SATAN
19
It is true that none of our symbols of faith, the official creeds ever mention that our salvation wa.s wrought by the defeat of a fallen angel, even when the patristic tradition wa.s always strongly in favor of Satan's existence. But this only shows the secondary and negative a.spect of the belief in Satan in salvation history. The essential revelation focuses on Jesus Christ who brings us back to our Father with the help of the Holy Spirit. Actually, the official teaching of the Church on demons is rather limited. Pope Paul VI recently put it briefly in these words: "Evil is not merely a lack of something, but also an effective agent, a living, spiritual being, pervet1:ed and perverting. A terrible reality, mysterious and frightening." To put the question briefly and clearly: Is the belief in a personal Satan and devils part of divine revelation'/ First it must be said that such a belief is surely not core material, a.s essential pati: of revelation but a secondary feature. Could a theologian hold that the non-existence of a personal Satan is certain? My answer would be that such a person is misinformed and misguided in abandoning the ordinary teaching of the Church. Does that mean that the belief in a personal Satan is beyond the possibility of a practical doubt? My answer again is no, because of the mysterious nature of the question and because so little is known, in fact, practically nothing beyond the ba1¡e fact of the existence of evil spirits. Yet all in all this seems to be the most probable opinion available. And in any case, evil must be conquered and this is not done by speculating on the existence of Satan, but practically by deciding for goodness, a.s determined in each concrete situation; by conquering everything which in our world is in any way related with evil. And no evil of any kind moral, physical, or personal can ever force or constrain our personal libe1i:y and freedom the only source of our accountability and responsibility.