed or comprehended by human rationality (2010, p. 364). I suspect that the same is true of grace and of Maat itself. In ancient Egypt there was wisdom literature that enjoined people to follow Maat and act or not act in certain ways, and there was a posthumous judgment in which people had to deny that they had committed a long list of acts (including stealing, killing, taking food from children, and causing anyone to weep), and if condemned they would be eaten by a monster called the Devourer or the Devourer of the Dead. There was negative potential in the cosmos, the ambiguous and dangerous realm of “nonexistence.” And there were negative or somewhat negative gods, Seth and Apophis. The crux seems to be that they had a necessary and balanced place in the cosmic order but could not be allowed to encroach upon that order or take control. But the main lexical oppositions that express these dynamics are often not those involving words translatable as “good” or “evil,” and although the Egyptians expressed many things in terms of dualities, they are more complementarities than examples of what we would consider a strict good–evil dualism.

I thank Dr. J. Harold Ellens for his patience and encouragement, and Dr. Terence DuQuesne for a collegial and generous exchange of ideas. In this chapter, I use the computer-friendly “Manuel de Codage” notation for Egyptian transliteration, except for quotations and for titles listed in the references for this chapter.

REFERENCES Allen, J. P. (1988). Genesis in Egypt: The philosophy of Ancient Egyptian creation accounts (Yale Egyptological Studies 2). New Haven, CT: Yale Egyptological Seminar. Assmann, J. (2002). The mind of Egypt: History and meaning in the time of the Pharaohs (Trans. A. Jenkins). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cerny, J. (1976). Coptic etymological dictionary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crum, W. E. (1939). A Coptic dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DuQuesne, T. (1992). “I know Ma’et”: Counted, complete, enduring. Discussions in Egyptology, 22, 79–90. DuQuesne, T. (1994). The raw and the half-baked: Approaches to Egyptian religion. Discussions in Egyptology, 30, 29–35. DuQuesne, T. (1995). “Semen of the bull”: Reflexions on the symbolism of Ma’et with reference to recent studies. Discussions in Egyptology, 32, 107–116.

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DuQuesne, T. (2003). Ancient Egyptian religion and its relevance in today’s world. Discussions in Egyptology, 56, 11–24. Erman, A., & Grapow, H. (1926–1931). Wörterbuch der Aegyptischen Sprache. Leipzig: Hinrichs. Faulkner, R. O. (1962). A concise dictionary of Middle Egyptian. Oxford: Griffith Institute/Oxford University Press. Hoffmeier, J. K. (1985a). Sacred in the vocabulary of Ancient Egypt: The Term DSR, with special reference to Dynasties I–XX (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 59). FreiburgSchweiz and Göttingen: Universitätsverlag and Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Hoffmeier, J. K. (1985b). Abstract of preceding. NAOS, 1 (3), 10–11. Hornung, E. (1982). Conceptions of god in Ancient Egypt: The one and the many (Trans. J. Baines). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Hornung, E. (1990). The Valley of the Kings: Horizon of eternity (Trans. D. Warburton). New York: Timken. Kemboly, M. (2010). The question of evil in Ancient Egypt (GHP Egyptology 12). London: Golden House. Klotz, D. (2006). Adoration of the ram: Five hymns to Amun-Re from Hibis Temple (Yale Egyptological Studies 6). New Haven, CT: Yale Egyptological Seminar. Lorton, D. (1973). The so-called “vile” enemies of the king of Egypt (in the Middle Kingdom and Dyn. XVIII). Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, 10, 65–70. Meltzer, E. S. (1987). The concept and semantic field of “sacred” in Ancient Egypt. NAOS, 3 (1), 2–5. Meltzer, E. S. (1988). The “sacred” in Egyptian: Further semantic and lexical notes. NAOS, 4 (1), 2–3. Meltzer, E. S. (1990). Notes on Ancient Egyptian words for the sacred. NAOS, 6 (1–3), 35–37. Meltzer, E. S. (1994). “Eating and drinking (one’s) refuse”: An Egyptological footnote. Notes Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires, (4), 74. Meltzer, E. S. (1996). Egyptian DF3 “purify, wipe away” = Semitic KPR? Journal of Ancient Civilizations (Changchun), 11, 53–55. Meltzer, E. S. (2003). Some basic principles of Ancient Egyptian religion: A basis for further exploration. Discussions in Egyptology, 57, 57–63. Meltzer, E. S. (2006). The caring god: The experience and lexicon of grace in the Ancient Egyptian religion. Journal of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities, 33 (Nicholas B. Millet Memorial Vol. 2), 129–138. Meltzer, E. S. (2007). Cosmic and personal: The god of awe and grace in Egyptian texts, the Hebrew Bible, and rabbinic commentary. In J. Harold Ellens (Ed.), Text and community: Essays in memory of Bruce M. Metzger (Vol. 1, pp. 39–50). Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix. Meltzer, T. (1995). Stylistics for the study of ancient texts: Wanderings in the borderlands. In W. R. Bodine (Ed.), Discourse analysis of biblical literature: What it is and what it offers (pp. 131–151). Atlanta: Scholar’s Press, Semeia Studies. Miosi, F. T. (1973). A possible reference to the non-calendar week. Newsletter of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities, 4 (1), 2–5. Nietzsche, F. W. (1967). Zur Genealogie der Moral. Eine Streitschrift. Leipzig: Naumann. English ed., On the genealogy of morals (Trans. W. Kaufmann & R. J. Hollingdale)

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and Ecce homo (Trans. W. Kaufmann). New York: Random House. (Original work published in 1887). Redford, D. B. (1992). Egypt, Canaan, and Israel in ancient times. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Shennum, D. (1977). English-Egyptian index of Faulkner’s concise dictionary of Middle Egyptian (Aids and Research Tools in Ancient Near Eastern Studies 1). Malibu, CA: Undena. Simpson, W. K. (Ed.). (2003). The literature of Ancient Egypt (3rd ed.). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Wilkinson, R. H. (2003). The complete gods and goddesses of Ancient Egypt. London: Thames & Hudson. Zandee, J. (1960). Death as an enemy according to Ancient Egyptian conceptions (Studies in the History of Religions [Supplements to Numen] 5). Leiden: Brill.

ch apter 3

Evil in the Time of Thomas Aquinas Alfred J. Eppens

A mere two centuries ago, Thomas Paine wrote, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” He was writing a pamphlet for the purpose of bolstering support for the American Revolution, a historical event that would drastically alter the world of modern times. Nonetheless, as we look back on the life and times of the 18th-century conflict between Great Britain and its North American colonies, in order to compare it with the titanic scale of world conflicts during the 20th century, Paine’s period appears somewhat quaint and civil. British (and, to a lesser extent, Hessian) troops fought by the rules of engagement at that time, and the impact of colonial (and, eventually, French) troops was often limited by lack of supply and organization. War is war, and the casualties on both sides were horrifying. However, there are degrees of tragedy and quantities of death. On the scale of more recent history, the “times” of Paine do not appear to be as great a crucible of pain and evil as he might have believed. A similar comparison has been made concerning our own times and those of the 13th century, the period of Thomas Aquinas. The reason for such a comparison involves Thomas’s philosophy, particularly his explanation of evil. In his detailed and painstaking way, building on the work of the Classical philosophers, particularly Aristotle, and early Christian theologians, particularly Augustine, Thomas expressed a rationale for the evils of his times that would not threaten either one’s belief in God or the moral principles of the Catholic Church. Examined from our later perspective, some critics have dismissed Thomas’s insights as inadequate for the global scale of evil during the 20th and 21st centuries. In an attempt to make sense of recent world

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wars, genocides, and holocausts, such students of history and theology have sought a more impressive and substantive explanation for evil, an explanation that rises to the level, so to speak, of the past decades of violence and death. According to them, Thomas’s ideas may have been adequate for his own times and circumstances, times that to modern eyes appear lackluster on the horror and mortality scale. However, they believe that in the face of massive 20thcentury tragedies, his philosophical explanations are simply deficient. My intention here is threefold. First, I will debunk what I consider to be a faulty view of the 13th century. It was a time of large-scale international bloodshed, involving threats of terror and death that penetrated to every level of European society, comparable in many ways to our own times. My second section will lay out Thomas’s philosophical explanation of evil, found in his massive Summa Theologica as well as in De malo. This explanation is often oversimplified in modern analysis, and presented without a proper philosophical context, leading to its devaluation. Finally, I will comment on ways in which Thomas’s insights on evil could be particularly functional in today’s world, defusing much of the doomsday rhetoric swirling about, and actively helping people to cope, particularly with manmade tragedies, in both a spiritually and a psychologically fruitful way.

THE LIFE OF THOMAS The century into which Thomas Aquinas was born was one of the most complex of European history. The changes happening in Europe were of a deeper nature than in previous medieval periods, and were occurring at an accelerating pace. The Crusades had been ongoing for over a century, and yet it was only in the 1200s that the most significant effects were beginning to manifest themselves. Learning and the arts were flourishing, and the population was rising, along with the naves of cathedrals in the new “Gothic” style. New currents of thought, both Classical and Muslim, were entering Europe, and international trade was reaching large-scale proportions. And yet there existed unprecedented threats, both from within and from outside of Europe. The Fourth Crusade went horribly wrong, and the Fifth Crusade failed, putting into question the future of crusades to the Holy Land. The Holy Roman Empire was weakened by decades of internal power struggles, and relations between popes and monarchs reached an all-time low with the excommunication of England’s King John and the Holy Roman Empire’s Otto IV. Most significant, however, is the threat of the Asian Mongols, whose military tactics and heinous brutality made them appear unstoppable as they amassed the world’s largest empire, stretching from the coast of China to Eastern Europe. Thomas Aquinas was fully engaged in this European milieu. He traveled between and lived in several of the largest and most influential cities of

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the time, and his teaching appointments and administrative responsibilities would have made him both well informed of current events and aware of the mood of the populace. He was in the nerve centers of both political and intellectual Europe in the 13th century, and would have been acutely aware of the conflicts and threats of the age. Thomas, the youngest of four brothers, was born in the kingdom of Naples around 1225 into a wealthy family of minor aristocracy. As with many younger sons of such families, he was intended for a religious life, and his father sent him to the great Benedictine monastery of Monte Casino. This was a place of profound historical significance, having been established by St. Benedict of Nursia around 529. It was here that Benedict wrote the Benedictine Rule, which prescribed the overall structure for Western Monasticism, a movement that would shape the very essence of Roman Catholicism and of European identity. Monte Casino had produced an impressive list of rulers, historians, and popes, and was at the height of its splendor and influence when the 5- or 6-year-old Thomas began living and studying there. Over the next eight years, this child would absorb many influences of the setting, both scholarly and intellectual (Torrell, 1996, pp. 14ff.). Monte Casino had strong Byzantine influences, both in its liturgical artistic works and in its having at one time served as a bridge of sorts between central Italy and coastal Byzantine city-states. Political conflict was to cut short, however, any future that the young Thomas would have at the monastery. In 1239, the imperial troops of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II attacked and occupied the abbey. Such a dramatic event must have strongly influenced the 14-yearold boy, putting into sharp focus the reality of papal-secular struggles that dominated Europe over the 13th and 14th centuries. At this time, Thomas’s parents supported Emperor Frederick’s cause, partly because of his mother’s connection with the royal family. Nevertheless, they withdrew their son from Monte Casino and sent him to study at a stadium generale, or university, recently founded by Frederick in Naples, his mother’s homeland. This change of location was to vastly influence the formation of the intellect of the teenaged Thomas. Here he would encounter a multiethnic and interreligious ecumene that would include the writings of the Jewish scholar Maimonides, the Arabic-Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd (also known as Averroës), and, most importantly, the classical philosopher Aristotle. The move to Naples would also affect the vocation of the young Thomas, as he would decide to part with the Benedictines and to eventually become a Dominican friar. The Dominican Order of friars had been founded by St. Dominic Guzman just 25 years earlier, for the purpose of applying the spirit and scholarship of the Benedictines to the challenges of the world outside of monastic walls. The ideals of the order were to preach and teach throughout the secular world, while maintaining poverty through reliance on donations.

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One can imagine how this might have appealed to an idealistic and possibly rebellious teenager, as a reaction to the grandeur of his earlier monastic experience at Monte Casino. It was sometime between 1240 and 1244 that Thomas became a Dominican novice. Thomas’s decision most likely resulted from the influence of the Dominican preacher John of St. Julian, who was at Naples at that time. It was not well received by his family, who ultimately held him captive for two years in an effort to get him to renounce the Dominicans. Ultimately, however, Thomas remained steadfast in his determination, and in 1246 he was allowed to return to the Dominicans, with whom he promptly made his final vows. After short stays in Rome and Paris, Thomas moved to Cologne, where he taught under the renowned Albertus Magnus, one of the greatest German philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages. It was Albertus who first championed the works of Aristotle, working to reconcile them with Christian theology and scripture. It was in Cologne that Thomas was ordained to the priesthood, probably around 1250. Shortly after this, he returned to Paris, where he now taught at the university. Paris in the 13th century was vibrant and cosmopolitan. The great churches of Notre Dame and Sainte-Chapelle were completed, and the official charter of the University of Paris had been granted in 1200. Clearly, by this time, Paris had become the heart of France, having been established as the cultural, economic, and administrative center of the region. The city’s guilds were wealthy and independent of the French king, connecting with the entire known world through international trade. Indeed, much the same can be said of all of the major cities in which Thomas lived: Cologne, located at the intersection of the Rhine River and several major trade routes, was the largest city in Germany and extremely rich; and Rome was the ancient seat of the Church, with its central Italian location and so on. The last two decades of Thomas’s life were ones of journeys, including stays in Naples, Paris, Anagni, London, Orvieto, Bologna, and Perugia. Of particular importance is his move to Rome around 1265 for the purpose of establishing a new Dominican study center (stadium). This was probably located at the priory of Santa Sabina, and Thomas was given a free hand to organize it as he saw fit (Tugwell, 1988, p. 224). He then returned to teach in Paris around 1268, possibly to head off a crisis involving a dangerous use of Aristotle by some faculty members of the university (Davies, 2003, p. 7n21). In 1272, Thomas was instructed to establish a new institution for theological study and had full discretion as to its location and the selection of faculty. He chose Naples and spent the rest of his productive life in that location. It is clear that throughout these decades, Thomas had full contact with wellinformed persons at all levels of society, from popes to beggars, and from elderly teachers to young scholars. As a priest, he preached frequently, being in direct contact with the congregations of many churches. As an organizer

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and administrator of schools, he would enter the world of tradesmen and laborers, servants and professionals. In 1274, while on a journey to Lyons, Thomas became ill, and he died on March 7 of that year.

THIRTEENTH-CENTURY EUROPE Europe in the 1200s was a swirling kaleidoscope of profound and rapid change. Although some of these changes were positive, their value would often not be apparent until later times. Indeed, Thomas Aquinas was in the vanguard of many of these changes, making his vows under a newly established Dominican order, and focusing on the controversial and newly rediscovered philosophy of Aristotle. And yet changes of a negative sort were also present, and were of a deeply dangerous and disturbing nature. I will discuss three prominent crises that, I believe, would have influenced Thomas. These are power vacuums in both the Church and the Holy Roman Empire, the disintegration and degradation of the crusading movement to the Holy Land, and the wide-ranging attacks and conquests of the Mongols, including the defeat of the Teutonic Knights. The first crisis involved leadership within the Holy Roman Empire. This vague collaboration of Germanic tribal duchies officially began with the crowning of the Saxon King Otto I in Rome in 962, but soon developed into a centuries-long power struggle between popes and emperors. These struggles included the investiture controversy of the 1000s and the efforts of Frederick I Barbarossa to restore imperial power in the 1100s. In both instances, the Church prevailed. The third great crisis of the Empire came to a head during the last half of Thomas’s lifetime. Frederick II had been crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 1220, having inherited the Norman kingdom of Sicily. This illustrates a persistent problem in the Empire: Since the time of Otto, it had acquired territories in northern and central Italy. This diluted imperial power, so that local German rulers rebelled when the emperor was engaged in Italy, and Italian rulers did likewise when he was in Germany. In any case, Frederick II consistently focused on his Italian possessions, and over the 30 years of his reign came close to uniting all of Italy and breaking the political power of the Church. Only his death in 1250 prevented the achievement of his objective. Various popes, seeking to prevent members of Frederick’s Hohenstaufen dynasty from continuing control of the Empire, successfully prevented leadership from being passed down through heredity. They argued for an electoral system, and thus prevented agreement of a successor to Frederick II for more than two decades. This period, called the Great Interregnum, lasted from Frederick’s death in 1250 until 1273, basically the last half of Thomas’s life. It was a period of constant warfare and lawlessness, as various states fought for land and trade. This was particularly intense in the German territories and in Italy,

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the very areas of many of Thomas’s journeys and residencies. These decades of virtual anarchy would produce great anxiety, causing the fear of a general breakdown of governmental order and structure. Nonetheless, the Church itself was not immune to such power vacuums. In 1268, Pope Clement IV died, and no candidate could be agreed upon to succeed him. Thus ensued the longest papal election in the history of the Church. This was due primarily to political infighting between French and Italian cardinals. Ultimately, the cardinals were confined to the palace, their rations reduced to bread and water, and the roof of the building was removed. Of the 20 cardinal-electors, three died and one resigned. At the end of this three-year ordeal, the election of Pope Gregory X was made possible by delegating authority to a committee of six, agreed to by the remaining ten cardinals. One can only imagine how demoralizing and frustrating such a spectacle must have been, especially to a religious such as Thomas. Compounding this was the practical problem of a leaderless church in a time of multiple external and internal threats, and the task of rebuilding papal authority once the impasse was over, to say nothing about the challenge to one’s faith in the workings of the Holy Spirit. The second great crisis involved the end stages of the crusading movement. European crusading had begun with the Norman reconquest of Sicily during the last half of the 11th century. It was in these same decades that European armies began to take back sections of Spain, particularly the city of Toledo. The scope of crusading was expanded with the Council of Clermont in 1095, when Pope Urban called for soldiers to liberate Jerusalem and other churches in that region from Muslin domination. Initially, crusading was a military success, as European armies captured such important sites as Antioch and Jerusalem, setting up Christian kingdoms. Such military successes were due in part to the weakness of the Abbasid Caliphate and the disorganization of local Muslin rulers. But Islamic armies soon recovered, and there began a slow reversal of European fortunes. Particularly under the command of Salah al-Din, Muslim troops recaptured Syria and, eventually, Jerusalem. The Second and Third Crusades failed miserably, and the Fourth Crusade, controlled by the Venetians, exploited Byzantine dynastic struggles, resulting in the profoundly disturbing sacking of Constantinople in 1204. Add to this the sad tragedy of the Children’s Crusade of 1212, when some 30,000 French and German children, believing that they were being transported to Palestine, were sold into slavery in Muslim slave markets. The Fifth Crusade, with the goal of conquering Egypt, would likewise end in failure. So by the time of Thomas, although crusades in the Western Mediterranean had succeeded in pushing back the Muslim threat, the situation in the East was very different. Not only were Christians on the run, being steadily pushed out of territories they had previously reconquered, but also it was now clear that the Byzantine Empire was much weaker than previously thought.

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For centuries, the Byzantines had served as a protective barrier between Europe and the Muslim empires; it now appeared that this protection was vulnerable and unreliable. The Muslim threat to Europe seemed greater than ever, and Europe seemed less than capable of responding effectively. Against this backdrop emerged the Sixth Crusade, called in 1228. It was more political than military, because it was led by Frederick II, even though he had been excommunicated for not fulfilling earlier crusade promises. It was clear that Frederick sought to use this crusade to push aside papal authority, and to consolidate and expand his own power. After alienating local Christian rulers in Cyprus and Acre, Frederick did not have the strength to take Jerusalem militarily. He was able, however, to negotiate a treaty of compromise with the sultan of Egypt, whereby Frederick was to share control of Jerusalem and some surrounding sites with the sultan for a limited period of time. This enterprise was viewed by many as an abominable twisting of the crusade movement for personal power grabbing, because it was neither military in nature nor sanctioned by the Church. Muslims ultimately recaptured Jerusalem in 1242, with a great slaughter of Christians. Hoping to put the crusading movement back on track, Louis IX of France led the Seventh Crusade, and initially enjoyed some modest success with the capture of Damieta in Egypt. Shortly after that, however, Louis was captured by Muslims, and the Crusaders were forced to pay a large ransom to gain his release. Islamic armies recaptured Antioch in 1268, and two years later Louis IX died of plague, quickly ending the Seventh Crusade. Although the last Christian stronghold in the Holy Land, Acre, would not fall to Muslim armies until 1291, it would have been clear by the end of Thomas’s life that the crusading movement had been a failure. What would this have meant to European Christians? Certainly, their faith in God and in the Church would have been shaken, because the Crusades had been called as a spiritual enterprise. In addition, the prospect of insecurity, which had vaguely existed at the start of Thomas’s life, would now be brought into sharp focus. The confidence of Europeans in the ability of their governments to provide effective protection in the face of Muslim threats was low indeed. It would not be Muslim threats, however, which would most frighten Europeans of the 13th century, but those of the Mongols. Originating as an obscure pastoral people in the region of Outer Mongolia in Central Asia, the Mongols would rise to power with stunning speed. Their first leader, Genghis Khan (Temujin), was born around 1162 and was elected Great Khan in 1206. He believed that he had a mission to rule the world, and his only goal was conquest. He did not seek treasure or the expansion of Mongol culture, but simply to expand his rule. “Man’s highest joy,” he is reported to have said, “is in victory: to conquer one’s enemies, to pursue them, to deprive them of their possessions, to make their beloved weep, to ride on their horses, to embrace their wives and daughters” (quoted in Fairbank, Reischauer, & Craig, 1973, p. 164).

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The hard and competitive lives of his nomadic people provided a readymade cavalry, numbering around 130,000. To this he added his own systematic organizational planning and brilliant military tactics, becoming perhaps the greatest conqueror the world has ever known. For many years, Mongol armies were unbeatable. Their flying columns of horsemen would surround enemy armies, luring them into pursuit and then attacking from the rear. They used a new type of compound bow that added power and distance to their assaults. In addition to battle, the Mongols would use outright terror to conquer territories, slaughtering whole cities such as Bokhara and Samarkand, so that surrounding regions would surrender without a fight. In addition, Mongols became expert at laying siege to great cities, effectively strangling them into submission, and then butchering and enslaving the inhabitants. Mongol military victories would strengthen, rather than dilute, their force. They would devastate a conquered area, destroying cities and towns and agricultural and irrigation systems, and reducing the population to servitude. Captives would be forced to fight neighboring armies in the front lines of battle or face a painful death. They thus used soldiers from one defeated army after another against the next country, making advancing Mongol armies unstoppable. By the time of Thomas, Genghis Khan had conquered northern China, Transoxiana, northern Iran, Persia, and south Russia, amassing the largest land empire in human history. After Genghis Khan’s death in 1227, his son and successor, Ogodei, after conquering more of northern China, turned west. He captured and largely razed Christian Kiev, creating a tributary system for the Russian principalities. From there, he began to raid Catholic Europe. By 1241, when Thomas was about 16 years of age, the situation had reached desperate proportions. Mongol armies had overwhelmingly defeated a Christian army at Liegnitz in Poland, and proceeded to invade Hungary. Cracow was burnt, and Moravia devastated. The Mongols crossed over into Austria, and were at the gates of Vienna. Europe was in a panic. No ruler had an army of significant size to face the Mongols, and the inability of European powers to collaborate had been proven during the Crusades. The salvation of Europe came with the death of the khan. Troops were withdrawn to the homeland, and five years of struggle would precede the election of the next leader. It was during this pause in Mongol expansion that an event of great significance occurred in the north. The Teutonic Knights had been successfully expanding Catholic influence and control of Eastern Europe for years. In 1242, they fought against the Russian prince Alexander Nevsky, who had sworn loyalty to the Mongol ruler and was fighting on his behalf. This illustrates that the Mongol armies that Europeans fought were often composed of mostly non-Mongols. In any case, the Teutonic Knights

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attacked across the ice of Lake Peipus, and during the battle the ice gave way. Almost the entire army of Teutonic Knights was lost. After ending their succession crisis, the Mongols next attacked the Islamic Abbasid capital of Baghdad. Having defeated the notorious sect, the Assassins, they stormed the city, burning, looting, and destroying the fruits of centuries of Islamic architecture, scholarship, and culture. In 1258, they murdered the last caliph, putting an end to the Abbasid Dynasty. The following year, they brutally conquered Syria. To the European mind, the prospect of Mongol domination must have been far more terrifying than the Muslim threat. Europeans knew how Christians had been treated in Islamic lands. Both Jews and Christians were “People of the Book,” and as such were usually given a measure of respect and certain rights. They clearly had to demonstrate their submission to the Islamic ruler, usually through payment of special taxes and restrictions on their religious practice. There was no question that Christians would be treated as secondclass citizens. But overall survival was assured. This was not the case with the Mongols, who seemed to practice a pantheistic, superstition-based religion while feigning openness to other belief systems and tolerating a variety of faiths in their courts. In practice, however, the Mongol brutality in conquest meant that survival was doubtful, and wholesale slaughter was likely. Even though the image of Mongol military invincibility was shattered in 1260 at the battle of Goliath Springs (Ain Jalut), most observers recognized that this was an opportunistic fluke caused by yet another withdrawal of Mongol troops to return home to fight over succession. The ability of the enormous Mongol Empire to swallow up Europe seemed unquestionable. The sustained psychological terror that this situation presented was unprecedented. Indeed, Oxford don J. M. Roberts has opined that the Mongols slaughtered and destroyed “on a scale the Twentieth Century alone has emulated” (1993, p. 299). The situation would compare to the nuclear threat of the late 20th century—an entire populace awaiting an almost certain annihilation. To a well-informed European such as Thomas, the future must have seemed a frightening choice between death and destruction at the hands of ruthless pagans or conquest and subjugation at the hands of Muslims, with European rulers unable to act effectively. Both at home and abroad, the world must surely have seemed to be filled with evil.

THOMAS ’ S EXPLANATION OF EVIL Throughout the prolific writings of Thomas Aquinas, he demonstrates an obsession to explain all things, seen and unseen, with a balanced thoroughness that can sometimes frustrate the modern reader. The sheer number of objections and replies often tends to obscure, rather than clarify, Thomas’s

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answers. It is this degree of depth and detail that can cause the modern reader to dismiss Thomas’s answers, without persevering to follow his exposition and explanation of their many facets and implications. There are two main sources that I will access for Thomas’s explanation of evil. The first is his massive and masterful, though unfinished, Summa Theologica (Aquinas, 1948). The word summa refers to a literary genre common during the High Middle Ages, involving a lengthy treatment of a subject in an exhaustive and carefully structured manner. In this case, Thomas prepared a comprehensive work covering all aspects of the science of theology, involving both God and man. My second major source is his work De malo, or On Evil (Aquinas, 2003). The form of this work is referred to as disputed questions. This genre arises from the university practice of conducting public and private disputations, or discussions, involving special topics, seeking to draw out all possible arguments for or against a given proposition, and answering all such arguments. Thus, we have a structure similar in form to that of the Summa Theologica, but expanded in depth of argument and reply. In some ways, it is even less accessible to modern readers than the Summa, but perhaps more focused. As background, it must be made clear that Thomas drew from the ideas of St. Augustine of Hippo, the fifth-century North African bishop, possibly the most important figure in the early Western Church, and a bridge between the ancient and medieval worlds. This background is interesting, because Augustine was most aligned with Platonic thought, and Thomas championed that of Aristotle. Nevertheless, on the topic of evil, Augustine is the foundation. In Chapter 11 of his Enchiridion, Augustine addresses the existence of anything evil among His works, if He were not so omnipotent and good that he can bring good even out of evil. For what is that which we call evil but the absence of good? In the bodies of animals, disease and wounds mean nothing but the absence of health; . . . Just in the same way, what are called vices in the soul are nothing but privations of the natural good. And when they are cured, they are not transferred elsewhere: when they cease to exist in the healthy soul, they cannot exist anywhere else.

This doctrine of Augustine, referred to generally as privatio boni, or privation of good, is built on the belief that good and evil do not balance and cannot properly be compared. They lack symmetry, because evil is not substantive and cannot be thought of as an entity. The metaphor of light (the good) and dark (evil) is often used to illustrate this idea. We perceive the absence of light, and refer to this perception as darkness. Building on what he embraces from Augustine, Thomas’s explanation of evil is largely in a metaphysical context rather than a moral one. This is

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because it goes to the very existence and identity of God. The metaphysical questions involve (a) “What is evil?” and, then, (b) “What is the cause of evil?” The moral issue in evil involves questions of why evil exists, or for what purpose. In Part 1, Q. 2, A. 3, Obj. 1 of the Summa, Thomas frames the objection to God’s existence thusly: It seems that God does not exist, because if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. But the word “God” means that he is infinite goodness. If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore God does not exist.

Thomas then goes on to discuss the five proofs of God’s existence. He specifically replies to the above objection by citing Augustine as quoted above, and then commenting, “This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that he should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good.” To put it another way, the so-called problem of evil is often presented in the following manner: 1. God is the creator of everything. 2. Evil is a thing; therefore, 3. God created evil.

The answer that Thomas formulated involves how one is to define thing in the second premise. For Thomas, evil was indeed real—he never argued that it was a mere illusion. However, it is precisely this concept of reality that requires some exposition. Thomas is not playing word games here, or denying the painful impact of evil on human lives. Evil is real, but it is not a positive thing, is not a substance, and therefore was not created by God. Thomas would presumably recast the problem of evil in this way: 1. God is the creator of everything. 2. Evil is not a thing, but a privation. 3. Thus, God is not the creator of evil. (Adapted from the analysis in King, 2002)

It is helpful here to be specific about the term privation. As Thomas is using the term, it refers to some sort of specific and particular power or quality that is meant to be or should be present in something. For example, a mountain is not expected to have the ability to taste, but various animals, including humans, are expected to possess this power. So to say that a mountain suffers the privation of taste means something different than to say it of a man or a dog. The mountain never was meant to have the potential to

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taste. But to a man, the inability to taste is a real or true privation. Thus this lacking, this privation, this evil, is real to Thomas. To clarify further, in De malo Thomas speaks of evil in two ways, comparing it to discussing the color white. He writes, [W]hen we speak of white in one way, we can understand the subject that is white. In the second way, we call white what is white as such, namely the very accidental quality. And we can similarly understand evil in one way as the subject that is evil, and this subject is an entity. In the second way, we can understand evil itself, and evil so understood is the very privation of a particular good, not an entity. . . . And so I say that evil is not an entity, but the subject that evil befalls is, since evil is only the privation of a particular good. For example, blindness itself is not an entity, but the subject blindness befalls is. (Q. 1, A. 1, Ans.)

Such privations explain the so-called physical or natural evils, such as death, physical pain, illness, or disability. In the sphere of moral evil, the evil in which humans freely choose to engage, Thomas describes evil as a privation in the free acts of men and women that are not in conformity with either divine or reasonable moral law. If, as we have seen above, God is not the cause of evil, then what is the cause? The Third Article of De malo answers this question, as Thomas writes, The cause of evil is good in the way in which evil can have a cause . . . every evil has a cause, but only by accident, since evil cannot have an intrinsic cause . . . only good can have an intrinsic cause. Nor can the intrinsic cause of good be anything but good, since intrinsic causes produce things like themselves. Therefore, we conclude that good is the cause of every evil. (Q. 1, A. 3, Ans.)

To understand this position, we need to distinguish between per se and accidental causes. The term per se means by, of, or in itself (i.e., intrinsically present). For Thomas, every created thing is good, and seeks to move toward that good. Everything desired or desirable is therefore good when it is intended, and is therefore a per se cause. On the other hand, if something happens outside of the intention, purpose, or plan, its effect is accidental, not intrinsic to the thing or person involved. Thomas reasoned that evil per se cannot be intended or desired, for everything desirable is good. Thus, everyone who does evil is, nevertheless, intending some good. For example, to the fornicator who seeks sensual pleasure, the pleasure appears to be good. It is not in the nature of a thing or a person to be evil. Yet the fornicator is violating the natural order of reason and divine law, his will having been prompted by the senses; he has been deceived, as it were, into a belief that he was doing good. The fault is not in

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seeking pleasure as such, but in proceeding to make a decision without considering the rule of reason or divine law. Thomas uses the example of a carpenter who ought to cut a piece of wood straight by using a ruler. If his cut is crooked, it will be because he failed to use the ruler. Likewise, according to Thomas, pleasure and everything else in human affairs should be regulated and measured by the rule of reason and God’s law, in order to avoid making a disordered choice. We can supplement this insight, and clarify our starting point, by looking at the answer to Summa, Part 1, Q. 48, Art. 2, where Thomas writes, One opposite is known through the other, as darkness is known through light. Hence also what evil is must be known from the nature of good. Now we have said above that good is everything appetible; and thus, since every nature desires its own being and its own perfection, it must be said also that the being and the perfection of any nature is good. Hence, it cannot be that evil signifies being, or any form or nature. Therefore it must be that by the name of evil is signified the absence of good. And this is what is meant by saying that evil is neither a being nor a good. (Italics in original)

IMPLICATIONS FOR MODERN TIMES The implications of Thomas’s explanation of evil are profound. In the religious arena, it preserves not only the existence but also the goodness of God. It also posits a world that is ordered and rational, operating by principles that are accessible to the human mind, even in the absence of divine revelation. This created world, including humankind, is naturally good and seeks to extend the good in all well-ordered decisions and intrinsic changes. How, then, did this philosophy function within the turmoil of 13th-century Europe, and how does it apply to our times? Thomas’s explanation of evil as privation serves to rob human fear and suffering of some of its sting. Under this analysis, evil, though real, is not an independent thing. It can never fully prevail over good, because this would belie the very nature of all of creation. Evil is empty, a void, an absence, a deficiency, and a nonentity. It is to be devalued and despised, not respected. Particularly in modern times, evil is viewed as an impressive force, a positive power, having an independent existence as real and natural as that of creation itself. This multiplies human insecurity and fear, encouraging surrender to the flow of events. If, instead, evil were recognized as the aberration that it is, people would more readily oppose it in all of its forms. This is particularly true in the sphere of collective evil, wherein entire societies participate in one way or another in social injustice or oppression.

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In general, the capacity for evil is a price we pay for having free will, and the human will, as we have seen, is the accidental cause of moral evil. Embracing this realization could make people more conscious of their obligation to weigh and measure their decisions, taking greater personal responsibility for their actions and inactions. It is precisely this point that makes Thomas’s explanation of evil unpopular to modern persons. We tend to react emotionally to suffering, to be unwilling to understand not only the cause but also the purpose of it. It seems too much to ask to apply our rational faculty to the situation, and to sort out the true reality of what is occurring. But this, aside from spirituality, is the only way to come to terms with the constant and universal reality of evil in our lives, and the human suffering that it causes. The philosophy that Thomas articulated is one of hopefulness and optimism. Even with the ubiquitous presence of evil in the world, and the depths of discouragement that can result from it, Thomas assures us that the workings of good and evil are stable and positive. But to access this consolation requires knowledge and effort, two commodities in short supply in today’s world. We live, as did Thomas, in a world filled with evil. We, however, have the benefit of having viewed the attempts of people in recent centuries to counter evil with other philosophies and dogmas, attempts that have proven ineffective or even counterproductive. The benefits of the Thomistic explanation of evil are even more valuable now than they were in his own time; we need only to embrace them.

REFERENCES Aquinas, T. (1948). Summa Theologica (Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province). Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press. Aquinas, T. (2003). On evil (Trans. Richard Regan and Ed. and Intro. Brian Davies). New York: Oxford University Press. Augustine of Hippo. Augustine’s Enchiridion. Retrieved from http://www.leaderu. com/cyber/books/augenchiridion/enchiridion01-23.html. Davies, B. (Ed.). (2003). Introduction. In T. Aquinas, On evil (Trans. Richard Regan). New York: Oxford University Press. Fairbank, J. K., Reischauer, E. O., & Craig, A. M. (1973). East Asia: Tradition and transformation. Boston: Boston University Press. King, B. (2002, Summer). Thomas Aquinas on the metaphysical problem of evil. Quodlibet Journal, 4 (2–3). Roberts, J. M. (1993). History of the world. New York: Oxford University Press. Torrell, J-P. (1996). Saint Thomas Aquinas: The person and his work. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. Tugwell, S. (Ed.). (1988). Albert and Thomas: Selected writings. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum.

ch apter 4

Where Is the Locus of Evil? Cassandra M. Klyman

I. EVIL OF THE INNOCENTS There was a little girl who had a little curl Right in the middle of her forehead; And when she was good she was very good, And when she was bad she was horrid. In 2009 in the state of Michigan, there were 135 juveniles incarcerated for felonies. All over the United States, there is a similar pattern of increasing numbers of youths, male and female, behind bars. There is no consistent way that American society has determined to deal with them in the criminal justice system. Federal and states’ rights become conflicted in the jurisdictional issues. We have moved from a parens patria view in which the judge, within the juvenile justice courts, represents the disciplining parent; to a position in which the juvenile, particularly the adolescent, is given full constitutional rights to defend himself or herself. That means the right to an attorney, the right to confront witnesses, protections against self-incrimination, protections against double jeopardy, and a standard of guilt of “beyond a reasonable doubt”—the firm tenets of the adult criminal justice system. The adversarial aspect of jury trials was considered not in the best interest of children, and the 14th Amendment was off-limits. However, one serious concession to youth has been made recently, and that is the U.S. Supreme Court decision (Roper v. Simons, 2005) that there be no death penalty assigned

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to any one who committed the crime while under the age of 18. In a conversation with Chief Justice John Roberts, this author and he agreed that attention should be prioritized to prevention and early intervention for minor offenses so that wrongdoing does not escalate to tragedy. It seems to me that the most fundamental mandate is to try to understand when and how nature and nurture interact to result in hurtful behavior, so that we can give thoughtful testimony to local and national legislatures to help them, in turn, meaningfully and beneficially change procedure and sentencing. We know from our myths, legends, and sacred scriptures that strictures upon disobedience to the law are central to teaching the important lessons of what it takes to be good. However, lessons can be heard in childhood but not really understood by an immature brain or a mind that is unable to “mentalize” (Allen, Fonagy, & Bateman 2008)—that is, unable to be simultaneously mindful of his or her mind and the mind of another or of the community. Freudian psychoanalytic understanding of controlled behavior rested on the resolution of the Oedipus complex wherein the child around the ages of 5–7 incorporated the proscriptions and prohibitions of the loved parents to form the psychological entity of the superego or conscience. At first the infant and toddler would want to please the external parent to avoid loss of the object, avoid loss of love, or prevent fantasized bodily harm. Then he or she would behave to avoid offending his or her conscience and experiencing the unpleasant affects of shame, guilt, or sadness. Melanie Klein and the British School of psychoanalysts also believed that aggression was fundamental in the baby; and until it was fused with a loving self-object the baby would scratch, kick, and bite trying to rid itself of unpleasant somatic experiences projected externally on to the caregiver. If this loving self-object fails to develop, then projection and lack of empathy result in a mean and angry person who may not recognize fear or terror in another enough to be moved by it. The attachment theorists emphasized that the child needs to feel secure and safe. This good feeling can only come from separation anxiety being resolved by secure attachment and a good enough caregiver. Those left with an insecure attachment will be more prone to violence toward themselves and others. A study from the United Kingdom (Barlow, Qualter & Stylianou, 2010) entitled “Relationships Between Machiavellianism, Emotional Intelligence and Theory of Mind on Children” sheds some light on this problem. The findings of the study were consistent with adults’ assessments. Negative associations were found between callous, deceitful, and opportunistic treatment by peers and friends (in the study, this was called Mach), and social and emotional understanding. However, interesting gender differences were found. Emotional Intelligence was the name of a book by Daniel Goleman (1998) that has been popular in North America. However, this chapter references

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Mayer and Salovey’s (1997) model, which defines emotional intelligence as having four hierarchical components: the abilities to perceive, use, understand, and regulate emotion. It relies on capability and emotion-related abilities to achieve actual social success. Those with impaired emotional intelligence score higher on loneliness, depression, and aggression. They are more likely to have alexythymia (an inability to verbalize emotions) and empathic failures in their daily lives. But can these skills be put to ill use, perverted for power or ideological ends? Does emotional intelligence always prohibit a Machiavellian outlook? When empathy is lacking, is aggression impossible to control? Machiavelli was a Renaissance prince who wrote a treatise for the Medici family advising how to gain and keep control of their principalities. He had a shrewd knowledge of human behavior, and his book, The Prince, has served as a primer in many current Philosophy and Ethics classes (Machiavelli, 1505). In the twenty-first century, we are seeing in the War on Terror that there can be a masochistic surrender to a charismatic leader that causes adolescents and adults to set aside individual morality and substitute his grandiose aims for their own values. In the Archives of General Psychiatry, Dr. Adrian Raine, chairman of criminology at the University of Pennsylvania, published an update to his research into his comparative study of the brains of antisocial people. In 2000, he had reported that the prefrontal cortex was significantly smaller in violent, asocial men than in controls; in 2005, that pathological liars had more white than gray matter in the prefrontal cortex, compared with controls; and, in 2009, that the amygdala of psychopathic individuals is smaller. Raine’s study was based on a recruited sample of individuals who were seeking temporary employment. They were screened with the Hare Psychopathy Checklist– Revised, which assesses factors of superficial charm, cunning and manipulation, pathological lying, impulsivity, irresponsibility, callousness, lack of remorse, and the like. A score of 23 or higher defines psychopathy. They selected 27 such high scorers and 32 low scorers matched for age, gender, and ethnicity. The magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) results of smaller amygdala in the high scorers held firm even when socioeconomic status and substance abuse were considered. Raine and his co-researches find this evidence convincing because it follows upon evidence that rats and monkeys with amygdala damage display a lack of fear. And humans with such damage have difficulty responding to facial expressions in another, and so another’s terror or pain is not aversive. What comes first—could the psychopathy cause the brain tissue’s volumetric difference? Or was the immaturity of the brain, the poor myelinization of neurofiber tracts from the cortex to the limbic system, not allowing conventional behavior? Psychoanalysts assume that there is an aggressive instinctual drive underlying all kinds of aggression, and that it is instrumental, together with the libidinal drive, in the formation of all psychic structure.

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Barlow’s study (2010) involved 360 children with a median age of 9 years 3 months. They were assessed as to their theory of mind, ability emotional intelligence, trait emotional intelligence, and measure of verbal ability according to standard testing, and this was then integrated into an assessment of how they might use their competencies towards others—compassionately or manipulatively. In general, the expected negative association between Mach and social and emotional understanding held true. Theory of mind scores were determined by the child being read three standardized stories, each containing a situation in which somebody accidentally says something he or she should not have said, as it may hurt the feelings of another. Could the children detect and understand who committed the social blunder, and understand the hurtfulness of the faux pas to the listener? They were also asked a control question regarding the content of the story. Ability emotional intelligence was determined by the MSCEIT-Y test, in which the child must, first, identify the emotions expressed by a series of faces; then, second, view a set of vignettes and tell how different emotions impact on behavior and decision making; third, choose the emotions a protagonist is feeling; and, finally, choose how helpful certain strategies are in managing certain emotions. Trait emotional intelligence was measured by the TEIQue-CF, which is a self-report instrument regarding one’s adaptability, emotional expression, perception, self-motivation, self-esteem, low impulsivity, peer relations, emotional regulation, and affective disposition. Finally, language ability was tested and found to be in the normal range. The results were as follows: Boys scored higher than girls on Machiavellian attitudes. Girls scored higher than boys on ability emotional intelligence— controlling for age—and language ability and there was a positive correlation for the self-report of trait emotional intelligence. Interestingly, for trait emotional intelligence—in the self-report instrument, there was a positive correlation. Also, the more superior the language ability, the more Mach the boys were, whereas the reverse was true for girls. This fits with everyday observations that the more boys can talk, the more they can lead, whereas talkative girls can conciliate and less verbal ones are more the tomboys and bullies. The conclusion pertinent to this discussion is that children with superior advanced theory of mind may be more able to deceive and manipulate others; however this alone is not enough for high level of Mach . . . children who are better able to understand the thoughts and beliefs of others do not use this in a negative way. (Barlow, Qualter & Stylianou, 2010)

Rather, understanding leads to appreciation of the feelings of others and being more respectful. The authors suggest that the gender difference may be related to social rearing—Mach qualities are more acceptable in boys, who may need to be

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more distrustful and suspicious (Sutton & Keogh, 2001), and/or boys may manage others differently from girls as they establish social roles and groups (Pellegrini and Long, 2002). This study claims to be the first to control for levels of theory of mind and to examine the relationship between ability and trait emotional intelligence and Mach in children. They express confidence that their relatively small study suggests that for girls, low emotional intelligence and poor theory of mind skills influence the onset and maintenance of Mach, whereas there are more variables to be studied for boys. Certainly we need more studies to both replicate and find remedies for this disturbing phenomenon that led ForbesWoman.com (Weissman, 2009) to state that 6 percent of sixth-grade girls and 10 percent of 12th-grade girls report being hit, slapped, or physically hurt “on purpose” by a boyfriend. A 2009 report for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration stated that about one-quarter of all adolescent females engaged in some sort of violent behavior in the last year. This reflects an increasing trend. (Ault, 2010). It has been my clinical experience that more and more of these girls are hitting back. There is a shift in at least American culture that is manifested by the female villain; starting, in my memory, perhaps with the movie Fatal Attraction, in which the femme fatale is the evil stalker, on through the Batman series and what we can see every night on TV. In the corrections system, the number of women prisoners keeps increasing. With the increasing mobility of families and the dilution of the extended family’s support, children become more vulnerable. Of course, there has always been childhood sexual abuse that has been a dark, miserable shadow over girls’ lives, but now there seems to be less of a “village” to act as a buffer. Widely quoted and replicated studies have explored the effect of the heterogeneity of the MAO-A gene in boys only. Due to their remarkable recordkeeping system in Sweden, researchers were able to determine in a study of 2,255 twins that boys who had two different alleles and suffered abuse were more likely to be aggressive and violent as adults. Just having the particular genetic loading was not enough. Nurturing trumped nature in how one’s character turned out (Caspia et al., 2002; Forsman et al., 2010; Guo, 2008). Relatively simple but effective protection was afforded by having the child have dinners with one or both parents or staying in his or her age-appropriate grade. This provided support and decreased the risk from bullying, shame, and loneliness. Aggression continues to be studied in three main experimental ways: heritability studies with genetic linkage maps to identify genes associated with violence, mechanistic experiments, and genetic behavior correlation studies such as human twin and adoption studies. But we must not rush to conclusions or to making legal determinations that would disallow responsibility. “My inadequate frontal lobes made me do it” cannot be used as a handy

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defense, nor can the allegation of bad parenting alone. The experience of the disproved belief that the XYY chromosomal abnormality was a prime factor in aggressive behavior leading to incarceration has to make us wary. This cautionary tale began in 1961 when the discovery of a Y chromosome doubling in a father was found during the investigation of the causes of his son’s Down’s syndrome. Follow-up genotype studies were done in a Scottish prison population and it was detected that nine violent and aggressive criminal also had this XYY anomaly. Subsequent studies were also done on captive populations—particularly tall institutionalized males. Then Mary Telfer, a biochemist, rushed to the conclusion that Richard Speck, the notorious serial killer who had been karyotyped as XYY, should be the prototype of a genetically determined murderer. This belief held sway for the next decade! Even to the extent of prominent geneticist envisioning a future where pregnant women might be required to abort “XYY sex-deviants”. Finally the problem of selection bias in the research was examined and prospective studies were carried out. The March of Dimes is to be commended for their sponsorship of conferences and publications covering the screening of almost 200,000 consecutive births from 1964–1975 that showed that only a taller height and perhaps a lower intelligence were the only certain expression of that sex chromosome trisome (Bender, Linden & Harmon, 2001). Nevertheless, in the case of Jane Doe (Klyman, 2008), her experience with her parents and grandmother undoubtedly increased the probability that she would be set on a violent course. I was introduced to this case by two very sad African American women, a mom and a grandma, so depressed, subdued, and hunched over that I could barely hear them tell me of the “tragic accident” that had occurred with their daughter and granddaughters. They were seeking my help to get her released from a juvenile detention facility to their custody. Jane Doe had gone out of state with her aunt on summer break to visit another aunt and her children. After she was dropped off there, a third aunt came, who dropped off her 18-month-old toddler. All the kids were being babysat by the eldest cousin, a 15-year-old male who was the son of the aunt whose house they stayed in, while his mom slept out with her boyfriend. During that same night, Jane Doe smothered the toddler to death. The juvenile authorities in Ohio responded to the terrible family tragedy by charging the sleep-away aunt with child endangerment and remanding Jane to her mom to take her back to Michigan. Lo and behold, when she returned to their trailer park home, she attacked two girls with a stick. Their parents prosecuted, and she was now in juvenile detention for assault and battery while the murder case in Ohio was awaiting disposition. From my window, on a very cold November day, I watched two cars drive up. Out of one came Mom and Grandma, and from the other emerged a security guard, a young woman social worker, and a young African American girl in bright prison garb. It was the social worker who took off her coat to put it

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around the little girl while the mother and grandmother just looked at her. They came into my waiting room, I opened the door, and the little girl said, “Here I am in my orange suit. Look!” Then she turned around 360 degrees and said, “See my shackles!” And she jingled her feet together. She had a bright, eager, highly vigilant look on her face as she appraised and complimented my office. I began, “Do you know why you’re here?” “Yes, so I can go home.” “And tell me about wanting to go home.” “Well, that is where I can do whatever I want.” Then, telling me about her current circumstances, she said she had peeked into the boys’ gymnasium and saw an older teenager friend of hers from the neighborhood with whom she had done “B & Es.” I said, “Really? How long have you been doing that?” “Oh you know, whenever I have the chance. Didn’t you used to when you were a kid?” I said, “No, never.” She rolled her eyes and said, “Hard to believe. Isn’t that what kids do, especially when they’re really young and can get away with it?” I asked, “Do you ever think about the feelings of the people whose homes you enter?” “Well, I don’t know that I do, but I just look, snooping around and maybe pickin’ up a few things. I never do anything major.” Returning to how things were for her the last four months, she told me approvingly that there was a routine at the detention center. She admitted that she had not liked it at all when she first arrived—the defined “lights out,” the regularity and predictability of meals, and so on. In the beginning, she hated the structure so much that she scraped her wrists with a comb until she bled. The punishment and protective consequence of being put into seclusion had mattered less to her than the fact that she had to trade in her orange uniform for a less attractive white one. At her trailer park home, things were different: No one paid any attention to her bedtime, and she could do whatever she wanted there. Her mother worked the afternoon shift, and unless Jane stayed up really late at night she would see her only on the weekends, but then her mother was essentially unavailable, sleeping and watching TV. Though very verbal, Jane got into physical fights at school. For her uncontrolled misbehavior, she was bussed into a special learning group. Neighborhood kids scapegoated her for being in “special ed,” and she defended herself by preemptive strikes. Sometimes her grandmother (when not in a manic episode, during which she would fling Jane against a wall) would take her to church, where she’d listen to Bible stories. Her favorite? “The one with the boy and the Giant. David faced that Giant, pulled back his slingshot and got him right between

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the eyes—boy, I like that David.” She continued, with much less affect, “Now, I’m trying to put that ‘turn the other cheek’ thing into practice . . . I’m learning if someone says something, you can turn the other cheek. You don’t have to just punch ‘em in the face.” Asking when she needs to think like that segued into her sharing with me the events of the night she suffocated her toddler-cousin. What had she done, and what might she have done differently? She complained that her 15-yearold cousin had previously yelled hard at her for going into the refrigerator as if she were at her own home. When he went to bed, she couldn’t fall asleep and roamed the house with her next-in-age girl cousin. They accidentally awakened the toddler, who got out of bed and followed them noisily. When she wouldn’t hush and started to cry, Jane was afraid the babysitter would awaken, so she put a pillow over the little girl’s face and just kept it there. It seemed irrelevant to her that the toddler struggled and the witnessing cousin testified that she shouted, “STOP, STOP—you’re hurting her.” “When I cry at night, I put my head into my pillow so no one will hear and I never died! And I’m so sorry I caused so much trouble. But I want to go home.” A few unacknowledged tears trickled down her cheek. These were not tears of remorse for the dead cousin or for the grieving aunts, but for her own loss of freedom to hurt others as she had been hurt. There was an astonishing absence of guilt. Guilt can come only from a refined mind (Klyman, 2008). A recent article in the Psychiatric Times (December 2009) had the premise that we are all born with aggression and evil—it is Original Sin, or the good or evil soul in the Hebrew tradition. Depending on experience, we can triumph over our base nature. “A longitudinal twin study of the direction of effects between psychopathic personality and antisocial behavior investigated the direction of effects between personality (genetics) and behavior (action)” (Forsman et al., 2010). 2,255 Swedish children and adolescents were studied prospectively. Psychopathic personality in mid-adolescence predicted rule-breaking behavior in adulthood but not vice versa except if antisocial and aggressive behavior was actively present in mid-adolescence. This is a corroboration of the MAO-A studies of boys. It seems to prove that limits, structure, and good, firm, but nonabusive parenting promote good behavior and produce better citizens. Channeling aggressive energy toward healthy outlets like competitive sports has been a time-tested part of child rearing. Though controversial, even vicarious experiences of media violence where the good guys eventually win may be helpful in establishing boundaries on the actualization of sadism. Gang Guo (2008), a sociologist at the Carolina Population Center and the Carolina Center for Genomic Science at the University of Carolina at Chapel Hill, looked at over 1,100 American adolescent boys in grades 7–12 with three genetic variations affecting brain neurotransmitters. He found

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that those boys with the DTD2 “risky” gene could have modified expression of that gene by having a daily meal with one or two parents; those with a genetic variation of the MAO-A*R2 gene who repeated a grade in school were more likely to become delinquent. There, the negative effect may come from the shame and humiliation before teachers and the loosening of bonds with previous classmates so that affective bonds are weakened—just the opposite of what comes from “breaking bread” with a parent. The new field of epigenetics presents us with a fascinating and revolutionary way to understand evolutionary biology as it is known today. It contradicts our previous beliefs that our DNA was impervious to anything but a natural mutation and that that mutation would be passed down to subsequent generations if it had survival value. Indeed, multigenerational studies from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden determined that 19th-century periods of feast and famine could not only produce life span-altering changes in that generation but also, by initiating a biological chain of events, shorten the lives of that generation’s grandchildren. Other studies in Israel and the United States with fruit flies, worms, and humans with serious disease strongly suggest that various chemicals sitting above each gene, the epigenomes, can be influenced by the environment, and in the laboratory by DNAmethylation, and in turn be replicated and carried forward as “off ” and “on” switches promoting the expression or suppression of that gene. Because the pubescent boy’s testes are the factory for developing sperm, it would seem that he would be the most vulnerable and susceptible to alteration of his epigenomes and to therefore being the agent for evolutionary change. Early adolescence is therefore a pivotal time for healthy mind–body nurturance. It is as if the rituals of initiation into community in so many cultures had the timing intuitively right! It behooves us to get the religious and cultural metaphors right as well.

II. EVIL: UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL You always hurt the one you love The one you shouldn’t hurt at all. . . . What can be more evil than biting the hand that feeds you? It seems so totally irrational, hideous, and self-defeating. What a crazy way to express gratitude. Unless, of course, the perpetrator believed—consciously or unconsciously—that the metaphorical food was toxic and meant to inflict harm from which they were defending themselves. Most murderers not only know their victims but also have had a close relationship with them. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in the arena of domestic violence. On occasion, there will be homicide-suicides that are believed to be merciful—suicide pacts between long-married, aged, ill, or poverty-stricken

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spouses; or infanticide at the hands of a mother in the depths of postpartum depression or psychosis, which is to provide an escape for a child threatened by abandonment or the devil. But when it is not a question of euthanasia or psychosis, it can be abuse that falls under Sigmund Freud’s dictum (1914) that reenacting can substitute for remembering when childhood attachment trauma is revived in a subsequent love or marital relationship. It creates an intergenerational failure of mentalizing—not knowing or caring what is in your mind and what is in the other person’s mind. Santayana (1905/1980) was right on more than one level with his insight that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Most often, the research emphasis regarding spousal abuse has been focused on the victim and how to treat her PTSD after helping her give up hope that her victimizer will change. The perpetrator, usually but not always the husband, has been viewed unsympathetically as wanting dominance and control. They have been categorized on the basis of their demographics, prior exposure to violence and psychopathology, and substance abuse. Drs. Lee and Chan, two psychologists from the University of Hong Kong, and Dr. Raine (Lee and Raine, 2009) from the University of Pennsylvania studied the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) findings of domestic offenders and a control group as they viewed various visual stimuli—neutral, positive affect, aggressive-threat, and aggression against women—while undergoing echo-planar fMRI. The hypothesis was that neurobiological and neurocognitive factors might play a role in their aggressive outbursts. And in their small sample of 10 male batterers matched with 14 male-matched controls, Lee, Chan, and Raine found evidence that there was hyperresponsivity to threat stimuli in those domestic violence offenders. They cite the one positron emission tomography (PET) study that “demonstrated that murderers have reduced pre-frontal but increased occipital cortical glucose metabolism during a cognitive challenge task, as well as increased activation of the right thalamus, hippocampus, amygdale and midbrain” (Raine, Buchsbaum & LaCasse, 1997). In a later article, five other independent studies showed cingulated functional and structural abnormalities in aggressive, psychopathic, and antisocial populations; another twelve studies showed functional abnormalities in widespread temporal lobe regions; three showed parietal lobe impairments (summarized in Raine and Yang, 2006). Brain impairments are hypothesized to be correlated with impulsive violence in contrast to cold-blooded predators—the “hitmen” who have normal prefrontal metabolism as they carry out their “job” (Raine and Meloy, 1998). Reduced prefrontal and increased subcortical brain functioning was assessed using PET in predatory and affective murderers. Men with intermittent explosive disorder (reactive aggression) have increased amygdala but reduced orbitofrontal activity in response to angry faces (Cocaro, 2007). Could this be a pattern for spouse abusers, too? Those

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men with “short fuses” might also be hyperreactors to anything they perceive in their environment to be threatening to their self-esteem, let alone their physical self. Slights, or a modicum of disrespect—a dinner that is cold or not to their liking, a wife or child not standing at attention or rolling their eyes or walking away, a wife or child responding or not responding when spoken to, the sight of a dirty kitchen counter—any of these might be enough in the social context to set them off, especially if alcohol or drugs have added to their brains’ impaired regulating ability. The increased neural responsiveness in the nonprefrontal cortex was borne out in this 2009 study (Lee and Raine, 2009) of brain activity to three different visual stimuli of (a) aggression, (b) aggression toward women, and (c) pleasant and neutral pictures. The subjects were Chinese men known to Family Protective Services; substance abusers were excluded. They were matched with screened community controls regarding the usual traits—age, education, and intelligence—and also for the specifics traits of anger, impulsivity, and depression. There were obvious discrepancies between factors of employment, marital status, and marital satisfaction. These could not be matched because these spousal abusers necessarily had trouble in the workplace and did jeopardize their marital standing. The key finding was that spouse abusers are hyperresponsive to threatening stimuli, in a general and widespread way compared to controls, and that that difference does not exist in response to neutral or positive visual stimuli. These findings “challenge an exclusively social perspective on spouse abuse and suggest the possibility of a neurobiological predisposition to battering” (Lee and Raine, 2009). Increased activation to threat involved multiple regions, including the left posterior cingulated cortex and hippocampus bilaterally. The former is associated with the episodic retrieval of familiar places and objects (Sugiura and Shah, 2005; and see Rekkas and Constable, 2005). There is evidence, from their fMRI study contrasting very recent memory with remote events, that autobiographic memory retrieval does not occur independent of the hippocampus. This may lend to our understanding of the common phenomenon that when a boy is exposed to trauma in the home he grows up in, he is likely to identify with those childhood aggressors and repeat that behavior— however he abhorred it—more readily than not. His subsequent remorse toward his “loved one” may be authentic at the time, however short-lived. Spouse abuse treatment programs and anger management classes have been minimally effective. Introducing neurocognitive remediation techniques or psychotropic medication may be additionally helpful in dealing with this very complex and tragic aspect of domestic life. Just naming the distressing feelings that prompt the rage can increase activity in the medial prefrontal cortex—the area of cognitive processing—and decrease the fright–fight– flight response of the amygdala.

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The following two clinical illustrations may be illustrative: John and Mary were an educated and handsome couple who had raised two children and were living an affluent lifestyle. When the 2001 economic bubble burst and Mary’s employer shut down his business, John’s regular gambling became a serious problem for the family budget. Mary was at home now getting calls from creditors and would meet him with an angry face at the door. He came home later and later. Dispirited, she neglected the house and her own appearance. Unkempt, angry, and arguing, John saw her as if she were his “crazy” mother who once had rushed at him with a kitchen knife. In experiencing this reenactment, he went into a self-defense mode (even though now he towered over the upset woman, unlike the reverse when he was 7 years old), hit her, and pushed her out into the street. It was a cold winter night, and she was locked out. She went to her car and called the police. Now she was hysterical, and despite her black eye John was not charged but warned. The cycle of abuse did not stop until John was put on psychotropic medication and had cognitive-behavioral therapeutic sessions that helped him reexperience his childhood kitchen scenes in the benign setting of the consultation office. A change had to occur in relationship capacity with a different way of living with oneself and then with the other. The best trauma treatment is to promote the emotion and let it be sustained long enough to be modulated. Then it can be remembered in a coherent narrative that corrects childhood distortions and moves toward the assumptions necessary for well-being—that is, the world is meaningful and benevolent, and the self is worthy. These are the good lessons from kindergarten—“I’m getting better and better everyday, and the policeman is my friend.” The second case is of Hannah and Doug. These two engineers were college sweethearts. The depressive side of Hannah’s bipolar illness developed insidiously after the birth of her daughter. She drank to feel better, and this triggered her latent narcolepsy and cataplexy. Her broken sleep and falls during the night were a trigger to Doug, whose mother had struggled with seizures following neurosurgery for a brain tumor. His rage exploded—when Hannah could not be roused from her cataleptic fall, he beat her. Following his overnight stay in jail and his conviction for domestic violence, he could no longer coach his kids’ soccer team. His self-esteem plummeted, and the marriage ended in divorce. Because of the economy, the marital home could not be sold, and the parents continued to live together so their son might afford college. If Doug sees her lying down during the day, he will approach her with raised fists, saying, “If you don’t get up right now, I will hit you again and again.” Then he will remove himself, sad and ashamed in front of his kids. Subsequently he apologizes, but this behavior recurs because he refuses any intervention. For both partners, the insecure nature of their childhood attachments maintains a fear of abandonment that serves as an adhesive that binds them

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together. Their persistent coming together is “crazy-making” to the objective bystander or unaware therapist, who then turns his or her back on the couple as “hopeless” and “untreatable.” The couple is left with feelings about the world and themselves—that nothing is safe and they are in danger (which they are). In contrast to those cases where there seems to be a psychodynamic and perhaps a neurological basis for the explosion of anger, it is to be noted that psychopathic and antisocial individuals have been shown to be hypoactive in their response to emotional stimuli. Instead, their cognitive, frontal-cortical areas become active as they plan and plot their evil actions. As we improve our psychotherapeutic armamentarium, we can help these individuals cope, sometimes sufficiently for them to live mainstream lives—work, marry, and have children! However, having children means they may pass on those same genes. We know there is an increased incidence demographically of both bipolar illness and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). These disorders are marked by impulsivity and asocial behavior, often worsened by substance abuse. This makes the children of those who suffer from these disorders biologically very vulnerable to affective instability and, consequently, difficult parent–child interaction. Empathy, on the other hand, depends on the inclusion of mirror neurons being activated, allowing us to have an understanding of what is in the other individual’s mind in an imitative way. We see it in infants who smile when their caregiver smiles, who open their mouths to receive a spoonful of food when their mother opens hers. The serendipitous finding of a lab researcher who ate a banana for lunch in front of an experimental monkey wired up to an EEG machine led to the discovery of mirror neurons as the monkey’s brain lit up as if he were the one eating the banana. The visual stimulus was enough to light up sensory-gustatory and motor-chewing areas of the monkey’s brain (Rizzolatti, 2004a). We now know that our brain lights up in similarly matching areas as is happening in participants’ brains when we watch sports, pornography, or everyday happenings. Empathy can let us literally walk in the other person’s shoes. It is not a matter of IQ score, for the autistic child may score high on that testing but have little social awareness. If an individual is unable to know what his or her victim’s fearful face means and what it feels like internally, then there is less reason to change his or her intentions to inflict even more apprehension. This can be true for the autistic population. Although this is certainly not a homogeneous group and they are not known for violence against others, we know their numbers are growing dramatically. They can have malfunctions of every neural system—an overdeveloped large brain, reduced connectivity, or an abnormal cerebellum that controls motor coordination but also plays a role in attention and orienting. As treatment improves and they achieve more independence, how they handle their inevitable frustrations will be significant because they are not

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likely to rely on their own monitoring of how others react to them to modulate social interacting. Clinically, those who are patients now usually take out their frustration on themselves or against inanimate things that fascinate and stymie them. Without the presence of a guardian who is a social interpreter for them, they may have no real internal sense of what is appropriate, right, or wrong. So they may steal electronics or cars, and if apprehended fight and injure someone in the process of getting free. This may be a difficult situation to deal with legally because the diagnosis is sometimes problematic, as is the treatment. For asocial and psychopathic individuals, there is an absence of remorse or guilt because they are unable to have an idea of what is and was in the mind of their victims. Without this theory of mind—this ability to mentalize—they cannot feel the pain, loss, humiliation, and degradation of those they offend or destroy. They do not need to dehumanize the enemy or those they kill because others are never really under their skin, or in their heart or mind.

III. EVIL AT A DISTANCE One chicken asks another, “Who is the worst villain— General Tso or Colonel Sanders?” In ordinary social life, aggressive tendencies are restrained, except for ritualized expression such as competitive sports, where it is endorsed. In adults, physical aggression that is not self-defense or in the defense of one’s family or country, as in a justified war, is considered mainly to be viewed as the behavior of persons with mental illness or character disorders. In such instances, the escape of the aggression is attributed to a pathological intensification of the aggressive tendencies, a pathological weakness of controls, or both. If we take a look at evil on a more sociopolitical scale, we have many examples to choose from—from Attila the Hun to Hitler in previous centuries, and the despots in Africa’s Rwanda, the Sudan, and the Middle East in the 21st century. President George W. Bush even coined the term Axis of Evil to refer to North Korea, Iraq, and Iran. Every American would agree that the 9/11 Twin Towers attack was an evil tragedy. Because much has been written about Hitler, I will use him as an example to look at through a psychoanalytic lens. It never seemed he experienced guilt, and his suicide was in keeping with his desire to remain in control—not to expiate sins. In fact, sin and guilt, and good and bad, are not terms much used—rather, peremptory right and wrong in keeping with the a priori goals. There is no question that what we know about Hitler’s youth and humiliations could render some

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sympathy from us except for how he was unable to feel it as such, but turned so quickly to identifying himself with Germany’s humiliated status after World War I. Determined to make Germany glorious, he wanted it to be cleansed of all “imperfect” peoples. He had collaborators—even those more educated and sophisticated than he. Wounded national pride is a dangerous thing—something all political leaders should take into account when they are victorious. It is probably the wisdom of the Marshall Plan and NATO, as well as a common enemy during the Cold War, that has been significant in creating a strong Europe. One of the first “germs” that Hitler felt infected Germany was the mentally ill—in particular, schizophrenics. Unfortunately, their bizarre hallucinations of world destructions and reconstruction and their delusions of grandeur resonated with his fantasy life, but they were without his gift of mesmerizing rhetoric and extraordinary energy. Believing in a false genetic theory of this mental illness, he convinced many, according to research by E. Fuller Torrey—past chair of the National Institute of Mental Health— that there was no reason to house schizophrenics, no reason to work toward cure or rehabilitation that might allow these terrible genes to be passed on to the German citizenry (Torrey & Yolken, 1997). Individual psychiatrists went along with this, and the rest of the profession presented no organized resistance. So it was that the total population of between 220,000 and 269,500 diagnosed schizophrenics were the first to either be sterilized or undergo Hitler’s “final solution” (i.e., death) by a law signed the day Hitler invaded Poland—September 1939. More time was spent on the planning and logistics than the morality and ethics. The cost was to be partially recouped from the gold fillings removed from the deceased’s teeth. The mentally ill at the Brandenburg asylum were told they were to be showered, but instead were gassed and then cremated. Aktion T-4 worked so simply and efficiently that it became the prototype for getting rid of other “infected” segments of the population—Jews, Catholics, and Gypsies. For those with more insight, judgment, and compassion, this infection theory helped them dehumanize their neighbors, friends, and acquaintances. Quarantine, sterilization, and medical experimentation—isn’t that what one does to get rid of pestilence? Ironically, in postwar Germany there was a dramatic increase in new cases of schizophrenia (53.6/100,000) that proved the genetic theory to be less important than the deprivation and trauma that the war years imposed (Torrey & Yolken, 1997). Some psychiatrists tried personally to intervene during Hitler’s reign, it had been rumoured, but no documentation of this was uncovered by Torrey and Yolken. How far have we come when we look at the resources we have put forward to help those with AIDS? Our compassion, as far as it goes to the AIDS population, is probably due to their high representation in the fields

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of creativity that we value—music, art, literature, and the general media, as well as sports. Magic Johnson comes to mind. They gave voice to their dilemma from a position of eminence. In another area where there was once only shame and silence—breast cancer—the outspokenness of presidents’ wives and others allowed dealing with the disease to become a movement of pride for survivors. Thus, getting out the word is essential to mediating hate and oppression, especially if the word is able to increase our mindfulness of what the other person is thinking and feeling. Recently, the Arab Human Development Report (United Nations, 2006) reported on some issues they believed were related to the instability of that region: the knowledge deficit, the gender deficit, and the freedom deficit. Consider if the following facts might give rise to insularity and xenophobia, and motivate desire to do evil to the unknown “other”: • The total number of books translated into Arabic in the last 1,000 years is fewer than those translated into Spanish in one year. • Greece, with a population of fewer than 11 million, translates five times as many books from abroad into Greek annually as the 22 Arab countries with a combined population of more than 300 million translate into Arabic annually. • According to a 2002 Council on Foreign Relations report, “In the 1950s, per-capita income in Egypt was similar to South Korea, whereas Egypt’s per-capita income today is less than twenty percent of S. Korea’s. Similarly Saudi Arabia had a higher gross domestic production than Taiwan in the 1950s; today it is about 50% of Taiwan’s.” • Dr. A. B. Zahlan, a Palestinian physicist, has noted that “a regressive political culture is at the root of the Arab world’s failure to fund scientific research or to sustain a vibrant, innovative community of scientists.” • According to the 2005 UN Human Development Report, only 2 Egyptians per million were granted patents (and for Syria, the figure was zero) compared to 30 in Greece and 35 in Israel. • In that same UN report (United Nations, 2005),”the adult literacy rate for women aged 15 and older was 43.55% in Egypt and 74% in Syria, whereas for the world’s top countries it was nearly 100%.”

Literacy does expose us to learning about other perspectives. It is not as good as a mother telling us that when we pinch our sibling, it hurts them just like a pinch would hurt us. It cannot insure that brothers and sisters can imagine that one day they may need each other or even, in the future, enjoy being best friends, but it definitely can help. We know literacy alone did not help in Germany, which at the time of World War II had the highest level of education in the world. A dispiriting conclusion, taking into consideration the most basic biological origins of human aggression, is that we cannot eliminate human violence

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(Gazzinaga, 2008). Gazzinaga cites the fact that particularly male violence can be attributed to our common ancestry with chimpanzees. We and they are the only animals that create and live in patrilineal, male-bonded communities where females routinely reduce the risk of inbreeding by moving to neighboring groups to mate. Further, like chimps, men are driven to lethal raiding where they attack and kill the vulnerable and then are themselves killed later, whereas females have the advantage of changing their allegiance to the conquerors and remain alive to reproduce. What is most important for our saving grace is the potential for emotional literacy. That knowledge needs to be particularly imparted to the girls who will become women and mothers—mothers who will then raise those good enough sons and daughters to eschew evil and have compassion and empathy, so that despite the instinctual drive they will have the necessary inhibiting and discriminating control from their prefrontal cortex and connecting, communicating structures. Nations and charities that empower women to create their own small businesses or give families livestock or grain and follow up with small loans for marketing their products above and beyond their own needs for subsistence can be an economic help that allows more time for nurturance and generous spirituality, not just survival. While we find out how best to influence our boys’ epigenomes in the near future, we can wait for the more permanent genetic mutations that will alter who the fittest will be to survive to make a more peaceful world.

REFERENCES Allen, J. G., Fonagy, P., & Bateman, A. (2008). Mentalizing in clinical practice. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association. Ault, A. (2010, February). Practice trends. Clinical Psychiatry News. Barlow, A., Qualter, P., Stylianou, M. (2010) Relationships between Machiavellianism, emotional intelligence and theory of mind in children. Personality and Individual Differences. V48, Issue 1, Jan. pp 78–82. Bender, B., Linden, M, Harmon, R. (2001, May/June). Life adaptation in 35 adults with sex chromosome abnormalities. Genet Med 3 (3), 187–91. Caspia, A., McClay, J., Moffitt, J., et al. (2002). Role of genotype in the cycle of violence in maltreated children. Science, 297 (5582), 851–54. Cocaro, E. F. (2007). Amygdala-orbitofrontal reactivity to social threat. Biological Psychiatry, 62, 168–78. Forsman, M., Lichtenstein, P., et al. (2010). A long-term study of the direction of effects between psychopathic personality and antisocial behavior. Journal of Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry, 51 (1), 39–47. Freud, S. (1914). Remembering, repeating and working through. In Collected works (Ed. and Trans. L. Strachey, Vol. 12, pp. 145–156). London: Hogarth Press. Gazzaniga, M. S. (2008). Human: The science behind what makes us unique. New York: HarperCollins.

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Goleman, D. (1998). Emotional intelligence: Why it is more important than IQ. New York: Bantam. Guo, G. (2008, July 14). Home, school setting can moderate teen “risky” genes. Canada.com. Retrieved from www.Canada.com/topics/news/national/story. html?id=9ba43368-688b-4339-b7a5-d8542c482586. Harris, D. A. (2006, December 30). It’s not about Israel. Jerusalem Post. Retrieved from www.zionism-israel.com/Israel in news/2007/01/its-not-about-israel.html. Klyman, C. (2008). Children who kill: Understanding our response. American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry, 29 (2), 19–31. Lee, C., & Raine, A. (2009). Domestic offenders. JCP, 70 (1), 36–45. Machiavelli, N. The Prince. (written c. 1505, pub. 1515.) Trans. by W.K.Marriot 1908. Rendered into HTML by Jan Roland of the Constitution Society. http://www. constitution.org/mac/prince00.htm. Mayer, J. D., & Salovey, P. (Eds.). (1997). What is emotional intelligence? In P. Salovey & J. Sluyter (Eds.), Emotional development and emotional intelligence. New York: Basic Books. Pellegrini A. D., & Long, J. D. (2002). A longitudinal study of bullying, dominance and victimization during transition from primary to secondary school. British Journal of Developmental Psych, 20, 259–280. Raine, A., Buchsbaum, M., & LaCasse, L. (1997). Brain abnormalities in murderers indicated by PET. Biological Psychiatry, 42, 495–508. Raine, A., & Meloy, J. R. (1998). Reduced prefrontal and increased sub-cortical brain functioning using PET. Behavioral Science Law, 16, 319–332. Raine, A., & Yang, Y. (2006). Neural foundations to moral reasoning and antisocial behavior. Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience, 1, 203–213. Rekkas, P. V., & Constable, R. T. (2005). Autobiographical memory and the hippocampus. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17, 1950–1961. Rizzolatti, G. (2004). Neural circuits involved in recognition of action performed by non-conspecifies in fMRI study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 16, 114–126. Santayana, G. (1980). Bartlett’s familiar quotations (1980 ed., p. 703). Boston: Little, Brown. (Quote originally published in 1905). Sugiura, M., Shah, N. J., et al. (2005). Cortical representation of personally familiar objects, places: Functional organization of the post-cingulate cortex. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17, 1950–1961. Sutton, J., & Keogh, E. (2000). Social competition in school relationships with bullying, Machiavellianism and personality. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 70, 443–456. Torrey, F. F., & Yolken, R. (1997). Psychiatric genocide; Nazi attempts to eradicate schizophrenia. Retrieved from http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/ egi/content/abstract/sbp097. Weissman, M. (2009) “Girl Power.” ForbesWoman.com. November, 2009, p. 67. United Nations. (2005). Human development report. Geneva: Author. United Nations. (2006). Arab human development report. Geneva: Author.

ch apter 5

Evil in America: Manipulating Wealth and Power in an Oligarchy Myrna Pugh

DOES EVIL EXIST? Most people assume the existence of evil, but not everyone would agree on this. Some go so far as to deny the existence of evil, whereas others are merely skeptical. Some, like David Frankfurter, when asked this question, remarked, “No, not in the sense of being satanic or demonic atrocities.” He feels that evil is a “social construct that inspires people to brutal acts in the name of moral order.” He went on to say, “When society labels people as evil, it places them outside humanity where others don’t have to think about motivations or context in any critical way. “Speaking of “evil” leads to evil.” From this perspective, even mentioning evil could actually lead to evil, so we ought not to acknowledge it at all. It is difficult to examine the dynamics of evil and its consequences. Human beings do not want to contemplate the possible scope and actions of evil, and we certainly do not want to consider our own connections to evil and the ramifications of it. Some have attempted to understand evil on a purely psychological plane. In his book Explaining Evil Behavior: Using Kant and M. Scott Peck to Solve the Puzzle of Understanding the Moral Psychology of Evil People (Ward, 2009), Ward uses Peck’s theory that evil comes from those who suffer from malignant narcissism. On the other hand, Kant postulates the idea that evil is not truly possible if we accept the idea that people “act out of wicked desires, but deliberate wrong-doing is not a genuine phenomenon.” In other words, people do not commit evil acts because evil is not a part of our makeup. It is hard to agree with Kant’s theory in the face of obvious evil behavior and its consequences (Ward, 2009).

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Modern gurus take differing positions on this issue. Albert Ellis says in Psychology Today about evil people, “No, we cannot accurately say that some people are essentially evil. Even those who commit many immoral acts would have to do so all the time to be evil people.” As Alfred Korzyski wrote in 1933,”Calling anyone evil is to falsely over generalize and to completely damn her or him for some evil act” (Staff, 2002). Others take opposing viewpoints. Elizabeth Radcliffe says, Throughout human history it is obvious that there are evil people. . . . I believe that we develop good or evil characters through our choices. . . . Those who develop a habit of choosing badly may lose all sense of the good, and this is what we call an evil character. (Quoted in Staff, 2002)

Carl Jung believed that everyone has within us what he described as “shadow” selves that remain largely unexplored and unacknowledged by most people, because it is a product of the unconscious part of us. It strives to remain hidden and lurks in the darkness. He said that “what I mean by shadow, I mean the negative side of personality, the sum of all those unpleasant qualities we like to hide, together with the insufficiently developed functions and the contents of the personal unconscious” (quoted Rychlak, 1981, p 188). Rychlak points out that Jung believed that “if we repress our darker side it can in time get hold of our behavior within consciousness and change us completely” (1981, p. 188). We can see that if we allow our “shadow” side to drive us, we may be prone to evil behavior. The important point here is that it is clear, according to Jung, we all have our “shadow” side to contend with. Evil may be easier to understand by sifting it through this model of behavior. More easily understood are the six stages of moral development discovered by Lawrence Kohlberg (Walsh, 2001). Kohlberg believed that humans passed through identifiable stages to arrive at one’s individual moral peak. He assessed his research subjects through various moral dilemmas that progressed throughout early development phases. It is when we reach this highest level of development that we are mature enough to make important moral decisions and act upon these decisions. The person who can do this is thought to be a psychologically mature and healthy person. This does not insure that the person will always make the decisions that are best for others; it only means that they have the ability to make them. It goes without saying that some people do not make decisions that are in the best interest of others; in fact, many people make decisions that create hardship and horror for many others. When this happens, you have a moral development situation that we call evil.

FOLLOW THE MONEY The epitome of evil is the diabolical evil that is associated with wealth and power vested in a few people, for all evil arises from these two agendas.

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Explaining Evil

Flowing from an evil well, every atrocity, war, crime, and behavior is rooted in the driving need to control wealth and power over other human beings. The manipulation of wealth and power influences entire countries, or continents. This power holds life or death for untold populations and decides if they have food to eat, homes to live in, medical care, jobs, income and all other issues of daily life. Less distinct from how humans can understand evil, is the question “Why?” Dallas Willard has written about the problem of evil, and he has suggested that we are focused on the wrong questions. Because many believe that the problem with evil is that God cannot control evil, and that he cannot be both all powerful and good at the same time. Because this assumption is wrong, perhaps our conclusion ought to be that he can be, and is, both powerful and good at the same time. We get caught up in God and fail to focus on the real problem on evil. If we are to enjoy a relationship with God, it needs to be because we choose that relationship from a free will perspective. Evil forces people to make critical choices. We can choose to push God away, or we can embrace him freely. A relationship is not a relationship if it is not undertaken out of choice. Evil can be a catalyst in the decision-making process (Willard, 2002). What drives people to engage in the kind of malignant narcissistic power quests suggested by Peck? It is not surprising that we all struggle with power and control issues. They are at the heart of every dysfunction known to man. It is the compression of these issues that lead to crime, heartbreak, and every evil behavior that mankind can imagine. Left alone, they will possess their host in the same way a cancer does. War is perhaps the most public form of evil, for it is difficult to deny or to change the facts of what war is all about. War, in its most basic dynamic, is all about money. Jesus had much to say about evil and the source of it. He said that evil is produced in the deepest, most hidden heart of people “Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony and slander” (Matt 15:16 NIV). The apostle Paul reiterated this when he addressed the issue of money. He said that the “love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (1 Tim 6:10). This would indicate that individual evil originates from an internal source. Peck would agree that this is an accurate picture of malignant narcissism. Greed is the most recognizable common denominator, war is an extremely profitable way to gather a great deal of money and exercise every evil behavior that some might have longed to do, but were too cowardly to do. Evil has a way of bringing out the very worst in each and every human being. What we have secretly thought about can now become reality. We become encouraged to allow our deepest and darkest “shadow selves” loose on innocent people. This occurs in all wars. Evil assumes a license to destroy, kill, maim, and torture others. Jesus remarked on this aspect of evil when he spoke to

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those who were seeking to kill him. He said these evildoers were the offspring of the devil, whom he claimed was “a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him” (Barker, 1985). War is all about death and killing people without a qualm of regret, and making obscene amounts of money (for the very few). The ultimate power and control issues are translated into dollars and cents, for whoever has the money wields the power. In order to understand evil in the United States, we must “follow the money.” Only then will we observe evil in action as it impacts our everyday lives, and also the rest of the world. Concentrating on the 20th century, we will identify and pinpoint areas of power and control that are fueled by the grasping and retention of vast sums of wealth, which result in how this country operates. Wealth is the ultimate form of power and is tied to every sort of evil that we can understand. All other forms of power and control flow out of this central core issue. For this reason, we will “follow the money” to its logical conclusion.

THE CHOSEN FEW There are a few wealthy families who have dominated the production and distribution of wealth in the recent past, and they continue to do so today. Their power is so great that they have operated totally unchecked for generations. They have used their power to influence how this nation conducts its business, its wars, its expansion, its foreign policy, and its destiny. These few have provoked wars in order to further their agenda. They have not been stopped, although many have tried to do so. The elite few of the very wealthiest families have dominated the financial, political, and industrial scene, and they continue to do so. During the early part of the 20th century, they manipulated the world into world wars, reaping tremendous benefits and billions of dollars into their already swollen coffers, while millions of people died from war, starvation, hatred, and sickness. We will focus on the Rockefeller family for a portrait of how these few families control the destiny of this and other countries.

Standard Oil Company Prior to the Second World War, vast fortunes were being created by quiet but energetic men who met behind closed doors and planned how to become even wealthier than they already were. Giant corporations and banking avenues were developed in order to make that happen. We have become accustomed to hear of, see, and use these same corporations for our own personal needs, never knowing that they were responsible for some of the most horrible evils of the world. John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil Company in 1877, and from that platform developed financial, political, and intelligence

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information systems around the world. Standard Oil (now Exxon) had, and still has, subsidiaries in almost every country in the world. He bought up, at clearance prices, small oil producers who could not compete with him in the oil money markets (Christopher, 1993). As the demand for oil grew, so did his empire. Oil quickly transformed into wealth and power. The genius of the Rockefeller clan is that they are known for not only their grabbing of small oil producers but also their ability to get away with it (Rivera, n.d.). Their oil and banking money has allowed them to diversify into other aspects of power and control. Hardly any part of this country, or anywhere around the world, has been exempt from their long and sinuous tentacles into every nook and cranny of the U.S. government. Politics, social programs, foreign policy, and most of the alphabet agencies (CFS, CIA, FBI, etc.) have been staffed, directed, and controlled by these ruling elite (Christopher, 1993). Exxon (formerly Standard Oil) owns a wide range of energy companies around the world. Some of these companies are Exxon Chemical Company, Exxon Coal and Minerals Company, Exxon Pipeline Company, Exxon Brasileira de Petroleo of Brazil, Transport Company, Inc., and many others. They even own their own oil insurance company, Petroleum Casualty Company, (Christopher, 1993). They have holdings in over 100 countries (Christopher, 1993). In 1920, Standard Oil participated in the formation of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (O.P.E.C.). Their goal was to fix prices of oil. This cartel had begun from Anglo-Persian, Socony-Vacuum, Royal Dutch Shell, Gulf, Esso (Standard Oil of New Jersey), Texaco, and Calso. It eventually became what is called “The Seven Sisters.” In the cartel are also Mobil (Standard Oil of New York) of which a part was made up of Vacuum Oil; Chevron (Standard Oil of California); Gulf Oil; Shell; and British Petroleum. Today, recent revenues earned by these giant companies are staggering. Since 2002, when we went to war against Al Qaeda, these companies, and their subsidiaries, earned a net profit of $123 billion. Exxon alone earned $40.6 billion (Weiss, 2008). According to one report, this means they earned $77,245.00 per minute (Weiss, 2008). This, while many people are struggling to keep their jobs in today’s difficult times, has the feel of evil profits. Today, the original “seven sisters” has evolved to become the “new seven sisters.” They are Saudi Aramco (Saudi Arabia), JSC Gazprom (Russia), GNPC (China), NIOC (Iran), PDVSA (Venezuela), Petrobras (Brazil), and Petromas (Malaysia). These are all state-owned enterprises, and together they play an important role in oil production. These collective oil companies own approximately one third of the known oil reserves in the world, and they wield considerable clout in the oil markets. A huge problem may be looming on the horizon, however, for most of these state-owned entities are not reinvesting much capitol into their ventures at

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the present time. This means that production is likely to fall off in the next few years due to plant failures, old and broken infrastructure, and poor management. Only Saudi Aramco is investing in a recapitalization program, to the tune of $50 billion in the next few years. Whereas other state-owned ventures are, at the present time, investing in political and social programs, this sets Saudi Aramco up to become the next oil giant (Vardy, 2010). Exxon is a large investor in Saudi Aramco. It stands to make enormous amounts of money through that investment.

Chase Manhattan Bank Rockefeller also founded Chase National Bank, later to be known as Chase Manhattan Bank and today known as J.P. Morgan Chase, which financed much of his business ventures. Through his Chase connections he and others helped finance the Third Reich’s Nazi Party and bring its leader, Adolf Hitler, to power (Lederman, 2000). Other large banks which also participated in the conquest of Europe were the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which was owned in part by banks in the United States; the First National Bank of New York (J.P. Morgan); the Bank of England; the Bank of France; and others. These banks were closely aligned with the Reichsbank of Germany. Each of these entities had morbid ties to one another through their corporate and financial leadership. The Chase conglomerate is made up of banks that have merged into the Chase system, mostly since 2001. Consisting of J.P. Morgan Bank, Bank One, Chemical Bank, Manufacture Hanover Bank, First Chicago, and National Bank of Detroit (SourceWatch, n.d.), Chase participated in the Troubled Assets Relief Program T.A.R.P. bailout to the tune of $25 billion in October 2008. One month before taking taxpayers’ money, Chase purchased Washington Mutual Bank for $1.1 billion. With this and other mergers, Chase was catapulted into owning one third of all the banking power in the United States (Isidore, 2000). In partnership with many central banks in Europe, Chase had solid ties to other banking institutions that aided and abetted Germany in its quest for European dominance—banks such as the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), Suisse National Bank, the Bank of Belgium, and the Federal Reserve Bank. Hitler’s chief financial officer, Emil Puhl, often came to the United States to meet with banking executives at Chase. Puhl was largely responsible for all money laundering in Europe, and collecting gold from dead prisoners in the death camps. Gold teeth and other items arrived at his door on a regular basis. They were melted down into gold bars and used for the German war machine (Preston, 1997). They have continued to thrive even in the face of economic crises and downturns. They paid their top executives and top producers over $8 billion

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in 2008. Because they earned only $8.693 billion that year, the money had to come from T.A.R.P. funds. Chase has one of the most diversified ownership portfolios of all time. They own outright, or in part, at least 42 of the largest corporations in the United States, including nine pharmaceutical houses and six major food companies, including farming giant Cargill, Coca-Cola, Del Monte, and Chiquita Brands International. They also own or have controlling interest in 35 coal-based power plants in this country. This is by no means a complete inventory of their holdings, but is merely a sample of the power and wealth this corporation wields (SourceWatch). Their involvement in financing the Nazi evil of World War II is vast and comprehensive.

I. G. Farben Prior to World War II, the industrial giant of Germany was a monster corporation called I. G. Farben, the largest chemical company in the world. Located in Frankfurt, it produced artificial rubber, chemicals, and pesticide, among other products. Funneling money to I. G. Farben through Chase National Bank, Farben built the slave labor and death camp of Auschwitz, which was a huge industrial operation. Farben produced the Zyklon B gas that the Nazis used to exterminate so many people (Nelson, 2009). Throughout the war, Farben continued to play an important role in the Nazi regime through its U.S. pipeline of money and influence. They had ties to a number of banks in both Europe and the United States, all of which had as board members individuals who were close to Hitler and the German government (Higham, 1983). Each of these banks had a common denominator in the form of the United States’ elite few, chiefly the Rockefellers and others. Some of the industries operated at Auschwitz included the Buna Chemical Plant, which produced gasoline and rubber for the Nazi war machine. This work was performed by slave labor, and here is where prisoners learned the truth about the motto arching above the entrance to Auschwitz, “Arbeit Macht Frei”: Work makes you free. It’s true. Work at Auschwitz did “free” at least 30,000 prisoners who died because of forced labor. More than 1.6 million others also died in Auschwitz, mostly Jews, gypsies, the elderly, the young, the infirm, and others considered “unfit” to live. I. G. Farben was active in corporate espionage and intelligence gathering through its VOWI spy agency, and they also performed horrific medical experiments on women and children. In one instance, 150 women were purchased for 170 reichsmarks each to be used in drug experiments. These tests were conducted by Bayer Pharmaceutical Company, one of the subsidiaries of I. G. Farben (Auschwitz, 2005). Some of the medications that teenagers were made to take were a form of early birth control. This fits in with Germany’s agenda of eugenics. I. G. Farben consisted of several subsidiaries that were folded into one conglomerate, chiefly BASF, Hoechst, and Bayer,

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as well as other companies. Bayer and Hoechst both participated in medical experiments at Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and to some extent Dachau. Some of the experiments were viral in nature, leading to typhoid fever. Most of the unwilling subjects died from the testing (Auschwitz, 2005). Following the war, I. G. Farben untangled itself and reformed into some of its original components such as Bayer, BASF, and Hoechst. It is the same company it was prior to the war and is still active today. During the Nuremburg war trials, at least 23 directors and those who associated with Farben were tried and convicted as war criminals. Only a few were ever convicted, and they received mere slaps on the wrist for their evil actions. Typical of the sentences handed out was Karl Krauch, chairman of I. G. Farben. He received a sentence of only six years, but was released early. He went on to become the director of one of Farben’s subsidiaries that had reverted to the Buna rubber plant (Nelson, 2009). Fritz ter Meer, also a director of Farben, was in charge of many of the medical experiments performed by Bayer. He was sentenced to seven years but served only two years. He assumed the chairmanship of the board of Bayer, as well as became director of several banks and other chemical businesses (Nelson, 2009). Another defendant, Walter Durrfeld, was in charge of construction at Auschwitz and worked for Farben. He was instrumental in choosing victims for the gas chambers. He was sentenced for eight years but was also released early. He ended up on the boards of several German corporations (Nelson, 2009). This is merely a sample of the sentences imposed on many of the people who ran and implemented Hitler’s evil policies of extermination and suffering. Those who had the wealth escaped with few consequences, and they were actually rewarded for their part in the suffering of millions. None of the American directors of a branch of I. G. Farben in the United States, called American Farben, were ever charged with war crimes. Wealth and power shielded those who orchestrated these events. The United States had multiple morbid ties to I. G. Farben. Farben had many Americans on its board of directors, and even, as mentioned above, had an American branch. Sitting on the board of this company were Carl Bosch, who was also on the board of Ford Motor Company; Edsel Ford, chairman of Ford Motor Company; H. A. Metz, director of I. G. Farben in Germany and also a director of Bank of Manhattan (U.S.); C. E. Mitchell, director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Walter Teagle, director of Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and also with Standard Oil of New Jersey; Paul M. Warburg, member of Federal Reserve Bank of New York and Bank of Manhattan; and W. E. Weiss of Sterling Products. Walter Duisberg, W. Grief, and Adolf Krttroff were also directors of American Farben (Sutton, 1976). These financial powerhouses made it possible for World War II to take place, financed in large part with U.S. dollars.

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In a speech by Homer T. Bone to the Senate Committee of Military Affairs on June 4, 1943, he stated, It is these US connections to Wall Street that concern us. Without the capitol supplied by Wall Street, there would have been no I. G. Farben in the first place and almost certainly no Adolf Hitler and World War II.

Some evil is evident and very visible, and some not as clearly defined. World War II defined evil for most people, yet the majority of people in the United States are largely unaware of just how evil this period actually was and what form this extreme evil took, and the power and wealth created by it. The face of evil is only now becoming more recognizable for those who wish to understand how this event has shaped our own politics, foreign policy, national finances, and social structure. What happened to Jews during the Holocaust was nothing short of extreme evil, and in some ways it is still ongoing. Not only did millions of people lose their lives, but also they lost their personal possessions, wealth, gold, diamonds, artwork, and all that they held dear.

LOOTED NAZI GOLD The Nazis accumulated vast stores of precious metals and artifacts from conquered nations and individuals. Much of the gold was stashed in various locations. A large part of this stolen treasure has never been recovered. Of those sites from which treasure has actually been recovered, notably those from the Merkel salt mines in Austria, it is estimated that just one treasure trove of gold was worth more than US$200 billion by the end of the war. Other holding sites were said to be in the aggregate of $100 trillion (Guyatt, 2000). One well-known gold cache was reputed to be in the hands of President Sukarno of Indonesia. This has been well researched, and there is evidence that there was a gold treasure reported to be held by UBS and Credit Suisse Bank in Switzerland, valued at more than $270 trillion. Some jungle sites still hold actual gold bars and artifacts of war plunder (Guyatt, 2000). Most, however, is said to be retained in vaults in banks scattered around Europe (Guyatt, 2000). One of many caches of gold seized by Hitler consisted of the entire national gold supplies from conquered nations like Czechoslovakia. This particular trove was routed by truck and train on twisting journeys throughout Europe, to arrive at the Bank of England. From there, it was shipped back to Berlin to fund the German war machine. Banks all over Europe laundered assets for Hitler to use to build his army (Higham, 1983).

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Banking was only one way that the United States participated in financing Hitler’s war. Big corporations fed Hitler a steady stream of oil and other products that they needed to wage war on Europe and the United States. Standard Oil built and transported oil in special tankers to Aruba, which were staffed with selected Nazi crews. The oil was bound for Hamburg, Germany, for use in Nazi fighter planes, U-boats, trains, trucks, and other critical uses for Germany. It is ironic that in the United States, citizens were rationed gallons of gasoline, tires, and even food, while American oil companies provided oil for the war machine that would kill our soldiers. It is estimated that 15,000 tons of aviation fuel per week, just for Nazi aircraft, were produced by Standard Oil’s refinery in Hamburg alone (Higham, 1983). The United States had, under the Trading With the Enemy Act of 1942, developed a list of countries, companies, and individuals with whom no one was supposed to trade. This came to be known as the “Proclaimed List.” In reality, big corporations ignored this list and continued to trade with the enemy with no interference or consequences. Already huge fortunes became bloated and grotesque, especially for those who were of the small but elite group who ran the country. This included entities such as Ford Motor Company, ITT (International Telephone and Telegraph), and SKF (a steel company owned by Sosthenes Behn). Behn’s company kept the Luftwaffe air force in the air by supplying them with crucial ball bearings. ITT financed the Focke-Wulf bombers with help from the Swedish Enskilda Bank in which Behn was heavily invested. With his assistance, Germany was able to keep bombing London and American Allies during the war. SKF traded with both American and German war machines with no interference from either government. Dozens of American companies simply ignored the caveat against trading with the enemy (Higham, 1983). Ford Motor Company built parts for military trucks for the Nazi Army at Poissy, France. According to an employee publication in 1940, Henry Ford wrote to his employees, “At the beginning of this year we vowed to give our best and utmost for final victory, in unshakable faithfulness to our Fuehrer” (Higham, 1983). In 1941, Charles Lindberg joined the staff of Ford Motor Company. Both Ford and Lindberg were close friends of Adolf Hitler and went to Germany on numerous occasions to visit him.

LOOTED ART TREASURE It was not only gold and other hard assets that were looted and stashed by the Nazis that made them money to fund their war effort, but also artwork. In addition, it was not only Jews who lost their art and other personal identities, but also anyone the Nazis wanted to crush for any reason. They then confiscated vast wealth stores that were owned by the populace. Europe was, at this time, a treasure trove of famous and rare artwork by masters such as

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Rembrandt and others. Many rare and valuable paintings found their way into private Nazi collections, such as that of Hermann Göring, who had a passion for rare and beautiful things. These cultural artifacts came from all over Europe and even Russia. Some of these items were recovered after the war, but the majority wound up in banks and museums around the world, including many in the United States. Mostly they made their way into private collections, and are still there today. The Nazis even had an organization set up to actively collect, inventory, liquidate, and store the artwork, known as the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg fur die Besetzten Gebiete (the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Institute for the Occupied Territories) under the control of Alfred Rosenberg. His organization was designed to seize books and cultural treasures, both public and private (Congress, 1945–1946). This institute seized over 21,903 objects from their owners (Congress, 1945–1946). It is estimated that over $20 billion worth of artwork of various kinds was taken from Poland alone. In 2000, Ronald S. Louder, chairman of the World Jewish Congress Commission for Art Recovery, testified before the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services. He explained that his programs help to locate, identify, and return stolen artifacts to those families who had lost them, whenever possible. They have located a number of stolen paintings, such as the Madonna and Child by Lucas Cranach the Elder in the North Carolina Museum of Art. This painting was returned to its rightful owners, but museums that have come by valuable pieces of artwork are not always as ready to return items that they have had for many years. Banks also continue to play a major role in hiding stolen assets (Lauder, 2000). In a report by Reuters in 2000, it was claimed that Chase Bank was harboring looted pieces. “There is evidence that German assets were placed at Chase, that these assets were used in transactions involving Jewish looted art” (ArtsJournal, 2000). Private collectors are even less inclined to return stolen items. It was reported that the Rothschild family harbored over 1,000 various pieces of art, which were auctioned by Christie’s in 1999. Many European countries have established commissions that were supposed to diligently return what they located, but there are thousands of pieces that have been sent to museums around the world and have not been returned, resulting in numerous lawsuits to recover documented art (Henry, 2000). Some of the stolen art has even turned up in Australia: It is unlikely that there is any major collection that has been active in acquiring in the last 50 years that doesn’t have something that came from a [Nazi] source . . . such was the scale of the raiding that took place. But to actually locate and find that is extraordinarily difficult. (Sydney Morning Herald, 2002)

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It was not only the Nazis who plundered Europe for its cultural treasures. In 1945, the U.S. Army confiscated what became known as the Hungarian Gold Train in Werfen, Austria. The seizure of the 44-car train of artifacts stolen from Hungarian Jews was sent to the U.S. Military Government Warehouse in Salzburg, Austria. The train was transporting gold, jewelry, rugs, furs, objects d’art, brilliant-cut diamonds, and much more. The train treasure sat there until a portion of it was finally auctioned off in New York in 1948, in a test auction to see how much money the initial offering would bring. It brought a total of $152,850.61 (American Israeli Corporative Enterprise, 1997). Some of the remaining loot was requisitioned by U.S. Army officials. Major General Harry J. Collins received Jewish items for both his home and office. He commandeered at least five rugs, eight paintings, objets d’art, as well as complete sets of valuable stemware, sheets, and fine linens. Much of the inventory was subsequently sold at U.S. Army Exchange Stores. In addition, some of the gold dust was stolen by U.S. Military Guards who were charged with protecting the treasures (American Israeli Corporative Enterprise, 1997). The allied countries had signed agreements that any cultural treasures would be given back to their original countries. However, the United States did not adhere to their policies in this regard. They labeled the train artifacts as “unidentifiable,” thus removing the entire lot from identification by Hungarian Jews or the many organizations who were attempting to recover the items for the Jewish survivors and heirs of dead Hungarian Jews.

OPERATION PAPERCLIP Following the war, the U.S. State Department, along with the CIA, engaged in a covert operation that would allow hundreds of Nazi war criminals of the highest rank and order to enter the United States. They were allowed to enter the nation’s important offices and made themselves at home here. Many of their number became leaders in banking, intelligence, the science industry, and other important positions of power. This included former German Gestapo spies like General Reinhard Gehlen, who was the master spy for Nazi Germany. He even had his own Nazi spy ring known as the Gehlen Group. He went to work for the CIA in Europe, feeding them information on Russia (Orange, 1997). Werner von Braun was the director of the Peenemunde rocket research center that had developed the famous V2 rocket that almost wiped out London. While at Peenemunde and later on at Mittelwerk, von Braun designed the V2 rockets that bombed London and so many of the cities of Europe. The physical work at these secret facilities was performed by slave labor drawn from concentration camps. They were working on the advanced prototype for a

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new rocket when the end of the war came. Von Braun and others surrendered to U.S. forces so as to escape their capture by the Russians. Von Braun was brought to the United States, and his Nazi record was whitewashed. He went to work with NASA, and in 1970 he became the director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. Von Braun was a member of the Nazi Party and a major in the SS (Saunders, 2008). An associate of von Braun’s was Arthur Rudolph. He was in charge of obtaining workers to build the rockets that came from the factory. Up to 20,000 slaves died while working in that facility. His Nazi file remarked that he was “100% Nazi, dangerous type, security threat, recommendation, internment” (Orange, 1997). Yet he, along with over 500 other Nazi “threats,” were brought to the United States under the auspices of Operation Paperclip. Rudolph became a U.S. citizen and later on designed the Saturn 5 rocket that was used in the Apollo moon landings. Rudolph had to flee the United States when his Nazi war history was uncovered. Both von Braun and Rudolph were avowed Nazis. The list goes on and on. Nazis by the drove went overnight from a “Sieg Heil” salute to singing “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

EUGENICS Evil in the United States is not limited to what happened just during World War II but, like a hydra, tentacles of evil branch out in various ways. Some ideas and philosophies that actually helped launch the war were founded early on in the 20th century here in the United States, with the advent of “social Darwinism.” Darwin’s ideas, in which he postulated that survival of a species hinged on the ability of the strongest of that species to pass on their traits to other generations, was enlarged upon by Francis Galton, who was a second cousin to Darwin. Galton and others applied Darwin’s theory to society and also to the races. They proposed that if the human race was to remain and become stronger, those traits that were thought to be defective needed to be weeded out. These unacceptable traits included low IQ, mental or physical imperfections, criminal background, racial inferiority, and other negative traits. Thus, one theory morphed into social policies that has in turn, affected the whole world. Eugenics grew into a wildfire from one burning ember. This wildfire soon became an evil of tremendous power. It carried with it enormous consequences. Eugenics was born in England but quickly spread to the United States. In this country, the social policy of the “survival of the fittest” ran amok resulting in the forced sterilization of those whom were deemed to be unfit. Many states had forced sterilization on their books as early as 1907 (Morgan, 2002). The movement was bolstered by the rising tide of psychology, which was heavily influenced by IQ testing and personality trait inventories and judgments.

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Eugenics was a popular movement in the United States in the early years of the 20th century. Endorsed by the wealthy and socially elite, more than 300,000 people underwent forced sterilization by the early 1960s. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes endorsed the practice in the majority opinion in the 1926 landmark case of Buck v. Bell, Justice Holmes wrote in the 8 to 1 verdict in 1927, It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute offspring for crime, or let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the fallopian tubes.

This attitude was partly responsible for preventing Jews who were seeking asylum in the United States prior to, during, and after the war from being able to immigrate. For example, while a ship waited offshore of the United States, Harry Hamilton Laughlin, a devout eugenicist argued the “Human dross” would produce a “breakdown in race purity of . . . superior stocks.” He proposed a 60% reduction in quotas on immigration. He also wanted to deport many of those who were already citizens (Richmond,1998). This kind of rejection also applied to each country in which they attempted to find a safe haven. This was a form of passive murder on the part of the civilized world. This greatly suited the Nazi agenda. It dovetailed nicely into their eugenics program. All persons with any supposed physical imperfections, defects, or mental impairments were sterilized or euthanized. This included groups such as gypsies, homosexuals, those of mixed-race ancestry, or Jews. These at-risk subpopulations were subject to the laws of eugenics. This quickly led to so-called mercy killings. Today, we see the problem of “mercy killings” through the eyes of the Hemlock Society, which advocates assisted suicide. Oregon and Montana both have assisted suicide laws in place. As early as 1912, an International Congress of Eugenics laid plans that would open the door to at least 65,000 forced sterilizations in 30 states in the United States. The vice presidents of this body were Winston Churchill and Alexander Graham Bell (Cuddy, 2009). Indiana was the first state to adopt forced sterilization laws, followed by Virginia, Georgia, California, Oklahoma, and others. These laws were in full force and effect until the inmates of correctional facilities brought suit in 1942 in Oklahoma (Skinner v. Oklahoma) (Platt, 2008) that slowed down, but did not stop, the practice. As late as the 1960s, it was still going on (Morgan, 2002). Some states have since rescinded their eugenics laws and followed the example of Georgia in offering public apologies by the state legislators. In 2007, the Georgia House offered Resolution 122, written by Representatives Oliver, Gardner, and Ashe, in which they apologized to those who had been

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harmed by this practice (HR122, January 30, 2007). Similar resolutions have also been offered by other states. Eugenics is not a new concept. The Greeks, known for their blatant worship of the human body as long as it was healthy, young, and virile, adopted the philosophy of Plato, who wrote concerning his “ideal state.” He advocated that the ideal state would establish in your state physicians and judges such as we have described. They will look after those whose bodies and souls are constitutionally sound. The physically unsound they will leave to die; and they will actually put to death those who are incurably corrupt in mind. (Cornford, 1957)

Every advanced culture has relied, to some extent, on the ideals and concept of value and worth adopted by the Greeks. This philosophy of catering to the healthy, wealthy, and beautiful can be seen in every Western society today. Hollywood bows to these vociferous standards today and sends the message that we are only worthy if we meet those standards. This is evil of a more subtle sort because it panders to ideas that play into inclusion and exclusion. If we meet certain standards of beauty, wealth, or physical abilities, we are included; if not, then we are unworthy to exist. One would hope that following World War II, certain ideas that favored the Nazi agenda would fade away, but they continue to plague us into the 21st century, and will no doubt continue to plague us far beyond this century. Many prominent people of modern times have believed they had the right to control who lives on this planet. George Bernard Shaw was one of these people. As a respected playwright, author, and orator, he made no attempt to disguise his views on the subject. Shaw was a devoted socialist who espoused eugenics with a vengeance. He proposed that every five years, everyone should be required to come before a board and defend their continued existence. He stated, If you can’t justify your existence, if you are not pulling your weight, and since you won’t, if you’re not producing as much as you consume or perhaps a little more, then clearly, we cannot use the organizati.ons of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us, and it can’t be of very much use to yourself.

Governor Dick Lamm of Colorado gave the people a glimpse of his attitude, when he stated in 1984, Like leaves which fall off a tree forming the humus in which other plants can grow, we’ve got a duty to die and get out of the way with all our machines and artificial hearts, so that our kids can build a reasonable life. (Morris, 2009)

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The governor was voicing the opinion that medical advances are many times inappropriate for the extension of life. Others hold to this same opinion. President Obama has given us a serious eugenicist in the person of John P. Holdren. Holdren is the science adviser to the president and he is known for his strong stand on eugenics. Holdren’s writings demonstrate an agenda for forcing women to have compulsory abortions regardless if they are desired or not. He wrote in his 1977 book Ecoscience, coauthored by Paul and Anne Ehrlich (Holdren, Ehrlich, & Ehrlich, 1977), that children ought to be limited to two per family by law, enforced by the federal government. They wrote, “It has been concluded that compulsory population control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing constitution, if the population crises became sufficiently severe to endanger the society” (Johnson, 2007). If implemented, these concepts will have the most negative effects upon the basic building blocks of our culture and society we have ever seen. There will no longer exist a “right to privacy” in any form and will forever alter the U.S. Constitution. This is not to mention who will pay for these forced abortions. The burden will surely fall upon the tax payer, further eroding the already fading family unit.

THE ABORTION AGENDA As we continue to “follow the money” of evil, we see that evil in the United States can be summed up in one word: abortion. This issue is relevant for every American, for who has not been touched by this volatile matter? Everyone has a stake in this issue, regardless if they adhere to a pro or con position. It affects the entire nation. It affects our economy, our social structure, the concept of what is right and wrong, and our worldview. The eugenics movement of the early 20th century flows directly into the abortion issue. The estimated number of abortions performed in the United States is staggering. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 20% of all pregnancies result in abortion of some kind (Jones, 2005). In 2006, 1.21 million abortions were performed. “The United States has one of the highest abortion rates in the developed world, with women from every socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, religious, and age group obtaining abortions” (Finer, 2005). The Guttmacher Institute is the research and public relations arm of Planned Parenthood, which is funded heavily by the Rockefellers. They estimate that it costs on average $487.00 per abortion. That translates into a hefty $535.7 billion per year that we spend on abortions. When we calculate the latest numbers provided by the Guttmacher Institute, we arrive at a sum of $21.214 trillion that has gone into the abortion industry since the advent of legalized abortion in 1973.

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These numbers remind us of the tremendous wealth and power illustrated by those figures. Abortion is a growth industry that gives no indication of slowing down. Coupled with the shocking amount that has been spent on abortions since 1973, and the lost tax revenue from an entire generation of income-producing workers, it is no wonder that our economy is reeling from excessive spending and taxation of the government. There is at present a federal ban on using taxpayer money to fund abortion, yet Guttmacher tells us that 13% of all abortions done are paid for through Medicaid according to the Guttmacher Institute (Guttmacher, 2009). On his first day in office as the newly elected president, Barack Obama’s first official act was to rescind the ban on federal funds for abortions overseas. This means that American tax dollars are paying for abortions both here and abroad. Abortion on demand is the other side of the eugenics movement. Margaret Sanger was deeply involved in the eugenics movement. She founded the American Birth Control League in 1921. It became Planned Parenthood in 1942. She was joined by Alexis Carrel, a French biologist and Nobel Prize winner in 1912. Carrel, like Sanger, was a dedicated eugenicist. Carrel was financed by the Rockefellers in eugenics projects. Carrel urged the use of gas chambers to eliminate “inferior stock” (NNDB). He has been implicated in the deaths of thousands of mentally ill or impaired patients under the Vichy France government. Margaret Sanger advocated forced sterilization of those she considered of the “moron class.” She believed, “Nearly half, 47.3% of the population had the mentality of twelve-year-old children or less—in other words they were morons” (Sanger, 1922). Her suggestion was as follows: The emergency problem of segregation and sterilization must be faced immediately. Every feeble-minded girl or woman of the hereditary type, especially of the moron class, should be segregated during the reproductive period. We prefer the policy of immediate sterilization of making sure that parenthood is absolutely prohibited to the feeble-minded. (Sanger, 1932)

In 1912 Sanger came up with a “Plan for Peace”. Her plan for peace has a loud echo of Hitler’s own plan. She suggested this solution to the feebleminded moron problem: To apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is already tainted . . . to appropriate farm lands and homesteads for these segregated persons where they would be taught to work under competent instructors for the period of their entire lives. (Sanger, 1932)

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In other words, she wanted inferior people to be confined to work in concentration camps. Not only do these concepts repel us, but they call to mind the policies of China, where there is a strictly imposed law in the form of the famous “One child per family.” Under these rules, a couple is limited by the state to having only one child. If a woman becomes pregnant again, she is forced to undergo abortion paid for by the state. If somehow she is able to escape having an abortion and the child is born alive, she has only one choice: to leave the child somewhere to die or to leave the child in one of the many orphanages in the hope that her child will be adopted, perhaps by a family in the United States. I personally know several of these “China dolls” who have been adopted by U.S. citizens. One of them I count as my grandchild, as I have been foster mother to her adoptive mother for many years. During ancient times, one of the truly awful faces of evil of earlier civilizations was that of making one’s own children “Pass through the fire” (Leviticus 20:2). This was designed to honor and hopefully appease the evil god Molech. Molech was personified in the form of an oven or kiln. Infants and children were routinely thrown into the fires of Molech’s appetites as a sacrifice. We have come a long way from the days of Molech. We no longer, as a rule, consign our offspring to an oven, yet it seems that the practice of child sacrifice continues to the present time. Instead of pitching our children into a stinking oven, however, we sacrifice them in a clean, sterile, room, surrounded by modern medical equipment that pulls the life out of our wombs, or discharges our offspring when they have been dismembered by someone dressed, not in bloody leather, but in bloody white gowns. The epitome of our modern-day child sacrifices are in the form of late-term abortions. Any child can normally be aborted up to and including 32 weeks, which means that the infant is viable, that is, fully developed and ready for the world. Late-term abortions can be done up to and including the time just prior to birth. The ones who perform this procedure are truly evil people. The king of late term abortions is Dr. Warren Hern of Boulder, Colorado. He advertises that he “[s]pecializes in late abortion for fetal disorders” (Hern, 2009). He does not specify what constitutes a fetal disorder. Because this is all he does, does this mean that everyone who comes to him has a fetus with some sort of “fetal disorder”? Is it possible for 100% of his patients to all have a “fetal disorder”? What kind of disorder would 100% of his patients have that could only be fixed by killing the patient? Furthermore, although Dr. Hern has both a master’s degree and a PhD in epidemiology, there is no current information on his clinical skills required to ascertain a genetic fault in the fetus, as he does not advertise as a geneticist, is he therefore not qualified to act in that capacity? So, when we see the term fetal disorder, we can only conclude that the only “fetal disorder” is the disorder of being alive.

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HUMAN TRAFFICKING Each year more than 700,000 women and children are swept into the sex trade against their will (Van Zandt, 2006). Some estimates place the total number of people victimized by the sex trade as high as 27 million (ALIPAC, 2004). They come from around the world, and they make billions of dollars for their masters. Of this number, roughly 50,000 work in the United States at any one time (Jones, 2006). In addition, perhaps 20,000 more new ones are forced into the sex market each year (Leah, 2006). Women and children have become a hot commodity on the open market. Every nation has lost women and children to the sex trade, with Asia and Central and South America taking the lead (Kovalski, 2000). Costa Rica is the home of rich and beautiful natural resources. It is also the home to an ugly underbelly of evil. It has at least 2,000 child prostitutes in San Jose alone (Garvin, 2000). Southeast Asia has an incredibly high number of prostitutes. Cambodia’s obsession with child prostitutes has 20,000 children just in Phnom Penh. So-called tourists flock to Southeast Asia and Latin American countries to have sex with children (Suvadip, 2005). In Italy, there is much concern that children are disappearing into the underground “organ donor” program. In other words, the fear is that many children are being killed for their young organs (Tyler, 2003). Many girls around the world are sold by their parents or family, some as young at 10 years old. Many of these young children have outlived their usefulness in a few short years, and they die of AIDS or other diseases (Suvadip, 2005). A girl is most valuable while she is still a virgin. Many men will pay a premium price for a virgin. Numerous women and children in the sex trade in the United States are here illegally. Some come through Mexico; still others arrive through Canada. They are told they will have good jobs, housing, money, and other benefits. Instead, they are forced into prostitution and degradation (ALIPAC, 2004). It is not uncommon to find these people locked up in “safe houses” in the Phoenix or Tucson, Arizona, areas. They are starved, beaten, and raped to keep them in line, and they often die from abuse. The forces that make this business possible are the same forces that make profiteering during wartime possible. Greed and the need to exercise power and control over other human beings fuel the business of the sex trade. According to a UNICEF report in 2003, 1.2 million children are forced into prostitution each year, and at least 200,000 come from Eastern Europe (Tyler, 2003). The report also states the Albania is the number one provider of children. They claim that the global revenue is upward of $12 billion per year. Albania has only $14 billion for its entire gross domestic product. Part of the reason that so many children find their way into the sex trade is due to factors that decimate the economy and especially impact children. Natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, drought, and war force young

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children into the sex trade when they lose their families, leaving children with no means of support, either financial or emotional. The poorer the stricken nation, the more likely that children will be snatched up into the profession from hell. There have been a few successful arrests and prosecutions in the United States, although they are rare. One group was arrested for enslaving up to 240 women into prostitution (White, 2006). Some attention on the national level has been gained through Criminal Justice Resources, maintained by Michigan State University. This website offers a menu of organizations that track and expose human trafficking around the globe. The quality and quantity of pure evil wrapped up in the sex trade are unimaginable to most people. We need to expose it for what it is and free the ones caught up in it.

SUMMARY Evil in the United States is not a passing shadow or ethereal dream. It is a very real nightmare from which we Americans seem unable to wake. But wake we must or forever live in its cold embrace. We have a charge to expose evil wherever it is hiding, and bring it into the light, for only if we can see, hear, taste, and feel it will we be likely to take necessary steps to stop it. We must shake off the inertia we suffer from and take a stand against it. The first step to doing that is to become aware. We have examined evil from several perspectives and found it to be pervasive, and always centered in some way around money and power for a few, and misery, subordination, and death for others. The United States is populated with many very good people who have not yet understood that they are surrounded by a few evil people whose excessive greed and lust for power have ordered their lives and altered their world. Most have not yet considered the truth that our lives are ours only by the suffrage of those whom we do not know, yet these few control almost every aspect of our very being. On the other hand, power is an illusion. It is temporary at best and unable to prevent even those who wield it from experiencing justice, although not in this world, as we have seen. However, each of us must enter another world someday, a world where the one with the power is unlike those who are evil. Justice will be served on that day of reckoning. It is with great comfort that we await the justice to come.

REFERENCES ALIPAC. (2004). Global sex trade and America’s open borders. Raleigh, NC: Author. Alliance for Human Research Protection. (2005). Auschwitz: 60 year anniversary—the Role of IG Farben-Bayer. www.ahrp.org/infomail/05/01/27a.php. American Israeli Corporative Enterprise. (1997). The mystery of the Hungarian “Gold Train.” Jewish Virtual Library. www.untdigital.library.unt.egu/ark:67531/ metadc770.

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ArtsJournal. (2000). The Jerusalem Post, www.jpost.com. Barker, K. (Ed.). (1985). New International Version of the Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. Christopher, A. (1993). John D. Rockefeller, Standard Oil and world monopolies. Retrieved from http://biblioteccapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_rockeferrer03.htm. Congress, T. L. (1945–1946). Nazi conspiracy and aggression. Office of the United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality (Vol. 1). Washington, DC: Library of Congress. Cornford, F. M. (1957). The Republic of Plato. New York: Oxford University Press. Cuddy, D. L. (2009). The dark roots of eugenics. NewsWithViews.com. Finer, L. B. (2005). An overview of abortion in the United States. Atlanta: The Guttmacher Institute. Frankfurter, D. (2006). Evil incarnate: Rumors of demonic conspiracy and satanic abuse in history. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Garvin, G. (2000). Latina women and children at risk: Sordid child sex trade booms in Costa Rica. Washington, D.C.: Libertad Latina, www.libertadlatina.org. Guttmacher Institute. (2009). Average cost for an abortion. Planned Parenthood. Atlanta: Guttmacher Institute. Guyatt, D. (2000). The Secret Gold Treaty. www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/ esp_sociopol_gold01.htm. Henry, M. (2000). Jewish lawyers enter Nazi-looted art fray. The Jerusalem Post, www .jpost.com. Hern, W. M. (2009). Boulder abortion clinic brochure. New York: NARAL. Higham, C. (1983). Trading with the enemy. New York: Delacorte. Holdren, J., Ehrlich, A., & Ehrlich P. (1977). Ecoscience. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Co. Isidore, C. (2000). Chase buying J.P. Morgan. CNN Money, www.money.cnn.com. Johnson, B. (2007). John Holdren: Obama’s biggest radical. Fresno, CA: Free Republic. Jones, K. (2006). A sex trade market in America? Denver: Associated Content. Jones, R. (2005). An overview of abortion in the United States. Atlanta: Guttmacher Institute. JRank.org. (2010). Buck v. Bell: Further readings. Retrieved from http://law.jrank .org/pages/4914/Buck-v-Bell.html. Kovalski, S. F. (2000). Child sex trade rises in Central America. Washington, DC: Washington Post Foreign Service. Lauder, R. S. (2000). Testimony of Ronald S. Lauder, chairman Commission for Art Recovery World Jewish Congress. Washington, DC: U.S. Congress, House Committee on Banking and Financial Services. Leah, H. (2006). America’s modern day slave trade: Human trafficking in the sex industry. Denver: Associated Content. Lederman, R. (2000). Chase Manhattan Bank’s right-wing relationship. Dallas: ATT. Morgan, D. (2002). U.S. eugenics like Nazi policy. ABC News. Reuters. www.abcnews .go.com/sections/science/dailynews/eugenics_0002124.html. Morris, D. (2009). Obama health care bill. The Cassandra Page: Quote of the day. www .cassandra2004.blogspot.com/2009/quote-of-the-day-dickmorris. Nelson, J. I. (2009). The significance of IG Farben for chemistry, literature and Jews. Retrieved from http://nerdylorrin.net/jerry/Germany/Fam/IG Farben.

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NNDB. (N.d.). Alexis Carrel biography. NNDB. www.nndb.com/honors.139/ 000048992. Oliver, M., Gardner, P., & Ashe, K. (2007, January 30). Eugenics movement: Georgia. Atlanta: Georgia General Assembly. Orange, A. (1997). Operation Paperclip. Retrieved from http://www.thekforbidden knowledge.com/hardtruth/operationpaperclip.htm. Platt, T. (2008). Tony Platt on American eugenics. Retrieved from http://www.truthdig .com/arts_culture/item/20080620_tony_platt: Truthdig. Preston, D. L. (1997). U.S. report: Swiss helped Nazis finance WWII. Los Angeles: Knight Ridder Tribune News Wire. Richmond, M. (1998). Healthy choices for women. Portland, OR: Andrew Burnett. Rivera, D. A. (N.d.). The Seven Sisters. In D. A. Rivera, Final warning: A history of the new world order. Retrieved from http:/www.the 7thfire.com/new_world_order/ final_warning. Rychlak, J. F. (1981). Introduction to personality and psychotherapy (2nd ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Sanger, M. (1922). The Fertility of the Feeble-Minded. The Pivot of Civilization, 6, 263. Sanger, M. (1932). Plan for peace. The Pivot of Civilization, 16 (4), 107–108. Saunders, L. (2008). Secret Weapons and Dr. Wernher von Braun. Hove, UK: Crystal Music. Snore, E. (2008). The Soviet Story. You Tube. www.imbd.com/title/tt1305871. SourceWatch. (N.d.). What really caused World War II? Retrieved from http://www .SourceWatch.org. Staff, P. T. (2002). A question of evil. Psychology Today. September, 2010. Sutton, A. C. (1976). Wall Street and the rise of Hitler. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House. Suvadip, D. A. (2005). Cambodia’s child sex trade. Global Politician. www.globalpolitician.com/2532-crime-prostitution. Tyler, R. (2003). Child trafficking in Eastern Europe: A trade in human misery. World Socialist Web Site. UNICEF. (2003). Van Zandt, C. (2006). Who’s taken our daughter? MSNBC. Vardy, N. (2010). The new Seven Sisters: The world’s most powerful oil companies. Cheyenne: WY: The Global Guru. Walsh, C. (2001, October 1). Reconstructing Larry: Assessing the legacy of Lawrence Kohlberg. HGSE News, 1–6. Ward, D. E. (2009). Explaining evil behavior: Using Kant and M. Scott Peck to solve the puzzle of understanding the moral psychology of evil people. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 9 (1), 23–26. Weiss, D. J. (2008). Big oil feasts on economic woes. Washington DC: Center for American Progress. White, B. E. (2006). Jews arrested in massive US white slavery ring. Roanoke, VA: Libertarian Socialist News. Willard, D. (2002). God and the problem of evil. Campus Crusade for Christ, Leadership U. www.leadershipu.org/LHC/leadership_u.

ch apter 6

The Evil of Christian Anti-Semitism in America Jack Hanford

Americans are proud of our victory at the end of World War II and of liberating the Jews by the end of the Holocaust. So, we probably do not think of anti-Semitism in the United States today, and surely not Christian antiSemitism, because the United States has been considered a Christian nation. In fact, we often think our country is the refuge for Jews. But our history of the immigration of Jews does not produce consistent evidence of being a welcoming refuge. Moreover, the evidence of the Zionists establishing Israel as a state of their own also suggests that there might not have been adequate and safe places for refuge. The Holocaust serves well as an apt metaphor for the ultimate meaning of evil and specifically the meaning of the evil of anti-Semitism. The Holocaust shows us an atrocity of humans brutally and systematically harming and murdering millions of persons of all ages thought to be Jews. More than a million Jewish children were murdered. If the Holocaust is not an adequate metaphor, Americans might refer to September 11, 2001, as a more recent and personal metaphor for the meaning of evil. Thus, we can combine these historical events as a beginning definition and image of real evil, including moral evil. A purpose of this chapter is not only to provide an understanding of evil and of the evil of anti-Semitism in the United States but also to see the history of evil of Christian anti-Semitism that preceded the Holocaust and continues even after the tragic agony of suffering from a prejudice that fomented during 2,000 years of Christian history and 500 years in America. We will begin with the Jews and their neighbors at the beginning of Christianity;

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acknowledge anti-Semitism in the Bible, especially with Paul and John; continue with the church fathers such as John Chrysostom, and focus significantly on Saint Augustine (354-431). Then, the story will sketch antiSemitism in the medieval period with Thomas Aquinas; continue into the Reformation with Luther, Calvin, and Wesley; and finally deal with the evil of Christian anti-Semitism in America from the colonial times to the Civil War and beyond the world wars toward the present. Anti-Semitism is a concern not only for Jews but also for Christians. Some scholars insist that early Christians had a need to interpret their faith as distinct from Judaism. These Christians searched for their orthodoxy at this time over against Judaism, and this view might have been read as an antiJudaism which could lay a foundation for anti-Semitism. Thus, it is Christian anti-Semitism that is my concern along with others. This chapter will explore and try to explain the meaning and evil of Christian anti-Semitism. Is this evil prejudice beyond the evil of other prejudice, and does it have its lasting origins in Saint Augustine? Where is the answer in Augustine’s voluminous writings? Will our search reveal that Augustine was plagued with shame, as shown in the Confessions, and that this shame had the underside of narcissism which led to blaming the Jews for rejecting and crucifying Jesus the Christ? Did this murderous act become the unforgivable sin in the judgment of Augustine and thus the major source of Christian anti-Semitism in the authoritative and official doctrine for Roman Catholic Christendom? This charge implied in the questions can be argued from Augustine’s interpretation of the Judaic and Christian Scripture, especially from Saint Paul’s anti-Judaism. Augustine and the Apostle Paul demean non-Christian Jews, and Augustine attacks them as heretics. Centuries earlier, Paul persecuted Christians prior to his conversion. Why did Paul as a Pharisee Jew persecute Christians such as Stephen and others? Prior to Paul’s conversion, he was a Pharisee who was highly trained and educated by a renowned Rabbi. Thus, he zealously demonstrated his loyalty to the Pharisees by savagely persecuting the Christians, who were considered to be a sect of Judaism. The Apostle Paul interpreted his conversion as a transition from the Judaic law to grace, and he identified the law with Judaism, which contributed toward anti-Judaism. After Constantine’s (285–337) conversion to Christianity, he embraced Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire. This important decision and action ended the Roman persecution of Christians and gave their moment greater power by being identified with the reigning rule of the emperor and empire. Augustine experienced his dramatic conversion from the law to grace and from lust to celibacy (Augustine, 1991, 37, pp. 209–218). He acquired the best classical education, especially in rhetoric and law, with assistance and sacrifice by his father. His mother, Monica, lived much longer than his father

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and was a more powerful influence in developing her son’s Christian faith. Augustine became a priest and eventually a bishop of the Roman Catholic Church, and carried his faith and power forward in shaping orthodoxy. He battled heretics and even approved persecution of the Jews, putting into action his Christian anti-Judaism which led to anti-Semitism. He believed that the Jews were instrumental in the crucifixion of Jesus the Christ, were considered evil before god, and threatened the unity of the church and the empire. Augustine united the growing power of the Church at the time of the declining power of the empire. He strengthened the power of the papacy by identifying it with the culture of patriarchy in the Roman Empire. All this power of patriarchy in the church would grow and increase. The name of Augustine’s father, Patricius, can be associated with its similar meaning of patriarchy illustrating a linkage between the strong authority between family, church, and empire. Nevertheless, celibacy and the monastic institutions did not facilitate the growth and development of family. If Augustine were anti-Semitic, patriarchal, and misogynist (such as in his relation even to women and even to his mother), we might be tempted to consider him an evil person. But surely, we need to evaluate him in relation to his history and time. We know that, to some degree, he shaped much of the history of his time as a seminal thinker and as a bishop in Christianity. But was he mainly shaped by the history and tumultuous events of his time, such as Christendom almost replacing the power of the Roman Empire? Paula Fredriksen is a significant scholar insisting that the psychoanalytic interpretations of Augustine did not give adequate attention toward understanding the historical context of Augustine in his time. Thus, the context must be studied seriously. P. Brown’s (2000) biography is psychoanalytically informed, and he is certainly an authority on understanding the complicated historical context of the Roman Empire and the emerging Roman Catholic Church. Fredriksen, Brown, and many other scholars confirm that Augustine did affirm and practice Christian anti-Semitism. We must remember also that the dominant value culminating in the medieval period was the value of asceticism. Asceticism can be represented in the person of John the Baptist and Saint Francis. It represents the peak of self-sacrifice and the denial of pleasure. Augustine seemed to become ascetic when he opted for celibacy and disparaged Jewish tradition in the slur of “carnal Israel.” Much of asceticism is embodied in his dualistic philosophy of Plato and his theology of original sin. The attack against the Jews expanded from Augustine toward greater intensity through the years or centuries of the Middle Ages. We should begin with the split in the unity of Christendom, when the Eastern Orthodox Christians separated from the Roman Catholic Church in 1054. Even earlier than the time of the peak of the medieval period around 1300, the Church was confronted by rising state power and by the threat of the Crusades

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empowered by Muslims whose power was their faith, and by militant Muslims who sought sovereignty over states and religions. Seeds of the Reformation were sown even during this early period in England, for example, with new translations of the Bible eventually into English, German, and others. With all these threats looming, the Church increased authority, defined heresy broadly, and persecuted heretics including Jews, who were identified as dangerous heretics in religion and in finance where the Christian understanding of usury conflicted with that of some Jews, especially in banking and other areas of marketing. By 1215, Pope Innocent claimed papal lordship over the entire world, including states, and insisted on the unity of Christendom. Anyone in opposition to unity, including Jews, could be vulnerable to persecution and the onslaught of the Inquisition, which mobilized structures to enforce the power of the papacy with the power of life or death put into action by the Crusades. This political theology established a theocracy and royalty of a patriarchal priesthood. To be identified as pro-Semitic and as an influence against unity could mean harsh punishment and even death. Patriotism was to be toward Christendom which to some extent was considered to be the world under the unity of a universal Christian society. The limited toleration identified with Augustine was considered past history, leaving no room for Jews and infidels in the totally unified society created especially by the papacy and the Dominican and Franciscan monastic orders. America was not part of this but some of the products of the medieval history came to our shores in future centuries. Now with the benefit of hindsight, some Christian scholars such as John Locke and James Carroll recognized that the story above might have slanted, exaggerated, and distorted the true Christian tradition. Orthodoxy and heterodoxy continue to struggle and perhaps intermingle. The Catholic clergy scandal shows that asceticism and celibacy might be wrong or misguided and in need of reinterpretation in the light of modern knowledge. Celibacy was called into question even by the older Augustine, according to Paula Fredriksen (2008). Moreover, and certainly with the Holocaust, Christians along with Jews must currently be thinking critically about the obvious evil of anti-Semitism. Harm to the other in the mixture of church and politics has had unsavory results for Catholics and Protestants. This train of thought can be developed from Augustine through the Augustinian Monastic Order to Martin Luther, Friedrich Nietzsche, and ultimately the anti-Semitism of Nazi Germany. This claim and its criticism have been put forth in rough form in the following. Currently, Carol Gilligan and David A. J. Richards (2009) point toward Augustine’s interpretation of Adam and Eve in Genesis to identify a negative view of human sexuality leading to Augustine’s decision for celibacy, leadership in Roman Catholicism as a bishop, and justification in using the patriarchal power of church

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and state to persecute heretics such as the Donatists and, of course, Jews because they were considered the ultimate heretics and were instrumental in the crucifixion of Jesus. For evidence of the Genesis view, Gilligan and Richards (2009) refer to Augustine’s City of God, and they refer to his Confessions (Augustine, 1991, p. 82) for the story leading to celibacy, rejection of pleasure in sexuality, misogyny, and violence. Too often, Christians have considered Jews to be the personification of evil. Yet, if Christians remember that Jesus was emphatically a Jew and not evil then these two facts might begin to counter the evil of anti-Semitism in the history of Christianity in the United States. This history appears to be paradoxical, which has been captured in Leonard Dinnerstein’s (1995) Antisemitism in America.

AMERICA Christian anti-Semitism has been traced from Augustine to Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), the foremost theologian of colonial America. Historically, this is a leap of over 1,200 years, but the basic charge against the Jews remains fairly consistent: that they were instrumental in the crucifixion of Jesus. Robert Michael (2005) insists that the continuity of the papacy facilitated the consistency of passing on Christian anti-Semitism. That is the same judgment for the punishment of Jews from original Catholic orthodox doctrine to New England Congregational Protestantism. Edwards was born in 1703, the same year as John Wesley. Wesley also places the curse of Cain on the Jews, just as Augustine did. Fundamentalist Methodists and Baptists carried Christian anti-Semitism against the “Christ killers” toward the western frontiers of the United States in their mission during the 19th century. Protestant fundamentalism contributed toward the South being the most anti-Semitic region of the United States and the most violent according to Leonard Dinnerstein (1995), who wrote one of the best single comprehensive volumes on anti-Semitism in the United States. He (1995, p. ix) insists, “Christian viewpoints underlie all American anti-Semitism.” He (1968) also wrote an entire book on the Leo Frank case which documents the lynching of a Jew for the murder of a 13-year-old girl. The trial opened in Atlanta in 1913. Frank was judged guilty by circumstantial evidence which he had thoroughly refuted. His attorney proved to be ineffective, and Frank was jailed. A mob took him from the jail and hanged him from a large oak tree, in its shadows and darkness, in the vicinity of the girl’s grave which was their chosen location. This case convinced Jews that in spite of their best efforts to assimilate in Atlanta, they could not live in the South and expect justice or even protection against the evil of anti-Semitism.

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Anti-Semitism continued into the 20th century within the mainstream of American society, and even joined forces of prejudice within Germany. This was a mutual transaction. For example, Robert Michael (2005, p. 140) reports that Adolph Hitler had a large picture of Henry Ford on his desk. Science with its prestige and authority was also used, manipulated, and distorted by Ford, Hitler, and others in their countries to make a case for racial hygiene and eugenic grounds for placing the Gentile over the Jew. In fact, race is an idea, not a fact. This confused “scientific” view of hostility to Jews and racism marks the continued reality of the original term anti-Semitism, which was coined in 1873 according to Gavin Langmuir (1990 p. 311). The pseudoscience assumed that the Jews were a race named Semites, which was considered inferior. This Aryan myth about a superior race passed on by genetic inheritance has been refuted by biologists and other scientists. Anti-Semitism became a pejorative term. We still have ethnic hostilities, ignorance, dictators, bigots, and insecure patriarchs in religion and politics. To deal with these, we need understanding of the language and culture of Jews and Christians to grow beyond the racial-stereotyping evil of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism. Catholicism is the single largest religious group in the United States. Thus, such a large group within the pluralist United States includes many different views toward Jews. We might come close to a single view if we stick to the official statements and writings of the popes, who have authority to represent all of Catholicism. David Kertzer (2001) offers a study of the papacy beginning with Vatican II, which produced a 10-year investigation of whether the Church had any responsibility for the Holocaust. The results of the investigation were produced in 1998 as the Church got ready to celebrate its 2000 jubilee. The results of the Vatican Commission’s research showed that the responsibility for the Shoah (Holocaust) could be explained by the rise of nationalism in the 19th century. Kertzer counters with a review of the papacy and their secretaries of state from 1740–1958 from access to the central archives of the Inquisition, which were opened in 1998. He concluded that although, indeed, the Roman Catholic Church did not sanction in public the mass murder of the Jews, the Church remained silent, allowing rights of Jews to be denied, and thereby it shared responsibility for the Holocaust. Because Kertzer is Jewish and could be accused of bias, he appeals and receives support from James Carroll (2001) with his massive research that also shows responsibility, and that fact is the reason why Carroll calls for a Vatican III. An important issue today is whether Pope Benedict XVI will succeed in persuading the Church to make Pope Pius XII a saint. Other leaders of the Church are against this effort until the role of Pius XII during the Holocaust is clarified. This controversy is evidence that the work of Vatican II was inadequate and a Vatican III is needed. This sketch of Christian anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism culminates in the Holocaust as an ultimate expression of evil. For instance, the commandant

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of Auschwitz, Rudolph Hoss, who built the prison and claimed to have executed two and a half-million Jews, was interviewed by G. Gilbert (1995, pp. 267–269). Gilbert sought the source of anti-Semitism, and Hoss expressed a comprehensive knowledge of its historical roots in the church and mythology articulated to him through Adolph Hitler’s writings and Heinrich Himmler. Specifically Hoss affirmed, “For me as an old fanatic National Socialist, I took it all as fact-just as a Catholic believes in his church dogma.” He was a major contributor to the Holocaust. The United States has made progress since the Holocaust and the 1960s. Vatican II (1962-1965) made some progress toward refuting Christian antiJudaism especially while Pope John XXIII was active. He had experienced some of the horrors of the Holocaust and might have offered an official apology for the Church’s failure to act during the rise of Hitler, but he died too soon and Vatican II did not adequately represent his intention and thought, according to Carroll (2001). Thus, as mentioned above, Carroll calls for a Vatican III to struggle for reform in the Church on the issues of patriarchy, anti-Semitism, sex scandals of some priests, celibacy, and anti-pleasure. Was a greater evil than anti-Semitism committed during the George W. Bush administration? The argument in Carol Gilligan’s recent book (2009) would seem to suggest a positive answer because of the book’s discussion of patriarchy culminating during this administration and being the overall umbrella cause or significant factor throughout history in producing a wide range of evils such as persecution of heretics, Jews, lepers, common enemies, and so on. There is still anti-Semitism in the United States but the United States has also become the refuge for Jews against anti-Semitism in the rest of the world. Presently, violent Muslims are a threat, if not the major threat, of anti-Semitism against Jews and Americans because of the Muslim charge that Jews have a decisive influence on American politics through lobbying, wealth, and power—political and military power. Today, Iran is the most dangerous threat against the Jews. But unlike the 20th century, the Jews are represented in their powerful state of Israel. This is a serious conflict but not another Holocaust. This conflict plus terrorism takes center stage in a global process of survival. The good news is that anti-Semitism in the United States is on the decline. The Anti-Defamation League reports from its 2009 survey that 12% of Americans hold anti-Semitic views, which is down from 15% in 2007 farther down from the 29% in 1964. The well educated are even less anti-Semitic than the 12% in the general population, which suggests that education has made a difference toward growth of understanding and acceptance. The Anti-Defamation League works now with the Catholic Church to identify and counter anti-Semitism. This cooperation toward the common good has been included in Catholic schools. Concern for continued progress will need to remain with us into the future.

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REFERENCES Augustine. (1972). City of god. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. Augustine. (1991). Confessions (Trans. Henry Chadwick). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brown, P. (2000). Augustine of Hippo. Berkeley: University of California Press. Carroll, J. (2001). Constantine’s sword: The Church and the Jews. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Dinnerstein, L. (1968). The Leo Frank Case. New York: Columbia University Press. Dinnerstein, L. (1995). Antisemitism in America. New York: Oxford. Feldman, E. (1990). Dual Destinies. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Fredriksen, P. (2008). Augustine and the Jews. New York: Doubleday. Gilbert, G. (1995). Nuremberg Diary. New York: Da Capo Press. Gilligan, C. and Richards, D. (2009). The deepening darkness. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kertzer, David (2001). The popes against the Jews. New York: Vintage. Langmuir, G. (1990). Toward a definition of Antisemitism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Michael, R. (2005). A concise history of American Antisemitism. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.

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Patriotism Today: Altruism or Narcissism? Good or Evil? Rafael Chodos

INTRODUCTION The conditions that made patriotism a virtue in earlier times do not apply in the world today. The rise of psychology has led us to see expressions of patriotism as a form of narcissism, which can lead to fascism. Multiculturalism and economic dislocations are creating a confused socioeconomic landscape that makes the idea of “one nation” unconvincing. Post-Enlightenment sociopolitical ideals, which include the rejection of absolute authority and respect for differing viewpoints, have undermined the “affinity gradient” that was critical to the patriotic worldview. In the contemporary world, the nation-state can no longer fulfill its historic role as the object of innocent patriotism.

EXPOSITION

I. The Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Although the “Pledge of Allegiance” is a uniquely American patriotic ritual, patriotism itself is a worldwide phenomenon, and the dangers of patriotism lurk everywhere.

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Written in 1892 by a Southern Baptist minister, this pledge was quickly adopted by school systems, the Boy Scouts, and legislative bodies throughout the country. Many legal challenges have been raised to it over the past 100 years (the U.S. Supreme Court has considered pledge-related issues in over 30 cases since 1930; the cases most important to our discussion are listed in the References); but despite the very convincing ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1943 to the effect that it is unconstitutional for the government to require students to recite this pledge (Board of Education v. Barnette, 1943), most of the states of the union still require its recitation by students at the beginning of the school day and at assemblies, and the sessions of Congress still open with it. Although the phrase under God, introduced in the 1950s, was held by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to be a violation of the First Amendment, the Supreme Court reversed that holding—principally on the technical grounds that the plaintiffs in the case lacked standing (Elk Grove v. Newdow, 2004). Although a lower federal court in Florida actually held that requiring the recitation of this pledge by students is a violation of their constitutional rights, the court of appeal reversed that holding on the ground that the parents had a constitutional right of their own to require their children to recite the pledge (Frazier v. Alexandre, 2006). The fact is that whether or not recitation of this pledge as a demonstration of one’s patriotism can be required by governmental entities or in governmentally sponsored settings, it is in fact widely recited and has been ever since it was first composed in 1892. And what is wrong with that? What could possibly be wrong with patriotism? Particularly these days, after 9/11, do we not need to come together and remember the ideals on which this country was founded? When so many terrorists—not to mention the ever-increasing hordes of just plain old criminals—are dead-set on disrupting our domestic tranquility, do we not need to come together and reaffirm the basic principles that brought this nation into existence? What is wrong with reminding ourselves that we are one nation, that we are a republic, that we all stand together before God, and that we are committed to preserving liberty and justice for all? When terrorists flew commercial airliners into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, did they not force us to recognize the dawn of a new age in this country? Not since the civil war had we seen battle take place on this great land; now we live in constant danger of having our public buildings destroyed by rabble from foreign lands who believe that by sacrificing their own lives, they contribute to the greater glory of their gods. As for the civil war, it was just a one-off: Once it was over, our country really did become “one nation.” And as wave after wave of immigrants came to our shores, did it not become progressively more important to remind them, and ourselves, of the high ideals for which we stand? Do we not need to enroll them all in the Great Project we have undertaken, to be a beacon of light and make the world a better place? Do we not need to embrace them all, and

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grasp them to our bosom, and do not this embrace and this grasp depend for their authenticity on our shared commitment to the ideals mentioned in this pledge? What patience should we have for those who do not share our fundamental values? Shall we not tell them to go home to where they came from? We did not invite them here, and we do not require them to stay here. In order for them to be productive members of our community, we require only the minimum from them: that they obey the laws, and that they share the ideals our country stands for. Must we remind them of the reasons they came here? Shall we recount the horrors of their own regimes, the torture, oppression, and hopeless poverty from which they have fled? They came here for freedom and prosperity. But in order for there to be freedom and prosperity, there must be liberty and justice for all. One cannot thrive in a kingdom or in an empire. No: One must live in a republic, and that republic must remind itself constantly that it stands in humble obedience before God. Nor can we have liberty and justice unless we have a nation of which we are proud, for the nation is the matrix in which liberty, justice, and prosperity all can flourish. This pledge reminds us also of our nation’s history. It was composed late in the 19th century, after the Civil War was over, and after the nation’s manifest destiny had been recognized. It was written by a minister who had grown up during the Civil War; and by the time he composed this pledge, our nation already stretched “from sea to shining sea.” That is why the words “one nation, indivisible” carry so much meaning. It comes down to this: The price of liberty is constant vigilance, and reciting this pledge makes us vigilant. The forces of tyranny, corruption, and evil are lurking everywhere, waiting for their chance; and we must align ourselves against them. For our country must remain a bulwark of freedom and justice, a light unto the nations, and a force for good in the world that stands always firm against the forces of evil. What is wrong with requiring this ritualistic expression of loyalty and readiness to sacrifice, this tiny affirmation of altruism, to reassure ourselves that we are all on the same side?

II. A “PRI Scan” of the Pledge When we begin to think about this pledge and the ideas behind it, we realize that we are being drawn into a dense and tangled thicket. We see deep linkages here among notions of “allegiance,” “nation,” “national history” and “destiny,” God, good, and evil. What presents itself to us is a complex of passionately held beliefs, assumptions, emotions, images, narratives, prejudices, and aspirations—and so I will suggest that we should identify the unnamed speaker as a patient and send that identified patient out for what we can call a “PRI scan,” that is, a “philosophical resonance imaging” scan (something

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analogous to the magnetic resonance imaging scan but more abstract) to see exactly what the linkages are and how deep they run. We can perform such a scan by examining the pledge carefully, phrase by phrase: “I pledge . . .”: To whom is the speaker giving this pledge, exactly? The other people in the room with him? Or to some unidentified listener? Is he perhaps merely giving the pledge, aloud, to remind himself of it—to affirm it, in the most clear-cut way? “I pledge allegiance . . .”: What is it exactly that the pledgor undertakes to do or to refrain from doing? Allegiance is a term that comes down to us from medieval times. It is related to liege and evokes memories of the feudal system. To pledge allegiance to Lord X was to assure him that in wartime, you would fight for him against Lord Y. So the whole notion of “allegiance” implicates warfare, competition, “us” versus “them,” and a political climate we hoped had long gone. And it is difficult to discern, amid the multifarious interest groups in the United States, which of them the oath-giver is thinking of. When the United States tortures prisoners at Abu Ghraib or murders innocent civilians in Afghanistan, do we still want to pledge our allegiance to that? “To the flag . . .”: Is this not a form of idolatry? Do we really approve of those laws that forbid “defacing” the flag? Many of the states had such laws, but they were stricken down as infringements of free speech rights under the First Amendment in Texas v. Johnson (1989). Congress then passed a law making it a crime to deface the flag, but that law was also stricken down by the Supreme Court in U.S. v. Eichman (1990). Do they not come also, like the notion of “allegiance,” from a much more benighted time when Jews would refuse to deface a Torah scroll; or when Christians in the Shogun’s Japan would refuse to step on the fumie—the picture of Jesus—and so could readily be identified and persecuted? To pledge allegiance to the United States of America is one thing: but to its flag? And the words here are “to the flag . . . and to the republic for which it stands.” “The republic for which it stands”: Here we have an anachronistic and inaccurate idea. Is the United States actually a “republic”? The term was used first in ancient Rome and then in the Renaissance to refer to states that were not monarchies. Its use in Roman times was different: The Latin phrase means, literally, “the public thing”—a startlingly contemporary turn of phrase. It refers to public affairs in general, or to the period of time between the Roman Kingdom and the Roman Empire. It refers also to public property, and to politics in general. It was not until the Renaissance that Machiavelli distinguished principalities—states ruled by princes—from republics, in which the people had a voice in the decisions. The term continued to be used through the time of the French Revolution as a label for the “new” kind of state where power rested with the people rather than with an aristocracy. But that was

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already done and over with in the early 1800s. By now, the feature of the United States that distinguishes it most from “monarchy” is “confederacy”: it is a group of putatively independent states that have agreed to band together as one nation. The use of the term republic to describe this federation is just one more way in which this pledge is stuck in the mud of an older time, and not at all in tune with current circumstances. “For which it stands . . .”: Here is a deliberate ambiguity: Is this nation the one that actually exists today, or one toward which we aspire? Is it the real nation or the ideal one? We will not criticize the pledge on this ground, but we notice the ambiguity. “One nation . . .”: Here we must take issue: The “oneness” of the United States is a questionable proposition. Admittedly, the end of the Civil War brought a sort of “oneness” to a nation that had recently faced the prospect of being splintered into two nations. But the fact is that in our world today, the oneness of the United States feels precarious as we see ever-increasing divisions between rich and poor, between whites and nonwhites, and among nonwhites themselves. When we travel from the slums of New Orleans to the hills of Bel Air, we have to wonder whether we are still in the same “nation.” There do not seem to be any issues that rank foremost in the minds of all the citizens—and when such issues are sought to be identified, they turn out to be vague and ill defined, such as “the economy” or “health care.” It seems, upon reflection, that the nation is many rather than one: a world with little worlds, as the Yiddish saying goes. “Under God . . .”: This phrase was added in the 1950s and has been the subject of some disputation in the courts. Some have objected that the use of the phrase is inconsistent with the separation of church and state, but the courts have by and large not been receptive to that argument. The U.S. Supreme Court has described the use of the phrase as an example of “ceremonial deism”—not true religion, but a kind of rhetorical trope with religious roots and overtones, which has by now lost any real religious content (Lynch v. Donnelly, 1984). It is similar to “In God We Trust” printed on our dollar bills, and does not favor any one religion over another, nor does it really favor deism over atheism. It has thus been given the “OK” under First Amendment scrutiny. But we cannot help wondering why the original text of the pledge, which was after all written by a Southern Baptist minister, did not include these words, and why the reference to God was added in the heyday of the House Committee on Unamerican Activities and the McCarthy hearings, shortly after World War II. And we cannot help feeling that although the pledge may not violate principles of separation of church and state, it does tend to turn the state itself into a church: a place where diverse congregants come together to affirm transcendent values in a group. “Indivisible . . .”: Why is this nation “indivisible”? Might the people themselves not decide to separate it into smaller countries: for example, along ethnic lines, or economic lines, or other cultural lines? When we say the

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nation is indivisible, it is as if we were speaking to some imagined agent who might try to divide it, and telling that agent, “Don’t even try!” “With liberty and justice for all”: No one will take issue with this phrase as a statement of aspiration. But here, it appears to be part of a description of the nation as it stands—the nation to which allegiance is pledged— and so it appears to paint a much rosier picture of the nation than truth would warrant. If “the Republic for which it stands” were to be understood to mean a republic we all want to cooperate to bring into existence, rather than a republic we claim exists, then there would not be a “pledge of allegiance” but instead a “statement of shared aspiration.” “For all . . .”: Who is the “all” here? All the people in the world? All the people in the republic? Only the citizens of the nation? Reciting the pledge: It is interesting that all the discussion around the pledge—around its legality, constitutionality, and so on—and all the rules around it require that it be “recited” (that is the word used) rather than “given,” “announced,” or “affirmed.” Yet a pledge is usually “given,” and so we wonder whether the act of merely “reciting” is just an empty formality.

The fact is that when we start looking closely at all these “resonances,” we see signs of an unhealthy syndrome that includes inappropriate performative utterances (pledging allegiance when it is not clear to whom the pledge is given, nor what it entails; and reciting rather than giving the pledge), attachment to the past and to its imagery (allegiance and republic), grandiose illusory descriptions of the nation (“with liberty and justice for all” and “indivisible”), and deliberate reliance on imagery in what purports to be a practical, political statement (“to the flag” and “under God”). The syndrome is called narcissism.

III. Narcissism: A Fractal View Narcissism was first defined as a personality disorder in the 1940s. The term began its life in the annals of psychology as an allusion to the Greek story about Narcissus, a beautiful youth who rejected all his suitors. One day he saw his reflection in a pool of water and fell in love with what he saw. Unable to draw himself away from the image, he fell into the pool and drowned. The term was used at the end of the 19th century to refer to sexual perversions. Freud wrote an essay on the subject in 1914, and later Karen Horney (1937, 1950), Heinz Kohut (1971), and, recently, Sandy Hotchkiss (2003) described its more general elements: a preoccupation with the self; a delusional image of the self—an image that is more glorious than the actual self; and an insistence that others accept the image rather than the reality. Like the character in the myth, the developmentally diseased individual is unable to love. He does not really know himself—which is a precondition to

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love. Instead, he is fixated on an image of himself that he mistakes for the real self; and thus he is drawn into the pool of illusion where that image lives. The term is more usefully seen as suggestive than precise. Although it has been the subject of many psychological studies and is now enthroned in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychological Disorders (4th ed.; American Psychiatric Association, 2000), it cannot really be used as a “diagnostic tool” in the sense of dictating any particular treatment. The narcissism arises from insecurities, but the particular insecurities and their sources vary from individual to individual, so it is not possible to tell the analyst, “Your patient is narcissistic so do this” (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). For our purposes, it will be sufficient to identify different classes of narcissism: malignant and benign, and individual and group.

Malignant and Benign What distinguishes these two kinds of narcissism is the behavior the disorder provokes. The individual who suffers from malignant narcissism requires everyone who comes in contact with him to share his illusional image of himself. The narcissist avoids putting himself in situations where his glorious illusion of himself might be shattered: He avoids risks and refuses to engage in groups where the reality of his idea of himself might be shown to be too unlike the group’s perception of him. In order to ensure that no one breaks that illusion, he surrounds himself with flatterers. He manipulates situations in order to induce those around him to become his flatterers and to enroll in his narcissistic program; and so he is often sneaky and manipulative. He becomes angry when someone fails to conform to his narcissistic delusion. He is thus unable to live with clarity and precision and so cannot behave honorably in legal or transactional settings. The narcissism is malignant because it turns him into an immoral actor: a person who cannot give appropriate weight to the needs of those around him and, instead, is preoccupied with his own needs and tries to make the world conform to his idea of what he needs. These characteristics of the narcissist are, unfortunately, the very characteristics we often find in successful politicians. In fact, in the United States they are actually required—at least at the presidential level. So we might conclude that not all narcissism is malignant: Perhaps we all need a measure of healthy narcissism. We must see ourselves as beautiful and worthy of love in order to love others. In order to strive to become better, we must have something in us that says, “We can be better.” We must have some sense that the “real” us is not quite exactly what an objective observer might say we are, in order to answer the call to our highest selves. So perhaps there is such a thing as benign narcissism—a narcissism that prompts us to aspire, and behave better than we might behave without it. And we will

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bear in mind the possibility that if patriotism is in fact narcissistic, then it is benignly narcissistic.

Individual and Group Although narcissism was first identified as a developmental disorder, and a characteristic of an individual personality, groups also exhibit forms of narcissism—both healthy and malignant. It is easy to find examples of malignant group narcissism: Germany during the Nazi period is a good example of a country whose narcissism was violently malignant and carried the nation to extremes of brutality. But Nazi Germany is far from the only example: When we look at history, we realize that wars have often been justified by claims of national glory and national destiny. What nation does not have such stories? The ancient Israelites told themselves that they were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt and that God brought them out of there with a Mighty Hand and an Outstretched Arm. Every year, at Passover, Jews sit around a table and reread the Haggada, the book in which this history—this story that has spawned so much ethnic hatred—is recited. Yet there was no slavery in Egypt, and there was no Exodus. The Jews lived in the land of Goshen as welcome members of a cosmopolitan Egyptian society. When they wanted to leave, the Egyptians begged them to stay, and they gave them gifts of jewelry to help them on their way when they finally did leave (Exodus 12:33–36). Yet the Jewish story is told as if Pharaoh were evil, our enemy, standing in the way of God’s plan. How about the United States itself ? Read James Fenimore Cooper’s Leather Stocking tales—the last words of his preface to The Pathfinder—and you will see him talking about the spread of “civilization” across this great land, as if what the Native Americans had before the white man arrived was something less than civilization. These were tales of grandeur and gloriousness that were used to encourage Cooper’s readers and justify them in their cruel project of ethnic cleansing. The United States’ grandiose malignant narcissism was the engine of the “manifest destiny” movement of the 19th century, which included “Indian removal” and “cleansing.” The Indian Removal Act was passed by U.S. Congress in 1830. British narcissism reinforced the establishment of the British Empire, on which the sun never set; and it characterized the exploitation of foreign peoples and their resources as “the white man’s burden.” Throughout history and across the globe, we see examples of genocide, brutal war, ethnic cleansings, and systematic rape and pillage—all justified by appeal to the glory of some group, whether it was a nation, a religion, or a religious group seeing itself as a nation (“the Kingdom of God,” “Christendom,” and “Onward, Christian soldiers!”). And in our own country, the linkages revealed in the Pledge of Allegiance run through subterranean streams

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of narrative—of stories we tell each other and our children, stories that are palpably and demonstrably untrue.

Narcissism as a Fractal Dimension It was the rise of psychology in the early decades of the 20th century that made us ready to see the glorious images of military power and national pride as examples of group narcissism. The “diagnosis” of this type of group narcissism occupied thinkers like Erich Fromm, who saw its roots in the frailties of the individuals who made up the society. Each individual wanted to “escape from freedom” and sought escape routes that led him, and all the others in his group, into this pathology (Fromm, 1941, 1973). The development of psychology led us to see even group behaviors as narcissistic and transformed our view of group dynamics from one that might be called Euclidean to one that we would better call fractal. Like the nonEuclidean curves described in the early 1980s by Benoit Mandelbrot and others (1983; see also Peitgen & Richter, 1986) as fractals, which appear to have the same shape no matter what scale they are viewed at (this is called self-similarity), we have come to see narcissism in groups of all sizes as having the same qualities and causes as it does in the individual. The individual’s insecurity and need for glory are mirrored at the larger scale in the group’s need for glory. And the pathology of the individual’s narcissism is similar to the pathology of the group’s. Just as there is a form of benign individual narcissism, we may ask ourselves whether we can find examples of benign group narcissism. Are there not times in history when a nation or a group banded together in support of high ideals, shared a glorious vision for the future, and actually did something praiseworthy as a result? We are taught that such a thing happened in 480 b.c. at the battle of Thermopylae, where a small group of 700 “patriots” banded together to resist the advance of Xerxes’s armies and faced certain death to delay his advance, and thereby gave their country a chance to survive. And we are told that American revolutionaries in the 1770s banded together in support of the high ideals recited in the Declaration of Independence, and risked their lives to establish this nation of ours to which we now pledge allegiance. These are examples of patriotism that we might see as a form of benign group narcissism. But all these examples reveal the ever-present, deep-lying problem with patriotism: It is associated with war, with conflict, and with revolution. Although group narcissism cannot be thought of as a developmental disorder, nevertheless, just as it is the individual’s own insecurities and sense of inadequacy that force him to adopt the grandiose view of himself that is characteristic of narcissism, so it is the group’s insecurity that must always come into view before “patriotism” can show its face.

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IV. Altruism, Loyalty, and the Affinity Gradient There are those who seek to justify patriotism as an expression of altruism and loyalty.

Altruism Altruism, the willingness to set the interests of others ahead of one’s own interests, is at the root of many virtues, charity most notable among them. Pauline love, or agapé, is an expression of altruism. To some extent, all forms of human cooperation involve the formation of a “team” and the temporary subordination of each team member’s interests to the goals and interests of the team itself. And one aspect of patriotism is the willingness of the patriot to sacrifice himself for the good of his country: The patriot might be said to see himself as a member of the “team,” which in this case is defined as the nation. Yet altruism is first and foremost a personal quality rather than a political one. It arises in direct interpersonal settings, and it always has a limited ambit. The altruist is admired when his readiness to sacrifice is confined to an identified target: The altruist who is always willing to sacrifice himself for everyone else, without discrimination, strikes us as a fool. Even Jesus did not do that: He sacrificed himself for all mankind, which is quite different from sacrificing oneself for each man, or for every man because the object of his sacrifice, although abstract, was highly focused. And when people make sacrifices for others in normal times, we do not speak of them as being “altruistic”; instead, we say simply that they are self-sacrificing, loving, or kind. Since Darwin, scientists and philosophers have asked themselves how the quality of altruism could ever have arisen in human beings, because it appears to be so contrary to “self-preservation” and to the survival of the species. There is some current research (Hotchkiss, 2003) suggesting that altruism actually might promote the survival of the group toward whom the altruistic feelings are directed. The altruism discussed in the recent study was what the authors called parochial altruism, something limited to a particular in-group. Their article suggests that the quality evolved during a stage of human history when war between small groups was a regular occurrence. The small group whose members were the most altruistic would be better fit to survive against the group populated by self-seekers: The sacrifices of the few for the benefit of the many would promote victory in the constant small skirmishes that were everyday occurrences. It is, after all, the element of war and conflict that transforms mere sacrifice into something else—something more “glorious.” It is the presence of war, conflict, and danger that transforms parochial altruism into patriotism—and that implicates narcissism.

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Whatever the evolutionary origins of parochial altruism might be, and whatever its resonances, the conditions that made it useful have changed. Present-day nations are much, much larger and more diverse than those small bands of competing hunter tribes; and present-day warfare is very different even from the warfare of the early 20th century. If I were standing on the field of battle with my musket, facing the British Army, I might well turn to my fellow soldiers and say, “No matter what happens, I am ready to die for our common cause! My allegiance is to General Washington and to you, my fellow soldiers. And I will fight these loathsome British to the death!” But I am not standing on a field of battle, am I? And in order to be a law-abiding citizen of the United States and a fully productive member of our society, must I say, “I am ready to kill the enemy on behalf of our country”? Is this the altruism that we demand of each other? Is this what patriotism means?

Loyalty and the Affinity Gradient We are “pack” animals: We live in groups, and we feel loyalty toward the members of our group. But over the course of history, the groups with which we identify have become larger and larger. In fact, one way of reading human history is that progress is the story of the formation of ever larger, wider loyalty groups: Primitive hunter-gatherers felt membership in and loyalty toward their hunting groups. Those groups were replaced by larger tribes, which were then replaced by nations. And the contribution Christianity may be said to have made to the world, 2,000 years ago, is the notion of a “family” of man that goes beyond all ethnic and national boundaries. Although that idea was admittedly a borrowing from the empires of Alexander and, later, Rome, the fact is that the Pauline ideal reflects a willingness to leave narrow groups behind and to feel oneself a member of the largest possible group, which is “all mankind, all God’s children.” Some day, we may encounter intelligent aliens from other planets and come to feel affinity with them as well. We can distinguish two kinds of affinity groups: involuntary ones and voluntary ones. The involuntary ones include the family group, the prehistoric hunting party, the extended family, the tribe, the people inside the walls of the city, the members of the same religious group, and so on to the nation as it used to be. The voluntary ones are the guilds we join, the clubs of which we become members, and the many less significant groups with which we ally ourselves all the time: sports groups, commercial “affinity groups,” and so on. And sometimes we undertake transactional loyalty toward specific groups of individuals: the employee toward his employer, the professional toward his client, and the executive toward his shareholders. Those limited forms of loyalty, too, are voluntary and rational. They are very different from patriotism, which is involuntary, irrational, and a consequence merely of our status as citizens.

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A group exists by reason of the sense of closeness, or affinity, which its members feel toward each other. There is a fundamental set of assumptions underlying this notion of affinity: It is the assumption of a Euclidean space, continuous, with a gradient radiating out from a central point. The central point is “us,” and the closer to “us” something is, the greater our affinity with it. As things move farther and farther away from the central point, the affinity becomes lesser. In the model shown in at the top of this page, there is a boundary beyond which there is no affinity at all: the dark edge of the circle in this diagram. This boundary may be difficult to draw, and we may have to make decisions in individual cases about whether someone is inside this boundary or outside of it. But the basic assumptions do not change: There is a space, and there are notions of “near” and “distant” and of “inside” and “outside.” But today, the “space” itself is no longer uniform, and measuring the distance from our self to any point in the plane is no longer a straightforward matter. Upon closer examination, we realize that the whole idea of a “nation” as some kind of affinity group is an artificial construct. The “nation” today is a collection of competing interest groups, with different issues that are of concern to them, with different religions, different ethnic backgrounds, different sexual orientations, and vastly different economic circumstances. All large developed nations today are boiling cauldrons of competing affinity groups, and we have no set way of measuring “distance” from the central point, and no way of drawing the outer circle. The underlying “space” is no longer perceived as uniform, the affinity gradient is no longer clear, and we cannot delineate it as we used to do. Not only is it an artificial and unconvincing idea to think of the nation as an affinity group, but also it is a very dangerous idea at that. For the people who have power in the United States are much, much more dangerous to me than the terrorists sitting in Afghanistan’s caves plotting their next attack. It is my own government that has debased my currency; has robbed my savings

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of their value; taxes me; sends our children to war for purposes ultimately unknown to me and with which, to the extent I do know them, I disagree violently; and passes regulations that limit my freedom. These harms are much more frequent and palpable than the occasional threats from bands of turban-wearing criminals. As in love, so it is in politics: It is the people who are closest to us who can hurt us the most.

V. The Dangers of Patriotism So is patriotism a virtue, as we are taught? Or is it something else in today’s world? Before we answer, let us take a moment now to remind ourselves of the severe dangers of patriotism.

The Linkages Between Patriotism and Narcissism, and Fascism Erich Fromm has shown the sinister connection between group narcissism and fascism. Fromm’s work suggests a linkage between the fear of freedom, the inability to separate from the group, and the destructive tendencies in human nature—tendencies which lead to fascism (Fromm, 1941, 1943). And now we see a similarly sinister connection between group narcissism and patriotism: These two feed each other. And so we can see patriotism as a step along the path that leads to malignant group narcissism and then to fascism.

Patriotism: Contingent It is evident that patriotism, like loyalty and obedience, cannot be a fundamental virtue, a universal virtue, or a “cardinal” virtue because we know that all these virtues can manifest themselves at the same time in two different people in completely opposite ways. Whenever two great armies are arrayed against each other—the Greeks and the Persians, the French and the Germans—both sides call on their ranks to feel and express patriotism and loyalty and obedience, and the ranks on both sides do. Yet both cannot be virtuous, can they? Patriotism, loyalty, and obedience are what we might call contingent virtues: They may be good or evil depending on the circumstances. To be loyal and obedient toward your supervisor in the Gestapo who tells you to murder all the Jews in the village—that is surely evil; to be loyal and obedient toward your commander in the Allied forces who tells you to rescue all the Jews in the village—that is good. And to be loyal toward your commander in the Allied forces when he tells you to kill the supervisor in the Gestapo—it is hard to categorize that loyalty as a virtue or a vice. Our judgment on this matter will have more to do with the nature of the Gestapo, our view of the

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Jews, and our relationship with the Allies than with our evaluation of loyalty itself.

