I have the feeling that over the past years, we’ve started seeing more TV shows that are either sympathetic towards Hell and Satan, or somewhat negative towards Heaven. I just watched “Hazbin Hotel” today, which isn’t too theological, but clearly is fairly negative towards Heaven.
In “The Good Place”,
Spoilers for The Good Place
the people in The Bad Place end up pushing to improve the whole system, whereas The Good Place is happy to spend hundreds of year not letting people in.
“Little Demon” has Satan as a main character, and he’s more or less sympathetic.
“Ugly Americans” shows demons and Satan as relatively normal, and Hell doesn’t seem too bad.
I only watched the first episode of “Lucifer”, but it’s also more or less sympathetic towards Lucifer.
I have a few more examples (Billy Joel: “I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints”, or the very funny German “Ein Münchner im Himmel”, where Heaven is portrayed as fantastically boring), but I won’t list them all here.
My question is: how modern is this? I’ve heard of “Paradise Lost”, and I’ve heard that it portrays Satan somewhat sympathetically, though I found it very difficult to read. And the idea of the snake in the Garden of Eden as having given free will and wisdom to humanity can’t be that modern of a thought, even if it would have been heretical.
Is this something that’s happened in the last 10 years? Are there older examples? Does anyone have a good source I could read?
Note that I don’t claim Satan is always portrayed positively, or Heaven always negatively :).
AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The idea of Satan as the embodiment of evil is arguably an early medieval borrowing from Zoroastrianism. In the Book of Job he works in conjunction with God as a tester of souls, and his roles in the garden of Eden and the temptation of Jesus aren’t inconsistent with that. A lot of the popular folklore associated with him originates from morally-ambiguous trickster figures from other traditions that were absorbed into Christianity.
ogmios@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
It should also be noted that the Gnostic scriptures, an alternate version of early Christianity, doesn’t actually mention Satan at all.
AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The Gnostics associated the Old Testament Jehovah with the Platonic concept of the Demiurge—an imperfect or misguided lesser deity who created the material world but botched it up and included evil as an unintended consequence—as opposed to the New Testament “God” who was the Platonic principle of transcendent Goodness or Unity. So the Gnostics didn’t need a separate Satan, since Jehovah was already covering that role.
Angry_Autist@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That’s because he’s the fucking Demiurge in Gnosticism you armchair theist
socsa@piefed.social 2 months ago
I would even argue that there is even a distinction to be drawn from the old world ideas of good and evil, and the modern ideas which have almost become "good vs nuance." No ancient religion goes as far as modern Christianity in terms of condemning people for mere non belief. This has led to a rise in literary themes around the idea that such moral absolutism is itself a form of evil, and that to the extent that it suggests that demons are merely the stewards of nuance, that they must be more sympathetic than God.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 2 months ago
The Epistle to the Romans and other Pauline epistles do seem to show that non-believers do generally go to hell.
Caligvla@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
Not to mention that the idea of the snake being Satan is a more modern interpretation, for a good while the snake was just a snake.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 2 months ago
Satan is very much evil in the Book of Job. He literally kills the dude’s entire family and ruins his life.
zbyte64@awful.systems 2 months ago
Satan checked with God first to see if it was okay.