The Prince of Darkness: Radical Evil and the Power of Good in History Book

''the modern materialist denial of the transcendent leads to a repression of transcendence in the modern psyche. Repressed transcendence then reasserts itself in bizzarre forms.''

Absolutely eye opening.

The Prince of Darkness is a work of historical theology that gives an overview of the concept of the Devil, and his development over the centuries from barely acknowledged abstract force, into the left hand of God himself, to a second equally powerful God alongside our God of Light, and eventually to the fallen angel we know him as today.

It's a fascinating overview that covers the Devil in his various incarnations as a religious, philosophical, literary, and psychological entity, and traces his existence from pre-Abrahamic demonology right up to the Jungian Shadow.

The book's core thesis about the existence of Radical Evil as a force'whether you believe it to be spiritual or psychological'is pretty difficult to refute, and speaks to questions that have been playing on my mind lately about deconstructive purely relativist moral systems that exist purely to justify increasingly obscene acts seemingly without end'Foucault's relatavistic moral justifications for child molestation being a good example.

One segment I especially appreciated was the discussion of the great theological questions that arose from early scholarly research into Satan'such as the long standing theological question about the infinite nature of the universe as it relates to the Devil eventually repenting'and the problems and dangers that arose from acknowledging the existence of such a force/entity.
This discussion of Christian theology and apologetics gave me a newfound respect for the Christian philosophers, and made me realise how completely facile the atheist attacks on God tend to be'classic questions from the titans of modern atheism such as the classic 'if God wants evil to exist and lets evil exist, he is evil; if God does not want evil exist but cannot stop it, he is powerless' are questions that were debated by Christian philosophers almost a thousand years ago, and the theological conclusions they came to are far more complex than the simplistic 'he works in mysterious ways' or 'free will creates evil' arguments that Dawkins and Harris would have you believe were the Christan answers.

This segment also goes in depth on the gnostics, who I find to have a kind of tragic romanticism'in the way an obsessed, faustian Lovecraft protagonist is a sort of romantic figure.
Far from modern Christianity's pure faith concept of devotion, the Gnostics saw seeking to scientifically and philosophically understand every aspect of God and the divine as the absolute highest form of worship. Their ultimate love manifested as a desire to know everything about God, without fear or hesitation about what they might uncover.
Unfortunately what they did eventually discover (or so they thought) was that the God of the Old Testament'sinful as he was, engaging in Wrath'was in fact a demiurge; a petty god created by the all powerful and non-interventionist Almighty. And that this demiurge, having imbued Earth with natural evils such as poisons, natural disasters, and disease, might just be the figure described as the Devil.
And so the Gnostics claimed that the Catholics, in worshipping the God of the Old Testament, were worshipping something akin to what would be described as the Devil; this idea eventually set the foundations for what would become Devil worship as we know it.

Another segment I enjoyed was the segment on demonology, and the idea that Jesus and Mary are seen by theologians as reflections of Adam and Eve'and that the reason you call out to Holy Mary Mother of God to dispel demons is because that as a reflection of Eve she casts the demons out in holy retribution for The Serpent tricking Eve into misleading Adam in the Garden of Eden.

Overall, The Prince of Darkness is a fascinating look into the Devil as a concept and the reality of what Jeffrey Burton Russell describes as Radical Evil.

I can't wait to read Russell's other work.