The Emotional Burden of Monotheism: Does Satan help us feel better about God?

This week at school I was privileged to share some of my research with the faculty. The presentation walked through my research concerning Satan and theodicy, something I have blogged about before.

What I call the "emotional burden of montheism" is simple enough to explain. Consider Isaiah 45:6-7 (KJV):

I am the LORD and there is none else. I form light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.

Obviously, in a strict monotheistic faith the theodic burden is acute. God is the source of both good and evil, weal and woe. Our engagement with God, then, is characterized by a mix of positive and negative emotions, something I called in the presentation "monotheistic lament": The startling mixture of praise and complaint, the dynamic seen in the lament psalms. I illustrated the Isaiah 45 dynamic in the following slide:



In contrast to monotheism, ditheistic faiths present a neater scheme, emotionally speaking. The benevolent deity can be experienced as the main or sole source of blessing and the malevolent deity can be experienced as the source of evil and woe. As a consequence, the believer's experience is less ambivalent. There are none of the approach/avoidance conflicts seen in monotheism. The experience of the gods is simple rather than composite. The ditheistic scheme:



Given these emotional contrasts between mono- and ditheism, from a theodic perspective we can see why dualistic formulations have been such temptations within Christianity. Consider the legacy of the great dualistic heresies:

Gnosticism (1st and 2nd Centuries)
Marcionism (1st and 2nd Centuries)
Manichaeanism (10th Century)
Catharism (13th Century)

It seems clear why dualisms are so alluring. They neatly resolve the emotional burden of monotheism. They "de-complicate" relationship with God. God can be experienced as predominately the Giver of Blessing.

Christianity has consistently rejected the great dualistic heresies. But in the concept of Satan we find a "soft dualism," which makes it reasonable to wonder if belief in Satan is partly a means of relieving the theodic pressures upon God.

Theologians have speculated that Satan is, functionally, a theodic innovation. Jack Miles in his book Christ: Crisis in the Life of God has speculated on the intensification of the Satan concept in post-exilic Israel. He suggests that the rise of the Satan concept in post-exilic Israel was due to a theodic crisis while undergoing an exposure to Persian ditheism:

“My translation reflects my belief that the linked angelology and demonology of Hellenistic Judaism and early Christianity are ultimately Persian in origin…[First,] Yahweh began to function as exclusively a principle of good rather than as, simultaneously, a principle of good and of evil. The consequences are obvious: As God became both a consistently good god and the only real god, the question How could a good god permit…? suddenly became unavoidable and indeed is faced for the first time…

Just at this point in its history, as it happened, Israel was massively exposed to a persuasive answer to the new question. The empire that succeeded the Babylonian in Israel was the Persian, and Persian Zoroastrianism recognized two competing deities: Ahura Mazdah, the personification of good, and Angra Mainyu, the personification of evil. These two were not the only supernatural beings in existence, but all others were organized around them. The process by which Persian religious thought penetrated Israelite thought is impossible to reconstruct, for the record of their interaction during the two centuries when Persia ruled Israel is extremely slender. It is undeniable, however, that after this period the long Israelite entanglement with Semitic polytheism seems to be over, while a dramatic growth in the importance of Satan, or the Devil, is easy to document, not to mention a concomitant growth in the number and importance of angels serving God and of devils serving the “new” Satan…One sees this change most easily in the extracanonical Jewish literature of the last pre-Christian centuries…” (Miles, 2001, pp. 300-302)

S. Mark Heim in his book The Depth of the Riches has also discusses to the Devil/Theodicy link:

“The devil offered a backdoor escape from the theodicy dilemma, by providing an informal vehicle for a manichaean or gnostic alternative to it. So the devil was sometimes tugged toward a manichaean status (a power equal and opposite to God, responsible for evil) or toward the gnostic status of a quasi-creator (a lower divinity responsible for the deficient character of material creation).” S. Mark Heim, 2001, p. 87)

Overall, then, Satan may be being deployed by believers as a means to resolve the theodicy dilemma, mainly from an emotional standpoint. Satan functions to create an orthodox dualism:



Theology and history aside, my research was psychological in nature. The question was simple: Does belief in Satan resolve some of the emotional burden of monotheism? As a psychologist I can do no research to determine if Satan does or does not exist. But I can examine the correlates of belief in Satan. I'm very well suited for that task.

If Satan is a theodic construct the predictions are straightforward. The relevant contrast would be between what I called in the presentation "monotheistic" and "dualistic" Christians. "Monotheistic Christians" would have an attenuated Satan concept. They may, abstractly, believe in Satan, but they don't really see Satan active in their lives. Psychologically, then, these "monotheistic Christians" would experience what I called a "theodic burden shift": They would tend to attribute both weal and woe to God. Consequently, their emotional experiences with God will be composite: A mixture of the plea and praise in monotheistic lament. Further, they will tend to blame God more for the pain and suffering of human existence:



By contrast, "dualistic Christians" have very robust notions of Satan and see the Devil's activity as a regular interference in their lives. As a consequence, these Christians experience little to no "theodic burden shift" and, thus, function as soft dualists. An emotional feature of this dualism is that the experience with God is more simple than composite, it is relatively free of lament. Plus, God is blamed less for pain and suffering:



As I've written about before, across two studies this model was supported by the data. "Monotheistic Christians" reported less rosy experiences with God and tended to blame God more for pain and suffering. By contrast, "dualistic Christians" reported more rosy experiences with God and tended to blame God less for pain and suffering. In sum, theology aside, it appears that there is good evidence to suggest that people are deploying beliefs in Satan to resolve much of the burden of monotheism.

The manuscript presenting this research is currently under review with the Journal of Psychology and Theology.