The Devil In The Modern World Analysis

The religious concept of the Devil has faced numerous changes by society through different interpretations and representation to create new modernized ideas of what the Devil really is. This Devil originating from biblical teachings still holds value in society today, but it has also been changed to fit our own personal satisfying definitions that change from person to person, with many of these definitions sharing the same basic core beliefs. These different beliefs range from religious values, to cultural standards set by media outlets and everyday life. While researching texts written about past and present Christian-Devil relations and media extracts depicting the Devil in news lights, I found a relation between religious demonology, the
Since then, the stories of demons and devils have intertwined with our society, leaving behind a long history that includes many appearances by Lucifer, who is often recognised as a demon to many people, to give us the image of the Devil we have today. Jeffrey Burton Russel, an American historian and religious studies scholar analyses the Devil in his own works such as; Satan: The Early Christian Tradition (1981), Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages (1984), and Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World (1986). In The Devil in the Modern World Russel’s third installment of his history of Devil-culture relations, he details the concept of the Devil and how it changed throughout the past centuries. Russel details the past portrayals of the Devil and creates his own definitions based off the studies, writing: “The Devil is the symbol of radical evil. But does he exist, and in what sense? The key to the question is in what sense.” (Russel 18). In what sense do we have to look at when analysing the Devil to this degree? Russel expands on this question through the roots
Many people in past societies (and a few today) believed the idea of illness being the cause of Devil possession, and the result of demons inhabiting your body. Thankfully with modern medicine we don’t have this problem anymore, as these illnesses seem to actually just be the result of sickness and not actual demon intrusion. But in a day with no medicine to turn to, people were thought to be possessed and often labeled as witches or in need of help. The Path of the Devil by Gary F. Jensen is one of many that includes the mindset of demon relations with illness. Jensen looks through the Salem Witch Trails as examples of modern day hysteria and illness being faced with the labialization of being associated with the Devil. A connection I found with this conclusion was with a class material including Mary Magdalene and her history of illness. The similarities were that Mary Magdalene was once filled with demons and before being saved by Jesus, was thought be impure which, added with the connection between Lewis and Burton, leads us to think this is just another one of many ways the Devil has been represented less as a religious figure and more of a symbolic representation. In John Christopher Thomas’s The Devil, Disease and Deliverance: Origins of Illness in New Testament Thought, a biblical analysis that also includes