By
Barney Zwartz
April 12, 2006
A FORMER Jesuit turned
university professor has set himself an ambitious project: rehabilitating the
devil.
Henry Ansgar Kelly says
Satan is the most maligned figure in history and has endured 17 centuries of
unjustified character assassination.
"For 1700 years
Satan has been the enemy of God, whereas in the Bible he works for God, he's
his prime minister or attorney-general, in charge of policing the world,"
Professor Kelly said.
"He is one of
God's angels, and his job is to test people."
The 71-year-old
University of California professor has played devil's advocate for four
decades, and is the author of many books and scholarly articles.
The devil did not have
a kingdom, did not rule over hell, and did not try to damn people, Professor
Kelly said. These ideas had developed from the second to the fourth centuries
AD, and were refined for the next 1000 years. Professor Kelly said it was
important to recapture the biblical understanding of Satan to combat the
doctrine of original sin, "in which the whole human race is delivered to
Satan".
"That's the most
immoral doctrine in Christianity, that the whole of the human race is doomed to
hell for something they didn't do. Once you get rid of that, Christianity
becomes less unreasonable."
Satan's rare
appearances in the Old Testament were not by one person, but a number of angels
doing God's work, Professor Kelly said. He would like his theories to attract
more official hostility, he said, because then they would be better known.
Professor Kelly is
officially an exorcist, but he has never tackled anyone with demon possession.
"Demons are like
talking germs - parasites looking for a place to stay, like diseases - and are
under Satan's control," he said. "I prefer to have a global exorcism
[of Satan's reputation]. Then we wouldn't have to worry about these minor
manifestations."