The Devil Wins: A History of Lying from the Garden of Eden to the Enlightenment

by Dallas G. Denery II

  Of course, all this left open another, more troubling question. Could God deceive other types of creatures, not merely sinners, demons, and the Devil, but even the faithful? Could God deceive those who love him?

  DIVINE DECEPTION AND THE SACRAMENT OF TRUTH

  At the center of medieval religious life was the mass, and at the very center of the mass was the celebration of the Eucharist. “Take away this sacrament from the Church,” explains Bonaventure in On Preparing for the Mass, a training manual he wrote for Franciscan novices in the 1250s, “and only error and faithlessness would remain in this world. The Christian people, like a herd of swine, would be dispersed, consigned to idolatry like all those other infidels. But through this sacrament the Church stands firm, faith is strengthened, the Christian religion and divine worship thrive. It is for all these reasons that Christ said, ‘Behold, I am with you always to the end of time.’ ”41 The entire mass proclaimed the truth of Christ’s promise and the faith he inspired, but it was the consecration of the host that transformed this promise into reality. Facing the altar with his back to the parishioners, the priest would shield the host from their view as he began to intone the words of institution, the words Christ had spoken at the Last Supper: “This is my body.” Incense, wafted from the wings, from the altar, would slowly fill the church as the priest reached the end of the consecration with Christ’s command “Do this in memory of me.” Suddenly, the ringing of bells would alert everyone to the miraculous transformation that had taken place. Only then would the priest raise his arms above his head, revealing to an eager audience the sacramental bread now transformed into the very body and blood of Christ.42

  Precisely because the truth of the entire religion rested in this sacramental miracle, most theological treatises, pastoral manuals, and popular devotional works would at some point assert that there could be no room for deception, no falsity, in it. As the Parisian-trained theologian William of Auxerre would put it in the 1240s, “deception [simulatio] has no place where the truth of the body of Christ is concerned.”43 For his part, William was drawing on an idea that dated at least as far back as the 830s, to the writings of the German monk Paschasius Radbertus. In a treatise originally written for a monastic audience and subsequently presented to Charles the Bald in 844, Radbertus reminds his readers that it was Christ himself who celebrated the Last Supper, that it was Christ himself who stated, as he held bread in his hands, “This is my body.” How are we to make sense of this statement? Radbertus assures his readers that Christ cannot lie. Invoking 1 John 6, he writes, “Christ is truth and the truth is God. And if God is the truth, then whatever Christ promised in this mystery must necessarily be true.”44 What Christ promised, Radbertus argues, and what the Church would eventually confirm as official dogma, was that his very body, the body to which Mary gave birth and then nurtured, the body that suffered, died, and was buried only to rise again in three days, was really and truly present within the consecrated bread. Only the true presence of Christ’s body in the bread could render his words true, could prevent him from having lied to the apostles.

  There would continue to be debates and disagreements about how best to account for this remarkable transformation. Even after the Fourth Lateran Council formally settled the issue in 1215 when it decreed that the transformation of bread into body occurred through a process known as “transubstantiation,” theologians continued to voice their displeasure with this particular solution.45 Doctrinal intricacies aside, almost everyone would have agreed with Thomas Aquinas who, writing in the 1270s, asserted that even though it remains invisible to our senses, we must accept that “the true body and blood of Christ is present in the sacrament…. You must not doubt whether this is true, but rather must faithfully accept the Savior’s words, since he is the Truth, he does not lie.”46

  No matter who stated it, it was all too easy for some people to doubt this alleged truth. When John Pecham, the Franciscan theologian and soon to be archbishop of Canterbury looked into the matter in the late 1270s, he counted fifty separate miracles that must regularly occur every time any priest, anywhere in the world, says a mass and in so doing transforms the host, which never ceases to look like anything but a piece of bread, into the very body of Christ.47 Thirteenth- and fourteenth-century religious works are peppered with stories of laymen, laywomen, priests, and friars who find it impossible to accept that all these miraculous changes actually occur. Their skepticism is all too easy to understand. Unlike popular medieval wonder stories in which the consecrated host suddenly appears as a baby boy or a hunk of bloody flesh in the priest’s hands, in which it heals deadly illnesses and sends heretical preachers to their watery demise, the official miracle of the Eucharist, like the lion chased by hunters, leaves no tangible traces.48 In the early 1320s, the English Franciscan William Ockham put the matter this way: “[I]t is clear that the body of Christ is not seen in the sacrament of the altar, it is only understood, only the appearance of the bread is really seen.” He then adds for good measure, “No one would hold that the body of Christ really is contained under the appearance of the bread were it not for the authority of the Savior and of the Church.”49 Ockham’s observation is hardly original, echoing as it does a sentiment present in every orthodox writer since Radbertus. We believe this happens, Ockham asserts, all empirical evidence to the contrary, simply because Christ tells us that it happens and Christ cannot lie.

