The Devil and his Angels

Extract

There is a parlour-game in which a whispered message is passed down a line from player to player and comes out unrecognisably distorted at the end. Sometimes the result is whimsical, sometimes hilarious, sometimes it is merely flat. Invariably it is ridiculous. Now this is not merely a game for parlours. It is a game which the succeeding generations of mankind have been playing with one another throughout history; and there we call it tradition (which is after all only a Latin word for handing on). Men of one generation after another have handed on their thoughts, their customs, their institutions to succeeding generations who have often made extraordinary and unrecognisable use of them. Sometimes the results are whimsical, more often they are tiresomely childish.

We in the Christian church have on our hands a great number of conceptions that started their life as adult, but, because they have been let slip from generation to generation by mere tradition without understanding, are now thoroughly and tiresomely childish. This article is an attempt to rescue one such conception from the childishness in which it is wrapped: namely, our conception of the Devil and his angels. It is an attempt to unroll tradition, so to speak, and catch our present conception in the making; to watch generation pass on its message to generation, and ask what message we would have received if each generation had made sure it understood what the previous generation was saying. Perhaps such an article can serve to start the original message on its way again.