Patriotism: Transient Patriotism requires conflict to make itself manifest. It is different from mere pride in the nation, or in its cultural qualities, because patriotism is a call to action. So patriotism is relevant only when the group feels itself threatened: In a world at peace, there is no patriotism. For this reason, patriotism is not an “innocent” virtue: It is a subterranean call to arms. Fidel Castro can be seen as a great Cuban patriot, Muammar Khadafi as a great Libyan patriot, and Lenin as a great Soviet patriot. Those revolutionaries risked their lives in order to bring about new social orders in their countries, and they succeeded in working great changes—changes that seemed, to them and their countrymen, as improvements over the status quo ante. But once their wars were over or their revolutions were won, there remained no occasion for patriotism. Instead, patriotism had to be replaced by a less intense form of loyalty, and as the state became more stable, loyalty was not so much required as merely being law-abiding or even, in some of the regimes established by those revolutionaries, merely being abjectly obedient. In the United States, which has been relatively stable for 200 years, there are no patriots today because there is no need for patriotism and no real way to be a patriot. To call someone a patriot in our time is to exaggerate, to distort, and to apply a label that does not really fit. The victims of 9/11 were called patriots and heroes by many fatuous politicians, but they were not: They were just victims. Members of the military services also—even those who are drafted—have often been called patriots, but they, too, are more like victims of their own government. For war itself is no longer the sort of photoop for patriotism that it used to be. Whom shall we call patriots after all? The soldier who presses the Play button on the control panel to send the latest drone aircraft into a Pakistani village? The general who gets up from his early supper with the envoy from Washington to order his troops into Baghdad? Or the poor soldier whose leg is blown off by a land mine he steps on as he marches, under orders, from Al Fallujah back to Baghdad? Indeed, it is hard to think of a single patriot today, or of any deed that we would all agree should be called patriotic. The occasions for patriotism no longer arise.

Patriotism: Not an Expression of Autonomy Since the Enlightenment, we in the West have come to assign moral praise and blame to people for their actions and choices rather than for their mere status, conditions, or circumstances. So we are ready to admire “love marriages” more than “arranged marriages.” We admire “deliberate patriotism”

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like Thaddeus Kozciusko’s more than the sacrifices that are made by soldiers who are drafted and have no choice. We think of our law as having progressed from “status” to “contract” (Maine, 1861), and we make moral judgments based on people’s contracts rather than on their status. For most of the people in the world, their nationality is an involuntary condition, like their family: something they are born into, do not question, and cannot change. So their patriotism does not count as a virtue. It is not voluntary, nor an act of autonomy.

Patriotism’s Linkage with Obedience Instead of being an expression of autonomy, patriotism and loyalty are more often expressions of obedience—and this is what is sinister about them. When our leaders call for us to be patriotic, what they are really calling for is obedience to their will. They want us to pledge allegiance to the nation, our country—to an artificial construct that they tell us is glorious and grand. By urging us to be patriotic, they would have us short-circuit the whole process of deliberation and decision making that, if we were to go through it honestly and with a sense of purpose, might lead us to rebel against them—or, at least, to oppose their current policies. The linkage between patriotism and loyalty, on the one hand, and obedience, on the other hand, is demonstrated by the story of the 47 samurai in the Japanese saga of Chushingura. Their lord was insulted by an official of the Shogun’s court and drew his sword in the official’s presence. This was against the law, and for this insult to the Shogunate, the lord was required to commit seppuku—ritual suicide; and thus the 47 samurai of his court became unattached ronin. But the official who had insulted him was not punished at all. Two years later, these 47 ronin attacked the official’s palace and killed him and all his retainers. They cut off his head and laid it on the grave of their lord. And then, all together, knowing the inevitable consequence of their deed, they committed seppuku themselves. These events have been the subject of Japanese kabuki and bunraku dramas since the early 19th century. To the Japanese, the 47 ronin are tragic heroes, driven to do what they did by honor and loyalty, given their status as their lord’s faithful retainers. Their disobedience to the Shogun’s law was required by their loyalty to their own lord. It is the conflict between their loyalty (the more personal obligation) and their obedience (the more public, or general, one) that gives the story its power. In the stories told about these 47 ronin, there is much focus on the way they lived their lives during the two years they were waiting for the appointed time to gather at the official’s house. One of them appeared to have become a conspicuous town drunk, another became a highwayman, and another fell passionately in love with a beautiful young maiden. But they had sworn a

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secret vow to carry out their revenge, and they kept their secret even from those they loved. When the appointed hour came, each of them took leave of his new life and, with unflinching resolve, walked to his duty and to his certain death. These “side stories” revolve around the tension between their new loyalties that were personal, even intimate; and their shared loyalty toward their feudal lord, which was more public. The intimate loyalty gave way to the public one, which then had to give way to obedience to the Shogun—which was public and political. Even we Westerners, who might see their loyalty toward their feudal lord as childish or unnecessary, cannot help admiring it along with their courage and their solemn expression of feudal allegiance. Their story arose in a world where the call of loyalty and the call of obedience were in conflict. But the feudal circumstances prevalent in late 18th-century Japan do not apply in the developed world today. For those in the United States today, patriotism is after all just an affirmation of the party line. The risks associated with patriotism—so we are led to believe—all come from outside the country, never from inside. There is no tension between patriotism and loyalty and obedience: They are perfectly aligned. But if good citizenship requires us to make choices about our governance, and to vote in accordance with those choices—not merely to be obedient toward kings who rule by divine right or by right of conquest, or even toward officials whose authority stems from majority votes—then we must be suspicious of patriotism: It is too cozily affiliated with obedience.

Time to Rethink the Role of the “Nation” A nation is not the glorious thing today that it used to be, and the nationstate can no longer be the object of innocent patriotism that it was as recently as 200 years ago. Today we are mindful that a nation is not a church: It is not something to which you can “pledge allegiance.” It is first and foremost a territory—usually a contiguous territory—with a shifting and heterogeneous population. It is a locus of shared responsibility—not glory. It has stewardship of the land and resources within its borders, and custody of its ever-changing population. But everything after that—its shared ideals and aspirations, its shared sense of history, its shared customs, and its pride of accomplishment—all those things are problematic. In today’s world, “patriotism” really does not come into it.

CONCLUSION I see before me a crowd of students, or boy scouts, or members of the U.S. Congress, standing with their right hands upon their breasts, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. They recite it mindlessly, from memory—as if it were

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a prayer. They feel a solidarity with each other that is not based on anything rational that I can discern. They are affirming a shared sense of pride and purpose—but without a rational source of pride and without any clearly articulated purpose. All the people in this crowd have voluntarily submerged themselves in a collective—but the collective has no real charter. The pressures that each member of the crowd feels from this collective overwhelm his own judgment—and he has consented to this. The force of this collective can legitimate cruelty and acts of unspeakable inhumanity. This crowd is ready to go to war, and in the last analysis, that is why they have come here to recite this pledge. I find nothing heartwarming in what I see. This is patriotism. This is evil.

REFERENCES American Psychiatric Association (APA). (2000). Narcissism. In Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text rev.). New York: Author. Board of Education v. Barnette. (1943). 319 U.S. 624, 63 S.Ct. 1178. Choi, J. K., & Bowles, S. (2007, October 26). The co-evolution of parochial altruism. Science, 318, 636. Cooper, J. F. (1840). Preface. In The Pathfinder. New York (1961): Signet Classics. Elk Grove v. Newdow. (2004). 542 U.S. 1, 124 S. Ct. 2301. Frazier v. Alexandre. (S.D. of Florida 2006). 434 F.Supp.2d 1350; at appellate level, 555 F.3d 292 (11th Cir. 2009) published dissents only. Fromm, E. (1941). Escape from freedom. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Fromm, E. (1943). The anatomy of human destructiveness. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Horney, K. (1937). The neurotic personality of our time. New York: Norton. Horney, K. (1950). Neurosis and human growth. New York: Norton. Hotchkiss, S. (2003). The seven deadly sins of narcissism. New York: Free Press. Kohut, H. (1971). The Analysis of the Self. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lynch v. Donnelly. (1984). 465 U.S. 668. Maine, H. S. (1861). Ancient law. London: John Murray. Mandelbrot, B. (1983). The fractal geometry of nature. New York: Freeman. Peitgen, H-O., & Richter, P. H. (1986). The beauty of fractals. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Texas v. Johnson. (1989). 491 U.S. 397. U.S. v. Eichman. (1990). 496 U.S. 310.

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Evil as a Socioeconomic Disconnect: Israel and the Somali Pirates Maija Jespersen

It may seem odd to discuss a theological concept such as “evil” in terms of secular, socioeconomic dynamics. Perhaps it even sounds absurd to explain something as spiritually central as evil in terms of humans getting their systems wrong. To do so would imply that there is no such thing as evil as a force existing independently of humans, and that what we think of as evil stems from human ideas and actions, instead of existing in an overarching, spiritual, extrahuman manner in a way that can cause human actions. Yet, that is exactly what this essay seeks to assert. Walter Wink, a theologian from the Gnostic tradition rather than the biblical criticism tradition would agree. By using the term Gnostic here, I mean that he performs his analysis within the point of view of understanding the Bible as sacred and true, whereas the critical tradition might seek to reject or explain away some aspects of Biblical text as stemming from human need, historical narrative, or misinterpretation. In Naming the Powers, he describes evil as the spiritual element of human action: These “Powers” do not, then, on this hypothesis, have a separate, spiritual existence. We encounter them primarily in reference to the material or “earthly” reality of which they are the innermost essence. . . . None of these “spiritual” realities has an existence independent of its material counterpart. None persists in time without embodiment in cellulose or in a culture or a regime or a corporation or a megalomaniac. . . . [D]emons can become manifest only through concretion in material reality. They are, in

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short, the name given that real but invisible spirit of destructiveness and fragmentation that rends persons, communities, and nations.

If human action is always necessary to manifest evil and evil does not exist as an independent entity, it follows that the human actions which produce atrocities and disasters include not only the material and emotional destruction of people and the natural world, but also the spiritual aspect of that destruction. All this we appropriately name “evil.” This spirit of evil can then go on to reinfect human attitudes and actions, but evil does not originally stem from an independent source. Therefore it becomes necessary to seek a source of evil other than itself—a source linked to human actions.

IS EVIL PART OF HUMAN NATURE? If evil stems from human actions, does it follow that the drives which produce actions embodying evil are also part of human nature or human biology? Many people argue yes. Nietzsche describes conquest and domination, with scarcely a thought for the vanquished, as natural to those for whom they are possible (Nietzsche, 2007/1887). Since the results of being on the losing side of a conquest range from the annihilation of buildings, cities, farmland, and cultures to slavery, rape, murder, and even genocide, surely any population that has been conquered have experienced gross evil. The Jews in Egypt, the Palestinians in Israel, the Native Americans in the United States, and the Africans brought to the Americas as slaves would appropriately describe the harm done to their ancestors, loved ones, culture, and land as blatant evil. For Nietzsche, humans not only are prone to doing evil but also do not have the slightest problem with it—unless they are the victims. This would indicate that the capacity to commit evil is indeed well entrenched in human nature, much more so than the compassion that would keep it in check. This capacity needs no external stimulus to manifest itself into actual harm other than opportunity. This point of view is supported in many disciplines. Sociologist Rene Girard posits that early religion developed as a scapegoating ritual, providing a necessary outlet for natural aggression which would otherwise tear society apart (Stirling, 2004). Sociobiologist Konrad Lorenz describes vicious conspecific aggression in the animal world and suggests that we have inherited those instincts (Lorenz, 1966). Evolutionary science is popularly conceived of as social Darwinism, the theory that the mentally and physically superior will naturally rise to the dominant positions in society, unless welfare or other social safety nets interfered with the dying out of the socially inferior (Kelves, 1995). In government, Thomas Hobbes posited that without submission to a strong authority, society will descend into a war of everyman against

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everyman (Hobbes, 1996/1651)—an idea that now forms the basis of international relations theory as it is taught and practiced. In genetics, the United States’ National Institute of Health looked for a violence gene in the 1990s, a line of research that could only stem from the belief that there is a biological determinant of evil actions. Even human history is usually portrayed as starting with primitive societies in which murder was present, naturally developing sexual domination as soon as the phenomenon of paternity was understood, when women were no longer seen as the magical bringers of children; and developing large-scale violence as soon as scarcity appeared as a driver. If one accepts these assertions, there is no other possible conclusion but that destructive and antisocial actions are natural to humans, and the spiritual element of evil that goes with such actions must therefore be accepted as the inevitable outgrowth of this part of human nature. But there is other evidence to consider. To answer Girard, Merlin Stone documents with compelling thoroughness the geographically and temporally vast goddess-worshipping religion of the Paleolithic and Neolithic eras, in which no kind of scapegoating or sacrifice was present, and under which social advances like the wheel, writing, and irrigation were made. (1978). Ashley Montagu points out the limitations in Lorenz’s research, namely, that he studied animals in artificially overcrowded conditions where they were not given the natural, and preferred, option of dispersing (Montagu, 1973). Darwin’s “competition” was for the purpose of adapting to the environment, and often involved cooperative or symbiotic relationships, within and between species (Darwin, 2009/1859). It was actually Herbert Spencer, a contemporary of Darwin, who invented the phrase survival of the fittest, and his accompanying theories have been associated with Nazism and eugenics (Craig, 2002; Kelves, 1995). Hobbes’s “war of everyman” was based on an imagined situation and his solution was a utopian theory, an aspect much neglected by international relations theorists, who tend to treat it as an observed situation with a policy solution. Douglas Fry offers evidence that human society did not evolve with murder and warfare: To explain what has been interpreted as prehistoric conspecific killings, he notes that the angle and placement of the holes in hominoid skulls are correct for having been dragged by a saber-toothed tiger. He also points out that the Wall of Jericho, often cited as the earliest defensive architecture definitively indicating the presence of warfare, was more likely a wall to stave off alluvial floods. His thesis makes sense because the Wall of Jericho does not make a closed circle but is open in the back, has a trench outside it, and is not a full moat but more like the kind of thing one would build to divert floodwaters, and the tower is well within the wall, with no strategic value for fighting whatsoever. Add that to the fact that none of the concurrently extant surrounding settlements had any kind of defenses, and the

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interpretation of the clay mound wall of Jericho as a defense against warmongers breaks down. Fry concludes his book with an appendix of more than 50 currently existing societies that do not and never have practiced war. (2008). Anthropologist Margaret Mead makes the same point in her essay, “War Is a Human Invention, Not a Biological Necessity.” (1940). Though we are still trying to understand the functions of many human genes, we have not found one for violence. The conclusion to be drawn from all of this is that we must not make the mistake that Nietzsche, Hobbes, and Girard have made. They erroneously assumed that because violence, oppression, and injustice, the spiritual aspect of which is evil, are prevalent in the societies around us, they are therefore intrinsic parts of human nature. We must look further for an explanation.

EVIL AS A DISCONNECT How, then, can we explain the horrible things that human beings do to each other and to the natural world? If we reject the two easy answers— the first being that evil is a spiritually independent force that acts upon us, and the second being that we are biologically or psychologically hard-wired to act that way—it still remains necessary to find a reason. Here, Spinoza comes to our rescue. God, he says in The Ethics, is the driving force behind the unfolding of all things, including human nature, and is good. In part IV, “Of Human Bondage,” he makes a specific claim: No deity, nor anyone else, save the envious, takes pleasure in my infirmity and discomfort, nor sets down to my virtue the tears, sobs, fear, and the like, which are signs of infirmity of spirit; on the contrary, the greater the pleasure wherewith we are affected, the greater the perfection whereto we pass; in other words, the more must we necessarily partake of divine nature. (Spinoza, 1677, p. 219)

In other words, human nature is to love each other. People cannot love when they are enslaved to their passions and ignorant of their true nature, and in proposition LV, Spinoza states, “Extreme pride or dejection indicates extreme ignorance of self ” (Spinoza, 1677, p. 224). It is failing to understand the nature of reality that leads people to hate—either to hate themselves, leading to dejection, or to hate others and imagine themselves superior, leading to pride. But pride and dejection are far from the only results of poor understanding. Spinoza was talking about individuals and their relationships to one another, but the consequences of misunderstanding reality, or using bad ideas, resonate much farther into political and economic realms that are capable of affecting vast numbers of people. For example, when we base our

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international relations on Hobbes’s idea that human beings will fall into chaos without a strong sovereign in control, we wind up with an international situation devoid of trust—one in which powerful countries are too afraid to give up their sovereign power to be held accountable to international institutions like the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Many international laws, such as the UN Convention on the Law of NonNavigational Uses of International Watercourses, are necessarily voluntary. The fear each country has of giving up its particular advantages vis-à-vis the others offers no alternative. Consequently, these conventions are often ignored by the countries that most need to be regulated by them. Countries in general have a very hard time cooperating to solve global environmental problems while they are pitted against each other in an atmosphere of mistrust. For example, China, a nonsignatory to the above-mentioned UN Convention on International Watercourses, is building a cascade of megadams upstream on the Mekong River. The altered water flow threatens to affect the seasonal flood patterns of Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Lake, disrupting the fish-breeding cycles and threatening the biggest source of protein for Cambodia’s people (Goh, 2007). Evil looms as the spiritual aspect of the prospect of the starvation and malnutrition of innocents, but is China evil, or is the international atmosphere of exploitation and mistrust that makes China care for its own needs first to blame? Anger and fear make it appealing to place the source of evil somewhere concrete, in a person, bureau, or country, instead of searching deeper for the ideological flaw, while clinging to the notion of human nature as good. The rest of this essay seeks to trace two separate examples of how a misunderstood concept has produced immense suffering—the material aspect of evil—in the Middle East and in the phenomenon of Somali pirates.

ISRAEL AND THE CREATION OF A FALSE COMMONS A commons is popularly understood as an unregulated public resource, a definition cemented in the public mind by Garrett Hardin’s 1968 essay, “The Tragedy of the Commons.” He describes a pasture to which everyone has free access, and then calculates the utility to an individual of grazing one more animal on the land than it can sustainably carry. Because the owner of the animal would get the entire benefit of the extra animal, but the cost of overgrazing the land would be shared equally among all the participants, Hardin asserts that it makes mathematical sense for each person to add additional animals until the carrying capacity of the land is exceeded and the pasture degrades. This is what he calls “the tragedy of the commons” (Hardin, 1968). The problem with Hardin’s analysis is that commons actually refers to a whole spectrum of property rights systems, of which total lack of regulation

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is only one extreme. Agarwal specifies, “For commons theorists, property rights institutions are . . . sets of rules that define access, use, exclusion, management, monitoring, sanctioning, and arbitration of behavior of users with respect to specific resources” (2003). Such institutions have been historically used around the world by communities to manage the resources upon which they depend, like forests and rivers. In many instances, this has proven more successful than privatization in maintaining the long-term integrity of the resource (McKean and Ostrom, 1995). Were Hardin’s theoretical pasture governed under a commons system of property rights, the people using the resource would have the ability to agree on limits to the land use, punish the person who added the extra animal, and exclude people—either repeat offenders or foreigners to the community seeking to tap into the shared resource. A crucial feature of a successful commons regime is that the rights to decision making and use of the resource must be fairly distributed among users; to alienate a group is to put their motivation to preserve the resource at risk (McKean & Ostrom, 1995). The Zionist movement that became the state of Israel made bold experiments in communally owning resources, but made the mistake of not including all of the necessary members. In 1901, the World Zionist Organization founded the Jewish National Fund to purchase land in Palestine. Acquired land was considered the property of all Jews, and was not to be sold or leased to Arabs. In doing this, the early Zionists established a kind of commons regime, but failed to recognize that Arabs were also part of the Palestinian community who depended on that land. Excluding them from use of it was bound to provoke insecurity and resentment. Thus early Jews who moved to Palestine to settle and farm were surprised when Arabs threw rocks at them. Nonetheless, the Jewish National Fund continued buying land from which Arabs were to be legally excluded (Marcus, 2007). Upon winning the war of 1967, Zionists, who in 1948 had established Israel as a state, claimed rights to all of the water in Israel, including in the Palestinian territories. The water, too, was to be the collective property of all Jews, and to be managed by the state of Israel. They quite rightly claimed that control over the water resources in the area is a national security issue for Israel. However, they either did not realize or did not acknowledge that water is also both a national and human security issue for Palestinians, even though Palestinians currently lack a recognized “nation,” and for the surrounding Arab countries as well. Israel limited the access of Palestinians to water, forbidding them to repair their wells or drill new ones, and used the military when necessary to enforce water quotas for the Palestinians. The Israelis themselves continued to drill new, deeper wells and to consume water on par with Europeans. The World Health Organization minimum daily requirement for water use is 100 liters per capita, whereas Palestinian consumption in the West Bank under Israeli quotas averages only 60 liters.

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Israelis, on the other hand, consume 280 liters per day, on a par with Europeans (Lendeman, 2008). At present, Israel consumes 80% of the water in the West Bank, whereas Palestinians have access to only 20%, and must purchase water from Israel at higher prices than Jewish citizens pay (Asser, 2007). At the same time, Israel’s National Water Carrier (NWC) diverts so much water from Lake Kinnaret on the Jordan River that the Lower Jordan, once used to irrigate farms in the West Bank and Jordan, is now an unusable, saline stream of less than one-fourth of its original flow. With water as with land, Israel progressively latched onto the idea of protecting a common resource, but regressively created an artificial community that excluded large parts of the real community depending on that resource. Israel selectively defined the users of the common resource as people of their own religious or ethnic background, failing to comprehend the inherent instability of that situation. Now, angry Palestinians and other Arabs who want their fair share of land and water are dismissed by Zionists as “Jewhaters,” and fearful Israel builds up its defenses and digs in its heels, more and more afraid to share. As Palestinian frustration breeds militancy and extremism, Palestinians launch rockets from Gaza, viewing their actions as self-defense in the face of resource deprivation. In response, Israel cracks down even harder with military raids and blockades, viewing that as their own self-defense, and worsening the situation by sinking the residents of Gaza further into misery, poverty, and frustration. Rocks and rockets, and bullets and bombs, fly both ways; innocent people are wounded and die; and the spirit of evil looms large, significantly invoked by the playing out of a malformed idea. Were Israel to embark upon an ambitious program of resource redistribution that acknowledged the rights and decision-making authority of all of the people dependent on the land and the scarce, precious water in the area, I predict with confidence that Arab hostilities towards Israel would lessen greatly, and militant Islam extremism, in the absence of this injustice that presently fuels it, would lose much of its hold in the Middle East. Paradoxically, Israel would become more secure by heeding McKean and Ostrom’s point about the need for all users of a resource to participate fairly in its management, and loosening its hold on the resources of which it now claims exclusive ownership. But many real-life situations contain this paradox: A breath held is not breathing. One final note on the creation of a false commons is that the problem is far greater than Israel—Israel merely provides a tidy example. Access to resources that are vital to human life, such as clean water and air, are becoming increasingly determined by people’s ability to afford them. For example, wealthy countries like the United States can pay poor African countries to take their toxic waste, thereby foisting the hazards of their lifestyles onto the less advantaged.

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As the West increasingly embraces Adam Smith’s laissez-faire market approach to determine access to not just luxury goods but also elements of human survival, we create a false commons of the better off. Just as in the Middle East, the dividend is instability and violence, with its corresponding spiritual aspect: evil. We of the neoliberal economic mind-set would do well to realize that all people who depend on water and air need to be empowered to preserve them, and control of these resources must not fall into or remain in the hands of only those who can pay for them.

SOMALI PIRATES AND THE MISVALUATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES The word pirates usually conjures up images of a crew of swashbuckling swordsmen on a stolen square-rigger, adventuring around on the high seas and taking what they want without a care in the world. The reality of pirates in Somalia could not be further from the truth. Somalia has been wracked by civil war since 1991, with a transitional government struggling to take control of two secessionist provinces, and a militant Islamist faction declaring themselves allied with Al Qaeda. The actual level of poverty in Somalia is difficult to calculate due to the fighting and displaced internal refugees, but according to the World Bank, were the gross national income to be equally shared among the population, it would amount to just under US$2.00 a day. That is US$2.00 of purchasing power parity, or the equivalent of what US$2.00 would buy in the United States, not two actual U.S. dollars, which is a fortune in some parts of the world. Still, the country has a long coastline and can rely on the bountiful resources of the sea—or could, that is, until the effects of international fishermen poaching $300 million a year of fish started to be felt, and Somali fishermen could no longer catch enough to feed their families or earn a living. To make matters worse, the horn of Africa is a cheap dumping ground for toxic and nuclear waste: According to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), European countries have been dumping hospital waste, chemical waste, industrial waste, nuclear waste, and heavy metals off the Somali coast since the early 1990s, at a cost of $2.50 per ton—a huge savings from the $250 per ton it would cost to dispose of in Europe. The tsunami of 2004 washed up thousands of barrels of waste onto the beach, leaving Somalis with a host of illnesses and contaminated groundwater. Caught between civil war and poverty on land, and resource degradation at the hands of wealthier countries at sea, and with the international community turning a blind eye, is it any wonder that the Somali people started taking matters into their own hands, developing what they call their own “coast guard”? The degradation of the ocean that has led desperate Somalis to turn to piracy could be initially dismissed as a case of Hardin’s tragedy of the

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commons, although as we have seen above, he misuses the word commons to describe unregulated resource use. But that analysis stops far short of adequate; there are more questions to be answered. Why, for example, are we allowing such rampant abuse of the ocean as a fish stock and a waste sink, but getting upset about the significantly lesser threat to private property posed by the pirates? Increased military presence in the area has shown that we are perfectly capable of protecting what we value, including the ocean, should we choose to do so. The problem is that we are valuing the wrong things.

THE THEFT OF NATURAL CAPITAL Herman Daly used to be an economist for the World Bank. He noticed that in the cost–benefit analyses for development projects, natural resources were always given a value of zero, even if they were scarce and should therefore have a high economic value. This was leading to disastrous outcomes for some development projects, for example megadams that inundated scarce fertile land, displacing people not only from their homes but also from their livelihoods, thereby creating as much or more poverty than they alleviated. His analysis fell on deaf ears at the World Bank, though, and he ended up leaving to teach and develop his ideas. In his 1996 book Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development, he pinpoints the real dynamic behind Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons” and the degradation of Somali waters. He declared that we are consuming natural capital and calling it income. Conventional economics acknowledges only the value added by labor, so it is theoretically impossible for people to consume more than we produce. But value cannot be added to nothing. Whether it is furniture made from wood, food grown in soil and with water, or submarines made from metals mined from the earth, natural capital (the wood, soil, water, and metal) is the necessary stock by which value is added. In “using” natural capital, it goes from a low-entropy state with high potential, to a higher-entropy state that is used up. Failing to recognize the necessary role of natural resources in facilitating the production of anything and everything, and the fact that they are significantly depleted in the process, amounts to a gigantic economic externalization. People, companies, and governments can virtually ignore ecological destruction and resource depletion when calculating their “bottom line” (Daly, 1996). It also allows a degree of emotional detachment from the situation; the dollars in your pocket determine where you live and what you can have for dinner. Natural resources are economic abstractions without a dollar value, and therefore without a direct connection to your welfare. Daly points out that this paradigm will not work anymore. The economic theory that assumes natural resources as infinite was developed in a past age when they did, in fact, seem infinite, and it was inconceivable that the population

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of the world should grow to the point that it now has. Now, we are reaching the limits of what ecology can sustain, but economics is not catching up. There is a fundamental and irreconcilable contradiction between an economic system that depends on perpetual growth via increasing throughput of resources, on one hand, and a finite natural world, on the other. That contradiction was not obvious when the population of the world was smaller and natural resources seemed infinite, but it is becoming obvious now (Daly, 1996). It doesn’t help that renewable and nonrenewable resources are misnamed. What we call renewable resources—trees, plants, animals, and ecosystems— actually cannot renew themselves beyond a certain point of degradation. An extinct animal can never be “renewed,” nor can a dead river. Coal, oil, and natural gas, on the other hand, are continually being reformed, if slowly (Matthews, 1989). The label renewable actually makes it easier to exploit resources that are in reality quite fragile. Daly’s eminently sensible solution is to place economics firmly within the finite system of natural resources upon which it depends. Economic “growth,” meaning an increase in throughput, must be rejected as a paradigm, because the capacity of the earth to produce more resources and absorb more waste does not grow. Instead, we need economic “development,” defined by Daly as an increase in human happiness and reduction of poverty achieved by increased efficiency, technological development, and redistribution of wealth (1996). Daly astutely notes a cosmological aspect to our economic problems, as well. All traditional religions, he observes, oppose idolatry, but scientific materialism takes the opposite stance. Through science, technology, and economic growth, humanity starts to see itself as the true creator, and the natural world as just a pile of stuff “to be used up in the arbitrary projects of one purposeless species. If we cannot assert a more coherent cosmology than that, then we might as well close the store and all go fishing” (Daly, 1996, p. 22). Fishing, yes—just not in Somalia. The problem of Somali piracy will not be solved by cracking down or meeting desperation with violence; it will only be solved by economics changing to acknowledge the dominant role of natural capital in what we produce and throw away. At the time of this writing, a leaking British Petroleum (BP) pipeline has been gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico for five weeks, and is predicted to do so for months longer. Meanwhile, BP continues to pay bonuses to its executives and dividends to its shareholders, secure in the knowledge that with a cap on damages, their financial profits are secure, even in the face of the immeasurable ecological damage their pipeline is causing and the Gulf Coast livelihoods that are being destroyed. This situation, so shocking to those of us in the first world, has been the situation in the Niger Delta for decades—almost daily oil spills have destroyed the land, groundwater, and fisheries upon which the Niger Delta’s agrarian peasant population depends, and the oil companies can afford to

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hire private militia to protect themselves instead of cleaning up their spills. Now that massive ecological destruction has been brought to the door of one of the most rich and powerful countries, we can hope that the West will pay attention to the urgent need to restructure neoliberal economics to value the ecosystems upon which people utterly depend for life, and that are therefore, in the end, most precious. It also presents an opportunity, as Daly put it, to develop a more sane cosmology, in which the natural world is not just “stuff ” for us to use up, but in which we are part of a beautiful, complex, and dynamic system, all parts of which are valuable. Let us hope we can take advantage of this opportunity.

CONCLUSION It is human actions that generate evil, not through inherent aggression, malice, or lack of compassion, but through using ideas that are inadequate to reality. Laws that exclude some people from the resources upon which they depend, and economic systems that fail to value what is most precious and essential for human life, play out in a tragedy of human suffering, as do other systems based ideologically on hierarchy and exclusion. For many people, it is actually not lack of compassion but the presence of compassion which makes it so hard to admit that many of the ideas and systems we are using are causing great harm. Our complicity is too much to bear, as is the massiveness of the poverty and ecological destruction that we face. It is easier to develop and maintain a degree of cognitive dissonance than to look that degree of evil in the face and admit we are a part of it. In the end, our choice is between owning the problem or letting it continue, and we are reaching the end of ecosystemic tolerance for our mistakes. The tragedies of the world are terrible to behold, but they are also the most fertile opportunities for us to use our human creative potential to create solutions—provided, that is, we are willing to look deeply and honestly at the roots of what’s going on. The problems may be enormous, but the human capacity for creativity and compassion is greater still. As a professor of peace studies I know (Abdul Asiz Said) is fond of saying, “The whole world needs the whole world.” Once we recognize this, and we can develop ideological and social systems that reflect this understanding, it is within our power to reduce destruction and suffering—to reduce the presence of evil. And this creative potential lies in every single one of us. As Dr. Who, the fictional, time-traveling alien recognized, “There never has been such thing as an ordinary human being.”

REFERENCES Agarawal, A. (2003). Sustainable governance of common-pool resources: Context, methods, and politics. Annual Review of Anthropology, 32, 243–262.

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Asser, M. (2007, May 23). Obstacles to peace: Water. BBC. Retrieved from http:// www.bbc.co.uk. Biegon, R. (2009, February 9). Somali piracy and international response. Foreign Policy Focus. Craig, E. (2002). Philosophy: A very short introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. Daly, H. E. (1996). Beyond growth: The economics of sustainable development. Boston: Beacon Press. Darwin, C. (2009). The annotated origin: A facsimile of the first edition of On the Origin of Species. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. (Original work published in 1859). Ellens, J. H. (Ed.). (2004). The destructive power of religion: Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Vol. 2. Religion, psychology, and violence. Westport, CT: Praeger. Goh, E. (2007). Developing the Mekong: Regionalism and regional security in ChinaSoutheast Asian relations. London: International Institute for Strategic Studies. Hardin, G. (1968, December 13). The tragedy of the commons. Science. Hobbes, T. (1996). Leviathan (Ed. R. Tuck). New York: Cambridge University Press. (Original work published in 1651). Hogan, Z. (2005, December 5). Tonle Sap: The flowing heart of Cambodia [Radio broadcast]. National Public Radio. Kelves, D. (1995). In the name of Darwin. In In the name of eugenics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lendeman, S. (2008, July 18). Drought and Israeli policy threaten West Bank water security. Countercurrents.org. Marcus, A. D. (2007). Jerusalem 1913: The origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. New York: Viking. Mathews, J. (1989, Spring). Redefining security. Foreign Affairs. McKean, M., & Ostrom, E. (1995). Common property regimes in the forest: Just a relic from the past?” Unasylvia, (180). Mead, M. (2008). Warfare is only an invention—not a biological necessity In R. K. Betts (Ed.), Conflict after the cold war. New York: Pearson. (Original work published in 1940). Montagu, A. (1973). Man and qggression. New York: Oxford University Press. Nietzsche, F. (2007). On the genealogy of morals. New York: Cambridge University Press. (Original work published in 1887). Somalia country profile. (2010, May 27). BBC News. Retrieved from http://www .bbc.co.uk. Stirling, M. C. (2004). Violent religion: Renee Girard’s theory of culture. In J. H. Ellens, The destructive power of religion: Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Vol. 2. Religion, psychology, and violence. Westport, CT: Praeger.

ch apter 9

HEAUTON T IMOROUMENOS:1 On the Evil That We Cause Ourselves Zenon Lotufo Jr. and Francisco Lotufo Neto

The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves. —Sophocles, Oedipus Rex In one of his most recent works, J. Harold Ellens (2007) writes, [W]hen one views the whole order of things, and focuses on what humans usually call evil, it is difficult to discern that there is anything in the world of human experience that might properly be called evil, except the unfortunate things that humans do to each other. (p. 15)

Ellens’s thesis is that certain forms of suffering can be unfortunate and terribly painful but are not evil events; they are only tragic ones. “It is not,” he writes, “a consequence of some evil force in this world” (Ellens, 2007, p. 16). In fact, it is reasonable to think that most of the suffering that afflicts people who do not face physical pain, natural disasters, and/or tragic loss is caused by others. It is also quite likely that to believe in a substantive evil, personified in a malevolent being or in a way subtly disguised in some deity, only helps to make things worse. In this chapter, starting from Ellens’s ideas, we focus especially upon the evils created by humans—the suffering we cause ourselves, pain ranging from mild and trivial to the most serious and pervasive.

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MANY LEVELS OF SUFFERING Suppose you are in an airport waiting for a flight and receive the news that there will be a delay. That means you can miss an important appointment. In addition, the place is very busy and noisy, and the air conditioning is not working properly. The situation, of course, is not comfortable, and we can say that it involves an objective and inevitable adversity that we will call distress 1. In such circumstances, an individual can seek to ascribe his discomfort to the factors that are beyond his control, diverting his attention to nice things he want to do on the weekend, or to any other activity that has some kind of interest. In the same situation, another individual may opt for a succession of negative thoughts that have no other effect than to leave him increasingly angry. Let us call this distress 2 and note that we are facing a double loss: the first objective and inevitable, and the second subjective and avoidable. Observe also that under certain conditions, the irritation may lead to other losses such as damage to health, or foolish frictions with other people. It is, of course, a situation somewhat trivial, and any damages will not be farreaching. However, a similar process may involve more intense suffering. Consider, for example, the possible reactions due to the loss of a beloved person: There will surely be an intense pain that can be considered inevitable and even necessary,2 but again, that pain will have intensity and duration proportional to the beliefs and thoughts that the person harbors. Thus, the fixation on ideas that generate feelings of guilt or helplessness will make the pain grow and extend indefinitely. We are therefore, in such cases, before a double suffering.

EMOTIONS: SPONTANEOUS AND MANIPULATIVE A very important contribution from Eric Berne (1964; see also English, 1971), essential to the comprehension of the human behavior from our standpoint, is the distinction of two kinds of emotions: (a) the spontaneous, which we share with other people and, to a great extent, with higher mammals; and (b) the manipulative, learned through social interaction and generated with the main objective of communicating to, and controlling, other people. The first lasts only as long as its cause or stimulus does. The others may last indefinitely, because we do not allow our reaction to “cool off ” or disappear. As far as we are interested here, emotions caused by false information or mistaken interpretation of reality, are, to all effects, spontaneous.3 Human beings, unlike other animals, are able to retain emotions over time, a fact that in some situations is an advantage. We do it through a process of mental feedback of images and internal dialogue. Besides, as we cultivate emotions artificially, they may result in totally inappropriate behaviors. This is particularly true with regard to wrath.

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In a nutshell, here are the differences: Spontaneous Emotions • They last while the stimulus lasts. • They are qualitative and quantitatively proportional to the stimulus. • They are important to our individual and collective survival.

Manipulative Emotions • • • •

They are retro-fed by the person himself or herself. They may last indefinitely. They are used to manipulate others. They are responsible for most of the human suffering.

Taking the distinction into consideration, we may also say that there are two different types of psychological sufferings: the ones caused by spontaneous emotions and the ones created by our own selves through manipulative emotions. The ones of the second kind result from self-aggression and are a large portion of the human suffering.

MOST HUMAN BEHAVIOR IS ADAPTIVE That is to say, human behavior is seldom the direct result of environmental or internal stimuli but rather a reaction to them that has a purpose (i.e., that has or had utility). We call this approach the teleological theory of emotions.4 For the average person, who probably never came into contact with the academic studies on emotions, it seems clear that emotion, whatever be it, is something that happens to you, generated by external or internal stimuli. For most scholars, however, the emotional reaction exists because it offers, or offered at some point in the evolution of species or even in the life history of the individual, some kind of advantage. Note that we are not saying that emotional reactions are always functional. It is clear that too often they are not, and to modify them is perhaps the main goal of psychotherapy. What we want to emphasize is that such reactions are not a direct effect of environmental stimuli, being always mediated by internal factors. One example, not related to emotions but to physiology, may further clarify the question: if we ask someone on a day when the temperature is high why is he sweating, he will certainly mention the hot weather. We may object that the inanimate objects around are also subjected to this temperature and are not sweating. The other can then modify his response, offering an explanation in causal terms (e.g., “Because the mechanism of homeostasis went into action, which has the function of maintaining body temperature stable”) or in teleological terms (e.g., “My body is sweating to cool off ”).

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Either way, it becomes clear that an adaptive process happened in the organism due to temperature (external environmental stimuli) and the concomitant elevation of body temperature (passive consequence and internal environmental stimuli) along with an active response of the body involving the mechanism of homeostasis that seeks to maintain body temperature within certain limits. To emotions in general, one can also ascribe similar causes and objectives or functions.

PURPOSES OF THE EMOTIONS “That emotions fulfill some sort of function is a basic Darwinian presupposition, which psychologists probably all share,” writes Nico Frijda, one of the most respected researchers of emotions.5 Thus, we can assign to spontaneous emotions both intrapersonal and interpersonal purposes. The intrapersonal relate to physiological changes that prepare the body for action, such as fear and anger, or inaction, such as sadness. They may also have the function of organizing behavior through triggering simultaneously and automatically diverse and complex adaptive response systems (Levenson, 1994), or even of informing the individual about the importance of events (Clore, 1994). Moreover, the interpersonal, which some authors call the social or communicative, serves to communicate to others the intentions of the initiating person6 who wishes to induce the emotion in others (Frijda & Mesquita, 1994). Anger, for example, is linked to changes in the body to prepare for a physical effort and at the same time, its expression can frighten a possible contender, putting him on the run and avoiding the risks of combat. Sadness on the other hand, while leading to reduced activities of the individual, contributes to the recovery in cases of loss, and leads us to display attitudes that invite other group members to give attention and support to the saddened companion.7 Manipulative emotions, on the other hand, are designed to generate emotions in others that lead them to meet certain needs of the manipulator. People generate emotions in themselves with three types of objectives: 1. Obtaining something from someone. The emotion generated aims at asking for things like help, protection, care, attention, support, condescendence, compassion, and the like. The emotional expression, in this case, demonstrates weakness, helplessness, and impotence. 2. Freeing themselves from someone. Faced with demands, pressure, expectations, and requirements, emotional strategies can be used that may involve tantrums, bad moods, irritability, rebellion, or hostile reactions. The message one intends to send can be summarized as “Leave me alone.” 3. Making someone feel guilty. The strategy consists of showing suffering with the objective of communicating something like “Look at how I am, because of you.” It is common in circumstances in which the individual feels hurt or believes him or herself to be the victim of injustice. On the other hand,

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although there are practical reasons for considering a person to have a specific objective, it is possible that the hidden goal is making him or herself feel valuable. In this case, the objective would fit into item 1. Other people’s reaction—real or imaginary—would satisfy in some way the need of rescuing his or her self-esteem. In chapter 3 of his The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain gives us a good description of how his little hero seeks to achieve this goal: He tried to steal sugar under his aunt’s very nose, and got his knuckles rapped for it. He said: “Aunt, you don’t whack Sid when he takes it.” “Well, Sid don’t torment a body the way you do. You’d be always into that sugar if I warn’t watching you.” Presently she stepped into the kitchen, and Sid, happy in his immunity, reached for the sugar-bowl—a sort of glorying over Tom which was well nigh unbearable. But Sid’s fingers slipped and the bowl dropped and broke. Tom was in ecstasies. In such ecstasies that he even controlled his tongue and was silent. He said to himself that he would not speak a word, even when his aunt came in, but would sit perfectly still till she asked who did the mischief; and then he would tell, and there would be nothing so good in the world as to see that pet model “catch it.” He was so brimful of exultation that he could hardly hold himself when the old lady came back and stood above the wreck discharging lightenings of wrath from over her spectacles. He said to himself, “Now it’s coming!” And the next instant he was sprawling on the floor! The potent palm was uplifted to strike again when Tom cried out: “Hold on, now, what ‘er you belting ME for?—Sid broke it!” Aunt Polly paused, perplexed, and Tom looked for healing pity. But when she got her tongue again, she only said: “Umf ! Well, you didn’t get a lick amiss, I reckon. You been into some other audacious mischief when I wasn’t around, like enough.” Then her conscience reproached her, and she yearned to say something kind and loving; but she judged that this would be construed into a confession that she had been in the wrong, and discipline forbade that. So she kept silence, and went about her affairs with a troubled heart. Tom sulked in a corner and exalted his woes. He knew that in her heart his aunt was on her knees to him, and he was morosely gratified by the consciousness of it. He would hang out no signals, he would take notice of none. He knew that a yearning glance fell upon him, now and then, through a film of tears, but he refused recognition of it. He pictured himself lying sick unto death and his aunt bending over him beseeching one little forgiving word, but he would turn his face to the wall, and die with that word unsaid. Ah, how would she feel then? And he pictured himself brought home from the river, dead, with his curls all wet, and his sore heart at rest. How she would throw herself upon him, and how her tears would fall like rain, and her lips pray God to give her back her boy and she would never, never abuse him any more! But he would lie there cold and white and make no sign—a poor little sufferer, whose griefs were at an end. He so worked upon his feelings

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with the pathos of these dreams, that he had to keep swallowing, he was so like to choke; and his eyes swam in a blur of water, which overflowed when he winked, and ran down and trickled from the end of his nose. And such a luxury to him was this petting of his sorrows, that he could not bear to have any worldly cheeriness or any grating delight intrude upon it; it was too sacred for such contact; and so, presently, when his cousin Mary danced in, all alive with the joy of seeing home again after an agelong visit of one week to the country, he got up and moved in clouds and darkness out at one door as she brought song and sunshine in at the other. (Twain, 1876).8

The ideas that follow stem, in large measure, from approaching certain self-defeating behaviors through the prism of this strategy.

THE DYNAMICS OF CULPABILIZATION There is here a vindictive element, or rather one of resentment. It is a kind of vengeance that does not want the destruction of the person to whom it is addressed, but rather that the malaise produced by the other’s guilt results in a kind of psychological compensation for the offended. This process can be a fleeting thing, without major consequences for the individual, or can lead to certain decisions that, over time, tend to become unconscious and in significant and negative ways will affect a person’s destiny.9 It depends on the impact of the situation or how often it occurs. No need to stress that certain consequences of parental behavior that affect more or less intensely the personality of the children are well known by psychological research, by clinical observation, and even by daily experience. These consequences may be, in certain cases and under certain angles, a direct result of parental action that produces beliefs that distort the perception of reality. Thus, for example, a child who feels rejected by his or her parents tends to conclude that this is due to something intrinsic to his or her being, and to develop negative beliefs about himself or herself. The resulting behavior can, however, be seen as an adaptive strategy that therefore involves intentions. This is a strategy that would, in a first moment, help the child deal with the situation, but with the passage of time would prove selfdestructive. In the above case of the rejected child, the strategy may involve the decision in the child never to attach himself or herself to anybody. That would ease her suffering by a kind of anesthesia or emotional desensitization; however, this decision can make him or her forever unable to establish emotional bonds with anyone. Either way, addressing dysfunctional behavior as possibly resulting from an adaptive strategy may be more operationally useful because, properly understood, it is a way of explaining the problem that implies the possibility of control by the subject.10

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DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN CONTROL, RESPONSIBILITY, AND GUILT The term properly understood intends to draw attention to the importance of distinguishing between responsibility versus motivations of control or guilt. This is because, although several important lines of psychotherapy do propose taking responsibility for one’s own feelings as a prerequisite for cure and/or for personal growth,11 the ambivalent meaning of the words responsibility and responsible, which may indicate “burden” and “guilt” as much as “control,” makes most people—especially those who are already facing problems with guilt—have difficulty in absorbing the idea. Thus, without an adequate understanding of the issue, instead of liberating and empowering, the concept can be perceived as oppressive12 Thus, to quote a previous Lotufo publication: We are not responsible for the manipulative feelings of others; in their essence, they are the instruments of manipulation. However, we may be responsible for spontaneous feelings. This topic is delicate because any type of community life requires its members to take a certain amount of responsibility over one another. And this is valid whether we are referring to our family, our church, our company, our nation, or even humankind as a whole. Taking responsibility, however, does not mean feeling guilty or burdened. I may not feel guilty for having unattended children around me, wandering around the streets, homeless, with no food nor care. However I can’t help but feel responsible for their fate. Guilt looks back and tends to produce artificial feelings; responsibility looks forward and bases itself on spontaneous feelings. (Lotufo, 2001, p.343. Emphasis in original.)

The work of Alice Miller, a German psychologist, is an important source of examples for causal explanations for the self-defeating, counterproductive behavior. She has endeavored to demonstrate and denounce maltreatment and parental abuse of young children. Over time the effects of this become unconscious in the child, and have destructive effects on their own and other people’s lives.13 Miller’s approach has special interest to us because it touches on an important aspect of our argument in this chapter, namely, that people, for various reasons, find it very difficult to get in touch with the memories of the suffering that their parents caused them, tending even to maintain idealized and uplifting images of those parents.14

CRYPTO-CULPABILIZATION Almost 50 years ago, a U.S. psychologist, Samuel J. Warner, wrote an important book (Warner, 1966) in which he sought to highlight the factors that lead people to harm themselves. For him, the process begins when the

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infant is the target of neglect, abuse, and/or other maltreatment by parents, with the result that the child develops confused feelings of anger—that Warner calls hostility—fear, and love. Anger has the function of mobilizing resources to remove obstacles to the satisfaction of the needs of the individual. But this function becomes worthless and risky when the need for affection is concerned, in which case any expression of aggressiveness may result in the opposite of what is wanted. The tendency to express anger is natural and intense, but dangerous, whether it occurs in bursts of temper or through a violent action. Children and adolescents, especially in those types of hostile and frustrating households that we have described, cannot adequately communicate their resentment in a direct way, because the direct expression of hostility against the father usually causes severe punishments. (Warner, 1966, p. 40) Realizing that his or her parents expect a certain level of performance, a child may discern, more or less intuitively, that it is possible to give vent to resentment against the parents through frustrating those expectations, even though it may have a cost to the child. Warner writes, If the child does not eat, the mother is scared, if he vomits, the whole house is shaken, if not learn quickly, the father is visibly restless. Moreover, this is a relatively “safe” way to discharge the hostility against the parents because have over it its own camouflage: the child was also himself hurt. That is, if the child “cannot” eat properly, the father will be upset, but his own loss is so obvious that overrides any suspicions that what in reality he wants is revenge. When wetting the bed . . . his own humiliation and discomfort are so evident that conceal the hostility inherent in the act. “Bleeding a little,” so to speak, attacks his father in a way that the attack appears accidental or beyond his control. The defeat of the “other” is thus achieved through his own defeat. We all learn from small the chance to dominate others by defeating ourselves. (Warner, 1966, p. 41)

He describes a phenomenon that has been observed by several authors who apparently have not realized how much this strategy may affect the development of personality; and how its effects have contaminated Western culture.

SELF-AGGRESSION AND SELF-SABOTAGE When dealing with damage that the individual does to himself, we must distinguish between aggression and self-sabotage. In cases of self-aggression, negative emotion is felt immediately and its effects are, in general, transient. In those of self-sabotage, the negative effects are felt later and can last indefinitely. It may even happen that a self-sabotaging behavior lessens the immediate anxiety of the individual; but is damaging when it prompts a person to evade some activity or function.15 It is also worth insisting that under

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the point of view of the teleological theory of emotions, self-destructive or self-sabotaging behavior has behind it decisions that at the time had adaptive value.

MANIPULATIONS It is easy to see that for the small child there is no other way to communicate his or her needs except by crying. To the degree that the child grows, forms of communication emerge that are not necessarily linked to discomfort and that have no manipulative function. However, the child also realizes that if he or she adds to the words certain tones of voice and physical expressions, it is more likely that he or she will achieve what is wanted.16 This is especially true in certain types of families in which manipulation or emotional blackmail are constant among all members. The higher the level of dysfunctionality of a family, the greater the frequency of manipulation, especially the attempt to blame each other, tends to be. In these families, the belief predominates that each person is responsible for the feelings of the others. In fact, we are to some extent responsible for the genuine emotions of other people, but not for those they “manufacture” themselves, consciously or unconsciously, in order to produce in us certain emotional states or other responses.

COUNTERMANIPULATION Although many authors have addressed the subject of manipulation and emotional blackmail, to our knowledge, none of them realized that the emotional response of the manipulated individual is also an attempt of manipulation, that is, a countermanipulation.17 So when a mother asks her teenage son to go to the supermarket to buy something she needs, she can do it as an objective question. This allows an objective response: “OK. I can go,” or “I cannot now.” However, if she joins to the request a tearful voice, she is communicating between the lines something like this: “You are responsible for what I feel. If you go, you will make me happy, if not, you will let me sad.” Unable to realize the false premise that he is responsible for her emotions, and believing the other side of that premise—that she is responsible for what he feels—he is bound to a doublebind.18 He will feel badly whether he goes (abused) or he doesn’t go (guilty). In such circumstances, his actions impose upon her the notion that she is guilty for what he is feeling. He is countermanipulating. Notice the central role that strategies to make the other person feel guilty play in this scheme. People use guilt as a preferential way to manipulate and countermanipulate each other and for this purpose they need to demonstrate that they suffer. Their suffering may or may not have an authentic basis; but it is enhanced for manipulative purposes by thoughts of self-aggressive and

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self-sabotage. As this is not an open assignment of blame, it is not thrown over the other in a transparent way, and thus it can be said that this is a crypto-culpabilization, or disguised culpabilization. We suggest that taking into account the presence of crypto-culpabilization, regarding certain reactions in the face of evil and suffering, can shed new light on the subject.

COGNITIONS One way to do ourselves evil is through our thoughts and language. When human language is used in private, we can dwell upon or relive painful events from the past or imagine unpleasant futures. We might judge and criticize ourselves, creating destructive rules and beliefs. Instead of being present in the real world we may stay with our distorted thoughts. They can make us feel that they are real. Hayes, Strosahl, and Wilson, (1999) described this mechanism, calling it “fusion.” “Cognitive defusion means learning to step back and separate and detach from our unreal thoughts. Painful feelings need to be accepted. Values need to be clarified and committed to action in keeping with our values.” (Harris, 2009, p. 9). Other cognitions that can affect our emotions and quality of life are through negative automatic thoughts. They were studied by Beck and Colabs. (1979), who showed that they have logical distortions. They feel real, being associated with depression and anxiety. Their origin is in central beliefs, learned through life experiences, especially in our early years (Young, Klosko & Weishaar, 2003).

QUESTIONS AND PSEUDO-QUESTIONS Questions usually require a response, but not always. Questions are asked, sometimes, with other intentions than to receive a response or information. They may have the intention of criticizing: “What do you have in mind to do that?” Or to protest: “Why does such a thing happen to me?” Such is the case of the manipulative questions mentioned earlier. They are all, as you can see, pseudo-questions.

LIMITING QUESTIONS It may happen that there is no answer to a given question, because it touches on a logical limit, in which case one can find no reason or explanation for what the questioner wants to know. In other words, questions and answers can form a more or less long thread in which every answer can fit a request for explanation, to clarify what was said (“Can you better explain?”), ask for reasons (“Why are you saying that?”), or ask the epistemological basis of the response (“How do you know that?”), but this sequence of questions

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and answers may come to a point beyond which no answer is possible. This can occur in everyday situations such as the following: “Why don’t you eat spinach?” ”I would rather not.” “Why don’t you?” “Because I do not like spinach.” “Why don’t you like spinach?” “Because I think it tastes bad.” “Why do you think it has a bad taste?” But it can also involve something more serious: “You have money to have fun tonight?” “No.” “Why don’t you ask your mother?” “Because she has told me that she cannot give me any.” “Why don’t you kill her while she sleeps and get the money?” “What nonsense—I would never do that.” “Why?” “Because this is totally wrong.” “Why do you think it is wrong?” J. M. Bochenski, the Polish philosopher from who we adapted this example, notes that in such a situation, “(W)e would only say that such a thing cannot be done. In other words, we wouldn’t answer anything. We would not be able to bring a single proof, a reason, for our way of thinking” (Bochenski, 1961, p. 69). Another distinguished contemporary thinker, Stephen E. Toulmin, in his book An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics (Toulmin, 1959), reflecting on such cases, calls them limiting questions, explaining that those are “questions expressed in a form borrowed from the familiar mode of reasoning, but not doing the job which they normally do within that mode of reasoning” (Toulmin, 1959, p. 205). Limiting questions are often raised when we feel perplexed facing evil and suffering. Toulmin illustrates this reaction with a passage from The Brothers Karamazov in which Dostoevsky recounts a dream of Dmitri (Mitya), one of the brothers. He was driving somewhere in the steppes, where he had been stationed long ago, and a peasant was driving him in a cart with a pair of horses, through snow and sleet. He was cold, it was early in November, and the snow was falling in big wet flakes, melting as soon as it touched the earth. And the peasant drove him smartly, he had a fair, long beard. He was not an old man, somewhere about fifty, and he had on a grey peasant’s smock. Not far off was a village, he could see the black huts, and half the huts were burnt down, there were only the charred beams sticking up. And as they drove in, there were peasant women drawn up along the road, a lot of women, a whole row, all thin and wan, with their faces a sort of brownish

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color, especially one at the edge, a tall, bony woman, who looked forty, but might have been only twenty, with a long thin face. And in her arms was a little baby crying. And her breasts seemed so dried up that there was not a drop of milk in them. And the child cried and cried, and held out its little bare arms, with its little fists blue from cold. “Why are they crying? Why are they crying?” Mitya asked, as they dashed gaily by. “It’s the babe,” answered the driver, “the babe weeping.” And Mitya was struck by his saying, in his peasant way, “the babe,” and he liked the peasant’s calling it a “babe.” There seemed more pity in it. “But why is it weeping?” Mitya persisted stupidly, “why are its little arms bare? Why don’t they wrap it up?” “The babe’s cold, its little clothes are frozen and don’t warm it.” “But why is it? Why?” foolish Mitya still persisted. “Why, they’re poor people, burnt out. They’ve no bread. They’re begging because they’ve been burnt out.” “No, no,” Mitya, as it were, still did not understand. “Tell me why it is those poor mothers stand there? Why are people poor? Why is the babe poor? Why is the steppe barren? Why don’t they hug each other and kiss? Why don’t they sing songs of joy? Why are they so dark from black misery? Why don’t they feed the babe?” And he felt that, though his questions were unreasonable and senseless, yet he wanted to ask just that, and he had to ask it just in that way. And he felt that a passion of pity, such as he had never known before, was rising in his heart, that he wanted to cry, that he wanted to do something for them all, so that the babe should weep no more, so that the dark-faced, dried-up mother should not weep, that no one should shed tears again from that moment, and he wanted to do it at once, at once, regardless of all obstacles, with all the recklessness of the Karamazovs. (Toulmin, 1959, p. 205)

For Toulmin, these questions have positive value, because “Psychologically they help us to accept the world the same way that science helps us understand it”. (Toulmin, 1959, p. 209. Emphasis from original.) They are above all the cries of distress arising from the desire to reject an unpleasant fact. Yes, such exclamations in the face of suffering are entirely understandable, and we might add that it would be strange if the emotions that cause them did not arise on these occasions. However, it is possible to notice that in many cases, side by side to that rejection that expresses a wish that it had never happened, there is an element of anger and resentment, which can be interpreted as an accusation. It can be directed toward any person whose guilt for the situation is more or less direct and obvious, but can also turn on something less personal as “the government,” or any institution that could have prevented what happened. The anger can also be directed toward God. 19 A question like “Why did you do that?” can be formulated nonemotionally, seeking an explanation; but it can also be expressed as mournful or angry. In

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the latter case, it has clearly the intention of blaming the person to whom it is addressed. The artificial magnification of the emotion displayed, an emotion that can also have a core of spontaneity, gives manipulative power to the communication. It also costs the questioner unpleasant feelings, which he attributes to the situation, but which are largely generated unconsciously by himself.

“WHY DOES GOD ALLOW THINGS LIKE THIS TO HAPPEN?” Why would anyone, faced with suffering and evil, ask a question like that? It can be presented in a rational, academic way. The question may only be an objective rational inquiry, while unconsciously being a way of circumventing the discomfort one feels in contemplating the suffering of others. That is what research shows about the so-called just world phenomenon, which points to the fact that many people seek ideologies that reassure their consciences. It is a way of assuming that everything that happens in this world is somehow deserved. In a previous publication, taking into account how these ideologies disfigure human personality, we have described this effect as a “noninvasive lobotomy.”20 But, as happens when this question is directed to humans in a tone of lamentation or anger, it aims to accuse. We are facing crypto-culpabilization and in order that it achieves the unconscious21 purposes of making the other feel guilty, in this case God, it must be accompanied by artificial malaise (i.e., produced by self-aggression). The resentment toward parents, sometimes transferred to the image of God,22 can affect the whole course of life of the individual as well as his theological ideas, and therefore the way he will ask the question about the relationship of God with evil and suffering. Blaming God will then appear among the goals of life for that person. For this purpose, that person may use crypto-culpabilizing strategies: Self-imposed suffering and self-sabotage will give force to the accusations while disguising the unconscious intentions or drivers.

CRYPTO-CULPABILIZATION: WHAT IS THE ADVANTAGE? In our early research about the culpabilizing strategies, we adopted the view of authors such as Samuel Warner (1966), and Karen Horney (1959) to whom the desire for revenge would be the factor that mobilizes selfdestructive behaviors. Further reflection, however, led us to link these behaviors to matters of self-esteem. Here, briefly, are the considerations on which we rely: • Nonhuman animals do not revenge themselves. Their emotions, unlike what happens with humans, depend on the presence of environmental

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stimuli, while we have the ability to feed our emotions through imagination and/or elements present in the culture that represents the sources of these stimuli.23 • Retaliation may represent a factor of survival by destroying an enemy or by causing damage of such magnitude that it dissuades further attacks; a kind of deterrence that, in practice, rarely has lasting effects. In the cases we examined, the subject has usually no interest in eliminating or causing injury to the other person because he has emotional ties with him or her and retains expectations of receiving important contributions to his or her physical and psychic well-being. • Studies on what motivates revenge and forgiveness point to the importance of the element self-esteem,24 that is, very often the main motivation for retaliation is to restore the sense of worth and dignity in one’s self and in others. Note that the books that describe impressive forgiving attitudes, such as the excellent Why Forgive by Johann Christoph Arnold (2009) hardly ever mentions forgiveness in cases of public humiliation. The fear of others’ gaze and of their possible contempt may also be a reason for revenge, even if the individual is not personally interested in the vengeance.25

Thus, destructive revenge may not be of interest or possibility; however, it is of great importance to rescue the feeling of personal worth. So the choice left is to see or to imagine the offender feeling guilty for the evil he did, because it shows that one has some value in his or her eyes. Exhibiting grief and eventually cultivating it and raising it intentionally, though unconsciously, effectively performs that function.

THOU SHALT NOT BE AWARE Let us return to the argument advanced by Alice Miller that the individuals who as children suffered maltreatment by parents, as they grow, tend to forget about that suffering or regard it as beneficial. They are inclined to praise the figure of the abuser. We saw quite plausible explanations for this phenomenon, offered by such therapists as Fairbairn and Guntrip. The point is also addressed by psychologists Roy Baumeister and Steven Berglas in their book Your Own Worst Enemy. They describe various modes of selfdefeating behavior. Particularly interesting to us here is what they call “Pyrrhic revenge” in reference to Pyrrhus, king of Epirus who, after a victory that cost many casualties, said one more such victory would utterly undo him. For them: People who use this type of behavior really want to hurt themselves. But this is not their main goal; in the process they want to hurt another person. (Berglas & Baumeister 1995, p. 43).

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The impotence resulting from the adoption of a pattern of Pyrrhic revenge adapts uniquely to achieving a compromise between staying emotionally attached to an ambivalent love object and symbolically attacking that object. By sabotaging healthy goal attainment or actively inflicting self-harm in ways that are immediately obvious to an ambivalently valued parent, the maliciously intentioned self-defeater assumes a status of impotence (“See, I cannot hurt you”) and elevates the status of the parent (“See how powerful you are). It is believed that this process will result in relief from the self-defeater because it offers the hope that the self-imposed punishment will ultimately evoke a proper attitude of the parent, regardless of the horrible failures committed by the parent in the past.26

In other passages, Berglas and Baumeister explained this behavior as having an intention that is essentially vindictive, yet they offer here an explanation that seems most appropriate because it indicates that the strategy seeks to achieve a purpose that is somehow useful for the individual. But the more subtle maneuver referred to therein is the glorification of the parent. This is really a very skilful unconscious trick because it provides a cloak of unsurpassed efficiency: How can you suspect the existence of a malicious intent, the result of resentment, beneath a manifestation that exalts the parent? Well, then, it is possible that such strategies are present in the roots of human culture, causing resentment to infect large numbers of its manifestations.

SUFFERERS IN THE HANDS OF AN EVIL GOD Many texts revered by conservative Christians, starting with the narrative of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise27 and continuing with the curse of Cain,28 the killing by the flood, the sacrifice of Isaac, the genocide of the Canaanites, and the story of Job, among many others, clearly convey the image of a partial, narcissistic, angry, touchy, vindictive God, a God to whom one can worship and praise, of whom one can and should be afraid, but whom one cannot love. Let us take one of the narratives from the list above for a closer look: the book of Job.

JOB, JUNG, AND CRYPTO-CULPABILIZATION Leaving aside the question of what is authentic in the book of Job, we address the way an ordinary reader, unfamiliar with the Judeo-Christian God, would interpret the story. It presents a deity easily manipulated and disposed to deliver a faithful friend to great suffering just to satisfy a whim.29 When

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setting out his arguments, this deity speaks as if Job had no importance. In the end, Job surrenders to that power against which he can do nothing and is reduced to silence. However, as Jung notes, “The victory of the vanquished and oppressed is evident: Job was in a morally superior position to Yahweh. The creature surpasses the Creator from this point of view” (Jung, 1980, VI, 640). Jung comments more, “Anyone can see how He exalts Job involuntarily, by humiliating him in the dust of the earth” (Idem, II, 607). With the backdrop of the ideas developed in this chapter, we realize that the surreptitious intent of the book may well have been to blame God for the undeserved suffering. Reading the text without the glasses of religious tradition, the moral victory of Job about an immoral God is quite evident. Let us return to Jung: Indeed, it is not a dignified spectacle to see how quickly Yahweh abandons his faithful servant to the evil spirit and with what unconcern and lack of sympathy he lets him drop into the abyss of physical and moral suffering. From the human point of view, the behavior of God is so outrageous that we are forced to wonder if behind all this there is a deeper reason. Do not feed Yahweh some hidden hostility against Job? (Idem, II, 579).

That God has some hidden hostility against Job is a hypothesis, and before the “outrageous behavior of God” we are forced to raise hypotheses of this type. This is a behavior that requires explanation. Another possible hypothesis, consistent with the idea of crypto-culpabilization, is that the author of the book feels a suppressed hostility against God. From this perspective, one might think that the passages that exalt God work as a cover for the author’s main objective, which would be to expose the divine evil and savagery (Idem, Introduction, 561). However, one question soon occurs: In what way would the author of the book of Job benefit by raising such accusations against God? Of course, he has not the intention, nor is he able to exercise revenge against the deity because God is not an enemy. God is rather the Being who is expected— within the conception that he is all-powerful and intervenes in human affairs—to provide benevolent and protective assistance, especially toward those who serve him. But this is not what one sees; misfortune is always happening to people who are good and respectful of the ways of God. Would it then have occurred to the author of the book to try to do something that he had done with some success regarding his own parents: in an unconscious maneuver, make them feel guilty in order to force them to be more affectionate? The charges in the book of Job would thus seek to change the behavior of God in relation to his creatures, to press him not to leave them at the mercy of destructive forces.

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AUGUSTINE: BEATINGS AND DEPRAVITY OF MANKIND St. Augustine is probably the theologian who, after the apostle Paul, exercised the greatest influence on Christian thought in the West. He was the author and systematizer of doctrines that are considered part of the backbone of Christian theology. It was he who shaped the doctrines of original sin and of total depravity of mankind, proposing in part because he misunderstood the biblical text30 that, because the whole species was represented in Adam, his fall curses any individual who comes to the world to be born guilty of the sin of this ancestor. This sin corrupted human nature, making it incapable of doing good, and condemned all humanity, after death, to be eternally tortured. Only those few would escape who were arbitrarily elected to salvation. In a brilliant work, Donald Capps (Capps, 1995/2004) drew on the writings of E. R. Dodds and Leo Ferrari, specialists, one in Hellenic, and the other in Augustinian studies, to show that Augustine reveals in his Confessions that he was deeply marked by the fact that, as a child, he was beaten by his teachers when he could not do well in his lessons. Prayers did not get response, and his parents, when he complained, laughed at his suffering. As a result, says Ferrari, “[C]ruel and terrifying as were the beatings which the young Augustine suffered at school, in his mature years through the light of his faith he was able to see these scourgings as the work of God Himself . . . . [T]he irate schoolmaster of Augustine’s infancy therefore becomes the scourging God who purifies his soul through the many punishments of life” (Ferrari, apud Capps, 2004, p. 135). Thus, much of the conservative Christian theology can have its base in a resented thought, marked by beatings suffered by a child, and by the pain caused by the indifference of his parents.31 This resentment in a brilliant mind led him to accuse God of creating a flawed humanity that from the outset was evil. The idea is not only unfair and cruel. It is obscene in God to condemn his own children to appalling punishments.

A RESENTMENT THEOLOGY The backbone of conservative Christian theology, commonly called the Plan of Salvation, presents God in a deeply unfavorable light, especially when interpreting Jesus’s death on the cross as being the only way to satisfy the divine justice, offended by our sin.32 This theory of atonement, the most widespread among conservative Christians, is an extraordinary example of a crypto-culpabilizing strategy: All human beings are presented as hopelessly sinful and worthy of eternal torments of which only the grace of God can save. But this grace in the context of the resentment theology does not mean free forgiveness; it requires that someone in our place pay the price required by the righteousness of God. Jesus, then, is sacrificed in our place and that satisfies this bloody justice.

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It is worth noting that in the sacrificial rituals of other religions, including Judaism, although frequently horrible, their essence is to offer the victim or the victim’s blood to the deity, and to kill it is just a way for the offer to reach the addressee. The victim’s suffering is not a goal and is also, if possible, avoided. However, the penal satisfaction theory explicitly states that the suffering of Jesus was essential because it was the currency or the compensation for the offense against God and was the only way to calm His wrath and implicitly state that contemplating suffering brings sadistic satisfaction to God.33 The same charge of cosmic sadism, moreover, is also present in the doctrine of eternal torment of the lost. In short, in stark contrast to the image of God that Jesus presents, this resentment theology shows us a God absurdly cruel, evil, and insane. Note that the thesis of what we call resentment theology is not restricted to conservative theologically educated environments, they are present in many publications for the general reader and easily accessible.34 The consequences of this theology from the psychological and spiritual points of view is that it produces, among other disorders, fear, and atrophy of the personality,35 and generates total impossibility to love God, and to live in real closeness to Him.36 And what are its goals? Ideologies may serve a plurality of interests and goals, subtle or obvious, central or peripherals. Evangelicalism and fundamentalism are ideologies. What is the objective of the sinister contents of the resentment theology and its unhappy consequences? What would be the unconscious target of its supporters? We have observed that the unconscious objective of a child when increasing his/her own suffering through ruminating negative thoughts, as in Tom Sawyer, is to produce feelings of guilt on the person who frustrated him in his need for protection, affection, recognition, and certification. Seeing or even imagining the abuser struck by guilt and regret satisfies those needs to some extent: “See how I suffer for your guilt. Once you fail to give me what I need, I will hurt myself so you will know what you have done me, so you will feel guilty and, will give me value.” For a small child, his parents are omnipotent, and if they do not meet his needs, they are doing this intentionally. Thus, even the death of a parent can be felt by young children as a voluntary relinquishment. They do not see, therefore, an excuse for paternal behaviors that cause children suffering. If, as they became mature, the children realize that their parents have all the flaws and weaknesses inherent to a normal human being, their resentment will lose intensity. If not, these resentments and their affects will last for a lifetime. Even when there is forgiveness of resentments, the consequences of decisions to inflict self harm may continue to bother the individual if he or she does not realize what he or she is doing against self, thus not getting rid of the self-inflicted harm.

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The feelings of children who have important needs frustrated by their parents, feelings that can reach high levels if the parents practice physical or verbal violence against them, is commonly transferred to God, who is believed omnipotent and therefore able to intervene and solve any problem of the individual. For those who have passed the infant stage, it is relatively easy to overcome their belief in the omnipotence of the parents; but the same cannot be said about the omnipotence of God because this is a belief that is reinforced by most religious circles. Indeed, in those environments, divine omnipotence and God’s “inscrutable will,” are among the principles of faith. It is also believed that God can always intervene to help those who trust him. Moreover, within the Calvinist view, the intervention of the Creator is continuous and absolute and nothing happens that is not the result of the “sovereignty” of God, a belief that aggravates the frustration and resentment of the believer who does not see his expectations fulfilled. Thus, the combination of the image of God as cruel or indifferent, resulting from childhood experiences with parents, with the belief that God is all powerful and can intervene to help when He wants, creates a fertile ground for resentment to grow as expressed in the theological ideas that flow from it. If we could translate into a few words the type of message that unconsciously a resentful Christian is addressing to God with his behavior and his theological system, we would say something like this: “We suffered since we were small, and you, being all-powerful and able to intervene, do not do anything. So we will spread very nasty ideas about you, disguising them with a lot of praise and worship. These ideas will produce atrophy in our personalities, but will show what you have done to us, and then, forced by guilt and shame, you will have to act on our behalf.”

UNDOING THE KNOT The belief that systematically or intermittently, in a supernatural way, God intervenes in human affairs, inextricably linked to the belief in God’s omnipotence, is the double-bind in which many of those seeking answers to the existence of evil and suffering are entangled.37 Moreover, being a doublebind, it is not open for discussion; our culture prevents us from seeing God differently. As we have seen, this belief leads almost inevitably to frustration, resentment, and crypto-culpabilization.

NEW PARADIGMS Movements like Process Theology, Open Theism, and some forms of Liberation Theology offer a new paradigm to think about God. Marcus Borg has also proposed in his writings a panentheist view of God.38 This view he

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contrasts with the traditional perspective that he calls supernatural theism. Panentheism is a theological current that rejects belief in the supernatural interventions of God, though maintaining the idea that he relates to human beings in a way that we can consider personal, through our conscience. In the field of alternative paradigms, we believe it is worth considering those ideas that are further away from traditional Christianity, such as those of Alan Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. In the preface, Watts wrote a summary, “[T]he thesis is that the prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination” (Watts, 1972, p. IX). This hallucination does not allow us to realize that literally all of us are one with God; that each of us is a part of Him, similarly to the way a wave is part of the ocean, although for some time it can be individualized.

OVERCOMING RESENTMENT Because resentment produces self-defeating strategies, it is important to understand the meaning of forgiveness, as well as how to put forgiveness into practice. First, resentment theology leads to vengefulness and holds a distorted view of forgiveness. Second, is a matter of wisdom; it simply makes sense in the cost–benefit equation of human relationships.

THE MEANING OF STOP DOING Manipulative emotions cause resentment and to produce rancor and vindictiveness; forms of self-harm and self-sabotage. These play against our best interests. Finally, the teleological approach points to the fact that much of our suffering comes from something we do against ourselves. So the solution is to stop doing something that we are doing. That seems simple. However, it is hampered by our tendency to actively problem solve, doing things and, if not successful, doing more of the same things. That often just worsens the evil we suffer. In other words, what we need is a second-order change,39 a change that will question the assumptions upon which we base our attempts to deal with evil and suffering, intellectually and practically. We hope this chapter will promote such questioning and the change it can bring.

NOTES 1. Heauton Timoroumenos (self-tormentor) is the Greek title of a play by the Roman plawright Terence (second century ce), and it is a translation or an adaptation of a missing comedy by the Athenian poet Menander (fourth century bce). 2. Perhaps the pain in these circumstances has no physiological function, but its expression may be important as a way to get attention and support from others. Moreover, the mere suppression of suffering the loss may cause problems later.

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3. It is strange that the growing volume of studies on emotions do not take into account this distinction. Doing so would certainly help resolve disputes like those between the advocates of the social constructivist perspective and those of the Darwinian perspective. 4. The basic concepts of this theory have been exposed in Lotufo and Lotufo (2001). 5. Frijda (1994). The “most of the time” of the title refers to a functional emotion like nostalgia, and dysfunctional emotions like phobic fears, about which he writes, “(E)motion, as a phenomenon and a provision, is useful; not every individual emotion necessarily is” (p. 117). 6. “[F]acial expression has evolved like other displays, to communicate information about the probable future behavior of the displaying animal” (Andrew, 1963; Cornelius, 1996, p. 43). Emotions are communication and survival mechanisms based on evolutionary adaptations. This is simply a recognition that emotions increase the chances of individual survival through appropriate reactions to adversities in the environment (e.g., by fight or flight). Emotional displays also act as signal of intention of future actions. (Plutchik, 2000, p. 78) One of the most interesting studies on emotional reactions as a way of communication was carried out at the Suffolk Child Development Center, in Long Island, New York, by the psychologists Edward Carr and Mark Durand. They worked with autistic and mentally challenged children, whose certain behaviors called their attention: One would repeatedly bang her head on the edge of a table, another one would violently try to injure her professor, and a third one (whose medical exams did not indicate any reason for it) would scratch herself as far as hurting herself severely. Their conclusions: That research—as they write—has convinced us that severe behavior problems are often not senseless acts but primitive attempts to communicate. Indeed, aggression, self-injury and tantrums are often the only effective ways some children have of making their needs known. (Carr & Durand, 1987, p. 63) Carr and Durand mention the works of psychologists Silvia Bell and Mary Ainsworth—who related babies’ crying to communication, showing that the more the child can communicate through facial expressions, gestures, and speaking, the less he will cry—and the work of Ivar Lovaas, psychologist at the University of California, who suggests that a child with schizophrenia has often a self-destructive behavior because he is trying to ask for something that every child needs: attention. As they proceed, Although most of the children we study are autistic or retarded, their behavior problems also seem to be means of communicating. We have found that these children are most likely to be aggressive or injure themselves when seeking adult attention or attempting to escape from unpleasant situations. Their strange behavior is a way of saying “Please pay attention to me,” or “Please, don’t ask me to do this.” (Carr & Durand, 1987, p.63. Emphasis added.)

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A relevant aspect of Carr and Durand’s findings is that, when children are taught normal ways of expressing their needs, they may give up on their abnormal behavior; when children are trained to express—through speaking or gestures—what they want, the extravagant behavior reduces drastically (Lotufo & Lotufo, 2001). 7. This is a functional explanation for sadness. A discussion of the various possible interpretations can be read in Frijda (1994). 8. Twain (1876). With his refined psychological insight, Twain makes here a very good description of how mental rumination may serve for manipulative, inculpating purposes. 9. The process in question was proposed by Eric Berne under the rubric of “life scripts” and its more consistent development may be found in Goulding and Goulding (1979). 10. One benefit of this approach can be explained by Albert Bandura’s concept of “self-efficacy,” a concept that can be defined very briefly as the positive effect of the belief that the individual can exercise control over events or circumstances that affect his or her life. See Bandura (1997). 11. For instance, Viktor Frankl’s “Logotherapy”, Fritz Perls’s “Gestalt Therapy”, and William Glasser’s “Reality Therapy.” 12. In this sense, we consider useful the distinction made by English psychologist Peter Fletcher: It is very important to make a clear mental distinction between two almost opposite senses in which this word ‘responsibility’ is commonly used. When I say I am responsible to somebody I mean that I am culpable or accountable to an external authority for what I do. He has the right or the power to control my actions, which thus express his choices and decisions, not my own. The more of this kind of responsibility I have, the less freedom I have. But I become responsible in a truer sense only as I become free to make my own choices and decisions. When I do this I am the source of my actions, and the direction of my life is no more under remote control. This is personal responsibility, and until I accept it I cannot gain emotional maturity or spiritual integrity, for I am not in possession of myself. (Fletcher, 1972, p. 23) 13. These examples can be found in the books of Alice Miller, among them: “The Drama of the Gifted Child,” “For Your Own Good,” “Thou Shalt Not Be Aware” and “Banished Knowledge”. 14. In Chapter III of the book The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self, Alice Miller cites cases of public figures such as filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, the writer Hermann Hesse as examples of this idealization. (Miller, 1984). The mechanism of idealization was well described by the British psychoanalyst Harry Guntrip, following the thought of another important psychoanalyst, W. R. D. Fairbairn, of Edinburgh: But one of the most serious problems of childhood is the ease with which one can make a child feel guilty. And when this child is really unhappy, she may feel a need so great of her mother that she has to buy her favors taking responsibility for everything. (. . .) The guilt becomes part

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of the anxious strategy to regain the love of mother and father. In order to preserve an ideal image of parents as being good, wise and loving people, with who she can count on in case of need, the child may agree to classify herself as bad, as if she had decided: ‘If I’m not loved, the guilt must be mine. (. . .) But to save the relationship with parents from total destruction, thing that the child fears, especially when she listens that if she continues to do that ‘Mom will not like you anymore’, the child is inclined to think, ‘My conduct is bad, but Mommy’s good ’. (Guntrip, 1971, pg. 77 of the Brazilian edition). 15. Beck and Padesky (1990), describe the cognitive aspects of people who harm themselves by avoiding activities that generate them dysphoric feelings. Useful as it is, their analysis of the beliefs and automatic thoughts that produce those feelings we believe that would be helpful to add the intentional, teleological, factors which, in turn, are behind the thoughts which under this point of view would be not strictly automatic. 16. According to Planalp (1999): From birth, babies elicit aid and comfort by screaming and crying. This is not a particularly subtle form of communication, but it is effective. In a few months, infants begin to adapt their messages to others,” as Dunn and Brown (1991) note. Experimenters studied how infants’ expressive skills develop over time by restraining the arms of 1-, 4-, and 7-months-olds. The 1-month-old infants showed vaguely negative emotions, the 4-months-olds looked at the restraining hands with angry expressions, but the 7-month-old infants directed their angry facial and vocal expressions toward their mothers or toward the person restraining them (Stenberg & Campos, 1990: 275). The 7-months-olds had already learned that communicating emotion can mobilize social resources; later they learn how they communicate makes a difference in their chances of being successful. (p. 141) 17. There are several books about manipulation that deserve to be read, as p. ex. Shostrom, E. L. (1967). Man, the Manipulator. Nashville: Abingdon; Forward, S. (1997). Emotional Blackmail—When the people in your life use fear, guilt and obligation to manipulate you. New York: HarperCollins; and Beier, E. G. & Valensi, E. G. (1975). Reading People—How we control others, How they control us. New York: Warner. The latter is of particular value for understanding the subject. The manipulation, often under other names, is also studied in many more academic books that approach social aspects of emotions and possible manipulative components. Of these, the one that touches more closely the theme is the work of Sally Planalp, Communicating Emotion: Social, moral, and cultural processes. Also useful readings on the subject are: Parkinson, B., Fisher, A. H. & Manstead, A. S. R. (2005). Emotion in Social Relations: Cultural, group, and interpersonal processes. New York: Psychology Press, as well as some of the volumes belonging to the series “Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction,” edited by Keith Oatley and Anthony Manstead, especially Tiedens, L. Z. & Leach, C. W. (Eds.) (2004). The Social Life of Emotions. New York: Cambridge University Press, and Manstead, A. S. R., Frijda, N. & Foscher, A. (Eds.) (2004). Feelings and Emotions—The Amsterdam Symposium. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Transactional analysts, starting with Eric Berne, developed the concept of “racket”, which implies the idea of using emotions to extort something from someone. To our knowledge, they gave little attention to the issue of manipulative suffering; their theory about the formation of life scripts only considers the role of parental messages. Possible exceptions are the ideas of the couple Mary and Robert Goulding, exposed in the book above. None of these studies, as we said, takes into account the active role of the person who is manipulated, i.e. of the countermanipulation, a role that is relevant from the viewpoint of teleological theory of emotions. 18. The term double-bind is used to describe situations in which one person receives orders or demands conflicting between them, while it is impossible to understand and discuss the inconsistency of those who send them and their assumptions. He cannot “meta-communicate” (i.e., communicate about communication). The concept was proposed in 1956, in a paper signed by Gregory Bateson, Don D. Jackson, J. Haley, and J. H. Weakland, titled “Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia.” An interesting discussion on the presence of double binds in a Christian context can be read in Cohen and Colabs (1982). 19. Sometimes it happens that unconsciously repressed resentments are directed to God. (. . .) The urge to blame God can be repudiated, rejected and repressed, and nevertheless persist and work unconsciously. (Guntrip, 1971, p. 48). 20. More information about this research can be found in Lotufo (2010). 21. We are aware that arguing with unconscious factors can give rise to mere fantasies, since, in most cases, there is no way to directly verify what is stated. One must consider that a) there are feelings and behaviors whose origins and purposes are beyond the reach of consciousness, b) in the face of feelings and behavior contrary to the normal interests of people, one must assume the presence of unconscious causes and objectives. In our case, what matters most are possible objectives that at some point had utility for the individual, and may even continue to have. c) If one needs to find an explanation for a feeling or behavior because they do not correspond to what might be expected of rational individuals, the teleological explanation and assumption of unconsciousness will be valid until a better explanation was found. Let us remember what has been already said, that the teleological explanation, even when assuming unconscious factors, it is preferable to a simply causal explanation because it is coherent with the idea that the individual can exercise control. 22. The issue of negative image of God is treated by Zenon Lotufo Jr. in a book to be launched shortly by Praeger under the title Cruel God, Kind God: How Images of God Shape Belief, Attitude, and Outlook, in the series Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality, edited by J. Harold Ellens. 23. This point is treated in greater depth in Lotufo Jr. & Martins, (2004). 24. See, among others, Emmons (2000). 25. In ancient times, in places such as Greece, and still in some corners of the modern world, it was believed that a victim not avenged had hindered his entry into the world of shadows, staying near the corpse and pursuing with terrible vengeance the killer or those who had failed in the duty to punish the guilty. (Guthrie, 1956, p. 212). Just as land or property, the “vendetta” was a heritage and a child had no choice: he must fulfill this sacred duty: While the anger of the dead were not appeased, his family was infected and exposed to an almost physical miasma (Ibid, p. 213). 26. Berglas & Baumeister 1995, p. 174. Emphasis added. In my view, as I search to demonstrate here and in other papers (eg Lotufo & Lotufo, 2001), the strategy

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described here deserves far more attention than it has received, since it plays an important role in emotional disorders. 27. The “sadistic” role of God in this episode is highlighted by Alice Miller (Miller, 2002). We note that in this text, the translation of a sentence omits the word unconsciously that in our view, is important in the context of the ideas of Miller. So where one reads This was how the authors of the Bible saw their “loving” father, translation from the German Aber so haben so die Bibeldichter unbewusst ihre angeblich liebenden Väter gesehen, should be read Nevertheless, this was how the authors of the Bible unconsciously saw their supposedly loving fathers. 28. Regina Schwartz (1997) shows how the image of God that results from such history, a God that promotes competition and violence instead of cooperation and chooses one sacrifice over the other (p. 3), may be responsible for much violence between individuals and between groups. 29. Here I follow Jung’s remarks in the first two chapters of his book on Job. See Jung (1980). An approach to the book of Job in optics, in some respects similar to Jung, can be found in Ehrman’s chapter Does Suffering Make Sense? The Books of Job and Ecclesiastes (Ehrman, 2008). 30. The Greek of Romans 5:12 says that death passed to all Human Beings “Inasmuch the all sinned.” But Augustine did not read Greek and Latin and used a very poor translations of Romans that mistranslated the verse to read “in quo omnes pecaverunt” or “in Whom [that is Adam] all sinned.” In other words, when Augustine read Romans 5:12, he saw the message that death spread to all the human beings inasmuch all sinned in Adam. But this is not what the verse says in the original language. (Olson, 1999, p. 272) 31. Miller (2002) makes a similar statement, referring to some of the biblical authors who have written under the influence of the beatings received from their parents in childhood. 32. The interpretation which St. Anselm gave shape, known as “substitutionary” or “of penal satisfaction” is just one among others that were presented in the history of the Christian church, but is what prevails in most churches. Many works have appeared in recent years proposing alternatives non-sacrificial, non-violent; among these can be mentioned: Sanders (2006), Beilby & Eddy (2006), Finlan (2005, 2007). 33. In Cruel God, Kind God, Lotufo Jr. examines this point further. 34. Such writings include the famous and horrifying Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, by Jonathan Edwards, or the more recent books like Saved from What?, by R. C. Sproul, and Show Them No Mercy—4 Views on God and Canaanite Genocide edited by Stanley N. Gundry. In the latter, only one contributor, C. S. Cowles, maintains a not cruel image of God; the others agree with the cryptoculpabilizing thesis that such killing only anticipates what, one way or another, would happen to those people, once they were condemned to eternal damnation. It can be stated with some certainty that this type of literature contributes substantially more to turn people away from Christianity 35. An analysis of these consequences can be found in my Cruel God, Kind God, above mentioned. 36. How can anyone come close to a God as he is described, for example, by Calvin in the following passage? Let us envisage for ourselves that Judge, not as our minds naturally imagine him, but as he is depicted for us in Scripture: by whose brightness the stars are darkened [Job 3:9]; by whose

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strength the mountains are melted; by whose wrath the earth is shaken [cf. Job 9:5-6]; whose wisdom catches the wise in their craftiness [Job 5:13]; beside whose purity all things are defiled [Job 25:5]; whose righteousness not even angels can bear [cf. Job 4:18]; who makes not the guilty man innocent [Job 9:20]; whose vengeance when once kindled penetrates to the depths of hell [Deut. 32:22; cf. Job 26:6]. Let us behold him, I say, sitting in judgment to examine the deeds of men: Who will stand confident before his throne? (Calvin, 1961, p. 755) 37. We can see an example in what Bart Ehrman writes in his (2008) book God’s Problem, interesting in several different ways. Mentioning and apparently agreeing with them, that for several thinkers a God whose power has limits and thus not intervene to end human suffering is not really God. (p. 9). Statements such as this are present several times through this book. Incapable to conciliate proposals as “God is all-powerful”, “God is all love” and “Suffering exists”, Ehrman concludes that is impossible for him to believe in this God. (p. 4). 38. In respect to Panentheism, Borg writes: God is the encompassing Spirit; we (and everything that is) are in God. For this concept, God is not a supernatural being separate from the universe; rather, God (the sacred, Spirit) is a nommaterial layer or level of reality all around us. God is more than the universe, yet the universe is in God. Thus, in a spatial sense, God is not “somewhere else” but “right here” (Borg, 1997, p. 112). In another of his books, The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith, (Borg, 2003), Borg returns to and deepens this theme. 39. We refer to a vision of the change process without which it is difficult to get good results in any attempt to change situations. Very briefly, a second-order change is one that 1) takes into account all elements of the system in which the problem appears, and 2) attempt to detect and act upon the assumptions that underlie a possible problem. This view is shown in two important books: Watzlawick, Weakland, & Fisch, Change: Principles of problem formation and problem resolution, and Fraser& Solovey: Second Order Change in Psychotherapy: The Golden Thread that Unifies Effective Treatments.

REFERENCES Andrew, R. J. (1963). Evolution of facial expression. Science, 142, 1034–1041. Arnold, J. C. (2009). Why forgive? (Rev. and exp. ed.). Farmington, PA: Bruderhof Foundation. (Original work published in 2000). Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: Freeman. Bateson, G., Jackson, D. D., Haley, J., & Weakland, J. H. (1956). Toward a theory of schizophrenia. Behavioral Science, 1, 251–264. Beck, A. T. and Colabs. (1979). Cognitive Therapy of Depression. New York: Guilford. Beck, K. & Padesky, C. (1990). Avoidant Personality Disorder. In Beck, A., Freeman, A. & Colabs. Cognitive Therapy of Personality Disorders. New York: Guilford. Beilby, J. & Eddy, P. R. (Ed). (2006). The Nature of Atonement—Four Views. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity. Berglas, S., & Baumeister, R. F. (1995). Seu Pior Inimigo (Your own worst enemy). Rio de Janeiro: Ediouro. Berne, E. (1964). Trading stamps. Transactional Analysis Bulletin, 3, 127. Bochenski, J. M. (1961). Diretrizes do Pensamento Filosófico (Philosophy: An Introduction). São Paulo: Herder.

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Borg, M. J. (1997). The god we never knew: Beyond dogmatic religion to a more authentic contemporary faith. New York: HarperCollins. Borg, M. J. (1997). The heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a life of faith. New York: HarperCollins. Borg, M. J. (2003). The heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a life of faith. New York: HarperCollins. Calvin, J. (1961). Institutes of the Christian religion (Library of Christian Classics, Vol. 20, Ed. John T. McNeill). London: S. C. M. Press. Capps, D. (1995). The child’s song: The religious abuse of children. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox. Capps, D. (2004). Augustine: The vicious cycle of child abuse. In J. H. Ellens (Ed.), The destructive power of religion: Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Vol. 2. Religion, psychology, and violence. Westport, CT: Praeger. Carr, E., & Durand, M. (1987). See me, help me. Psychology Today, 21, 11. Clore, G. L. (1994). Why emotions are never unconscious. In P. Ekman & R. J. Davidson (Eds.), The nature of emotion: Fundamental questions. New York: Oxford University Press. Cohen, E. J.& Colabs. (1982). Christian induced neurosis: An examination of pragmatic paradoxes and the Christian faith. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 10 (1) p. 5. Cornelius, R. R. (1996). The science of emotion. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Edwards, J. (1741). Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God available at http://edwards. yale.edu/archive, accessed on October, 2010. Ehrman, B. D. (2008). Does suffering make sense? The Books of Job and Ecclesiastes. In God’s problem: How the Bible fails to answer our most important question: Why we suffer. New York: HarperCollins. Ellens, J. H. (2007). Radical grace: How belief in a benevolent God benefits our health. Westport, CT: Praeger. Emmons, R. A. (2000). Personality and Forgiveness. In McCullough, M. E., Pargament, K. I. & Thoresen, C. E. (Eds.) Forgiveness – Theory, research and practice. New York: Guilford. English, F. (1971). The substitution factor: Rackets and real feelings. Transactional Analysis Journal, 1(4). Ferrari, L. (1974). The boyhood beatings of Augustine. Augustinian studies 5, 1–14. Finlan, S. (2005). Problems with Atonement. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. Finlan, S. (2007). Options on Atonement in Christian Thought. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press. Fletcher. P. (1972). Emotional problems. London: Pan Books. Fraser, J. S., & Solovey, A. D. (2007). Second order change in psychotherapy: The golden thread that unifies effective treatments. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Frijda, N. H. (1994). Emotions are functional. Most of the time. In P. Ekman & R. J. Davidson (Eds.), The nature of emotion: Fundamental questions. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 117. Frijda, N. H., & Mesquita, B. (1994). The social roles and functions of emotions. In S. Kitayama & H. R. Markus (Eds.), Emotion and culture. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Goulding, M. M., & Goulding, R. I. (1979). Changing lives through redecision therapy. New York: Random House.

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Gundry, S. N. (Ed.) (2003). Show Them No Mercy—4 Views on God and Canaanite Genocide. Grand Rapids, MN: Zondervan. Guntrip, H. (1971). Your Mind and Your Health. London: George Allen & Unwin. Guthrie, W. K. C. (1956). Les Grecs et leurs Dieux. Paris: Payot. Harris, R. (2009). ACT Made Simple: An Easy-to-Read Primer on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Oakland: New Harbinger. Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., & Wilson, K. G. (1999). Acceptance and commitment therapy: An experiential approach to behavior change. New York: Guilford. Horney, K. (1959). Neurosis and Human Growth. New York: Norton. Jung, C. G. (1980). Resposta a Jó. (Answer to Job). In C. G. Jung (Vol. 11). Petrópolis: Vozes. Levenson, R. W. (1994). Human emotion: A functional view. In P. Ekman & R. J. Davidson (Eds.), The nature of emotion: Fundamental questions. New York: Oxford University Press. Lotufo, Z., Jr., & Lotufo Neto, F. (2001). Uma teoria teleológica das emoções (A teleological theory of emotion). Revista de Psiquiatria Clínica, 28 (6), 340–346. Lotufo, Z., Jr., & Lotufo Neto, F. (2010). In Ellens, J. H. (Ed.) The Healing Power of Spirituality—How Faith Helps Humans Thrive, Vol. 2. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. Lotufo, Z., Jr., & Martins, J. C. (2004). Revenge and Religion In J. H. Ellens (Ed.), The destructive power of religion: Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Vol. 2. Religion, psychology, and violence. Westport, CT: Praeger. Lotufo, Z., Jr. (in press) Cruel. Miller A. (1984). The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self. New York: Basic Books. Miller, A. (2002). Prologue. In The truth will set you free: Overcoming emotional blindness and finding your true adult self. Retrieved from http://www.alice-miller.com/ books_en.php?page=10b. Olson, R. (1999). The story of Christian theology. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity. Planalp, S. (1999). Communicating emotion: Social, moral, and cultural processes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Plutchik, R. (2000). Emotions in the practice of psychotherapy. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Sanders, J. (Ed.) (2006). Atonement and Violence—A Theological Conversation. Nashville: Abingdon. Schwartz, R. M. (1997). The curse of Cain. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sproul, R. C. (2002). Saved From What? Wheaton, IL: Crossway. Toulmin, S. E. (1959). An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Twain, M. (1876). The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, disposable in http://www.online -literature.com/twain/tomsawyer, accessed in May, 2010. Warner, S. J. (1966). Self-Realization and Self-Defeat. New York: Grove Press. Watts, A. (1972). The book: On the taboo against knowing who you are. New York: Vintage. Watzlawick, P., Weakland, J. H., & Fisch, R. (1967). Change: Principles of problem formation and problem resolution. New York: Wiley. Young, J. E., Klosko, J. S., & Weishaar, M. E. (2003). Schema therapy: a practioner’s guide. New York: Guilford.

ch apter 1 0

Evil in Africa Dirk Odendaal and Yvette Odendaal

It is with great hesitation that we attempt to write this essay. A white man in and of Africa (a white African) writing about evil in Africa is in danger of talking of it in a bifurcated way (i.e., as either black or white) or blaming “Africa,” “Black Africans,” or “White Colonialists” for all that is wrong. The reality is much more complicated than that. Therefore, when discussing this topic, I will give attention to evil as an expression of the use and misuse of power. Africa has a history of empires. The best known empire that stretched over several centuries was that of Egypt. The influence of Egypt was widespread in northern Africa, especially along the reaches of the Nile, but also reaching into the hinterland of present-day Sudan and Ethiopia. Archaeologists are starting to discover more sites that represent civilizations that had come and gone on the continent. At the moment, these civilizations go back to the time of the early Middle Ages in Europe. It is still difficult to know who the people were who lived in the remains of the settlements of Zimbabwe and Mapungubwe, because no written documentation was found in them. Northern Africa has a history dating back to before that time with Europe and especially with the Greeks and Romans, who at first had settlements in northern Africa as trading stations and later came to colonize and occupy large areas of the northern part of the continent. Africa’s contribution to the growth of Christian theology and philosophy has been quite significant as some of the early prominent church fathers came from the continent, such as Augustine, Tertullian, and Cyprian. The influential library of Alexandria and the many Egyptian monasteries contributed

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to the development of the influential ideas and the ethics that influenced the growth of Christianity and its later proliferation in Europe in the Middle Ages. It is ironic that Africa was the enlightened continent at that stage. Much of what has been written about Africa at present, and the impression that has been created about Africa, dates back to the period after the Islamization of Africa and the start of the colonization of Africa by European countries. Up to the collapse of the Byzantine Empire, North Africa was integral to the empire and played an important part in the economy. However, it was systematically conquered by the Islamic Empire and was converted to Islam. Already from the time that it was colonized by the Greeks and Romans, local people did not have political say and had to join the imposed rule. Europeans had contact with North Africa through their own incorporation in the Roman Empire and through trade. Possibly their involvement in the Crusades may have contributed to contact after the fall of the Byzantine Empire. It was only from the 14th century onward that more of Africa became explored, as a concerted drive developed to find a sea route to the East. It was during this time that Africa became a handy stopover for Europeans en route to Asia. It was also the start of the exploitation of Sub-Saharan Africa for its produce and people. For Europeans the impression of Sub-Saharan Africa as the Dark Continent, inhabited by exotic savages, dates back to the 19th century, as Sub-Saharan Africa was still largely unknown to them. Adventure novels and travelogues contributed to the formation of European impressions of Africa. Such novels as Henry Rider Haggard’s Queen Sheba’s Ring, Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness, and Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan, and travelogues such as by David Livingstone, were virtually the only images of the continent known by the outside world. Several themes come to mind when one discusses evil in Africa, but I will focus on one. The theme has to do with power: first, that of the external political and economic forces upon Africa, and, second, the power issues internal to Africa.

EXTERNAL POWER INFLUENCES AND EVIL Sub-Saharan Africa made contact with Europeans from the mid-1400s onward. First it was the Portuguese, then followed the Dutch, the British, French, Belgians, and Germans. Trading stations were developed, and the end result of this contact was the creation of the two large colonies of Angola and Mozambique. The Dutch followed a similar approach with the settlement of a trading post in 1652 at the site of the present Cape Town. The British followed later at the end of 1700s when they took on the custody of the Dutch colony and more formally at the beginning of the 1800s. It was in the 1800s that the European scramble started for ownership of Africa, and the continent was carved up between the main European powers

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of the time. Britain seemed to have been able to secure a lion’s share of the continent for itself. France, Portugal, and Germany were also able to assure sizable portions for themselves. Germany lost most of its colonies after the First World War. The Belgian monarch, King Leopold, was one of the few European monarchs to obtain a personal share in the division of Africa in the Belgian Congo. For several hundred years Africans were the subjects of colonial powers that imposed their values, boundaries, and expectations on Africans, without regard for existing borders, affiliations, religion, and ownership. The colonial powers came and went as it pleased them, but Africans were seen as unwelcome guests in the “Homelands.” Even worse, the “natives” became strangers in their own homelands, or second-class citizens, and often lost say of how their lands could be used. Africa is known to be rich in resources, but these resources served to build the foreign powers and supported their technological growth. Raw material was mined in Africa and transported to Europe, where it was refined and imported back into Africa at huge profits to the colonial powers. Africans’ view of religion was challenged by European churches in support of the colonial powers, and a process was set in motion in which families and tribes were weakened by their adherence to the new European religious practices. Schools and training institutions were provided by the church organizations. These gave easier access for African natives to the new colonial administrative and cultural systems. Often the study material was designed for European circumstances and needs, and the schooling system itself was strange to indigenous Africans. Through the schooling system, more estrangement was brought between children and their families, and between families and their native culture. Children were exposed to Western values and behavior, and had to comply with these expectations in order to get access to colonial benefits. Colonial settlers quickly outnumbered the indigenous inhabitants in especially fertile areas and after several decades of habitation owned the lands; and the indigenous people were relegated to being servants to the colonists on the natives’ own lands. In areas like the Cape Colony human barriers were used on the colonial borders. Some of the people used for these barriers were indigenous but had become displaced for some reason or another, such as the Fingos who had fled the rule of Shaka, or the Griquas who were Khoi but had lost ownership of their lands and were offered alternative sites by the colonial powers. Some tribes were also actively exterminated, such as the Bushmen tribes (San people) who were the inhabitants of large areas of southern Africa for at least 100,000 years. In South Africa, for example, they were allowed to be hunted until the start of the 20th century. Of course, the philosophy of Social Darwinism was based on Darwin’s theory of evolution, and it attempted to apply evolutionary theory to the

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development of society. Well-known social scientists belonged to this category (e.g. W. G. Sumner, John Dewey, and William James in the United States; Herbert Spencer in Britain; Ernst Haeckel in Germany; and C. A. Royer in France). It was especially the Spencerian approach that took on an ardent racial aspect. Spencer coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” and was opposed to any support for the poor as nature would want to get rid of them. Followers of the Spencerian approach, such as De Lapouge, studied ancient skulls in order to discern the innate racial differences between races. In a further development, Francis Galton in Britain raised the opinion that “inferiority” and “superiority” should be objectively described because of the concern of the degeneration of the species taking place as a result of the less fit starting to procreate faster (Watson, 2000). These arguments were sometimes institutionalized in government policies, in e.g. Indiana in the United States through anti-miscegenation laws (prohibiting inter-racial marriages) and later in Apartheid in South Africa. The theory attempted to give scientific credence to the superiority of some races above others as a natural progression. At the pinnacle of social development, of course, was Western society. Examples of how this “science” was practiced and how it effected Africa can be found in the history of Saartjie Baartman, whose body was posthumously dissected and exhibited for many years as a specimen of a primitive, one of the Cape Khoi, in French and British museums. Other extremist theories, such as that of “the eleven lost tribes of Israel which found their home in Britain” and Nazism, were a result of social Darwinism. The colonists imported more than their own presence with them. They imported several deadly diseases, like smallpox, pneumonia, measles, and the like. These had devastating impacts upon the indigenous populations of Africa during the 17th and 18th centuries. The natives had never developed immunity to the diseases, because they had never been exposed to them prior to the arrival of the Europeans.

TRADE WITH AFRICA Trade with Africa took on a strange turn as it was more a matter of trading of African people than goods. Thousands of Africans from West Africa were treated as articles of trade and were transported by European ships to colonial destinations such as the Americas, West Indian Islands, and the like. Thousands of Africans’ work therefore directly contributed to the wealth of the European civilizations. As Africa became colonized, more of its mineral wealth was discovered and “harvested.” The slave trade had been banned from 1830 onward in the British colonies, but afterward Africans became a source of affordable labor for the mines in Johannesburg and the colonial farms. The more they came into contact with Europeans, the more they lost

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their land, traditions, language, customs, and identity. In turn, that made the indigenous inhabitants more helpless and exposed in the face of European power. It also made them more exploitable and “slaves” to the financial power. It has left a bitter taste in the mouth of indigenous people, often without their having any real understanding of what happened to them. When one compares the investment that was made in the colonies by the European powers, however, one finds huge discrepancies. Little was done to add value to the mineral wealth of the colonies. Had this been done, it would have contributed to the colonies at least having an equitable trading relationship with the colonizing powers. The lack has left a legacy of poverty in the colonies. At first the leather, elephant teeth, wood, and whale oil were “harvested” to satisfy the needs of the colonizing powers. On the one hand, that contributed to a thriving cattle industry, but also to the slaughter of wild animals both on the coast and inland, some to the brink of extinction. It was to the benefit of the colonial powers to keep as many people as possible “in the dark” as that lowered the chances of opposition to the policies, and it also maintained the possibility of cheap accessible labor and resources. The policies practiced by the colonial powers have left Africa behind in terms of modern technological and financial abilities. After the colonies became independent, a system was left behind that did not make sense to the new leaders. Moreover, they were left with few if any trained administrators. The continent was subdivided by artificial borders, and states were created that did not recognize the traditional kingdoms or tribal boundaries. The newly independent states were left with an infrastructure that the inhabitants could not maintain. The citizens of the new states were relatively poor, which made the government structures expensive for them. This was true also because they did not benefit directly from this infrastructure. The indigenous people were forced to adopt other cultural systems like foreign financial systems and social relations such as state-regulated marriages. In the 19th century a black citizen of the Eastern Cape Colony could vote or own land if he or she had 50 pounds in a bank and was able to do some writing and reading. Such persons had to buy back the lands that belonged to them, and from which they had often been driven by force by the colonial armies. In the colonization of Africa, the Church and Islam seem to have played no small role, because in both cases the spread of the religions was accompanied by strong cultural and political interests. It is interesting that in northern Africa, Arabic is a lingua franca as English is mostly in southern Africa.

INTERNAL AFRICAN ISSUES Of course, evil is not only the result of external forces in Africa. When one looks at the period that followed on the independence of the Colonial Territories in Africa, one is struck by the violence of the past centuries by

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Africans to Africans that has been passed forward to later generations. One is struck by the dichotomy between the expressed political ideals and the practiced realities. At a political level, African independence was characterized by numerous ups and downs in stability. Especially the 20th-century period from the 1960s on, was characterized by enormous instability. Almost all the countries in Africa experienced major periods of instability and upheaval. Often these periods of instability followed on changes of government or leadership. Many of the countries’ early leadership was characterized by despotism and autocratic leadership. Examples of such ruling are numerous. The Congo under President Mobutu Sese-Seko is one such an example, as is Uganda under Colonel Idi Amin, Egypt under Colonel Gamal Abd al-Nasir, Libya under Muammar Gaddafi, the Republic of Central Africa, Liberia under Charles Taylor, and recently Zimbabwe under the rule of President Mugabe. South Africa just came out of a long period of white single-party rule that ruled mostly in favor of a minority racial group. In some cases, such leadership led to periods of intense suppression and terror (e.g., Idi Amin, Mugabe, and so forth). In some cases the rule was characterized by a more benign form of despotism or single-party rule, as in Egypt, Libya, Zambia, and Malawi. One might be perplexed by how a continent that is supposed to adhere to the principals of ubuntu can also become the home of periods of suppression, terror, and misrule. Often the authoritative forms of rule that were in sway led to great tragedies, such as the famines in Ethiopia and Somalia and the genocides in Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Sudan, and Biafra. There are almost no countries on the continent that were not affected in one way or another by violence since the 1960s. Up to the time when the Soviet Union came to an end, some of the regimes could still remain in power because they could bargain on support from one of the superpowers that vied against each other for influence. Instead of a Western understanding of ubuntu, which could probably best be understood as something similar to the ideals of the French Revolution of liberty, equality, and fraternity, one sometimes finds paternalism, nepotism, and corruption. It is probably because ubuntu is a term that refers to strong familial ties and therefore also to strong expectations of help from powerful persons in the family.

Paternalism Paternalism is an important aspect of ubuntu in that the heads of families in Africa are traditionally male figures. The names of men are embedded in the family trees or lineages as important “milestones” of the history of a family or tribe. Although power is often negotiated within the wider family context, the paterfamilias can expect to have a strong say within the confines of a specific family. Traditionally it was expected that as head of his house, the father would see to the maintenance of the family and its survival, and be

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the intermediary with other families in a tribal context. Within the narrower context of his family, it would be expected that wives and children would bow to the final decision of him as father and head of the house. As familial bonds have weakened over the past decades, many of the controlling measures on the role of the father have also weakened. Men would still demand the same kind and amount of respect without the contributing involvement of the man. Violence then frequently accompanied what was interpreted as opposition to his power.

Nepotism Beneficence is often regarded as the ubuntu in leadership. A leader with ubuntu is a leader who cares for his people like a father, who respects the citizens, who is concerned about the poor and the powerless and who takes up their case for them. At the start of a leader’s or party’s reign, there is often much talk about how this value is going to be lived out operationally. Nepotism can be described as the negative side of the caring role of the father. As someone who has influence, he should see to it that his dependents achieve the most they can, especially if he has access to the resources needed. Of course, when this is done in a way that excludes capable people from positions that they deserve and that are necessary for organizations then it starts becoming a problem. It really becomes a problem when someone in power, especially in government, starts supporting himself with “like-minded” people or favorites, or family, as that opens the way for the misuse of the position and to the detriment of the needy and powerless. It leads to the misuse of resources for personal gain and power and to its restriction to a small elite group. As we see in Africa in ubuntu, these characteristics are often closely combined and intertwined to the detriment of the continent.

Corruption The third aspect that I raised at the outset is corruption. Under ubuntu, it would be understood as accessibility. A person with ubuntu is available in times of need. Such a person would go out of his or her way to assist people in need. It is an obligation for members to assist each other in the family with financial, ritual, and social needs. But it would be expected that “the one hand washes the other.” It would therefore be expected for those who are helped to show some form of gratitude. Children, for example, have to do it when they have started working by caring for the needs of the parents, who reach the end of their abilities to care for themselves. Mostly it is not seen as a burden, but as a privilege and a way of showing appreciation. Problems arise when the accessibility comes at a price, especially these days within the administrative and financial environment.

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In Africa one of the key problems is the big disparity between rich and poor, and also the high number of poor compared to the rich. One of the contributions to the rich becoming rich is the access they have to resources and the way in which these resources are used. The sad truth is that African resources are often not used for the benefit of the many inhabitants. The poorly maintained infrastructure, the many expensive white elephants on which resources are squandered and that bring no added benefits to the already existing infrastructure, the lack of technical knowledge and absence of a philosophy of excellence, and the myopic application of plans are all examples of how the riches of Africa are not used to the people’s benefits. Often, economic strategies were implemented against all good reason, for the sake of the powerful retaining power, or for the sake of enriching a small minority—often the allies or family of the powerful. Even sadder is the fact that these resources are often made available to other interests, companies, or nations because of the incentives involved for the privileged minority. Corruption eventually spirals down to all the sectors of society. In some countries on the African continent, it is well known that officials will often hold clampdowns and surprise inspections at the end of the month in order to supplement their official income. The economy of the black market is even equal to that of the normal market in some countries. The effect of that is that even less money is made available for governmental structures. Other types of corruption lie in not applying public regulations, such as health, building, services, and the required people care. This eventually contributes to further crises, accidents, inefficient services, and neglect. Of course, the poorest suffer the most and are often robbed of opportunities for their improvement and empowerment. Inefficiency in South Africa has robbed many services of a steady fiscal support because of the inefficient delivery of services. In some cases, it is expected that bribes must be paid in order for services to be rendered, or opportunities made available to service providers. Theft and destruction of public property in some cases seem to be deemed acceptable, leading to interruptions of services and unnecessary expenditures on the repair of national assets. The secondhand price of popular metals (scrap), such as copper and aluminium, has led to widespread theft of wiring and pipes in many African countries to the detriment of the economies. Because of the lack of other public works programs, nothing exists to counter this practice.

JEALOUSY Respect and sacrifice for the sake of the community are important aspects of ubuntu. Self-love and individualism can never stand in opposition to the communal good. Mbiti (1969) describes this philosophy as “I am, because we

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are; and since we are, therefore I am.” An individual is part of the whole; he or she cannot exist without the community, as his existence is dependent on it. For long periods, the community served as an individual’s support structure in good times and bad times. The state of affairs has not been supplanted until recently by the role of a central government (e.g., in the Republic of South Africa [RSA]). The RSA has started developing a social security system through the provision of grants. The family and community are still the major sources of support in times of great need and crisis. As such, the individual or group has to suppress its personal desires in favor of the wider community’s good. On the other hand, there is also the understanding that all is shared and that there has to be a balance between how resources are allocated to groups and individuals, because in a world with limited resources, those who overindulge do it to the detriment of others. Jealousy is the attitude of the individual or group who has become disgruntled and annoyed with a position that compares poorly with other individuals or communities. There is displeasure with an imbalance that has occurred which is attributed to the use of unfair practices (e.g., magic). Jealousy can become a driving force to set things “right” and can lead to taking drastic action against the target, through subversive tactics at work, by gossiping (spreading a bad name), and/or by generating “bad luck” through “poison” and “magic” (using extraworldly powers). It does take on an ominous character because the victim often does not know who the jealous one is, and in some cases retaliation can involve people who are innocent. The victim of jealousy runs the risk of being undermined, opposed, and even physically injured. Some of the xenophobic attacks in South Africa carried characteristics of jealousy (e.g., “[T]hey are stealing our jobs”). Jealousy goes with bearing a grudge and can lead to hatred and violent acts, such as xenophobic attacks, rape, and murder as forms of inflicting punishment. The division of people of sub-Saharan Africa into different race groups has made other races vulnerable to such attacks, such as the Indians in Uganda under Colonel Idi Amin, or the whites, Coloureds, and Indians in the Republic of South Africa.

CONCLUSION In this essay, we gave attention to evil as produced by how power is brokered and used on the African continent. The abusive and inefficient manipulation of power and resources, ironically, have led to the lack of an adequate and sustained power supply. The evil that originates from the misuse and abuse of power is felt at all levels of society, from the individual struggling to make ends meet every day to national enterprises that do not function properly because of the four-way alliance of evil between, paternalism, nepotism,

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corruption, and jealousy. Evil is incarnated in the infrastructures of Africa, and their destructive function. In spite of Christianity growing fast in the sub-Saharan Africa, little of the ethical stance of the faith has been adopted on an individual and national level. It is especially worrisome, as the overarching value of ubuntu is being proclaimed as African, filling African communities and nations with unproductive alternative values that eventually lead to the impoverishment of thousands of the inhabitants of the continent. The warning against the desire for power (“to be like God”) in Genesis (3:3), and against the distancing it brings between humankind and the Creator, should not be taken for granted or taken lightly. In Africa it has contributed to widespread misery and destruction. What is so insidious about power and the desire for it is that it infiltrates the most noble of ideals (e.g., ubuntu) and transforms it into selfserving nepotistic ideology. There is still much to be said about how power has led people to become involved in evil practices toward the environment in Africa and toward its many inhabitants. This evil is especially tragic in the case of the animal life, which cannot speak for themselves and are in danger of being exterminated. It seems as if more and more species are being added to the endangered lists while humankind’s population growth seems to be unstoppable, adding more and more pressure to the planet’s limited resources.

EXCURSUS: A SELF-CRITIQUE In rereading this essay, we became aware of our hypocrisy as writers. We realized that it was fortunate that we called it an essay, because that indicates a personal look at the topic. The fact that we still include references seems to indicate that we want to get confirmation from other voices about the views that we have been discussing, which is the academic approach to follow. It allows other readers to see that we do not claim to be that original. The problem, of course, lies in the academic and “objective” look at what we call African. We are both African, but it is easier to discern what is “evil” in those who do not belong to your own cultural group. If there is a lack in this essay, it is the lack of a discussion of “evil” in Afrikaners or in British South Africans. In conversations we recently had with students, mostly from an Afrikaans and British background, it became apparent that especially those from a British background were unaware of having any culture. What we have also personally experienced is that our attitudes are influenced by which language we speak and in whose company we are. When we speak Xhosa and are involved in a social setting with the traditional Xhosa people, it is not easy to observe the moral reasons for judging the evil in the Xhosa culture. When we use English or Afrikaans, it is easier to be aware of and judge the “other.” In both examples, we lose the intensity with which we are aware of ourselves.

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The objective and academic approach seems to isolate us from our own involvement and contribution to social evil, as it masks the “observer” who takes on the guise of the third-person uninvolved narrator. The problems that we raised above about the external and internal contributions of power to evil in Africa would therefore have to apply to ourselves as do the discussions of paternalism corruption, nepotism, and jealousy. That is, as Africans of any stripe, we are either contributors to or complicit in the evil in Africa. The difficulty is finding a suitable mirror in which to view ourselves. As we have coined these terms, they probably hide aspects of ourselves for which we would rather not find terminology, as our own underbelly would then be exposed. Some thoughts that come to mind, however, that need to be explored within this context are as follows: keeping ourselves uninvolved, underinvolved, distanced, individualistic, and narcissistic regarding the complex problem of evil in Africa. On the surface, it would appear that these terms would be far removed from the communalistic approach of what is traditionally seen as African or “primitive.” When we see how many people can be covered by those terms, they show that individualists are not alone in their individualism but that the form of communication of the African community has changed. That brings us to the point that researchers like Foucault have tried to point out. Power has become an internalized force in us. The next two or three decades will probably point out to us what the effect of this force has been. Will we still have the forests and woods that we need for a healthy earth, or will most of them have succumbed to the pressures of globalization? Ironically, our own endeavors at writing contribute to our demise as we write on paper that in turn adds to the pressure of acquiring more wood. Possibly we have reached the stage that, like King Belshazzar, we will not be able to read on the wall the words “Mene, mene, tekel, parsin,” because we are too busy writing them ourselves (Dan 5.25). Maybe what Christ said about the ease of seeing the splinter in the other’s eye and interpreting it as a beam also applies to this essay and to us, who find it so difficult to see the beam in our own eyes, tending at best to call it a splinter.

REFERENCES Becker, P. (1974). Tribe to township. Frogmore: Panther. Berkhof, H., & De Jong, O. (1967). Geschiedenis der kerk (7th Edition). Nijkerk, the Netherlands: Uitgeverij G. F. Callenbach N.V. Giliomee, H. (2004). Die Afrikaners, ‘n biografie. Capetown: Tafelberg Uitgewers Beperk. Kapp, P. H., Moll, J. C., Scholtz, P. L., De Jongh, P. S., & Grundlinghm, L. W. F. (1985). Geskiedenis van die westerse beskawing. Deel 1. Oorsprong tot intellektuele rewolusie. Pretoria: HAUM. Levy-Bruhl, L. (1928). The “soul” of the primitive. London: George Allen and Unwin. Mbiti, J. S. (1969). African religion and philosophy. London: Heinemann. Mbiti, J. S. (1975). Introduction to African religion. London: Heinemann.

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Mtuze, P. T. (2003). The essence of Xhosa spirituality and the nuisance of cultural imperialism (Hidden presences in the spirituality of the amaXhosa of the Eastern Cape and the impact of Christianity on them). Johannesburg: Vivlia. Shillington, K. (1989). History of Africa. London: Macmillan Press. Tempels, P. (1959). Bantu philosophy. Paris: Presence Africaine. Watson, P. (2000). A terrible beauty: The people and ideas that shaped the modern mind: A history. London: Phoenix Press.

ch apter 1 1

The Concept of Evil in African Christian Theology Xolani Sakuba

INTRODUCTION African Christian theology emerged out of an attempt by African Christian scholars to articulate Christian faith as it became manifest throughout the African continent. Central to this initiative were two concerns. First, these scholars were concerned that Africa lacked a theology that truly reflected Christian faith as it became incarnate amongst the people of the African continent. Second, these scholars were concerned that Africans were being bombarded with prefabricated forms of theology that did not speak to cultural and religious aspirations of the African convert. Amongst many things that have become characteristic of African Christian theology has been a deliberate attempt by several African Christian theologians to formulate, or reformulate, some of the key aspects of the Christian faith with a view toward giving an African twist to some of those aspects. Parallel to and as part of doing this, several African Christian scholars had to rigorously familiarize themselves with African pre-Christian cultural and religious worldviews with a view toward improving their ways of communicating the Gospel. Over the years and customarily, African Christian theologians have directly and indirectly reflected on a number of issues as they continue to articulate their faith and that of fellow Africans. As it is the case with all those who come up as leading thinkers within a religious tradition, the views of African Christian theologians on a number of issues pertaining to African religiosity have become instructive and in most cases even synonymous with

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all that might be considered to be official positions as far as the Christian faith tradition on the African continent is concerned. Against this backdrop, this chapter looks at how the phenomenon of evil is understood within the context of African Christian theology. However, it would be crucial for a reader to be warned from the onset that like all traditions, African Christian theology is not a homogenous entity without internal differences. Instead, a closer look at this tradition reveals that there are obvious nuances within the terrain of African Christian theology and these are mainly due to what might be seen as different approaches on the part of those who are doing theology within this tradition. Because of the way in which these nuances usually tend to influence how certain concepts are understood by different people within a tradition, a quick look at various strands in African Christian theology might be necessary. To do this, the next section offers a brief overview of the emergence and development of African Christian theology, with a view to showcase various strands within this tradition.

AFRICAN ENCULTURATION THEOLOGY: THE FIRST GENERATION OF AFRICAN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY Although reflections by Africans on issues relating to Christianity go as far back as the fourth century during the time of the church fathers through the work of giants such as St. Augustine (the bishop of Hippo), Tertullian, Cyprian, and many others, in Sub-Saharan Africa such reflections began to emerge in the 17th century through figures such as Kimpa Vita, who used to live in the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo, and later in the 19th century through the work of repatriated slaves such as scholars Edward Blyden, Holy Johnson, Alexender Crummell. and Bishop Samuel Crowther. However, the official institutionalization of what is now generally known either as African theology or African Christian theology took place in Ibadan, Nigeria, in 1966 under the auspices of the All African Council of Churches.1 The key resolution that emerged out of this consultation, which was adopted by almost all those who attended, is probably well captured nowhere else other than in the following quotation: We believe that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Creator of heaven and earth, Lord of history, has been dealing with mankind at all times and in all parts of the world. It is with this conviction that we study the rich heritage of our African peoples, and we have evidence that they know Him and worship Him. We recognise the radical quality of God’s self-revelation in Jesus Christ: yet it is because of this revelation we can discern what is truly God in our

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pre-Christian heritage: this knowledge of God is not totally discontinuous with our people’s previous traditional knowledge of Him. (Dickson & Ellingworth, 1969, p. 16)

As shown in this resolution, one of the major issues to which all delegates in this consultation agreed upon was the importance of the pre-Christian African religious and cultural heritage for all those who wished to do theology in the African continent.2 It became clear for theologians present in this consultation that it is through having a deeper understanding of the richness of this African heritage that one could understand the religious aspirations of African people and that it is in understanding those aspirations that one can be able to genuinely understand and therefore be able to articulate the faith of an African convert. It is this realization by African Christian theologians that later gave rise to an interest in African religions and cultures. As a result, African theologians started to publish books and articles on the subject of African religions and cultural traditions.3 Parallel to this were publications that dealt with questions of methodology. Although African Christian scholars were all in agreement that the pre-Christian religious and cultural heritage was crucial for doing theology in Africa, there was a slight disagreement as to how exactly to go about doing that. There were those who thought that perhaps the best way to do this would be through embarking on what came to be known as adaptation.4 Others felt that adaptation was too artificial for it implied that there was nothing wrong with western theology and that all that had to be done was to adapt that theology into an African context. Those who objected to the adaptation model were of the view that what was needed instead was a more in-depth knowledge of the African faith systems, for that would then allow a theologian to communicate the gospel using the language people could understand.5 Apart from a clear and deliberate strong focus on a study of African religions and cultures, African Christian theologians have produced books and articles on a number of themes in areas such as biblical hermeneutics, systematic, homiletics, and missiology.6 The first generation of African Christian theologians who did work in these areas did so within the context of what came to be known as an African Christian theology of enculturation.

AFRICAN LIBERATION THEOLOGY Although enculturation theology paved the way for a theology that reflected Christian theology that was truly African, not everyone was comfortable with this approach. For example, there were those who felt that the enculturation approach with its strong emphasis on the retrieval of traditional African religions and cultures did not speak to more urgent issues that

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were challenging the African continent and its peoples. One such theologian was a Cameroonian by the name of Jean-Marc Ela. Ela felt that while African scholars, both those who were working in the field of theology and those in African political philosophy, were obsessing over issues of culture, Africans were struggling with poverty; diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS; malnutrition; economic underdevelopment; unfair trade relations masqueraded as globalization; the IMF’s strangle hold on African nations, including the enforced Structural Adjustment Programmes; as well as racial discrimination, which at the time was still prevalent in countries such as South Africa.7 On this basis, the work of Ela and those who were like minded such as Bénézet Bujo (1992) and Engelbert Mveng (1983, 1988) constitutes what is now generally referred to as African liberation theology. For African liberation theologians, the issue of the African past constituted an obstacle to the liberation of Africa (Ela, 1986, p. 122). First, most of these theologians were of the view that the entire discourse on African identity belonged to a Western conceptual heritage. Second, they pointed out that the very movement which supported the retrieval of pre-Christian African heritage characterized the aspirations of a petit bourgeois who were straddling the fence between European culture and African tradition (Ela, 1986, p. 123). Third, and most importantly for African liberation theologians, to put it in Ela’s (1986, p. 126) words, “the cultural traditionalism that feeds the authentic fire glosses over the basic economic exploitation constituting the colonial economic system.”8 The close proximity between African liberation theology and South African black theology may lead one to think that the latter shared the same sentiments regarding the importance of African religions and cultures. However, this is rather difficult to say, given that South African black liberation theologians have always seen the task of retrieving African religions and cultures as one of the key objectives of black theology.9 This is despite the fact that until after 1994, the main preoccupation for South African black theology was that of critiquing the ideology of the apartheid government. It is only after 1994 that South African black theologians began to increasingly show interest in the theme of culture and national pride.10

AFRICAN WOMEN ’ S THEOLOGY Another equally important development in African Christian theology was a result of an increased participation of women Christian scholars in the wider theological discourse that was taking place in Africa. African women theologians carried out what was probably the most piercing critique of the work of the first wave of African Christian theologians. At the center of African women theologians’ concern was the view that African Christian theologians, especially those who were advocating for inculturation, were

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portraying African cultures in terms of a romanticized traditional past with a special focus on an idealized communal life in the pre-industrialized African village. This, as far as these theologians were concerned, was none other than a blatant cover-up for some of what these women saw as inherent evils that were committed by men against women in the name of culture and tradition. Leading African women theologians such as Mercy Oduyoye (1979, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 2001) and Musimbi Kanyoro (2002) bemoaned the tendency of the first wave of African Christian theologians to refer to (African) culture as though it was innocent, apolitical, neutral, and a simple given. They argued that all cultures, African cultures included, were social constructs that were mediated according to given social structures. As far as these theologians were concerned, their (male) counterparts in the first wave of African Christian theologians were turning a blind eye to the evidence that proved that over and above cultures being social constructs, cultures and African cultures in particular were inherently patriarchal and thereby hostile toward women. This deliberate overlooking of reality, as they would argue, pointed to a conspicuous lack of critical consciousness (on the side of their male counterparts) that was necessary to uncover the ideology of domination that was inherent in African cultures. To further illustrate the element of romanticizing in the way the first wave of African Christian theologians handled the theme of culture: African women theologians identified several aspects of African culture, particularly those which they thought needed to be challenged (see Kanyoro, 2002; Mutambara, 2006, p. 181; Phiri & Nadar, 2006, p. 11). In addition to the charge of romanticizing, African women theologians also accused their male counterparts of suppressing all those elements of African cultures that are life enhancing and favorable toward women. It is on this basis that these theologians opted for what they called cultural hermeneutics. In other words, one may say that calls for cultural hermeneutics by African women theologians were based on the realization that not all aspects of African culture were a subject of concern. It is this critique by African women theologians that prompted leading African Christian theologians such as Maluleke to issue warnings concerning the dangers of romanticizing the African cultural heritage. In addition to pointing to the dangers of overlooking the patriarchal nature of African cultures, the likes of Maluleke and Mugambi went further to warn that unnecessary romanticizing of African traditions and cultures would lead to what Wiredu (2003, p. 1) has referred to as the preservation of anachronistic practices in the name of cultural preservation. That includes the spreading of the fallacy that the only worldview that exists in Africa is a traditional African worldview. Linked to this warning is the view that African Christian theologians do not seem to take cognizance of the impact of things such as globalization and

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consumerism in contemporary African urban cultures, a view that has led to a situation whereby certain aspects of African cultures, particularly those that came about through Western influences, are not readily acknowledged as authentic aspects of African cultures or that certain cultural activities are exclusive to certain races. As some (Kwame Appiah, 1998, 2003, in particular) have argued, this has led to a situation whereby a number of phenomena that are crucial in the process of cultural change (e.g., “cultural hybridity,” “cosmopolitanism,” “globalization,” and “cultural diffusion”) are hardly taken into consideration as significant factors that African cultures are susceptible to. And this has created the impression that most African Christian theologians seem to understand the phenomenon of cultural change mainly from the point of view of acculturation while disregarding other equally important factors as insignificant. That is despite the fact that throughout their writings, most African theologians do acknowledge that African culture is not static.

EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY IN AFRICA A further development in the field of African Christian theology came in the form of a concern by those African Christian theologians whose theological inclination favored a more evangelical approach. The major concern for these theologians was that the Bible remains the only source of theology. Because of this fundamental conviction, African evangelical theologians critiqued the first wave of African Christian theologians over their emphasis on the continuity between African primary religions and cultures and Christian faith. One would recall that for African inculturation theologians, preChristian African religious heritage served as a preparation for the gospel. Amongst leading African evangelical theologians the name of a Byang Kato, a Nigerian theologian died at a very young age, comes up. Although the theme of culture was not necessarily a taboo for African evangelical theologians such as Byang Kato, they nevertheless believed that African traditions and cultures were totally incompatible with the Christian faith and that African Christians needed to make a complete break with the past. Similarly, Kato (1975) saw no salvific value in African religions and cultures, hence he rejected the idea that African religions and cultures constitute a preparation for the Gospel. Last, Kato (1975) was totally opposed to ecumenism on the basis that ecumenism encouraged liberalism and syncretism. Although it may be true that to a large extent this continues to be the typical position of African evangelical theology with regard to the link between the traditional African religious heritage, it is equally worth noting that this position has recently been debated in African evangelical circles (Chitando, 2006, p. 100). Similarly other African evangelical theologians— for example, Kwame Bediako—have become more supportive of the view

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that African pre-Christian heritage plays a pivotal role in the formation of an authentic African Christian identity. For example, although Bediako is no doubt sympathetic to the views of Byang Kato, he nevertheless sees a great value in the work of some of the leading representatives of the first wave of African Christian theology such as Idowu, Mbiti, and Mulago.11

RECONSTRUCTIONIST PERSPECTIVE Perhaps the most recent development in the field of African Christian theology has taken place in the area of Jesse Mugambi’s theology of reconstruction. Like other major developments in African Christian theology, a theology of reconstruction was to a greater extent a response to work of the first wave of African Christian theologians. However, unlike either liberation or women theologians, Mugambi’s is more of a suggestion for a way forward than a passionate critique of the inculturationist approach. Although cognizant of the obvious gaps in the work of the first wave of African Christian theologians, Mugambi nevertheless demonstrates a deep appreciation for the contribution of scholars such as John Mbiti and Bolaji Idowu for highlighting the role of African religions and cultures in the development of contemporary African Christian religiosity. For example, commenting on John Mbiti’s pioneering work on African traditions and philosophy, Mugambi remarks that Mbiti managed to pull off what no other African scholar before him (Mbiti) has ever succeeded to do. However, Mugambi (1998, pp. 8–9) also notes with concern that early African Christian theological writings have tended to concentrate more on what he calls “theological anthropology” with a focus on ethnographic descriptions of African communities and their response to the Christian faith. Similarly, he further notes that the work that was produced by the first generation of African Christian theologians is neither introspective nor speculative. In response to this, Mugambi (1998, p. 31) proposes a shift toward theological introspection and self-criticism and such a shift, as far as he is concerned, should be modelled around the theme of reconstruction as a new paradigm for African Christian theology. What becomes clear in what Mugambi suggests is that the theme of culture can no longer continue to dominate the theological discussions in contemporary African Christian theology as this was the case in the first wave of African Christian theology. Instead, he proposes that an “African Christian theology of the future” has to be guided by themes such as reconstruction and development.12 Likewise Mugambi notes that the first wave of African Christian theologians have tended to adopt a reactionary attitude toward the impact of colonialism and missionary theology on the self-image of the African peoples. This, as far as Mugambi is concerned, poses a number of challenges especially pertaining to issues of methodology in African Christian theology. For

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example, he observes that unlike in African philosophical scholarship the issue of methodology has received little attention in the work of the first wave of African Christian theologians (Mugambi, 1998, p. 9).

PENTECOSTAL AND ZIONIST THEOLOGIES Another often forgotten or overlooked development, despite its significance, in African Christian theology is that of the emergence of Pentecostal and Zionist theologies. Alan Anderson (1992, p. 7) classifies African Pentecostals into three major streams, namely, Pentecostal mission churches, Independent Pentecostal churches, and Indigenous Pentecostal-type churches, also known as the Spirit-type churches or Zionist-type churches (also see Hollenweger, 1972, pp. 149–171). Anderson’s classification is very crucial in this regard in the sense that in most cases Zionist churches are not usually grouped as Pentecostal churches. However, that Zionist churches are Pentecostal in nature becomes clear once one takes into consideration the emphasis put on the Holy Spirit by members of these churches with regard to such things as healing, and prophecy. Typically, African Pentecostal theology is a biblically based theology that puts more emphasis on the work of the third person of the triune God that is the Holy Spirit. According to this theology, the promise that the Lord made during the Pentecost can still be realized today. That means, through the Holy Spirit people can be saved from their sinful lives, can be baptized in the Holy Spirit, can be healed, and more importantly can speak in tongues. For this reason African Pentecostal theologians13 tend to put more emphasis on issues such as the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, the fruits or the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the deeds of the Holy Spirit. According to African Pentecostal theology, God is working through the Holy Spirit. God uses the Holy Spirit to communicate with people. It is the Holy Spirit who regenerates the sinners. This emphasis on the Holy Spirit however does not mean that African Pentecostals or Pentecostal movements in general simply overlook other themes of the Bible. As already indicated at the beginning of this section, the Pentecostal nature of the theology of the Zionist churches lies in their understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit. What makes the approach of theologians within this tradition unique however is that unlike your other Pentecostal theologians Zionists tend to adopt a more positive and accommodative attitude toward African religions and cultures. As a result, Zionist churches are known for their conspicuous integration of several aspects of traditional African cultures and worldviews in the way they do theology. In the light of the above overview of the major developments in the history of African Christian theology, one can then safely say that there are six major strands within this theological tradition. As it has already been indicated, a concept of evil within the context of African Christian theology is

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to a greater extent influenced by some of the nuances seen in these various strands. In the next section we look at how this plays out in how theologians within these strands understand the phenomenon of evil.

TOWARD UNDERSTANDING EVIL IN AFRICAN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY In Christian theology the theme of evil is usually addressed in relation to the notion of sin or as something that is inseparable from human sin. To be more specific: unlike in traditional African worldviews, in classical Christian theology evil is considered to be the result of sin and sin is understood to be that which human beings are fully responsible for. As a result of this, any discussion or treatment of the theme of evil in classical Christian theology starts with sin, for there is a strong belief that these are two sides of the same coin. In Christian theology, therefore, an investigation into the nature of evil automatically lends one into inquiring about the relationship between sin and evil. A quick glance in into how this discussion has been carried out in classical Christian theology before we look at African Christian theology might be necessary.

The Origins of Sin Does sin come from God? Does it come from some supernatural being that is in opposition to God, or does it come from human beings? This is one of the most difficult questions within the history of the Christian doctrine of sin. In the history of the Christian faith, there are three fundamental positions in response to the question of the origins of sin, namely, dualism, monism, and human responsibility for sin.

Dualism Thinkers who followed this position understood the origins of sin to be in a cosmic power, which is hostile to God. In accordance with this understanding, there were two hostile supernatural beings, one responsible for goodness, and the other for evil and sin. This position is called dualism. This idea became popular in early Christian theology due to the influence of Gnosticism, Marcionism, and Manicheanism. Augustine himself supported this idea when he was still a follower of the Manicheans. This explication of the origins of sin gained support from many, for it protected both God and human beings from being seen as authors of evil. In spite of all the support dualism enjoyed, the church rejected it on grounds that it suggested that God have an opponent who was equally powerful. The church could not allow the idea of having two Gods, for that seemed to be an insult to the sovereign power

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of the living God. Having rejected dualism, the church had to come up with another explanation. Hence there is a position called monism.

Monism Under the full conviction that God is the creator of all that there is including sin, and also cautious not to repeat the same mistake of dualism, monistic thinkers reached a conclusion that God was the origin of sin. This found expression in statements such as “from him and through him is all things.” Sin therefore could not fall outside of this confession (Berkhof, 1986). Berkhof (1986, p. 202) observes that those who followed this idea felt that they were backed by a number of biblical passages, which seemed to agree that God ordained sin. Berkhof quotes a number of passages such as Exodus (4:2, 8:15), Romans (9:17), 1 Samuel (16:14), and Matthew (18:7). The Church nevertheless also rejected this position on the basis that God cannot combat sin and fulminate against it if God wanted it in the first place. This implies that there must be another explanation for the origins of evil. This leads us to the third position, which is human responsibility for sin.14

Human Responsibility for Sin In this position, the church came to the conclusion that human beings are solely responsible for sin. This means that they have no excuse, and no scapegoat, which can absolve them from this responsibility. This position later became the official position of the church with regards to the origin of sin in Europe and in the United States. Although the church is not moving from this position, debates over the issue of the origin of sin did not come to an end. First, to affirm that human beings are solely responsible for sin, for some, seemed to ignore or undermine the role of Satan, or the devil in the biblical narrative, as the one who invites or entices human beings to commit sin. On the other hand, there were those who, indirectly, saw the origins of sin neither in God nor in human beings, but in the nature of creation itself. A classic example of this is the notion that God created human beings out of nothing, which makes them changeable and imperfect. This aspect of human nature manifests itself in the freedom of the will that makes it impossible for a human being to depend on a supreme being, but also to turn away from it and so condemn him or herself to a loss of being. Thomas Aquinas, for example, believed that God caused evil by accident. In other words, God created everything good, and out of this good came sin. Other figures that contributed debates of this nature include Paul Tillich (1957, 1968), Friedrich Schleiermarcher (1928), and Reinhold Niebuhr (1941).15

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How Can Human Beings Know Sin? (The Knowledge of Sin) Can human beings understand and know sin on their own? Western Christian theology has always maintained that this is not possible. A general Christian response to this question is clearly reflected in the words of Berkhof as he says, “Knowledge of sin is faith knowledge. What God calls sin goes much deeper and is infinitely more comprehensive than what we can dig up out of our own “hearts” even with the most merciless introspection” (1986, p. 198). However, there have always been differences in how this is understood in Western Christian theology. Theologians began to pay more attention to this question in and after the Reformation (Berkhof, 1986, p. 200). For Luther, knowledge of sin does not come from human beings. Instead it comes from God via the law, while the knowledge of grace also comes from God via the gospel. According to Luther, “the light of the law instructs us, teaching us that we are under corruption and wrath, and designating all men [sic] as liars and sons of wrath.” He further argues that there are two types of evil that the law reveals, namely inward evil and outward evil. Elsewhere, he argues that the Gospel on the other hand, aims at removing sin from human beings through grace.16 Modern followers of Luther, in line with his thoughts, regard the knowledge of sin as a result of God’s universally accessible revelation in creation, which is owing to man’s (sic) failure to live up to the creation’s mandate, a revelation of wrath (see Berkhof, 1986, p. 200). In Reformed Protestantism, the so-called Further Reformation followed the same direction, but this movement did not connect the knowledge of sin from the law with general revelation (see Berkhof, 1986, p. 200). On the contrary, it found the source of that knowledge in a peculiar illumination by the spirit, which preceded grace. Calvin followed a different direction. He considered the knowledge of sin and the knowledge of grace as opposites: “we mean to show that a man cannot apply himself seriously to repentance without knowing himself to belong to God. But no one is truly persuaded that he belongs to God unless he has first recognized God’s grace.”17 In line with Calvin, Barth did not agree with the view that the knowledge of sin comes from the law, and most importantly not from general revelation, for he saw no difference between the law and the gospel. Instead, using Christology as his starting point in his doctrine of sin, Barth strongly argued that it is impossible for human beings to understand or to know sin in any other way, except through a confrontation with Christ. For Barth, human beings first need to know God who is incarnated in Jesus and only then will they understand what sin is. In other words, for Barth, the experience of sin is exclusively possible through God’s grace in Jesus Christ. This is the only way through which human beings can recognize their sinfulness.18

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What Are the Results of Sin? How Serious Is Sin? Western Christian theology believes that sin breaks the lines of communication between God and his people. In other words what human beings and God shared is no longer in place. As a result of this, human beings lose one thing that they need most for their survival: God’s love. Gestrich (1997) would say they lose what he calls “divine splendour.” Defining sin, Berkhof (1986, p. 194) writes that “sin is the negation of the centre around which the existence of human beings was created.” Without this vital element of human existence, Augustine believed that human beings become blind to the divine truth and to God Himself. Their will is forever biased toward evil or wrongdoing. Sin takes control of the human will. In other words, the will becomes enslaved to sin or evil. This leads to yet another point. It is believed that sin robs human beings of their “freedom.19 That is not all. Sin also makes human beings sick. It becomes a disease that cannot be cured. What, then, does this lead to? Christian theology maintains that having negated God, human beings usually, if not all the time, find refuge in the world or in themselves. Berkhof (1986, p. 195) observes that because human beings stand in the triangular relation of “God-I-the world,” when they refuse to be anchored in God, their only alternative is either to seek fulfilment in the world or the self as the main point of reference. In the latter instance, argues Berkhof, a human being’s goal is self-affirmation and self-realization (see Berkhof, 1986, pp. 195–196). In other words sin either makes us worshippers of nature or makes us our own Gods. Sin makes human beings tyrants. Niebuhr (1941) argues that while we praise ourselves, we also force others and nature to praise us as well. Sin therefore affects the sinner, those around the sinner, and nature.20 In addition, sin does not only affect the sinner, other people and nature. Sin takes control of the whole society, including its structures (Erickson, 1985). Sin pollutes, destructs, and perverts the way things were supposed to be (Plantinga, 1995). The last, and most important thing that results from sin, is that sin leads to death.21 What, then, is the relationship between sin and evil in Western Christian theology? The next section explains how this relationship is understood in Western Christian theology.

What Is the Relationship Between Sin and Evil? In Christian theology, it is often difficult to recognize the difference between sin and evil. However, it is also true that Christian theology treats sin and evil as two different concepts with different meanings, but closely related to each other. The relationship between these two concepts can be outlined as the follows. Western Christian theology regards sin as an act that gives birth to evil. It is believed that once human beings turn away from God, they are

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immediately confronted by evil. Sin gives birth to two types of evil: the evil people commit and the evil they endure (Van de Beek, 1990). This calls for a little further explanation. The evil people endure includes anxiety, fear, disillusionment, suffering, other peoples’ evil deeds, and the power that takes over their lives. The evil that people commit consists of cruelty that takes the form of deceit, discrimination, torture, destruction of other creatures (including the environment), and injustice. For Deist (1991), as far as the Old Testament is concerned, an act of insubordination (i.e., sin) produces evil, which suffocates life. When, in the creation narratives, Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree, they created evil and summoned death and a divine curse. Hammer (1990, pp. 321–323) notes that the story of Cain and Abel forms the first account of evil in the Bible. He argues that throughout this part of the Bible, sin is defined as temptation to do evil. According to this description therefore, evil is the product of sin.

EVIL IN AFRICAN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY Now that we have some idea of how the concept of evil features in a larger Christian discourse we can now turn to how the same concept is understood in African Christian theology, a scholarly tradition that reflects on Christian faith as it manifests within the African context. African Christian theology is part of a wider tradition of Christian theology, albeit operating within an African context, and for this reason an investigation into a concept of evil in African Christian theology should be carried out within the context of the relationship between sin and evil within this tradition. The issue of how the relationship between sin and evil is understood in African Christian theology is one of the most difficult subjects to comprehend. An investigation into this subject is immediately faced with two methodological problems. First, not much has been written on sin and evil in African Christian theology. To be more specific, up until the writing of this chapter, no African Christian theologian has published a book on this topic. Second, the literature that is available,22 as limited as it is, does not always deal with issues of sin and evil in African Christian theology. Instead, when writing on this subject, most authors tend to spend more time on sin and evil in African traditional religion.23 Due to these problems, several other related topics such as sorcery, witchcraft, healing, exorcism, and salvation have to be investigated. In spite of these problems, a few comments can be made on the relationship between sin and evil in African Christian theology. First, someone may argue that most African Christian theologians except for those who come from the Evangelical and Pentecostal background agree that an African Christian theological doctrine of sin and evil has to take into consideration a traditional African conception of sin and evil. These theologians reflect

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this in all the material that they have published on sin. Second, someone may further argue that there are two basic positions from which the issue of sin is understood in African Christian theology. The first position follows the traditional Christian doctrine of sin, which defines sin as alienation or estrangement from God. According to this position, to sin is to consciously remove oneself from the presence of God. In other words, to sin is to be selfish, self-centred, to have pride, as well as to be disobedient toward God.24 One would note that followers of this position link the entire notion of sin to a broken relationship between human beings and God. The second position, on the other hand, tends to follow a traditional African understanding of what sin is. As far as this position is concerned, sin is an act that is morally wrong, not necessarily in the face of God, but in the face of the people as well. In this context, therefore, when someone speaks about sin he or she may be referring to what society considers wrong. That would include such actions as smoking, drinking, beating one’s wife or not wearing the standard dress code required in the church.25 This view of sin is very close to what Pobee calls respectability.26 Unlike the first position, the second position tends to use the society, or the well-being of the community, as the point of departure for what it means to sin. Thirdly, one may also argue that, when it comes to dealing with the issue of sin, African theologians, like their counterparts in Europe and the United States, are faced with the challenge of answering various questions that form part of the doctrine of sin. This chapter focuses on only one of these questions, which is how African Christian theologians understand the concept of evil with a special focus on views pertaining to the relationship between sin and evil in African Christian theology. There are two ways in which one can investigate how this relationship is understood in African Christian theology. First there is what I call the two contrasting positions classification, and second there is what I call the four contrasting positions classification. In the first classification, one would find that there are two major positions from which the relationship between sin and evil is viewed within the context of African Christian theology. The first position is that sin is the source of evil and the second one is that evil is the source of sin. In the second classification, there are four positions in terms of which this relationship is understood in African Christian theology. The first position is that sin leads to evil, whereas at the same time evil can lead to sin, but the latter happens only in exceptional cases, hence it is not emphasized. The second position is that sin is the product of evil, and evil can be a product of sin even though the latter is not emphasized. The third position is that evil is the product of sin, period. The fourth position is that sin is the product of evil as much as evil is the product of sin. In other words, they produce each other equally. In terms of how the following sections are

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divided, the first section looks at the first classification, and the second section deals with the second classification.

TWO CONTRASTING POSITIONS IN SIN AND EVIL

Evil as the Consequence of Sin That evil is that which results from sin forms a major part of the African Christian doctrine of sin. This thought is common, especially among those who understood sin as alienation from God. Also, it is probably the most common way in which most African Christians and theologians understand the relationship between sin and evil. When they teach about sin during their Sunday sermons and Sunday school classes, preachers and Sunday school teachers from all denominations teach that sin leads to evil. Parents and elders also teach the same thing whenever they offer some sort of guidance to those under their care. Every African child who is brought up in a Christian home knows that Adam and Eve were chased out of the Garden of Eden because of their sin. The most common expression attesting to this fact among the Xhosas of South Africa is that “Umvuzo wesono bububi,” which means “The prize one gets out of sin is evil.” African Christian theologians, coming from all trends of African theology, know and are part of this teaching by virtue of being Christians. Apart from the fact that most people in Africa take it for granted that sin leads to evil, this is also reflected in the writings and sayings27 of African Christian theologians across the spectrum. Let us then take a look at how theologians from different trends of African theology reflect on this position.

African Enculturation Theology Within the context of African enculturation theology evil consists in human suffering that people experience when they are not under the protection of Jesus Christ. This has to be understood in the light of how African Christian theologians understand the person of Jesus Christ or African Christologies. In African Christologies, Jesus Christ is conceived of as a proto-ancestor, a big brother, a chief, protector, and so on.28 All these attributes of Jesus Christ point to the protective nature of the person of Jesus Christ without which human beings become victims of evil. But more importantly African enculturation theologians see evil as that which becomes possible through sin, with the latter being conceived of in terms of alienating one’s self from God Whom human beings know through Jesus Christ Who is conceived of as the proto-ancestor of all Christians. This is clearly reflected in the work and thoughts of African Christian theologians such as John Mbiti (1989), Harry Sawyerr (1964, 1972), Adeolu

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Adegbola (1969), and John Pobee (1979). In his analysis of the concept of sin among the Yoruba of Nigeria, Adegbola (1969, pp. 130–133) takes the Yoruban view of sin as that which produces evil as its consequence and uses it as his defense against those who previously concluded that Africans have no sense of guilt or sin. From this, we immediately get an idea of his position on the relationship between sin and evil. For example, throughout this discussion one can see that his defence indicates the fact that the Yoruban concept of sin does not contradict his Christian understanding of what sin is. This also comes out in a statement he makes about the doctrine of sin in Africa: A Christian doctrine of sin close to the heart of African ontological morality will begin with a definite recognition of sin as fundamentally an inward problem of character. The cause of sin will be seen as lying at the centre of human personality, springing out of man’s urge for vital force, consisting of the inner motives animating the search for life force and the extent to which one is able to universalize this life force. (Adegbola, 1969, p. 133)

This line of thought also comes up in John Pobee’s work albeit in a different form. Pobee defines sin as a violation of God’s demands and the challenge to his honor, integrity, and dignity, as well as an act which does not contribute to the welfare, and continuance of the family; does not conform to the standards of love; while it also sunders the cohesion of the society by destroying the personality of both the victim and the perpetrator. (see Pobee, 1979, pp. 116–119)

Three forms of evil resulting from sin are quite clear from Pobee’s understanding of sin: absence of growth, disunity, and the destruction of human personality. Pobee’s understanding of the relationship between sin and evil is firmly based on his emphasis on the individual responsibility for sin. For example, elsewhere in his discussion he stresses the fact that (1979, p. 116) the attribution of sin to personal forces of evil does not absolve man (sic) of his individual and personal responsibility for sin. He also goes on to say the mainspring of evil in a human being is lust. In other words man’s (sic) lust for earthly objects, an act that results from turning away from God, is the mainspring of evil. Harry Sawyerr, (1964, pp. 60–63; 1972, pp. 126–137), another leading theologian who belongs to this strand of African theology, seems to agree with Pobee and Adegbola. For example, Sawyer seems to be quite certain that sin is nothing other than that which leads to evil. Like Adegbola, he seems to be fascinated with the aspect of an African traditional anthropology that looks at sin as that which bears bad consequences. This is especially

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true with respect to the part whereby sin is understood as the violation of one’s individual or group rights by another, and thus the violation of the authority of the victim’s guardian spirits, an act, which calls for punishment because of its consequences in society. To show his fascination with this idea, he suggests that the Christian teaching in Africa must simply substitute the God of Jesus Christ for the various spirits. This according to him will not only preserve the traditional African understanding of sin but also enhance and transform it into that of the covenant sealed with the blood of Jesus (see Sawyerr, 1964, p. 63). Here we can see that Sawyerr understands evil as the product of sin. If this were not the case he would not have been able to find this as the common feature, which could easily be understood by people both as Africans and as Christians. In other words, this African conception of sin fits very well with Sawyer’s idea of what the relationship between sin and evil is. Without any doubt, we can therefore conclude that the idea of sin as that which leads to evil is clearly reflected in the thoughts of African enculturation theologians. That takes us to how the concept of evil is conceived of in African liberation theology.

African Liberation Theology For African liberation theologians, evil consists in any form of human intention, action, and design that is geared toward infringing on fellow humans’ rights to live life in freedom and to the fullest.29 Such human action or design may include things such as blatant violence, for example in the form of war, genocide, use of force to restrict human movements and control freedom of speech and of the press, and denying other access to equal opportunities on the basis of race, gender, age, class, or ethnic group. Also included here are subtle forms of violence and infringements usually found in highly sophisticated establishments guided by highly oppressive ideologies. Such establishments may include things such as a political system, a form of governance, an economic system, classism, a patriarchal society, and the like. One would note that a system could be regarded as evil due to its potentiality to produce evil. Evil as far as African liberation theologians are concerned also consists in human suffering that the marginalized endure when those who are aware of the undesirable state of things choose to be quiet and passive. Like African enculturation theologians, African liberation theologians also look at evil as that which results from sin, albeit from a different point of view. The only main difference between liberation theologians and theologians from other trends of African Christian theology is that they understand sin mainly from within the framework of being sinned against,30 and in terms of a failure to rise up against an oppressive system or regime. For instance, within the

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circles of African liberation theology, it is believed that the sinful actions of the oppressors may lead to evils such as the suffering of the oppressed. Hence, Simon Maimela (1991) believes that the idea of sin and evil in African anthropology, whereby sin is measured in terms of the life of the individuals who suffer injustice, oppression, and destruction at the hands of their fellow human beings, can be a valuable contribution to Christian theology. In this regard he writes, This African perspective on life, which lays greater emphasis on the wrongs and evils which human beings commit against one another, is the one which African Christians should try to lift up and offer as the African contribution to the theological reflection on the great questions of sin and salvation. . . . For it reminds the church that sin is not only an evil activity which is directed against God but also has to do with all the evil deeds which are directed against our human fellows in the society. (Maimela, 1991, p. 12)

It is also within this same line of thinking that Maimela (1982, p. 51) criticizes the traditional concept of sin. As far as he is concerned, in traditional Christian conceptions of sin, sin is only understood as a personal problem and as an abstract idea, which must be discussed theoretically with reference to obedience to some divine laws, laws that are not familiar to African people.

Zionist Theology For theologians in the Zionist traditions, who by the way are usually church leaders with no formal theological training, evil consists mainly in such things as sickness and lack of prosperity. Even within this context evil can be seen as a direct product of sin.31 Analyzing the concept of sin in “The Church of the Lord,”32 Turner (1967, pp. 359–361) observes that members of “The church of the Lord” have a view of sin that is based on the Bible, with special emphasis on scripture and on sin as a human responsibility rather than on personal misfortune. He further reports that even though the role of the supernatural evil spirits is not denied in this church, the magnitude and reality of this demonic realm is not allowed to clear human beings from personal responsibility for their own sins. Instead, because the Lord is believed to have power over all the forces of evil, if the evil spirits capture a human being, that human being is seen as a sinner or as being alienated from the Lord. To be captured by evil forces, in other words, is seen as a form of punishment by God (Turner, 1967, p. 361).33 G. C. Oosthuizen (1967), another well-known scholar of African Independent Churches, makes the same observation regarding the Church of Nazarene. He notes that, according to Shembe, sin is

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a negative kind of mystic quality, which weakens a person’s umoya, a burden he carries, through which evil spirits empower him; it is a material defilement which adheres physically to the unclean person until it is ritually washed away. The greatest negative effect of sin is that it puts a curse on a person. (Oosthuizen, 1967, p. 121)

Gerhard Van der Merwe also observes the prevalence of this conviction in a study he conducted in 1989 among the followers of the Zionist Christian Church in Pietersburg. According to the preliminary findings of this study, members of the Zionist Christian Church regard sin as an act that results in physical evil such as accidents, illness, harmful interhuman relations, and death (Van der Merwe, 1989, pp. 200–201). He also discovers that certain specified diseases are considered to be the direct consequences of certain types of sins (see van der Merwe, 1989, p. 201).34 Another way in which this idea is reflected among the AICs, is through their emphasis on the ritual of confession of sins. This ritual is performed whenever a person is suffering from a disease or any ailment or problem that is believed to be the direct result of a sinful act committed by the sufferer. It is believed that, only when the sinner confesses all the sins, can the healing take place or the problem be solved. This belief comes out of the conviction that sin leads to the evils of sickness, or to problems that make one’s life a living hell.35

African Evangelical Theology For African evangelical theologians, evil consists in a form of suffering that results from being alienated from God, thereby not being able to benefit from God’s grace, which all human beings require if they are to be rescued from their sinful nature. Once again, African Christian theologians who come from an evangelical background also firmly subscribe to the idea that evil is that which becomes possible evil comes. As far as they are concerned, this is the only relationship that exists between sin and evil. This view corresponds with this group’s strong belief in the individual responsibility for sin which, according to them, is the only truth that the Bible or the “Word of God” teaches about sin. Byang Kato (1936–1975), a world renowned African Evangelical theologian from Nigeria who in a very short career managed to stand out as the main spokesperson of Evangelical theology in Africa, is very significant in this regard. In his criticism of the Jaba’s (his clan’s) belief system and of African Christian theology on the issue of sin, Kato (1974, p. 15; 1975) completely rejected any view that takes the social aspect as the point of departure in understanding the issue of sin. He observed that this is a trend in both the Jaba concept of sin and African Christian theology (also see Bediako, 1992, p. 388).

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With regard to the relationship between sin and evil, he made it very clear that all human problems are a direct result of sin. Commenting on the human crisis, he argued that human miseries such as exploitation, disease, abject poverty, deprivation of life, and sickness are the results of sin. He then goes on to say that human efforts like the provision of basic human needs and political liberation are not the final answer for man’s (sic) root problem, for such a problem lies squarely in sin (see Kato, 1975, pp. 15–16).36

African Pentecostal Theology African Pentecostal theologians have always believed that evil that takes the form of human suffering and problems and that it is the direct outcome of sin. One may argue that this conviction has to do with this trend’s origins in the worldwide Pentecostal movement. African Pentecostals believe that problems such as drunkenness, smoking, adultery uncertainty, hunger, unemployment, boredom, homelessness, indifference, and hopelessness are the direct results of being alienated from the Lord. Their entire theology is based on this belief. In accordance with this conviction, they believe that once a person allows Jesus Christ, who offers himself graciously and forgives the sins, to enter into one’s life, such a person’s problems will diminish and the sinner will become free of all the problems associated with his or her sinfulness. Filled with the Holy Spirit, a sinner goes through a process of regeneration, a process that restores the sinner to his or her original perfection. Sin in this context seems to be mainly understood in terms of being separated from the Lord. In South Africa, most Pentecostal African theologians or leaders such as Elias Letwaba, Edward Mutaung, Engenas Lekganyane, Job Chiliza, Nicholas Bhengu, Richard Ngidi, Frank Chikane, and Mosa Sono are known for their ability to heal the sick and help people with different problems. All these leaders believed that the sufferer should allow Christ to dwell inside him or her and forgive the sin before he or she can be saved from sickness and other forms of evil (see Anderson, 1992, pp. 36–55). Walter Hollenweger, one of the most respected scholars of Pentecostalism, confirms this in his analysis of the Pentecostal doctrine of justification. He also confirms that in this regard, African Pentecostals share this view with their Pentecostal counterparts from all over the world (see Hollenweger, 1972, pp. 315–320; 1997, pp. 247–257).37

Evil as the Source of Sin That evil is the product of sin is not the only way in which the relationship between sin and evil is understood in African Christian theology. It happens that evil can also be regarded as that which from time to time can produce sin.

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African Christians across the spectrum either share this belief or are aware of its existence. For example, in Africa it is very common to hear people referring to a sinful incident as the work of the devil or of the evil forces, or to hear them saying, “uSathana uyabasebenzisa abantu bakaThixo,” meaning “The devil is using God’s poor people.” Those who share this view believe that there are evil forces that can possess someone and cause him or her to act in ways that are beyond his or her control. For example, they believe that some mysterious force can possess a person and cause him or her to commit sinful acts such as incest, rape, or murder. In South Africa, especially among the Xhosas, this is known as ukubulawa, which means to be killed. To be killed means that the person is totally under the spell of the evil force. This can happen even if someone is a devoted member of the church. For example, if a supposedly good man rapes a child or a woman, and this is exposed, it is possible that a verdict may be that the whole incident was the work of an evil spirit. In a case like this, both the rapist and the raped are the victims of this evil force. The perpetrator would remain a sinner, but the evil force is regarded as the main cause of his sin. It might happen that the aims of the evil one were either to harm the reputation of the rapist or to destroy the future of the rape victim. This may also be the case with a young man or woman whose behavior is regarded as antisocial. All his or her crimes could be regarded as the plans of the evil spirit. In cases like these, evil does lead to sin, because in both cases, the victims are not aware of their actions. If you are not aware you are also not responsible for your sins. Something else is, in this case, the evil spirit, which causes people to sin. However, this view is not as dominant as the previous one, because those who share it are usually careful of being seen as either defending themselves or those who are close to them. Nevertheless, the truth is that this view does exist within African Christian theology and for that reason cannot be ignored. People think of sin as the product of evil when they believe that some evil force is behind the sinful act that has been committed. Also, they are more likely to think in these terms when the previous reputation of the sinner does not correspond with the nature of the sinful act, which he or she has committed. The classic example of how African people think of sin as the product of evil is when they try to make sense of the nature of witchcraft. I choose witchcraft because for most Africans witchcraft is the greatest of all sins, and the witch is the greatest of all sinners. Before doing that, let us briefly look at what is meant by witchcraft.

Witchcraft Witchcraft38 is any human endeavor that is aided by mystical powers in order to harm or to manipulate events according to the liking of a witch

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(Mbiti, 1979, p. 202). In other words, for an act to qualify as witchcraft, its doer has to receive help from some form of a mystical power. Hence Africans regard sorcery and magic as just another form of witchcraft. Through witchcraft, witches can make people sick in many different ways. Bewitched people suffer from all sorts of diseases, but the most feared ones are amafufunyane, amadliso, ukubekelwa, ibulawo, and ukuxhuzula. People suffering from amafufunyane become schizophrenic. Those who are diagnosed with idliso usually suffer from fatal stomach aches. If a person is diagnosed as ubekelwe, he or she suddenly feels pain in the foot or a leg. To qualify as ukubekelwa, the pain has to be life-threatening to such an extent that one’s leg may even have to be amputated. Ibulawo is something that makes one unable to function in a normal way. For example, if someone is unable to conform to the rules of the society and nothing can be done about it, that person is regarded as umlwewe. Apart from making people sick, it is believed that witches can also kill people through poisoning their food (victim’s food) and mysteriously inflicting them with deadly diseases. In Africa, many deaths are attributed to witchcraft. Even today, there are people who seem to be convinced that witches who are jealous because of other people’s successes can cause HIV/AIDS. Through their powers, witches can manipulate the outcomes of an event. For example, it is believed that a witch’s child can quite possibly become an “A” student without putting in the required effort. Witches can make people fall in love with them. Because of their bad reputation, those who are involved in witchcraft are not welcome in most societies. To conclude, it is important to note that witchcraft involves two things, that is, a mystical power and the destruction of relationships and the well-being of the society. Hence people label as witchcraft anything that is mysterious and destructive39 to society. Let us then look at the origins or the nature of witchcraft. Most Africans believe that witchcraft originates from the evil within human beings. They argue that evil human beings do everything in their power to acquire the mystical power, which they use to effect their evil desires, such as to cause chaos in society, and to harm and kill other human beings.40 In this case, the human being (the witch) takes charge of what is going to happen. He or she decides who has to be taken care of and when. All the victims are his or her enemies and the mystical power is just there to help him or her to do those things that are humanly impossible, such as turning him- or herself into an animal or a snake (see Bucher, 1980, pp. 121–123). In this type of witchcraft, the witch is the main sinner. He or she usually receives the most severe punishment, preferably death. Nevertheless, in most cases, members of the community chase the culprit out of the community to find a place to live somewhere else.41 Hence among the Xhosas of South Africa the irhanuga, meaning a stranger, is always viewed with some suspicion, for it may happen that such a person left his or her place of birth because he or she is a witch.

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Apart from this, some people believe that not all witches are merciless evil monsters who simply rejoice in other people’s miseries. Instead, they believe that some witches are merely victims of some mystical powers,42 which are inherently evil. It is believed that there are some evil powers that possess people and use them as tools to do their (the evil force’s) evil works (Gelfand, 1967, pp. 17–22; Bucher, 1980, pp. 106–107; Lewis, 1971, pp. 112– 113; Bosch, 1987, pp. 45–47). It is also believed that some witches pass their powers to whomever they like, usually their own children, in order to continue their legacy. Such a person consequently becomes a witch against her or his own will. In this case a witch is viewed differently compared to the previous case. For example, although some may be angry due to the extent of the damage caused in the society, others may sympathize with the witch, acknowledging that there is an evil force behind the witch that is the main culprit. In other words, even though no one denies that the witch is evil or sinful, some would suggest that something out there has made him or her sin, in this case an evil force. It is this view that resurfaces in the way African people understand the relationship between sin and evil within their present Christian context. Three factors may contribute to the existence and the continuation of this view within the circles of the Christian church in Africa.

Lack of Exposure to the Christian Doctrine of Sin One of the factors that may be contributing significantly in making people to presume that evil can lead to sin, is a lack of exposure to the Christian doctrine of sin. It is a fact that some Christians in Africa have never been introduced to the basic Christian doctrine of sin. This means that they are not aware of some of the core arguments within this tradition. For example, such people would not know the significance of certain expressions within the Christian doctrine of sin, such as bondage of the will, original sin, total human responsibility for sin, total depravity, and God’s grace. Not knowing the position of the Christian doctrine of sin, Africans simply bring into their Christian faith their traditional African way of explaining the mystery of sin, which takes into account the African conviction that human beings are inherently good, and therefore cannot be responsible for sin. What we see in a position whereby people see evil as the source of sin, therefore, is an unchallenged rebirth of a traditional African understanding of the nature and origin of evil. It is unchallenged in the sense that Africans who follow this position are not exposed to the Christian doctrine of sin, which is the only Christian tradition that has the endowment to challenge any form of a dualistic approach to the issue of sin and evil. This view may also be linked to a prevalent lack of theological education among the leaders of the church in Africa.43

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Inability to Differentiate Between Sin and Moral Issues The second factor that leads to the presumption that sin leads to evil within African Christian theology is that most African Christians and African Christian leaders are unable to distinguish between sinning, as understood in Classical Western Christian theology, and breaking the moral codes of the society. For example, for most African Christians, to sin is equal to stealing, drinking alcohol, incest, having an extramarital relationship, not respecting one’s husband, smoking, and so on. In most communities in Africa, smoking is more sinful than breaking all ties with God, pride, self-appraisal, or excessive love for money. This inability to distinguish between sin and the breaking of moral codes not only has reduced God to the level of a judge whose role is to punish those who break the moral codes, but also has made it easy for people to remain within their traditional framework of understanding the relationship between sin and evil. In addition to that, such a moralistic view of sin can also lead to a moralistic view of the gospel.

A Lack of Communication Between Theologians and the Laity The other reason that sustains the presumption of the idea that sin leads to evil is that some African Christian theologians,44 including church ministers and pastors who have at least been exposed to the classical Christian doctrine of sin, are not always successful in communicating what they know about the doctrine of sin to the laity. In such cases no one provides guidance on how the issue of sin is to be understood in the context of the Christian faith. Unlike Europeans and Americans, African lay people are not used to doing their own theological investigations. With regard to that, they rely entirely on their ministers and pastors (Oosthuizen, 1968, pp. 255–261). The remaining part of this section reveals how the view that sin is the result of evil forces features in different trends of African Christian theology.

African Enculturation Theology As it has been indicated in the previous section, African enculturation theologians strongly emphasize the individual’s responsibility of sin. Pobee (1979) made it clear that evil forces do not absolve man (sic) of his responsibility for sin. However, the fact that there are Christians in Africa who think of sin as that which originates from evil is not unknown, or completely rejected, within the circles of African enculturation theology. First, most theologians who follow this trend are church ministers. As church ministers, they know that they, together with other church ministers, have failed, and continue to fail, to communicate any of their knowledge of the classical doctrine of sin, which teaches that sin is alienation from God to the laity. They also know that there are churches that are led by people

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who are completely unfamiliar with the traditional Christian doctrine of sin. These are people whose knowledge of what sin depends entirely on reading the Bible, which they read without doing proper biblical exegesis. African enculturation theologians also know that without a proper exposure to the Christian doctrine, people are bound to make inappropriate interpretations especially when it comes to issues that involve the Christian doctrine of sin. In addition to that, most of these theologians are fully aware of the significant role which evil spirits play in African Independent Churches. Apart from that, Pobee also confirms this when he says that in Africa, witchcraft beliefs continue to hold their ground and to some extent account for the popularity of the spiritual churches, which are sometimes also called ‘witchcraft eradication movements’ because that appears to be the their major concern and preoccupation. So with no apology, one can speak of sin as captivity by the forces of evil. (Pobee 1979, p. 118)

Up to this day, no other theologian has challenged Pobee on this statement. This can only mean one thing, namely, that African enculturation theologians are partly in agreement with the view that evil can lead to sin.

