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Dispensing With the Devil

Dispensing With the Devil 30 DISPENSING WITH THE DEVIL Reflection on Kay SUMMARY William Kay has drawn attention to an interesting feature of those British Pente- costal ministers who hold a 'demonic world-view': that they tend to score higher on the Eysenck psychoticism scale than might be expected. This article, reflecting on these findings, relates this observation to the 'agonistic' world-view of early Christianity. It then relates these findings also to the decline in belief in a personal agent of evil with whom the Christian is in conflict, and to the relative scarcity of high scorers on the psychoticism scale among Christian worshippers. 1. What should we do with the Devil? The Devil has had a long and varied history in Christian belief, but it might seem that his day is now done. Belief in a personal agent of evil has ceased to commend itself to large numbers of Christians on grounds of theological likelihood: the existence of the Devil fails to explain the existence of evil, and might appear to be unacceptably close to a form of dualism. Psychology has added its voice to that of theology, by indicating how easy it is for the human mind to create Satan by http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Empirical Theology Brill

Dispensing With the Devil

Journal of Empirical Theology , Volume 11 (1): 30 – Jan 1, 1998

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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
© 1998 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
ISSN
0922-2936
eISSN
1570-9256
DOI
10.1163/157092598X00040
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

30 DISPENSING WITH THE DEVIL Reflection on Kay SUMMARY William Kay has drawn attention to an interesting feature of those British Pente- costal ministers who hold a 'demonic world-view': that they tend to score higher on the Eysenck psychoticism scale than might be expected. This article, reflecting on these findings, relates this observation to the 'agonistic' world-view of early Christianity. It then relates these findings also to the decline in belief in a personal agent of evil with whom the Christian is in conflict, and to the relative scarcity of high scorers on the psychoticism scale among Christian worshippers. 1. What should we do with the Devil? The Devil has had a long and varied history in Christian belief, but it might seem that his day is now done. Belief in a personal agent of evil has ceased to commend itself to large numbers of Christians on grounds of theological likelihood: the existence of the Devil fails to explain the existence of evil, and might appear to be unacceptably close to a form of dualism. Psychology has added its voice to that of theology, by indicating how easy it is for the human mind to create Satan by

Journal

Journal of Empirical TheologyBrill

Published: Jan 1, 1998

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