Getting God and Satan wrong, from Voltaire to Dostoyevsky

Voltaire, the French Enlightenment's man of belles lettres, bon mots and more, once said:

"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."

Meanwhile, Dostoyevsky, in his Grand Inquisitor story, would have us believe similar, but in a more existential vein.

Reality?

Mark Twain, in "The Mysterious Stranger," got nearer the truth, though he wasn't headed in that direction.

Contra Simon Critchley's take on Dostoyevsky, the truth is staring him, Doystoyevsky, Voltaire and others in the face.

Metaphorically speaking, if one wants to be religious, and with any sort of world religion, whether monotheistic or not, it's Satan you have to invent, at least as much as God.

It's Twain's Satan the nephew of Satan who chides humans for belittling animals because they allegedly don't have "the moral sense," for example on how Twain is headed down the right pathway. Whether Satan in western monotheism, Kali for Hindus, maya for Buddhists or whatever, concretizing an evil principle seems to be a necessity once a religion reaches a certain point.

After that, of course, in the Western monotheistic position, things get more fun. It's only after that point of development that the vengeance of god, and the tag-along thirst for vengeance of his believers, really gets to take off.

The perfect example of this is Dante.

Everybody reads the Inferno. Those who are more intrepid move on to the Purgatorio and usually sputter out about halfway through. NOBODY reads the Paradiso.

Well, almost nobody. I forced my way through it the first time I read the Inferno and then moved on to the Purgatorio.

So, sorry, Voltaire and others. For entertainment value and more, we'd find ourselves, at least metaphorically, compelled to invent Satan if more people didn't think he metaphorically (or still really, for monotheistic/dualist fundamentalists) exists.

Martin Luther: Lutherans can’t explain away his remaining trapped in fear

Ten years or so after his “Damascus road” flash of insight into being saved by grace alone, depending on your start date for counting, Martin Luther assembled his Small Catechism of biblical and post-biblical doctrines and documents.

For all of these, he developed interpretive explanations of what they really meant, or should really mean, in Christian life.

The first of these was the Ten Commandments.

For the First Commandment in non-Jewish reckoning, Luther said, “We should fear, love and trust in God above all things.”

For each of the remaining ones, his explanation began, “We should fear and love God …”

Hmm. If one were really free of the belief that we are “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” to flash forward ahead 200 years from Luther’s time, shouldn’t the word “love” have come first, as the primary motivation to live the Christian life?

Then “trust”?

Then “fear,” only because people aren’t perfect?

Oops.

When I was growing up, and we had to learn all this as part of Lutheran confirmation instruction, I was told by dear old dad, who also happened to be dear old pastor, that, well, “fear” didn’t really mean “fear.”

BULLSHIT.

You can’t hold Martin Luther up as a brilliantly creative translator of the Bible into German on the one hand, and claim he meant something besides fear when he used the word “fear” on the other hand.

Martin Luther was still, above all else, afraid of God. Afraid of God and ridden and riddled by anxieties, it’s no wonder he was morbid and morose more often than in-house biographies of the man will tell you.

(Nor will they tell you that much of the story of Oct. 31, 1517 is myth invented not just years but a decade or more after the fact.)