  While Ockham’s observation may lack originality, it resonated in novel ways with significant early fourteenth-century theological discussions concerning the nature of vision, cognition, and the status of human claims to knowledge. These debates themselves were ultimately connected to ongoing controversies about the nature of divine omnipotence that had received a decided jump start with the infamous Condemnation of 1277, in which theologians representing the bishop of Paris, Etienne Tempier, condemned 219 propositions, many of which were deemed to have placed undue restrictions and limits on what God can do. The Franciscan theologian Peter Aureol set the stage for much of this discussion concerning the nature of vision in his commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences. Unhappy with the epistemological theories of his predecessor, John Duns Scotus, Aureol points to a number of familiar experiences of visual error and illusion, experiences in which things appear differently than they really are, in which we see things that don’t exist. Large castles look tiny from great distances, and straight sticks appear broken or bent when partly submerged in water. Often after staring at the sun we continue to perceive patches of light even though we have averted our gaze or closed our eyes. Reflecting on experiences like these, Aureol concludes that if they can happen naturally, they can certainly happen through God’s direct intervention.50 William Ockham himself would become the most famous player in these debates when he framed the possibility of this sort of divine deception in a simple thought experiment. Imagine you are looking at a star. Now imagine that God, who can do anything, destroys the star while conserving your vision of it. What you now see is a nonexistent star. There is no necessary connection between what you see and what exists.51

  The Eucharistic miracle could hardly have seemed that much different from Ockham’s mischievous star-destroying God. In both cases, the viewer sees something, either a star or a piece of bread, that no longer exists. In both cases, it is God who is responsible for this sudden and imperceptible interruption in the natural order. Given these similarities, what does it mean to claim “Christ cannot lie” or “There is no room for falsity in the miracle of Eucharist”?

  In the 1330s, the English Dominican Robert Holkot offered shockingly new answers to these questions. During his life, Holkot was a well-known figure whose commentary on the Book of Wisdom would remain popular for centuries. Holkot’s analysis of the Eucharist, like Ockham’s discussion of the star, begins with a recognition of God’s omnipotence and human weakness. God can do more than the intellect can understand, Holkot asserts, and if God wishes, he can hide the entire world under the appearance of a
mouse, the substance of an ass under the appearance of a man, even a thousand asses under the appearance of a single man.52 For Holkot, the possibility of this sort of divine activity does nothing to impugn God’s goodness. It simply reveals the limits of human knowledge, and he readily admits that we can have no absolute certitude when it comes to knowledge about singular things, of mice and men and stars.53 For all that, when we see something, we do not normally feel compelled to doubt its existence, and Holkot believes this response is reasonable. “I am sufficiently persuaded,” he concludes, “that God would not work such transmutations because he has not revealed such things to anyone, nor does it appear that he would do such things unless great utility would result.”54

  Holkot’s willingness to frame his discussion of the Eucharist in terms of deception sets him somewhat apart from most everyone else who had written on the topic. In order to explain away any possible deception and falsity in the very sacrament of truth, earlier theologians had made recourse to the language of figures and mysteries, to the fittingness of what appears in relation to the sacrament’s deeper and ultimate truths. The anonymous author of the early fourteenth-century preaching manual the Fasciculus Morum argues that the Eucharist’s perceptual discrepancies, far from being deceptions or illusions, are actually paradoxes whose meaning, if properly understood, can deepen the believer’s faith. The whiteness of the consecrated host, for example, indicates that we ought “to be pure and white in the chastity and purity of our life.”55 On a more visceral level, the appearance of bread served a quite useful purpose. Imagine the disgust we might experience were the reality of what we were eating not hidden from us behind the appearance of simple bread, wrote Ambrose, and a chorus of subsequent theologians pronounced their agreement.56 While Holkot accepts these sorts of explanations, it is telling that in his actual analysis of the sacrament he leaves the entire discussion at the level of sensory awareness. He never redefines the Eucharist’s perceptual challenges as figurative paradoxes, and this means that he never shifts the analysis from the level of empirical to spiritual experience. Holkot opts to define the believer’s position with respect to the Eucharist entirely in terms of its deceptive qualities. Just like Ockham’s thought experiment with the star, Holkot treats the Eucharist as an example of seeing something that no longer exists.

  Holkot returns to the problem of divine deception repeatedly in his commentary, constantly expanding the extent of God’s potentially misleading behavior. During an analysis of God’s knowledge, he asks whether God could promise or reveal something to someone knowing all the while that he has no intention of keeping that promise. Citing Augustine’s On Lying (a book we will discuss in the next chapter), Holkot notes, “A lie is to say something false with the intention of deceiving.” Augustine had in fact written this, but Holkot provides an illuminating gloss. “[Augustine’s] opinion ought to be explained like this: A lie is to say something false with an inordinate intention to deceive.” Since God cannot act inordinately, that is, since God cannot do anything that is not suitable to his nature, it follows that by definition God cannot lie. From our perspective this may seem like little more than mere wordplay, leaving us at a loss to know when God is or is not telling the truth. Holkot simply accepts this possibility. There is no reason, he adds, why God cannot fittingly, yet “knowingly, assert something false and with the intention of deceiving a creature.” And so it is, Holkot explains, that God rightfully deceived the Egyptians and continues to deceive demons, not to mention various and sundry sinners. Invoking the central idea behind the Devil’s mousetrap, Holkot adds that Christ intentionally concealed the nature of his birth from the Devil.57