The Theology of the Zionists The view that evil is that which produces sin is definitely affirmed among the followers of the African Independent Churches or the Zionist churches. This is reflected through the emphasis that these churches put on the impact that evil spirits have on human lives and the society at large. For example, followers of these churches believe that evil spirits, which possess human beings with the aim of using them to effect their (evil spirits’) evil deeds, may cause certain forms of behavior. It is believed that this interference by evil spirits in human lives can be reflected in all forms of what is not expected from a human being. That includes such things as failing one’s loved ones and community in all means possible, cruelty, rebellion, pride, selfishness, irresponsibility, as well as stupidity. Sin, which is usually understood in terms of disturbing harmonious communal relationships also, falls within this category of what is not expected from a human being. If viewed from this framework, therefore, sin becomes the product of evil. Also, in accordance with this framework, a sinner is not necessarily responsible for his or her sins, for he or she is sick from evil. Hence healing through exorcism plays a major role in the Zionist church.45 This view of sin and evil reflects a continuance of a traditional African anthropology and worldview within the Zionist churches. Hastings (1976, p. 72) argues that this continuity with the past is “in the concerns they respond to and the complex of rituals and social therapy they employ rather than in any final religious interpretation.

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They do not for a moment deny the presence of spirits to be cast out, witchcraft spells to be loosed, but faced with them they assert the power of God to free and to restore.” He further states that “there are parts of Rhodesia where people who think themselves; bewitched or their child killed by a witch are today as likely to go to the Zionist prophet as to the traditional nganga” (Hastings, 1976, p. 75). Bucher (1980, p. 156) also argues that within the context of the Zionist churches, the prophet substitutes as a divine healer. When the Zionists speak about healing, they not only refer to healing physical sicknesses. To the contrary, they are also talking about psychological sicknesses or mental disorders such as antisocial behavior. This means, in this context a criminal may easily be referred to as sick. If a man does not want to take responsibility for his children, such a man might be referred to as sick. It is also important to note that most forms of sicknesses are always seen to be originating from the “evil one” or the demons. Hence exorcism becomes the most important aspect of healing in the Zionist churches.46

African Liberation Theology African liberation theology also affirms the fact that evil is that which produces sin. African liberation theologians identify such evil in perpetrators of oppression and in various social structures that are designed to oppress and humiliate the weak and the poor (Gutierrez, 1973, p. 232). For example, in South Africa during the time of apartheid, various aspects of the government such as its laws, its policies, its officials,47 and its institutions were regarded as the embodiments of evil. Maimela (1982, p. 50) refers to these as powers of enslavement. Dwane (1977, p. 10) argues that such enslaving powers can be sociopolitical, cultural, and psychological or spiritual. All these forms of evil are regarded as partly responsible for the sins of many South Africans who suffered under the apartheid government in South Africa. A classical example of how this form of evil can be responsible for sin is a lack of trust in God, which many Africans have after they became suspicious of Christianity and the Bible on grounds that it was used by Europeans to effect their evil intents. Black theologians from South Africa, for example, would argue that their theology seeks to show to the poor and oppressed that God is not the enemy of people, instead He is on their side. It is on these bases that sin becomes the product of evil in African liberation theology.48

African Pentecostal Theology That evil can be a precursor to sin also features in an African Pentecostal theology of sin. African Pentecostal theologians express this view in their understanding of the doctrine of the devil and demons. Pentecostal churches

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teach that sin is the work of the devil that sends his agents (the demons) to possess some people and use them as tools to do his dirty work. In addition, these churches teach that the world is being taken over by the devil and all those who are not saved are working for him. In some churches this has completely overshadowed the traditional Pentecostal emphasis on the individual’s guilt for sin. Because most of the time the blame is put on the devil and the demons, people such as those who are HIV-positive are made to believe that the devil and the demons have inflicted their sicknesses on them. Church members with dysfunctional families and relationships are taught that their partners are being controlled by the devil or are possessed, and only if the demons inside of them are removed will they be able to act rationally again.49

African Evangelical Theology That evil can lead to sin in a way that is reflected in our previous discussions is not affirmed in African evangelical theology. As it has been indicated in this chapter, African evangelical theologians refuse to look at this relationship in any other way than that of sin as the origin of evil. However, when it comes to communicating their knowledge of the Christian doctrine of sin to the laity, African evangelical theologians are not different from African theologians from other trends of African Christian theology.

FOUR CONTRASTING POSITIONS CLASSIFICATION

Sin as the Source of Evil—Evil as the Source of Sin According to this position, the relationship between sin and evil is understood mainly in terms of sin, as that which leads to evil and partially in terms of evil as that which leads to sin. In other words, this position recognizes both the first and the second position of the two positions’ classification, albeit on different levels. African inculturation theologians represent a typical example of this position. For example, if asked what the relationship between sin and evil is, most African inculturation theologians would probably respond by saying that sin leads to evil, but if someone else answers differently, they would not challenge that either.

Evil as the Source of Sin—Sin as the Source of Evil According to this position, the relationship between sin and evil works the other way around. According to this position, it is mainly evil that leads to sin, and only in exceptional cases sin that leads to evil. One has to note though that the fact that the other position is less emphasized does not mean that it is denied. The main representatives of this view of

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the relationship between sin and evil are the followers of African Independent Churches or Zionist churches and African liberation theologians, albeit in different ways. In African Independent Churches especially in the Zionist churches, this is affirmed through a strong belief in evil spirits that can control and manipulate human beings into doing things they would not have been able to do if they were not possessed. In liberation theology, this is confirmed by a view that the evil embodied in structures such as an oppressive government, labour policies and various structures put in place by the rich and powerful, cause people, mainly the oppressed, to behave sinfully. Usually this is seen as some form of retaliation or rebellion.

Sin as the Source of Evil, and Equally the Product of Evil According to this position, both the first and the second position of the first approach are equally emphasized. In other words, according to this position, sin is the product of evil as much as evil is the product of sin. Those representing this position are the followers and theologians of the African Pentecostal churches. African Pentecostals have a strong belief in the individual’s guilt for sin. This implies that humans are fully responsible for their sins, and not some external force. Also within the context of Pentecostal theology there is an equally strong emphasis on the role of the devil that works through his agents, the demons. African Pentecostals teach that the demons possess people and use them for their evil purposes, which implies that a person can do something, not out of his or her own will but through being manipulated by the devil.

Sin as the Exclusive Source of Evil This position follows only the first position of the two-position approach. As far as this position is concerned, sin can only lead to evil and not the other way around. The main representatives of this position are theologians from the evangelical churches. Evangelical theologians are completely against any view that gives human beings a scapegoat for their sins. For these theologians, human beings are solely responsible for their sins.

CONCLUSION This chapter has looked at various ways in which the concept of evil is understood in African Christian theology. To explain this phenomenon, the chapter looks at how the relationship between sin and evil is understood in six strands that make up African Christian theology.

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NOTES 1. For more on this, see Parrat (1995) and Muzorewa (1985). 2. For more on the papers that were presented in this conference, see Dickson and Ellingworth (1969). 3. The following are amongst those who produced large amounts of literature on this subject: Alexis Kagame, John Mbiti, Bolaji Idowu, Christian Gaba, Makarakiza, Father Rahajarizafy, François-Marie Lufuluabalo, Vincent Mulago, Jean-Calvin Bahoken, Mongameli Mabona, and many more. This is over and above the literature that was already produced by Western anthropologists who worked in Africa before and during this period. One could think of the work of famous Western ethnographers such as Dominique Zahan, Evans-Pritchard, E. W. Smith, Geoffrey Parrinder, J. B. Danquah, Marcel Griaule, and many others. 4. See Parrat (1995). 5. For more on these terms, see Antonio (2006), Bosch (1987), Parratt (1995), Schreiter (1989), Shorter (1977, 1995), Schineller (1990), and Waliggo et al. (1986). 6. See Ritchie (1994). 7. For a concise account of this trend of African Christian theology, see Ukpong (1984, pp. 53–56). 8. For similar arguments, see Soyinka (1976), Mphahlele (1962), and Mazrui (1980). 9. See an article by Desmond Tutu titled “Black Theology and African Theology: Soulmates or Antagonists” (1997) and an essay delivered at the EATWOT Pan African theological conference, January 6–11, 1991, by Simon Maimela. 10. See, for example, the article in the Journal of Theology for Southern Africa by Luke Lungile Pato (1997). This is particularly true of the work of Tinyiko Maluleke. 11. See Bediako (1992, 1995). 12. For example see Mugambi in “From Liberation to Reconstruction: African Christian Theology After the Cold War” (1995). 13. I was not able to provide references in this regard, for most of this theology is not documented. 14. For more on the origins of sin in Western Christian theology, see Berkouwer (1971) and Berkhof (1986, pp. 201–206). 15. I am not saying that there is neither a fourth nor a fifth position within the context of Western Christian theology in this position. Instead, I want to make it clear that Aquinas and other authors during modernity and during the 20th century were not content with the decision that the church took. 16. See Luther (1958, pp. 223–229), translated by George Lindbeck from Luther’s work published in 1521. For more on the knowledge of sin through the law and gospel, see Berkouwer (1971, pp. 139–231). 17. On Calvin’s thoughts on this subject, see a good survey by Berkouwer (1971, pp. 149–231). 18. For a view of contemporary Western Christian theology with regard to this issue, see Pannenberg (1985) and Gestrich (1997). 19. For more information on how human beings lose their freedom through sin, see a section in Brunner (1952, pp. 118–132)

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20. For a more detailed analysis on the effects of sin on the sinner, on those around the sinner, and on nature, see Erickson (1985, pp. 615–619) and Boice (1986, pp. 199–203). 21. See Erickson (1985), Boice (1986), Jungel (1975, pp. 59–94), Van de Beek (1990), and Hall (1986). 22. There are about six articles written by African Christian theologians on the subject of sin. Adeolu Adegbola wrote an article entitled “The Theological Basis of Ethics Featuring in Biblical Revelation and African Beliefs,” edited by Kwesi Dickson and Paul Ellingworth (1969). Sawyerr wrote two articles, the first one in 1964 entitled, “Sin and Forgiveness in Africa” featured in the Spring 1964 issue of Frontier, and the other one entitled “Sin and Salvation: Soteriology Viewed from the African Situation” in 1972 featured in Relevant Theology for Africa, edited by Hans Jurgen Becken. Simon S. Maimela also wrote two articles, which are both published in The Journal of Theology in Southern Africa. The first one is entitled “The Atonement in the Context of Liberation Theology” (1982), and the second one is entitled “Traditional African Anthropology and Christian Theology” (1991). Pobee wrote a chapter on sin entitled “Sin in African Christian Theology” in Towards African Theology (1979). Mbiti also wrote a chapter entitled “The Concepts of Evil, Ethics and Justice” in African Religions and Philosophy. An article also from Mbiti appears in the AME Zion Quarterly in 1989 entitled “God, Sin and Salvation in African Religion. Oosthuizen wrote a section on “The Concept of Sin in the Nativistic Movements” in Post Christianity in Africa: A Theological and Anthropological Study. Van der Merwe wrote an article on sin in which he reported the findings of a research he conducted on the concept of sin among the Zionists in Kwazulu Natal. This article was published in 1989 in Missionalia. Turner also writes about the concept of sin in a study he conducted among the members of the Aladura Church of Christ. See his “African Independent Church II: The Life and Faith of the Lord (Aladura)” (1967). Kato also makes very brief comments on the issue of sin, but this is not much because he deals with other topics in his papers. See a collection of Byang Kato’s articles and addresses in Kato (1985), Biblical Christianity in Africa: A Collection and Addresses. Also see Bediako (1992, pp. 386–425). 23. More or less 90% of each of the articles mentioned above, except for Kato and Turner, deal with sin only in African traditional religion. Only a few sentences and a paragraph here and there deal with sin in African Christian theology. Even then, almost all these authors fail to be more specific on their own 24. One may say that this position reflects the views of churches, which scholars refer to as Protestant mission churches, including the Ethiopian churches (Oosthuizen, 1992a, p. 16). 25. This understanding of sin is more common among the followers of African Pentecostal churches. 26. Pobee argues that there is a big difference between respectability and righteousness (see Pobee, 1979, p. 105). 27. Most African theologians have not been able to document their thoughts, hence African theology also includes what is called oral theology; see Mbiti (2003). 28. See Nyamiti (1984; 1989, pp. 5–13). 29. Please note that this explanation applies to all expressions of liberation theology, and in this case that includes African women’s theology.

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30. According to liberation theologians, a sinner is the one who oppresses others. Liberation theologians, then, being part of the oppressed, mainly understand sin from the position of being sinned against. 31. I use the word leaders instead of theologians, because their theology, most of the time, is not in written form, as in conventional theology. 32. Also known as the Aladura. 33. For more information on the beliefs and doctrine of this church, see Peel (1968, pp. 114–156). 34. For more information on sin as the cause of certain diseases, see Becken (1972, p. 37), Martin (1964, p. 116), and Oosthuizen (1992b, p. 17). 35. For more information on confession of sin including activities involved in this ritual in African Independent Churches, see Oosthuizen (1968, p. 191), Van der Merve (1989), Turner (1967), and Haselbarth (1976, p. 11). 36. Also see Kato (1975) and Muli (1997, pp. 31–50). 37. One would note that in this section, I discuss Pentecostal theology separately from Zionist theology. Also, I no longer make the distinction I made earlier. The main reason I am doing this now is that, when it comes to their understandings of sin and evil, there are huge differences between Mission Pentecostals, Independent Pentecostals, and Spirit-type Pentecostal churches, widely known as the Zionist churches. 38. Nowadays, people use the word witchcraft to refer to any form of a mysterious action. Sometimes they use it metaphorically and humorously in conversations (Mbiti 1969, pp. 192–193). In this thesis, this word only refers to what people consider to be evil and antisocial. 39. These days, anything that is destructive to society is labeled as witchcraft. For example, a rapist or a corrupt politician or a child molester, may be regarded as a witch. 40. There are also other reasons that make people want to be witches. For example, some people merely want to have dignity because of the aura around witches, whereas others want it so that they may become rich (see Bucher 1980). 41. The diviner or the prophet is the one who informs the community about someone’s witchcraft status. 42. These powers also include witches, as they are also seen as the embodiment of evil that can possess human beings. 43. See Oosthuizen (1968, pp. 255–263). 44. By African theologians, I mean those theologians who are either academics or involved in some scholarly work. 45. See a discussion by Daneel (1992, pp. 195–236). 46. For more on healing in the Zionist churches, see Turner (1967, pp. 141–158), Oosthuizen et al. (1989, pp. 69–241), Ndiokwere (1981, pp. 114–122), and Daneel (1992, pp. 195–238). 47. These include many black government officials as well. 48. Also see Cone (1969, pp. 187–191). 49. Messages such as these came up in almost every sermon that I listen to when I visit a Pentecostal congregation. One can also pick up these views on train sermons and in church pamphlets or in a simple conversation with a member of a Pentecostal church.

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REFERENCES Adegbola, E. A. A. (1969). The theological basis of ethics. In K. Dickson & P. Ellingworth (Eds.), Biblical revelation and African beliefs (pp. 117–136). London: Lutterworth Press. Anderson, A. (1992). Bazalwane: African Pentecostals in South Africa. Pretoria: University of South Africa. Antonio, E. P. (2006). Enculturation and post-colonial discourse. In E. P. Antonio (Ed.), Enculturation and post-colonial discourse in African theology (pp. 1–28). Peter Lang: Oxford. Appiah, K. A. (1998). The illusions of race. In E. C. Eze (Ed.), African philosophy: An anthology (pp. 275–290). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Appiah, K. A. (2003). Race, culture, identity: Misunderstood connections. In P. H. Coetzee & A. P. J. Roux (Eds.), The African philosophy reader (pp. 373–390). New York: Routledge. Ashworth, A. (1996). Of secrecy and the commonplace: witchcraft and power in Soweto. Social Research, 63 (4), 183–208. Barth, K. (1961). Church dogmatics (Vol. 4). Edinburgh: Clark. Becken, H. (1972). Relevant theology for Africa: Report on a consultation of the Missiological Institute at Lutheran theological College, Mapumulo, Natal, September 12–21. Durban: Lutheran Publishing. Bediako, K. (1992). Theology and identity: The impact of culture upon Christian thought in the second century and in modern Africa. California: Regnum. Bediako, K. (1995). Christianity in Africa: The renewal of a non-Western religion. New York: Orbis. Berkhof, H. (1986). Christian faith: An introduction to the study of faith. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Berkouwer, G. C. (1971). Studies in dogmatics: Sin. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Boice, J. M. (1986). Foundations of the Christian faith: A comprehensive and readable theology. Leicester, UK: Intervarsity Press. Bosch, D. J. (1987). The problem of evil in Africa: A survey of African views of witchcraft and the response of the Christian church. In P. G. R. de Villiers (Ed.), Like a roaring lion . . . essays on the Bible, the church and demonic powers (pp. 38–62). Pretoria: Unisa. Brunner, E. (1952). Dogmatics: Vol. 2. The Christian doctrine of creation and redemption. Philadelphia: Westminster Press. Bucher, H. (1980). Spirits and power: An Analysis of Shona cosmology. Cape Town: Oxford University Press. Bujo, B. (1992). African theology in its social context. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis. Chitando, E. (2006). The (mis?) appropriation of African traditional religions in African Christian theology. In E. P. Antonio (Ed.), Enculturation and post-colonial discourse in African theology (pp. 97–113). Peter Lang: Oxford. Cone, J. H. (1969). Black theology and black power. New York: Seabury Press. Daneel, M. L. (1992). Exorcism as a means of combating wizardry: liberation or enslavement. In G. C. Oosthuizen & I. Hexham (Eds.), Empirical studies of African independent / indigenous churches. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. Deist, F. E. (1991). The nature and origin of evil: Old Testament perspectives and their theological consequences. Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, 74, 71–81.

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Dickson, K., & Ellingworth, P. (Eds.). (1969). Biblical revelation and African beliefs. London: Lutterworth Press. Dwane, S. (1977). Christology and the third world. Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, 21, 1–13. Ela, J. (1986). African cry. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis. Ela, J. (1988). My faith as an African. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis. Erickson, M. J. (1985). Christian theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker. Gelfand, M. (1967). The African witch: With particular reference to witchcraft beliefs and practice among the Shona of Rhodesia. Edinburgh: Livingstone. Gestrich, C. (1997). The return of splendor in the world: The Christian doctrine of sin and forgiveness. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Gutierrez, G (1973). A theology of liberation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis. Hall, D. J. (1986). God and human suffering. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg. Hammer, R. (1990). The biblical perception of the origin of evil. American Jewish Congress, 155, 319–325. Haselbarth, H. (1976). Christian ethics in the African context. Ibadan: Dayster Press. Hastings, A. (1976). African Christianity: An essay in interpretation. London: Chapman. Hollenweger, W. J. (1972). The Pentecostals: The charismatic movement in the churches. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg. Hollenweger, W. J. (1997). Pentecostalism: Origins and developments world-wide. London: Hendricks. Idowu, B. E. (1973). African traditional religion: A definition. London: SCM Press. Jungel, E. (1975). Death: The riddle and the mystery. Edinburgh: Saint Andrew Press. Kanyoro, M. R. A. (2002). Introducing feminist cultural hermeneutics: An African perspective. London: Sheffield Academic Press. Kato, B. H. (1975). Theological pitfalls in Africa. Kisimu: Evangel. Kato, B. H. (1985). Biblical Christianity in Africa: A collection of papers and addresses. Achimota, Ghana: African Christian Press. Lewis, I. M. (1971). Ecstatic religion: An anthropological study of spirit possession and shamanism. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin. Luther, M. (1958). Against Lamotus. In Luther’s Works (Vol. 32). Philadelphia: Fortress Press. Maimela, S. S. (1982). The atonement in the context of liberation theology. Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, 39, 45–54. Maimela, S. S. (1991). Traditional African anthropology and Christian theology. Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, 76, 4–14. Maluleke, T (1997). Half a century of African Christian theologies. Journal of Theology for Southern Africa, 99: 4–23. Martey, E. (1993). African theology: Enculturation and liberation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis. Martin, M. (1964). The biblical concept of Messianism in Southern Africa. Morija: Moria Sesotho Book Depot. Martin, M. (1975). Kimbagu: An African prophet and his church. Oxford: Blackwell. Mazrui, A. (1980). The African condition. New York: Cambridge University Press. Mbiti, J. S. (1989). God, sin and salvation in African Religion. AME Zion Quarterly, 100, 2–8. Mbiti, J. S. (1990). African religions and philosophy. Chicago: Heinemann Educational.

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ch apter 1 2

Evil in Australian Aboriginal Religious Perspectives Suzanne M. Coyle

Evil and its effects are experienced by all of us at some point in our lives. It may be experienced on a personal level when a marital relationship is disrupted by an affair of a partner. It can be experienced in a community as increasing numbers of people have cancer from toxic wastes in the ground and water. Whole countries experience evil through racial genocide. Some of the sources of evil can be personified as a perpetrator of violence. Other sources of evil are more amorphous. Western culture has largely sought to identify evil with a particular source of evil or a person as a perpetrator. The response to evil then is to find ways of eradicating the identified source of evil—be it a person or society. Thus, our conceptualization of evil is largely identified through cause and effect. We naturally think of tracing the effect of evil to its cause. Evil is largely understood in Western culture as the opposite of good. Evil and good are paired together. Often, the intertwining of good and evil is overlooked. It is this bifurcation that fits in an “either-or” approach to explaining evil. Something or someone is usually seen as being evil or good. Good is seen as the absence of evil. So, it becomes difficult in Western thought to conceptualize good and evil as coexisting with each other. A resulting response sometimes focuses on the strong effort to “overcome” evil. Christian hymnody is full of references to overcoming evil or Satan. In this posture, evil is seen as being an intruder in God’s creation. The human response is then to fight with every ounce of strength to eradicate it. Western culture continues to respond to evil and to find an explanation for it in our world in various ways. Philosophy seeks to offer reflective discourse

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on evil. Psychological literature focuses more on behavioral explanations of evil. Religion looks at ways that belief in God impacts the human experience of evil. Anthropology also looks at how evil and its effects on humans are represented in various cultures. All of these disciplines offer an important voice in the conversation about our human reflection and response to evil. It is, however, beyond the scope of this chapter to utilize all these approaches when looking at Australian Aboriginal peoples. As a person of white ethnicity I do not assume that I can speak for traditional or contemporary Australian Aboriginal peoples. Given these delimitations, this chapter will focus largely on Australian researchers’ views of how traditional Aboriginal religions can positively contribute to Western views of evil. Much diversity exists among contemporary Aboriginal people today. It would be impossible for one person to speak for all those people. However, a reexamination of traditional Aboriginal beliefs will be enlightening in explaining evil. Traditional in this chapter refers to Aboriginal beliefs and people in prehistorical eras until the coming of whites to Australia. More recent scholarship of the Australian Aboriginal people focuses on the belief that traditional Aboriginal culture and myths form rather sophisticated religious beliefs. This focus differs markedly from earlier anthropological research that saw the Aboriginals as a primitive people incapable of forming religions (Charlesworth, 2005). This chapter will present aspects of Australian Aboriginal religions as important perspectives on evil with the following presuppositions: (a) No one can speak for the Aboriginal peoples; (b) religion scholars can offer religious paradigms that can challenge and be challenged by Aboriginal religions; (c) religion as an academic discipline can lend a helpful approach in presenting Aboriginal spirituality and practices; (d) Australian Aboriginal culture, as the world’s oldest culture, can offer challenges to Western thinking; and (e) the conversation between Aboriginal and Western thought through Christianity can provide a fruitful perspective on explaining evil. Thus, my purpose in this chapter is to be respectful of Aboriginal peoples as I try through the lens of religious scholarship to present their sense of spirituality and practices. I then hope to use this lens to see how evil might be viewed through the multiple perspectives of Aboriginal religions with implications for Christianity in the Western world.

SPIRITUALITY AND RELIGIONS OF AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINALS Prior to 1984, anthropologists and other scholars differed on the nature of Aboriginal religions or whether there was even a definable structure in the many indigenous cultures called religion. Some scholars argued that

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Australian Aboriginal religions were a primitive form of religion. The sociologist Émile Durkheim argued that the sole purpose of those religions was to form some kind of social cohesion. Scholars often understood that that the essential purpose of religion as understood through dominant definitions of religion was not developed sufficiently in Aboriginal religions (Charlesworth, 2005). These interpretations were based on Western thinking that was then imposed on Aboriginal religions. The necessity for religions in Aboriginal Australia to have a different spiritual philosophy of humans and their world than Christian faith in the West was ignored. Since 1984, W. E. H. Stanner emerged as the foremost scholar studying Aboriginal religions (Charlesworth, 2005). Stanner abandoned previous scholarship and declared, “Aboriginal religion was probably one of the least materialminded, and most life-minded, of any of which we have knowledge” (Stanner, 1984, p. 137). He went on to sketch the positive character of the religion: 1. The Aborigines thought the world full of signs to men; they transformed the signs into assurances of mystical providence, and they conceived life’s design as fixed by a founding drama. 2. At best, the religions put a high worth on the human person, both as flesh and as spirit. 3. It magnified the value of life by making its conservation and renewal into a cult. 4. It acknowledged the material domain as being under spiritual authority. 5. Religious practice included a discipline to subdue egotistical man to a sacred, continuing purpose. 6. Religious belief expressed a philosophy of assent to life’s terms. 7. The major cults inculcated a sense of mystery through the use of symbolism pointing to ultimate or metaphysical realities which were known by their signs. (Stanner, 1984, p. 145)

These characteristics evoke Stanner’s admiration of Aboriginal religions. Scholars concur that his observation of Aboriginals was one of respect in which Australian Aboriginal religions are seen as being a “complex (and admirable) body of belief, moral, and social practice, ritual, and even philosophical thought” (Charlesworth, 2005, p. 8). The complexity of Aboriginal religions has increased so that it is generally recognized that there is not one religion but many religions based upon the different cultures over Australia. The many religions reflect the Aboriginals’ relationship to the land and people where they live (Charlesworth, 2005). Further complication arises since the acceptance of Stanner’s recognition of Australian Aboriginal religions as a formal religion. During the last two decades, an increasing awareness and distinction between spirituality and religion have been made. The definitions are difficult to quantify, but such an exploration is important for this discussion.

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Contemporary definitions of religion and spirituality have both overlap and separation. Both religion and spirituality seek to discover whether there is really more to life than we experience in the here and now. Given this focus, hope is a central necessity in both religion and spirituality in order to provide a safe place in times of fear (Bouma, 2009). Western approaches to Christianity have largely focused on the rational approach to religion that results in organizing believers in structures like churches. Such a structure is intended to provide a place for spiritual practices such as meditation, prayer, music, reflection upon the Bible, and so forth. It can be argued that religion without some sense of spirituality is empty. Equally, spiritualities practiced over a period of time tend to form some kind of organization and look a lot like religions. In general, a current understanding of spirituality refers to a more generic religion without the historical or structural trappings. Oftentimes, it is focused more in the here and now than on what gives life meaning beyond one’s self. To narrow the definitions of spirituality and religion for this discussion on Australian Aboriginal religions, a definition from the High Court of Australia will provide our guiding principles. Religious groups offer 1. a belief in something supernatural, some reality beyond that which can be conceived by the senses: 2. that the belief in question relates to man’s nature and place in the universe and his relationship to things supernatural: 3. as a result of this belief adherents are required or encouraged to observe particular codes of conduct or engage in particular practices that have supernatural significance; and 4. the adherents comprise one or more identifiable groups. (High Court of Australia, as cited in Bouma).

Drawing from Australian researchers and the preceding legal definition, I concur that traditional Australian Aboriginal belief did form religions with a vibrant spirituality. These indigenous religions focus around supernatural beliefs that seek to understand human beings and our place in this world. There are varying beliefs among the various cultural groups in Australia. However, the overlapping beliefs offer cohesion while respecting the differing geographical regions and their different impact upon humans. Building upon this premise that Australian Aboriginal religions meet the guidelines of a definition of religion, this discussion will now explore the commonalities of these indigenous religions that offer both a framework and concepts for viewing evil. Further, a discussion will then explore whether evil does exist in the traditional Aboriginal world—and, if so, to what degree.

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COMMONALITIES OF ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER RELIGIONS Certain commonalities exist across the continent of Australia in the various indigenous religions. It is accepted practice now to refer to all of these different religions under the title of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander religions. All references to Aboriginal in this chapter also include the Torres Strait Islanders. The first commonality of all these religions is the concept of the founding drama. The founding drama is understood to have occurred thousands of years ago before the advent of the whites. Preexisting ancestral presences refined the land and its inhabitants into the forms they are today. Some of the myths and stories give explanations of land formations and their effect upon the inhabitants. The Aboriginals have a strong attachment to the land. This long-ago era of the founding drama was when the ancestral heroes established a moral code that served as a unifier for all life. The land, sea, and skies were formed and shaped. Sacred places exist over Australia where the ancestral heroes stopped or were transmogrified into a feature of the landscape according to the Law. For example, a low ridge may resemble the sleeping body of the emu; ghost gums are witnesses to where the Lightning Brothers flashed at their father, Rain; and the clear, sweet water holes make the home of the Rainbow Serpent. The seasons continue because the Law is followed (Bell, 2009). The founding drama was communicated to the Aboriginal people through myths and stories that were passed down from generation to generation. Creation stories are powerful. People need to earn the right to be told a story, and not everyone in the Aboriginal community knows the entire story. Stories are layered with meaning restricted by “age, gender, kinship, place in family, place of birth, residence, marriage and individual traits, aptitude, interests, talent, and disposition” (Bell, 2009, p. 70). Further, the Elders in the Aboriginal community have the right to determine when the stories can be told (Bell, 2009). A second commonality of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander religions focuses around totemism. Many different understandings of totemism exist that are too exhaustive to delineate in this chapter. Some scholars contend that the Aboriginals believed that the totem was alive. Other scholars contend that the totem is primarily a symbol. What can be agreed upon is that totemism in traditional Aboriginal religions always stresses a mystical connection between living persons. Although some scholars have stressed the object of the totem through the years, the more important aspect of totemism is the impact of its mysticism. This mysticism emphasizes the high worth of human beings to the elevation of the spiritual over the material (Bell, 2009).

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The third commonality of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander religions is less cohesive than the previous ones discussed. This is the debate over whether the Aboriginal people were monotheistic and worshipped a supreme being. The concept of the “high gods” has been identified as evidence of belief in a supreme being. Debates have ensued over whether the Ancestors in the founding drama story can be likened to gods. It seems unclear as to whether this interpreted evidence that points to a supreme being is accurate. It could be the interpretation of European scholars placing their Western template over the indigenous religious belief. It could also be the transfer of belief in one god after the white missionaries arrived. Such an apparent similarity in belief in one god could coincide with the missionaries arriving fairly close to the arrival of anthropological and religious researchers (Bell, 2009). It could be also that the belief in a supreme being is rather a powerful creative figure related to the founding drama rather than any deity related to a Christian god. Some references have been found referring to the Great Spirit. Some scholars contend that this is a deity similar to the “Our Father” in Christianity. Other researchers cite the myths around the Rainbow Serpent, which is touted in some scholarly circles as a bisexual snake that connects the land and sky. At this point, the consensus of the debate is that it is over. Too many discrepancies exist to make a determination. It is not likely that the traditional Aboriginals were monotheistic. What can be argued is that there is a transcendent sense of connection in the creation that humans know (Bell, 2009). Another commonality among traditional Aboriginal religions is the concept of Dreaming or Dreamtime. This term is used to apply to the fundamental religious conceptions of all Aboriginal groups (Bell, 2009). The Dreaming can be defined as “a time—or rather a state—of creative force for the enactment of religious ritual, law and customary life” (Carey, 2009, p. 5). It occurred at the time of the Ancestors. But, at the same time, it is more than that. Stanner refers to the Dreaming as a “unity of waking-life and dream-life” (1972, p. 271). The Dreaming is a complex concept and central to cohesion of life for the traditional Aboriginals. It even extends to modern-day explanations about why everyday things occur. The Dreaming through its myths and experience connected the parts of the world that had been broken. Wholeness and brokenness thus coexist with each other. The Dreaming represents a vision of order that helps to counteract the mundane. So, the Dreaming is both the time when the ancestral beings created form and a kind of eternal principle (Morton, 2005). Some Aboriginal groups understand that the Dreaming occurred before humans and will continue to exist after humans cease to exist. This understanding is most analogous to understanding that we have two dimensions of time—the time of our everyday, and the Dreaming. But, whereas we experience out temporal world in the here and now, some Aboriginals would

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understand that the true reality is the Dreaming and not our temporal world as we understand it (Charlesworth, 2005). Some researchers contend that the Aboriginals’ strong connection to the land is part of the Dreaming. Kolig says, “The physical and spiritual universes are not experienced as distinct . . . in the Aboriginal view no distinction existed between man and land: they were quite literally part of each other” (1987, pp. 126–127). If one takes quite literally this interpretation, some of the Aboriginals have a highly spiritualized view of the land that has been made sacred by the Ancestors (Charlesworth, 2005). It is difficult to determine to what extent the importance of the land and the Dreaming are intertwined. Land is certainly important. But because the land is made sacred by the Ancestors, one can argue that the Ancestors are more primal to Aboriginal religious beliefs than the land. Thus, there is a transcendental character of the Dreaming and the founding drama or the Law of the Ancestors. However, it is of a very different kind than of the Christian views of God (Charlesworth, 2005). Several interesting aspects emerge regarding traditional Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander religions as one begins to look at them and how evil is viewed through the lens of these religions. The commonalities just discussed among all these religions lift up several religious dimensions that will be important in determining in what way evil fits in these belief systems. A striking connection these religious commonalities have is an understanding of humans, animals, and land being undeniably interwoven with each other. Traditional Aboriginal religions’ belief is that this creation is bound together with each and that all must respect the others. Humans are part of creation, not stewards of creation as is presented in the Creation story of Genesis. Humans are learning from animals and the land. The understanding is that what happens to one happens to the other. So, a religious sense of immanence arises from this partnership. This sense of rootedness in the here and now at the same time takes on a sacred quality that is passed down from the Ancestors. In a sense, this immanence and awe at the present creation in which we live take on a transcendent quality. It is not the kind of transcendence that Christians usually think of in God, who is wholly other. The transcendence of the Aboriginals is true reverence for this world and its creatures, and it points humans to something that is uplifting—a sense of connecting with something bigger than human beings. This large immanence of life focuses on a much broader sense of time as well. The Dreaming illustrates the sense of the Aboriginal religions’ notion of time being rather free-floating. Whereas Christian eschatology may point to an end time, Aboriginal religions do not think of time through the Dreaming as ending. It goes on and on with no final judgment. Another aspect of Aboriginal religions’ common beliefs is an acceptance of the created world as it is. The many stories of the Ancestors as well as

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those stories earlier anthropologists cited as relating to the “high gods” do not have a god of righteousness as God in Christian beliefs who seeks to overcome evil (Hiatt, 2005). Anthropologists have not found stories even in the founding drama or the Dreaming that focus on transcendent beings (even the “high gods”) who try to help humans overcome obstacles (Keen, 2005). Anthropologists do not find belief in a god who has high moral authority. Life is what it is.

ABORIGINAL RELIGIONS ’ RESPONSE TO EVIL This discussion now turns to the dilemma of how and if traditional Aboriginal religions have a place for explaining evil in its philosophy. To begin this discussion, we will first look at a story that Smith cites as an Aboriginal contribution to wrestling with the problem of good and evil. In the beginning the Great Spirit used to speak directly everyday to his people. The tribes could not see him, but they could hear his voice, and they used to assemble every morning to listen to him. Gradually, however, the tribes grew weary of listening, and they said, one to the other[,] “Oh, I am tired of this listening to a voice. I cannot see to whom it belongs. Let us go and enjoy ourselves by making our own corrobberies. The Great Spirit was grieved when he heard this, so he sent his servant Nurunderi to call all the tribes together again. Nurunderi did so saying, “The Great Spirit will not speak again to you, but he wishes to give you a sign.” So all the tribes came to the meeting. When every one was seated on the ground Nurunderi asked them all to be very silent. Suddenly a terrific rending noise was heard. Nurunderi had so placed all the tribes that the meeting was being held round a large gum-tree. The tribes looked and saw this huge tree being slowly split open by some invisible force. They also saw an enormous tongue come down out of the sky and disappear into the middle of the gum-tree, after which the tree closed up again. Nurunderi said to the tribes, “You may go away now to your hunting and corrobberies.” The tribes went away to enjoy themselves. After a long time some began to grow weary of pleasure, and to long to hear again the voice of the Great Spirit; so they asked Nurunderi if he would call upon the Great Spirit to speak to them again. Nurunderi answered, “No. The Great Spirit will never speak to you again.” The tribes went to the sacred burial-grounds to ask the dead to help them, but of course the dead did not answer. At last the tribes cried aloud. They began to fear that they would never again get in touch with the Great Spirit. Finally the tribes appealed to Wyungard, the wise blackfellow who lives in the Milky Way. He told them to gather round about the big gumtree again. When they were all assembled Wyungard asked, “Did you not see the tongue go into this tree?” The tribes answered, “Yes.” “Well,” said

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Wyungard, “take that as a sign that the tongue of the Great Spirit is in all things.” Thus it is to-day that the aboriginals know that the Great Spirit exists in all things, and speaks through every part of nature. The Tongue speaks in the voice of the wind; he rides on the storm; he speaks from out the thunder. The Tongue is everywhere and become[s] manifest through the bush, the birds, the flowers, the fish, the streams—in fact, everything that the aboriginal sees, hears, tastes, smells, and feels. (Smith, 1970, pp. 182–184)

The telling of this story comes at a time in research about Aboriginal religions when it was believed that references to the Great Spirit in the stories referred to belief in a supreme being. As this chapter’s discussion indicates, that is not the case now. One could say that Smith’s interpretation of this story is an example of how Aboriginals’ response to the problem of good and evil seems to be based upon belief in a supreme being similar to the Christian belief in God. With this understanding, the actions of the Aboriginals in the story were to turn away because they tired of a strong connection with the Great Spirit. They turned to mischief and merriment, and the Great Spirit has his servant call them together. The gum tree encompasses the tongue— seemingly symbolic of the Great Spirit’s voice. The tribes go back to their ways and then yearn to listen for the Great Spirit. The result of their actions is they no longer can communicate directly with the Great Spirit but are able to experience the Great Spirit through nature. The separation of the tribes from the Great Spirit as a result of their behavior is reminiscent of the Creation story in Genesis if the Aboriginals believed in a supreme being that is similar to God in Christianity, who has characteristics of omnipotence as well as compassion. However, my contention based on an understanding that the traditional Aboriginals did not believe in a supreme being with anthropomorphic qualities changes the interpretation of this story. This story does point to an examination of evil but in a very different way from Smith’s interpretation. The Great Spirit in this story is more amorphous than God in Christianity. He talks to the tribes in a voice. He does not reach out to the tribes after their behaviors. His tongue is contained in a tree that becomes part of nature—speaking to the Aboriginals in different ways than a voice speaking to them through nature. Instead of a story of good overcoming evil or good expressing an interest in helping humans with the obstacles of life, this story rather presents a picture of life as it is. The good and bad coexist with each other. The hope that the tribes have of connecting with the Great Spirit is now experienced through nature. In contrast to the active God of Christianity, the Great Spirit does not offer advocacy on behalf of humans. Although not a supreme being in the Christian sense, it can be argued that the Great Spirit

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is something like a life force that is bigger than humans and at the same time part of the creation. Just as this story offers a rather indirect nod to a struggle between good and evil, the research for this chapter could not find discrete references to evil in traditional Aboriginal religions similar to a concept of evil in Christianity and Western thought. Evil in our Western world is understood as both an abstract concept and an active entity in the world. Humans and Ancestors wreak havoc on each other and the world as depicted in traditional Aboriginal religions. References are found to a devil doctor, black magic, and tricksters (Eliade, 1973). At the same time, research seems to indicate that there is not a sense of identifying evil as evil in traditional Aboriginal religions. Black magic and other perpetrators of bad things are rather accepted as part of the way life is. There seems to be little energy expended on trying to eradicate those obstacles in life as does Western culture. In traditional Aboriginal religions, little distinction exists between the sacred and the profane (Charlesworth, Kimber, & Wallace, 1990). This important philosophical emphasis leads me to conclude that evil does not exist in traditional Aboriginal religions as it does in Christian beliefs. I am not contending that the Aboriginals believed that nothing painful or bad occurred in life. Further, the religions did not advocate denial of physical pain. Rather, the myths of Aboriginal religions show that pain and suffering are part of human life and indeed all of creation. How, then, do traditional Aboriginal religions perceive evil in a different sense? Explaining evil in an Aboriginal context can be seen through the commonalities of traditional religions discussed previously. In the first commonality of the founding drama and the Ancestors’ role in that, a general sense of awe and reverence exist for all the world—land, sky, seas, and animals. Recognition is evident in the founding drama and the stories of the Ancestors of the acceptance of everything in the world. As a culture, the Aboriginals are not a violent culture, yet the myths are quite violent at times. It may serve a purpose of giving the society an outlet for expressing this violence in story and not in reality. Through acceptance of bad or evil as the world is created, Aboriginal religions laid the foundation for a unity among all things. There emerges a living energy in the creation that gives everything a purpose for being. Good and bad are seen as an ebb and flow of life. If one is patient and waits, there will be balance to life. One cannot force it. The commonality of totemism among the religions offers an interesting perspective on evil. The traditional Aboriginal religions have an emphasis on immanence as opposed to transcendence in Christianity. Although researchers have a difficult time with thoroughly understanding the full impact of totemism, power comes to the Aboriginals through the naming of the totems—a kind of census or categorizing of who one is and where you fit in

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the world. This does not relate directly to evil. However, if no supreme being exists to protect you, being able to name and touch a totem for your family lineage provides security in the face of bad things. A powerful visual and symbolic picture of connection over generations comes through the Aboriginal religions’ use of totems. In Christian faith, we go to church to see familiar images and symbols of our faith to give us strength in the face of evil. Totems were not in a designated sacred space for the traditional Aboriginals. They were spread over the land and helped the people to connect to a spiritual entity in the world. In this way, the tribes had a visual reminder of a long connection of support to help them stand up to evil. In contrast to a more abstract Western understanding of good and evil, the Aboriginal religions provided a sensate experience of support through totemism that was integrated through the land offering a spiritual connection with the tribes’ physical surroundings. Evil is part of the world just as the totems are part of the world. Our discussion now turns to the two-decade-long debate over whether the traditional Aboriginals believed in a supreme being. Such a belief would provide a unique perspective on evil. In monotheistic religions such as Christianity, questioning how evil can exist in the face of a good god is common. Without a monotheistic belief in a deity, the Aboriginals are not so troubled about why evil exists. It just is. In some sense, one can argue that without the predominance of a good supreme being, the problem of how evil can coexist with such goodness just does not become a problem for the Aboriginals. Not looking to a supreme being, however, does not negate a spiritual sense of connectedness to a kind of life force that permeates the entire world. The traditional Aboriginal religions see this connection with the physical and spiritual as a force that holds them and moves them in the world. With such a strong connection with the land and the environment, it would seem that evil’s hold on the people would be lessened. We now come to the final commonality of the traditional Aboriginal religions to view evil through the concept of the Dreaming. The Dreaming offers an interesting lens for this discussion. In our Western culture and Christian faith, the sense of time is often moving toward an end point. No so in the Dreaming. Although, as our discussion related, the Dreaming is connected with the founding drama of the ushering in of humans and the land, it is much more like a ribbon that connects past, present, and future in no particular order. One could argue that focusing on evil seems less important if one’s religious beliefs connect with time and the world in a fluid ribbon. What may be evil and painful in the present is real enough, but it may also be gone in a spiritual sense in a moment. The traditional Aboriginal concept of the Dreaming gave the people a way to hold on to belief in connection again when they met evil. It truly is a religious belief if we understand religion to be that which helps to face the unknown and make meaning of our lives.

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CONTRIBUTIONS OF ABORIGINAL RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVES ON EVIL TO THE WESTERN WORLD Evil as we understand evil in the Western world does not exist in the world of traditional Australian Aboriginal religions. Although we in the West spend so much time trying to overcome evil with some force, the Aboriginal world overcomes evil by not trying to overcome evil. It is a concept that is rather alien to our culture and one that we could learn to emulate more. By not resisting bad with every fiber of their existence, Aboriginal religions offer a way of perhaps crowding out evil through peace and acceptance—a noble venture if we could learn it. The traditional Aboriginal world relied on a sense of ebb and flow to put evil in its proper perspective. Although this discussion focused on traditional as opposed to contemporary Aboriginal religions, it is helpful to note that the current reality of where evil fits for indigenous people is quite different. With the coming of whites, the sacred land was ravaged, and cultures and people were forced to emulate Western ways. I would contend that Aboriginals experienced evil as the sacredness of their world was violated. Western culture can learn to learn first from others by respecting their beliefs. As Aboriginal religions teach cohabiting with evil, Christianity as interpreted in Western culture could learn to see God as one who joins with us when we approach evil. Aboriginals have a deep respect for learning from life. Perhaps Christians and Western culture could spend more time learning from our encounters with evil and moving forward. There are probably many things that Aboriginal religions can contribute to Christian beliefs in the Western world. One that is sorely needed is our relationship with time. Just as our spirits are not limited by time, so our learning to be rooted in the present could rob evil of its hold over us. Time affects our perceptions. And, at times, we often may perceive things to be evil that are not and not perceive the evil in things that really are evil.

CONCLUSION Traditional Aboriginal culture is intensely spiritual. It is impossible to truly view the world of traditional and by extension contemporary Aboriginals without using indigenous religions as the lens for viewing it. It is quite unique from Christian religious beliefs in the West and as such offers an interesting journey. Through the commonalities of the founding drama and the Ancestors, a belief in a transcendence that permeates the world, totemism, and the Dreaming, helpful explorations enable us to discover that the traditional Aboriginals would not know evil as we Westerners know it. Their clear emphasis on an immanence in life that paradoxically gives them a kind of transcendence makes explaining evil really unnecessary. What is needful is to accept evil as part of an order that will hopefully exercise more good than bad.

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REFERENCES Bell, D. (2009). Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander religions. In J. Jupp (Ed.), The encyclopedia of religion in Australia (pp. 69–118). Port Melbourne, VIC: Cambridge University Press. Bouma, G. (2009). Defining religion and spirituality. In J. Jupp (Ed.), The encyclopedia of religion in Australia (pp. 22–27). Port Melbourne, VIC: Cambridge University Press. Carey, H. (2009). An historical outline of religion in Australia. In J. Jupp (Ed.), The encyclopedia of religion in Australia (pp. 5–8). Port Melbourne, VIC: Cambridge University Press. Charlesworth, M. (2005). Introduction. In M. Charlesworth, R. Dussart, & H. Morphy (Eds.), Aboriginal religions in Australia: An anthology of recent writings (pp. 1–27). Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Charlesworth, M., Kimber, R., & Wallace, N. (Eds.). (1990). Ancestor spirits: Aspects of Australian aboriginal life and spirituality. Geelong, VIC: Deakin University Press. Eliade, M. (1973). Australian religions: An introduction. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Hiatt, L. (2005). High gods. In M. Charlesworth, R. Dussart, & H. Morphy (Eds.), Aboriginal religions in Australia: An anthology of recent writings (pp. 45–59). Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. High Court of Australia. Church of the New Faith v. Commissioner for Pay-roll Tax. 154 CLR 120 as cited in Bouma, 2009. Keen, I. (2005). Stanner on Aboriginal religion. In M. Charlesworth, R. Dussart, & H. Morphy (Eds.), Aboriginal religions in Australia: An anthology of recent writings (pp. 61–78). Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Kolig, E. (1987). The Noonkanbah story. Dunedin, New Zealand: University of Otago Press. Morton, J. (2005). Aboriginal religion today. In M. Charlesworth, R. Dussart, & H. Morphy (Eds.), Aboriginal religions in Australia: An anthology of recent writings (pp. 195–204). Aldershot, UK: Ashgate. Smith, W. (1970). Myths and legends of the Australian Aboriginals. Sydney: Harrap. Stanner, W. (1972). The dreaming. In W. Lessa & E. Vogt (Eds.), Reader in comparative religion (pp. 269–277). New York: Harper & Row. Stanner, W. (1984). Religion, totemism and symbolism. In M. Charlesworth, H. Morphy, D. Bell, & and K. Maddock, (Eds.), Religion in Aboriginal Australia: an anthology (pp. 137–172). St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press.

ch apter 13

Evil in the Three Contemporary Abrahamic Faiths J. Harold Ellens

Notions of evil in Christian history and thought were shaped mainly by two ancient Jewish influences. The first was the Hebrew Bible, and the second was the apocalyptic forms of Judaism. The latter developed between 586 bce and the time of Jesus Christ. The Jesus Movement was a form of apocalyptic Judaism that believed evil came from demonic sources and was propagated in this world of time and space by fallen angels, ruled over by a Prince of Darkness. The subsequent development of the second- to fifth-century Christian Church took various forms. Most of these preserved the notion that evil came from the ethereal world. It arrived either in the manner described in Genesis 6 or in that described in Genesis 3. Judaism continued to think of evil in those same terms until the rise of Rabbinic Judaism between 300 and 600 ce. I indicated in Volume 1 that Genesis 6 was the earliest biblical explanation for the entrance of evil into this world. It came from angels who had sex with women and produced a rambunctious generation of giants. Genesis 3, on the other hand, holds that evil entered the world by a phallic demon that seduced Eve to disobey God. Eve then seduced Adam in turn to join her in disobedience. Those are both intriguing metaphors, of course. When the Israelites were in exile in Babylon, they wrote both of those stories based upon more ancient Mesopotamian myths and legends. Some Israelites in Babylon were more interested in theology and philosophy than in such myth and poetry. They developed more sophisticated notions of how evil got started in this world. Those Israelites created models for explaining evil based on Zoroastrianism from Persia. They claimed that

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either God created evil and put it into the world before creation, by his eternal decree; or it was created by a rebellion in heaven by Lucifer who is now God’s adversary. Those Israelites thought that God either permits that evil or has not yet had time or strategies to conquer and eliminate it. Some of those folks thought there is nothing humans can do about evil since God has predetermined who will be evil and damned or righteous and redeemed. Others believed humans could decide to join with the forces of evil or with God’s forces of righteousness in the world. Some even thought that by choosing the latter you could determine where you fit in the decree of election to salvation or damnation. In any case, almost all early Christians believed that in the end the entire human experiment on this planet would be terminated by a cataclysmic judgment. All evil and evil ones would be exterminated, and the righteous gathered into God’s kingdom (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). Almost all varieties of apocalyptic Judaism were carried over into Christianity in its various early forms. This great variety of Christian “denominations” of the first through the third centuries was streamlined into a unified orthodox form of Christianity by the ecumenical councils during the fourth and fifth centuries ce. That was a result of the imperial edicts of Constantine and the work of the bishops who formulated the official theological doctrines of the church—the creeds. Those who did not agree with the powerful bishops, such as Athanasius, Theophilus, and Cyril of Alexandria, were killed or denounced as heretics, run out of the church, and persecuted by those bishops. By the seventh and eighth centuries, Christianity was solidly established as the main power in the empire, persecuting and attempting to exterminate all other forms of spirituality and religion. During the seventh century, Islam arose in Arabia and developed its religion and theological ideas mainly on the basis of the Hebrew Bible, but without the apocalyptic ideas of postexilic Judaism that had infected Christianity. Consequently, the three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, grew and developed and carried on during the same time frame, as it were, sometimes congenially and often with intense bellicosity. All three took Abraham as their progenitor and developed their ideology from God’s covenant with Abraham in Genesis 12 and 17. Christianity supplemented the OT with the New Testament. Islam supplemented its Hebrew Bible base with the Qur’an, the prophetic deliverances of Mohammed. All three Abrahamic religions were similar in many ways and differed markedly as well. Both Christianity and Islam struggled with many of the same theological problems while developing their ideology. Both, for example, were at great pains to define and describe God. Both examined carefully the question of Jesus’s nature. Christianity concluded that he was somehow divine and human. Islam took him to be a human prophet full of the divine

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spirit. Christianity and Islam also struggled with similar issues regarding the problem of evil. Both developed the concept of humans as flawed and failing to measure up to divine expectations, though living under the imperative to bring our lives into line with God’s will and way. In addition to the Old and New Testament, Christianity prized the creeds as interpretations of the sacred scriptures. In addition to the Qur’an, Islam developed a large volume of commentaries and interpretations of the Qur’an. These interpretations were called the Hadith. The theology of evil in Christianity and Islam is, therefore, similar and both are interesting. Both depend heavily on a doctrine of the devil and his demonic minions influencing humans to do evil. This has two implications in both faith traditions. On the one hand, they assume that evil is a subversion of the good world and work of God by a set of otherworldly forces who are ultimately responsible for evil. On the other hand, they assume that humans are constantly faced with a decision to side with the forces of God or the forces of the evil one. Billy Graham’s consistent emphasis upon humanity standing in the valley of decision is an apt metaphor depicting this side of Christian and Islamic tradition. Islam developed and retains a unique theology of Satan. Islam holds that Satan is very active in the world, endeavoring to prompt humans to deny Divine Unity. For Muslims the being who became Satan had formerly been an archangel but fell from that divine grace to a status of an evil, rejected and accursed, spirit (Qur’an 3:36, 5:17, 5:34, 16:98). This was the result of disobedience to God’s command to honor Adam. Satan refused. Since then, his work has been to beguile man into error and sin. Satan is, therefore, the contemporary of man, and Satan’s own act of disobedience is construed by the Qur’an as the sin of pride. Satan’s machinations will cease only on the Last Day. (Qur’an 5:91, 35:6, 36:60, see also Macropedia, 1974, p. 913)

The Qur’an depicts the entire universe and the human soul as replete with evidence of God’s existence, nature, behavior, unity, and grace. Nonetheless, the Qur’an portrays the human response to Muhammad’s prophetic preaching as rather dismal. Its portrayal of history holds that God’s messengers have repeatedly called us back to him but few respond. Few accept the divine truth. Most reject it and become Infidels (the ungrateful). Satan-inspired human obduracy seals our hearts against God (Qur’an 8:48, 22:52–53). Such intransigence requires abject repentance and resistance of Satan (Qur’an 7:200–201). This is necessary if we wish to gain divine pardon and reconciliation. Such repentance requires genuine conversion, and few open themselves to that. True repentance cleanses us and restores us to that state of sinlessness with which each person began life. Thus evil is

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endogenous in each human and endemic in the human community throughout history. However, it is easily remedied. God is always willing and ready to forgive and embrace us in his grace. The concept of evil in Rabbinic Judaism is markedly different, as detailed by Ilona Rashkow in Volume 1, Chapter 10 of this work. It has little reference to an otherworldly demonic agent, agency, or force. It has mainly to do with falling short of the divine ethical claims upon humans in this life and world. Therefore, living righteously and justifying oneself by righteous living set the tone for contemporary Judaism’s understanding of evil and its resolution.

MODERNITY The development of the modern scientific age in the 18th and 19th centuries produced philosophical and theological movements that tried to remove the notions about the devil and otherworldly evil from Christian ideology. Such notions came to be seen correctly as the product of myth-making story telling by the ancient church, reinforced by medieval mystical and scholastic theology. Thoughtful Christians began to realize that the figure of Satan in the Hebrew Bible, as in the book of Job, is that of a compatriot and servant of God, indeed, God’s special agent with responsibility for managing the affairs of life on this planet. The devil, as represented in late ancient and in medieval theology is not present in the Hebrew Bible. Any references to either Satan or the devil in the New Testament are all metaphoric, mostly in parables, and do not imply either Satan or the devil having any actual substantive existence. Only in postbiblical Judaism, that is, Second Temple Judaism (535 bce to Christ), does the devil become the adversary of God as a result of a heavenly revolt of angels against God. Developing this unbiblical notion of the devil provided apocalyptic Judaism with the mechanism for separating the Hebrew Bible concepts of the wrath of God from the person of the Holy God. It made possible placing those negative attributes upon the devil. This cleaned up the image of God as an exclusively good God, removing from him the reputation of a warrior god who solves all his ultimate problems by resorting immediately to ultimate violence. This Jewish apocalyptic myth that God is good and the devil is evil carried over into early Christianity. This is one way in which Christianity differs from Islam on the matter of evil. Islam remains dependent upon the Hebrew Bible notions of the warrior and wrathful God of violence and threatened judgment. Islam has little emphasis upon grace. That is why it was so easy for Al Qaeda to hijack Islam for its violent political purposes, justifying unlimited violence. When Islam was briefly a peaceful religion and culture, as betimes during the Spanish Caliphate, it was so because its adherents were better, more gracious and humane, than is the Qur’an.

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Christian Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism still perpetuate and proclaim these erroneous mythic notions about evil and the devil from the OT, as does Islam. This is a tragic abuse of humankind because there is no evidence for any such thing as the devil, otherworldly evil forces, eternal hell, or divine wrath. John’s Gospel definitively guarantees the truth of my claim, as does a proper reading of Paul’s epistles. Nonetheless, in conservative Christian theology, the devil seems very much alive. He has three jobs: to seduce humans into sin, to disrupt God’s plan of salvation, and to testify before God, slandering and accusing humankind of evil. This mayhem is designed to erode the number of redeemed in God’s kingdom and increase the number of the damned in the demonic host. “Through the influence of the dualistic thinking of Zoroastrian religion during the Babylonian Exile (596–538 BC) in Persia, Satan took on features of the countergod” (Macropedia, 1974, Vol. 4, p. 479). Thus, in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the satanic figure is the spirit of wickedness, the adversary of the prince of luminaries and of the spirit of truth. The metaphoric references in the NT to the Prince of Darkness or the Prince of This World, and the ungodly powers in general describes them as endeavoring to hinder the establishment and obstruct the expansion of God’s reign in the human world. In the early church’s theologies, these NT notions are treated more literally than metaphorically and Satan is seen as the hater of humankind and destroyer of all beauty. This is evident in the second-century Letter of Barnabas, the work of Athenagoras, Manichaeanism, and Valentinian Gnosticism. One finds it also in the fourth-century work of Basil of Caesarea. Manichaeistic and Gnostic tendencies . . . remained . . . a permanent undercurrent in the church; and determined . . . its understanding of sin and redemption. Satan remained the prototype of sin as the rebel who does not come to terms with fulfilling his godlikeness in love to his original image and Creator, but instead desires equality with God and places love of self over love of God. (Macropedia, 1974, Vol. 4, p. 480)

Among the later theologians of the ancient church these perverse notions of evil tended to become more mystical, ethereal, and transcendental as time moved on. They gave rise to the mystical traditions of the Middle Ages. These were preoccupied with sin, temptation, sexual aberration, celibacy, and esoteric ecstasies. It is probably this strain of erroneous theology that gave rise to the experimental spiritual cultures of the religious orders. In church history, the eras of the awakening of a new consciousness of sin are identical with those of a newly awakened sense of the presence of “evil”—as was the case with Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, Luther, Calvin, and Wesley. In the Christian historical consciousness, the figure of Satan plays an important role.

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In historic Christian thought, prior to the 18th-century Enlightenment and persisting in contemporary fundamentalist-evangelical ideologies, the impasse between God and his adversary moves toward ultimate cosmic catastrophe. In that cataclysm, all evil and evil ones will be permanently exterminated, and all sin and sinfulness washed away. Since the Enlightenment, as I mentioned above, a concerted attempt has been made by enlightened theologians to demythologize the myths of Satan and demons, and to prove that there is no such thing. On a humorous note, the Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov declared in the 19th century that this move on the part of modern theologians to eliminate talk of the devil is the devil’s cleverest subterfuge and self-camouflage. He thought this was a certain proof that such a thing as the devil does exist after all, if he must be so aggressively countered. The simple fact of the matter comes down to this: The Christian faith perspective affirms that the material world is created by God and is inherently good. The Christian evaluation of the natural order is positive. Moreover, because creation is good, evil is a privation of the good in any thing or person. This privation results from any thing that destroys, distorts, or perverts the good in any person or thing. Even when someone functions in an evil manner and does evil things, the creaturely nature of that person is still inherently good. Some distortion, illness, or impairment is present that deprives that person’s function of that inherent good. As Augustine declared, evil is the deprivation of that inherent potential for good. On this matter of sin, much has been written in the English-speaking world since the publication of the King James Version of the Bible (KJV) in 1611 ce. Christians are aware of the fact that for humans to know what is good is not sufficient to make us good in nature and behavior. Nor is the rule of reason a sure path to virtue in a person, or to justice in a community or in society. “Good and evil are produced by the moral disposition of the heart,” in other words, by what we love most; that to which our hearts are most committed (Macropedia, 1974, Vol. 4, p. 557). So evil is what we volunteer to do because we wish to do it more than we wish to refrain from it. Evil is not the product of ignorance. It is a decision of our minds in keeping with the disposition of our wills, determined by the commitment of our hearts, our inner selves. Since the appearance of the KJV, such behavior that destroys or perverts the good and produces evil is, in the English language, called sin. For a person who is disposed to doing evil, the only cure for sin is an intervention of divine grace, that is, a new illumination of the heart that makes us wiling to decide to do good and not evil. That required illumination is the realization that God has, in advance, radically forgiven and freed us from all fear, guilt, and shame; freed us to choose to love and desire God’s will and way over choosing to do evil. If we are afflicted by various kinds of seriously distorting psychological illness,

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such as extreme neurosis, any form of borderline syndrome, or overt psychosis, we are unable to respond to such illuminations of grace. First we require medication and therapy to open the door to freedom from sinfulness, freedom from the proclivity to do evil, and freedom from the behavior that perpetrates evil. The Bible has no word that is exactly equivalent to the English word, sin. At least since the KJV appeared, sin is the English word used to translate at least 13 biblical words, six Hebrew and seven Greek. The words in Greek duplicate the constructs of the Hebrew Bible. Most ancient Near Eastern literature, including Hittite, Sumerian, Akkadian, and Israelite literature, has rich linguistic sources from which to draw words relating to what we call sin. There are perhaps 50 words in biblical Hebrew that convey ideas we have captured in that one word. The great number of these words, and the way they are spread throughout the Old Testament (OT), suggests that this sort of human dysfunction was a dominant concern for the Israelite theologians. In fact, their emphasis upon human failure, deficiency, or offense in worship, ethics, and morality make up the central theme of OT theology. Scholars frequently remark that it is not accidental that the Bible, with its keen sense of moral and spiritual values, presents such a florescence of words for human dysfunction. The Bible authors were less interested in creating a theoretical description or definition of human behavior gone awry. They were more interested in the depth and scope of the effects of human dysfunction as they experienced it; and so they reflected it in their rich and vivid terminology. They were concerned to wrestle with the operational manifestations of human failure, deficiency, or offense, as indicated above. This suggests that if the biblical authors were writing today they would work on clarifying the scope and complexity of human dysfunction, far beyond the range of mere moral failure. They were concerned about the fact that humans fall short in every area of potential growth, development, and actualization. We fall short of our own possibilities and of God’s expectations. They would insist on taking into consideration the entire empirical and phenomenological database now available regarding the function and dysfunction of human persons’ psyches and spirits. The biblical terms for which we use the word sin all call our attention to relational dysfunction or inappropriateness of some kind. Behind these biblical concepts lies the core notion that by nature our intended destiny is in relationship. We are created to be in relationship to ourselves, others, creation, and God. These relationships are essential to our self-actualization and carry with them weighty responsibility. The human dysfunction at stake in the concept we call sin is a failure to attend properly to this responsibility. “This notion has many subsidiary aspects, one of which is the moral component of the biblical concept of sin, that is, willful failure to be responsible in a setting in which we have the capacity to be responsible” (Ellens, 2001, p. 451).

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The moral component is not the main component of the biblical notions we call sin. The biblical terms and concepts weave a much larger basket that carries a much larger load. St. Paul epitomized the biblical issue in his remark that the good he would like to do he did not do, and the evil that he did not wish to do he did. The weightiest perplexity in the biblical concept of sin concerns the wide scope of human dysfunction which does not seem to be chosen by the perpetrator and over which he or she seemingly has little or no control. It is that which seems, indeed, to be a systemic affliction of persons and societies. Twenty years ago Martin Seligman published an extensive research indicating that a very large part of human psycho-spiritual dysfunction cannot be changed by moral-spiritual and psycho-social strategies or therapeutic intervention. Today most psychotherapists agree that unless the issues of biochemistry and genetic predispositions are addressed with medication, nothing can be done for 80% of all persons seen in psychological clinics. In the light of this, the biblical words for human dysfunction, employed as foundational concepts in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, are very interesting. They describe the inherent human inclination to miss the mark, to fall short of expectations, to veer from the standard, to be inadequate to requirements, to evidence a nasty disposition, to be perverted in character, and to be insensitive and situationally inappropriate, particularly as compatriots of God living before God’s face. In sum, they speak of our failure to reflect, do, or achieve the ideal design for us—a failure to achieve our ideal potential actualization as persons filled with all the possibilities of God’s creative image in us. There is a distortion, fracture, or deficiency in God’s nature in us. These dysfunctions are occasionally characterized as impiety or even rebellion, more frequently . . . unrighteousness and depravity. However, the general pattern which these terms describe is a dynamic operational program that would fall clearly within the contemporary diagnosis of the inherited condition of Borderline Personality Syndrome (Borderline Psychosis). (Ellens 2001, p, 452)

In 1989 I urged that whatever term we use to describe human failure must express three things. It must describe the brokenness of those relationships which are essential to our achievement of our true destiny. It must describe our proclivity to break the rules of moral responsibility. It must describe the systemic disorder that casts us inevitably into those first two dysfunctions and prevents us from lifting ourselves out of our forlorn predicament (Ellens, 1989, p. 58). For 20 centuries, Christianity has been struggling to keep in clear focus those primary concerns, in the light of the fact that after all the medical and psychological intervention available, the only available healing and resolution for fractured humans is the grace of forgiveness and reconciliation. That is the Christian way of handling the problem of evil.

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Unfortunately, the Christian world has a poor record of adherence to that code, often appearing to be no different than aggressive Islam and Judaism. As indicated above, for 3,000 years life and thought about godliness, in the three Abrahamic faith traditions, has been muddied, distorted, and obscured by a completely erroneous religious metaphor derived from ancient Israelite religion and the Hebrew Bible. It is the notion that this world is the arena of an apocalyptic cosmic conflict between good and evil. This useless, but highly destructive, metaphor seems to justify our worst prejudices and our most destructive behavior. Yet it has no ground under it. There is no evidence for ontic evil. However, in all three of these major religions, our sacred scriptures lock us into this notion. That defines us. Unless we radically revise our theology of sacred scriptures, in all three religions, we cannot escape the prison house of our predilection to defensive violence. We cannot transcend our built-in bigotry. We cannot become fully human. We cannot escape the tragedy of destructive aggression that leads to spiritual devolution, social violence, and war. We cannot achieve a communal life of grace. The Hebrew Bible conveyed an ethical principle to its adherents that was cryptic, direct, and pragmatic. It is simply stated in the Levitical and Deuteronomic Codes. It readily became a rule for life in society and a metaphor for justice in a relatively barbaric world. “An eye for and eye and a tooth for a tooth” (Exodus 21:23–25), the Bible legislates. We call it the Lex Talionis or the law of the jungle in tooth and claw. Inherent in Rabbinic Judaism and fundamentalist Islam, down to our time, is the assumption that vindictive justice, balancing the scales of evil behavior, is an appropriate ethic. The determinative influence of this Hebrew Bible metaphor is readily evident today in the behavior of Islam, especially in the form of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and in the latent fascism of Israeli foreign policy and Zionist arrogance. Much has been written and preached to ameliorate those barbaric tones and their consequences since the ancient regulations were imposed, purportedly on God’s authority. Jesus’s own words seem the most powerful contradiction of the Lex Talionis. He declared, You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” I say to you, “If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. . . . Love your enemies and do good to those who persecute you so that you may be children of your father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:38, 39, 44, 45)

Few people in the Western world today would speak in favor of running society or personal life by the ancient barbaric code of the law of the jungle. No one reading this book would favor such a system. The problem with metaphors, as Freud and Jung noted, is that they are hatched in our unconscious. They accrue their rich and fruitful meaning in our unconscious. They carry

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out their function mainly at hidden levels of the psyche, not readily accessible to conscious analysis or discipline. Thus, the ancient cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean adopted that barbaric code, and although Arab societies today claim a Qur’anic grace as their code, and the Israelis insist that their society is a democracy, that old barbaric metaphor shapes and justifies both the policies of Jihad, on the one side, and the exaggerated mayhem of what is now being called “proactive or preemptive defense,” on the other: all that in this 21st century, in this supposedly civilized Western world. Freud and Jung were correct in urging that metaphors, infecting our psychological archetypes, function with effects far beyond our wildest imaginations. By wholesome metaphors, we create aesthetic and humane civilization, almost as though it were the normal product of daily life. By pathogenic metaphors, we continue to re-create destruction in each new generation, as though it were inherited in our genes. Some awful things are inherited genetically, of course. However, what continues to defeat civilized decency and aesthetic idealism is not only genetically inherited pathologies like borderline syndrome and psychoses. What we inherit culturally in our dominant metaphors also defeats the gains in goodness for which we hope, and which we optimistically expect in each new era. We need not look to international politics to discern this desperate truth. We do not need exotic explanations of physical or cultural inheritance to account for our violence and the problem of evil in us. We all seem perfectly capable of devising enough evil quite on our own, without destructive metaphors or bad genetics. The Palestinians and Israelis have no mortgage on violence, and Al Qaeda is not unique, but typical of the universal human pathology; we need only to look within our own psyches or souls. Potential for violence seems built into our psyches or souls. Even Jesus, despite his nice talk about loving one’s enemies, was unacceptably violent. He showed that in castigating Peter for getting the messianic terminology and vision wrong in what we call The Great Confession (Mark 8:27–33). Jesus was unacceptably violent when he castigated his mother at the wedding at Cana (John 2:3–4), when he “cleansed the temple” of the money changers (Mathew 21:12–13; Mark 11:15–17), and when he consigned the Jewish authorities of his day to a place below Sodom and Gomorrah in his equivalent of Dante’s Inferno (Matthew 11:20–24, 12:38–42; Mark 8:11–12; Luke 11:16, 29–32). However, what I am concerned about here is something that seems to me to go far beyond that simple, sinister, human inclination to daily personal violence. I am worried about what seems to me to be the societal and institutional violence that has plagued the Western World from its beginnings 2,500 years ago. It is particularly troublesome to consider the role it has played since the rise of Christianity in the first century, of Rabbinic Judaism in the third or fourth century, and of Islam in the seventh century ce.

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It is true that the early ethical code articulated in the Hebrew Bible is the Lex Talionis. However, it is more important that the later prophets inveighed against this ethic. Long before the close of the OT canon, its old barbaric code had been contested and contrasted by the code of divine grace. Micah 7:18–20, for example, declares, Who is a God like our God. He pardons iniquity, passes over transgression, will not keep his anger forever, delights in steadfast love. He is faithful to us when we are unfaithful to him. He tramples our iniquities under his feet and casts all our sins into the depths of the sea. Moreover, he has guaranteed this to us through our ancestors from the days of old. (Author’s translation)

The Hebrew Bible is full of enjoinders for humans to do likewise. This is the Hebrew ethic of grace that Jesus highlighted. It was the ideal code for the new and distinctive Christian life for individuals and institutions. It shaped the New Testament and the early Christian Movement. This was the later Hebrew prophets’ way and became the Christian Way, as well as the Rabbinic Way. However, this ethic did not seem to hold up well in the earliest centuries of the church’s life. The factionalism and heresy trials of early church history are discouraging. Moreover, the ethic of grace seems to have completely failed as soon as the church was empowered by Constantine as the Queen of the Empire in 313 ce. It shifted from the witnessing underdog to the persecutor. Indeed, the conduct of many individual Christians, Jews, and Muslims seems generally, throughout the last 2,000 years, to have been considerably more grace filled than that of the nations and official institutions of the Western world, including the Imperial Church. These institutions and nations were influenced by the rise and presence of the ethics of Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. The readiness with which communities and nation-states in our world today and for the last 25 centuries resort to violence to solve all major problems is appalling. This is particularly true for those directly influenced by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,

THE INHERENT DISSONANCE What is the inherent dissonance in our religious systems that prevents our idealism from expressing itself in grace, love, justice, and decency? What is it that, in almost every crisis, automatically justifies a quick resort to violent evil? The emphasis is upon the word justifies. Every decent human being in all three Abrahamic faith traditions will insist that the ethic of grace is the only worthy one for human affairs. However, we immediately suspend that ethic when faced with a difficult relationship or negotiation. We quickly justify the exception—violence!

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I believe that this is not just a tendency toward pragmatic action. Most resorts to violence are not the most pragmatic course of action available in the situation. Moreover, we tend to allow things to get to a state in which we cannot think of any solution except violence. We do this precisely because we assume at some subconscious level that if things get bad, it is justifiable to resort to violence. Thus, insufficient care is taken in advance to prevent that extreme eventuality from arising. Something is going on in our unconscious, as persons and nations, that so easily leads us to the justification of violence. What is going on inside us? Is it possible that we have a metaphor stuck in our collective unconscious that contradicts our conscious commitment to decency and to the redemptive ethic of grace? Have we forgotten that the Hebrew and Christian prophets fashioned that ethic for us, so that it might stand against the pressures of the barbaric in ourselves and in our cultures? I believe that is exactly where the problem lies.

VIOLENT RELIGIOUS METAPHORS Out of the Hebrew form of the Lex Talionis came a notion of atonement that corrupted the covenantal theology of grace in the Hebrew Bible. It produced a shift away from the original equation of a gracious God caring for his people in a perpetual covenant of grace. In that early model, the sacrificial system was Israel’s sacrifice to God of the first fruits of flock and field. It was their grateful response to God’s covenant of unconditional acceptance and grace. In that equation God is congenial and good for our health. The relationship between God and Israel was one of pleasant companionship along the pilgrimage of life. The move away from this grace equation to the notion of OT sacrifices as atonement for sins was a result of the influence of Zoroastrianism in the exile in Babylon. This shift was most likely engineered by the Zadokite priests after the decree of Cyrus the Great in 539, releasing the Israelites from Babylonian exile (Boccaccini, 2002). Exilic and postexilic Judaism tried to figure out how God could possibly be present in history, given the tragedy of their exile to Babylon. Their conclusion was that it could only make sense on the assumption that Israel had desperately sinned. God had sent the foreign nations to punish God’s own rebellious people. This idea led to the supposition that Israel’s safety lay in its ability to mollify God with sacrifices that paid for the iniquity of God’s people, individually and communally. This was a strategy for balancing the scales of divine justice, or at least resolving God’s anger. In this model, God is a threat and his wrathful judgment can only be turned aside by sacrificial compensation. That is an ancient pagan notion exactly opposite to the original Hebrew tradition of the covenant of grace.

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Pauline theology picked up this metaphor of payment for sin and identified the crucifixion of Christ as a propitiation for our sins. This atonement theology, elaborated by the early Christian theologians and epitomized in the juridical atonement theory of Anselm, represented God as sufficiently disturbed by the sinfulness of humanity that he had only two options: Destroy us, or substitute a sacrifice to pay for our sins. He did the latter. He killed Christ. This concept of God has carried over into Islam, though it has been eliminated from Rabbinic Judaism. That theology of sacrificial death as payment for sins has been interpreted in well-frosted theological terms. It has been interpreted so as to make the cross, as substitutionary atonement, appear to be a remarkable act of grace. However, at the unconscious level it is, in fact, a metaphor of the worst kind of violence: infanticide or child sacrifice. God killed his son! The unconscious dynamics of this metaphor have to do with the model of God as being so enraged that the only way he can get his head screwed back on right is to kill somebody, us or Christ. God solves his ultimate problems with immediate resort to ultimate violence. In the mythic narrative of the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, God cursed his own people (Genesis 3). With the flood of Noah, he virtually exterminated them. By exiling them to Assyria and Babylon, he abused them. In the New Testament, he crucified a substitute to settle the score (Miles, 1995, 2002). That is represented in the NT texts as better behavior on God’s part than the earlier OT abusiveness of the angry God. It is not easy to see this as an improvement today. That is, the crucifixion of Jesus is an image and metaphor at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years that radically contradicts the grace ethic that it purports to express. It cuts the taproot of grace by reinforcing the dominant model of solving ultimate problems by resort to the worst kind of violence. With that kind of metaphor at our center, and associated with the essential behavior of God, how could we possibly hold any other notion of ultimate solutions to ultimate questions or crises than violence? As recorded in the deep structure of our own unconscious, violent human solutions are equivalent to God’s kind of solutions.

THE GOD IN OUR MASTER STORY My father was without exception and by a wide margin the very best man I ever knew. He was the epitome of grace, patience, and self-control. I would like myself a lot better if I were more like him. I easily project upon God the image and metaphor that my father has become in my conscious and unconscious mind. So to me God is the epitome of grace, patience, and decency. There is much in the Bible to certify that view. I could never know or believe in any other kind of God. Any other kind of God is a monster, given the needs

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of the likes of us. We are caught in our human predicament, not designed or selected by us. I need the God of Micah 7:18–20. But that is not the God of the Western World at the institutional level. Who is that God? Is it possible that at the core of our collective selves lies a divine monster? When that monster is feeling a little crazy about something like our human frailty, it goes out looking for somebody to murder? Are we stuck with a monster god in our unconscious psyches, who plays out his devilish game under the flag of our expediencies? Is it possible that beyond the dysfunction caused by bad biochemistry or genetics lurks this evil power in us? We need to find out. The American tragedy of September 11, 2001, is not just economic or political. It is not just the insupportable psycho-spiritual anguish about the death of 2,700 people at the hands of terrorists. It is not just the immense grief and loss for the survivors and the families of the dead. All of that is sufficiently overwhelming by itself. However, the real depth of the tragedy lies in the fact that an entire community of human beings, pseudo-Islamic fundamentalists, perpetrated this immense disaster upon another community of innocent humans, and did it under the banner of a religious metaphor: jihad. The tragedy of that terrorism is severe enough at the physical and material level to gain global attention and concern. However, the real tragedy of violence lies in the fact that it is a state of the soul or psyche, conditioned and twisted by specific religious archetypes. Those terrorists apparently really believed that their action was an execution of the will and intention of God. They anticipated that for carrying it out, they would gain an “exceedingly great reward.” Weaver, Gustav Aulen, and J. Christiaan Beker argue that there is a violent metaphor at the center of the Master Story of Western tradition. God’s crucifixion of his son is interpreted as an act of grace designed to disarm the powers of the evil in persons and society (Aulen 1969; Beker 1980; 1982; cf. also Wink 1984, 1986, 1992). That may make some kind of sense in idealistic models of theology or psychoanalysis. In reality, the entire notion that violence quells violence is absurd, whether theologized or psychologized. The violence that is supposed to resolve social dissonance provides a temporary release of the destructive human energies at best. It provides no resolution. Violence breeds violence and does not quell it. Even a superficial look at history informs us of that fact. The most common and most universally agreed upon reality of history is the fact that quelling violence and social or intrapsychic dissonance by a violent or aggressive action reinforces the anger and dissonance in the violent person; and it breeds a festering counterforce in the victim. This counterforce eventually manifests itself in revolution. The Islamic term jihad means struggle against evil. Humane Muslims have long interpreted this to mean the human personal struggle against the counterproductive and self-defeating forces within ourselves. However,

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Mohammed himself, in the process of establishing his hegemony in Arabia, called for jihad as a military struggle in which anyone who died in the heroic cause could be assured of the reward of immediate translation to heaven. That metaphor of jihad as military action created an authoritative model identified with the prophet himself. There can be no doubt that it is this metaphor, which has been raised to the level of an unconscious archetype in Muslim culture, which drives the Al Qaeda terrorists in their passion to destroy the Infidel Western world. This behavior struck down the World Trade Center Towers, and is little different in nature, motive, spirit, and method from the Israeli extermination of the Canaanites in the biblical narrative of the Book of Joshua. Nor does it differ significantly, in any of these categories, from the Christian Crusades of the High Middle Ages. All three of these great religions of the world have at their core a religious metaphor grown into a psychological archetype, which legitimates violence in the grossest imaginable forms. They, therefore, justify violence on the grounds of divine order and behavior.

CONCLUSION Undoubtedly, it would be difficult to persuade the general Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities, much less the perpetrators of the specific tragedies of human history, that their motives are unconscious and their drives are moved and shaped by a divine metaphor that works like a monster deity inside them. Most of us are certain of what we are doing and confident that we know why we are doing it. Of course, this is almost never so. It is never true to the degree of clarity or transparency that we constantly and universally believe and claim. Psychoanalytic theories have taught us crucial things about our role in what John F. Kennedy called “this tragic adventure” of human existence. They have given us the clue to the sources and forces at play in our psyches and societies that make violent evil inevitable. Their model fails to provide a mechanism for exorcising the monster deity from the center of our selves. Moreover, that is forever unlikely as long as the function of that monster is constantly reinforced within us by the cultural metaphors of radical violence at the center of our Master Stories. We must rid ourselves of that violent Jewish God of the OT. Until we are ready to analyze those Master Stories and eradicate from them their violent core metaphors, it is impossible for us to develop, at the unconscious level where this action is, warrantable nonviolent alternatives in our strategies for conflict resolution. Warrantable alternatives are required that carry more and better authority than we now give automatically to the destructive metaphors of violent divine behavior, inhabiting the dark caves of our individual and collective unconscious. We will never be able to accede to

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a better authority until we can substitute constructive metaphors for violent ones and exchange manipulative power struggles for true democracy. We cannot gain ground against violence until we accept the risks of authentic mutual acceptance of each other. That requires taking the time to hear and negotiate in good faith those needs and claims each has. In that way, we can give up the notion that narcissism and vindictive justice are more important than grace and mercy. This will not happen until we eliminate from our framework of thought the unconscious perceptions that atonement is a phenomenon necessary for psychosocial equanimity. We must rise above the notion that life is a quid pro quo contest. Such destructive structures cannot be eradicated as long as the unconscious god in our psyches is a violent monster who cannot achieve intrapsychic stasis without killing someone, even his “beloved son.”

Various aspects of the argument in this chapter were published previously in J. Harold Ellens (2004), The Destructive Power of Religion: Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Westport, CT: Praeger. Copyright © 2004 by J. Harold Ellens. All rights reserved. Used, in radically revised form, with permission of ABC-CLIO, LLC, Santa Barbara, CA.

REFERENCES Aulen, G. (1969). Christus victor: An historical study of the three main types of the idea of atonement (Trans. A. G. Herbert). New York: Macmillan. Beker, J. C. (1980). Paul the Apostle: The triumph of god in life and thought. Philadelphia: Fortress. Beker, J. C. (1982). Paul’s apocalyptic gospel: The coming triumph of God. Philadelphia: Fortress. Bettelheim, B. (1984). Freud and man’s soul. New York: Random House. Boccaccini, G. (2002). Roots of rabbinic Judaism: An intellectual history, from Ezekiel to Daniel. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Cox, D. (1959). Jung and St. Paul. New York: Association Press. Ellens, J. H. (1989). Sin and sickness: The nature of human failure. In L. Aden & D. G. Benner (Eds.), Counseling and the human predicament: A study of sin, guilt, and forgiveness. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker. Ellens, J. H. (2001). Sin or sickness, the problem of human dysfunction. In M. Van Denend (Ed.), Seeking understanding: The Stob lectures, 1986–1998. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Fierz, H. K. (1991). Jungian psychiatry. Einsiedeln, Switzerland: Daimon Verlag. Freud, S. (1997). Selected writings. New York: BOMC. Gay, P. (1983). Reading Freud: Psychology, neurosis, and religion. Chico, CA: Scholars Press. Gay, P. (1984). The bourgeois experience: Victoria to Freud: Vol. 1. Education of the senses. New York: Norton.

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Gay, P. (1986). The bourgeois experience: Victoria to Freud: Vol. 2. The tender passion. New York: Norton. Gay, P. (1988). Freud: A life for our time. New York: Norton. Gay, P. (1993). The bourgeois experience: Victoria to Freud: Vol. 3. The cultivation of hatred. New York: Norton. Girard, R. (1987). Things hidden since the foundation of the world (Trans. S. Bann & M. Metter). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Gruenwald, I. (In press). Rituals and ritual theory in Ancient Israel. Leiden: Brill. Guirdham, A. (1962). Christ and Freud. New York: Collier. Hogenson, G. B. (1983). Jung’s Struggle with Freud. Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press. Homans, P. (1979). Jung in context: Modernity and the making of psychology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jung, C. G. (1938). Psychology and religion. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Jung, C. G. (1957). The undiscovered self (Trans. R.F.C. Hull). Boston: Little, Brown. Jung, C. G. (1997). Selected writings. New York: BOMC. Kung, H. (1979). Freud and the problem of God. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Macropedia. (1974). Macropedia: The Encyclopaedia Britannica. Chicago: Helen Hemingway Benton. Miles, J. (2001). Christ: A crisis in the life of god. New York Knopf. Miles, J. (1995). God: A biography. New York: Knopf. Palmer, M. (1997). Freud and Jung on religion. New York: Routledge. Rollins, W. G. (1983). Jung and the Bible. Atlanta, GA: John Knox. Scharfenberg, J. (1988). Sigmund Freud and his critique of religion. Philadelphia: Fortress. Seligman, M. E. P. (1993). Learned optimism: What you can change . . . and what you can’t. New York: Fawcett Columbine. Slussssser, G. H. (1986). From Jung to Jesus, myth and consciousness in the New Testament. Atlanta, GA: John Knox. Spielrein, S. (1912). Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens. Jahrbuch fur psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen, 4, 465–503. The Qur’an (1995). Abdullah Yusufari, trans., Sayed A. A. Raxwy. New York: Alavi Foundation. Tuchman, B. (1984). The march of folly. New York: Knopf. Weaver, J. D. (2001). The non-violent atonement. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Williams, J. G. (Ed.). (1996). The Girard reader. New York: Crossroad. Wilmer, H. A. (1994). Understandable Jung: The personal side of Jungian psychology. Wilmette, IL: Chiron. Wink, W. (1984). Naming the powers: The language of power in the New Testament (Vol. 1). Philadelphia: Fortress. Wink, W. (1986). Unmasking the powers: The invisible forces that determine human existence (Vol. 2). Philadelphia: Fortress. Wink, W. (1992). Engaging the powers: Discernment and resistance in a world of domination (Vol. 3). Philadelphia: Fortress.

Ch apter 14

Evil, Sin, and Imperfection: Ethics in Practice Philip Brownell

INTRODUCTION What is man that You should take thought of him, And the son of man that You care for him? Yet You have made him a little lower than God, And You crown him with glory and majesty! You make him to rule over the works of Your hands. Psalm 8:4–6a (New American Standard)

That is a question that has been capturing people’s attention for some time. In a biblical anthropology, humankind would be male and female–sexual. Humankind would also exist in the image of God, but in a fallen state. It is largely the causes, the implications, and the influence of that fallen state that concern this series. All who write, do so from a human perspective. Consequently, this chapter concerns evil in the context of human sin and imperfection. What is the difference between evil and sin, or between sin and imperfection? Are these all words for roughly the same thing, or is there a substantial difference across the range that they provide? When people think of evil, names like Adolf Hitler and Charles Manson come to mind. There is something quantitatively horrendous in ha’shoah (the Holocaust). Six million European Jews were systematically killed using everything that the country of Germany could use and turning the country into what some have called a genocidal state. Is evil simply a matter of the scope of sinister intent? When Manson was apprehended and caught on

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camera, there was something malevolent, more than merely deranged, something qualitatively fiendish in his eyes; he had masterminded and persuaded several devoted followers to commit multiplied murder. Is evil a demonic quality of spirit? Ironically, evil can be associated with the church as well. The various inquisitions, crusades, witch-hunts, and religious wars—all conducted in the name of God—provide a gruesome history that cannot be glossed over, rationalized, or ignored. Neither can the cruelties committed every day in religious congregations where rigid legalism runs over people for the sake of righteousness and in which performance-based economies reward the loss of self in devoted conformity. One need not go to the deception and destruction caused by a Jim Jones, a cultic figure who leads his flock into mass suicide; the evil that lurks right next to one as he or she sits in the pew on Sunday is bad enough. This is what C. S. Lewis (1961) wrote about in the Screwtape Letters, in which he envisioned demons working in the lives of Christians even as they sit together in church. What follows is a defining comparison and contrast of the concepts of evil, sin, and imperfection, especially illustrated through the clinical examples of gestalt therapy—a system that is not religious or essentially nomothetic in itself, yet that does provide a model of health and one that has adopted the phenomenological ethics of Emmanuel Levinas—both of which are useful in order to consider evil, sin, and imperfection from a clinical perspective.

EVIL Two words in Greek stood for the concept of evil. One was kakos, and the other was pon¯eros. Kakos meant “bad” or “evil” and its derivatives meant to harm, embitter, do wrong, and be an evil-doer. Pon¯eros pointed to being in poor condition, sick, bad, poor, evil, and wicked (Achilles, 1975). During the classical Greek period, kakos meant bad in the sense of lacking something and always in contrast to agathos (good). In secular Greek, there were four uses: (a) negligible, unsuitable, and bad; (b) morally bad or evil; (c) weak or miserable; and (d) harmful or unfavorable. The Pythagoreans regarded evil to be a metaphysical principle, but Democritus, Socrates, and Plato regarded evil to result from ignorance in that an unenlightened person does evil involuntarily. Conversely, according to these philosophers, enlightenment leads to knowledge and frees a person from evil, “causing him to do good and so creating the moral man” (Achilles, 1975, p. 562). Plato eventually created a metaphysical dualism, spirit and matter, by synthesizing these two concepts, asserting that evil resides in the physical and material. Also in Hellenistic thought, evil was considered to be imperfection. Both kakos and pon¯eros translated the Hebrew words rá and r¯a´âh (bad, badness, evil, misery, distress) (Brown, Driver, & Briggs, 1907/1978) about

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equally in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, kakos is mostly the evil that objectively hurts one’s existence. As such it is the reciprocal consequence of the sin, which God brings back upon the people who commit sin (Deut 31:17; Amos 3:6b). On the other hand, God protects from evil as well (Ps 23:4; Jer 29:11). Evil is also an aspect of moral behavior (Mic 2:1; Jer 7:24; Ps 28:3, 23:12). The Old Testament seldom describes evil in the abstract and theoretical; usually, it is done so concretely and in terms of a specific instance or case (Achilles, 1975). The range of activity associated with rá starts with activity that is contrary to God’s will and begins with the rejection of God Himself (Is 1:4, 9:17; Jer 7:26, 16:12). This includes the practice of idolatry and extends to the abuse of people and their property (physical pain, slavery in Egypt, dishonesty, demand for immoral relationships, verbal abuse, etc.). The people who do these kinds of things do so because they lack understanding of the true nature of what they do (Livington, 1980). The New Testament prefers the terms pon¯e ros and hamartia for the constructs of evil and sin (see below). Further, with regard to evil, the sense is more to a state of being than to specific acts, and this trend finds its culmination in the evil personified, that is, the evil one, Satan (Achilles, 1975). In Matthew 6:23 and Luke 11:34, the reference is to an eye that is sick (or evil). In Matthew 18:32, it refers to servants who are worthless. In Matthew 7:11, people are referred to as being evil. It is also used to refer to being hardened or opposed to God (Matt 12:34, 16:1–4; 2 Thess 3:2). When its use extends to people’s actions it is usually a qualitative statement regarding what kind of behavior is in question. For instance, Cain was of the evil one and slew his brother because his deeds were evil—they were evil qualitatively (1 Jn 3:12). Thus, Adolf Hitler and Charles Manson would be considered essentially evil because there was something intrinsically bad and contrary to God’s will and God’s nature in who they were. They would be considered necessarily evil and not accidentally so, because they were inherently bad. They were not simply mentally deranged and pathetic; they were inexcusable.

SIN By contrast, sin in reference to Hitler and Manson would mean they did something bad and were guilty. Sin can refer to a single failure or transgression, but that can also extend to one’s complete ruination (Günther, 1978). The most general word for sin is hamartia, followed by adikia and its cognates, and then parabasis and parapt¯oma. Table 14.1 compares and contrasts the various meanings of these words in classical Greek, the translation of Hebrew words in the LXX, and their use in the New Testament.

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Table 14.1 Relative Understandings for the Concept of Sin Word

Classical Understanding

Translation for Words in LXX

Use in the New Testament

Hamartia

Missing a mark, losing one’s way, or making a mistake; an offence against prevailing order but without evil intent

Falling away from a relationship of faithfulness towards God as well as disobedience to the commandments

The comprehensive expression of everything opposed to God, including the self-righteous keeping of the law

Adikia

Commit an injustice; all that offends against morals, customs, or decency

Translates 24 different Hebrew words concerned with acting unjustly, oppressing or extorting; to lie or defraud; as an offence against the sacral order of divine justice (1 Sam. 3:13)

Act unjustly and harm people; behavior not conforming to the moral norm; in contrast to hamartia, adikia describes more clearly the outward and visible characteristics of what is under the power of sin

Parabasis

Deviate from an original and true direction; transgress or neglect the norm

Not common in the LXX; neglect God, break the covenant; fail to maintain the correct relationship with God

Related to the gracious ordinances, such as His covenant, it means to deviate from observing them

Parapt¯oma

Translates words Fall by the wayside; miss one’s way or the meaning to commit truth; fail in one’s duty acts of unfaithfulness; conscious and deliberate sinning against God

Fall away, be unfaithful, as a whole position– abandonment of Christian truth–and as a single act representing that position

Adapted from Günther (1978) and Bauder (1978).

Hamartia was considered to be an offense against morals, laws, people or the gods and related to ignorance; Aristotle placed it between adik¯ema (injustice) and atych¯ema (misfortune) as an offense against order, but without evil intent. Adikia was more akin to a legal term, implying a breach of law,

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and it was regarded to be the opposite of righteousness. Parapt o-ma depicted a moral fall and an offense for which a person would be responsible (Günther, 1978, pp. 573–587). Sin is an act, a state or condition in which one might find oneself, and it is a ruling power that deviates from God and leads to destruction (Bauer, Arndt, & Gingrich, 1957). Paul of Tarsus wrote, For what am I doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. (Romans 7:15–17)

This so aptly describes a dynamic in people with which most can understand and identify. The very thing I tell myself I should not do, will not do, I do. “I will not eat that extra piece of pie.” I eat it. The very thing I tell myself I will do, I do not. “I will exercise and trim off this extra fat.” In reality, however, I do not exercise as I should and each day God has a little talk with me about that. By contrast, sin’s dynamic counterbalance is grace, or undeserved favor. This word for grace, the Greek charis, translated a Hebrew word, h¯en in the LXX, denoting a stronger person coming to the aid of a weaker who stands in need of help by virtue of his or her circumstances or intrinsic weakness. God comes to the aid of sinners, who stand in need because of the sin that separates them from a holy God. Grace covers sin and makes up for its destructive effect. It is the power that flows from God to accompany and give success, as in the case of the mission of the apostles, and it empowers one to overcome sin and deal with evil.

IMPERFECTION Recently, while interacting in a listserv discussion group of professionals, someone corrected me on something, and I responded by saying, “How nice to be imperfect.” It was sarcastic. I did not feel nice, and I was not happy to be corrected; however, someone else on the list responded to what I had written, affirming that yes, indeed, it was nice to be imperfect. That puzzled me. What could be nice about that? Was it the freedom that person might have felt not to have to live up to a standard, not to have to perform according to someone else’s sense of “the way it should be?” I could not figure it out. We are finite. Limited. We are made in the image of God, and we have some of His attributes, but we have those attributes only to a point. God has the capacity to love to an infinite degree, without measure, but we do not. Our love comes in dribbles and mixed with all kinds of other motives and behaviors that makes it diluted in quality.

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This limitation of ours, this finitude, is by design. It was not an accident, and it was not just a product of the fall; so, when God was finished with creation and He proclaimed His work “good,” that included the fact that human beings are limited. Perhaps we were created perfect even though limited. After all, how could anything created be infinite in the first place? Thus, the fact that we are creatures makes us finite. We are the work of God’s creativity; so, perhaps we were created perfect to fit a design and to take our place on the stage of His creation for a purpose. I believe that is so, and I believe that design and purpose linger in our being; it’s what compels us to investigate the world in which we live so as to understand it and to manage it. God gave us the world, and after he pronounced His creation good, he commissioned human beings as the foresters to husband and manage the world—to have dominion. Environmentalists will say that we have done a lousy job at that, but the original purpose still shines through the corruption that makes us want to have dominion at the expense of almost everything and everyone else. Our state is a fallen state—what the Bible teaches to be a state of sin. Jesus described us as evil in this fallen state (Luke 11:13) when He was teaching His followers about prayer. He said, “If you, being evil, know how to give your children good things, how much more does your heavenly Father know how to give good things when you ask Him?” (my paraphrase). Is all this what compels me to make mistakes and forget names? Is this why I misjudge the distance between my bumper and the next car? Is this why my vision is blurred up close? God made me limited, but did God make me imperfect? Many people would say that sickness and flaw, failure and imperfection, as exemplified in the kinds of things mentioned just above, are the result of sin, that the whole of creation was marred in the fall of humankind. What is the difference between evil and sin or between sin and imperfection? Are these all synonyms and caused by the same, terrible event? Are evil, sin, and imperfection simply points on a gradient? In the story of life in the garden of Eden, leading up to the fall, Adam and Eve walked with God openly and had a transparent and authentic relationship with Him. However, when they decided to go against God’s will, they became ashamed and hid themselves from God. That was the beginning of a darkness in understanding that the Bible describes to be the crux of evil and sin. It is not simply a matter of being imperfect, in the sense of being limited. It is a loss of self, loss of a knowledge of one’s self, and it is a loss of authenticity.

GESTALT THERAPY ’ S MODEL OF HEALTH Gestalt therapy has been variously described, and can be summarized as follows: Gestalt therapy is a holistic system offering an emergent view of self that comprises what other systems know as personality, that is, the organizing of

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subjective experience with a metanarrative about the identity of the person in which both move through time and space, syncopated by the evolving situations in which the person exists. This includes the relational considerations in the working alliance as well as intimate systems such as couples and families, and it extends to teams and large configurations within organizations. It is the same view as that of relational systems psychoanalysis, which illustrates gestalt’s comprehensive ability to pull together constructs from various clinical paradigms. A similar consilience exists between gestalt therapy and the mindful and constructive elements of cognitive-behavioral therapy. Gestalt is a comprehensive, all-encompassing approach. Gestalt therapy’s field methodology includes all things having effect, regardless of what domain or system is in focus, and its philosophical base includes major discussions of epistemology, ontology, and ethics. In terms of a philosophy of science and a scientific method in psychology, gestalt therapy provides a solid ground for the third leg of a scientific method (systematic observation, mathematical analysis, and conceptual analysis) (Brownell, Meara, & Polák, 2008). Individual experience is relational, situated, and made manifest through experimental action, all of which is indivisible—a unity. This is gestalt therapy (Brownell, submitted). Gestalt therapists believe that people incline toward growth. They selfregulate in their best interests, and their natural tendency is toward selfactualizing. Thus, gestalt therapy is one of several positive psychology approaches. Positive psychology provides a frame for understanding what Martin Seligman (2002) called “the good life.” Among those factors associated with positive psychology, and a picture of good psychological health, would be an emphasis on positive subjective experiences (such as happiness, pleasure, gratification, and fulfillment), positive individual traits (such as talents, strengths of character, interests and values), and positive institutions (such as families, schools, businesses, communities, and societies) (Peterson & Park, 2009). Gestalt therapy understands people by investigating their experience. Its theory of health is simple: Healthy functioning requires being in contact with what is actually occurring in the person-environment field. Contact is the quality of being in touch with one’s experience in relation to the field. By being aware of what is emerging, and by allowing action to be organized by what is emerging, people interact in the world and learn from the experience. By trying something new, one learns what works and what does not work in various situations. When a figure is not allowed to emerge, when it is somehow interrupted or misdirected, there is a disturbance in awareness and contact. (Yontef & Jacobs, 2007, p. 339)

AN ETHICAL STANCE IN GESTALT THERAPY Gestalt therapy is not essentially an ethical system. That is, it does not advance categories of right and wrong or enlist imperatives by which it tells

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people what to do. It does not pass judgment. It follows the figures of interest and the current experience, and it advocates acceptance however a person enters the circle of contact. Still, no system in which people work with other people can be values neutral. People bring into a system all their relative beliefs and morals; it cannot be helped. Nonetheless, the phenomenological ethics of Emmanuel Levinas have become important to gestalt therapists. Utilizing his system of thought, the client or patient becomes mystery, the transcendent presence which is the other person. Gestalt therapists recognize that to characterize that other person in the process of case conceptualization, even to diagnose them, requires that one “thematize” the other person (represent the other person as an intentional object that stands in the place of the actually existing other whenever the therapist perceives or contemplates that person). Levinas considers this thematizing to be violence, and an ethical breach. Thus, through the acceptance of his thinking, gestalt therapy adopts a moral posture. It’s as if to say, “Thou shalt not thematize.” To do so might be considered turning aside from the dialogical stance. That sets up a problem. If a therapist cannot conduct therapeutic business (assessment, case conceptualization, and treatment planning) without doing violence to the client, then what is to be done? Is there a way around such an apparent impasse? James K. A. Smith (2002) suggested the iconic look. He contrasted the idol with the icon. The idol is an end in itself; it is the object of worship. However, an icon is not an end in itself; it points beyond itself to something greater. In the case of gestalt therapists, it is possible to perceive the client as an icon; that is, when we attend to the client in the aboutness of the therapeutic process, we see the other person, but we do not sum them up in our minds nor strive to completely “figure them out.” We remain close to their phenomenality, their subjective experience, and we accept that what we see and hear of the client only points to something greater—their being.

AN ETHICS IN PRACTICE So, how do we pull all this together to make some useful observations? The goal is to explore these concepts using a clinical heuristic so as to see what evil, sin, and imperfection look like in that kind of light. First, a primary consideration is the emotional consequence that follows either feeling one has done something bad or one is something bad. This is the difference between guilt and shame. Both guilt and shame are self-conscious emotions (Tangney & Fischer, 1995); they arise because of the subjective sense of a social audience whose opinion matters. Whereas guilt (I have done something wrong) can be made amends for, shame (I am

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something wrong), cannot without the extinguishing of the person who is ashamed. Thus, in terms of self-conscious emotions guilt is to sin as shame is to evil. To sin means to make a mistake, turn aside from the standard, act unjustly, and/or fall away from a relationship with God. It is something we do. Evil is an active and knowing state of being that is in opposition to God, and it often comes with a malevolent tone. Imperfection is a state of being that exceeds finitude and it relates to being a sinner; our imperfect state is one of being “in” sin. There is overlap, because while being imperfect, characterized by sin, we are also opposed to God and therefore evil. These are not all the same things, but they are related in a biblical anthropology. Second, in a therapeutic relationship there is the person of the client and the person of the therapist. Each may demonstrate imperfection, commit sin, and exhibit evil. In a gestalt therapeutic process these categories of right and wrong, good and bad, suggest the issue of ethics, and when that happens then gestalt therapists are eager to differentiate the ethics that arise from within the process of therapy itself as opposed to the ethics that are often imposed upon the process from outside of it (Dan Bloom, personal communication, May 26, 2010). The guideline set from the outside of any given therapeutic process, extrinsic ethics, is comprised of such things as a personal code for life, an ethics code or standards of practice, and the philosophical study of ethics (Bloom, 2010). The guideline that emerges from within the process, intrinsic ethics, relates to the quality of contact and the respect for the Other—the ethics of alterity experienced in the current moment of contact between therapist and client.

Table 14.2 Extrinsic and Intrinsic Ethics in Gestalt Therapy Practice Extrinsic: Imposed from outside gestalt process

(1) General Pattern or Way of Life (e.g., Religious Values and/or Spiritual Disciplines) • Sin: falling away or deviating from the norm • Evil: living in an active opposition to the norm • Imperfection: existing in a state of deviation (2) A Set of Rules of Conduct or Moral Code (e.g., Guidelines for Best Practice) • Sin: deviating from guidelines for best practice • Evil: actively opposing practice standards • Imperfection: having assimilated practices in opposition to best practice (continued)

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Table 14.2 Extrinsic and Intrinsic Ethics in Gestalt Therapy Practice

Intrinsic: Emergent from within gestalt process

(3) Philosophical Ethics (e.g., Emmanuel Levinas’s Philosophy of Alterity) • Sin: ignoring or turning aside from ethical considerations • Evil: challenging the need to think about ethics • Imperfection: living in ignorance of ethical considerations in clinical work (1) Therapist observes the lived faith of his or her client and inquires as to how such trust in God affects the current situation. • Sin: ignoring the emergent figure of how the client’s faith in God affects his or her situation due to an a priori conviction that God does not exist • Evil: making it a priority to turn clients away from faith in God due to a conviction that religion is a source of suffering • Imperfection: practicing with a blind spot to religious matters that limits an ability to follow clients’ emerging figures (2) Therapist recalls the theoretical “core” of gestalt practice and chooses interventions consistent with tracking the client’s phenomenality, engaging in contact over time (a real relationship), and engaging in experimental action consistent with a field methodology. • Sin: forgetting the basics of gestalt praxis and using a technique one recently read about • Evil: actively opposing gestalt praxis • Imperfection: having developed a technically eclectic style of working that is not integrated into the core of gestalt praxis (3) Therapist is “overwhelmed” by the presentation of the client and receives the revelation of the client as a gift given in the moment–actual contact of an ontologically present Other. • Sin: retreating in panic from something not understood, something not reducible to one’s existing categories of thought • Evil: actively opposing the spontaneous creativity in gestalt praxis as being dangerous and without evidence • Imperfection: keeping the client at an interpersonal distance by using diagnostic interviewing as a constant practice

Developed following Bloom (2010).

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CONCLUSION This chapter presented working definitions for the concepts of evil, sin, and imperfection. Sin is a deviation from the norm, often out of ignorance. Evil is an ongoing and active opposition to the norm. Imperfection is a state of being characterized by the presence of sin. The “norm” in terms of a spiritual life is God, but the norm can also be any standard of life that produces an ethic in which people sense a right way and a wrong way of living or doing something. The example of gestalt therapy praxis was offered, with its adoption of Emmanuel Levinas’s philosophy of alterity as an ethic, and that helped to extend the understanding of how evil, sin, and imperfection compare and contrast.

REFERENCES Achilles, E. (1975). Evil, bad, wickedness. In C. Brown (Ed.), The new international dictionary of New Testament theology (Vol. 1, pp. 561–567). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. Bauder, W. (1978). Parapt¯oma. In C. Brown (Ed.), New international dictionary of New Testament theology (Vol. 3, pp. 585–587). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. Bauer, W., Arndt, W., & Gingrich, F. (1957). A Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament and other early Christian literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bloom, D. (2010, June 1–6). Chasing rainbows: Ethics in gestalt therapy: External (extrinsic), foundational—and the “rainbow,” the emergent “ethos.” Presentation given at the 10th biennial conference for the Association for the Advancement of Gestalt Therapy (AAGT), an international community. Brown, F., Driver, S., & Briggs, C. (1978). A Hebrew and English lexicon of the Old Testament. Oxford: Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press. (Original work published in 1907.) Brownell, P. (Submitted). A theoretical core for gestalt therapy. Brownell, P., Meara, A., & Polák, A. (2008). Introduction. In P. Brownell (Ed.), Handbook for theory, research, and practice in gestalt therapy. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars. Günther, W. (1978). Sin. In C. Brown (Ed.), New international dictionary of New Testament theology (Vol, 3., pp. 573–585). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. Lewis, C. S. (1961). Screwtape letters. New York: Macmillan. Livingston, G. (1980). Ra. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological wordbook of the Old Testament (pp. 854–856). Chicago: Moody Press. Peterson, C., & Park, N. (2009). Positive psychology. In I. Marini & M. Stebnicki (Eds.), The professional counselor’s desk reference (pp. 791–799). New York: Springer. Seligman, M. (2002). Authentic happiness. New York: Free Press. Smith, J. K. A. (2002). Speech and theology: Language and the logic of incarnation. New York: Routledge. Tangney, J., & Fischer, K. (1995). Self-conscious emotions: The psychology of shame, guilt, embarrassment, and pride. New York: Guilford Press. Yontef, G., & Jacobs, L. (2007). Gestalt therapy. In R. Corsini & D. Wedding (Eds.), Current psychotherapies (8th ed., pp. 328–367). Florence, KY: Cengage.

ch apter 15

Combating Evil: Human Rights, International Law, and the Global Community Saul Takahashi

INTRODUCTION Though human rights may seem predominantly about humanitarianism, the global regime of human rights has at its core combating evil and bringing evildoers to account for their actions. However, international law as a whole, in particular the enforcement of international law, is hampered greatly by structural flaws and geopolitical and historical considerations. New approaches need to be found, and although several proposals have been put forward dealing with particular elements of the problem, the problems still remain. The Hollywood movie Lord of War is about a man who is, on the face of it at least, truly evil. Yuri Orlov, played by Nicholas Cage, is a large-scale illicit international arms dealer. Yuri specializes in smuggling weapons, from tanks and helicopters to assault rifles and other small arms. He evades UN embargoes for a living and provides the means to kill to despots, dictators, and morally depraved armed opposition groups. One of the ongoing storylines in the movie is Yuri’s relationship with Jack Valentine, an Interpol agent who is bent on apprehending Yuri and bringing him to justice. Valentine spends years chasing Yuri in all sorts of locations in the globe, hunting him down within countries and on the high seas, attempting to catch Yuri red-handed. In one scene, the clearly multiskilled Interpol agent even boards a jet fighter plane, shooting at Yuri’s private cargo plane (full of illicit arms) and forcing it to land. Of course, anybody who has any kind of familiarity with Interpol, or with international organizations in general, would say that this valiant picture

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of a heroic Interpol “agent” jetsetting from continent to continent hunting down his man has no bearing whatsoever in reality—but this is Hollywood, so one should take all of this in good humor.1 In what I believe to be one of the key scenes of the movie, Valentine, as above, intercepts Yuri’s cargo plane over Sierra Leone, and attempts to force it to land at the nearest airstrip for inspection. Yuri, however, outsmarts him by landing the plane on a long dirt road in the bush, buying time before Valentine—who cannot replicate this feat in his jet fighter—can land at the airstrip and come via land to inspect the plane’s cargo. During the fifteen or so minutes before Valentine and his colleague arrive on the scene, Yuri dispenses with the evidence (i.e., the illicit arms) by simply opening the doors to the hull and inviting passing villagers to take whatever weapons they wish, for free. Within minutes, the cargo plane is completely empty. Valentine arrives with one of his colleagues. The evidence is gone, and once again they have no case against Yuri; they are foiled. Nevertheless, they handcuff Yuri, and the colleague takes out a machete and puts it against Yuri’s neck. The colleague practically begs Valentine to let him do away with Yuri then and there—there are no witnesses, and people disappear around here all the time, he says. He and Valentine have already chased Yuri for years, and know for a fact that he is guilty of smuggling weapons on a massive scale; yet at each step they are unable to arrest him due to lack of adequate evidence, Yuri’s manipulation of legal loopholes, or other obstacles. Nevertheless, Yuri is evil, it is clear; and would it not be more just to kill him there, preventing him from continuing to commit his dastardly deeds? However, Valentine, true to his character as an upright, model law enforcement agent, prevents his colleague from extrajudicially killing Yuri. He is confident that he will, one day, be able to amass enough evidence to apprehend Yuri in accordance with the due process of the law. Yuri is let go, and continues on with his activities. In the words of Yuri in a different scene, Valentine is one of “the rarest breeds of law enforcement officers—the type who knows [Yuri] is breaking the law but who wouldn’t break it himself to bust [him],” much less engage in extrajudicial execution. The next key scene for us is at the end. Valentine has finally collected enough evidence to catch Yuri, and Yuri is arrested. However, Yuri calmly informs Valentine what will happen next. His superiors will call him aside, commend him for his good work, and instruct that Yuri be released. Naturally, this is what transpires; the well-connected Yuri walks free, and our hapless hero Valentine is left aghast at the injustice of the situation. Yuri continues on supplying illicit arms to conflicts all over the world, fueling the killing and massive human rights violations so prevalent in those wars. The obvious question (which, this being Hollywood, is unfortunately not revisited in the film) is—should not have Valentine killed Yuri when he had the chance? Extrajudicial execution is surely an act of evil—but was not the

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competing evil, namely, letting Yuri free and allowing him to continue to sell arms, a larger one? Would that one vigilante act not have served justice better? Would less fussing over legal technicalities and the rights of the accused not have been in order? Would not the greater good have been better served had Valentine simply eradicated the evil being in front of him—a small act of evil to destroy a much larger one? Of course, any human rights lawyer would be shocked by this suggestion, and would mount a passionate defense of the rights we must provide accused criminal suspects with, above all else, the right to a fair trial, the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, the right to a meaningful opportunity to mount a defense, and so on. And we all know why these rights are so important, not only for the individual concerned, but also for the state in general. For most fundamentally, if law enforcement officers—or more broadly the government—were able to simply execute those suspected of crimes, inevitably innocent people would be killed. In addition, there would be no checks against abuse; governments would create all sorts of pretexts to kill their political enemies, and history has shown us time and time again that this is a real possibility. The rule of law is a fundamental pillar of the modern state, and this dictates that procedures are followed to the letter. All of the above arguments are true. However, it is equally true that these kind of general arguments do not truly deal with the fundamental question posed. When confronted with real, sheering, obvious evil, is it not better to simply do away with the technicalities, and do what common sense dictates, legal or not?2

HUMAN RIGHTS I do not deal with illicit arms dealers—in my organization, that is the purview of others, mainly those dealing with counter terrorism activities. However, as a human rights lawyer, I deal with unspeakable evil on a daily basis. What force, other than evil, could compel a thug in an armed group in Sierra Leone to rape and then chop the arms off of small girls? How could one possibly describe what makes an Israeli settler teach his small children to throw stones at sick, elderly Palestinian women? What within pushes American troops to torture Iraqi prisoners and then take humiliating photographs of them? Copious amounts of work—much of it highlighted in this book—have been done exploring exactly why human beings commit such acts. Some believe it is due to social conditions and conditioning, whereas others take a more mystical approach to the “dark side” of human nature. My personal experience has lead me to conclude that the answer lies somewhere in between; or, more accurately, that both are correct. Social conditioning, a dehumanization

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of the other, and a particular set of circumstances (whatever those circumstances may be) are definitely required.3 At the same time, we are not born as tabulae rasae; clearly there is something inherent in each of us, the ghost in the machine, that enables us to commit such fearsome acts. In any case, at this point I have little qualification to address such fundamental issues, at least in any coherent sort of way. Rather, this essay will focus on a very small area of human existence, namely, international law. As is often the case in life, the questions themselves are simple ones, nevertheless requiring complex answers: what do we, the people of the world (whose collective will is presumably put forward in international law) define as evil? And is the international system equipped to combat, eradicate, or prevent evil in any meaningful way? It is fair to say that many people believe human rights is a profession populated by do-gooders; naïve, tree-hugging liberals who have somewhat lost their common sense. Why else, many say, would persons involved in human rights jump to defend the rights of the worst mass murderer during trial, or write petition after petition arguing that the death penalty is too cruel for that same murderer? It would therefore come as a surprise to many that, in the eyes of most human rights lawyers, the beginning of modern human rights is not some lofty, pie in the sky eyed declaration in the halls of the United Nations in New York or Geneva, but rater the trial of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg in 1945–1946. Human rights is about protecting the weak and the needy, it is true. But equally so, it is about holding violators of human rights accountable for their deeds, about putting criminals in the dock. In fact the declarations, as we shall see, came later—much later in some cases. And the most exciting development in international human rights law in the last few decades is the creation of the International Criminal Court, precisely to hold evildoers to account. This is one of the main differences between the human rights movement and humanitarianism. Humanitarianism is about addressing the humanitarian needs of people who are suffering, whether the cause of their plight is manmade or a purely natural one. Human rights, on the other hand, deals only with the evil acts of man—and is, at the core of it, about making sure that evil acts do not go unpunished. In this way, human rights is actually a combative movement, geared at fighting evil—or at least at taking evildoers to task. The boys who wanted to be firemen end up in the humanitarian field. It is the boys who wanted to be policemen that are attracted to human rights.

HUMAN RIGHTS TREATIES IN INTERNATIONAL LAW There is a large number of international human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the International

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Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights; the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; and the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, just to name a few. The UN human rights office, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, lists 17 of these treaties as “core conventions.” In addition to the ones above, there are lesser known conventions such as the International Convention on the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons From Enforced Disappearance. Besides these core instruments, a wealth of other human rights instruments are listed in the OHCHR website, covering an extensive range of issues, such as the prevention of discrimination, the right to self determination, the rights of older persons, marriage, the right to work and to fair conditions of employment, and others (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, n.d.-a). Probably the most famous international human rights document is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN in 1949. This has been translated into 375 languages (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, n.d.-b)—pretty much every language under the sun—and contains provisions on what most anybody would recognize as important safeguards of human dignity: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity in rights”(Article 1), “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person” (Article 3), “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression” (Article 19), “Everyone has the right to work” (Article 23), “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well being of himself and his family” (Article 25), and “Everyone has the right to education” (Article 26) for example. However, the UDHR is a declaration, not a treaty, and therefore is not binding on states.4 International law is the law of state relations; it regulates conduct between states. The words “international convention” or “treaty” sound impressive, but basically they are just contracts between states; states A and B enter into an agreement to allow trade, or to exchange ambassadors, or whatever. International law is essentially one big, somewhat overinflated corpus of contracts. Sometimes, however, states get together and for whatever reason (usually some sort of conflict of interest) can’t agree on a binding treaty. One thing they might do in those cases is adopt a declaration, or a resolution, which are basically statements of intent or reaffirmations of principle. Generally these rank below treaties in the ladder of international law, and are not binding on states.5 When the states of the world—to be precise, the ones that were independent states (i.e., not colonies) that were on the victorious side in World War II6—got together to make the UN, there was wide agreement that there

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should be a binding human rights treaty, to solidify the provisions that were used in the Nuremberg trials and also to ensure that massive violations like the Holocaust could not happen again. However, the devil is always in the details, and negotiations soon stumbled over what exactly would be included as binding human rights provisions. States could all agree that genocide should be prohibited, so the Convention against Genocide was adopted in 1948. There was discussion during the drafting of the Genocide Convention as to whether to include language creating a permanent international criminal court; however, as with other issues, in the end there was no agreement on this (see, e.g., Schabas, 2009, pp. 411–416), and the creation of such a court was not to be realized until the International Criminal Court was created in 2002. After the Genocide Convention, though, things got stalled. The UDHR was adopted basically at the same time as the Genocide Convention, in 1948,7 and was intended to be made into a single, binding human rights treaty. However, the Cold War got in the way. The Western countries, whose economies operated on the basis of capitalist systems, were traditionally (and ideologically) more concerned with civil and political rights such as the right to freedom of expression and the right to a fair trial. They argued that economic, social, and cultural rights— such as the right to work and the right to an adequate standard of living— were not really justiciable rights but were about social justice, and should be excluded form any human rights treaty. For their part, the ideology of the countries of the socialist bloc dictated that it was economic equality that was at the heart of all social ills. In addition, they were weaker than the West on many aspects of civil and political rights (i.e., violations of these rights were more systematic there). Therefore, they argued that, on the contrary, it was economic, social, and cultural rights that were important, and that civil and political rights should take a back seat. Essentially, each side wanted to talk only about the set of rights they had a better record on. The big issues remained until 1966, when it was finally agreed that two separate conventions would be adopted—the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Essentially, the states gave up in making one big convention for all categories of rights, and made two; the Western one and the Socialist one. The UDHR, which contains both sets of rights (i.e., civil and political on the one hand, and economic, social, and cultural on the other) was divided into two. So, for example, the right to freedom of expression, the right to be free form torture, and the right to a fair trial were all included in the ICCPR, whereas the right to food, the right to health, and the right to an adequate standard of living were included to the ICESCR. A false dichotomy, many would argue—after all, all of the rights are essential for human existence (or at least a dignified life).

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Looking at the provisions of both conventions, it is apparent that the Western countries managed to prevail in certain ways. Mainly, the provisions of ICCPR have immediate effect; in other words things like torture and unfair trials are prohibited immediately, and states have no excuse for not living up to these standards. On the other hand, ICESCR talks about progressive implementation—state parties “[undertake] to take steps, individually and through international assistance and co-operation . . . to the maximum of its available resources, with a view towards achieving progressively the full realisation of the rights” (Article 2.1) in the Covenant. Of course, these kind of provisions were (and are) arguably necessary, since they take into account the situation of most of the developing world. Still, it is impossible not to notice the difference in teeth between ICESCR and ICCPR.

THE WEAKNESSES OF INTERNATIONAL LAW One thing that should be stressed is that international law is made by states, for states. States are the actor here; they are the subject and the object of international law. Naturally, states are abstract entities, and there are people actually doing the negotiating and signing of treaties—generally these are diplomats. However, the important thing to recognize is that they represent the political interests of their states, and in general are not making international treaties for mainly altruistic goals. In this regard, the advent of human rights can only be described as a revolution in international law, because for the first time individual persons became the subjects of international law, not just states. Ever since the beginning of international law, the subjects of law were states, and only states— individuals existed only insofar as they were citizens of states A or B, and usually didn’t even figure in the equation at all. In human rights though, individuals are bestowed rights through international law, rights which they can and do, in theory and in practice, claim against their own states. Under many procedures in international human rights law, an individual who feels that he has been wronged can appeal to an international committee to adjudicate his claim. All of this only works so far, though. For an individual to say he has, under international law, particular rights that are guaranteed by a particular treaty, his country has to have become party to that treaty. There has to be a decision on the part of his state to enter into that contract and to agree to be bound by it. Otherwise, for the citizens of that state, the human rights in that treaty mean basically nothing. International law is made by states, and particular rules bind only those states that express freely their wish to be bound by those rules—once again, this can’t be stressed enough. Even on the domestic level, all laws are made by political actors, through a political and inevitably imperfect process.

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However, once national laws are adopted, they bind everybody, like it or not, and the police of the country will come and apprehend those who break the law. International law is not like this. States are bound by rules only if they want to be. Imagine a situation like the following: a country, a direct democracy, where all citizens took part in the drafting and adoption of laws. A law would be proposed at an assembly of all citizens. Those citizens that were interested in this law would form a committee to come up with a concrete draft, on which the assembly would vote. However, even if the law is adopted, it would be up to each citizen to decide whether to be bound by the law or not. Surely, one would say this situation is absurd, but that is the current state of international law. Suppose that, in the above imaginary country, only adult male citizens were allowed to vote. One day at the assembly, an upright, high minded citizen decries the situation of women in the country, noting that many men lock them away in their homes and subject them to physical and verbal abuse. This citizen proposes a law making such behavior unlawful, and subject to punishment. The law is drafted and adopted by the good citizens of the country. However, it is up to each citizen to make a declaration that he is bound by this law. If he does not do so, this law means nothing to him or to his wife— he is free to return home and abuse her as before. There are in fact certain principles, known as customary international law, that are understood to be binding on all states, regardless of whether they are party to a particular treaty. To become customary international law, it has to be widely recognized as a principle that states consistently abide by, and that they do so because they have a sense of legal obligation. As one can imagine, the scope of customary law is extremely limited. In addition, here again the devil is in the detail, and there are lengthy debates as to which principles of human rights (and other law) have metamorphosed into customary law. Human rights lawyers like to think that the prohibition of torture is customary law, and certainly it is true that not many (if any) states argue that torture is legitimate—in the words of one of my professors of human rights law, arguing against human rights is like arguing against motherhood. Nevertheless, given the widespread practice of torture in many countries in the world, it is debatable as to whether this principle really has the binding force many human rights lawyers hope.8 In this system, one could hardly expect states to agree to treaties or laws that go against their interests. Because human rights treaties by definition restrict the freedom states have toward their own citizens, one would therefore expect all human rights treaties to be watered down to the lowest common denominator, and/or to have almost no state parties whatsoever. However, I do not wish to sound overly cynical about this, because the fact of the matter is that most countries are party to international human rights

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treaties. Of 192 member states of the UN, 165 are party to the ICCPR, 160 to the ICESCR, 110 to the Rome Statute of the ICC (see UN Treaty Collection, n.d.). The most universal treaty in human rights is the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which all but two states in the entire world have signed up to—pathetically for a country that purports to promote human rights worldwide, one of those two is the United States (the other is Somalia).9 States sign up to human rights treaties for many reasons, but it is fair to say that there is wide recognition in diplomatic circles that it’s simply the accepted thing to do. Countries, or more to the point, governments like to look good. In many ways, multilateral diplomacy is about going with the flow and being accepted as one of “the gang.” If the name of the game is signing up to human rights treaties and making pronouncements saying how important human rights are which is how it is in the current international arena, then that is what states will do.10 So, even though international law is a system whereby states are only bound by rules and norms that they freely sign up to, there does not appear to be much of an issue—since the rules of the game of international diplomacy dictate that, to be a recognized member of the club, states need to ratify international human rights treaties. Or is that really the case? The true issue is not so much which states have signed up to international treaties, since, as we have seen, most have them have. The real issue is whether states actually implement those treaties, and actually protect and ensure the human rights enumerated in them—and, when they do not (as is often the case), how is international law enforced. The record here, as one may guess, is much spottier.

EVIL IN HUMAN RIGHTS How exactly is evil defined in human rights? In modern human rights law, evil would probably be defined as breaches of the legal standards that exist now. As noted above, there are quite a formidable number of human rights recognized in international law. However, surely top of the list of “evil” in human rights law would be the large scale violations that are enumerated in the Statute of the International Criminal Court, commonly known as the Rome Statute from the city that the document was finally adopted in 2002. Article 5 of the Statute says that the ICC will have jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Besides the definition of genocide, which essentially reproduces the definition of this in the 1948 Convention against Genocide, there are long lists in the Rome Statute stipulating exactly what would be defined as a “crime against humanity” and a “war crime.” Crimes against humanity include acts such as murder, extermination, enslavement, torture, or rape, “when

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committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against any civilian population” (Article 7). Article 8, on war crimes, essentially reproduces the list of “grave breaches” of the Geneva Conventions, the main treaties of the international laws of war. It is readily obvious that there are a number of shortcomings with this statute. Most glaring is the fact that to fall under the jurisdiction of the Court, the act has to be either committed as a widespread or systematic act, as above, or has to be committed during an armed conflict. This means that many, if not most, acts of “evil” would not be a crime punishable by the ICC. Of course, that doesn’t mean that those acts should go unpunished, any human rights lawyer would rush to argue in defense of the ICC. It is simply that the drafters of the Rome Statute, the “international community,” recognized that to be functional and to gain the support of the states of the world, the ICC had to focus on a narrowly limited, clearly defined category of evil. Making the focus broader would result in the Court losing focus, and in being ineffective. Besides, the same lawyers would argue, the ICC is to be complementary to national courts, not to substitute them—when it comes to “normal” human rights violations, prosecution by national courts should be sufficient. All of the above may be true, in a narrowly defined, technocratic sort of way. However, these defenses miss the main point, a point that goes straight the heart of international law; namely that, as we have seen, international law is a body of law made by states for states. If states can’t agree on something, it does not become law, and all the aspirations and cries of the people that the states purport to represent will not be crystallized. And even if a law is created, if a particular state does not become party to that treaty, then it is pretty much meaningless for the people of, and in, that state;11 it cannot be applied there. I wrote above that, despite this general principle of international law, the majority of states are party to international human rights treaties. This is true, and it is also true with the Rome Statute—the website to the ICC states that as of July 21, 2009, 110 countries have become parties to the ICC, allowing that court jurisdiction over crimes committed within their territories or elsewhere by their nationals. Nevertheless, the ICC is greatly hampered by the fact that the world’s predominant superpower, the United States, has not become party. The United States did sign the statute when it was first adopted in Rome,12 but later on it “unsigned” it, declaring that it would not become party after all. The United States—in particular, the Bush administration—went on a rampage against the Court, stating that it was concerned that politically motivated prosecutions would be lodged against its troops abroad and threatening countries with the termination of aid if they did not promise that no U.S. troops would be handed over to the Court. In a move which drew strong international

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opprobrium, the U.S. Congress even passed a law commonly known as “the Hague Invasion Act,” permitting the government to use “all means necessary” to free any U.S. official from an attempt to transfer him to the ICC (Feinstein & Lindberg, 2009, p. 51). President Barack Obama, on the other hand, has given strong indications that he will revisit the question of becoming state party to the ICC, and there has definitely been greater cooperation with the ICC and a general change of tone. Nevertheless, it remains the case that the United States is not state party to the ICC statute. Under the statute, for the Court to exercise jurisdiction, the alleged crimes have to have taken place either within the territory of a state party, or have to have been committed by a national of a state party. The only other possibility is if the UN Security Council refers a case to the Court, under Chapter 7 of the Charter—this shall be examined later. Other states, both countries with serious human rights issues, have also “unsigned” the Rome Statute, namely Israel (in 2002) and Sudan (in 2008). The website of the Israeli Foreign Ministry notes as one of the reasons for its “unsigning” the inclusion of “the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the occupying power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies” as a crime under the jurisdiction of the ICC. “The inclusion of this offense, under the pressure of Arab states . . . is clearly intended to try to use the court to force the issue of Israeli settlements without the need for negotiation as agreed between the sides” (Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2002). Sudan’s “unsigning” took place in August 2008, a couple of months after the Prosecutor of the Court requested an indictment against the President of Sudan.

RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT AND STATE SOVEREIGNTY So there exists an inherent weakness in international law, in that states can in principle decide which laws to be bound by. Nevertheless, there is an emerging norm that states have a responsibility to protect the human rights of its citizens, and that when states fail spectacularly in this (i.e., when they are unwilling or unable to prevent massive acts of evil) the international community has the duty to intervene, militarily if necessary. Called the “responsibility to protect” (R2P in human rights circles), this idea was first put forward in an international commission brought together by the Canadian government in 2001. The principle of R2P has been endorsed by the countries of the UN, in principle at least, at the World Summit in 2005. The World Summit Outcome Document states, The international community, through the United Nations, also has the responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful

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means, in accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In this context, we are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter VII, on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation with relevant regional organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. We stress the need for the General Assembly to continue consideration of the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and its implications, bearing in mind the principles of the Charter and international law.

I state that the endorsement was “in principle” because, as any international lawyer worth his weight in salt will have noticed, there is a big gap in the above text, namely that, in considering R2P, the UN must bear in mind “the principles of the Charter.” And, as any international lawyer knows, one of the main pillars of the UN Charter, and of international law as a whole, is that of state sovereignty; the idea that what goes within the borders of a state is that state’s business and nobody else’s. The first principle of the UN, as elaborated in the Charter, is that “the Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members” (Article 2(1)). Many right minded people, in the field of human rights and otherwise, scoff at sovereignty. They look at it as an anachronism, an “old guard” defense put forward by tyrants and despots who systematically abuse their citizens. To them, sovereignty is something out of the 19th century, an excuse to shield human rights violations from scrutiny. Other people criticize sovereignty from a different viewpoint. They argue that, in the increasingly globalized world of the 21st century, sovereignty means very little. When multinational corporations and others regularly transfer billions of dollars across borders with the push of a button, they say, just how seriously can sovereignty be taken? As a practical matter, all of these arguments have merit, and surely we are at the time where we need to rethink the principle of sovereignty and exactly what it entails. However, it should also be recalled that sovereignty is something that people in many states, in particular developing states, take very seriously. It was not long ago that Western (and other) powers colonized most of the rest of the world, brutally exploiting their resources, abusing their populations, and engaging in all sorts of evil deeds. For much of the developing world, the principle of sovereignty is looked upon as a shield against the repetition of such hegemony. In both developed and developing countries, pressure from foreign countries on what is widely looked upon as an internal affair often brings a violent, kneejerk reaction. No person wants

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their rights to be abused—but perhaps equally, no person wants foreign meddling in what they see as their community’s problems. Much work has been done on the psychosocial reasons that lead persons to identify with their nation and/or their community, but this is largely out of the scope of this essay. The point is that this is the reality. So how can we reconcile the pressing need to intervene when there are mass violations of human rights with the principle of sovereignty? Is it not obvious in some cases of massive evil, such as Bosnia, Rwanda, and Darfur, that “we” need to “do something,” legal niceties notwithstanding? In such extreme cases, is that not also what the people concerned want?

ENFORCEMENT: THE SECURITY COUNCIL AND THE LEAGUE OF DEMOCRACIES Even supposing we could get over the stumbling block of sovereignty— and this is a big “if ”—another issue remains, and that is this: Who is going to determine that a situation requires intervention, and who is going to do the intervening? It goes without saying that if we should see somebody committing a felony, our first reaction would be to call the police, and our expectation would be that the police would come and apprehend the person. One of the principal elements of a definition of a state, or perhaps one should say a functioning government, is that it has a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within its territory, and that it uses this monopoly to enforce the law, to keep the peace, and to ensure security for its residents. On the global level, there is—almost—no such policeman, no such global cop. I say “almost” because, in theory, this is what the UN Security Council is tasked with. In practice, however, as is well known, it has largely failed at this task. The first purpose of the UN, as enumerated in Article 1 of the UN Charter, is to “maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace.” It is quite clear from the outset, therefore, that the main goal of the UN is to keep the peace—to maintain international security. The main body of the UN charged with security matters is the Security Council; the Charter states specifically that the members of the UN “confer on the Security Council primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, and agree that in carrying out its duties under this responsibility the Security Council acts on their behalf ” (UN Charter Article 24(1)). And the Security Council has teeth; if it determines a threat to international security, it can adopt a resolution under Chapter 7 of the Charter, which makes it mandatory for all states. It can, if it so wishes, decide

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on military intervention under Chapter 7, to stop wide scale human rights violations. It is perhaps a potent vehicle for combating evil. The problem is, of course, is that the Security Council has never been able to perform this function effectively, in a sustained way. The fact that any one of the permanent five members of the Security Council—the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China (known in UN circles as the P5)—can veto a resolution has meant that the Security Council has usually been prevented from taking effective action. The list is long, and no country has been an angel—for example, the United States has used its veto to stop strong language on Israeli practices in Occupied Palestine. However, more destructive than the actual use of the veto itself is the implicit threat of the veto, which usually leads to a significant watering down of any resolution after much backroom wheeling and dealing. Most resolutions of the Security Council that are of concern to this essay, for example those deciding on peace-keeping operations in post conflict situations, are adopted under the weaker provisions of Chapter 6 of the Charter, which does not provide for mandatory actions by all UN member states—and everything is subject to bargaining outside of public scrutiny. It is clearly problematic that the Security Council reflects how the world looked like in 1945, and not the present day, and no serious observer can claim that the system does not need reform. There have been several attempts at this, most focusing on expanding the number of countries with permanent seats and also restraining the use of the veto. The most recent reform movement was in 2005, when for some time it looked like several other countries (most of all Japan) might be successful in gaining a permanent seat. However, as with other issues highlighted in this essay, the devil is always in the details; which countries would be new permanent members? And would they have the veto? The crux of the matter is, though, that any kind of reform would require the agreement of all five permanent members. And, it is extremely difficult to envisage those five countries (or any five countries) agreeing to relinquish or share the vast powers they have. One can call this cynicism, or realism—the point is that has been the reality up till now, and it is not likely to change. We have, therefore, what we have—a clearly flawed system of enforcement. The international fight against evil may have a court, of sorts, and a law, of sorts; but without the policemen to go in, stop crimes taking place, and bringing perpetrators to justice, it is hard to argue that the entire system is effective. Even when the court issues an indictment, we have no policemen to go in, arrest the criminal suspect, and bring him to court—as we see now with the fact that the president of Sudan lives free in Khartoum, despite an indictment by the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity including “murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture and rape” (International Criminal Court, 2009).

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As much as the Security Council is the exclusionary preserve of a small handful of countries, some argue that the UN as a whole is also hampered by the opposite problem, namely the blind pursuit (some would even say worship) of inclusion and universality. The UN is, of course, the club that anybody can join, and many would say that the UN’s true strength lies in the fact that it is the one forum that brings all countries—with some arguable exceptions such as Taiwan—together. On the other hand, however, the universality of the UN does at times lead to situations that are clearly problematic, if not even ludicrous. In 2004, during the height of ethnic cleansing in Darfur, Sudan was elected to the Commission on Human Rights. The year before, the Commission was chaired by Libya, another country with a dubious human rights record to say the least. And the division of regional seats on the relatively new Human Rights Council—like with most intergovernmental bodies in the UN, in reality member states are elected to sit on this Council in accordance with regional groupings—has resulted in an extreme bias, with the situation in Occupied Palestine receiving far more attention than other situations at least as, if not more, serious. Such fiascos take place in the Security Council as well. Rwanda was elected as a non permanent member of the Security Council in January 1994, and sat on the Council during the genocide that the government itself had orchestrated and was conducting. This gave the government access to information and the opportunity to influence the debate, and while it does not appear the Rwandan delegation was too vocal, at the very least it could (and surely did) report back to the genocidaires that the international community was unlikely to act. Indeed, Rwanda nearly became the president of the Security Council in September, because the rules were that the seat of president was to be rotated in alphabetical order. A genocidal government representing the Security Council to the media! This was too much even for the countries of the UN, and the Security Council voted to suspend the normal rules and skip Rwanda (see, e.g., Barnett, 2002, pp. 145–147). Some commentators have put forward the idea of a Concert (or League) of Democracies, a new international organization that would bring together the democracies of the world to cooperate on security issues. The underlying idea is simple; democracies share liberal values such as the rule of law and respect for human rights, and can be expected to stand up for these values and combat evil when necessary. The UN, so the idea goes, with its principles of universality and inclusion of non democracies on the Security Council, will always be constrained. If the democracies of the world banded together, then they could work effectively to defend human rights and bypass the paralysis of the UN, in particular the Security Council. The main idea seems relatively clear: the creation of a “NATO plus,” which would act militarily in situations where the UN was powerless to act.

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Proponents of the idea point to the fact that NATO—an alliance of likeminded democracies that, globally speaking, share a common culture—has been called upon to do exactly that in several situations in recent years, including Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan. Proponents also point to the situation in Darfur, where for many months one country (China) prevented the Security Council from taking concrete action, resulting in—once again—the world standing by as large scale crimes against humanity occurred. The idea of a Concert of Democracies was subject to a considerable amount of criticism, with liberal commentators stating that it reeked of neocon philosophy and seemed more like an attempt at creating a platform to legitimize American military escapades than anything else. Indeed, the Princeton Project, from which this concept emerged, was first and foremost an American project to “develop a sustainable and effective national security strategy for the United States of America” (Princeton Project on National Security, 2006). The fact that John McCain adopted the Concert of Democracies as one of his foreign policy platforms surely was another nail in the coffin. There are two main points that critics of the proposal put forward. First of all, creating a club open only to “democracies” may sound reasonable on the surface, but in practice serious questions arise as to exactly what a democracy entails, and, therefore, what countries would qualify. Russia, for example, has regular elections—but it would not appear that the country would top the list for eligible countries in the minds of the proponents of the Concert. Expanding the criteria from one focusing simply on the conducting of free and fair elections to include concepts like the rule of law and human rights would certainly be in order, but, so the critics state, the devil is in the detail, and establishing legitimate criteria would be no easy task. Welfare-minded states in Europe, for example, might argue for criteria based on ensuring a minimum standard of economic well-being for a candidate country’s citizens—criteria which could easily result in the exclusion of the United States. The inclusion of Israel could be a thorny problem; a vibrant democracy within its borders, but in the eyes of many an aggressor and oppressor in Occupied Palestine. The other main point that most critics raised was the fundamental belief at the heart of the proposal that democracies always, or even usually, share national interests. While the United States and, say, India may agree on some things, it would be (in the words of one critic) “wishful thinking” (Carothers, 2008, p. 3) to assume that the mere fact that the two countries are democracies means that the interests of the two will always converge—in the area of security, economic cooperation, or just about anything. Currently, the idea of a Concert of Democracies appears to be dead— which, in the eyes of this author, is a shame. The criticisms above have merit, but they are somewhat technocratic, and are reminiscent of civil servants scrambling to convince the minister how reality is far more complicated and

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why his idea won’t work. The idea of a Concert of Democracies is a big idea, a visionary one. Like all big ideas, it has flaws—but these are hardly insurmountable. On the question of criteria, for example, one can rightly point to the European Union, which employs strict, concrete criteria in the area of democracy, governance, and human rights for aspiring entrant countries. There are plenty of politics involved in the EU’s decisions as to whether particular countries should be allowed to become a member of the club, as can be seen in, for example, the EU’s decisions regarding Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, and others. However, it remains the case that there are criteria, and there is a process through which compliance with the criteria are measured.13 Regarding the issue of shared interests, it is surely wishful thinking to assume that democracies will always share interests. However, that is no reason not to make efforts in that direction, and the mere creation of a separate forum may encourage that. The fact of the matter is that at least most democracies by definition share common values in several areas, as listed above: the rule of law, the protection of human rights, and good governance, to name a few. Interests on the international stage may not always coincide, but the agreement on certain values could surely become the basis for increased cooperation. Another criticism that has been raised is that of legitimacy; that a Concert of Democracies would have to exclude many, probably most countries from membership. However, while universality may have its place, it is not necessarily an all-encompassing objective in and of itself. Some areas of international cooperation may require universality, whereas others may not. In any case even its proponents state that the Concert of Democracies would not, at least initially, replace the UN, but would complement its efforts and take action where the UN failed to—so the world would remain with the UN being the truly universal organization, and with the Concert being a less unwieldy organization that could take speedier action on certain issues. Whether such an organization would really function in this way is, of course, open to question.

CONCLUSION All of this should surely make clear that the fight against evil in international law still has quite some way to go. Some of the problems have to do with particular provisions of international law, and how they are formulated. Some problems have to do with the system of enforcement of international law. Yet other problems are more fundamental, and have to do with the system of international law itself, and how it is based on states and their interests. It all seems quite messy, and in many ways ineffective. After elaborating throughout this essay some of these many problems, it might seem odd to look at the positive aspects of the current system. Nevertheless, it is worthy to note that, while what we have now may be

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lacking in many ways, it is surely preferable to what might exist otherwise. International human rights law and its enforcement may be insufficient, influenced by geopolitics, even arguably arbitrary at times. However, it remains the rallying cry of millions of activists and citizens throughout the world, and has become a mainstream issue that cannot be ignored by those in power. As ineffectual as the Security Council may be, the alternative, in 1945 at least, may have been a return to the law of the jungle. And it was not so long ago that the prospect of a head of state being indicted by an international court for crimes against humanity would have seemed laughable. The fact that the points I raised in this essay are even debated shows that there is a basis for discussion, created and built throughout decades and centuries of work. As naïve as it may seem to many historians, this author has a linear view of history, and believes that, all things considered, humanity is making progress. It is our responsibility, however, to ensure that progress continues, and that humanity progresses in the right direction, for this is not always a given. The glass right now is either half empty or half full, but at any point it could be emptied—and it is up to us to ensure that it continues to be filled. The opinions expressed in this essay are those of the author alone, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, the United Nations, or of any of its organs.—Saul Takahashi, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

NOTES 1. When it comes to films portraying the UN and other international organizations in an overly glamorous fashion, my personal favorite is the “Art of War” series, which features the “UN Special Unit.” Trained in martial arts and military skills, this Special Unit engages in espionage like activities to ensure that negotiations at the UN proceed smoothly. The sheer idea is laughable to anybody with any contact with the hapless civil servants of the UN, but good fun nonetheless. 2. Some might argue that the “ticking bomb” situation is a similar moral dilemma, and one that requires firm action, even should it be illegal. The argument essentially starts with the scenario where an apprehended terrorist is known to have information on a time bomb that, if it were to explode, would cause large numbers of innocent deaths. Under such circumstances, the argument is, it would be justified to torture the terrorist, to obtain the necessary information. However, this is in fact not a true analogy of the Lord of War dilemma, mainly because torture has been proven to be largely ineffective as a means of obtaining information. Therefore, moral and legal considerations aside, torture is not an effective tool to combat evil. 3. I could not possibly begin to cite the vast literature that exists on this topic. See, e.g., Kerinan (2007), Waller (2007), and Staub (1989). Other scholars argue that ethnic cleansing and genocide are inherent in the modern state; see, e.g., Mann (2005).

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4. Some scholars argue otherwise, stating that the UDHR has passed into the realm of customary international law, binding on all states. Others argue that it is an integral part of the UN Charter, which is a binding treaty on member states of the UN. 5. The big exception to this rule is resolutions of the Security Council under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter. This will be examined later on in this chapter. 6. The first general assembly of the UN, in 1946, brought together 51 states. See, e.g., United Nations (n.d.). 7. The Genocide Convention was adopted by the UN on December 9, 1948, and the UDHR the next day, on December 10. 8. The debate is usually not whether torture is as such legitimate, but whether particular methods of interrogation amount to torture. Israel practiced several methods that could only be described as ill treatment and torture legally until 1999, when a decision of the Supreme Court ruled that the General Security Services were not authorized to use such practices, though it did not rule out the possibility of a defense of necessity in certain cases. See Public Committee against Torture in Israel et al v. the State of Israel et al, HCJ 5100/94. Numerous methods that amount to torture or ill treatment were also used by the United States in the “war against terror” and were seemingly authorized by high-level government directives. 9. See, e.g., Heritage Foundation (2006). On the other hand, President Obama has stated he would review the United States’ nonratification of this Convention, calling the fact that the only other country that had not ratified the Convention was Somalia “embarassing” (Child Right’s Information Network, 2008). 10. For an insightful, if somewhat irreverent, look at the world of international diplomacy, see Ross (2007). 11. The distinction between “of ” and “in” is important, as foreign residents of a country are also, in principle, protected by human rights treaties. 12. In the technical jargon of international law, signing an international treaty is generally only the first step toward actually becoming party. To become a party, that state has to ratify (or accede to) the treaty, a step which usually involves the adoption by that state’s legislature of some kind of enabling act. However, signing a treaty is not meaningless—it is an indication that state intends to become party, and, legally speaking, prevents them from carrying out acts against the purpose of that treaty. 13. Robert Kagan (2010) notes rightly that “when Europeans consider whether to admit a new member they do not shrug their shoulders and ruminate on the hopelessly complex meaning of the term ‘democracy’. They employ precise and stringent criteria. . . . A new [Concert of Democracies] could simply borrow the EU’s admissions form.”

REFERENCES Barnett, M. (2002). Eyewitness to a genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Carothers, T. (2008). Is a League of Democracies a good idea? Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Child Right’s Information Network. (2008). Is Obama’s win also a victory for children’s rights? London: Author.

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Feinstein, L., & Lindberg, T. (2009). Means to an end: US interest in the International Criminal Court. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Heritage Foundation. (2006). Human rights and social issues at the U.N.: A guide for U.S. policymakers. Washington, DC: Author. International Criminal Court. (2009, March 4). ICC warrant for the arrest for Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir. The Hague: Author. Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (2002, June). Israel and the International Criminal Court. Retrieved from http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/2000_2009/ 2002/6/Israel%20and%20the%20International%20Criminal%20Court. Kagan, R. (2010, May 13). The Case for a League of Democracies. Financial Times. Kerinan, B. (2007). Blood and soil: A world history of genocide and extermination from Sparta to Darfur. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Mann, M. (2005). The dark side of democracy: Explaining ethnic cleansing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. (N.d.-a). International law. Retrieved from http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/index.htm#core. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (N.d.-b). Universal declaration of human rights. Retrieved from http://www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Pages/ Introduction.aspx. Princeton Project on National Security. (2006). Forging a world of liberty under law: US national security in the 21st century. Princeton, NJ: Author. Public Committee against Torture in Israel et al v. the State of Israel et al, HCJ 5100/94. Ross, C. (2007). Independent diplomat: Dispatches from an unaccountable elite. London: Hurst. Schabas, W. A. (2009). Genocide in international law: The crime of crimes (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Staub, E. (1989). The roots of evil: The origins of genocide and other group violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. United Nations. (N.d.). Milestones in United Nations history. Retrieved from http:// www.un.org/Overview/milesto4.htm. UN Treaty Collection. (N.d.). Retrieved from http://treaties.un.org/Pages/Treaties. aspx?id=4&subid=A&lang=en. Waller, J. (2007). Becoming evil: How ordinary people commit genocide and mass killing (2nd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

ch apter 16

Evil in the Shadow: What Carl Jung Can Teach Us About Evil Steven A. Rogers and Deborah A. Lowe

You won’t kill me out of some misplaced sense of self-righteousness. And I won’t kill you because you’re just too much fun. I think you and I are destined to do this forever. . . . You complete me. —The Joker to Batman (in The Dark Knight, 2008) Most of us like to keep evil in the shadows. Either we completely deny the reality of evil, which is an increasingly popular postmodern phenomenon, or we try to keep it safely out of mind, detached from our everyday work, family, and recreation. If we do indulge thoughts about it, these are typically restricted to fantasies, fables, or stories, where we can personify evil in archetypal and unequivocal form. Batman has the Joker; Sherlock Holmes has Professor Moriarty; Cinderella has her stepmother; the Fellowship has Sauron. Even in these cases, however, evil is clearly demarcated and kept separate, not only from ourselves but also from what we perceive as good and wholesome. This retains our need for distance and detachment, lest we become infected or contaminated with evil if we come in too close contact with it. But it also means that we are surprised when it appears in the form of genocide, 9/11, high school killing sprees, or cruelty to animals, almost as if we had hoped that our denial of its existence, or our willingness to let it have the space of the shadows, would keep it tamed and at bay. Evil is undoubtedly a complex phenomenon, and no one theory can accurately or completely capture its multifaceted nuances. However, an often overlooked, but key part of the problem may be that we are trying to keep evil removed from ourselves and in the shadows, rather than examining how

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it already exists within us. In our conjecturing about evil, we may forget that this tendency to split off evil from ourselves and project it onto stories or other people is not just an externalization of the things that we consider evil but also an internal process, whereby we push into the recesses of our mind those things that are unacceptable. On their own, these repressed parts may not substantiate evil, but they can assume the life of a monster. This is most accurately captured by the disparity between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, who are one-in-the-same person. There is a sharp duality between Dr. Jekyll’s kind, wise, and warm persona and the deformation, coldness, and absent conscientiousness of Mr. Hyde. In our most honest moments, we would all likely admit that we have a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Perhaps the problem is that we are not honest; we are duplicitous and disavow the presence of Mr. Hyde in our psyche. Perhaps the flaw in Dr. Jekyll was that he was unable to embrace a tension or find a synthesis between his opposites (Sanford, 1991). As this fable ultimately reveals, such a failure to integrate sows the seeds for evil. In similar fashion, the goal of this chapter is to suggest that evil can emerge from the unconscious splitting off of unacceptable emotions, thoughts, and urges from the self, resulting in an incomplete tension between the good and bad within the self. Relying heavily on the theory, writings, and musings of C.G. Jung, we will attempt to show that evil and destructive tendencies can result when the shadow side is either ignored or when it is not integrated and balanced by the fullness of consciousness. To better understand this view, though, requires an exploration of Jung’s ideas about the shadow, how it develops, and how it contributes to the emergence of evil. This will provide fertile ground for discussing how to use the process of integration to avoid perpetuating evil, as well as exploring the implications of this view for a personal responsibility for evil. With these goals in mind, let us go into the shadow.

THE SHADOW Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions. —C. G. Jung The shadow side of human nature has assumed many names. The dark twin, the alter ego, and the dark side are all monikers that come to mind. But it was Carl Jung who probably most advanced and plumbed the concept of the shadow as it relates to the possibilities of human evil. According to Jung (1959/1971), the shadow is the psychic structure that contains all those emotions, experiences, motives, and shameful desires that we would rather

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not admit, so we instead reject or banish. These are not things that are external to us and that we simply hope to avoid becoming, but rather elements and parts of who we actually are that we consider to be unacceptable and threatening. For some, the shadow may consist of lust, pride, or depression, whereas for others it might be rage, dependence, or vulnerability. This suggests that the content of the shadow may look different for each individual because we all differ in what we deem to be unacceptable. Some may see laziness as unacceptable, others may see sexuality that way, and still others may relegate kindness to the shadow. In a sense, the shadow is the contrast to the persona, another psychic structure highlighted by Jung (1953/1971). The persona is the public mask we wear in order to function adequately in our relationships. It reflects the image and personality that we desperately try to convey to the external world, often as a way of eliciting social approval, acceptance, and love. In the least, it embodies our concerns about physical appearance, our attempts toward political correctness or the lack thereof, our level of congeniality to others, and our level of directness in relationships. Put simply, it is everything that we consider to be acceptable and important to demonstrate about ourselves to the public world. Because the persona and shadow are opposites, it is possible to loosely determine someone’s shadow by imagining those features that are contrary to their social mask. For the person who tries to present as intelligent and culturally refined, there may be shadow elements of mundanity, naïveté, and earthiness. For the person who is overzealous in their attempt to appear gregarious and morally certain, their shadow may betray tendencies toward shyness and deep existential angst and doubt. Again, however, it is important to note that the shadow, namely those things that are unacceptable and threatening, looks different for each person. One person’s shadow might be another’s persona. Perhaps this idea of the shadow can be better understood by exploring how it develops. The shadow arises through the process of splitting, which can also be understood as repression or disownership. In the development of each individual, there occurs a learning or internalization of the values of society and parents. There are behaviors, values, emotions, and thoughts that are considered ideal, for which individuals are praised and given approval. This can occur at any age, particularly when there is strong judgment or criticism of a certain personality trait by a culture, job, or respected person. However, it often first occurs in childhood, so kids learn a set of rules that earn acceptance or rejection. Freud (1933/1964) termed this the ego-ideal, an internal set of behaviors or values about how one should be. All those personality features that the ego-ideal deems acceptable remain on the conscious level and come to form the persona. In contrast, those emotions, impulses, and desires that do not match the ego-ideal are considered unacceptable and subsequently rejected. Anything that is too variant from this persona has to

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be split off, such as fear, anger, grief, or other emotions because they represent threats to the ego-ideal and the persona. They are excluded from the psyche, from one’s sense of self, and from one’s dominant self-image. If, for example, you are raised with the ideal of being loving, morally upright, generous, and kind, then you would have to reject or hide anything antithetical to this ideal, like anger, selfishness, sexual fantasies, and the like (Miller, 1991). The shadow therefore contains everything that has been hidden for the sake of the ego-ideal (Whitmont, 1991). As this suggests, once these rejected feelings, urges, and thoughts are split off or dissociated, they are cast, usually through the process of repression, into the unconscious, where they become the dark aspect of the personality, namely the shadow. They are dark, not because the elements are inherently sinister or evil, although they can easily include destructive and violent impulses, but rather because they are unconscious and out of awareness. They are kept distant from the light of consciousness, which renders them hidden, difficult to understand, dangerous, and disorderly. These qualities that are split off become a secondary personality, akin to a splinter personality, with its own contents, thoughts, ideas, images, and value judgments (Zweig & Abrams, 1991). The individual may consider the contents of this unconscious shadow to be “negative” parts of the personality, but it is more appropriate to conceptualize them as inferior rather than negative (Zweig & Abrams, 1991). They are inferior in the attention and status they are given because the ego-ideal has deemed them to be less important than the socially acceptable features of the persona. They are also inferior in their development and differentiation because they are given less space and mindfulness to differentiate. However, as we will later explain, this does not mean that the shadow has any less influence on behavior, emotion, or thought. Robert Bly (1991) provides a useful analogy by likening shadow development to bag stuffing. Behind each of us, Bly states, is an invisible bag. The parts of us that parents, teachers, and society do not like get placed in the bag, perhaps as a way of survival or as a way of retaining others’ love. Children are asked, “Can’t you be still?” They are told, “Don’t get angry.” Girls are encouraged to make decisions based on fashion and collective ideas about beauty. Boys are reprimanded if they show too much artistic sensibility, or they are scolded for too much wildness. As a result, things like impatience, fury, and self-confidence are all placed in the bag, perhaps along with sexuality, untamedness, impulsivity, and freedom. Individual children are left with a highly restrictive set of personality traits and dispositions, and then spend a large portion of their youth searching for who they are and what separates them from all the others who look and act similar to them. It is often not until middle age that someone thinks to look in the bag, only to find that at least one half of their individuality and uniqueness has been placed there. It is also not uncommon for the elements of the bag to be hostile to the

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person opening it. But, Bly cautions, even before this time, the elements in the bag assume their own personality and cannot be ignored. This shadow or splinter personality will emerge, and when it does, it can assume a dark and monstrous shape.

THE EMERGENCE OF EVIL That boy may come back for his shadow. —Mrs. Darling (in Peter Pan) Based on the foregoing discussion, it would be easy to prematurely conclude that the shadow is evil. However, the shadow is not absolute evil, nor the source of it. Quite the contrary, it has an incredible amount of energy and positive potential. It is the source of strong emotion, spontaneity, and creativity, and what one culture deems as shadow-worthy might be deemed by another as persona-worthy. The potential for evil, rather, emerges from the lack of integration of the shadow. It is probably more precise to say that evil has a greater likelihood of emerging when someone fails to acknowledge, wrestle with, and own his/ her shadow. This is because, in the absence of integration or a balancing of internal tension between opposites, the self becomes unipolar. The creation of the shadow is really the formation of a dualistic personality disguised in an attempt to appear unidimensional and consistent. Whenever shadow formation occurs, it is often conducted with a mind toward survival for oneself and one’s family. Many individuals abandon parts of themselves for social approval, love, or pure physical or emotional existence, perhaps even for evolutionary purposes. However, this usually comes at the expense of realizing that they are most whole and authentic before the splitting, when they are forced to wrestle with, and hold in tension, their multiple dimensions and complexities. After the split, they become dualists in reality but unipolar in mind, overidentifying with those things that they perceive as good and relegating everything else to the only place they know where to put the bad, namely out of consciousness and in the shadows. This forms a breeding ground or Petri dish for evil. Consider, for example, those occasions when someone tries to be perfect and completely consistent with their ego-ideal. Not only does this create an impossible standard of unipolarity that will invariably frustrate the individual, but also the individual loses an appreciation for the reality, and more importantly the power, of his or her own internal darkness. This might explain some of the evil acts of certain politicians or celebrities, who seem to dispassionately sanction or commit murder. Built up by the admiration of the populace, who largely do not want to hear about flaws, faults, and inconsistencies in their leaders, it makes sense that some of these individuals

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overidentify with their persona. After several years of repetition and encoding of this pattern, they may come to see themselves as all good, only to later be surprised when some evil overcomes them or when others puncture their persona and accuse them of evil intention or actions. Because they have repressed the shadow, they live in a self-deception that leaves them susceptible to unconscious elements, such as vindictiveness, nepotism, and abusive power. Even in less severe cases, our own hidden and forbidden impulses, emotions, and desires often emerge, usually in unconscious ways. We may hurt, violate, and disregard others because our shadow impulses and emotions seek expression and then erupt into consciousness. But because we are not already aware, accepting, and conscious of these elements, we unknowingly yield to their influence, sometimes with evil results. In most cases, the abandoned parts of the self that form the shadow are not inherently evil, although the shadow of some individuals is clearly composed of evil. Destructiveness, deceit, and unchecked selfishness are among the shadow features of those in this category. The folktale of Bluebeard, who murdered spouses and kept their skeletons in the closet, or King Minos who built an elaborate labyrinth to hide the monstrous Minotaur, are examples of figures whose shadow contained the elements of evil. In these cases, denial or repression of the unacceptable parts of the self resulted in the denial or repression of one’s own evil. A similar phenomenon can occur when we are blinded to the reality of our own evil, such as our tendencies toward aggression and deceit. Like Bluebeard, our blindness to the skeletons in our closet renders us more likely to dispense misery and evil to others. Because there is a complete disconnect with the shadow, some individuals became so preoccupied with matching their ego-ideal or so enmeshed with their persona that they lose touch with their murderous and vengeful intentions. When these intentions and impulses are locked away, they build up a kind of rage or pressure that forcefully tries to break through their negation and denial, often in violent and surprising ways. The overworked employee who strives to present herself at work in a pleasant and acquiescing manner may fall prey to this when the anger in her shadow erupts in the abuse of her children. On a more collective scale, the Crusades during the Middle Ages, the Inquisition by the Catholic Church, and the attacks on the World Trade Center are all painful and humbling examples of evil emerging from the shadow. In these cases, individuals became so convinced of their own righteousness that they committed atrocities of evil. By keeping their evil in the shadows, they were completely victim to its unconscious working and its eventual expression. As Becker (1991) aptly states, the person who sees him or herself as innocent can create considerable harm without knowing it. Likewise, Peck (1991) claims that those who in their narcissism are blind to their shadow are most likely to inflict evil

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and destruction upon others. It is hard not to wonder if these acts of personal and collective evil could have been avoided had the inflicting individuals been able to own their shadow, use it to balance their unidimensional focus on the ego-ideal, and been able to exercise power over their evil, simply because they were more mindful and aware of their darker capacities. In the foregoing cases, the possibility for evil might make greater sense considering the clear elements of evil in the shadow. However, it may be more surprising to consider that the seeds of evil can just as easily be sown when someone’s shadow does not display clear elements of evil. Put differently, if some individuals are susceptible to evil because they are trying to be overly pious and sanctimonious, others are likely to commit evil because they have discarded their own piety. In fact, those whose evil seems unquestionable, such as professional assassins, child molesters, and sadists, may be among those comprising this group. Unlike the majority of the population, this group does not have hate and violence in the shadow. They are quite comfortable expressing overt hate and deception, so they have a different psychic structure. Their values are reversed, with their shadow containing tenderness, compassion, and kindness. Those personality traits and emotions that are in the dark of their unconscious are positive feelings (Metzner, 1985). In a sense, their evil emerges from a similar denial or rejection of their shadow, but the contents of the shadow differ. Rather than failing to integrate and balance their hostility and destructiveness, they are unable to assimilate and bring into consciousness their conscientiousness and empathy. Yet their evil also emerges from not expressing the shadow side. McCully’s (1978) careful description of a familial murder may provide a helpful example of this. In gruesome fashion, the 18-year-old male who was involved had murdered his mother, tiny half-brother, and stepfather. Several explanations for these murders were raised, but key among these were an upbringing deprived of moral values and his grandmother’s spoiling by sharing her considerable wealth with him. McCully argued that because this young man was granted every whim and imposed few boundaries, he was not able to integrate moral values or self-control. In Jungian terms, self-control and morality were in the boy’s shadow, but his failure to integrate them into his psyche and his decision to instead project these values outward rendered him a vessel for evil. This is also supported by the perpetrator’s responses to Rorschach plates. McCully (1978) notes that not only did the young man report seeing several satanic-supernatural images in the cards, but also these were disturbingly given alongside images of flowers, trees, and other pleasant images. The young man offered these flowers and pleasant images with disdain and careful attention toward ensuring that the examiner knew these were representations of what the young man was not. These images, which would be comforting and relatable to most of us, were symbols of weakness and the

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things he did not want to be, suggesting that his shadow was composed of a fear of being vulnerable and weak. His psychic battle, therefore, was between power and weakness, but rather than integrate the latter, he became fully immersed in power, relegating perceived weakness to the shadow. According to McCully, the young man felt compelled to murder his mother because she was a scapegoat who not only housed his projection of weakness but also was able to elicit his own vulnerability and weakness. To further fortify his position of power and completely banish the weakness and goodness in his shadow, he also brutally murdered her son and her husband. For this young man, relatedness and vulnerability came to symbolize weakness, but rather than risk tolerating their coexistence, he became his shadow, with evil results. In this case, evil involved a fatal capitulation from the loving parts of oneself (Ivey, 2005). Therefore, whether the shadow is composed of overt elements of murder or elements of grace and gratitude, the problem is a loss of one’s multidimensional nature in favor of a one-sided existence. Evil seems to emerge from an inability to accept the tension between opposites or an unwillingness to integrate and balance one’s imperfection and complexity. It is easy to forget that the capacity for good and the capacity for hurt both coexist within the individual. Denial of either of these capacities can result in evil acts. In most people, there is not a complete rejection of the shadow, as there was with McCully’s case. This should not be taken to mean, though, that most people are incapable of evil. Even partial rejection of the shadow can result in evil. For example, someone may start a charity that provides food, clothing, and water to destitute countries, perhaps as a way to match their ego-ideal of selflessness and service to others, but unless they embrace their own selfishness, they may be shocked at how easy it is for them to embezzle contributions to the cause. Others who find themselves constantly lying in a way that endangers others are likely operating out of their own deceitfulness in an attempt to live up to some persona of integrity and honesty. In the same way, someone who participates in hate crimes may have been described as a paragon of kindness and thoughtfulness as a child, only to have repressed that part of themselves for the sake of survival as they matured in age. Each of these occasions of wrongdoing can be wrought in an imbalance between the persona and the shadow. If individuals are open to their shadow side or even accept the existence of their darkness, which again can be positive qualities, they may be able to catch themselves before committing these type of acts. Put simply, the greatest protection against evil is honesty (Miller, 1991). By closing the distance with one’s shadow, there is a simultaneous distancing from evil because it means dissolving a false persona and becoming aware of those tendencies, although previously unconscious, that facilitate evil. Refusing insight and acceptance of the entire self, including our glaring flaws and

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complexities, seems to be what contributes most to our tendency to commit evil (Miller, 1991). By integrating and owning our own shadow, be it vulnerability, aggression, or selfishness, we can neutralize its destructive impact. Does this mean that we should completely immerse ourselves in the shadow? Arguably, this line of thinking is equally faulty because it is again unipolar, leading to the abandonment of the important qualities of the persona and the ego-ideal. The problem for Dr. Jekyll, for example, was that once he decides to fully yield to his shadow Mr. Hyde, he becomes Mr. Hyde, including the acts of murder (Sanford, 1991). A similar process may explain some fascination with Satanism and the occult. Certain individuals, often young, are searching for connection with a destructive, violent, and psychopathic side that has been socially rejected. Because they are searching for ways to manage and integrate this wild, aggressive, and angry side, Satanism and gangs become highly appealing. Maybe cults, the KKK, and ideologies that encourage religious fanaticism have done a better job than the rest of society in providing a place for the shadow. The problem is that individuals in these groups completely become the shadow and thereby commit the same error as those who try to completely clothe themselves in the persona, namely, losing the ability to hold opposites and emotional complexities in tension. Police officers and athletes, or perhaps the librarian who occasions a firing range, may represent better exemplars for integrating the hostile and aggressive tendencies of the shadow with the demands of the persona. As Jung (1991) says, “[W]e must not succumb to either of the opposites” (p. 171). It is rejection, splitting, and lack of integration that contribute to our likelihood to commit evil, so we are least likely to commit evil when we find tension between the opposites or tension between the multiple parts of ourselves.

COLLECTIVE SHADOW Our capacity for evil hinges on our breaking through our pseudoinnocence. So long as we preserve our one-dimensional thinking, we can cover up our deeds by pleading innocent. —Rollo May The discussion so far has focused on personal acts of evil, based on a failure to integrate or balance one’s personal shadow. Societies, though, can also have a shadow. The shadow of Christian subculture often includes sexuality and spontaneity. Primitive cultures may place individuality or inventiveness in the shadow (Bly, 1991). Those in academia may relegate physicality and spirituality to the realm of the shadow. Some might argue that evil can even be seen in the collective pollution or poisoning of rivers and oceans. In each of these cases, societies and their members are living out communally

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acceptable sides of life, but disowning socially unacceptable aspects. This results in the repression or placement of certain emotions and traits into the unconscious minds of a great number of people. What emerges from the lack of acceptance or awareness of this collective shadow is the possibility for an archetypal or collective form of evil. Racism, scapegoating, and religious wars are all examples of cultures or subcultures responding to their own socially acceptable emotions and trying to excise or tame their disowned tendencies. In many cases, the collective shadow becomes personified in political leaders, such as Stalin, Hitler, or Hussein (Zweig & Abrams, 1991). These leaders receive the projections of the people and become representatives of the collective shadow and evil. Because the German people denied the existence of their societal shadow, they were unable to recognize its incarnation in Hitler (Metzner, 1985). Yet, as Metzner points out, for someone to be susceptible to being influenced by the collective shadow, there has to be some correspondence in his or her own psychic construction. Put simply, there must be something in our own shadow that makes us susceptible to the propaganda and psychopathic diatribe of these leaders. If more citizens in the German culture had been able to delve into their own unconscious and call attention to the ongoing genocide and Holocaust, exposing it to the world, it might have abated. The activity of a collective shadow may account for the recent identification of an Axis of Evil. Whenever the term evil is used to describe another person or culture, it seems important to ask what type of projection is occurring. One way of managing the shadow and all the primitive, underdeveloped, and inferior parts of ourselves is to project it onto other people. This not only serves to keep us unconscious of our own darkness but also makes others bad, evil, dangerous, or whatever qualities comprise our own shadow. It turns first-person characteristics into third-person traits, so that “I am destructive” becomes “They are destructive.” Similar to the young man’s projections onto his mother in McCully’s (1978) case study, other people embody the threatening aspects of ourselves and become scapegoats for evil (Griffin, 1986). This makes it easy for certain individuals and certain cultures to see evil all around, when it actually lies within. This does not negate the existence of evil external to the self, but if we describe other societies, states, or countries as evil, it seems important to ask how this might also be a projection, allowing us to deny the same behavior and attitudes in ourselves. The shadow side for some Western societies might be greed, excess, aggressiveness, and righteousness. Of course, if other cultures denigrate Western societies for being capitalist, self-righteous, and war-mongerers, these cultures are also denying those same tendencies in themselves. They may also be projecting their shadow of violence and intolerance onto Western culture (Spiegelman, 2005).

