The Origin of Satan (25 page)

breath, Tomorrow you may be dead.” “Ominous words,” others

reproached Epictetus, but he replied, “Not at all, but only

indicating an act of nature. Would it be ominous to speak of

harvesting ripe corn?”54 Like Epictetus, Marcus ignores the

obvious objection that a child is hardly “ripe” for death's

harvesting; he muses only that every one of us will fall, “like

grains of incense on an altar, some sooner, some later.”55 So, he

continues in his internal dialogue, instead of saying, “How

unfortunate I am, that this has happened to me,” one should

strive to say, “How fortunate I am, that this has happened, and

yet I am still unhurt, neither crushed by the present, nor

terrified of the future.”56 Reflecting on reverses of fortune—

emperors suddenly assassinated, slaves freed—Marcus tells

himself:

Whatever happens to you, this, for you, came from destiny;

and the interweaving of causes has woven into one fabric your

existence and this event.57

Marcus’s primary article of faith, then, involves the unity of

all being:

All things are woven into one another, and the bond that

unites them is sacred; and hardly anything is alien to any other.

For they are ordered in relation to one another, and they join

together to order the same universe. For there is one universe,

consisting of all things; and one essence, and one law, one

divine reason, and one truth; and . . . also one fulfillment of the

living creatures that have the same origin, and share the same

nature.58

Marcus perceives nature and destiny collapsed into one

divinely charged reality and strives to accept his own lot as a

matter of religious obligation. He expects no less of everyone

else— certainly of anyone who aspires to philosophy.

Marcus was unique; few pagans tried to construct such a

working synthesis of philosophy, ethics, and piety. Yet virtually

all who worshiped the gods would have agreed that these

invisible ener-

130 / THE ORIGIN OF SATAN

gies preside over every element of life, giving or withholding

fertility, fixing at birth each person’s life span, allotting health

and wealth to some, and to others poverty, disease, and slavery,

as well as presiding over each nation’s destiny.

Many pagans, perhaps the majority, performed rituals at

temple festivals, participated in feasts, and poured out sacred

libations, thus revering these supernatural powers as elements of

“the divine.” By Marcus’s time, however, many worshipers

would have agreed that all the gods and
daimones,
even those

apparently in conflict with one another, must be part of a unified

cosmic system, whether they called it the divine, nature,

providence, necessity, or fate.

Belief in the universal power of fate, which Marcus struggled

to accept, aroused in others a strong impulse to resist its all-

pervading power. As Hans Dieter Betz and John Gager have

shown, many people visited magicians who claimed to summon

certain
daimones
and to bind them, for a fee, to improve one's

health, or to guarantee success in love, horse races, or business.59

Other people sought initiation into foreign cults, hoping to find

in such exotic Egyptian gods as Isis and Serapis divine power that

surpassed that of all the more familiar gods and could overturn

the decrees of destiny. Lucius Apuleius, who may himself have

undergone rigorous initiation into the mysteries of Isis,

describes his ecstatic discovery that worshiping the Egyptian

goddess could break the power of fate:

Behold, here is Lucius, who rejoices in the providence of

powerful Isis. Behold, he is released from the bonds of misery,

and is victorious over his fate.60

Although many pagans had come to believe that all the powers

of the universe are ultimately one, only Jews and Christians

worshiped a single god and denounced all others as evil demons.

Only Christians divided the supernatural world into two

opposing camps, the one true God against swarms of demons;

and none but Christians preached—and practiced—division on

earth.61 By refusing to worship the gods, Christians were driving

SATAN’S EARTHLY KINGDOM / 131

a wedge between themselves and all pagans, between divine

sanctions and Roman government—a fact immediately

recognized by Rusticus, Marcus’s teacher in Stoicism and his

personal friend, who, in his public role as prefect of Rome,

personally judged and sentenced Justin and his students to

death.

After Justin's beheading, his young student Tatian, a zealous

young Syrian convert, wrote a blistering “Address to the

Greeks,” which begins by attacking Greek philosophy and

religion, and ends by denouncing Roman government and law.

Tatian wants to show “the Greeks”—which Tatian takes to mean

“pagans”—their demonically induced delusions. He asks the

crucial question:

For what reason, O pagans, do you wish to set the

governmental powers against us, as in a wresding match?62

Then he declares his spiritual independence:

If I do not wish to comply with some of your customs, why am

I hated, as if I were despicable? Does the governor order me to

pay taxes? I do so willingly. Does he order me to do service? I

acknowledge my servitude. For one must honor human beings

in a way appropriate to humans; but one must fear God alone—

he who is not visible to human eyes, nor perceptible by any

means known to us.63

Tatian agrees with Justin that pagans cannot understand the

violence of their own response to Christians until they begin to

see that all the supernatural powers they worship are evil beings

who are holding them captive. All the powers they worship are

nothing more than the continuing fallout of a primordial cosmic

rebellion. So Tatian, like Justin, begins at the beginning: “God is

spirit,” he explains, creator of supernatural and human beings

alike. Originally, all supernatural beings were free, but, Tatian

explains, drawing on Jewish accounts of the angels’ fall, “the

firstborn of these rebelled against God, and became a demon . . .

and those who imitate him . . . and his illusions, become an army

of demons.”64 This swarm of demons, enraged when punished

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for their apostasy, are nevertheless too weak to retaliate against