  Rummaging through both the Old and New Testaments, Holkot finds numerous examples in which God personally deceives not only evil men but also the good. Among other examples, he reminds his readers of how God famously deceived Abraham when he ordered the old man to sacrifice his only son Isaac. Even Christ was not above misleading his parents. When he was twelve, as his parents left Jerusalem with a crowd of festivalgoers, Christ deceived Mary, causing her to think he was with Joseph and the other men when he had actually hidden himself away, only to be found three days later speaking with the priests of the temple. Scripture, Holkot notes, is replete with stories of good people blamelessly lying to other good people. Rebecca and Jacob, to name but one of the many examples he offers, deceive Isaac when Jacob pretends to be his brother Esau. “Therefore,” Holkot adds, “God deceives a good man through good men.”58 None of this much worries Holkot, who distinguishes between appropriate and inappropriate deceptions. “To deceive” simply means to cause a person to have a false belief. While false beliefs can be instilled for entirely unworthy, malicious, disordered, and unjust reasons, they can also be instilled for entirely appropriate, useful, and beneficial reasons.59 Needless to say, God’s deceptions of the good, just like his deceptions of the evil, by definition can never be disordered or unjust. Whenever and whomever he deceives, God has his reasons, even if they remain forever beyond our capacity to understand, and those reasons are appropriate, useful, and entirely just.

  Holkot’s expansive conception of God’s deceptive powers also helps to explain his fascination with illusions, substitutions, and false copies. In the third book of his commentary on the Sentences, when he takes up the topic of Christ’s incarnation, for example, he orients the entire discussion around the problem of hidden identity. He begins the discussion with a question: “Was it possible for the son of God to have been incarnated?” and immediately offers a reason why it was not possible. Imagine that the incarnate Christ looked so much like Jacob that “no one could look at them and tell them apart.” Now imagine that Peter sees Jacob, believes him to be Christ, and begins to worship him as God. Would Peter’s adoration be meritorious or damning? Holkot is quick to reject this as any sort of argument against the incarnation, an event that the entire Church accepts as true. It does, however, set the stage for a wide-ranging discussion concerning the moral status of human conduct in what might be described as situations of extreme duress, misinformation, and misperception. Is a person excused from the sin of idolatry who worships the Devil transfigured into the likeness of Christ? Can someone win merit through false faith? Did Abraham absolutely believe that he should sacrifice Isaac as God had commanded?60

  Holkot’s answer to these sorts of questions is simple and straightforward. Just as God’s actions (no matter how confusing they are from our perspective) are never disordered or irrational, neither are his judgments of our actions. We can only be judged based on our capacities, on our ability or inability to discern the truth in any given set of circumstances. Imagine the case of John who sees the Devil transfigured into the image of Christ. The illusion is perfect, and it is entirely beyond anyone’s power to see through it. In such a situation can the individual be blamed for believing the Devil is Christ, for worshipping the Devil as Christ? “A person is excused from sin,” Holkot writes, “when it arises out of invincible ignorance.” As Holkot reads the situation, this person’s actions would not only be blameless, they would be meritorious. It is impossible for John to discern the terrible truth of the vision that confronts him. Given what he cannot help but see, he believes and behaves as he should. Nothing more can be asked of people.61 Or as Holkot would put it in a different context, in words that would come to define much of Catholic thought even as they outraged sixteenth-century reformers, if man does what he can, he will not be damned.62

  Holkot’s analysis of the Eucharist as an example of divine deception would profoundly influence even those who found his ideas appalling. Writing in 1379, some thirty-two years after Holkot had fallen victim to the plague, another English theologian, John Wyclif, a committed pastor, fiery preacher, and future heretic, challenged Catholic orthodoxy and denounced the very notion that Christ’s body was somehow present behind or within the host. “Since God chose to give us so great a gift,” Wyclif writes, “it hardly seems fitting with the splendor of his truth,
that he would deliver himself to us to honor in a veil.” As far as Wyclif is concerned, God would have to behave like the Devil himself were he to work the sort of miraculous, yet invisible, transformation in the host that would create such a radical rift between what appears and what exists. For all intents and purposes, Wyclif accepts Holkot’s analysis of the Eucharist as an example of supernatural deception. Unlike Holkot, Wyclif finds such miraculous interventions entirely antithetical to the nature of God. “Every such deception is evil,” Wyclif argues, “for man naturally seeks to know the truth,” and since our senses “judge that the very substance of bread and wine remain after consecration, and not just their appearance, it does not seem appropriate for the Lord of Truth to introduce such an illusion when graciously communicating so worthy a gift.”63