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Any time these collective projections occur is an example of black and white thinking, which reflects the absence of shadow integration and serves as a harbinger for evil. When we repress unacceptable emotions and ideas into our collective shadow, we come to see others as black or evil, which necessarily positions our culture as white or good. For this projection to happen, however, means that this same splitting is occurring internally, so that certain parts of ourselves are hailed as bad or inappropriate and other parts are hailed as good or acceptable, forgetting that perhaps we are neither one nor the other, but rather both. Similar to what happens when we fail to integrate our own personal shadow, societies must recognize the collective shadow for what it is and then learn how to deal with it, lest they become the tools of evil. This process is often best expressed in the fables and stories of a given culture. The story of Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars saga embodies the journey from collective and personal splitting to personal wholeness. He starts his journey with an unfettered idealism that leads him to be immersed in the collective ideals of the Rebel Alliance against the evil of the Empire, which is perhaps best personified in the faceless, mechanical, and black figure of Darth Vader. Partway through Luke’s training on the planet of Dagobah, however, he has to enter the cave of his own shadow and duel an apparition of Vader. After he strikes down this apparition, the face that hauntingly appears in the dark mask is his own. It is at this point that Luke recognizes his own darkness and capacity for evil, rather than keeping it safely projected onto a nameless entity and culture. In this moment of disillusionment, Luke becomes more mature and closer to wholeness. He is less likely to participate in collective evil because he can assume responsibility for his own shadow material. Along with Pogo in Walt Kelly’s cartoon, he can say, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

HOW DO WE AVOID EVIL? This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine. —William Shakespeare If we accept the idea that the capacity for evil is born in alienation and denial of key parts of ourselves, then one of the remedies for evil is the pursuit of a path toward psychic integration and wholeness. Those parts that have been dissociated and split off in the name of social acceptance or avoidance of discomfort need to be recovered and brought into the light of consciousness. This involves reconciling opposites, accepting our complexities and multidimensionality, and balancing internal tensions. This means that we have to go where we have concealed so we can convert “inner warfare to inner peace” (Metzner, 1985, p. 47).

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The first stage in the process is likely one of mourning. Many individuals need to first mourn the betrayal of the self, the dissociation they had to make in order to find acceptance. Some form of mourning seems appropriate because facing one’s shadow means becoming aware that we are not good enough for the ideal values that caused the splitting and the formation of the shadow (Griffin, 1986). This mourning is itself a form of acceptance of the loss of all the things that the self was not permitted to be. Sometimes this requires the exchange of a stance of violence and defensiveness for a posture of welcoming and grace. To fully mourn may mean opening to oneself, not viciously cutting oneself off (which is the weapon of the ego-ideal), but rather approaching one’s shadow with respect. At other times, this mourning may involve a wrestling match that demands courage and perseverance. This is aptly depicted in the biblical story of Jacob wrestling with the angel of God. Presaging Jesus’s later temptation by the devil in the desert, one interpretation of this story is that it represents Jacob’s struggle with his own shadow. Jacob refuses to let go of this entity, even when the entity requests it, and even after the entity permanently injures Jacob’s hip socket, because Jacob knows he has to struggle in order to prevail. He responds that he will not let his adversary go until the latter blesses him. At that point, the entity responds, “What is your name?” revealing that the true contest is about identity. At this point, Jacob receives the blessing he has been longing for, namely, complete knowledge about who he is. Thereafter, he also walks with a limp, reflecting how a life with shadow integration is a life of imperfection and psychic woundedness. As this story shows, we do not have to befriend our shadow; in fact, we may have to sometimes engage in shadow boxing. This makes sense considering that it takes remarkable energy to face our envy of others, our discontent with our bodies, our hate toward others for not seeing us, or our fear of fulfilling our calling. Therefore, it is not necessary to befriend the shadow, but rather come to terms with it and accept the responsibility of struggling with it until it gives us our full identity and wholeness. Once we have mourned or wrestled with our shadow, the path to integration demands a willingness to be in ongoing relationship with our shadow. This involves perpetual awareness and recognition of our shadow, a form of psychological unmasking that allows us to neutralize the power of our capacity for evil. This is often difficult because it is far easier to engage in repression and projection. It is much more difficult to live a full and conscious life. Even the thought of being in relationship with our disowned and unacceptable parts may seem unbearable. Imagine, for example, that you are asked to live in relationship with those whom you most strongly dislike. This is essentially what is necessary in order to diminish our capacity for evil because those we dislike house our shadow projections. This suggests that we have to expand our sense of self by suffering the conflict with our shadow (Ulanov

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& Dueck, 2008). We have to remove our tendencies toward polarity and balance the conscious with the unconscious and the persona with the shadow. This is what Paul essentially accomplishes in the New Testament when he says in Romans 7:18–19, “For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” Here, Paul humbly demonstrates a healthy recognition of the power of his shadow. In the same way, individuals need to recognize that it is just as easy to do evil as it is to do good. The tension of this awareness helps us realize that perfection, which is the aim of the persona and ego-ideal, is merely an illusion, whereas wholeness is the more realistic and healthy aspiration. It is when the conscious and unconscious are in responsible relationship that an individual is most protected from his or her own tendencies toward evil. How is it that integrating, owning, and accepting the shadow protects us from our own evil? Part of the reason is because integrating the shadow makes us conscious of, and responsible for, who we are, how we feel, and how we act. Whitmont (1991) suggests that it is a replacement of repression with discipline. It does not help to convince ourselves that these shadow parts are not present. Rather, it is most helpful to recognize them and act responsibly regarding them. This does not necessarily mean acting out one’s evil intentions because you can say yes to an uncomfortable feeling or impulse, but say no to its expression (Metzner, 1985). At other times, though, it may be appropriate to act according to the shadow impulses. What is most important is for an individual to not deny, defeat, or disavow his or her shadow, but instead to know one’s shadow so it can be neutralized and controlled. Without this awareness, individuals abdicate conscious ownership of their intentions. Becoming conscious of it means that they can choose between good and evil, rather than allowing the shadow to choose for them. Evil has a much larger entryway when we assume we are incapable of it because once we are aware of our shadow issues, they no longer have control of us. Once we have awareness and relationship with them, we have greater possibility for control over them. This may be what makes Alcoholics Anonymous so successful. In acknowledging their weakness and susceptibility to the power of alcohol, members paradoxically gain power and greater strength toward tolerating their conflicting desires for alcohol and healthy living. As this suggests, conquering devils and demons cannot be achieved by trying to destroy them, but rather by learning to acknowledge and assimilate what they symbolize into oneself (Diamond, 1991). This is the realm of responsibility for all aspects of our existence, but this responsibility cannot happen when certain parts of the self are disavowed. This should not be taken to suggest that integration will lead to the defeat or elimination of the shadow. On the contrary, elimination of the shadow would lead to the elimination of the self and its creative energies. As

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previously mentioned, the shadow is the key to our individuality and wholeness, including our inoculation against evil. This may explain why the dark, unacceptable sides of us can provide inestimable guidance whenever we are in a place of impasse or sterility. Any attempt to eliminate this shadow side only channels our attention and energy into building a wall of denial or trying to desperately live out a persona that is one-sided. A full and meaningful life emerges from accepting, rather than fighting and denying, who one is. As one Hindu tale puts it, “[T]he wise are attached to neither evil nor good. They are attached to nothing at all” (Zweig & Abrams, 1991). Perhaps Schmookler’s (1991) interpretation of Joseph Conrad’s story “The Secret Sharer” illustrates this principle. In this parallel story to Moby Dick, a naked stranger climbs aboard a ship while the captain is on watch. This stranger, who is an officer from another ship, has murdered one of his men. The captain hides this stranger, at which point a sense of danger descends on the vessel, leading the captain to almost commit a crime parallel to that of his hidden stranger. However, when the captain finally recognizes his proclivities for murder, the tension dissipates and the shadow man leaves. In the same way, it is when we recognize our own shadow that we can finally dissolve our own tendencies toward evil. As Schmookler suggests, “[W]hen we gain the true strength to acknowledge our imperfect moral condition, we are no longer possessed by demons” (p. 189). Among the things that interfere with this process of integration and its protection from evil are repression and denial. There is a reason why we place threatening elements of the psyche in the unconscious. We perceive and experience them as threatening and unacceptable, perhaps because of early messages from society, religion, or culture, but we are afraid that the awareness or unleashing of them will result in a loss of love, abandonment, or even death. This makes it incredibly difficult to overcome or unblock years of negation, and to allow oneself to express these impulses. It might even be argued that this blocking and negation is akin to the role of the devil. In Goethe’s Faust, Mephistopheles is “the spirit who always says ‘no,’” and in Christian theology, the devil is hailed as the “father of lies” or the sower of doubt. Thus, whenever we deny parts of ourselves, we may be playing the role of the devil (Metzner, 1985). Evil, therefore, is really a condition of alienation. The redemption from evil, be it personal or collective, comes from assimilating our shadow and raising it from unconsciousness so it can be integrated into the whole.

LIMITATIONS These ideas about evil are certainly not without their flaws. Among the possible critiques is that wholeness does not necessarily equate with morality. If the foregoing theory is correct, the tendency to commit evil is inversely related to one’s ability to reconcile with one’s shadow. However, there is no

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explicit research or guarantee to suggest that integration with one’s shadow will lead to less evil. McCully’s (1978) case study provides some evidence for the emergence of evil following years of disownership of one’s shadow, but this and similar case studies are only retrospective. Many other theories may also be able to explain the data after the evil has been committed. Moreover, as Griffin (1986) aptly describes in surveying Jung’s landscape, the emphasis of this theory is on the value of wholeness, not rightness. An appropriate confrontation with one’s evil, or at least the potential for it, can allow for growth, but it does not necessarily eliminate or reduce evil. Simply achieving psychic harmony and balance may make one aware of tendencies toward evil, and the full knowledge of all of oneself forces the individual to be intentional and responsible for his or her actions, but there is nothing to suggest that fully seeing all of oneself precludes a decision to commit evil. Granted, if someone is striving for maximal tension in the psyche, as Jung and this theory would encourage, much of an erring toward egregious forms of evil would be avoided (Hall & Raff, 2006). Murder, for example, seems like a strong imbalance and the dispelling of tension toward a polarity, so it would be inconsistent with the integration of the shadow. However, it could be just as easily argued that every decision will likely result in some imbalance for a period, albeit brief, until another decision can correct the imbalance. There is nothing to suggest that these momentary decisions, first toward the persona, then toward the shadow, then toward the persona, and so on, cannot be evil in their own way, even if tension is reestablished afterward. Perhaps Segal’s (1985) observation that utility and truth are distinct is helpful here. Jung’s ideas may have personal utility, but it does not mean they are truth. An equally important limitation is that this theory about evil lacks an existential source of meaning or a rootedness in a system of morality. Somewhere in Jung’s theories there may be an innate system of meaning, but there is no overt reason why it is important to achieve balance and avoid evil. It seems noble and admirable for someone to integrate their dissociated selves, but it may feel unsustainable without a system of meaning or purpose to drive it. Perhaps what is missing is a theology, because without it, the reason “why” is purely internal, without a sense of something larger (Griffin, 1986). This may be sufficient for some, whose internal values about wholeness and about holding tension with one’s own antinomy provide enough weight to sustain a reason to integrate the shadow and avoid evil. For others, though, it may help to have an underlying meaning system or theology that gives purpose and reason for the avoidance of evil.

CONCLUSION These limitations notwithstanding, there may be some fresh implications that emerge from this idea that a greater capacity for evil emerges when the

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shadow remains unintegrated. Among these is the possibility for a reconceptualization of our ideas about God and other divine entities. If perfection is really wholeness and an ideal tension between the totality of opposites, then it may be helpful to view God, Allah, and other supernatural figures with less unidimensionality. It may be more appropriate to conceive of them as the totality of all things, including light and dark. This is a key part of Jung’s (1952/1971) argument in “Answer to Job,” where he suggests that both good and bad coexist in the same godhead. He points out that God’s antinomy is evident throughout the Old Testament. He promises to never break oaths, but later violates this promise because of jealousy, just as He demands loyalty and praise, but simultaneously delivers wrath and murder. God clearly has a full complement of inconsistent emotions and tendencies, such as rage, love, cruelty, and faithfulness. However, this idea about a God who is both creative and destructive, as well as good and bad, seems intolerable in many religions, at least monotheistic ones. By default, this intolerability or discomfort forces the creation of an all-loving God and an evil counterpart, such as Satan. Perhaps this reflects humanity’s need to project its collective shadow into a supernatural entity of evil. Or it may reflect a collective need to project all goodness into a God figure, which necessarily relegates all shadow elements to the unconscious, corporeal, and human realm. Regardless of the reason, this splitting off of the shadow from God risks making the image of God into a particular persona, perhaps depriving Him of the fullness of consciousness and awareness. It also deprives humanity of a more complete and honest image of wholeness, where the conscious and unconscious are held in healthy tension. A more accurate picture may be the God presented in Isaiah, where God is given responsibility for forming the light and the darkness, as well as making peace and creating evil. Perhaps more to the point, if it is true that the threshold for evil is substantially lowered by a failure to integrate one’s shadow, then evil becomes a deeply personal and individual issue. Much of our modern language about evil seems to betray one of two vantage points. For some, evil seems to be an outdated concept, as if it is some residue from Enlightenment thinking. When someone asks or comments on evil, those with this mind-set may sincerely ask, “Is that conversation still occurring?” The other option seems to involve speaking about evil in more global, diffuse language, so that most everyone or everything that is hurtful, destructive, or unhelpful is described as “evil.” In this case, which seems more prevalent in certain religious circles, evil seems to be used too loosely, resulting in a watered-down concept that has either little poignancy for everyday conversation or, conversely, a sharp edge used for judgment and exclusion. Both of these vantage points, however, lose a critical perspective for understanding evil that the theory in this chapter attempts to recover. Both of these options keep evil external to the self. It is something “out there,” rather

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than something internal. Ethnic slaughter, child rape, terrorism, and sexual abuse are things committed by other people, but there is little appreciation for how close we may be to performing similar acts. If we accept the theory introduced in this chapter, namely the possibility that evil is proportional to one’s wholeness and one’s ability to sit in the tension with one’s shadow, then there is a personal responsibility for evil. Because we can avoid individual acts of evil by owning our shadow, we are responsible for these individual acts of evil. However, we are also liable for collective evil because avoiding our abandoned and unacceptable impulses only colludes with the collective shadow, making us susceptible to unknowing participation in cultural or societal evil. Therefore, we can no longer simply claim ignorance, or try to withdraw from this responsibility, or project it onto others. Doing so only divides us further from ourselves and increases the power and possibility for the elements of the shadow to emerge in the form of evil. The best option seems to be to enter into the shadows, bring the dark elements into the light, and try to live in responsible consciousness of our own capacity for evil.

REFERENCES Becker, E. (1991). The basic dynamic of human evil. In C. Zweig & J. Abrams (Eds.), Meeting the shadow: The hidden power of the dark side of human nature (pp. 186–188). Los Angeles: Tarcher. Bly, R. (1991). The long bag we drag behind us. In C. Zweig & J. Abrams (Eds.), Meeting the shadow: The hidden power of the dark side of human nature (pp. 6–11). Los Angeles: Tarcher. Diamond, S. A. (1991). Redeeming our devils and demons. In C. Zweig & J. Abrams (Eds.), Meeting the shadow: The hidden power of the dark side of human nature (pp. 180–185). Los Angeles: Tarcher. Freud, S. (1933/1964). The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud: Vol. 22. New introductory lectures on psychoanalysis (Ed. and Trans. J. Strachey). New York: Norton. Griffin, G. A. E. (1986). Analytical psychology and the dynamics of human evil: A problematic case in the integration of psychology and theology. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 14, 269–277. Hall, J. A., & Raff, J. (2006). Thoughts on the nature of evil. Journal of Jungian Theory and Practice, 8, 19–29. Ivey, G. (2005). “And what rough beast . . .?” Psychoanalytic thoughts on evil states of mind. British Journal of Psychotherapy, 22, 199–215. Jung, C. G. (1971). Answer to Job. In J. Campbell (Ed.), The portable Jung. New York: Viking Penguin. (Reprinted from The collected works of C. G. Jung: Vol. 11. Psychology and religion: West and east, by C. G. Jung, 1952, New York: Bollingen). Jung, C. G. (1971). Aion: Phenomenology of the self. In J. Campbell (Ed.), The portable Jung. New York: Viking Penguin. (Reprinted from The collected works of C. G. Jung: Vol. 9, part 2. Aion: Researches into the phenomenology of the self, by C. G. Jung, trans. by R. F. C. Hull, 1959, New York: Bollingen).

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Jung, C. G. (1971). The relations between the ego and the unconscious. In J. Campbell (Ed.), The portable Jung. New York: Viking Penguin. (Reprinted from The collected works of C. G. Jung: Vol. 7. Two essays on analytical psychology, by C. G. Jung, trans. by R. F. C. Hull, 1953, New York: Bollingen). Jung, C. G. (1991). The problem of evil today. In C. Zweig & J. Abrams (Eds.), Meeting the shadow: The hidden power of the dark side of human nature (pp. 170–172). Los Angeles: Tarcher. McCully, R. S. (1978). The laugh of Satan: A study of a familial murderer. Journal of Personality Assessment, 42, 81–91. Metzner, R. (1985). On getting to know one’s inner enemy: Transformational perspectives on the conflict of good and evil. ReVision, 8, 41–51. Miller, W. A. (1991). Finding the shadow in daily life. In C. Zweig & J. Abrams (Eds.), Meeting the shadow: The hidden power of the dark side of human nature (pp. 38–46). Los Angeles: Tarcher. Peck, M. S. (1991). Healing human evil. In C. Zweig & J. Abrams (Eds.), Meeting the shadow: The hidden power of the dark side of human nature (pp. 176–179). Los Angeles: Tarcher. Sanford, J. A. (1991). Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In C. Zweig & J. Abrams (Eds.), Meeting the shadow: The hidden power of the dark side of human nature (pp. 29–33). Los Angeles: Tarcher. Segal, R. A. (1985). A Jungian view of evil. Zygon, 20, 83–89. Spiegelman, J. M. (2005). C. G. Jung’s Answer to Job: A half century later. Journal of Jungian Theory and Practice, 7, 46–78. Ulanov, A. B., & Dueck, A. (2008). The living God and our living psyche: What Christians can learn from Carl Jung. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Whitmont, E. C. (1991). The evolution of the shadow. In C. Zweig & J. Abrams (Eds.), Meeting the shadow: The hidden power of the dark side of human nature (pp. 12–18). Los Angeles: Tarcher. Zweig, C., & Abrams, J. (Eds). (1991). Meeting the shadow: The hidden power of the dark side of human nature. Los Angeles: Tarcher.

ch apter 17

Evil and the Death Instinct Zvi Lothane

The polarity of good and evil, or the imagination images of good and bad, and the ethical concepts thereof, have preoccupied ordinary mankind, creative writers, philosophers, psychologists, and theologians since time immemorial. However, there is no consensus in defining these terms. Philosophers saw good as absence of evil, implying that evil is easier to define as such, while unable to reach a unified conception of evil. Furthermore, not all philosophers agree that evil is a vice. For Judeo-Christian theologians, evil was a sin against God’s commandments. However, theologians were unable to reconcile the existence of evil with the theodicy of God as the source of goodness and universal love. In the Bible, evil is symbolized by the duality of God and Satan, or Devil, or the duality of love and hate, love and destruction. In the dualistic Zoroastrian and Manichaean mythologies the deity is a creator of both good and evil, with the promise of the ultimate victory of the good Ormuzd over the evil Ahriman. For ordinary men and women evil has the overwhelming meaning of pain and suffering from illness of body and soul, deprivation, poverty, hunger, hatred, violence, cruelty, torture and killing, rape and sexual enslavement, and, last but not least, racial, religious, and sexual persecution. In our time Auschwitz became both the real incarnation of evil upon earth and one of its most awe-inspiring emblems. It was Emmanuel Kant who coined the concept of radical evil, manmade evil, the premeditated and willful inflicting of cruelty, injury, death, or destruction, for which we are held morally and legally responsible. This idea was also expressed in Wordsworth’s lament about what man has made of man:

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I heard a thousand blended notes, While in a grove I sat reclined, In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts Bring sad thoughts to the mind. To her fair works did Nature link The human soul that through me ran; And much it grieved my heart to think What man has made of man. . . . If this belief from heaven be sent, If such be Nature’s holy plan, Have I not reason to lament What man has made of man? (Wordsworth, W. 1910)

It follows that evil is not just a name or an empty phrase: It pertains to the reality of being human, to acts not of construction but destruction, to acts not of love but hate. As a phenomenon, violence is the destructive face of aggression: destruction of nature or property, individual murder and serial killings, mass murder, war, and genocide. Aggression as violence is distinguished from the positive concept of aggression as spontaneity, goal setting, and goal getting, all proactive attitudes. Violence is also the antagonist of love in human relations, the use of brute force, coercion and cruelty, and spiritual destruction of the victim of violence. In the European languages such violence has been psychologically and spiritually decried as soul murder, a concept made popular by the immortal Schreber (1903) and discussed in my works on Schreber (Lothane, 1992, 2004, 2005, 2008a, 2009a, 2010a). Schreber addressed the problem of evil in relation to the Deity: How can God create evil? Schreber first offered a Manichaean solution, invoking the Persian deities Ahriman and Ormuzd, but then solved it by an “oxymoron: God Himself was on my side in His fight against me, that is to say, I was able to bring His attributes and powers into battle as an effective weapon in my self-defence” (Schreber, 1903, fn35). The latter amounted to regaining of a non-Manichaean stance, to a belief in a God of justice and love and in harmony with the moral precepts of Kant. From the perspective of the ethics of religion, evil is the name given to violence as sin against divine law and the precept of universal love and tolerance. The crimes against the Jews perpetrated by the Nazis cannot be understood simply as violence. They need to be understood in the context of Kant’s radical evil, cruelty compounded by brainwashing of the masses by means of a mass media, delusional and mendacious pseudo-science of racism, building on traditional religious and social anti-Semitism (Lothane, 1997d). Hitler and the Nazis needed the Jews as scapegoats to deflect anger and dissent of

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the German people upon an external enemy. When World War II was over, another dictator, Stalin, also used anti-Semitism and show trials to deflect anger and dissent of Russian people. From the perspective of law, individual violence and murder are crimes punishable by death or imprisonment. There is, however, a double standard regarding the Sixth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:12), and war, seeing that warfare and conquest are institutionalized in society. Although killing of soldiers in war has become an accepted necessary evil, the rights of people caught in war, regulated by the Geneva Convention concerning prisoners of war and conduct towards civilian populations, have repeatedly been violated by the powers, and most egregiously by the Nazis in World War II. The morality of wars declared as self-defense continues to be a thorny moral issue. The raping, torturing, and murder of women and children and noncombatant men has been condoned as part of conditions of war. An even thornier issue is war waged in the name of God of established religions versus the pacifism of practitioners of spirituality: While mankind needs religion, religion has not been an unmitigated blessing. Already the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius, who lived in the first century before Christ, had the insight that “tantum religio potuit suadere malorum” (so potent was religion in persuading to evil deeds, De Rerum Natura, Book I, 101). The genocide of the pagan inhabitants of the Land of Canaan by the armies of Joshua, the Catholic church militant and its Inquisition, the contemporary militant Islam and the use of terror, proselytizing and persecutory, are examples of man’s inhumanity to man in the name of God. (Lothane, 2010b, p. 37)

The massacres of Jews by the Crusaders, of Armenians by Turks during World War I, and the recent genocide of Muslims by the Serbs in former Yugoslavia, are inglorious pages of history. We do not know where the war now waged by radical Islam will end. Whereas war and genocide were practiced throughout history, their prevalence in the “enlightened” 20th and 21st centuries, with the League of Nations before and the United Nations now in place, these remain an urgent global problem urgently calling for an international solution by representative governments and nations.

FREUD AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL Psychiatric and psychoanalytic approaches to evil fall short of sociological and ethical conceptions and of Kant’s concept of radical human evil. Sigmund Freud (1915) faced evil after the outbreak of World War I, the Great War: Then the war in which we refused to believe broke out, and it brought disillusionment. Not only is it more bloody and more destructive than

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any war of other days, because of the enormously increased perfection of weapons of attack and defence; it is at least as cruel, as embittered, as implacable as any other that preceded it. It disregards all the restrictions known as International Law, which in peace-time the states had bound themselves to observe; it ignores the prerogatives of the wounded and the medical service, the distinction between civil and military sections of the population, the claims of private property. It tramples in blind fury on all that comes in its way, as though there were to be no future and no peace among men after it is over. It cuts all the common bonds between the contending peoples, and threatens to leave a legacy of embitterment that will make any renewal of those bonds impossible for a long time to come. (pp. 278–279)

Writing a century after the preceding major war in Europe, the Battle of Nations to defeat Napoleon, still fought in a series of old-fashioned pitched battles, Freud is both impassioned and prophetic. As his life was ended by a morphine injection administered by his private physician Max Schur in 1939, three weeks after World War II broke out, Freud was spared witnessing the even greater horrors of the latter, including the Holocaust, in which he would have perished together with his sisters and other Vienna Jews were it not for the heroic rescue and emigration to England initiated by Princess Marie Bonaparte. With Germany in mind, Freud speaks of a belligerent state [that] permits itself every such misdeed, every act of violence, as would disgrace the individual. It makes use against the enemy not only of the accepted ruses de guerre, but of deliberate lying and deception as well—and to a degree which seems to exceed the usage of former wars. (p. 279)

Prophetic and incisive in his analysis, Freud was unable to see and decry the evil of the deliberate lying and deception practiced by Nazi Germany after 1933, in the speeches of Hitler and Goebbels, even as his books were burned by the Nazis. More grievously, he condoned the persecution of Wilhelm Reich for his Communist sympathies while turning a deaf ear to Reich’s unmasking the evils of German fascism (Reich, 1970). In fact, Freud condemned Reich as a persona non grata and had him expelled from the International Psychoanalytic Association for his antifascist activities at a time when he himself, daughter Anna, and Ernest Jones were negotiating an accommodation with the Nazi regime to “save” psychoanalysis. It was of no avail: In the end the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society would be outlawed and its psychoanalytic publishing house impounded, while the Berlin Society would become merged with the Nazi-controlled Göring Institute, with the blessings of C. G. Jung (Lothane, 2001c).

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Recognizing evil as a social reality in 1915, and skeptical of “eradicating . . . evil human tendencies . . . [with] education and a civilized environment” (p. 281), Freud attempted to solve the problem with the help of psychological—or, more strictly speaking, psycho-analytic—investigations [showing] instead that the deepest essence of human nature consists of impulses which are of an elementary nature, which are similar in all men and which aim at the satisfaction of certain primal needs. These impulses in themselves are neither good nor bad. We classify them and their expressions in that way, according to the needs and demands of the human community. It must be granted that all the impulses which society condemns as evil—let us take as representative the selfish and cruel ones—are of this primitive kind. (p. 281; emphasis added)

Moreover, in the appendix of the 1915 paper, a letter written a year earlier to Dr. Frederik van Eeden, Freud referred to “two theses put forward by psychoanalysis”: [1] primitive, savage and evil impulses of mankind have not vanished in any of its individual members, but persist, although in a repressed state, in the unconscious (to use our technical terms), and lie in wait for opportunities of becoming active once more. [2] It has further taught us that our intellect is a feeble and dependent thing, a plaything and tool of instincts and affects, and that we are all compelled to behave cleverly or stupidly according to the command of our [emotional, Strachey’s addition] attitudes and internal resistances. If you will now observe what is happening in this war—the cruelties and injustices for which the most civilized nations are responsible . . . you will have to admit that psycho-analysis has been right in both these theses. (pp. 301–302; emphasis added)

Freud was doubly confused: He first confronted evil as a phenomenon defined by ethics and sociology only to retreat to instincts and biology. However, a phenomenon is one while its causes are many. The Great War was not simply caused by primitive impulses; it had many complex causes, among them the military industrial complex of the times; world markets and world finances; and the greed, selfishness, and cruelty of charismatic crowned heads of state and their ability to incite the masses of humanity, endowed with similar character traits, to wars of destruction and self-destruction. Freud was also confused in that after decrying the atrocities of that war, evil by any social criterion including his own, he now reverted to the biological-scientific idea that such impulses are neither good nor bad, and that convention, rather than individual and social ethics, makes them so. It is also untrue that such primal impulses are the same in all men: People come in very different moral shapes and are moved by diverse moral sentiments. By

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implication, Freud denied the reality that the need for truth and justice is just as primal an aspect of being human as the temptation to succumb to selfish and cruel impulses, that children and adults have the potential of acting as angels or devils. He may have been familiar with the language of Genesis 8:21, narrating the story of the flood: “ki yetser be’ lev hadam ra mi’neurav” = for the yetser in man’s heart is evil from youth, where yetser can stand for nature: desire, lust, urge, impulse, and inclination. That nature is primal and primitive and animals are beyond good and evil, as Nietzsche put it, is not in doubt. However, men, women, and children in a community must know the difference between good and bad, for they must live by rules, whether fashioned by social contract, as Rousseau had it, or bound by principles taught by moralists secular and religious, in order to survive as a community. From youth on, the child has an inkling of good and bad if taught by mother and father, school, and religious education. If so trained, from youth the child possesses a sense of right and wrong and of guilt over doing something wrong and is driven to right that wrong, whatever penance or punishment it takes (Lothane, 1998a). Such are the moral ingredients of real dramas of everyday life which become the subject of staged dramas, films, and television shows, as I have illustrated with the new paradigm of dramatology (Lothane, 2009b, 2010c, 2010d, 2011 in press). Dramatology represents a challenge to narratology, or narrative truth, that was popularized by Donald Spence (1982) to become an arch-slogan, which I critiqued (Lothane, 1984). I emphasize the primacy of drama over narrative: Life events are primarily dramas and secondarily stories, to become the leading literary genre, the novel, made easy by the invention of the printing press. Stories, derived from dramas, become case histories and case reports. Mythology and science create their stories: creation of the world according to Babylonians, Egyptians, Hebrews, or Greeks, and the Big Bang story of astronomy. Freud’s equivocation between biology and sociology, and between cosmology and psychology, has a deeper source: Throughout his psychological writings, he conflated method and theory, person and organism, intellect and instinct, philosophy and politics, and operationalism and occultism (the latter meaning speculative theories). Operationalism requires that terms for scientific concepts should be defined by the very operations (e.g., observing or measuring, performed to establish or disprove such concepts). Operationalism in the social realm means observing actions and interactions in everyday life situations or in controlled scientific settings, thus it can be either empirical or experimental. It is in the nature of language itself to operate with concepts that are abstract, general, and universal. The nouns gravitation and evil are such concepts: We see falling bodies, but we do not see gravitation. Operating with universals leads to metaphysics, metapsychology (Freud’s term), mythology, and metaphor, all aids in thinking and speculating about our real experiences in life and talking and writing about them. As I showed in 1995,

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in his famous rejoinder to Einstein, Freud (1933a) expressed a profound insight: “It may seem to you as though our theories are a kind of mythology. . . . But does not every science in the end come to a kind of mythology like this? Cannot the same be said to-day of your own Physics?” Earlier in his career Freud (1914) spoke of both physics and psychoanalysis when he stated that theories are “not the foundation of science upon which everything rests; that is observation alone. They are not the bottom but the top of the whole structure and can be replaced and discarded without damaging it” (p. 77). By contrast, he did not express himself with skepticism or irony about his psychoanalytic method. He called it an instrument: “In point of fact psycho-analysis is a method of research, an impartial instrument, like the infinitesimal calculus, as it were” (Freud, 1927, p. 36). The method was instrumentally, or operationally, conjoined with observation. (Lothane, 1995, pp. 31–32)

The ancient Greek term for perception with the senses was aisthesis, which includes both sensing and feeling. Aisthesis gives rise to aesthetic (i.e., both the perceptual and the emotional quality of experience, not just the narrow meaning of aesthetics as a theory of the beautiful). We do not see evil, but we feel actions that we call evil. Evil actions are experienced and observed; instincts and other occult forces of action are posited as explanatory theories but are not directly observed. We may posit those potential mythical evil impulses as unseen cosmological movers, but the occasions for their becoming active as real-life dramas are events in individual or group history, bound to specific persons, places, and times. The evils of the Great War were again mourned by Freud in 1916: The war broke out and robbed the world of its beauties. It destroyed not only the beauty of the countryside through which it passed and the works of art which it met with on its path but it also shattered our pride in the achievements of our civilization (Kultur), our admiration for many philosophers and artists and our hopes of a final triumph over the differences between nations and races. It tarnished the lofty impartiality of our science, it revealed our instincts in all their nakedness and let loose the evil spirits within us which we thought had been tamed for ever by centuries of continuous education by the noblest minds. It made our country small again and made the rest of the world far remote. It robbed us of the very much that we had loved, and showed us how ephemeral were many things that we had regarded as changeless. (p. 307; emphasis added)

Five years later, after the war ended and changed Europe forever, in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud (1920) put forward his new dual instinct theory to explain evil, attributing evil impulses to a newly discovered instinct, the death instinct, for which Freud found inspiration in the 1912 paper by Sabina Spielrein. Spielrein became notorious as a participant in the

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Spielrein–Jung–Freud alleged scandal triangle, which I disproved, but is known much less for her contributions to psychoanalysis (Spielrein, 1987), and whose life has also been my passionate interest (Lothane, 1996, 1997a, 1999a, 2000, 2001a, 2001b, 2003a, 2003b, 2006a, 2006b, 2007b). Contrasted with life instincts, represented by Eros, the new instinct was popularized by gracing it with the names of another Greek divinity, Thanatos (death), although the word Thanatos was never used by Freud himself although he conceded that “a considerable portion of these speculations have been anticipated by Sabina Spielrein (1912) in an instructive and interesting paper” (Freud, 1920, p. 55n1). In the 1920 Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud speculates widely and wildly, as he admits himself: “[W]hat follows is speculation, often far-fetched speculation, which the reader will consider or dismiss according to his individual predilections” (p. 24), “as a basis for our metapsychological speculations” (p. 30), to wit: From the aggregate of these experiments [with unicellar protozoa] two facts emerge which seem to offer us a firm footing. First: If two of the animalculae, at the moment before they show signs of senescence, are able to coalesce with each other, that is to ‘conjugate’ (soon after which they once more separate), they are saved from growing old and become ‘rejuvenated’. . . . Secondly: It is probable nevertheless that infusoria die a natural death as a result of their own vital processes. . . . And if we abandon the morphological point of view and adopt the dynamic one, it becomes a matter of complete indifference to us whether natural death can be shown to occur in protozoa or not. . . . The instinctual forces which seek to conduct life into death may also be operating in protozoa. . . . The striking similarity between Weismann’s distinction of soma and germ-plasm and our separation of the death instincts from the life instincts persists and retains its significance . . . [a] pre-eminently dualistic view of instinctual life. (Freud, 1920, pp. 48–49)

But a new difficulty surfaces: We started out from the great opposition between the life and death instincts. Now object-love itself presents us with a second example of a similar polarity—that between love (or affection) and hate (or aggressiveness): if only we could succeed in relating these two polarities [in my reading: life/death and love/hate] to each other and in deriving one from the other! (Freud, 1920, p. 53)

Freud then goes on to consider how the sadistic instinct . . . enters the service of the sexual function. . . . Wherever the original sadism has undergone no mitigation or intermixture, we find the familiar ambivalence of love and hate in erotic life.

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If such an assumption as this is permissible, then we have met the demand that we should produce an example of a death instinct—though, it is true, a displaced one. But this way of looking at things is very far from being easy to grasp and creates a positively mystical impression. It looks suspiciously as though we were trying to find a way out of a highly embarrassing situation at any price. (p. 54)

It does look suspicious: The bridge between cosmology and psychology and between cosmology and sociology is a tenuous one, and cosmic forces are not the same as dramas of love and hate that take place between people in love or among peoples at war. Freud returned to the topic of evil in “Why War?” (1933a) and in New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis (1933b). Responding to Albert Einstein’s seeing a “welcome opportunity of conferring with [him] upon a question [why war?]” (1933a, p. 199), Freud sees two sides in wars of conquest: “Some, such as those waged by the Mongols and the Turks, have brought nothing but evil. Others . . . have contributed to the transformation of violence into law” (p. 207; emphasis added). However, he cannot escape the dilemma of “Right and Might” (p. 203) that creates “victors and vanquished, who turn into masters and slaves” (p. 208). Moreover, “it must be admitted that war . . . [is an] inappropriate means of establishing the ‘everlasting’ peace since . . . it fails in this purpose, for the results of conquest are short-lived” (p. 207). In response to Einstein’s writing that “man has within himself a lust for hatred and destruction” (p. 201), Freud goes on to refer to our hypothesis [of] human instincts . . . of only two kinds: those which seek to preserve and unite—which we call “erotic,” exactly in the sense in which Plato uses the word “Eros” in his Symposium . . .—and those which seek to destroy and kill and which we group together as the aggressive or destructive instinct . . . the universally familiar opposition between Love and Hate. . . . But we must not be too hasty in introducing ethical judgments of good and evil. (p. 209; emphasis added)

Once again, Freud denies the importance of ethics and equivocates between sociology and cosmology. He just cannot resist his hobby of speculating cosmologically and mythologically: As a result of a little speculation, we have come to suppose that this [destructive] instinct is at work in every living creature and is striving to bring it to ruin and to reduce life to its original condition of inanimate matter. Thus it quite seriously deserves to be called a death instinct. (p. 211)

But neither can Freud escape the need for a sociological and psychological remedy: Our mythological theory of instincts makes it easy for us to find a formula for indirect methods of combating war. If willingness to engage in

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war is an effect of the destructive instinct, the most obvious plan will be to bring Eros, its antagonist, into play against it. Anything that encourages the growth of emotional ties between men must operate against war. These ties may be of two kinds. In the first place they may be relations resembling those towards a love object, though without having a sexual aim. There is no need for psycho-analysis to be ashamed to speak of love in this connection, for religion itself uses the same words: ‘Thou shalt love the neighbour as thyself ’. This, however, is more easily said than done. The second kind of emotional tie is by means of identification. Whatever leads men to share important interests produces this community of feeling, these identifications. And the structure of human society is to a large extent based on them. (p. 212)

Yes, there is no shame to speak of love, on the contrary, one should stand proud. Each of us becomes eloquent about love at some point in his life. In 1982, I started writing about love (Lothane, 1982a, 1987a, 1989). Freud’s sermon of love makes eminently good sense, to end on these final reflections. There are the “leaders and the followers,” and the latter stand in need of authority . . . [and] unqualified submission. This suggests that more care should be taken than hitherto to educate an upper stratum of men with independent minds, not open to intimidation and eager in the pursuit of truth. (p. 212)

This is a kind of intellectual timocracy inspired either by Plato’s Republic or by Nietzsche’s superman. But even such aristocratic minds would have to be “subordinated to the dictatorship of reason . . . a Utopian expectation” (p. 213). The more realistic expectation turned out to be prophetic of weapons of mass destruction: “owing to the perfection of instruments of destruction a future war might involve the extermination of one or perhaps both antagonists . . . it may perhaps be leading to the extinction of the human race” (pp. 213–214). And the real hope is “the justified dread of the consequences of a future war” (p. 215), which did more than wisdom to save us from catastrophe during the years of the Cold War, may save us yet. In the New Introductory Lectures (1933b), Freud invokes the death instinct only once, in order “to understand our self-destructiveness” (p. 107), that is, the “‘daemonic’ character [of] the compulsion to repeat” and masochism. The latter was also Spielrein’s great concern.

WHAT DID SABINA SPIELREIN REALLY SAY? In acknowledging his indebtedness to Spielrein, Freud (1920) gave with one hand and took away with the other: “[The paper], however, is unfortunately not entirely clear to me. She there describes the sadistic component of the sexual instinct as destructive” (p. 55n1). More surprisingly, Freud

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showed amnesia concerning linking the sadistic instinct with destruction: In the aforementioned footnote about Sabina Spielrein, he said he could not understand that “she there describes the sadistic component of the sexual instinct as destructive,” seeing that he linked the two instincts himself ! The surprise vanishes when in Freud’s letters to Jung, we find that Freud makes other condescending remarks about Spielrein. In her paper, Spielrein in turn cited her indebtedness to Wilhelm Stekel, a founding member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society who was later marginalized by Freud and expelled (Lothane, 2007a). It was Stekel (1911) who introduced the paired concepts of Eros and Thanatos in a commentary on a patient’s dream: Just as in the dream there is generally no negation, there is similarly no negation of life. Dying in dreams most often means living and it is precisely the highest life’s pleasure that finds its expression in a death wish. . . . Such ideas were repeatedly spoken of by poets and philosophers, too, have repeatedly highlighted these connections between Eros and Thanatos. (p. 96, my translation)

And he proceeds to quote from Euripides in a footnote, “who knows then, if life is not death, and death not life” (p. 96, my translation). Spielrein’s interest in biological speculations had also been inspired by the work of a noted German biologist August Weismann. She may have also read the books ˙ of her compatriot Élie Metchnikoff (1905, 1908), who had immigrated to France and became a subdirector of Institut Pasteur in Paris. Metchnikoff referred to Weismann’s 1892 idea about the immortality of unicellar organisms, investigated phenomena of life and senescence, and drew an analogy between natural death and sleep. In her landmark paper about destruction as a cause of becoming (1912), which was printed in the Jahrbuch following Part II of Jung’s monumental monograph-length heresy about the libido, an attack on Freud’s shibboleth (the libido theory) and his interpretation of Schreber became the cause of a furious fight and a parting of the ways for Jung and Freud (Lothane, 1997b). Spielrein started with the fact that the “most powerful drive, the drive for procreation, harbors within itself, next to the expected positive emotions, also the negative feelings such as anxiety and disgust” (p. 465; my translations throughout). She then proceeded to cite Stekel’s aforementioned equation of death images in dreams with sexuality but noted that her own interests in procreation were conceived before the appearance of Stekel’s 1911 book. She then quoted Jung’s thought from the Part I of Transformations and Symbols of the Libido, published in 1911: The passionate yearning, i.e., the libido, has two sides: the power that beautifies all and one that on occasion destroys . . . the destructive nature of

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the creative power. . . . To become generative means to destroy oneself, since the becoming of the next generation means that the preceding one has reached its peak: In this way our descendants are our most dangerous enemies, with whom we cannot cope. . . . The anxiety over the erotic fate is understandable, for there is something unforeseen in it. . . . He who renounces the courage to experience, must stifle in himself the wish to commit a kind of suicide. This explains why death fantasies readily accompany erotic wishes. (pp. 465–466)

Based on her work with young women, Spielrein questioned Jung’s emphasizing the clash, rather than the concurrence, between love’s abundance and love’s anxiety and proceeded to set forth an ingenious theory, acknowledged by Jung as original and as a source of his own future theories. Thinking biologically, she muses about the mayfly “that pays for her life by producing the next generation and must die” (pp. 466–467). Similarly, in the act of fertilization by coitus, “the male part dissolves in the female part . . . [which] receives a new form by the penetration of the foreign intruder . . . destruction followed by prompt reconstruction” (p. 467). Thinking psychologically, and based on her psychoanalysis of a schizophrenic woman (her M.D. dissertation; Spielrein, 1911), she posits that “in the depth of our psyche there is no ‘I’ but only its summation, the ‘we’” (p. 472), and the parallel division between a “speciespsyche” and an “ego-psyche,” locked in a conflictual relationship with each other. The ego-psyche is personal-psychological, the species-psyche is archetypal-cosmological, a foreshadowing Jung’s later theory of archetypes. The female and mother of the species is “destroyed during pregnancy by the child that develops at the expense of the mother like a malignant tumor” (p. 481) Just as instructive are destruction fantasies in various forms of self-gratification. Psychical autoerotism can be studied in the case of Nietzsche . . . alone all his life, who turned all his libido onto his own person. How did Nietzsche conceive love, or, more precisely, how did he experience love? Loneliness tormented the poet so much that he invented an ideal friend, Zarathustra, with whom he identified himself. As a result of yearning after a love-object Nietzsche himself became man and woman in one and both in the shape of Zarathustra. (p. 481)

Like her schizophrenic woman, Nietzsche also expressed a similar destruction symbolism in the birth of thought that for him takes the place of a child. Zarathustra defends himself against the act of creation with expressions of disgust, as if creation were something unclean. This recalls to her his words: “He who bears is sick, he who has given birth is unclean.” (p. 482)

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Spielrein did cite Freud, but Freud paid no heed to her many heuristically valuable ideas. For one, Freud missed her important analysis of Nietzsche, which applied even more tellingly to Schreber’s fantasies of turning into a woman (Lothane, 1993). For Freud (1911) made a double error, diagnostic and dynamic: Neither was Schreber paranoid, nor did he have a desire to be anally penetrated by his psychiatrist Flechsig, as Freud maintained. Schreber’s fantasy of turning into a woman expressed compassion for his wife Sabine (a diabetic, who had four miscarriages and two dead babies, the last in 1892, prior to Schreber’s second illness) and a compensatory wish to bear a child for her. These fantasies were not a cause of Schreber’s psychosis but its outcome (Lothane, 2002a). A question now surfaces: What is the difference between mental illness and evil? Is it helpful to recast this problematic in the terminology of good and evil?

PSYCHOSIS AND EVIL Andrea Yates, who drowned her five children in a bathtub; Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris in the Columbine High School massacre; Seung-Hui Cho in the Virginia Tech massacre—were these homicides and suicides premeditated acts of evil or were these products of mental illness? Were they responsible for their acts? Mental illness diagnoses have also been applied to such great master minds of genocide as Stalin and Hitler. And how normal were the three emperors, the Austrian, the German, and the Russian, who engineered World War I? Thomas Szasz (1961) roiled the psychiatric establishment when he declared that mental illness was a myth, where myth implied something imagined, not real. However, Szasz did not deny the existence of psychiatric disorder; he only objected to its being conceptualized as a medical disorder, as a condition, rather than as conduct. And, in truth, psychiatry has one foot in medicine and another in sociology and jurisprudence. Similar arguments were advanced at that time by Michel Foucault (1961) in France and by Ronald Laing (1967) in England. These writers also raised the issue of essentialism in the causation of mental illness: Is there such a thing as an essence that is at the heart of insanity, not unlike the question raised here: Is there such a thing as quintessential evil? There is no doubt that an existential problem will manifest itself all of a piece, as a unitary and caused event, even though the event is one and the causes are many (e.g., a murder whose causes are multiple). But even as a unitary act, it will be differently defined. Thus, for the poet, murder is a mad act caused by Gods that are angry at the murderer or his forbears, as with Oedipus. The philosopher classifies murder as vice, the priest as sin, the prosecutor as crime, and the psychiatrist as illness, and in all these classifications

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something of the cause is being slipped in imperceptibly into the definition. In addition, there is a difference in focus: whether one concentrates on the act or the perpetrator, or, better yet, the perpetrator’s personality, his motives, and his history. Thus, the prosecutor focuses on the act and demands punishment, and the defense attorney focuses on the person and pleads extenuating circumstances. In this way, Psychiatry and justice help the policeman and the prosecutor rid society of perpetrators of anti-social conduct. Like the forensic expert, the forensic psychiatrist is not interested in the doer, the person, but only in the deed, the crime committed, the pathology observed, documented and diagnosed. The prosecutor and the forensic psychiatrist are loyal to society and the state and use expertise to catch the suspect; a dynamic psychiatrist uses empathy in an effort to understand the person’s conscious and unconscious life; here the psychological and social history of the patient are an integral part of disorder, diagnosis, and treatment. (Lothane, 2010e; slightly modified)

Before the rise of psychiatry as a profession, disturbed people were demonologically defined and seen as evil, as possessed by the Devil, and cruelly persecuted as witches and warlocks. With the emergence of psychiatry as a profession, thanks to Pinel in 1801, psychiatrists were called alienists and the sick alienés, alienated from society, or insane. The prejudice that the sick are in some ways evil and beyond the pale did not end with Pinel’s legendary unchaining of the cruelly mistreated insane in 1793: It persisted in the theory of degeneration propounded by the psychiatrist Morel in 1860, and in spite of the progress made by Pinel’s traitement moral (Lothane, 2010e) and the more humane no-restraint policy advocated around 1838 by John Connolly. This prejudice is still with us: Evil people are branded as psychotic (e.g., Hitler), and psychotic persons are feared and shunned. Reagan liked to inveigh against the Soviet Union as the evil empire, and George W. Bush engaged in a similar rhetoric. Although Hitler remains a synonym for radical evil incarnate, and Osama Bin Laden is the latest addition to the list, people like Cho and Yates are either viewed as evil or diagnosed with malignant psychosis. The question is: In what way are evil and paranoid and/or schizophrenic psychosis equivalent terms? Are they adequate as explanatory terms? Do we have better terms? Moreover, as far as the magnitude of evil is considered, it is wrong to lump together a single serial murderer like Cho and a genocidal murderer like Hitler or terror murderer like Osama bin Laden. There is a world of difference between an individual criminal and a genocidal mass murderer who has an army of willing executioners at his disposal within a police state run by terror, be it a Hitler or a Stalin. In addition, there is a need to consider the

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dynamics between the leaders and the led: the demagogues and the masses that follow them (Lothane, 1997d, 2006c). Psychiatric diagnoses and psychoanalytic dynamic formulae are powerless to account for evil on either an individual or mass scale. Nor is the argument that violence is natural to animals and humans of any avail here: Animals kill other animals as part of the food chain or when they defend their turf, not out of malice or for revenge or profit, as humans do. Animals are beyond good and evil, humans are not. Human social, political, economic, intellectual, and military institutions and moral values have been created by humans. As Kant says, mankind has created radical evil. We are inclined to think that evil acts are premeditated and thus punishable by law, whereas psychosis is beyond voluntary control and caused by thoughts and emotions that are in the nature of an irresistible impulse, that is, an impulse that cannot be resisted by moral resolve or will. These alternatives, related to the issue of free will versus determinism and personal responsibility, cannot be decided without first asking: From whose perspective and for whose profit are these alternatives offered? Is it the perpetrator of a crime that claims irresistible impulse or is it a judgment made by third parties: jurors, judges, or forensic psychiatric experts? With its emergence as a profession, psychiatry evolved into many specialties, including forensic psychiatry, a collaboration between psychiatry and law, as more than a century ago by Henry Maudsley (1897), fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, professor of medical jurisprudence in University College, London, and so on. Maudsley cited the “case of Burton,” tried for murder in 1863. The murderer was a youth of eighteen years of age; his mother had been twice in a lunatic asylum, having been desponding, and having attempted suicide; his brother was of weak intellect, silly and peculiar. He himself was of low mental organization . . . he was always strange, and not like other boys; he “had a very vacant look, and when told to do anything, would often run about looking up to the sky as if he were a maniac” . . . The prisoner said that he had felt “an impulse to kill someone”; that he sharpened his knife for the purpose and went out to find someone he might kill; that he followed a boy, who was the first person he saw; that he knocked him down, stuck him in the neck and throat, knelt upon his belly, grasped him by the neck, and squeezed until the blood came from his nose and mouth and trampled upon his face and neck until he was dead. . . . He knew the boy he had murdered, and had no ill feelings against him, “only I had made up my mind to murder somebody”; he did it because he wished to be hanged. His counsel argued that this vehement desire to be hanged was the strongest proof of insanity; the counsel for the prosecution, on the other hand, urged that the fact of his having done murder in order to be hanged, showed clearly that he knew quite well the consequences of his act, and was therefore criminally

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responsible. When the sentence of death had been passed, the prisoner, who during the trial had been the least concerned person in court, said, with a smile, “Thank you, my lord” . . . There is no need to found a diagnosis of insanity upon the act itself, peculiar as was its character, nor upon the motive of it, insane as it was; through a chain of circumstances the course of the hereditary disease towards its desperate evolution was traceable. Certainly, were it necessary, many cases of acquittal on the ground of insanity might be quoted, in which the evidence of mental derangement was far less than it was in this sad case. (Maudsley, 1897, pp. 169–171)

Clearly, the celebrated professor of jurisprudence did not doubt his diagnosis and neither did the two counsels doubt their judgments, except that they were concerned with the deed and not with the doer. A landmark precedent was turned into the “McNaughten’ rule” by the 1843 case of Daniel McNaughten (more commonly spelled M’Naghten), who shot his victim under the influence of a delusion that he was one of a number of persons whom he believed to be following him everywhere, blasting his character and making his life wretched. He was, however, acquitted on the ground of insanity, [for] to establish a defence on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that at the time of committing the act the party accused was laboring under such a defect of reason from disease of the mind as not to know the nature of the quality of the act he was doing, or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong. (Maudsley, 1897, pp. 101–102)

This rule, later referred to as the Durham Rule, was extended to include the notion of irresistible impulse invoked, for example, to acquit Lorena Bobbitt for her irresistible impulse to cut off her husband’s penis. Similarly, in the case of Andrea Yates, one could ask: Was murdering the children caused by her overall psychosis or just by an irresistible impulse at the time of drowning them? Did she think she ought to have been sentenced to death for her act rather than acquitted, or was this decided for her by the court? Did she secretly admit to herself at any time she knew her act was wrong, before, during, or after committing the crime? By the way, Freud did not address the biological and psychological differences between male and female patterns of aggression. There were the mythical female Amazon warriors, but there also was Lysistrata (the army disbander in the play by Aristophanes), who organized women to deny their husbands sex until they made peace in the Peloponnesian wars. There were a few women serial killers, but none known to have organized genocides. It is not my purpose to question the standing of forensic psychiatry, merely to point out how much vested professional interests—political, pecuniary, and prestige driven—come into play, also reflected in the difference between justice and jurisprudence, between what is immoral and what is illegal. Similar

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conflicts of interest exist between town and gown, office psychiatry and institutional psychiatry. Methodologically, the question is this: Are evil and psychosis like cancer, a monadic malady occurring within one person or one organism? Or is it a dyadic drama, something occurring between two people, in the nature of an interaction? For the sake of understanding the psychotic or criminal person it is the dramatic-psychological approach, as exemplified by the Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, it is the modern dramatist such as Shakespeare, Ibsen, Shaw, and others, and novelists like Balzac and Dostoevsky, who teach us more about such sufferers than the experts and the textbooks.

EVIL OF EVERYDAY LIFE The dyadic nature of personhood, dialogue, and love hit me full force: the human condition was all about love’s doings in the dyad (Lothane, 1982b). It was followed by writing on love’s antagonist in 1987: Freud did not remain consistently dynamic in his sociological conceptions. Contradictions appeared as a result of the old pull towards organicist theories. Whereas in his method Freud opted for concepts of conduct, relations, and ethics, in his mythology he was biological and cosmological. Thus, the organic-biological death instinct was hypothesized to explain human violence and destructiveness. This, I believe, is an error and an escape from responsibility for conduct. The myth of the death instinct confuses natural senescence and death with human violent destructiveness, ill will, deceitfulness, vengefulness and the way these are used in the sociology and politics of war and militarism. . . . This is a nihilistic position, away from social responsibility. For people are no lemmings. Eros is not a chemical or biological agent: it is the essential labor of love in human relations, needed to encourage emotional ties between people and peoples. The Nazi war machine was no mere manifestation of a German death instinct. Rather, it was human intelligence and energies applied in the service of destructive violence. (p. 9)

And, we might repeat, the Nazi war machine was a manifestation of radical evil and a negation of love writ large and peaceful coexistence: Mankind is a biological species, and a mastery of this biology is indispensable for mankind’s life on earth. But mankind also transcends biology in two essential ways: by being endowed with conscience and responsibility in interpersonal relationships and by having irrevocably changed the conditions of life on earth by means of science, technology, and industry. The industry of war—especially the thermonuclear machinery of

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destruction—has changed the world we live in more radically that anything that has happened before or since. Along the high road of civility mankind has progressed towards the settling of economic conflicts of interest by the peaceful means of love: dialogue, decency, cooperation, and fair compensation for loss or injury. Along the low road, mankind has repeatedly regressed to settling disputes by means of war: violent force, deceit, exploitation, plunder, and destruction. The teachers of ethics East and West have expressed it succinctly in the precept “love thy neighbor as thyself.” However, against the self-evident ideality of this injunction there has always been the reality of fear, hatred, violence, and destruction. Have the moral teachers been naïve dreamers? But this is precisely the problem in human relations: that love, as the lifepromoting principle, is constantly threatened by the life-destroying pursuit of war. It is a fact that war and militarism have become a permanent institutions in society the world over, even though pacific societies have existed and still exist. (1987b, p. 9; slightly modified)

These ideas led me more and more in the direction of interpersonal and social approaches to psychiatry and psychoanalysis: the interpersonal nature of sexuality (Lothane, 1992, 2002b); the hitherto unacknowledged interpersonal side of Freud (Lothane, 1997c); Nazi ideology and group dynamics (Lothane, 1997d); Freud’s conflicts about love (Lothane, 1998a); and the functions of imagination (2007c), speech (2007d), and humor (2008a) in interpersonal communications. The culmination was introducing the concept of dramatology (2009b) that binds the preceding interpersonal work (2010c, 2010d) into a coherent whole. In my very last essays (2010e, in press), I apply dramatology to psychiatry, and specifically the phenomenology of two of its most celebrated exponents, Kraepelin and Jaspers, who held there is an unbridgeable gulf between average and neurotic people and psychotic people. Both, and especially Jaspers (1973), represented a static, descriptive, scientific and explanatory phenomenology against Freud’s (1911) dynamic approach, also espoused by the Swiss psychiatrist Bleuler, that pathology was a continuum, a spectrum, from normalcy to pathology: The interest felt by the practical psychiatrist in such delusional formations as these is, as a rule, exhausted when once he has ascertained the character the character of the products of the delusion and has formed an estimate of their influence on the patient’s general behavior: in his case marveling is not the beginning of understanding. The psycho-analyst, in the light of his knowledge of psychoneuroses, approaches the subject with a suspicion that even thought-structures so extraordinary as these and so remote from our common modes of thinking are nevertheless derived from the most general and comprehensible impulses of the human mind; and he would be glad to discover the motives of such a transformation as well as the manner

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in which it has been accomplished. With this aim in view, he will wish to go more deeply into the details of the delusion and into the history of its development. (pp. 17–18)

Freud was keen on studying the history, the longitudinal, not the crosssectional view of the forensic psychiatrist. Freud strove to increase understanding of hallucinations and delusions (Lothane, 1982b) and thereby to humanize psychiatry, not unlike Maudsley (1897): Much of the success of the modern humane treatment of insanity rests upon the recognition . . . that the insane have like passions with those who are not insane, and are restrained from doing wrong, and constrained to do right, by the same motives which have the same effects in sane persons. (p. 4)

From the perspective of dramatology, events, encounters, enunciations, and emotions observed in everyday interactions are translated and transformed into the descriptive categories of psychiatry, into its symptoms, syndromes, systems, and specialized language. Evil and psychosis, however defined, also belong in the realm of ethics, an approach that is philosophical, psychiatric, and pragmatic (Lothane, 1994, 1998b, 1999b). Ethics informs laws and principles that rule and regulate relations between individuals and between the individual and society. Socrates was clear in defining the form of the good. But well before Socrates, the ancient Hebrews enunciated this principle in Leviticus 19:18: “You shall not take vengeance or bear any grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself, I am the Lord.” This was later paraphrased as a “don’t”: Don’t do to others as you would not like done to yourself. So far we have dealt with big Evil, but what about small evils, the evils of everyday life? Here, too, commonsense psychology and sociology, among the foundations of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, become helpful. The most important human need is to love oneself and others, as expressed in the aforementioned quote from the Torah, to love and to be loved in return. And yet this is the most frustrated need of mankind. People are so constituted that they cannot easily requite love, cannot give love upon request. Some hold that the only genuine love, the only love you can trust, the only sincere love, is one that is expressed spontaneously. That is because people look for proofs of love, rather than engaging in giving and receiving love, which ends in frustration. Frustrations of love become traumas, trauma in turn become dramas, tragical and comical, of conflicted and frustrated love. Among the greatest frustrators of love are anger and lying, both major blind spots for the man Freud, about which the scientist and psychoanalyst Freud wrote in circumlocutions: He paraphrased anger and destructiveness

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as the death instinct and lying as disavowal and repression. And yet these common words, anger and lie, best capture the everyday evil killers of joy, love, and happiness, the cause of pain and suffering. It is unhappiness in love relations that drives people to depression and despair, it is also the most powerful motive for seeking psychological treatment.

CONCLUSION Evil is not an essence, it is a mode of engagement, of commitment, between one person and an other, between one people and an other. The answer to the question what is the soul and where is the seat of the soul, should be: The soul is everything, it is everywhere and nowhere, it is not in the brain or in the mind, it is between two persons. Like its healer, love, evil is what evil does: It is man’s inhumanity to man, it is something that happens between people and peoples, it exists in the sense of dramatic action, as explicated by dramatology. Because evil exists as ethical action and interaction, then the ethical imperative is to reveal it, to identify it as such, and to confront it. Just as in therapy the goal is to know oneself and to increase insight about one’s interactions with others so as to live a better life, so it is imperative to rouse individuals, societies and nations to become aware of evil, to expose it, and with, energy and resolve, take appropriate legal and political action to remove it, heal it, and prevent it from happening again, in order to make life livable and enjoyable for all.

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Freud, S. (1933b). New introductory lectures on psycho-analysis. In The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 22). London: Hogarth Press. Jaspers, K. (1973). Allgemeine Psychopathologie. Neunte, unveränderte Auflage. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. Laing, R. D. (1967). The study of family and social contexts in relation to the origins of schizophrenia. In J. Romano (Ed.), The origins of schizophrenia (pp. 139–146). Amsterdam: Excerpta Medica Foundation. Lothane, Z. (1982a). Dialogues are for dyads. Issues in Ego Psychology, 5 (1–2), 19–24. Lothane, Z. (1982b). The psychopathology of hallucinations: A methodological analysis. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 55, 335–348. Lothane, Z. (1984). A new metapsychology: Psychoanalysis as story making. International Forum for Psychoanalysis, 1, 65–84. Lothane, Z. (1987a). The primacy of love: Love ethics vs. hermeneutics. Academy Forum (The American Academy of Psychoanalysis), 31 (1), 5–6. Lothane, Z. (1987b). Love and destructiveness. Academy Forum, 31 (4), 8–9. Lothane, Z. (1989). The nature of love. Academy Forum, 33 (1–2), 2, 11. Lothane, Z. (1992). In defense of Schreber: Soul murder and psychiatry. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press. Lothane, Z. (1993). Schreber’s feminine identification: Paranoid illness or profound insight. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 2, 131–138. Lothane, Z. (1994). The revival of ethics. Academy Forum, 38 (1–2), 4–6. Lothane, Z. (1996). In defense of Sabina Spielrein. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 5, 203–217. Lothane, Z. (1997a). In defense of Sabina Spielrein. In Mahony, P., Bonomi, C., & Stensson, J. (Eds.), Behind the scenes: Freud in correspondence. Stockholm: Scandinavian Universities Press. Lothane, Z. (1997b). The schism between Freud and Jung over Schreber: Its implications for method and doctrine. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 6, 103–115. Lothane, Z. (1997c). Freud and the interpersonal. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 6, 175–184. Lothane, Z. (1997d). Omnipotence, or the delusional aspect of ideology, in relation to love, power, and group dynamics. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 57, 25–46. Also in: Ellman, C., & Reppen, J., Omnipotent Fantasies and the Vulnerable Self. Northvale, NJ: Aronson. Lothane, Z. (1998a). The feud between Freud and Ferenczi over love. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 58, 21–39. Lothane, Z. (1998b). Ethics, morals, and psychoanalysis. Dynamische Psychiatrie/ Dynamic Psychiatry, 31, 186–215. Lothane, Z. (1999a). Tender love and transference: Unpublished letters of C. G. Jung and Sabina Spielrein. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 80, 1189–1204. Lothane, Z. (1999b). Ethics in psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Psychopathology (International Journal of Descriptive Psychopathology Phenomenology and Clinical Diagnosis), 32 (3), 141–151.

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Lothane, Z. (2000). Tenere amore e transfert: lettere inedite tra C. G. Jung e Sabina Spielrein. Studi Junghiani, 12, 97–121. Lothane, Z. (2001a). Nezhnaia lubov i transfer: neopublikovannye pisma K. G. Iunga is Sabiny Shpilrain. Vestnik Psikhoanaliza, (special International Congress Issue), 87–106. Lothane, Z. (2001b). Zärtlichkeit und Übertragung—unveröffentlichte Briefe von C. G. Jung und Sabina Spielrein. In A. Karger, O. Knellessen, G. Lettau, & C. Weismüller (Eds.), Sexuelle Übergriffe in Psychoanalyse und Psychotherapie. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Lothane, Z. (2001c). The deal with the devil to “save” psychoanalysis in Nazi Germany. The Psychoanalytic Review, 88 (2), 195–224. Lothane, Z. (2002a). Paul Schreber’s sexual desires and imaginings: Cause or consequence of his psychosis? In C. W. Socarides & A. Freedman (Eds.), Objects of desire: The sexual deviations. Madison, CT: International Universities Press. Lothane, Z. (2002b). The human dilemma: Heterosexual, homosexual, holosexual— hidden interpersonal dynamics in Freud’s theories of sexuality. In C. Schwartz & M. A. Schulman (Eds.), Sexual faces. Madison, CT: International Universities Press. Lothane, Z. (2003a). Tender love and transference: Unpublished letters of C. G. Jung and Sabina Spielrein. In C. Covington & B. Wharton (Eds.), Sabina Spielrein: Forgotten pioneer of psychoanalysis (pp. 191–225). Hove, UK: Routledge. Lothane, Z. (2003b). Nachwort. In Sabina Spielrein, Tagebuch und Briefe/Die Frau zwischen Jung und Freud. Herausgegeben von Traute Hensch (pp. 249–279, 318–320). Gießen: Psychosozial-Verlag. Lothane, Z. (2003c). What did Freud say about persons and relations? Psychoanalytic Psychology, 20, 609–617. Lothane Z. (2004). Seelenmord und Psychiatrie. Zur Rehabilitierung Schrebers. Gießen: Psychosozial-Verlag. Lothane, Z. (2005). Daniel Paul Schreber on his own terms, or how interpretive fictions are converted into historical facts. In H. Steinberg (Ed.), Leipziger psychiatriegeschichtliche Vorlesungen (pp. 129–156). Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt. Lothane, Z. (2006a). Czuła miło´s c´ i przeniesienie: nie opublikowane listy C. G. Junga I Sabiny Spielrein. In I. Błocian & R. Saciuk (Eds.), Gabinet luster. Toru´n: A. Marszałek. Lothane, Z. (2006b). Verführung/Entführung, mit/ohne Psychoanalyse. Oder: was suchen jüdische Mädchen bei germanischen Helden und vice versa? psychosozial, 29, 97–124. Lothane, Z. (2006c). Mass psychology of the led and the leaders, With some thoughts on current world events. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 15 (3), 183–192. Lothane, Z. (2007a). Foreword. In J. Boos & L. Groenendijk (Eds.), The self-marginalization of Wilhelm Stekel: Freudian circles inside and out (pp. v–vii). New York: Springer Science+Business, Lothane, Z. (2007b). The snares of seduction in life and in therapy, or what do young Jewish girls (Spilerein) seek in their Aryan heroes (Jung), and vice versa? International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 16, 12–27, 81–94.

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Lothane, Z. (2007c). Imagination as a reciprocal process and its role in the psychoanalytic situation. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 16, 152–163. Lothane, Z. (2007d). The power of the spoken word in life, psychiatry and psychoanalysis: A contribution to interpersonal psychoanalysis. American Journal of Psychiatry, 67, 260–274. Lothane Z. (2008a). Mit Schreber Freud die Stirn geboten. Psychoanalyse im Widerspruch, (40), 61–90. Lothane, Z. (2008b). The uses of humor in life, neurosis and in psychoanalytic therapy. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 17, 180–188, 232–239. Lothane, Z. (2009a). Wobronie Paula Schrebera. Neuropsychiatria/Przegl˛ad Kliniczny, 1 (3), 4–14. Lothane, Z. (2009b). Dramatology in life, disorder, and psychoanalytic therapy: A further contribution to interpersonal psychoanalysis. International Forum of Psychoanalysis, 18, 135–148. Lothane, Z. (2010a). Schreber as interpreter and thinker. Schweizer Archiv f. Neurologie u. Psychiatrie, 161 (1), 42–45. Lothane, Z. (2010b). Spirituality: Methods and meanings. In J. H. Ellens (Ed.), The healing power of spirituality: How faith helps humans thrive (Vol 3., Psychodynamics, pp. 36–55). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. Lothane, Z. (2010c). Dramatology: A new paradigm for psychiatry and psychotherapy. Psychiatric Times, 27 (6), 22–23. Lothane, Z. (2010d). Sándor Ferenczi, the dramatologist of love. Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 7 (1), 165–182. Lothane, Z. (2010e). Romancing psychiatry: Paul Schreber, Otto Gross, Oskar Panizza: Personal, social, and forensic aspects, In W. Felber, G. M. Heuer, A. Götz von Olenhusen, & B. Nitzschke (Eds.), Expressionismus und Psychoanalyse. 7. internationaler Otto-Gross-Kongress, Dresden (pp. 461–493). Marburg: LiteraturWissenschaft.de. Lothane, Z. (2011 in press). Dramatology: a new paradigm for psychiatry, psychoanalysis and interpersonal drama therapy (IDT). Academy Forum, in press. Lothane, Z. (In press). The lessons to psychiatry by professor h.c. Dr. jur. Daniel Paul Schreber, or dramatology’s challenge to phenomenology. Psychoanalyse im Widerspruch, 2011, in press. Maudsley, H. (1897). Responsibility in mental disease. New York: Appleton. ˙ (1905). Etudes ˙ Metchnikoff, E. sur la nature humaine. Essais de philosophie optimiste. Paris: Masson. ˙ (1908). The prolongation of life: Optimistic studies. New York: Putnam. Metchnikoff, E. Reich, W. (1970). The mass psychology of fascism. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. (Original work published in 1933). Schreber D. P. (1903). Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken nebst Nachträgen und einem Anhang über die Frage: Unter welchen Voraussetzungen dass eine für geisteskrank erarchtete Person gegen ihren erklärten Willen in einer Heilanstalt festgehalten werden? Leipzig: Oswald Mutze. (Trans. and Ed. I. Macalpine & R. A. Hunter, Memoirs of my nervous illness, London: Dawson, 1955). Spence, D. P. (1982). Narrative truth and historical truth / meaning and interpretation in psychoanalysis. New York: Norton.

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Spielrein, S. (1911). Über den psychologischen Inhalt eines Falles von Schizophrenie (Dementia praecox). Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen, 3, 329–400. Spielrein, S. (1912). Die Destruktion als Ursache des Werdens. Jahrbuch für psychoanalytische und psychopathologische Forschungen, 4, 465–503. Spielrein, S. (1987). Sämtliche Schriften. Freiburg i.Br.: Kore. Stekel, W. (1911). Die Sprache des Traumes. Eine Darstellung der Symbolik und Deutung des Traumes in ihren Beziehungen zur kranken und gesunden Seele für Ärzte und Psychologen. Wiesbaden: J. F. Bergmann. Szasz, T. (1961). The myth of mental illness. Foundations of a theory of personal conduct. New York: Hoeber-Harper. Wordsworth, W. (1910[1798]). The Harvard classics. Volume 41, p. 659.

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The Deletion of Will from Freud’s Theorizing Dan Merkur

A considerable literature criticizes Freud for the machine-like operations that he attributed to the human mind. My contention in this article is, however, that Freud did not ignore the human experience of will at the outset of his psychoanalytic career. Rather, he began his therapeutic work with open acknowledgments of human agency and only gradually came to delete the concept of will from his theorizing and writing. As an additional part of my exposition, I will try to explain what was at stake in this change in Freud’s theorizing: what he was implicitly privileging by his preferences among his theoretic options, what alternative theories he might have chosen instead, what theories he would then have had to abandon, and so forth.

WILL IN THE HYSTERIA STUDIES OF THE 1890s Let us begin with two passing references to will that Freud published in 1893. In their “Preliminary Communication,” Breuer and Freud (1893) attributed hysteria to the unconscious persistence of a memory that neither faded nor lost its affect. This persistence owed most frequently to the nonoccurrence of an “energetic reaction to the event that provokes an affect.” To illustrate, Breuer and Freud (1893) referred to “the whole class of voluntary and involuntary reflexes—from tears to acts of revenge—in which, as experience show us, the affects are discharged” (p. 8). For their purposes, it was immaterial whether the failed reaction at the time of the event was voluntary or involuntary. In the absence of an adequate reaction, the individual became hysterical.

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In an 1893 paper “On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena,” Freud made passing reference to “hysterical counter-will” (p. 32). Freud explained more fully what he had in mind in “The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence” (1894). In this article, Freud attributed pathogenesis to an act of will that happens to achieve a different result than was consciously intended. The splitting of the content of consciousness is the result of an act of will on the part of the patient; that is to say, it is initiated by an effort of will whose motive can be specified. By this I do not, of course, mean that the patient intends to bring about a splitting of his consciousness. His intention is a different one; but, instead of attaining its aim, it produces a splitting of consciousness. (Freud, 1894, pp. 46–47; emphasis in original)

The act of will that opposes and is responsible for splitting-off selected materials is the “hysterical counter-will” that Freud mentioned in 1893. Freud was emphatic that counter-will was conscious and deliberate. Referring summarily to several of his patients, Freud (1894) wrote, In females incompatible ideas of this sort arise chiefly on the soil of sexual experience and sensation; and the patients can recollect as precisely as could be desired their efforts at defence, their intention of “pushing the thing away,” of not thinking of it, of suppressing it. (p. 47)

Freud acknowledged that he was describing a normal mental process and that he was unable to explain why, in the cases of his patients, what might otherwise be healthy was instead pathogenic. I cannot, of course, maintain that an effort of will to thrust things of this kind out of one’s thoughts is a pathological act; nor do I know whether and in what way intentional forgetting succeeds in those people who, under the same psychical influences, remain healthy. I only know that this kind of ‘forgetting’ did not succeed with the patients I analysed, but led to various pathological reactions which produced either hysteria or an obsession or a hallucinatory psychosis. The ability to bring about one of these states— which are all of them bound up with a splitting of consciousness—by means of an effort of will of this sort, is to be regarded as the manifestation of a pathological disposition, although such a disposition is not necessarily identical with individual or hereditary “degeneracy.” (Freud, 1894, p. 48)

Over the course of time, Freud was to offer two very different explanations why intentional forgetting was sometimes pathogenic. In 1894, however, he offered neither. He was instead preoccupied with neuroscientific speculations regarding how, rather than why, pathology ensued. He wrote,

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As regards the path which leads from the patient’s effort of will to the onset of the neurotic symptom, I have formed an opinion which may be expressed, in current psychological abstractions, somewhat as follows. The task which the ego, in its defensive attitude, sets itself of treating the incompatible ideas as “non arrivée” simply cannot be fulfilled by it. Both the memory-trace and the affect which is attached to the idea are there once and for all and cannot be eradicated. But it amounts to an approximate fulfilment of the task if the ego succeeds in turning this powerful idea into a weak one, in robbing it of the affect—the sum of excitation—with which it is loaded. The weak idea will then have virtually no demands to make on the work of association. But the sum of excitation which has been detached from it must be put to another use. (Freud, 1894, pp. 48–49; emphasis in original)

In this theory, an act of conscious will had the power both to block an unconscious “affect” or “sum of excitation” and to detach it from the ideas with which it had been connected. The quantity of affect then became available for use—indeed, had necessarily to be used—in the production of a symptom. Freud did not develop the implications of his theory for a theory of will. When he returned to the topic several paragraphs later, he contented himself with remarking that his theory helped explain hypnosis. If the splitting of consciousness which occurs in acquired hysteria is based upon an act of will, then we have a surprisingly simple explanation of the remarkable fact that hypnosis regularly widens the restricted consciousness of a hysteric and allows access to the psychical group that has been split off. (Freud, 1894, p. 50)

Freud implied that hypnosis alters the counter-will, causing it to split consciousness differently than was its habitual activity during normal waking sobriety. In all, Freud’s 1894 article attributed neurosis to “the patient’s effort of will, which succeeds in repressing the unacceptable sexual idea” (p. 53). Automaticity had no place in this formulation and only entered discussion in connection with the “return of the repressed” ideas in the disguised form of a neurotic symptom. In Studies on Hysteria, which Freud coauthored with Breuer, Freud went so far as to insist that hysteria can originate no other way. “Before hysteria can be acquired for the first time one essential condition must be fulfilled: an idea must be intentionally repressed from consciousness and excluded from associative modifications” (Breuer & Freud, 1893, p. 116; emphasis in original). The moment of trauma was the moment of a conscious decision to initiate pathogenesis.

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The actual traumatic moment, then, is the one at which the incompatibility forces itself upon the ego and at which the latter decides on the repudiation of the incompatible idea. . . . The splitting of consciousness in these cases of acquired hysteria is accordingly a deliberate and intentional one. At least it is often introduced by an act of volition; for the actual outcome is something different from what the subject intended. What he wanted was to do away with an idea, as though it had never appeared, but all he succeeds in doing is to isolate it psychically. (Breuer & Freud, 1893, p. 123)

Among the several case studies that Freud presented in Studies on Hysteria, the one that most closely fit his theory was his account of Elisabeth von R., whose psychoanalysis led in the end to a memory of attending her sister at the time of her death. We may recall the moment when she was standing by her sister’s bed and the thought flashed through her mind: “Now he is free and you can be his wife”. . . . This girl felt toward her brother-in-law a tenderness whose acceptance into consciousness was resisted by her whole moral being. She succeeded in sparing herself the painful conviction that she loved her sister’s husband, by inducing physical pains in herself instead. . . . It is, I think, safe to say that at that time the patient did not become clearly conscious of her feelings for her brotherin-law, powerful though they were, except on a few occasions, and then only momentarily. If it had been otherwise, she would also inevitably have become conscious of the contradiction between those feelings and her moral ideas and would have experienced mental torments like those I saw her go through after our analysis. She had no recollection of any such sufferings; she had avoided them. It followed that her feelings themselves did not become clear to her. (Breuer & Freud, 1893, pp. 167, 157, 165)

Freud argued on theoretic grounds that the example of Elisabeth von R. was paradigmatic. In all cases of hysteria, he suggested that at least one moment of this kind must have occurred. . . . The incompatible idea, which, together with its concomitants, is later excluded and forms a separate psychical group, must originally have been in communication with the main stream of thought. Otherwise the conflict which led to their exclusion could not have taken place. It is these moments, then, that are to be described as “traumatic”: it is at these moments that conversion takes place, of which the results are the splitting of consciousness and the hysterical symptom. (Breuer & Freud, 1893, p. 167)

Freud arrived at his emphasis of unpleasure as a corollary. On the basis of several completed analyses, he

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recognized a universal characteristic of such [pathogenic] ideas: they were all of a distressing nature, calculated to arouse the affects of shame, of selfreproach and of psychical pain, and the feeling of being harmed; they were all of a kind that one would prefer not to have experienced, that one would rather forget. (Breuer & Freud, 1895, p. 268)

Freud’s next step in theorizing arrived him at an oversight. It has indeed been generally admitted by psychologists that the acceptance of a new idea (acceptance in the sense of believing or of recognizing as real) is dependent on the nature and trend of the ideas already united in the ego, and they have invented special technical names for this process of censorship to which the new arrival must submit. The patient’s ego had been approached by an idea which proved to be incompatible, which provoked on the part of the ego a repelling force of which the purpose was defense against this incompatible idea. This defence was in fact successful. The idea in question was forced out of consciousness and out of memory. (Breuer & Freud, 1895, p. 269)

Because the psychoanalytic method of interpreting dreams, free associations, and so forth, enabled Freud to restore split-off ideas to consciousness (Breuer & Freud, 1895, p. 269), he trusted to his assumptions; but we may note the inconclusiveness of his reasoning. Novelties may be hard to absorb without there being any dynamic resistance. An idea may be unconnected, or become connected only slowly, because it has no point of contact, as distinct from being pushed away. Accordingly, Freud’s concept of “defense” was unearned, a speculation regarding a purpose or intentionality that introduced automaticity within a theoretical model that was otherwise explicitly voluntaristic. Why necessarily “defense”? One could equally argue that ideas were incompatible with vanity, with malicious ambitions, or other offenses of will. On Freud’s showing, the ego disliked unpleasure and manifested a counter-will against it. A psychical force, aversion on the part of the ego, had originally driven the pathogenic idea out of association and was now opposing its return to memory. The hysterical patient’s “not knowing” was in fact a “not wanting to know”—a not wanting which might be to a greater or less extent conscious. (Breuer & Freud, 1895, pp. 269–270)

Freud’s earliest discussion of free association, several pages later in Studies on Hysteria, praised its capacity to outmaneuver the limitations that the ego’s counter-will imposed. The advantage of the procedure lies in the fact that by means of it I dissociate the patient’s attention from his conscious searching and reflecting—from

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everything, in short, on which he can employ his will. . . . The pathogenic idea which has ostensibly been forgotten is always lying ready “close at hand” and can be reached by associations that are easily accessible. It is merely a question of getting some obstacle out of the way. This obstacle seems once again to be the subject’s will, and different people can learn with different degrees of ease to free themselves from their intentional thinking. (Breuer & Freud, 1895, p. 271)

In an article on “The Psychical Mechanism of Forgetfulness,” Freud (1898) paraphrased his wording in Studies on Hysteria, stating that “hysterical people do not know what they do not want to know” (p. 96).

WILL IN THE BOOKS ON DREAMS, PARAPRAXES, AND JOKES The foundation of Freud’s psychoanalytic oeuvre involved four books: Studies on Hysteria, which he coauthored with Breuer; and three monographs on the so-called primary process that utilized the evidence of dreams, parapraxes, and jokes (Freud, 1900, 1901, 1905b). Freud never fully articulated the implications of the data base that he amassed in these four books. They remained for him as a lifelong resource, a mine of data and observations that never ceased to yield new ore. Time and again for the rest of his life, he reverted in his theory construction to one or another problem that he had known but left unsolved since he composed the tetralogy. In The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), Freud began moving beyond a voluntaristic model. In the phrase, “ideational work of the kind which we feel as intentionally willed” (p. 49), for example, he did not affirm that will is a reality but instead referred noncommittally to the subjective feeling that makes will seem to be real. Again, he placed involuntary repression alongside voluntary suppression in his formulation of his book’s central thesis: “a dream is a (disguised) fulfilment of a (suppressed or repressed) wish” (p. 160; emphasis deleted). One passage in the dream book referred explicitly to a conflict of two wills. The passage is notable also because Freud there took the occasion to define what he meant by will. In other dreams, in which the ‘not carrying out’ of a movement occurs as a sensation and not simply as a situation, the sensation of the inhibition of a movement gives a more forcible expression to the same contradiction—it expresses a volition which is opposed by a counter-volition. Thus the sensation of a movement represents a conflict of will. . . . Now an impulse transmitted along the motor paths is nothing other than a volition, and the fact of our being so certain that we shall feel that impulse inhibited during sleep is what makes the whole process so admirably suited for representing

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an act of volition and a ‘no’ which opposes it . . . it must be a question of an act of volition which was at one time capable of generating libido—that is, it must be a question of a sexual impulse. (Freud, 1900, pp. 337–338; emphasis in original)

Elsewhere in the dream book, Freud (1900) stated: “The system Pcs. [Preconscious] not merely bars access to consciousness, it also controls access to the power of voluntary movement” (p. 615). In linking will with motor activity, Freud defined will in the sense that had been conventional since the philosopher Thomas Hobbes in the 17th century (Pink, 2004, pp. 62–65). At the same time, he conceptualized a splitting of the ego in its exercise of will, exhibiting both a will that was congruent with libido, and a counter-will that resisted unconscious impulses. For present purposes, The Interpretation of Dreams is additionally notable for its equation of the processes by which hysterical symptoms are formed with the processes of the dream-work (Freud, 1900, p. 597). Armed, as Freud was, with a unified theory of unconscious symbol-formation, he arrived at his distinction between two types of unconsciousness. Thus there are two kinds of unconscious, which have not yet been distinguished by psychologists. Both of them are unconscious in the sense used by psychology; but in our sense one of them, which we term the Ucs. [Unconscious], is also inadmissible to consciousness, while we term the other the Pcs. because its excitations—after observing certain rules, it is true, and perhaps only after passing a fresh censorship, though nonetheless without regard to the Ucs.—are able to reach consciousness. (Freud, 1900, pp. 614–615)

Looking back on his career in 1933, Freud acknowledged that he had repeatedly been guilty of overly simple formulations: “The deeper we penetrate into the study of mental processes the more we recognize their abundance and complexity. A number of simple formulas which to begin with seemed to meet our needs have later turned out to be inadequate” (p. 92). Freud’s distinction between the unconscious and the preconscious is, I suggest, an important example of his tendency to over simplify. Freud’s topographic hypothesis received its name from the mental image of three layers of earth. The notion of a censorship, involuntary repression, that had to be passed between the lowermost and middle strata, raised the question of how to conceptualize the further censorship, voluntary suppression. Within the metaphor, it ought to be located between the middle and top strata; but the interior logic of the metaphor was inconsistent with the fact that pathogenic ideas that the ego voluntarily excluded from consciousness became available to the unconscious process of symbol-formation. They were not consigned merely to the preconscious. They somehow made their way down below to the unconscious.

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Freud never solved this theoretic problem. In “An Outline of PsychoAnalysis,” which was published posthumously in 1940, he drew explicit attention to the fact that the problem remained unsolved. Preconscious material can become temporarily inaccessible and cut off by resistances, as happens when something is temporarily forgotten or escapes the memory; or a preconscious thought can even be temporarily put back into the unconscious state, as seems to be a precondition in the case of jokes. We shall see that a similar transformation back of preconscious material or processes into the unconscious state plays a great part in the causation of neurotic disorders . . . large portions of the ego, and particularly of the super-ego, which cannot be denied the characteristic of preconsciousness, none the less remain for the most part unconscious in the phenomenological sense of the word. We do not know why this must be so. (Freud, 1940, pp. 161–162)

In the present context, I emphasize that Freud’s distinction between the preconscious and the unconscious made voluntary suppression equivalent to involuntary repression, in that both processes consigned pathogenic ideas to the unconscious, where the ideas undergo symbol-formation and are developed into symptoms of psychopathology. For Freud’s clinical purposes, the concept of will was superfluous. Will might exist; but if it did, it was irrelevant to his therapeutic procedures. Through the interpretation of dreams, free associations, parapraxes, symptoms, enactments, and transferences, psychoanalysis occupies itself with the unconscious. Freud did not vary his technique to reflect differences in how things get to be unconscious. Voluntary or involuntary, it was all the same to a technique that was concerned exclusively with making the unconscious conscious. In The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901), Freud acknowledged that conscious will plays a considerable role in the production of parapraxes. “It is a frequent occurrence for the idea one wants to withhold to be precisely the one which forces its way through in the form of a slip of the tongue” (Freud, 1901, p. 64). Among his many illustrations was an instance of bungled actions from his own life. One day a patient reminded me to give him the two books on Venice that I had promised him, as he needed them in preparing for a journey at Easter. ‘I have them ready,’ I replied, and went to the library to fetch them. The truth, however, was that I had forgotten to look them out, for I did not entirely approve of my patient’s journey, which I saw as an unnecessary interruption of the treatment and a material loss to the physician. I therefore took a hasty look round the library for two books I had had my eye on. One was ‘Venice, City of Art’; but besides this I thought I must own a historical work in a similar series. Quite right, there it was: ‘The Medici’. I

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took it and brought it to my waiting patient, only ashamedly to acknowledge the error. In reality I of course knew that the Medici have nothing to do with Venice, but for a short time it did not strike me as in any way incorrect. I now had to be fair; as I had so frequently confronted my patient with his own symptomatic acts I could only vindicate my authority in his eyes by being honest and showing him the motives (which I had kept secret) for my disapproval of his journey. (Freud, 1901, p. 221)

In this example, Freud made a conscious and voluntary decision to suppress his honest opinion of the journey. He also lied about having the books ready. By causing him to fetch an inappropriate book, momentarily thinking it appropriate, his unconscious conscience rebelled against his will, embarrassing him with the obligation either to sacrifice his authority or to confess his dishonesty. Freud carefully defined the sense in which he was prepared to discuss the phenomenon of will. He allowed that there is a subjective experience that seems to consist of free will. Many people, as is well known, contest the assumption of complete psychical determinism by appealing to a special feeling of conviction that there is a free will. This feeling of conviction exists; and it does not give way before a belief in determinism. Like every normal feeling it must have something to warrant it. . . . According to our analyses it is not necessary to dispute the right to the feeling of conviction of having a free will. (Freud, 1901, pp. 253–254)

Freud immediately proceeded, however, to insist that the feeling is mistaken, because psychic determinism prevails. Whatever is not motivated consciously is motivated unconsciously (p. 254). In taking the occasion to advocate psychic determinism, Freud overlooked the fact that unconscious motivation is experienced consciously as unmotivated compulsion; it is not experienced as voluntary freedom. But even if one were to grant Freud’s point that the subjective conviction of free will is mistaken, the feeling of conviction retains scientific interest. In the course of his discussion of convenient forgetting, Freud urged that research be devoted to the puzzle of will and the counter-will that together generate a parapraxis as a compromise between them. Analysis of the examples of forgetting that seem to require a special explanation reveals that the motive for forgetting is invariably an unwillingness to remember something which can evoke distressing feelings. . . . The extent and the significance of this unwillingness to remember distressing impressions would seem to deserve the most careful psychological examination . . . in the analysis of the examples a counter-will can regularly be

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recognized which opposes the intention without putting an end to it. . . . Either the counter-will is turned directly against the intention (in cases where the latter’s purpose is of some importance), or it is unrelated in its nature to the intention itself and establishes its connection with it by means of an external association (in the case of intentions that are almost indifferent). (Freud, 1901, pp. 274–275)

Freud never followed up on this research proposal. Over the years, he came simply to delete the subjective conviction of will from his considerations. The first step toward that deletion was already taken in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, where Freud (1901) underestimated the importance of his own findings. After noting that the same “condensations and compromise-formations” that were responsible for the “incongruities, absurdities and errors” that he had found in dreams were also responsible for parapraxes (Freud, 1901, pp. 277–278), Freud was content to blur the line between mental health and pathology. The peculiar mode of working, whose most striking achievement we see in the content of dreams, cannot be attributed to the sleeping state of mental life if we possess such abundant evidence in the form of parapraxes that it operates during our waking life as well. The same connection also forbids our assuming that these psychical processes, which strike us as abnormal and strange, are determined by a deep-seated decay in mental activity or by pathological states of functioning. We shall not be able to form a correct picture of the strange psychical work which brings about the occurrence of both parapraxes and dream images until we have learnt that psychoneurotic symptoms, and especially the psychical formations of hysteria and obsessional neurosis, repeat in their mechanism all the essential features of this mode of working . . . the borderline between the normal and the abnormal in nervous matters is a fluid one, and . . . we are all a little neurotic. (p. 278)

Having initially come to his concept of the primary process by interpreting neurotic symptoms as symbolic disguises of traumatic memories, and having extended his practice of interpretation to the circumstance of dreams, Freud had concluded that the primary process was both unconscious and pathological. In their “Preliminary Communication,” Breuer and Freud (1893) had referred to “dream-psychoses” (p. 13); and Freud continued to defend the diagnosis to the end of his life. In the posthumously published An Outline of Psycho-Analysis, Freud (1940) wrote, A dream, then, is a psychosis, with all the absurdities, delusions and illusions of a psychosis. A psychosis of short duration, no doubt, harmless, even entrusted with a useful function. . . . None the less it is a psychosis. (p. 172)

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Freud’s detection of the primary process in the construction of parapraxes ought to have led him to revise his diagnosis of symbol-formation. Dreams and parapraxes are parts of normal healthy psychology. Freud nevertheless contrived to regard them as parts of abnormal psychology. Straining the term psychosis until it applied as a metaphor to dreams served to emphasize their manifest irrationality; but there are no similar pretexts for thinking that parapraxes are in any sense pathological. Parapraxes are often not incoherent. Quite to the contrary, they are frequently transparent—whether sexual, selfish, or ironic. They may be embarrassing; but because they betray secret motivations, their exposures of secrets tend to serve the greater good through their effect on social relations. Parapraxes might legitimately be called inconvenient because they are noncompliant with conscious intentions; but Freud’s claim that they constituted The Psychopathology of Everyday Life was a gross misrepresentation. Freud’s diagnosis implied that whatever in thought and behavior has undergone primary processing is by definition pathological. Freud’s fourth great contribution on the primary process, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905b), made his position still more untenable. Jokes cannot by any stretch of the imagination be seen as unhealthy or morbid. Again and again, Freud made the case that the unconscious process of constructing a joke exhibited the same operations—“condensation, displacement and indirect representation”—that he had documented in dreams (pp. 88, 159, 165). Writing the joke book should have led Freud to revise his diagnosis of dreams and parapraxes. Had he done so, he might have been disposed to explore the findings regarding healthy mental functioning that his studies had been accumulating. He might have embarked, for example, on the beginnings of a psychology of consciousness by exploring the distinction between pathological and voluntary triggerings of the primary process. As it was, he ignored the issue and left it for Ernst Kris (1934) to introduce the diagnostic category “regression in the service of the ego.” On Freud’s showing, psychoanalysis needs to give thought to an analogous concept that might be described as “hysteria in the service of the ego,” but Freud’s research agenda took him in other directions. Because Freud was fascinated by the primary process, he did not remark, much less dwell, on the facts that jokes are always voluntary productions, and there is nothing unhealthy about them. In jokes, the primary process is activated voluntarily in the service of conscious intentions to make jokes. In the communication of consciousness with the unconscious without an intervening preconsciousness, the circumstance of jokes is precisely parallel to cases of hysteria that involve voluntary suppression rather than automatic repression. In jokes the communication is concordant, whereas in hysteria it is oppositional; but in both cases it is direct.

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Kris’s (1950) theory that the exclusion of ideas from consciousness, not only by repressing them, but also merely by neglecting them, relegates them to the preconscious, where they are available for unconscious, primary processing, accurately and elegantly restated ideas that are contained in Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams. Freud had imagined the day residue’s transition from waking, conscious knowledge, to preconscious memory and elaboration within the latent dream content, whence it is taken up by the unconscious dream-work and converted into an experience. Kris generalized that creativity, in all of its forms, deploys the same procedures of intrapsychic communication. Kris’s theory implied what Freud had overlooked, that the psyche’s ideas and processes vary independently. Ideas are not located “in” the preconscious, or “in” the unconscious. In the absence of repression, they are located in a common storage area where they may be processed at different times in any of several ways. Further writings that Freud published in 1905 made passing references to will and, indeed, to its freedom. In “Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria,” Freud (1905a) considered whether displaying “a warm personal interest” in clients would have been preferable to his customary professional distance. He concluded, In spite of every theoretical interest and of every endeavour to be of assistance as a physician, I keep the fact in mind that there must be some limits set to the extent to which psychological influence may be used, and I respect as one of these limits the patient’s own will and understanding. (p. 109)

Reconsidering the same technical issue in “Psychical (or Mental) Treatment,” Freud (1905c) acknowledged “that the physician . . . should use his personality in such a way as to gain his patient’s confidence and, to some degree, his affection.” He recommended, however, that the influence should be natural rather than contrived, with some physicians being effective with some patients and other physicians with other patients. At the same time, he concluded that “if the right of a patient to make a free choice of his doctor were suspended, an important precondition for influencing him mentally would be abolished” (p. 293). In “‘Civilized’ Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness,” Freud (1908a) illustrated his thesis that conventional morality was pathogenic by discussing a case that involved voluntary suppression. Let us, for instance, consider the very common case of a woman who does not love her husband, because, owing to the conditions under which she entered marriage, she has no reason to love him, but who very much wants to love him, because that alone corresponds to the ideal of marriage to which she has been brought up. She will in that case suppress every

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impulse which would express the truth and contradict her endeavours to fulfil her ideal, and she will make special efforts to play the part of a loving, affectionate and attentive wife. The outcome of this self-suppression will be a neurotic illness; and this neurosis will in a short time have taken revenge on the unloved husband and have caused him just as much lack of satisfaction and worry as would have resulted from an acknowledgement of the true state of affairs. (p. 203)

In “Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis,” which Freud gave at Clark University in 1910, he illustrated the psychogenesis of hysteria by presenting anew the case of Elisabeth von R. that he had first discussed in Studies on Hysteria. The patient was a girl, who had lost her beloved father after she had taken a share in nursing him—a situation analogous to that of Breuer’s patient. Soon afterwards her elder sister married, and her new brother-in-law aroused in her a peculiar feeling of sympathy which was easily masked under a disguise of family affection. Not long afterwards her sister fell ill and died, in the absence of the patient and her mother. They were summoned in all haste without being given any definite information of the tragic event. When the girl reached the bedside of her dead sister, there came to her for a brief moment an idea that might be expressed in these words: ‘Now he is free and can marry me.’ We may assume with certainty that this idea, which betrayed to her consciousness the intense love for her brother-in-law of which she had not herself been conscious, was surrendered to repression a moment later, owing to the revolt of her feelings. The girl fell ill with severe hysterical symptoms; and while she was under my treatment it turned out that she had completely forgotten the scene by her sister’s bedside and the odious egoistic impulse that had emerged in her. She remembered it during the treatment and reproduced the pathogenic moment with signs of the most violent emotion, and, as a result of the treatment, she became healthy once more. (Freud, 1910a, pp. 24–25)

Freud’s use of these two case examples in 1908 and 1910 indicates that he continued to endorse the voluntarism that he had expressed in Studies on Hysteria. Indeed, he was expanding the importance for psychoanalysis of coming to an understanding of voluntarism. In Studies on Hysteria, he had very briefly mentioned the phenomena of “abulias (inhibitions of will, inability to act,” and he had explained that “the inhibition of will is caused by the anxiety attendant upon the performance of the action” (Breuer & Freud, 1893, pp. 88–89). In 1909, he returned to the clinical problem of inhibited will when he introduced the concept of “obsessive thinking” that, he claimed, was a typical symptom of obsessional neurosis. It would be more correct to speak of ‘obsessive thinking’, and to make it clear that obsessional structures can correspond to every sort of psychical

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act. They can be classed as wishes, temptations, impulses, reflections, doubts, commands, or prohibitions. . . . Their essential characteristic is that they are incapable of coming to a decision, especially in matters of love; they endeavour to postpone every decision. . . . If an intense love is opposed by an almost equally powerful hatred, and is at the same time inseparably bound up with it, the immediate consequence is certain to be a partial paralysis of the will and an incapacity for coming to a decision upon any of those actions for which love ought to provide the motive power. (Freud, 1909b, pp. 221–222, 236, 241)

At the same time that his observations of voluntarism progressed, he was also discussing automaticity, resulting in a mixed model overall. For example, he proposed that unconscious fantasies may be unconscious either voluntarily or automatically. Unconscious phantasies have either been unconscious all along and have been formed in the unconscious; or—as is more often the case—they were once conscious phantasies, day-dreams, and have since been purposely forgotten and have become unconscious through “repression.” (Freud, 1908b, p. 161)

Four years later, he reported a change in his thinking on the topic. We were accustomed to think that every latent idea was so because it was weak and that it grew conscious a soon as it became strong. We have now gained the conviction that there are some latent ideas which do not penetrate into consciousness, however strong they may have become. . . . The term unconscious, which was used in the purely descriptive sense before, now comes to imply something more. It designates not only latent ideas in general, but especially ideas with a certain dynamic character, ideas keeping apart from consciousness in spite of their intensity and activity. (Freud, 1912, p. 262)

Consistent with the increase in automaticity that Freud detected in the psyche was a tendency, during these same years, to select or define words in ways that diminished the visibility of voluntarism in Freud’s writings. Freud had long been in the habit of employing the term repression in a manner that was ambiguous; it had sometimes been synonymous with suppression, but other times not. In 1909, however, he changed his usage. “Analysis replaces the process of repression, which is an automatic and excessive one, by a temperate and purposeful control on the part of the highest agencies of the mind. In a word, analysis replaces repression by condemnation” (Freud, 1909a, p. 145; emphasis in original; see also Freud, 1915a, p. 146). Not only did Freud here define repression as automatic, but also his reference to condemnation

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omitted a key detail that he acknowledged in a footnote in 1923: “Analysis does not set out to make pathological reactions impossible, but to give the patient’s ego freedom to choose one way or the other” (Freud, 1923a, p. 50n1; emphasis in original). Referring one-sidedly to condemnation did not express the voluntarism that Freud specified by the phrase freedom to choose.

THE ECLIPSE OF VOLUNTARISM BY DRIVE THEORY For the remainder of his life, Freud expressed views on will that were consistent with the incomplete and confusing observations that he had made by 1912. His research had led him into a quandary that he could not solve. Interestingly, his Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (1916–1917) reversed the order of his discoveries by beginning with a discussion of parapraxes, before proceeding to dreams, and only lastly to the clinical topic of the neuroses and their treatment. It is tempting to consider this feature of the Lectures’ overall design as itself a parapraxis, whose latent content was the requirement that Freud rethink parapraxes without skewing his thought by assimilating the healthy processes to the circumstance of neurotic symptoms. Certainly Freud’s account of parapraxes in the Lectures weighted their voluntarism more than he had 15 years earlier. Nowhere in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life had Freud allowed himself the generalization, boldly offered in the Lectures, that “the suppression of the speaker’s intention to say something is the indispensable condition for the occurrence of a slip of the tongue” (Freud, 1916–1917, p. 66; emphasis in original). In his concrete examples, Freud continued to observe closely and qualify his statements more carefully than he did when offering striking generalizations. He discussed slips of the tongue in language that he might have used 15 years earlier. In the first two groups [of “the three mechanisms of slips of the tongue”] the disturbing purpose is recognized by the speaker; furthermore, in the first group that purpose announces itself immediately before the slip. But in both cases it is forced back. The speaker decides not to put it into words, and after that the slip of the tongue occurs: after that, that is to say, the purpose which has been forced back is put into words against the speaker’s will, either by altering the expression of the intention which he has permitted, or by mingling with it, or by actually taking its place. This, then, is the mechanism of a slip of the tongue. (Freud, 1916–1917, p. 65; emphasis in original)

Coming, however, to the forgetting of intentions, he used language that expressed the same ideas in ways that sought to introduce an element of automaticity.

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The forgetting of intentions is quite unambiguous; . . . its interpretation is not disputed even by laymen. The purpose which disturbs the intention is in every instance a counter-intention, an unwillingness . . . the presence of this counter-will is unquestionable. Sometimes, too, we succeed in guessing something of the motives which compel this counter-will to conceal itself; acting surreptitiously by means of the parapraxis it always achieves its aim, whereas it would be sure of repudiation if it emerged as an open contradiction. (pp. 71–72)

Here the will to forget is termed “a counter-intention, an unwillingness” and a “counter-will.” What Freud had in mind was an umbrella term that might be applied to conscious decisions not to think of something, that allowed it to be forgotten, but that might equally be applied to unconscious resistance. Turning to the topic of neurosis, Freud summarized a case of obsessional neurosis that sustained his thesis about the conscious instigation of neurosis. The case refuted his and Breuer’s generalizations about neurotic amnesia, which he now claimed to remain valid for hysteria but not for obsessional neurosis. If, however, you consider the case of our first analysis you will not find this view of amnesia justified. The patient had not forgotten the scene from which her obsessive action was derived; on the contrary, she had a vivid recollection of it; nor did anything else forgotten play a part in the origin of the symptom . . . there was no true amnesia, no missing memory; but a connection had been broken which ought to have led to the reproduction or re-emergence of the memory. (Freud, 1916–1917, pp. 282–283)

At the same time, Freud introduced a theoretical concept that stripped consciousness of the voluntarism that he had all along been taking for granted. But what are the powers from which the objection to the libidinal trend arises? What is the other party to the pathogenic conflict? These powers, to put it quite generally, are the non-sexual instinctual forces. We class them together as the ‘ego-instincts’. The psycho-analysis of the transferenceneuroses gives us no easy access to a further dissecting of them; at most we come to know them to some extent by the resistances which oppose analysis. The pathogenic conflict is thus one between the ego-instincts and the sexual instincts. In a whole number of cases, it looks as though there might also be a conflict between different purely sexual trends. But in essence that is the same thing; for, of the two sexual trends that are in conflict, one is always, as we might say, ‘ego-syntonic’, while the other provokes the ego’s defence. It therefore still remains a conflict between the ego and sexuality. (Freud, 1916–1917, p. 350)

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Here, on the evidence of neuroses, Freud replaced the concept of voluntary suppression, which we meet in parapraxes and jokes, with the different concept of ego-instincts that function automatically to produce resistance. Without ever being denied, much less refuted, the concepts of will and counter-will went into abeyance. They were eclipsed by the theories of instincts that Freud had been constructing since 1914. Freud always entertained the idea that in addition to the sexual drives, there were other drives, such as hunger and thirst, that were not sexual but self-preservative. In his early writings, Freud did not significantly pursue the topic. He introduced the term ego-drives as a means to identify the selfpreservative drives only in 1910, in an article on “The Psycho-Analytic View of Psychogenic Disturbance of Vision” (1910b, p. 214). Freud was not able to do much with the concept, either upon its introduction or its further discussion in “Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning” (1911), where he concluded, as it were despite himself, that the connection, on the one hand, between the unconscious and sexual drives, and on the other, between consciousness and the self-preservative drives, was not intrinsic but only “secondary” (p. 223). Freud’s failure to replace voluntarism with his drive theory in 1911 presumably contributed to the dissatisfaction that led him to revise drive theory dramatically in both 1914 and 1920. Because a close review of Freud’s theories of automaticity would here constitute a digression, I will limit my discussion to selected details. Freud’s essay “On Narcissism” (1914) advanced the thesis that in addition to the energy that the self-preservative drives provide the ego, the ego is able to acquire further psychic energy by transforming libido into narcissistic libido. At one point in the essay, Freud criticized Jung’s ideas that there is only a single sort of psychic energy, which may or may not be sexual. Freud here happened to quote Jung’s phrase “sexual interest” (p. 80). After commenting that Jung discussed sexuality “only in the popular sense of the word ‘sexual’ ” (p. 80), Freud went on, as it were, to correct Jung by referring to “libidinal interest” (p. 82; emphasis in original), before he arrived at the further formula, “libido and ego-interest” (p. 82). In this way, Freud replaced the patently absurd term ego-drive, with its implications of compulsiveness, with the more sensible phrase ego-interest. (The Standard Edition routinely mistranslated Trieb, meaning “drive,” as “instinct” in order to sidestep the same problem.) The formulation “egointerest” recurred in the Introductory Lectures: “We termed the cathexes of energy which the ego directs towards the objects of its sexual desires ‘libido’; all the others, which are sent out by the self-preservative instincts, we termed ‘interests’” (Freud, 1916–1917, p. 414). Retreating from the concept of a drive to that of an interest did not immediately solve the problem in theory. The ego may well have interests and nevertheless, if it has will, act despite them.

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Working with the concept of “ego-interests,” Freud (1916–1917) went on to assert the link that in 1911 he had acknowledged that he had been unable to demonstrate: “The differentiation between libido and interest—that is to say, between the sexual and the self-preservative instincts—was forced upon us by our discovery of the conflict out of which the transference neuroses arise” (p. 420). This statement was overly simple. Freud had initially accounted for psychic conflict with reference to distress: “the affects of shame, of selfreproach and of psychical pain, and the feeling of being harmed” (Breuer & Freud, 1893, p. 268). In this way, he had satisfactorily accounted for conflict by appealing to the unpleasure principle. As late as 1911, he had neither needed nor been able to implicate self-preservative drives in his theory of neurotic conflict. Since 1911, however, he had introduced his speculations about primary narcissism and the derivation of the ego ideal from the ideal ego of the neonatal period (Freud, 1914). In this way, he had theorized a link not directly to the ego, but indirectly through the intermediation of the ego ideal. For a neurosis to be generated there must be a conflict between a person’s libidinal wishes and the part of the personality we call his ego, which is the expression of his instinct of self-preservation and which also includes his ideals of his personality. (Freud, 1916, p. 316; emphasis in original)

Abel (1989) shrewdly remarked: “The ‘self ’ in ‘self-preservation’ is usually the idealized self rather than the physical self; impulses to preserve one’s selfimage and self-respect are what oppose sexual desires” (p. 26). Changing terminology while continuing to conceptualize neurosis as a conflict between sexual desire and moral scruples, as Freud had done continuously since the 1890s, did not alter the ego’s place in the theory. Granting that it was the ego that implemented the scruples, the ego’s means of doing so might be either willful or involuntary, depending on whether the ego deployed suppression or repression in any particular instance. The position that Freud took in the Introductory Lectures was logically untenable and he replaced it in 1920, when he offered his equally but differently untenable theories of Eros and the death drive. Interpreting psychic conflict as proceeding between Eros in the unconscious (later, the id), and “a pure culture of the death-instinct” (Freud, 1923, p. 53) that holds sway in the superego, was new wording for the same theory that Freud had already rejected as inadequate. The superego may motivate repression, but it is the ego that does the repressing (Freud, 1923, pp. 51–52). The theory cannot speak decisively to the question whether the ego acts willfully and/or automatically. At the same time, Freud’s preoccupation with drive theory served to put the topic of will into eclipse. The impression arose among Freud’s new readers that he offered an exclusively mechanical theory of the psyche.

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When, beginning in 1927, Otto Rank (1936) offered his own “will therapy” that drew heavily on the terms will and counter-will, the latter a synonym for resistance as it also was in Freud, Rank was almost universally thought to have departed from Freud, when in fact he persisted in the voluntarism that Freud had taught him when they had met 20 years earlier. It may be correct to say that Freud wished to offer an exclusively mechanical theory; but he never did so. Despite his repeated efforts to extend his theories of automaticity with his speculations about drives, Freud continued to refer to will in passing remarks. “His internal perception, consciousness, gives the ego news of all the important occurrences in the mind’s working, and the will, directed by these reports, carries out what the ego orders and modifies anything that seeks to accomplish itself spontaneously” (Freud, 1917, p. 141). “Nothing has entered into you from without; a part of the activity of your own mind has been withdrawn from your knowledge and from the command of your will” (Freud, 1917, p. 142). “The id . . . cannot say what it wants; it has achieved no unified will” (Freud, 1923, p. 59; see also Freud, 1933, p. 73). The displacement of the distribution of forces in favour of satisfaction may have the dreaded final outcome of paralysing the will of the ego, which in every decision it has to make is almost as strongly impelled from the one side as from the other. (Freud, 1926a, p. 118)

“The patient wants to be cured—but he also wants not to be. His ego has lost its unity, and for that reason his will has no unity either. If that were not so, he would be no neurotic” (Freud, 1926b, p. 221). “If a volitional impulse has been formed in the patient’s ego which wishes to retain the illness, it too must have its reasons and motives and be able in some way to justify itself ” (Freud, 1926b, p. 222). “But the reader must decide of his own free will whether to linger over the subject or to come back to it” (Freud, 1939, p. 104). “Unluckily an author’s creative power does not always obey his will: the work proceeds as it can, and often presents itself to the author as something independent or even alien” (Freud, 1939, p. 104). Whether one believes that will is free or not—and Freud did not—one certainly believes that the voluntary nervous system differs from the involuntary, and that acts of will, such as voluntary suppression, differ from compulsions, involuntary motions, and events like repression that proceed wholly unconsciously.

SOME BENEFITS OF HINDSIGHT In 1915, in an article on “The Unconscious,” Freud returned to the question of a second stimulus barrier that he had left open in 1900. After reviewing the topic in greater detail than he had ever previously done, he concluded

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that “it becomes probable that there is a censorship between the Pcs. and the Cs.” (Freud, 1915b, p. 191). Freud nowhere explained what theoretic question was nagging at him that inclined him to revisit the unsolved problem, only to leave it unsolved yet again. But we may infer that he was still puzzling over “hysteria in the service of the ego.” In 1939, Heinz Hartmann published a theory, which has since been widely accepted, that accounts adequately for the censorship that Freud could not conceptualize. It concerns the automatization of preconscious ego functions, but it can also be conceptualized as a type of censorship. In well-established achievements they [preconscious ego processes] function automatically: the integration of the somatic systems involved in the action is automatized, and so is the integration of the individual mental acts involved in it. With increasing exercise of the action its intermediate steps disappear from consciousness. . . . Not only motor behavior, but perception and thinking, too, show automatization. Exercise automatizes methods of problem-solving just as much as it does walking, speaking, or writing. . . . The place of these automatisms in the mental topography is the preconscious. . . . It is obvious that automatization may have economic advantages. . . . In using automatisms we apply means which already exist, which we need not create anew at every occasion, and consequently the means-end relations in some areas are, so to speak, “not subject to argument” . . . It is possible that automatization functions as a stimulus barrier in the mental apparatus. (Hartmann, 1958, pp. 87–89, 91)

Freud’s concept that neurosis originates with an act of will, a voluntary suppression that pushes a distressing experience out of consciousness, may be augmented with Hartmann’s concept of automatization. Whenever an act of voluntary suppression is repeated until it becomes automatic, we may speak of it as “automatized suppression.” In so far as it is a stimulus barrier that functions automatically, it is indistinguishable from repression. Whatever automatized suppression excludes from consciousness would be unconscious and equivalent in its dynamism to materials that are unconscious because they are repressed. If automatized suppression were to be pictured spatially in topographic terms, it might be imagined on part of the border between the preconscious and consciousness. It would not cover the entire border, but only a portion. Picture, for example, a three-story building, with a wall across half of the second floor, and the flooring removed on one side of it. The result would be a second floor that covered only half of the area of the first and third floors, and half of the first floor would be two stories high. Add also a stairway that permitted easy traffic between the half-sized second floor and the top of the building. The repression barrier would be the

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ceiling-floor between the first and second stories; the automatized suppression barrier would be the ceiling-floor between the first and third stories, on the half of the building that had no second story. Now that we can picture the solution that evaded Freud, we can recognize, I suggest, the pertinence of a theory that he attained, but did not recognize as relevant to the present puzzle. Freud initially proposed that “any experience which calls up distressing affects—such as those of fright, anxiety, shame or physical pain—may operate as a trauma” (Breuer & Freud, 1893, p. 6). Traumas might be single, but they were more frequently cumulative. “It not infrequently happens that, instead of a single, major trauma, we find a number of partial traumas forming a group of provoking causes” (p. 6). In both events, traumas were, as we have seen, all of a distressing nature, calculated to arouse the affects of shame, of selfreproach and of psychical pain, and the feeling of being harmed; they were all of a kind that one would prefer not to have experienced, that one would rather forget. (Breuer & Freud, 1893, p. 268)

In Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety, written over 30 years later, Freud (1926b) proposed a fundamentally different description of trauma. Citing the fact that traumas may occur in early childhood, years before moral scruples have been acquired, Freud reverted to a very old idea that he had originally developed as a neuroscientific speculation and left unpublished (Freud, 1893). He now offered the old neuroscientific concept not literally but as a psychological metaphor. There is a danger of over-estimating the part played in repression by the super-ego. . . . It is highly probable that the immediate precipitating causes of primal repressions are quantitative factors such as an excessive degree of excitation and the breaking through of the protective shield against stimuli. (Freud, 1926a, p. 94)

Translating the metaphor, Freud introduced the concept of “mental helplessness” (pp. 138, 142). The concept led him to redefine trauma. “Let us call a situation of helplessness of this kind that has been actually experienced a traumatic situation” (p. 166). I have elsewhere argued that whenever “the ego is reduced to a state of helplessness” (Freud, 1926a, p. 141), the person is effectively paralyzed, because incapable of willing effective action. When consciousness is paralyzed, the unconscious psyche automatically protects the person by shutting the ego down. While the trauma is ongoing, its perception is isolated, so that it cannot associate with and so contaminate other mentation. The ego is then said to be in a state of shock or dissociation. After the paralyzing event has ended,

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quarantine may persist through the repression of the trauma’s memory. In both cases, the perceptions and/or memories are segregated and made unavailable for processing, lest they precipitate renewals of paralysis (Merkur, 1984). Freud’s re-definition is best treated, I suggest, as his articulation of the existence of a second type of trauma. What he had written in the 1890s had not been wrong and was not superseded. It was being augmented through attention to a second process of pathogenesis. Mental helplessness evokes responses (isolation, repression) that are unconscious, automatic, amoral, and wholly within the power of the ego. What is at stake is precisely self-preservation in a completely literal, organismic sense, and not merely in reference to the self-image. Moral scruples are not involved as motivations. The superego has no role to play. During the traumatic moment, a state of shock (dissociation, isolation, derealization) prevails. There is no occasion during shock for a voluntary act of suppression, of “pushing away,” of wanting not to know, in reaction to moral scruples. Reactions to paralyzing traumas bypass the higher mental functions. They are a question first of containing the paralysis (through shock, dissociation, or isolation) and secondly (through repression) of recovering from it, in both cases in order to be able to resume voluntary activities. Freud’s quest for a theory that would render the whole of the psyche automatic led him, I suggest, both into increasing absurdity and controversy over the drives, and also to an entirely valid appreciation of a different type of trauma than he had recognized in the 1890s. It is as though he had a hunch that there was something automatic that he had not figured out, and he persisted until well after he had discovered it. Unfortunately, he did not recognize his discovery when he had made it, nor did he turn it clinical account. Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety was, however, the same text where Freud revived his concept of “defenses” after a quarter century of neglect. It is as though he recognized unconsciously that introducing a second theory of trauma called into question his long-standing views of repression and defense. Let me briefly provide a clinical example. A lean, tall, handsome, but somewhat boyish man in his late 20s called on me for once-weekly psychotherapy because he blushed bright red whenever he spoke in public, and he wished relief from his embarrassment. He was embarrassed because he blushed, and not vice versa. He was unconscious of any reason why he blushed. He had lived with this problem for 13 years, but it was now beginning to impact on his career. He had recently been promoted to a managerial position that obliged him to speak weekly to a team of 10 subordinates; and he had also to attend international managerial meetings at home office, where 30 fellow managers and their superiors were present when he made his reports. It is pertinent to his case that he is European; that his promotion to manager had involved being sent to manage his corporate branch office in Toronto, where I live; and that he spoke to me in an excellent but markedly accented English.

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Near the start of our very first conversation, he told me that money matters a lot to him, as it does not to his three brothers; that his friends, whom he has retained from high school onward, were rich, but accepted him as a friend despite his middle-class background; that it was important to him to be able to afford expensive travel in order to continue to holiday with his friends; and that he was successfully fulfilling his monetary ambitions and distinguishing himself by being the youngest branch manager in his international corporation. I felt from the vehemence of his tone that these values were nonnegotiable, and that any contrary questions or comments I might voice would be off-limits. After asking for basic information about his family of origin, education and work histories, and romantic and/or sexual history, I explored the time of origin of his symptom. It first occurred when he was 16, in high school, when he was called on to speak in class. Had anything else that was notable occurred around that time? He had had sex for the first time a few months previous to the onset of blushing, but free associations and further inquiries about his sexual history turned up nothing that either he or I considered useful. He had been sexually active and had enjoyed several long-term relationships with girlfriends over the years, including one deep love, but only now, as he felt secure in his business career and was living far from home and friends, was he beginning to think about taking a wife and having children. When, in a later session, he remarked that when he had been young, his father had been a television personality who hosted a weekly show, I suggested that his father must have excelled at public speaking. There was no significant reaction. After a bit, he told of being uncomfortable as a child when his father was recognized and made a fuss over in shops, and of the family’s move to the countryside, upon his father’s change of career, in order to avoid celebrity. At the end of the following session, as several efforts to hint obliquely at oedipal issues had gone nowhere, I raised the topic of the Oedipus complex. He had heard of it. But he and his brothers all got on very well with their father, whom they admired. He called home almost daily to speak with both of his parents and continued to seek their advice on all sorts of topics in his life. At the very end of the session, I remarked that one configuration of the Oedipus complex is shaped by excessive guilt over competition with the father, so that the boy avoids activities in an area where his father excels. Perhaps he was unconsciously sabotaging his public speaking in order to leave his father unrivaled? He returned the next week with a story. He, his father, and his brothers were all very competitive. He and his father were the worst. They liked to golf, but when they did badly they could get so mad that they would throw golf clubs. Now that I had mentioned it, it was true, he had sometimes deliberately lost a round of golf that he could have won so as to avoid angering his father. But these issues, though genuinely part of his makeup, seemed

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unrelated to the blushing, so far as he could tell. For my part, I silently accepted his story about golfing as unconscious confirmation of my interpretation that had nevertheless not been curative. Having no further prepackaged ideas, I inquired less and indulged meandering free association more. Several sessions later, which had been interrupted by winter holidays, he was telling me about current dating and his increased inclination to start a family, when he drifted onto the topic of the girlfriend who had broken his heart some years earlier. He had spoken of her before, but now gave me much more detail. She was a famous beauty in the major city of his country, and it had been a feather in his cap that she had shown him interest, despite his provincial origins. The story of the romance and its failure was followed by remembrances of his grandmother, who had had aristocratic social pretensions and had been unique in his family in approving of his relationship with the girl. Somewhere in the narrative of his grandmother, he let drop the fact that in his country there were different regional accents, and that people in the major city could identify his place of origin by his accent. Connecting the dots, I suggested that perhaps public speaking caused him to blush because he gave away his countryside origins every time that he spoke. He stared at me, astonished, and immediately said yes, of course. I asked him why he might be embarrassed at having grown up in the countryside. It was not as though he were an uneducated hick, coming from poverty. His well-to-do father had taken the family to live in the country in order to gain refuge from his celebrity. He returned the next week with a story. His family had moved from the countryside to a small regional city in the late summer, just before the start of the school year, when he was 16. A few weeks immediately prior to the move, he and two friends were caught shoplifting in a department store, and the police were summoned. He and his friends had been pilfering candy from stores for several years. It was a competition among them, involving peer pressure about daring and cowardice. He would not have shoplifted had he not been their friend. They were countryside fellows, poor and a bit wild. When he was caught, he was embarrassed more than he had ever been in his life. He had known better, and he was deeply ashamed of himself. Even after the police pressed no charges and his fear subsided, the shame remained. It had shaped his life ever since. Once he moved to the regional city, he deliberately sought out friends who had a lot of money and would never be interested in stealing. His own desire to make money was always connected in his mind with his embarrassment. And so, yes, when he spoke in public, his accent betrayed his countryside origins, but what made him ashamed was what he had done there as a teenager. And when he concluded telling me the story, his face and neck slowly turned a deep red before my eyes.

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I saw him only once more. He came next week to tell me that he had spoken with his parents about the shoplifting incident. They recalled it dimly, had not thought of it in years, and had never imagined that he had reacted to it as strongly as he had. In the meantime, he had had occasion to speak in public at work, and he was no longer blushing, nor feeling his customary anxiety about public speaking. He felt cured, thanked me very much for solving his problem, and said that he would not be returning. We filled the rest of the session with chit-chat, including my explanation to him of what I considered to be the theoretical significance of his case. A classical oedipal interpretation had been valid but not curative, because his symptom had concerned guilt and shame that had been conscious and voluntary, rather than unconscious and involuntary. I asked for and received permission to write up his case. It is my conclusion, both from reading Freud and my own clinical experiences, that emotional distress and paralyzing helplessness are two very different types of trauma. Their sequels are equally dramatically divergent. Emotional distress is disliked intensely. It is defended against voluntarily, by being pushed out of consciousness. These defenses may be automatized secondarily. Automatic suppression may be the stimulus barrier portion of a more complex “mechanism” such as a reaction-formation, reversal, undoing, identification with the aggressor, and so forth. Helplessness, by contrast, is not meaningfully discussed in terms of like and dislike. Affect is isolated when paralysis sets in. Because paralysis precludes voluntary action, the processes that defend against it are automatic. Isolation and repression prevent emotions and ideas from forming in connection with the helplessness, during and after the trauma, respectively. The evidence at hand—the cases of Elisabeth von R., women who do not love their husbands, and my blushing business manager—concerns the suppression of moral culpability. Elisabeth von R. and my patient both reproached themselves far in excess of any genuine guilt; but women who persist in marriages despite their lovelessness for their husbands do them a genuine cruelty. Bakan, Merkur, and Weiss (2009) argued that Freud was indebted intellectually to the theories of the 12th-century Rabbi Moses Maimonides, who proposed that psychogenic illnesses (e.g., blindness and paralysis) are symptoms of sin that begin with conscious denials of guilt that subsequently become involuntary and generate symptoms. Maimonides conceptualized all mental illness as a product of will; Freud initially did so too. By replacing the word will with the terms ego-drive and ego-interest, Freud later attempted to retain the same theory, while revising it to make all mental illness a product of automaticity. By contrast, I am arguing that we need two theories, one for pathologies that owe to will, and another for pathologies that owe to the portion of us that is automatic. That some will is good, and other evil, goes without saying.

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REFERENCES Note: All Freud sources are from Freud, S. The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. London: Hogarth Press. Abel, D. C. (1989). Freud on instinct and morality. Albany: State University of New York Press. Bakan, D., Merkur, D., & Weiss, D. S. (2009). Maimonides’ cure of souls: Medieval precursor of psychoanalysis. Albany: State University of New York Press. Breuer, J., & Freud, S. (1955). On the psychical mechanism of hysterical phenomena: Preliminary communication. In The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud; Vol. 2. Studies on hysteria (pp. 1–17). London: Hogarth Press. (Original work published in 1893). Freud, S. (1893). On the psychical mechanism of hysterical phenomena: A lecture. Standard Edition, 3, 27–39. London: Hogarth Press, 1962. Freud, S. (1894). The neuro-psychoses of defense. Standard Edition, 3, 45–61. London: Hogarth Press, 1962. Freud, S. (1898). The psychical mechanism of forgetfulness. Standard Edition, 3, 289– 297. London: Hogarth Press, 1962. Freud, S. (1900). The interpretation of dreams. Standard Edition, 4–5, 1–625. London: Hogarth Press, 1958. Freud, S. (1901). The psychopathology of everyday life. Standard Edition, 6, 1–279. London: Hogarth Press, 1960. Freud, S. (1905a). Fragment of an analysis of a case of hysteria. Standard Edition, 7, 7–122. London: Hogarth Press, 1953. Freud, S. (1905b). Jokes and their relation to the unconscious. Standard Edition, 8. London: Hogarth Press, 1960. Freud, S. (1905c). Psychical (or mental) treatment. Standard Edition, 7, 283–302. London: Hogarth Press, 1953. Freud, S. (1908a). ‘Civilized’ sexual morality and modern nervous illness. Standard Edition, 9, 181–204. London: Hogarth Press, 1959. Freud, S. (1908b). Hysterical phantasies and their relation to bisexuality. Standard Edition, 9, 159–166. London: Hogarth Press, 1959. Freud, S. (1909a). Analysis of a phobia in a five-year-old boy. Standard Edition, 10, 5–149. London: Hogarth Press, 1955. Freud, S. (1909b). Notes upon a case of obsessional neurosis. Standard Edition, 10, 155–249. London: Hogarth Press, 1955. Freud, S. (1910a). Five lectures on psycho-analysis. Standard Edition, 11, 9–55. London: Hogarth Press, 1957. Freud, S. (1910b). The psycho-analytic view of psychogenic disturbance of vision. Standard Edition, 11, 211–218. London: Hogarth Press, 1957. Freud, S. (1911). Formulations on the two principles of mental functioning. Standard Edition, 12, 218–226. London: Hogarth Press, 1958. Freud, S. (1912). A note on the unconscious in psycho-analysis. Standard Edition, 12, 260–266. London: Hogarth Press, 1958. Freud, S. (1914). On narcissism: an introduction. Standard Edition, 14, 78–102. London: Hogarth Press, 1957.

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Freud, S. (1915a). Repression. Standard Edition, 14, 146–158. London: Hogarth Press, 1957. Freud, S. (1915b). The unconscious. Standard Edition, 14, 166–204. London: Hogarth Press, 1957. Freud, S. (1916). Some character-types met with in psycho-analytic work. Standard Edition, 14, 311–333. London: Hogarth Press, 1957. Freud, S. (1916–1917). Introductory lectures on psycho-analysis. Standard Edition, 15–16, 9–463. London: Hogarth Press, 1961–1963. Freud, S. (1917). A difficulty in the path of psycho-analysis. Standard Edition, 17, 137–144. London: Hogarth Press, 1955. Freud, S. (1923). The ego and the id. Standard Edition, 19, 12–59. London: Hogarth Press, 1961. Freud, S. (1926a). Inhibitions, symptoms, and anxiety. Standard Edition, 20, 87–172. London: Hogarth Press, 1959. Freud, S. (1926b). The question of lay analysis: Conversations with an impartial person. Standard Edition, 20, 183–258. London: Hogarth Press, 1959. Freud, S. (1933). New introductory lectures on psycho-analysis. Standard Edition, 22, 5–182. London: Hogarth Press, 1964. Freud, S. (1939). Moses and monotheism: Three essays. Standard Edition, 23, 6–137. London: Hogarth Press, 1964. Freud, S. (1940). An outline of psycho-analysis. Standard Edition, 23, 144–207. London: Hogarth Press, 1964. Hartmann, H. (1958). Ego psychology and the problem of adaptation. New York: International Universities Press. (Original work published in German in 1939.) Kris, E. (1934). The psychology of caricature. In Psychoanalytic explorations in art (pp. 173–203). Rpt. New York: International Universities Press, 1952. Kris, E. (1950). On preconscious mental processes. In Psychoanalytic explorations in art (pp. 303–318). Rpt. New York: International Universities Press, 1952. Merkur, D. (1984). The nature of the hypnotic state: A psychoanalytic approach. International Review of Psycho-Analysis, 11 (3), 345–354. Pink, T. (2004). Free will: A very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rank, O. (1936). Will therapy (Trans. Jessie Taft). New York: Knopf.

ch apter 1 9

Conclusion: Is There Really an Evil Force Out There? J. Harold Ellens

In my four chapters in volume 1 of this work (Chapters 1, 6, 11, and 19), I have already set the stage for addressing the theme of this chapter. Is there really an evil force out there? Of course, the worlds of the transcendent, paranormal, and otherworldly are largely unexplored by scientific methods. If we paid more attention to the data we do have about those realms of reality, we would probably have a scientific analysis of them by now. However, we do have reason to conclude a number of things about those relatively unknown spheres. First, it is evident that the divine spirit manages to move back and forth through the apparently highly permeable screen between the visible material world and the invisible other world. Humans experience the illuminations and intimations of the spirit of God in our spirits with remarkable frequency and clarity. Nearly every mature person can testify to a number of such experiences that we might refer to as moments of the spirit (Ellens, 2010). We know it is the divine spirit and not some demonic spirit because the impact it makes upon human experience is invariably and by definition constructive. That is the watershed criterion. Second, there has been a great deal of speculation throughout history about the presence of evil forces in our world. Many things have been taken as evidence of such evil agency out there somewhere. Natural disasters are often credited to the demonic forces, despite the fact that insurance companies refer to volcanoes, tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods as acts of God. One gets the impression that they are using medieval or ancient terminology and referring to some kind of evil god, like the devil or Satan,

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who wreaks such natural havoc upon the earth, often doing much harm to humans. Third, most religions throughout history have gotten a lot of mileage out of projecting upon the face of the universe rather devastating notions of an evil force, either within the divine being or within God’s will; or as a separate and opposing ethereal being like the devil. Such notions pose Satan as an alternate and evil god who endeavors to subvert and undo the work of God, in heaven and on earth. Such notions have always been wholly speculative, imaginary, and manipulative. They are consciously or unconsciously designed by religious leaders, first of all, to account for the evil that humans do to each other. They are also employed to maintain an adequate sense of “divine” threat in the hearts of devotees so that these members of the believing community remain faithful, motivated, and persistent in subsidizing the religious enterprise with adequate financial resources (Ellens, 2004). The fourth fact of life, however, is that there is not the slightest degree of evidence for such a cosmic, ethereal, or divine force of threat or evil at play in God’s world or ours. That is, there is no empirical experience, no phenomenological evidence, or any heuristic data or argument that can give any substance whatsoever to the notions of there being an evil force out there or in this world. The only evidence available is that there are evil things that humans experience in this world; and every one of them is the result of thoughtless, careless, unkind, intentional, or malicious acts by a human being. Natural disasters are merely the planet’s normal functions working themselves out. Some of them inconvenience, discomfort, or even kill humans; but to call them evil products of some evil agent is an illusionary human imperialism. Fifth, reifying evil as an objective thing out there or in our world, which comes around and impacts us with its forces, not only is erroneous, but also such ideation actually gives evil a kind of ontological existence and power. By imagining it and acting like it exists ontologically, that is, as if it had real being, we give it reality in our imaginary world. Then we translate that to our thought world. The next step is that we entrench it in our religious formulations and theological statements. By that time it exists in our ideological world, where it becomes an operational factor in our belief system. Therefore, we begin to interpret many human experiences as though they are really caused by some evil force or agent, and so evil takes on the nature and contours of real being, when in reality it does not exist as an objective entity in our world or God’s. It remains merely a figment of our imagination. This reified evil then becomes a handy scapegoat, at that point, on which to displace the blame for our own misbehavior. The devil made me do it, or my flawed nature is the cause of it, or God built the problem into the nature of the universe. Our imagined evil is then an object that we have created out of thin air, and it becomes the excuse for our perpetration of real evil in our

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relationships with each other and with God’s good world. We act as if there is an evil agent out there, and so we make evil an ontological reality, and then handily escape from the need to confront our own mistakes, even when they are monstrous. My father liked the poem of the three monkeys sitting in a coconut tree, contemplating the behavior of humans and trying to discern if humans really descended from monkeys. Their conclusion was interesting. They finally said to each other, upon the empirical evidence of human behavior, “He descended from something, the ornery cuss, but he sure as hell never descended from us.”

REFERENCES Ellens, J. H. (2004). The destructive power of religion: Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (4 vols.). Westport, CT: Praeger. Ellens, J. H. (2010). Light from the other side: The paranormal as friend and familiar. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock.

Index

Abbasid Caliphate, 27 Abbasid Dynasty, 30 ability emotional intelligence, 39 abortion agenda, 69–71 Abrahamic faiths, 202–217; God in master story, 214–216; inherent dissonance, 212–213; modernity, 205–212; violent religious metaphors, 213–214 accidental causes, 33 accusation, 125 Adegbola, Adeolu, 168 Adorno, T., 9 Africa, 141–151, 142, 145; colonization of, 142; corruption, 147–148; external power influences and evil, 142–144; internal issues, 145–149; Islamization of, 142; jealousy, 148–149; nepotism, 147; paternalism, 146–147; trade with, 144–145; use and misuse of power in, 141–151 African Christian theology, 153–183; and Christian doctrine of sin, 175; dualism, 161–162; enculturation theology, 154– 155, 167–169, 176–177; evangelical theology, 158–159, 171–172, 179; evil: as the consequence of sin, 167–172, as the source of sin, 172–173; evil as

the source of sin—sin as the source of evil, 179–180; evil in, 165–167; liberation theology, 155–156, 169–170, 178; monism, 162; origins of sin, 161; Pentecostal theology, 160–161, 172, 178–179; reconstructionist perspective, 159–160; sin: and evil, relationship between, 164–165, human responsibility for, 162, knowledge of, 163, and moral issues, differentiation inability, 176, results of, 164; sin as the exclusive source of evil, 180; sin as the source of evil, and equally the product of evil, 180; sin as the source of evil—evil as the source of sin, 179; theologians and the laity, communication lack between, 176; witchcraft, 173–175; women’ s theology, 156–158; Zionist theologies, 160–161, 170–171, 177–178 aggression, 9, 37, 38, 40, 43, 45–46, 49, 51, 102, 111, 242; destructive aggression, 210; self-aggression, 120–121 aggressive tendencies, 49, 258 AIDS, 50–51 Albania, 72 al-Din, Salah, 27

324

Index

alexythymia, 38 All African Council of Churches, 154 al-Nasir, Gamal Abd, 146 Al Qaeda, 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10 altruism, 93–94 American Christian religious, 4 American Revolution, 22 Amin, Idi, 146 amygdala, 45 ancient Egyptian mythology and ideology, 12–19 Anderson, Alan, 160 anger, 46, 48, 105, 116, 120, 124, 125, 253, 286–287 Anti-Defamation League, 82 anti-Judaism, 77, 81 anti-Semitism, 76–82 anxiety, 121 apartheid, 144 Apophis, 19 Aquinas, Thomas, 22–35, 162; explanation of evil, 30–34; implications for modern times, 34–35; life of, 23–26; in thirteenth-century Europe, 26–30 Arab Human Development Report, 51 Arabs, 1, 106 Archives of General Psychiatry, 38 Aristotle, 22, 24, 25, 31 Aronson, Elliot, 8 Aryan myth, 81 asceticism, 78 Asian Mongols, 23 Assmann, Jan, 18 atonement, 130 attachment theory, 37 Auschwitz, 82 Australian aboriginal, 189–200; aboriginal religions’ response to evil, 196–199; commonalities of aboriginal and Torres strait islander religions, 193–196; contributions to the western world, 200; spirituality and religions, 190–192 avoiding evil, 260–263 Baartman, Saartjie, 144 Baird, Robert M., 7 Bank for International Settlements (BIS), 59 Bank of England, 59

Bank of France, 59 Barlow, A., 39 Batman series, 40 Baumeister, Roy, 126, 127 Beck, K., 135n15 Bediako, Kwame, 158–159, 171 Beek, Van de, 165 Behn, Sosthenes, 63 Bell, Alexander Graham, 67 Benedict XVI (pope), 81 benign, 90–91 Berglas, S., 127 Berglas, Steven, 126 Berkhof, H., 162, 164 Berlin, Isaiah, 3 Bernard of Clairvaux, 206 Berne, Eric, 114, 136n17 Bhengu, Nicholas, 172 Bible, 79, 158, 165, 192 bin Laden, Osama, 4, 7, 9 Blyden, Edward, 154 Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), 85 Bochenski, J. M., 123 Bone, Homer T., 62 Borg, Marcus, 132 Brain impairments, 45 Brandenburg asylum, 50 British narcissism, 90 British Petroleum (BP) pipeline, 110 British School of psychoanalysts, 37 Brown, P., 78 Bucher, H., 174, 175, 178 Buck v. Bell, (2010), 67 Bujo, Bénézet, 156 Bushmen tribes, 143 Byzantine Empire, 27 Caliphate, 3 Calvin, Jean, 163, 206 Capps, Donald, 129 Carr, Edward, 133–134n6 Carrel, Alexis, 70 Carroll, James, 79, 81–82 Castro, Fidel, 97 cataclysm, 7 Catholicism, 81 celibacy, 79

Index Chase National Bank, 59–60 Chikane, Frank, 172 childhood sexual abuse, 40 Children’s Crusade of 1212, 27 Chiliza, Job, 172 Christendom, 78, 79, 91 Christian anti-Judaism, 82 Christian anti-Semitism, 76–82, 80; America, 80–82 Christian doctrine of sin, 175 Christology, 163, 167 Chrysostom, John, 77 Church, 22, 25–28, 31, 78–79, 81–82, 162, 171, 202, 255 Churchill, Winston, 67 Church of Nazarene, 170 Chushingura, Japanese saga of, 98–99 City of God, 80 Clement IV (pope), 27 cognitions, 122 cognitive-behavioral therapy, 47 collective shadow, 258–260 Collins, Harry J., 65 colonization of Africa, 142 combating evil, 230–249 compulsory abortions, 69 Confessions, 77, 80, 129 conscience, 37 Constantine, 77 Constantinople, 27 contingent, 96–97 contingent virtues, 96 control, responsibility, and guilt: distinguishing between, 119 Cooper, James Fenimore, 90 Coptic, 16 corruption, 147–148 Council of Clermont, 27 countermanipulation, 121–122 counter-will, 294, 296, 298, 300, 301, 307, 308, 310; hysterical, 293, creation of a false commons, 105–108 Creator, 131 Crowther, Samuel, 154 Crummell, Alexender, 154 Crusades, 23, 27–28, 78–79, 142 crypto-culpabilization, 120, 125, 125–126, 128

325

culpability feelings, dynamics of, 118–119 cultural hermeneutics, 157 customary international law, 237 Cyprian, 154 Daly, Herman, 109–111 darkness, 31 Darwinian presupposition, 116 death instinct, 268–287; evil of everyday life, 284–287; Freud and the problem of evil, 270–277; psychosis and evil, 280–284; Spielrein, Sabina on, 277–280 Deist, F. E., 165 dejection, 104 De malo, 23, 31, 33 determinism, 282, 300 devourer, 19 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychological Disorders, 4th edition, 90 Dinnerstein, Leonard, 80 disputed questions, 31 divine evil and savagery, 128 DNA, 44 Dodds, E. R., 129 Doe, Jane, 41–43 domestic violence, 44–49 Dominican friar, 24 double suffering, 114 Douglas, Mary, 17 Dreaming, 194, 195 drive theory, 306–310 DTD2 “risky” gene, 44 dualism, 161–162 Duisberg, Walter, 61 DuQuesne, Terence, 13, 15 Durand, Mark, 133–134n6 Durrfeld, Walter, 61 Dwane, S., 178 Eady, Dorothy Louise (Omm Sety), 13 early adolescence, 44 Eastern Orthodox Christians, 78 Edwards, Jonathan, 80 ego-drives, 308 ego-ideal, 252 ego-interest, 308 Ehrlich, Paul and Anne, 69

326

Index

Ehrman, Bart, 138n37 Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg fur die Besetzten Gebiete, 64 Ela, Jean-Marc, 156 Elk Grove v. Newdow (2004), 85 Ellens, J. Harold, 113 Ellis, Albert, 55 emergence of evil, 254–258 emotional intelligence, 37, 38 emotions, 114–115, 116; purposes of, 116–118 empathic failures, 38 empathy, 48 Enchiridion, 31 enculturation theology, 154–155, 167–169, 176–177 enforcement, 242–246 Erickson, M. J., 164 ethics in practice, 226–229; evil, 219–221; imperfection, 219, 223–224; sin, 219, 221–223 Euclidean, 92 eugenics, 66–69 European crusading, 27 euthanasia, 45 evangelicalism, 130 evangelical theology, 158–159, 171–172, 179 evil, 179. See also individual entries: in Africa, 165–167; as the consequence of sin, 167–172; as a disconnect, 104–105; at a distance, 49–52; ethics in practice, 219–221; of the innocents, 36–44; as preexistent, 18; as the source of sin, 172–173 evil as the source of sin—sin as the source of evil, 179–180 evil god, 127 evil per se, 33 existence of evil, 54–55 Exxon (formerly Standard Oil), 58 fascism, 96 Fatal Attraction (film), 40 Faulkner, R. O., 15 felonies, 36 Ferrari, Leo, 129 Fingos, 143 First National Bank of New York (J.P. Morgan), 59

Fletcher, Peter, 134n12 ForbesWoman.com, 40 Ford, Edsel, 61 Ford, Henry, 63 Ford Motor Company, 63 14th Amendment, 36 fractal, 92 Frankfurter, David, 54 Frazier v. Alexandre (2006), 85 Frederick I Barbarossa, 26 Frederick II, 24, 26, 28 Fredriksen, Paula, 78 French Revolution, 146 Freud, Sigmund, 37, 45, 275–278, 280, 285–287, 292–316. See also will: and the problem of evil, 270–277; psychoanalytic understanding of controlled behavior, 37 Frijda, Nico, 116 Fromm, Erich, 92, 95 frustration–aggression model, 9 Fry, Douglas, 103 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) findings, 45 fundamentalism, 2–3, 5, 130; psychopathology of, 2 fundamentalists, 1 Further Reformation, 163 Gaddafi, Muammar, 146 Galton, Francis, 66, 144 Gazzinaga, 52 Gehlen, Reinhard, 65 gestalt therapy: ethical stance, 225–226; model of health, 224–225 Gestrich, C., 164 Gilbert, G., 82 Gilligan, Carol, 79, 80, 82 Girard, René, 5–6, 102 glorification of the parent, 127 God, 7, 22, 125, 128, 130, 131, 138n38, 164, 166, 169–171; existence, 32, five proofs of, 32; omnipotence, 131; selfrevelation, 154–155 Goebbels, Jospeh, 271 Goleman, Daniel, 37 good–evil dualism, 19 good life, 225 Göring, Hermann, 64

Index Graham, Billy, 204 Great Interregnum, 26 greed, 56 Greeks, 68 Gregory X (pope), 27 Grief, W., 61 Griquas, 143 guerrilla warfare, 7 guilt, 15, 17, 36, 37, 43, 49, 80, 119, 121–122, 130, 273, 314, 316 Guo, Gang, 43 Gutierrez, G., 178 Guttmacher Institute, 69, 70 Hadith, 204 Haggard, Henry Rider, 142 Hague Invasion Act, 240 Hammer, R., 165 Hannah and Doug case, the, 47–48 Hardin, Garrett, 105, 106 Hardy, Henry, 3 Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, 38 Hastings, A., 177 Hayes, S. C., 122 Heauton Timoroumenos, 113–138 heritability studies, 40 Hern, Warren, 71 Himmler, Heinrich, 82 hindsight benefits, 310–316 Hitler, Adolf (Adolph), 49–50, 59, 81, 82, 221, 259, 271, 280, 281 Hobbes, Thomas, 102 Hohenstaufen dynasty, 26 Holdren, John P., 69 Hollenweger, Walter, 172 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 67 Holocaust, 62, 81 Horkheimer, M., 9 Horney, Karen, 125 Horus, 17 Hoss, Rudolph, 82 human action, 101–102 human behavior, 115; adaptability, 115–116 human nature, evil as part of, 102–104 human rights, 232–233; evil in, 240–242; treaties in international law, 233–236 human trafficking, 72–73 Hungarian Gold Train, 65

327

Hussein, Saddam, 259 hyperresponsivity, 45–46 Ibn Rushd (Averroës), 24 ibulawo, 174 ideologies, 130 Idowu, Bolaji, 159 I. G. Farben, 60–62 imperfection: ethics in practice, 219, 223–224 Indian Removal Act, 90 indigenous people, 145 individualism, 148 infanticide, 45 Innocent (pope), 79 innocents evil, 36–44 insularity, 51 intermittent explosive disorder, 45 International Criminal Court in the Hague, 105 international law, 271; human rights treaties in, 233–236; weakness of, 236–238 interpersonal, 116 Islam, 1, 6, 7, 10, 145, 203–204, 205 Islamic armies, 28 Islamization of Africa, 142 Israel, 76, 105, 106; and creation of a false commons, 105–108 ITT (International Telephone and Telegraph), 63 jealousy, 148–149 Jesus Christ, 56–57, 130, 167, 169, 172 Jewish National Fund, 106 Jews, 76, 80, 82 jihad, 215 Job, 128, 137, 205 John, King, 23 John and Mary case, 47 John of St. Julian, 25 Johnson, Holy, 154 John the Baptist, 78 John XXIII (pope), 82 Judaism, 77, 202, 203, 205 Judeo-Christian God, 128 Judeo-Christian tradition, 13

328 Jung, Carl, 55, 128–129, 128 jury trials, 36 just world phenomenon, 125 Kadish, Gerald E., 17 Kant, Immanuel, 54 Kanyoro, Musimbi, 157 Kato, Byang, 158–159, 171, 172 Kemboly, M., 13–14, 15, 18, 19 Kertzer, David, 81 Khadafi, Muammar, 97 Khan, Genghis, 28, 29 Klein, Melanie, 37 Kohlberg, Lawrence, 55 Korzyski, Alfred, 55 Kozciusko, Thaddeus, 98 Krttroff, Adolf, 61 laissez-faire market, 108 Lamm, Dick, 68 Langmuir, Gavin, 81 late-term abortions, 71 Laughlin, Harry Hamilton, 67 League of Democracies, 242–246 Lee, C., 45 Lekganyane, Engenas, 172 Lenin, Vladimir, 97 Letwaba, Elias, 172 Levi-Straussian concept, 14 lexical study, 15 liberation theology, 132, 155–156, 169–170, 178 limiting questions, 122–125 Lindberg, Charles, 63 Livingstone, David, 142 Locke, John, 79 locus of evil, 36–52 looted art treasure, 63–65 Lorenz, Konrad, 102 Lorton, David, 16 Lotufo, Zenon, Jr., 120, 136n22 Louder, Ronald S., 64 Louis IX, 28 loving self-object, 37 loyalty and affinity gradient, 94–96 Lucifer, 203 Luther, Martin, 163, 206 Maat, 13, 16–17, 18, 19 Mach, 37, 39, 40

Index Machiavelli, Niccolo, 38 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), 38 Magnus, Albertus, 25 Maimela, S. S., 170, 178 Maimonides, 24 malignant, 90–91 Mandelbrot, Benoit, 92 manipulative emotions, 114–115, 116, 121 Manson, Charles, 219, 221 MAO-A*R2 gene, 44 MAO-A gene, 40 Mapungubwe, 141 Mayer, J. D., 38 Mbiti, J. S., 148, 159, 167 McGuire, C., 5 Mead, Margaret, 104 media violence, 43 Medicaid, 70 Medici family, 38 Meer, Fritz ter, 61 mercy killings, 67 Metz, H. A., 61 Michael, Robert, 80, 81 Miller, Alice, 120, 126 Miosi, Terry, 15 Mitchell, C. E., 61 modernity, 205–212 Molech, 71 money, 56. See also wealth and power Mongols, 28–30 monism, 162 Montagu, Ashley, 103 Monte Casino, 24, 25 moral development stages, 55 moral evil, 33 MRI, 38 MSCEIT-Y test, 39 Mugabe, President, 146 Mugambi, Jesse, 159 Mulago, 159 Muslims, 82 Muslim troops, 27 Mutaung, Edward, 172 Mveng, Engelbert, 156 narcissism, 56, 77, 89–90, 96; as a fractal dimension, 92; individual and group, 91–92; malignant and benign, 90–91

Index nation, 95 National Institute of Health, 103 National Water Carrier (NWC), 107 natural capital theft, 109–111 natural evils, 33 natural resources misvaluation, 108–109 Nazi: looted art treasure, 63–65; looted gold, 62–63 Negative associations, 37 negative automatic thoughts, 122 nepotism, 8, 147 neurocognitive remediation techniques, 46 Nevsky, Alexander, 29 New England Congregational Protestantism, 80 New Testament, 221 Ngidi, Richard, 172 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 162 Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 15, 102 Niger Delta, 110 9/11 tragedy, 3, 4, 7, 76 non-Abrahamic traditions, 17 nonexistence, 18–19 nonhuman animals, 126 “noninvasive lobotomy,” 125 nonprefrontal cortex, 46 Norman reconquest of Sicily, 27 North Africa, 142 Nun, 18 Nurunderi, 196 Obama, Barack, 69, 70 obedience, 98–99 occultism, 273 Oduyoye, Mercy, 157 Oedipus complex, 37 Ogodei, 29 Old Testament, 165, 208 Oosthuizen, G. C., 170, 171 Open Theism, 132 operationalism, 273 operation paperclip, 65–66 organized violence, 10 Original Sin, 43 origins of sin, 161 orthodoxies, 3 Otto I, 26 Otto IV, 23

329

Padesky, C., 135n15 Paine, Thomas, 22 Palestinian, 106 panentheism, 132 parens patria, 36 parochial altruism, 93 paterfamilias, 146 paternalism, 146–147 pathological liars, 38 patriotism, 79, 84–100; altruism, 93–94; contingent, 96–97; loyalty and affinity gradient, 94–96; narcissism, 89–90, as a fractal dimension, 92, individual and group, 91–92, malignant and benign, 90–91; and narcissism, and fascism, 96; nation’s role, 99; not an expression of autonomy, 97–98; and obedience, 98–99; Pledge of Allegiance, 84–86, “PRI scan” of, 86–89; transient, 97 patriots, 97 Peck, M. S., 54, 56 Pentecostal theology, 160–161, 172, 178–179 per se, 33 physical aggression, 49 pirates, 108 Pius XII (pope), 81 Planalp, Sally, 135n16, 136n17 plan for peace, 70 Planned Parenthood, 70 Plan of Salvation, 129 Plato, 68 pleasure, 33–34 Pledge of Allegiance, 84–86; “PRI scan” of, 86–89 Pobee, John, 168, 176, 177 political fundamentalism, 5 positron emission tomography (PET) study, 45 power vacuums in the Church and the Holy Roman Empire, 26 prefrontal brain, 45 prejudice, 3–6, 8, 9; anatomy of, 4 pride, 104 The Prince, 38 principles of faith, 131 privatio boni, 31 privation, 32 problem of evil, 32, 56 Process Theology, 132

330 Proclaimed List, 63 protection responsibility: and state sovereignty, 240–242 Protestant fundamentalism, 80 pseudo-questions, 122 psychoanalysts, 38 psychobiology, 4 psychopathology of fundamentalism, 2 psychosis, 45, 302 pyrrhic revenge, 126, 127 questions, 122; limiting questions, 122–125; pseudo-questions, 122 Qur’an, 2, 10, 203, 205 racism, 81 Radcliffe, Elizabeth, 55 radical Islam, 10. See also Islam radical violence, 4 Raine, Adrian, 38, 45 rebellion theme and disobedience, 18 reconstructionist perspective, 159–160 Redford, D. B., 15, 16 Reformation, 77, 79 Reformed Protestantism, 163 renewable resources, 110 repression, 305 resentment theology, 129; overcoming, 132 Resolution 122 (Georgia House), 67 respect, 148 responsibility to protect (R2P), t240 retaliation, 126 revenge, 126 Richards, David A. J., 79, 80 Roberts, J. M., 30, 37 Rockefeller, John D., 57–59 Roman Catholic Church, 78, 81 Roman Empire, 78 Rome Statute, 238, 239, 340 Roper v. Simons (2005), 36 Rosenbaum, Stuart E., 7 Rosenberg, Alfred, 64 Rudolph, Arthur, 66 Rychlak, J. F., 55 sacred, 14 sacrifice, 148 sacrificial rituals, 130 sadism, 43

Index sadistic role of God, 137n27 sadness, 116 Salovey, P., 38 Sanger, Margaret, 70 Santayana, G., 45 Satan, 162, 204 Sawyerr, Harry, 167, 168, 169 Schleiermarcher, Friedrich, 162 Security Council, 242–246 self-aggression, 115, 120–121 self-defeating behavior, 118, 126 self-efficacy, 134n10 self-imposed suffering, 125 self-inflicted harm, 131 self-love, 148 self-sabotage, 120–121, 125 self-similarity, 92 Semites, 81 September 11, 2001. See 9/11 tragedy Sese-Seko, Mobutu, 146 Seth, 17, 19 sex trade, 72 shadows, 137n25, 250–266; avoiding evil, 260–263; collective shadow, 258–260; emergence of evil, 254–258; limitations, 263–264 shadow selves, 55, 56 Shaw, George Bernard, 68 Shembe, 170 sin, 15; ethics in practice, 219, 221–223; and evil, relationship between, 164– 165; as the exclusive source of evil, 180; human responsibility for, 162; knowledge of, 163; and moral issues, differentiation inability, 176; results of, 164; as the source of evil, and equally the product of evil, 180; as the source of evil—evil as the source of sin, 179 SKF, 63 slave trade, 145 Smith, Adam, 108 social Darwinism, 66, 102, 143 socioeconomic disconnect, 101–111 socioeconomic status, 38 Somali pirates, 108; and the misvaluation of natural resources, 108–109 Sono, Mosa, 172 South Africa, 143, 146. See also Africa Speck, Richard, 41

Index

331

Spencer, Herbert, 103, 144 Spielrein, Sabina, 277–280 Spinoza, Baruch de, 104 Spirit-type churches, 160 spontaneous emotions, 114–115 spouse abusers, 46 St. Anselm, 137n32 St. Augustine, 77, 78, 80, 129, 154, 164, 206 St. Benedict, 24 St. Dominic Guzman, 24 St. Francis, 78 St. Paul, 77 Stalin, Joseph, 259, 270, 280, 281 Standard Oil Company, 57–59 Stanner, W., 191 sterilization laws, 67 Stirling, M. C., 5, 102 Stone, Merlin, 103 stop doing, 132 Strosahl, K. D., 122 Structural Adjustment Programmes, 156 subcortical brain, 45 sub-Saharan Africa, 142 substance abuse, 38 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 40 substitutionary, 137n32 suffering, levels of, 114 suicide, 44 summa, 31 Summa Theologica, 23, 31 superego, 37 supernatural theism, 132 suppression, 305 survival of the fittest, 103

Tillich, Paul, 162 Torrey, E. Fuller, 50 totems, 198–199 Toulmin, Stephen E., 123, 124 toxic and nuclear waste dumping, 108 Trading With the Enemy Act of 1942, 63 trait emotional intelligence, 39, 40 transient, 97 trauma treatment, 47 Troubled Assets Relief Program (T.A.R.P.), 59, 60 Turner, H. W., 170

Taliban, 1, 2, 5, 7, 10 Taylor, Charles, 146 Teagle, Walter, 61 TEIQue-CF, 39 teleological theory of emotions, 115, 121 terrorism, 1–10 Tertullian, Quintus Septimius Florens, 154 Teutonic Knights, 29–30 theologians and the laity, communication lack between, 176 theory of mind, 39

Wall of Jericho, 103–104 war, 1, 22, 56; moral way, 1 Warburg, Paul M., 61 Ward, D. E., 54 Warner, Samuel J., 120, 125 war of everyman, 103 War on Terror, 38 Warrior God of the Hebrew Bible, 7 Watts, Alan, 132 wealth and power, 57, 62; abortion agenda, 69–71; chosen few, 57–62; eugenics, 66–69; evil that is associated

ubuntu, 146, 147, 148 ukubulawa, 173 Umma, 1, 3 unconscious factors, 136n21 UN Convention on the Law of NonNavigational Uses of International Watercourses, 105 United Kingdom, 37 Urban (pope), 27 Van den Berghe, P. L., 8–9 Van Merwe, Gerhard, 171 Vatican II, 81, 82 Vatican III, 81 vegetarianism, 8–9 violence, 4, 147 violent evil, 4, 7 Vita, Kimpa, 154 voluntarism, 304, 305, 306–310 von Braun, Werner, 65 Von Clausewitz, C., 1

332 with, 55–57; human trafficking, 72–73; looted art treasure, 63–65; looted Nazi gold, 62–63; operation paperclip, 65–66 Weiss, W. E., 61 Wesley, John, 80 white (color), 33 will: in Dreams, Parapraxes, and Jokes 297–306; eclipse of voluntarism by drive theory, 306–310; hindsight benefits, 310–316; in hysteria studies (1890s), 292–297 Willard, Dallas, 56 will theory, 310 Wilson, K. G., 122 Wink, Walter, 101 witchcraft, 173–175 women’s theology, 156–158

Index World Health Organization, 106 World Trade Center tragedy. See 9/11 tragedy World Zionist Organization, 106 xenophobia, 51 Xhosa culture, 150 XYY chromosomal abnormality, 41 Yoruba, 168 Young-Bruehl, Elizabeth, 4–5 Zandee, J., 15 Zimbabwe, 141 Zionism, 4, 106; theologies, 160–161, 170–171, 177–178 Zionists, 76 Zionist-type churches, 160

About the Editor and Advisers

EDITOR J. Harold Ellens, PhD, is a research scholar, a retired Presbyterian theologian and ordained minister, a retired U.S. Army colonel, and a retired professor of philosophy, theology and psychology. He has authored, coauthored and/ or edited 185 books and 167 professional journal articles. He served 15 years as executive director of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies, and as founding editor and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Psychology and Christianity. He holds a PhD from Wayne State University in the Psychology of Human Communication, a PhD from the University of Michigan in Biblical and Near Eastern Studies, and master’s degrees from Calvin Theological Seminary, Princeton Theological Seminary, and the University of Michigan. He was born in Michigan, grew up in a Dutch-German immigrant community, and determined at age seven to enter the Christian Ministry as a means to help his people with the great amount of suffering he perceived all around him during the Great Depression and WW II. His life’s work has focused on the interface of psychology and religion.

ADVISERS Donald Capps, PhD and Psychologist of Religion, is Emeritus William Hart Felmeth Professor of Pastoral Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. In 1989 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Uppsala, Sweden, in recognition of the importance of his publications.

334

About the Editor and Advisers

He served as president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion from 1990 to 1992. Among his many significant books are Men, Religion and Melancholia: James, Otto, Jung and Erikson and Freud; also The Freudians on Religion: A Reader; also Social Phobia: Alleviating Anxiety in an Age of SelfPromotion; and Jesus: A Psychological Biography. He also authored The Child’s Song: The Religious Abuse of Children, and Jesus, the Village Psychiatrist. Zenon Lotufo Jr., PhD, is a Presbyterian minister (Independent Presbyterian Church of Brazil), a philosopher and a psychotherapist, specialized in Transactional Analysis. He has lectured both to undergraduate and graduate courses in universities in São Paulo, Brazil. He coordinates the course of specialization in Pastoral Psychology of the Christian Psychologists and Psychiatrists Association. He is the author of the books, Relações Humanas [Human Relations]; Disfunções no Comportamento Organizacional [Dysfunctions in Organizational Behavior] and co-author of O Potencial Humano [Human Potential]. He has also authored numerous journal articles. Dirk Odendaal, DLitt, is South African, born in what is now called the Province of the Eastern Cape. He spent much of his youth in the Transkei in the town of Umtata, where his parents were teachers at a seminary. He trained as a minister at the Stellenbosch Seminary for the Dutch Reformed Church and was ordained in 1983 in the Dutch Reformed Church in Southern Africa. He transferred to East London in 1988 to minister to members of the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa in one of the huge suburbs for Xhosaspeaking people. He received his doctorate (D.Litt.) in 1992 at the University of Port Elizabeth in Semitic Languages and a Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology at Rhodes University. Wayne G. Rollins, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at Assumption College, Worcester, Massachusetts, and Adjunct Professor of Scripture at Hartford Seminary, Hartford, Connecticut. His writings include The Gospels: Portraits of Christ (1964), Jung and the Bible (1983), and Soul and Psyche, The Bible in Psychological Perspective (1999). He received his PhD in New Testament Studies from Yale University and is the founder and chairman (1990–2000) of the Society of Biblical Literature Section on Psychology and Biblical Studies.

336

About the Contributors

Chodos’s lifelong interest in art, religion, law, and technology have produced prolific writings, which include The Jewish Attitude towards Justice and Law (1984); Centripetal Art: Matrix of Growth (eBook 2008); and Why on Earth Does God Have to Paint? / Centripetal Art (2009). Chodos and his wife, the worldrenowned artist Junko Chodos, formed the Foundation for Centripetal Art in 2008 to promote serious discussion of contemporary art, and to spread the ideas of centripetal art. Suzanne M. Coyle, PhD, is assistant professor of pastoral theology and marriage and family therapy at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, where she also serves as the executive director of the Counseling Center and director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Program. A diplomate in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors and an approved supervisor in American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, she has many years of experience as a pastor, therapist, consultant, and educator. Dr. Coyle holds a MDiv and PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary. J. Harold Ellens, PhD, is retired from his roles as professor of philosophy and psychology, executive director of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies, founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Psychology and Christianity, U.S. Army colonel, and Presbyterian (PCUSA) theologian and pastor. He continues in private practice as a licensed psychotherapist and as an international lecturer. He is the author of 180 published volumes, mainly on the interface of psychology and spirituality, and of 167 professional journal articles and reviews. He is the father of seven children. He and his wife have been married for 56 years. Alfred J. Eppens, JD, was born and raised in Michigan. He attended Western Michigan University, studying history under Ernst A. Breisach and receiving a BA (summa cum laude) and an MA. He continued his studies at the University of Michigan, where he was awarded a JD in 1981. He is an adjunct professor at Oakland Community College, as well as an active church musician and liturgist. He recently completed a bachelor of philosophy (summa cum laude) at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit. He was a founding officer of the Michigan Center for Early Christian Studies and a founding member of the New American Lyceum, and participates in many professional associations. Jack Hanford, ThD, is a professor emeritus of biomedical ethics at Ferris State University in Michigan. He is a member of the American Philosophical Association, American Academy of Religion, Christian Association for Psychological Studies, and Association of Moral Education. He is also an associate of the Hastings Center, the foremost center for biomedical ethics;

About the Contributors

337

the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities; the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity; the Kennedy Institute of Ethics; as well as several other societies. He has published the book Bioethics from a Faith Perspective: Ethics in Health Care for the Twenty-First Century and many professional articles, including those in Religious Education, the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, the Journal of Psychology and Christianity, and the Journal of Pastoral Psychology, Ethics and Medicine. Maija Jespersen studies peace and conflict resolution at American University in Washington, DC. Cassandra M. Klyman, MD, is a nationally published psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who has a full-time private practice in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. A graduate of the University of Michigan Medical School and the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute, she holds the following memberships: distinguished life fellow, American Psychiatric Association; and fellow, American Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychotherapy; American College of Forensic Examiners. Her academic appointment is an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry, Wayne State University College of Medicine. She is a past president of the Michigan Psychiatric Society. Zvi Lothane, MD, is clinical professor of psychiatry at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York City. He is also in private practice of psychiatry, psychotherapy, and psychoanalysis. Lothane is a distinguished life fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and a member of the American and International Psychoanalytic Associations. He is the author of the definitive In Defense of Schreber: Soul Murder and Psychiatry (expanded version, Seelenmord und Psychiatrie Zur Rehabilitieung Schrebers), historical research on the life and work of Sabina Spielrein, and papers on the methodology of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. His latest contribution is papers on dramatology. Zenon Lotufo Jr., PhD, is a retired Presbyterian minister (Independent Presbyterian Church of Brazil), a philosopher, and a psychotherapist specializing in transactional analysis. He received his PhD from Catholic University of São Paulo in psychology of religion. He is one of the coordinators of the course of specialization in spirituality in counseling and psychotherapy of the Department of Psychiatry, University of São Paulo. He is author of many professional articles and books, including the chapters “Revenge and Religion” (with José Cássio Martins) in The Destructive Power of Religion; “Bible and Obedience: To Whom?” in Text and Community; and “Healthy Religiosity That Promotes Illness” (with Francisco Lotufo Neto) in The Healing Power of Spirituality, all of the preceding books edited by J. Harold Ellens.

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About the Contributors

Deborah A. Lowe received her bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from Biola University in 2006. She is currently a research assistant at the Psychology Department of Westmont College with an emphasis on neuropsychology. Edmund S. Meltzer, PhD, was born in New York City and attended the University of Chicago, where he received his BA in Near Eastern languages and civilizations, and the University of Toronto, where he earned his MA and PhD in Near Eastern studies with a concentration in Egyptology. He has taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; the Claremont Graduate School, where he was associate chair of the Department of Religion; and Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China, where he was foreign expert in Egyptology. Dr. Meltzer has worked in Egypt as an American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) fellow and has participated in the Akhenaten Temple Project–East Karnak Excavation as well as several excavations in the United States. He has published numerous articles and reviews and has contributed to many edited volumes. Most recently, he is a coauthor of The Salakhana Trove: Votive Stelae and Other Objects from Asyut (2009). He has presented papers at many national and international conferences, and currently teaches modern languages in the Wisconsin public schools. Most of his current research concerns ancient Egyptian religion and texts. Dan Merkur, PhD, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Toronto, Canada. He is also a guest scholar in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. He taught religious studies at five universities in Canada and the United States and has published 13 books and many articles variously in psychoanalysis, the history of religion, and the psychoanalytic study of religion. His most recent books are Explorations of the Psychoanalytic Mystics (2010); and, coauthored with David Bakan and David S. Weiss, Maimonides’ Cure of Souls: Medieval Precursor of Psychoanalysis (2009). Francisco Lotufo Neto, MD, is a psychiatrist and associate professor of the Department of Psychiatry, University of São Paulo. He is the author of articles and books in his specialty and one of the coordinators of the course of specialization in spirituality in counseling and psychotherapy of the Department of Psychiatry, University of São Paulo. Dirk Odendaal, DLitt, is South African and was born in what is now called the Province of the Eastern Cape. He was trained as a minister at Stellenbosch University and was ordained in 1983 in the Dutch Reformed Church in Africa. He was transferred to a congregation in Mdantsane, a suburb of East London, in 1988, to minister to members of the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa. He holds a doctorate (DLitt) from the University of Port

About the Contributors

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Elizabeth in Semitic languages. Odendaal obtained a masters degree in counseling psychology at the Rhodes University and is a practicing psychologist, and he is a part-time pastor to five congregations in the East London region. Yvette Odendaal, MA, was born and raised in the Western Cape, South Africa. She earned an undergraduate degree in history at the University of Stellenbosch, then worked in King Williams Town at the Amatole Museum as historian from 1992 until 1997. She finished her master’s degree in cultural history at the Stellenbosch University in 1998. She taught history at the University of Fort Hare for a year. Since 1999, she has specialized in cultural tourism and taught travel and tourism at secondary and tertiary institutions. For the last eight years, she has worked as an accredited tourist guide trainer with specific reference to heritage and cultural interpretation. Myrna Pugh, MA, is a graduate of Denver Seminary in the field of counseling. She is retired from private practice and now devotes herself to writing full-time and practicing “grandmotherhood.” She mentors single mothers, and also mentors counseling students through Phoenix Seminary. She has been involved with Stephen Ministry since 1991, and has been a Stephen trainer since 1994. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, with her husband Pat, who is a retired attorney and physician. She loves to cook and collect exotic recipes. Steven A. Rogers received his PhD from Fuller Graduate School of Psychology and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in neuropsychology at the Department of Neurology, University of California–Los Angeles. He is assistant professor of psychology at Westmont College, Santa Barbara, CA. With Karen Miller he coauthored The Estrogen-Depression Connection: The Hidden Link between Hormones and Women’s Depression (2007). Xolani Sakuba, PhD, is a lecturer of systematic theology, with a special interest in African theology, at the School of Religion and Theology, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Saul Takahashi, JD, is a human rights lawyer and encounters injustice, violence, and evil on a daily basis. He grew up in the United States and in Japan, and started his career as refugee coordinator of the Japanese Section of Amnesty International, where he set up the office’s refugee operation and assisted individual asylum seekers in presenting their refugee claims to the Japanese government. After completing his studies in the United Kingdom, he was employed as refugee officer in the International Secretariat of Amnesty International in London, where he was responsible for formulating

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policy on refugee protection issues. His career took some subsequent detours, but Takahashi always remained a human rights lawyer at heart, and he is currently employed as deputy head of office of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. He works in Ramallah in the West Bank, where he is establishing the office’s operation to monitor and document human rights violations in the occupied territories.

