ABSTRACT
It is C. S. Lewis who, convinced that the forces of evil were incarnate in a living, factual creature called the devil, finds it curious that the early and not-so-early church both made the mistake of postulating the existence of a serious contest between the forces of good and evil, between God and the devil. Lewis goes on to suggest that the mistake had to do with the drama implicit in such a contest. The suggestion appears in Lewis’s writings that the hopelessness of the devil’s position adds weight to this dramatic conflict and makes the devil somehow appealing to the modern age, which tends to support the underdog. This is of course a kind of secular nonsense, reducing the endless combat between right and wrong or good and evil to the stature of a mere stage play, with the crescendo of the drama coming, as in all good plays, at the end of the second act, just before the villain begins his rapid fall toward destruction. Strangely, but not so strangely perhaps, Lewis goes on to suggest that there does exist a physical devil, who has the temerity to challenge God.