God: “No doubt, if they could, they undoubtedly would pull

down the very heavens themselves, together with the rest of

creation.”65 Restrained from totally destroying the universe, they

turned all their energies toward enslaving humanity. “Inspired

by hostile malice toward humankind,” they terrify people by

images they send in dreams and fantasies. Tatian does not deny

that these “gods” actually possess powers; he says they use their

power to gain control over human minds. Nor do demons prey

only upon the illiterate and superstitious. Philosophical

sophisticates like Marcus Aurelius are no less vulnerable than

the local shoemaker, for, as Marcus’s own philosophy might

show,
daimones
can turn philosophy itself into a means of

subjugating people to their tyranny. Tatian ridicules the

philosophers, calling Aristotle “absurd” for his famous

statement that a human being is a mere “rational animal” (
logikon

zoon
), part of the natural order.66 Even elephants and ants, Tatian

says, are “rational animals” in the sense that they “participate in

the instinctive and rational nature of the universe,” but to be

human means much more. It means that one participates in
spirit
,

having been created in the image of the God who is spirit.67

Deriding the philosophers, Tatian adamantly refuses to see

himself as merely part of nature. Since baptism, Tatian says, his

own sense of self has had virtually nothing to do with nature;

“having been born again,” he now identifies with the God who

stands beyond nature. Tatian perceives his essential being as

spirit, ultimately indestructible:

Even if fire should annihilate my flesh, and the universe

disperse its matter, and, although dispersed in rivers and seas,

or torn apart by wild animals, I am laid up in the storehouse of

a wealthy master . . . and God the king, when he pleases, will

restore the matter that is visible to him alone to its primordial

order.68

The power of destiny is not divine, as Marcus imagines, but

merely a demonic conspiracy; for it was
daimones
, Tatian

caustically explains, the offspring of fallen angels, who,

SATAN’S EARTHLY KINGDOM / 133

having shown humans a map of the position of the stars,

invented destiny—an enormous injustice
! For those who judge

and those who are judged are made so by destiny; the

murderers and their victims, the wealthy and the destitute, are

the offspring of the same destiny; and every human birth is

regarded as a kind of theatrical entertainment by those beings

of whom Homer says, “among the gods arouse unquenchable

laughter” (emphasis added).69

Like the spectators who flock to the city amphitheater to

amuse themselves, making bets while watching some gladiators

win and others die in agony, so, Tatian says, the gods entertain

themselves with human triumphs and tragedies. But those who

revere the gods ignorantly “attribute events and situations to

destiny, believing that each person's destiny is formed from

birth”; and they “cast horoscopes and pay for oracles and

divination” to find out what destiny has in store.

Tatian ridicules such superstitious people for failing to see that

disease and other sufferings happen simply because of elements

intrinsic to our physical constitution: surprisingly, he
secularizes

disease, accident, and death, removing them from the super-

natural. Although everyone is vulnerable to these contingencies,

Tatian says, they hold no real power over people who belong to

God, since baptism breaks the bonds that once bound us to

destiny
and to
nature
. Now, he says,

we are superior to destiny, and instead of worshiping planets

and daimones, we have come to know one Lord. . . . We do not

follow the guidance of destiny; rather, we reject those

[
daimones
] who established it.70

Tatian refuses to acknowledge any subjection to nature and

refuses to submit to the demands of the culture and society into

which physical birth delivered him:

I do not want to be a ruler; I am not anxious to be rich; I decline

military command; I detest sexual promiscuity; I am

134 / THE ORIGIN OF SATAN

not impelled by any insatiable love of money to go to sea; I do

not contend for reputation; I am free from an insane thirst for

fame; I despise death; I am superior to every form of disease;

grief does not consume my soul. If I am a slave, I endure

slavery; if I am free, I do not boast of my fortunate birth. . . .

Why are you “destined” so often to grasp for things, and often

to die? Die to the world, repudiating the insanity that pervades

it. Live to God, and by apprehending God, apprehend your

own nature as a spiritual being created in his image.71

Tatian rails against nature and culture—polemics that

articulate the suspicion of both that will be woven into Christian

theology for nearly two thousand years. The kind of attack

Tatian launched would eventually transform Western attitudes

toward Greek civilization. Classical civilization would become for

Western Christendom virtually synonymous with paganism.72

Like Justin, Tatian protests pagan indifference to human life:

I see people who actually sell themselves to be killed; the

destitute sells himself, and the rich man buys someone to kill

him; and for this the spectators take their seats, and the

fighters meet in single-handed combat for no reason whatever;

and no one comes down from the stands to help! . . . Just as you

slaughter animals to eat their flesh, so you purchase people to

supply a cannibal banquet for the soul, nourishing it with the

most impious bloodshed. Robbers commit murder for the sake

of loot; but the rich man buys gladiators to watch them being

killed!73

Tatian does not exaggerate here. The French scholar Georges

Villes reports that spectators at the Roman amphitheater might

watch as many as three hundred and fifty gladiators die before

their eyes at a single day’s entertainment.74

Declaring himself free from all worldly affiliations, Tatian

openly defies pagan rulers: “I reject your legislation, along with

your entire system of government.” Only allegiance to the one

true God “can put an end to the slavery that is in the world, and

SATAN’S EARTHLY KINGDOM / 135

restore us from many rulers, and then from ten thousand

tyrants”—freeing the believer from innumerable demonic

tyrants and simultaneously from all the thousands of human