Explaining Evil

Recent Titles in Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality

J. Harold Ellens, Series Editor Where God and Science Meet: How Brain and Evolutionary Studies Alter Our Understanding of Religion, 3 volumes

Patrick McNamara, editor Sexual Liberation: The Scandal of Christendom

Raymond J. Lawrence The Destructive Power of Religion: Violence in Christianity, Judaism and Islam, Condensed and Updated Edition

J. Harold Ellens, editor The Serpent and the Dove: Celibacy in Literature and Life

A.W. Richard Sipe Radical Grace: How Belief in a Benevolent God Benefits Our Health

J. Harold Ellens Understanding Religious Experiences: What the Bible Says about Spirituality

J. Harold Ellens Miracles: God, Science, and Psychology in the Paranormal, 3 volumes

J. Harold Ellens, editor Speaking of Death: America’s New Sense of Mortality

Michael K. Bartalos, editor The Invisible Church: Finding Spirituality Where You Are

J. Pittman McGehee and Damon Thomas The Spirituality of Sex

J. Harold Ellens The Healing Power of Spirituality: How Faith Helps Humans Thrive, 3 volumes

J. Harold Ellens, editor Families of the Bible: A New Perspective

Kamila Blessing

E XPLAINING E VIL VOLUME 3

Approaches, Responses, Solutions

J. Harold Ellens, Editor

Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality

Copyright 2011 by ABC-CLIO, LLC All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Explaining evil / J. Harold Ellens, editor. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-313-38715-9 (hard copy : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-313-38716-6 (ebook) 1. Good and evil. I. Ellens, J. Harold, 1932– BJ1401.E97 2011 214—dc22 2010041383 ISBN: 978-0-313-38715-9 EISBN: 978-0-313-38716-6 15

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This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. Praeger An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

These volumes are dedicated to three gentlemen who constructively influenced my life in very substantial ways. Professor Henry J. Stob of Calvin College inspired me to think creatively despite the crimped and doctrinaire community from which both of us derived. Professor Seward Hiltner taught me how to savor the flavor of freedom, in the thoughtful quest for truth, the careful cherishing of people and an honest pastoral passion for those in need. Dr. Jeffrey Zaks of Providence Medical Center Department of Cardiology saved my life repeatedly; and gave me reason to believe that after four heart attacks, two open heart surgeries, and two minor strokes, life was still worth while and still held great possibilities. All of my significant published scholarship came about after that. These men not only cared for me. They loved me and I loved them.

Contents

VOLUME 3 APPROACHES, RESPONSES, SOLUTIONS Series Foreword

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chapter 1

Introduction: Avoidance and Prevention J. Harold Ellens

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chapter 2

Responses of Narrative Practice to the Effects of Evil Suzanne M. Coyle

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chapter 3

The Doubling of Conscience in Groups Dan Merkur

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chapter 4

Punishment as a Restraint of Evil David J. Jennings II, Aubrey L. Gartner, Everett L. Worthington Jr., Don E. Davis, Joshua N. Hook, Chelsea L. Greer, Daryl R. Van Tongeren, and Todd W. Greer

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chapter 5

The Role of the Church in Mitigating Evil Myrna Pugh

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chapter 6

The Role of Religion in Repelling Evil: A Jungian Perspective Daryl S. Paulson

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chapter 7

Contents

My Favorite Enemy: A Pastor’s Response on Resolving Evil F. Morgan Roberts

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chapter 8

Forgiveness, Reconciliation, and the Hard March to Peace 109 Everett L. Worthington Jr. and Peter J. Hampson

chapter 9

Overcoming Evil in I Peter Peter Rodgers

chapter 10

Biblical Notions and Admonitions on Evil in Pauline Literature James A. Waddell

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chapter 11

Exorcising Evil: The Bible and Psychology on Demon Possession 144 Stephen J. Pullum

chapter 12

Law as Society’s Quest for Integrity: More than a Response to Evil Rafael Chodos

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chapter 13

How Individuals Cope with Evil Daily Myrna Pugh

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chapter 14

Meaning as a Restraint of Evil Daryl R. Van Tongeren, Jeffrey D. Green, Jody L. Davis, Don E. Davis, Everett L. Worthington Jr., Joshua N. Hook, David J. Jennings II, Aubrey L. Gartner, Chelsea L. Greer, and Todd W. Greer

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chapter 15

Evil and Positive Psychology Don E. Davis, Joshua N. Hook, Everett L. Worthington Jr., Aubrey L. Gartner, David J. Jennings II, Chelsea L. Greer, Daryl R. Van Tongeren, and Todd W. Greer

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chapter 16

Evil in Mind: Psychopathy and Anomalous Cognitive Processing Kevin J. Eames

chapter 17

Dealing Constructively with Sin and Evil: Biblical Psychology against Theology Matthew B. Schwartz, Kalman J. Kaplan, and Elizabeth Recht-Jones

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chapter 18

Existential-Integrative Perspectives on the Psychology of Evil Louis Hoffman, Helen Juliett Warner, Christine Gregory, and Steven Fehl

chapter 19

A Postmodern Reaction to Evil Dirk Odendaal

chapter 20

Conclusion: The Future of Evil, A Lovers’ Quarrel J. Harold Ellens

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Index

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About the Editor and Advisers

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About the Contributors

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Series Foreword

The interface between psychology, religion, and spirituality has been of great interest to scholars for a century. In the last three decades a broad popular appetite has developed for books which make practical sense out of the sophisticated research on these three subjects. Freud expressed an essentially deconstructive perspective on this matter and indicated that he saw the relationship between human psychology and religion to be a destructive interaction. Jung, on the other hand, was quite sure that these three aspects of the human spirit, psychology, religion, and spirituality, were constructively and inextricably linked. Anton Boisen and Seward Hiltner derived much insight from both Freud and Jung, as well as from Adler and Reik, while pressing the matter forward with ingenious skill and illumination. Boisen and Hiltner fashioned a framework within which the quest for a sound and sensible definition of the interface between psychology, religion, and spirituality might best be described or expressed.1 We are in their debt. This series of general interest books, so wisely urged by Praeger Publishers and vigorously sought after by its editor Deborah Carvalko, intends to define the terms and explore the interface of psychology, religion, and spirituality at the operational level of daily human experience. Each volume of the series identifies, analyzes, describes, and evaluates the full range of issues, of both popular and professional interest, that deal with the psychological factors at play (1) in the way religion takes shape and is expressed, (2) in the way spirituality functions within human persons and shapes both religious formation and expression, and (3) in the ways that spirituality is

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shaped and expressed by religion. The interest is psycho-spiritual. In terms of the rubrics of the disciplines and the science of psychology and spirituality this series of volumes investigates the operational dynamics of religion and spirituality. The verbs “shape” and “express” in the above paragraph refer to the forces which prompt and form religion in persons and communities, as well as to the manifestations of religious behavior (1) in personal forms of spirituality, (2) in acts of spiritually motivated care for society, and (3) in ritual behaviors such as liturgies of worship. In these various aspects of human function the psychological and/or spiritual drivers are identified, isolated, and described in terms of the way in which they unconsciously and consciously operate in religion, thought, and behavior. The books in this series are written for the general reader, the local library, and the undergraduate university student. They are also of significant interest to the informed professional, particularly in fields corollary to his or her primary interest. The volumes in this series have great value for pastoral settings in congregational ministry, in clinical settings, and in the development of treatment models, as well. This series editor has spent his professional lifetime focused specifically upon research into the interface of psychology in religion and spirituality. This present set of three volumes, entitled Explaining Evil, is an urgently needed and timely work, the motivation for which is surely endorsed enthusiastically by the entire religious world today, as the international community searches for strategies that will afford us better and deeper spiritual selfunderstanding as individuals and communities as we struggle with palpable forms of violent evil in our world. This project addresses the deep psychosocial, psychospiritual, and biological sources of human nature which shape and drive our psychology and spirituality. Careful strategies of empirical, heuristic, and phenomenological research have been employed to give this work a solid scientific foundation and formation. Never before has such wise analysis been brought to bear upon the dynamic linkage between human physiology, psychology, and spirituality in an effort to understand the irrepressible and universal human quest for meaning, which this work defines as spirituality. For 50 years such organizations as the Christian Association for Psychological Studies and such graduate departments of psychology as those at Boston College, Fuller Graduate School of Psychology, Rosemead Graduate School of Psychology, Harvard, George Fox, Princeton, Emory, and the like, have been publishing important building blocks of research on issues dealing with psycho-spirituality. In this present project the insights generated by such patient and careful research are explored in three categories. The first volume treats evil itself while the second volume describes its role and dynamics in the church and society, and the third volume addresses the psychodynamics

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at play in countering evil and the psychosocial efforts to contain, control, and cure it in persons and society so as to guarantee or facilitate healthy social psychology and religion, thus affording us wholesome psycho-spirituality. These volumes employ an objective and experience-based approach to our spiritual life and growth as we pursue the quest for explaining evil. Some of the influences of religion upon persons and society, now and throughout history, have been negative. In 2004 we published in this series four volumes entitled The Destructive Power of Religion. That set of volumes analyzed the biblical metaphors which infect our psychological archetypes with destructive forces that prompt humans to utilize our capacity for violence in the name of God. Such biblical metaphors as a cosmic conflict in which God is a warrior in mortal competition with the power of evil, and God’s inclination to solve his ultimate problems with ultimate violence, prompt humans to behave in the same way. Such pathogenically evil images of idealized divine and human behavior are reprehensible and must be done away with. Those biblical myths have wreaked havoc upon our world for 3,000 years or more. Surely that must end now. On the other hand, much of the impact of the great religions upon human life and culture has been profoundly redemptive and generative of great good. It is urgent, therefore, that we discover and understand better what the psychological and spiritual forces are which empower people of faith and genuine spirituality to open their lives to the transcendent connection and give themselves to all the creative and constructive enterprises that, throughout the centuries, have made human life the humane, ordered, prosperous, and aesthetic experience it can be at its best. Surely the forces for good in both psychology and spirituality far exceed the powers and proclivities toward evil. These volumes are dedicated to the greater understanding of Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality, and thus to the profound understanding and empowerment of those psycho-spiritual drivers which can help us (1) transcend the malignancy of our earthly pilgrimage, (2) open our spirits to the divine spirit, (3) enhance the humaneness and majesty of the human spirit, (4) empower our potential for magnificence in human life, and (5) illumine us with an understanding of the problem of the evil with which we contend. J. Harold Ellens Series Editor

NOTE 1. L. Aden and J. H. Ellens, Turning Points in Pastoral Care: The Legacy of Anton Boisen and Seward Hiltner (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1990).

ch apter 1

Introduction: Avoidance and Prevention J. Harold Ellens

What shall we do about the evil in the world? Is it possible to avoid it or, better yet, prevent it? A great deal of effort, time, energy, and treasure has been invested in both of these strategies over the centuries of human history, and none of those efforts or designs has worked very well. Sociological solutions have worked particularly poorly and have proved too expensive for most societies. For example, the United States has spent something like $40 billion during the last half century on various experiments in prisoner rehabilitation. Virtually the only one that has worked with an acceptable level of sustained success is the federal program of treatment for sex offenders. Perhaps the Maracaibo County experiment in Arizona is an exception. The outcome remains to be seen. The federal sex offender program requires five years of intensive rehabilitation. Even so, most sex offenders do not enter that program because they are offenders confined in the state prison systems or the judicial processes have not taken adequate measures to require treatment in any system. In many cases, during the last five decades, sex offenders have not been required to serve prison terms at all. Thus, whatever sociological solutions have been applied to cure the problem of evil, aggressive or passive, have in large part proven ineffective. Psychological treatment programs have been increasing in effectiveness over the last two decades but before that were virtually useless in assisting society or individual citizens to avoid evil or prevent themselves from perpetrating it. The improvement in the effectiveness of psychological strategies during the recent decades correlates directly with the degree to which psychotherapists have acknowledged that 80% of every thing we see in the psychological clinic is biochemical and genetic in source and cause,

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Explaining Evil

thus requiring medication. Many psychotherapists think the percentages are higher than 80%. Psychological interventions do little good, in such cases, until the patients have been medicated psychiatrically. Spiritual or religious interventions are about as effective as psychological intervention. In former centuries, these forces of social suasion and ethical modeling held strong sway over the behavior of persons and societies. However, religious or spiritual approaches to avoiding and preventing evil have lost considerable social effectiveness because of increasing disillusionment with the established institutional churches and their decreasing influence in society during the past three or four decades. Some of our community and national leaders feel that law enforcement is the most effective tool for avoiding evil and preventing it. There seems to be some evidence for the truth of that belief. However, the high incidence level of recidivism for most crimes, including petty thievery, breaking and entering, drug abuse, domestic abuse, and the serious incidences of sexual abuse, as well as the persistence of serial murders, suggests that our law enforcement folks can catch the criminals but cannot induce a sustained protection of the citizenry against them. The blame for this may lie at the door of the judicial system, the prison system, or the legislature. In any case, not much is really working, and the cost of the chronic failure is unacceptably high. For this volume, Approaches, Responses, Solutions, I have asked nearly 50 colleagues in the helping professions to put their hands and hearts to the task of discussing a great variety of ideas for the avoidance and prevention of evil. They have given us their rich and enriching responses. They address every imaginable aspect: Freudian psychoanalysis, psychobiology, psychodynamic psychotherapy, positive psychology, cognitive psychology, biblical psychology, traditional religious practices, Jungian religious approaches, punishment, restraint and confinement, forgiveness and reconciliation, pastoral methods, biblical approaches, politics, exorcism, individual coping, cultivating meaning in life, existential approaches, and postmodern responses to evil. We have covered the battlefield. The proposals in this volume will astonish, inspire, and illumine you. Here is a feast that you will savor like the flavor of a luxuriant picnic. This is a volume that requires attentive, steady reading—even sturdy study. Once you pick it up, you will not be able to put down most of this volume. The variety of ideas, illustrations, and case studies is enticing, enchanting, and instructive. I do not hope you will enjoy it; I know you will enjoy it. You will find it immensely profitable and gratifying. I trust it will inspire you to help us more effectively avoid and prevent evil in your corner of the world.

ch apter 2

Responses of Narrative Practice to the Effects of Evil Suzanne M. Coyle

Responses to evil vary widely depending upon the responder’s cultural context, religious beliefs, physical ability, moral values, and even gender. The poor have fewer resources with which to respond to evil and often are either in the grips of evil or near it. The wealthy, on the other hand, may seem to be out of evil’s reach but are close to its more insidious dimensions such as greed.

RESPONSES OF NARRATIVE PRACTICE TO THE EFFECTS OF EVIL The response to evil also depends upon how one defines evil. Traditional theological definitions of evil have focused upon moral evil and natural evil. Moral evil is understood as “the product of human action of the failure of humans to act in particular situations” (Swinton, 2007, p. 50). Moral evil presupposes that there is a person, or victim, who is the object of the evil and a person, or perpetrator, who is responsible for those acts toward the victim. Natural evil is “the product of the world being the way the world is” (Swinton, 2007, p. 51). It is not the direct result of human activity. Evil and destructiveness are indeed quite close. Scott Peck offers a simple and profound definition of evil as “that force, residing inside or outside human being, that seeks to kill life or liveliness” (1983, p. 53). Swinton also offers a definition of evil: Evil occurs when human beings or systems created and controlled by human beings carry out actions that deliberately or consequentially engender forms of suffering, misery, and death which are marked by the absence of hope that there is meaning and order in the world or a God who exercises providential care. (Swinton, 2007, p. 59)

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Explaining Evil

Both of these definitions reach for an intrinsically central element of defining evil as with the theological emphasis on its stripping humans of life, creativity, and meaning. Ultimately, the effect of evil’s presence is a sense of separation from God and a profound isolation and hopelessness. This perspective on evil emphasizes its effect on people rather than conceptualizing what evil is. Such a perspective on evil, I would argue, is quite helpful in our emerging postmodern world. David Morris writes, The advent of postmodern time ha[s] seen evil not so much transformed as turned inside out. Evil has long been understood by theologians and by popular audiences . . . as the cause of suffering. The postmodern era has redefined suffering as evil. Suffering becomes one of the few agreed-upon new shapes that evil assume[s] in the postmodern world. (2001, p, 60)

Just as we no longer live in a world where the same meaning of a concept is shared by everyone, so evil is no longer understood as a rather pure concept. Evil’s effect on people becomes the most important definition. In a fragmented world full of conflict and suffering, the postmodern person can understand evil as what robs everyday life of meaning. This definition then becomes an operational theological definition for this discussion rather than a philosophical debate about what is evil. Our definition of evil is, then, concerned with whatever individual or systemic actions have the effects of taking away the meaning of life, its creativity, and one’s relationship with God. Note that by adding God in our definition, the assumption is that a relationship with God gives full meaning in life. Thus, the effect of evil in a person’s life is that the relationship with God is impaired. People who attend to those affected by evil need to be aware of the psychological and spiritual dynamics of helping in order to restore meaning and creativity to life through God’s care. Addressing the effects of evil through therapy has traditionally been focused on identifying the problem and finding ways to overcome it. Cognitivebehavioral approaches utilized commonly in private practice and community mental health centers focus on problem solving through resolving cognitive conflicts around the problem. Psychoanalytic approaches center on the intrapsychic dynamics of the problem and ways to “work through” the problem. Psychotherapy in general focuses upon ownership of the problem and to what extent the client has internalized it. By extension, the problem and the client become intertwined (Cooper, 2007). How, then, do we deal with evil in a postmodern world? Given our definition of evil as that which robs humans of meaningful life in God, I offer another therapeutic approach that has a postmodern foundation to look at evil in unique ways. This approach is narrative therapy as articulated by Michael White and David Epston. Rooted in a narrative metaphor and the

Responses of Narrative Practice to the Effects of Evil

5

poststructuralism of Michel Foucault, narrative therapy responds to evil in alternate ways from traditional psychotherapy. In fact, in all my research and readings in narrative therapy I have never seen “evil” discussed. What are discussed are concepts that boldly speak to the effects of evil: hardship, suffering, abuse, and violence. So, this chapter will discuss the effects of various forms of evil—hardship, suffering, abuse, violence, and trauma—and how narrative therapy and its many practices respond to these evils. In short, evil for narrative therapy can best be understood as evils. How, then, does narrative therapy respond to evils in our world? The term narrative practices instead of narrative therapy will be used in this discussion. This is because narrative therapy can be used in individual and increasingly in group contexts in many different ways. The primary focus of narrative therapy has been working with individuals, couples, families, and children in a therapeutic context. Increasingly, collective narrative therapy, a recent extension of narrative therapy that works with the concerns of groups and communities, is becoming more popular. By utilizing the private therapy room and the wider community contexts, this discussion will address how narrative practice responds to both individuals and groups who are affected by evil. To accomplish this task, I will give a brief overview of narrative therapy that will lay a foundation for the rest of my discussion. Next I will discuss what a problem is in the context of narrative therapy and its practices. To then expand the discussion, specific narrative practices will be discussed as they respond to the effects of evil such as trauma, abuse, suffering, hardship, and violence. A case vignette will then be discussed, highlighting those narrative practices that were most helpful in responding to the effects of evil in this case. Finally, implications of narrative practice for spirituality when dealing with the effects of evil and ways spirituality can enrich narrative practice will be discussed.

OVERVIEW OF NARRATIVE THERAPY Narrative therapy approaches as developed by Michael White of the Dulwich Centre in Australia and David Epston of the Family Centre in New Zealand can be described as follows: Narrative therapy holds that our identities are shaped by the accounts of our lives found in our stories or narratives. A narrative therapist is interested in helping others fully describe their rich stories and trajectories, modes of living, and possibilities associated with them. At the same time, this therapist is interested in co-investigating a problem’s many influences, including on the person himself and on their chief relationships. By focusing on problems’ effects on people’s lives rather than on problems

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Explaining Evil

as inside or part of people, distance is created. This externalization or objectification of a problem makes it easier to investigate and evaluate the problem’s influences. Another sort of externalization is likewise possible when people reflect upon and connect with their intentions, values, hopes, and commitments. Once values and hopes have been located in specific life events, they help to “re-author” or “re-story” a person’s experience and clearly stand as acts of resistance to problems. The term “narrative” reflects the multi-storied nature of our identities and related meanings. In particular, re-authoring conversations about values and re-membering conversations about key influential people are powerful ways for people to reclaim their lives from problems. In the end, narrative conversations help people clarify for themselves an alternate direction in life to that of the problem, one that comprises a person’s values, hopes, and life commitments. (Dulwich Centre, n.d.)

This description of narrative therapy illustrates the divergence it has taken from structural humanistic psychology. Whereas contemporary psychology may strive to emancipate people from the restraints of their problems, narrative therapy comes from a poststructural thinking that challenges many of the modern notions about how life and one’s identity should be (White, 1997). The ultimate goal is not the resolution of problems, but rather how people’s relationships with problems can be changed. In contrast to a structural view that advocates a “right” way of viewing things, narrative therapy works in a postmodern context that encourages us to examine our assumptions all the more. Narrative practitioners then work with people to help them understand their beliefs that support their problems (Freedman & Combs, 1996). This examination moves people to look at the broader cultural context to understand better how culture many times supports beliefs that maintain problems in our lives. One of the large cultural pieces that narrative therapy examines in looking at the maintenance of problems is power. Narrative’s understanding of power comes from Michel Foucault’s extensive analysis of power. Foucault argues that there is an inseparable link between knowledge and power. The discourses of society determine what knowledge is acceptable so that the people in the society who control the discourses control knowledge. Further, the dominant knowledge in a society determines who has positions in that society that gives them power. Power is knowledge, and knowledge is power (Freedman & Combs, 1996). This emphasis on power is not to say that power cannot be used in a redemptive way. It is to say that in society, power is most often used to dictate the approval of a certain value or belief. When people choose to practice a value that is in conflict with the dominant discourse in culture, then that person often experiences a problem. It then becomes necessary from a narrative perspective to have therapeutic conversations with people that will enable them to find other values and beliefs that resist the problem

Responses of Narrative Practice to the Effects of Evil

7

they are experiencing. The discussion will now describe a problem from the narrative perspective as we move toward identifying responses to the effects of evil.

PROBLEMS THROUGH A NARRATIVE LENS How then does a narrative view of a problem differ from other psychotherapeutic perspectives? It is probably good to begin with Michael White’s quizzical quotation, “The person is not the problem; the problem is the problem.” This description of a problem identifies the core uniqueness of narrative approaches to problems. Narrative therapy understands that the best way to approach problems is to break the problem’s grip on the person. The problem is not understood as part of the person. Rather, it needs to be addressed on its own. Narrative does not see problems as something to be solved. The approach is to separate the person from the problem. Criticism of this approach to problems is that narrative therapy encourages people to relinquish responsibility for their problems. Narrative therapists contend that by experiencing the problem as separate from the person, it becomes actually easier for the person to take responsibility for how he or she interacts with it (Freedman & Combs, 1996). The challenge in understanding and responding to problems from a narrative perspective is to encourage people to be able to step back and see how the problem has been affecting their lives and their relationships. A clear example of how problems become attached to the person is a typical response of parents in therapy. They might say, “Johnny’s the problem.” The problem then becomes to the person a truth about his or her character and identity. They internalize the problem (White, 1995). This understanding of a problem or what is destructive being separate from the person raises challenges to a Christian spirituality and invites us to look for different ways of looking at problems. In the New Testament, we encounter Jesus’s response to sinners to see the sin as separate from the sinners. To be sure, the sinner needs to confess the sin and repent. He or she is then to live a life forgiven of that sin. But Jesus did not see the sin and the sinner as one entity. The sin and the sinner are separate. The sinner is understood as a person to be loved. People in churches often connect the sin with the sinner and fail to see the person who is capable of experiencing forgiveness and release from the sin. In a rather parallel way, it is easy for a therapist to connect the problem with the client and not see a person who is capable of experiencing a different life without the problem. Many times, the diagnosing of a presenting problem for a therapist soon turns into the identity of the client. For example, in a case conference, a therapist may refer to a new intake as a borderline. Recovery witnesses this phenomenon when persons suffering from the effects of substance addiction refer to themselves as a recovering alcoholic.

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Such a perception of a person, whether it is in the church or counseling room, robs a person of the potential for a change. A problem, then, from a narrative perspective can be a hardship or suffering that comes from a dominant story in our culture. In turn, the dominant story lays claim on a person’s identity to the extent that it snuffs out meaning and creativity. It becomes then necessary for the person to see possibilities of new stories without the problem so that new life can be nurtured. Responding to the effects of evil or the problem that is manifest in hardship, suffering, or trauma is done through narrative therapy by various practices. It is to those practices that this discussion now turns.

OVERVIEW OF NARRATIVE PRACTICES To illustrate how narrative practice responds to the effects of evil, an overview of the primary narrative practices will be explained. Then, a case vignette will be presented that illustrates the primary narrative practice that focuses on the problem—externalizing. But, first the discussion turns to the primary practices that inform narrative therapy. These practices are externalizing conversations, reauthoring conversations, re-membering conversations, and definitional ceremonies. Externalizing conversations provide a response to the identification that people make with their problems. As people come to believe that their problems are really them, they often become more entrenched in the problem they are trying to resolve. Through externalizing conversations, the problem is objectified. In externalizing, the therapist rather takes a position of investigative reporter in response to the effect of the problem. In turn, the client is encouraged to take a more objective view of the problem and its effects on his or her life (White, 2007). As the conversation regarding the problem progresses, the person may find a name or metaphor for the problem that has the effect of loosening the problem’s grip. It can vary from a more literal description of the problem— such as sadness or depression—to a more descriptive metaphor such as “being stuck on the roundabout of life.” The next stage in the externalizing conversation highlights the effects of the problem in the person’s life such as home, workplace, school, identity, and future hopes. The third stage develops quickly upon the recognition of the effects of the problem in the person’s life in a kind of challenging tone. The person is faced with questions that focus on the degree of satisfaction he or she has with life as the problem’s effects are confronted. Such questions may include “Are you satisfied with these developments on your life?” These questions are built upon as the person really comes to grips with the assessment of how the problem has affected his or her life and to what degree he or she is content to let that remain (White, 2007).

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The final stage of the externalizing conversation begins with questioning into the “why” of people’s evaluations. These kinds of questions are concerned with helping people develop their understanding of what they want in life, what they really value, and their hopes for the future. This part of externalizing helps people step away from problems with a glimpse into what they want for themselves. In short, externalizing conversations are not used in all therapeutic conversations. They are, however, critically important for people whose lives are ruled by problems (White, 2007). Another narrative practice is reauthoring conversations, which invites people to tell stories about their lives and, very importantly, to include the neglected stories that are not supported by the dominant discourses of a culture. These kinds of exceptions or alternate stories allow people to develop their stories that will strengthen them in addressing the problems of their lives (White, 2007). In reauthoring conversations, two levels of conversation around life stories exist—landscape of identity and landscape of action. Landscape of identity are those aspects of people’s stories that have the following concepts: (a) intentional understanding; (b) understanding about what is accorded value; (c) internal understandings; and (d) realizations, learnings, and knowledges. The other level is the landscape of action, which includes the following: (a) events, (b) circumstances, (c) sequence, (d) time, and (e) plot (White, 2007). The landscapes of identify and action work together to help people reauthor their stories. Many people would generally think of stories as comprising those points that make up the landscape of action—the skeleton of the stories. This is an essential part of stories. However, the heart of the stories must interact with its skeleton or form through the landscape of identity. It is this landscape of identity that gets at the meaning of the story with its values, commitments, and direction for lives. Re-membering conversations are based upon the understanding that identity is formed through our many associations in life rather than a core self. Significant figures of the past and present in people’s lives and the relationships with those figures form people’s identities. These significant figures can be people, authors of books, and characters from movies, favorite toys, or pets (White, 2007). Re-membering conversations are not mere reminiscences, but intentional interactions with these significant figures whether in the past or present, living or dead. It offers ways for people to make a decision about what figures they want in their lives that will nurture their present and future lives. As we reconfigure who and what we want in our lives, the assumption is that our identities also change. The hopeful outcome is that emerging identities will be those that most apply to our present lives as we move toward the future. The last narrative practice we will discuss is definitional ceremonies. Although not a conversation, it offers a context to further develop the stories

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of people. These are rituals that acknowledge people’s lives while the experience itself of the definitional ceremony adds richness to that life. In definitional ceremonies, people have the opportunity of telling or retelling the stories of their lives before an audience of outsider witnesses. These outsider witnesses respond to these stories with various forms of acknowledgement (White, 2007). Outsider witnesses respond to the stories not by congratulations, evaluations, or opinions. Rather, they respond to images evoked for them through the telling and retelling, with personal experiences that resonated with the stories and how they have been touched by the expressions. Outsider witnesses are people who are interested in the person or have had some experience with the problem the person may be resisting. The purpose of the definitional ceremony with participating outsider witnesses is to gain a new perspective on life and identity and think in new ways (White, 2007). The discussion now turns to a case vignette where narrative practices were used. The client in this vignette reflects the characteristics of several clients. Names and identifying information have been changed to respect confidentiality. A reflection identifying the use of narrative practices with the client will follow the case vignette.

CASE VIGNETTE Carmen is a 33-year-old single Latina woman who is a receptionist in a hospital. She grew up in a single-parent home with her mother and two brothers in New Jersey. Carmen has had difficulty staying employed. She sought counseling because she had had work-related problems, legal problems, and relational problems. Carmen also sought counseling with me because she wanted a therapist with a Christian perspective. When she came to counseling, Carmen described her childhood as characterized by feelings of loneliness and abandonment. Her father and mother were divorced, and she saw very little of her father. Carmen’s mother worked at two jobs in order to provide for the family. When Carmen’s mother was home, she was so tired that she had little energy to invest in nurturing Carmen. Carmen experienced physical abuse at the hands of her younger brother when they were home alone. Her older brother became her protector from the younger brother when he was home. Carmen’s mother seemed to have little concern about the physical abuse. As the physical abuse continued, Carmen began to believe that she was not worthy of affection and attention. Soon in her teen years, she began a string of relationships with men that were of short duration and characterized by sex with little affection. Eventually, she started seeing older men. Many times Carmen was the one who exited the relationship.

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As Carmen entered her 20s, she had some encounters with the legal system. She used drugs illegally on a sporadic basis as well as shoplifted at local stores. Through it all, she made contact again with her father. Whenever she got into legal trouble, her father would bail her out of jail and give her money. Getting steady employment also became a problem for Carmen. It seemed that as she secured a job, some friction developed between her and a fellow employee. Then she would either be fired or decide to leave the job herself. A constant for Carmen was attending the Catholic parish of her childhood that was near her home. During her counseling sessions, she expressed her comfort when she attended mass. Yet, despite finding meaning in church, Carmen had difficulty being consistent in her commitment to church. As our counseling sessions continued, I at first tried to enable Carmen to alternately work through some of her family-of-origin issues and physical abuse she had experienced. The path seemed to be quite long with no end in sight. Then, I tried to help Carmen with problem solving. It seemed at times that she gained some problem-solving skills and made some progress. Then, more problems emerged seemingly from nowhere. At this point, I began to think that a narrative approach might be helpful. As we talked about her life, the feeling that kept coming up was anger. After several sessions where this seemed to be the theme, I posed several externalizing questions to Carmen: “I’d like to ask you some questions that I hope will be helpful about anger, and you can tell me if they’re helpful.” “So I wondered if it would be helpful for you to reflect upon when anger first became a big part of your life.” “So, do you remember much about that time with anger?” “How did that affect you at school?” “Did the anger show up at particular times when you look back on it?”

Carmen responded to these questions as she talked about ways in which anger was always there when she got in trouble at school or a time when she had an illegal handgun. She talked about how anger would get bottled up and then things would happen. I continued to ask her questions—carefully extending the effects of anger on her life. I then asked, “How would you describe the impact of anger today?” Carmen went on to describe how she thought that she was different today as an adult and better able to anticipate things that she found upsetting. I then proceeded to ask her what had enabled her to look differently at anger today. Without hesitation, she replied that it was the consequences. (The use of consequences here is equivalent to the effects of the problem.) Carmen said that as she got older, she learned ways to deal with anger through therapy. Then she added that prayer helped her.

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This part of the conversation seemed quite significant for me as I thought about the importance of people responding to the effects of the problem. (For this discussion, it would be a form of evil.) I then inquired, “I’d be interested more in how prayer helps you battle anger.” Carmen replied that she often had obstacles in getting to church. However, when she actually got to church, she described it as a “safe haven.” Our conversation extended what makes a safe haven for Carmen in her faith and spirituality as she responds to anger. Carmen described prayer as a spiritual practice that strengthens her and helps her to feel that she is more worthy than she has felt through the years. She described the abuse from her brother as making her feel unworthy—and, in turn, making her feel angry about it. Carmen commented on this session as being a turning point for her in her quest to overcome anger and how it had negatively impacted her life. In the conversations, Carmen became able to see stories in her life that she had overlooked and that could be developed. In contrast to the stories about her that seemed to convey her irresponsibility, Carmen began to see herself as a child of God whose spiritual connection with prayer enabled her to resist anger and its evil effects on her life.

REFLECTIONS ON THE CASE VIGNETTE What are the effects of evil, then, in this case vignette? The foundational effects of evil on Carmen and her life begin with narrative’s perspective on power. Carmen’s growing-up years were affected by our culture’s response to both her racial ethnicity and family constellation. As the daughter of a single Latina mother, Carmen did not have the socioeconomic advantages afforded to white, middle-class people in our society. Further, both her and her mother’s gender likely blocked her from accessing some of the social advantages available even to Latino men. The cultural discourses that blocked Carmen from having social advantages are not the only examples of power that controlled her. Her family of origin had powerful effects on her. She did not have a father living with her and her family. This loss handicapped Carmen in ways that one can only imagine. In addition, the physical abuse from her brother contributed to evil effects on how Carmen viewed herself. From a narrative perspective, the cultural and family discourses or stories with values that affected Carmen’s identity focused primarily on her gendered ability to respond or not respond to those evil effects (White, 2007). Socioeconomic disadvantages also hindered Carmen from experiencing the personal agency with which to disagree with those cultural discourses that defined her identity as a person who had little power over her life’s story. It seems that the separating or externalizing of Carmen’s response to these forces—anger—enabled her to step back and look at alternate responses

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to the abuse and oppression she had experienced. For many years, she had experienced herself as a woman who little say-so over what happened in her everyday life. Over the years, these experiences developed Carmen’s identity as a person who receives violence and isolation with no hope of another identity who has dignity and worth. Externalizing conversations are a way of getting at those cultural discourses or conversations that people have internalized and made part of their identities. By lifting up nagging internalized doubts and beliefs people hold about themselves, externalizing questions help people consider alternate beliefs and actions for their lives (Strong, 2008). Carmen illustrates this process of narrative practice when she talks about how she can see anger more clearly now and understand its effects in a way she had not before. Carmen then talks about her connection with her church and how prayer strengthens her to respond to the effects of anger. At this point, she is illustrating the beginning of a reauthoring conversation where she discovers both alternate identities and actions that give her a sense of hope about the future. Although this narrative practice is important in the development of alternate stories for Carmen, I see the connection of prayer and church affiliation as the “safe haven” that evokes the definitional ceremony. Through the connection of fellow believers and rituals in the church, Carmen is transported to a spiritual strength in herself that enables her to believe that she does indeed have the strength to respond to the anger that has controlled her life for so many years. Collective narrative practice is another narrative practice that is not used here with Carmen but might be profitable in the future. By definition, collective narrative practice is a recent development of narrative therapy that works with groups and communities in attempts to reauthor painful stories through mutual sharing. Some examples of this exciting work include working with persons in Rwanda who are suffering the effects of genocides through collective sharing and writing of their experiences. Writing of collective documents, songs, and stories comprises an approach in collective narrative practice for people who seek to strengthen their responses to the effects of evil (Denborough, 2008). I can envision using a collective narrative practice with Carmen in her most important affiliative community—her church. This could be a group of women who have experienced some form of abuse during their childhood and youth and who have experienced difficulty forming personal and/or work relationships, as did Carmen. This group would differ from some support groups in that the process of telling and retelling their stories of strength about abuse and anger would be prevalent rather than the sheer recounting of the abusive events. In addition, there could also be a connection from the collective group that would include outsider witnesses to the community in making voices of protest about abuse and the anger that its recipients often feel.

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RESPONSES OF NARRATIVE PRACTICE AND SPIRITUALITY TO THE EFFECTS OF EVIL Narrative practice has much to say in responding to the effects of evil such as hardship, suffering, and abuse. These problems are well known for their ability to cause people to live lives that are robbed of meaning and hope. It is hoped that this chapter has illustrated ways in which narrative practice can enrich people’s lives as for Carmen’s life so that they are able to find stories in their lives that give them hope and strength in the face of evil. Limitations of narrative practice have to do with the explicit acknowledgment of spiritual or religious practices that can be enriching instead of oppressive for people. In and of itself, narrative practice is concerned about creating new experiences that give people meaning in their life. However, this meaning is limited because human enterprises are just that—human. Spirituality in the Christian tradition understands that human generativity and strength are limited by human frailty. Although narrative practice, I believe, draws on the best from humans, more strength is often needed when responding to the effects of evil. Christian spirituality sees God as a strength who sustains us when we or our community of friends cannot sustain us. A challenge from Christian spirituality to narrative practice is that humans need a transcendent source for strength such as God. Whereas narrative practice does not require personal belief and practice in God, Christian spirituality does. What, then, is the contribution of spirituality to narrative? For a beginning, it does challenge the notion that all values are fluid. Belief in God presupposes that despite what image of God people believe in, God is. This center of one’s spiritual life is then called God. In contrast, a nontheistic narrative approach to spirituality definitely involves meaning, but that meaning may change totally. The beginning point of work for narrative-informed Christian spirituality is to look at our beliefs about God and what is central and unchanging about God in our lives. A narrative perspective would advocate for a meaningful source of strength that can be different for varying contexts of life. A postmodern foundation of narrative practice in its extreme posits that no ultimate values exist. With this view, then, looking to a transcendent God for strength could present challenges. God as narrative practitioners with a Christian spirituality, however, is experienced as a God who seeks to find creativity and an expanding future for us. As Christian narrative practitioners, we are very much aware of the effects of evil such as the problems of hardship, suffering, trauma, and abuse discussed in this chapter. Narrative practice offers a way for us to discover stories in our lives that might remain undiscovered as we seek to find an ultimate storyline ordained by God. A collaborative approach between narrative practice and the Christian spirituality of resisting evil is multivoiced. Narrative provides an approach

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of giving many stories of our encounters with evil a place to exist. Christian spirituality leads us to God as a transcendent source of accommodating all our stories of strength. With this kind of collaboration, both narrative practice and Christian spirituality can resist a common foe—the effects of evil in the lives of people.

CONCLUSION Narrative practice provides enriching responses to the effects of evil in people’s lives that emphasize challenging commonly accepted beliefs in our culture while encouraging people to find their hidden life stories that nurture them. These immanent voices of a multistoried life strengthen people to create new identities. Yet, immanence is limited, and the challenge is to look to God as a transcendent power who can offer safety while calling us forth into an unknown and creative future.

REFERENCES Cooper, T. (2007). Dimensions of evil: Contemporary perspectives. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Denborough, D. (2008). Collective narrative practice: Responding to individuals, groups, and communities who experienced trauma. Adelaide, Australia: Dulwich Centre. Dulwich Centre. (N.d.). Training brochure. Adelaide, Australia: Author. Freedman, J., & Combs, G. (1996). Narrative therapy: The social construction of preferred realities. New York: Norton. Morris, D. (2001). The plot of suffering: AIDS and evil. In J. Geddes (Ed.), Evil after postmodernism: Histories, narratives, ethics (p. 60). New York: Routledge. Peck, M. S. (1983). People of the lie. New York: Simon & Schuster. Strong, T. (2008). Externalising questions: A micro-analytic look at their use in narrative therapy. The International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work, 3, 59–71. Swinton, J. (2007). Raging with compassion: Pastoral responses to the problem of evil. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. White, C. (2007). Working for gender justice across cultures; An interview with Taimalieutu Kiwi Tamasese. In A. Yuen & C. White (Eds.), Conversations about gender, culture, violence and narrative practice: Stories of hope and complexity from women of many cultures (pp. 99–106). Adelaide, Australia: Dulwich Centre. White, M. (1995). Re-authoring lives: Interviews and essays. Adelaide, Australia: Dulwich Centre. White, M. (1997). Narratives of therapists’ lives. Adelaide, Australia: Dulwich Centre. White, M. (2007). Maps of narrative practice. New York: Norton.

ch apter 3

The Doubling of Conscience in Groups Dan Merkur

Psychoanalytic theories of group psychology have never been equal to the evidence of anti-Semitism. The seemingly anomalous character of the data, their exception to the psychodynamics that psychoanalysts understand, has been asserted repeatedly. Loewenstein (1947) stated the problem succinctly: “Although there are neurotics who are anti-Semites or whose anti-Semitism is one symptom of their neurosis, there are also anti-Semites, even violent ones, who are neither psychotic nor neurotic in the usual sense of the word” (p. 318). Ackerman and Jahoda (1948) added a further cautionary observation: “[A]nti-Semitism is not the concomitant of any single clinical category of personality . . . in general, there is no correlation with the type of clinical diagnosis or specific symptom” (pp. 242–243). A half-century later, Ostow (1996) corroborated these postwar observations: In certain segments of society, antisemitism was encouraged, and within that segment, socially compliant. That being the case, we had no basis for considering it pathologic or even anomalous unless we assumed that our own views of socially desirable behavior are absolute and universally true. Accordingly, we revised our views, seeing antisemitism now simply as an aspect of human behavior that we in our study group considered undesirable, but that was not necessarily pathologic. (Ostow, 1996, p. 16)

These findings on anti-Semitism are inconsistent with existing psychoanalytic theories of group psychology. Abraham (1909/1979) introduced the technique of interpreting group phenomena as though they were the psychological productions of an individual; this methodology proceeds as though the group possessed a group mind. Freud (1958/1913) applied Abraham’s

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innovation in Totem and Taboo and many later works. Freud’s Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1955/1921) provided a compatible but independent argument. Freud interpreted groups and their leaders as though they were siblings and their fathers, while alleging that the leader deployed powers of suggestion that resembled hypnosis. In this way, the leader did all of the thinking for the group; and the methodological reduction of group psychology to individual psychology was tenable. Utilizing anthropological fieldwork, Róheim (1932) instead demonstrated culturally typical circumstances that impact traumatically on children. The culturally typical traumas produce culturally typical symptoms, some of which are recognizable as the cultural productions of adults. Kardiner (1939) characterized the cultural productions not as symptoms but as defense mechanisms, a rephrasing of Róheim’s id psychology that proved long-lived among ego psychologists (Merkur, 2005); but Kardiner simultaneously introduced an autonomous, personality-shaping role for culture when he suggested that the existence of a cultural institution that functioned psychologically as a defense mechanism imparted a “basic personality structure” to members of the culture. Erich Fromm’s concept of “social character,” such as the authoritarian character shared by Nazism and Stalinism and the capitalist personality of the postwar West, similarly treated culture as an independent, personality-shaping variable; but the psychoanalytic mainstream explored the concept of culturally modal personalities (Arlow, 1961; Boyer, 1977, 1979) in ways that instead conformed with the axiomatic assumption that all mentation, including the whole of culture, is ultimately reducible to instinctual drives. The three methodologies—group mind, culture as psychopathological symptoms, and culture as defense mechanisms—share a common paradigm: Each proceeds by attempting to correlate group phenomena with the personalities of individual group members. The same general paradigm is invoked when people are said to self-select to belong to a distinctive subgroup within society—for example, a profession, or a hobby—because they have been predisposed to their choices by their personalities. Aviram’s (2009) contribution on prejudice is a recent example of the self-selection methodology. Aviram noted that prejudice against an out-group involves an “overidentification” with the in-group (p. 119) that can be interpreted as an insecure attachment and understood as characterological. None of these approaches to psychoanalytic group psychology is adequate to the data of anti-Semitism, which is not a phenomenon of group mind, a symptom of culturally typical trauma, a modal personality defense, or a self-selection by a diagnostically discrete subgroup of the population. For many years, no one has known quite what to do with the anomaly— better, exceptionality—of anti-Semitism; but a second body of data has

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recently come to public attention whose exceptions to theoretic expectations proceed along similar lines. In the wake of 9/11, a consensus has formed that religious terrorists, including suicidal terrorists and their handlers, are not necessarily pathological and do not possess personalities of a single, common type. Terrorists—for example, in Israeli jails—resemble the general population of their cultures in their variations in mental health, personality types, and diagnostic categories (Berko, 2009). Indeed, the in-group bias of the term terrorist, for which out-group members might prefer to substitute freedom fighter or revolutionary, exemplifies the puzzle that terrorism constitutes for psychoanalytic theorizing. So, too, does the ease with which terrorists have repeatedly transformed in midcareer into statesman. Consider Lenin, Castro, Begin, and Arafat, none of whose dramatic behavioral changes involved personality changes. Terrorist organizations do not exhibit the symmetry or isomorphism of individual and group psychology that conventional theories of group psychology assume must be the case. Varvin (2003) accordingly called for a new psychoanalytic theory. Instead of looking for the characteristics of individual terrorists (the terrorist’s psychology)—an endeavour that has not yielded much success—we have been looking for the preconditions, especially in large-group dynamics, for terrorism and the basic human preconditions for the use of dehumanizing violence. The last can potentially be developed in any human being, given the right circumstances. (p. 240)

A LIBERTARIAN MODEL In this chapter, I shall argue that the exceptionality of anti-Semitism and suicidal religious terrorism is an illusion that has been produced by the regnant philosophy of psychology, whose axiomatic assumption of causal determinism wrongly equates physical and psychic determinism. Freud introduced the phrase psychic determinism precisely to assert that the sort of determinism that governs events in the psyche differs from the sort of physical determinism that could be taken for granted, for example, in neurology (Basch, 1978; Wallwork, 1991). Psychoanalysis is not a physical science but a semiotic one (D’Andrade, 1986). Its laws pertain not to the mechanics of physical events, but to the coherence of mental representations of physical events. Exceptionalities have occurred because the electronics, as it were, of television sets have been expected to account for the narratives of television shows. Self-conscious choices and voluntary actions function as independent variables that set in motion a series of involuntary and unconscious psychological reactions. It is only the latter whose mechanical and amoral character conforms to expectations that are based on analogy with the physical sciences. For

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example, in a highly regarded article on terrorism, the social psychologist Albert Bandura (2004) asserted that people who engage in “reprehensible conduct” must engage in “moral disengagement” from their victims. Moral disengagement can be brought about through moral justification (Bandura, 2004, p. 124), advantageous comparison with their victims’ actions (p. 127), euphemistic language that avoids naming their own actions (p. 129), displacement of responsibility onto authorities (p. 130), diffusion of responsibility within one’s group (p. 132), disregard or distortion of harmful consequences (p. 133), attribution of blame onto the victims (p. 134), and the dehumanization of the victims (p. 135). These actions are all consciously chosen by terrorists in order to manage their involuntary reactions to their deeds of terror. Bandura’s catalog of rationalization, disavowal, and projection attests to the difficulty that terrorists have in maintaining moral disengagement. Indeed, to a psychoanalyst his catalog suggests that terrorists are never morally disengaged, but are forever only attempting to be so. Terrorists engage in a variety of defenses against unconscious moral conflicts. We must assume that they have successfully achieved levels of moral development that conflict with their acts of terrorism, or they would have no need for defenses. We must accordingly look not to individual development but to group processes in order to account for the symptoms that Bandura cataloged. Much of the psychoanalytic literature on freedom of will debates whether it is possible that will is or can be free. Under the term ego autonomy, Hartmann (1958) developed a completely mechanical way of talking about the ego’s origination of its activities, in furtherance of its own interests. Devotion to the values internalized within the ego ideal permits the ego to resist direct discharge of the drives. Because the ego’s decision making on the basis of its interests conforms ultimately to the pleasure principle, the ego was theorized to possess will but not freedom. The existence of morality is nevertheless contingent on the existence of freedom. There can be no personal responsibility, and therefore neither good nor evil, unless there is freedom of choice. Bandura’s findings cannot be explained adequately in terms of ego autonomy and ego interests. If the ego psychological theory were adequate and terrorists act voluntarily in their own ego interests, prioritizing group ambitions over developmentally acquired personal preferences in conformance with the pleasure principle, why are they conflicted? It ought to be a simple matter of greater or more pleasurable ego ideals outweighing lesser pleasures, with unconscious moral conflict never entering the picture. Here, again, prejudice proves to be a conceptual exceptionality—but in this case, to the conflation of physical and psychical determinism in psychoanalysis. To account for prejudice, we need a psychoanalytic model that is not only voluntaristic but also libertarian.

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DOUBLING Bandura’s discussion of moral disengagement cataloged symptoms, I have suggested, of terrorists’ unconscious moral conflicts. Other valuable contributions also warrant review. In The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton (1986) noted, on the basis of extensive interviews, that the German doctors who performed criminal experiments on Jews in the concentration camp at Auschwitz during World War II manifested a psychological syndrome that he called the doubling of the self. In their private lives, the doctors were an unexceptional selection of members of their profession. Consider the more or less typical Nazi doctor who sought from the movement a form of national renewal; who laughed at the more extreme claims of Nazi racial theory but was drawn to “scientific racism” with its emphasis on German unity; who considered the Nordic race generally superior, and feared racial mixture; who considered himself a rational rather than a fanatical anti-Semite. (p. 434)

The Auschwitz doctors were mostly bourgeois family men and were not any more pathological than German doctors in general. At work, however, they performed atrocities with all of the skills at their disposal. Lifton emphasized that this psychological syndrome cannot be understood in terms of multiple personality (p. 422). Rather, doubling belongs to the psychology of normalcy. In general psychological terms, the adaptive potential for doubling is integral to the human psyche and can, at times, be life saving: for a soldier in combat, for instance; or for a victim of brutality such as an Auschwitz inmate, who must also undergo a form of doubling in order to survive. (p. 420)

Although doubling is normal in extremity, reliance on it may be intrinsic to the psychology of criminal subcultures. Nazi doctors’ behavior resembles that of certain terrorists—and members of the Mafia, of “death squads” organized by dictators, or even of delinquent gangs. In all these situations, profound ideological, family, ethnic, and sometimes age-specific ties help shape criminal behavior. Doubling may well be an important psychological mechanism for individuals living within any criminal subculture: the Mafia or “death squad” chief who coldly orders (or himself carried out) the murder of a rival while remaining a loving husband, father, and churchgoer. The doubling is adaptive to the extreme conditions created by the subculture, but additional influences, some of which can begin early in life, always contribute to the process. (Lifton, 1986, p. 423)

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Doubling can include elements that are found in psychopathy: “a disorder of feeling (swings between numbing and rage), pathological avoidance of a sense of guilt, and resort to violence to overcome ‘masked depression’ (related to repressed guilt and numbing) and maintain a sense of vitality” (Lifton, 1986, p. 423). Lifton nevertheless saw doubling as “more a form of adaptation than a lifelong pattern” (p. 424). Rejecting its consideration as a character disorder, Lifton saw it instead as a voluntary syndrome that the Nazi doctors induced in themselves as adults. Doubling is the psychological means by which one invokes the evil potential of the self. That evil is neither inherent in the self nor foreign to it. To live out the doubling and call forth the evil is a moral choice for which one is responsible, whatever the level of consciousness involved. By means of doubling, Nazi doctors made a Faustian choice for evil: in the process of doubling, in fact, lies an overall key to human evil. (pp. 423–424)

For theoretical purposes, Lifton (1986) described doubling in terms of five characteristics. There is, first, a dialectic between two selves in terms of autonomy and connection. The individual Nazi doctor needed his Auschwitz self to function psychologically in an environment so antithetical to his previous ethical standards. At the same time, he needed his prior self in order to continue to see himself as humane physician, husband, father. The Auschwitz self “succeeded” because it was inclusive and could connect with the entire Auschwitz environment: it rendered coherent, and gave form to, various themes and mechanisms. . . . Third, doubling has a life-death dimension: the Auschwitz self was perceived by the perpetrator as a form of psychological survival in a death-dominated environment; in other words, we have the paradox of a “killing self ” being created on behalf of what one perceives as one’s own healing or survival. Fourth, a major function of doubling, as in Auschwitz, is likely to be the avoidance of guilt: the second self tends to be the one performing the “dirty work.” And, finally, doubling involves both an unconscious dimension—taking place, as stated, largely outside of awareness—and a significant change in moral consciousness. These five characteristics frame and pervade all else that goes on psychologically in doubling. (p. 419)

Bandura’s discussion of moral disengagement addressed the avoidance of guilt that Lifton listed as the fourth major function of doubling. Lifton’s account of the syndrome is considerably more extensive and moves us farther from analogies with characterological psychopathy, toward a realistic picture of a discrete psychological phenomenon, a type of group process that draws on both voluntary and mechanical aspects of the psyche.

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RELIGIOUS TERRORISM Placing himself in an intellectual lineage that includes Rank, Adler, Jung, Fromm, Rado, Horney, and Erikson (Lifton, 1976, pp. 14, 70), Lifton stated, “In much of my work I have expressed ideas that, from the standpoint of prevailing views in psychoanalysis, could be said to be heretical” (p. 13). Although Lifton has worked steadily on favorite topics or themes, he is not a system builder. For example, his study of suicidal religious terrorism, Destroying the World to Save It (1999), focused on the charisma of Shoko Asahara, the guru who led the Aum Shinrikyo movement to use sarin gas to poison the air in the subways of Tokyo in 1995. Lifton’s preoccupation with the topic of guruism was implicitly inspired by Freud’s (1955/1921) account of the relation between the leader and the group. Lifton focused on the disciples’ indoctrination through mystical states of identification with Asahara, together with the disciples’ ambivalence toward their guru’s exclusive claim to their devotion. Lifton found similar dynamics of identification and ambivalence at work in suicidal religious cults in the United States: the Charles Manson family, Jim Jones’s People’s Temple, and Heaven’s Gate. In his study of suicidal religious movements, Lifton mentioned doubling only briefly, as a routine part of the group process. “In both guru and disciples, we may encounter forms of doubling, one self bound to totalistic guruism and the other subversive of guruism in some tabooed fashion” (p. 114); “This existence of two relatively separate, even warring selves within the same psyche was a version of the doubling that was part of cult life” (p. 219). Implicitly, readers were expected to interpolate the account of doubling that Lifton had provided in The Nazi Doctors, but Lifton neither explained how to do so nor modified his model in retrospect of the data of terrorism. To augment Lifton’s account of doubling, I turn instead to the work of James W. Jones, who has dual competence in religious studies and relational psychotherapy. On 9/11, Jones (2002) happened to have a book in press on the topic of idealization in the psychology of religion that included a chapter on religiously motivated terrorism. In a follow-up study, Jones (2008) reversed priorities by including a discussion of idealization in a book-length examination of the psychology of religious terrorism. Adding Jones’s perspective to Lifton’s findings contributes important details to the symptomatology of doubling. Jones (2008) compared Muslim terrorism with both the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo movement and apocalyptic expectations of the rapture among American Protestant fundamentalists. Jones emphasized the exception of the data to expectations that are based on the regnant paradigm in psychoanalysis. “Most extraordinary acts of inhumanity are committed by very ordinary people. . . . No serious contemporary study has found any evidence for diagnosable psychopathology in those who commit acts of terror and

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genocide” (p. 9). Conventional theories cannot account for the psychology of religious terrorism. “There does not seem to be any common personality or psychopathological traits exhibited by terrorists” (p. 13). “Terrorists are not abnormal psychologically or diagnostically psychopathological” (p. 27). Jones (2008) recognized the complex motivation of religious terrorism, which regularly blends religious ideology with secular ambitions. “Religious terrorism is often characterized by a theologically informed campaign of demonizing the potential victims, and there are almost always economic, political, or cultural conflicts associated with religiously sponsored killing” (p. 12). Jones (2008) remarked that changes in the organizational structure of terrorism were rapidly rendering theories of group pressure obsolete. Research has clearly shown that group pressures can motivate ordinary individuals to do heinous things. In the past, the focus of psychological study has been on these group processes (recruitment procedures, authority structures, moral disengagement, redefinition of killing as morally justified, etc.) shared by terrorist groups, but current terrorist cohorts appear to be smaller, looser, decentralized cliques of friends or relatives. (p. 27)

If we continue to assume that group pressures are at work, we need to postulate pressures that can be acquired, internalized, and applied by individuals to themselves, even in the absence of other group members. Emphasizing the specifically religious components of religious terrorism, Jones (2008) drew attention to many of the themes at the heart of religious texts of terror from around the world: (1) the complete rejection of the modern values of individual judgment and the separation of religion and the state and therefore the demonizing of secularization as the enemy of religion; (2) the insistence on a previous time of spiritual purity to which we must return, a past purity that has been corrupted by the replacement of divine revelation with human thought . . .; (3) the centrality of law in religion and the ultimate duty to impose that law on all aspects of human life; (4) the claim that the modern age is characterized by growing decadence and immorality; (5) the strict dualism of good and evil, the godly and the unrighteous; (6) a sacred text or teacher that is seen as infallible . . .; and (7) the advocacy of violence. (p. 35)

Jones (2008) noted that “feelings of humiliation on the part of Arab populations has been one of the most frequently cited root causes of the turn to fundamentalism” (p. 36), and he found “the same theme of humiliation” in “rituals of shaming and humiliation” that the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo movement required of its members (p. 36). Jones connected the feelings of humiliation with the idealization in which religions invariably engage.

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By holding out an absolute and perfect ideal—whether it’s a divine being or a perfect guru or master—against which all mortals inevitably fall short and by insisting on the “infinite qualitative difference” (in the words of Søren Kierkegaard) between human beings and the ideal, religions can easily exacerbate and play upon any natural human tendency toward feelings of shame and humiliation. (p. 35) While much of the humiliation that fuels certain acts of terrorism might begin in social and cultural conditions, fanatical religions may build upon that and establish a cycle where their teachings and practices increase feelings of shame and humiliation that intensif[y] aggressive feelings, and then in turn the religion provides targets for that aggression. (pp. 37–38)

Religious terrorists regularly imagine themselves to be “locked in an apocalyptic battle with demonic forces, that is, usually with the forces of secularism” (Jones, 2008, p. 42). They see themselves as “an elect and chosen people especially favored by God and destined to rule the world” (p. 41). From a clinical psychodynamic standpoint, what appears most salient . . . are the themes of shame and humiliation, the apocalyptic splitting of the world into all-good/all-evil camps and with it the need for absolute purity, an overly idealized deity or leader who is wrathful and punitive and so functions as a source of shame and humiliation, a fascination with violence and the linkage of violence and purification, and the authoritarian concern with submission and prejudice against outsiders. (p. 121)

Jones argued that it is not merely the religious exacerbation of political, social, or economic humiliation that motivates religious terrorism, but also the inculcation of wholly religious humiliation through the idealization of humiliating deities, heroes, and leaders (p. 122). By pushing for submission to a humiliating but idealized god or leader, religion makes terror possible. This drive to connect to an idealized and humiliating divine figure . . . overwhelms all connections between human beings. The result is a detachment from empathic connections between human beings (one of the traits of many religious terrorists) and the replacement by a totalizing connection with God alone. Love of this demanding God replaces love for other human beings. (Jones, 2008, p. 123)

Citing Fairbairn’s (1952) theory of the moral defense and Klein’s (1975) concept of splitting, Jones (2008, pp. 128–129, 132, 152) accounted for religious terrorists’ preoccupation with purification. Fairbairn’s and Klein’s theories imply that the more rigid the split between the good and the bad, the more powerful the drive to expel it by projection and the stronger the need to protect the ideal from

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contamination. When good and evil are totally dichotomized, doing good, doing God’s will, becomes easily equated with eliminating the bad, eliminating it from oneself through ritual self-abnegation, eliminating it from the world through the ritual purification of terrorist warfare against the evil ones. (Jones, 2008, p. 135)

To account for the conversion of humiliation into rage and violence, Jones cited Kohut’s (1972, p. 379) concept of narcissistic rage. The confluence of applicable psychoanalytic theories led Jones to conclude that “terrorist religion is characterized by certain psychological themes that, for developmental reasons, often occur together” (p. 140); but it would be equally appropriate to remark that the themes occur together developmentally because they occur together functionally, both at their origin in childhood and subsequently throughout life. Jones’s account of the religious components of religious terrorism needs to be contextualized through the findings of Anat Berko, whose unpublished 2003 dissertation documented the phenomenology of doubling among Palestinian Arab terrorists whom she interviewed in Israeli jails. “The dispatchers judge issues according to two polarized criteria: one is normative and humane, and is used with regard to their own people, and the other is to delegitimize and dehumanize the victims of their terrorism” (Berko, 2009, p. 173). Jones one-sidedly explicated the moral imperatives of religious terrorists as terrorists. Berko’s findings established the important corrective that the everyday values of religious terrorists’ lives as members of their own communities form a second set of moral considerations, to which they also conform. Like Bandura’s discussion of moral disengagement, Jones’s account of idealization may be seen, I suggest, as a contribution that enlarges our understanding of Lifton’s delineation of doubling. The fourth major feature is inaccurately described as an avoidance of guilt. It is better defined as a doubling of both self and conscience, with an ostensibly higher moral obligation being inculcated that takes precedence over ordinary moral obligations. Lifton mentioned data that warrant this conclusion, but did not notice the pattern that Jones recognized. Lifton (1986) wrote, The way in which doubling allowed Nazi doctors to avoid guilt was not by the elimination of conscience but by what can be called the transfer of conscience. The requirements of conscience were transferred to the Auschwitz self, which placed it within its own criteria for good (duty, loyalty to group, “improving” Auschwitz conditions, etc.), thereby freeing the original self from responsibility for actions there. (p. 421; italics in original) Communal ethos was so strong that, even when one was deeply troubled by Nazi policies, one hesitated to oppose them because that meant “you become a traitor and stab your own people in the back.” One

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either adheres to the sacred community or is seen (and sees oneself) as a murderous, cowardly traitor. (p. 434)

The Auschwitz self periodically involved an experience of transcendence: of a psychic state so intense that time and death disappear. . . . One’s own sense of transcendence merges with the image of the endless life of one’s people. In that experience—or promise— of ecstasy, one may be ready to kill, or at least to sanction killing. (p. 473)

Supporting the separation of higher and everyday moralities was a “radically diminished feeling” of the Auschwitz self that Lifton called “psychic numbing,” together with derealization and disavowal (pp. 444–445). In all, the fourth major function of doubling is not to be comprehended by analogy with the lack of guilt in characterological psychopathy. It compares better but still imperfectly with the Kleinian concept of a manic defense (Winnicott, 1935/1992), a kind of trouble-free, reality-denying conscious elation in reaction formation against disavowed fear and depression. Doubling is, however, a syndrome that is induced voluntarily in the service of evildoing. It does not originate involuntarily as a symptom of developmental psychopathology.

HUMILIATION Like many commentators on terrorism, Jones emphasized the role of humiliation as a motivation. Humiliation may be defined as an interpersonal process that involves both an external humiliator and the person who feels humiliated (Eidelberg, 1959; Kaufman, 1980; Morrison, 1989). Conscious experience of humiliation is avoided through self-abasement in masochism and grandiosity in narcissism, but it is keenly felt both in health and in paranoia. O’Leary and Watson (1995) explained, Humiliation begins as shame does, with the exposure of a weakness. But, by contrast with the experience of shame, the humiliated person’s attention focuses not on his own deficiencies and his feelings about having them but on the other person’s role in bringing them to light. . . . Whatever the other person has done to belittle or ridicule absorbs the victim’s fullest attention. (p. 402)

Humiliation has its origin in the interaction of mother and infant. A baby howling in rage who is forced, however kindly, to the nipple, into a clean diaper, or into clothing presumably feels thwarted and humiliated, resulting in a masochistic reaction formation that Fairbairn (1952) termed the moral defense. Mother is consciously idealized while self is derogated; unconsciously, however, the reverse obtains. Mother is fantasized as a bad object while the

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innocence of the self is known but repressed. Miller (1990) noted that physical and sexual abuses may exacerbate the syndrome: The conviction that parents are always right and that every act of cruelty, whether conscious or unconscious, is an expression of their love is so deeply rooted in human beings because it is based on the process of internalization that takes place during the first months of life. (p. 5)

The psyche internalizes humiliation as long-lasting psychic structures (Fairbairn, 1952; Kaufman, 1980; Morrison, 1989). Once humiliation has been suffered repeatedly in infancy, it becomes an expectation not only of the mother but also of all recipients of mother transferences. People then expect and overreact to humiliation by people in general. Oversensitivity to humiliation is available for exploitation, for example, in bullying of all kinds, in the mutual humiliation that forms so much of normative peer behavior, and in emotionally abusive schooling, employment, religious organizations, and so forth. Humiliation is also the common currency of male chauvinism, racism, classism, homophobia, and other prejudices. A second aspect of humiliation that makes it useful for religious terrorists is the ease of its displacement. The distress of feeling humiliated can be deflected through aggressively shaming the humiliator. “Humiliation, hypersensitivity, and feelings of having been victimized run hand in hand. One feels wounded and wants to retaliate. The injustice weighs heavily and promotes revenge fantasies” (O’Leary & Watson, 1995, p. 403). “For individuals struggling to reassert their dignity, pride, and honor over their shame, and for nations that go to war to avenge their honor, humiliation walks hand-in-hand with seeking revenge” (Kaufman, 1989, p. 41). Importantly, humiliation can be displaced not only by turning it against the humiliator, but also by turning it against third parties. Sensitivity to humiliation that originated in the family, and was subsequently brought to acute discomfort through the teachings, rites, and interpersonal processes of an in-group, can be redirected by the group’s religio-political doctrines and practices to motivate revenge taken against outsiders. When groups exploit humiliation by intensifying it, they provoke shame-rage that needs an outlet. A target may then be provided by demonizing an out-group. Miller (1990) amply documented the abusive child rearing to which Germans of the Nazi generation had been subjected as children. Shaming is also widely employed in Arab child rearing (Racy, 1970). In-group teachings about Aryan racial contamination and Islamic religious defilement serve, however, to redirect shame-rage away from both the parents and the in-groups, toward Jews and other third parties. The arbitrary, irrational, and happenstantial character of the targeting process, which is a by-product of the in-group using humiliation as a means of recruitment and motivation, is what makes the relation to the out-group prejudicial.

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Humiliation is additionally useful for its capacity to facilitate doubling. Because psychic integration is accomplished through reflective thinking (Hinshelwood, 1997), emotions and mental states that inhibit reflectivity work also against integration. Kaufman (1980) credited humiliation with the power to interrupt thinking. “When feeling exposed, the conscious self becomes blank, if only momentarily. Gradually the self can learn not even to be aware of experiencing a feeling which generates shame” (p. 47). Not only does humiliation make reflective thinking impossible—so, too, do pain and fear—but also humiliation initiates the very process of doubling by supplying reflective ideas of its own. A basic aspect of shame involves a split in the self. The self simultaneously experiences itself as shame (shrinking, passive, helpless, exposed, and desiring to hide; as being bad, ugly, and worthless) and experiences the feelings, attitudes, and words of the shamer not only directed toward the self, but as if within the self. (Morrison, 1987, p. 69)

An individual feels shame in response to humiliation by a shamer, only because the individual’s superego introjects and empathizes with the shamer’s values at least momentarily. Sustained humiliation can inculcate and enforce new values, inducing the doubling of conscience.

THE SYNDROME OF THE COMPROMISE OF INTEGRITY In anti-Semitism, the doubling of Nazi doctors, and religious terrorism, we have been considering heinous acts of cruelty by people who are neither necessarily pathological nor of a single personality type, as evidence of a distinctive pattern of group psychological processes. Lifton’s concept of doubling is the most useful theory that I have encountered, but it has needed augmentation by Jones’s emphasis on idealization. We are concerned with a doubling not only of the self, as Lifton suggested, but also of conscience and its ideals. The question may next be asked whether doubling is restricted to extreme circumstances, or can also be detected in commonplace, everyday contexts. Addressing the topic of the psychology of Watergate, the psychoanalyst Leo Rangell (1974, 1976, 1980) proposed a diagnostic category that he termed the syndrome of the compromise of integrity. He considered the syndrome ubiquitous. Syndromes resulting from the compromise of integrity are endogenous to human life. Not just with income tax or marital fidelity where double standards are accepted norms—or with major or notorious frauds—but in the interpersonal transactions and daily traffic of everyday living—and at all levels of the social intellectual scale. (Rangell, 1974, p. 7)

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Watergate was simply a highly public and dramatic instance of the syndrome that was notable additionally for its group process. “The forty or so men under Nixon, who almost to a man went along and who participated with all that Nixon did, link the syndrome from the individual to the group” (Rangell, 1980, p. 208). Financial gain was not a demonstrably significant motive for their actions. Doubling seems, however, to have been involved. The higher patriotism of serving the president trumped ordinary morality. Sentenced to a minimum of ten months in prison, [Jeb] Magruder stated, “We were completely wrong. We had private morality but not a sense of public morality. Instead of applying our private morality to public affairs, we accepted the President’s standards of political behavior, and the results were tragic for him and for us.” (Rangell, 1980, p. 73)

Like anti-Semitism and suicidal religious terrorism, compromises of integrity vary independently of conventional understandings of both developmental psychopathology and personality. There is no evidence in any statistically controlled study that neurotics or psychotics are less honest than subjects who do not suffer from such psychiatric syndromes. Any of the neuroses or psychoses conventionally known on the scale of psychiatric pathology can exist without psychopathic, antisocial, or immoral behavior. Conversely, opportunistic, self-seeking, rule-breaking behavior, from the mildest to the most severe, takes place every day with none of the typical neuroses necessarily accompanying them. Of course, the two may coincide. But even when they do, they need not be causally linked. (Rangell, 1980, p. 208)

Recognizing the need for a new theory, Rangell (1974, p. 8) suggested that integrity is compromised when the ego, acting out of autonomous ego interests, both conflicts with the superego and successfully inhibits its demand for integrity. “Narcissism unbridled is the enemy of integrity” (p. 8). “The mechanism offered counters the superego value of consistency, the requirement to live up to superego principles” (p. 9). “Moral integrity, in the sense of the superego, depends on ego integrity, in the sense of wholeness” (p. 10). Arguing that neurosis occurs when the ego conflicts with the id and successfully inhibits its instinctual pressures, Rangell imagined that compromises of integrity formed an entire class of undocumented psychopathologies that is as large and complex as neuroses (p. 8). In quantitative terms, the syndrome of the compromise of integrity is no small category, but a large generic one on the level of neuroses and of the same ubiquity. From the nosologic standpoint, just as there is hysteria or

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obsession under neurosis and paranoia or depression under psychosis, so can subdivisions be classified under the rubric of compromise of integrity. (Rangell, 1980, p. 209)

Rangell (1976) claimed that he was advocating “a scientific, not a moralistic, attitude toward morals” (p. 57). Conforming to Hartmann’s system of ego psychology, Rangell’s account of the ego’s willfulness remained mechanical and amoral. What I have just emphasized is not a reactive but an initiating process within the ego itself. The difference is a profound one, with far-reaching implications for psychosocial theory. Impulses from the ego—an explanation of the power drive in man—can become as relentless and peremptory in psychic motivation as the force of instinctual drives. And these can operate for the good or the bad, toward ego achievements which only man can attain on the evolutionary scale, and toward the capacity for destruction and social disaster also reached only by man. (Rangell, 1976, p. 56)

In Rangell’s model, the ego acts under constraint of its interests and not through its integration with freely made choices. A number of traits are subsumed under narcissism. Grandiosity, a feeling of omnipotence, exhibitionism are all parts of it. Ambition and a craving for power, in the pathological sense described previously, both traits of high intensity and out of control, accompany the narcissistic syndrome. (Rangell, 1980, p. 62)

The chief ego interests, “ambition, power, and opportunism . . . create havoc when out of control although they are desirable qualities in normal human growth and development” (Rangell, 1976, p. 50). Ambition unbridled, mastery which expands to an insatiable quest for power, and opportunism which results in the ruthless seizing of advantages without concern for the consequences to others, are the three ingredients of “the syndrome of compromise of integrity.” . . . From the time that man has become organized into a social fabric of any degree of complexity, it is these traits which have been at the center of tyranny and destruction in human history. (pp. 50–51)

Rangell’s contributions on compromises of integrity advance our cumulative portrait of moral conflict. At the same time, Rangell wrongly took for granted that compromises of integrity must involve inhibitions of the superego—the phenomenon that Johnson (1949) had termed “superego lacunae.” A higher

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moral obligation that is produced through a doubling of conscience is not the same thing as a lacuna. We may nevertheless retain Rangell’s ideas of ego interests and the general concept of the ego’s defenses against the superego. Rangell was overly specific and mistaken in suggesting that the defense consists of an inhibition of the superego. Doubling of conscience utilizes idealization in order to effect a compromise between the ego and a superego that it is unable to inhibit. We need not hesitate, however, to confirm Rangell’s observation of the ubiquity of compromised integrity. Doubling is a normal part of everyday life. Doubling is involved in the distinction between private and public spheres of behavior, between family values and professional or business ethics. Among traditional Navajo hunter-horticulturalists, for example, sociability, good temper, humor, and kindness were associated with herbivorous species, femininity, and the social world of the village and horticulture; whereas violence, killing, anger, and humorlessness were separated, both ideologically and ritually, as carnivorous and masculine, and located in the wilderness of the hunt (Merkur, 1981). Comparable divisions of moral standards are by no means restricted to stone-tooled cultures. Discussing bureaucratic behavior, Devereux (1980) comprehended as a reaction formation what, I suggest, may be better interpreted as doubling when he noted that the delegation of hostile impulses to . . . organizational mores, so as to allow the individual to function, in informal contexts and on the personal level, in a humane, warm and reasonable manner, and to evolve a self-image in conformity with the humanitarian mores. (p. 328)

In both government bureaucracy and private enterprise in the modern West, where “the bottom line of the ledger” informs corporate ethics and culture, it is conventional to adopt an adversarial or oppositional attitude toward the general public who are ostensibly being served; and the attitude of hostility comes to be applied also to subordinates within the organizational structure. Doubling is ubiquitous and psychologically healthy. Because people are not all of one piece, but routinely behave differently in different types of relationship—for example, when interacting with peers, parents, and children—doubling can also be entirely ethical. At the same time, doubling is deeply implicated in some of the most egregiously unethical group processes of which we know.

GROUP PSYCHOLOGY Our argument has moved from the exceptionality of anti-Semitism, Nazi doctors, and religious terrorists, through Watergate, to the psychology of

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normalcy. At this juncture, it will be useful to consider several contributions on group psychology. Freud’s (1955/1921) major thesis in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego was his assertion that the distinctive behavior of groups, crowds, and mobs is characteristic also of behavior within families. Groups treat their leaders as siblings treat their fathers, idealizing and obeying them; and group members treat each other much as siblings behave, by jealously demanding equality of favoritism from their leaders. Freud offered the Catholic Church and the Army as his chief examples of groups. It is not without a deep reason that the similarity between the Christian community and a family is invoked, and that believers call themselves brothers in Christ, that is, brothers through the love which Christ has for them. . . . The like holds good of an army. The Commander-in-Chief is a father who loves all soldiers equally, and for that reason they are comrades among themselves. (p. 94)

Psychoanalysts have since added comparatively little to Freud’s major thesis. Redl (1942) cataloged 10 types of leaders, of which the “patriarchal sovereign” that Freud discussed was only one. He proposed the term central person, rather than leader, in order to designate the person “through emotional relationship to whom the group formative processes are evoked in the potential group members” (p. 576). In discussing the appeal of the leader, Freud (1955/1921, p. 81) had employed LeBon’s term prestige where it is today more conventional to use Weber’s term charisma; and studies of charisma suggest that Redl underestimated the variety of leaders that Freud’s formulations could accommodate. Schiffer (1973) remarked that “all leaders, including the charismatic, are to a meaningful degree creations of the people” (p. 6). Lindholm (1990) concurred, Even though charisma is thought of as something intrinsic to the individual, a person cannot reveal this quality in isolation. It is only evident in interaction with those who are affected by it. Charisma is, above all, a relationship, a mutual mingling of the inner selves of leader and follower. Therefore, it follows that if the charismatic is able to compel, the follower has a matching capacity for being compelled, and we need to consider what makes up the personality configuration of the follower, as well as that of the leader, if we are to understand charisma. (p. 7)

Because leaders are experienced as charismatic to the extent that their personalities complement the personalities and fantasies of their followers (Caper, 1999, pp. 9–10), Freud’s analogy between groups and families holds. Leaders can be as varied in their personalities as parents are. Leadership, in Freud’s sense, does not depend on a single personality type, but on a leader successfully connecting with followers whose personalities happen to be complementary.

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Another important addendum to Freud’s theory of group psychology may be derived from the psychiatrist Arthur J. Deikman’s (1990) discussion of religious cults—or, better, new religious movements. Echoing Freud’s account of groups, Deikman discussed compliance with the group and dependence on a leader, but he added that the groups that he studied also devalued the outsider and avoided dissent. Writing prior to Bandura’s listing of the dehumanization of victims as a characteristic component of terrorists’ moral disengagement, Deikman cautioned, “Perhaps the most important thing to understand about devaluing the outsider is that it is a necessary preliminary to harming others, to doing violence” (p. 102). Erikson (1977) had argued that the devaluation of outsiders is an inevitable consequence of possessing an identity that we think well of, both in ourselves and in those whose identities are similar. This circumstance leads to a dividing line between the “in” group, which shares a wider vision, and those “out” groups against which that vision must delineate itself by declaring them as basically dangerous and, therefore, to be ignored if distant enough, to be demeaned when too visible, and to be attacked when threatening to encroach. (p. 59)

To name this phenomenon, Erikson invented the neologism pseudospeciation. Man’s social evolution has built on the facts of “real” evolution a superstructure of tribal, national, and religious divisions, each dominated by a world view ascribing to itself some unquestionable superiority as “the people” and thus assigning an inferior status to all non-people. (p. 60)

Pseudo-speciation presumably has its unconscious basis in feelings within nuclear and extended families, which are secondarily extrapolated to larger tribal, national, ethnic, and other groups. Erikson’s theory that group identities inevitably and invariably imply distinctions between the in-group and outsiders dovetails with Deikman’s (1990) finding that new religious movements regularly devalue outsiders. Attitudes and behavior toward outsiders and out-groups need to be added to Freud’s model of group psychology. Deikman (1990) suggested that the “four basic behaviors . . . compliance with the group, dependence on a leader, devaluing the outsider, and avoiding dissent . . . are not distinct and independent but interrelated” (p. 48). The four behaviors are connected by a shared fantasy. Deikman explained, They arise in part from what I refer to as the dependency dream, the regressive wish for security that uses the family as a model, creating an authoritarian leadership structure (the parent) and a close-knit, exclusive group (the children). Since the leader-parent has many of the insecurities

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of the follower-child, reality must be distorted by both to maintain the child’s illusion (or wish) that the parent can always provide protection, that he or she has no weaknesses. Dissent is stifled because it casts doubt on the perfection of the leader and the special status of the group. Group compliance preserves security by supporting the beliefs crucial to the fantasy of superiority, beliefs which also explain the powers and entitlement of the leader and can no more be challenged than he or she. Outsiders, nonbelievers, are excluded and devalued for they do not believe what the group believes; if the group and leader are superior, the outsider is inferior. (p. 48)

Because the dependency dream is obliged to provide security, it invariably idealizes the leader and/or the group, while denying reality and promoting a fiction. It is a group analog to a manic defense. Deikman’s concept of the dependency dream agrees well with Ostow’s (1996) argument that anti-Semitism, in all its many aspects, has unity and transgenerational continuity in the myth about Jews that it promotes. Ostow used the term myth in the popular sense of a fiction or falsehood. He did not use the technical sense shared by religious studies and anthropology, in which myth is a traditional story about the divine, set at the beginning or end of time, that exemplifies and implicitly explains the power of the god or gods. Anti-Semitic tales of Jews are technically legends, in that they are stories about human beings, set in historical time, and ostensibly concerned with real events in the world we know. Two further studies may be mentioned in this connection. Robert A. Paul (1996), who is both an anthropologist and a psychoanalyst, defended Freud’s (1964/1939) claim in Moses and Monotheism that Jewish culture is burdened by a collective guilt over the death of Moses. Paul rejected categorically Freud’s speculations that the guilt is inherited genetically through a Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics. He proposed instead that the biblical text of the Moses story, with its narrative of ingratitude toward Moses and Moses’s tragic failure to reach the Promised Land, inculcates guilt in its readers, generation upon generation. The guilt that Jews experience in connection with the biblical text furnishes manifest content for the unconscious oedipal dynamics that Freud located at the core of Jewish cultural identity. More recently, Daniel D. Hutto, a philosophical psychologist, has argued that children learn to understand the intentional actions of others from “folk psychological narratives,” that is, the narratives that convey the ideas of folk psychology in their discussions of people’s intentions. These theses may be contrasted with the regnant view in psychoanalysis that different tales and genres of tale appeal to children at different developmental stages, because children select manifest contents that are appropriate for the expression of the unconscious dynamics that are alive within them at the time (Arlow, 1961; Boyer, 1977, 1979; Merkur, 2005). Ostow, Paul, and Hutto instead made cases for reversals of the direction of influence. Instead

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of personality shaping folklore, they argued that folklore may shape—and distort—personality. That myth and legend play a pathogenic role in the inculcation of doubling deserves serious consideration. Some narratives may express dependency fantasies; others, such as anti-Semitic narratives, may instead function as the biblical text does, as vehicles of group humiliation.

THE UBIQUITY OF DOUBLING Once the pattern is apprehended, multiplying examples of the doubling of conscience is simple and alarming. The duality of the sacred and the profane (Caillois, 2001/1959; Eliade, 1961–1959), which is present in religions throughout the world, is immediately recognizable as an instance of doubling, with the special values of the sacred being privileged over ordinary human values that are derogated prejudicially as profane. In addition, religions everywhere impose at least some moral obligations (Little & Twiss, 1978; Outka & Reeder, 1973), creating opportunity for humiliation in the process. Ritual obligations may be further occasions for the humiliation that is integral to the inculcation of doubling. Doubling also prevails throughout a second major sector of modern life. Deikman (1990) remarked at intervals throughout his book on parallels between the emotional and psychological pressure tactics that new religious movements impose on their group members and the treatment of management by large corporations in the United States. Managers are often required to subordinate their family’s needs to the corporation, working long hours and on weekends, and taking work home to be done in the evening. Managers are regularly transferred, every few years, from one city to another, decreasing their involvement in local communities and increasing their dependency on the corporation and its personnel. Sycophancy toward corporate leadership is often rewarded. Dissent is often suppressed and sometimes punished (Deikman, 1990, pp. 61–63, 68, 137). The pattern of doubling is also to be recognized in the myth of capitalism, with its claims of moral superiority to other economic arrangements; the fictional security to be derived from capitalism as mediated by the corporation of one’s employment; the treatment of consumers as outsiders; the disavowed devastation wrought politically, economically, and environmentally by uncontrolled greed; and so on. The Canadian documentary film The Corporation (2004), based on the book by Joel Bakan and directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott, took the corporation’s legal status in the United States as a “person” as its point of departure and diagnosed psychopathy. Doubling may be nearer the mark. Psychoanalysis is yet another cultural institution where prejudice and the doubling of conscience are pandemic. Freudians, Adlerians, and Jungians

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have engaged in prejudicial behavior toward each other for nearly a century, and matters repeatedly worsened within psychoanalysis through its multiple division into rival schools (King & Steiner, 1991; Kirsner, 2009; Roazen, 2000, 2001, 2002). Psychoanalytic terms such as orthodox, classical, neo-Freudian, and heretical all express prejudices. They denote differences in fealty to mainstream fictions about Freud. They do not name intellectual positions in collegial debates within a scientific discipline. The concept of a psychoanalytic superego refers to the special moral obligation, not to heal, but to heal in a way that is specifically “psychoanalytic” according to one or another definition of the latter; the phrase wild analysis is a pejorative that is used primarily to derogate qualified psychoanalysts, and only rarely to identify untrained practitioners

CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS The variety of healthy and morbid personalities, and the variety of morbidities, that engage in prejudice, as exemplified by anti-Semitism and suicidal religious terrorism, makes prejudice an exceptionality to the dominant paradigm that traces culture to character. Prejudice is an exception to the conventional assumption that human thought and behavior are always causally determined in an exclusively automatic manner. Prejudice involves both automatic processes and behavior that is voluntary and libertarian. Prejudice may be recognized as an instance of the process that Lifton called “doubling” with reference to the psychology of Auschwitz doctors. The sense of self undergoes doubling in order to conform to two distinct social realities, and to preserve the primary self despite the self-traumatizing behavior that is required of the second. Doubling also involves extensive denial that suppresses knowledge of distressing aspects of self and reality. Doubling specifically avoids consciousness of guilt, among other manners, by dehumanizing victims in conformance to higher ideals and values. Jones emphasized that the idealization initiates further processes, such as shame and rage. Coordinating Lifton’s and Jones’s models, I suggest that doubling involves both the self and conscience. When the self is doubled, so too is its conscience. Group processes may voluntarily induce doubling by manipulating conscious and unconscious humiliation within the group. In order to avoid humiliation, people learn to conform to group doctrines and behavior toward outsiders. In this way, prejudice may be acquired as a manifest content that displaces onto outsiders humiliation that has its origin within the group. The doubling of self and conscience is not limited, however, to prejudice, but is a commonplace of “peer pressure” throughout normal life. Rangell discussed “the syndrome of the compromise of integrity” as moral hypocrisy that facilitates criminal behavior; but in other cases doubling may be morally innocuous. For example, the realistic demands of work and family life may produce

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significantly divergent moral standards in the two social contexts, particularly when work requires violent aggression, for example, among hunters, soldiers, and police. Further instances include the duality of the sacred and the profane, the disparity of corporate and consumer values, and the rivalry of psychoanalytic schools.

REFERENCES Abraham, K. (1979). Dreams and myths: A study in folk-psychology. In Clinical papers and essays on psycho-analysis. New York: Brunner/Mazel. (Original work published in 1909.) Ackerman, N. W., & Jahoda, M. (1948). The dynamic basis of anti-Semitic attitudes. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 17, 240–260. Arlow, J. A. (1961). Ego psychology and the study of mythology. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 9, 371–393. Aviram, R. B. (2009). The relational origins of prejudice: A convergence of psychoanalytic and social cognitive perspectives. Lanham, MD: Jason Aronson. Bandura, A. (2004). The role of selective moral disengagement in terrorism and counterterrorism. In F. M. Moghaddam & A. J. Marsella (Eds.), Understanding terrorism: Psychosocial roots, consequences, and interventions (pp. 121–150). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Basch, M. F. (1978). Psychic determinism and freedom of will. International Review of Psycho-Analysis, 5, 257–264. Berko, A. (2009). The path to paradise: The inner world of suicide bombers and their dispatchers (Trans. E. Yuval). Washington, DC: Potomac. Bohleber, W. (2003). Collective phantasms, destructiveness, and terrorism. In S. Varvin & V. D. Volkan (Eds.), Violence or dialogue? Psychoanalytic insights on terror and terrorism (pp. 111–130). London: International Psychoanalytic Association. Boyer, L. B. (1977). Mythology, folklore, and psychoanalysis. In B. B. Wolman (Ed.), International encyclopedia of psychiatry, psychology, psychoanalysis, and neurology (Vol. 7, pp. 423–429). New York: Aesculapius & Van Nostrand. Boyer, L. B. (1979). Childhood and folklore: A psychoanalytic study of Apache personality. New York: Library of Psychological Anthropology. Caillois, R. (2001). Man and the sacred (Trans. M. Barash). Urbana: University of Illinois Press. (Original work published in 1959.) Caper, R. (1999). A mind of one’s own: A psychoanalytic view of self and object. London: Routledge. D’Andrade, R. G. (1986). Three scientific world views and the covering law model. In D. W. Fiske & R. A. Shweder (Eds.), Metatheory in social science: Pluralisms and subjectivities (pp. 19–41). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Deikman, A. J. (1990). The wrong way home: Uncovering the patterns of cult behavior in American society. Boston: Beacon Press. Devereux, G. (1957). The criteria of dual competence in psychiatric-anthropological studies. Journal of Hillside Hospital, 6, 87–90. Devereux, G. (1980). Sadism, superego and the organizational mores. Journal of Psychoanalytic Anthropology, 3, 327–333.

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Eidelberg, L. (1959). Humiliation in narcissism. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 7, 274–283. Eliade, M. (1961). The sacred and the profane: The nature of religion (Trans. W. R. Trask). New York: Harper Torchbook. (Original work published in 1959.) Erikson, E. H. (1977). Toys and reasons: Stages in the ritualization of experience. New York: Norton. Fairbairn, W. R. D. (1952). Psychoanalytic studies of the personality. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Freud, S. (1955). Group psychology and the analysis of the ego. In The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 18, pp. 69–143). London: Hogarth Press. (Original work published in 1921.) Freud, S. (1958). Totem and taboo: Some points of agreement between the mental life of savages and neurotics. In The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 13, pp. 1–161). London: Hogarth Press. (Original work published in 1913.) Freud, S. (1964). Moses and monotheism: Three essays. In The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 23, pp. 6–137). London: Hogarth Press. (Original work published in 1939.) Hartmann, H. (1958). Ego psychology and the problem of adaptation. New York: International Universities Press. Hinshelwood, R. D. (1994). Attacks on the reflective space: Containing primitive emotional states. In V. L. Schermer & M. Pines (Eds.), Ring of fire: Primitive affects and object relations in group psychotherapy (pp. 86–106). London: Routledge. Hinshelwood, R. D. (1997). Therapy or coercion? Does psychoanalysis differ from brainwashing? London: Karnac. Johnson, A. M. (1949). Sanctions for superego lacunae of adolescents. In: K. R. Eissler (Ed.), Searchlights on delinquency: New psychoanalytic studies (pp. 225–45). New York: International Universities Press. Jones, J. W. (2002). Terror and transformation: The ambiguity of religion in psychoanalytic perspective. Hove, UK: Brunner-Routledge. Jones, J. W. (2008). Blood that cries out from the earth: The psychology of religious terrorism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kardiner, A. (1939). The individual and his society: The psychodynamics of primitive social organization. New York: Columbia University Press. Kaufman, G. (1980). Shame: The power of caring. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman. Kaufman, G. (1989). The psychology of shame: Theory and treatment of shame-based syndromes. New York: Springer. King, P., & Steiner, R. (1991). The Freud-Klein controversies 1941–1945. London: Tavistock Routledge. Kirsner, D. (2009). Unfree associations: Inside psychoanalytic institutes (2nd ed.). Lanham, MD: Jason Aronson. Klein, M. (1975). Love, guilt and reparation and other works. 1921–1945. New York: Delacorte Press. Kohut, H. (1972). Thoughts on narcissism and narcissistic rage. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 27, 360–400. Lifton, R. J. (1976). The life of the self: Toward a new psychology. New York: Simon & Schuster.

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Lifton, R. J. (1986). The Nazi doctors: Medical killing and the psychology of genocide. New York: Basic Books. Lifton, R. J. (1999). Destroying the world to save it: Aum Shinrikyo, apocalyptic violence, and the new global terrorism. New York: Henry Holt. Lindholm, C. (1990). Charisma. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Little, D., & Twiss, S. B. (1978). Comparative religious ethics. San Francisco: Harper & Row. Loewenstein, R. M. (1947). The historical and cultural roots of anti-Semitism. Psychoanalysis and Social Science, 1, 313–356. Merkur, D. (1981). The psychodynamics of the Navajo Coyoteway ceremonial. Journal of Mind and Behavior, 2, 243–257. Merkur, D. (2005). Psychoanalytic approaches to myth: Freud and the Freudians. New York: Routledge. Miller, A. (1990). For your own good: Hidden cruelty in child-rearing and the roots of violence (3rd ed., trans. H. Hannum & H. Hannum). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Morrison, A. P. (1989). Shame: The underside of narcissism. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press. Morrison, N. K. (1987). The role of shame in schizophrenia. In H. B. Lewis (Ed.), The role of shame in symptom formation (pp. 51–87). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. O’Leary, J. V., & Watson, R. I., Jr. (1995). Paranoia. In M. Lionells, J. Fiscalini, C. H. Mann, & D. B. Stern (Eds.), Handbook of interpersonal psychoanalysis (pp. 397–417). Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press. Ostow, M. (1996). Myth and madness: The psychodynamics of antisemitism. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Outka, G., & Reeder, J. P., Jr. (1973). Religion and morality: A collection of essays. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press. Paul, R. A. (1996). Moses and civilization: The meaning behind Freud’s myth. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Racy, J. (1970). Psychiatry in the Arab East. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, (Suppl. 211), 11–79. Rangell, L. (1974). A psychoanalytic perspective leading currently to the syndrome of the compromise of integrity. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 55, 3–12. Rangell, L. (1976). Lessons from Watergate: A derivative for psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis Quarterly, 45, 37–61. Rangell, L. (1980). The mind of Watergate: An exploration of the compromise of integrity. New York: Norton. Redl, F. (1942). Group emotion and leadership. Psychiatry, 5, 573–596. Roazen, P. (2000). Oedipus in Britain: Edward Glover and the struggle over Klein. New York: Other Press. Roazen, P. (2001). The exclusion of Erich Fromm from the I.P.A. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 37, 5–42. Roazen, P. (2002). The trauma of Freud. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Róheim, G. (1932). Psycho-analysis of primitive cultural types. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 13, 1–224. Schiffer, I. (1973). Charisma: a psychoanalytic look at mass society. New York: Free Press. Symington, N. (1990). The possibility of human freedom and its transmission (with particular reference to the thought of Bion). International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 71, 95–106.

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Varvin, S. (2003). Dealing with terror—a plea for a measure of reflection and dialogue. In S. Varvin & V. D. Volkan (Eds.), Violence or dialogue? Psychoanalytic insights on terror and terrorism (pp. 237–242). London: International Psychoanalytic Association. Wallwork, E. (1991). Psychoanalysis and ethics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Winnicott, D. W. (1992). The manic defence. In Through paediatrics to psycho-analysis: Collected papers (pp. 129–144). New York: Brunner/Mazel. (Original work published in 1935)

ch apter 4

Punishment as a Restraint of Evil David J. Jennings II, Aubrey L. Gartner, Everett L. Worthington Jr., Don E. Davis, Joshua N. Hook, Chelsea L. Greer, Daryl R. Van Tongeren, and Todd W. Greer

He who does not punish evil commands it to be done. —Leonardo da Vinci Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature: these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind are set on work, and guided. —John Locke

INTRODUCTION In this chapter, we consider whether punishment is an effective means of restraining evil. Punishment generally involves the application of something aversive, and at times painful, onto someone who has violated a law, standard, or social norm. Because evil and punishment involve the infliction of suffering, the means and severity with which punishment is implemented are the subjects of much debate. We consider punishment’s effectiveness to restrain evil in the context of the individual (i.e., through moral emotions), the family system (i.e., through corporal punishment with children), and society (i.e., through group cooperation and the justice system). In each context, we discuss punishment’s effectiveness and its limitations. Hugo Grotius, the 17th-century philosopher of law, defined punishment as “the infliction of an ill suffered for an ill done” (as cited in Bean, 1981, p. 2). The word punish comes from the Latin word punire, which means to inflict a penalty on or cause pain for some offense. Punishment is imposed

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on individuals when they have committed some form of wrongdoing, such as violating a law, rule, social norm, or standard of society. Punishment is generally imposed by someone in a position of authority (e.g., a ruler, judge, officer of the law, teacher, or parent). Punishment can be implemented in a variety of ways and involves something that is negative (i.e., unpleasant, if not painful) for the recipient. In the behavioral theory formulation, punishment is a consequence following a behavior that makes the behavior less likely to occur in the future (Skinner, 1953). In this chapter, we examine how punishment might restrain evil. We define evil as a willful act that inflicts or causes suffering upon another human being. Examining punishment as a method to restrain evil is somewhat paradoxical because punishment, by definition, involves inflicting something aversive onto a person, which produces suffering. Thus, even though punishment might be inflicted with good motives by the punisher, it is often perceived as evil by the one punished. Because this juxtaposition appears contradictory, the idea of punishment has been philosophically and morally debated for centuries.

HISTORY OF PUNISHMENT To recount a full history of punishment is beyond the scope of this chapter, though it stands to reason that punishment has existed since the beginning of human society. In the biblical account of creation in Genesis, God punishes Adam and Eve for eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden and condemned to die (at least some day) as punishment for their disobedience. One of the earliest codes of law discovered for a society in the ancient world is the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi (1790 BC). The code outlines rules of conduct for Babylonians and the punishments for breaking these laws, the most common of which was death or the loss of some extremity. Similarly, Moses delivered the Ten Commandments to the Hebrews as God’s requirements for how they should conduct themselves as his people. In the Book of Leviticus, the laws and regulations for virtuous living (i.e., worship, morality, interpersonal relations, and government) are outlined in great detail for the Hebrew people, including punishments for disobedience. The Assyrians and Romans were also well known in the ancient world for their brutal means of punishing and executing wrongdoers. Undoubtedly, for any society throughout history to flourish, it must have had a way to reasonably enforce its laws and values. Punishment had to be strong enough to be unpleasant and to deter future transgressions. However, too severe a punishment (e.g., loss of life or limb) could destroy the wrongdoer’s productivity and contribution to society. Many ancient civilizations, concerned

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more with the collective than with the individual, resorted to the most barbarous means of punishment to accomplish the goal of social control. Comparatively, many Western societies have questioned the morality and effectiveness of using harsher forms of punishment.

DEBATE ABOUT PUNISHMENT Questions concerning the value of punishment, its purpose, and how it should be implemented have been widely debated. Typically, a theory of what punishment is thought to accomplish falls into one of three categories: retributive, deterrent, or reformatory (Gerber & McAnany, 1972; Grupp, 1971). Under retributive theory, punishment involves the infliction of pain onto someone who has committed some wrong. Put simply, it asserts people should be punished because it is just and right for one to be punished for breaking a law or social norm, and it would be wrong for one to go unpunished for such a violation. Those holding to a deterrent theory of punishment argue that punishment inflicts pain onto wrongdoers in order to deter them from repeating the offense and to deter others, through social learning, from committing a similar offense. Deterrence theory contends that the utility of punishment to deter offenses justifies its use, and punishment should not be aimed at mere retribution. The third category, reformatory (or rehabilitation) theory, arose largely as a humanitarian reaction to the poor treatment of criminals and the poor conditions in which they were held. The idea behind reformatory theory is that punishment is justified only if it provides a humane way of reducing an individual’s tendency and desire to commit the same or other crimes in the future. In contrast to deterrence theory, the aim of punishment is to change the individual’s attitude about his or her behavior (i.e., to come to view his or her behavior as wrong and to reform or rehabilitate). The goal, therefore, is an intraindividual change and not to prevent other members of society from similar wrongdoing. Judging from the existence of systems of punishment in the vast majority of societies, most consider punishment of some kind necessary to preventing evil regardless of how one justifies its use. Evil exists, and without some restraints, those who choose to commit evil would likely prevail. However, in this chapter, rather than argue the best motivation for engaging in the punishment of wrongdoing, we have limited our concern to a utilitarian question: “How well does punishment actually work in restraining evil?” In the behavioral sense, it is not punishment if it does not decrease behavior. So really the question is “When people are trying to prevent behavior, what strategies of punishment work best when?” We consider the question of punishment’s effectiveness to restrain evil in three contexts: the individual, family system, and society.

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PUNISHMENT AND THE INDIVIDUAL We first examine the extent to which punishment restrains evil within the individual. In this section, we attempt to answer the following questions. First, how do we as humans self-regulate our behavior to prevent us from committing harmful acts upon others? Second, are there emotions that create such an aversive state that we will inhibit our impulses in order to avoid those emotions in the future? To answer these questions, we will examine moral disengagement theory and the role of moral emotions on behavior.

MORAL DISENGAGEMENT THEORY In social-cognitive theory, mechanisms of personal agency are responsible for moral reasoning and actions (Bandura, 1991). Simply put, people refrain from doing things that will violate their own personal morals as well as the standards of society because doing so will bring about selfcensure and aversive emotional states. Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara, and Pastorelli (1996) postulated this self-regulatory system operates by three major subfunctions: (a) self-monitoring of one’s conduct, (b) judgment of conduct by evaluating whether situational circumstances meet up with internal standards or ideals, and (c) the anticipation of positive and negative self-reactions for different forms of behavior. However, our self-regulatory system can be selectively activated and disengaged through a variety of practices allowing people to commit harmful acts that might otherwise go against their conscience (Bandura, 1999, 2002; Bandura et al., 1996). These practices provide key insights into the nature of self-regulation and how we as people find creative ways for committing and justifying evil acts.

Reprehensible Conduct According to Bandura’s model, the first set of disengagement practices is concerned with the behavior itself. Moral justification is the process by which a detrimental act is committed based on a higher moral imperative (e.g., killing an abortion doctor because one believes abortion is morally wrong and justifies murder). Using euphemistic language, destructive or harmful behavior is sanitized by giving it a more benign label, allowing the behavior to be performed with a clearer conscience (e.g., “I’m not killing a doctor—I’m saving lives”). Finally, advantageous comparison also mollifies the sense that an act might be evil by contrasting it with a greater evil (e.g., killing thousands of unborn children is more reprehensible than killing one doctor). Regardless of which tactic is used, the consequence of these practices involves inflicting suffering onto another person while feeling not only justified in one’s actions but also at times even morally superior for the behavior.

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Distortion The second set of disengagement practices, according to Bandura, is accomplished through distorting the agent of the behavior or the detrimental effects the behavior causes its victims. Through displacement or diffusion of responsibility, people are able to absolve themselves of personal responsibility when societal or group pressure is involved in evil acts (e.g., the Nazi soldiers carrying out the execution of innocent Jews because they were commanded to do so by their superiors). Additionally, people may disregard or distort the consequences of their actions by minimizing the detrimental effects of the behavior on the victim. Studies have shown that perpetrators do in fact minimize the negative outcome of their behavior on victims, and they tend to highlight mitigating details or justifications for their actions more so than victims (Baumeister, Stillwell, & Wotman, 1990; Feeney & Hill, 2006; Stillwell & Baumeister, 1997; Zechmeister & Romero, 2002).

Perception of Victims The last set of practices relates to how the offender views the victim. Through dehumanization, people justify immoral acts on other people on the basis of considering those people subhuman. This type of practice would have been largely responsible for the subjugation and ill treatment of slaves by otherwise law-abiding citizens. The final practice of disengagement is called attribution of blame, whereby individuals blame the other party as responsible for the punishment or pain they have inflicted on them because of the victim’s prior actions. This is the “You brought it on yourself ” rationale. The reasoning goes, “Whatever harm I may have caused you, I was justified because of your actions, and you are the one who is ultimately responsible.” Bandura et al. (1996) investigated how these moral disengagement practices would influence aggressiveness, prosocial behavior, self-sanctions for transgression behaviors, and delinquent acts. They found that individuals who practice moral disengagement had higher levels of anger, ruminate more over perceived grievances, are less prosocially oriented, experience less guilt, and behave more aggressively and injuriously than those who apply the principle of moral self-sanctions. In other words, the ability to regulate committing injurious acts is largely predicated on the ability to self-censure. If we view self-censure as a form of punishment (e.g., bad behavior elicits aversive emotions such as guilt and shame), it would seem this ability is an effective means of deterring individuals from committing evil.

GUILT AND SHAME Baumeister, Vohs, DeWall, and Zhang (2007) suggest that the mechanism for how emotions affect behavior is through a feedback system that

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influences our cognitive processes, which in turn affect our decision and behavior regulation processes. For example, if a boy steals money from his parents, he will experience practical and emotional consequences (e.g., being grounded or feeling guilty). The boy will then cognitively analyze the behavior and establish a new lesson and rule for future behavior (i.e., “If I steal, then I’ ll get in trouble,” or “Stealing is wrong”). These processes all contribute to his affective residue toward the offensive behavior (i.e., dislike for stealing). When at a later time the boy has the opportunity to steal again, it will elicit the memory of his past stealing and outcome. This leads to affective dislike for stealing and recollection of his rules for stealing. These rules will then inform the boy’s decision about whether or not to steal based on his desired emotional outcome (i.e., not stealing so he doesn’t feel guilty). Generally, when people violate their moral standards or do harm to another person, they experience aversive feelings. When a person sees themselves as not living up to their moral standards, moral emotions (e.g., guilt or shame) provide immediate punishment of behavior (see Tangney, Stuewig, & Mashek, 2007, for a review), making it less likely that the person will repeat the behavior in the future. People make decisions seeking to avoid guilt or shame in the future (Tangney et al., 2007). Thus, although these emotions are negative, they can internally motivate people to avoid doing evil. In the case of anticipatory guilt or shame, these emotions may prevent people from committing evil. In cases where an individual has already committed an injurious act, shame and guilt may prevent them from repeating the offense. Research on shame and guilt, from the Western-individualistic tradition, shows the two emotions to be experienced differently, with different effects on behavior and on the individual (however, individuals in collectivistic cultures find that shame causes one to focus on one’s relationship with the group, not introspection on one’s failure to live up to one’s own ideals; Sue & Sue, 1990). Shame involves negatively evaluating the global self, whereas guilt involves negatively evaluating a particular behavior (Lewis, 1971). This distinction is an important one because shame seems to be associated with greater emotional pain and has a greater negative effect on behavior than does guilt. Studies have found shame to be positively associated with anger, hostility, externalization of blame, low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, eating disorder symptoms, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and intentions toward illegal behaviors. Shame has also been found to be negatively related to other-oriented empathy. Conversely, the moral emotion of guilt has been positively associated with perspective taking and empathic concern, and it is negatively associated with delinquency, aggression, anger, and antisocial and risky behavior (for a review of these studies, see Tangney & Dearing, 2002; Tangney et al., 2007).

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It is theorized that seeing oneself as a “bad person” (i.e., shame) rather than seeing oneself capable of “bad behavior” (i.e., guilt) leads to a greater egocentric focus that inhibits constructive behaviors, particularly in the wake of relational failure or harm (Tangney, 1991, 1995; Tangney & Dearing, 2002). Guilt, on the other hand, leads people to acknowledge their wrongdoing and seek relational repair. The distinction between shame and guilt makes an important statement about the constraint of evil within individuals. Guilt, an aversive emotion, is necessary and good for promoting right behavior and facilitating relational repair, thereby preventing evil from either occurring or preventing its escalation. However, shame, which is considered to be a more aversive emotion than guilt, is associated with greater negative psychological and interpersonal outcomes. In this case, it would seem that a moderate amount of punishment is good to the extent that it produces a sense of guilt that inhibits future evil actions. However, too much punishment may produce a sense of deep shame that could create the opposite of its intended effect. The amount of punishment that is too little, too much, or just the right amount differs by individual and perhaps by culture.

PUNISHMENT IN THE FAMILY SYSTEM Parents often supply humans’ first experiences of punishment in the world. Punishment is also a core value for many in how they choose to raise their children, hoping that their children will one day become responsible and productive members of society. Parents punish children by a variety of different means (e.g., physical spanking, time-out, isolation, and restriction); however, corporal punishment is the most controversial and researched form of punishing children. Proverbs 13:24 states, “Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him” (ESV). Many have interpreted this verse to mean that physical punishment is necessary and good for the well-being and development of children, whereas others have eschewed its use. Most parents use some form of discipline to deter misbehavior (that could potentially lead to evil); however, parents may experience confusion or conflict regarding how to use punishment most effectively. Because of the controversy surrounding its effectiveness, we will focus our attention on the use of corporal punishment. Though most American parents admit to common physical punishment practices such as spanking (94%; Straus & Stewart, 1999), many parenting experts (i.e., the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, American Bar Association, and American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry) have advocated against the use of corporal punishment. Nevertheless, some psychologists argue that there is a place for corporal punishment in the effective parent’s disciplinary tool belt (i.e., Larzelere & Kuhn, 2005). When differentiated from overly severe physical

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punishment (i.e., excessive force, hitting, slapping, or biting; Baumrind, Larzelere, & Cowen, 2002), customary and nonabusive physical punishment techniques have been found to be more strongly associated with reduced noncompliance and antisocial behavior than other disciplinary tactics (Larzelere & Kuhn, 2005). Compared to alternative disciplines, Larzelere and Kuhn (2005) found in a meta-analysis that physical punishment was only associated with worse outcomes when it was used too severely or as the primary disciplinary method of the parents. Furthermore, their research suggests that milder punishments (e.g., time-out) can be even more effective when enforced with conditional spanking (e.g., spanking used as a secondary form of discipline when the child will not remain in time-out). Despite the potential, though contested, value of corporal punishment in reducing immediate antisocial behavior, noncompliance, and aggression, some leaders in the field continue to call for universal and unconditional avoidance of its use (i.e., Durrant, 2008; Gershoff, 2002). An estimated 25 countries around the world have now legally banned the use of all forms of corporal punishment with children. Sweden became the first country to abolish the use of corporal punishment in 1979. The effects of the ban have been researched and hotly contested. Whereas some researchers have noted the ban’s positive effects (Durrant, 1999, 2000), others have observed an increase of criminal assaults in the generation raised after the ban was enacted (Larzelere, 2008). One reason argued to support the universal avoidance stance is that there is a slippery slope between mild conditional spanking and more severe physical punishment (Durrant, 2008). Imagine a young mother who is tired and frustrated with her toddler in the middle of a temper tantrum. She may first try to put her toddler in time-out when he won’t stop screaming. When the child continues to cry and scream while being placed in timeout, it may seem acceptable to resort to conditional spanking to enforce the time-out discipline. However, the well-intentioned mild spank to the child’s buttocks may end up as a swift slap or hit that is more severe than intended. Parents who resort to secondary forms of discipline are generally at a point of increased frustration, and they may have a reduced capacity to monitor the severity of the physical punishment in this emotional state, thereby inadvertently spanking the child too harshly (Durrant, 2008). There is ample research that warns about the negative effects of physical punishment on children. For example, a meta-analysis by Gershoff (2002) illustrated that although spanking is related to immediate compliance, it is associated with depression, relationship difficulties, child aggression, and difficulties with long-term compliance. Higher levels of corporal punishment have been shown to predict characteristics of a callous and unemotional interpersonal style (i.e., lacking empathy and guilt) along with increased

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antisocial behavior (Pardini, Lochman, & Powell, 2007). Additionally, greater levels of physical punishment are related to higher family conflict, more negative parental relationships, more depressive symptoms, more perceived nonsupport, and negative social relationships in young adults (Leary, Kelly, Morrow, & Mikulka, 2008). Corporal punishment is also believed to make it more difficult for children to internalize parental messages about prosocial behavior and inhibit conscience development (Hoffman, 1983; Kochanska, 1993). Furthermore, physical punishment has been shown to be a risk factor for child delinquency and serious and violent juvenile offending (Loeber & Farrington, 2000). Despite the disagreement in the utility of corporal punishment, most researchers agree that conditional spanking or other forms of mild corporal punishment are not sufficient to facilitate positive character development in children. Corporal punishment can help punish unwanted behaviors, but other methods of discipline are needed to help teach children which behaviors are in fact desired (Baumrind et al., 2002; Larzelere & Kuhn, 2005). The research on corporal punishment shows that it, at best, has little promise for developing positive character traits inconsistent with evil behavior, and, at worst, it might promote acts of evil (i.e., antisocial behavior and violence) if used too severely or frequently. However, we cannot conclude based on the existing research that corporal punishment is ineffective in all circumstances. Furthermore, parents use other forms of punishment as well (e.g., loss of privileges, time-out, etc.). Research suggests that combining any form of mild punishment, both corporal and noncorporal, is most effective when combined with reasoning to discipline toddlers (Larzelere, Schneider, Larson, & Pike, 1996). The discipline practices associated with both preventing misbehavior and encouraging positive child behavior include clear rules and requests by the parent, direct reinforcement of behavior that is incompatible with the misbehavior, time-out, brief negative punishment (withdrawal of privileges or rewards), and reasoning (Lock & Prinz, 2002). Additionally, when punishment is considered part of parental control (i.e., parental behavior aimed at controlling, managing, or regulating child behavior through discipline, rewards and punishment, and supervision), it is considered to have a positive effect on child development (Kuppens, Grietens, Onghena, & Michiels, 2009). The manner and consistency in which punishment is delivered are also important aspects regarding its effectiveness. Gordon, Jones, and Nowicki (1979) found that high intensity of punishment was associated with maladjustment, aggression, and impulsivity in boys, and withdrawal and inhibition in girls. Likewise, inconsistency of punishment was associated with maladjustment as well in both sexes. It seems that although there is some place for corporal punishment in restraining short-term antisocial or deviant behavior, physical and harsh

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punishment is more predictive of antisocial behavior in the long term. However, other forms of punishment, when combined with nurture and consistency, are effective in preventing poor character development that could lead to perpetrating evil as an adult. Looking at this in the context of moral emotions, it may be that harsh punishment that is inconsistent may lead children to develop shame-proneness and appraisals of themselves as flawed, whereas logical punishment that fits the behavior and is predictable may help children develop guilt and a greater sense of moral self-regulation. Thus, parental discipline may actually mirror and help shape the child’s emotion regulation strategies. Similar to findings when looking at punishment in the context of the individual, some punishment is necessary for the constraint of evil and the positive development of children within the family system. However, when punishment is too severe or applied inconsistently, the outcomes are poor and could lead to problematic behaviors in adulthood.

PUNISHMENT AND SOCIETY Perhaps the most significant area to examine the use of punishment in the constraint of evil is at the societal level. Most obvious is the use of punishment in the penal system because its very purpose is to do just that—to punish those who commit evil and prevent evil acts from reoccurring. Another important area to consider, particularly from an evolutionary standpoint, is the role punishment plays in enhancing cooperation among groups, which has impacted the way societies have developed over time.

COOPERATION AMONG GROUPS Behaviorism teaches that positive incentives and rewards are generally more effective than punishment for eliciting compliant behavior on an individual level. However, a growing body of literature shows that punishment can be effective in certain situations for inducing cooperation among groups of people (Caldwell, 1976; Oliver, 1984; Pruitt & Gleason, 1978). Researchers have argued that punishment, especially altruistic punishment, evolved as a social tool for promoting cooperation in human societies (Fehr & Gächter, 2002). Altruistic punishment occurs when people are willing to punish others in society, particularly free riders who do not contribute to the group or those whom they consider to have acted unfairly, even when doing so incurs a personal cost to the punisher with no obvious personal benefit (Fehr & Gächter, 2002; Seymour, Singer, & Dolan, 2007). These researchers theorize that altruistic punishment explains the evolution of human cooperation among genetically unrelated people in nonrepeated interactions. Studies using economic games (e.g., the prisoner’s dilemma, the public goods game, and the ultimatum game) have consistently found that the

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right balance of punishment enhances cooperation (Boyd & Richerson, 1992; Fehr & Gächter, 2002; Oliver, 1984; Yamagishi, 1988). However, although punishment promotes cooperation, it can also have adverse effects on outcomes. Oliver (1984) found that punishment was in fact effective for increasing cooperation within group apex games with a sample of 216 college students, but its use provoked problems of retaliation and anger. She found that those who were justly punished sometimes retaliated to save face. Furthermore, because the punishments were given anonymously, some participants found themselves the undeserved recipients of this retaliation, and they retaliated in turn for their unjust punishment, leading to a costly retaliatory spiral. Others have found that unfair punishment actually decreased cooperation (Fehr & Rockenbach, 2003; van Prooijen, Gallucci, & Toeset, 2008). Finally, punishment, although increasing cooperation, can actually neutralize its effects. Dreber, Rand, Fudenberg, and Nowak (2008) demonstrated that although the option to punish increased cooperation in an economics game, those who punished most often ended up with the lowest profits. The belief in supernatural punishment is purported to be another source of punishment that has contributed to the evolution of cooperation among cultures. Johnson and Krüger (2004) argue that before modern mechanisms such as the justice system were firmly in place, something must have existed in early human history to deter crime and evil. Because of the universal practice of religion and the common belief of some form of supernatural punishment for wrongdoing, they contend this conviction is responsible for establishing cooperative norms in early societies, and that it may offer a better explanation than the idea of altruistic punishment for how civilizations evolved. These authors theorize that religion provided a system of cooperation enforced by punishment through three complementary mechanisms: (a) religious traditions that established the laws and norms of conduct for the group, (b) threat of supernatural punishment for those who violate the laws and norms, and (c) admonishment and punishment of those who violate the norms by other members of the community. Although the actual data to support this theory are sparse, there is some evidence that cultural belief in a high god (i.e., one who created all reality and has ultimate authority and power to govern the natural world) is associated with greater cooperation across a sample of 186 societies around the globe (Johnson, 2005). In conclusion, punishment, whether at the hands of other within-group members or at the hands of a supernatural being, increases cooperation and was plausibly necessary for the evolution of societies. However, punishment within this context is again not without its problems. It increases the likelihood of aggression and retaliation, and if judged to be unfair, actually reduces cooperation.

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PUNISHMENT WITHIN THE LEGAL SYSTEM The concept of justice appears to be a basic human value. The belief in a just world, that people get what they deserve, is a strong motivational influence when people are faced with injustice (Lerner, 1980). At the societal level, we employ a retributive justice system that repairs justice through unilateral application of punishment. In other words, a judge punishes the offender as he or she sees fit without input from the offender. Once the offender receives his or her punishment, justice has been served (Wenzel, Okimoto, Feather, & Platow, 2008). The retributive justice system also assumes that punishment effects specific and general deterrence. Specific deterrence theory suggests that punishing criminal offenders will result in reduced future offending specifically for the punished offenders. General deterrence theory, on the other hand, suggests that punishing criminal offenders deters offending for other members of society as well (Brennan & Mednick, 1994). In other words, we assume that by punishing offenders we can restrain evil in both current offenders and society at large. As previously noted, there is much debate over these theories of punishment and their respective merits and effectiveness. The legal system upholds the value of justice so that the more severe crime a person commits, the more severe punishment he or she receives. This idea of proportional punishment, that the punishment should fit the crime, is especially relevant in the context of heinous and depraved crimes. Unfortunately, no such standard of what constitutes an evil crime exists; instead, a label of evil or heinous is inconsistently applied. For example, both sides of a legal case use language of evil in order to sway the jury in their sentencing (McPherson, 2002; Welner, 2003). The validity of proportional punishment, however, has been called into question as an effective way of achieving justice in our modern society (i.e., Braithwaite, 2006; Curtis & Nygaard, 2008). In a review of the literature, Doob and Webster (2003) concluded that “sentence severity has no effect on the level of crime in society” (p. 143). There is some evidence that capital punishment, the most severe form of punishment in our society, does not on the general level deter violent crime (Cheatwood, 1993). One study found that in real death penalty cases, expert ratings of degree of heinousness of the crime and psychopathology of the prisoner could not consistently discriminate between the most and least heinous crimes in terms of sentencing outcomes (McPherson, 2002). Furthermore, research has shown that, for offenses that held a maximum penalty of no more than a 3-year sentence, imprisonment was followed with increased probability of recidivism compared to a suspended sentence (i.e., when the offender’s prison sentence is suspended provided the offender demonstrates good behavior for a specific length of time; Cid, 2009).

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One possible explanation for the ineffectiveness of the current methods of punishment is labeling theory. Labeling theory suggests that once imprisoned, offenders will adopt a self-image of an offender and deviant member of society. Consequently, they will have greater difficulty readjusting to society post imprisonment (Cid, 2009). This suggests that imprisonment as a form of punishment may increase recidivism (Cid, 2009). Although it is unclear whether punishing offenders actually prevents them from committing future evils (i.e., specific deterrence), perhaps punishing evildoers prevents others from doing evil (i.e., general deterrence). Vicarious punishment includes both the knowledge of another person’s criminal behavior and knowledge of the consequences of that behavior (Stafford & Warr, 1993), but does having such knowledge prevent people from committing evil acts? To answer this question, we must consider both the effects of punishment and the effects of avoiding punishment when evil has been perpetrated (punishment avoidance). Stafford and Warr (1993) reconceptualized general and specific deterrence theories into a comprehensive theory that includes the avoidance of punishment both directly and indirectly. Deterrence theory suggests that experiences of punishment (both direct and indirect) decrease future offending, whereas punishment avoidance (both direct and indirect) increases future offending. Several studies have empirically tested deterrence theory (Piquero & Paternoster, 1998; Piquero & Pogarsky, 2002; Pogarsky, Piquero, & Paternoster, 2004; Sitren & Applegate, 2007). When a person avoids punishment directly (i.e., escaping punishment for a wrong he or she committed) or sees punishment avoided indirectly (i.e., observation of someone else escaping punishment for a wrong committed), he or she is more likely to do wrong in the future (Piquero & Paternoster, 1998; Piquero & Pogarsky, 2002). Pogarsky et al. (2004) found that direct and indirect punishment decreased a person’s future offending by increasing the perception of certainty of punishment. Similarly, direct and indirect punishment avoidance increased future offending through reducing the perception of certainty of punishment. Sitren and Applegate (2007), in a study on cheating, also found empirical support for deterrence theory. Specifically, they found that participants’ experience of escaping punishment reduced their expectations for punishment and thereby increased the likelihood of future academic dishonesty. However, in opposition to deterrence theory, the authors found that both personal and indirect experience of punishment was positively related to one’s likelihood of future offending. Some scholars have called for a reform in the punitive legal justice system (i.e., Curtis & Nygaard, 2008; Latimer, Dowden, & Muise, 2005; Wenzel et al., 2008). There is growing research promoting the use of restorative justice rather than retributive justice. Restorative justice seeks to provide

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justice in a community context so that it emphasizes healing for the victim(s) and restitutional punishment, with a bilateral discussion between the victim and offender of how to address a transgression. If punishment of the offender is involved, restorative justice promotes constructive punishment that calls the offender to do something for the victim (Wenzel et al., 2008). In a metaanalysis on restorative justice, Latimer et al. (2005) found that restorative justice is associated with lower reoffending and is considered by both victims and offenders to be fairer than traditional nonrestorative justice approaches. However, these findings may partially be explained by an inherent selfselection bias of victims and offenders who choose to participate in restorative justice rather than the traditional court process (Latimer et al., 2005; Wenzel et al., 2008). Despite these methodological limitations, the findings show promise for the use of restorative justice measures and its potential role in reducing future perpetration of evil. Restorative justice that involves punishment is also considered fairer than responding to a transgression with no punishment (Okimoto, Wenzel, & Feather, 2009). Another possibility for transforming how we punish criminals is the concept of therapeutic justice (Curtis & Nygaard, 2008). Supporters suggest that a response to a crime should include not only punishment but also rehabilitation of the deficiencies of the offender that contributed to the act of the crime. In short, we should teach offenders the skills and give them the tools to prevent reoffending. Imprisonment would only be used for dangerous offenders and those who were noncompliant with the alternative rehabilitative responses. In sum, research suggests that punishment has some impact on restraining evil in the criminal justice system. However, traditional approaches to punishment must be reevaluated. Punishment, if primarily retributive in nature, has little rehabilitative effect for reducing future offending. Once again, punishment works, but it seems to again have only immediate value. Yes, if we incarcerate people, they can no longer commit heinous crimes, thereby constraining the perpetuation of evil at least within society. Unfortunately, evil is often rampant among prisoners as they continue to inflict injury upon one another, and once released, recidivism rates are high. Perhaps the greatest value of punishment may be in its deterrent effects on a general level. However, the certainty of punishment is important. When punishment is avoided rather directly or indirectly, the likelihood of reoffending increases.

CONCLUSION In this chapter, we considered the question of whether punishment effectively reduces the occurrence of evil within individuals, children, and society. The literature on this question can be quite confusing. It is our view that some punishment is necessary for the restraint of evil. Individuals must have some form of self-censure to regulate moral behavior, and aversive feelings of

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guilt for wrongdoing promote prosocial and pro-relational actions. Parents must punish children to teach them proper restraint of antisocial and aggressive impulses, so that they conform to the norms of society and become productive members therein. Punishment within groups, and perhaps the fear of supernatural punishment, has been instrumental in the promotion of cooperation among individuals and the evolution of society. Finally, criminals must be punished for breaking the laws of society; otherwise, the avoidance of punishment may lead to increased offending. However, we also believe that there are limitations on the value of punishment to restrain evil over time. First, too much punishment can be detrimental. At the individual level, too much self-censure associated with feelings of shame and seeing oneself as a “bad” person leads to anger, hostility, and other negative outcomes that could contribute to harmful behaviors. Severe, intense, and inconsistent punishment of children can lead to antisocial behavior, delinquency, and increased violence. Additionally, severity of punishment does little to deter criminal activity or rehabilitate offenders, and punishment that is perceived to be unfair can provoke anger and retaliation within groups. Second, punishment that is not paired with other forms of discipline (e.g., teaching and rehabilitation) is likely to restrain evil in the short term but not in the long term. Thus, it is our view that the optimal value of punishment in restraining evil occurs when punishment is used in a moderate amount and is paired with some type of constructive discipline. If evil involves inflicting suffering onto another human being, using punishment to restrain evil poses a problem in that it also inflicts suffering onto others. The mixed data on its effectiveness are evidence of this paradox. Punishment is effective at constraining evil across a variety of settings and circumstances, but the manner and intensity in which it is delivered are extremely important. Too much punishment can itself cause harm and be considered evil. Too little punishment will be ineffective and offends our sense of fairness and justice. Although punishment for retribution’s sake may protect society from further harm, it has little value for the individual. However, too soft a punishment in the interest of humanitarianism is a disservice to both society and the individual as well. As C. S. Lewis stated, “Mercy, detached from Justice, grows unmerciful” (1971, p. 308). In the end, any form of punishment in whatever context must be balanced with mercy and not just an attitude toward punishing for the sake of punishment but also an eye toward the greater good for all parties involved.

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Fehr, E., & Gächter, S. (2002). Altruistic punishment in humans. Nature, 415, 137–140. Fehr, E., & Rockenbach, B. (2003). Detrimental effects of sanctions on human altruism. Nature, 422, 137–140. Gerber, R. J., & McAnany, P. D. (Eds.). (1972). Contemporary punishment: Views, explanations, and justifications. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Gershoff, E. T. (2002). Corporal punishment by parents and associated child behaviors and experiences: A meta-analytic and theoretical review. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 539–579. Gordon, D. A., Jones, R. H., & Nowicki, S., Jr. (1979). A measure of intensity of parental punishment. Journal of Personality Assessment, 43, 485–496. Grupp, S. E. (Ed.). (1971). Theories of punishment. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hoffman, M. L. (1983). Affective and cognitive processes in moral internalization. In E. T. Higgins, D. Ruble, & W. Hartup (Eds.), Social cognition and social development: A socio-cultural perspective (pp. 236–274). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Johnson, D. D. P. (2005). God’s punishment and public goods: A test of the supernatural punishment hypothesis in 186 world cultures. Human Nature, 16, 410–446. Johnson, D. D. P., & Kruger, O. (2004). The good of wrath: Supernatural punishment and the evolution of cooperation. Political Theology, 5, 159–176. Kochanska, G. (1993). Toward a synthesis of parental socialization and child temperament in early development of conscience. Child Development, 66, 325–347. Kuppens, S. Grietens, H., Onhgena, P., & Michiels, D. (2009). Associations between parental control and children’s overt and relational aggression. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 27, 607–623. Larzelere, R. E. (2008). Disciplinary spanking: The scientific evidence. Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, 29, 334–335. Larzelere, R. E., & Kuhn, B. R. (2005). Comparing child outcomes of physical punishment and alternative disciplinary tactics: A meta-analysis. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 8, 1–38. Larzelere, R. E., Schneider, W. N., Larson, D. B., & Pike, P. L. (1996). The effects of discipline responses in delaying toddler misbehavior recurrences. Child and Family Behavior Therapy, 18, 35–57. Latimer, J., Dowden, C., & Muise, D. (2005). The effectiveness of restorative justice practices: A meta-analysis. Prison Journal, 85, 127–144. Leary, C. E., Kelley, M. L., Morrow, J., & Mikulka, P. J. (2008). Parental use of physical punishment as related to family environment, psychological well-being, and personality in undergraduates. Journal of Family Violence, 23, 1–7. Lerner, M. J. (1980). The belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. New York: Plenum. Lewis, C. S. (1971). The humanitarian theory of punishment. In S. E. Grupp (Ed.), Theories of punishment (pp. 301–308). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Lewis, H. B. (1971). Shame and guilt in neurosis. New York: International Universities Press.

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Lock, L. M., & Prinz, R. J. (2002). Measurement of parental discipline and nurturance. Clinical Psychology Review, 22, 895–929. Loeber, R., & Farrington, D. P. (2000). Young children who commit crime: Epidemiology, developmental origins, risk factors, early interventions, and policy implications. Development and Psychopathology, 12, 737–762. McPherson, S. B. (2002). Heinousness in capital crimes: Myths of proportionality and social protection. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 25, 459–472. Okimoto, T. G., Wenzel, M., & Feather, N. T. (2009). Beyond retribution: Conceptualizing restorative justice and exploring its determinants. Social Justice Research, 22, 156–180. Oliver, P. (1984). Rewards and punishments as selective incentives. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 28, 123–148. Pardini, D. A., Lochman, J. E., & Powell, N. (2007). Development of callous-unemotional traits and antisocial behavior in children: Are there shared and/or unique predictors? Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 36, 319–333. Piquero, A. R., & Paternoster, R. (1998). An application of Stafford and Warr’s reconceptualization of deterrence to drinking and driving. Journal of Research in Crime Delinquency, 35, 3–39. Piquero, A. R., & Pogarsky, G. (2002). Beyond Stafford and Warr’s reconceptualization of deterrence: Personal and vicarious experiences, impulsivity, and offending behavior. Journal of Research in Crime Delinquency, 39, 153–186. Pogarsky, G., Piquero, A. R., & Paternoster, R. (2004). Modeling change in perceptions about sanction threats: The neglected linkage in deterrence theory. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 20, 343–369. Pruitt, D. G., & Gleason, J. M. (1978). Threat capacity and the choice between independence and dependence. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 4, 252–255. Seymour, B., Singer, T., & Dolan, R. (2007). The neurobiology of punishment. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 8, 300–311. Sitren, A. H., & Applegate, B. K. (2007). Testing the deterrent effects of personal and vicarious experience with punishment and punishment avoidance. Deviant Behavior, 28, 29–55. Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and human behavior. New York: Macmillan. Stafford, M. C., & Warr, M. (1993). A reconceptualization of general and specific deterrence. Journal of Research in Crime & Delinquency, 30, 123–135. Stillwell, A. M., & Baumeister, R. F. (1997). The construction of victim and perpetrator memories: Accuracy and distortion in role-based accounts. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 1157–1172. Straus, M. A., & Stewart, J. H. (1999). Corporal punishment by American parents: National data on prevalence, chronicity, severity, and duration, in relation to child and family characteristics. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 2, 55–70. Sue, D. W., & Sue, D. (1990). Counseling the culturally different: Theory and practice (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley. Tangney, J. P. (1991). Moral affect: The good, the bad, and the ugly. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 61, 598–607. Tangney, J. P. (1995). Shame and guilt in interpersonal relationships. In J. P. Tangney & K. W. Fischer (Eds.), Self-conscious emotions: The psychology of shame, guilt, embarrassment, and pride (pp. 114–139). New York: Guilford.

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Tangney, J. P., & Dearing, R. (2002). Shame and guilt. New York: Guilford. Tangney, J. P., Stuewig, J., & Mashek, D. J. (2007). Moral emotions and moral behavior. Annual Review of Psychology, 58, 345–372. Van Prooijen, J. W., Gallucci, M., & Toeset, G. (2008). Procedural justice in punishment systems: Inconsistent punishment procedures have detrimental effects on cooperation. British Journal of Social Psychology, 47, 311–324. Welner, M. (2003). Response to Simon: Legal relevance demands that evil be defined and standardized. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 31, 417–421. Wenzel, M., Okimoto, T. G., Feather, N. T., & Platow, M. J. (2008). Retributive and restorative justice. Law and Human Behavior, 32, 375–389. Yamagishi, T. (1988). The provision of a sanctioning system as a public good. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 110–116. Zechmeister, J. S., & Romero, C. (2002). Victim and offender accounts of interpersonal conflict: Autobiographical narratives of forgiveness and unforgiveness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 675–686.

ch apter 5

The Role of the Church in Mitigating Evil Myrna Pugh

The problem of evil is pervasive and encompasses all of life and all of our behavior. Is there anything we can do to soften the impact or damage inherent in evil? Political, scientific, or social systems do not seem to have an answer. There is one option for realizing some hope in the fight against evil and its consequences. This is the Church. When we speak of the Church, does a building come to mind, or perhaps Sunday services in a quaint out-of-theway edifice? This picture is not the essence of the Church. We seem to equate spirituality with places or certain behaviors. Just as we seem to hold to proscribed understandings of what evil is, we also have a vague and sometimes false picture of the Church. Evil and the Church cannot be separated, and it would be helpful if we could define them both while making them real and understandable.

DEFINING EVIL It is far easier to rail against evil than to understand it, for in order to understand evil, we must penetrate its systems and explore its depths and parameters. We must also conquer our fear of evil if we want to take control over any part of it. We must know our enemy if we are to own our own lives. Some have described evil as abstract and ethereal. Others see evil as the absence of good, and certainly this is true, yet evil is much more than this. Still others have taken the position that evil is corporate, personal, and real. This is the position of the Universal Church. Evil is malignant in its very essence. It is like a cancer growing out of control within its host, consuming all that it touches. It is a voice, sometimes whispering in the darkness, sometimes screaming in our faces. It is an

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influence and suggestion in our heart of hearts. At times it is overt, and at others it is covert. Evil has an agenda with goals and strategies and knows how to achieve them. It is a force that arises from both within and from without. This internal and external force is so subtle that we are largely unaware of its operation in our hearts, minds, and souls. Evil has been a part of us from birth, and we are acquainted with its voice. Evil’s agenda is not a secret. The Church has been aware of evil’s purposes for eons. The biblical narrative is filled with warnings, predictions, and guidelines on how to deal with evil. The problem arises with the choices many make to not acquaint themselves with the multitude of information contained within its pages. Jesus spoke a great deal, and the early writers of the New Testament wrote much, about how to overcome evil; indeed, much of the New Testament has been devoted to this vital issue. To study the New Testament is to study the ways of evil and the defeat of it. At the heart of evil is deceit. Evil seeks to deceive us about its true agenda, and most people have believed its lies. The agenda of evil is to lie to us and kill us all. Jesus was quick to shine the light on this when he accused some of those who followed him around. Many of those who went with him did not truly want to become his disciples; they only wanted to trip him up, because they had their own agenda. He accused them of Belonging to their father the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he is speaking his native language, for he is a liar, and the father of lies. (John 8:44 NIV; quoted in Barker, 1985)

Jesus did not mince words here. He clearly laid out the agenda of Satan. From this, we can ascertain that we are marked for death by Satan, and that we get there because we believe his lies. Evil is a study in opposites. Whatever good is, evil is the opposite. In the world of science, where we would like to find the answers to all things, including the problem of evil, we can see that almost everything that exists has an opposite. For example, we know what matter is and how it operates. We can measure, describe, and test it. Science has also discovered that matter has an opposite, antimatter. It behaves in opposition to matter in all its ways.

EVIL AS AN OPPOSITE We know that almost everything can be spoken of in terms of contrast, such as light versus dark, dry versus wet, up versus down, white versus black, good versus bad, and life versus death. So it is with evil. Whatever

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good is, evil is the opposite. These opposites could be described as alternate states of being. Some have attempted to describe evil solely on the basis of behavior using psychology or social constructs. These are merely a few tools that we use to understand evil and how it affects our lives. In this respect, the behavior of evil might represent the opposite of all we know about our world and how it operates. The biblical narrative offers us a broader, deeper, and far more developed framework in which to study evil, for it tracks evil from its beginning to the present. The picture leaves little doubt of the existence of evil, its origins, and its agenda. We discover the agenda of evil early on in the narrative. Genesis 2:9 (NIV) describes two very special trees in the Garden of Eden. One tree is the tree of life, and the other tree is the tree of knowledge, specifically knowledge of good and evil. Newly created Adam was admonished not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God explained it clearly to Adam. He said categorically, “When you eat of it you will surely die” (Genesis 2:17). We not shocked to learn that when Satan was selling Eve a bill of goods, he slyly called God a liar when he told her, “You will not surely die” (Genesis 3:4). The telling of the lie became the catalyst for the drama to follow. Adam and Eve were called upon to make a choice. Would they believe God, who had forbidden them to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, with its promise of death to come; or would they choose to believe the serpent who cleverly disguised his real agenda under the guise of the desirability of truth seeking? To their dismay, they learned that God meant what he had said. They did surely die, and all their offspring with them. When we ask ourselves, “Does God keep his promises?” the answer is “Yes.” God always keeps his promises, and death is the result of choosing to believe a lie. Every time we pass by or visit a cemetery, we are witnessing the truth of God’s word. A cemetery is proof that God always keeps his promises. Death came when they chose to switch from God’s control to Satan’s control. Death is a consequence of believing a lie spoken to them by Satan. What is shocking is that she naïvely believed this lie. Faced with the choice of whether to believe the truth or a lie, Adam and Eve fell into the trap so carefully laid by Satan. In large part, evil has to do with the choices we make in our lives. When we choose to partake of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it sets in motion a process of death, as it did with Adam and Eve. We have all chosen to do that, just as Adam and Eve did. Our fate is wrapped up in their fate. They were no more able to escape their fate, once it was started, than we are. Our fate is the same as theirs: to choose to believe the lies of evil and then to die. It is part of the DNA of Adam and Eve, and is a portion of the legacy we have inherited from them. What we know for certain is that evil is made up of equal parts of lies and death. They go together, hand and glove. Satan

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is adept at lying to us, and death is the end result of believing those lies. Like Adam and Eve, we all traverse our way from an ideal paradise to a fallen state of death. Jesus also reminds us that Satan came to “steal, kill, and to destroy” (John 10:10). What is it exactly that he is stealing from us? It is that state of innocence that we first experienced, and then bargained away, when we first believed the lies of evil. It is that ideal paradise of life, then on to the lies that lead to the darkness of the grave. Sooner or later, death will find each of us and will extract the price for our own failure to heed the warning that our first parents succumbed to. It is only the various causes of death, and the manner in which we meet it, that provide any variance in its dark purposes.

DEFINING THE CHURCH We cannot discuss the role of the Church in relationship to evil without discussing what the Church is and what it is not. Most people believe the Church is an edifice or physical repository of ethics, beliefs, codes, or rituals of behaviors performed for the purpose of attempting to get God to do something we want Him to do. We call this organized religion. Although this is certainly a portion of the role of the Church, it is not the Church itself. This is not the essence of the Church. The Church may be located in a physical location, but it is secondary to the actual Church itself. The Church is made up of individuals who have responded to an internal voice to “Come, follow me” (John 10:26). Those who have responded to this voice have abandoned the desire or need to get God to do what they want, and have surrendered their will to Him. True believers may or may not be affiliated with a movement, denomination, or faith belief system. One thing is clear here: They have an intimate relationship with God, in the person of Jesus Christ. Many of them are to be found within the trappings of organized religion, but many are not. They also are a study in opposites. They were lost, now they have been found; they were seekers, and they are now finders; they lived in darkness, and now they live in light; and they once were crippled and now are whole. They would sum up their belief system into one word: relationship. This is one thing that evil seeks to destroy in the Church. Satan fears this relationship with God above all and will do anything to prevent it from developing. The Church also has an agenda, to stop the rising tide of evil from consuming everything and everyone in its path. We know that evil in all its manifest venues, models, practices, and behaviors is all about power and control. Whatever evil strives to do to us, in order to control us and prevent us from having this relationship with God, the response of the Church is to push back against it. The Church has declared war against evil, and every believer has been commissioned as an officer or soldier in that endeavor and God is our commander-in-chief.

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The Church is unlike any other force, agency, or entity in the world. It is unique and designed to operate in the realm of spiritual activities. The specific role of the Church, in the face of evil, is to stand in opposition to it, to resist in every way possible the advance of evil. We are the dissonant voice, the truth tellers, the caregivers to a wounded world, the messenger of hope to those who live in chaos and darkness. Our weapons are unlike the weapons we would see in a modern army. We do not engage in propaganda as does the enemy. Our weapons of war are ancient and battle tested over millenniums. They are mostly defensive and internally generated. They are subtle and not easily recognized by most people. They are spiritual in nature and not as numerous or complicated as those of our enemy. However, first impressions can be misleading. Our weapons are generally very effective when they are employed correctly. We have excellent armor with which to protect ourselves. Because we fight a spiritual war, it makes sense that our weapons are spiritual as well. We see this in 2 Corinthians 10:3–5 as Paul explains our weapons to us. He said, For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

As we have noted, the battle is one of opposites, so each of our weapons is designed to combat each of our enemy’s weapons. For example, one of the favorite weapons that Satan likes to use against us is lies. He uses lies of every sort. He has had thousands of years in which to perfect his lies, and he is very good at what he does.

THE WEAPON OF TRUTH Our weapon is the only weapon that works against lies, and that is truth. No other weapon exists that can or will defeat a lie except truth. Jesus put a great deal of emphasis on truth telling. He prefaced much of his teaching with “I tell you the truth” (John 10:7). Whenever Jesus wanted to make an important point, he began by saying, “I tell you the truth.” Jesus is the essence of God the Father, in other words, the most knowable form of God. When he stressed the importance of truth and knowing the truth, it was for a purpose. Truth is a powerful weapon in the right hands. A woman who had a history of domestic violence kept it hidden for many years. Recently she was forced into her husband’s car, and this was observed by a policeman. Her husband was arrested and served some time in jail. Not only did she report the abuse, but also she stood in the midst of her extended

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family and told them her history of abuse. No one was aware of the abuse until she spoke the truth. She reported how good it felt to actually speak the truth for the first time. Incidentally, her husband is a minister. It was no accident that Jesus referred to himself as Truth (John 14:6). Here he clearly identifies himself as Truth. He was demonstrating an aspect of who God is. God is truth, and Jesus was saying that he is Truth, not merely a truth, but the truth. If only lies can be found in Satan, then the opposite is to be found in Jesus. Truth is the only proper response to lies. This holds true for individuals as well as the nations of the world. At the present time, the world listens to and believes the lies that Satan tells them. Every recovery program, regardless of the nature or form it might take, or what it might look like, is based on telling the truth. Truth is acknowledging who and what you are and how you came to be who you are. It is discovering how to speak it clearly. When we learn to do this, we will move on in our lives. It is an essential part of becoming an adult. This is true to becoming a spiritual adult as well. It is true that Jesus loves us just the way we are. It is also true that he loves us too much to leave us that way. Part of moving from a state of victimization to one of victory is learning to tell the truth. It is difficult to be a victim and be victorious at the same time. When Jesus made the bold statement, “Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32), he was referring to himself as God. It is somewhat like saying, “God is love.” Just as this is a true statement, so is the statement that “Jesus is truth.” One of the reasons Jesus came to earth was to show us what God the Father was like by his teaching and actions. He stressed the truth so intensely because he is truth, not simply teaching about truth, although he did that, but to let people know that he alone could set them free from the things that kept them in chains. When we speak of freedom in any sense, we are speaking of Jesus, for he is truth incarnate. If we want to be free of evil in our personal lives, that freedom will only be found in Jesus Christ. Telling lies becomes an ingrained habit for many people. Some people cannot tell the truth under any circumstances. This is a serious pathology and is found in increasing numbers in dysfunctional people and families. Truth is getting to be very scarce in the marketplace of life. Satan is a chronic and pathologic liar. He cannot tell the truth under any circumstances. In order to understand where and how to apply truth as a weapon, we must understand the lies spread by Satan. If we know what the truth is, regardless of what form, manner, or style it takes, we can counter those lies. This is why true believers need to be informed, involved in world affairs, responsive to those spiritual alerts that tell us we are needed in the battle, and willing to engage the enemy on his own turf. In other words, we need to take the fight to him and stop living in spiritual foxholes.

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COUNTERFEIT DECEPTION One of the most effective weapons used against believers is that of counterfeiting. Criminals and other agents of evil often engage in the art of counterfeiting money and false documents that are then used to finance evil projects. Counterfeiting seeks to deceive gullible people by appearing to be something it is not. It looks very much like the real thing, but is merely a copy. There are certain properties that are present in the original but that do not appear in the counterfeit copy. This is especially true in the spiritual world. Young, inexperienced, or needy people are particularly vulnerable to this tactic of the enemy. Satan can and does pass himself off to gullible people as the real deal. Those who are acquainted with the true spirit of God are not likely to buy into his deception. However, those who are not on intimate terms with God would be fair game for this kind of lying deception. Believing this lie will quickly bring pain, loss, shame, and death in the end. It is the purpose of the Church to expose these counterfeit spirits, and to do that we must be steeped in the truth of what is real and what is phony. Satan is very efficient at counterfeiting spiritual life. He does this by deceiving those who are living in the dark, searching for the light. Satan masquerades as that light they are desperately looking for. He offers them a taste of what they want and need, and they are hooked. There are numerous cults, groups, cliques, and counterfeit religions that operate solely in order to catch the unwary in the grip of evil. Satan can offer them nothing that will free them from their sinful nature, nor the guilt and shame that come with the package. What he does offer them is a “feel-good” emotional high that is not truly what they need. Those who believe this are unaware that they are actually in bondage and slavery. Because counterfeiting is a function of deceit, the weapon for the Church is exposure to the light of truth. We can and must expose each and every lie used by the enemy to the light of day. Only when we can see that what Satan is actually offering is not real, or original, but a lie, will those lies disappear under the scrutiny of the light. Light reveals what is going on in the dark, and because this is where Satan operates, he must be revealed as he truly is. This can only happen in the light.

LIGHT AS A WEAPON The Church is called to be a light to the world. Jesus spoke of himself as being Light, and he also commissioned us to be the light of the world. He went on to say, A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead, they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men,

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that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:14)

We are to shine like a beacon and light the way for those following behind. Just as a lighthouse shines bright light out over the water to guide ships away from dangerous rocks and treacherous waters, we are to be like that beacon of light, warning those who about to crash into the clutches of evil, and offering them a way of escape. Our light does not need to be a strobe light in order to be effective. Sometimes a small single light can do the job of leading someone away from the cliffs. In ancient times, people had only small clay lamps to guide them. Yet, those little lamps have guided many a soul to their destination. If you are only a one-person light, then be a one-person light. For example, perhaps you will not need the bright illumination that an evangelist such as Billy Graham might require, but you might be a shepherd of a flock of only one or more. The important thing to remember is that you need to keep your light turned on at all times, for you never know when a lost soul might need your individual light to find their way to spiritual safety. A New Testament parable illustrates this point clearly. Jesus admonished those who were lazy to make sure their lamps had enough oil, in advance of an important marriage, because they never knew when the bridegroom would come to claim his bride. Those who waited until the last moment or who had not seen to their lamps at all were forbidden to participate in the wedding. They missed out on the entire celebration (Matthew 25:10). In fact, Jesus said that he did not even know them. They missed out on heaven because they were foolish and were unprepared. We do not want to miss out on the celebration of victory because we were lazy. Without light, we will be unable to participate in the war against evil. Light is one of the celebrated qualities of the character of God. Light was the first act in the very beginning of the creation process (Genesis 1:3). Without light, there would be no food or shelter, except in caves. No animals would be raised for food or work. Humans depend on light for our very lives. Without it, we would die quickly. Light has so many spiritual aspects that we equate it with God himself (Psalms 27:1). One psalm describes God as follows: “The Lord is my light and my salvation” and “Your word is the lamp for my feet and the light for my path” (Psalms 119:105). The Apostle Paul paints a bleak picture when he gives us both the good news and the bad news. We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the one who was born of God keeps him safe, and the evil one cannot harm him. We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. (1 John 5:18–19)

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The good news is that we have protection from evil, and the bad news is that the entire world is languishing and taking a beating from evil. Does the Church have problems? Yes! Do we always get it right? No! The Church does have problems, some major ones, and they all have implications for the war we are supposed to be waging against our enemy, Satan. One huge problem for the Church is that there is much infighting among the body. This is one of the most effective tactics used by Satan. If we are constantly fighting among ourselves, we are not engaging the forces of evil. Infighting is a mark of immaturity, and sometimes the Church looks more like a romper room brawl instead of an organized army of seasoned soldiers out on the front lines. Divide and conquer is a good, effective way to deflect a fighting force and cause them to use up their resources on the wrong targets. This problem can be overcome by better training by the Church on how to wage spiritual warfare successfully. Often, the army does not even recognize the actual enemy, and they end up wounding one another. An army that is immobile or unavailable because of being wounded by “friendly fire” is not a well-trained army. It is easy to see that an army such as this would be reluctant to go into battle because they would be taking a chance that they might be brought down by their fellow soldiers. The proper response to this infighting is a difficult one for human beings. We must give up our right to have it our way. We must learn to put our conflicts and foolish desires aside and petition God to bring harmony into the situations. Most of the time, the things we fight about in the Church are small petty issues. However, some issues are worth fighting for. For example, we must get our doctrine right, or we will wander around like blind people, for we will be blind. We need to know God and His son, Jesus, so well that we cannot be confused with Satan’s lies. This confidence only comes with a strong relationship with Christ. When we observe how Jesus handled conflict and persecution, we have a model that will serve us well in this arena. Many times, Jesus walked away from confrontation. He did not become bogged down in unnecessary conflict. There were times when he confronted openly, but when he did, it was a conflict that was worthy of engagement. We ought to be able to examine each issue and decide if this is the hill we are ready to die on. We need to choose our battles wisely, like Jesus did. A related issue is that not only do we wound our own soldiers but also we are not equipped to help them recover from their wounds. Much of our army is in disarray because they are left on their own to either recover or die. So many people have been wounded by the very Church they are trying to serve that they do not know where to go for help. The Church ought to be a safe place in which to recover from our wounds. However, when it is the Church itself inflecting the damage to its soldiers, it must be called to accountability.

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When the Church is in a controlling position with people, it can become abusive (Enroth, 1992). I have known several hurting souls who have left the Church because they have been so wounded, and some will never go back. Mostly the wounded are women who have riled the leadership in some way, so that they have become objects of persecution, although this also applies to men and children in some cases. This is particularly true in churches that are legalistic and rigid in their thinking and attitudes. The idea that men have special privileges because of their gender, and women ought to “submit” to them under any circumstances, is not taught in the scriptures in the original languages. It is very easy to become entrapped in this evil scheme, and it is often implemented by the enemy. It is one of the sad realities of today that none of us is free from any number of afflictions, addictions, dysfunctions, or pathologies, and this especially applies to the Church. We have a severely wounded army, and they need to be treated and healed, but the Church does not know how, so they are ignored, swept under the rug, or otherwise not utilized in the fight. This leaves prized territory open to the enemy.

WOMEN AS WARRIORS This coveted territory especially applies to women, who desire to serve God in a more active role than they have been allowed in the past. When autocratic males are in charge of the entire Church and exclude women from positions they are not only suited for but also qualified for, they are playing into the hands of Satan. Women represent fully one half of the Church, yet their role has traditionally been supportive to male roles. It is one of Satan’s favorite tactics. He has an especially fearful hatred of women, whom he has been suppressing for thousands of years. He fears women on multiple levels. He understands, even if the Church does not, that women make up half of the army that is pledged to defeat him. He also knows that if women were ever allowed to become fully equipped soldiers, thus doubling the size and intensity of the army, he would be in serious trouble. As it is today, women are not recruited by the Church into the life or role of a spiritual warrior, yet God has called his entire Church body to the fight. Nowhere in the scriptures are women exempt from spiritual military duty. Women have proven themselves in the military armies of the world, especially the U.S. military. In our family, we have a female officer who will retire as an Air Force general very soon. She has had an exemplary career and is a role model for women everywhere. Our spiritual army needs female generals and officers in the same way it needs male generals and officers. Fortunately, many churches are becoming more aware of this situation and are taking some steps to correct the problem. We need more churches that fully utilize the gifts of women

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based on their qualifications, and not their gender. Those who do so are to be applauded. Men have long misunderstood the role of women in the Church and even outside the Church. They have pointed to a few scriptures that indicate that a woman has no leadership role in the Church. In most cases, these verses have been mistranslated. They have been used to suppress the call of women into pastoral ministry or positions of leadership. They have also been the mechanism whereby women have always been held out as second- or even third-class citizens and fit only to serve men in some truly evil and degrading ways. Throughout the world, women and girls have paid the price for the appetites of men, and have always done so. Abuse of women has become almost acceptable to both the Church and society—so much so that today we hardly respond to the murder, rape, and prostitution epidemics that are sweeping the globe. The victims are almost always women and girls, and the beneficiaries are exclusively men. This results in the Church becoming weak and ineffective in its declared mission of defeating evil. The issue of abuse not only harms women and children but also emasculates men. This leaves a confused and disoriented army. Because the Church participates in this evil plan by tacit approval, or in some cases outright participation, the remaining army holds little or no fear for Satan. The result is one defeat after another, allowing evil to rule unchecked. Whether it is eugenics, abortion, or abuse of any kind, women and girls pay the price. It is as though Satan held a board meeting with his evil minions and asked them to come up with the most efficient way to defeat the Church. The answer is woman and child abuse. No other issue has the potential to prevent the Church from seeing the real culprit here. Abuse, especially longterm abuse, has the power to destroy not only the person being abused but also each generation after her. If the abused woman has children, they also will likely be abused, because usually we can only pass on what we know and experience. Thinking in financial terms, abuse is a low-risk, high-yield investment strategy on the part of our enemy. It takes only moments to abuse a child, but those moments will pay dividends for Satan for the rest of that person’s lifetime, and will be seen or experienced in the next generation unless she gets some serious help early on. The longer the abuse continues, the less likely she is to recover and become a warrior against evil. Satan excels in causing blindness to people. Curing blindness was one of the most frequent miracles performed by Jesus and, later on, his disciples. He healed all who came to him with blindness. He does the same today. “Once I was blind, but now I see” (John 9:25) was the testimony of many. We need to be able to see and recognize the true face of the enemy. Restoring sight to the blind can occur in a moment, or it can be a process. The Army of God

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has need of good eyesight with which to recognize and spot any weaknesses in the enemy. A blind army is a liability. We cannot go around stumbling all over the place. We would be wounded, either by the enemy or by our very own “friendly fire” comrades.

THE WEAPON OF FORGIVENESS For those who have been wounded by life or the Church, the antidote here is forgiveness. Not the pop forgiveness that seems to crop up every time there is a shooting at a school or mall. Forgiveness is far too important to throw around like a mantra. It ought to be a carefully thought out and crafted plan that will take commitment, courage, and being accompanied by others who know and care for us (Olio, 2000). It also takes time to make it real to us. However, when forgiveness has done its work, then we are qualified to teach others how to experience it. As warriors, we will need forgiveness if we are to wage a successful war against our enemy. The enemy loves to fill us with pride. Pride is designed to expose every flaw or fault we possess. It will be our downfall like nothing else. Pride is that arrogant spirit that says, “I want to have my way, because I am important.” Both Elvis and Frank Sinatra sang a song called “My Way.” Yet, in the end, they did not have their way. They both succumbed to death, and so their way was irrelevant. People are proud and seek the pleasure they assume they are entitled to. Pride is a lie at its heart. The truth is God does not actually need us to fight his battles. We are not essential to the battle being waged by God. If we were not here, God would send someone else to do the job we are supposed to do. When we understand this, we become truly humbled, and this is where we need to be. Pride is at the heart of Satan’s own rebellion against God. Out of our pride, we humans crave recognition and self-importance more than food or air. We want to be recognized as valuable and essential to God’s plan. He has a way of bringing us to our knees at these times. He will strip us of our pride and arrogance and leave us with a bruised and tender heart when he is done with us. When this happens, we are then useful to him at last. A humble soldier is a good soldier, willing to take orders from our commander-in-chief. When I was much younger, I labored under the mistaken impression that I was going to “lead my father to Jesus.” I plotted and planned just how to do it and I set my plan into action. He visited me to say goodbye, as he had been diagnosed with lung cancer. My plan fell to pieces very soon. I remember standing in my living room when he left in anger, saying, “I don’t want to have anything to do with your God, and I don’t want anything to do with you”. I recall falling to my knees in despair, crying out to God, “Oh Lord, you will just have to save him all by yourself.”

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That was when the light came on in my heart, and for the very first time I prayed for my dad according to the true will of God. I saw myself for who I really was, someone wanting to be in control of everyone’s lives. I wanted to control not only my dad but God as well. I have worked on my control issues ever since that time. My father did come to the Lord, but it had nothing to do with me. I became squashed between my two fathers, my earthly one and my heavenly one. I have learned from that experience that God can use us or not, but we must get out of his way or we will get trampled.

EARTHLY DISTRACTIONS We become distracted from the battle when Satan puts temptation in our way. We can become caught up in unimportant things, and sometimes urgent things, and forget that we are frontline soldiers. We often go AWOL for long periods of time. This is especially true of those in Church leadership. Nowhere are these distractions more obvious than in the paralyzing practices of addictions and dysfunctions seen in those in positions of leadership, such as pastors and teachers. Anyone in leadership can become special targets of evil. Satan knows if he can snare leaders with any addictive behavior, he has derailed an essential part of our army. Church leadership seems to be very vulnerable in the area of addictions. This includes pornography, marital affairs, and domestic violence; and they must also deal with mental illness such as depression or personality disorders. Pastors and Church leaders are particularly weak here because they lead such solitary and contained lives. Pastors rarely are surrounded by people who are competent in the areas of confidentiality and mentoring. It is not that they are not surrounded by good people, but that they are not surrounded by people they can unconditionally trust with their deepest and darkest secrets. It is a lonely place in pastoral leadership. The Church is in real trouble in the area of strong, steady leadership. It is easy to be part of the problem instead of the answer. Satan boldly strikes directly at the head of the Church instead of just nipping at its heels. It is much more effective for the enemy to eliminate those who have their heads sticking out. I am reminded of areas up above the tree line in Rocky Mountain National Park, where the trees are reduced to the size of scrub brush. These tiny, little stunted trees become sheared off to a uniform height, and not one dares grow higher than the rocks that shelter them. Trees at this level do not try to be large or bold. We are reminded that many in the Church are not encouraged to think or behave in bold ideas, or to reclaim territory that has been lost to the enemy, like the concepts of honesty, purity, holiness, speaking the truth in love, and other things we used to believe and practice. A recent study highlighted some disturbing statistics on pastors. Fifteen hundred pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual

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burnout, or contention in their churches. Fifty percent of pastors’ marriages will end in divorce. Eighty percent of pastors feel unqualified and discouraged in their role as pastor. Fifty percent are so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they had any way to earn a living. Eighty percent of seminary graduates will leave the ministry within the first five years. Almost 40% said they have had an extramarital affair (Fuqua, 2010). These are frightening statistics. If the leadership is in trouble, just imagine what is happening to the rank-and-file followers. A fighting army cannot afford such losses and defections. The Church must regain its spiritual focus by employing powerful weapons such as repentance, confession, transparency, relinquishment of addictions, forgiveness, and accountability. The entire church must be willing to come alongside those who are wounded in these areas. Now is not the time to shun or otherwise abandon them and their families, as is sometimes the case. Each pastor and his family need to have available to them a system of those who not only care about them but also are skilled in the ways of spiritual warfare. This might include counseling for the entire family, or a time away from ministry in which the wounded warrior can recover and learn how to walk in freedom. As it stands now, if pastors are caught in these devastating addictions, they are either tossed away or, sometimes, simply allowed to continue on in their sin. Neither of these approaches is helpful to the person, their families, or the Church. Only as they accept the truth that they have been duped by Satan, and begin a recovery process, will they be able to overcome their problems and regain a place of service. Otherwise they will become flotsam and jetsam upon the sea of rejection. The most disturbing thing about a situation like this is that anyone can fall into the traps laid by Satan without seeing it coming, although we ought to have seen it coming, and been better prepared. The Church needs to be emphasizing battle plans to its parishioners instead of how to get more of the things that make us feel good, such as prosperity. The biggest problem with the Church is that it does not truly believe or understand that it is actually in a real war; therefore, it does not prepare the people for it. We have become very complacent in the last 50 years or so. The Church does not teach about sin, the need for repentance, having a humble spirit, or how to walk alongside a hurting brother or sister. We have replaced the unpleasant subject of sin, and how it destroys our lives, with pop psychology. We have many pastors, speakers, and teachers who tell us that the Church is a place where we can come together and celebrate our successes in life. We have built mega-churches on the backs of young people, and we call them seeker friendly, and that is a good thing. In the meantime, some of these huge churches have turned their backs on elderly believers, in some cases actually discouraging them from attending. I know about this trend because I have

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experienced it firsthand. One very large church offered ear plugs to elderly members if the loud music was hurting their ears. Shortly thereafter, most of the “blue hairs” had left the Church, taking with them their wisdom, their giftedness, and their vast experience, not to mention their money. The Church is supposed to be a place where we can come together in order to support each other, become better equipped for warfare, and learn how to defeat the enemy. Part of becoming better equipped is to know what to do with those who do not seem to fit in with the agenda of the church. Many who come for the unconditional acceptance offered by Jesus do not find it in the local church. If you are disabled, suffer from mental illness, or are poor and obviously needy, you might not find an open door when you knock. You are, in many cases, swept under the rug. However, to reject one of these vulnerable “little ones” is to reject Jesus. He made it a part of his agenda to welcome and interact with these outcasts, and he warned us not to reject them: Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child, will never enter it. (Luke 18:16)

Children, and those who are childlike, are the most vulnerable and least valuable to many cultures. It is a mistake to not be concerned about those who are very important to God. These “little children” could turn out to be powerful warriors for the kingdom of God.

DUMB SHEEP Symbolism in Scripture is very interesting. Jesus often compared believers to persons, places, or things. He referred to believers as sheep. It is difficult to see the picture here of a warrior sheep. Sheep are not known to be warriors. In fact, all sheep are cowards. Never have they been described as smart, courageous, or anything except dumb. They are totally dependent on the shepherd to provide them with food, shelter, water, and safety. They are unconcerned with life or death. They are just sheep. Sheep cannot get themselves out of any trouble they find themselves in, but will go right off a cliff and kill themselves. They will follow any leader into danger. If they fall down and land on their backside, they cannot get up without help. They not only will stand and allow a person to shear their wool but also will put up no fight when they get their throats cut for slaughter. No fight to them at all. Jesus saw us as sheep, and, left to our own devices, we can be very much like sheep. It is distressing to know that in too many cases, the shepherds are not “feeding the sheep” but instead are cannibalizing them through neglect or false teaching.

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COURAGEOUS LIONS Continuing with the theme of opposites, consider the case of a lion. A lion is nothing like a sheep. Lions are aggressive, strong, brave, and courageous. They are also smart, and wise in the ways of fighting. Lions are naturally at the top of the food chain, and they act like it. No one crosses a mature lion when he is on the prowl. Jesus is closely identified with the lion. He is called “The Lion of the Tribe of Judah” (Revelation 5:5). He possesses all of the characteristics of the mature lion. Jesus is of the warrior class and is victorious in all he undertakes. He is the lion that roars. Interestingly enough, Satan is also referred to as a lion who “Seeks whom he may devour” (I Peter 5:8). However, this lion is not the powerful, brave lion depicted in the same picture as Jesus, but the old, weak, toothless, decrepit lion going around and eating the weak and easy prey of those who will not, or who do not know how to, fight back. In other words, he is defeated and pitiful. If we hit him with a stick, he will run away. It is promised that if we “Resist the devil, he will flee from you” (James 4:7). The image here is of victory over the enemy. We must ask ourselves the question “Do we want to be a sheep just waiting to be eaten by the enemy, or do we want to be like that strong, brave lion who wins fight after fight?” Some caution is appropriate here. The stick we hit the lion with must be one of the weapons approved by God, and not one we make up ourselves. If we engage the lion with our own weapons, it will have no effect on him and will only make him angry. We must always look to see how Jesus handled the problem of evil. Jesus did not always engage Satan in combat, but often bested him through the use of the Word of God. On one occasion, after Jesus had fasted for 40 days and was weak and worn out, Satan took him to the highest place in Jerusalem, and offered him the whole world if Jesus would just do any of three temptations offered to him. Jesus was spiritually stressed and emotionally drained from his recent experience. However, at no time did Jesus respond as one would expect him to. He did not rail on Satan or threaten him in any way. He simply spoke from scripture the truth of what it means to be a container for the character of God. Satan left him at once. The Word of God is the proper stick to use against a defeated lion. It is noteworthy that when Jesus was at his very weakest, and Satan was at his strongest and most confident, Jesus was stronger on his worst day than Satan on his best day. This was a demonstration of what Jonathan Edwards called “Fortitude and strength.” Edwards describes Christian fortitude as follows: Strength in mind, through grace, exerted in two things; in ruling and suppressing the evil and unruly passions and affections of the mind; and in steadfastly and freely exerting and following good affections, and disposition, without being hindered by sinful forces. (Edwards, n.d.)

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In other words, the Christian warrior is in full control of all his processes as he engages in warfare. All his skills, abilities, and talents as well as his mind, emotions, and will are in perfect alignment with those of the commander-in-chief. We see here that it is not enough to simply have the outward trappings of a good soldier, for not only is a good soldier able to withstand and counter outside forces, but also he or she must resist and suppress the internal enemies of pride, ambition, and other human drives and forces. The good soldier must be willing to follow orders without complaint, and to trust the experience and wisdom of others. Just as an earthly army is made up of many different groups, units, skills, and specialties, so is a spiritual army. In fact, most of the army is unseen, and does not advertise its whereabouts, strength, or plans. This is true of armies on both sides of the fight. In this case, the armies are for the most part invisible, although they sometimes make themselves visible when it is necessary. We are largely unaware of their presence, because they generally operate in the spiritual arena. Both armies have vast numbers of warriors who work behind the scenes, either on our behalf or to our detriment, depending upon which side is in operation at the moment. These armies are composed of angels both evil and holy, and they influence our lives in important ways. The battles that take place in the spiritual realm are constant and bloody. Angels have been fighting the same battles since time began, and they will continue to fight long after we have left the scene. It is the age-old battle of good against evil. Satan has his wicked and perverted angels, and God has his pure, holy, and faithful angels who are his servants. Both of these armies are arrayed in rank and file, as with any army. The apostle Paul described the forces of evil like this: For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realm. Therefore put on the whole armor of God. (Ephesians 6:12)

We see, then, that we are not fighting against earthly enemies so much as spiritual ones. We clearly are at a disadvantage here. If we did not have the unseen spiritual army of God on our side, we would stand no chance against evil forces. Satan’s evil angels are called demons, and we can win against them.

DOING GOOD IS A WEAPON One of the most helpful ways we can defeat the enemy is to become more enlightened about the nature of spiritual warfare against Christians. In the

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midst of battle, we are encouraged to be good and also to do good. Romans 12:9 instructs us, “Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.” We see opposites once again. In this same vein, Paul mentioned the power of doing good. He commands us to “not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21). This seems to imply that in the midst of the war, there are balances to be achieved, and this applies to the opposites of good and evil. Doing good is a weapon in the fight against evil. When evil seems to overrun us, we need to overwhelm evil deeds with good ones in the name of Jesus. King David knew about war, both the physical and the spiritual. David had the confidence of one who knew who he was and what he was supposed to be doing. He exhibited a remarkable attitude of graceful dependence upon God for the numerous victories in his life. He showed his reliance upon God when he said, The Lord is the stronghold of my life, of whom shall I be afraid? When evil men advance against me to devour my flesh, when my enemies and my foes attack me, they will stumble and fall. Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear; though war break out against me, even then will I be confident. (Psalm 27:1–3)

This is the proper attitude for the confident warrior.

PRAYER AS A WEAPON Prayer is undoubtedly the most potent and important weapon we have at our disposal. It is available to us day or night, and it always evokes a response from God. When we wield this powerful tool in the direction of the enemy, he must yield to our demands, providing we have a legal right to order him to cease and desist in his evil activities. We receive this legal right by virtue of our relationship with Christ, and from receiving our authority from God. We are his ambassadors and his representatives upon the earth, and when we speak, we are speaking for him, and in his name. II Corinthians 2:19–20 explains this to us as Paul reminds us of who we are to be: “He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.” This position of ambassadorship carries with it the right to represent God in the spiritual warfare arena.

DEMONIC ACTIVITY Demonic activity is rampant on earth today. It is evident in the way the world thinks and behaves. It is seen in entertainment, politics, social policies, and everyday lives. Evil is accessible to all so that we seem to be drowning

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in it. Our children are exposed to evil from birth, and they grow accustomed to it. By the time they are old enough to make their own choices, they have been heavily influenced. Movies and music combine to pull them away from truth and light. Those parents who choose to shield their children from these evil influences are excoriated and sometimes even have their parental rights terminated by the state. Christian students in public school systems routinely are forbidden to present their ideas and views within the system, even when they have earned the academic right to do so. This, too, is evil and must be confronted. We read about people being demon possessed in scripture. Jesus and those in the first few centuries confronted this problem by casting out those evil spirits who had taken physical, mental, and spiritual control over many people. There are those who feel that this does not occur today, whereas others believe it does. Those who do not base their convictions on a few verses such as 1 John 4:4, which states, “You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.” This is very true. It demonstrates the intensity of the battle for the hearts and minds of every person. The mind is coveted territory of the enemy. According to Neil T. Anderson (1990), Satan and his demons are [a]ctively involved in trying to distract you from your walk of faith by peppering your mind with his thoughts and ideas. He is relentless in his attempts to establish negative, worldly patterns of thought in your mind which will in turn produce negative, worldly patterns of behavior. (p.159-160)

It is up to us to do battle for not only our own minds but also those of others. The weapon to be deployed here is the voluntary surrender of every part of our identity to God, including our thinking. So says the apostle Paul, “We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). This means taking control of our thought processes, by the very act of relinquishing them to Christ. Oddly enough, when we are out of control in any area of our lives, the way we can regain control is to give up the need to be in control. By giving up control over our thinking and giving that process to God, we are able to see how we have been deceived by our enemy, and we become more disciplined. When our minds are brought into the will of God, we understand clearly what we are to do. A disciplined soldier is an excellent soldier.

CONCLUSION We have examined the role of the Church in mitigating evil forces in the world by looking at what the Church is and is not. We have also explored the

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spiritual battles that take place both inside and outside of the Church. Satan and his demons have been revealed in all their ugliness, and we have learned how to effectively dismantle some of their programs. Many of the problems contained within the Church have been discussed, and we have offered some ways and means of correcting them. This does not mean that they will all be corrected anytime soon, but illumination and awareness are always the first steps in confronting any problem. Hopefully, we will learn how to do efficacious battle with the enemy and regain some ground that has been lost. There is much in scripture about the rewards of overcoming the enemy and becoming a victorious army. Every believer is called to be a part of that victorious army, defeating a powerful and intelligent yet vulnerable foe. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain by our participation in the war. In addition, we are well equipped for the fight. We have everything we need to win the war. Take up the weapons that have been provided for you, move out in confidence to the front lines, and begin to reclaim any ground you have lost.

REFERENCES Anderson, N. T. (1990). Victory over the darkness. Ventura, CA: Regal. Barker, E. K. (1985). The NIV study Bible (Ed. K. Barker). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. Edwards, J. (N.d.). Religious affectations Part 3. Leadership U, online at www.leaderu. com. Enroth, R. M. (1992). Churches that abuse (Ed. L. G. Goss). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. Fuqua, D. (2010). What is happening to pastors? (Ed. B. H. Murray). Tucson, AZ: News Media LLC. Olio, K. (2000). Forgiveness (Ed. M. E. McCullough). New York: Guilford Press.

ch apter 6

The Role of Religion in Repelling Evil: A Jungian Perspective Daryl S. Paulson

Religion has long been practiced as a way to follow and become one with God’s plan (good) and avoid the devil’s hardships (bad). This has occurred in humans for centuries and has been somewhat successful. But is this actually what has happened, from a psychological perspective? We will look first at Jungian psychology to better understand the terms used and, from there, at religion to understand it from a Jungian perspective.

JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGY Perhaps the best way to gain an understanding of religion at a deeper level is through reference to Jungian psychology (Jung, 1964). Before I describe that discipline, let us digress to explore how Jungians view the psyche and its contents. There are a variety of terms used to describe the aspects of psyche, and it is necessary that we understand their meanings (Edinger, 1972). Figure 6.1 displays the psyche in Jungian terms. The main components are as follows: • Ego: This is the center of consciousness, which for most humans is that of which they are aware. It is the most prominent of the structures in the human psyche (Jung, 1951). The ego provides a unified sense of self in conscious life. Through it, we are aware of the flow of images, thoughts, feelings, desires, sensations, and impulses, and these we can observe, analyze, and judge. It learns from experiencing itself with the input from others. Most humans have been, are, and will be only aspects of their egos and nothing more. They are unconscious of the other aspects. • Persona: The mask that we put on to appear appropriate to others is our persona (Jung, 1951). It is how we relate to others in preconditioned and

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Figure 6.1 depicts the psyche in Jungian terms (Edinger, 1972; Jung, 1964; 1968; Singer, 1972).

acceptable ways governed by our culture. It includes our social roles, the way we want and need others to envision us, our way of being with others, and our way of envisioning ourselves. We have various roles that we play in life—a doctor, a businessperson, a spouse, a sibling, a pilot, a dock worker, or a carpenter. Currently, we find multiple masks or personas in a person, which form that person’s various roles (Singer, 1972). For example, a person may employ their parent persona for dealing with their offspring, then switch to the professional persona that they display as well in their working environment. During the course of a day, they may also adopt their caring role persona, if someone they like needs reassurance, later switching to their party persona for dinner with friends. You can see that individuals have great abilities for forming boundaries to accent positive aspects they want to show and to hide the negative aspects. We don an appropriate mask that tells us what aspects of ourselves to leave in or leave out, how to act, and what we should say and do. We may forget that we use the mask, or persona, as a tool and “glue” it to our ego, actually becoming that mask (Singer, 1972). Personas have both positive and negative aspects. An overly dominant persona can smother certain individual aspects of oneself. The persona can also protect an individual ego, and even the psyche, from various social pressures and negative attitudes directed at a person. • Shadow: This is the region in one’s mind that serves as the focal point and storage container for material, for example that which has been repressed or suppressed (Jung, 1951). The material put into the shadow are tendencies, desires, memories, and experiences one wishes to forbid to consciousness. One could say such things are individual aspects of

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a person that are incompatible with what the person tries actually to be with social standards as the guide. The shadow, then, contains the negative tendencies an individual wishes to deny, including sexual characteristics, animal instincts, and underdeveloped qualities. The shadow is quite harmless and can serve our purposes well when it is recognized and acknowledged, but it is very dangerous when suppressed and unrecognized (Jung, 1951). When it is not recognized, its contents can be unconsciously projected onto others. When carried too far, this can result in phenomena such the rise of a Hitler to power, resulting in the deaths of millions. The interaction of the persona and the shadow will be a main focus of this chapter as it proceeds. • Animus and anima: These are unconscious structures that tend to complement a person with masculine or feminine characteristics. Jung (1951) termed these structures the animus for men and anima for women. They provide the basic framework for how men and women define themselves according to their masculine and feminine viewpoints. For example, the animus may project a strong, assertive, and aggressive male. A woman may view her role as passive, reactive, speaking only when spoken to, and a caregiver. These are learned roles from one’s upbringing, in turn stemming from one’s culture. • Self: Many Jungians feel that Self is the most important archetype contained within the psyche and, therefore, term it the central archetype (Jung, 1951). It seeks to direct the persona, shadow, anima and animus, and ego in balanced and integrated ways. The Self can be expressed in dreams as having certain characteristics, such as a mandala, or a circular image. Great spiritual teachers—Buddha, Mohammed, and Jesus—are actually representations of the Self, the central Being who resides in each of us. The ego, through the early life, is thought to be the “All,” but those who search in matters of life through the individuation process find that the images of the great spiritual teacher were actually of the central Being, or Self, who controls the psyche (Jacoby, 1969). • Some other aspects: Unconscious: Jung (1951) emphasizes in his writing that the unconscious cannot be known because it is not conscious. Because of its very nature, it must be described in terms of relationships to the conscious self. There are two levels of the unconscious: (a) personal and (b) collective. Personal unconscious: This is represented mainly by the individual’s past and is unique to every person and his or her experiences. The personal unconscious contains the memories of painful events that have been repressed, as well as memories that are unimportant and have slipped from conscious memory. The person’s unconscious, in the way I use it here, corresponds to Freud’s (1957) perspective of it. Collective unconscious: Jungians also conceived of a deeper than personal unconscious, which he termed the collective unconscious (Jung, 1951; Singer, 1972). Its content does not come from personal experiences but, instead, is common to all people. Jung postulated that the mind of an infant already possesses a structure that molds and channels all of its

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future development and interaction with the environment. Just as the human body can be studied in terms of evolutionary progress, the mind can also be studied as such. The collective unconscious is the home of the archetypes (Jung, 1951). Archetypes: These are formless, primordial, a priori structures of the psyche (Jung, 1951; von Franz, 1975). They are inherited systems that act as source points for the ultimate potential energy of the psyche. These objects can best be viewed in terms of the folktales and legends of many cultures and periods. Archetypes are the structure-forming elements of the collective unconscious. A wide variety of symbols can be associated with a given archetype (Jung, 1951). For example, they include a hero’s quest, the night sea journey, and the battle for deliverance from the Mother. Archetypal figures include, for example, gods and goddesses, devils and witches, the Virgin Mary, and Jesus.

THE PERSPECTIVE OF GOOD AND BAD Language, itself, selects, limits, and defines a perspective (Paulson, 2008). Consider how language shapes basic concepts of quantity, quality, and even relationships and spirituality in terms of duality. When discussing quantities, people generally think in terms of “one” or “many.” When discussing quality, a person will generally respond in terms of “good” or “bad.” When one considers the meaning of an event, one assumes “cause” and “effect.” Finally, when one discusses spirituality, the concepts of “possible” versus “impossible” come to the fore. Notice the preanalytic constraints through which one filters world information, shaping a perspective prior to any reasoning process. We look out into the world and see what we believe we have—either good or bad aspects. For example, if it has been a good year, we judge this upon factors such as how we like our job, whether we made a sufficient income, if someone dear to us survived near death, or if we were happy. A bad year would be defined from the opposite perspective. Is a good time good for everyone? Right now, I say it is great; the snow has melted, and the day is bright and shiny. My next door neighbor is an ex-farmer who still thinks in farming terms. It is a bad day for farming, because the sun is shining and there is not enough moisture for his crops. Obviously, what we see depends upon our life’s perspective. As valuable as speech and concepts are for organizing the world, they are not reality but expressions of our viewpoint of reality. It must be kept in mind that our language and concepts for organizing the world both clarify and distort our understanding by constructing boundaries that actually do not exist and creating multiple distinctions out of what, in reality, is seamless (Midgley, 2000; von Bertalanffy, 1968). For example, if we discuss good experiences as consciously enjoyable, tacit boundaries in terms of good and evil are drawn to differentiate them. Given that our focus is on

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good experiences, bad experiences can be marginalized, not by conscious intention but by unconscious omission. This is necessary in using language and our linear structure of thought. This is well and good, but at a deeper level, what is the origin of good and bad? This question prompts exploration that is a little more vague. Let us go back to the beginning of our lives. When we were born, we had a proto-ego and not an ego per se (Washburn, 1995). We were, in simple terms, in a state of semiconsciousness. As we developed over time, so did our ego, until we became completely self-centered or egocentric. We modeled aspects of our siblings and parents in learning how to respond to someone appropriately. For example, we learned from our parents, more commonly our mothers, what was good and what was bad. As we developed from seeing the “outer” mother, we formed an “inner” mother within our being who modeled her. We essentially saw and felt our mother as either happy with us (good mother) or angry with us (bad mother). Ultimately, the things we did right went into our persona. This process originated from the archetype of the good mother, and our bad actions shamed us and were repressed into shadow via the archetype of the bad mother. Although the collective unconscious also plays a strong role in this evolution of self, shaping our broader aspects or cultures, we do not know anything about it except through our dreams. In religion, we also used the same good-bad strategy, but in ultimate terms (Jung, 1964). Those things we value as good become heavenly, and those things that are bad become hellish.

REPELLING EVIL Human defense mechanisms, like repression, suppression, and denial, and our normal thought processes allow humans to repress what they feel is against the norms, and to actively bring to consciousness that which is compatible with them (Cloninger & Svrakic, 2009). This process allows humans to coexist more comfortably. When repressed, certain aspects go into the shadow, and when accentuated, they are placed in the persona. The same selective process is performed in the realms of ultimate good and evil; that is, hell, as represented in the shadow, and the heavenly regions of one’s being, as represented in the persona. It is not realized that they are essentially the same thing, but simply of different polarities. They are, instead, ultimately viewed as two separate dimensions in humans—the good and the bad.

THE ROLE OF RELIGION IN REPELLING EVIL With this background, let us look at the role of religion in repelling evil. We have observed, to a degree, how the human mind segregates the good and

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bad components, but how does it work with evil, and how does this connect with religion? Looking back to the beginning of human evolution, we find five stages of development (Gebser, 1986). The design of these stages is represented in Figure 6.2. These five aspects exemplify human psychological growth through eons of time. The archaic stage (Gebser, 1986) is descriptive of humans differentiating the conscious from the unconscious, which began among the most primitive forebears of our species, a proto-human. The individual consciousness was dormant. Individuals conducted life mostly instinctually instead of consciously. They were completely unaware of anything beyond their own existences. As humans increased in brain development, they became keyed into the ecosystem, but there was not an “ecosystem” external to them. Instead, it was connected to them unconsciously, and they experienced it through their “feelings”—that is, magical events. Events, such as storms, that occurred on a large scale were, in their awareness, beyond their control. Humans believed such events were driven by magic, because the storms were not perceived as separate from themselves. There was not an I and an it perspective, only a vague I; the world was viewed as an extension of the self. Every attempt to control it is from within oneself and not from without. Lucien Levy-Bruhl (1926) termed this as participation mystique, participation of the subject (self) in the objective (outer) world in terms of I. The world appeared as they felt it, not as though they saw it. For example, if they knew that someone was angry with them, they felt or believed a god or goddess archetype was angry. They saw it in the way the world responded, not how they felt directly. In order to control their lives, it was the job of “witch doctors” to appease the gods or goddesses. At the magical stage (Gebser, 1986), humankind were hunters, traveling from one area to another, searching for game (Feuerstein, 1987). As humans developed further, they became farmers, and then city builders. They changed their causative focus from “magicians” to the mythical stage, which was composed of gods or goddesses. They saw the world as it, and themselves as I. The two were separated now. They believed they could attain respect and glory by having on their side a god or goddess to control aspects of life Figure 6.2

Evolutionary Stages

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detached from them or out of their direct control. A new way of mastery was emerging—appeasing a god or goddess. Humankind’s goal was to adopt for themselves a role subordinate to the gods or goddesses, who were now conceived to be superior. The gods or goddesses had the power, not humans. There are, of course, thousands of such god or goddess archetypal beings, but all took their power from humans in the collective or shared unconscious. The next stage of evolution is that of human mental intelligence (Gebser, 1986). At this point, humans took control of the world, beginning to understand it. They realized that events occur as they do based on laws of science, not the whim of a god or goddess. Humans had taken control of what previously was believed beyond their control, and was now to become the center of being. I should state here that, no matter how developed one becomes, one still retains the beginnings of humanity stored in the collective unconscious. For example, I, as a scientist, may claim this is hogwash, yet when quiet and alone I may still experience the mythological aspects in my soul. This is especially true when I face a new, unpredictable situation in life, and I get initiated by the experience. Mythologically, I am “called,” I go through an “initiation,” and I must “return” from the adventure and integrate this experience into my past positions of life. I, as well as many other individuals, can even revert to magical thinking, as presented, for example, in the popular Harry Potter adventures. I go to the rest home to visit my mother, and many times I find her in the archaic stage of Alzheimer’s disease. All of these stages remain very much alive in us, even if unrecognized and unused. Finally, there is the integral or aperspectival stage (Gebser, 1986), where humans can see the world in terms of not only the “part” on which they focus but also the “whole,” through a quadrant view that consists of four domains of cause and effect (Wilber, 2000). These are the personal subjective and objective domains, and the collective objective and subjective domains. Instead of ignoring three quadrants and living in only one, we can live in all domains in an integrated way. Religion and religious rituals have been used by humankind from the dawning of sentience. These are parts of the mythical and magical stages that have become formalized. The god and goddess were actually forms of the Self archetype that had deep human perception and perspective overlaying it. Humans protected themselves from psychic depths and its dangers by imaging the Self as external from themselves. That is, they projected the Self as God. Hence, a religion served as a container of the Self for a multitude of people. This protected them from the dangers of self-inflation and even alienation; that is, seeing themselves as God, seeing themselves as disconnected from God, or even simply seeing themselves. The collective unconscious (Assagioli, 1965; Jung, 1964), through the Self, brings to humans an image of itself, depicted as Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, or others, but even so, it is the Self (Washburn, 1995). Currently, much psychological counseling focuses

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on helping humans to bring themselves directly into consciousness of the Self. However, this requires much personal and transpersonal psychological work (Mahoney, 2003). Recall our previous discussion of splitting good and bad components into the persona and the shadow. We tend to create a power of good over us (God) and suppress the bad that takes us from good (Edinger, 1972) (see Figure 6.3). We view the power of the Self as God, and what has been repressed as Satan. We continue to feel that these images are larger and more powerful than ourselves because, in reality, what they represent is larger and more powerful than we (Jung, 1968). In truth, this is the Self operating through the collective unconscious, which is much stronger than the ego. We know this at a deep level and have used a magical-mythological way of presenting ultimate good (God) and evil (Devil), thereby separating them from our ego.

Figure 6.3

Good vs. Bad

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We do this specifically by mythologizing religion, collectively, as a container for the Self. Religion becomes, then, RELIGION, which is something vastly more powerful. It is our deepest way of living according to our own Self ’s way of viewing our life. Unfortunately, we suppress our Self and project our most sacred views onto religion. All religious practices hold to the view that God is good and the devil is bad. We are to aspire to the good (God) and resist temptation from the bad (devil). Yet, the more one believes in God, the more one is tempted by the devil (Edinger, 1972). This is normal, due to the psychological makeup of humans. Every society has such suprapersonal categories in the collective religious life, which, again, protect the individual from self-inflation and alienation. However, although the collective methods may protect humans from the dangers of psychic depth, they also deprive us of the individual experiences of these depths and the growth that such experiences promote (Jacoby, 1969). As long as a religion can contain the Self and mediate these events, there will be little need for the individual to have a personal encounter with the Self. The problem has been growing since the 1950s, as humans have developed beyond the mythical to the mental, and has led to vast alienation. One no longer perceives his image of God in a magical-mythical role, personifying the highest power in the universe. In fact, God is dead for most humans (May, 1953), which has led to their undoing. Humankind is filled with existential fear and meaninglessness in life, as drugs, alcohol, and playthings take center stage (May, 1977). We are the hollow men . . . Headpiece filled with straw. Alas . . . ! —Eliot (1925, p. 101)

THE WAY OF INDIVIDUATION Today, humans have ignored God and the devil and become alienated from their selves. There is now only a self. The self–Self connection has been removed, the baby thrown out with the bathwater. Many humans are without purpose. What does life mean? You are born, you live a futile life, and then you die. There was a strong directedness to God that religions have provided, but humankind feels only alienation now. Humankind is lost in its estrangement. What needs to be done now is for humans to take back the image of God (Self) and see it in their own psyches, where it has been for eons unconsciously. People must make it conscious now. Humans must come to realize that their egos exist within a larger sphere that includes the Self. Each of us

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must see and recognize the self within the Self (Washburn, 1995). This will take much effort. One must leave the present for the future. But before one can leave the present for the future, one must suffer the “night sea journey,” or the “betwixt and between” of one’s life as it is now. As this occurs, people will discover that two things happen simultaneously. They will become more authentic human beings out of the masses of inauthentic humanity. They will realize that they are good at certain things and not so good at others. They will see that good is not separate from bad but is a part of it. They will still perceive good and bad according to what the larger public believes in the cultural realm. But in their private realms, their “real lives,” they will notice that good and bad will become integrated aspects of life, not separate distinctions of life. The second thing that will occur is increased meaning in their lives. Meaning will exist inside them, not outside them in a church, synagogue, or temple. It will be inside them as the Self with which they can communicate. They will not pray to it but commune with it, for it will be a constant aspect of life. It knows things—deep things—for sure. The Self knows what their self ’s purpose is in life, it knows what they like and dislike, it knows disappointment, and it knows how to get on with life. It is essentially their true compass.

CONCLUSION Integration is rare. However, it is not out of the range of human possibility, but so many people do not meet it because it requires will and persistence to master. Those who do make integration a top priority find that it becomes more than a way of repelling evil. It becomes a period when one is whole, not fragmented. One becomes integrated—mind–body, thought–feeling, logic– creativity, civilization–instinct, and ego–Self (Washburn, 1995).

REFERENCES Assagioli, R. (1965). Psychosynthesis: A manual of principles and techniques. New York: Hobbs, Dorman. Campbell, J. (1949). Hero with a thousand faces. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. Campbell, J. (1988). The power of myth. New York: Doubleday. Cloninger, C. R., & Svrakic, D. M. (2009). Personality disorder. In Comprehensive textbook psychiatry (9th ed., pp. 2197–2244). Philadelphia: Lippincott, Williams, Wilkins. Edinger, E. G. (1972). Ego and archetype. New York: Putnam. Eliot, T. S. (1925). The hollow men. In Collected poems. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Feuerstein, G. (1987). Structures of consciousness. Lower Lake, CA: Integral. Freud, S. (1957). A general selection from the works of Sigmund Freud (Ed. J. Rickman). New York: Doubleday.

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Gebser, J. (1986). The ever-present origin. Athens: Ohio University Press. Jacoby, J. (1969). Complex, archetype, symbol in the psychology of C. G. Jung. New York: Pantheon. Jung, C. G. (1951). Aion. In Collected works (Vol. 9, Part 2). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Jung, C. G. (Ed.). (1964). Man and his symbols. New York: Doubleday. Jung, C. G. (1968). Analytical psychology: Its theory and practice. New York: Pantheon. Levy-Bruhl, L. (1926). How natives think. London: Allen & Unwin. Mahoney, M. J. (2003). Constructive psychotherapy. New York: Guilford. May, R. (1953). Man’s search for himself. New York: Norton. May, R. (1977). The meaning of anxiety. New York: Norton. Midgley, G. (2000). Systemic intervention: Philosophy, methodology, and practice. New York: Kluwer Academic. Paulson, D. S. (2008). Wilber’s integral philosophy: A summary and critique. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 48 (3), 364–388. Singer, J. (1972). Boundaries of the soul: The practice of Jung’s psychology. New York: Doubleday. von Bertalanffy, L. (1968). General systems theory. New York: George Braziller. von Franz, M. (1975). C. G. Jung: His myth in our time. New York: Putnam. Washburn, M. (1995). The ego and the dynamic ground (2nd ed.). Albany: State University of New York Press. Wilber, K. (2000). Sex, ecology, spirituality. Boston: Shambhala.

ch apter 7

My Favorite Enemy: A Pastor’s Response on Resolving Evil F. Morgan Roberts

THE EARLY YEARS Somewhere in my recent reading I came upon a statement allegedly made by Gandhi. He is reported to have said, I have only three enemies. My favorite enemy, the one most easily influenced for the better, is the British nation. My second enemy, the Indian people, is far more difficult. But my most formidable opponent is a man named Mohandas K. Gandhi. With him I seem to have very little influence.

When I came upon this statement I found myself whispering inwardly, “Why is it that such a gracious, humble statement wasn’t made by a Christian?” Reflecting, as it does, a grace-filled attitude toward the oppressive enemy of his own people, as well as his humble admission of his own need for the grace to make peace with himself, it is the kind of confession that ought to come from the lips of a Christian. It leads me to suggest that Gandhi was more “Christian” than most of the Christians I have known. I begin with this statement of Gandhi because it has taken me a lifetime to travel toward the kind of response to the enemy that I find in his statement; indeed, I am still traveling and have a long way yet to go. But now, however, in the ninth decade of my life as “the shadows lengthen and the evening comes,” I think I can see where it is that I want to arrive. I hope I can finally reach that moment when I can look with hope upon the worst enemies of the human race with a hope inspired by the unconditional grace of God but, at the same time, also realize that I am in as deep need of such forgiving grace as those who perpetrate the most evil forms of injustice upon the human family.

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The reader may suspect that what follows will be largely the account of a personal pilgrimage. My excuse for addressing the assigned topic (responses to evil) in this manner is that it is the only approach for which I am qualified. After all, no one needs certification to tell their story in their own terms. I am neither a social historian nor an accredited scholar in any particular field; all I have known is a half century’s journey as a pastor and preacher, with some few final years at a theological seminary, trying to mentor students who were preparing to enter the same life of ministry from which I was about to retire. So the starting point of this journey will be on the other side of our world, far from Gandhi’s India. Rather unromantically, it will begin in what was a declining Hudson River mill town, the city of Newburgh, New York, at which I arrived in 1953 to begin my first pastorate. It was here that I would arrive at my earliest understanding of, and engage in my first battle with, the evil of racial injustice. It may seem strange that a student of sufficient intelligence (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, with high honors in Classical Greek) could pass through a sophisticated institution of higher education (Colgate University) and, after that, Princeton Theological Seminary without having acquired some sensitivity to the inherent injustice of our society’s systemic, rampant racism. However, such was the case! Perhaps it was the result of the circumstances of my childhood and teenage years. I was raised in a blue-collar neighborhood in which, four doors from our home, an older Negro (that was the term back then) couple resided. They were there from the earliest moment of my consciousness; they must have moved into our block before our arrival in the early 1930s. Whether their arrival was occasioned by resistance, I do not know; they were simply always there. Our other neighbors seemed to have no contacts with them. A little boy, probably a grandson, was sometimes there on weekends, but we did not play with him. One of my playmates had said something nasty to him of which my mother did not approve; however, she neither encouraged nor discouraged my playing with him. Besides, he was there only once in a while and not on every weekend. I realize now that there was nothing our neighbors could do but accept the reality of this family’s presence. We were in the depths of the Great Depression, some of the men having lost their jobs. Even if we wanted to move away, who would (or could) have purchased our house? We were simply stuck in a neighborhood in which a black family happened to reside. The importance of this situation is that, from my earliest childhood, I was conditioned to accept the fact that it was no “big deal” to have African American neighbors. I did not know that such a situation would have caused cross-burnings elsewhere in America. That was an America I did not know. During my years at a downtown high school, because of my success as a distance runner, some of my closest friends on the track and cross-country

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teams were African Americans. We ran together and roomed together when we traveled to New York City to compete in national events. The strength of these personal connections was one of the reasons why, in my freshman year at college, I declined membership in fraternities. Even though Colgate had very few black students, it never seemed right to join any organization that would exclude my black or Jewish friends. None of these early experiences, however, had prepared me to understand what would become the civil rights movement, and one major event of my teen years definitely pointed me away from such an understanding. At age 17, I became a born-again Christian. The details of my coming “to know the Lord” are unimportant; what is important is that my newly found mentors taught me that it was not the church’s mission to meddle in political matters. By leading people to “accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior” on a one-by-one basis, we were making them more just and tolerant persons. The world’s woes would never be fully healed until the glorious Second Coming of Christ brought in the kingdom of God. The church’s mission was to save souls. The best thing we could do for racial justice was to preach the gospel. Worse yet, it was not even important to seek the racial integration of the church. On Sunday afternoons, a few of us would go to the county jail to “witness” to the prisoners. This was my first attempt at preaching—and to a truly captive audience! At one of these services, I learned that one of the black prisoners would be released during the coming week, and so I invited him to come to our church. When with great enthusiasm I told one of the deacons that this ex-con might be arriving at our church, I was informed that this was not the purpose of our jail ministry. Instead, he told me, “These people have their own churches; our church is for people who have made something of themselves.” Thus, when a weary seamstress, Rosa Parks, refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man and, after that, Martin Luther King Jr. entered the fray by organizing the Montgomery bus boycott, my level of response was of little more than mild interest. This was happening far away from my church in Newburgh. I did not know that I was a guilty bystander. What is even more astounding is that the seriousness of the situation did not dawn upon me even when King visited our city and a black pastor friend of mine invited me to join him in front of his church to be photographed with this emerging leader of the battle for racial justice. There, on the front page of the Newburgh News, with Pastor Burrus and Dr. King, I stood to be photographed for all to see. But I still did not join the movement or raise the prophet’s cry for justice! So what happened?

THE BATTLE OF NEWBURGH On the afternoon of May 1, 1961, a line of about 60 rather weary and shabby-looking people was forming outside police headquarters at the drab

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building that served as the City Hall for the city of Newburgh.1 Both black and white, most of the people in the line were women, some of whom carried babies. One woman, aged 71 years, would stand in that line for an hour and a half. Another one had seven children at home, one of whom was dying of leukemia. Inside police headquarters, these people were being taken to a small back room for interrogation. Some of them were being fingerprinted. Ordinarily, on the first day of the month, they would have gone to another city building. Today, however, they had been ordered to report at police headquarters to be questioned about their family status, dates of residence, and work history. Their crime was poverty. They were welfare recipients who had come, at the beginning of the month, to pick up their welfare checks. On this May Day, however, welfare investigative procedures had been taken over by the police at the orders of a man who would enjoy a brief moment of glory on the pages of some of the most prestigious newspapers in the world. That man was Joseph McDowell Mitchell, city manager of Newburgh, who had ordered this crackdown on welfare “chiselers.” Events in the coming months in this city of 31,000 people would attract national and world attention far out of proportion to the city’s size and failing economy. The battle that began on that morning would be discussed on the pages of such diverse publications as the New York Times, the Herald Tribune, the San Francisco Examiner, the Wall Street Journal, National Review, the Nation, the Christian Century, Commonweal, the London Sunday Express, and the Manchester Guardian. Before the battle ended, most of its residents, whatever their assessment of the battle, would observe that the city had been famous for better reasons in its illustrious past. This deep-water port city on the Hudson River was founded by German Lutherans in the early 18th century. They had hoped to produce the fine wines that they had made along the Rhine. Its fortunes, however, arose more from the river than from the hillsides and mountains that rose up from the river, making it one of the most scenic sections of the Hudson River Valley. By the early days of the 19th century, when the Hudson was the principal avenue of north-south transportation between New York and Albany, Newburgh had become the third largest city in the state. In its earliest shipyards, the graceful Hudson River Sloop was built. Whaling ships of the 1800s made it their home port. Its shipbuilding industry, employing several thousand persons, continued to produce oceangoing vessels until the yards closed after World War II. With the building of the West Shore line of the New York Central Railroad, its adjacency to New York City made Newburgh attractive to the textile industry in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A fine fabric mill, a major carpet factory, and a large manufacturer of overalls had once provided employment for thousands of persons. Newburgh achieved historical eminence during the American Revolution as the scene of George Washington’s headquarters following his victory at

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Yorktown. In the Hasbrouck House, which is still standing, Washington maintained command quarters, with his troops stationed at Temple Hill, the last cantonment of the Revolutionary War. During a restless two years, they awaited the official termination of the war. Of interest to us is the fact that Newburgh, although founded by Lutherans, became a hotbed of Presbyterian and Reformed church life. Within a one-mile radius of City Hall were located two Presbyterian (U.S.A.) congregations, a United Presbyterian church, an Associate Reformed Presbyterian church, two Reformed Presbyterian Churches, a Dutch Reformed Church, and an Italian Reformed Church. A small Associate Reformed Seminary had once been located up the hill from my church. There was much upon which the citizens could look backward with pride. It was said (although it may be apocryphal) that, when Washington took leave of his headquarters, intending to return, he instructed his military aides, “Don’t do anything until I return.” Some felt that too many Newburghers had taken those instructions too seriously. The usual set of complex factors had led to the economic and social decline of the city. The only remaining major industry within the city’s borders was the DuPont Fabrikoid factory. The entrepreneurial vision of an early-20th-century citizen in developing a process for making coated fabrics had brought this factory to the city. Such vision seems to have disappeared. Although modern Newburgh attracted seasonal loft operations, making women’s apparel and handbags, such major employers as IBM were not successfully courted by Newburgh, and built their profitable installations in nearby Kingston and Poughkeepsie. When the New York State Thruway was completed in 1954, it passed through the western outskirts beyond the city line, drawing businesses and transportation networks outside of the city. When the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge was completed as a part of the interstate highway system, it crossed the Hudson north of the city’s border, carrying traffic north of the city. With the bridge completed, the Newburgh-Beacon ferry was closed. With its landing in the downtown shopping section, the riverfront shopping center, major law offices, and historic homes and churches were deeply threatened. The “movers and the shakers” were moving their homes and businesses out of the city. In tune with the mood, my own congregation of 220 members (40% of whom were over 65 years of age), no longer able to maintain a sanctuary that could seat 800, moved into a Tudor mansion north of the city, and transformed the mansion’s ballroom into a sanctuary. We were all participants, knowingly or unknowingly, in a long and complex process of suburban growth and urban decline that has been experienced in many American cities. Strangely, however, the blame for all of this “blight” (a term often used by City Manager Mitchell) was not traced to the usual assortment of financial, social, and industrial factors and structures, but to a

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certain group of people least able to defend themselves. All of them were poor. Many of them were black. In the decade following 1950, the black population of Newburgh increased by 151.4%. They moved into poorly maintained properties along the riverfront, many of which were owned by the very people who would applaud the city manager’s bold welfare reform program. The dream (or nightmare) of cracking down on welfare chiselers was clearly conceived in the mind of City Councilman George F. McKneally, the brother of Martin McKneally, national commander of the American Legion. He shared his brother’s conservative views, which were characteristic of the post-McCarthy era. Two years earlier, he had laid the blame for the city’s crime, health, and sanitation problems on the black community. In an address before a business group, he had laid it out blatantly in “bottom-line” terms, saying, “When you come right down to it, it’s a Negro problem.” Of course, he protested too that he had done more to help honest, hardworking black people than any other councilman. It was George McKneally who led the campaign in City Council to hire Joseph Mitchell. Mitchell was depicted as the dragon slayer of state and federal bureaucracies. He had spent his previous years at numerous minor desk jobs with the federal government. Strangely, his last position in federal service was with the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare! Moving into the field of city management in 1957, he held two rather brief and troubled appointments as assistant city manager of Culver City, California, and as city manager of Marple Township, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. It was this man, who would later be censured for unethical conduct and removed from membership in the International City Manager’s Association, and who would still later work as an organizer of White Citizen’s Councils in the South, who was handpicked to deal with urban blight in Newburgh, New York. For various reasons, Newburgh was one of only six upstate New York communities that administered its own welfare department, separate from the county operation. For some years, there had been discussion of merging the city’s department with that of the county, but this largely sensible merger had not happened. Less than a month after Mitchell’s arrival, at a meeting of the City Council, City Welfare Commissioner John J. O’Donnell announced that the 1961 welfare budget would need to be increased by $43,000. Although more than half of the city’s welfare budget was reimbursed by state and federal funds, this still left approximately $423,810 to be paid from local taxes, an amount higher than that budgeted for police services. A study committee was appointed by the city manager to begin work upon the problem. One of the members, Dr. Irving Weiner (my own physician), would later reveal that his name was signed on the final report without his knowledge, and that most of the statistics used in the report were produced by the city manager’s office. While the report was being prepared, Mitchell

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continued to carry the message to the citizens that their problems were being caused by southern Negro migrants. When the most severe winter storm in a generation resulted in the overspending of funds in the snow removal budget, the city manager ordered that the deficit be paid by cutting that amount out of aid to dependent children and home relief budgets. His order was declared illegal by the State Department of Social Welfare, and rescinded. With great flurry, Mitchell announced a work-relief program that would put able-bodied idlers to work. An earlier program had been abandoned because of the difficulty of finding such eligible men on relief. Still, the city manager’s proposal was warmly greeted by citizens who believed that “these people” should be put to work. Months later, when he could produce only one welfare recipient capable of, and eligible for, work, the program was quietly abandoned. New York City’s Daily News heralded its inception and failure by saying, “With the bravado of an elephant stepping on an ant, Newburgh’s work-relief program began yesterday.” Still, the vast majority of people in the city approved of the brave stand that Mitchell was taking, and believed his statistics and facts, many of which were manufactured or distorted. Thus, when he staged his surprise muster of recipients at police headquarters on May 1, there was broad public approval of this crackdown. The muster came as a complete surprise to the press, the mayor, and the City Council; the only persons who knew of this raid upon the poor were the chief of police, the welfare commissioner, and the city comptroller. Welfare recipients were instructed by mail on April 29 to appear at the police station to obtain their checks. They came quietly and obediently, and after interrogation, were given their checks. The total number thus examined was 250. Of these, 86 were too ill or aged to leave their homes. They were visited by police officers who, after interrogation, gave them their checks. At the end of this muster, not one unqualified recipient had been discovered, but the objective of the search had been accomplished. The recipients had been harassed and made objects of scorn and shame. There were few early voices of protest. With the local newspaper giving its editorial support to the muster, most people believed that Mitchell’s statistics were true, and that his policies were moving in the right direction. Only two groups were resistant. The Newburgh Community Service Conference, which represented many charitable and social service agencies, voiced its disapproval. The Newburgh Ministerial Association, in moderate and respectful tones, denounced the muster as degrading. The moderate tone was the result of mixed feelings on the part of the clergy themselves. Because of my wife’s employment as a caseworker in the Welfare Department, we had access to accurate facts and figures, and knew that the city manager’s facts were fabricated. Understandably, our feelings were strongly against Mr. Mitchell’s policies. Two other clergymen, one a Jewish rabbi and the other a Unitarian

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minister, worked with me to motivate the Ministerial Association. When the city council received the Ministerial Association’s letter of disapproval, instead of politely receiving our communication to be filed as information, a majority declared the letter out of order and told us not to interfere. Mr. McKneally spoke for the majority in saying, “If the Ministerial Association wants to do good, let its members go into the welfare area and instill some morality into people who are running up these costs.” The official report of the study committee was released on May 8. It consisted of various findings, conclusions, and moral judgments, the majority of which were supported by little or no evidence, and most by hearsay. On one interesting point, the report criticized the inability of Planned Parenthood to advise mothers in birth control methods that might limit illegitimacy. Rather oddly, when my wife had been executive director of Planned Parenthood, Councilman McKneally had been active in the successful campaign of the Knights of Columbus to remove the Planned Parenthood clinic from the public housing facility where most of the welfare mothers could receive such services. With carefully phrased wording, the report made it clear that “blight equals black.” Many months later, when the battle was over, it would be revealed that Mitchell, from the beginning, had known that the implementation of his policies was neither legal nor financially practical. This was revealed in a memorandum to Republican members of the city council that was never made public until discovered by an investigative journalist. However, at that time, Mitchell proceeded to publish a 22-point welfare program, 13 points of which would be adopted by the council. The revolutionary new program, founded upon a belief in Mitchell’s manufactured statistics, displayed his ignorance of state welfare laws that already provided many safeguards against welfare chiseling. To a public that was uninformed about the whole subject of public welfare, his program seemed bold. His public did not even notice the financial burden that would have been placed upon them had his 13th point been implemented. It called for the outrageously expensive removal of dependent children from unsuitable homes to foster care. Not only the public but the national press also appeared to have been charmed by Mitchell. With the exception of the New York Times and the New York Post, most reporters published his fabricated statistics as factual truth. Apparently, in those times, few newspapers had social welfare specialists on their staffs. Amazing also was the fact that Mitchell was selling people upon the notion that the flow of southern black migrant workers to the city should and could be halted. The eighth point of his program suggested that certain citizens should be treated like illegal immigrants and denied freedom of movement unless they could provide evidence of employment elsewhere. In heated arguments with many of my parishioners, it was clear that many regular church members agreed with the desirability of such a policy.

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The pattern of clergy opposition to Mitchell was varied. Most white clergy remained silent except for one priest, two rabbis, a Unitarian, and me. Those who did raise their voices began receiving the crudest and most vicious varieties of racist hate literature. After making a rather mild statement to the New York World Telegram, I received copies of The Thunderbolt, published by the National States’ Rights Party, and the Truth Seeker, which depicted the federal government as a “Black Bastard Breeder.” I spoke to my congregation about the fires of racism that were being fanned beyond our city. When more copies of these publications began to be circulated in the city, both Mitchell and McKneally, disturbed that the true color of their program was being revealed, expressed their displeasure with such racist literature. It may be that this literature was the first revelation of what was in progress in our city. Also, certain objective data began to be published. One magazine article revealed that the majority of welfare recipients in Newburgh were not black. Only 39% were nonwhite, and black welfare recipients represented only 7% of the black population. The most devastating statistic, over against Mitchell’s contentions about the influx of chiselers, was that the 1960 expenditure for newly arrived migrants was only $205, all of which was reimbursed by the state! Still, in defiance of state welfare law, the program was to go into effect on July 17. City Hall was crawling with reporters. Cameramen were standing by to record this historic moment. Mitchell had estimated that about 60 welfare recipients might be eligible for work-relief employment. Only two were found to be eligible. When the two appeared, one was a 45-year-old Negro porter who was crippled. His name was taken off the list. The second was a 33-year-old unemployed laborer with one eye. He was the father of five children under 9 years old. His wife was hospitalized with lung disease, and so he was sent home to care for his children. When a permanent injunction was granted, forbidding the implementation of the program, it began to become obvious that the battle was lost and that all was not well. Still, the rest of the nation was unaware of the turn of events in Newburgh. In late 1961 and early 1962, Mitchell was in constant demand as a speaker before conservative groups. He was even mentioned as a Conservative Party senatorial candidate to run against incumbent Jacob Javits. All through the summer, another devastating event for Mitchell was in the making. While Mitchell was absent on his speaking tours, NBC TV was preparing its Whitepaper # 9, which would be entitled “The Battle of Newburgh” and would be aired nationally in January 1962. Throughout that summer, we spent long hours with the director, providing him with the names of key people with vital information, and directing him to welfare recipients who would be willing to tell their real story. We agreed to have a discussion scene filmed in our church garden. Out of the argumentative nature of the discussion,

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the camera would move out to explore the realities of the welfare problem. Although we invited various church members with the strongest negative opinions to tell their story to the nation, the most vocal would not take part. Somehow or other, they did not want to air their opinions nationally. Only a small part of our discussion could be used in the final production. The director located a more spirited argument in a local bar. Most telling were the testimonies of the welfare recipients. A shut-in member of our congregation told the simple story of how she had outlived her savings, and of how she was grateful for the kindness of the Welfare Department that kept her in her one-room apartment. The dignity and honesty of other recipients displayed the flimsiness of the charge that they were chiselers. The city was enraged and disillusioned. Councilman McKneally demanded that those associated with the production be investigated. Nothing happened. A public debate between Mitchell and me was cancelled. Councilman Doulin said that he wished he had never heard of welfare. Mayor Ryan stated, I don’t think people around here realized just how black a name their home town was getting, but when they saw . . . welfare recipients crying on the screen and found out that 15,000,000 other Americans saw it too, then I think they began wondering whether the whole thing was worth it.

In August of that summer, I accepted a call that took me from this suburban church to an integrated congregation outside the Bronx in Mount Vernon, New York. Late in the day on December 7, 1962, detectives from New York City District Attorney Frank S. Hogan’s office arrested Joseph Mitchell upon a charge of accepting a $20,000 bribe to rezone a piece of property. Taken to New York City, he was questioned, fingerprinted, and photographed—just like a welfare recipient! Throughout the long proceedings that followed, he maintained that he was framed by communists and liberals. A split jury finally leaned in favor of his acquittal upon the grounds of reasonable doubt. The detectives had arrested his middleman accomplice on the way to their meeting, before the $20,000 had actually been delivered to Mitchell. Most Newburghers, however, felt that he was actually guilty. What convinced them was that, three days before his arrest, with $498 in the bank and with heavy indebtedness, he had ordered a $7,107 Lincoln Continental. Most interesting of all was the color that he selected for what was to be his new car: presidential black! On July 8, 1963, Joseph McDowell Mitchell submitted his resignation. After a year of unemployment, he became national field director for the segregationist Citizens Councils of America.

SOME REFLECTIONS MIDWAY IN THE JOURNEY The reader may already be wondering why I have stored so many facts in my old notes about this event that took place almost 50 years ago. I confess

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to a certain vengeance in nursing such dark memories, as though I am determined that such an outrage must never be forgotten. Even as I write these words, I feel again an intense anger toward Joseph Mitchell, and discover that it erupts whenever, on TV, I hear some aspiring politician exploiting the fears that people have of “the outsider.” It all comes roaring back when irrational fears of Hispanic immigrants are played upon for the purpose of advancing someone’s political career or when homophobic fears of gay and lesbian persons are exploited by those who purport to be defending traditional marriage. It was certainly a blessing in disguise when the city manager withdrew from our scheduled debate. I cannot recall how it came to be that I was chosen to debate him, but what I do know is that, if it had taken place, my goal would have been to utterly discredit and humiliate him before as large an audience as possible. When we respond to evil, there is a very fine line between a prophetic defense of the victims of injustice and, on the other hand, the dark enjoyment of utterly destroying the enemy. Righteous anger must never be confused with vengeance. When the prophet understands, as did Gandhi, that he and his enemy share the same flawed nature, debate can proceed in a constructive manner. I fear that, had the debate proceeded, my desire to destroy might have won the debate, but would have lost the battle by lowering myself to the hateful tactics of the enemy. If the best person for the debate had been chosen, then it certainly would have been someone who, though not an ostentatious person of faith, was a remarkable example of Christian grace. Attorney Edward G. O’Neill was an old-fashioned New Deal Democrat, formerly assistant district attorney of New York County (Manhattan) under “gangbuster” Thomas E. Dewey. With his ever-smoldering pipe in his mouth, I still remember the gracious wisdom with which he counseled me as the dust was settling upon this debacle. Although he certainly agreed that the city manager’s reform was cruel and unjust, he reminded me that many of those who had initially supported the reform were, nonetheless, persons of good faith who would never have refused to help an individual black person who came to their door in need. It was just that they had not arrived at an understanding of systemic racism. “One on one,” they were kind and just in their dealings with all persons; they simply had not reached a level of understanding that saw beyond individual charity. With grace and patience, however, they might be brought along. In other words, they were exactly where I once had been in my lack of understanding of the distinction between personal and social righteousness. Who knows but that, in my previous life of private piety, I might have been a supporter of Joseph Mitchell’s plan to root out chiselers? How odd that I had to learn that truth from someone who made no claims at being Christian or spiritual! We discover God’s universal grace in such odd places and in the lives of such unlikely persons.

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Still, I left Newburgh with a deeper understanding of the widespread network of raw racism and hostility toward the poor that is always awaiting mobilization. We do well to fear those who aspire to public office and do so by tapping into this ever present infrastructure of fear and hatred. As Mitchell’s predecessor, Albert Abrams, observed, I’ve wondered how Hitler could have come to power in Germany. . . . I think I’ve discovered the answer here in Newburgh. The role of the politician is often one that requires him to express publicly what the people fear privately. Often it’s a play-back of their own voices in louder decibels—and that’s what happened in Germany and in Newburgh.”

THE 1960s It was with relish that I accepted the call to the racially integrated First Presbyterian Church of Mount Vernon, New York, a densely populated (19,000 people per square mile) bedroom community, the first station on the New Haven railroad line outside of the Bronx. The congregation of 750 members had been racially integrated for about a decade, with African American members comprising about 17% of the membership. One factor that had made integration a possibility was that there was a higher percentage of college graduates among the black members than among the white. Because the black members were both well educated and well employed, integration was more difficult to resist. At the same time, although it cannot be proven, this probably made some white members resentful of the black members. One result of such resentment was that no black member had ever been elected to serve on the board of deacons or on the session, the ruling body of a Presbyterian congregation. Even more interesting was the exclusion of black women from the women’s association of the church. It is, of course, impossible to estimate the extent to which my influence brought about change in these areas of exclusion. I would like to think that I was the one who led the charge in achieving black membership in all three of these areas, but such may not have been the case. Whatever the truth of the matter may be, I saw it as my role as a true “white knight” to correct these situations, and so I lent my influence to the task. After all, since my “conversion” to prophetic ministry in Newburgh, I was now one of the good guys. One by one, the gates were opened. Despite resistance, the first black deacon was elected. After that, the election of the first black elder to the session was easier. The last stronghold was the women’s association. To their credit, when confronted with the need to act, the session informed the association that they could no longer exclude black women, so that, when the first black woman “happened” to arrive at a monthly meeting, the gates were opened.

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Interestingly, the infusion of energetic young black women into the association brought new vitality to the work of the association, and made the association more attractive to young white women. One conversation will always remain with me. Before all of this took place, a highly active, middle-aged white member of the association hailed me in the hallway one day to inform me that “when they [black women] are allowed in, I’ll be leaving.” With wisdom that must have come from above, I answered her simply by saying, “I can’t believe that you would really do that.” Appealing to her inherent goodness must have worked; she never left the church or the women’s association, and when I returned to preach at an anniversary celebration 20 years later, she was still there, working beside her black sisters in the association’s activities. At the time, I was not able to theologize about what this woman’s “conversion” really meant. However, to use a Quaker phrase, I have to believe that what George Fox called “that of God” in every person accounts for the fact that the divine Spirit, present in every life, can work in surprising and constructive ways, especially when encouraged by a hopeful and friendly attitude. Had I played the role of the angry prophet, calling down fire from heaven upon her racist threat, she might well have carried through on her stated intention to leave. However, she obeyed the “still, silent voice” of God’s indwelling Spirit and did the right thing. However, it would take me many years to articulate such an understanding of “that of God” in every person. Even if my realization of this truth was years in formation and practice, I now believe that it is the only solid basis upon which we can frame our responses to evil. But this was just the beginning for me. There were, however, other workings of the Spirit that were moving me in that direction. One of the moments of such dawning awareness began at a synod retreat for pastors who were devoted to the cause of civil rights. Those invited to this gathering were all committed to the cause, and I felt good being identified with this cutting-edge group. Those were exciting times, with the civil rights movement gaining strength. I felt good about myself and my ministry. I was now on the right side, a true warrior in the Lord’s army. During one of the free reading sessions, someone had started to play a recording of blues singer Bessie Smith. She had died, allegedly, when refused treatment at a white hospital in the Deep South following an auto accident. It was not the truth or untruth of that account that mattered. What mattered that day was what I heard in the utter freedom of her voice. I was sitting alone in the reading room as I became absorbed by her song. Suddenly I realized something that changed my entire understanding of my role in this great march toward justice. It came to me with the same clarity that I heard in her sweet voice. Black people didn’t need me; they were already free, even though our institutions were trying to keep them in bonds. Their spirits were soaring with a spiritual freedom that I had never known. I was the one

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who needed to be liberated, and I needed to learn this spirit of freedom from them. Unless I learned this liberation that arises from the indwelling divine Spirit, I would be of no use to the movement. From that day forward, I viewed my fellow white warriors with different eyes. I was still one of them, but I realized I needed more than devotion to a cause. I was beginning to realize that some people who fight for a cause (whatever the cause) are more interested in the cause than in the people for whom the cause supposedly exists. In one of his musings about Spanish poets, Thomas Merton (1965) noted the difference between poets with a Franciscan love of life and the “Marxist poets . . . whose love is for a cause. How quickly one discovers, below the surface of this devotion to causes, the deep current of hatred for men” (p. 13). Amidst the shrill voices of my years in Mount Vernon, I learned to look for evidence of this deeper, forgiving grace of God in other places. The grace to hope for and believe in one’s enemies was not automatically conferred upon ordained Christian pastors, especially upon those who had been reared upon a harsh diet of apocalyptic scripture. Ordinary layfolk, black or white, whose simple diet was made from the gentle ingredients in the Sermon on the Mount were instinctively better equipped to love their enemies than clergy whose Jesus was the warrior of the Book of Revelation. A hateful, vengeful spirit toward the enemy is a denial of the very spirit of Jesus, even if we find it in the Book of Revelation! Such a gracious, peacemaking spirit I discovered in a conservative rabbi in Mount Vernon. I had already learned in my Newburgh days that, in matters of justice, one often finds more friends among Jewish rabbis than among Christian clergy, but Aaron Blumenthal was a special case. Through the various community debates, particularly those related to schools, he maintained a persistent but kindly presence. Of course, as a Jew, he had fought many battles against bigotry. However, his battles had never embittered his spirit. I often wondered why Aaron was one of the “best Christians” I have ever known. I would discover the secret of his serene spirituality one evening when I phoned him regarding some routine matter related to our United Clergy group. When his wife answered my call, I asked if Aaron could come to the phone. I have never forgotten her answer. “I’m sorry, Morgan,” she said, “I’ ll have him call you later. Right now, Aaron is praying.” Never in over a half century of ministry have I ever received such an answer when phoning a Christian pastor. Aaron had disciplined himself to set his sails close to the winds of the Spirit2 from which we can be refreshed by the holy winds of God’s forgiving grace. I began to learn from Aaron’s prayerfulness what I learned later from Professor A. B. Rhodes of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, that Israel’s prophets were also Israel’s intercessors. The very first occurrence of the word prophet in the Bible occurs in the brief phrase “for he is a prophet,

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and he will pray for you” (Genesis 20:7). A prophet who does not pray will never be able to make truly prophetic, healing responses to evil. This was another lesson of those years upon which I would need to be working.

MOVING ON As I moved on to churches in Kentucky, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Alabama, and finally back to Kentucky, confrontations with evil continued to be the most important source of my growth. The details of those other pastorates are not as important as the fact that evil continued to present itself in different costumes. It kept coming back dressed in different disguises, but underneath it was always the same. If I believed in the existence of an actual devil, I would say that the devil continued to return, wearing different clothing; however, as one who no longer believes in an actual Prince of Darkness, I can only say that, whatever it was, it continued to return. I have found myself responding in my morning prayers with those words of the psalmist (62:3–5), How long will you assail a person, will you batter your victim, all of you, as you would a leaning wall, a tottering fence? Their only plan is to bring down a person of prominence. They take pleasure in falsehood; they bless with their mouths, but inwardly they curse.

The psalmist who penned those words may well have believed that our life is surrounded by cosmic forces of evil that keep coming back. However, although I do not believe that our life is the battleground of such an insidious war against the saints, the psalmist certainly does voice our persistent human weariness with the evil that keeps returning to us in ever-new forms. Just when we think that we have definitively driven the enemy beyond the borders of our soul, a new attack takes place on one of our outer provinces. Of course, persons of good faith do not always agree about what constitutes a manifestation of evil. In my next pastorate in Kentucky, many Christians felt that the war in Vietnam was evil. Although I was not a marcher in the antiwar movement of those years, I felt keenly for the pain of those who did. Being adjacent to Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, I met with students who were agonizing over the decision to burn their draft cards, and was often caught in the clash between my church members who supported the war and seminary professors who opposed it. Finally, as that war began to disintegrate and divide the soul of the nation, I did join a handful of older pastors who, with the counsel of our U.S. senator, and the wise and kindly guidance of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Louisville, called for the end of hostilities. I felt it was time to say, “Enough is enough.” Even so, the agony of that war and, particularly, the unhealed wounds of those who fought in it continue to divide my

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own soul. On every Memorial Day, I try to express my personal gratitude to some of those veterans who served in that war. The worst manifestation of evil and injustice in the years that have followed is the battle for the acceptance of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered persons in both church and society. It is still an unresolved issue in my own denomination, and I find it difficult to restrain my anger against pastors and churches that have closed the door to such persons from enjoying full membership and/or ordination in our denomination. It is a very personal pain as I remember one of my gifted associate pastors who died of AIDS. He had so much to offer the church, and could have enjoyed a full, free personal life if acceptance and marriage to a partner of his choice had not been blocked by those who are so insecure in their own skin that they must deny life and happiness to those whose sexual orientation differs from theirs. I truly hate such bigotry in the church, as well as in our country whenever I see enterprising, homophobic politicians continue to make an issue of this matter by uttering the hellish lie that they are only trying to defend traditional marriage. With that battle still raging, the newest disguise of evil is in the “patriotic hatred” that is being directed against Hispanic migrant workers. I react to such bogus patriotism as being what it is, “the last refuge of scoundrels,” and I react to it with deep personal hatred as I work weekly with migrant children. I know how hard these people work, picking two tons of tomatoes daily to earn the equivalent of a minimum wage, and how their children have to travel with them and work beside them as they follow other crops to other places during the summer months. I felt rage arising within me when a fourth grader whom I tutor at a charter school for migrant farm worker children told me that he would be spending his summer picking berries. As he probably suspects, he will return every night to the generally wretched housing provided for migrant families. One of the teachers with whom I work at that same school spent her early years crawling in the fields and picking cucumbers, but now holds a degree in elementary education. It is as if these are my own enslaved people; I want to rise up with Mosaic fury (Exodus 2:12) against those who speak against them and who want to be able to harass them by demanding special identification from them—simply because they “look” Hispanic. These have been the faces of evil that I have had to confront over the years. At times they seem one and the same enemy, particularly as these evils are gathered together by those who package anti-gay, anti-migrant hatreds with their pro-gun, pro-God campaigns. But before I boil over in my revulsion of such enemies, I must accept the shattering, humbling truth that, whatever the costume in which evil may appear, I am always the one wearing the costume. My worst enemy is always myself. In that sense, my worst enemy is always my favorite enemy because he or she is always revealing to

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me the depths and heights of which my own soul is capable. I share a common humanity with those I classify as my worst enemies. The hateful heart within them is the same heart that beats within my own breast. The inner light that calls me to goodness is the same inner light that is also shining in some recess of their darkened or dimly lit soul. The same amazing, unconditional, unlimited, and universal grace that bears patiently and forgivingly with me is operating secretly with the same salvific love in their lives. To hate my enemy is, therefore, to hate myself. But to hate myself is, at the same time, to hate the God who is determined, whatever it takes, to bring me home to my true self. And so I must wait patiently. But as I wait, it helps me to remember those simple truths that have been growing within me over this long journey. Time is always on God’s side. Not even one of the worst enemies will be able to hold out forever against the forgiving grace of God. God has so designed our hearts that we are always being drawn to our True Home. God is punishing us with love. If God seems to be absent and strangely silent as the world’s worst enemies continue their evildoing, then I must remember, “Love punishes when it forgives, and injured beauty by its awful silence” (Tagore, 1960, p. 99). God is always working in every life, not by punishing, but because sin is its own punishment, driving us finally to God. City Manager Mitchell destroyed himself. The worst tyrants finally bring down their own evil kingdoms. Sin punishes sin, and in doing so, brings us, whether in time or eternity, back to God. So I can wait patiently and lovingly as God does God’s own work, in God’s own way, in God’s own time in destroying the evil works of my enemies. This does not mean that I may be passive in responding to evil. I may be called to speak out or act out God’s (not my) revulsion of evil. Speaking my painful truth may be controversial, and acting out God’s horror of evil may need to be radical, as it was in Bonhoeffer’s participation in the plot to assassinate Hitler. What is of utmost importance is that only those who know their own need of God’s unconditional grace, and see themselves in the enemy—only such identification with the enemy can qualify us for making a grace-filled response to evil. Confident that we are moving toward the restoration of all things by God’s grace, we become the kinds of peaceful persons who are, uniquely and only, qualified to become peacemakers. Resigning from the exhausting (and impossible) task of fixing other people, we rest assured that God is already fixing them, and so surrender ourselves to God’s fixing in ourselves, as God’s inner light continues to burn and cleanse our own souls. As we do this, we find ourselves falling in love again with the entire human family. This was the cleansing truth that finally came to Thomas Merton. As strenuously as he was opposed to all wars, he realized that he had to love the entire human family, even those who were his hawkish enemies. During my

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years in Louisville, on every Wednesday noon as I went to a weekly gathering of some men in my church, I would pass by the corner of Fourth and Walnut without realizing the moment of grace that came upon Merton at that very corner. He wrote of that revelatory moment, In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. . . . I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. . . . And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun. . . . If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. . . . I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other. (Merton, 1965, pp 156–158)

NOTES 1. What follows in this account is from notes that I began making almost 50 years ago, most of the sources of which I no longer possess. To those journalists or writers from whom I may have gotten them, I express my deep thanks. 2. A favorite phrase of this book’s editor, J. Harold Ellens.

REFERENCES Merton, T. (1965). Conjectures of a guilty bystander. New York: Doubleday. Tagore, R. (1960). Fireflies. New York: Macmillan.

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Forgiveness, Reconciliation, and the Hard March to Peace Everett L. Worthington Jr. and Peter J. Hampson

The past is never dead; it’s not even past. —William Faulkner

INTRODUCTION Forgiveness can defuse personal and societal evils arising from discord, strife, or violence. It is thus one (of many) important ways that can help people move from conflict to personal, social, and societal peace and reconciliation. Forgiveness is one of several moral strengths that can become part of a more integrated character for those who value and habitually practice the virtues. Depending on which virtues that groups of people most value, or overaccentuate, peace (or war) can ensue. Even forgiveness, if misunderstood, can tragically inhibit individual pursuit of reconciliation and peace as well as the mutual journeys toward social and societal peace.

GENERAL APPROACH: ASSUMPTIONS, DEFINITIONS, AND PRELIMINARIES: FOUR PROPOSITIONAL CLAIMS AND SOME ASSUMPTIONS In our title, we imply four propositions. Proposition 1: Forgiveness and reconciliation lead to one crucial pathway to societal healing after group conflict. Forgiveness and reconciliation are not necessary to promote individual, social, and societal peace, but individuals or groups who ignore them miss an opportunity to move toward peace.

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Proposition 2: Any societal trek to peace is a long hard march. Barriers are encountered and will need to be surmounted. For individuals, privations and ego control, and for societies, cultural efforts are unavoidable costs to (a) persuade people to forgive and (b) reconcile. Proposition 3: To change society, people must change aspects that are relatively stable. Changing people’s virtue orientation and emphasis on forgiveness within the virtues might lead to permanent societal changes. Proposition 4: Effective leadership is needed for society to march toward peace.

We also make several initial assumptions (for more detailed discussion, see Worthington, 2009; Worthington & Aten, 2010). First, societies consist of interacting people who often respond individually to transgressions. Societies fluctuate widely in reactions to societal unrest. Second, civil conflicts cue many different opinions among groups that underpin different societal actions to repair the damage. Third, when threats to identity occur, as they typically do in societal conflict: (a) People become locked into their beliefs and attitudes (Hicks, 2001), (b) each group cuts off relationships with the other group, and (c) locked-in beliefs about identity and interpersonal transgressions live longer than the precipitating conflicts (Hicks, 2001). Fourth, after conflicts, extremists might still trigger violent reprisal by acting violently. Fifth, individuals in a close-knit group trigger each other toward peace or disintegration. Sixth, there are many options for handling transgressions prosocially, including justice, acceptance, forbearance, and relinquishing judgment to God (Worthington, 2006). We believe that forgiveness, which after all is but one way to achieve peace, should never be coerced within victim communities. Forgiveness should always be presented as a possibility that can promote reconciliation and healing.

DEFINITIONS Forgiveness is an internal cognitive or affective experience that can generate merciful and loving motives and behaviors. Humility, forgiveness, and mercy are ideal virtues for promoting peace between individuals, groups and societies. Researchers have offered the following consensual definition of forgiveness: “intraindividual, prosocial change toward a perceived transgressor that is situated within a specific interpersonal context” (McCullough, Pargament, & Thoresen, 2000; p. 9). Others have recently expanded this, noting that forgiveness involves two related but distinct levels (Exline, Worthington, Hill, & McCullough, 2003). Emotional forgiveness is the internal experience of replacing negative emotions with positive emotions (e.g., empathy, love, and compassion). Decisional forgiveness is an intention to reduce negative behavior toward the offender and (if possible) restore

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positive behavior toward the offender, though the interpersonal context in which forgiveness often unfolds can prevent full reconciliation. It is useful to distinguish further between two key types of forgiveness. We differentiate forgiveness of other whereby an individual, internally, forgives a perpetrator from that which involves forgiving the self (Worthington, 2006). Both types are useful in peace seeking. Reconciliation is the restoration of trust in a relationship. It requires mutually trustworthy behaviors. It does not necessarily imply that the previously conflicted parties will subsequently live together in harmony after the reconciliation. Forgiveness and societal peace implicate questions of justice. Legal justice involves fairness and due process under laws of the land or the state, and social justice typically requires an optimal balance of freedom and equality for all (dependent on prevailing social realities and practicalities). Justice, likewise, must be tempered with mercy; this is an act by a person or persons with the legitimate authority to recommend or administer less punishment than might be required or expected.

CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF INTERGROUP FORGIVENESS Extending forgiveness research to intergroup contexts implies that groups and communities can also commit offenses that result in anger, distrust, vengeful motivations, and damaged relations (Roe, 2007). However, in the intergroup context, the meaning of forgiveness becomes ambiguous because conflict is ultimately a collective interconnected experience. The theologian Milbank (2003) notes that forgiveness always struggles with behavioral interconnections that are nearly impossible to disentangle in practice. To illustrate, assume that a country is controlled by a majority group opposed by an oppressed minority. Part of the minority forms into a resistance group, which spins off fringe elements. Suppose a member of a fringe group kills people of majority ethnicity during worship. Who is or are the perpetrator(s)? Only the shooters of particular victims, all members of the group, or just their leaders? Are all members of the ethnic minority somewhat responsible due to the resistance to the majority? Or is the majority group partly responsible because of the social injustices they may have perpetrated? Ambiguities exist on the victims’ side as well. Are the victims those who were directly victimized, or must we consider their families and friends too? What about the workplace that suffered traumatic losses of valued workers? Are there other victims such as the leaders of the political party in power, the terrorized population, or maybe the entire country impoverished because tourist and trade are curtailed?

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How forgiveness is received is also unclear. Can a group or an individual actually forgive another group? In individual forgiveness, we carefully defined forgiveness as an internal intraindividual experience. We differentiated it from the communication of an offer or acceptance of forgiveness. In social and societal settings, people obviously cannot read minds. If forgiveness is to make an impact on the society, it must be communicated sincerely and believably (and not merely be used as a negotiating ploy or military stratagem). Likewise, for the offender or offending group, the acceptance of communicated forgiveness must be made publicly and believably. Must an official representative of the group convey and accept forgiveness? What if group members do not concur with the leaders’ actions? Given these complexities, it is unsurprising that scientific inquiry into intergroup forgiveness is in its infancy. Recently, researchers have defined intergroup forgiveness as “a reduction of feelings of revenge, anger and mistrust towards the perpetrator group and intentions to understand, approach, and engage with its members” (Cehajic, Brown, & Castono, 2008, p. 352). This locates forgiveness within an individual’s changed feelings toward a perpetrator group. Needless to say, not all group members change from negative affect and motives to neutral (or perhaps positive) affect and prosocial motives in exactly the same way. Inevitably, for example, there will be “the hothead factor” (i.e., acts of violence or hatred of extremists that provoke negative emotions and motivations in the other group). Others may simply be slow to forgive (Worthington, 2001). Intergroup forgiveness has also been defined as “a process that involves making a decision to learn new aspects about oneself and one’s group (one’s emotions, thoughts, and capability to inflict harm on others), and to try to explore the world as perceived by the out-group” (Noor, Brown, & Prentice, 2008, p. 101). This again treats intergroup forgiveness as an individual decision, but one incorporating affective and cognitive components including empathy. Thus, in intergroup forgiveness, two types of definitions parallel the distinction between individual decisional and emotional forgiveness (Exline et al., 2003). Communication of forgiveness is not the same as the experience of forgiveness, because communication can be withheld or be duplicitous. Yet if forgiveness is communicated—especially in the public political arena—it carries far more political clout than silent forgiveness in the hearts of millions, and can change the sociocultural climate. There might then be good justification for differentiating several additional levels of intergroup forgiveness, including: (1) the internal forgiveness or self-reported forgiveness of the majority of the people, (2) the degree to which forgiveness permeates the attitudes of key political factions, (3) the internal forgiveness of the leaders of the country, (4) the forgiveness on record of the leader, and (5) the politically communicated forgiveness of a sanctioned leader or representative body on behalf of the country.

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In general terms, however, we define intergroup forgiveness as intraindividual, prosocial change of emotion and motivation toward a perceived individual perpetrator or general outgroup that is situated within a specific political and/ or societal context. As an extension, we define societal intergroup forgiveness as intergroup forgiveness attributed to a whole group with the recognition that minority positions within the group might oppose intergroup forgiveness. Thus, we retain an understanding of forgiveness per se as intraindividual.

THE SOCIAL AND SOCIETAL CONTEXTS OF INTERGROUP FORGIVENESS Although intergroup forgiveness is experienced individually, it is unavoidably communicated socially—if it is to be socially effective. We propose that the term intergroup communication of forgiveness be used in these regards because actual states of internal experience of forgiveness are not directly assessed. In distinguishing forgiveness from related concepts, we also hope to clarify misunderstandings that imply that forgiveness (a) is opposed to and incompatible with justice, (b) seeks peace at too great a price, (c) is too difficult for most people to experience, and yet, at the same time, (d) is too glib a recommendation to be taken seriously for real-world peacemaking. Intergroup forgiveness is only one of many possible responses to transgressions and often needs to be coupled with additional coping mechanisms at the individual and societal levels. Individuals can deal with transgressions, not always appropriately, by seeking legal redress or resorting to “rough” justice, reattributing cause, forbearing, accepting, or turning the matter over to God for divine justice. An individual might employ more than one such strategy for coping with a particular transgression and might employ different strategies for different transgressions (see Worthington, 2006). Forgiveness need not merely imply condoning, letting go, or forfeiting the right to justice. Nor should it belittle the experience or pain and suffering of victims (Worthington, 2009). Nor is forgiveness just another term for reconciliation. “Forgiveness is an inner response, whereas reconciliation is a behavioral coming together” (Enright & Zell, 1989, p. 54). Other considerations for understanding intergroup forgiveness are the theoretical complexities regarding the collective context (Hewstone, Rubin, & Willis, 2002), and the idea that intergroup behavior is distinct from individual and interpersonal behavior (e.g., Cairns & Hewstone, 2002). The shift from personal to social identity (Tajfel, 1978), the emphasis on ingroup identification (Brown, Wohl, & Exline, 2008), and the collective memory of old grievances are relevant factors (Staub, 2006). In an intergroup context, forgiveness may be withheld out of a sense of ingroup loyalty or even in

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remembrance of historic abuses that occurred generations before (Wohl & Branscombe, 2009). Within an intergroup context, two opposing parties often do not have the option to disengage socially, politically, or locationally from the relationship. Unavoidable enduring contact might be perceived as an ongoing threat, a source of inevitable future abuses, or competition for limited resources.

FORGIVENESS: ONE VIRTUE WITHIN A VALUE HIERARCHY OF VIRTUES Forgiveness can be construed as a virtue. Following Aristotle, virtue is habitual right action aimed at a worthy telos (i.e., goal), requiring a means of acting and habitual practice until the behavior becomes second nature or a routinized “character strength.” We are also particularly influenced by Christian versions of this concept (see especially MacIntyre, 1985, 1999; Sherwin, 2005; Wright, 2010). Vices are habitual acts aimed at a goal judged inappropriate or unworthy. This judgment will itself be affected by what an individual, group, or society holds to be good or worthy. We hypothesize that virtues that tend to promote peace are as follows: one’s own humility; virtues of restraint of negative action (e.g., forbearance, prudence, and self-control); virtues of understanding (at first) and later warmth toward the antagonist (e.g., empathy, sympathy, compassion, love, gratitude for having experienced mercy, and forgiveness); virtues of unselfishness, inclusion, and acceptance (e.g., generosity, open-mindedness); virtues of self-giving and altruism (e.g., love, forgiveness); and virtues of patience. As well as emphasizing these virtues, other character strengths must be lowered or neutralized within the value hierarchy of the virtues, making them less likely to be triggered through rational reflection or nonconscious cueing, These include previously valued virtues applied judgmentally toward the outgroup and leniently toward the ingroup. In addition, loyalty (especially to one’s ingroup) is important. We shall particularly examine religion’s role in these connections. Individual virtues are unitary, but a fully virtuous character will involve the complex integration of several interconnecting virtues or virtue complexes. Moreover, it turns out that we can usefully organize virtues into three groups. Warmth-based virtues. So called warmth-based virtues (e.g., love, empathy, sympathy, compassion, forgiveness, kindness, generosity, and altruism) are positively affectively toned. Often people drawn to one of these virtues are drawn to the others. Conscientiousness-based virtues. Another group of the virtues might be called conscientiousness-based virtues. These include justice, self-control,

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responsibility, accountability, conscientiousness, temperance, forbearance, and restraint. Epistemic-based virtues. Epistemic virtues include qualities such as wisdom, courage, prudence, discernment, and knowledge.

Why do these virtue groups differ? From an evolutionary standpoint, the conscientiousness-based virtues typically restrain negative emotion and focus attention on survival (Fredrickson, 2009). Overfocus on survival, however, can lead to behaviors and decisions with poor social consequences. Unrestrained pursuit of self-interests impel people to harm or threaten other groups’ interests. Positive emotions, associated with warmth-based virtues, inspire people to open up to the world, and permit more flexibility and play. However, overfocus on positive emotions can reduce attention to survival needs or lead to diffuse efforts that inadequately meet one’s goals. Epistemic virtues treat the acquisition of knowledge, wisdom, effective problem solving, and critical thinking as goods. These are still important even though modern cognitive psychology has shown that many decisions are made and problems are solved virtually automatically or intuitively, especially by experts. In an important sense, experts here might be viewed as the people who have developed “expertise” with all the virtues in question.

Experimental Support for This Model of Virtues Worthington, Berry, and Parrott (2001) suggested that the three groupings of virtues might be differentially valued by different individuals, groups, and societies. They further proposed that virtues might be related to physical health through moderation of high and low religious commitment, suggesting that the more highly religious would be more virtuous overall, and would thus enjoy better mental and physical health. Webb and colleagues (2010) tested this model. They found broad agreement. Berry et al. (2005) studied forgiveness and justice depending on people’s habitual valuing of warmth-based and conscientiousness-based virtues and found that people who forgave their transgressors tended to highly value the warmth-based virtues in preference to the conscientiousness-based virtues. Those who advocated justice and revenge more often valued the opposite. That said, all three types of virtue may be needed to some degree. Philosopher-theologian Thomas Aquinas emphasized the need to balance intellectual strengths (epistemic virtues) with strengths of love, desire, and will (warmth virtues) with virtues such as prudence (a conscientiousness virtue) to guarantee a fully virtuous character (Sherwin, 2005). The same, we propose, is likely to be true for society as a whole.

The Variety of Virtues in Society We suggest that virtues are typically valued more or less by individuals in different societies, with paradoxical effects. In certain cultures, what

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are vices in most other contexts may be elevated as virtues and used to justify conflict, genocide, war, or peace and reconciliation. Even sincerely held but disconnected virtues as well as vice, if shaped by self-absorbed and ingroup-absorbed motives, can lead to devastating consequences for humans (Chesterton, 1908).

Ordering of Virtues in Circumstances of Societal Strife, Oppression, Conflict, and War The ordering of the virtues must often be modified by individuals and society seeking peace. In a society characterized by frequent injustice and conflict, justice is needed to insure social justice and the punishment of wrongdoers through societal due process. However, restraint against retaliation, honor retribution, vengeance, and individual application of justice is also needed. Some virtues must be employed to prevent or mitigate angry, fearful, and depressed rumination of individuals and to replace such negative thoughts, emotions, and attitudes with more positive ones toward the outgroups. Empathy, sympathy, love, compassion, and forgiveness are (along with justice) particularly needed. Humility and restraint when judging others are also essential.

A PSYCHOLOGICAL MODEL FOR VIRTUOUS BEHAVIOR What affects whether people act virtuously or whether they pursue vice? We now offer a provisional model with three important aspects: person variables, environmental variables, and triggers. Person variables: Person variables include personality (such as low agreeableness, high neuroticism, narcissism, pride, low humility, and low sense of mercy), personal values, personal virtue or vice, and religious beliefs, values, and attitudes. Both personal processes and personal structures are important. For example, a person might engage in rumination (a process) when a traumatic memory (a structure) is triggered. Environmental variables: Environmental factors involve social and societal structures such as historical context, leadership, social and political policies, social norms, and cultural factors (such as a culture of honor, forgiveness, social justice, or peace). In addition, environmental processes might arise such as democratic political processes, meetings, or demonstrations by power-seeking or peace movement groups. Triggers: Triggers might include salient environmental stimuli. A terrorist bombing could draw attention to personal and societal structures (e.g., repressive policies like curfews) or set in motion personal and societal processes (e.g., engaging in catastrophic ruminations or initiating socially repressive mass killing).

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How the Three Aspects of the Model Interact The relationship among (a) personal structures and processes, (b) societal or environmental structures and processes, and (c) internal or environmental triggers is best seen as three interlocking systems. There is no single starting place. Triggers can activate aspects of the personality, cognition, emotion, and motivation, or they can focus attention on cues within the situation. But normal thought processes could easily trigger a traumatic memory, which triggers attending to an existing cognitive structure (such as a belief that one cannot trust the outgroup), which in turn activates environmental or societal structures as the person phones a friend (social process) to organize a meeting of a political demonstration by an existing group (a societal structure). That demonstration (a societal event) serves as both a societal process and trigger for other thoughts and acts in the involved people.

MORAL UNDERSTANDINGS AND VIRTUES ELICITED BY SITUATIONS

General Moral Understanding People take different general approaches to determining what they believe to be moral. According to Wright’s (2010) analysis, some people equate morality with duty and moral rule compliance. Others adopt a personal moral emotivism. They reason that, if it feels right in one’s heart of hearts, then it must be right. The trouble for society is, others likely feel differently! Wright’s third alternative resonates with our suggestions: Morality can be seen within a framework of virtue ethics advocated by Aristotle. People are oriented toward a goal or telos, to act to attain the good life for themselves and the common good for others. Practiced assiduously, the four cardinal virtues (namely, justice, courage, temperance, and prudence) will lead to a good character. Yet Wright, reflecting a deeper Christian point of view, suggests that these Aristotelian virtues must be supplemented with Christian virtues such as love, humility, gratitude, and faith along with others such as mercy, forgiveness, compassion, and the like. These lead people along a Christian path toward God—not in the sense of lording power over others but in the sense of presenting the glory of the creation to God the Creator, and helping bring the glory of God to creation.

Called-Out Virtues Situations will often elicit or trigger two (or more) valued virtues, which then come into conflict. For example, a mass killing by Hutus of their Tutsi countrymen as occurred in Rwanda in 1994 might trigger strong demands among Tutsis for justice. Yet the degree they could empathize with some of

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the Hutus might trigger some forgiveness and at least a desire to reconcile rather than to seek vengeance. Both valued virtues are triggered, and the person is now conflictually governed by the (a) thoughts, values, and beliefs that are triggered; (b) the cognitive processes that follow; and (c) societal stimuli that are salient and social processes that unfold. In Rwanda, an estimated 800,000 people were killed in 100 days. As long as neighbors were acting in mobs and were stirring each other up to do more violence, those stimuli were the most prominent. They triggered other thoughts and actions in individuals and social groups—most of which led to violence seeking. When Paul Kagame, then military commander of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, defeated the incumbent government of Jean Kambanda in July 1994, it triggered cessation of the genocide. It also triggered a process of justice and reconciliation. Although influenced by the successful South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SA-TRC) under the leadership of President Nelson Mandela and Head Commissioner Desmond Tutu, Rwanda could not use the same structure as did South Africa. Murders in Rwanda were simply too widespread to have such national hearings as were used in South Africa for human rights, amnesty, and reparations. Instead, Rwanda set up gacaca courts to adjudicate, within afflicted communities, the atrocities that occurred during the 1994 genocide. Over 100,000 people had been detained and charged with genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Relative to mere incarceration, the courts emphasized restorative justice, including justice that is satisfactory for victims and perpetrators. They often imposed community service. (The courts have been criticized, however, as placing victims and those who testify at risk for reprisal.) In proceedings such as those in Rwanda and South Africa, virtues clearly come into conflict with each other. For SA-TRC commissioners, virtues such as forgiveness confront virtues of justice, fairness, and honesty head-on. Commissioners had to exercise prudence, courage, self-control, and temperance to make decisions. Head Commissioner Desmond Tutu held the Christian virtues of forgiveness, empathy, compassion, and love at the forefront of people’s minds. For victims in Rwanda, honesty and the desire to continue as a provider for one’s family (at risk if one is injured or killed for testimony) were in opposition.

WHAT CAN BE DONE TO CHANGE THE LIKELIHOOD OF VIRTUOUS, PEACE-SEEKING BEHAVIOR?

Hypothesized Mechanisms That Govern Moral Behavior Individuals might act to make forgiveness more likely in various ways. They can work toward personal forgiveness, heightening their awareness

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of relevant virtues, and replacing old cognitions, memories, affects, and attitudes with new ones. Numerous programs with empirical support are available to assist. Enright and Fitzgibbons’s (2000) process approach is the most supported for psychotherapy. Worthington’s (2006) five steps to REACH forgiveness is the best-supported psychoeducational approach. Enright’s process and Luskin’s (2001) cognitive models also have substantial empirical support. Societies can also take practical steps to promote forgiveness. Societies or leaders holding political office can effect modifications of societal structures to reduce the likelihood that they will trigger old patterns of conflict. For example, they can set up formal mechanisms for processing claims of injustice in the past, deploy new symbolic markers such as a new flag, institute a new national anthem, or elect political leaders. Both individuals and societies can work to dismantle triggers leading to conflict and power and replace them with triggers of forgiveness and the pursuit of reconciliation. For example, in Rwanda, talk of tribal tensions between Hutus and Tutsis was feared to trigger renewed violence. President Kagame has thus prevented people from discussing tribes, and a policy of “We are all Rwandans” has been employed. Although this might retard the healing from the massacres, it will likely help make future violence less likely. Worthington and Aten (2010) explored the transition needed from a cycle of aggression to a cycle of peace. There is logic to the cycle of aggression. It is based on threats to self and to group identity. People respond to these threats by suppressing weakness and masking fear by expressing anger and acting in strength. But the logic of aggression is not inevitable. People can learn a logic of peacemaking at every point in the cycle of aggression.

RELIGION AND CULTURE AS POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE We have not drawn heavily on religion in our account, but religion can play important parts in societal healing. First, religious groups generally are prominent in society, and the number of people who attend worship and identify with religions is usually high. Religious groups value traditional virtues. Some religious groups may have different views of what is sacred— e.g., Christians hold the Trinity to be sacred; Buddhists do not usually hold a personal God to be sacred. Nevertheless, both Christians and Buddhists tend to promote traditional virtues. In society, views of morality tend to fluctuate over time. Religious groups tend not to follow the fluctuations, but they stick close to the traditional virtues. If a country’s leadership aims to stimulate a particular virtue to cope with the aftermath of societal malaise, engaging the religious organizations and religious leaders is important. Third, when virtues are sacralized, most

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people, whether religious or not, pursue those virtues with more emotional motivation than virtues that are purely secular. Setting aside simple-minded criticism of religion, there are reasons why its involvement may not always be positive. Different religions understand forgiveness differently, for instance (Rye et al., 2000). Christianity understands forgiveness to be mandated for followers of Jesus. No act is seen as impossible to decisionally forgive. Decisional forgiveness is internal, religiously mandatory, and expected for Christians. Judaism, however, sees forgiveness as a virtue imbedded in a social interaction of teshuvah—return to the path of God or repentance. The practicing Jew is not religiously compelled to forgive unless the offender has substantially returned to the path of God (see Rye et al., 2000). There are implications of this. For one, if a victim has been killed or has died, the survivors hold the perpetrators in unforgiveness because the conditions for repentance cannot be met (i.e., the offender can never apologize, make restitution, and so on to the dead victim). In addition, even well-intentioned actions of dominant religious individuals can be perceived ambiguously. Tutu’s powerful presence as chair of the SATRC has been lauded as a brilliant choice because of his moral authority to promote forgiveness and reconciliation. Yet, it has also been criticized because his status as a Christian archbishop provided strong social pressure for victims to express forgiveness toward perpetrators of human rights violations. Culture also limits people’s understanding of forgiveness. Cultures of honor have been documented throughout the world (see Nisbett & Cohen, 1996). Cultures of honor mandate aggressive responses when one’s honor is defamed. Some people interpret any slight as a violation of honor. Other cultures confuse forgiveness and reconciliation. The people may urge reconciliation even if it is unsafe or patently unwise to reconcile because they believe they are forgiving (see Staub, 2006). Hence, we are not proposing forgiveness or the positive effects of religious cultures as panaceas for social and societal problems, though we still expect our emphasis on forgiveness to be criticized.

THE NECESSITY OF GREAT SOCIETAL LEADERSHIP

Conditions for Great Leadership Effective leadership, needed on the march toward peace, involves four qualities. These are (a) sound, “bedrock” moral principles; (b) a strong moral GPS system that reorients people to and orders the principles when social emotions run high; (c) a virtuous vision that engages the majority of people to work toward peace; and (d) the ability to forge consensus first on whether to and later on how to pursue that vision. Some gifted leaders develop into great leaders. Others are called out by trying times and, sometimes unwillingly, rise to the occasion.

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Emotional triggers necessitate sound bedrock principles. In times of restoration of peace after a country or group has experienced extreme social and civil discord, atrocities, and violence, including genocide, people are necessarily in a heightened emotional climate. Strong, potentially disruptive emotions are so dominant and intrusive, even in the leader, that he or she must have principles that include a commitment to peace. Furthermore, great leaders need a sense of balance between justice, mercy, and humility. The Hebrew prophet Micah spotted this long ago when he wrote, “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8). The effective transitional leader must understand that pursuit of justice alone is doomed. Mercy must temper justice. Justice is a social construct concerned with fairness. It often insists on retribution for harm (i.e., retributive justice) and can provide a context where the wrongdoer can make amends and be restored as a useful member of society (i.e., restorative justice). Justice aims to rebalance freedom with the equality of resources and opportunity as much as is possible (i.e., social justice). Mercy, by contrast, is an act that does not insist on what might be believed to be a fair punishment. Justice tends to be centrifugal. It consolidates the power of the dominant group, and slings the minority group outward away from the center of power. Mercy tends to be centripetal. It is center seeking and draws groups together. Humility is also needed for wise leadership. Leaders are perceived as humble if they have an accurate view of self and as one who can not allow his or her own agenda to infringe on promoting others’ welfare. A humble leader can make wise decisions, considers the welfare and viewpoints of others without defensively projecting his or her agenda onto others, and is not merely a reflection of others’ needs and wants (see Worthington, 2009; Worthington & Aten, 2010). Emotional triggers necessitate a “goodness-aligned” moral compass. Leaders can have bedrock principles and still not pursue the true and the good. Hitler, Stalin, and numerous others have led effectively but not in socially beneficial ways. Or they have done so with damaging social and societal costs. Usually, this is because their moral GPS does not orient to the truth. C. S. Lewis (1947), in The Abolition of Man, described the shared moral center of virtually all religious and secular traditions. These “laws” included laws of general and special beneficence; duties to parents, elders, and ancestors; and duties to children and posterity, justice, good faith, veracity, and magnanimity. When people orient away from those shared principles, their moral GPS is generally out of alignment. Events surrounding social unrest severely test one’s moral GPS, including most notably one’s ability to forgive. Good leaders survive such challenges. Disintegrated or weakly connected social structures and processes reveal the need for a grand and good vision. Leaders must project a morally uplifting

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telos for individuals that inspires cooperation and consensus. Leaders who do not do so will probably not lead the country to societal change. Typically, in conflicted societies, a single vision has not rooted or stayed dominant. Even in fiercely partisan political climates, a metanarrative can serve as a guiding vision that disagreement is acceptable but the population still endorses consensual rule. Good leaders build either agreement or at least willingness to move in a common, consensually validated direction, thereby promoting forgiveness and reconciliation. Leaders have to build a consensus behind their vision. Skills for building consensus are many and varied. They include inspirational articulation of the vision, working politically to bring about an ownership of the vision, helping people feel that they are valued participants, and working out conflicts in means and ends. In carrying out these essential leadership goals, people inevitably get hurt and feel disrespected. Power plays can occur. Thus, in this interpersonal context, forgiveness and reconciliation are frequently needed—if, on no other level, the purely human level between leader and others. Forgiveness thus plays a role at each level of leadership.

CONCLUSION Forgiving individuals can help promote societal peace after conflict, aggression, war, mass killing, and genocide, and we have identified numerous ways that such healing and peace might be brought about. Using a model that incorporated personal structures and processes, societal (environmental) structures, and triggers, we suggested ways that leaders or societies could engender change toward peace. We concentrated most heavily on (a) making forgiveness a habitually practiced virtue that is valued appropriately, especially with justice and humility; and (b) how forgiveness might play a role in four important aspects of great leaders. We briefly suggested that religion might enhance the effect of forgiveness working to promote peace. In these ways, afflicted countries and their conflicting people can forge lasting peace, provided they remain humble and resist the rigid conviction that only their view of reality is correct.

REFERENCES Berry, J. W., Worthington, E. L., Jr., Wade, N. G., Witvliet, C. v. O., & Kiefer, R. (2005). Forgiveness, moral identity, and perceived justice in crime victims and their supporters. Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, 29 (2), 136–162. Brown, R. P., Wohl, M. J. A., & Exline, J. J. (2008). Taking up offenses: Second-hand forgiveness and identification with targets of transgressions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1406–1419. Cairns, E., & Hewstone, M. (2002). Northern Ireland: The impact of peacemaking in Northern Ireland on intergroup behavior. In B. Neov & G. Salomon (Eds.),

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Peace education: The concept, principles and practices around the world (pp. 217–228). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Cehajic, S., Brown, R., & Castano, E. (2008). Forgive and forget? Antecedents and consequences of intergroup forgiveness in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Political Psychology, 29, 351–367. Chesterton, G. K. (1908). Orthodoxy. London: Bodley Head. Enright, R. D., & Fitzgibbons, R. P. (2000). Helping clients forgive: An empirical guide for resolving anger and restoring hope. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Enright, R. D., & Zell, R. (1989). Problems encountered when we forgive one another. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 8, 52–60. Exline, J. J., Worthington, E. L., Jr., Hill, P., & McCullough, M. E. (2003). Forgiveness and justice: A research agenda for social and personality psychology. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 7, 337–348. Fredrickson, B. L. (2009). Positivity: Groundbreaking research reveals how to embrace the hidden strength of positive emotions, overcome negativity, and thrive. New York: Crown. Hewstone, M., Rubin, M., & Willis, H. (2002). Intergroup bias. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 575–604. Hicks, D. (2001). The role of identity reconstruction in promoting reconciliation. In R. G. Helmick & R. L. Petersen (Eds.), Forgiveness and reconciliation: Religion, public policy, and conflict transformation (pp. 129–150). Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press. Lewis, C. S. (1947). The abolition of man. New York: Macmillan. Luskin, F. M. (2001). Forgive for good: A proven prescription for health and happiness. San Francisco: Harper. MacIntyre, A. (1985). After virtue: A study in moral theory (2nd ed.). London: Duckworth. MacIntyre, A. (1999). Dependent rational animals: Why human beings need the virtues (The Paul Carus Lectures). London: Duckworth. McCullough, M. E., Pargament, K. I., & Thoresen, C. E. (2000). The psychology of forgiveness: History, conceptual issues, and overview. In M. E. McCullough, K. I. Pargament, & C. E. Thoresen (Eds.), Forgiveness: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 1–14). New York: Guilford Press. Milbank, J. (2003). Being reconciled: Ontology and pardon. London: Routledge. Nisbett, R. E., & Cohen, D. (1996). Culture of honor. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Noor, M., Brown, R., Gonzalez, R., Manzi, J., & Lewis, C. A. (2008). On positive psychological outcomes: What helps groups with a history of conflict to forgive and reconcile with each other? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 819–832. Roe, M. D. (2007). Intergroup forgiveness in settings of political violence: Complexities, ambiguities and potentialities. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 13, 3–9. Rye, M. S., Pargament, K. I., Ali, M. A., Beck, G. L., Dorff, E. N., Hallisey, C., et al. (2000). Religious perspectives on forgiveness. In M. E. McCullough, K. I. Pargament, & C. E. Thoresen (Eds.), Forgiveness: Theory, research, and practice (pp. 17–40). New York: Guilford Press. Sherwin, M. (2005). By knowledge and by love: Charity and knowledge in the moral theology of St Thomas Aquinas. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press.

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Staub, E. (2006). Reconciliation after genocide, mass killing, or intractable conflict: Understanding the roots of violence, psychological recovery, and the steps towards a general theory. Political Psychology, 27, 867–894. Tajfel, H. (1978). Differentiation between social groups: Studies in the social psychology of intergroup relations. Oxford: Academic Press. Webb, J., et al. (2010, March 26). Four empirical tests of Worthington’s theoretical model relating forgiveness, religion and health. Symposium at the American Psychological Association Division 36 MidYear Conference, Loyola University, Columbia MD. Wohl, M. J. A., & Branscombe, N. R. (2009). Group threat, collective angst and ingroup forgiveness for the war in Iraq. Political Psychology, 30, 193–217. Worthington, E. L., Jr. (2001). Unforgiveness, forgiveness, and reconciliation in societies. In R. G. Helmick & R. L. Petersen (Eds.), Forgiveness and reconciliation: Religion, public policy, and conflict transformation (pp. 161–182). Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press. Worthington, E. L., Jr. (2006). Forgiveness and reconciliation: Theory and application. New York: Brunner-Routledge. Worthington, E. L., Jr. (2009). A just forgiveness: Responsible healing without excusing injustice. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. Worthington, E. L., Jr., & Aten, J. D. (2010). Forgiveness and reconciliation in social reconstruction after trauma. In Erin Martz (Ed.), Post-conflict rehabilitation: Creating a trauma membrane for individuals and communities and restructuring lives after trauma (pp. 55–72). New York: Springer. Worthington, E. L., Jr., Berry, J. W., & Parrott, L., III. (2001). Unforgiveness, forgiveness, religion, and health. In T. G. Plante & A. Sherman (Eds.), Faith and health: Psychological perspectives (pp. 107–138). New York: Guilford Press. Wright, N. T. (2010). Virtue reborn. London: SPCK.

c h apter 9

Overcoming Evil in I Peter Peter Rodgers

Among the most striking features of the New Testament is its consistent attitude toward overcoming evil. This teaching of nonretaliation and blessing in the face of an intentional evil act has its roots in the Hebrew Bible and is embodied in the teaching and action of Jesus. He taught his disciples not to resist one who is evil. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also, and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. (Matthew 5:39–41)

Jesus actually lived out this teaching in his great time of trial. When he was being crucified, he prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34). The New Testament writers, following the teaching and example of Jesus, challenge his disciples to “trace out his steps.” (1 Peter 2:21). They are called, like Jesus, not to be overcome by evil, but to “overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:21). Of all the writings of the New Testament, perhaps none is more shaped by Jesus’s response to evil than the First Letter of Peter.1 This short compendium of Christian faith and life is written to Christians in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) who are suffering trials for their faith. Misunderstood and even persecuted “for the name of Christ” (1 Pet 4:14), they are called to follow their Lord and Master. They are not to “repay evil for evil or abuse for abuse; but, on the contrary, repay with blessing” (1 Pet 3:9). This chapter will explore the theological background to this call to nonresistance and blessing in the face of an evil act, and will draw some conclusions for followers of Christ in the 21st century—a century where organized, intentional evil seems to be on the rise. Thus the First Epistle of Peter can be for us the

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clearest lens for learning how to be faithful followers of Christ in a world where evil abounds. One of the most outstanding features of the first letter of Peter is its extensive use of the Old Testament, the scriptures of Israel. In particular, in 1 Peter 2:18–25, phrases from the fourth Servant Song (Isa 52:13–53:12) are weaved into the narrative of Christ’s behavior under trial. Karen Jobes (2005, p. 194) notes the dependence of 1 Peter 2 on Isaiah 53:13–53:12, the Suffering Servant passage. J. H. Elliott (2000) remarked that the use of the fourth Servant Song in 1 Peter 2 is “as creative as it is singular in the New Testament” (p. 504). In a passage exhorting household servants to be submissive to their masters, the behavior of Jesus under trial is held up as a model that Christians should copy in detail. Because the next paragraph (3:1) begins with the word likewise, it is clear that the example of Christ’s suffering unjustly is meant to apply in some way to wives and husbands as well. Christ’s fulfillment of the role of Suffering Servant is the governing model for the household codes in the central section of 1 Peter. It is the pattern and power of the Servant’s life that provide the motive and the model for Christian thinking and living throughout this section (2:11–3:12) and indeed throughout the letter. Jesus, the obedient Servant of God, committed no sin; no deceit was found on his lips. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return, when he suffered he did not threaten, but entrusted himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were like sheep straying, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls. (1 Pet 2:23–25)

This passage begins by setting forth Jesus the servant as our model, in whose steps we should follow (1 Pet 2:21). It moves from presenting Jesus as the example of nonretaliation and blessing, to asserting the redemptive significance of his death: He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree (2:24). Christians are presented here not only with the incentive to live like Christ, but also with the declaration that in him new life is possible. By his wounds you have been healed (2:25). Another Old Testament text has shaped the thought of the First Letter of Peter, and like Isaiah 53, it is quoted or alluded to several times in the epistle. This is Psalm 34 (LXX 33). In 1 Peter 3:10–12, Psalm 34:11–16 is quoted extensively. He that would love life and see good days, Let him keep his tongue from evil, and his lips from speaking deceit;

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Let him turn away from evil and do right; let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, And his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. (RSV)2

This long quotation comes right after Peter’s exhortation not to return evil for evil (3:8–9). It describes the suffering righteous one, who holds his tongue and does not practice guile. It affirms that this one will “see good days.” J. H. Elliott (2000) asserts that the author here “uses a quotation of scripture to substantiate and conclude preceding instruction” (p. 611). But rather than seeing the quotation as a proof text, recruited by Peter to cap off his teaching, we should consider that the use of Psalm 34 is much more creative and constitutive for the argument of the letter as a whole. Joel B. Green (2007) correctly notes that Psalm 34 is “woven into the fabric of 1 Peter as a whole” (p. 107). In addition to a quotation from the Psalm in 1 Peter 2:3, there are a number of allusions and echoes of the Psalm elsewhere in the letter.3 It is interesting to note that the word for deceit (δο′λον), which occurs in 1 Peter 3:10 (Psalm 33:14 LXX), also occurs in the citation of Isaiah 53:9 in I Peter 2:22, and that this is a vice that Christ’s followers are called to “put away” (1 Pet 2:1). This is certainly an important word for the letter. I would suggest that the word might have helped to draw the two passages together (Isa 53 and Psalm 34) in Jewish and Christian exegesis prior to the writing of the letter. This association of different Old Testament passages through similar words or themes was a common exegetical technique in Second Temple Judaism (Evans, 2005, pp. 380–384). Thus an early Jewish Christian would have made the link: No deceit was found on Christ’s lips (Isaiah 53). Keep your lips that they speak no deceit (Psalm 34).

This observation is further strengthened by the fact that Psalm 34 was given a Christological interpretation elsewhere in the New Testament. In John 19:36, Psalm 34:20 is cited as Jesus fulfils the scripture in his crucifixion: “These things occurred that the scripture might be fulfilled, ‘None of his Bones shall be broken.’”4 This psalm, then, for the New Testament writers looks back to the Passover and forward to the cross. And although the primary use of the psalm in 1 Peter is paraenetic, exhorting Christians to follow in the steps of Christ, some new evidence suggests that the whole Psalm may also have been given a Christological interpretation by the Christian Church, and perhaps even by the author of 1 Peter. Our two earliest manuscripts of 1 Peter, papyrus

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P72 (Bodmer VIII) and the newly published P125 (P Oxy 4934), both read at 1 Peter 2:3 (quoting Psalm 33:9 LXX) not “For you have tasted that the Lord is good,” but “You have tasted that Christ is Lord.” If this is what Peter originally wrote,5 then the exhortation to Christian nonretaliation is based on a Christological reading of Isaiah 53 and Psalm 34, being interpreted together. Because Psalm 34 is a psalm of the “righteous sufferer” and Christ is the quintessential suffering righteous one, could the psalm as quoted in 1 Peter 3:10–12 be describing not just the righteous sufferer in general but also Christ, the one who kept his tongue from speaking evil and his lips from deceit? So, then, the Christ of Psalm 34, no less than the Christ of Isaiah 53, provides the pattern for Christian living. Paul Achtemeier (1996) summarizes this teaching of 1 Peter toward the end of his commentary, “The fate of Christ,—suffering, crucified, exalted is thus both the pattern of activity and the ground of the Christians’ faith and hope” (p. 340). To sum up these explorations of the text of 1 Peter, the life of Christ supplies the motive and power for nonretaliation of an evil act.6 Texts from the scriptures of Israel, in particular Isaiah 53 and Psalm 34, provide the thought and language in which this Christ-like behavior is framed, and it is the combination of the words of scripture and the life of Jesus that have coincided in early Christian thought to provide this groundbreaking theological and practical affirmation.7 It is one thing to discover this theology and praxis; it is quite another to live it out. I wrote this chapter up to this point sitting in the idyllic surroundings of the Duke Humphrey reading room of the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Surrounded by old books in that ancient setting with lovely views of gardens and spires from the windows, it is easy to forget the prevailing presence of evil in so much of the world and the call to overcome it by “following in Christ’s steps” (1 Peter 2:21). But I returned home and picked up the New York Times. Terrorist threats, murders, genocide, starvation, environmental degradation, abuse of children, and financial fraud—these were the headlines that caught my eye in the paper on Good Friday! Evil is a present reality in our world and will not be overcome by halfhearted resistance. What is called for is nothing less than radical living. And the Christian vision for that radical living is summed up in the challenge in 1 Peter 2:21 to “follow in Christ’s steps.” The word used for example here is a very vivid one. Karen Jobes (2005) wrote of it, The Greek word translated “example” was used to refer to a pattern of letters of the alphabet over which children learning to write would trace. It suggests the closest of copies. English words such as “example,” “model,” or “pattern” are too weak, for Jesus suffering is not simply an example or pattern or model, as if one of many, he is the paradigm by which Christians write large the letters of his gospel in their lives. (p. 195)

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But for many modern and postmodern interpreters such a picture, especially drawn from 1 Peter, is problematic. They see that the very document that purports to offer the Christian model of overcoming evil through submission to the treatment of the oppressor as part of the problem and, indeed, a collaborator in that oppression. One writer put the matter bluntly: The glorification of suffering, like that found in 1 Peter, is seen to glorify all suffering and in fact holds up the victim as a model for women. . . . Thus, the myth of Jesus as “Suffering Servant” should not be made into a model for Christian life, particularly for Christian women. . . . Of all the Christian Testament texts, the message of 1 Peter is the most harmful in the context of women’s lives. Its particular message of the suffering Christ as a model for Christian living leads to precisely the kind of abuses that Feminists fear. . . . The basic message of 1 Peter does not reflect God’s liberating word. (Corley, 1995, pp. 349–360)8

How should we respond to such a reading of 1 Peter, and to other texts that present the same vision of overcoming evil by nonretaliation? I suggest four characteristics of our interpretive posture.

Repentance We set aside for a moment the question as to whether this and other revisionist interpretations of 1 Peter, and other New Testament texts, have read the message of 1 Peter correctly or understood what it is saying. What is clear is that this and similar biblical texts have been recruited by the church at many points in its history to justify the oppression of women, slaves, and other marginalized people. In any treatment of this text, therefore, the Christian interpreter must begin with the posture of repentance. We must repent of any ways in which we ourselves, whether knowingly or unknowingly, have interpreted and used the text of 1 Peter, or any other biblical texts, to participate in or support this oppression. Such repentance cannot be simply a fresh interpretive strategy that enables the continued use of this and similar biblical texts to oppress others in ways more subtle and refined. One of the prime characteristics of the new life in Christ, according to 1 Peter, is genuineness (1:22, “unhypocritical”). So we need to search our own hearts and mind, and to repent of any recruitment of texts in scripture for the oppression of others.

Rereading The second step for the faithful interpreter is to ask how well he or she has understood the passage. A fresh assessment of the words of 1 Peter 2:18–3:7 in their contexts (1 Peter, the larger Christian canonical framework, and the

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cultural setting in which the letter was penned) is called for. One example of how to proceed is to recognize that this catechetical teaching, and the larger, fivefold pattern of which it is a part is common to a number of New Testament writers. This pattern was thoroughly laid out by Philip Carrington and E. G. Selwyn in the middle of the 20th century (Carrington, 1940; Selwyn, 1946; see also the earlier Seeberg, 1903). It seems clear that on matters of Christian behavior, no less than in matters of central beliefs, Peter, Paul, and James would agree, “Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe” (1 Cor 15:11). 1 Peter is no “better” or “worse” than any other New Testament writing. They are all drawing from the same catechetical teaching. In the study of 1 Peter, a careful and faithful rereading of the letter will require the interpreter to develop a healthy skepticism toward the modern and postmodern consensus that has emerged: The document is a pseudonymous letter in the name of the Apostle Peter, from around 80–100 CE, and written to largely Gentile groups of persecuted Christians in Asia Minor. Furthermore, any reader of 1 Peter must never lose sight of the controlling narrative that pervades the whole document, “The sufferings of the Messiah and the subsequent glory” (1 Peter 1:11). The careful reader will also be alert to the nuanced way that this narrative operates in the letter. The Suffering Servant is foregrounded in 2:18–25 but in the background in 3:1–7, and this may be due in part to the difference in situations being addressed. Whereas the servants of 2:18 are in danger of being beaten, there is no such danger present in the situation of the wives of 3:1–6. Moreover, if we read 1 Peter 3:1–7 with special emphasis on the equality of men and women in Christ that emerges with the term “co-heirs of the grace of life” a different picture emerges. Men and women are equal, and the woman exercises power by selfcontrol. The strategy enjoined on wives of unbelieving husbands by 1 Peter offers them special opportunity to embody the “soft differences” toward non-Christians that Miroslav Volf helpfully isolates as the characteristic Christian posture (Volf, 1994, pp. 15–30).

Retrieval This term has been much used in recent theological discussion. I use it here in the sense employed by George Lindbeck (1999) to mean the revisiting and employment of elements in the Christian tradition that can have a constructive value for current discussions in biblical studies and theology (pp. 26–51). In particular, I would urge a retrieving from the tradition of the almost universal conviction of the precritical commentators (patristic and medieval) that 1 Peter is a letter written primarily to Jewish readers in Asia Minor. Unpopular among modern interpreters of the letter, this view commends itself to me as both refreshing and subversive. The wealth

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of references to Israel’s scriptures, whether quotations, allusions, or echoes, and the dependence of the writer on the narrative of Israel (in particular, the Exodus and the Exile) make such a picture of the letter likely if not compelling. Full argument for the Jewish recipients of 1 Peter must await another essay. But here I offer one illustration of how such retrieval of the classic Christian picture of the letter would make it freshly available to those exercising toward the modern consensus a healthy skepticism, and toward the letter itself a “hermeneutic of trust” (for this expression, see Hays, 2005, pp. 190–201). In the section addressing wives and husbands, commentators assume that the writer is concerned with Christian wives married to unbelieving Gentile husbands. These wives should do all they can not to offend, but may suffer trials for their faith if they are required, as was the custom, to have no other gods but those of their husbands (see Achtemeier, 1996, p. 207n35, who cites Plutarch, Coniugalio praecepta 104D, on this point). But what if we consider a different possible mid-first-century social situation: Christian wives of non-Christian Jewish husbands. I believe that the language and imagery of the passage point in this direction: The term for “if some of them do not obey the word” is elsewhere used in the New Testament specifically of Jewish unbelief (Acts 14:2, 19:9; Rom 11:31, 15:31). A retrieval of the picture found in Origen and Eusebius, that 1 Peter was written to people “of Hebrew parentage” (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. III.4.2), is needed. This will result in a reassessment of what the letter is actually saying to husbands and wives. We need to ask, have we really understood this letter? And we need to remember that for 1 Peter, the controlling image is “the sufferings destined for the Messiah and the subsequent glory” within the thoroughly Jewish context of the letter.

Retracing Christians are called to follow in the steps of Jesus. Literally, we are called to retrace his steps, like a child traces the shapes of the letters in her copybook (1 Peter 2:21). Sometimes this will be easy, but often it will be difficult. It will be especially hard to respond as Christ responded. When he was abused, he did not abuse in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten (1 Peter 2:23). But according to 1 Peter 3:9, this is clearly the Christ-like way. Walking this way, we will learn afresh with Dr. Martin Luther King that “unearned suffering is redemptive” (1963). Walking this way, we will learn to respond like Christ when it is most difficult to do so. I shall never forget learning this lesson afresh in the dark days after September 11, 2001. Many voices were calling for retaliation and revenge, and this was understandable. But on several occasions I heard Governor George Pataki of New York cite St. Paul’s articulation of the principle at the heart of our

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Christian faith and life: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).

I am grateful to a number of people for help with this article, especially Karen Bolte, the Rev. Dr. Kathryn Greene-McCreight, and Dr. David Vinson.

NOTES 1. Throughout this article, the author of the biblical epistle is referred to as Peter. This does not imply insensitivity to the debate about authorship, but recognizes the Church’s long attribution of it to the Apostle Peter from the very earliest times. He probably wrote the letter with assistance from Sylvanus (1 Pet. 5:12). 2. This translation is quoted here because, unlike the NRSV, it preserves the singular of the original Greek, a matter of some significance. See my review of J. H. Elliott, 1 Peter (Rodgers, 2004). 3. K. Jobes (2005, pp. 221–223) give a very useful chart. W. Bornemann (1919/1920, pp. 143–165) proposed a much more extensive list of parallels. 4. On this passage and the use of Psalm 34 as a key text in New Testament exegesis, see C. H. Dodd (1952, pp. 98–99). 5. See my discussion of this variation on the blog Evangelical Textual Criticism (Rodgers, 2009). 6. Nonretaliation is in view here, and it is not the same as nonresistance. “The Devil, and all the oppression that his minions carry out are certainly to be resisted” (1 Peter 5:9). 7. This perspective is not entirely new with Jesus and his followers. See Elliott (2000, p. 606n207). 8. This selection of citations from Corley’s essay is found in Horrell (2008, p. 107).

REFERENCES Achtemeier, P. J. (1996). 1 Peter, Hermeneia. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Bornemann, W. (1919/1920). Der erste petrusbrief—eine Taufrede des Silvanus. ZNW, 19, 143–165. Carrington, P. (1940). The Primitive Christian Catechism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Corley, K. (1995). 1 Peter. In E. Schussler Fiorenza (Ed.), Searching the Scriptures: Vol. 2. A feminist commentary (pp. 349–360). London: SCM. Dodd, C. H. (1952). According to the Scriptures. London: Nisbet. Elliott, J. H. (2000). 1 Peter, Anchor Bible. New York: Doubleday. Evans, C. A. (2005). Jewish exegesis. In K. J. Vanhoozer (Ed.), Dictionary for theological interpretation of the Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker House. Green, J. B. (2007). 1 Peter: Two horizons commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Hays, R. B. (2005). The conversion of the imagination. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Jobes, K. (2005). 1 Peter: Baker exegetical commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker House.

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Horrell, D. G. (2008). 1 Peter: New Testament Guides. New York: Clark. King, M. L. (1963, August 28). I have a dream. Speech delivered in Washington D.C. Lindbeck, G. A. (1999). Postcritical canonical interpretation: Three modes of retrieval. In C. Seitz & K. Green-McCreight (Eds.), Theological exegesis: Essays in honor of Brevard S. Childs. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Rodgers, P. R. (2004). Review of J. H. Elliott, 1 Peter. Novum Testamentum, 46, 293–295. Rodgers, P. R. (2009, October 12). Evangelical textual criticism blog. Retrieved from http://evangelicaltrxtualcriticism.blogspot.com. Seeberg, A. (1903). Der Catechismus der Urchristenheit. Leipzig: Deichert. Selwyn, E. G. (1946). 1 Peter. London: MacMillan. Volf, M. (1994). Soft differences: Theological reflections on the relation between Church and culture in 1 Peter. Ex Auditu, 10, 15–30.

ch apter 10

Biblical Notions and Admonitions on Evil in Pauline Literature James A. Waddell

Evil plays a significant role in the letters of Paul. Paul referred to evil in a number of different ways. Evil is both a personal being and an abstract concept. For Paul, evil describes human nature and human behavior in this life, and it describes the effect of God’s eschatological punishment of those who do evil. Because of the more developed arguments in his Letter to the Romans, Paul appears to have been primarily interested in or at least gave more importance to the transmission of sin as the human effect of evil, and to its remedy in the death and resurrection of Christ.

EVIL PERSONIFIED The expressions of evil as a personal being in the letters of Paul are written as if Paul assumed that his readers had prior knowledge. There is very little accompanying explanation. In 1 Thessalonians, for example, Paul wrote that while he remained in Athens he sent Timothy to inquire about the state of faith in the Thessalonian community. Here Paul referred to evil as a personal being, “the tempter.” “I sent (Timothy) in order to learn about your faith, whether the tempter had tempted you and our labor had been in vain” (1 Th 3:5). The reference is in passing, and no explanation accompanies Paul’s comment. A similar use of evil as a personal being appears in 1 Corinthians. In Chapter 5 Paul gave instructions to the community in Corinth. He said that they were to discipline the person who had committed incest with his father’s wife. The instructions were “to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh” (1 Cor 5:5). Here again there is no elaboration on the nature of this personal being. Satan appears again in Chapter 7, in Paul’s instructions for married couples. “Do not hold out on each other, unless it is for a mutually

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agreed upon time in order to devote yourselves to prayer, and then come together again, so that Satan might not tempt you because you lack control” (1 Cor 7:5). Satan fulfills the role of tempter, like the figure in 1 Thessalonians 3:5, but there is no detailed explanation of who this figure is. Paul assumed his readers knew. The personal being, Satan, appears again in Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. There are three references here. In Chapter 2, Paul instructed the community to forgive the person who was caught in the incestuous relationship and disciplined for it. Paul writes to the Corinthians that he himself had extended forgiveness for their sake, “in the presence of Christ, in order that we might not be overwhelmed by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his schemes” (2 Cor 2:10–11). Just as in the previous examples, there is no accompanying development of the identity of Satan or his role in this experience of the Corinthian community. In Chapter 11, Paul asserted his apostolic position over against the pseudo-apostles who had challenged his authority, “changing themselves into apostles of Christ” (2 Cor 11:13). Paul then pressed his criticism to the point of comparing his opponents to Satan: “And it is no surprise; for Satan himself changes into an angel of light. So it is no great thing if his servants disguise themselves as servants of righteousness; their end will be according to their deeds” (2 Cor 11:14–15).1 Paul’s references to Satan as a personal being in Second Corinthians include one of the most intimate descriptions of Paul’s own personal experiences. In Chapter 12 Paul described a series of visions and revelations of heaven. From Paul’s perspective these visions and revelations tempted him to think more of himself than he should. He claimed that, in order to keep him from exalting himself, God sent an “angel of Satan, to beat” Paul (2 Cor 12:1–8). The language is very cryptic, and again there is no real explanation as to who this “angel of Satan” was or what precisely it did to Paul. Paul seems, in fact, to give such names or terms to what he himself realizes are inner spiritual urges or weaknesses within human persons. Was Paul employing symbolic names for what Greek thought, particular that of Aristotle, had pointed out three centuries earlier as negative psychological tendencies or vulnerabilities within us? Three other references in 2 Corinthians warrant some attention. In Chapter 3 Paul referred to the veil Moses wore to conceal from the Israelites the radiant glory emanating from his face. In Chapter 4 Paul used this veil as a metaphor for unbelief, claiming that his gospel is veiled to those who are perishing, that “the god of this age has blinded the minds of those who do not believe” (2 Cor 4:4). Paul did not elaborate on “the god of this age,” but it does seem as though he is referring metaphorically to a psycho-social or psycho-spiritual outlook in the culture and society of his time: the spirit of this age. This notion is even more pronounced when, in Chapter 6, urging the Corinthians not to participate in idolatry, Paul wrote,

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Do not become mis-yoked with unbelievers; for what partnership does righteousness have with lawlessness? What participation does light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Beliar? Or what part does faith have in unbelief ? And what agreement does the temple of God have with idols? (2 Cor 6:14–16)

The Beliar figure (or Belial in Second Temple period Jewish literature) is a personification of evil. But surprisingly Paul provides no accompanying explanation for his gentile readers. He leaves us with the sense that this figure is a symbol of a tendency in humans to do spiritually self-defeating things. In Chapter 11, in a context of defending his apostleship to the Corinthians, Paul intimates that the false apostles who challenged Paul’s authority were deceiving them, “as the serpent deceived Eve by his trickery” (2 Cor 11:3). Although there is no direct identification of the serpent with Satan in this text, the association is subtly (craftily?) implied, as the association of the pseudo-apostles with Satan in 2 Corinthians 11:12–15 makes clear. The allusion to Genesis 3 is unmistakable. A similar allusion to Genesis 3 appears in Romans 16, where Paul admonished his readers “to watch out for those who cause divisions and scandals” (Rom 16:17), that they be wise with respect to the good and without deceit with respect to what is evil, “and the God of peace will quickly crush Satan under your feet” (Rom 16:19–20). It comes as somewhat of a surprise that in the undisputed Pauline letters there is a single reference to demons in 1 Corinthians 10. In a context where he warned the community in Corinth to “avoid the worship of idols” and not to participate in pagan sacrifices (1 Cor 10:14–22), Paul informed the Corinthians that what they sacrifice is for demons and not for God; I do not want you to become partners with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot share in the table of the Lord and the table of demons. (1 Cor 10:20–21)

In Greco-Roman culture, there was no default association of evil with daimonia as lesser gods. In Corinthian culture, the daimonia were simply part of a pantheon of lesser gods included in their cultic activities. Obviously, Paul did not accord such notions actual existence as quasi-divine beings. Although Paul did not draw the association between evil and the daimonia in 1 Corinthians (possibly out of the apostle’s sensitivity to their cultural inclination to reverence daimonia), in the broader context of his argument Paul had already insisted on the uniqueness of God over against other “gods” and “lords.” Paul introduced the problem of food offered to idols by arguing,

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We know that there is no such thing as an idol in the world and that there is no God but one. For even if there are so-called “gods” whether in heaven or on earth, just as there are many “gods” and many “lords,” but for us there is one God. (1 Cor 8:4–6)

The language here demonstrates Paul’s sensitivity to the Corinthians’ cultural context and probably explains why Paul did not explicitly associate daimonia with the concept of evil. Moreover, in the Corinthian culture, the daimonia, namely, lower gods, were not negative forces or agents but rather mainly constructive advocates of the will and intentions of the high god. In his Letter to the Galatians, Paul twice mentions “elementary principles” (ta stoicheia) at 4:3 and 4:9, and he reminds the Galatians that before they came to faith they were “enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods” (Gal 4:8). Although the stoicheia were probably elementary cosmic principles of a cultic system rather than personal entities,2 the “beings that by nature are not gods” suggests language that is very similar to that of 1 Corinthians 8:4–6, although the language in Galatians is far less subtle. This same language appears in the Letter to the Colossians (2:8), indicating that there must have been some sort of Greco-Roman cult in the Lycus Valley and the region of the Galatians, and probably beyond these regions into the rest of Asia Minor, that incorporated some sort of stoicheia veneration as part of its system. In all of the references to personified evil in his letters, Paul simply did not elaborate on the nature or the role of the specific figure mentioned, whether it was Satan, or Beliar, or the tempter, or the god of this age, or the serpent. Paul assumed that his readers would know, probably indicating Paul’s confidence in his own instruction of these communities during his missionary visits, or in the case of Corinth a more extended stay in their community (the community in Rome, of course, excepted). There are no clear indications in the letters themselves what those assumptions might have been, with the possible exception of the allusions to Genesis 3 in 2 Corinthians 11:3 and Romans 16:19–20. It is likely that Paul was simply using metaphoric language and symbolic notions about the tendencies in humans to be vulnerable to acts or behaviors that represented a psycho-spiritual slide away from the spiritual decorum God wishes for us.

THE HUMAN ELEMENT OF EVIL Having touched on the references to personified evil in Paul’s letters and their ambiguities, Paul’s admonitions regarding evil and human behavior are more concrete. Paul made use of general admonitions against evil regarding human behavior, and he also used the term evil to describe the teachings of those who opposed his gospel.

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General admonitions regarding evil and human behavior appear in Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians. In a list of final exhortations to the community, Paul included the warning, “See to it that one not pay back another evil for evil” (1 Th 5:15; the same admonition is repeated in Rom 12:17). In the same context Paul wrote, “Stay away from every form of evil” (1 Th 5:22; cf. also Rom 12:9).3 The latter reference is probably a reminder of an earlier admonition in the same letter to “stay away from sexual immorality,” together with other instructions about marriage (1 Th 4:3–5). In 1 Corinthians 5:8, Paul described the presence of sin in the Corinthian community in terms of the “leaven of evil and sexual immorality,” and in verse 13 Paul instructed the community to “drive out the evil person from among yourselves,” again with reference to sexual immorality, here in the form of an incestuous relationship. In addition to the references to personification of evil and Paul’s Corinthian opponents, there is one further reference in his letters where Paul associated human participation in evil with his opponents. In Philippians 3, Paul warned his readers, “Watch out for the dogs. Watch out for the evil workers. Watch out for the mutilation” (Phil 3:2). Paul’s reference to “mutilation” was a harsh attack against the opponents of his message, to whom Paul contrasted the Philippian community as “the circumcision, who worship God in spirit and boast in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh” (Phil 3:3). There is only one instance in Paul’s letters of admonition against human participation in evil. In 1 Corinthians, Paul pedagogically interpreted the biblical account of the exodus out of Egypt and the wandering of the Israelites in the wilderness following the exodus (1 Cor 10:1–5). Paul wrote, “These things have become examples for us, so that we might not desire evils as they themselves did” (1 Cor 10:6). Paul then proceeded to elaborate on what he meant by “evils”: idolatry, sexual immorality, and putting God to the test (1 Cor 10:7–10). Paul’s Letter to the Romans begins with a forceful indictment of human behavior in general. Paul especially aimed his language against those who committed idolatry and willfully rejected knowledge of God, describing them as “filled with all injustice, sexual immorality, greed, evil, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit . . . inventors of evil” (Rom 1:29–31). Paul warned the Roman community that on the day of God’s judgment, there will be “tribulation and distress upon every human soul that does evil” (Rom 2:9). In Romans 3 Paul asserted that such human wickedness serves to demonstrate the righteousness of God (Rom 3:5). Paul even pointed out that some were accusing him of claiming that “we must do evil in order that good may come” (Rom 3:8). All humans, Jews and Greeks, are incapable of keeping the law. The basic premise of Paul’s concept of human participation in evil is that observance of the law cannot save anyone from God’s righteous condemnation against that evil. Having argued in the beginning of Romans that Gentiles participate in human evil,

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a premise that no Jew would have denied, Paul then argued in chapters 2 and 3 that Jews are no better. “All people, Jews and Greeks, are under sin” (Rom 3:9). The rhetorical force of Romans 1–3 notwithstanding, it should also be noted that Paul urged the Roman community to live the only alternative to human evil. In Chapter 12, Paul exhorted the Romans, “Do not be conquered by evil, but conquer what is evil with what is good” (Rom 12:21; cf. also Rom 6:12–14). Thus, in Chapter 16 he wrote, “I want you to be wise with respect to what is good, and pure with respect to what is evil” (Rom 16:19). In what can only be described as one of the most syntactically convoluted arguments in Second Temple period Jewish literature, or even in all of Classical literature, Paul wrote about his own personal experience of the human condition. Romans 7 describes in excruciating detail the human struggle with sin and evil. In what is actually a discussion about the effect of the law, Paul claimed that the law brings awareness of sin. With the awareness of sin comes death. But the law itself is not sinful or evil. For Paul, the law is holy and good. It only serves as God’s instrument to awaken awareness of the sinful human condition. Once that awareness is awakened, the battle begins. For what I do I do not understand, since what I will, this I do not do, but what I hate, this is what I do. If I do that which I do not will, I agree with the law, that it is good. But now it is no longer I who am doing it, but the sin that dwells in me. For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh. For the willingness is present in me, but the ability to do the good is not. For I do not do the good that I will, but the evil that I do not will, this I do. And if I do that which I do not will, it is no longer I who am doing it, but sin that dwells in me. Therefore I have found this principle [to be in play], for me who is willing to do the good, that evil is present with me. (Rom 7:15–21)

I suppose it could be observed on the basis of Romans 7 that Paul included himself in the same tightly argued indictment against human participation in sin and evil that he leveled against all others. As I have already intimated, human participation in evil cannot be separated from human sinful acts. For Paul, all human beings exhibit concrete participation in evil through acts of sin. This according to Paul is the default condition of all humans since the first created human, Adam. Paul was very detailed about his Adam typology, and his argument is quite vigorous. In Romans 5, Paul claimed that “through one human sin entered the world, and through sin [came] death, and so death spread to all human beings, because all sinned” (Rom 5:12; cf. 1 Cor 15:21–22, 42–50). For Paul, the transmission of sin throughout all of humanity has a genealogical core; we are all descended from Adam, and “we have borne the image of the man of dust” (1 Cor 15:49).

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It is left to be said that for Paul, there is a remedy for the human condition inherited from Adam and for human participation in evil through specific acts of sin. In 1 Corinthians 15, although Paul links the human condition to Adam, he also holds out the promise of the messiah. “Even as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven” (1 Cor 15:49). “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Cor 15:22). “So also it is written, ‘The first human, Adam, became a living being; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit” (1 Cor 15:45). Paul introduced the entire discussion of resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 with the statement: For I passed along to you in the first place, what also I received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures. (1 Cor 15:3–4)

Near the end of the intense initial argument of his Letter to the Romans, where he assigns equal participation in the human condition for both Gentile and Jew, Paul wrote that all are “justified freely by [God’s] grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God presented as an atoning sacrifice through faith in his blood” (Rom 3:24–25). This was the essence of Paul’s gospel, his remedy for the human condition inherited from Adam and participation in evil through acts of sin. The reality that the protoplast Adam brought sin and death, for Paul could only be changed by the “last Adam,” “the life-giving spirit.” This is echoed all the way through Paul’s discussions of human participation in evil.

PAUL ’ S VIEW OF EVIL IN SECOND TEMPLE JEWISH CONTEXT There is a growing awareness among scholars of the New Testament and Second Temple Judaism that the earliest first-century followers of Jesus closely corresponded to Enochic Judaism in their ideology.4 It has already been observed that Paul’s concept of evil was in a line of tradition growing out of Enochic apocalypse.5 The Enochic system located the origin of evil in the supernatural realm (see Sacchi, 2000). According to the Book of Watchers, a group of heavenly angels transgressed the boundary between heaven and earth. As the myth goes, these watchers lusted after human women and had sexual relations with them. The offspring that resulted from these illicit unions were the giants, who ravaged humans, destroying their property and committing all kinds of violent acts, including murder and drinking human blood. God punished the transgression of the watchers and intended to cleanse the world of their evil by sending the flood. While the giants died in the flood, their spirits lived

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on as demons who then oppressed humans with their evil. According to the Enochic system, humans were victims of this supernatural origin of evil, and salvation was only available to them at the eschatological judgment. Other systems during the Second Temple period held humans more directly accountable for the evil that resulted from their sinful acts. Some traditions held Adam accountable, but at the same time gave Adam a fair amount of slack and instead vilified Eve for her role in introducing sin to humankind. In some of these systems, the protoplast Adam was identified, even vilified, as the origin of inevitable human participation in evil. The Greek Life of Adam and Eve is a first-century Jewish text that, to a significant extent, mitigated Adam’s culpability for human sin and evil, while not entirely exonerating him of his responsibility. According to The Greek Life, the first humans were deceived by Satan in the Garden of Eden (cf. Gen 3:13). After Satan’s deception of Eve, she in turn deceived Adam with Satan’s help. In The Greek Life, Eve is harshly vilified for her role, almost to the point of misogyny. From a broader perspective, human beings are held accountable for sin. Disease and death are the painful consequences of the sin of Adam and Eve. Salvation is granted through God’s recognition that Adam is the image of God and that Adam adopted a repentant disposition in his relationship with God. As the prototypical human being, Adam demonstrates that these two remedies for evil and human sin are available to all humans: being born in the image of God and having a repentant disposition that trusts God for mercy. Although there were some later traditions that developed in a direction of an exalted Adam (e.g., the Testament of Abraham), other traditions condemned the protoplast for his role in introducing sin and evil to humankind. 4 Ezra, a book that dates to around 100 CE, is an example of the latter. 4 Ezra describes the transmission of Adam’s sin as if it were an infectious and incurable disease. For the first Adam, burdened with an evil heart, transgressed and was overcome, as were also all who were descended from him. Thus the disease became permanent; the law was in the people’s heart along with the evil root, but what was good departed, and the evil remained. (4 Ezra 3:21–22) It would have been better if the earth had not produced Adam, or else, when it had produced him, had restrained him from sinning. For what good is it to all that they live in sorrow now and expect punishment after death? O Adam, what have you done? For though it was you who sinned, the fall was not yours alone, but ours also who are your descendants. For what good is it to us, if an eternal age has been promised to us, but we have done deeds that bring death? And what good is it that an everlasting hope has been promised us, but we have miserably failed? (4 Ezra 7:46–50; Metzger, 1983, pp. 529, 541)

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The nearly nihilistic point of view expressed in 4 Ezra most certainly reflects the mood the people experienced just a few decades following the destruction of the second temple in 70 CE. The contempt for Adam is palpable (4 Ezra 3:1–7). The role of Adam in Paul’s letters is to some extent similar to the later tradition described in 4 Ezra. Adam’s contribution to humankind in Paul’s letters is entirely negative. Adam is only a source of the corrupt human condition. He is the beginning of human participation in evil through acts of sin. He introduces to humans the experience of death. While there are allusions to Genesis 3 in Paul’s letters, nowhere did Paul identify Adam as a victim of Satan’s deception. The connection between Paul and the Enochic tradition of a supernatural origin of evil is to be recognized in Paul’s understanding of a personified evil, a heavenly angel who disguises himself, deceives humans, and tempts humans to sin. Paul, however, departs from the Enochic point of view in that he does more than hold Adam accountable for human evil. Paul also gives Adam the role of progenitor of human sin and evil. That explains Paul’s notion of the inherent human psycho-spiritual proclivity to do evil, to which he refers with the metaphorical images of Satan, Beliar, and the spirit of this age.

NOTES 1. The comparison of Paul’s opponents with Satan, who “changes himself into an angel of light,” is very similar to the narrative of the Greek Life of Adam and Eve, where Satan disguises himself as a ministering angel in order to deceive Eve. 2. See Schweizer (1976, 249ff.). Schweizer’s argument is related to the phrase as it is used in Colossians, but it also applies to Paul’s use of the phrase in Galatians. Schweitzer argued, “Adoring the elements as gods (Herodotus I, 131; Philo, Vit. cont. 3) is not the same as demonizing them; in this case, they would simply be some gods among others, and one would not use a comprehensive term like ‘the elements of the world,’ if one meant gods like Ge or Helios.” 3. In these two passages in 1 Thessalonians 5, Paul used two different words that are typically translated “evil.” One, to kakon, is usually used by Paul to describe evil in general with various specific applications. The other, poneros, is almost always used by Paul to refer to sexual immorality. 4. See Ellens (2010), and the recent monograph by Leslie W. Walck, The Son of Man in the Parables of Enoch and in Matthew, Jewish and Christian Texts in Contexts and Related Studies (2011); and see Walck (2007). See also the dissertation by Matthew Novenson, “Christ Language in Paul and Messiah Language in Ancient Judaism” (2010); and the dissertation by James Waddell, “The Messiah in the Parables of Enoch and the Letters of Paul: A Comparative Analysis” (2010). 5. Boccaccini (1991, pp. 220–222); see also Boccaccini (2006) 9–26, esp. 21. “When read in the broader context of Second Temple Judaism, the Jesus movement (including Paul) looks at its inception to be little more than a variant of the Enochic system.”

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REFERENCES Boccaccini, G. (1991). Middle Judaism: Jewish thought 300 B.C.E. to 200 C.E. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress. Boccaccini, G. (2006). Inter-Jewish debate on the tension between divine and human agency in Second Temple Judaism. In J. M. G. Barclay & S. J. Gathercole (Eds.), Divine and human agency in Paul and its cultural environment (pp. 9–26). New York: Clark. Charlesworth, J. H. (Ed.). (1983). The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Vol. 1). New York: Doubleday. Ellens, J. H. (2010). The Son of Man in the Gospel of John. Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Phoenix Press. Metzger, B. M. (1983). The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (Vol. 1, Ed. J. H. Charlesworth). New York: Doubleday. Novenson, M. (2010). Christ language in Paul and messiah language in ancient Judaism. Doctoral dissertation, Princeton University. Sacchi, P. (2000). The history of the Second Temple Period (JSOTSS 285, ed. D. J. A. Clines & P. R. Davies. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Schweizer, E. (1976). Christianity of the circumcised and Judaism of the uncircumcised: The background of Matthew and Colossians. In Jews, Greeks and Christians: Religious cultures in late antiquity: Essays in Honor of William David Davies (Ed. R. HamertonKelly & R. Scroggs). Leiden: Brill. Waddell, J.A. (2011). The Messiah: A Comparative Study of the Enochic Son of Man and the Pauline Kyrios. London: T. & T. Clark. Waddell, J. A. (2010). The messiah in the parables of Enoch and the Letters of Paul: A comparative analysis. Doctoral dissertation University of Michigan. Walck, L. W. (2007). The Son of Man in the parables of Enoch and the Gospels. In Enoch and the messiah Son of Man: Revisiting the Book of Parables (Ed. Gabriele Boccaccini, 299–337). Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Walck, L. W. (2011). The Son of Man in the parables of Enoch and in Matthew (Jewish and Christian Texts in Contexts and Related Studies). New York: Clark.

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Exorcising Evil: The Bible and Psychology on Demon Possession Stephen J. Pullum

Several years ago, an old friend came to visit. Not having seen each other in a couple of years, he was eager to catch me up on all that had been going on in his life since we had last spent time together. Very early in the conversation, my friend paused. With a serious look on his face, he eagerly announced to me, “Stephen, we finally found out what was wrong with Martha [his wife].” Not remembering that anything serious had ever been wrong with her, I played along. “Oh, and what was that?” I queried. Before giving me the answer, he warned me, “This is going to rock your theology.” Now I was really puzzled, wondering what on earth he was about to disclose. And then came his reply—stern, sober-faced, adamant. “She was demon possessed,” he boldly announced. Not wanting me to be overly worried, though, he quickly attempted to calm whatever trepidations he thought I might have had. “But she’s okay now,” he assured me, “because we had it exorcised.” At the time, I remained detached. I offered no rebuttal, nor did I ask any other questions, choosing rather to allow him to bask in the relief that his wife was finally well. In other words, I just listened. Whatever problems my friend’s wife might have suffered and for whatever reason, I was certainly glad that she was now okay, and I communicated this to him. My friend’s story is not unlike many individuals’. Though the specifics may differ, untold numbers of people over the last four decades have claimed similar experiences. Many of these stories have been chronicled in books. Perhaps the best-known set of stories is found in Malachi Martin’s book Hostage to the Devil (1976). Appearing three years after William Peter Blaty’s enormously influential movie The Exorcist (1973), which was based on his

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1976 book by the same title, Martin tells the story of “the possession and exorcism of five living Americans” (title page; and see Cuneo, 2001, p. 15). Other books that recount exorcisms include Carl Vogl’s Begone Satan (1973); Geral Brittle’s The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren, the World-Famous Exorcism Team (1980); and Felicitas Goodman’s The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel (1981). One of the most influential books attesting to demon possession, People of the Lie (1983), was written by psychiatrist and best-selling author M. Scott Peck. Then there was Gabriele Amorth’s two books An Exorcist Tells His Story (1999) and An Exorcist: More Stories (2002), as well as John Zaffis and Brian McIntyre’s Shadows of the Dark (2004). Other books within this decade testifying to the validity of demon possession include Jose Fortea’s Interview With an Exorcist (2006); David Kiely’s The Dark Sacrament: True Stories of Modern-Day Demon Possession and Exorcism (2007); Anne Palagruto’s Deliver Us From Evil: A Guide to Spiritual Warfare and Exorcism (2008); Stephen Conn’s The Devil Called Collect (2008); and journalist Matt Baglio’s The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist (2009). All of these works support the notion that demon possession is as common today as dog tracks in a kennel. These are only a few of the scores of books written to convince people that demon possession is not only possible but also more probable than one suspects and that people can and should take steps to free themselves from such evil spirits. Aside from books on the subject, we are constantly bombarded nowadays with the rhetoric of televangelists testifying that demons possess people. Longtime resident of Akron, Ohio, and well-known televangelist and faith healer Ernest Angley, for example, reveals in his book The Deceit of Lucifer (1989) that during his ministry, The Lord would bring the demons . . . and let me look at them. They’re hideous to behold. If you knew how they looked in the devil-possessed people you associate with, you would not want to be around those people at all. (p. 43)

Angley claims that “seeing the devils—their eyes, ears, noses, teeth—is absolutely horrifying” (p. 44). Claiming that he sometimes sees demons “the way God sees them,” Angley describes them as having “‘horses-eyes’ lit with fire” (p. 45). On one occasion, Angley tells that while dining one day in a “mission field,” just before giving thanks for the meal, a demon manifested itself to him: “[A]ll of a sudden the most repulsive head I have ever seen—no body, but great eyes, beard and all—came rolling down that table toward me. I just gasped” (p. 68)! Moreover, Angley points out that demons talk in “a raspy, harsh, satanic voice” (p. 63). Contemporary faith healer and televangelist Benny Hinn also attempts to persuade individuals that demons possess people today. On one occasion,

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Hinn claimed that he cast a demon out of the sole of a woman’s foot and that it slithered off the stage in the form of a serpent (S. J. Pullum, personal observation of Benny Hinn, Nashville, TN, October 23–24, 1997). On another occasion, Hinn tried to convince a Portland, Oregon, audience that he saw a demon leave the auditorium after he commanded it, “Go out of this place!” Mustering all of the rhetorical drama he could, Hinn announced, “I see an animal, half man, half animal literally walking out of this building in fear and trembling” (Thomas, 2001). Historically, other faith healers such as Oral Roberts, A. A. Allen, and Jack Coe, to name a few, believed that physical afflictions such as cancer, deafness, and the inability to speak were due, in part, to demon possession. Moreover, they believed that habits such as cigarette smoking, drug addiction, illicit sexual conduct, and lying were caused by demons possessing people (Pullum, 2008a, p. 142). Well-known evangelist Kenneth Hagin tells of healing a young girl who had lung cancer, which was caused by a demon. “As I looked at her,” recounts Hagin, “I saw fastened to the outside of her body, over her left lung, an evil spirit, or an imp. He looked very similar to a small monkey.” After casting out the demon, according to Hagin, it fell to the floor before running down the isle and out of the building. Hagin also reported a demon sitting on a man’s shoulder, holding the man in a headlock with both arms (as cited in Hanegraff, 1993, pp. 256–257). Writing in 2001, sociologist Michael Cuneo cogently argued that demon possession and exorcisms were very common among “Christians of various persuasions” (p. 271). They could be found among Catholics, Charismatics, and Evangelicals alike. “By conservative estimates,” suggests Cuneo, “there are at least five or six hundred evangelical exorcism ministries in operation today, and quite possibly two or three times this many” (p. 209). He concludes, “Over the past thirty years plenty of people have needed or wanted an exorcism badly enough to go looking for one” (p. 273). Cuneo (2001) argues that, after “decades of near-invisibility,” exorcisms became a “raging concern” in the United States during the mid-1970s as the result of the entertainment industry. He contends that “fears of demonization” became “widespread” only after the release of the Hollywood blockbuster The Exorcist (Friedkin, 1973) and the publication of Malachi Martin’s book Hostage to the Devil (1976). “Almost overnight,” suggests Cuneo, “untold numbers of people were complaining of being afflicted by demons, and new exorcism ministries couldn’t spring up fast enough to meet the soaring demand” (pp. 271–272). Cuneo remarks that throughout the 1970s, “Tens of thousands of people (the number is only a rough approximation) who previously wouldn’t have given a thought to demons now seemed obsessed with extricating themselves from demonic influence” (p. 112). Suffice it to say that belief in demon possession, along with its counterpart, the exorcism, is alive and well today. But what exactly do individuals mean

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when they say they are demon possessed? Moreover, what is an exorcism? Perhaps the best individual to answer these questions is one who believes in and participates in these practices. Contemporary exorcist Bob Larson, the United States’ “foremost exorcist,” who flies around the country casting out demons in auditoriums and rented hotel conference rooms, is just the man to provide the answer. He defines an exorcism as “the expelling of a demon, an evil spirit that has entered into a person.” Larson suggests, “Sometimes the term deliverance is used. I prefer to refer to deliverance as the process of healing that leads to the expulsion of a demon” (Deliver Us From Evil, 2003). According to sociologist Michael Cuneo, those who believe in demons possessing people do not believe in them in some “metaphorical” sense. Instead, they believe that demons are “real supernatural entities, with their own identities and missions, their own strengths and foibles, and sometimes even their own telltale odors” that literally inhabit people (Cuneo, 2001, p. 82). Given the fact that, ostensibly, so many people believe in demon possession, this is an important subject of investigation. Although the argument can be made that exorcisms and belief in demons today would not be as widespread had it not been for the entertainment industry in the early 1970s, I contend that had there been no Bible, which recounts numerous stories of exorcisms by Jesus and/or his disciples, there probably would not have been movies and books on the subject to fuel the fire that rages nowadays in the first place. In other words, just as I have argued elsewhere regarding the central role the Bible has played in causing people to believe in modern-day miraculous healings, had there been no Bible, there probably would not be belief in demon possession, at least as we know it within contemporary Christendom (Pullum, 2008b). After all, as Cuneo (2001) rightly points out, miraculous healings and exorcisms are “two sides of the same coin” (p. 88). Without the Bible, particularly the synoptic gospels, we may have had some other paranormal belief, but we probably would not call it demon possession per se as we now know it. Although many Charismatics, Pentecostals, Evangelicals, and Catholics draw on personal experiences to prove the miraculous, frequently they will corroborate their stories by turning to the Bible in an attempt to legitimize their beliefs and practices, especially when talking to other people of faith, at least insofar as they think they can. And why not? After all, appealing to a credible source—one held in high esteem by nearly everyone who shares similar worldviews—is a common rhetorical strategy. Rhetorical theorist Richard Weaver (Johannesen et al., 1970) suggests that one way of proving an argument is to rely on a source external to the argument itself. In other words, the strength of one’s argument is derived from the credibility of the source cited. Weaver points out, “If a proposition is backed by some weighty authority, like the Bible, or can be associated with a great name, people may be expected to respond to it in accordance with the veneration they have

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for these sources.” Continuing, Weaver argues that “if [an individual] has been confronted with testimony or authority from sources he respects, he will receive this as a reliable, if secondary, kind of information about reality” (p. 210). Charismatics, Pentecostals, Evangelicals, and Catholics—for that matter, anyone within the broader scope of Christianity—will most likely at some point cite the Bible to bolster their claims because they realize the veneration that the Bible contains for people of faith, including themselves. But herein lies the rub. If one is going to use the Bible to prove a case, he or she must understand its teachings on a given subject. Otherwise, it will be misapplied, which leads us to the purpose of this chapter. Four questions, I believe, are in order regarding the subject of demon possession as it relates to the Bible: (a) What does the Bible have to say about the origin of Satan? (b) What does it tell us about demon possession in general? (c) Do demons really possess people today according to the Bible? And (d) if demons do not possess people today according to the Bible, to what might we attribute the behavior of individuals who claim they are possessed? My intention is to help us to understand from a biblical perspective what I believe heretofore has been an often misunderstood subject, not only by the average churchgoer but also by priests and ministers alike. Let us turn to our first question.

WHO IS SATAN, AND WHERE DID HE COME FROM? In his Expository Dictionary of New Testament Greek Words (1939), Vine tells us that the name Satan comes from the Greek satanas, which means “adversary” (p. 992). Not only does the word occur frequently in the New Testament, but it is used around 17 or 18 times in the Old Testament as well. Another term used interchangeably with Satan is devil. According to Vine, devil comes from the Greek diabolos, meaning “an accuser, a slanderer” (298). Hamilton (1991) points out that although “Satan and Devil refer to the same being in the Bible,” he is also referred to as “‘prince of the powers of the air’ (Eph. 2:2), ‘prince of this world’ (Jn. 12:31; 14:30; 16:11), [and] ‘prince of the demons’ (Matt. 9:34; 12:24; Mk. 3:22; Lk. 11:15)” (p. 5). Prince comes from the Greek archon, meaning “chief ruler.” Therefore, suggests Hamilton, “Satan is the chief or the ruler of the beings that seek to control men in this world and are also of ‘the power of the air’” (p. 5). In addition to the above terms, Conley (1997) reveals that the devil “is variously known in the Bible as ‘Satan’ . . . ‘Beelzebub,’ ‘the prince of this world,’ ‘the prince of the power [sic] of the air,’ ‘the dragon,’ or ‘the old serpent’” (p. 23). Other descriptions include “enemy” (Matt 13:39), “ruler of demons” (Matt 12:24), “strong man” (Matt 12:29), “murderer” (John 8:44), “liar and the father [of lies]” (John 8:44), “god of this world” (2 Cor 4:4), “Belial” (2 Cor 6:15), “Tempter (1 Th 3:5), “Adversary” (1 Pet 5:8), and “Accuser of the brethren” (Rev 12:10) (Rudd, 2009). These are some of the many terms that one will find in the New Testament that refer to the devil or Satan.

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Demon is another term found in the Bible. Vine suggests that this name is translated in the New Testament from daimon, which “denotes an evil spirit” or one that knows (p. 283). The Bible points out that although there is only one “devil” (i.e., Satan), there are many demons (i.e., unclean spirits) (Jas 2:19; Mk 3:11). These demons are depicted in the New Testament as evil beings who do the work of their leader, the devil (Rev 16:13–14; Matt 25:41). Occasionally we hear various individuals within Christianity use the word Lucifer in reference to Satan. One need to look no further than Ernest Angley’s book The Deceit of Lucifer (1989), for example. In this book Angley assumes that Lucifer is the devil and expects all of his readers to believe the same. Not once, however, does he explain the etymology of Lucifer or why the reader should believe that Lucifer and the devil are the same being. The fact is that the word Lucifer is found only one time in the King James Version of the Bible—in Isaiah 14:12. In this context, Lucifer refers to an unnamed “king of Babylon” (vs. 4), not to Satan. Isaiah is writing against an arrogant king who, at one time, “smote the peoples [Jews] in wrath” and “ruled the nations in anger, with a persecution that none restrained” (vs. 6). The time would come, however, when this king would be defeated. Isaiah depicts the king of Babylon as a “day-star” “fallen from heaven” and “cut down to the ground” (vs.12). In his humiliated state, those who look upon him would ask, “Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms . . . and overthrew the cities thereof; that let not loose his prisoners to their home?” (vss. 16–17). In short, this text depicts an ignominious ending—the shameful death of a decrepit king who once ruled with the glory of a shining star. Nowhere in this text, however, does it refer to Satan. Any references to Satan as Lucifer, according to the Bible, are, therefore, unfounded. But where did Satan come from? Frankly, the Bible does not have much to say about this subject. There have been a number of theories put forth, though. Some have suggested that Satan came from a “pre-Adamic race of men who lived upon the Earth in a ‘gap period’ that allegedly fits between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2” (Jackson, 1998, p. 2). Relying on Genesis 6:2–4, others, such as the early Church Patriarch Justin Martyr, suggest that demons were the offspring of angels that cohabited with women prior to the time of Noah (one is tempted to ask how a spirit being can have physical intimacy with a woman). A third theory suggests that demons were little more than the spirits of deceased wicked men who were allowed to return to earth. Such was the belief of the Jewish historian Josephus (Jackson, 1998). Perhaps the most reasonable explanation, according to the Bible, is that Satan was probably a created being, an angel that fell from heaven. Evidence to support this position can be found in 2 Peter 2:4, Jude 6, and Revelation 12:7–9. Second Peter 2:4 suggests that God “spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell.” Jude 6 teaches that “angels that kept

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not their own principality, but left their proper habitation, he hath kept in everlasting bonds.” Revelation 12:7–9 discusses a war in heaven between “Michael and his angels” and “the dragon . . . and his angels.” The dragon lost the battle and was consequently “cast down . . . and his angels were cast down with him.” According to Rudd (2009), these verses suggest “that demons are most likely angels who sinned” (p. 2). Likewise, Hamilton (1991) argues that Satan, the “prince of demons” (Matt. 9:34), was one of these angels who were cast out of heaven. “The inference appears to be inescapable,” suggests Hamilton; “[demons] are fallen angels about whom Peter and Jude wrote. . . . In fact, the inference that they are fallen angels appears to be incontrovertible” (p. 6). Jackson (1998), on the other hand, is not so sure. He argues, “In the final analysis, no dogmatic conclusion can be drawn with reference to the origin of demons. That they existed admits of no doubt to anyone who takes the Bible seriously; as to their origin, the Scriptures are silent” (p. 3).

WHAT DOES THE BIBLE TELL US ABOUT DEMON POSSESSION? That demons possessed people in the New Testament is clearly taught. In what sense, though, did they possess them? Some have suggested that Jesus did not actually cast out demons or perform any other miraculous healings, for that matter. Instead, acting as the “village psychiatrist” (Capps, 2007, as cited in Ellens, 2008, p. 3), he merely went about trying to help people psychologically—especially males who had been “demasculinized”—deal with the stresses and anxiety of everyday life compounded by the occupation of the Roman forces in the land of Palestine (Ellens, 2008, p. 3). In other words, Jesus as the “village psychiatrist” merely tried to empower people to cope with life’s stressors rather than literally cast out evil spirits. Any “demons,” therefore, were merely metaphorical. Similarly, others have suggested that when Jesus either healed or cast out demons, he was merely seeking to accommodate the “popular ignorance and superstition” of his day. In other words, those who were believed to be demon possessed were actually suffering from “natural diseases” of the day such as epilepsy or mental illness. Gould, for example, suggests, “It was the unscientific habit of the ancient mind to account for abnormal and uncanny things, such as lunacy and epilepsy, supernaturally” (as cited in Rudd, 2009, p. 3). Still others suggest that “demons” were only symbolic representations of evil. When Jesus cast out a demon, according to this theory, he was casting out mythological characters, which “represent[ed] His conquest over evil by His doctrine and life” (Rudd, 2009, p. 2). There is a fourth approach, however—the view that demons literally possessed people and were literally cast out. It is this literal view that those today who believe in demon possession tenaciously hold. But should they?

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In other words, does a literal interpretation of the Bible regarding demons in the first century give us a license to believe in literal demon possession today? In the remainder of this section, I will attempt to show that although some characteristics of what some people today think is demon possession coincide with what one reads about in the synoptic gospels, what is actually believed and practiced nowadays differs significantly, even if one takes a literalist view. As described in the New Testament, demon possession during the time of Christ was not merely a mental or physical illness (Mk 1:32–34; Matt 10:1; Acts 8:7, 19:12). Instead, demons were depicted as spirit beings (Luke 10:20) who were cognizant of their surroundings and were capable of holding conversations (Matt 8:28–34; Mk 5:7; Luke 4:34), something that mere illnesses cannot do. Although people today who believe in demon possession understand this dichotomy, there are several significant differences between what is believed today and what is revealed in the New Testament. First, in the synoptic gospels, when demons talked to Christ (sometimes he made them keep quiet; Mk 1:34), they spoke to him with the utmost respect. As Jackson suggests, “There is not a single case of a demon blaspheming either God or Christ in the biblical narrative” (p. 7). Demons did not insult Christ, nor did they fight against him physically. This may be the irony of ironies. How can a demon be so evil yet be so civil? In Matthew 8:29, for example, demons once respectfully asked Jesus, “What have we to do with thee, thou Son of God? Art thou come hither to torment us before the time?” Knowing that they were about to be cast out, they begged Christ to send them into a heard of swine. Realizing their inferiority to Christ—that they were in no position to bargain—in essence, they begged Jesus to take it easy on them. Elsewhere a demon respectfully said to Christ, “I know thee who thou art, the Holy One of God” (Luke 4:34). The demons who confronted Paul, Luke, Timothy, and Silas in the city of Philippi in Acts 16 admitted, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim unto you the way of salvation” (vs. 17). Juxtapose this to what one sees today. In William Peter Blaty’s movie The Exorcist (Friedkin, 1973), the demons that possessed 12-year-old Regan were combative and used the vilest language imaginable. Although, admittedly, this is merely Hollywood’s take on the subject, this type of behavior often can be found in real-life exorcisms as well (Deliver Us From Evil, 2003; Cuneo, 2001, pp. 168, 174). And why not? Cuneo (2001) argues that people who want to “deliver a convincing rendition” of demon possession have really nothing more to go on than Hollywood’s depiction (p. 247). The problem, however, is Hollywood has it wrong. Although demons in the Bible sometimes caused people to flail around, foam at the mouth, and grind their teeth (Mk 9:17–27), much like one might see today in a person who claims to be possessed, demons ironically did not use foul language, insult the one doing the exorcising, or

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behave as recalcitrants. Instead, they spoke with respect and obeyed immediately when they were commanded to leave (Mk 1:34). One might be quick to cite the example in Acts 19:13–16 as a counterargument. In this context, seven sons of a Jewish priest named Sceva tried to exorcise “evil spirits.” In what I believe is one of the most comical stories told in the entire Bible, after the exorcists cried out, “I adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preacheth,” one of the demons responded, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?” This is hardly a response of respect. Afterward, the sons of Sceva were “mastered” by the man with the evil spirit and “fled out of that house naked and wounded.” The argument is “See, here is an example of demons being uncooperative with the exorcist.” Obviously this is an anomaly of the pattern revealed in the synoptic narratives. The response from the demon occurred because the sons of Sceva had no right to invoke the name of Christ. In other words, they had no authority to attempt the exorcism in the first place. They were not men of God. They were charlatans. In the New Testament, whenever the person attempting to cast out demons had the authority to do so, demons never insulted them. A second characteristic of exorcisms in the New Testament is that they were performed with minimal effort on the part of the one casting out the demon. In short, demons were exorcised “with a word” (Matt 8:16). There was no blood, sweat, or tear shed in the casting out of demons in the New Testament unlike what one sees in modern exorcisms. Nowadays the exorcist may get down on his or her hands and knees and roll around on the floor with the victim before coming up physically exhausted, often with nothing to show for his or her efforts. Third, and closely related to the second point, the effect of an exorcism was immediate. In the story of the two Gadarenes possessed by demons in Matthew 8:28–32, for example, Jesus merely told the demons to “go,” and “they came out.” In fact, the process seemed to be so easy that when the 70 on whom Christ had bestowed the ability to cast out demons returned to him, they were joyous, “saying, Lord, even the demons are subject unto us in thy name” (Luke 10:17–20). When the apostle Paul cast the demon out of the maid in Acts 16:16–18, the Bible says that Paul “turned and said to the spirit, I charge thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And it came out that very hour.” The idea is that it occurred immediately and with what appears to be minimal effort on Paul’s part. In the New Testament, whenever demons were cast out, there was certainly no need for future sessions nor was there any need for constant cajoling and badgering of the demon on the part of the one doing the exorcising. The point is, the New Testament does not characterize exorcisms as a laborious task that takes hours and hours to accomplish. Contrast this to the approach taken today. In his book Interview With an Exorcist, Catholic priest Jose Fortea (2006) suggests that both in “Orthodox

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Christianity” and among Pentecostal churches, a normal exorcism consists of a group of people surrounding the possessed individual and ordering the demon “again and again to leave the person in the name of Jesus” (p. 104). In the movie The Exorcist (Friedkin, 1973), for example, the two priests exorcising the demons from Regan said no less than 15 times in a row, “The power of Christ compels you.” Even so, the demon refused to budge. In fact, the ordeal was so arduous that the priests had to take a break before beginning again. Mike Thierer, pastor and head exorcist for the Hegewisch Baptist Church in Highland, Indiana, whose approach is similar to that of many exorcists today, reveals, “We like to get into the pit with the people [who are demon possessed].” This involves taking “the tie off ” and having to “get down in the floor and roll around with them.” Thierer learned his craft from his father-in-law Win Worley, the pioneer deliverance minister of the 1970s whose exorcisms were described by Cuneo as “wild marathon, puke and rebuke” sessions (Deliver Us From Evil, 2003). There is only one problem with this approach. These methods are foreign to those that one reads about in the New Testament narratives. Sometimes the counterargument is made that in the New Testament, demons did not always come out of individuals when they were commanded to. Although it may be argued that even Christ’s apostles occasionally could not perform the task of casting out demons, the problem was not that the demons had to be cajoled and browbeaten into submission. The problem was the lack of faith on the part of the apostles, for which Christ rebuked them (Luke 9:40–41). Had they had the necessary faith to do the job, it could have been done relatively easily. In Mark 9, Christ’s disciples were unable to cast the demon out of a boy. Christ called them a “faithless generation” and commanded that they bring him the boy to be exorcised. Eventually, the disciples asked Christ why it was that they were not able to cast out the demon. Jesus responded, “This kind can come out by nothing, save by prayer” (Mk 9:29). The idea is not that some demons are more powerful than other demons as Fortea (2006, p. 105) suggests. The idea is that the disciples—although they had the authority to cast out all demons—lacked the faith necessary. Jesus called them “faithless” and was suggesting that one way for them to increase their faith was through prayer. If they had had the necessary faith, they could have performed the task relatively easily, regardless of the demon. A fourth characteristic of exorcisms in the New Testament is that—like miraculous healings in general (Pullum, 2008b)—they caused amazement, not skepticism and disbelief. For instance, in Matthew 9:32–33, Christ healed a mute man possessed with a demon. The Bible says, “[T]he multitudes marveled, saying, It was never so seen in Israel.” After Christ cast out a demon from one of the men in the country of the Gerasenes in Mark 5:2–20, the Bible says that “all men marvelled.” When Christ healed a demon-possessed

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man in a synagogue in Capernaum, Luke records that “amazement came upon all, and they spake together, one with another, saying, what is this word? For with authority and power he commandeth the unclean spirits, and they come out” (4:36). In Matthew 12:22–23, we are told that after Christ healed a man “possessed with a demon,” among other problems, “all the multitudes were amazed.” Even the enemies of Christ did not deny that the demon had been cast out. Although on occasion they tried to put the worst interpretation on Jesus’s work—saying that he cast out demons by the power of Beelzebub—they never actually denied the fact that he had, nonetheless, cast out a demon (Pullum, 2008b). After having personally experienced over 50 different exorcisms in researching his book American Exorcism, Cuneo (2001) came away unimpressed. He reports seeing “nothing startling” whatsoever. There were no levitating bodies, no heads that spun around, or voices that talked from the grave. In short, there were no “fireworks” at all (pp. 274–275). In fact, Cuneo was not even convinced that people had been possessed by demons in the first place, let alone set free from them. Simply put, Cuneo was not amazed like those who witnessed exorcisms in the synoptic narratives. A fifth argument to be made against modern-day exorcisms is that there is no evidence whatsoever in the New Testament that demons withered or writhed in pain after a person possessed by a demon came into contact with holy water, Bibles, crucifixes, or any other physical object for that matter, Acts 18:12 notwithstanding. In fact, none of these devices were ever used in New Testament exorcisms. These are obviously artifacts of the Catholic Church, which have been perpetuated to a great extent by William Peter Blaty’s book and movie—clearly the stuff of Hollywood imagination. Apparently these paraphernalia have been handed down through the centuries by the Catholic Church, but there is no evidence whatsoever that they were ever used by either Christ or his apostles. Whenever they cast out demons, there was no long, drawn-out ritual whatsoever involved. A sixth point to be made about demon possession is that in the New Testament, Christians were never possessed. Other people were, but Christians were not. Had this occurred, this would have suggested that demons were stronger than the Spirit of God within Christians (Eph 5:18). I know of no Christian today who would be willing to grant this possibility. In fact, there are no cases of anyone in the early New Testament church who was ever possessed by a demon. In our day, exorcism occurs almost exclusively (at least the overwhelming majority of cases) among people of faith, so-called Christians. If a person is not a religious person in the first place, it is highly unlikely that he or she will admit to being possessed by a demon, let alone allow someone else to lay their hands on him or her to exorcise an evil spirit. It is important to note at this point that we should not confuse demon possession with being tempted by the devil. The two are not even remotely

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related. Although it is true that the Bible teaches that Satan tempts Christians (Eph 6:10–13; 1 Pet 5:8) just as Christ himself was tempted (Matt 4:1–11), being tempted is a far cry from being possessed. Conley (1997) notes, “The influence of the devil today is real, but it is persuasive, not possessive” (p. 44). One could even add that although the devil may be pervasive (1 Pet 5:8), he is not possessive. The apostle James suggests that individuals are not tempted by God but are tempted when they are “drawn away by [their] own lust, and enticed” (Jas 1:13–14). James goes on to tell us to “resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (Jas 4:7). What James is teaching does not remotely sound like even the possibility of demon possession. The fact is, the Bible teaches, There hath no temptation taken you but such as man can bear; but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make also the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. (1 Cor 10:13)

The Bible teaches that not only are Christians not possessed by demons, as I will attempt to illustrate further in the following section, but also they are not even tempted beyond their abilities to resist the devil.

DO DEMONS POSSESS PEOPLE TODAY? As I have already pointed out in the previous section, I do not believe that the Bible teaches that demons possess people today as is depicted in the New Testament narratives. Although individuals may be tempted, this is a far cry from being possessed. If demons do not possess people today as they did in the synoptic gospels and Acts, why do they not? Moreover, why did God allow demons to possess people in Jesus’s day in the first place? Let us begin by answering the second of these two questions. Then we will be in a better position to understand the answer to the first. Conley (1997) articulates three reasons why God allowed demons to possess individuals during the time of Christ: (a) “to demonstrate the power of Christ and His apostles over Satan and his cohorts”; (b) to prove to Christ’s enemies that he received his power from God, not from Satan; and (c) “to demonstrate for all time the nature and reality of evil” (p. 34). There are a few verses in the synoptic gospels that suggest that demons were allowed to possess people so that Christ might demonstrate his power. Luke 11:20 quotes Christ as saying, “But if I by the finger of God cast out demons, then is the kingdom of God come upon you.” A similar idea can be found in Matthew 12:28, where Jesus is quoted as having said, “But if I by the Spirit of God cast out demons, then is the kingdom of God come upon you.” The idea is that whether by the “finger of God” (a member of the body that is not very powerful compared to other body parts) or by the “Spirit

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of God,” Christ cast out demons. Therefore he has conquered the devil, he is more powerful than the devil, and he has the authority and the power to establish his kingdom. In effect, Christ has bound “the strong man” (Matt 12:29). Christ wins. Satan loses. Jackson (1998) contends that Christ’s argument is as follows; “I have cast out demons, the servants of Satan. I could not have done so if I were not stronger than he. My power thus is superior to his” (p. 5). During his ministry, not only had Christ demonstrated power over diseases and physical ailments (Matt 9:20–22; John 4:46–54, 9:1), power over nature (Matt 8:23–27, 14:22–23), power over material things (John 6:1–14), and power over death (Matt 9:18–26; John 11:1–45) (Pullum, 2008b, pp. 139–140; Jackson, 1998, p. 5), but also he had demonstrated power over demons. Jackson (1998) notes that just as Christ had demonstrated his power in the realms of diseases, nature, material things, and death, “it likewise was appropriate that he be able to demonstrate his authority in the spirit [emphasis Jackson] sphere as well” (p. 5). Similarly, Hamilton (1991) suggests, Demons possessed men in the period between the testaments and in the New Testament period . . . evidently for the reason of presenting the occasions for Jesus to show his power over Satan and his angels in the world of the invisible spirits. (p. 7)

In demonstrating his power over evil spirits, Christ also showed that he did not receive his abilities from Satan, as Conley suggests above. When Christ’s enemies accused him of casting out Satan by the power of Beelzebub, Jesus pointed out to them the silliness of their argument. “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand,” he reminded them. No one would disagree with this logic. Reasoning by analogy, Christ went on to conclude, “and if Satan casteth out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then shall his kingdom stand?” (Matt 12:25–26). In casting out demons, suggests Conley (1997), Christ also demonstrated “the nature and reality of evil.” “No one who has read the gospel records,” suggests Conley, “would be able to say that evil is abstract and impersonal. It is both real and personal.” Conley concludes, “By allowing demon possession, God provided a glimpse into the demonic world that should sober all of us” (pp. 34–35). The question remains, Why do demons not possess individuals today? Conley (1997) suggests that he does not believe in demon possession today because he does “not believe in present-day miracles.” “Belief in demon possession and belief in miracles . . . are inextricably linked. To believe in demon possession today, logically and psychologically, requires belief in modern day miracles” (p. 35). As I have attempted to demonstrate elsewhere, miracles ceased “at or near the end of the first century” with the coming of the New

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Testament canon because their purpose had been fulfilled—to demonstrate that the person doing the preaching had the mantle of God upon him (Heb 2:3–4; Mk 16:20; 2 Cor 12:12) and to teach and edify the early church in the absence of New Testament scripture (Pullum, 2008b, pp. 152–154). Gwinn (n.d.) argues that “at least two approaches can be used to show that evil spirits do not possess individuals in our day” (emphasis in original). First, he suggests that Christ’s disciples had the ability to cast out demons (Mk. 16:17–20). “Add to this the knowledge that such gifts have now ended (I Cor. 13:8–10), and we have the basis for a conclusion about these evil spirits.” Concluding, Gwinn makes a compelling argument, “If men today were possessed, what method might be used to expel the devil? Since miraculous spiritual gifts have ceased, this would leave a person under the influence of a devil, with no possible means to escape” (pp. 3–4). In other words, there would be no defense or remedy. There is a final line of reasoning I wish to pursue in showing from the Bible that demons do not possess people today—the second argument set forth above by Gwinn. The Old Testament prophet Zachariah told of a time when “the unclean spirit” would “pass out of the land” (13:3). This would occur in “that day” when “a fountain [is] opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness” (13:1). Zechariah is one of the most Messianic prophets in the Bible. In fact, Robinson suggests that the book of Zechariah “is the most Messianic, the most truly apocalyptic and eschatological, of all the writings of the O.T.” (quoted in Hailey, 1972, p. 319). Just as “the spirit of grace and supplication” was to be poured out, just as there was to be a mourning for the one who was to be “pierced,” a “fountain” was to be opened for “sin and uncleanness” (Zech 12:10, 13:3) Hailey suggests that “the time under consideration in these two chapters” is “clearly Messianic.” Zechariah was referring to the time of Christ when the unclean spirits would begin to depart. Hailey (1972) concludes, “In the conquest of Christ over Satan and his forces, unclean spirits have ceased to control men as they did in the time of the ministry of Christ and the apostles” (p. 392). Jackson (1998) points out, “While this is not a common view of Zechariah’s prophecy, and certainly not one upon which an entire case can be built, it is not without possibility” (p. 8). If demons do not possess people today, according to what we read about in the Bible, then how do we account for the behaviors of individuals who say they have been possessed? I believe we can find the answer to this question—at least in part—by turning to psychology.

WHAT DOES PSYCHOLOGY HAVE TO SAY ABOUT DEMON POSSESSION? When one turns to the psychological literature on demon possession, he or she is quickly introduced to the concept of dissociative identity disorder

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(DID) as a possible explanation as to why individuals claim to be possessed. Formerly referred to as multiple personality disorder (perhaps Sybil was the most popular case of this), Carson and Butcher (1992) define it as a dissociative reaction . . . in which a patient manifests two or more complete systems of personality. Each system has distinct, well-developed emotional and thought processes and represents a unique and relatively stable personality. The individual may change from one personality to another at periods varying from a few minutes to several years. (p. 208)

Bull (2001) points out that in “a survey of 236 cases of multiple personality disorder (MPD) by DSM-III-R criteria, 28.6% reported an alter personality identified as a demon” (p. 131). In fact, Crabtree’s 1985 book Multiple Man: Explorations in Possession and Multiple Personality is devoted “to a history of [demon] possession experiences as it relates to multiple personality disorder (now called DID)” (as cited in Bull, 2001, p. 131). In addition to DID, Ferracuti et al. (1996) suggest that individuals who claim to be demon possessed may be suffering from dissociative trance disorder (DTD). DTD is “a distinct clinical manifestation of a dissociative continuum” that shares some of the same characteristics of DID (p. 525). Citing the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), Ferracuti et al. suggest that DTD requires “the presence of either a trance state or a possession trance state” (p. 525). According to these researchers, “A possession trance state is . . . the presence of a single or episodic altered state of consciousness, in which a person’s customary identity is replaced by a new identity attributed to the influence of a spirit or deity” (p. 525). In their study of 10 individuals who claimed to be possessed by a demon and who met the criteria set forth above for DTD, Ferracuti et al. conclude that most of their subjects suffered from a “severe distortion of reality” (p. 536). In a study of four cases of exorcism “performed at a Trinidadian Pentecostal Church,” Ward and Beaubrun (1980) discovered that “these individuals had neither been institutionalized nor previously referred for psychiatric consultation, but their histories reflect[ed] maladaptive behavioural patterns.” Although “no consistent clinical picture of psychopathology [was] apparent,” suggest Ward and Beaubrun, these individuals showed “a tendency toward hysterical features, both conversion and dissociation” (p. 205). Not only might individuals who claim to be demon possessed be suffering from DID, DTD, or hysteria, but also quite possibly they may suffer from some other psychological pathology such as schizophrenia. According to Dr. Alex Kopelowica, a clinical psychiatrist, schizophrenia “is probably the most severe and pernicious of the psychiatric disorders” and causes its victims to suffer “delusions, auditory hallucinations, and paranoia” (Deliver Us From Evil, 2003).

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Such was the case of 25-year-old schizophrenic Holly Spence, who claimed to hear voices, especially from her deceased father. Believing that her illness was caused by a demon, she met privately with former Southern Baptist minister Brian Conner of Richmond, Virginia, to be exorcised. Conner believed that demons can come into people and impersonate dead relatives. Referring to the Spence case, Kopelowicz suggests that “the feeling of being possessed by a devil or a demon is not unusual in people with schizophrenia, especially folks who have a religious upbringing. They’re trying to understand as best they can the experiences that they’re having” (Deliver Us From Evil, 2003). Citing numerous psychological studies, Ward and Beaubrun (1980) argue that stress can also “precipitate [demon] possession” in individuals with psychological problems (p. 206). They suggest that “possession is a basic condition in response to an individual’s intrapsychic tension and a precipitating situation due to an event involving unusual stress or emotion” (p. 206) Citing Ludwig (1965), they report that “incestuous conflicts as well as emotional crises, guilt, feelings of rejection, strong unmet dependency needs, or feelings of inadequacy also act as precipitating factors” (p. 206). According to Ward and Beaubrun (1980), claiming to be possessed by a demon provides an individual with two benefits: He or she can (a) “escape from unpleasant reality” and (b) be set free from “guilt through a sense of diminished responsibility” (p. 206). In other words, all the blame for a person’s evil thoughts and behaviors can be placed squarely on a demon—an external force. Corroborating the above findings, Ross and Joshi (1992) suggest, “Like dissociation in general, paranormal experiences [such as demon possession] can be triggered by trauma, especially childhood physical or sexual abuse” (p. 1). In critiquing the work of contemporary exorcist Bob Larsen, Walter Brakelmanns, professor of psychiatry at UCLA’s School of Medicine, suggests that “repressed impulses” are in all of us and that Bob Larson is giving subjects in his audiences permission to “vent” those repressed impulses and emotions “under the guise of the devil” causing them. Brackelmanns argues that Larson has a great talent for (a) “picking out people who are highly suggestable” and (b) “putting in their minds what it is he wants from them.” “What he’s really doing,” suggests Brackelmanns “is tapping into a lot of the fears and unresolved issues and conflicts that people have” (Deliver Us From Evil, 2003). Besides the above psychological possibilities, individuals who claim to be possessed by a demon may, in some cases, actually be faking. Although this may occur only in extreme cases, it is certainly a possibility. Evangelist Ney Rieber, for example, tells of an instance in 1995 during a prison visit when an inmate tried to trick Rieber into believing that he was demon possessed. As Reiber looked into his cell, he saw a man sitting in the floor with a “crazed look,” drooling from his mouth. Not believing in demon possession, Reiber confessed, “I looked at him a moment, and began to laugh.” As the

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man screamed louder and louder and “banged his fists against the door” in an attempt to be convincing, Reiber reveals that he kept laughing and eventually said to him, “Good show. How long have you been practicing?” The inmate quickly “broke into a laugh” himself and asked, “How did you know? How come I couldn’t fool you like I have everyone else?” (as cited in Rudd, 2009). Although this example may be atypical, I cite it here simply to support the possibility that, for whatever reason, individuals may claim to be demon possessed when, in reality, they are only trying to fool others around them.

CONCLUSION In this chapter I have attempted to address four questions: What does the Bible have to say about the origin of Satan? What does the Bible have to say about demon possession? Do demons actually possess people today, not metaphorically but literally, as so many people believe? If not, to what might we attribute this belief and its concomitant behaviors? Although the Bible does not have much to say about the origin of Satan, there are a few passages that suggest that he may have originally been an angel that rebelled. Known by such names as the Devil, Satan, the Prince of this world, and so on, the Bible depicts him as the chief devil who rules over many demons. The New Testament narratives Matthew, Mark, and Luke suggest that these demons occasionally inhabited people during the time of Christ and his disciples. It is, in part, because demon possession is recorded in the synoptics that people today believe in this phenomenon. There are at least six characteristics that we can extrapolate from the gospel narratives regarding demon possession: (1) Demons always spoke with respect when addressed by Christ. Never did they use foul language, nor did they talk impudently when being exorcised, with the exception of the example of the seven sons of Sceva, and they did so there because the men who were trying to exorcise them were frauds. Unfortunately, when one observes an exorcism today—either a real-life exorcism or one portrayed in the movies— respect for the exorcist is the last thing a person will see. (2) Exorcisms in the New Testament were performed with minimal effort and were often cast out “with a word” (Matt 8:16). (3) Moreover, exorcisms were always immediate, like all other miracles recorded in the Bible. Nowadays, exorcisms are arduous, hours-long, multiple-day ordeals that leave both the exorcist and the victim physically exhausted. (4) Like other miracles recorded in the gospel narratives, exorcisms caused amazement, not skepticism, on the part of onlookers. (5) Nowhere do we read about demons writhing in pain when their victims were touched by crucifixes, holy water, or Bibles used as metaphysical swords. The fact is these items were not employed in the exorcisms of the gospel narratives. Instead, demons were cast out verbally. This begs the question as to why crucifixes and the like are being used today if they

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cannot be found in the New Testament. (6) Finally, Christians were never possessed with demons in the New Testament. In fact, if anything, the Bible is clear on the idea that if Christians resist the devil, then he will flee from them (Jas 4:7). The truth of the matter is, according to the Bible, demons do not inhabit individuals today because, like miracles, possession was limited to a particular time and place. To suggest that demons possess people today without the supernatural ability to cast them out would leave individuals defenseless. What may be occurring today among individuals who claim to be possessed by demons is not really demon possession at all but behavior brought on by dissociative identity disorder (i.e., multiple personality disorder), dissociative trance disorder, hysteria, schizophrenia, or some other psychological pathology. In very rare cases, one could even argue that individuals may be, at worst, faking or, at best, self-deluded. Despite what I believe the New Testament has to say about this subject, I have no delusions that belief in demon possession is likely to abate anytime in the near future. As long as individuals continue to read the myriad number of popular books on the subject, as long as there are movies made like The Exorcist (Friedkin, 1973), The Exorcism of Emily Rose (Derrickson, 2005), or The Last Exorcism (Stamm, 2010) and as long as individuals fail to understand what the New Testament has to say about the miraculous in general and exorcisms in particular, we will continue to hear about people in our day and age being possessed. This in no way is to castigate these individuals. Quite frankly, I am willing to grant that many people—perhaps even the majority—who believe in demon possession do so sincerely. This does not mean, however, that we should take them at their word. In other words, we do not have to believe them. Nor should we be enamored with their testimonies. Instead, we need to offer people who claim to be possessed psychiatric and psychological assessment and therapeutic interventions along with theological education. Having said all of this, one thing seems clear to me from reading the New Testament narratives. Demons do not possess people today, at least not the supernatural kind. Despite the thousands of claims made about demon possession, when they are examined against the Bible—the very book used to validate them—we are forced to the same conclusion made by the little boy who gazed at the ruler in his newly tailored birthday suit: “The emperor is wearing no clothes!” Simply put, things are not, in reality, as people say they are.

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Angley, E. (1989). The deceit of Lucifer. Akron, OH: Winston Press. Baglio, M. (2009). The rite: The making of a modern exorcist. New York: Doubleday. Brittle, G. (1980). The demonologist: The extraordinary career of Ed and Lorraine Warren. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse. Bull, D. L. (2001). A phenomenological model of therapeutic exorcism for dissociative identity disorder. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 29 (2), 131–139. Carson, C. R., & Butcher, J. N. (1992). Abnormal psychology and modern life (9th ed.). New York: HarperCollins. Conley, D. (1997). The gospel versus occultism. Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press. Conn, S. J. (2008). The devil called collect: The exorcism of Jessica Leek. New York: iUniverse. Cuneo, M. W. (2001). American exorcism: Expelling demons in the land of plenty. New York: Doubleday. Deliver us from evil [Television broadcast]. (2003, February 11). The Learning Channel. Wilmington, NC: Time Warner Cable. Derrickson, S. (Dir.). (2005). The exorcism of Emily Rose [Motion picture]. Los Angeles: Screen Gems. Ellens, J. H. (2008). Biblical miracles and psychological process: Jesus as psychotherapist. In J. H. Ellen (Ed.), Miracles: God, science, and psychology in the paranormal (Vol. 1. pp. 1–14). Westport, CT: Praeger. Ferracuti, S., Sacco, R., & Lazzari, R. (1996). Dissociative trance disorder: Clinical and Rorschach findings in ten persons reporting demon possession and treated by exorcism. Journal of Personality Assessment, 66 (3), 525–539. Fortea, J. A. (2006). Interview with an exorcist: An insider’s look at the devil, demonic possession, and the path to deliverance. West Chester, PA: Ascension Press. Friedkin, W. (Dir.). (1973). The exorcist [Motion picture]. Los Angeles: Warner Brothers. Goodman, F. D. (1981). The exorcism of Anneliese Michel. New York: Doubleday. Gwinn, G. (N.d.) Some thoughts on demon possession. Unpublished manuscript in author’s possession. Hailey, H. (1972). A commentary on the minor prophets. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker. Hamilton, C. D. (1991, January 3). From heaven or from men. Guardian of Truth, 5–7. Hanegraff, H. (1993). Christianity in crisis. Eugene, OR: Harvest House. Jackson, W. (1998, November 27). Demons: Ancient superstition or historical reality? ChristianCourier.com. 1–10. Retrieved from http://www.christiancourier.com/ articles/21-demons-ancient-supersition-or-historical-reality Johannesen, R. L., Strickland, R., & Eubanks, R. T. (Eds.). (1970). Language is sermonic: Richard Weaver on the nature of rhetoric. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Kiely, D. M., & McKenna, C. (2007). The dark sacrament: True stories of modern-day demon possession and exorcism. New York: Harper One. Martin, M. (1976). Hostage to the devil: The possession and exorcism of five living Americans. New York: Reader’s Digest Press. Palagruto, A. (2008). Deliver us from evil: A guide to spiritual warfare and exorcism (3rd ed.). Philadelphia: TPA Publishing. Peck, M. S. (1983). People of the lie: The hope for healing human evil. New York: Simon & Schuster.

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Pullum, S.J. (2008a). “Hallelujah, thank you, Jesus!”: Selling the miraculous in the preaching of faith healers. In J. H. Ellen (Ed.), Miracles: God, science, and psychology in the paranormal (Vol. 3. pp. 139–161). Westport, CT: Praeger. Pullum, S. J. (2008b). “That they may believe”: Distinguishing the miraculous from the providential. In J. H. Ellen (Ed.), Miracles: God, science, and psychology in the paranormal (Vol. 1. pp. 135–158). Westport, CT: Praeger. Ross, C. A., & Joshi, S. (1992). Paranormal experiences in the general population. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 180 (6), 357–361. Retrieved from http://0-web.ebscohost.com.uncclc.coast.uncwil.edu/ehost/delivery. Rudd, S. (2009). Demons and demon possession (pp. 1–16). Retrieved from http:// www.bible.ca/su-demons.htm. Stamm, D. (Director). (2010). The last exorcism. [Motion picture]. United States: Lionsgate. Strong, J. (1984). The new Strong’s exhaustive concordance of the Bible. New York: Thomas Nelson. Thomas, A. (Prod.). (2001, April 15). America undercover: A question of miracles [HBO series]. Wilmington, NC: Time-Warner Cable. Vine, W. E. (1939). An expository dictionary of New Testament words. Nashville, TN: Royal. Vogl, C. (1973). Begone Satan! A soul-stirring account of diabolical possession (Trans. C. Kapsner). Rockford, IL: Tan. (Original work published n.d.) Ward, C. A., & Beaubrun, M. H. (1980). The psychodynamics of demon possession. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 19 (2), 201–207. Zaffis, J., & McIntyre, B. (2004). Shadows of the dark. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse.

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Law as Society’s Quest for Integrity: More than a Response to Evil Rafael Chodos

INTRODUCTION Although many think of the law as a means of restraining people’s base natures or as a response to their evil actions, or even as a set of rules and procedures to be manipulated for selfish gain, this chapter presents a view of law as society’s shared quest for integrity in interpersonal affairs. The notion of integrity is analyzed, and the way the law embodies this notion in the process of litigation is illustrated through a particular case which the author, an experienced business litigator, is handling. It is customary to think of the law as one of society’s most basic responses to evil—both to the evil that has made itself manifest, and to the evil that lurks within. Think of the serial murderer who hides in the crowded city, and then think of the police who track him down and of the court that imposes punishment on him. What could be a more definitive illustration of society’s response to evil than this? Here is a clear case of evil, and a clear response that is prescribed by our law. And standing in the background is the Sixth Commandment, “Thou shalt not murder,” a proscriptive law of universal application, fashioned to avoid evil and prevent it. Yet this view of the law and its function is shallow and incomplete. For law intrudes itself into the whole spectrum of our activities. It does not lie asleep until some evil is committed: It makes itself available to help us form marriages and conduct commerce, to build cities, to distinguish licensed professionals from amateurs, to safeguard reputations, to raise the revenue through taxation, to wage war, and to educate children. The uses of the law are too numerous to catalog here, but even this short list makes us realize that to view the law as a “response” and “solution” to evil is to overlook its other aspects.

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Take the case again of the serial murderer. Why do we need “law” to deal with him at all? Why not just track him down and lynch him? Would not that sort of response to evil provide a solution—an effective solution? What does law really add to society’s response? Why is a legal response better than a lynching? How does law contribute—if at all—to anything we could call a “solution” to “the problem of evil”? I have been a lawyer for over 30 years, and about 7 years after I started practicing I came to a deep realization: Law is more than the particular laws we pass; it is more than the particular cases we try; it is more than society’s “response” to anything. It is instead a shared quest for integrity in interpersonal affairs. When I arrived at this deep realization, it became my motto and my mantra. Whenever a friend or acquaintance asks me what law is about, this has always been my ready answer: “Law is society’s quest for integrity in interpersonal affairs.” And for more than 25 years, the people to whom I have said this have always given me a surprisingly uniform reaction: a smile of disbelief as if to say to me, “You’re kidding.” And when I press them, they tell me what they think law really is: a system of rules to constrain the behavior of the members of society so that they will repress their base natures and abstain from killing, raping, and stealing; or a system of rules and procedures to be manipulated wherever possible in order to achieve a desired result. I know that those views are widely held, and I think I understand where they come from. But I want to take the time here to explain why I see law the way I do. I am working on a particular case that came into my office nearly 18 months ago. To the extent that professional ethics permit, I want to tell you about this case and share my experience of it with you so that you can see why I believe my short mantra is more accurate a description of law than the cynical views most people seem to hold. This case illustrates many aspects of my mantra—not all of them, but many important ones. My view of the law is colored by the kinds of cases I handle: business matters—both transactions and litigation. I do not handle criminal matters or personal injury matters, but at one or another point in my career, I have handled many other kinds of cases. The litigation I handle does not involve mass murderers or psychopathic rapists: It is about money, usually, and business affairs. In the cases that I handle, it is often difficult to decide who is “good” and who is “evil,” and instead, my focus has to be on what is “fair.” It is true that the adversaries in my cases are often greedy, dishonest, abusive, sloppy, or sneaky, and if those qualities are “evil” (and they certainly are not “good”), then you might say I try to fight evil in my practice. But by and large, my practice consists in seeking fair and just outcomes in my cases— not in punishing wicked people. My clients are individuals—sometimes owners or managers of corporations, but always individuals who I speak to directly. Their lives have been disrupted

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in some way, and they come to me to help them resolve that disruption. Their lawsuits arise out of some disturbance in the smooth flow of their affairs, and it is my job to help them resolve that disturbance through justice. My client in this case is a man in his 40s who has been a real estate developer for more than 15 years. He builds homes in northern California, and most of his projects were successful. He and his family before him had dealt with the local community bank on many development projects, borrowing, repaying, and earning profit on each project. But late in 2007, the economy took a much-publicized nosedive (the media refer to it as the global financial crisis [GFC], and so will I), and, like most of the real estate developments in that part of the world, my client’s projects failed. He came to me for help on one of the projects that “crashed.” The bank was threatening to sue him and his partners for the balances due on the development loans: more than $20 million. Because of the GFC, the underlying real estate that secured the borrowings, even as it was improved by my client’s hard work, was not likely to be worth even $5 million—so there would be a huge shortfall. He was referred to me by a lawyer whom I had represented successfully 25 years ago in a complicated situation that arose out of an earlier burst in the real estate bubble. Now he was asking me to represent his client in what might be seen as a similar situation—only in this case, the outlook was glummer because there was no question that the bank had advanced money, my client had signed personal guarantees, and the money had not been repaid. The lawyer told me that for over 20 years, he has been an “asset protection planner,” specializing in helping clients move money into places and legal structures where it cannot be reached even if judgments should be rendered against them. This client had come to him for help, and all the “asset protection work” would soon be completed. But he thought the client needed my help— either to delay the bank’s anticipated lawsuit, or hopefully, to negotiate a livable settlement of it. There was no thought that it might even be possible to defeat a suit by the bank: If a settlement could not be reached, bankruptcy seemed the only alternative. This was not the kind of case I usually handle, because “fairness” seemed already to have been determined by the loan documents. Also, I was put off by the “asset protection” activities that had gone on: Even though they might have been perfectly legal, they gave off a slight odor of sneakiness and a desire to evade responsibility. So I suggested to my former client that perhaps he should make a referral to a lawyer who specializes in banking or real estate law, or possibly to a bankruptcy lawyer. But he was quite insistent that I would be the right lawyer for the job because this case required some deeper thinking. It seems that the bank had acted outrageously during the GFC, failing to respond to my client’s urgent entreaties to make rational modifications to the project plans in light of the changed economic circumstances. Although the bank might not be blamed for the changed circumstances, it did seem

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that it might have had some duty to cooperate with the borrower to mitigate the damages and, possibly, to avert them. The lawyer thought that I might be able to find a way to shift all or some of the blame for the default to the bank, and that was why he was referring the matter to me. I agreed to speak with the prospective client; and after a 30-minute telephone conversation with him, in which I was very much impressed with certain aspects of his character, I agreed to take the case and do my best for him.

WHAT IS “INTEGRITY”? In order to understand why law can be seen as a quest for integrity, it is necessary that I tell you what I understand integrity to be. Integrity is a term most properly applied to individuals, and it has only a metaphorical application to groups. It refers to specific qualities of character, or aspects of behavior, that we deem to be a virtue. These qualities include a kind of consistency that transcends mere habit or custom, a high level of deliberate decision making, and a willingness to accept even the most unpleasant consequences of our decisions.

Different From Honesty Although we sometimes mention honesty and integrity in the same breath, as if they were two aspects of the same thing, integrity is in fact something beyond honesty. Honesty is a relationship merely between our words and the truth, whereas integrity is a relationship between our words, our actions, and the truth. For this reason, integrity is a “higher” virtue than honesty, and sometimes, in extreme situations, integrity can even require deliberate dishonesty. So if, during World War II, you were hiding a Jewish family in your attic and the Gestapo came to the door and asked, “Are there any Jews here?” mere honesty would require you to say, “Yes,” but integrity would require you to lie and say, “No.” Honesty is a virtue that might be acquired and exhibited by an artificial intelligence: A network of cameras might record everything that happens in a given locale, and with a sophisticated user interface it could answer any question about what happened there at any given hour with perfect honesty. But we would not say of such a network that it “acted with integrity” or “has integrity”—even though we might say that the “integrity of the network” had been compromised if some unauthorized party were able to hack into it and plant inauthentic video on its storage units. Assessing integrity requires subjective judgment. Integrity is a matter of our behavior: To have integrity, we must “walk the talk.” But assessing whether we have acted with integrity in a given situation, or over a long period of time, can be difficult. The assessment involves subjective judgments about

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what is “the walk” and what is “the talk.” We have to make judgment calls, and people may disagree. We often criticize people for acting without integrity or for sacrificing their integrity when we feel that a particular statement they have made, or thing they have done, does not sort well with our notion of their “real” or “true” or “highest” selves. For example, there is always vigorous discussion about the conduct of our political leaders: By voting this way or that way on any particular legislation, have they “betrayed” the people who voted for them? Have they “lost” the qualities that the electorate found attractive? Filmmakers and performers, too, come in for this kind of criticism: Does their latest film show that they have “sold out”? Have they “lost the magic”? Has the response of the Catholic Church to widespread allegations of sexual abuse been appropriate? All these questions revolve around notions of integrity, and they usually provoke disagreement. Resolving any one of these questions is difficult. Similarly, when we attempt to assess integrity in the course of court proceedings, disagreements arise—honest disagreements—and resolving these in a satisfying way is the important business of the court process. Integrity requires a consistency that transcends mere habit and custom. The man who always takes cream with his coffee is acting consistently, but we will not say of him, on this basis alone, that he is acting with integrity. He runs one mile every day to keep trim: Here, too, he acts consistently, but we will not say he acts with integrity. He is a devout Jew, and he prays three times a day: His consistent observance by itself does not amount to any kind of integrity. The kind of consistency that integrity requires is something more than mere habit or custom: It requires the assessment of underlying values, motives, and aspirations. When the actions arise from a commitment to those values and when they are an expression of that commitment, only then are we ready to say that they reflect integrity. Part of what that means is that the man of integrity must be ready, at every moment, to abandon his habits and his customs if his underlying values require a different kind of action. One’s wife, for instance, falls sick and requires care: Better to stay with her than to go to the synagogue and recite the prayer that says, “Love and honor your wife.” As the prophet Amos said, “I despise your festive offerings. . . . Let justice roll down as the waters and righteousness as a mighty stream” (Amos 5:21–24). In court, consistency involves the study of court precedents: What have other courts done in similar situations? What “is” the law? These questions will have to be answered in a creative way, because there might not be any situations that are completely “similar,” or—worse—there might be several different kinds of situations, all of which appear to be “similar.” Whatever precedents there are, the court will strive to achieve consistency with the principles underlying the precedents: The court should always seek justice, not merely conformity to precedent.

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Acting with integrity involves acting from proper motives. Part of our judgment about whether a given action reflects integrity is based on the actor’s motives: If the politician voted the way he did for no other reason than that he thought it would gain him the most notoriety, we will probably say that he voted without integrity. If the Catholic Church tried to cover up the sexual abuse, and took measures to eliminate it only after scandals hit the news—then we will say that its motives were fear and self-preservation rather than the higher motives we might view as consistent with its “integrity.” If the moviemaker’s last movie was a cynical attempt to pander to a particular audience for only financial reasons, we may feel—on that basis alone—that it lacks integrity. Integrity requires self-awareness and deliberate decision making. Before we can act with integrity, our decisions must be informed by a full awareness of the situation, and we must be clear about our own motives. We must be aware of ourselves. In order to have integrity, and in order to assess integrity, one must be able to step outside of himself and observe himself as if he were a third party. Important decisions necessarily involve an effort to find out the relevant truth—the truth about the situation in which we propose to act, and also the truth about ourselves. The decision to marry, to pursue a certain career, to move to a certain country to live, and even to make important business decisions—all these decisions, if they are made consciously and deliberately rather than out of habit or fear, require us to ask ourselves, “Who am I, really?” and “What impact will this decision have on my life?” The business executive who launches a new product line; the president who sends troops to a war zone; the young couple who take their marriage vows—we appraise the integrity of all these decision makers partly on the basis of the degree to which their decisions are conscious, deliberate, and informed. Hasty, ill-considered decisions—particularly decisions that have large consequences for us and for others affected by them—are inconsistent with our notion of integrity. Integrity requires us first to assess the situation and only then to act. When I say that the law is society’s quest for integrity, part of what I mean is that an analogous process goes on in the courtroom. There will be a “trial” in which the first order of business will be to establish what happened: What did the parties do? What were their motivations? What are the facts? Only after these have been established will the court go on to the next step, which must be seen as an effort to become “self-aware”: It will try to find out what the law is, and then will go about the task of applying the law to the facts in order to determine what action—what judgment—is appropriate. Integrity requires a willingness to accept even unpleasant consequences. Integrity requires us to take risks and accept consequences. The important decisions we make lead to consequences that are not under our own control, and it would betray a lack of integrity if, having made a decision,

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we sought to evade the consequences of it. Of course we all tend to do that: We blame others, we deny that the consequences flowed from our actions, and we deny that the consequences even exist. But these denials and evasions are inconsistent with our notions of integrity: Integrity requires us to say, “Yes, I did it, and I am ready now to take the consequences of my actions.” Among the highest examples of integrity, we count Socrates and Jesus: Socrates who drank the hemlock rather than renounce his teachings or leave Athens, and Jesus who went willingly to be crucified. Not every man of integrity has to face such dire consequences: It is possible to maintain one’s integrity and to be entirely successful in the world. But the readiness to take the consequences—which we identify as those things that are outside of our own control—is part of what we mean by integrity. My client’s “asset protection” maneuvers represented a deliberate attempt to avoid certain unpleasant consequences of his prior actions. One of the first things I discussed with him was the need to leave behind this “cover your assets” approach and prepare for whatever consequences the court would impose. I always tell my clients, when I am retained, that they must be prepared to lose in court because the outcome of the litigation is a matter outside our control: It depends on the court. In this case, I told the client that losing was the most likely outcome because the contracts were unfavorable and the chances of success were very, very slim. I asked him to consider carefully if paying me to fight for him—knowing that losing was a likely outcome—was a rational decision. I was impressed with his response: He understood the situation, and he gave me complete authority to disclose the details of his asset protection maneuvers if necessary; and he assured me that he would unravel them—all of them—when required. He also pointed out to me that he had tried his best to settle with the bank before coming to me, but had been unable to make any progress. He hoped my efforts might soften the bank and reopen the possibility of settlement; and if they did not, he said he would rather use what money he had to pay his lawyers than give it to the bank anyway. Once all those ground rules were established, we agreed that we would revisit this issue as events unfolded in the course of the litigation. In the courtroom process, the court is there to impose the consequences of their actions on the parties. The parties must submit to the court’s jurisdiction: This submission is an aspect of their integrity. And the court itself must also have integrity and must be ready to stand by its own decision. Even if the court’s decision appears to depart from specific precedents, the court must be ready to articulate its reasons for reaching that particular decision and must be ready to accept the consequences: reversal on appeal, public outcry, and/or the displeasure and burden it imposes on the losing party.

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LITIGATION AS THE CORE OF THE LAW Before coming to me, my client had consulted transactional lawyers, estate planning lawyers, asset protection lawyers, and real estate lawyers. Yet there is a sense in which all the other lawyers did their work with one eye on the possible future litigation that now had come to pass. Contracts are always drafted with a view to protecting the client in case the other side breaches and has to be sued; estate plans are set up to ensure that even people who feel a plan disadvantages them cannot overturn it in court; asset protection planning is all about anticipated litigation and possible adverse judgments. So in these ways, litigation is the apotheosis of the transaction: It is the drama for which all the other activities are forms of preparation. I will not speak here of legislation—the making of laws; for surprising as it may sound, particular laws are not really part of the essence of the law. Unlike litigation, which seeks justice as an ideal, legislation is often merely a practical matter that does not regard “ideals” but rather only necessities, or partisan interests. In the course of the legal process, we need to be aware of the particular laws relevant to the case, and of course we need to take account of them in the course of our search for justice. But the search for justice is something more than mere obedience to written laws: It involves considering all the written laws and all the underlying principles that might be applicable to the case, and deciding which of those laws and principles should govern the outcome, and why. Litigation is a process whose outcome is an action—that is, a judgment by the court. And the entire purpose of everything we do in the process of litigation is to move the court toward what we believe is the proper action. To this end, we supply evidence, and argument; and we try to persuade the court what action will be appropriate. The “appropriateness” of the court’s action is what implicates the whole notion of integrity. After all, the court has the power to act in a variety of ways. For instance, the judge could rule against my client just because he does not like him, or because he wishes to curry favor with the powerful bank. But such actions would lack integrity, and we trust the judge to be seeking a higher outcome: We trust him to be ready to make the rulings that the law requires, in light of the facts that he finds to be true. The litigation is a two-phase process: First, there is the effort to establish what happened, to determine “the truth”; and then there is the phase in which the court responds to the truth it finds, by rendering its judgment.

FROM CASTING BLAME TO ASSIGNING RESPONSIBILITY Litigation is a path that leads from casting blame to assigning responsibility. We cast blame and refuse to accept blame in anger: We assign responsibility and take responsibility in a cool state of mind, after reflection and analysis.

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In this case, my client and I both began our thinking together by asking ourselves whether he or the bank was to blame for the project’s failure. His own work had been diligent and entirely in accord with the original plans. This was not a case of a developer promising to build houses and then using the money for something else, or walking away from his commitments. My client had done his best, and had done all that he promised the bank he would do—that is, until it became impossible to meet the financial goals embodied in the loan documents. So we both came quickly to the idea that he was not to “blame”—yet he had signed the documents, and our first thought was that he might still have to accept the responsibility. Then the thought occurred to us that he might be able to avoid or diminish his own responsibility if we could cast some blame on the bank. And, indeed, one of the unusual features of this client’s case is the way the bank shut its eyes and buried its head in the sand, refusing to cooperate with my client in any significant way to make the project viable. For example, my client urged the bank to allow him to build cheaper homes than had originally been planned because there were no customers at the higher prices. He asked for extensions of time to allow him to sell the redesigned units—and he offered to pay the extra interest that would be due. And he had some qualified purchasers who were eager to buy homes and lots—but at prices below the original release prices listed in the loan documents. The prices offered were fair and even attractive in the changed market. But the bank—without saying why— refused to give its authorization. Its position was “It is not our job to change the deal: You made the deal, and you took the risks of the deal; and if the world outside changed, that is your problem, not ours.” This argument—this snippet of dialectic—is at the heart of our case. It seems clear that the reason the project failed was the GFC, and it seems likely that the GFC was not entirely this bank’s fault. And it certainly was not my client’s fault. So neither of the parties can really be “blamed” for the failure of the project. But once the GFC hit, did the bank have any responsibility at all to adapt to the changed circumstances? And will its failure to adapt excuse some or all of the borrower’s performance? This argument forces us to be more cool-headed: We need to rise above our anger and start asking the harder questions. These questions will require us to pursue many complicated lines of thought: Does the fact that it became impossible to carry out the project plans in accordance with the loan documents operate to excuse or reduce my client’s responsibility? Does the fact that neither my client nor the bank foresaw the GFC when they entered the loan arrangement mean that their contract can somehow be annulled as having been entered through mutual mistake? Does the old Victorian doctrine of “frustration of purpose” apply here? Law students all learn about those English cases that arose from the postponement of the coronation of King Edward VII in 1902 because of the king’s

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illness and the fact that he had to undergo surgery. Many people had entered contracts to rent second-story rooms so they could watch the coronation parade from the windows. When the parade was cancelled, they did not want to honor their agreements. The English courts held that because the whole purpose of the rental agreement was to allow the renters to view the parade, and because that purpose had clearly been frustrated, the contracts could not be enforced. But money paid in advance to hold the rooms did not have to be refunded: It was just that the contracts could not be further enforced (Krell v. Henry).1 Does a similar argument apply here? The money my client had paid through early sales could be retained by the bank and the bank would be entitled to foreclose on the security given for the loans. But perhaps it could not seek to enforce the guarantees. All these arguments were raised in our court papers, and predictably the bank sought to have all of them thrown out at the very beginning. These arguments have been recognized by the California courts, but the underlying doctrines are subject to many complicated limitations. Still I was able to persuade the court that there was enough plausibility to these arguments, and enough evidence to support them, to entitle us to have the court evaluate them in a full trial. This was the very first “public” step of the litigation process, and we prevailed in it. Although many courts might have rejected our arguments semiautomatically, and although the bank’s lawyers expected our arguments to be rejected out of hand, the judge who heard the argument was receptive to our ideas, and we prevailed. Ultimately, the case may be resolved, or disposed of, on other grounds entirely. But once we raised those arguments and defended them against the bank’s effort to have them thrown out, we had moved beyond anger and into a more rational frame of mind. And hopefully it is in this state of mind that the court will render its decision if and when it is required to render a decision.

FROM SECRECY THROUGH TRANSPARENCY TO TRUTH One of the first things every litigant, and lawyer, learns in our contemporary court system is that there is such a thing as pretrial discovery and that everyone has to go through it—either the hard way or the easy way. In the old days, parties would come to court and present their evidence, and the court would decide the case based on what was presented. Only if it was apparent that an important fact was missing and that further investigation had to be carried out would the trial be adjourned to allow additional witnesses to be interviewed. Otherwise, the whole trial was concluded based on “the parties’ evidence”—which is to say, on the evidence they had been able to amass before they came into the courtroom.

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But in 1938, after much debate, a revised set of Federal Rules of Civil Procedure was adopted in which new policies favoring “pretrial discovery” were adopted (Subrin & Woo, Chap. 7). These rules were designed to require each side to disclose to the other what evidence he had or could reasonably be expected to obtain. Through devices such as depositions, written interrogatories, and requests for production of documents, the idea was that the parties would learn about the weaknesses of their own case before they got to the courthouse, and this would serve the dual goals of eliminating surprise during the trial and encouraging settlement before trial. The system has been in place since 1938 in the federal courts, and has gradually been adopted by the states. The pretrial phase of a case is now the dominant feature of “the user experience,” and a recent American Bar Association (2009) survey suggests that lawyers earn more than 70% of their fees in this phase of a case. A few years ago, the pretrial discovery rules were rewritten to make it clear that when “documents” are requested, that includes electronic documents; and the result of all this is that if you are involved in a lawsuit, all your e-mails and electronic files, as well as your paper files, have to be presented to the other side for inspection and copying. So this means that in a lawsuit there is no such thing as privacy: Just about everything that is relevant or that could lead to the discovery of admissible evidence (Greyhound Lines v. Superior Court) has to come out. There are some limits: Attorney–client and work product privileges may still apply (Hickman v Taylor). But the fact is that where there may have been secrecy at the outset, in the courthouse there is something closer to transparency. But mere “transparency” is quite different from “honesty” and “truth.” For example, if I ask a company’s human resources manager, “Did this company have a policy of turning a blind eye to sexual harassment in the workplace?” the true answer might be “Yes.” But all pretrial discovery requires is that the human resources manager turn over the company’s employment records for a given time period—and that they thus become “transparent.” It will be for the court to determine whether all that evidence adds up to a “yes” or a “no”—and it will be up to the plaintiff ’s attorney to persuade the trier of fact (judge or jury) that the mountain of evidence produced compels a “yes” answer. It might be said that everyone has something he wants to hide. In my case, my client had engaged in “asset protection” maneuvers before he met me. This was a secret; but when it came time to litigate, we disclosed it all without hesitation because the litigation requires that level of transparency. But of course, although the “secret” may have been seen as a source of embarrassment, the fact is that there was nothing illegal about it. The bank had never required that the client’s assets be held as security for the loans: He was free to do with them as he wished, pending any court orders. So although “hiding” the truth was not an option, and transparency was required, the “honesty”

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issue was never compromised. What he had done with his assets before the case commenced was irrelevant to his obligations under the loan documents. And in any event, early in the litigation we disclosed all the asset protection details to the bank, and this was a step toward satisfying the requirements both of transparency and of integrity. The bank also has something it wants to hide. It turns out that this bank was one of the major beneficiaries of the first $85 billion of bailout funds that the U.S. Treasury gave to AIG Insurance at the end of 2008. The money was used to honor financial obligations toward a list of 20 “counterparties”—of whom our bank was one of the largest. This list was kept as a dark secret for many months, but then it leaked into the news. Now, if the litigation proceeds, the bank will have to produce documents reflecting its position on that list, and the benefits it received from the U.S. taxpayers—of whom my client is one. In that first hearing, the bank moved to eliminate this whole cluster of issues from the case, but the court overruled its objections, agreeing with our argument that the jury might find it obnoxious that the bank wants to impose the full consequences of the GFC on my client but took secret measures to avoid those same consequences itself. And there is also the suggestion that banks in general—and this bank in particular—were in some way responsible for the GFC. So the bank too is required to move from secrecy to transparency. So when the question is asked in court—if it is asked—“Was this bank responsible for the very downturn that resulted in the failure of the project, to a degree that it is unjust to allow it to enforce the guarantees?” the jury, or the judge, will have to come to a true “yes” or “no” answer.

CONSISTENCY AND RECREATING OUR PAST When we think of integrity, we think of self-knowledge and consistency, but as pointed out above, consistency alone does not amount to integrity: It may reflect only habit, custom, or compulsivity. It is only when consistency is coupled with self-knowledge and deliberate decision making that we respect it as “integrity.” In the law, these issues circle around precedent: the application of rules that were established and applied in earlier cases, to the case at hand. In my case, there is a lot of law that says, “Contracts are to be performed.” Pacta sunt servanda, it is said (contracts must be performed), and pacta dant legem contractui (contracts create law for the contracting parties). And if these Latin sayings aren’t bad enough, the same idea is restated in the Old Testament, “according to every word that goes out of your lips, so shall you act” (Deuteronomy 23:24), from the seventh century BCE; and related ideas appear in the Code of Hammurabi 1,000 years earlier—and the ideas are even older than that! It is a principle of law that arose from commercial

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interactions among peoples who traded with each other, often without even speaking the same language. The law of contract has been thought to be so central to our law that the philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries viewed it as the whole essence of the law; and they thought we might even see all political and social structures as grounded in “a social contract” (e.g., Hobbes and Rousseau). So in my case, looking at the documents that my client had signed— documents that the bank’s lawyers had prepared—it seemed that there was no way out of the contract for him: He had agreed to pay, and he had not paid, and now there was no way to avoid the consequences. Before he had come to me, my client had consulted real estate attorneys and banking law attorneys, and all of them had told him that there was no way he could win his case: It was a “lay-down” for the bank. And the bank’s lawyers in my case had been treating the litigation as a joke: They believed the case is like all their other debt collection cases, a routine one, which they will necessarily win. But just as happens in a course of intense psychoanalysis, when we come to see values and aspects of ourselves that we thought were inviolate and untouchable, as mere relics of childhood, or as the results of dysfunctional family relationships—so in the course of litigation, we have the right to examine and question even the most fundamental principles, if we can find some ground to question them. In my case, I came to feel that the entire structure of banking law—which I had taken as inviolate and untouchable—was somehow corrupt and slanted in favor of lenders. It seems corrupt to allow a bank to shift all the risk of a project onto a borrower when the bank’s documents do not allow the borrower to alter the structure of the project in response to changed circumstances beyond his control. Here, my client wanted to reduce the sales prices of the units in order to attract sales, but the bank said, “These are the selling prices called for in the loan documents and they cannot be changed.” Why could they not be changed? And when it turned out that the project went sour—is it fair to say to the borrower, “We know you wanted to make adjustments but the bank documents did not allow that. So you have to bear all the consequences”? The “contractual defenses” of mutual mistake, impossibility, frustration of purpose, and comparative fault—all those ideas are just as old as the ideas of contracts themselves. Even the Code of Hammurabi includes a provision that if a man cannot pay a debt because flood or drought has destroyed his crop, the debt shall be postponed for a year without interest (Johns, Sec. 48). The defense of impossibility was raised also in one of those early Coronation cases (Griffith v. Brymer) where the lease agreement for a second-floor room was made an hour after it was decided that King George had to undergo surgery. The court in that case held that the parties entered into the contract

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under a mutual misapprehension, and that because the contract was impossible to perform, it could not be enforced. I raised all these arguments on my client’s behalf and the court gave us permission to pursue them. And more recently, these defenses were enacted into law in a widely adopted international convention on commercial law (Vienna Convention of 1980, Art. 79, listing “Exemptions” to contractual obligations).2 But it turns out that there is another line of precedent: cases having to do with what California calls antideficiency legislation. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, California passed a series of laws aimed at protecting borrowers from catastrophe in the event of massive downturns in the property market (California Code of Civil Procedure, Secs. 580a–580d, and Sec. 726). It has been customary for many years for lenders to make loans that are secured by the underlying property. If the borrower defaults on the loan, the lender has the right to take the property by foreclosure. The antideficiency laws barred lenders who exercised that right from seeking an additional, so-called deficiency judgment against the borrower. A simple example would be this: A man and his wife apply for a loan to purchase a house. The bank gives them a 30-year loan for $500,000, secured by a trust deed on the house. The man and his wife make payments for a few years and then default. The bank takes their property by foreclosure, selling the house at a trustee’s sale for $300,000. The payments have reduced the principal still owing from the original $500,000 to $490,000, and the sale generated just $300,000. In the old days, the bank used to be able to sue the man and his wife for the “remaining” $190,000. But the antideficiency laws stopped all that and decreed that once the bank had foreclosed on the property, no further “deficiency” could be sought from the borrower. In my client’s case, the loan was not a “purchase money loan” but was a development loan. However, the antideficiency laws were extended late in the 1930s to cover all loans secured by real property because the same policies apply. The purposes of the legislation are to avoid speculative land deals by making it clear to the lenders that they will be “stuck” with the actual market value if the loan is not repaid, to eliminate the risk that the lender’s price at the foreclosure sale might be artificially low and the lender would still have a claim for an artificial “deficiency” after that sale, and to avoid the “ripple effects” of a recession or depression that would appear if the defaulting borrowers still had to face additional judgments even after they had lost their property. If the lender does not want to be “stuck” with the foreclosure value of the property, it can go through a lengthy courthouse process of foreclosure where the court supervises the appraisal and sale of the property, and where the borrower has the right to redeem the property for the foreclosure sale price for a period of time after the sale (3 months or 1 year, depending on whether the property was sold for the full amount of the debt of for less; see Calif. Code of

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Civil Proc. Sec. 729.010). The right of redemption is an important safeguard for the borrower and for the guarantor (if any): If it did not exist, nothing would prevent the lender from selling the property at the trustee’s sale to a “friend” or “straw man” for much less than its actual value. But judicial foreclosure can take a long time, and most lenders go through the nonjudicial foreclosure. By doing that, they bring the antideficiency rules into play and are barred from seeking still more money from the original borrower. And now we come to the interesting complexities of my client’s case. In his case, the “borrower” was a limited liability company (LLC) whose only asset was this parcel of land, and whose only purpose of existence was to manage this development project. The members of this LLC were themselves LLCs; and the members of those second-tier LLCs were six individuals. The bank required all six of those individuals to sign “guarantees” of the loan; and my client was one of those six guarantors. The bank foreclosed nonjudicially on the property—thus becoming barred from seeking a deficiency judgment against the borrower LLC (which had no assets anyway). But it now seeks judgments against the guarantors for that same deficiency. May it do this? Or do the antideficiency laws bar it? The bank argues that the law respects the borrower LLC as a separate “person”—just like a corporation. It says that the antideficiency laws no longer apply to this case at all because it has dismissed the LLC from the action and is not seeking any kind of deficiency against the borrower. And I am arguing that, in fact, the same six people were both the borrower and the guarantors so seeking a deficiency judgment against the six guarantors is the same thing as seeking a deficiency judgment against the LLC. And to this, the bank replies that the guarantors all waived, expressly and in writing, the protections of the antideficiency statutes so that the argument I am trying to advance has been barred. But when I remembered those Latin maxims I quoted above, I remembered some more as well: Pacta privata juri publico derogare non possunt (private contracts cannot be in derogation of public laws) and pacta quae contra leges constiutionesque . . . nullam vim habere indubitati juris est (it is an undoubted principle of law that contracts contrary to law and policies can have no force). These maxims articulate a time-honored principle that is part of contemporary California law as well (Civil Code, Sec. 3513). It is true that the bank had required my client to waive all the defenses that he might have had under the antideficiency statutes—but those waivers were contrary to public policy and are therefore of no effect (Freedland v. Greco). There is a line of California cases holding that where the borrowers and the guarantors are “the same people” by different names, the antideficiency laws apply to protect the guarantors (see Torrey Pines Bank v. Hoffman). Most of those cases were decided before limited liability companies became a popular structure, and they involve instead partnerships, family trusts, and

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corporations. Yet the ideas behind those cases seem just as applicable to LLCs as to corporations. The court in my case will have to wrestle with these issues and reach a decision. The second major “public” event that occurred in our case was a motion I made to have the court rule on these antideficiency issues first. Again, the Court granted my motion over the bank’s strong objection—and to its great surprise. The court did not rule on the arguments themselves but it agreed with me that giving those arguments special consideration at a separate full-afternoon hearing, makes sense; and that hearing will take place later this year. At that hearing, the Court will have to answer some hard questions, “What is our law?” “Are the antideficiency policies more important than the policy of recognizing artificial persons such as the borrower LLC?” and “Are those two policies inconsistent?” This will be similar to an individual asking himself, “Are my religious beliefs my own, or are they merely a kind of indoctrination that I received from my parents, and that they received from their parents? Do I really believe them? And what are they, really?” All of these questions come up and require answers because what we are seeking here is a kind of integrity—not just a resolution of the case but also a satisfying resolution.

SOCIETY ’ S QUEST: A FORM OF ASPIRATION All human desires can be categorized as desires for “more” or desires for “less.” The desires for less arise from fear and aversion, and they are usually much stronger than the desires for more, which take the form of appetites, ambitions, and aspirations. The appetites—as for food or sexual gratification—are primarily personal, and when we involve other people in our efforts to satisfy them, those other people are often being used or manipulated. Ambitions are different because they involve other people in a more crucial way: In order to satisfy the desire for power, wealth, or glory, we require other people to watch us and approve of us. In this way, appetite is personal, but ambition is essentially social: If one were condemned to live alone on a desert island, he would still have appetites, but he could not have any ambitions. Yet he might still have aspirations—for aspiration is, again, personal. Yet it transcends mere appetite. It involves a consciousness of standards, and norms, of “higher” and “lower” and “ideals.” And unlike either appetites or ambitions—both of which one may have in common with other people— aspiration can actually be shared with other people. Aspirations are not inconsistent with appetites or ambitions. For example, when two people love each other, their sexual activity is more than merely a transaction in which their personal appetites are gratified: We believe it to be an expression of their shared aspiration. And when the Founding Fathers formed the United

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States of America in the late 18th century, they shared both ambition and aspiration. Indeed, shared aspirations lead to a kind of cooperation that is something quite beyond mere transactions: They are an expression of, and lead to, a kind of love. Litigation has to be seen as a form of aspiration. It represents a shared effort—an effort shared by the litigants, the lawyers, and the courts—to make the world a better place by ensuring that justice is done in each case that is presented. And this brings us to the last aspect of it.

SOCIETY ’ S QUEST: THE GROUP, AND NOT THE INDIVIDUAL We can identify various spheres of aspiration: art, religion, science and technology, commerce, and law—just to name a few. In order to participate in any of these activities, one needs to have ideals, and one needs to aspire to something, We may say that the artist aspires to beauty or truth, the religious person aspires to union with God, and the lawyer and judge aspire to justice. But some kind of aspiration is required in all of these spheres. And the relationship between the individual and the group is different in all of these spheres. Certain kinds of art, for example, must be created in solitude, and the presence of the group during the act of creation would be an intrusion and disruption. The relationship with God, also, might be seen to be essentially personal and individual, and the presence of the group can be seen as interfering with it. Not everyone agrees with this idea, but it is a common trope in the mystical traditions of all religions that the religious leader leaves the group and goes to the cave, or the forest, or the desert, or the mountaintop to speak directly with God. The presence of the group is required only to receive the teaching: The revelation itself is, again, a private, personal matter. But when we come to the law, the presence of the group is required because the law is essentially a shared, group aspiration. When the law becomes purely private and personal, it becomes degenerate, because the whole purpose of law is to seek and embody integrity for the community. The litigation process requires the shift from the purely personal to the communal—from private aspiration to shared aspiration. The essential aspects of this shift have already been discussed in the foregoing sections of my chapter: the replacement of secrecy with transparency; the resolution of anger through the deliberate assignment of responsibility; and the process of recreating our shared past—which is to say, researching and interpreting the body of legal precedent that each case requires us to reassess and reinvent in order to identify and apply the relevant fundamental principles to the case at hand. And the biggest part of this shift from the purely personal to the communal is the element of persuasion: The lawyer’s job is to persuade the court

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of the merit of his client’s position. Whereas the artist may create his work without any regard to what others think of it, and whereas the religious leader may speak to God directly without caring what other people think God should say or would say, the lawyer who struggles alone to find justice in his particular case must then carry his conclusions into the courtroom and persuade the court that he is right. This is an essential aspect of law as society’s quest: It is not just an individual’s quest. Persuasion, and aspiring to reach agreement through a process of open argument and informed discussion—those are the unique features of law.

CONCLUSION What I have written here about the law applies to all areas of law—to criminal law as well as to civil law. To answer the question I raised at the beginning: What law adds to the lynching is integrity. The lynching is done in anger, without fully conscious deliberation and without integrity; but although the legal process may lead to the same result—the hanging of the murderer (in primitive jurisdictions)—the legal process itself has integrity. For all these reasons, I see law as society’s shared quest for integrity in interpersonal affairs, motivated by a shared aspiration for justice. And for all these reasons, law is a very high expression—one of the highest expressions there is—of man’s love for his fellow man.

NOTES 1. In Krell v. Henry, the lease was for £75, of which £25 was paid down. When the parade was cancelled, Krell, the landlord, sued Henry for the remaining £50—but he lost. The doctrine has been criticized and limited—see Lloyd v. Murphy (1944) 25 Cal.2d 48—but is still part of California law. 2. The Vienna Convention on the International Sale of Goods (1980, Article 79) reads, “A party is not liable for a failure to perform any of his obligations if he proves that the failure was due to an impediment beyond his control and that he could not reasonably be expected to have taken the impediment into account at the time of the conclusion of the contract or to have avoided or overcome its consequences.”

REFERENCES Alcoa Aluminum v. Essex Group 499 F. Supp 53 (W.D. Pennsylvania, 1980). American Bar Association, ABA Litigation Section. (2009, December). Member survey. Retrieved from http://www.abanet.org/litigation/survey/1209-report. html. California Civil Code, Sec. 3513: “Any one may waive the advantage of a law intended solely for his benefit. But a law established for a public reason cannot be contravened by a private agreement.”

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California Code of Civil Procedure, Secs. 580a–580d (antideficiency rules), 726 (single action rule), and 729.010 (right of redemption). Chase Precast Corporation v. John J. Paonessa Co. 566 N.E.2d 603 (Mass. 1991). Freedland v. Greco (1942) 45 Cal.2d 462. Greyhound v. Superior Court (1961) 56 Cal.2d 355. Griffith v. Brymer (1903) 19 T.L.R. 434 (KB). Hickman v. Taylor (1947) 329 US 495. Hobbes, T. (1651). Leviathan. N.p. Johns, C. H. W. (1987). Babylonian and Assyrian laws, contracts and letters. New York: Legal Classics Library. (Original work published in 1904) The full text of the Code of Hammurabi is presented here. Krell v. Henry (1903) 2 K.B. 740. Lloyd v. Murphy (1944) 153 P.2d 47 (Cal.). Rousseau, J-J. (1762). Le Contrat Social. N.p. Subrin, S. L., & Woo, M. Y. K. (2000). Litigating in America: Civil procedure in context. Fredericksburg, MD: Aspen. Torrey Pines Bank v. Hoffman (1991) 231 Cal.App.3d 308. Versteeg, R. (2000). Early Mesopotamian law. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Vienna Convention on the International Sale of Goods. (1980). Article 79.

c h apter 13

How Individuals Cope with Evil Daily Myrna Pugh

If we assume the existence of evil, then we must do a number of things in order to survive it. There are some who do not accept evil as a malignant force or personal entity, whereas the majority of people do believe in an evil force that is an enemy of human beings. We must learn all that we can insofar as how to deal with it. If we do not, it will overtake us and devour us and all that we hold dear. Because we are incapable of escaping the presence of evil and its attendant behavior, then we must, by necessity, develop adequate coping skills and techniques with which to survive it, and even thrive in spite of its presence, without succumbing to its siren calls. If we are unable to find ways to deal with it, or at least to manage it somehow, we are doomed to become its victims. How do we do that? Is it possible to live with evil and not become caught up in it? Are there coping skills or techniques that we can learn in order to protect ourselves and those we love from its influence? If so, will these tools be useful in other areas of life, such as stress or trauma of some kind? As we explore the world of evil, we will examine some of the tools that can help us in our quest for survival in an evil environment.

METHODS AND TOOLS FOR DEALING WITH EVIL There seem to be three overriding methods for dealing with evil people, thoughts, or behaviors. These methods are broad and reaching, but they reflect the coping strategies of many people when they are confronted with everyday life and the problems it brings. When it comes to the phenomenon of evil, we employ these broad defenses in the area of evil, as well as the stress of normal life. We can choose from any number of strategies and

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techniques that assist us in coping with evil: however, these three defenses seem to be universally employed, even across cultural lines: (a) we can choose to accept it, (b) we can also choose to embrace it, or (c) we can choose to confront it. There are many ways to enlarge or modify these ideas, and some very clever people come up with new ideas from time to time, but these three are popular, are proven, and have been around from earliest times. This is not to say that these techniques are better than others, or that they are emotionally and psychologically healthy. In fact, they sometimes demonstrate extremely dysfunctional behavior in people, and they all contain some degree of pathology. But they each represent a necessary response to evil that is geared toward survival. These defenses are broad psychological categories that support any number of specific coping and behavioral layers. Each of these concepts is universal in nature and has been employed by people in every situation of life. What these three choices might look like is defined by Steven Dutch in his classes on evil. He describes some possible ways to deal with an immoral or evil system. Active endorsement (system may be seen as good by some). Accept evil as unavoidable price to obtain a good result. Reluctant or coerced cooperation. Active cooperation for personal gain. Keep a low profile. Passive or non-violent resistance. Obstruction, sabotage, diversion. Overt acts of rebellion. (Dutch, 1997)

How do we accept it, you ask? For some, it means that we embrace it with actions and behavior; for some, it is more passive and nonthreatening. We accept it by making choices that do not allow us to take a stand or oppose it. The world watched this happen during World War II. When Hitler was sending his SS troops to demolish Europe, people closed their hearts to the sights, sounds, and smells of evil, and did very little to stop it. This practice was not only engaged in by the general populace but also present within churches all over Europe. Christians stayed indoors and tried to get out of the way of the evil winds that were blowing across the landscape. This phenomenon is not limited to this example, but is a clear snapshot of how easy it is to stand apart and let the storm rage outside of our own personal space or sphere of influence. This is one method of survival that many people think will protect them from danger. The rationale for this behavior says, “If no one sees me, I will be safe.” This allows people to keep a low profile in order to reduce the chances of being seen. Everyone tried to stay under the radar, but few succeeded. The problem with this strategy is that evil has a way of searching in every corner and locating those who are hiding in the dark. Moreover, it results in becoming indifferent to the suffering of others. This indifference surfaced in

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New York City in 1964, when Catherine Susan “Kitty” Genovese was stabbed to death on the sidewalk in clear view of her neighbors. This resulted in what came to be known as the “Bystander effect” (Sexton, 1995). In this instance people observed the scene being played out for half an hour and did nothing to interfere. They became passive participants in the murder, and none seemed to accept responsibility for their passivity. Some choose to actively participate in the practice of evil. These are those who perhaps were marginal in their own identity, and when the opportunity comes along, they join with the enemy. They become caught up in the cycle of evil. A prime example of this is Gustov Schwarzenegger, the father of Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was a postal worker. He joined the SS Brownshirts 6 months after Kristallnacht (Night of broken glass), and 2 weeks prior to the Anschluss (the takeover of Austria) (Fitrakis & Wasserman, 2003). The thinking here is the idea of safety in numbers. Anonymity can become a survival strategy for one who is marginalized in life. This becomes evident in violent gangs when a new member, who might never have been accepted by society, becomes a part of a close-knit group of other social exiles who accept them unconditionally, support them by the process of acceptance, and protect them in the commission of crimes such as theft, rape, murder, and drug manufacturing and distributing. The evil lifestyle they engage in often results in early and violent death for them. Within this context, the price one pays for acceptance is enormous.

STOCKHOLM SYNDROME Another scheme of acceptance is the phenomenon known as the Stockholm syndrome. This syndrome is born out of overwhelming reaction to stressors that the victim cannot mentally or emotionally process or manage, such as a kidnapping, or other brutal and violent acts perpetrated upon a hapless person. It is a psychological condition in which hostages sympathize with their captors to the point of joining them in their own captivity (Carver, 2009). This was noted in the case of Patricia Hearst when she was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). Everyone anxiously watched as Elizabeth Smart was rescued from her kidnappers a few years ago. She, too, had identified with her captors and made no effort to escape on her own. When Phillip Garrido and his wife kidnapped Jaycee Lee Dugard in 1991, she did not surface until 2009. For 18 years, she had been held at their home in Antioch, California, in the backyard. In that time, she had given birth to two daughters by Garrido (Griffith & Sonner, 2009). She was alone much of that time. She could have left many times, but she did not. She had become deeply attached to her captors and was psychologically unable to separate herself from the Garridos. This form of personal identification is

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profound and binds the victim to the one who holds them, not by brute force, but by powerful emotional chains.

DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER (DID) There are some who are confronted by evil on such a personal level, that the only defense is for the mind to actually split off a new alter ego, a personality that is capable of bearing the abuse or trauma that threatens to engulf the victim. This then becomes a matter of preserving the true identity of the victim. The victim becomes capable of giving birth to entirely new identities. There is of necessity some confusion about the new identities. Formerly called multiple personality disorder (MPD), today it is known as dissociative identity disorder (DID) (American Psychiatric Associaiton, 1994) and is a major coping mechanism in extreme abuse cases. This behavior is adaptive in nature and is essential to survival in an extremely evil situation (Friesen, 1991). How well this behavior works depends on several factors. According to Friesen, it takes a person, usually a child, who is biologically capable of splitting into alter egos. Not all children are born with this capability. The child must be highly creative, be intelligent, and have a robust imagination. The age of onset of abuse is critical to the ability to split. The earlier the age of onset, the more likely the highly intelligent child will be able to perform this task. Another factor is whether the abuse is ongoing or not. The longer the abuse continues, the more important the splitting becomes. When these components are melded together, they form the foundation for DID (Friesen, 1991). The third option is to confront evil. This is the most dangerous of our choices for it entails a decision-making process that is complex and simple at the same time: complex in that it compels us to think through our choices thoroughly, and simple because the choice is one that would normally arise from years of character building. Although other options are also high risk, confronting evil bears the highest risk factor because it necessarily brings us to the attention of what Jesus called “the evil one” (Matthew 6:13). There is no hiding here, no low profile to obscure who we are and what we are about. We become more exposed the more we protest what we can no longer tolerate. When we choose to confront evil in any form, we make a commitment that takes into account the dangers of any number of losses that could result from that decision. Some of these losses might be friends or family who do not understand why we are taking a stand, or who may not agree with the necessity of taking such a stance. Work issues could interfere with we agenda, and therefore we could lose status or a promotion if we make this our priority. The other side of this issue is “If we do not take a stand, then who will?”

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Social and financial losses might occur when the enemy strikes back at us. Physical illness could be a price we pay for our decision. This is why these decisions are not to be made lightly, but only after much consideration and processing many factors through our hearts, minds, and souls. Any choices we make that are not the result of careful thinking are invalid choices. Snap decisions will not suffice in the ongoing problem of coping with evil. We would be unable to sustain the emotional, mental, and spiritual energy and strength necessary for the long term battle with evil. Jesus urged us to “count the cost” (Luke 12:20) before we engage in any kind of behavior that would endanger us or result in not being able to finish what we started. This applies to building bigger barns, as in the example he used, to engaging the enemy.

DENIAL: THE PERFECT COPING TOOL The skill of denial is learned; it is the one most often used by human beings, and it assumes many forms. All coping mechanisms are offshoots of denial. Regardless of the diverse formats we may choose for coping with evil, they are sure to be related to, and a product of, denial. We, of course, do not understand this, and we are quick to deny our denial and reject it out of hand. Denial is the most pervasive defense we can mount in the face of evil, especially when we are unprepared to deal with it on a personal or community level. A friend succinctly remarks of this pervasive thinking, “Denial is more than a river in Egypt.” Denial is found in many social contexts. Language is one of them. We are all influenced by what is known as political correctness today. We choose to not call evil by its true name, but we label it other, more acceptable and innocuous terms and names. For example, we no longer refer to a dead person as dead. We now say he or she passed away. We do not refer to death as an enemy but say instead, “Death is a part of life,” as though death has ceased to be the enemy of humans beings. One woman says about her parents, “They went away.” It is as though we cannot pronounce the words dead, died, or corpse. These have become offensive words to many people. A funeral is no longer known as a funeral; it is a memorial or celebration of life. We have sanitized our language to the point that some words have lost their meaning altogether. Our spiritual language has also undergone dramatic changes in usage and meaning. We do not use words like sin or repentance any longer. We ignore sinful behavior and call it character disorder. As believers, we have become adept at evading the presence and practice of evil. Some believe that people are not actually evil; they simply make “bad choices.” This is a popular defense against the onslaught of evil. If there is no evil, then one has no responsibility for its consequences.

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FORGIVENESS: A COPING TOOL One of the most effective means for dealing with the problem of evil is to learn to forgive. This is not to say that we are supposed to forgive all evil, because we would never get to the end of it. But we can learn to forgive those offenders and events that intrude upon our lives and affect us in negative ways. Exciting work has been, and is being, done in the past 20 or so years on the dynamics of forgiveness in the emerging fields of forgiveness theory and therapy. According to McCullough, Rachal, and Worthington (1997), forgiveness is defined as the set of motivational changes whereby one becomes (a) decreasingly motivated to retaliate against an offending relationship partner, (b) decreasingly motivated to maintain estrangement from the offender, and (c) increasingly motivated by conciliation and goodwill for the offender, despite the offender’s hurtful actions. (pp. 321–336)

Forgiveness allows us to let go of the claims of the past while holding on to the present here and now. If we constantly dwell on the offense, it will hinder the forgiveness process. How much the offended party dwells on the offense is predictive of how long it will take to achieve forgiveness. Because forgiveness is intrapersonal as well as intrapsychic, it becomes a choice one must make after careful consideration of many factors (Cosgrove & Varda, 2008). Studies pertaining to sexual abuse survivors have led to treatment models that help the survivor to gain insight, understanding, and trust, and learn to forgive. Some treatment models include forgiveness, whereas others do not address forgiveness at all. There are some who do not think forgiveness is necessary, and in fact, some believe that forgiveness can actually be harmful to the recovery process itself (Beckenbach, Giordano, Sells, & Tollerud, 2007). A helpful model of forgiveness therapy has been developed at the University of Wisconsin by Dr. Robert Enright. Known as the forgiveness process model, it is divided into 20 processes and three phases. The first phase is the uncovering phase, where much work is done to identify those actions, defenses, and insight of the client. The decision phase calls for the commitment to forgive others. The goal of the work phase is help the client develop understanding and empathy toward the offender, thus allowing the client to release the offender (Reed, 2007).

CULTURAL VARIATIONS ON FORGIVENESS Various cultures look at forgiveness from different theological and social perspectives. What is normal for one culture may not be what another culture values. For example, predominantly Christian American

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and Jewish cultures value different outcomes of forgiveness. Forgiveness in Jewish culture involves a step that is not stressed in Christian teaching and practice very much, namely, that one needs to “return” to God before forgiveness can take place, because ultimately all offenses are committed against God as well as another person. God remains at the center of the forgiveness transaction, and before the human relationship can be restored, the relationship between God and humans needs to be restored. The ultimate goal of “returning” has the goal of both restoration and reconciliation. This allows for bringing the relationship back to the time before the offense was committed (Dorff, 1998). The process of restoration between God and people is found in the process of “returning.” When this is complete, then the relationship between people can be addressed. Until this process is complete, then forgiveness cannot take place. In Christian practice, forgiveness can be achieved apart from the idea of first “returning” to God. The “return” principle is very powerful and seems to offer many benefits that may not be included in other paradigms. One important difference here is that the idea of “return” brings forgiveness into a triune model of an ongoing relationship between God, victim, and offender (Dorff, 1998). This echoes the triune relationship between God, Adam, and Eve in the garden as well as the relationship between the three members of the trinity. Including God can be a part of Christian practice, especially within the context of Christian counseling formats. However, in secular settings it might not include God at all. The Eastern Orthodox Church brings new perspectives on salvation as well as forgiveness. Salvation is not a one-time event as it is with Western theologies. It is progressive and takes a lifetime to achieve complete salvation. This illustrates one of my personal philosophies of “Life is a process, God is in the process, and therefore, we can trust the process.” In Eastern Orthodox tradition, there is much emphasis placed upon the resurrection, the Pentecost, and the work of God through the Holy Spirit in history, whereas Western theologies place greater weight upon the crucifixion and what was achieved by Christ on the Cross. This fits well within Jung’s concept of the “shadow self ” that we all possess and work so diligently. In the matter of forgiveness, more weight is placed upon the offended party to seek out the offending party and to initiate forgiveness and reconciliation. The purpose of this is that it keeps us humble and gives us a more compassionate heart. The offended party has control over the forgiveness process. Forgiveness yields great benefits for both parties, but the offended one will hopefully see themselves as a sinner too, and so ask God for forgiveness if they might have played a role in the offense. This is a good example of paying attention to the beam in one’s own eye before we complain about the mote in the eye of another (Matthew 7:3–5). When we examine ourselves, we are able to see ourselves in a new light, thus clarifying

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our own hidden nature (Gassin, 2001). These deep inner issues camouflage what we are so adept at doing; concealing the truth from ourselves and others. When we become conscious of our own dark side, we can examine ourselves and see that, indeed, we too are in need of forgiveness. Forgiveness is formally solicited in at least two ways in Eastern Orthodox Church ritual. A service of forgiveness vespers takes place prior to Lent in which both the clergy and parishioners engage in asking for and granting forgiveness to all. During the Divine Liturgy, in which communion is begun with both clergy and parishioners asking for and receiving forgiveness for all. Then one is deemed to be worthy of communion. Eastern Orthodoxy values the trinity model of relationship. God and humans are linked together when we ask for or grant forgiveness from one another. This allows repentance to flourish in an environment of love and humility (Gassin, 2001). This leads to a doctrine of forgiveness that models a triune relationship before the fall, between God, Adam and Eve, much like the Jewish model. The Imago Dei is a prime consideration for Eastern Orthodox. Whatever enhances the idea that God has endowed us with His Spirit is incorporated into the forgiveness paradigm. When the offended party takes responsibility for forgiveness upon themselves, as in the Jewish or Eastern model, they assume the sin of the offender as well. This mirrors the action of Christ when he took the sins of others upon himself, thus furthering the identity of man to God, through Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit. Martyrdom is an important element of virtue with Eastern Orthodoxy. It becomes easier to see how the early martyrs, such as Stephen, have impacted Church doctrine of forgiveness. When Stephen called upon God to forgive his tormenters, he perfectly demonstrated the message of God’s love for sinners. His actions impacted Saul of Tarsus, and opened the door for his salvation, which has in turn changed the life of each and every believer. This behavior expressed the powerful message of God’s love and desire for reconciliation of both the offender and the offended parties (Gassin, 2001). An interesting perspective on forgiveness was postulated by Charles Williams in his book The Forgiveness of Sins (1942). His ideas of co-inherence were unique regarding forgiveness of sins. He believed that whatever affects one person actually affects the entire human race. These actions include both good and evil. The vital doctrine found in Eastern Orthodoxy has a close counterpart in the ideas of Charles Williams. He envisioned humankind as a net or web of events and people (McCullough, Sandage, & Worthington, 1995). As events occur, whether good or evil, they upset or affect the balance of the web, and it becomes agitated. Due to the interdependence of people, it is impossible not to affect the web one way or the other. For this problem, we have not only the need but also the power to forgive. We inherit this power through our relationship with God through Christ. If we fail to exercise

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forgiveness, we engage in a never-ending cycle of hurting and wounding others, thus increasing the disturbance of the web. One of the essential elements of personhood was distorted at the time of the fall, namely, the ability and the drive to be a blessing to others. The co-inherence of sin created a gap in the web and those blessings are now being lost to the benefit of mankind. One of the reasons Christ taught so often about the importance of forgiveness, as well as the final lesson on the cross, was to restore the pattern of forgiveness. As we practice forgiveness, the disturbance on the web becomes less destructive and more balanced, thus reducing the stress on us all. Forgiveness becomes part of the command to “overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21). When “good” becomes so plentiful that there is no room for evil on the web, the net will support the weight of the planet, and humans will truly overcome evil. According to Williams (1942), it is essential that we forgive one another: To forgive is indeed compassion, the suffering with another. To refuse to forgive is to refuse that other as himself or herself; it is to prefer the spectre of him, and to prefer a spectre is to be forever lost. (p.95)

It must be said that in every case, forgiveness is not the same as forgetting. “I, even I, am he that blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and will remember your sins no more” (Isaiah 43:25). “In the great healing and restoration which he has promised, the High and Holy One will set aside even the memory of the sin” (Williams, 1942, p. 45). We see, then, that only God can both forgive and forget.

THE CONSCIENCE AS A COPING MECHANISM One of the greatest tools for coping with evil that we possess is the conscience. We are all born with the capacity for developing our conscience over time. It is activated in infancy and early childhood when we were charged with making choices and decisions that would shape our world, or the world of others. It operates out of an internal set of rules learned at an early age. One of the primary tasks of the parent is to teach their children to have, and to live by, their conscience. When we are taught to make “good or bad” choices, or “right or wrong” choices, we are developing our conscience. According to Alan Wong (1997), a child ought to “feel the wrong he has done.” He goes on to explain why this is true. The “conscience judges our actions whether they are in agreement with our moral standards” (1 Samuel 24:5). It executes that judgment within a person’s soul as guilt, shame and estrangement from god (Psalms 32:4). When a child does something wrong,

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he should feel the wrong of what he has done through the conscience (Wong, 1997). However, the child will not be able to experience these feelings unless the parents have instilled them into the child early on. The conscience can become resistant to change if it is subjected to physical, emotional, or spiritual pressures, especially in the context of mixed messages by those who have not learned to make healthy choices on their own. Then, it can shut down, or become delayed in its development. When this happens, we have serious pathology in the life of a person. Those without a conscience are called psychopaths or sociopaths. Many of these wounded persons become criminals and serial killers. Psychopaths have seared their conscience to the point of death. They are essentially devoid of a conscience. Several psychological models exist that attempt to discover the mechanisms for the growth and development of moral judgment and the conscience. Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg were pioneers who worked on unlocking the processes for moral development in children. Kohlberg theorized that children developed from thoughtless infants into fully functioning adults by passing through at least six stages on their journey. He based his research on moral dilemmas presented to children and young teens (Crain, 1985). His goal was to discover the reasoning behind their answers. He built upon the research of Piaget who worked with young infants to discover how they solved problems. Piaget developed his ideas into stages as well, from infancy to highly adult thinking and the processing of complicated information (Boeree, 2003–2009).

COPING WITH EVIL THROUGH PRAYER Prayer is the lynchpin for the emotional, physical, and spiritual framework for coping with evil, especially on a day-to-day basis. There are no requirements or expectations when it comes to prayer. Prayer is personal, private, and instantaneous, and God is never too busy to listen to us. When we pray, we are connected to divine wisdom, strength, and energy. God is the one who expresses his love and concern for us, and invites us to ask for what we need in order to win a victory over the enemy. It is the most personal of all our methods of coping with stress as well as evil. When we pray, we are outside the influence of evil, because we are connected to a Holy God. Shelter, renewal, and power are released on our behalf when we go to God in prayer. Everything we require to remain strong and vital can be found when we pray. God delights to answer our prayers. Fears subside during and after prayer. When we do not know what to do, God provides us with the wisdom and understanding we seek. He is always accessible to us, even under the most distressing circumstances. Our relationship with God is the most intimate of all relationships, and prayer is powerful intimacy, not always to be shared with others. There

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are times when it is very appropriate to share our prayers with others, whereas at other times it is too personal. There are many ways that we pray and communicate with God. We ask God for something on behalf of someone else, and we call it intercessory prayer. Moses prayed this kind of intercessory prayer for the Israelites when God let it be known that He was going to kill them all because of their evil ways. While Moses was on the mountain with God, the people were practicing their old evil ways. Numbers 14:12–20 tells the story. The Lord said to Moses, how long will these people treat me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in me, in spite of all the miraculous signs I have performed among them? I will strike them down with a plague and destroy them, but I will make you into a nation greater and stronger than they. Moses said to the Lord, “In accordance with your great love, forgive the sin of these people, just as you have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now.” The Lord replied, “I have forgiven them, as you asked me.”

Praise is ascribing to God all of the qualities He possesses. This genre of prayer is focused on blessing God, not on blessing people. It is sometimes composed in music, poetry, writing, and other creative ways of telling God that He is loved and appreciated. We enumerate the many ways that God has blessed our lives and guided us during difficult times. The Psalms are full of examples of pure praise and thanks to God. The Israelites had ceremonies of praise that demonstrated their thankfulness. When they ascended the steps of the Temple, they sang the Hallel or Hallelujah songs of praise to God for His faithfulness, goodness, mercy, love, and caring. Perhaps the most moving and vibrant of all music is the beautiful, soaring, and powerful music of Handel’s Messiah. Here we have praise and prayer in every form. It is so majestic that, when it is performed, most audiences are moved to experience the “Hallelujah Chorus” portion of it standing in humble appreciation. We experience some of our most sacred moments when we practice reflective or meditative prayer. We draw from the strength of God Himself when we simply look back over our lives and discover how and when God has been there for us. It is always easier to look backward with perfect vision into the past, then peer into the future. It is in looking back however, that we discover the key to moving into the future. When we see clearly the pattern of God’s presence in the past, we may be assured of His presence in the future. I recall with thankfulness a time of grief and sorrow when I realized that although I am a trained psychotherapist, I was not prepared to walk through my own quagmire of heartache. I made the conscious choice to invite God to walk with me through that experience, and God showed up. He showed Himself caring and faithful to me and my entire family. Looking around, I could

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see His handprints on everything. During this painful experience, I never felt myself to be alone or abandoned. This is the greatest need, for comfort and a sense of safety for the believer. God invaded my home, my heart, and guided my steps through what was the most difficult experience I had ever faced. There are prayers that are born out of desperation or circumstances. These are the times of “Help, Lord” impulsive prayers. How many times have you realized, too late, that you were in danger of some kind, and lifted a quick prayer for safety or protection? I have had a number of these experiences, when I have had to rely on the grace of God to protect my life. They serve to keep one humble and always aware of the fragility of life. These situations remind us that we are all on spiritual life support, and we do not know when we might be called home.

CHURCH RITUAL IN COPING WITH EVIL Church ritual offers some very real help in coping with the evil with which we are surrounded each day. Each of them allows us a role or a part in the Church body. Each part is important, and we are all called to perform our designated role. Romans 12:4–5 instructs us as to how that works. “Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” In other words, we all need each other. Rituals such as communion remind us that we are all connected to God and Christ through the Holy Spirit. There is great comfort and safety when we know we are linked to others who believe as we do, and who live the same kind of life that we also live. This sense of spiritual community assists all to withstand and thrive in the midst of evil swirling around us. This does not mean that no harm will come to us, but it does mean that we will be stronger because we are in the company of others who will help us to take a stand. This could be practical, such as financial, or emotional, or spiritual. Certain religious groups carry this caring principle into the arena of doing things like building a house for a family or working the fields in times of sickness. This is part of “Loving one another” that Jesus emphasized in John 13:34: “A new commandment I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” This understanding of community is integral to the growth of the Church and plays an essential role in defining the Church and how it is to relate to the world. Likewise, baptism, which identifies us with the resurrected Christ; praying for the sick, and anointing with oil for healing; and other rituals are done in response to the “one body” idea. What is good for one is good for everyone. Not only is this true in the spiritual sense, but also it is especially true in the area of child rearing. When children learn to help others in time

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of need, they will also learn to be there in times of rejoicing. Because children are the Church of tomorrow, it makes sense to include them in these rituals. Just because a child is small, and perhaps not as sophisticated as the adults around them, they bring a special quality to servanthood and often have a rich and genuine prayer life that God loves to see and hear. If, in a time when most children are either pampered or neglected, children are taught to love each other when they are malleable and teachable, it means that they will move into positions in the Church well equipped to continue to “love one another” throughout life. I know one mother who took her 3-yearold son on a mission trip to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, so he could help other children. He passed out clothes, and food, and helped paint a church. He picked up trash and shared his own games and toys with other children. He has a very tender heart for others and prays for others daily. Today, at age 7, he has his own ministry to one little boy who is very poor. He regularly packs up clothes and other items, and mails them to his friend.

LAUGHING AT EVIL Poking fun at the devil has been a popular activity for hundreds of years. This can be seen in widespread variations from writing, music, poetry, plays, movies, and all kinds of art and art forms. People have been dressing up in costume and portraying the devil and his minions at Halloween, Mardi Gras, and other occasions for generations. Evil has found a place of welcome in many venues today. The secular and religious aspects of evil have come together in variations all around the world. Following the disastrous earthquake in Haiti, groups of people came together to pray and worship God. They also were practicing Voodoo at the same gathering. They prayed to a Christian God and performed Voodoo rites at the same time. No one seemed to think this odd (Michaels, 2010). Some of the content of the many ways we poke fun at the devil is in the form of dark comedy and writings. We have adapted writings, both old and new, such as ancient tales like Faust or The Divine Comedy to demonstrate the eternal struggle between good and evil. One of the ways to do that is to write plays, which causes the audience to think about their lives and how connected we are to evil. The play Faust by J. W. Goethe, which was written in two parts and has been portrayed in several versions by many different writers, takes the reader or audience on a trip to hell and back. Much of the plot takes place in heaven, where God and Satan are wagering to win a bet that Faust will or will not succumb to the ploys of the devil. There is an undercurrent of the trials of Job to be found here. Faust makes a pact with the devil. He sells his soul in order to obtain wealth and knowledge. This theological predicament reflects Adam’s lust for knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. The devil helps Faust through

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many adventures and, indeed, Faust becomes wealthy and knowledgeable in the ways of magic and trickery. The irony of the story is that the devil gets his comeuppance. At the end of Faust’s life, instead of the devil obtaining the soul of Faust, angels come and rescue him and carry him to heaven. This represents the ultimate triumph of good over evil. Dante’s Divine Comedy also takes us to hell, where we meet evil of every kind. His writing blends real people with mythological ones. We also meet supernatural beings like Lucifer, his demons, and good angels. Dante addresses issues which we all struggle with, like materialism, sins of the flesh like gluttony, and other predilections. He portrays hell as nine circles, each becoming more and more steeped in horror. We are introduced to limbo, where the least offensive of the sinners are, and into the depths of hell itself. Circle by circle, we move through hell and into the realm of purgatory. Here, Dante meets those who have not met the requirements of Christianity and are merely biding their time until their fate becomes known to them. Dante then describes Heaven, where there are those who have achieved full entrance into the realm of God, Jesus, Mary, and the disciples. Other stories have contributed to the revelation of the good-versus-evil struggle through modern storytellers, such as Star Wars and J. R. R. Tolkien’s epic trilogy of the eternal battle of darkness versus light in The Lord of the Rings. In all these struggles we find ourselves engaging, rooting for the underdogs, and encouraging the heroes and heroines. We are learning about evil and just how evil it really is. We come to understand that we all have a “dark side of the Force” that we all must conquer. We are repelled by Gollum and orcs, and we cheer for our side as we watch mere humans triumph over evil, especially in the face of stark adversity. Today we can take college courses in either dark or comedic theater. The Tolkien Society offers classes on “Dissecting the Dark Side: Dragons, Demons, and Dark Lords” (Yates, n.d.). No less than 16 undergraduate and graduate courses on this topic may be found in the United States alone (Porter, 2002). Heroes regularly appear as a coping mechanism to dealing with evil. This allows us to wage war against evil in an indirect manner, much like psychotherapy, and especially psychodrama. It is obvious that, in the context of facing up to evil, we can either laugh or cry at our predicament. The obvious purpose and benefits of these different literary approaches are to minimize evil and to reduce it to manageable stages or issues. Again, this is a more acceptable form of denial. Make no mistake however: They are all alternate forms of denial.

THE LOST ART OF LAMENTING When our grief and sadness cannot be expressed in other ways, some turn to the lament as a method of expression that is not well known in our

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contemporary society. Yet, lament has been an essential part of most cultures in the past. We, in the sophisticated West, have discarded this age-old custom of manifesting our grief in such a physical and dramatic manner. Civilizations far older than ours have perfected lament and taken it to a high art form. In the recent past it has fallen into disuse, and some in the Church feel that lament is a portion of our Judeo-Christian heritage that is missing in our teaching and worship (Card & Seerveld, 2008). A lament is a structured poetic genre of psalm that is especially designed to allow people to accurately describe their true feelings to God and others. It is letting our most powerful emotions be known. It is an absurdly dramatic form of prayer and complaint to God in the most honest way, and we do not see it in the life of the Church today. It is a lost art and needs to be rediscovered by Christians everywhere. Lament was used in everyday life when life became too treacherous and threatened to overwhelm people in grief and sorrow. It is found in almost every chapter in the Bible, especially the Old Testament. The drama of lament is captured in the Book of Job, appears throughout the Psalms, and is the theme of the Book of Lamentations. When it is effectively incorporated into psychotherapy, we might call it psychodrama. Lament offers a physical, emotional, and spiritual method of crying out to God, complaining how the person is being treated by others and sometimes even by God. There is no holding back, no reticence or shame in pouring out their complaints to God. Lament has been tailored to various cultures and people groups. Mourning has lost much of its meaning in Western societies, yet a few groups still practice lament as it was done long ago. We can still see the art of lamenting when we watch Jews or Arabs grieving over their losses. The images of people in the midst of grief and suffering are crystal clear on the latest daily news coverage. The structure of lament usually begins by asking for help from God, then God is regaled with the problems that are bringing so much sorrow and pain into their lives. This is direct and open communication with God and goes straight to the heart of the matter. The specific manner in which they are suffering is often described by using vivid earthy or animal metaphors to emphasize and embellish the pain. Sometimes the grieving and brokenhearted person accuses God in some way if they feel they are being treated unfairly by the Lord. They might repeat their complaint or petition, yet end with the promise that in spite of the pain they still trust in God (Wiebe, 2005). Lament can look like circular reasoning sometimes, because it comes back to a starting point, but it can also be rambling and disjointed when people are not essentially artistic in nature. Lamenting is an acceptable way to tell God how you really feel. In ancient times, Jews and Arabs expressed their grief and sorrow in much the same way they do today. Lamenting has retained its purpose, flavor, and drama for these people. Jewish mourners would kneel in a public area and throw ashes

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over their clothes and bodies as a sign of despair. Loud keening would fill the area as many others joined with the suffering one. Even today, Arab women still perform the ancient habit of crying out in a high-pitched, undulating trill that seems to be ethereal, fierce in their expressions of grief. The sounds alone evoke images of unimaginable loss and heartbreak. These deep and archaic venues of grief reflect the deep and abiding grief and mourning of God the Father as he participates in our suffering. Out of our desire and calling to help others in times of suffering, one of the most helpful efforts we can engage in is joining with other human beings while sharing their sorrows. This is commanded of us by Paul when he told us to “Carry one another’s burden and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2). In spite of this clear commandment, most of the time we are either unable, or unwilling, to participate in the grief and sorrow of others, because we are afraid to weep and grieve for ourselves, and because it is not taught by the Church anymore. We find it difficult to join in the sorrows of others. Although it is an important element of praise and worship, most Christians are uncomfortable with grief, sorrow, and weeping. Indeed, we do not enjoy any display of deep and troublesome emotions. Part of this reluctance to grieve with others can be found in dysfunctional teachings that have no basis in truth. This is especially true for males, who have been taught, “Big boys don’t cry.” This has effectively stymied the very responses that we have been called on to deliver to the world. We have lost the importance of emotions in the body of believers. This is because we have become a body of human “doings” instead of a body of human “beings.” The concept of shared sorrow is a major part of relationships portrayed in both Old and New Testaments. Jeremiah was known as the “weeping prophet” as he grieved over the destruction of Jerusalem and the brutal execution of most of its inhabitants. It was a scene of pure horror. He acted out his heartbreaking sadness and sorrow through lament after lament. To read his accounts is to enter into a world of greatest sorrow that will forever change one’s idea that we can even begin to understand the grief of others. He repeatedly cries out in pain, Oh, my anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain. Oh, the agony of my heart! My heart pounds within me, I cannot keep silent. For I have heard the sound of the trumpet; I have heard the battle cry. Disaster follows disaster. (Jeremiah 43:19)

Is there any doubt that Jeremiah was a man who was overcome by sorrow? Jesus wept many times during his life here on earth. Like the Jew that he was, he wept over the death of his friend Lazarus (John 11:35). He participated in the grief rituals of his time along with his entire culture. Mourning does not always have to apply to death and dying. It is also a sign that we

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are sorry for our sins. Part of our salvation is strongly connected to mourning. According to James 4:8, we ought to “Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts you double minded. Grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” Grief, sadness, and mourning are strong indicators that we grieve because we have offended God. Often, forgiveness is preceded by grief and sadness. The apostle Paul told us to “Weep with those who weep” (Romans 15:15). Lamenting should be as much a part of life as joy is. Life can be brutal and hard at best, and we need powerful methods of coping with all the heartache that is part of life. We need to grieve and experience sorrow over our own sins, and the consequences sin brings into our lives, and the lives of others. Out of the sorrow can come cleansing repentance and needed restoration. Lament plays a role in that transaction. To be human is to suffer, and in the suffering become closer to others and to God, who suffers along with us. Michael Card refers to lament as a “sacred sorrow.” His book Sacred Sorrow: Reaching out to God in the Lost Language of Lament (Card, 2008) reveals that he and others feel that lament ought to be incorporated into worship in order to touch those who mourn. “We’ re afraid of other people’s pain. Like Job’s friends, we’ re afraid when we don’t have answers. Job doesn’t get any answers for his suffering, but he gets God” (Card, 2008). Card says of using lament in a worship service, “I call that redemptive suffering. Lament is not about psychology, about getting things off your chest. It’s about true worship, offering up as a sacrifice your brokenness and pain to God” (Card & Seerveld, 2008). While in seminary, I attended a workshop on writing laments. This was one of the most helpful workshops I have ever attended. I have used the skills gained at the workshop in therapy with clients to help them better understand their own feelings about the tragedies they have experienced. Sometimes, this is the only way we have to get our repressed feelings out, and writing a lament is one way to do that. I have written a lament that might serve to help you write your own lament. This is a lament similar to one I wrote when my granddaughter died. Because I live in the southwestern desert, I have written it from a natural perspective using desert flora and fauna metaphors.

MYRNA’ S LAMENT Oh God, I don’t know how to do this. Lord, I am on fire from this burning grief and sorrow. I don’t know what to do. My mouth is like a desert in time of drought.

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My tongue clings to the roof of my mouth. I have no moisture at all. My lips are cracked and parched, and I cannot cry out to you with my voice. My whole body feels like I have fallen into a Cholla cactus and I am unable to rescue myself from its vicious grasp and the ripping of my flesh. My grief and sadness makes me feel like I am being stalked by a hungry mountain lion, and all I want to do is lie in the dirt and never get up. The vultures circle around my body waiting for me to die. Oh Lord, have mercy on me, for I cannot help myself. I do not know how I will get through this. I cannot escape my grief and sorrow, and I am so angry, Lord. Lord, if you do not walk beside me, and show me how to do this, I will die from a broken heart. Oh Lord, teach me how to lean on you. Yet, Lord, even though I cannot see you, I can feel you in my heart, softly, gently, waiting for me to acknowledge you. My heart is responding to your presence. In the quiet silence Lord, I faintly hear the barest whisper of your voice. Lead my heart and soul to your perfect peace, Oh Lord. Help me learn how to trust you in my pain and grief. Lord, I put my faith and trust in you alone, Oh God, for you alone are to be praised and trusted.

CONCLUSION As we are learning how to cope with evil in our daily lives, it is obvious that we need as many coping skills as we can develop. The skills mentioned here are certainly not the only ones available to us. There are others that work in helping us as we journey through an evil world. However, we have discussed some of the more obvious ones. We have examined a variety of available methods that individuals engage in. They are skills that we have developed over time and experience, and they all work to some degree. We have looked at the biblical narrative for examples of how people survived in ancient times, and also considered ones that are a part of our modern thinking. We examined how different cultures and religious groups dealt with, and still do deal with, grief and sorrow, and have found them to be effective in their purposes of expressing deep and profound feelings of loss. Humans need to be able to connect with God and others during times of personal sorrow in a way that allows us to continue on with life, after the intense

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feelings subside somewhat. God gave us a way to do that when he gave us the gift of grief and sadness when we are overtaken by circumstances of life. He knew we would go through many dark times and places in our lives, and he has not left us uncomforted but has provided numerous ways to overcome the evil that stalks our lives. These coping behaviors that we all engage in are especially designed to strengthen us, empower us, and guide us as we struggle through life. We understand through trust and faith alone that God has given us what we need to make it to the end. Because of the faithfulness of God, we can look forward to a time in the future when we can say with triumph, “We have overcome.”

REFERENCES Alighieri, D. (1980). The divine comedy (Trans. C. Sisson). New York: Oxford University Press. (Original work written in 1308–1321.) American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.). Washington, DC: Author. Beckenbach, J., Giordano, F., Sells, J., & Tollerud, T. (2007). Sexual abuse and forgiveness: A regression analysis. Professional Issues In Counseling. Retrieved from http:// www.shsu.edu/~piic/summer2007/index.html. Boeree, C. G. (2003–2009). Jean Piaget and cognitive development. Shippensburg, PA: Shippensburg University, Department of General Psychology. Card, M., & Seerveld, C. (2008). Bringing our pain to God: Michael Card and Calvin Seerveld on biblical lament in worship. Grand Rapids, MI: Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. Carver, J.M. (2009). Love and Stockholm Syndrome: The Mystery of Loving an Abuser. Kenmore, Wa.: Mental Health Matters. Cosgrove, L., & Varda, K. (2008, January 1). Forgiveness and forgetting: Clinical implication for mental health counselors. Journal of Mental Health Counseling. Crain, W. (1985). Chapter 7: Kohlberg’s stages of development. In W. Crain, Theories of development (5th ed., pp. 118–136). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Dorff, E. N. (1998). Forgiveness: A Jewish approach. In E. L. Worthington (Ed.), Dimensions of forgiveness (Vol. 1, p. 38). Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press. Dutch, S. (1997). Coping in an evil world: Inquisitors and conquistadors. Online at http:// www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/westtech/evili.htm. Ellwood, R. (2010). Tales of darkness:The mythology of evil. New York: Continuum. Fitrakis, B., & Wasserman, H. (2003). The Bush-Rove-Schwarzenegger Nazi Nexus. Columbus, OH: Free Press. Fong, K. (2010). A disturbing question: Christians for biblical equality. Minneapolis, MN: Arise. Friesen, J. G. (1991). Uncovering the mystery of MPD. San Bernardino, CA: Here’s Life. Gassin, E. A. (2001, September 22). Interpersonal forgiveness from an Eastern Orthodox perspective. Journal of Psychology and Theology, Griffith, M., & Sonner, S. (2009). California kidnap case prompts look back at cold cases. Associated Press. Online at http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Calif.+kidnap+c ase+prompts+look+back+at+cold+cases-a01611985922

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McCullough, M. E., Rachal, K. C., & Worthington, E. L., Jr. (1997). Interpersonal forgiving in close relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73 (2), 321–336. McCullough, M. E., & Worthington, E. L., Jr. (1995). Charles Williams on interpersonal forgiveness: Theology and therapy. Christian Association for Psychological Studies, 14 (4), 355–364. McCullough, M. E., Sandage, S. J., & Worthington, E. L., Jr. (1995). Charles Williams on interpersonal forgiveness: Theology and therapy. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 14 (4), 355–364. Michaels, J. (2010). The spirit is alive and well in Haiti. USA Today, Jan. 26, 2010. Porter, L. (2002). Courses on Tolkien’s literature. Gothenburg, Sweden: The Tolkien Society. Reed, G. L. (2007). Is it time for forgiveness? The journey of forgiveness: A living narrative of transformation. Madison: University of Wisconsin, Leadership U. Wiebe, G. (2005). Permission to lament: A time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance. Retrieved from http://www.Disciplethenations.org/ ArticleLaments.html. Williams, C. (1942). The forgiveness of sins. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Wong, S.L. (1997). The work of our conscience. Yates, J. (N.d.). Tolkien as a writer for young adults. Retrieved from http://www. tolkiensociety.org/tolkien/jessica_jrrt.html.

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Meaning as a Restraint of Evil Daryl R. Van Tongeren, Jeffrey D. Green, Jody L. Davis, Don E. Davis, Everett L. Worthington Jr., Joshua N. Hook, David J. Jennings II, Aubrey L. Gartner, Chelsea L. Greer, and Todd W. Greer

“As long as people believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities.” —Voltaire

INTRODUCTION Voltaire’s provocative, but potentially enlightening, claim regarding the nature of the human condition is that individuals are likely to do evil if they adhere to absurd, or meaningless, belief systems. This claim suggests that constellations of beliefs are a primary wellspring for moral actions. It also underscores our central premise: A meaningful belief system is a necessary (though not sufficient) component for reducing and avoiding evil. In presenting our thesis, we will (a) briefly review why evil is a problem, (b) argue for the psychological importance of meaning, (c) present evidence for the moral benefits of having an established meaning system, and (d) explain the qualities of a meaning system that reduce evil.

CONCEPTUALIZING EVIL Evil has many layers of meaning. For example, politicians may refer to evil to gain support for an agenda, religious leaders may refer to evil to describe conflict with supernatural forces, and many others may refer to evil to characterize a particularly cruel or selfish person. We define evil as an intentional and serious act of harm against another person. Accordingly, we define (and will treat) evil as a behavior rather than a personality trait. However, we acknowledge that individuals regularly infer that people are evil because

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they perform evil acts. In a process called moral amplification (Haidt & Algoe, 2004), individuals prefer to differentiate sharply between good and evil: they want their heroes to be predictably good and incapable of evil, and they want their villains to be predictably bad, purely evil, and somehow different from heroes and from the rest of us. In spite of such a preference to label people as saints or sinners, such oversimplified thinking is inconsistent with over a half century of social psychological research that documents how almost anyone can commit evil acts under certain circumstances. In the famous Milgram (1974) experiments, most people obeyed immoral orders to shock another person to the point of ostensible unconsciousness or death. Likewise, in the Stanford Prison Experiment (Haney, Banks, & Zimbardo, 1973), individuals who were randomly assigned to play the role of a prison guard (rather than a prisoner) became so abusive that some prisoners had extreme stress reactions and had to be released early from the experiment. This was true even though guards knew that if a coin flip had turned out differently, they would have been the prisoners. Similarly, when group norms become destructive, a crowd may quickly become violent (e.g., crowds celebrating a sports championship have, at times, suddenly destroyed property and assaulted each other; Postmes & Spears, 1998). In short, under particular social conditions, evil acts (e.g., intentional and serious acts of harm against another) can be elicited even from “good” people. Given that all individuals share a potential for evil, it is important to explore potential systems for restraining evil, such as having a sense of meaning.

ON THE PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPORTANCE OF MEANING Humans are remarkably apt at extracting and maintaining meaning. For example, eating food, observing others interact, and walking at night are transformed through meaning into catching up with an old friend over a meal, watching a compelling and evocative play, and taking a romantic moonlit stroll. Beyond a basic level of defining social interactions (such as sharing a meal), meaning helps transform events from the mundane (e.g., working at a job) into the profound (e.g., pursuing a dream or calling) or divine (e.g., faithfully carrying out God’s will). We believe that meaning operates on two levels. First, meaning serves immediate, social-cognitive functions (i.e., defining events in the social world to make life more predictable). Second, meaning provides life with purpose in the service of existential functions (i.e., imbuing existence with direction and value). We term the former proximal meaning and the latter distal meaning. Proximal meaning allows individuals to arrange their social worlds in a fashion consistent with their expectations and cognitive frameworks, and provides expectations regarding the nature of relationships among objects in their social world (e.g., Baumeister, 1991; Baumeister & Vohs, 2002; Heine, Proulx, & Vohs, 2006).

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Distal meaning allows individuals to feel important, valued, and significant in light of broader human concerns such as isolation and death (e.g., Landau, Greenberg, Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Martens, 2006; Pinel, Long, Landau, Alexander, & Pyszczynski, 2006; Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Greenberg, 2003). In both cases, meaning maintenance is an important human motivation, both at the proximal, social level (Heine et al., 2006) and at the distal, existential level (Yalom, 1980). Psychological research on the maintenance of meaning, especially at these two levels, has suggested that the pursuit of meaning may be a central social motivation for individuals. To consider how meaning can curtail evil, we draw from two theoretical frameworks on meaning: terror management theory (Greenberg et al., 1986) and the meaning maintenance model (Heine et al., 2006). Both theories argue for the importance of maintaining meaning in psychological equanimity and contend that this motivation may be evidenced in social cognition and behavior.

Terror Management Theory Terror management theory (TMT; Greenberg et al., 1986) is a broad social psychological theory that argues that human beings, like all other animals, are oriented toward biological self-preservation, though they are keenly aware that they are destined to the same inescapable demise as every other living creature—physical death. In addition, humans are unique in their ability to self-reflect and to think about the future. This combination causes a realization of a disturbing paradox of the human condition—people desire life but are aware that they will eventually die. According to TMT, this awareness of mortality has the potential to create overwhelming anxiety. The management of such existential anxiety has been offered as a primary source for many social motivations (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 1997), and may occur even without conscious awareness (see Pyszczynski, Greenberg, & Solomon, 1999). Thus, according to TMT, many cognitive, behavioral, and motivational efforts are orientated toward managing existential anxiety resulting from the uniquely human confrontation with mortality. TMT suggests that existential anxiety is effectively managed by (a) the construction of and adherence to cultural worldviews (Pyszczynski et al., 2003) and (b) the procurement of self-esteem (Pyszczynski, Greenberg, Solomon, Arndt, & Schimel, 2004). Therefore, TMT emphasizes the importance of distal meaning in managing existential concerns. Cultural worldviews are belief systems that provide people with ways of meaningfully interpreting the world. They provide a framework that addresses epistemological and ontological claims regarding the nature of humanity and the world, especially regarding death (Pyszczynski et al., 2003). Although there are some shared worldviews (e.g., religions and existentialism), personalized

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expressions of such belief systems vary considerably. These worldviews provide individuals with a sense of meaning and a meaning structure by facilitating a ready interpretation of events in the social world. Worldviews also involve beliefs that directly address the concept of death by providing individuals with a sense of symbolic immortality (e.g., “I am part of an American legacy that lives on”) or literal immortality (e.g., “I will live forever in paradise”). In this way, cultural worldviews provide a ready solution for the nagging problem of death by imbuing individuals’ existence with a sense of meaning that transcends death, either figuratively (i.e., symbolic immortality) or literally (i.e., eternal life). These systems of belief vary considerably among cultures and societies, but are similar in that they mitigate the problem of impending mortality. In a related vein, self-esteem helps people manage the anxiety provoked by contemplating their death. A sense of self-esteem, achieved by living up to the standards set forth by a cultural worldview (Pyszczynski et al., 2004), allows individuals to feel as though they are meaningful and significant. Believing that their legacy will live on through their enduring contributions may allay individuals’ impending existential angst. A generous helping of self-worth may make the prospect of future death seem particularly distant. For example, self-esteem attenuates the typically negative effects elicited by thinking about one’s death (i.e., mortality salience; Harmon-Jones et al., 1997). In sum, TMT posits that individuals are motivated to maintain a sense of meaning as a response to the existential threat engendered by human awareness of mortality, and that their quest to maintain meaning is an important mechanism in the pursuit of psychological equanimity, especially in the face of threat.

The Meaning Maintenance Model A second fecund approach to understanding the nature of meaning is the meaning maintenance model (MMM; Heine et al., 2006). According to MMM, people are motivated to acquire and protect meaning, and they are skillful at doing so (cf. Baumeister, 1991). People derive meaning through four interchangeable domains that manifest as social needs: self-esteem, belonging and affiliation, certainty and closure, and symbolic immortality. Thus, individuals achieve a sense of meaning through feeling good about themselves (i.e., selfesteem), having enriching relationships (i.e., belonging and affiliation), deriving a sense of predictability and stability from the social environment (i.e., certainty and closure), and expecting to “live on” through achievements or connections to larger entities or greater causes (i.e., symbolic immortality). Meaning is maintained in a domain-general fashion called fluid compensation. This compensation occurs when individuals’ meaning is disrupted in one domain, and they bolster meaning in another area. For example, if receiving a negative work evaluation damages self-esteem, an individual may regain meaning by

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compensating through increasing closeness to a romantic partner. Initial research has found that nonconsciously processed threats to meaning evoke bolstering (i.e., fluid compensation) of all four domains of meaning, suggesting that the defense of meaning can occur automatically (Van Tongeren & Green, 2010a). In harmony with terror management theory, the MMM suggests that the desire to maintain a sense of meaning is powerful and central human motivation.

THE MORAL BENEFITS OF MEANING Existential threats can cause people to do evil such as engage in outgroup derogation (Rosenblatt, Greenberg, Solomon, Pyszczynski, & Lyon, 1989), display hostility toward outgroups (Rothschild, Abdollahi, & Pyszczynski, 2009), and increase endorsement of suicide bombing (Pyszczynski et al., 2006). In other words, research has shown that people can behave immorally when faced with existential threat. Morality is a constellation of beliefs regarding what is good and evil within a culture and in existence (e.g., within the natural and supernatural existence; e.g., see Pyszczynski et al., 2003). According to the existential security model of morality (ESM; Van Tongeren & Green, submitted), morality can help restrain evil by giving people greater meaning in life when coping with existential anxiety. That is, in order to feel valued, worthwhile, and significant (i.e., different ways of experiencing meaning in life), people are motivated to do good and not evil. This allows them to fit within a culture or supernatural existence and achieve a sense of self-esteem, belongingness, certainty, and attachment to a culture or supernatural existence that has the potential to outlive their physical existence. Thus, to maintain a sense of meaning, people may avoid doing evil. To the degree that people possess greater meaning in life, they should be less likely to resolve existential threats by doing evil. In this broad sense, felt meaning in life should restrain evil. We further elaborate and provide support for this position by (a) discussing the problem of meaninglessness, (b) reviewing research that links meaning to morality, and (c) explicating the existential function of meaning systems.

The Problem of Meaninglessness Humans live in a world saturated with meanings (Baumeister, 1991) and are natural meaning makers (Heine et al., 2006). Deriving a sense of meaning is a chief existential motivation (Yalom, 1980) toward which a substantial portion of human behavior may be oriented. When their lives lack meaning, or when a coherent system of meaning is not readily accessible, individuals may become consumed with anxiety. Our definition of meaning—providing structure to the social world proximally and alleviating existential concerns

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distally—suggests that a lack of meaning may render individuals unable to navigate their social worlds effectively. Lack of meaning also may cause individuals to experience higher levels of existential anxiety. A lack of a sound meaning system that could effectively help navigate the social world or address existential concerns could leave individuals vulnerable to the terror associated with existential certainties such as death, which would likely prompt defensive reactions. Importantly, defensive reactions aimed at reducing anxiety could include evil actions as attempts to bolster meaning via whatever means are available. In support of this reasoning, mildly depressed individuals (who presumably would report less meaning and diminished faith in a cultural worldview) demonstrated greater worldview defense, relative to nondepressed individuals, when they contemplated their own death (Simon, Greenberg, Harmon-Jones, Solomon, & Pyszczynski, 1996). Cultural worldview defense (especially when religious systems are challenged or disempowered) may involve (a) derogation of others who hold divergent beliefs, (b) stereotypical and prejudicial attitudes, and (c) aggression toward outgroup members (see Pyszczynski et al., 2003). Engaging in these behaviors resulted in increased meaning for mildly depressed individuals (Simon, Arndt, Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1998). This research suggests that when those who lack a sense of meaning are confronted with an existential certainty (e.g., death), they are likely to engage in defensive actions to regain a sense of meaning. An additional way in which meaninglessness might evoke evil reactions is when systems of meaningfully interpreting the world (or cultural worldviews) actually suggest that life has no meaning. Although cultural and religious worldviews typically are construed as systems of belief that imbue life with meaning and significance (Pyszczynski et al., 2003), some individuals may adopt frameworks asserting that life is objectively (and perhaps utterly) meaningless. This perspective likely is not relegated to a few nihilistic philosophers; it may be more common (and perhaps more pronounced among academics) than one might imagine. Critical existential analysis could lead to the conclusion that life is meaningless (see Becker, 1973). To explore this possibility, Van Tongeren and Green (2010d) examined reactions to reading an essay that argued for life’s utter lack of meaning, ostensibly written by a philosopher at a top university. Participants who read the essay were persuaded by the cogent argument, and they subsequently reported decrements to their sense of meaning. Different reactions occurred in related research when threats of meaninglessness were processed implicitly; in a procedure involving subliminally presenting meaninglessness-related words, participants reacted against a potential threat to meaning by bolstering their meaning across the various MMM domains such as self-esteem and religiousness (Van Tongeren & Green, 2010a). It seems that an explicit, convincing presentation of a coherent meaning system that life lacks meaning

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may be assimilated and can result in a loss of meaning. Thus, espousing a worldview in which life lacks meaning may also be detrimental to one’s sense of meaning. This line of reasoning suggests that not only is the availability of a meaning system important to curtail evil, but also that cultural worldviews should endorse beliefs of value in human existence to effectively manage existential anxiety.

Meaning and Moral Affirmation The ESM claims that morality provides a sense of meaning, which in turn provides existential security (Van Tongeren & Green, submitted). To the degree that morality provides a sense of meaning, disruptions to meaning should elicit moral affirmations to restore a sense of meaning (i.e., fluid compensation; see Heine et al., 2006). Those domains that are reaffirmed in the wake of threats to meaning should be of central importance to the integrity of the system of meaning (see Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 2004). In this way, moral affirmations that follow disruptions to meaning point toward the importance of morality in providing a sense of meaning. Research has demonstrated that reminders of mortality, which is a threat to meaning (Heine et al., 2006), can elicit greater prosocial attitudes and behavior (Jonas, Schimel, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 2002). Moreover, such effects can be elicited without conscious awareness. For example, individuals who were interviewed in close proximity to a funeral home reported more positive attitudes toward charities. In addition, a laboratory study buttressed these findings by demonstrating that contemplating one’s death (mortality salience) evoked greater generosity (i.e., giving more money to charity; Jonas et al., 2002). These findings demonstrate that threats to meaning can occur beyond conscious awareness and evoke moral responses to restore distal meaning. Similarly, more recent research has demonstrated that secretly switching experimenters during an experiment (unbeknownst to the participants) can elicit strong moral affirmations, similar to those evoked by mortality salience (Proulx & Heine, 2008). In a laboratory experiment, one experimenter began the study session and was surreptitiously replaced by another experimenter (when out of sight of the participant). This subtle disruption to meaning led participants to reaffirm their morality by being more punitive in a hypothetical moral scenario (i.e., setting a higher bond for a prostitute). That is, a minor threat to their proximal sense of meaning—an experimenter suddenly being different than expected—was sufficient to arouse discomfort and cause individuals to reaffirm their sense of meaning. Even though participants were not consciously aware that the experimenters had been switched (i.e., they did not see the two experimenters switch places), subconsciously they had a vague sense that something was not right. Their reaction to this violation of

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proximal meaning mirrored the results of other research when distal meaning was threatened. Namely, a loss of meaning evoked fluid compensation through moral affirmations as a way to regain a sense of meaningfulness. Van Tongeren and Green (2010b) also provided support for the important role of morality in maintaining meaning. In the laboratory, participants completed a computer-based personality assessment that provided feedback regarding various personal characteristics, including their morality. Participants received a quantitative assessment of their relative level of morality by being told that they were either low (38th percentile) or high (84th percentile) in morality, relative to the average college student. They then indicated the degree to which they agreed with this assessment. Afterward, they completed two meaning-in-life indices. When participants agreed with the feedback (i.e., viewed the computer-based personality assessment as a valid measure of their morality), believing they had greater morality was related to feeling greater meaning in life, whereas believing they had lower morality was related to feeling less meaning in life. When participants disagreed with the feedback (i.e., disputed the computer-based assessment of their morality as inaccurate), the pattern reversed. Specifically, when participants disagreed with the feedback (i.e., viewed it as an invalid assessment of their morality), being told that they had lower morality was related to feeling greater meaning in life. Morality provided a sense of meaning in life insofar as individuals trusted the assessment. Thus, when individuals perceive themselves to be moral, they will also perceive their lives to have greater meaning. In sum, threats to meaning, both on proximal (Proulx & Heine, 2008) and distal (Jonas et al., 2002) levels, evoke compensatory affirmation of morality. That is, individuals with a clear, strong system of meaning are likely to both bolster the endorsement of moral attitudes and behave in moral ways (as ascribed by their meaning system) when their sense of meaning is threatened as one way to regain psychological equanimity. The value of morality in providing meaning in life suggests that meaning is one way to curb evil.

The Existential Function of Meaningful Cultural Worldviews Systems of belief that instill life with meaning and significance are important for resolving potential existential anxiety, such as the mitigation of terror resulting from the human awareness of mortality (e.g., Solomon et al., 2004) or threats of meaninglessness (Yalom, 1980). Beyond organizing the social world in predictable ways (Landau et al., 2004) to provide proximal meaning, cultural worldviews serve important existential functions (Landau et al., 2006) by providing distal meaning. For example, research has demonstrated that meaning ameliorates the existential anxiety caused by reminders of death, as individuals bolster meaning following such reminders

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(Vess, Arndt, Cox, Routledge, & Goldenberg, 2009; Vess, Routledge, Landau, & Arndt, 2009). Cultural worldviews provide a structure of right and wrong, and this system of morality is of chief importance to providing a sense of symbolic or even literal immortality. For example, religious worldviews often instruct how one should live (i.e., right and wrong) in order to secure a place (or improve one’s position) in the afterlife (i.e., literal immortality). Similarly, nonreligious individuals commonly endorse worldviews that include beliefs about morality that reduce harm and promote justice (Haidt, 2007). However, these moral values often depend on other cherished components of cultural worldviews, such as political attitudes (see Haidt & Graham, 2007). Individuals who are remarkably moral are likely to be enshrined in the collective memory of a community, which provides a sense of symbolic immortality for the moral actor. Living up to the standards set forth by a particular worldview is richly reinforced through the provision of selfesteem (Pyszczynski et al., 2004), which is a source of meaning (Heine et al., 2006). In short, cultural worldviews clearly outline standards for how one should live and detail the benefits of living up to these standards. It is the content of cultural worldviews that is particularly important in the management of existential anxiety and the reduction of evil. As reviewed earlier, cultural worldviews that argue that life is without meaning may not be effective in managing existential terror and reducing evil. However, cultural worldviews that provide a sense of meaning play an important role in reducing potential anxiety engendered from the contemplation of existential certainties such as death or meaninglessness. When confronted with the inevitability of one’s future death (i.e., reminders of death), meaning that exists only in this life is related to greater defensiveness (i.e., derogating an author who impugns one’s beliefs; Van Tongeren & Green, 2010c). Presumably, this is because death ends life and robs a person of such meaning. On the other hand, some meaning is preserved through death; that is, it is perceived to be extended into the next life. This type of meaning is an important mechanism for ameliorating existential terror. Therefore, meaning that exists only as long as one is alive (e.g., the joy of a fulfilling career) is defended when the prospect of death is salient. Conversely, meaning that is perceived to remain after death (e.g., a religious paradise, or a memorial fund that provides scholarships to future generations) takes some of the sting out of contemplating death. To be sure, many cultural worldviews provide meaning in this life in parallel with meaning that transcends death (e.g., religion). Even at a coarse-grained level of analysis, one function of cultural worldviews is to reduce existential angst. Thus, they in turn can reduce evil. However, preliminary research suggests that what may be driving such a reduction in evil is the aspect of meaning that persists after death (Van Tongeren & Green, 2010c). This initial work on distinguishing between meanings appears to be

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promising. We believe that this work will help clarify the role of systems of meaning in buffering against the negative effects of existential anxiety. Unresolved existential anxiety can elicit a variety of negative interpersonal reactions that many would classify as evil. As stated earlier, potential terror evoked from reminders of eventual death is related to perpetuating evil (including derogating members of outgroups, defending one’s cultural worldview, and endorsing stereotypes; see Pyszczynski et al., 2003, for a review). However, cultural worldviews—and the systems of meaning they support—help attenuate these negative reactions. Research has demonstrated that intrinsic religiousness—which provides meaning that is preserved even after death—can reduce cultural worldview defense (Jonas & Fischer, 2006) and increase intercultural tolerance and reduce death-related anxiety (Van Tongeren et al., 2010). Moreover, reminding religious fundamentalists of the compassionate values that are central to their belief system (though potentially underemphasized) can result in improved attitudes toward members of an outgroup (Rothschild et al., 2009). Cultural worldviews that provide meaning in this life as well as meaning extending beyond death are of central importance in resolving existential concerns and restraining evil.

HOW MEANING CAN REDUCE EVIL Thus far, we have argued that (a) evil encompasses the harm, restriction, or oppression of others against their will; (b) people are prone to existential anxiety and, when experiencing existential threat, may react in a way that is evil; and (c) a strong sense of meaning makes people more resilient to existential threat, and hence less likely to commit evil acts. We believe that our approach to addressing evil from an existential perspective is important, especially given the pervasiveness of existential considerations (Pyszczynski et al., 1997) and how reminders of existential concerns can affect us, even when we are not aware of their influence (e.g., Pyszczynski et al., 1999). Nonetheless, we readily acknowledge that there are other motivations for evil beyond managing existential threats. Accordingly, meaning is not a cure-all for eliminating evil. Nevertheless, we believe that meaning is related to the reduction of evil, especially in light of existential reminders, and considering the role of meaning in restraining evil is an important contribution to its scientific investigation. We have alluded to a number of conditions in which a meaning system may most effectively restrain evil. However, we more systematically elaborate on them here. Based on previous research, we suspect that a meaning system must have particular characteristics in order to best manage existential concerns and reduce evil. To effectively reduce evil, a meaning system must (a) confer a degree of certainty, (b) provide meaning that persists after death, and (c) value human life. We present our model for how meaning can reduce evil in Figure 14.1.

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Figure 14.1 Process by which meaningful belief systems attenuate existential anxiety and reduce evil. Cultural worldviews must confer a degree of certainty, provide death-transcendent meaning, and value human life in order to restrain evil, rather than perpetuate it.

Meaning Systems Must Provide Certainty We have discussed the problem of a lack of meaning, and how systems of meaning help assuage existential anxiety. However, these meaning systems must provide certainty and reliably provide meaning. That is, a meaning system should provide concrete meaning when individuals are confronted with reminders of existential concerns, such as death or isolation. Meaning systems that are silent, are uncertain, or offer contradictory beliefs regarding particular existential issues may be ineffective in managing existential anxiety and reducing evil. Previous theorizing suggests that meaning systems that are open to doubt or promote meaning-seeking behaviors may be less effective in managing existential anxiety and may result in existential angst (cf. Beck, 2004, 2006). For example, following implicit threats to meaning,

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individuals bolstered perceived meaning and downplayed meaning-seeking behaviors (Van Tongeren & Green, 2010a). In an attempt to regain meaning, individuals are likely to endorse beliefs that provide meaning rather than search for meaning. Thus, meaning-seeking behaviors are not necessarily effective in providing meaning. Accordingly, such meaning systems that endorse the search for meaning may manage existential anxiety less effectively than meaning systems that authoritatively provide meaning. Therefore, to effectively reduce evil, a meaning system must provide a coherent sense of meaning, rather than encourage a potentially frustrating search for meaning, in the face of existential threat.

Meaning Systems Must Provide Meaning That Persists After Death As discussed earlier, Van Tongeren and Green (2010b, 2010c) obtained evidence that threats to meaning can elicit defensiveness. In one study, participants wrote about thoughts and feelings about their own death. Those who wrote about thoughts and feelings that detailed great meaning in their life were more likely to dislike an author who wrote an anti-American essay (i.e., engage in cultural worldview defense and outgroup derogation). Interestingly, feelings of meaning that persisted after death (e.g., religious afterlife, or being remembered by one’s loved ones) were not associated with such cultural worldview defense and outgroup derogation. That is, worldviews that include meaning believed to exist after death may elicit less defensiveness. This meaning need not be religious. For example, death could be imbued with meaning when the results of an act outlast physical life, such as donating money to a charitable foundation. Put another way, cultural worldviews that articulate great meaning in this life but are silent regarding what happens after death may be vulnerable to the disruption of meaning that seems associated with death. Other research also converges on this notion. Participants who had a greater meaning in life also reported a greater frequency of death-related thoughts (King, Hicks, & Abdelkhalik, 2009). When individuals thought about how valuable life was, thoughts regarding the prospect of death became increasingly accessible. Death-related cognitions can arouse existential anxiety and evoke myriad defensive (and potentially evil) reactions aimed at avoiding conscious awareness of thoughts related to death (see Arndt, Cook, & Routledge, 2004). It seems that reminders of the value of life can cause death to become more salient and might therefore arouse existential anxiety and defensiveness. Thus, we assert that meaning systems should provide both meaning in life and meaning that persists after death to effectively manage existential anxiety and reduce evil.

Meaning Systems Must Value Human Life Some might argue that individuals find meaning and coherence through evil (though individuals may not immediately see their own actions as evil).

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Hitler and his regime blamed the Jews for Germany’s economic troubles and asserted Aryan ethnic superiority as justification for slaughtering millions. Communists in the Soviet Union and China surpassed even the Nazi body count as justification for trying to ensure that communism triumphed over capitalism. Countless destructive religious movements (often called cults) have isolated individuals from their heartbroken loved ones and have even led to mass murder (e.g., the sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo subway by Aum Shinrikyo) or suicide (e.g., Jonestown and Heaven’s Gate). These meaning systems led to evil acts on a grand scale, presumably because such systems did not explicitly value all human life. Because meaning systems are culturally bound and reinforced by others who cherish similar beliefs, it may be difficult for individuals in such systems to clearly see how constellations of beliefs may devalue the lives of others. Individuals can easily convince themselves of the rightness of their own actions. For example, research on belief in a just world has revealed that people can readily justify their cruel actions toward an innocent victim (Lerner, 1980). More broadly, individuals are creative in their ability to see themselves in an overly positive light and deny, distort, or fail to recall negative feedback (e.g., Green, Sedikides, Pinter, & Van Tongeren, 2009). Though the benefits to the self (i.e., resilience and mental health) may be significant, there may be costs for others. Thus, systems of belief that appear noble, but in fact promote evil acts to others, are not effective systems of meaning to restrain evil. Although there may be some degree of ingroup superiority inherent in all cultural worldviews (i.e., individuals tend to think ethnocentrically), beliefs that promote the subjugation of one group for the advancement of another will not restrain evil. In short, we believe that worldviews must inherently promote a sense of the universal value of human life in order to reduce evil.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS From a social psychological perspective, we have argued that evil is an existential issue that is often restrained through experiencing meaning in life. Building from the recently proposed existential security model of morality (ESM; Van Tongeren & Green, submitted), we posit that meaning in life provides existential security, which, in turn, reduces evil. Thus, one potent restraint of evil is a constellation of beliefs that provides proximal (i.e., immediate, social-cognitive) and distal (i.e., further removed, existential) meaning. Meaning and morality are also intricately tied, such that moral actions may be (partly) in the service of procuring existential security through providing meaning. Thus, individuals may act morally to gain a sense of meaning; accordingly, virtuous acts can assuage existential anxiety by providing meaning and, in turn, reduce evil. We have argued that meaning is an effective route to restraining evil. Individuals who feel as though life is meaningless or who do not have an

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accessible system of meaning are vulnerable to the full effects of anxiety elicited from existential reminders. However, we have suggested that not all meanings are “created equal” and have provided three important qualifications. First, a meaning system should be certain and provide concrete meaning (rather than simply endorse potentially frustrating meaning-seeking behaviors). Second, a meaning system should provide some degree of deathtranscendent meaning, such that meaning in this life continues beyond the final clasp of death. A worldview in which meaning is temporally bound only to this life may be less effective in mitigating the existential anxiety produced by reminders of death, and may evoke increased defensiveness (Van Tongeren & Green, 2010c). Third, a meaning system should explicitly value all human life; systems of meaning that inherently promote suffering, harm, or oppression will be ineffectual in providing sustained protection from the terror associated with existential reminders such as death, meaninglessness, or isolation, and will be ineffective in reducing evil. Accordingly, meaning systems that promote the value of human life and embrace virtue should help restrain evil. All of us are susceptible to perpetuating evil, as evil resides in actions that can be evoked in even the most noble of humans. As Voltaire suggested in the opening quote, a lack of a sustainable, meaningful system of belief may lead us to perpetuate a cycle of violence and evil. On the other hand, adopting cultural worldviews that value human life and provide a lasting sense of meaning may help us resolve some of the potentially frightening existential realities that all humans encounter, and may allow us to face such concerns with peace and a sense of resolve. In doing so, we do not use evil to escape the inevitabilities that come with being human but, rather, embrace our humanity and respond virtuously.

REFERENCES Arndt, J., Cook, A., & Routledge, C. (2004). The blueprint of terror management. Understanding the cognitive architecture of psychological defense against the awareness of death. In J. Greenberg, S. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp. 35–53). New York: Guilford Press. Batson, C. D., & Schoenrade, P. A. (1991). Measuring religion as quest: 1) Validity concerns. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 30, 416–429. Baumeister, R. F. (1991). Meanings in life. New York: Guilford Press. Baumeister, R. F., & Vohs, K. D. (2002). The pursuit of meaningfulness in life. In C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology (pp. 608–618). New York: Oxford University Press. Beck, R. (2004). The function of religious belief: Defensive versus existential religion. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 23, 208–218. Beck, R. (2006). Defensive versus existential religion: Is religious defensiveness predictive of worldview defense? Journal of Psychology and Theology, 34, 143–153.

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Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. New York: Academic Press. Green, J. D., Sedikides, C., Pinter, B., & Van Tongeren, D. R. (2009). Two sides to self-protection: Self-improvement strivings and feedback from close relationships eliminate mnemic neglect. Self and Identity, 8, 233–250. Haidt, J. (2007). The new synthesis in moral psychology. Science, 316, 998–1002. Haidt, J., & Algoe, S. (2004). Moral amplification and the emotions that attach us to saints and demons. In J. Greenberg, S. L. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp. 322–335). New York: Guilford Press. Haidt, J., & Graham, J. (2007). When morality opposes justice: Conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals may not recognize. Social Justice Research, 20, 98–116. Haney, C., Banks, C., & Zimbardo, P. (1973). Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison. International Journal of Criminology and Penology, 1, 69–97. Harmon-Jones, E., Simon, L., Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & McGregor, H. (1997). Terror management theory and self-esteem: Evidence that increased self-esteem reduces mortality salience effects. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 24–36. Heine, S., J., Proulx, T., & Voh, K. D. (2006). The meaning maintenance model: On the coherence of social motivations. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10, 88–110. Jonas, E., & Fischer, P. (2006). Terror management and religion: Evidence that intrinsic religiousness mitigates worldview defense following mortality salience. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 553–567. Jonas, E., Schimel, J., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2002). The scrooge effect: Evidence that mortality salience increases prosocial attitudes and behavior. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 1342–1353. King, L. A., Hicks, J. A., & Abdelkhalik, J. (2009). Death, life, scarcity, and value. Psychological Science, 20, 1459–1462. Landau, M. J., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Martens, A. (2006). Windows into nothingness: Terror management, meaninglessness, and negative reactions to modern art. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 879–892. Landau, M. J., Johns, M., Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., Martens, A., Goldenberg, J., et al. (2004). A function of form: Terror management and structuring the social world. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 190–210. Lerner, M. L. (1980). The belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. New York: Plenum Press. Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. New York: Harper & Row. Pinel, E. C., Long, A. E, Landau, M. J., Alexander, K., & Pyszczynski, T. (2006). Seeing I to I: A pathway to interpersonal connectedness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 243–257. Postmes, T., & Spears, R. (1998). Deindividuation and antinormative behavior: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 123, 238–259. Proulx, T., & Heine. S. J. (2008). The case of the transmogrifying experimenter: Affirmation of a moral schema following implicit change detection. Psychological Science, 19, 1294–1300. Pyszczynski, T., Abdollahi, A., Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., Cohen, F., & Weise, D. (2006). Mortality salience, martyrdom, and military might: The great Satan versus the axis of evil. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32, 525–537.

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Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (1997). Why do we need what we need? A terror management perspective on the roots of human social motivation. Psychological Inquiry, 8, 1–20. Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., & Solomon, S. (1999). A dual-process model of defense against conscious and unconscious death-related thoughts: An extension of terror management theory. Psychological Review, 106, 835–845. Pyszczynski, T., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Arndt, J., & Schimel, J. (2004). Why do people need self-esteem? A theoretical and empirical review. Psychological Bulletin, 130, 435–468. Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. (2003). In the wake of 9/11: The psychology of terror. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Rosenblatt, A., Greenberg, J., Solomon, S., Pyszczynski, T., & Lyon, D. (1989). Evidence for a terror management theory: I. The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who violate or uphold cultural values. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 681–690. Rothschild, Z. K., Abdollahi, A., & Pyszczynski, T. (2009). Does peace have a prayer? The effect of mortality salience, compassionate values, and religious fundamentalism on hostility toward out-groups. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45, 816–827. Simon, L., Arndt, J., Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. (1998). Terror management and meaning: Evidence that the opportunity to defend the worldview in response to mortality salience increases the meaningfulness of life in the mildly depressed. Journal of Personality, 66, 359–382. Simon, L., Greenberg, J., Harmon-Jones, E., Solomon, S., & Pyszczynski, T. (1996). Mild depression, mortality salience, and defense of the worldview. Evidence of intensified terror management in the mildly depressed. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22, 81–90. Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., & Pyszczynski, T. (2004). The cultural animal: Twenty years of terror management theory and research. In J. Greenberg, S. Koole, & T. Pyszczynski (Eds.), Handbook of experimental existential psychology (pp. 13–34). New York: Guilford Press. Van Tongeren, D. R., & Green, J. D. (2010a). Combating meaninglessness: On the automatic defense of meaning. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 1372–1384. Van Tongeren, D. R., & Green, J. D. (2010b). Perceived morality and meaning in life. Unpublished data. Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond. Van Tongeren, D. R., & Green, J. D. (2010c). The paradox of meaning in terror management: Meaning and the defense against death. Unpublished manuscript. Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond. Van Tongeren, D. R., & Green, J. D. (2010d). Disparities in the notion of the absurd and experiencing the absurd. Unpublished data. Van Tongeren, D. R., & Green, J. D. (Submitted). Being good as an existential motivation: The Existential Security Model (ESM) of morality. Van Tongeren, D. R., McIntosh, D. N., Raad, J., & Pae, J. (2010). Religion and terror management: The existential benefits of priming a cherished meaning system. Manuscript submitted for publication. Vess, M., Arndt, J., Cox, C. R., Routledge, C., & Goldenberg, J. L. (2009). Exploring the existential function of religion: The effect of religious fundamentalism and

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mortality salience on faith-based medical refusals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 334–350. Vess, M., Routledge, C., Landau, M. J., & Arndt, J. (2009). The dynamics of death and meaning: The effects of death-relevant cognitions and personal need for structure on perceptions of meaning in life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 728–744. Yalom, I. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books.

ch apter 15

Evil and Positive Psychology Don E. Davis, Joshua N. Hook, Everett L. Worthington Jr., Aubrey L. Gartner, David J. Jennings II, Chelsea L. Greer, Daryl R. Van Tongeren, and Todd W. Greer

INTRODUCTION This chapter considers how positive psychology may help prevent evil. We define evil as a subjective appraisal that something sacred (e.g., innocent human life) has been hurt or damaged. Drawing on Baumeister’s theorizing on four causes of evil—instrumentalism, egotism, idealism, and sadism—we describe a model of relational spirituality to explain how evil tends to escalate. Then we consider four virtues that help curb evil by promoting forgiveness and reconciliation: resilience, humility, justice, and courage. Third, we use a model of relational spirituality to describe how appraising evil can contribute to the escalation of evil.

EVIL AND POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY In this volume, our research group is honored to contribute three chapters— one on punishment as restraint of evil (Chapter 4), one on meaning and evil (Chapter 14), and this one on positive psychology and evil. We chose these topics because they fit well with the lead authors’ interests. As we think about our three contributions, and as we read them all together, we see that there is a framework to our contributions. The Roman Catholics of the Middle Ages (e.g., Pseudo-Dionysius, John of the Cross, and Teresa of Avila) often wrote about the threefold way to knowing God better that passed through purgation, illumination, and union. Purgation has to do with harnessing misoriented desires to permit a pursuit of virtue. Illumination is about understanding and spiritual knowing. Union is a matter of the will’s intuitive sense of spiritual vision.

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Although the analogy is necessarily imperfect, we were struck by the ways that our chapters mapped onto this development. Jennings et al. wrote about the restraint of evil through punishment, which we liken to purgation. Van Tongeren et al. wrote about meaning and its role in orienting us away from evil and toward virtue, which can be likened to illumination. Positive psychology—while a far cry from unitive religious knowing—is still about pursuit of virtue. We see positive psychology as being kin to religion and spirituality. In some ways, religion shows us why virtue is important: If we connect with God, virtue should flow naturally from that connection. Religion provides an ordering of the virtues, clarifying which virtues are most worthy of each moment’s pursuit and showing us ways to connect with the Sacred, the source of virtue. Likewise, positive psychology aims to help us understand and pursue virtue. In the present chapter, we explore positive psychology and the ways it might be related to subduing evil or redirecting people from evil. We (a) describe the positive psychology movement, (b) consider how psychologists have defined evil, (c) present four theorized roots of evil, and (d) describe four virtues from the positive psychology movement that are useful for preventing and stopping evil by promoting reconciliation and forgiveness.

POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY The positive psychology movement involved a change in how researchers justify their research. Before ever conducting a single study, researchers must tell a story that convinces someone to spend money and resources on a research topic. Thus, from the very outset, research is a value-laden enterprise. Psychologists have usually focused such stories on solving problems. For example, they identify a problem, show its costliness to society, and then show how their research program might contribute to ameliorating the problem. Positive psychologists introduce a nuance into the standard problemfocused narrative for showing the importance of a research question. Namely, they argue that being preoccupied with problems creates opportunity costs. Understanding a problem may not naturally lead to understanding a solution; sometimes the best strategy for addressing problems may come from studying what it looks like when things are going well. For example, Martin Seligman introduced the prototype of this story with his own research program on depression (Seligman, 2004). After spending his early career studying depression, he realized that by focusing on how to reduce depressive symptoms, psychologists had not placed enough emphasis on studying strategies to enhance happiness and life satisfaction. As president of the American Psychological Association in 1999, he reasoned that psychology as a field needed a similar renovation, calling for a positive psychology that focused

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on subjective valued experiences in the past, present, and future (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). The movement has flourished. In its early years, several prestigious journals released special editions on positive psychology. The movement now has its own journal (i.e., Journal of Positive Psychology) and is attracting prestigious authors. Books on positive psychology have been published in both the popular and academic literature (e.g., Fredrickson, 2009; Seligman, 2004). Despite some criticism, the movement gained momentum, as many eminent leaders contributed to the discussion, applying the positive psychology initiative to their own research programs. Whereas subfields such as social psychology and clinical psychology found plenty of room for greater balance, other subfields such as developmental psychology or counseling psychology highlighted their rich history of focusing on strengths. We focus on the pursuit of virtue rather than positive emotions or subjective well-being. Positive psychology is defined, for the purpose of this chapter, as the scientific study of eudaemonia, which is virtue for self and other. Namely, positive psychology not only is about how to experience happiness, or even greater levels of engagement and meaning in life, but also is about the pursuit of virtue. The pursuit of virtue should lead people toward real, lasting, deep happiness—not the happiness of the hedonic treadmill, where one seeks happiness as the greatest good and perhaps end up gasping for air, but rather a lasting happiness that comes from seeking intimate connection with others and the Sacred.

EVIL In psychology, evil has typically been defined as a severe transgression that an offender commits against a victim. Psychologists have disagreed on how severe a transgression must be in order to be considered evil, though most agree that heinous acts of cruelty, such as torture, murder, or genocide, constitute evil. Some also consider less severe transgressions, such as intentionally hurting another person, to be evil (e.g., Baumeister, 1996). Whether an action is considered evil depends on one’s point of view. The very theme of evil often implies the victim’s perspective of a transgression, for offenders rarely see themselves as doing evil (Baumeister, 1996). Indeed, ingroup members regularly portray their own hurtful actions as just and right, while portraying the hurtful actions of others as evil. For example, in 1945, the Japanese were probably more likely to see the dropping of the atomic bomb as evil, whereas Americans may have viewed it as a more humane way to end the war than, for example, an invasion of Japan. Most definitions of evil have avoided spiritual meanings of evil. However, evil often draws on spiritual narratives of conflict between spiritual forces. Incorporating spirituality into a definition of evil helps one deal with how the

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threshold of evil differs by viewpoint—anything may be considered evil by someone. We define spirituality broadly as a person’s experience of relationship with the Sacred (God, humanity, nature, the cosmos, or whatever one considers of ultimate importance and central to spirituality; adapted from Shults & Sandage, 2006). Accordingly, one may also imbue any object or relationship with sacred meaning if it affects one’s relationship with the Sacred (Pargament et al., 2005). We define evil as a victim’s perception (or someone in touch with the victim’s perspective) that something has harmed, violated, or destroyed something considered sacred (Pargament et al., 2005). A person who is not spiritual or religious may borrow the language to mean that something of ultimate value and importance has been harmed or destroyed. Across cultures, killing innocent people is often considered evil, whereas a fundamentalist Christian might perceive the self as evil for having a lustful thought (see Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009; Haidt, 2001). In the present chapter, we focus on interpersonal transgressions, but we also acknowledge that one might perceive natural disasters or random accidents as evil, particularly if they are seen as being caused by evil forces.

CAUSES OF EVIL Baumeister (1996) theorized four roots of evil: (a) instrumentalism, (b) egotism, (c) idealism, and (d) sadism. We draw on his theorizing as a foundation for our thinking on how positive psychology can counteract evil.

Instrumentalism People may hurt others as a means to an end. Offenders rarely see themselves as doing evil. They view themselves as having good reasons for doing harm to others. Some situations may create strong motivations that sweep people into doing evil, such as an authority figure who tells a person to hurt another person, accompanied by a plausible justification (Zimbardo, 2007). Similarly, people may see doing evil as justified when deprived of their basic needs (e.g., safety, autonomy, social connection, and meaning; Staub & Miller, 2004). Conditions of poverty, substance abuse, and crime beget evil in a downward cycle of poverty. Moreover, aside from being immoral, evil can be quite effective. From an evolutionary perspective, successful competition often involves inflicting costs on one’s rivals (Duntley, Buss, & Miller, 2004). Killing a rival can be effective because one might gain access to the rival’s resources (e.g., food, money, and sexual partner) while also weakening the rival’s family or social group. Stealing puts a rival’s resources in one’s own pocket. Slandering a rival harms his or her reputation. Community members may withhold cooperation, making the rival vulnerable to attack. From this perspective,

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perhaps prejudice and intergroup conflict are inevitable results of competition between groups. Thus, although the typical moral response to perceiving evil is “How could anyone do such a thing?” from an evolutionary perspective, a better question is “What keeps evil from happening more regularly?”

Egotism A second root of evil is threatened egotism, which is the desire or drive to maintain a positive view of self and a positive reputation with others. People may act aggressively when they feel their honor has been threatened (Nisbett & Cohen, 1996). High, unstable self-esteem has been linked with aggressive behavior (for a review, see Baumeister, Smart, & Boden, 1996). In some social settings, such heightened aggressiveness may have been adaptive, such as when victims earn a reputation of inflicting high costs on those who try to exploit them. For example, in pastoral communities (with economies dependent on highly portable resources), allowing others to steal one’s resources would soon lead to empty corals (Nisbett & Cohen, 1996). Likely, having a reputation for being willing to enact swift revenge helped deter exploitation. In contrast, in agrarian communities, the costs of stealing are not as high. In fact, overreacting to theft might cause escalation of violence, which would be more costly than having a few ears of corn stolen.

Idealism A third root of evil is idealism, which refers to worldviews that articulate ultimate and highest goods. Idealism may lead to evil when people use their own conceptualization of virtue to legitimize hurting others. For example, a group may see a rival group as a threat to some high ideal, and thus aggression is warranted in order to protect and defend the good of society. Many of the bloodiest conflicts in world history have occurred in the name of high ideals (e.g., Chinese Cultural Revolution, the Stalinist purges, the Holocaust, the Inquisition, and the Crusades). Less extreme examples are more common (e.g., religious or political groups that tell narratives to promote their own values in competition with other groups). The root of idealism allows a person to enjoy the instrumental benefits of evil, while avoiding guilt and moral self-sanction (Bandura, 1999). Again, the root of idealism highlights the discrepancy between the victim’s and the offender’s perspectives: What one calls good, the other calls evil.

Sadism A fourth root of evil is sadism, which is deriving pleasure from seeing other people suffer. Victims often see their tormenters as enjoying evil, seemingly clear evidence of their cruel character. As it turns out, sadism is rare (Baumeister, 1996). Most perpetrators of torture or violence feel uncomfortable

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harming others. The minority of individuals who do enjoy inflicting pain and suffering seem to acquire this enjoyment gradually. Baumeister applied opponent-process theory (Solomon & Corbit, 1974) to explain sadism. This theory posits that risky behaviors, such as skydiving, can become pleasurable through habituation. One initially experiences stressful emotions such as fear (called the A process). In the B process, the body returns to equilibrium. However, through repeating the action, one may habituate to the A process, with the B process staying the same in magnitude. Thus, the B response may overcompensate, giving a sensation of pleasure. The same process could be used to develop sadism, as one habituates to the initial emotions of stress or guilt, and the overcompensation of the B process leads to a feeling of pleasure. Baumeister suggested that guilt may prevent more people from learning to enjoy evil. For example, people may enjoy hunting if they do not see it as morally wrong to kill animals..

THE ESCALATION OF EVIL THROUGH RELATIONAL SPIRITUALITY We describe a model of relational spirituality that explains the tendency of evil to escalate. Unforgiveness—a negative emotional response to an offense—occurs when victims ruminate angrily about a transgression. According to Baumeister, Vohs, DeWall, and Zhang (2007), conscious emotions do not directly cause behavior, but rather they cause a person to think and learn from what just happened. Positive emotions lead to a global stamp of approval that allows a person to focus on the future, leading to a broader range of responses (Fredrickson, 1998). However, negative emotions, such as when a transgression occurs, cause a person to look for details that will help him or her prevent the hurt from happening again. Accordingly, rumination on the transgression may evoke contempt in victims, causing them to downwardly adjust their view of the offender’s character. When people feel increased contempt toward each other, causing them to malign each other’s character, this widens the gap in how they see the history of transgressions between them (e.g., Baumeister, Stillwell, & Wotman, 1990). Consider Beth, a devoted Christian, who recently learned that her husband, John, cheated on her and plans to leave her. Beth’s perspective focuses on the egregious affair, her husband’s pattern of choosing work over their family, and his flaring temper with her and their two kids. She has told her story to anyone who will listen. John’s story is different. He can discern that his story evokes little sympathy from his current friends, many of whom are also friends with Beth. He feels like a failure as a husband and a father; however, he also sees another side of the story. For a long time, he has felt depressed and hopeless, because he felt little intimacy or connection with Beth. By no means is he proud of what he did, but given the pain he was experiencing, including the increasing

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contempt he felt from Beth, he sees what he did as justified. He did not want to keep feeling horrible, as he was starting to hate who he was with her. Although spirituality can often help a person cope with unforgiveness, it can also cause conflict to escalate by intensifying rumination, contempt, and character maligning. In a model of relational spirituality, we have explored various ways a victim may interpret a transgression in a spiritual way. Victims may appraise the relationship between (a) the Sacred and the transgression (Davis et al., 2008), (b) the Sacred and the offender (see Davis et al., 2009b), and (c) the Sacred and himself or herself (see Davis et al., 2009a).

Victim’s Appraisal of Sacred–Transgression Relationship Victims may appraise the relationship of the transgression to the Sacred (Pargament et al., 2005; see Figure 15.1). For example, Beth may ruminate in righteous indignation on how John’s infidelity was an evil desecration of holy marriage. She may perceive that God brought them together and had good plans for their marriage and family, but John, taking a sinful path, became susceptible to schemes of Satan. She may feel comfort imagining the grief of God toward him. Perceiving a transgression as a desecration tends to make forgiveness more difficult (e.g., Davis et al., 2008). Figure 15.1. Spiritual appraisals of relationship in model of relational spirituality and forgiveness.

Note: Figure from Davis, Hook, and Worthington (2008), reprinted with permission.

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Victim’s Appraisal of Sacred–Offender Relationship Victims may also appraise the relationship between the offender and the Sacred (Davis et al., 2009b; Pargament, Trevino, Mahoney, & Silberman, 2007; Raiya, Pargament, Mahoney, & Trevino, 2008; and see Figure 15.1), with a special eye toward whether an offender is similar or different in relationship to the Sacred as is the victim. For example, feeling strong contempt for John’s infidelity (Gottman, 1994), Beth may alter how she sees John as a person. As a Christian, she used to see him as a strong, Christian man, similar in faith to herself. Of course, she recognized that he had some weaknesses, but she fully expected him to continue to grow and mature into the ideal husband that she hoped for. How far he had fallen! Appraising that he desecrated their marriage and conspired with evil, she now sees him as hardhearted and resistant to God’s will, a hypocrite of the worst kind, barely human, and certainly not similar in faith to herself. Seeing him as evil makes it hard for her to empathize or even sympathize with him (see Davis et al., 2009b). Thus, as Beth experiences greater disgust and contempt toward John, she begins to explain his behavior by using a language of evil. Furthermore, she also begins to fall prey to the dichotomous categories and thinking that strongly negative emotions encourage, such as the fundamental attribution error. That is, she tends to explain his behavior as caused the kind of person he is—namely, a person of evil character—rather than considering situational factors that may have motivated his behavior. Such adjustments in the victim’s view of an offender may be adaptive (e.g., they may prepare the victim to act aggressively without being slowed down by feelings of guilt).

Victim’s Appraisal of Victim–Sacred Relationship The victim may also appraise how his or her own relationship with the Sacred is affected by an offense (Davis et al., 2009a; Krumrei, Mahoney, & Pargament, 2009). From our example, Beth may view her relationship to God as being tainted due to what she sees as a failure in her marriage, as she and John were “one” before God. This may cause harm to how she enacts her own religious faith, as well, due to a cloud of guilt overshadowing her relationship with God. Appraising commitment or positive attachment to the Sacred has been found to be associated with greater forgiveness, whereas feeling anger toward God, or feeling judgment or unforgiveness from God, is generally associated with less forgiveness in a relationship (Davis et al., 2008). As we illustrated the model using the hypothetical case of Beth and John, we focused on Beth’s perspective and how she might have viewed the affair. However, in most conflicts, both sides see themselves as victims and have a story of the conflict that focuses on desecrations committed by the other side. Thus, we might have illustrated the entire model from John’s perspective,

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discussing several transgressions that he viewed as desecrations, changes in how he viewed Beth, and changes in his relationship with God, resulting from conflict in the relationship. Thus, at the interpersonal level, conflict between individuals, as well as the accumulation of transgressions, can allow the channels of evil to become entrenched. Both sides of conflict each eventually see themselves as victims, ruminate on desecrations, feel growing contempt for the other, and see the other as the offender and as increasingly evil. Paradoxically, appraising evil makes it more likely that both sides will do evil, seeing the other as a little less than human. Both sides may see hurting the other person’s interests as justified (i.e., means to an end). Both people may feel they need to defend themselves from being maligned by the other (i.e., threatened egotism). Both sides may justify hurting the other person by drawing on ideologies of religious or spiritual beliefs. Gradually, both sides may begin to feel pleasure and gain an increased sense of self-esteem from engaging in conflict, as evil becomes commonplace (i.e., sadism). Evil also escalates at the societal level, sometimes even more rapidly than it does at the interpersonal level. Shared memories and narratives of conflict are etched on the minds of those within the community. People may draw on appraisals of relational spirituality within such narratives. For example, both sides of conflict may justify their contempt with stories about desecrations (i.e., the sacred–transgression relationship) committed by the other side. These stories provide ingroup members with evidence that the other side is evil (i.e., the sacred–offender relationship) and must be avoided, guarded against, or even destroyed. Furthermore, such narratives do not abate quickly, becoming engrained in how history is told within a culture. Thus, the same channels of evil operate and may escalate at a societal level. For example, both sides may feel justified in seeking greater justice for their group (i.e., means to an end). Both sides will see the other’s attempts to bring justice as evidence of exploitation. Primed to anticipate contempt and disdain from the other side, merely being in the presence of an outgroup member may threaten one’s sense of identity (i.e., ego threat). Groups may incorporate ideologies that justify their hatred of the other group. In fact, some groups may judge the loyalty of other members based on how well they demonstrate contempt toward outgroups. People may become so entrenched in conflict that they may gradually learn to enjoy it (i.e., sadism). Examples of the escalation of societal conflict are apparent in the historical relationships between the Jews and Muslims, Irish Protestants and Catholics, and Serbs and Croats. We have outlined one understanding of evil above, and discussed its escalation in both interpersonal relationships and societies. We also have employed a relational spirituality model in understanding how religion and spirituality might become implicated in justifying and maintaining evil, both in intimate relationships and in societal relationships. We now turn to the prevention of evil, and examine how positive psychology might prevent evil.

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PREVENTING AND STOPPING EVIL WITH VIRTUE As we have framed it, if not natural, evil is at least somewhat predictable. Following Baumeister (1996), we have taken a view of evil that emphasizes social psychology more than it does personality. Thus, this view tends to look for causes (and cures) not solely localized within the personality or human nature, as in many religious narratives (e.g., humans are sinful and fallen). Rather, we have looked to situations, including ways that situations trigger personality dispositions or processes. Worthington (2009) has characterized behavior as an interacting product of structures (internal and environmental or situational), processes (internal and environmental), and triggers. Whereas evil can occur due to natural disaster, environmental catastrophe, or sheer bad luck (e.g., if one views evil forces as causing these events), much of the evil experienced by most people is a result of interpersonal transgressions. We have focused on evil that people enact in the present chapter. Paradoxically, one of the lynchpins of evil is that both sides of conflict tend to portray themselves as victims. They use narratives of evil to malign the character of the other side, evoking moral emotions that actually can fuel a sense of moral superiority that may promote conflict and violence. Feeling disgust and contempt toward the other side, both sides may feel completely justified in hurting the other in the name of justice. What, if anything, does positive psychology have to offer to help curb this predictable, if not natural, escalation of conflict into what is typically perceived by both sides as evil? As positive psychologists, we believe that to employ a long-standing strategy to prevent and stop evil, it is often not enough to stop the bad. In addition to stopping the bad, one must move toward the good. In the sections below, we discuss four virtues that can help curb the escalation of conflict and evil by promoting forgiveness and reconciliation: • Resilience: People often bounce back from evil. • Humility: Respecting the other’s perspective helps curb the tendency for both sides of the conflict to become entrenched in their positions. • Justice: Third-party mediators can help moderate the conflict. • Courage: People can resist strong currents to passively participate in evil.

Resiliency One resounding theme highlighted by the positive psychology movement is that people are generally resilient to evil. Across a variety of literatures, psychologists have discovered that many people bounce back quickly from trauma (see Park, 2010, for a review). Indeed, across the life span, and across a variety of losses and traumas, the normative trajectory is one of resiliency, rather than recovery or complicated grief (Bonanno, 2004, 2005; Bonanno, Galea, Bucciarelli, & Vlahov, 2006; Bonanno, Papa, Lalande, Westphal, & Coifman, 2004; Mancini & Bonanno, 2009). Research on happiness has found

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that people are generally quite resilient to both positive and negative changes in life circumstances (Diener, Lucas, & Scollon, 2006). Several rapidly growing literatures (e.g., on posttraumatic growth, hope, optimism, courage, resiliency, meaning making, and narrative identity) have converged on a similar theme. Thus, although evil occurs on a regular basis and the sum of human suffering is great, many people emerge from the other side of evil with a sense of hope and meaning. Being able to reframe an event or glean a sense of purpose or meaning from a traumatic event may result in better adjustment and may curb one’s desire to retaliate and perpetuate evil. Thus, although downward cycles of evil are powerful, they are not inevitable, and freeing oneself from the escalation of interpersonal and societal evil is possible.

Humility A second virtue that may help reduce conflict in relationships and societies is humility. Humility runs counter to egotism and helps diminish the gap between the victim and the offender’s perspective. We have recently proposed a model of relational humility that conceptualized humility from the perspective of a third party. Relational humility is an observer’s judgment that a target person (a) is other oriented; (b) is modest, being able to regulate selforiented emotions such as shame or pride; and (c) has an accurate view of self (Davis, Hook, & Worthington, 2008). We propose that humility can be most readily observed in three situations that threaten the hierarchy of a relationship: receiving honor or recognition, role-driven hierarchical relationships, and conflict (see Funder, 1995). When a member of a group is honored (e.g., a star on a sports team), other members may feel envy or jealousy, fearing their relationship with the honoree will change. Modest behavior by the star helps curb such reactions in observers. People in higher positional (or supervisory) roles (e.g., managers) have greater influence than do subordinates. Subordinates may fear exploitation by the manager. Humility helps leaders gain greater cooperation and trust from subordinates and helps create a more cohesive and effective team. Finally, related to the topic of the current chapter, humility can help curb the damage that conflict tends to have on relationships. Namely, conflict often causes a widening breach between the victim and offender. For example, the victim may appraise the transgression as a desecration, evoking contempt and disgust for the offender. Accordingly, the victim may see the offender as evil, as somehow a little less human. Negative emotions such as contempt predictably lead to a narrowing of focus. Humility counteracts this tendency for victims and offenders to hone in on their own perspective of a transgression. Humble individuals regulate negative emotions that cause them to narrow on their own perspective, including emotions such as disgust and contempt that cause them to see themselves as morally superior to the other.

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In addition, they cultivate other-oriented emotions that open their mind to the other person’s perspective. Accordingly, humility is essential for promoting forgiveness. Psychologists have developed psychotherapy groups and psychoeducational groups to promote forgiveness in victims (for reviews, see Baskin & Enright, 2004; Lundahl, Taylor, Stevenson, & Roberts, 2008; Wade, Johnson, & Meyer, 2008). Consistent with positive psychology, these interventions tend to use strategies that both decrease negatives (e.g., reducing rumination) and cultivate positives (e.g., empathy, gratitude, and compassion). Wade, Worthington, and Meyer (2005) reviewed over 40 psychoeducational interventions to promote forgiveness. They found that seven steps were common across the interventions that foster forgiveness from different theoretical vantage points. These steps included the five steps of the REACH forgiveness model (Worthington, 2006); the other two were (a) arriving at a common definition of forgiveness, and (b) including other interventions (like relaxation). Importantly, humility underlies each step in the REACH model of forgiveness, which is our research team’s structuring steps for promoting forgiveness in a psychoeducational format. Below, we describe each of the five steps and demonstrate how humility is involved in each. • Recall: Group members learn to recall (R) the offense differently. They learn to cultivate a greater appreciation for the limitations of their own memory and ability to see things objectively. They discover how victims and offenders tend to see the transgression in predictably different ways, and they learn and practice strategies of reducing rumination and viewing the offense more humbly. • Empathy: Participants learn to cultivate other-oriented emotions (an important feature of relational humility), especially empathy (E) toward the offender. Batson has shown that empathy actually promotes altruistic motivations for another person. They do several activities to cultivate empathy for the offender, such as the empty chair exercise, in which they imagine themselves having a conversation with the offender, acting out both perspectives. • Altruism: Next, they offer forgiveness as an altruistic (A) gift. They continue to cultivate other-oriented emotions, such as gratitude, that can help them experience greater emotional forgiveness. Gratitude has been found to be an especially powerful emotion. In one exercise, participants remember how they felt when they were forgiven for a very hurtful offense. They draw on feelings of gratitude and humility to help them forgive. • Commit and hold: The fourth and fifth steps help participants prepare for obstacles they will inevitably face when the leave the intervention. They are challenged to realistically acknowledge their limitations and plan accordingly, which requires having an accurate view of self. An example activity is that participants prepare themselves for the first time they see the offender again. Thus, they learn to commit (C) and hold

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(H) on to forgiveness by anticipating such challenges and planning to practice virtues of courage and perseverance.

Justice A third theme for counteracting evil with virtue is justice. Although research on justice has often focused on the victim’s perspective of justice, we are referring to justice as a virtue of a third party (e.g., mediator, legal system) in the role of mediating conflict between a victim and offender. A good mediator should prevent the escalation of evil within a society. There are various strategies to dole out justice (Worthington, 2009). Of course, a mediator could allow vigilante justice; however, unbridled revenge causes an escalation in conflict and violence in a society. Retributive justice refers to the strategy of using punishment to try to even out the suffering of the victim and offender. Restorative justice refers to strategies that keep the victim and offender involved in the legal process in order to allow the relationship to mend. Procedural justice refers to how justice is decided and whether that process is just. Mediation can occur at the relational or systemic level. A marriage counselor might mediate conflict at the relationship level. Distressed couples are often engaged in a downward spiral of rehashing transgressions (e.g., desecrations) and viewing each other through globally negative categories (e.g., evil). Ideally, the counselor helps both partners express their perspective more vulnerably, with less hostility and contempt. This allows an opportunity for partners to experience greater empathy for their partner, which will help initiate more positive trends in the relationship. One example of mediation at the systemic level occurs through the legal system. Even retributive justice systems strike a compromise between the victim and the offender’s perspective of justice. Rather than allowing the victim to pursue their own version of justice, the justice system indirectly reflects the values of the greater society. The legal system can inflict costs on victims if they resort to revenge. However, legal systems do not necessarily serve the best interests of offenders or victims. Legal systems may hurt the offender’s ability to change, making future evil more likely. For example, a felony conviction provides a public confirmation that a transgression has occurred. People may use the term felon to refer to someone of poor moral character. Although such stigmatization may deter crime, it also makes rehabilitation of inmates more difficult. Thus, some justice systems have begun exploring alternative approaches, such as restorative justice, that focus on mending relationships between the victim and the offender, which might help restrain future episodes of evil between individuals. Legal systems often cause harm to victims. Consider a typical course of a murder case in the United States. The so-called swift hand of justice tends to be rather slow. The case may take many years to weave its way through the court

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system. Wanting to avoid a guilty sentence, the offender is likely to show little remorse. Thus, if family members attend the trial, they may have old wounds agitated and new ones created, seeing the offender arrogantly attempt to absolve himself or herself from blame. The family members may have to wait many years before the ordeal actually ends and justice is served. Still, the sentence may not completely meet their view of ideal justice, causing them to feel unforgiveness toward the offender as well as other members who participated in the legal process (e.g., the jury members, judge, and lawyers). Given what we now know about forgiveness, even if the goal is to tailor the legal process more to victims’ (or the surviving families’) needs, there are likely other models that are more humane.

Courage A fourth theme related to counteracting evil is courage (for a review, see Pury & Lopez, 2009). Zimbardo (2007) argued that strong situations (e.g., authority and group norms) sweep people into doing evil. Heroic courage stands against such currents. Courage involves acting nobly, willfully, and thoughtfully in the face of personal risk (Rate, Clarke, Lindsay, & Sternberg, 2007). There have been numerous studies on people who have acted courageously, including kidney donors, volunteers in violent countries, Holocaust rescuers, winners of medals of bravery, and workers in dangerous occupations (Becker & Eagly, 2004; Cox et al., 1983; Fagin-Jones & Midlarsky, 2007; O’Connor et al., 1985). For the purposes of the present chapter, we are particularly interested in courage by third-party members to help moderate conflict and unforgiveness. Because third-party members are often aligned with one side or the other, they may exacerbate conflict rather than help resolve it. Traditionally, triangulation is considered an unhealthy pattern in relationships (Green, Burnette, & Davis, 2008). However, a wise third party works to counteract the natural trend of both sides to hone in on their own perspective, focus on desecrations, and view the offender as evil. They can skillfully offer support and empathy, which helps the victim (or offender) experience greater empathy for the offender (or victim). Being a mediator that cultivates humility requires courage, because people may feel angry if they perceive the mediator as being disloyal. We tentatively hypothesize that courage, like the enjoyment of evil, may occur gradually through a dual process (Baumeister, 1996; Solomon & Corbit, 1974). At first, when people lack confidence dealing with individuals conflict, they may experience anxiety and fear (A process). They may fall prone to tendencies to align with the victim (or offender). However, with wisdom and experience, a person may develop greater confidence in their ability to cultivate humility in the victim. As the A process fades with habituation, the person may experience greater confidence and self-efficacy (B process) in their ability to guide the victim toward forgiveness and perhaps reconciliation. Such courage is needed by people who deal with conflict between

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individuals, such as counselors, teachers, managers, professional mediators, or customer service employees. Even greater courage is needed to promote peace at the systemic or even societal levels.

CONCLUSION In the present chapter, we have sought to show the roles of positive psychology in combating evil. We defined positive psychology as the scientific study of eudaemonia—virtue for self and other. Virtue is the antidote for vice. Rather than simply holding evil at bay, virtue can provide positive directions for people to pursue goodness in addition to avoiding evil. We concluded by examining some particular virtues that might undo and redirect people from the evils that come about through interpersonal transgressions at the interpersonal or societal levels. By cultivating the good and promoting virtue, evil may be restrained.

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Lundahl, B. W., Taylor, M. J., Stevenson, R., & Roberts, K. D. (2008). Process-based forgiveness interventions: A meta-analytic review. Research on Social Work Practice, 18, 465–478. Mancini, A. D., & Bonanno, G. A. (2009). Predictors and parameters of resilience to loss: Toward an individual differences model. Journal of Personality, 77, 1805–1832. Nisbett, R. E., & Cohen, D. (1996). Culture of honor: The psychology of violence in the South. Boulder, CO: Westview. O’Connor, K., Hallam, R. S., & Rachman, S. (1985). Fearlessness and courage: A replication experiment. British Journal of Psychology, 76, 187–197. Pargament, K. I., Magyar, G. M., Benore, E., & Mahoney, A. (2005). Sacrilege: A study of sacred loss and desecration and their implications for health and well-being in a community sample. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 44, 59–78. Pargament, K. I., Trevino, K., Mahoney, A., & Silberman, I. (2007). They killed our Lord: The perception of Jews as desecrators of Christianity as a predictor of antiSemitism. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 46, 143–158. Park, C. L. (2010). Making sense of the meaning literature: An integrative review of meaning making and its effects on adjustment to stressful life events. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 257–301. Pury, C. L. S. & Lopez, S. (2009). Courage. In S. J. Lopez and Snyder, C.R. (Eds.), Oxford handbook of positive psychology (2nd ed., pp. 375–382). New York: Oxford University Press. Raiya, H. A., Pargament, K. I., Mahoney, A., & Trevino, K. (2008). When Muslims are perceived as a religious threat: Examining the connection between desecration, religious coping, and anti-Muslim attitudes. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 30, 311–325. Rate, C. R., Clarke, J. A., Lindsay, D. R., & Sternberg, R. J. (2007). Implicit theories of courage. Journal of Positive Psychology, 2, 80–98. Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Authentic happiness: Using the new positive psychology to realize your potential for lasting fulfillment. New York: Free Press. Seligman, M. E. P., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive psychology: An introduction. American Psychologist, 55, 5–14. Shults, F. L., & Sandage, S. J. (2006). Transforming spirituality: Integrating theology and psychology. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. Solomon, R. L., & Corbit, J. D. (1974). An opponent-process theory of motivation: I. Temporal dynamics of affect. Psychological Review, 81, 119–145. Staub, E., & Miller, A. G. (2004). Basic human needs, altruism, and aggression. In The social psychology of good and evil (pp. 51–84). New York: Guilford Press. Wade, N. G., Johnson, C. V., & Meyer, J. E. (2008). Understanding concerns about interventions to promote forgiveness: A review of the literature. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 45, 88–102. Wade, N. G., Worthington, E. L., Jr., & Meyer, J. E. (2005). But do they work? A meta-analysis of group interventions to promote forgiveness. In E. L. Worthington Jr. (Ed.), Handbook of forgiveness (pp. 423–439). New York: Routledge. Worthington, E. L., Jr. (2006). Forgiveness and reconciliation: Theory, and application. New York: Brunner-Routledge. Worthington, E. L., Jr. (2009). A just forgiveness: Responsible healing without excusing injustice. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. Zimbardo, P. (2007). The Lucifer effect: Understanding how good people turn evil. New York: Random House.

ch apter 1 6

Evil in Mind: Psychopathy and Anomalous Cognitive Processing Kevin J. Eames

The casual killer was a staple of the hardboiled American crime novel. In the novel The Moving Target (1949), author Ross Macdonald neatly describes such an individual as he sits, gun in hand, facing Macdonald’s protagonist, Lew Archer: Now that the gun was in his hand, ready for violence, his face was smooth and relaxed. It was the face of a new kind of man, calm and unfrightened, because he laid no special value on human life. Boyish and rather innocent, because he could do evil almost without knowing it. (p. 185)

Macdonald had written in a post–World War II world, where the optimistic Enlightenment promises of science and technology had found their darkest expressions at Auschwitz and Hiroshima. He had no qualms about identifying evil; contemporary psychology, however, has limited itself in its purview and hesitates to comment on ontological or metaphysical issues regarding evil. Prior to its full emergence into a science of behavior in the 20th century, psychology was often housed in departments of philosophy, where questions regarding good and evil were legitimate scholarly currency. However, as psychology strove to show itself to be every much as scientific as physics, it lost its voice in issues regarding good and evil. The ontological questions regarding the nature of evil were no longer subject to the narrowing lens of scientific psychology, which contented itself with descriptions of observable phenomena that could be operationalized as having evil outcomes. Beginning with psychophysics, and devolving to structuralism, functionalism, and behaviorism, American psychology found itself with greater and greater limitations in its ability to contribute to a holistic understanding of human

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behavior. Much like the radical behaviorist Professor Frost in the C. S. Lewis novel That Hideous Strength (1946/1996), psychology itself had become “condensed and sharpened . . . into the hard, bright little needle” that it was (p. 296). Though not a moral revolution, the so-called cognitive revolution widened psychology’s scope. Drawing on contributions from multiple disciplines including linguistics and computer science, this paradigm shift has permitted psychology to articulate human learning and behavior change with concepts like neural networking, while augmenting these conceptual schemas with brain-imaging technology like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and positron emission tomography (PET). Although these technologies do not contribute to a deeper understanding of the ontological nature of evil, they do demonstrate that psychology’s version of the casual killer described in Macdonald’s book—the psychopath—processes sense data differently than the general population. The most succinct operational definition of evil in the psychological literature may be found in the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), in the diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD; American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Synonyms of this disorder include psychopathy and sociopathy. The diagnostic criteria involve a singular set of characteristics that might be classified as “evil” symptomology: a pervasive pattern of disregarding or violating the rights of others, deceitfulness, poor impulse control, aggressiveness, a lack of regret or remorse for wrongs done to others, a pervasive disregard for the safety of oneself and others, and a refusal to conform to social norms (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Additionally, there is often evidence of the onset of conduct disorder prior to age 15. Those who exhibit the symptoms of ASPD are also likely to engage in substance abuse, pathological gambling, and other impulse control disorders. The DSM-IV describes these individuals as lacking in empathy, tending toward callousness, cynical, and demonstrating a contemptuous disregard for the suffering, feelings, and rights of others (1994). Additional phenomena have also been observed in individuals diagnosed with psychopathy, including anomalies in various neurochemical systems, underarousal of the autonomic nervous system even when presented with aversive stimuli, brain hemisphere anomalies, antisocial behaviors induced by lesions to the prefrontal cortex, difficulties in affect recognition, and anomalies in processing verbal information. Prior to the current diagnostic classification system, the psychiatric community was not shy about explicitly labeling pervasively antisocial behavior as immoral. The 19th-century predecessor of ASPD was “moral insanity,” which Dr. J. C. Pritchard identified as a form of insanity where the intellectual faculties were uncompromised but the moral faculties were “depraved

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and perverted” and the capacity for self-control was significantly impaired (Orazin, 2001). Nineteenth- and early 20th-century psychiatrists continued to recognize a kind of pathology where the individual appeared to function normally at an intellectual level, but engaged in pervasive acts of deviance. In Germany, J. L. Koch used the term “psychopathic inferiority” in 1888 to describe such individuals, and William A. White used the term “psychopathy” in a 1935 psychiatry textbook (Orazin, 2001). In the classic text The Mask of Sanity, first published in 1941, Cleckley used the term “semantic dementia” to identify psychopathy, describing it as “a discordance between linguistic and experimental components of emotion appearing as an incapacity to experience grief, shame, love, pride, or other emotions, although being able to verbalize emotions” (quoted in Herpertz & Sass, 2000, p. 569). Some personality theorists suggest a biological basis for antisocial personality disorder. The most prominent among these is Marvin Zuckerman (e.g., 2005) and his theory of sensation seeking. Zuckerman’s research categorizes people as either high sensation seekers or low sensation seekers; “people high in sensation seeking are in search of new, complex, varied, and exciting experiences” (Carver & Scheier, 2000, p. 167). Impulsivity is a central characteristic for high sensation seekers, who are thought to have difficulty constraining sensation-seeking impulses. Zuckerman differentiated between high sensation seekers who were social and those who were antisocial; the latter Zuckerman describes as “Impulsive Unsocialized Sensation Seeking (ImpUSS), which includes impulsivity, sensation seeking, autonomy, and aggression” (2005, p. 168), with a “strong attraction to sensory rewards, particularly intense and novel sensations” (2005, p. 209), suggesting the involvement of dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with the reward center of the brain. PET scan and fMRI scan studies performed on individuals with psychopathic traits also “suggest that neurochemical and neurophysiological hyper-reactivity of the dopaminergic reward system may comprise a neural substrate for impulsive-antisocial behavior and substance abuse in psychopathy” (Buckholtz et al., 2010, p. 419). The motivation toward impulsive unsocialized sensation seeking is also associated with varying levels of other brain chemicals. Low levels of monoamine oxidase (MAO) have been correlated with high sensation seeking, impulsivity, attention deficit and conduct disorders in children, and antisocial personality disorder in adults (Zuckerman, 1995). Persons with ASPD behavior correlates also show low levels of cortisol, released with the excitation of the stress response, high levels of testosterone, and low levels of serotonin (Zuckerman, 2005). Dabbs and Morris (1990) analyzed archival data related to over 4,000 U.S. military veterans and found a direct link between high testosterone levels and antisocial behavior, though it was moderated by socioeconomic status (SES), showing a weaker link between antisocial behaviors and testosterone among veterans at higher SES levels.

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Sensation seeking and its related correlates are associated with criminality (Klinteberg, Humble, & Schalling, 1992). In the Klinteberg et al. study (1992), 199 males ages 32–40 completed multiple inventories, including the Psychopathy Check List (Hare, 1980, cited in Klinteberg et al., 1992). Respondents were categorized into three groups on the Psychopathy Check List (PCL): low, medium, and high. Respondents in the high group also demonstrated associations with impulsivity, monotony avoidance, nonconformity, and suspicion. More specifically, respondents who had committed two or more criminal acts between the ages of 11 and 14 displayed higher scores on three PCL factors: sensation seeking and impulsivity, callousness, and narcissistic manipulation. One aspect of high sensation seeking and consequent psychopathy involves a muted response of the autonomic nervous system. When confronted with a threatening or aversive stimulus, the autonomic nervous system normally responds in proportion to the threat level by releasing the chemicals necessary to prepare the body to fight or flee. A muted autonomic response can explain the fearlessness and indifference to aversive consequences characteristic of persons with ASPD. Moreover, this lack of responsiveness inhibits a learned response to a conditioned stimulus (Herpertz & Sass, 2000); psychopaths are less likely to learn that antisocial behaviors have aversive consequences. In short, “data on underarousal have strong implications for basic features of psychopathy, such as fearlessness and poverty in emotional reactions” (Herpertz & Sass, 2000, p. 572). In an illustrative study, Benning, Patrick, and Iacono (2005) used a picture-viewing task that involved both a startle blink measure and a measure of skin conductance, or electrodermal activity. After factor analyzing scales from the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (Lilienfeld & Andrews, 1996), Benning et al. (2005) found two noncorrelated factors: fearless dominance and impulsive antisociality. The former involved content from the Social Potency, Stress Immunity, and Fearlessness subscales of the PPI, whereas the latter involved content from the Carefree Nonplanfulness, Blame Externalization, Impulsive Nonconformity, and Machiavellian Egocentricuty subscales. Participants scoring high on the fearless dominance scale were deficient in fear response startle as measured by their blink response. Similarly, participants high on impulsive antisociality were deficient in skin conductance magnitudes, and the highest scoring participants on fearless dominance showed a specific deficiency in skin conductance when shown aversive pictures as opposed to neutral pictures. Predictors of psychopathy are also evident in similar electrodermal studies with conduct-disordered children. In a pilot study conducted in 1985, Schmidt, Solant, and Bridger found that 11 children diagnosed with severe conduct disorder, often a precursor to psychopathy in adulthood, responded differently to a loud bell stimulus than 11 controls. The children with conduct disorder reacted with significantly lower electrodermal activity than their

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counterparts to the aversive stimulus, displaying an electrodermal profile similar to adult psychopaths. Convergent validity for emotional underarousal may also be found in discrepancies between performance and verbal scores on Weschler intelligence scales. Weschler notes that psychopaths often score significantly higher on the performance items than the verbal items of the intelligence scale (1958, cited in Walsh & Beyers, 1986). Walsh and Beyers (1986) tested juvenile offenders with a minimum of a 15-point difference between the verbal and performance scales and found that they had significantly higher profiles for antisocial behaviors. Their explanation is that the verbal scale is anxiety provoking and the performance scale is dependent upon short-term memory; normals taking both will experience the typical memory disruption associated with anxiety. Psychopaths are likely to respond with atypical underarousal, and therefore not subject to short-term memory interference when preforming tasks related to the performance scale. This emotional underarousal explains the scale discrepancy in the psychopathic test profile. There is evidence that damage to the prefrontal cortex is associated with antisocial behavior (Anderson, Bechara, Damasio, Tranel, & Damasio, 1999; Dolan, 1999). Dolan (1999) recalls the famous case of Phineas Gage, who suffered a catastrophic injury to the orbitoprefrontal cortex. After the injury, Gage’s behavior became markedly antisocial, in contradistinction to his preinjury personality, where he demonstrated himself to be conscientious and responsible. Similarly, Anderson and colleagues (1999) report on two case studies involving individuals who suffered early trauma to the prefrontal cortex: One had been run over by a vehicle at 15 months, and the second had a tumor removed from his right frontal lobe at 3 months. Both presented with marked and pervasive antisocial behaviors in early adulthood, despite lacking many of the environmental preconditions for psychopathy. As Anderson and his colleagues (1999) note, Both patients were raised in stable, middle-class homes by college-educated parents who devoted considerable time and resources to their children. In neither case was there a family history of neurologic or psychiatric disease, and both patients had socially well-adapted siblings whose behavior was normal. (p. 1033)

Although the patients were capable of functioning at a normal intellectual level, they were significantly impaired in making age-appropriate responses to social situations. Moreover, they both operated at a Kolhbergian preconventional level of moral reasoning typical of many 10-year-olds. Of particular note is the difference Anderson and colleagues (1999) observed between those with adult-onset damage to the prefrontal cortex and those whose damage occurred in early childhood. Although adult-onset patients suffered impairment, they

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were typically more restrained and less likely to exhibit the more blatant aspects of psychopathy; Anderson et al. reasoned that these patients “acquire varied aspects of socially relevant knowledge during normal development, and usually have had decades of appropriate application of such knowledge to social situations before incurring brain damage” (Anderson, Bechara, Damasio, Tranel, & Damasio, 1999, pp. 1034–1035). The implication, as Dolan (1999) points out, is that early-onset prefrontal damage results in a deficit in factual knowledge related to moral and interpersonal norms: “the crucial element may involve a deficit in representing the value of behavioral options that involve other people” (p. 928). In another study seeking to identify early psychiatric indicators, Anckarsater (2005) factor analyzed diagnostic features related to psychopathy and earlyonset childhood psychiatric disorders, including attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity disorder, Asperger’s syndrome, tic disorders like Tourette’s syndrome, and conduct disorder. Four factors emerged: executive dysfunction, compulsivity, social interaction problems, and superficiality. Anckarsater (2005) correlated these factors with a lifetime history of aggression score. He concluded that the relationship between childhoodonset psychiatric symptoms and levels of lifetime aggression was remarkable enough to warrant an assessment of these early-onset symptoms in forensic investigations. Another deficit in psychopathy involves the ability to recognize affect in facial expressions. Kosson, Suchy, Mayer, and Libby (2002) tested 34 psychopaths and 33 nonpsychopaths through the observation of slides with prototypic facial expressions. All of their subjects were male. The research was also designed to test three alternative hypotheses related to brain function: (a) Psychopaths are generally deficient at processing nonverbal emotional stimuli; (b) psychopaths are deficient in processing specific nonverbal emotions, like disgust, fear, or sadness; and (c) psychopaths’ processing deficiencies are limited to verbal information. The researchers also attempted to determine whether hemispheric abnormalities were related to deficits in nonverbal emotional processing. This also involved three alternative hypotheses: (a) right-hemispheric dysfunction; (b) reduced lateralization dysfunction, which involves the distribution of cognitive resources across hemispheres; and (c) reversed laterization. They found support for the specific emotional-processing deficit, specifically with the facial expression of disgust. This finding was consistent with an early finding by Forth (1992, cited in Kosson, Suchy, Mayer, & Libby, 2002), who found differences between psychopaths and controls with stimuli designed to induce disgust, and by Levenston and colleagues (2000, cited in Kosson, Suchy, Mayer, & Libby, 2002), who found that psychopaths failed to show a startle response to images depicting mutiliation. Kosson et al. (2002) found that psychopaths may have either deficits in the emotional-processing mechanisms in the right hemisphere or a “reduction in hemispheric asymmetry for processing emotion” (p. 407).

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Psychopaths also have singular attributes related to verbal functioning. In a study designed to test deficits in lateralization, Raine and colleagues (1990) conducted a verbal dichotic listening task with adolescents with and without psychopathic tendencies. A dichotic listening task involves producing separate verbal stimuli for each ear. Their findings suggested that “reduced ear asymmetry appears to indicate that psychopaths are less lateralized for linguistic processes” (Raine, O’Brien, Smiley, Scerbo, & Chan, 1990, p. 276). The researchers tentatively suggest that their findings are consistent with earlier findings by Hare and Jutai (1988, cited in Raine et al., 1990), who suggested that such cerebral asymmetry may explain why psychopaths show deficits in the use of cognitive strategies that depend on verbal processes active in the left hemisphere. Bernstein, Newman, Wallace, and Luh (2000) found deficits among psychopaths in left hemisphere activation and response modulation. The researchers began with the working hypothesis that psychopaths have deficits in responding to contextual or secondary cues, or modulating their response, once they are in engaged in goal-directed behavior, which involves the activation of the left hemisphere. Their study involved a serial recall task that engaged both the right and left spatial fields. According to their hypothesis, psychopaths would show significantly lower recall on tasks involving the right spatial field because the left hemisphere was already engaged in goaldirected behavior. The results supported their hypothesis, suggesting that social or affective cues that normals might notice in order to modulate socially inappropriate behavior were not noticed by psychpaths. In a revealing study, Gray and colleagues (2003) used a test typically used to assess implicit biases, the Implicit Association Test (IAT), to determine differences in implicit beliefs about violence among psychopathic murderers, nonpsychopathic murders, psychopathic convicted of other offenses, and nonpsychopathic convicted of other offenses. The methodology of the test involves measuring response time to the presentation of images with an incongruent response task. Their results indicated that “psychopathic murderers have diminished negative reactions to violence compared with non-psychopathic murderers and other offenders” (Gray, MacCulloch, Smith, Morris, & Snowden, 2003, p. 497), suggesting a singular cognitive measure of deviant social beliefs about violence among a subset of psychopaths who commit murder. If there is any good news in the study of psychopathy, it is that there appears to be evidence that a subtype of psychopathy involves the experience of anxiety. This would be anomolous for psychopathy, because one of its characteristic attributes involves emotional underarousal. In 1963, Van Evra and Rosenberg differentiated between primary and secondary psychopaths on the basis of ego strength as measured by the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), an instrument designed to assess psychopathology on

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multiple dimensions. Primary, or ego-syntonic, psychopaths showed lower scores on Manifest Anxiety and higher scores on Ego Strength; both scales are subscales of the MMPI. Secondary, or ego-dystonic, psychopaths showed higher scores on Manifest Anxiety and lower scores on Ego Strength, suggesting that they experienced ambivalence about their psychopathic tendencies. The lower Manifest Anxiety scores for the primary psychopaths in turn indicated no evidence of such conflict. In a more recent study, Raine, Venable, and Williams (1995, cited in Watson & Casillas, 2003) found that antisocial adolescents who demonstrated greater levels of autonomic arousal were less likely to become adult offenders than their counterparts. Similarly, “successful” nonconvicted criminal psychopaths showed marked differences from “unsuccessful” convicted criminal psychopaths on their level of autonomic stress reactivity and cognitive function (Ishikawa, Raine, Lenez, Bihrle, & Lacasse, 2001); the successful psychopaths had greater levels of cardiovascular reactivity and higher levels of executive function. There is also evidence that some perpetrators of violent crimes, though not necessarily classified as psychopaths, experience intrusive memories of the incident, with a small percentage meeting the diagnostic criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (Evans, Ehlers, Mezey, & Clark, 2007). In sum, these data all suggest that psychopaths demonstrate remarkably different profiles from normals. These differences involve neurotransmitter and hormonal anomolies, low levels of autonomic arousal, deficits in hemispheric lateralization and executive function, deficits in affect recognition, and, in cases of damage to the prefrontal lobes in childhood, the inability to learn social norms and patterns of behavior that would facilitate socially appropriate interpersonal interactions. It is clear that antisocial behavior is highly correlated with structural and functional anomolies in the brain. However, although it is descriptive, it leaves the question of responsibility and accountability unanswered. Personality disorders in general, and psychopathy in particular, are intractable and highly resistance to change. When a “cure” is considered, it is difficult to avoid thinking about the end of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, where the anti-establishment hero (and most likely psychopath), Randall McMurphy, is lobotomized (1962); to date, our culture has opted more for incarceration than the lobotomy. To consider otherwise on a institutional scale would invoke a nightmarish dystopia. The remaining question brings us back to the ontological issue of evil. Inasmuch as psychopathy is the way in which evil is operationalized on an individual level, why does the psychopath choose to do evil? If it is an issue of autonomic underarousal and a high need for sensation seeking, why not hang gliding, bungee jumping, or riding roller coasters? There are many ways in which an underaroused autonomic nervous system may be stimulated without resorting to cruelty or malice. Why is the latter chosen when the former is readily available? Perhaps G. K. Chesteron’s (1925) observation offers us a

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point of departure for such a question: “There comes an hour in the afternoon when the child is tired of ‘pretending’; when he is weary of being a robber or a Red Indian [sic]. It is then that he torments the cat” (p. 164).

REFERENCES American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed.). Washington, DC: Author. Anckarsater, H. S. (2005). Clinical neuropsychiatric symptoms in perpetrators of severe crimes against persons. Nordic Journal of Psychiatry, 59, 246–252. Anderson, S. W., Bechara, A., Damasio, H., Tranel, D., & Damasio, A. R. (1999). Impairment of social and moral behavior related to early damage in human prefrontal cortex. Nature Neuroscience, 2 (11), 1032–1037. Benning, S. D., Patrick, C. J., & Iacono, W. G. (2005). Psychopatthy, startle blink modulation, and electrodermal reactivity in twin mean. Psychophysiology, 42, 753–762. Bernstein, A., Newman, J. P., Wallace, J. F., & Luh, K. E. (2000). Left-hemisphere activation and deficient responde modulation in psychopaths. Psychological Science, 11 (5), 414–418. Buckholtz, J. W., Treadway, M. T., Cowan, R. L., Woodward, N. D., Benning, S. D., Li, R., et al. (2010). Mesolimbic dopamine reward system hypersensitivity in individuals with psychopathic traits. Nature Neuroscience, 13, 498–521. Carver, C. S., & Scheier, M. F. (2000). Perspectives on personality (4th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Chesterton, G. K. (1925). The everlasting man. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Cleckley, H. (1941/1982). The mask of sanity. New York: Plume: Dabbs, J. M., & Morris, R. (1990). Testosterone, social class, and antisocial behavior in a sample of 4,462 men. Psychological Science, 1 (3), 209–211. Dolan, R. J. (1999). On the neurology of morals. Nature Neuroscience, 2 (11), 927–929. Evans, C., Ehlers, A., Mezey, G., & Clark, D. M. (2007). Intrusive memories in perpetrators of violent crime: Emotions and cognitions. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 75 (1), 134–144. Forth, A. E. (1992). Emotion and psychopathy. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of British Columbia. Gray, N. S., MacCulloch, M. J., Smith, J., Morris, M., & Snowden, R. J. (2003, May 29). Violence viewed by psychopathic murderers. Nature, 497–498. Hare, R. D. (1980). The assessment of psychopathy in criminal populations. Personality and Individual Differences, 1, 111–119. Hare, R. D., & Jutai, J. (1988). Psychopathy and cerebral symmetry in semantic processing. Personality and Individual Differences, 9, 329–337. Herpertz, S. C., & Sass, H. (2000). Emotional deficiency and psychopathy. Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 18, 567–580. Ishikawa, S. S., Raine, A., Lenez, T., Bihrle, S., & Lacasse, L. (2001). Autonomic stress reactivity and executive functions in successful and unsuccessful criminal psychopaths from the community. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 110 (3), 423–432. Kesey, K. (1962). One flew over the cuckoo’s nest. New York: Penguin.

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Klinteberg, B. A., Humble, K., & Schalling, D. (1992). Personality and psychopathy of males with a history of early criminal behaviour. European Journal of Personality, 6, 245–266. Kosson, D. S., Suchy, Y., Mayer, A. R., & Libby, J. (2002). Facial affect recognition in criminal psychopaths. Emotion, 2 (4), 398–411. Levenson, G. K., Patrick, C. J., Bradley, M. M., & Lang, P. J. (2000). The psychopath as observer: Emotion and attention in picture processing. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 109, 373–385. Lewis, C. S. (1996). That hideous strength. New York: Scribner Classics. (Original work published in 1946.) Lilienfeld, S. O., & Andrews, B. P. (1996). Development and preliminary validation of a self-report measure of psychopathic personality Traits in noncriminal populations. Journal of Personality Assessment, 66 (3), 488–524. Macdonald, R. (1977). The moving target. New York: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard. (Original work published in 1949.) Orazin, L. (2001, May 18). Moral insanity: A brief history. Psychiatric News. Retrieved from http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/content/36/10/21.full. Raine, A., O’Brien, M., Smiley, N., Scerbo, A., & Chan, C-J. (1990). Reduced laterlization in verbal dichotic listening in adolescent psychopaths. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 99 (3), 272–277. Raine, A., Venables, P., & Williams, M. (1995). High autonomical arousal and electrodermal orienting at age 15 years as protective factors against criminal behaviors at age 29 years. American Journal of Psychiatry, 152, 1595–1600. Schmidt, K., Solant, M. V., & Bridger, W. H. (1985). Electrodermal activity of undersocialized aggressive children: A pilot study. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 26 (4), 653–660. Van Evra, J. P., & Rosenberg, B. G. (1963). Ego strength and ego disjunction in primary and secondary psychopaths. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 19 (1), 61–63. Walsh, A., & Beyer, J. A. (1986). Weschler performance-verbal discrepancy and antisocial behavior. Journal of Social Psychology, 126 (3), 419–420. Watson, D., & Casillas, A. (2003). Neuroticism: Adaptive and maladaptive features. In E. C. Chang, & L. J. Sanna (Eds.), Virtue, vice, and personality: The complexity of behavior (pp. 145–161). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Weschler, D. (1958). The measurement and appraisal of adult intelligence. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins. Zuckerman, M. (1995). Good and bad humors: Biochemical bases of personality and its disorders. Psychological Science, 6 (6), 325–332. Zuckerman, M. (2005). Psychobiology of personality (2nd ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Dealing CONSTRUCTIVELY with Sin and Evil: Biblical Psychology against Theology Matthew B. Schwartz, Kalman J. Kaplan, and Elizabeth Recht-Jones

This essay offers a biblical psychological approach to dealing with evil. The Hebrew Bible in essence demystifies evil as an abstract force and sees it as the product of human actions that can be atoned for and corrected. Two biblical narratives are examined as case studies: (a) the Israelites worshipping the golden calf, and (b) David slaying Goliath. The first narrative describes how perpetrators of bad behavior can recover from their sinful actions. The second narrative describes how victims of predatory and destructive force can disempower that force and survive. In neither case is evil idealized or worshiped. Biblical psychology offers three important principles to this end: (a) It can be self-defeating and even idolatrous to make sin or evil into a force independent of human actions; (b) it is important not to be paralyzed by an idea that people are subject to predetermined fate and cannot change; and (c) it is essential that people not give up hope, and not overinterpret or idealize negative events. The essence of this work is to offer a paradigm shift for mental health, in which biblical foundation narratives are offered as an alternative to the psychological foundation stories emerging from classical Greece. What differentiates this approach is that it sidesteps theology and employs these biblical narratives in a mental health context. Thus, we can offer Isaac rather than Oedipus, Ruth rather than Electra, and Jonah rather than Narcissus (Kaplan & Schwartz, 1993, 2008a, 2008b; Schwartz & Kaplan, 2004, 2007; Wellisch, 1954).

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In the biblical and rabbinic point of view, sin does not exist as an abstract concept or as a palpable force independent of human action, as in ancient polytheism. Sin is an act, not a state of being. However, people sometimes do act badly, and they can repent when they do. To be awed by evil is psychologically counterproductive whether one has been the perpetrator or the victim of a hurtful action. It is important to emphasize that this is one way in which Judaic views differ from certain Christian (and Pauline) views. The Third Commandment (Exodus 20:5–6) states, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God visiting the sins of the fathers on the children on to the third and fourth (generation) to those who hate Me. And showing kindness to the thousands (of generations) to those who love Me and keep My commandments. (See also Deuteronomy 5:9 and Exodus 34:6–7.)

Despite the widespread belief that the “Old Testament” God is a jealous God, jealousy is ascribed to Him only in dealing with idolatry. God has a special covenant with Israel that they should worship Him only and no other. The simple meaning of these verses is that the person who worships false gods sets up a bad situation that can entrap future generations. Most Jewish commentators interpret this as meaning that succeeding generations can be punished, but only if they continue the sins of their fathers. If people would mend their ways even after the fourth generation, God would accept this, but in the usual way of things, by that point, the bad behavior would be embedded so deeply as to become the norm, and change would be difficult. Also, Rabbi Bahya (13th century) points out that people often live to see a fourth generation. For this reason, the verse specifies the fourth generation. Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman (13th century, Spain) argues that by the fifth generation, the problems that began with the first have reached their denouement and are no longer in effect. Look at the next words in Exodus, too, which promise that goodness will be rewarded to the thousandth generation. Clearly, there is no notion here of a universal, indelible, and inherited sin. The Apostle Paul, in contrast, specifically ties the idea of the inheritability of sin into the concept of original and indelible sin, going back to Adam and Eve. “Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned” (Romans 5:12). Thus, because Adam and Eve fell into sin, the whole human race fell into sin. Sin is a congenital disease that presents itself in every human being born on the planet. Adam and Eve sinned, and they passed sin on to their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and beyond. “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive” (1 Cor 15:22). There is no escape from the human condition of sin except through

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the gift of divine grace. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). John Calvin (1960) is among many who interpret the verses from Exodus 34:6–7 as indicating the inheritability of sin: “it is to be understood that the Lord’s righteous curse weighs not only upon the wicked man’s head but also upon his whole family” (II, viii, p. 19). He offers several examples from the Hebrew Scriptures: Hezekiah’s sons will be sent into captivity (Isa 39:6–7) and “the houses of Pharaoh and Abimelech were afflicted for the injury done to Abraham (Gen. 12:17, 20:3, 18)” (Calvin, 1960, II, viii, p. 19). This is not, however, the traditional Jewish interpretation of the Exodus 20 passage, the Third Commandment. The simple meaning of these verses is that if people would mend their ways even after the fourth generation, God would accept this, but in the usual way of things, after that point, the bad behavior might be embedded so deeply as to become the norm and change would be difficult. However, such change is possible and may even be more likely when the original perpetrators have died off. The Talmud compares the companion verse in Exodus (34:6–7) to a verse in Deuteronomy, “fathers shall not die for the sins of their sons nor sons for the sins of their fathers” (Deut 24:16), meaning that the sons shall be punished only when they commit the same transgression. In any case, the verses do not at all indicate that a primal sin remains indelibly affixed on the descendants of the sinner. Nor is the sin when uncorrected seen as lasting through more than three or four generations. By then, too many other things have happened, and the sins of the first generations have often dissipated. Rabbinic writers debate whether Ezekiel indicates great change from the possible implication of Exodus 20 that children are indeed punished for the sins of their parents. The coming destruction of the Temple would take place in the time of people who were only partly responsible for the sins that led to it. Yet the decree of destruction affected the entire nation. Part of punishment of evil behavior is that it does affect children as part of a degraded society, not because of some abstract mystical inheritance. Ezekiel’s generation lived in a historical time of turbulence in the Middle East as Babylonians, Egyptians, Persians, and others fought constantly. Judean society had weakened morally during the 55-year reign of King Manasseh, although he personally tried to repent. In this view, God annulled Moses’s statement in Exodus through the prophecy of Ezekiel. Possibly, the idea of mutual responsibility for the sins of one another, including for the father to the child, was suitable to the community of Israel, which was closer joined while the Temple stood and when communal atonement and repentance could be accomplished through the Temple service. With the loss of the Temple, however, individuals had to take responsibility more for themselves and could rely less on community. Moses’s law needed

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to be amended, and Moses had been aware from the start that this was likely to happen. When the community was still intact, people could be heavily affected by the bad behavior of others. With the destruction of the Temple, each individual stood more unconnected and alone. To these new circumstances, Ezekiel said, “Whichever soul sins, it shall die, and not the children for the fathers” (Eisenmann, 1988, pp. 288–291). In any case, rabbinic sources see no hint of a concept of an inherited or original sin in any of this. For the Hebrew Scriptures, sin is simply to act contrary to the will of God. Sin can be corrected by mending the relationship between God and the people—by changing misbehavior. Indeed, God’s love is immense and far-reaching. For the ancient Greeks, on the other hand, sin is a demonic force, a tangible pollution that must be cleared out or eradicated. It can overpower an entire community and cannot be removed simply by repentance or correction but requires rituals of purification. Sometimes people can be redeemed from the power of sin only by rituals as extreme as the execution of a prisoner in the form of a scapegoat (Burkert, 1985, pp. 75–82). When a person flounders and fails in his own foolishness, shall he try to get up and go on? Does he have a right to try? The ancient Greeks did not usually think so. Often their most powerful mythical heroes failed, skewered by their own hubris and mortality, their fitful souls joining the miserable wraiths in Hades. Perhaps we can see this Greek sense in some of Paul’s statements regarding the existence of evil as an abstract and independent force in this world. The Hebrew Bible offers a different attitude. There is no hero. There are atonement and forgiveness and a better life. There is a support system orchestrated by God and including, in the golden calf story, Moses, a leader totally dedicated to his people. A person or a group can commit a fault that appears so serious that it can never be set right. Indeed, can anyone ever act so righteously as to repay God for all the benefits he bestows on humankind? Diogenes Laertius tells that Socrates was once describing to a student all the gifts that the gods bestow—light, warmth, and so forth. The student, struck by an almost existential sense of inadequacy, asked Socrates how can people pay the gods back. Socrates answered in a manner that reflects the wisdom of good observation and not of mythology, that although people cannot truly give back measure for measure, they can obey the gods, offer proper sacrifices, and use the gods’ gifts to the best of their ability. In this matter, Socrates as a brilliant and individual thinker proposed an idea much at odds with the usual Greek religion at that time. A biblical person, too, may wonder how to justify his existence. Can he ever live up to what God has given him and may expect from him? The Hebrew Bible does not accept any concept of innate or existential guilt. Yet a person can easily be stuck with the feeling that his deeds are inadequate and

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his life meaningless. For the heroes of Greek myth, no accomplishment or glory was ever enough to justify a person’s existence. The most dangerous and heroic and final act of all was to kill not merely one more enemy but one’s self. What can a biblical person do who has made a serious mistake and committed a major sin, whether toward God or toward people? Can he or she ever overcome what has been done? How can one ever face his Creator after having failed to carry through an important part of his earthly mission? These questions have troubled many thinking people at some points in their lives. It is a more existential worry than the midlife career and marital crises, which have drawn so much attention in recent years. Some philosophical systems have posited a worldview based on determinism in which a person’s success is determined by cosmic patterns and about which the person can do nothing. His life will lead him to heaven or hell with no serious opportunity for him to alter it. The ancient Greeks wrote of Fate, which likewise sets unalterably the process of one’s life and against which even the gods have little power. No wonder so many famous Greeks and Romans turned to suicide. The Hebrew Scripture introduces the concept of repentance, which was very new to the ancient world. God has ordained that a person who has sinned not only can but also must overcome his problem. He can be wholly reinstated and can fulfill his purposes in life. God loves people and wants them to master adversity and move on to fulfillment. This principle shows in a number of stories of the Hebrew Bible, particularly (a) the golden calf and (b) the combat of David and Goliath. In the first, the Israelites are the perpetrators of bad behavior. In the second, they are potentially victims of Goliath’s bad behavior. Healing in both cases depends on demystifying and demythologizing the behavior and the actor. This allows an overcoming of the problem in practical terms. How can a person free himself from the idolatrous worship of evil, done either by or to him or her?

THE ISRAELITES WORSHIP THE GOLDEN CALF: HOW TO HELP THE PERPETRATOR The Children of Israel, just led forth from generations of Egyptian bondage as the beneficiary of God’s love and of so many spectacular miracles, made for themselves a golden calf to lead them when Moses appeared to be late returning from his 40-day encounter with God on Mount Sinai. The people brought offerings to this golden image and feasted and cavorted before it. After so grievous a sin, how could this people ever again turn to God and regain his confidence and favor to carry forward their world mission of living the fully biblical life? This episode bore the potential to bring about a terrible

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destruction of the Children of Israel. Could God ever be reconciled to a people that had strayed so badly? In a larger sense, what does God expect of frail humanity? Is it within a person’s ability to overcome his own sins? The issue has turned up often enough in world history. Greek mythology and drama hardly had an answer. Not only was bad behavior damaging, but also even heroic accomplishment was never enough. Suicide occurs constantly as a most viable option both in the Greek theater and in real life. Even if a person tries to play the fatalistic game of life to the end, any slip can doom him, and even his successes can lead only to doom. Had Zeus been the god of Exodus 32, we would expect him to have struck the Israelites with his thunderbolt or planned some even more sadistic punishment. Yet, when Israel sinned, Moses was there to step into the breach and plead their case, turning a potential tragedy into something more like a family quarrel, which could end in greater intimacy and understanding than before. The Talmud suggests that the story of the calf sets a paradigm for the acceptance of the repentant (BT Avoda Zara 4b). “Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said, ‘Israel made the calf only to give an opening to those who seek an opening to repent.’” Rashi (1978), in his commentary on that text, explains that no sinner should think that his repentance will not be accepted. Repentance is a duty incumbent on every human being. It is necessary also, in this view, to understand and accept that people can err, but that they can and must correct themselves, and that God loves and supports them. What wrong exactly had the people committed with the golden calf ? Scholars debate whether the golden calf began as full idolatry or was perceived by the people more as a substitute for Moses, who had been away on the mountain for 40 days. In either case, things soon got out of hand, with people eating, drinking, and playing before the image. Commentators note the use of the word harat (etched) describing the forming of the calf. The stone tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments are described in the same term, harut, or etched on the stones. The word can also mean freedom, perhaps indicating that these people newly freed from Egyptian bondage initially found the demands of God’s Law too restricting. Yet true freedom could come only through the discipline of the acceptance of God’s commandments. God told Moses, who was still on the mountain with him, what the people had done. “This people whom you brought up from Egypt have made a molten calf and worshipped it and are saying, ‘these are your gods, O Israel who brought you up from Egypt’” (Exodus 32.8). “And now leave Me and let my anger burn in them, and I will finish them off, and I will make of you a great nation.” Moses understood this correctly as an invitation from God to plead for his people. Moses now entreated God, offering three reasons not to destroy the Israelites:

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1. Why should God be so angry with this people? Is it perhaps to be expected that, after all they had been through, there would be some difficult adjustments? 2. One reason for bringing the Israelites up from Egypt in so spectacular a manner was so that the peoples of the world would be strongly impressed by God’s greatness. Now the Egyptians would demean God, saying that he took the Israelites from Egypt only to destroy them in the mountains: “Refrain from doing evil to your people” (32.12). 3. Moses recalled Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to whom God had sworn to build their descendants into a great nation. Moses’s plea made the point, and God turned from the evil that he had spoken to do to his people (32.14).

After averting God’s immediate anger at the Israelites, Moses returned down the mountain to the camp, acting strongly to bring the situation under control. He ground the golden calf to dust, showing how powerless it actually was. Then, enlisting the support of the Levites, he slew many of the guilty and with God’s approval smashed the tablets containing the Ten Commandments that God had given him. The next day, he returned up the mountain to try to seek full atonement for the sin. His plea to God was direct and truthful: “Please! This people has sinned a great sin and made themselves a god of gold. And now please forgive their sin, and if not, then erase me from Your book which You have written” (32:31–32). Moses put his whole life on the line for the sake of his people. What meaning would life have if he could not help them? Moses did not seek empty fame or honor, nor did he value the idea of establishing a “legacy” that had no meaning. Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman holds that Moses was offering himself to bear the punishment of his people, as though he were saying, “I will bear the burden of their punishment.” But God answered that only one who sinned would be blotted out from his book. Moses should continue to lead the people, and God would send his angel with them, though He himself would be less close. “And God plagued the people because they had made the calf which Aaron had made” (32.15). A Midrashic passage (Exodus Rabbah 44) portrays well a rabbinic approach to the relationship between the patriarch predecessors and their descendants. In this portrayal, original sin plays no role. On the contrary, the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have established a wonderful relationship with God and His world on which later generations can stand. The Israelites sinned with the golden calf, and Moses pleaded for them. Most important in his presentation was that God should remember Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. These are not ancestors whose sin brought unending guilt or tragedy on the world or even on their children. Instead these ancestors, despite a mistake here and there, continue to exert a loving, benevolent influence through the generations.

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The Midrash records a number of points raised by Moses in his plea to God seeking atonement and forgiveness after the sin of the golden calf. 1. Just as a grapevine grows better from old, dead wood, so the Jewish people flourish rooted on their patriarchs, although they are no longer alive. 2. The 10 tests that God put to Abraham will nullify his descendants’ breach of the Ten Commandments. 3. If the Children of Israel are worthy of death or exile, remember that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have already faced these challenges successfully. 4. The patriarchs were entitled to great and immediate rewards for their righteous deeds. However, instead, they postponed the rewards so that their children could benefit later. 5. Moses reminded God that he had promised the patriarchs to multiply their progeny like the stars of the heavens and the grains of sand by the sea. Now, he may not annihilate them. A 19th-century glossator (Etz Yosef) suggests that Moses meant to point out that perhaps the Israelites’ sin relieved God of fulfilling his promise. However, the patriarchs will worry about their descendants, so God should help those descendants even if they are not fully worthy. 6. Moses reminded God that he was willing to save the wicked city of Sodom from destruction if there were as few as 10 righteous people there. Among the Israelites, too, there are 10 righteous people—Moses, Aaron, Elazar, Itamar, Phinehas, Caleb, and Bezalel, added to the three patriarchs.

Yet, another passage in the Talmud (Makkot 24a) states that Moses said that the sins of the fathers would affect the sons, and centuries later, the Prophet Ezekiel amended, What do you want? You who use this proverb on the will of Israel saying “The fathers eat unripe grapes and the sons’ teeth become blunt.” As I live, the words of my Lord God, “There will no longer be among you those who use this proverb in Israel.” (Ezekiel 18:1ff.)

God’s anger lessened, and he later came to Moses and told him that the people should go on to the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but God would send his angel to drive out the Canaanites and would not help the Israelites directly. The people were not ready at that moment for greater intimacy with God. They heard and were contrite, which they showed by removing the ornaments (zayan) that they had worn since Mount Sinai. Their contrition was genuine, and the text goes on to portray a picture of restored calm, the people standing at the doors of their tents and watching Moses walk to and from the Tabernacle each day, and the Cloud of Glory descending over him as he spoke with God as though face to face.

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Moses had intervened successfully to save his people and to bring about an almost idyllic interaction with God. Now Moses sensed that the moment was ripe for more. He approached God, “If I have found favor in Your eyes, please make Your ways known to me, and I will know You” (Exodus 33.12). Moses may have been asking for insight as to the deeper meaning of life and of man’s relationship with God (Rashi, Exodus, 33.12). When Moses saw that God’s response was favorable, he went on to ask that God himself be with the Israelites as they journeyed on (32.17). When God granted this as well, Moses continued, “Show me please Your glory” (32.18). God agreed to this, too, and as Moses stood in the cleft of the rock at Horeb, God granted him the immense vision of his 13 attributes of mercy (34.6–10), and God made a new covenant with the Israelites, promising to do great things with them beyond what any nation had ever experienced. Thus the sin with the golden calf brought about, in the longer term, a deeper and more intimate relationship between God and Israel. Repentance may require a support system. When the Israelites sinned with the calf, it was Moses who intervened with God to reconcile His relationship with His people, and who also punished the guilty. Moses was wholly dedicated to his people, just as his stepmother, the Egyptian princess, had been to him (R. Chaim Shmuelevitz, Sichot Musar, 1980), and it was Moses too who guided the people through their difficulties and induced God to teach him his 13 principles of kindness and forgiveness. Sin is not inevitable, nor does it need to be removed as though it were some physical infection. The pattern of the world is not immutable. The Midrash suggests (Exodus Rabbah 43.4) that God had vowed to destroy the calf worshippers, but Moses, as it were, nullified God’s vow. When a person or a nation sins, he must look deep into his heart and change his pattern. However, the sin does not create an evil entity that cannot be erased except by a cosmic activity of compensation. Another Midrashic parable tells of a farm laborer who planted a vineyard for a king, and the first grapes turned out sour. The king was ready to destroy the vineyard, but the farmer told him that it was natural for the early grapes to be sour and that the later crops would be good. Similarly, Moses persuaded God to wait and see that the Israelites would learn to do better. Sin thus simply needs correction. It is not necessarily a drastic sign that the perpetrator ought to be destroyed (Exodus Rabbah 43.10). It is remarkable that later, after the Israelites had erred in accepting the negative reports about the Land of Israel from the spies (Num 14), Moses pleaded with God in a manner very similar to his pleas after the golden calf. He again reminded God that if God destroyed the Israelites in the wilderness, the nations would attribute it only to His being unable to take them safely through the wilderness and to overcome the gods of Canaan.

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It is as though God became angry at the Israelites, and Moses needed to remind God of their important historical mission—to let all the world know that God is the creator and ruler of the world. The Israelites, whatever their failings, had already begun on this mission. The patriarchs had established the relationship with God that had been visibly renewed in the exodus, the giving of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai, and other recent events. God accepted Moses’s pleas: “I have forgiven them according to your word” (Numbers 14:20). The pattern of forgiveness for error is confirmed and strengthened. People are not perfect, and they will err, but correction, improvement, and forgiveness are possible and necessary. God’s plan for human history can proceed. The line of history will not move forward rigidly straight and without glitches, nor does it need to. More importantly, God and Moses made clear that human error and evil are neither innate nor irreparable. People can sin without destroying their historical mission. In a sense, sin is overrated. It is generally worse to leave a sin uncorrected than to have committed the sin in the first place. One does more damage to his life’s work by believing himself to have failed and to have thereby become distant from God than to have actually failed or sinned. To recover from a sin can be easier than to recover from a feeling of failure and worthlessness, which was a foundational part of the spies’ experience when they felt they were no more than little insects in the sight of the powerful Canaanites, whom God had commanded them to conquer (Num 13:33). The report of 10 of the 12 spies showed their fear. Even though their report clearly displayed the plenty of the land of Canaan, the 10 spies’ fear and misinterpretation of the facts they brought back led to a crisis for the whole nation. Despite the courageous and faith-filled minority report of Joshua and Caleb, the people accepted the majority’s viewpoint of themselves—and, by extension, the rest of the people of Israel—as insects in the eyes of the Canaanites. The people saw themselves as powerless. Because of their smallminded view of themselves, they believed they could not conquer the land. Just as the 10 spies had a poor self-image, so did the people of Israel.

DAVID SUBDUES GOLIATH: HOW TO HELP THE VICTIM Let us now turn to our second case—demystifying the bad behavior of another and overcoming its potentially paralyzing effects. The famous duel between David and Goliath is more than the tale of the victory of a plucky young lad against a giant warrior. It is also a confrontation between two views of strength—the Hebrew Bible’s and the Greek epic’s. The giant Goliath was a Philistine, the people who conquered the Gaza area about 1200 BCE. They were one of a group called the Sea Peoples of which different branches had overrun the Hittite Empire and much of Phoenicia and had almost destroyed

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Egypt at about the same time. These Sea Peoples, including the Philistines, seem to have been recipients to the Aegean tradition of Homeric-style warriors. Goliath is a spiritual descendant of the Iliad’s Achilles and Ajax. He is a fighter who devotes himself to the search for military glory. Fighting and winning are his life. The Philistines and Hebrews were constantly at war. On one occasion, the Philistines invaded Israel, and King Saul gathered his army to meet them. As the two armies faced each other, the giant Goliath stepped forth from his own ranks to challenge an Israelite champion to single combat. He was huge, and his armament was impressive. In the true form of an Iliadic hero, Goliath heaped verbal abuse on the Israelites. They are “slaves” (1 Samuel 17:8). “I scorn the ranks of Israel.” The Israelites are cowards. If no one comes voluntarily, let them pick one man to face the giant (1 Sam 17:10). It was part of the warrior’s plan to frighten his opponent and to build his own reputation—what is termed trash talking in today’s vernacular—almost like heavyweight boxers before a big fight. Saul and his army were overwhelmed with fear. No one felt ready to fight Goliath in single combat, nor could they seem to develop any other strategy. They allowed themselves to be trapped in Goliath’s game plan and to be demoralized. At this point, David came to the Israelite camp, bringing food and other things for his brothers in King Saul’s army. Goliath had been coming forth daily, morning and evening, for 40 days to hurl his challenges and abuse at the Israelite army, whose morale steadily declined. David saw how terrified the Israelites were. They told David about Goliath and how he “scorns Israel,” and that the king had promised to enrich the man who could defeat Goliath. The winner would marry the king’s daughter, and his family would be free of taxes (1 Sam 17:25). David, however, was a more original thinker, and his answer showed that he understood a certain reality that his countrymen did not. The promised rewards were not the issue to David. The question was “who will smash the Philistine and remove the humiliation from Israel, for who is this uncircumcised Philistine that scorns the ranks of the living God” (1 Sam 17:26). David saw this not as a challenge match between gladiators but as a battle between the Philistine lifestyle, which failed to recognize God, and that of the Israelites, whose entire world was God centered and for whom circumcision was a sacred mark of a life of special dedication. When David said this, the people could only repeat their earlier assurances of material rewards. His own brothers expressed their irritation with him (17:28). David nevertheless continued to voice his opinion, and finally he was called before Saul. David offered to fight the giant. Saul did not understand: “You cannot go to fight against this Philistine. For you are an inexperienced lad and he is a warrior trained from youth.”

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David replied with a story of how he slew a bear and a lion that had attacked his sheep, “and this uncircumcised Philistine is like one of them, for he has scorned the ranks of the living God” (17:34–36). David thus expressed his belief that God rules the world, and nothing happens by chance. His fights with the animals attacking his sheep had helped prepare him for his encounter with Goliath. He convinced Saul that God was with him, and Saul consented reluctantly to allow David to fight Goliath. “And Saul said to David, ‘Go and God be with you’” (17:37). What made David think he could actually defeat this fearsome warrior? Was he delusional? Was he relying on a miracle? David, as a devout Israelite, certainly believed in miracles. Yet here, David did not seem to have felt that there was a need to change the course of nature in order to win. David understood something that the other Israelites had forgotten—the importance of the mental and spiritual elements in warfare. He seemed to have correctly sized up the braggadocio of Goliath, whose spirit could not match his muscles. David knew too the value of a slingshot in battle, even against a heavily armed professional warrior. Did either David or Goliath know the story of the archer Paris standing in safety on the ramparts of Troy and slaying the mighty Achilles? David picked up five stones and approached the Philistine. Goliath seemed a bit nonplused by his challenger. While David moved directly toward him, the giant walked more hesitantly with his armor bearer in front of him. He heaped derision on David’s youth and good looks. He was surprised and befuddled—indeed, almost insulted. “Am I a dog that you come to me with sticks?” (17:43). Why did Goliath refer to himself as a dog? David must have sensed Goliath’s inner weakness. Like many macho bullies and like the typical Homeric hero, Goliath had, in fact, a very poor self-image. “Come to me and I will give your flesh to the birds of the sky and the cattle of the field” (17:44). Goliath continued. David understood that Goliath was concerned about his lack of mobility under the heavy armor. He heard too that Goliath was befuddled, as “cattle” do not eat meat. David replied very directly. “You come to me with sword, spear and shield, and I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the ranks of Israel whom you have scorned.” This was not to be a battle between warrior champions but between two ways of life. David assured Goliath that he would cut off his head and would leave his corpse “for the birds of the heaven and the beasts of the earth” (beasts this time, not cattle). Victory is in the hands of God, and does not depend on military panoply. With that David charged at a run straight toward Goliath and the Philistine army. While moving, he slung a stone at Goliath and hit him in the head, killing him. Slingers were an important arm of ancient armies. It would not have been unusual for David to have been expert in the use of the sling. It is probable too that had he missed the first shot, he would have had time for several

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more. David was not relying on miracles. He was acting on a very intelligent plan and knew exactly what he was doing. However, this was not only a matter of the young shepherd outwitting a great warrior, as the crafty Odysseus outwitted his enemies in the Iliad and the Odyssey. David’s entire concept of the world was different. Compared to this, Goliath was a brute who floundered in situations where he could not overwhelm his opposition with machismo. His self-concept collapsed when he was challenged. David, on the other hand, did not depend on macho brutality like Goliath and Ajax. He had a deep feeling for God and his own people, and his self-concept was in good shape. This enabled him to overcome the feeling of paralysis that Goliath had engendered in the Israelite ranks, the same paralysis that the spies experienced when they felt they were no more than little insects in the sight of the powerful Canaanites, whom God had commanded them to conquer (Num 13.33).

IMPLICATIONS FOR BIBLICAL PSYCHOLOGY The demystification of sin and evil seems essential to a useful and practical biblical psychology. In our first case, Moses’s prayer points the way to overcoming the sense of paralysis endemic to having “sinned.” It sets the stage for a dynamic relationship between God and the people that allows atonement for bad behavior through concrete human actions. When God did forgive the people, it was at Moses’s behest, after both the calf and the spies. God had taught Moses about his 13 attributes of mercy and forgiveness, and Moses effectively reminded him of some of these after the sin of the spies (Num 14:18). Certainly the people had sinned with both the calf and the spies. Yet they also learned and established a pattern for all history of how to respond to their own failures. They did not have to become heroes like the warriors of Greek myth. Nor did they have to become subservient, self-destructive martyrs to gain God’s approval. They needed to return to God and to renew their acceptance of the role he gave them in the great mission of world history. The story of David and Goliath illustrates overcoming a paralyzing sense of inadequacy. To Goliath, war was a means of achieving glory and expressing control and power. He was a bully. However, no victory could ever bring him more than a momentary thrill. His deeper fears and confusions remained as painful as before. For David, war was a practical means of preventing enemies from disrupting the purposes in life for which humans were created—creativity and good works in both intellectual and practical matters all in the service of God. David’s self-concept stemmed from his awareness that God loved him unconditionally, and he did not need to seek grandiose and destructive ways to express himself. This healthy self-concept enabled him to free himself from Goliath’s hold. He sidestepped victimhood.

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Sometimes a patient will come to treatment feeling that he has no significant strengths in his personality. He feels unworthy of being loved and incapable of serious work. He sees himself as either an incurable victimizer or a victim, when in fact both views are inaccurate and rub salt on the wound of his/her original situation. It is especially surprising that often the person has a great deal going for him. He may be sensitive, kind, intelligent, resourceful, and likable. Why does he discount all his attributes, instead focusing on his limitations? He mistakenly sees his sensitivity as weakness, his kindness as foolishness, his intelligence as uselessness, and his resourcefulness as trickiness. He may admit that he is likable but for no good reason. This orientation may be a consequence of the experience of nonconstructive parental criticism of any imperfection on the part of the patient as a child. Our approach with this person is to provide a therapy that will help him to accurately assess both his strengths and weaknesses. Such an approach is necessary to make him feel good about attributes he previously discounted. The therapist can find in the biblical stories of Moses and the golden calf and of David and Goliath constructive practical guides to help the patient overcome his idealization of the wrong he has done to others or others have done to him. People can and do change, and are not destroyed by past actions. In conclusion, we can draw several important lessons and guides from the Hebrew Bible and biblical psychology toward dealing with bad behavior and in not becoming enraptured with the problem of evil as an abstract force. 1. It can be self-defeating and even idolatrous to make sin or evil into a force independent of human actions. This tends to compound the damage wrought by bad behavior. People sin, but they can atone for their act, repent, and grow. This applies not only to the performers of bad behavior but also to the victims of it. Agag, Pharaoh, Haman, and Hitler were all terrible people, essentially cowardly bullies who should be dealt with summarily. Their actions are not to be magnified or reified. One’s own negative actions are not to be idealized, but atoned for. People must not view sin or evil as abstract cosmic forces. As stated before, sin and evil are overrated. 2. It is important not to be paralyzed by the idea that people are subject to predetermined fate and cannot change. They, indeed, can grow and change. First, however, they must refuse to accept their status as victim or victimizer. The Israelite exodus from Egypt is a prime example in this regard. The Israelites threw off both the physical and spiritual bondage they experienced in Egypt. Just as a victim must transform through faith into a positive survivor, so through repentance must a victimizer transform himself. From the point of view of the Hebrew Scriptures, one is not held hostage by such misdeeds.

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3. It is essential that people not give up hope, and not overinterpret or idealize negative events. Moses remains faithful to God in extreme circumstances (see Numbers 4), and David remains faithful when running from Saul (1 Samuel). The story of Job is paradigmatic in this regard. First, Job loses his great wealth; next, all his children are killed. Still, Job reaffirms his faith in God. Finally, Job is inflicted with severe skin inflammations all over his body, and he takes a potsherd to scrape at his boils as he sits in the ashes. By this time even Job’s wife urges him to “curse God and die” (Job 2:9). Though he is deeply grieved, he reaffirms his relationship with his Creator: “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (13:15). Job does not fall into the trap of idolizing his misfortune and taking his life.

The story of Zeno of Citium offers a striking contrast. Zeno, a Stoic, catastrophizes the relatively innocuous mishap of stubbing his toe into a sign from the gods that he should die. He exaggerates a minor mishap into a major disaster, and overinterprets a small misfortune. Job is able to withstand his far greater misfortunes because he never gives up his belief that he has been created by a merciful God in His own image. He does not reify evil or become paralyzed by the idea that he is a sinner. He holds onto his faith in his Creator and survives, and ultimately he thrives once again.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This work has been developed into an ongoing online educational program, created conceptually by Kalman Kaplan while on a Fulbright Foundation Grant at Tel Aviv University and further developed by Professor Kaplan and Elizabeth Jones as part of a project funded by the John Templeton Foundation at the University of Illinois College of Medicine (see www. rsmh.org).

REFERENCES Babylonian Talmud. (1978). New York: NP. Bahya b. Asher. (1995). Midrash Rabenu Bahya. Jerusalem: NP. Burkert, W. (1985). Greek religion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Calvin, J. (1960). Institutes of the Christian religion (Ed. J. T. McNeill). Philadelphia: Westminster. Eisenmann, M. (1988). Yechezkel. Brooklyn: Mesorah. Hamisha Humshei Torah. (1978). New York: Shulsinger. Hanoch Zundel. (1990). Etz Yosef on Midrash Rabbah. Jerusalem: NP. Holy Scriptures. (1955). Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America. Jones, E. R. (2010). Suicide prevention or life promotion? A biblical way of dealing with life’s darkest times. Journal of Christian Nursing, 27 (3), 2–7.

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Kaplan, K. J., & Schwartz, M. W. (1993). A psychology of hope: An antidote to the suicidal pathology of Western civilization. Westport, CT: Praeger. Kaplan, K. J., & Schwartz, M. W. (2008a). A psychology of hope: A biblical response to tragedy and suicide. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Kaplan, K. J., & Schwartz, M. W. (2008b). The seven habits of the good life: How the biblical virtues free us from the seven deadly sins (2nd ed., softcover). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Midrash Rabbah. (1994). Jerusalem. New Oxford annotated Bible, New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha (3rd ed.). (2001). New York: Oxford University Press. Schwartz, M. W., & Kaplan, K. J. (2004). Biblical stories for psychotherapy: A sourcebook. Binghamton, NY: Haworth Press. Schwartz, M. W., & Kaplan, K. J. (2007). The fruit of her hands: A psychology of biblical women. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Shmuelevitz, C. (1980). Sichot Musar. Jerusalem: NP. Wellisch, E. (1954). Isaac and Oedipus: A study in biblical psychology of the sacrifice of Isaac, the Akedah. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

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Existential-Integrative Perspectives on the Psychology of Evil Louis Hoffman, Helen Juliett Warner, Christine Gregory, and Steven Fehl

I am not predicting doom. But I am stating that if we ignore evil, we will move closer to doom, and the growth and triumph of evil may well result. —Rollo May (1982, p. 20) Evil is a controversial, and often shunned, topic in contemporary culture and professional psychology. This is especially true within humanistic psychology which tends to see people as being basically good. Existential psychology, which is often considered a branch of humanistic psychology, creates more space for the concept of evil. This basic tension is an important, although not absolute, distinction between those identifying themselves as humanistic versus existential. As both emphasize human potential along with limitation, this distinction is more a matter of degree than a definitive line in the sand. This tension is best represented in the historical dialogue between Rollo May and Carl Rogers in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology. May (1982), in response to an article by Rogers, invited the optimistic Rogers to dialogue about the importance of considering evil. He maintained that Rogers’s theory and approach to therapy was weakened by not paying more attention to the darker side of humanity including the potential for evil. Rogers (1982) largely rebuffed May’s invitation, giving only a brief response. Roger’s response, more in quality than content, seems to suggest that he does not think this is an important or necessary issue for humanistic psychology. The neglect of evil in the humanistic literature, as well as the

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psychological literature at large, further presupposes that it is an unnecessary conversation. When examining the history of the psychology of evil, there are justified reasons for psychology to be wary of entering this discussion.

WHY THE CONCERN? Historically, evil has been the domain of religion, which presented evil as an external metaphysical reality (Hoffman, Patz-Clark, Looney, & Knight, 2007). The presence of evil in the world was ascribed to the influence of the devil or demons. This conception of evil is one that psychologists are skeptical about for obvious reasons. Most psychologists and psychiatrists, with the notable exception of M. Scott Peck (1985), have been hesitant to endorse this externalization of evil. Another contributing factor to the concern about evil is the misuse of this term in many political and social settings. The rhetoric of evil can be used to label groups of people or individuals for political, social, or security reasons (Keen, 1991). As Keen explains, this has its basis in a projection process by which an individual projects their own unacceptable impulses onto others, then labels them evil. It is easier to label that which individuals do not accept about themselves as evil after it is projected, as opposed to when it is recognized as part of the self. Keen states, “In the beginning we create the enemy. Before the weapon comes the image. We think others to death and then invent the battle-axe or the ballistic missiles with which to actually kill them. Propaganda precedes technology” (p. 198). He continues, Instead of being hypnotized by the enemy we need to begin looking at the eyes with which we see the enemy, . . . We need to become conscious of . . . “the shadow.” The heroes and leaders toward peace in our time will be those men and women who have the courage to plunge into the darkness at the bottom of the personal and corporate psyche and face the enemy within. Depth psychology has presented us with the undeniable wisdom that the enemy is constructed from denied aspects of the self. (Keen, 1991, pp. 198–199)

Evil, in this scenario, is primarily, though not necessarily exclusively, the result of projection and not an external reality. The true heroes that Keen refers to are those who are willing to look inward and acknowledge their own potential for evil instead of living in a deluded sense of goodness. Projection and sometimes displacement form the basis for some of the most hideous abuses of evil in contemporary society such as hate crimes against groups and individuals. Unacceptable aspects of the self, which could be tendencies such as laziness or anger, or aspects of the individual such as sexual orientation or skin color, create an internal tension and form the basis of self-loathing or disgust. The related feelings, qualities, and tendencies are then projected upon a group of individuals, such as Latino/as or lesbian, gay,

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bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) individuals. These groups, or individual representatives of the groups as a whole, become the source of hate, anger, and rage, often leading to discriminatory actions or even hate crimes. Frequently, the use of the word evil is used in the rhetoric against these groups. This same process happens with individual scapegoats or identified patients in various work, family, or social systems. At this point, it is important to consider a distinction between common religious and psychological perspectives on evil. Understanding projection as a basis for much rhetoric about and labeling of evil says nothing about an external or metaphysical aspect of evil. With some evident exceptions such as those noted above, psychology has remained silent on this issue. Although it could be appropriate for a theorist to take a position on metaphysical aspects of evil, it is important for the field of psychology as a whole to remain neutral. Committing to a metaphysical stance on evil would be a mistake that would exclude many clients and professionals with different beliefs, including different religious beliefs. Although there is a place for the integration of specific religious beliefs with psychological theory, this should be done by specified perspectives clearly identified as such and should not be done by the field at large. In discussing projection as a cause of what gets labeled as evil, we are not discounting or endorsing a metaphysical position on evil. Rather, we are advocating for a need to understand the psychological, social, and systemic aspects of evil as it is understood for the purpose of this chapter. If there is a direct metaphysical cause for some evil, it cannot account for all the evil in the world. Given the gross misuses of the concept of evil, it makes sense that psychologists are wary of using this term. It may be preferable to replace the word evil with new or alternative terminology that does not carry the same baggage as the word evil does. Although we do not fault people for taking this position, and are highly sympathetic with their intentions in doing this, we also believe there are important reasons for redeeming the word evil.

REDEEMING EVIL Our purpose for setting an agenda to redeem evil is directly connected to the misuse of this term. If evil can be redeemed from the misuse of the extremists, hopefully it will limit the effectiveness of rhetoric utilizing the label of evil as a call to arms. In other words, it is precisely because “evil” has been so misused that we believe it is essential to talk about the psychology of evil. By redeeming evil, we mean that there needs to be a concerted effort to take back the term from those who misuse it as a tool or weapon against various individuals and groups. Redeemed evil understands evil as something in which everyone retains the potential to participate. Individuals ought not to understand evil as an

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external reality that has nothing to do with them. Rather, the potential for evil is inherent in the human condition. How it is conceptualized and defined will continue to vary, but it is essential for prevention of misuse that evil is conceived of in a manner that recognizes the potential for evil in everyone, as well as the potential for good. This potential is not solely due to the influence of an external metaphysical force, but rather is inherent in the human condition.

DEFINING AND CONCEPTUALIZING EVIL FROM AN EXISTENTIAL-INTEGRATIVE PERSPECTIVE Evil was an important topic for many influential existentialists including Rollo May (1969), Ernest Becker (1968, 1973, 1975), Victor Frankl (1959/1984), and Stephen A. Diamond (1996). Few other branches of psychology and philosophy have dedicated as much attention to the concept of evil as the existentialists. Despite this, their contributions have been overshadowed by the dominant religious conceptions and the social psychology perspective developed primarily through the writing and research of Phillip Zimbardo (2004, 2007). For the purpose of this chapter, and a proposal for broader usage, we suggest the definition that evil is any violence, hatred, or destruction aimed at individual people, society, or nature, including processes intended to lead to these activities. This definition is suggested, in part, because it is sufficiently specific to limit many misuses of the term while remaining open to various conceptions of the origins of evil. As suggested from the earlier discussion, evil is typically located (a) within the individual, (b) within the cultural or social systems, or (c) as an external metaphysical reality. The suggested definition allows for all three to potentially be correct or understood as one source of evil. From this perspective, it is now possible to develop an existential-integrative conceptualization.

ERNEST BECKER AND EVIL Becker provides an important, penetrating conceptualization of evil that originates in The Denial of Death (1973) and comes to fruition posthumously in Escape From Evil. For Becker, death is the central human problem that is exacerbated by constant denial of its reality. By not confronting the reality of death, it is empowered, leading individuals to a position where they must create complex denial systems. But the reality of death does not go away. Becker (1973) borrows from Freud’s system to understand how this denial of death impacts humans psychologically. Essentially, Becker says that Freud’s structure was correct, but what he placed in the central role was wrong. Sex, in Freud’s system, should be replaced with death. Becker is sympathetic to

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Freud’s mistake; after all, sex was highly repressed in Freud’s Victorian era and this repression undoubtedly was the source of psychopathology. Freud’s system, too, was largely correct; he just erred in what he connected to the libido. This criticism of Freud is not completely fair, as Becker recognizes, because toward the end of his life Freud balanced the life instinct, symbolized in sex, with the death instinct. The paradox or tension between the life and death instincts provide a broader conceptualization of human condition than what is represented in much of Freud’s work. Just as sex becomes a more practical concept if it is interpreted symbolically, Becker’s death, too, has broader applicability when understood symbolically. Death can be conceived as a symbol of all human limitation. What humans struggle with accepting is not just the reality that they will someday die and give up their human form, but also their broader finite nature that renders them limited in knowledge, power, and influence. In Escape from Evil, Becker (1975) extends this conception to his understanding of evil. For Becker, evil is the human inability to accept their finiteness. Again, Becker focuses more on literal death in his writing, but the concepts are easily applied more metaphorically to all human limitation. This conception is illuminating when integrated with Erik Erikson’s (1950) developmental stages. In the final two stages, Erikson purports that individuals first face generativity versus stagnation. The primary concern here is passing something on to the next generation. The final stage is ego integrity versus despair in which healthy individuals synthesize their life meaning. A strong link can be made between these two final stages, particularly if individuals connect passing something on to the next generation as an important part of meaning. Individuals in their last stages of life who have not attained a meaningful narrative of their life are faced with three primary options. First, they may use this final stage to reexamine their life, recognize their shortcomings, and attempt to redeem their life. Facing death is redemptive for many individuals, as is illustrated in the life changes many face with near-death experiences. Second, some individuals will turn to despair. For these individuals, the final days are dark and dreary. Although these individuals are difficult to be around because of their intense sadness and anger, they are preferable to the third alternative. Many individuals unable to attain a synthesized meaningful narrative of their life develop a strong, malignant desire to force an attainment of meaning. Becker (1973) discusses a similar process, although not as malignant, in Freud’s psychoanalysis. It is well known that Freud was very protective of psychoanalysis, often ostracizing and cutting off relationships with individuals who would not submit to orthodox interpretation and practice. According to Becker, this was Freud’s immortality project or attempt to deny death. In a very real way, Freud was successful. It is hard to imagine a time when the name or influence of Freud will disappear. What is distressing is the high price Freud paid

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for this type of immortality. It cost him many friendships, drove away many adherents to psychoanalysis, and caused him immense suffering. In the end, it was Freud’s need to force his immortality through psychoanalysis that caused harm. Had Freud developed a healthy, meaningful narrative of his life, he may have been able to lessen his hold on psychoanalysis and accept his finitude. This is not to say that Freud was evil, as indeed we are not purporting that evil is an appropriate label for people or organizations. Rather, it is saying that Freud’s immortality project led him to participating in evil, something that we all do at times to greater or lesser degrees. Death can redeem individuals, but death can also drive them to evil. The acceptance of death and human limitation is necessary for healthy, ethical living and dying. It is not death that is evil, as many would assume, but rather how death is faced. Becker (1973) summarizes the relationship between death, evil, and psychological health: What is the ideal for mental health, then? A lived, compelling illusion that does not lie about life, death, and reality; one honest enough to follow its own commandments: I mean, not to kill, not to take the lives of others to justify itself. (p. 204)

MAY AND DIAMOND: EVIL AND THE DAIMONIC Rollo May is the key figure in introducing the concept of evil to existential psychology. His key concept for understanding evil is the daimonic (May, 1969), which derived partially from Jung’s concept of the shadow (Diamond, 1996). According to May (1969), the daimonic is “any natural function which has the power to take over the whole person” (p. 65). The daimonic is not necessarily a destructive force; rather, it often serves to fuel creativity, vitality, and health. The daimonic is potentially healthy or destructive, good or evil. However, in placing the daimonic in this context one should not assume that the daimonic, or evil for that matter, is the opposite of good. Such a dualistic oversimplification of evil confuses more than it illuminates. How an individual interacts with and uses the daimonic is what carries the potential for evil. May believed that our current period of history is particularly sensitive to the misuse of the daimonic. Before postmodernism was introduced into intellectual and popular discourse, May (1969, 1991) described with impressively penetrating insight what now could be understood as the paradigm shift from the modern to the postmodern period. His concern was not leaving modernism or the introduction of postmodernism, but rather the loss of myth during the transition between phases. This created a unique potential for the expression of evil: “Our age is one of transition, in which the normal channels for utilizing the daimonic are denied; and such

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ages tend to be times when the daimonic is expressed in its most destructive form” (May, 1969, p. 130). This same type of discord, and its corresponding expression of evil, occurred in the transition from the premodern to modern phases. The 1650s are often cited as the approximate time of the transition from premodernism to modernism (Hoffman & Kurzenberger, 2008); however, as is evident, such a significant paradigm shift requires many decades of preparation and adjustment. In the years prior to and immediately following the shift from premodernism to modernism, the tension between the old guard of religion and the new guard of reason and science led to the crusades, inquisitions, witch trials, and trials of scholars such as Galileo. These great evils surely can be connected with the challenge to meaning and loss of myth, the great meaning systems of old. Myths, in this sense, represent a healthy channeling of the daimonic into sustained meaning systems. The loss of myth unleashes the daimonic and, without alternatives to creatively challenge this energy, it often finds expression in evil acts. History teaches that the challenges associated with postmodernism’s deconstruction of modernism will again bring the daimonic to the surface in collectives and individuals. This is evident in contemporary times through the loss of myth, which May discussed and warned about. Individuals, as well as cultures and societies, must deal with the daimonic. Whereas May introduced the daimonic, no one has done more to develop the term and relate it to the psychology of evil than Stephen A. Diamond (1996). A central theme for Diamond is personal responsibility, integrity, and awareness in the face of the daimonic: Integrity is unity of the personality; it implies being brutally honest with ourselves about our intentionality. Since intentionality is inextricably bound up with the daimonic, this is never an easy, nor always pleasant pursuit. But being willing to admit our daimonic tendencies—to know them consciously and to wisely oversee them—brings with it the invaluable blessing of freedom, vigor, inner strength, and self-acceptance. (1996, p. 233)

As we will demonstrate, this elucidation of personal responsibility provides an important expansion and corollary to the external social and cultural influences in the expression of evil. In order to understand awareness and personal responsibility in existential thought, attention first must be given to tension between freedom and destiny, particularly as it relates to the internal and external influences of behavior. For May (1981), the freedom–destiny paradox is central to the human condition. This paradox demonstrates that humans are free as well as limited or determined. The limits of freedom include both nature (i.e., genetics and biology) and nurture (cultural, social, and familial influences).

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Another important strand of destiny, or limitation, emerged from the writing of Otto Rank (1931/1936). Rank, elucidating what is a standard psychoanalytic principle with an existential twist, believes that which influences individuals of which they are not aware has control over them. In addition to nature and nurture, Rank focuses on the role of the unconscious. Nature and nurture can be located in the conscious or unconscious, either way contributing to human limitation. For Rank, the unconscious is inclusive of varied aspects of life experiences. Consistent with Ecker and Hulley’s definition, the unconscious is understood “broadly to encompass all cognitive, emotional, and somatic contents, states, and processes that are outside of awareness” (p. 3). Rank (1931/1936) creates an important parallel to the more contemporary writing of Diamond (1996). Rank’s conception of the unknown, unconscious, or subconscious influences on individual’s control bears similarity to what Diamond refers to as “daimonic possession.” In other words, to paraphrase from May’s (1969) definition of the daimonic, any natural process relegated to the realm of the unconscious has the potential to control us, which could be called daimonic possession. The daimonic is often connected to repression and constriction. Repression, or keeping information from conscious awareness, fuels the daimonic through not acknowledging its influence. Constriction is broader. Schneider (2007a) states that “constriction is the perception of drawing back and confining psychophysiologically. . . . Constriction . . . is signified by the perception of retreating, restricting, isolating, falling, emptying, slowing, or in short, reducing the psychophysiological capacities” (p. 39). Although constriction may fuel repressive processes, it can be conscious or unconscious. Often, it is intentional. The constricted individual is afraid of his or her expansive potential and freedom, and so holds back. Individuals often are not aware of this occurring, or at the least they are not aware of what causes the anxiety driving the process. This illuminates an important crossroads in the intersection of evil, responsibility, and ethics. For Diamond (1996), personal responsibility requires self-awareness. Similarly, Rilker (1997) connects awareness and the unconscious to ethics. If biological, environmental, and the unconscious influences are relegated to the unconscious, allowing them greater influence over the individual, this creates a situation where it is impossible to be fully responsible or ethical. This statement requires some reinterpreting of “control” and “ethical” away from the absolutes in which they are often conceptualized. As the freedom–destiny paradox demonstrates, individuals are always more or less controlled. Freedom is never absolute; however, it is irresponsible and arguably unethical to then maintain that humans are not free. Similarly, being ethical cannot be reduced to simply stating that an individual is ethical or unethical, or even acting ethical or unethical. In

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many situations, individuals may be more or less ethical rather than ethical or unethical in an absolute sense. Indeed, being absolutely ethical would indicate that one is fully self-aware; however, it is widely recognized that the fully analyzed or aware person is not a realistic possibility. This creates an interesting place for the role of depth psychology in contemporary culture. The various depth psychologies, defined as those that take seriously the role of the unconscious (or subconscious) and self-awareness, have been criticized for not being cost- and time-effective as treatment models. Insight, whether cognitive or experiential, was similarly discounted as unnecessary in providing successful therapy. If the alleviation of symptoms is the only concern, this is a valid, but limited, critique. However, if self-awareness is connected to responsibility, ethics, and morality, and these are deemed as valuable pursuits of therapy, then this falls best under the realm of depth psychology. It could even be argued that there is an ethical mandate for depth psychology for those seeking to live more ethical and responsible lives. In the present context, depth psychotherapy is necessary to limit and prevent evil.

AN EXISTENTIAL PERSPECTIVE ON NEEDS FRUSTRATION Needs frustration is attributed as a common cause of evil in the psychology of evil literature (Baumeister, 1997; Baumeister & Vohs, 2004; Hoffman et al., 2007; Staub, 2004; Zimbardo, 2007). Two types of needs can be distinguished: physical and emotional. Zimbardo (2007) refers to the needs for comfort as contributing to evil. For example, various research examples illustrated that heat contributes to increased rates of violence. Although many theorists acknowledge the role of physical needs, it would be difficult to defend this as accounting for all or most violence. When combined with social needs, such as real or perceived oppression, its explanatory power increases but is also diluted given the other contributed social factors. Emotional needs, such as those for security and relationships, can be understood as related to the primary existential givens (Hoffman et al., 2007). The existential givens include (a) death and finitude; (b) freedom, responsibility, and the will; (c) isolation and relationship; (d) meaning; and (e) emotion and embodiment (Hoffman, 2009). Death, human limitation, and meaning were reviewed in the discussion of Becker. The other givens can be approached similarly. The denial of these needs fuels the daimonic through relegating them to the unconscious levels. However, frustration of these needs at the conscious level also contributes to the daimonic and the potential for violence. For example, it is common to hear real or perceived rejection (i.e., isolation, and frustrated attempts at relationship) identified as a cause of violence, including spousal violence.

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To this point, we have focused on intrapersonal contributions to evil and how this relates to self-awareness, ethics, and responsibility. However, if we were to end the discussion here, it would be stopping short of a more complete understanding of evil. Where the existential literature falls short is in developing a comprehensive understanding of the social creation of evil. The existential literature does recognize a social aspect of evil; however, its authors have not taken the initiative to develop this.

ZIMBARDO: HOW PEOPLE BECOME EVIL Zimbardo (2004, 2007) identifies his viewpoint as a situational approach to the psychology of evil, as opposed to the dispositional approach. The dispositional approach locates evil within the individual. Various dispositional approaches exist, including those that locate evil in biology (nature), the influence of personal history (nurture), or the personality. Although Zimbardo’s situational approach does not discount personal influences or responsibility, it locates the primary cause of evil as social and cultural, similar to Carl Rogers. This approach continues to have a good deal of empirical support (Zimbardo, 2004, 2007). Given the amount of theory and research that Zimbardo and other social psychologists have developed, it is hard to discount the social role in evil. However, this does not mean that there are not also personal factors that play a primary role. Several social factors contribute to the power of the system in the situationist approach, including role expectations, contextual issues, cultural forces, and systemic influences (Zimbardo, 2007). In The Lucifer Effect, Zimbardo acknowledged that he neglected the systemic forces in much of his previous research and writing. The system is distinct from the broader situational forces in that it entails a system with more distinct boundaries. For example, businesses, organizations, and political systems would have distinct systemic influences. Hoffman et al. (2007) state, Systems are intoxicating. Individuals often find themselves immersed in systems with their behavior heavily influenced by the power of the system without even recognizing they are acting in ways inconsistent with their values, beliefs, and typical behavior patterns. They are lured into acting as sheep giving up their own autonomy and values to conform to the external pressures. When these individuals later recognize what occurred, they are too entangled to easily disengage. (p. 26)

Systems often intensify situational influences, particularly when systems become highly enmeshed and resistant to feedback. Zimbardo’s (2004, 2007) social psychological theory of evil complements the existential perspective. Similar to how the existentialists have neglected the development of the social or systemic side of evil, Zimbardo has neglected

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a more comprehensive intrapersonal understanding of evil. It is not that Zimbardo denied personal responsibility or an intrapersonal role in evil; this just has not been his focus. Acknowledging the power of situation forces does not excuse the behaviors evoked in response to their operation. Rather, it provides a knowledge base that shifts attention away from simplistic “blaming the victim” mentality and ineffective individualistic treatments designed to change the evil doer, toward more profound attempts to discover casual networks that should be modified. (Zimbardo, 2004, p. 47)

Later, Zimbardo continues to acknowledge there are a small number of “heroes” or exceptions, however rare they might be: “The situationist approach redefines heroism. When the majority of ordinary people can be overcome by such pressures toward compliance and conformity, the minority who resist should be considered heroic” (p. 47). Although approaching it from a very different perspective, this quote bears similarity to the previous quote from Keen on heroes. Unfortunately, Zimbardo’s description of the hero lacks the depth and sophistication of his analysis of the system. But, again, this was not Zimbardo’s primary concern. The existentialists agree with Zimbardo’s message on the conformity being too commonplace; however, they differ in locating the source of the conformity. Whereas Zimbardo and the social psychologists focus on the power of the social or situational influences, the existentialists emphasize what is lacking in the individual allowing him or her to conform. A middle ground between these two extremes, which recognizes the power of the collective without diminishing the potential of the individual, is needed. This, too, would provide a powerful corrective to one of existentialism’s greatest mistakes: aligning with an extremist individualist position. Nietzsche’s (1892/1954) powerful lament, “No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse” (p. 18), speaks to the same condition of which Zimbardo voices concern. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche’s lament is primarily concerned with human condition and the lack of courage and authenticity with which most people live. Later existentialists, such as May (1981), Frankl (1959/1984), and Rank (1931/1936), developed the idea that people are as free as they become. The most powerful illustration of this is in Frankl’s (1959/1984) book Man’s Search for Meaning. As he discusses the psychological condition of prisoners in the concentration camps, the situationist influence is evident in both the guards and prisoners; however, Frankl chooses to focus more on the “heroes,” or exceptions, compared to Zimbardo. Here is where the existential perspective has much to offer the social psychological viewpoint. Probably more than any other school of thought in

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psychology, existentialists have focused on an analysis of this heroic and its counterpoint of conformity. It is concerned with, as May (1981) illustrates, how to set people free or help them become freer. A compromise between the fatalistic situationist and the tragic individualist perspectives provides the greatest hope for standing up to evil in an effective manner.

AN EXISTENTIAL-INTEGRATIVE CONCEPTION OF EVIL The central thesis of the chapter thus far is that combining an existential understanding of evil integrated with a social psychological perspective provides a more comprehensive theory of evil than has previously been developed. This recognizes the interpersonal, social and cultural, and personal elements of evil. The most influential situationist, Zimbardo (2004, 2007), and the major existential thinkers (Becker, 1968, 1973, 1975; Diamond, 1996; May, 1969) agree that there are situational and dispositional factors influencing the development of evil. They also agree that individuals should be held responsible for engaging in evil. We agree with the situationists that social or situational forces are often the primary agent in creating evil actions. Where we differ is in locating the nature or force of this problem. For Zimbardo, the answer is in the power of the system. We propose that it is the conformist mentality of individuals that gives this power to the system and then the system serves as a self-reinforcing agent. The system plays a primary role in creating and maintaining this conformist mentality. In the end, it is difficult to deny the pervasive power of the social forces, along with the need to address systemic issues, when attempting to reduce the power of the conformist mentality. Conformism needs to be replaced with community if success is to be obtained in decreasing the amount of evil in the world. Community, as opposed to conformism, is not opposed to the individual and requires accountability. Both radical individualism, an error existentialists have often made, and conformism are common contributors to the production of evil. Healthy individualism rooted in relationship and community integrates individual and collectivist mentalities, becoming one of the best safeguards against evil. Zimbardo (2007), instead of integrating a more balanced perspective, chose to offer a regular apologetic: Throughout this book, I repeat the mantra that attempting to understand the situational and systemic contributions to any individual’s behavior does not excuse the person or absolve him or her from responsibility in engaging in immoral, illegal, or evil deeds. (p. xi)

Our critique of the limitations of Zimbardo’s work is not intended as a criticism. If a large systemic change is to occur, it will be necessary for

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people to be chanting the mantra of the situationist approach loudly at every opportunity. The focus on individual blame is too strong and the influences of the systems too pervasive for change to occur simply by focusing on the individual level. Limiting his discussion of the personal factors, which he acknowledges that he does, allows for his voice to be stronger in helping people recognize the social forces of evil. At the same time, the situationist approach is stronger and will be more effective in implementing change when it better understands the role of the individual. We hope to complement the situationist approach, not contradict it, in delineating the individual factors. Second, the situationist reality is not a necessary one. Nietzsche’s (1892/1945) lament, “No shepherd and one herd!” (p. 18), is so powerful because he recognizes that this is not the way it ought to be, nor the way that it has to be. Unfortunately, Nietzsche frequently errs on the side of radical individualism in attacking conformity. A balance between individual and collectivism, which rightly challenges the dangers of conformism, could help create a broader social situation in which systemic powers are tempered. They will never completely desist; they are part of human nature. However, the more conformism is replaced with community in the context of an increasingly self-aware population and culture, the more individuals and systems will be empowered to restrain evil.

APPLICATIONS The existential-integrative model presented thus far combines the existential writings of Becker (1973, 1975), May (1969), and Diamond (1996) with the social psychological perspective of Zimbardo (2007). As a theoretical model, this can be integrated into working with clients who have had experiences with evil, or the potential for evil. In this section, we will discuss how this understanding of evil can be applied when working with individuals who are victims of evil and actual or potential purveyors of evil. Several related themes can be applied, including (a) the role of intrapersonal self-awareness, (b) personal responsibility, (c) awareness of social influence and personal limitation, (d) reinvesting in relationships and community, (e) accepting limitation and ambiguity, (f) creative integration of the daimonic, and (g) creating or discovering meaning.

VICTIMS OF EVIL Given our broad definition of evil, everyone could be considered a victim of evil. Evil, which is a form of trauma, is a pervasive reality in the world that has both direct and indirect negative impacts on all people (Serlin & Cannon, 2004). Because many victims of evil who have not appropriately dealt with their hurt become purveyors of evil, it is important to help people work through

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their hurts and wounds. Although the most severe wounds result from those who may be described as daimonically possessed, the severity of the wound is not the only issue to consider. The response to having been wounded is equally as important as the wound itself. Being a victim is rarely absolute. Victims are also agents, capable of responding to their situation. Additionally, there are times when victims co-create the context or setting from which evil emerges. This should not be confused with the actual evil acts. Too often, people identify partial blame for full blame in regard to victims. For example, when one partner engages in the process of escalating a fight that results in domestic violence, it does not make him or her responsible for their partner’s violent behavior. It merely states they were responsible for participating in creating the context that increased the likelihood of the violence occurring.

Responsibility Issues of responsibility must be approached cautiously, particularly when dealing with the more dramatic and invasive wounds such as rape, violent crimes, and abuse. Often, when therapists approach the issue of responsibility, clients are left feeling responsible or blamed for the abuse and the suffering resulting from the abuse. Therapists should not approach this issue recklessly or too quickly in therapy. Oftentimes, therapists should wait until a solid therapeutic alliance is developed and some less severe conflicts have been worked through in the therapeutic relationship. Additionally, this issue should not be broached in a session unless there is sufficient time to process it as there is an increased possibility of conflict when dealing with this issue. The key issue in working with the responsibility of the victim is to help them accept appropriate responsibility for their response to the evil, while not accepting inappropriate responsibility for the act. At times, there may be some responsibility appropriate for contributing to the context that elicited the action, such as when they contributed to the escalation of anger in a situation that resulted in violence; however, this, again, should be approached cautiously to not suggest they were responsible for the actual choice to initiate physical violence.

Power and Powerlessness Responsibility requires awareness. For victims of evil, there is a paradoxical element to responsibility that is particularly difficult to navigate. First, victims need to recognize their own lack of power and the power of the system. This often brings a healthy distrust of people, and the world in general. The world is no longer a safe place to be. Initially, this serves as a healthy protection against being revictimized; however, if it remains too

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long, it serves to isolate and protect the wounded state instead of moving toward healing and reintegration. The second part of the paradox is recognition of one’s own power: power in responding, power in decreasing the chances of revictimized, and power in bringing meaning to their suffering. Frankl (1959/1984) provides some of the most penetrating examples of recognizing personal power in situations where it is easy to perceive one’s self as powerless. Even in the midst of the concentration camp, where freedom was limited and life was constantly threatened, Frankl maintained that one still had the ability to choose their attitude and how they would respond to their situation. He argued that often the choice made influenced whether individuals consciously sought death, unconsciously sought a passive death, or live despite the intense pain and suffering. If an individual’s power is not addressed, individuals often become trapped in a cycle of despair and their own constrictive processes. Responsibility, and recognition of one’s power, are necessary to overcome this despair. However, if an individual’s powerlessness is not recognized and addressed, it is easy for them to respond too powerfully or expansively. For example, some victims respond through connecting their rage with their feelings of power, leading them to engage in their own evil and destructive acts. This often is the case in individuals who seek revenge that equals or surpasses the initial act of violence against them. The therapist’s presence is essential in helping the client experience their power and powerlessness, and their constrictive and expansive potentialities (Schneider, 2007b). Through the therapist recognizing and being present with both potentialities, the client is drawn toward being present with them, too. It is often not necessary to confront, interpret, or rationally convince the client of their paradoxical potentialities. Rather, by remaining present with them and softly reflecting their presence, the client begins to experience these differently, as less threatening.

Attunement and Processing Stolorow and Atwood (1992) place attunement as central for understanding trauma reactions. From an intersubjective perspective, this explains why some seemingly insignificant events become traumatic, whereas other more dramatic events seem to have limited long-term impact. The easiest example of this builds from childhood. If a parent helps a child to understand and put their experience into words, as well as helping them feel understood (i.e., empathy), the pain of the traumatic event becomes more manageable and can be processed. This prevents the event from having the more extreme long-term consequences as well as preparing them to be able to manage later traumatic events.

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When parents do not help their children to develop understanding and do not offer empathy, even the seemingly minor traumatic events can develop into long-term problems (Stolorow, 2007; Stolorow & Atwood, 1992). This explains why for some individuals seemingly minor childhood events have more long-term consequences than some bigger traumas. Many wellintentioned parents do a good job helping their children process bigger hurts while not taking some of the smaller events as seriously. Thus, these smaller, and seemingly insignificant, events have greater impact. In other words, trauma by nature is an intersubjective reality, and the degree of long-term impact is more about the response than the traumatic event. Adults, too, need to process trauma. The basis for this is established through parental or caregiver relationships providing resiliency to later trauma; however, later contexts and opportunities to process are necessary. This intersubjective perspective fits well with the existential viewpoint. Schneider (1998, 2003, 2007b) emphasizes the role of both encounter, which entails a special category of relating, and experience, which entails a type of experience beyond mere cognitive understanding, as essential in the therapy process. Both of these are particularly important when dealing with the victim of evil. Many individuals who have been subjected to evil disengage from themselves through detachment from others and withdrawal. Attunement, encounter, and processing help individuals prepare to reengage with others and with the community or world at large. Too often, however, therapy stops short. It is essential that therapy, after working through the pain in a one-toone setting, helps people take the final step of reengaging in the world and relationships.

Integration and Meaning Serlin and Cannon (2004) state, “Every trauma that we experience shatters our sense of coherence and meaning” (p. 314). An essential process in working with victims of trauma and evil is to assist them in recreating meaning systems. Parry and Doan, from a narrative therapy perspective, state, The importance of the re-vision phase of the therapy cannot be overemphasized. It is one thing to be a catalyst in the deconstruction of client’s or families’ mythology: it is another to provide them with the opportunity to revise their stories in such a way that these will be more in line with what they want. To omit the re-vision process is to leave the clients in a state of “psychological free fall.” (p. 45)

The deconstruction related to trauma occurs through trauma that collapses the meaning systems, through an active therapy process of deconstructing

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established systems, or both. A traumatic event that is perceived as the result of evil can be particularly challenging to one’s worldview. Narrative, social constructivist, humanistic, and existential therapists all agree that it is necessary to reconstruct, or reenvision, meaning. They differ, however, on what this means. For existential and humanistic therapists, encounter and experience are necessary in addition to the cognitive component more emphasized in the narrative and social constructivist perspectives. Although narrative and postmodern therapists emphasize the co-creation or co-construction of meaning systems, which alludes to relationship, this remains a largely cognitive and dialogical process that does not include the depth of experience in an encounter. Experience and genuine relationship are parts of the creative process. A defining characteristic in an existential-integrative approach to dealing with victims of evil is the role of the daimonic. Several factors related with trauma can serve to empower daimonic tendencies. As previously mentioned, May’s (1969) definition of the daimonic is that it is a natural process that could overtake the individual. Despair is a natural reaction to many traumatic situations and has the potential to take over the individual. Many people who have experienced trauma recoil into a deep despair that can lead to suicide, extreme isolation, or giving up on life. A second, related daimonic potential is for the defenses, which serve to protect the person from being retraumatized, to take over the individual. This frequently leads to detachment, dissociation, and isolation. Third, anger can consume individuals, pushing them to approach the world in a destructive manner. Daimonic anger in response to evil creates an obsession with revenge. At times, this is contained to the perpetrator; however, it can also be generalized to others who represent some symbolic similarity to the perpetrator. At other times, the victim, consumed with daimonic anger, becomes a perpetrator engaging in acts similar to that which they experienced. In other words, evil easily perpetuates evil. To prevent these possible daimonic possessions arising from being victimized, it is necessary for individuals to integrate their traumatic experience in a healthy manner. This can take many forms. For example, many victims use their painful experience to develop compassion for others. In other instances, they find outlets for creative expression through poetry, art, or dance. Another healthy integration of traumatic experience is healthy, as opposed to daimonic, expressions of anger. Many therapists, out of their own discomfort with anger or bias against the healthy potential of anger, fuel the development of daimonic anger through encouraging clients to suppress, deny, or prematurely “let go” of their anger. Hillman and Ventura (1993) view this as one of the greatest problems with contemporary psychology. Similarly, Diamond (1996) discusses the redemptive, healing, and creative opportunities associated with anger and the daimonic.

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Racism and heterosexism provide important examples of therapists working against the creative utilization of the daimonic. For many who have experienced discrimination or hate crimes, anger is a healthy response that can motivate the development of passionate visions of change through confronting the systems of oppression and violence. Unfortunately, therapists too often work to help clients become comfortable in the midst of the oppression and injustice instead of using their anger as an agent of change (Hillman & Ventura, 1993). This not only serves to repress daimonic potential but also reinforces systems of oppression. At times, the healthiest response for the therapist is to align with and encourage the healthy anger of clients. In summary, the final step of integration and meaning creation needs to include several important factors. First, it must include genuine encounter and experience, further facilitating reengagement in relationships and with the world and community. Second, it must include integrating the daimonic potentials in a healthy manner.

PURVEYORS OF EVIL GREAT AND SMALL In order to better understand the creation of evil, it is necessary to approach perpetrators of evil with compassion. This is a hard statement. The more typical practice is to write off these individuals through diagnosis, discount them as biologically flawed, or label them as spiritually or morally evil. For example, the well-known mass murderer Charles Whitman, who shot and killed 13 students at the University of Texas, was found with a tumor near his amygdala that likely played a significant role in his lethal acts of aggression (Buck, 1999). Unfortunately, the discovery of biological contributors to or correlations with acts of aggression has too often led to the overly simplistic and reductionistic assumptions that these are the sole causes of violence and evil. Many paths to aggression exist, and most, if not all, have multiple contributing factors and unique etiologies. To isolate violence and evil to singular causes creates naïveté, not understanding.

Preventing Pain from Becoming Evil Unaccepted negative emotions, such as pain, loneliness and isolation, fear, and anxiety, are some of the strongest unrecognized contributors to evil. The interaction of these variables, in particular, may serve to explain violence. Loneliness, pain, and depression, when not accepted or faced, often lead to despair. By themselves, these experiences often progress toward violence toward oneself. This violence toward oneself is often of the variety that if coming from someone else would be characterized as emotional abuse. In more extreme instances, this violence toward oneself could be in the form of self-harm behaviors or suicide ideation and attempts.

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When fear and anxiety are combined with a perception of mistreatment or oppression, the aggression often is directed outward. Given that fear, anxiety, and aggression are all connected to amygdala functioning, this should not be surprising. Karen Armstrong (2001) discusses this on a cultural level to help explain the violence within extremist religious groups. Religion, more commonly associated with peace and nonviolence, often becomes violent when subjected to oppression. This can be seen within many of the extremist white supremacist groups identifying with Christianity in the United States as well as many of the militant Islamic groups in the Middle East. Oppression, real or perceived, frequently is connected with violence and what gets characterized as evil. Often there is a cry for help or assistance prior to turning to violence. When the requests for help are ignored, it is easy to use this to justify the cries of oppression and violent retaliation. This pattern is often paralleled with individuals. The adolescents responsible for the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado exemplified this pattern. Their experience of isolation, as well as the perception of being mistreated or bullied, is well documented. Although their cries for help may not have been as evident, they were there. The responsibility for this tragic act of violence must be shared, although to a lesser degree, by the many who were not listening. Similarly, not listening played a role in Seung-Hui Cho’s 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech. Undoubtedly, Cho was an individual suffering in extreme anguish and likely may have “qualified” for a psychiatric diagnosis; however, this does not explain his killing spree. Most individuals who are mentally ill, even with the diagnoses placed on Cho, are not violent. Evil is rarely, if ever, isolated within the individual. The dramatic systemic failure of the mental health and political systems has contributed to violence in many unseen ways. The political response to the Virginia Tech shootings was to propose laws in a number of states which would extend mandated reporting when violence is suspected. This ignores research indicating that mental health professionals are very poor at predicting violence, especially in individuals who have not demonstrated previous violent behavior. Additionally, it contributed to the increased suspicion of the mental health field. When discussing confidentiality, it is not uncommon for clinicians to hear clients make statements such as “I know nothing is really confidential in here.” Recognizing mandated reporting, many clients simply do not discuss issues that would require reporting, handicapping the effectiveness of therapists. Although many of these politicians may have good intentions, they are unaware of the deleterious consequences of creating increased distrust of mental health professionals and thus preventing many individuals from seeking treatment. If understanding purveyors of evil is going to increase, it is going to require taking the risk of understanding these individuals from their perspective. At times, this may introduce people to a side of evil that is unexplainable and

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quite terrifying. However, it may also afford many opportunities for offering new potential for understanding and compassion. Many are not willing to take the risk of really knowing the perpetrators of evil because of the fear of what may be found or the fear of being manipulated. These are real fears. A number of examples could be provided of individuals who have lost their ground when working with severely mentally ill and otherwise severely disturbed individuals. However, the other consequence is equally as dangerous. To not understand them limits our ability to make progress in preventing violence. Yalom (2002), in his criticism of diagnosis, maintains that clinicians often begin seeing what they diagnose. This process eerily resembles the idea of a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, Yalom takes this argument one step further in maintaining that clinicians often begin acting in a manner that elicits the behaviors they expect. When individuals are written off as “bad” or “evil,” this often leads to treating the individuals in a manner that creates the type of despondence and isolation that fuels evil. This is demonstrated quite easily with adolescents. Adolescents often start to “act out” to get attention when they are feeling rejected or unappreciated. When they are labeled as being “bad,” they often feel further rejected and unseen. If, in continuing in the pattern they have already established, they respond by acting out in more dramatic ways, this escalates the acting-out behaviors. Breaking the cycle of violence and evil can, at times, begin with as simple a process as changing the response pattern from distancing to listening. Although this rarely is the complete solution, it is an essential first step in the healing process.

Recognizing the Universality of the Potential for Evil The astonishing outcome of Zimbardo’s (2007) historical and psychological research is the consistency in which it illustrates the social forces in evil and the potential for anyone to engage in evil. This thought is echoed in earlier writing by Arendt (as cited in Bernstein, 2005): Some years ago . . . I spoke of the “banality of evil” and meant with this no theory or doctrine but something quite factual, the phenomenon of evil deeds, committed on a gigantic scale, which could not be traced to any particularity of wickedness, pathology, or ideological conviction in the doer, whose only personal distinction was perhaps extraordinary shallowness. (p. 8)

Arendt connects the social psychological idea of social influence with the existential concern of conformity and the lack of depth and awareness. In a different context, it would not be at all surprising to see the above quote in the writings of Nietzsche. The greatest ally of evil is shallowness, or the lack of self-awareness, whereas one of the greatest threats to evil is personal

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responsibility and awareness of each individual’s potential for evil. When one believes they are incapable of an act, they have just unwittingly made themselves more open to it. Clients who talk about feeling empty or describing a lack of meaning in their life can be particularly susceptible to the banality of evil. Other easy prey includes those who are intensely lonely or emotionally numb. Through disengagement, these individuals have already begun functioning on an automatic level as opposed to being an active agent in their own lives. Therapists often unwittingly enter into a pattern of facilitating the banality of evil. When therapists reinforce the victim role through empathizing and sympathizing with the client’s suffering without encouraging the client to take responsibility, they enable evil. Empathy, without responsibility, can be dangerous. Similarly, when therapists empower clients to control their uncomfortable emotions without understanding them, they further empower the banality of evil. Instead, finding meaning and responsibility in suffering helps prevent evil. This is uncomfortable ground for many therapists because their interventions can be mistaken for blaming the victim. This concern is well justified. It can be very damaging for therapists to too quickly move toward meaning and responsibility when working with individuals who have suffered the consequences of evil. But it is equally dangerous to never go there.

Decreasing Social Factors Contributing to Evil In considering the literature on Zimbardo and the social psychologists, we agree that social and cultural factors play an important role in the creation of evil. Zimbardo (2007) discussed implications of this for preventing evil on cultural and political levels. The existential perspective on social influence can be summarized succinctly in the thinking of Nietzsche that is so pervasive in his writing, but most readily evident in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1892/1954). However, let us begin with Zimbardo’s language. For Zimbardo (2007), the heroes are the ones who do not fall prey to social forces, but he falls short of explaining how this heroic element develops within individuals. Nietzsche (1892/1954) complements this limitation in Zimbardo. For Nietzsche, in an almost prophetic manner considering the future of the Germany he was writing in, argues that conformity is the root of immorality. Well before the emergence of Hitler, Nietzsche provided a powerful explanation for how so many Germans could participate in the horrors of the Holocaust. It was not that they were evil, but that they were unaware of their potential for evil. Nietzsche (1892/1954) believed that self-awareness and critical thought were important tools for combating conformity, and therefore the potential for evil. No doubt Nietzsche, if alive today, would lament that his cry “No shepherd and one herd!” (p. 18) is equally fitting today.

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Socially, the prevention of evil necessitates a broad commitment to promoting critical thought and dissent to popular views. This would require a dramatic reworking of the applied principles in contemporary politics and education. A movement toward Schneider’s (2004) awe-based education, which emphasizes self-awareness along with facing mystery and finitude, would be a good start. However, it also is necessary to help individuals become aware of the social, cultural, and systemic influences on them. Therapists can help clients negotiate how they can be a part of a cultural heritage or system without blindly conforming to all aspects of it. Similarly, they can help people identify themselves as a potential agent of change. One of the great utilizations of the suffering that all people face is using it to promote positive change.

Preventing Great Evils Preventing the great evils begins by battling everyday evil. However, it is important not to become blind to the other forces of evil. In instances such as Charles Whitman, with the tumor on his amygdala, other types of interventions are necessary. It is likely that there are genetic and biological factors that contribute to evil and violence in many circumstances, although we maintain they are rarely, if ever, the sole factor. Another mistake is to assume that therapy is the primary route to preventing evil. Hopefully, psychotherapy can take a more influential role in preventing and dealing with evil in the future; however, it will always be limited in its role. It is also necessary to explore the cultural and corporate factors contributing to evil in contemporary society. Larger social, political, and international interventions are also needed.

CONCLUSION People often do not see what they do not have a theory to understand. If there is no theory for evil, it is easy to deny it. But if there is a way of conceiving of it, then it becomes necessary to conceive of it responsibly. Our hope is that a comprehensive psychology of evil will (a) serve to help improve therapeutic vision, recognizing issues previously ignored; (b) recognize the need for all clients (and therapists) to deal with their own daimonic impulses and potentialities; and (c) contain the abuses of evil rampant in the rhetoric of contemporary culture.

REFERENCES Armstrong, K. (2001). The battle for God. New York: Ballantine. Baumeister, R. F. (1997). Evil: Inside human violence and cruelty. New York: Freeman/ Owl.

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Baumeister, R. F., & Vohs, K. D. (2004). Four roots of evil. In A. G. Miller (Ed.), The social psychology of good and evil (pp. 85–101). New York: Guilford Press. Becker, E. (1968). The structure of evil. New York: Free Press. Becker, E. (1973). The denial of death. New York: Free Press. Becker, E. (1975). Escape from evil. New York: Free Press. Bernstein, R. J. (2005). The abuse of evil: The corruption of politics and religion since 9/11. Malden, MA: Polity Press. Buck, R. (1999). The biology of affects: A typology. Psychological Review, 106, 301–336. Daniels, M. (2005). Shadow, self, spirit: Essays in transpersonal psychology. Charlottesville, VA: Imprint Academic. Diamond, S. A. (1996). Anger, madness, and the daimonic: The psychological genesis of violence, evil, and creativity. Albany: State University of New York Press. Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and society. New York: Norton. Frankl, V. E. (1984). Man’s search for meaning. New York: Simon & Schuster. (Original work published in 1959.) Hillman, J., & Ventura, M. (1993). We’ve had a hundred years of psychotherapy—and the world’s getting worse. San Francisco: Harper. Hoffman, L. (2009). Introduction to existential psychotherapy in a cross-cultural context: An East-West dialogue. In L. Hoffman, M. Yang, F. J. Kaklauskas, & A. Chan (Eds.), Existential psychology East-West (pp. 1–67). Colorado Springs, CO: University of the Rockies Press. Hoffman, L., & Kurzenberger, M. (2008). The miraculous in mental illness. In J. H. Ellens (Ed.), Miracles: God, science, and psychology in the paranormal (Vol. 3, pp. 65–93). Westport, CT: Praeger. Hoffman, L., Patz-Clark, D., Looney, D., & Knight, S. K. (2007). Historical perspectives and contemporary needs in the psychology of evil: Psychological and interdisciplinary perspectives. Paper presented at the 115th annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, San Francisco. Keen, S. (1991). The enemy maker. In C. Zweig & J. Abrams (Eds.), Meeting the shadow: The hidden power of the dark side of human nature (pp. 197–202). New York: Tarcher/Putnam. May, R. (1969). Love and will. New York: Delta. May, R. (1981). Freedom and destiny. New York: Norton & Norton. May, R. (1982). The problem of evil: An open letter to Carl Rogers. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 22, 10–21. May, R. (1991). The cry for myth. New York: Delta. Nietzsche, F. (1954). Thus spoke Zarathustra: A book for none and all (Trans. W. Kaufmann). New York: Penguin. (Original work published in 1892.) Peck, M. S. (1985). People of the lie. New York: Touchstone. Rank, O. (1936). Truth and reality (Trans. J. Taft). New York: Norton. (Original work published in 1931.) Rilker, J. H. (1997). Ethics and the discovery of the unconscious. Albany: State University of New York Press. Rogers, C. R. (1982). Notes on Rollo May. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 22 (3), 8–9.

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Schneider, K. J. (1998). Existential processes. In L. S. Greenberg, J. C. Watson, & G. Lietaer (Eds.), Handbook of experiential psychotherapy (pp. 103–120). New York: Guilford Press. Schneider, K. J. (2003). Existential-humanistic psychotherapies. In A. S. Gurman & S. B. Messer (Eds.), Essential psychotherapies: Theory and practice (pp. 149–181). New York: Guilford Press. Schneider, K. J. (2004). Rediscovery of awe: Splendor, mystery and the fluid center of life. St. Paul, MN: Paragon House. Schneider, K. J. (2007a). Theory of the existential-integrative (EI) approach. In K. J. Schneider (Ed.), Existential-integrative psychotherapy: Guideposts to the core of practice (pp. 35–48). New York: Routledge. Schneider, K. J. (2007b). Therapeutic implications of the theory. In K. J. Schneider (Ed.), Existential-integrative psychotherapy: Guideposts to the core of practice (pp. 49–87). New York: Routledge. Serlin, I. A., & Cannon J. (2004) A humanistic approach to the psychology of trauma. In D. Knafo (Ed.), Living with terror, working with trauma: A clinician’s handbook (pp. 313–330). Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson. Staub, E. (2004). Basic human needs, altruism, and aggression. In A. G. Miller (Ed.), The social psychology of good and evil (pp. 51–84). New York: Guilford. Stolorow, R. D. (2007). Trauma and human existence: Autobiographical, psychoanalytic and philosophical reflections. New York: Analytic Press. Stolorow, R. D., & Atwood, G. E. (1992). Contexts of being: The intersubjective foundations of psychological life. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press. Yalom, I. D. (2002). The gift of therapy. New York: HarperCollins. Zimbardo, P. (2004). A situationist perspective on the psychology of evil: Understanding how good people are transformed into perpetrators. In A. G. Miller (Ed.), The social psychology of good and evil (pp. 21–50). New York: Guilford Press. Zimbardo, P. (2007). The Lucifer effect: Understanding how good people turn evil. New York: Random House.

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A Postmodern Reaction to Evil Dirk Odendaal

INTRODUCTION TO THE POSTMODERN WORLD There are many ways of talking about evil. Especially since the middle of the 20th century, evil has been understood as both an intention and act. Since that point in time, evil deeds have been perpetrated on an astounding scale, not only in terms of what has been done but also the scope of the deeds. Contributing factors are the astounding growth in knowledge, technology, and wealth that happened in the course of that half century. Since World War II, the frequency and size of brutality and destruction leave one amazed and breathless. Just when one thinks that people have learnt at last, something else happens that shocks one anew. The sophistication of the weapons of the 20th century and the role of scientific invention are all contributing factors to the increase of such conflicts, raising the possibility that any conflict these days can spiral into the global dimensions, with disastrous consequences for the whole planet (Watson, 2000). The dawn of the 21st century has raised our awareness of how precarious is the situation in which we are living. In the last 200 years, humankind has “developed” to such an extent that it has put all life on earth on the edge of a precipice. Anthony Giddens (1990) compares it to riding a juggernaut, which we must try to control as well as we can by at least minimizing the high-consequence risks. It is especially the 20th century that saw technical development surge forward at an ever increasing speed. The technological wonders included all sectors of life (e.g., travel, communication, economics, urban growth, agriculture, macro- and micro-engineering, health, and politics). People who were still used to traveling with horses and buggies at the start of the century became used to traveling across the continents quickly by

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plane. Communication has become instantaneous and accessible through the availability of cellular technology. News from any area in the world is known to the whole world in minutes. Huge amounts of money can be transferred to anywhere in the world electronically. Moving beyond the boundaries of earth has become not just possible but also even relatively safe. On the downside, catastrophes in modern times have started taking on global apocalyptic dimensions. In Nazi Germany, Hitler massacred an estimated 6 million Jews and 12 million other ethnic groups. Stalin was reported to have wiped out 5 million Ukrainian farmers who opposed his ill-fated farming program. The numbers of people who died during the Great War (direct deaths approaximately 15 million) was far surpassed by the effects of the Second World War, in which an estimated 40 to 70 million people died. World War I used weapons that could destroy not only one’s enemies but also the earth itself. Conflicts quickly escalated into huge tragedies. In Bosnia, thousands of people were killed; in Burundi, almost a million people were massacred; and 3 million were murdered in Cambodia under Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. The sophistication of the weapons and the mobility of warring parties (armies) mean that conflicts seldom remained contained. The 20th century brought with it an awareness of the growth of wealth and the increase in the number of millionaires and billionaires, and the great disparities between rich and poor. Many people, especially natives, lost their rights to use the lands and forests in which they had been living for thousands of years, and some became employees of the new corporate landowners. The income and wealth that were generated from those “properties” were then lost to the original inhabitants (e.g., the companies producing coffee, linen, chocolate, clothing, and toys). Another invention that brought a distance between many people and the ability to “create wealth” is the development of the stock markets and software for computers. With the centralization of wealth came the acquiring of enormous power by a few individuals and nations. The market-oriented trade centralized many of the gains in the hands of a few countries. The so-called Western countries are blamed for using up to 90% of the world’s resources in the development processes that are taking place there; their purchasing power allows them to buy up raw products from the developing countries and to resell finished products to them at great markups. Another side of this type of developing is that this process of development is also contributing to consuming the earth’s resources and contributing to the destruction of the environment, to global warming, and in a sense to creating a hell for future generations to live in. Mankind, the rich, and the powerful have become so powerful that their abilities are now on the brink of recreating global destruction through its own hubris. From this short introduction it has become clear that people living in the 21st century are facing challenges that in a way equal those at the time of the

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catastrophes that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. This time, however, we hold in our own hands the key to the extinction; but we seem incapable of stopping the process of committing genocide and ultimately suicide. In the aftermath of World War II, the basic tenets of postmodernism came to be formulated. It was a movement away from structuralism toward relativism and the role of language. Huge changes in politics took place as the era of European and American colonialism came to an end. Theories of revolution and liberation became prominent in many academic fields and there were attempts at implementing them with varied success. The political systems in many countries changed from theocracies and royal imperialism to democracies, and sometimes to chaos and anarchy. Feminism challenged the accepted ways of thinking about gender issues and the role of power in society. Women, children, and laborers were accorded rights. These accords started influencing the way in which people think about labor, wealth, and development. All this shapes the way power is distributed in society. The environment has become a very important focus point. Relativity and chaos theory have become important scientific points of departure (Watson, 2000). Discussing the concept and term evil from a postmodern perspective requires giving attention to evil as an expression in language, as text and power statement. Because language is the tool used to create and describe evil, there are many ways of talking about it, and the various definitions are relative.

LANGUAGE AS A MEDIUM OF KNOWLEDGE AND TOOL FOR ACTION Wittgenstein raises the point in Philosophical Investigations (2009) that there is no possibility of knowing anything outside the boundaries of language (Van der Merwe, 1995). All our knowledge and everything we know are described in language and open to interpretation. De Saussure, the structuralist, pointed out, though he may not have intended to do so, that there is no complete certainty in language because both the signifiers and the signifieds are agreed upon by the users of language. There is nothing in the word tree that relates to the real thing except the consensus we all have about the meaning of that term. Eco (1979) uses the concept of signs as a way of describing the function of words, and shows how easy it is to have misunderstandings in written language, especially when one does not have the keys to interpret it. Especially with the poststructuralist movement, the fluidity of language became clear. It just needed someone like Derrida to exploit the inherent uncertainty of language through the process of deconstruction to show how uncertain the process of communication really is. Derrida shows how open to interpretation even apparently solid language structures actually are. However, even

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statements coming from the most objective research are open to interpretation and criticism. Sentences and words have fields of meaning that are included and excluded from the communication.

A CRITICAL STANCE TOWARD ACCEPTED KNOWLEDGES AND TRUTHS What has become typical of postmodernism is the critical stance it takes against what is generally accepted as truth. Truth refers to the certainty with which certain claims are made about what could be regarded as knowledge (i.e., empirically verified information). Such claims have a huge impact on what is understood as morality. If we could agree on issues of truth, confusion in moral choices could soon be relegated to the past. Scientific research and logical reasoning would quickly resolve issues and dilemmas and point out what decisions have to be made. Of course, the horrors of World War II and the conflicts following it contributed to the postmodern argument about the instability of meaning in language. The clear gaze of science is far from value free and humanitarian. It was in the very extermination camps of Nazi Germany that new research was being done on the human psyche. The research methods employed in the development of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki put countless lives of soldiers and civilians at risk. It is worth asking whether the scientists who had started the research could foretell what horror was wrought by the explosions. Of course, for modernist scientists and postmodern critics alike, the use of those two atom bombs remains intensely ambiguous. MacArthur had estimated that invading Japan would result in the loss of 1 million American men and 7 million Japanese. The two atomic bombs killed a total of 180,000 Japanese. The ratio between 180,000 and 8 million is a very good outcome, proving the wisdom of Truman’s decision to drop the bombs. The 11 million families whose sons came home rather than potentially dying in the invasion of the Japanese homeland were sure Truman did the right thing. Of course, in the minds of the postmodernists, comparing the loss of lives as the result of the atom bombs with the possible lives that were saved by the same acts never accounts for the horror of the act, and the cruelty and heartlessness implied by it. The postmodernists consider Truman’s decision as an “amoral” form of reasoning, heartless, cruel, and merely an expression of absolute power. Postmodernists sometimes consider such thinking sociopathic.

DISCOURSES AS LANGUAGE ACTS As Wittgenstein (Van der Merwe, 1996) pointed out, truth claims are actually language statements. An inherent quality of knowledge is that it can

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only be known through language. Knowledge is language for that matter, and often privileged language. Even the so-called objective logical language of science is imposed on an emotionally laden vehicle, the sign (semeia), the linguistic structure, and the metaphor. Logic is a heavily structured form of language, which has to meet specific linguistic consistency criteria. As such eventually it does not matter so much what language is used, as whose language is used and for what purpose language is used, that is, language is a tool to acquire power and to maintain it or as a tool for doing something (action) constructive for society or a person. When language is used in political ways, it is laden with implications and is manipulative discourse. As discourse, language frames and forms ideologies: religions and philosophies. Our language of the moment is smattered with various forms of discourse, religious, gender, race, cultural, communal, and historical discourses, and many others. Some discourses clash with each other and often leave us confused and feeling anxious or even guilty. Some discourses empower people, and others disempower. We do not have much control over our own modes of discourse, because they become embedded (embreasted) in us from when we are babies. They play an important role in the choices, understandings, and knowledge we employ as we grow up and mature. Our forms of discourse are our stories, supported and carried by idioms and narratives that we tell. They have the ability to convey emotions over long distances and down the generations. Especially discourses about national pride or shame can resonate with generations far removed from historical events. These discourses carry with them not only stories about actual acts but also the interpretations that go with them, and predispose following generations to choices, reactions, and emotions. Some stories make us vulnerable to or aware of the possibilities of power manipulations.

EVIL AS DISCOURSE: OUR MASTER STORIES In the postmodern world, there has also been a growing awareness of how words take on culturally influenced values. Although equivalent words may exist in other languages, it does not mean that they will cover the same range in the semantic field in our language as they do in those other languages. Words have a context within which they are and have to be used. Outside of that range, they may take on the character of becoming nonsensical. Foreigners often use words and idioms out of context, which can be funny but identify them as strangers. In other words, concepts may or may not exist in parallel roles in different languages and cultures. Or they may not be associated with the equivalent words of another language. Translators of texts, such as the Bible, know that. Meaning does not necessarily reside in individual words but in contexts, and dynamic equivalent translations, in which the attempt is made to translate the meanings rather than the literal equivalent

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words, sometimes make more sense than direct-equivalent, word-for-word translations. Most of what we say is communicated in learnt language that consists of many codes learnt in a social context and eventually influencing the roles we adopt in our families and society. Gergen makes the statement that the self is saturated with the voices of humankind, especially because of the influence of the information explosion. The influence of the exposure to these voices is the relativization of who we know we are—our identity. We develop multiple concepts of ourselves, none of which is permanent. In this openness to the world, we are exposed to coherent systems of meaning or narratives that compete for our attention. Each has a vision of self, the world, and morality. These become incorporated in dominant institutions and political structures and in the power and influence they exert. Our master stories are very powerful language acts, because they are used to do things (Brink, 1987; Potter & Wetherell, 1987). Evil as a word is a case in study. There is nothing inherent in that word that indicates to what it refers. Both the sign and the meaning context have simply been agreed upon in the Anglo-Saxon world. It has a specific place in our master story—our discourse. The word can be used as a term in politics, business, philosophy, psychology, religion, and culture. Evil, as a word used in an English essay, has semantic or meaning fields that depend on the narrative contexts in which the word is embedded. As such, it carries with it specific cultural, power, and gender stories or meanings. On the one hand, evil can be used as a description of the experience of actions, and on the other hand, it can function merely as a label. It is a word or term that has strong religious and moral connotations. The word, however, gets its approximate meanings from the stories that are told in which it is used, whether it be a news story, a religious one, or a fairy tale. It is the context around the word that gives the word its specific meaning, and the context is contained in the story being told. It also presents one with a point of view of the author or narrator (Van der Merwe, 1996, 1996a). Examples of how the term is used are found in Wikipedia (2009), for example as part of political rhetoric as in the oft-quoted phrase “axis of evil” of George W. Bush. Falun Gong is called an “evil cult” by the People’s Republic of China. Some businesses use it to indicate transgressions of the laws guarding intellectual property rights. In philosophy, it is used in discussions or arguments on ethics and morality to refer to what causes harm. Philosophers distinguish between moral evil and natural evil; the latter refers to natural disasters that lie outside of one’s free will. Plato is reported to have equated evil with ignorance, and Spinoza as a narcissistic perspective. In psychology, Rosenberg and Ellis hold the viewpoint that people are not evil but commit evil acts, a position that Ellens and other authors in this book take. Jung is reported to have seen it as representing the dark or shadow side of

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a person. Peck describes evil as a person’s misleading interaction with life, and uses descriptions of evil in people that are similar to those found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR; American Psychiatric Association, 2000) on personality disorders. These examples were all extracted from “stories” in which the concept is used. These expressions were also not just expressions but also acts. The statement about the “axis of evil” became the title of the narrative of American reinvolvement in the matters of Middle Eastern countries. It also became a first step in the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. The Chinese government’s statement about the Falun Gong as evil reflects the narrative of the involvement of the Chinese authorities with religious and semireligious organizations, and more specifically with this organization. Part of the narrative would reflect why the Chinese authorities wanted to crack down on the Falun Gong movement and then how they did it. These statements do not therefore represent an opinion alone, but became the justification for action. Some of the more academic narratives include descriptions discussed in logical language and causal and deductive arguments. The arguments are often dependent on arguments of precursors and were and are often made in response to what have been observed as mistakes and fallacies. Plato’s foil is the Sophists and counterfoil is Socrates, who is used as the main character in Plato’s books. Van der Merwe (1996) points out that just the use of these academic names opens up a network, “a plot of entangled stories,” that would bring numerous and diverse definitions to the fore, with the possibility of having no single common denominator. Indeed, there might not be such a denominator. Herein lies the underlying potential for cognitive chaos in postmodernism and in such philosophical systems at that of Wittgenstein, Husserl, Derrida, and Foucault. The implication, then, would be that we would never know what evil is except for when we are the victim in our own lived experience (Crossley, 2000). Herein lies the potential for the absurd in postmodernism.

EVIL AS POWER Evil as a discourse, narrative, or master story would also imply that it represents power. However, where the power lies is not so clear-cut. President Bush did not clarify his country’s moral base in the statement about the axis of evil, and when the reports about the treatment of the inmates of the Abu Ghraib started surfacing, we wondered to which moral high ground the United States could appeal. The issue is raised that aspects of power become hidden, and almost accepted “because we are the good guys.” A useful way of thinking about evil as the representation of a power stand is found in using systems theory as the model for discussion. Bronfenbrenner’s distinctions between the macro, meso, and micro levels of systems (as adapted by

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Nelson & Prilleltensky, 2005) are helpful when looking at the functioning of evil.

Macro Levels Often when one speaks of evil, especially within a western perspective, we do it to place great emphasis on individual moral responsibility. It implies it a sense of guilt that has to be punished. As in the Nuremberg Trials, for example, someone had to take the blame for the evil of the extermination camps. The punishment had to be meted out even if it was largely symbolic. Within a systems framework, one would have to start making sense of how evil plays a role at the different levels of the system. Looking at how evil is expressed or lived out at a macro level, the question is raised about the structures that make the practice of evil possible at all in a society. In South Africa, for instance, the presence of several centuries of colonialism, the 400 years of violent learning experience of white South Africans, the benevolent eye of the governor general, and the ignorance and indifference of the wider international community all contributed to making it possible for the arrogant and imperialist Afrikaners to implement the Apartheid laws. The tolerance for discriminating practices has not changed all that much. Just as countries did not get involved with the plight of the Jewish passengers on the Bremen, and belatedly realized that they did not get involved with the genocides that took place in Germany against the Jews from 1935 to 1945, so also the neglect of East Bengal (later called Bangladesh) in 1971, Burundi in 1972, Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, Guatemala in 1982–1983, the Iraqi Kurds in 1988, Bosnia in 1992–1995, Rwanda in 1994, and the like illustrate how the nations of the world neglect the rhetoric and actions of evil, until after the fact, when it is too late. In a time when communication is instantaneous, the silence that is maintained by civilized and neutral governments during the commitment of these atrocities is obscene. Often, as was the case during the Cold War, there were and are political reasons and more often than not economic reasons for this inaction, as in the case of Biafra. In these scenarios, the individuals are fairly helpless unless they can mobilize against the organized powers.

Meso Levels The role of evil intentions and deeds can also be discovered at the meso level. This level refers to the systems that are much closer to the individual (e.g., the work or school environment). Attention to this has been brought to light through the contribution of union actions or feminist movements. Discrimination still takes place against women in work environments (e.g., in the

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availability of management positions). It was only after World War II that a concerted effort was put into opening the workplace for all genders and races. In the 1960s in South Africa, women were still considered as minors in the sense that they had to get the consent of their spouses to open bank accounts or sign legal documents. Nonwhites were also excluded from management positions for thirty years more in South Africa. Again, power and privilege played a role in the continuance of these evil practices. Schools are not always places of learning, at least the learning that some parents might like for their children. The environment allows bullies of various types to play their roles. In some cases, in South Africa at least, and probably in many other countries, headmasters or principals of schools treat colleagues and pupils alike as minors, and verbally abuse colleagues. They may put obstacles in their way and try to minimize their achievements, sometimes to the detriment of their own institution. Of course, teachers may also abuse their positions in the class rooms, for example when a learner becomes labeled as a troublemaker without any possibility of redemption. Employees may undergo abuse, applied in a systematic way, experiencing severe trauma and feelings of helplessness. Their efforts may be ignored or hijacked for a manager’s benefit. They may be passed by for promotion because of the nepotism of the employers or because of not meeting the expectations for doing their bosses favors. Officials in municipalities or other institutions may expect to be rewarded for their normal duties, but they may be victims of a system that underpays them for their services, or victims of institutionalized corporate greed. Sometimes they are the victims of people who bypass prescribed routes through their powerful positions, wealth, or connections.

Micro Levels The family home is supposed to be the place where one grows up and is prepared for all the challenges of life. The child and the family members are supposed to be protected there against dangers. Police and social work reports have shown that the ideal is far removed from reality. For many children, the family homes are places of danger. Some get seriously injured psychologically, mentally, and physically in their homes and by their so-called loved ones. For a long time, secrecy and the sanctity of the home, as well as respect for the elders, kept these conditions hidden. Often the whistleblower would become doubly a victim for talking to people outside the home. Children often have no other recourse than to accept the state of affairs. Spouses and parents misuse their power against each other and against their dependents. Wives and husbands also become the victims of abuse. Often jealousy, physical violence, and verbal outbursts become tools to instill dependency, uncertainty about self-worth, and doubt that anyone will believe

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one. Elderly people may become especially susceptible to abuse when they become physically weak and sickly.

Discourses or Master Stories and the Individual Bullying is an example of how our stories can take on a reality in the lives of people. Amongst siblings it can take on a variety of formats, which can range from physical acts and symbolic acts to very sophisticated language. Symbolic acts are often regarded as of lesser importance than the physical acts because the welts and scars are not visible. Where these bullying discourses are applied in a systematic way on somebody, we might call it torture. Bullying as activity can only be successful if there is at least the perception that the bully has more power than the victim. Certain positions and situations lend themselves to misuse by people, for example, abuse by persons in sensitive government positions like border posts, managers in offices, procurement administrators, and the like. It can take place anywhere, in schools where principals or teachers appear to hold the future of teachers and learners in their hands, or at home where a husband can subjugate a wife to physical and verbal abuse. These positions of power can sometimes be supported by religious institutions, traditional values, or social norms. A wife may find it very difficult to distance herself from an abusive husband because of the premium placed on marriage, and the sanctions on divorced or single people in the form of stigma or taboos. Powerful positions can then seem unassailable, supported by religious beliefs or cultural values. Persons who value those religious beliefs and cultural norms then ironically become more at risk to become victims of bullying tactics. Their respect and adherence to these values make them follow unquestioningly the lead of those who have been inducted into those positions. Since the 1960s, there have been several reports of cults in which the leadership guided followers into disaster.

CONCLUSION There are many ways of talking about evil. It is the postmodern contribution to the literary world to point out that evil can only be talked about in language and therefore in discourse. As part of the communal and social discourse, there are therefore many narratives about evil, some of them very academic, some very moral, and so on. The danger of talking about evil is that its embodiment can be missed and the fact that those who talk the most objectively and authoritatively could be cloaked evildoers as it serves power and position. It is especially those who cannot talk, who are silenced and vulnerable, that are the ones who experience the effects of evil words and deeds. Evil cannot

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be experienced in an objective way, and it cannot be labeled or generalized. Even the term evil does an injustice to that to which it refers, as it can easily cloak reality and mislead the user into complacency. In an era of globalization and generalization, the effects of what evil refers to are widespread, destructive, and uncontained. It is affecting the whole planet with all of its creatures.

REFERENCES American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed., text rev.). Washington, DC: Author. Brink, A. P. (1987). Vertelkunde. In ‘n Inleiding in die Lees van Verhalende Tekste. Pretoria: Academica. Crossley, M. (2000). Introducing narrative psychology: Self trauma and the construction of meaning. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Eco, U. (1979). The role of the reader: Explorations in the semiotics of texts. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Giddens, A. (1990). The consequences of modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Nelson, G., & Prilleltensky, I. (2005). Community psychology: In pursuit of liberation and well-being. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Potter, J., & Wetherell, M. (1987). Discourse and social psychology: Beyond attitudes and behaviour. London: Sage. Van der Merwe, W. (1995). Wittgenstein’s legacy and the challenge to psychology. Theory & Psychology, 5 (1), 27–48. Van der Merwe, W. (1996). Language and postmodern culture (1). In G. J. Rossouw (Ed.), Life in a postmodern culture. Pretoria: HSRC. Van der Merwe, W. (1996a). Language and postmodern culture (II) or LANGUAGE/:/,/?/ Lit(t)eraPture and/or/in/(in spite of)/of/as/for/versus/beyond the “postmodern.” In G. J. Rossouw (Ed.), Life in a postmodern culture. Pretoria: HSRC. Watson, P. (2000). A terrible beauty: The people and ideas that shaped the modern mind: A history. London: Phoenix Press. Wikipedia (2009). Evil. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil. Wittgenstein, L. (2009). Philosophical Investigations. The German Text with and English translation by G.E.M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte. Revised 4th edition by P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley -Blackwell

ch apter 20

Conclusion: The Future of Evil, a Lovers’ Quarrel J. Harold Ellens

Robert Frost wrote quite a lot of fetching poetry. The reason for its catchy quality is that he wrote with the dour placidity about real life that we all, by midlife, recognize as authentic. He seemed to accept life as a tragicomic adventure in which he found, nonetheless, a lot of sunshine and color insinuating itself through the wet leaves of life. Frost was always glad enough but never triumphalist, usually satisfied but never quite comfortable, always resigned but never complacent, and often pensive but never silenced by the pain and evil he realistically faced. In the end, Robert Frost depicted his life and work as a “lovers’ quarrel with the world.” That catches him exactly, I think. Jesus said that there will always be a lot of poor people around, and there will always be war, violent and counterproductive. That sounds like a pessimistic outlook on any efforts at the avoidance and prevention of evil. Was it his realism or helplessness that Jesus was voicing? Was he, in the end, actually helpless and hopeless about definitively establishing God’s gracious reign on earth? Did he think our efforts to discern ways to avoid or prevent evil were futile? Moses must have felt it was so when he smashed the tablets, so newly wrought “by the finger of God.” Moreover, Mohammad proclaimed a blessed new faith perspective for Arabic people, focused upon the notion of jihad as a spiritual call to resist evil within us and remove it from our souls and psyches. However, he soon sold out his own doctrine to violence when threatened by the enemies from Mecca. Immediately he turned his spiritual concept of jihad into a violent concept of warfare and the extermination of the Infidel. In the end, Moses said, “Keep the commandments. . . . Farewell.” Muhammad, if we can take the Qur’an at face value, said in effect, “Exterminate the Infidels.”

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In the end, Jesus said, “Love your enemies and do good to those that persecute you. . . . Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” If these towering figures, filled with the divine spirit, felt helpless and hopeless in the face of the monstrous task of avoiding and preventing evil, how shall we carry on? Approximately 80 scholars have addressed the issue of evil in the three volumes of this work. They have proposed remarkably good ideas and in many cases suggested specific ways to make them work operationally, down on the ground, where we all live with evil. Will this do the trick? Can we report to Moses, Jesus, and Mohammad in a year or two, or a decade, that we took their advice despite their personal despair and did the job? Well, I do not expect that we will have achieved quite that much in these three volumes, though I believe firmly that what we have done here is to clarify what we are doing about the problem of evil. We have leveled the playing field. We have assessed the reality of the problem. We have discerned its nature and contours. We have suggested the strategies that we must employ to keep to the task. We have done that in a way that will last for a century, if seriously taken note of by society. However, there are three reasons why I think the task will persist from generation to generation. First, each new generation needs to start over at the beginning to learn anew everything that really counts. Second, we all have to take on this divine-sized task with only human resources. Third, we have a lovers’ quarrel with the problem of evil. The first one is surprisingly troublesome. It is of considerable interest to me that I am publishing this present work on Explaining Evil when I am nearly 80 years of age. It illustrates that for many of us, it takes nearly a whole lifetime to be sufficiently confident of our own insights and convictions to be able to articulate them adequately. I do not know if it takes a village to raise a child. I was not raised in a village but on a Depression-era farm. I doubt if that could have been improved upon under the circumstances. However, I am sure that it takes a lifetime to figure life out. That would not be a major problem because it is rather enjoyable to follow that journey of growth and achievement that life requires, except that a real issue arises when we consider that each new generation of children starts out exactly where every person started out before them throughout the history of the human race. We cannot stand upon the shoulders of our parents in any of the matters that count in life: our development intellectually, social, emotionally, and spiritually. The entire enterprise of learning data, discerning truth, acquiring wisdom, developing morality and ethics, and cultivating genuine faith, trust, and decorum is, in each new generation, an individual experiment in trial and error. Of course there are some ways we can stand on our progenitors’ shoulders, so to speak, and build on up from there, but only on the relatively peripheral

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things of life. We can learn the technology of previous generations and build better cars, refrigerators, medical instruments, satellites, airplanes, oil wells, and the like. Those are important because they enhance and preserve life. Better refrigerators mean fewer dead babies, provided the refrigerators are available where needed and are properly utilized. But those are not usually the issues that cause evil. The problem of evil has to do with the human psyche, mind, and soul or spirit. As regards all of those, every child is born a primitive, with lots of potential but no practice. A great number of genetic glitches, biochemical aberrations, and developmental distortions lie in wait to undermine the decent development of every single new person, from the moment we are conceived in the womb to the moment they close our coffins. That fact will never change. In this world of total freedom, many an error in judgment, intention, and desire will continue to sidetrack persons into evil. Many an accident of ignorance, many a reaction of fear and anxiety, and many a motive of bad will will create monstrous evil in every generation. We must settle with that reality and then keep trying for the answer to the existential question: What can we do best with what we have left? That is the bottom-line question from the second we are conceived to the moment of our last brain wave and heart beat. That is, the enterprise of dealing with evil in our selves and in society is an ongoing existential task, from which there will be no relief until life is complete. Then we must pass the torch to others. What we can do in the meantime is cherish children and give them the best shot possible at making sense out of dignified living as early in life as possible. That should crowd us toward the responsibility of making certain that children everywhere have the very best experiences of filling their minds with constructive learning, their psyches with optimistic idealism, and their spirits with the spirit of God afloat in the universe. We can certainly improve the job we are doing in that regard in American society—and God help the secular Europeans! What makes this a more difficult than necessary undertaking is the fact that it is a divine-sized job—and we have only human resources! It is a Godsized job to build a mature humane character out of a primitive new child. Nonetheless, we are all challenged to do this, though we have not been given a full set of data about the nature, meaning, and dynamics of life. We do not know enough, are not wise enough, have insufficient skills, and cannot foresee what is ahead. We do not know what the child and we our selves are going to be up against. With what must we prepare the children to cope? These human limitations do not decrease the size of our responsibilities. Moreover, we only get one chance at each child. It is a trial-and-error process, with a little prior experience thrown in if the child will receive it, and life is not long enough to profit from this process. Time moves along too fast to use our own accumulated learning well enough, as we go along, to get the

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job done well. In the end, we are virtually left with David’s counsel in Psalm 37:3, “Trust in the Lord and do good!” That is about the best one can say in undertaking the task of determining what we can do best with what we have left, at each turn of the road. When discussing the precariousness of this life enterprise with my uncle, the chief of neurology at Mayo Clinic, he responded by saying, “Well, Harold, the amazing thing is that things turn out so well most of the time.” We have a divine-sized task in dealing with the problem of evil. We have only human resources. It is true that we might well stand in awe of the fact that from generation to generation, things go as well as they do. Most of the primitive kids do not grow up into prisoners, monsters, abusers of others, and proponents of the problem of evil. Moreover, we are on the track of those that do go wrong. We are studying carefully how genetics, biochemistry, environmental disadvantages, and bad education twist them up and make them go wrong. Undoubtedly, we are on the right track and can reduce the problem of evil even further than ever in the past. We can trust in the Lord and keep on doing as much good as possible. The third reason we shall never eradicate the problem of evil, however, remains enigmatic and difficult to explicate. We have a lovers’ quarrel with evil, I think. Consider the simple question, What would be lost if this evening we definitively and permanently solved the problem of evil? A great deal of the heroic motivation on the part of a very large segment of society would suddenly be deflated. What would they have to put in its place? An enormous amount of self-justification of behaviors, which are claimed to be necessary to hold evil at bay, would suddenly become unnecessary, and downright undesirable and offensive. Moreover, suddenly 90% of the entire entertainment industry would collapse, an enormous cost to the world economy. If we did not have the problem of evil as a stimulating resource in our society, at least 90% of all the preachers in the world would have to look for work as farm laborers, hod carriers, or carpenter’s assistants in the construction industry. Perhaps they could get hired as ward orderlies to empty bed pans. Otherwise they would need to find the aesthetics of life to sermonize and celebrate in place of the trivial moralizing one hears from the pulpits of the land these days. De Tocqueville would be appalled and withdraw his famous tome on American democracy depending upon the courage and brilliance of her pulpits. I trust you are getting my tongue-in-cheek point. As a huge percentage of U.S. government workers must find a way to perpetuate the presence of poverty and the poor in our society or lose their own jobs in the “service-tothe-chronic-poor” industry; just so, if we did away with evil this afternoon, the wide range of government agencies servicing the management of the evildoers in our society would become unnecessary. Can you imagine how many people that would put out of work? Moreover, in such a case, the church as a

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crusader against evil in the world would evaporate! The sexton would come to clean the church and open its windows, speaking metaphorically, and all he would find is a patch of grass and wildflowers growing there on the hill next to the old cemetery. What if we fixed the problem of evil in one fell swoop? What would be lost? Well, I need not try to answer that question for you; but you must answer it for yourself, not flippantly, but after very careful thought. How much of our unconscious brains are busy devising ways to keep evil going at just the right level to keep society as we know it going in all the ways it is familiar to us? I live in the Detroit metropolitan area. Detroit has been a rotten mess for four decades, at least since Coleman Young’s criminal tenure as mayor. There are very large bright spots in the city now as it recovers from its horrors, particularly the productive center of downtown and the lovely waterfront. However, why have we talked about fixing the rest of the city for five decades without doing anything about it? The new mayor, Mr. Bing, seems to know what he is doing. He talks about clearing the dead areas of town and turning them into agricultural strips. That is a great idea. So why is he not getting it done? Talk is cheap. His proposed action will turn a lot of familiar things upside down. Will society tolerate that? Do we prefer our love affair with evil? Do we simply need the problem of personal and institutionalized evil to keep life stimulating and familiar—and, of course, to have a rich stream of things to bitch and moan about—and to employ a lot of otherwise unemployed and in many cases unemployable people? What is this lovers’ quarrel we have with evil? Can we ever break its addiction? Do we need to do so, if we are to get definitively and curatively serious about fixing this problem? Addressing the problem of evil in all the ways we do in our society is a huge industry with an enormous budget dedicated to it. Just like the disaster that would occur for millions of government workers if we solved the problem of the poor, so fixing the problem of evil would create a fiscal and social disaster in this land. My point is simple. Evil is not just what you and I do in our bad moments, nor just what criminals do that sends them to prison or should, and not just what crazy people do that lands them in psychiatric wards. Evil is an institutionalized industry in every major culture and society in the world. So if we are to reduce the import and impact of evil in our persons and interpersonal lives, we must solve the problem of the institutionalization of evil everywhere in the world. That warrants another 10 volumes, I suppose. Lionel Tiger has taken a crack at it in his book, The Manufacture of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and Industrial System (1987). Perhaps in our next work, we will need to start where he left off.

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So we have a lovers’ quarrel with the problem of evil. We do not want evil, but we need it in ways that enmesh us with it. I suppose it was exactly this issue that was on Mohammad’s mind in his better days, when he proclaimed his message of Allah’s justice, grace, and judgment; and was on the mind of Moses when he insisted the Israelites keep themselves lawful and disciplined and eliminate the evil of the Canaanites. I suppose this is the enigma with which Jesus was wrestling when he enjoined us, “Return to no one evil for evil, but overcome evil with good.” Can we build goodness into our societal and governmental system to such an extent that it becomes institutionalized and replaces institutionalized evil? Worth a try! The alternatives to that are not impressive!

REFERENCES The Qur’an. (1995). Abdullah Yusufali, trans., Sayed A. A. Razwy, ed. New York: Alavi Foundation. Tiger, L. (1987). The manufacture of evil: Ethics, evolution, and industrial system. New York: Harper & Row.

Index

Abbott, Jennifer, 35 Abraham, K., 16 accepted knowledges and truths, 290 “Accuser of the brethren,” 148 Achbar, Mark, 35 Achtemeier, Paul, 128 Ackerman, N. W., 16 advantageous comparison, 44 adversary, 148 Allen, A. A., 146 altruism, 231 altruistic punishment, 50 American Bar Association, 47, 174 Amorth, Gabriele, 145 Anckarsater, H. S., 242 Anderson, Neil T., 78 Anderson, S. W., 241 Angley, Ernest, 145, 149 animus and anima, 82 anomalous cognitive processing, 237–245 antideficiency legislation, 177 antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), 238 Applegate, B. K., 53 Aquinas, Thomas, 115 archetypes, 83

Aristotle, 135 Armstrong, K., 281 Asahara, Shoko, 22 asset protection, 170 Aten, J. D., 119 attribution of blame, 45 Atwood, G. E., 277 “axis of evil,” 292, 293 Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, 42 Baglio, Matt, 145 Bakan, Joel, 35 Bandura, Albert, 19 Baumeister, R. F., 45–46, 223, 225, 229 Beaubrun, M. H., 158, 159 Becker, Ernest, 275; and evil, 266–268 “Belial,” 136, 148 Benning, S. D., 240 Bernstein, A., 243 Berry, J. W., 115 Beyer, J. A., 241 biblical psychology: against theology, 247–261; David subdues goliath, 256–259; implications for, 259–261; Israelites worship the golden calf, 251–256 “Black Bastard Breeder,” 99

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blame and responsibility, 171–173 Blaty, William Peter, 144, 151, 154 Brittle, Geral, 145 Bull, D. L., 158 Burrus, Pastor, 93 Butcher, J. N., 158 Bystander effect, 185 Calvin, John, 249 Cannon, J., 278 caring role persona, 81 Carson, C. R., 158 causes of evil, 223–225; egotism, 224; idealism, 224; instrumentalism, 223–224; sadism, 224–225 central archetype, 82 character strength, 114 charisma, 32 Charles Williams, 190, 191 Chesteron, G. K., 244 church, role in mitigating evil, 60–79; counterfeit deception, 66; courageous lions, 75–76; defining evil, 60–61; defining the church, 63–64; demonic activity, 77–78; doing good is a weapon, 76–77; dumb sheep, 74; earthly distractions, 72–74; evil as an opposite, 61–63; light as a weapon, 66–69; prayer as a weapon, 77; weapon of forgiveness, 71–72; weapon of truth, 64–65; women as warriors, 69–71 church ritual, 194–195 Coe, Jack, 146 cognitive-behavioral approaches, 4 collective unconscious, 82–83 compromise of integrity, 28–31 conceptualizing evil, 203–204 conformism, 274, 275 Conley, D., 148, 155, 156 Conn, Stephen, 145 conscience, 191–192 conscientiousness-based virtues, 114, 115 consistency and recreating our past, 175–179 cooperation among groups, 50–51 coping with evil, by individuals, 183–201; church ritual, 194–195; conscience, 191–192; denial of evil, 187;

dissociative identity disorder (DID), 186–187; forgiveness, 188, cultural variations on, 188–191; lamenting, 196–199; laughing at evil, 195–196; methods and tools, 183–185; Myrna’s lament, 199–200; prayer, 192–194; Stockholm syndrome, 185–186 counterfeit deception, 66 courage, 233–234 Cuneo, M. W., 146, 147, 151, 154 Dabbs, J. M., 239 daimonic possession, 270 David subdues goliath, 256–259 da Vinci, Leonardo, 41 dealing constructively with sin and evil, 247–261; David subdues goliath, 256–259; implications for biblical psychology, 259–261; Israelites worship the golden calf, 251–256 death squad, 20 dehumanization, 45 Deikman, Arthur J., 33, 35 demonic activity, 77–78 demon possession: Bible on, 150–155; of people, 155–157; psychology on, 157–160 denial of evil, 187 destructiveness, 3 deterrent theory of punishment, 43 Devereux, G., 31 DeWall, C. N., 45–46, 225 Dewey, Thomas E., 101 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV), 158, 238, 293 Diamond, S. A.; and evil and daimonic, 268–271 Diamond, Stephen A., 266, 268, 269, 270, 275, 279 Diogenes Laertius, 250 dispositional approach, 272 dissociative identity disorder (DID), 157–158, 186–187 dissociative trance disorder (DTD), 158 distal meaning, 204–205 distortion, 45 divide and conquer, 68 Doan, R., 278 doing good, 76–77

Index Dolan, R. J., 241, 242 Doob, A. N., 52 doubling of conscience in groups, 16–37; compromise of integrity syndrome, 28–31; doubling, defined, 20–21; group psychology, 31–35; humiliation, 26–28; libertarian model, 18–19; religious terrorism, 22–26; ubiquity, 35–36 doubling of self, 20, 25 Dreber, A., 51 DSM-IV. See Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition Dutch, Steven, 184 earthly distractions, 72–74 Ecker, B., 270 Eco, U., 289 Edward, King VII, 172 Edwards, Jonathan, 75 effect of evil’s presence, 4 ego, 80; autonomy, 19 egotism, 224 “elementary principles,” 137 Eliot, T. S., 88 Elliott, J. H., 126, 127 empathy, 231 Enright, R. D., 119, 188 environmental variables, virtuous behavior, 116 epistemic-based virtues, 115 Epston, David, 4, 5 Erikson, Erik, 22, 33, 267 eudaemonia, 222, 234 euphemistic language, 44 evil, 203, 222 evil and positive psychology, 220–234; causes of evil, 223–225, egotism, 224, idealism, 224, instrumentalism, 223–224, sadism, 224–225; escalation of evil through relational spirituality, 225–228, victim’s appraisal of sacred–offender relationship, 227, victim’s appraisal of sacred– transgression relationship, 226, 228, victim’s appraisal of victim–sacred relationship, 227–228; evil, 222–223; positive psychology, 221–222; preventing and stopping evil with virtue, 229, courage, 233–234,

307

humility, 230–232, justice, 232–233, resiliency, 229–230 evil in mind, 237–245 existential-integrative perspectives, 263–284; applications, 275; Becker and evil, 266–268; defining and conceptualizing evil from, 266; Diamond, and evil and daimonic, 268– 271; existential-integrative conception of evil, 274–275; May, and evil and daimonic, 268–271; needs frustration, 271–272; purveyors of evil great and small, 280–284, decreasing social factors contributing to evil, 283–284, preventing great evils, 284, preventing pain from becoming evil, 280–282, recognizing the universality of the potential for evil, 282–283; reason for concern, 264–265; redeeming evil, 265–266; victims of evil, 275–280, attunement and processing, 277–278, integration and meaning, 278–280, power and powerlessness, 276–277, responsibility, 276; Zimbardo, 272–274 existential security model of morality (ESM), 207, 215 exorcising evil, 144–161; demon possession, Bible on, 150–155, of people, 155–157, psychology on, 157–160; Satan, origin and evolution, 148–150 exorcism, 147 Ezekiel, 254 Fairbairn, W. R. D., 24, 26 faithless, 153 Falun Gong, 293 family system, punishment in, 47–50 Faulkner, William, 109 fears of demonization, 146 Ferracuti, S., 158 finger of God, 155 Fitzgibbons, R. P., 119 fluid compensation, 206 “folk psychological narratives,” 34 forgiveness, 71–72, 109–122; cultural variations on, 188–191; definitions, 110–111; general approach, 109–110;

308

Index

great societal leadership, conditions for, 120–122, necessity of, 120; intergroup communication of, 113; intergroup forgiveness, conceptualizations, 111–113, social and societal contexts of, 113–114; likelihood of virtuous, peace-seeking behavior, hypothesized mechanisms governing moral behavior, 118–119; moral understandings and virtues elicited by situations, 117–118, called-out virtues, 117–118, general moral understanding, 117; psychological model for virtuous behavior, 116–117, environmental variables, 116, interaction of the variables, 117, person variables, 116, triggers, 116; religion and culture as positive and negative, 119–120; and virtue, 114–116, experimental support, 115, variety, 115–116, ordering of, 116 Fortea, J., 145, 152, 153 Forth, A. E., 242 Foucault, Michel, 4, 6 Frankl, Victor, 266, 273, 277 Freud, Sigmund, 2, 16, 22, 32, 34, 82 “friendly fire,” 68, 71 Frost, Robert, 298 Fudenberg, D., 51 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), 238 Gage, Phineas, 241 Gandhi, Mahatma, 91 Garrido, Phillip, 185 general deterrence, 52 Genovese, Catherine Susan “Kitty,” 185 George, King, 176 Gergen, K., 292 Gershoff, E. T., 48 Giddens, Anthony, 287 global financial crisis (GFC), 166 “god of this world,” 148 Goethe, J. W., 195 good and bad perspective, 83–84 Goodman, Felicitas, 145 Gordon, D. A., 49 Graham, Billy, 67 Gray, N. S., 243 Great Depression, 92, 177

Green, J. B., 127 Green, J. D., 208, 210, 214 Grotius, Hugo, 41 group psychology, 31–35 guilt, 45–47 Hagin, Kenneth, 146 Hailey, H., 157 “Hallelujah Chorus,” 193 Hamilton, C. D., 148, 150, 156 Hare, R. D., 243 Hartmann, H., 17 Hearst, Patricia, 185 Hillman, J., 279, 280 Hinn, Benny, 145 Hitler, Adolf, 288 Hoffman, L., 272 honesty, 174; differentiation, 167–170 Hulley, L., 270 humiliation, 23–24, 26–28 humility, 230–232 Hutto, D. D., 34 Iacono, W. G., 240 idealism, 224 illumination, 220 Implicit Association Test (IAT), 243 Impulsive Unsocialized Sensation Seeking (ImpUSS), 239 impulsivity, 239 individual, punishment and, 44 instrumentalism, 223–224 integrity, 164, 167–170, 171, 175, 181, 269 intercessory prayer, 193 intergroup communication of forgiveness, 113 intergroup forgiveness: conceptualizations, 111–113; social and societal contexts of, 113–114 Israelites worship the golden calf, 251–256 Jackson, W., 150, 156, 157 Jahoda, M., 16 Jesus, 7, 64, 68, 88, 93, 104, 125, 126, 129, 138, 140, 152, 155, 186, 194, 298, 299, 303 Jobes, Karen, 126, 128 Johnson, A. M., 30 Johnson, D. D. P., 51 Jones, J. W., 22–24

Index Jones, R. H., 49 Josephus, 149 Joshi, S., 159 Jung, Carl, 2, 80, 82, 268 justice, 232–233; procedural, 232; restorative, 53–54, 232; retributive, 52, 232; vigilante, 232 Jutai, J., 243 Kagame, Paul, 118, 119 Kambanda, Jean, 118 Kardiner, A., 17 Kaufman, G., 28 Kiely, David, 145 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 93, 131 “king of Babylon,” 149 Klein, M., 24 Klinteberg, B. A., 240 knowledge and power, 6 Kohlberg, Lawrence, 192 Kohut, H., 25 Kopelowica, Alex, 158 Kosson, D. S., 242 Krüger, O., 51 Kuhn, B. R., 48 labeling theory, 53 lamenting, 196–199; Myrna’s lament, 199–200 Larson, Bob, 147, 159 Larzelere, R. E., 48 Latimer, J., 54 laughing at evil, 195–196 legal system, punishment within, 52–54 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT), 3 Levenston, G. K., 242 Levy-Bruhl, Lucien, 85 Lewis, C. S., 55, 121, 238 Libby, J., 242 libertarian model, 18–19 Lifton, Robert Jay, 20, 21, 25 light as a weapon, 66–69 likelihood of virtuous, peace-seeking behavior: hypothesized mechanisms governing moral behavior, 118–119 limited liability company (LLC), 178 Lindbeck, George, 130 Lindholm, C., 32

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litigation as the law core, 171 Liturgy, Divine, 190 Locke, John, 41 Loewenstein, R. M., 16 Luh, K. E., 243 Luskin, F. M., 119 Macdonald, Ross, 237, 238 Manasseh, King, 249 Mandela, Nelson, 118 Martin, Malachi, 144–145, 146 Martyr, Justin, 149 May, R., 263, 269, 270, 274, 275, 279, 282 May, Rollo, 263, 266, 274, 275, 279, 282; and evil and daimonic, 268–271 Mayer, A. R., 242 McArthur, Douglas, 290 McCullough, M. E., 188 McIntyre, Brian, 145 McKneally, George F., 96 McKneally, Martin, 96 McMurphy, Randall, 244 meaning, 203–216; and certainty, 213–214; conceptualizing evil, 203–204; after death persistency, 214; and evil reduction, 212–215; and human life value, 214–215; moral benefits of, 207, meaning and moral affirmation, 209–210, meaningful cultural worldviews, existential function of, 210–212, problem of meaninglessness, 207–209; psychological importance, 204–207, meaning maintenance model, 206–207, terror management theory, 205–206 meaning maintenance model (MMM), 206 Merton, Thomas, 104, 107 Merwe, Van der, 293 Meyer, J. E., 231 Milbank, J., 111 Milgram, S., 204 Miller, A., 27 Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), 243 Mitchell, Joseph McDowell, 94, 96, 99, 100, 101, 107 Mohammad, 298, 299, 303 monoamine oxidase (MAO), 239 moral amplification, 203

310

Index

moral defense, 24, 26 moral disengagement theory, 44–45; distortion, 45; perception of victims, 45; reprehensible conduct, 44 moral evil, 3, 222 “moral insanity,” 238 morality, 207 moral justification, 44 moral understandings and virtues elicited by situations, 117–118; called-out virtues, 117–118; general moral understanding, 117 Morris, David, 4 Morris, R., 239 Moses, 34, 42, 135, 193, 249–256, 259, 260, 298, 299 multiple personality disorder (MPD), 158, 161, 186. See also dissociative identity disorder mutilation, 138 Myrna’s lament, 199–200 myth, 34; loss of, 269 narcissistic rage, 25 narrative practices, 5 narrative theories: defining problems in, 7–8 narrative therapy, 4, 5; overview of, 5–6 natural evil, 3, 222 Nazism, 17 needs frustration, 271–272 Newman, J. P., 243 New Testament, 7 Nowak, M. A., 51 Nowicki, S., Jr., 49 O’Leary, J. V., 26 Oliver, P., 51 O’Neill, Edward G., 101 organized religion, 63 Orthodox Christianity, 152–153 Ostow, M., 16, 34 overcoming evil in I Peter, 125–132; repentance, 129; rereading, 129–130; retracing, 131–132; retrieval, 130–131 Palagruto, Anne, 145 parent persona, 81 Parks, Rosa, 93 Parrott, L. III., 115

Parry, A., 278 participation mystique, 85 party persona, 81 Pastorelli, C., 44 Pataki, George, 131 patriarchal sovereign, 32 Patrick, C. J., 240 patriotic hatred, 106 Paul, Apostle, 67, 248 Paul, Robert A., 34 Pauline literature, biblical notions and admonitions on evil in, 134–142; evil personified, 134–137; human element of evil, 137–140; Paul’s view of evil in second temple Jewish context, 140–142 Peck, Scott, 3, 145, 264 perception of victims, 45 persona, 80–81 personal unconscious, 82 person variables, virtuous behavior, 116 Peter, Apostle, 130 Piaget, Jean, 192 Pogarsky, G., 53 political correctness, 187 politics and society, role in resolving evil, 164–181; blame and responsibility, 171–173; consistency and recreating our past, 175–179; honesty, differentiation, 167–170; integrity, 167–170; litigation as the law core, 171; secrecy and transparency to truth, 173–175; society’s quest, aspiration form, 179–180, group, 180–181 positive psychology, 222, 234 positron emission tomography (PET), 238 postmodern world, 4 postmodernism, 287–297; accepted knowledges and truths, 290; discourses as language acts, 290–291; evil as discourse, 291–293; evil as power, 293–294, macro levels, 294, meso levels, 294–295, micro levels, 295–296, discourses or master stories, 296; language, 289–290 posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 46 power, 6

Index prayer, 192–194; intercessory, 193; as a weapon, 77 precipitate (demon) possession, 159 Presley, Elvis, 71 prestige, 32 pretrial discovery, 173, 174 preventing and stopping evil with virtue, 229–234; courage, 233–234; humility, 230–232; justice, 232–233; resiliency, 229–230 Pritchard, J. C., 238 problems, through a narrative lens, 7–8 procedural justice, 232 professional persona, 81 proximal meaning, 204 pseudospeciation, 33 psychic determinism, 18 psychic numbing, 26 psychoanalytic approaches, 4 psychoanalytic superego, 36 psychoanalytic theory, 18 psychodrama, 196, 197 psychological model for virtuous behavior, 116–117; environmental variables, 116; interaction of the variables, 117; person variables, 116; triggers, 116 psychological treatment programs, 1 psychopathic inferiority, 239 psychopaths, 192, 241, 242–244 psychopathy, 237–245 Psychopathy Check List (PCL), 240 punishment, 41–55; cooperation among groups, 50–51; debate, 43; in family system, 47–50; and guilt, 45–47; history, 42–43; and individual, 44; within legal system, 52–54; moral disengagement theory, 44–45, distortion, 45, perception of victims, 45, reprehensible conduct, 44; and shame, 45–47; and society, 50 purgation, 220 purveyors of evil great and small, 280–284; decreasing social factors contributing to evil, 283–284; preventing great evils, 284; preventing pain from becoming evil, 280–282; recognizing the universality of the potential for evil, 282–283

311

Rabbi Bahya, 248 Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, 248, 253 Rachal, K. C., 188 Raine, A., 243, 244 Rand, D. G., 51 Rangell, Leo, 28, 29, 30 Rank, Otto, 270, 273 recall, 231 recovering alcoholic, 7 Redl, F., 32 reformatory theory, 43 rehabilitation theory, 43 relational humility, 230 relational spirituality, 225–228; victim’s appraisal, of sacred–offender relationship, 227, of sacred– transgression relationship, 226, 228, of victim–sacred relationship, 227–228 religion, role in repelling evil, 80–89; Jungian psychology, 80–83; perspective of good and bad, 83–84; repelling evil, 84; way of individuation, 88–89 religion and culture as positive and negative, 119–120 religious terrorism, 22–26 repelling evil, 80–89 repentance, 73, 120, 129, 187, 252, 255 reprehensible conduct, 44 rereading, 129–130 resiliency, 229–230 response on resolving evil (a pastor’s), 91–108; battle of Newburgh, 93–100; early years, 91–93; moving on, 105–108; the 1960s, 102–105; some reflections midway in the journey, 100–102 responses to evil, 3 responsibility and blame, 171–173 restorative justice, 53–54, 232 retracing, 131–132 retributive justice, 52, 232 retrieval, 130–131 “return” principle, 189 Rhodes, A. B., 104 Rieber, Ney, 159 righteous sufferer, 128 Rilker, J. H., 270 Roberts, Oral, 146

312

Index

Rogers, Carl, 263, 272 Róheim, G., 16 Ross, C. A., 159 Rudd, S., 150 “ruler of demons,” 148 sacred–offender relationship, 227 sacred sorrow, 199 sacred–transgression relationship, 226, 228 sadism, 224–225 “safe haven,” 12, 13 Satan, origin and evolution, 148–150 Schiffer, I., 32 Schneider, K. J., 266, 278, 284 Schwarzenegger, Gustov, 185 Schweizer, E., 142n2 “scientific racism,” 20 Second Temple Judaism, 127, 139, 140 secrecy and transparency to truth, 173–175 seeker friendly church, 73 self, 82 “semantic dementia,” 239 Serlin, I. A., 278 “service-to-the-chronic-poor” industry, 301 shadow, 81–82 shame, 45–47 sin and the sinner, 7 Sinatra, Frank, 71 Sitren, A. H., 53 situational approach, 272 Smart, Elizabeth, 185 Smith, Bessie, 103 social character, 17 societal intergroup forgiveness, 113 societal leadership: conditions for, 120–122; necessity of, 120 society: punishment and, 50; quest, aspiration form, 179–180, group, 180–181 socioeconomic status (SES), 239 sociopaths, 192 Socrates, 250 South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (SA-TRC), 118, 120 specific deterrence, 52, 53 Spirit of God, 155–156 spirituality, 223 splitting, 24 Stafford, M. C., 53

Stalinism, 17 Stockholm syndrome, 185–186 Stolorow, R. D., 277, 278 “strong man,” 148, 156 Suchy, Y., 242 superego lacunae, 30 Swinton, 3 Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), 185 syndrome of the compromise of integrity, 28–31 “tempter,” 148 terrorism, religious, 22–26 terror management theory, 205–206 Thierer, Mike, 153 Tiger, Lionel, 302 Tolkien, J. R. R., 196 torture, 296 transfer of conscience, 25 transparency to truth and secrecy, 173–175 trash talking, 257 triggers, virtuous behavior, 116 truth, 174, 290 Tutu, Desmond, 118 unconscious, 82 Van Tongeren, D. R., 208, 210, 214 Varvin, S., 18 Venables, P., 244 Ventura, M., 279 victim–sacred relationship, 227–228 victims of evil, 275–280; attunement and processing, 277–278; integration and meaning, 278–280; power and powerlessness, 276–277; responsibility, 276 vigilante justice, 232 “village psychiatrist,” 150 Vine, W. E., 148 virtue, 114–116; called-out virtues, 117–118; experimental support, 115; ordering of, 116; variety, 115–116 virtuous behavior, psychological model for, 116–117; environmental variables, 116; interaction of the variables, 117; person variables, 116; triggers, 116 Vogl, Carl, 145

Index Vohs, K. D., 45–46, 225 Volf, Miroslav, 130 Voltaire, 203, 216 Wade, N. G., 231 Wallace, J. F., 243 Walsh, A., 241 Ward, C. A., 158, 159 warmth-based virtues, 114 Warr, M., 53 Watson, R. I., Jr., 26 weapon: doing good as, 76–77; of forgiveness, 71–72; light as, 66–69; prayer as, 77; of truth, 64–65 Weaver, Richard, 147 Webb, J., 115 Webster, C. M., 52 “weeping prophet,” 198 Weiner, Irving, 96 Weschler, D., 241

White, Michael, 4, 5, 7 White, William A., 239 Whitman, Charles, 280, 284 wild analysis, 36 Williams, Charles, 190 Williams, M., 244 women as warriors, 69–71 Wong, Alan, 191 Worthington, E. L., Jr., 115, 119, 188, 229, 231 Wright, N. T., 115 Yalom, I. D., 205, 207, 210, 282 Young, Coleman, 302 Zaffis, John, 145 Zhang, L., 45–46, 225 Zimbardo, P., 233, 266, 271, 272–274, 275, 282, 283 Zuckerman, M., 239

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About the Editor and Advisers

EDITOR J. Harold Ellens, PhD, is a research scholar, a retired Presbyterian theologian and ordained minister, a retired U.S. Army colonel, and a retired professor of philosophy, theology and psychology. He has authored, coauthored and/ or edited 185 books and 167 professional journal articles. He served 15 years as executive director of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies, and as founding editor and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Psychology and Christianity. He holds a PhD from Wayne State University in the Psychology of Human Communication, a PhD from the University of Michigan in Biblical and Near Eastern Studies, and master’s degrees from Calvin Theological Seminary, Princeton Theological Seminary, and the University of Michigan. He was born in Michigan, grew up in a Dutch-German immigrant community, and determined at age seven to enter the Christian Ministry as a means to help his people with the great amount of suffering he perceived all around him during the Great Depression and WW II. His life’s work has focused on the interface of psychology and religion.

ADVISERS Donald Capps, PhD and Psychologist of Religion, is Emeritus William Hart Felmeth Professor of Pastoral Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. In 1989 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Uppsala, Sweden, in recognition of the importance of his publications. He served as

316

About the Editor and Advisers

president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion from 1990 to 1992. Among his many significant books are Men, Religion and Melancholia: James, Otto, Jung and Erikson and Freud; also The Freudians on Religion: A Reader; also Social Phobia: Alleviating Anxiety in an Age of Self-Promotion; and Jesus: A Psychological Biography. He also authored The Child’s Song: The Religious Abuse of Children, and Jesus, the Village Psychiatrist. Zenon Lotufo Jr., PhD, is a Presbyterian minister (Independent Presbyterian Church of Brazil), a philosopher and a psychotherapist, who specializes in Transactional Analysis. He has lectured both to undergraduate and graduate courses in universities in São Paulo, Brazil. He coordinates the course of specialization in Pastoral Psychology of the Christian Psychologists and Psychiatrists Association. He is the author of the books, Relações Humanas [Human Relations]; Disfunções no Comportamento Organizacional [Dysfunctions in Organizational Behavior] and co-author of O Potencial Humano [Human Potential]. He has also authored numerous journal articles. Dirk Odendaal, DLitt, is South African, born in what is now called the Province of the Eastern Cape. He spent much of his youth in the Transkei in the town of Umtata, where his parents were teachers at a seminary. He trained as a minister at the Stellenbosch Seminary for the Dutch Reformed Church and was ordained in 1983 in the Dutch Reformed Church in Southern Africa. He transferred to East London in 1988 to minister to members of the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa in one of the huge suburbs for Xhosaspeaking people. He received his doctorate (D.Litt.) in 1992 at the University of Port Elizabeth in Semitic Languages and a Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology at Rhodes University. Wayne G. Rollins, PhD, is Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at Assumption College, Worcester, Massachusetts, and Adjunct Professor of Scripture at Hartford Seminary, Hartford, Connecticut. His writings include The Gospels: Portraits of Christ (1964), Jung and the Bible (1983), and Soul and Psyche, The Bible in Psychological Perspective (1999). He received his PhD in New Testament Studies from Yale University and is the founder and chairman (1990–2000) of the Society of Biblical Literature Section on Psychology and Biblical Studies.

About the Contributors

Rafael Chodos, JD, practices law in California and is the founder and CEO of RentAJudge.com, which offers private, speedy, and cost-effective dispute resolution. He holds a BA in philosophy from the University of California,– Berkeley, and his JD from Boston University School of Law. He developed and taught a course on law, ethics, and the enterprise for the EMBA Program at the Drucker/Ito School of Management in Claremont, California. He is the author of a major treatise, The Law of Fiduciary Duties (2000), cited several times by the California courts, including the California Supreme Court. Chodos’s lifelong interest in art, religion, law, and technology have produced prolific writings, which include The Jewish Attitude towards Justice and Law (1984); Centripetal Art: Matrix of Growth (eBook 2008); and Why on Earth Does God Have to Paint?/Centripetal Art (2009). Chodos and his wife, the worldrenowned artist Junko Chodos, formed the Foundation for Centripetal Art in 2008 to promote serious discussion of contemporary art, and to spread the ideas of centripetal art. Suzanne M. Coyle, PhD, is assistant professor of pastoral theology and marriage and family therapy at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, where she also serves as the executive director of the Counseling Center and director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Program. A diplomate in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors and an approved supervisor in American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, she has many years of experience as a pastor, therapist, consultant, and educator. Dr. Coyle holds a MDiv and PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary.

318

About the Contributors

Don E. Davis is a doctoral student in counseling psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University. His research interests are forgiveness, humility, and religion and spirituality. Jody L. Davis, PhD, is an assistant professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University. She is a social psychologist who primarily studies close relationships. Her research interests include attitude alignment, forgiveness, interpersonal respect, and interdependence processes. Kevin J. Eames, PhD, is associate professor of psychology and director of Institutional Research at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, GA. In addition to his contribution to the current volume, he has contributed chapters to two previous J. Harold Ellens–edited books: Miracles: God, Science, and Psychology in the Paranormal (2008); and The Healing Power of Spirituality: How Religion Helps Humans Thrive (2010). Dr. Eames earned his PhD in counseling psychology in 1999 from Georgia State University. His teaching and research interests include psychology of religion, history and systems of psychology, and effective methods for teaching statistics to undergraduates. In addition, he maintains a scholarly interest in issues related to leadership and organizations as complex systems. J. Harold Ellens, PhD, is retired from his roles as professor of philosophy and psychology, executive director of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies, founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Psychology and Christianity, U.S. Army colonel, and Presbyterian (PCUSA) theologian and pastor. He continues in private practice as a licensed psychotherapist and as an international lecturer. He is the author of 180 published volumes, mainly on the interface of psychology and spirituality, and of 167 professional journal articles and reviews. He is the father of seven children. He and his wife have been married for 56 years. Steven Fehl, PhD, is a student in the doctor of clinical psychology program at the University of the Rockies, and is currently completing his psychological internship at the Center for Growth in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Steve served Lutheran parishes in Texas, Michigan, California, Minnesota, and Colorado before beginning his doctoral work. He has an MA in psychology and has done additional graduate work through the San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo, CA. Aubrey L. Gartner is a doctoral student in the counseling psychology program at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her research interests include forgiveness, mercy, marital enrichment, and positive psychology. Jeffrey D. Green, PhD, is a member of the Department of Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University. He studies the interplay of affect and

About the Contributors

319

the self (such as the role of self-focused attention on moral emotions such as gratitude), the processes by which individuals process and remember threatening self-relevant information (the mnemic neglect model), affective forecasting for benevolent and hurtful behaviors, meaning and morality, and close relationships, particularly forgiveness (e.g., the “third-party forgiveness effect”) and attachment (e.g., attachment and exploration). Chelsea L. Greer is a doctoral student in counseling psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University. Todd W. Greer is a doctoral student in the PhD in organizational leadership program at Regent University, majoring in human resource development. He has served in ministry in Michigan and Virginia. His research interests include group and organizational conflict, teamwork, training and development, followership, and organizational psychology. Christine Gregory, PhD, is a humanistic-existential psychotherapist at the Center for Growth in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Her interests include working with the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) population; women’s issues; diversity; trauma; and growth issues. Christine is currently working on her dissertation at the University of the Rockies, where she expects to graduate this year with a doctoral degree in clinical psychology. She is active in the lesbian community in Colorado Springs as well as in Denver. Christine was married this past year to a wonderful woman and now has six children. Peter J. Hampson, PhD, is a professor of Psychology at the University of the West in Bristol, (UK), associate tutor, Wesley College Bristol (UK), and president of the Bristol Theological Society. From 2011 he will be Visiting Research Scholar at the Aquinas Institute, Blackfriars Hall, Oxford University. His interests include: the theology-psychology dialogue; Thomist anthropology and moral psychology; religion, theology, and interdisciplinarity in contemporary higher education. He has published articles in psychological and theological journals including Cognition, Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, British Journal of Psychology, Theology and Science, and New Blackfriars, co-authored (with Peter Morris) Imagery and Consciousness (1983), and Understanding Cognition (1996), and co-edited (with David Marks and John Richardson) Imagery: Current Developments (1990). Louis Hoffman, PhD, is a faculty member at Saybrook University in San Francisco, California. He is author or editor of five books, including Existential Psychology East-West and Brilliant Sanity: Buddhist Approaches to Psychotherapy. Additionally, he serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Humanistic Psychology and PsycCRITIQUES: APA Review of Books, and is co-editor-in-chief

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About the Contributors

of the Journal of Psychological Issues in Organizational Culture. Dr. Hoffman is also active in cross-cultural psychology, particularly the East-West dialogue on existential psychology and the psychology of religion and spirituality. Joshua N. Hook is a doctoral student in the counseling psychology program at Virginia Commonwealth University. His research interests include psychotherapy process and outcome research, religion and spirituality, forgiveness, and humility. David J. Jennings II, MA, is a graduate student in the counseling psychology program at Virginia Commonwealth University. His major research interests are forgiveness and relationships, spirituality and counseling, and marital therapy. Kalman J. Kaplan, PhD, is a professor of Psychology Emeritus at Wayne State University, and now conducts graduate seminars at the University of Illinois. Dr. Kaplan served as editor of The Journal of Psychology and Judaism and developed his model of Biblical Psychology on a Fulbright Fellowship at Tel Aviv University in the years 2006-2007. He is currently running an online class on Biblical psychology, in the Departments of Psychiatry and Medical Education at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, funded by a Templeton Foundation grant. That online program has taught students from Canada, Cambodia, China, England, Guam, India, Israel, Italy, Korea, Romania, South Africa, Thailand, the United States, and Venezuela. Dan Merkur, PhD, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Toronto, Canada. He is also a guest scholar in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. He taught religious studies at five universities in Canada and the United States and has published 13 books and many articles variously in psychoanalysis, the history of religion, and the psychoanalytic study of religion. His most recent books are Explorations of the Psychoanalytic Mystics (2010); and, coauthored with David Bakan and David S. Weiss, Maimonides’ Cure of Souls: Medieval Precursor of Psychoanalysis (2009). Dirk Odendaal, DLitt, was born in South Africa and in what is now called the Province of the Eastern Cape. He was trained as a minister at Stellenbosch University and was ordained in 1983 in the Dutch Reformed Church in Africa. He was transferred to a congregation in Mdantsane, a suburb of East London, in 1988, to minister to members of the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa. He holds a doctorate (DLitt) from the University of Port Elizabeth in Semitic languages. Odendaal obtained a masters degree in counseling psychology at the Rhodes University and is a practicing psychologist, and he is a part-time pastor to five congregations in the East London region.

About the Contributors

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Daryl S. Paulson, PhD, is president and chief executive officer of BioScience Laboratories, Inc., which he founded in 1991. He is a member of the American Society for Microbiology, the American Psychological Association, and the Association of Practitioners of Infection Control. He is board-certified by the American College of Forensic Examiners, and has published more than thirty articles on clinical evaluation, business strategy, quantitative management science, the development of marketable products, experimental designs, microbiology, and psychology. Paulson received a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a master of science degree in medical microbiology and biostatistics from the University of Montana, a master of counseling psychology from the Human Relations Institute in Santa Barbara, California; a doctorate in psychology from Sierra University in Riverside, California; a doctorate in human science from Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center in San Francisco; and an M.B.A. from the University of Montana. Myrna Pugh, MA, is a graduate of Denver Seminary in the field of counseling. She is retired from private practice and now devotes herself to writing full-time and practicing “grandmotherhood.” She mentors single mothers, and also mentors counseling students through Phoenix Seminary. She has been involved with Stephen Ministry since 1991, and has been a Stephen trainer since 1994. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, with her husband Pat, who is a retired attorney and physician. She loves to cook and collect exotic recipes. Stephen J. Pullum, PhD, is professor of communication studies and former associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of North Carolina at–Wilmington. He received a PhD from Indiana University and an MA from the University of Tennessee, both in communication. He is author of the book “Foul Demons, Come Out!” The Rhetoric of TwentiethCentury American Faith Healing and numerous other articles dealing with rhetoric and religion. Dr. Pullum teaches courses in the rhetoric of faith healing, intercultural communication, communication theory, and nonverbal communication. He is the recipient of the Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence Award and the Distinguished Teaching Professorship at the University of North Carolina at–Wilmington. Elizabeth Recht-Jones teaches and is a research associate of Professor Kalman J. Kaplan at the University of Illinois. F. Morgan Roberts, DD, served as a pastor in the Presbyterian Church (USA) for over 50 years. Upon retirement, he was named pastor emeritus of the Shadyside Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh. Following retirement, he served several congregations as an interim pastor, and ended his ministry as interim director of field education and adjunct professor of ministry and

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homiletics at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Dr. Roberts was educated at Colgate University and Princeton Theological Seminary, and has received five honorary doctoral degrees. He is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature. Peter Rodgers, PhD, is adjunct professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary in northern California, and pastor and theologian of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Antelope, California. From 1979 to 2003, he served as rector of St John’s Episcopal Church, New Haven, CT. He is the author of numerous publications in the field of biblical studies. Matthew B. Schwartz, PhD, teaches in the History and Near Eastern Studies Departments at Wayne State University. He has authored or coauthored numerous books and articles, including many with Kalman Kaplan. He is the author of Roman Letters: History from a Personal Point of View. His special interest is the thought and religions of the ancient Greeks and Jews. He serves on the editorial board of Menorah Review. Daryl R. Van Tongeren is a doctoral student in the social psychology program at Virginia Commonwealth University. He studies the social cognitive factors involved in maintaining a meaningful conceptualization of oneself. His research interests include meaning, morality, religion, forgiveness, and positive psychology. James A. Waddell received the PhD from the University of Michigan with an interdisciplinary specialization in Second Temple Judaism, Christian origins, and New Testament. He has written on Jewish messianism in the Enoch literature and the letters of Paul. His research is focused on the transmission of Jewish intellectual traditions within Second Temple period scribal communities and the early Jesus movement. Helen Juliett Warner, PsyD, is currently working in the mental health field and proudly served 20 years in the U.S. Air Force. The one consistent part of her life has been the search for knowledge and challenges. Throughout her life, she has tried to make a difference by being the best she could be in whatever field she was working. Everett L. Worthington Jr., PhD, is professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is primarily affiliated with the counseling psychology program (APA accredited), and is affiliated with social psychology and developmental psychology programs. He is a licensed clinical psychologist in Virginia. His research interests include forgiveness, marriage enrichment, religion and spirituality, and positive psychology.