The sympathetic devil trope has become such a mainstay of popular fiction as to be a Pop Cult zombie meme. Audiences – even pro writers – now take for granted that a demon could choose to do good or even repent and gain salvation.
Few people see anything weird about that idea, which is featured prominently in the works of Nail Gaiman and Arthur C. Clarke, but attained full cultural penetration through anime and manga.
“So what?” many of you are asking right now. “It’s fantasy. Anything’s possible! Why can’t our demons be different?”
For one, let’s remember that a lot of the same folks who claim the fantasy genre gives carte blanche to make archetypal villains sympathetic get up in arms over heroic orcs.
Because the exact same dynamic is at work behind the script flipping that portrays demons and orcs – traditional agents of the forces of evil – as redeemable.
“You’re not the fiction police!” some readers are shouting at their screens. “Who are you to decide what people can and can’t write?”
And they’ve got a point.
By my own admission, I am not the Grand Inquisitor in charge of the Index of Forbidden Tropes.
Yet.
But that’s neither here nor there, since I’m not presuming to declare simping for fictional demons off limits to authors.
Nope, the author hat is off, and the conical theologian hat is on.
Because spinning fanciful yarns that include little men with horns and pitchforks running around in red underwear and having the occasional pang of conscience isn’t the issue.
The point at which humanized fantasy demons become a problem is when you start getting high on your own supply and substitute your invented demonology for defined Church teaching.
It shouldn’t be hard to see why pulling that switch is risky.
But in case it’s not obvious why a writer rejecting Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium in favor of his own inventions poses him a spiritual hazard, let’s explore what demons are and why their intrinsic nature makes it impossible for them to repent.
Here are a few fun facts to remember next time you’re reading that pseudo-Gygaxian manga series with that saucy but lovable succubus …
Demons are real
We not only know for a moral certainty that demons exist based on Scripture, their existence is a logical conclusion from the hierarchy of being. Here we have nonliving matter (rocks and stuff), living but non-sentient material beings (plants), living, sentient, but non-sapient material beings (animals), living, sentient, and sapient matter-spirit composite beings (men), and the Spirit of Life, Logos, and Being Himself (God).
Sharp readers noticed a major gap in that progression. Nature abhors a vacuum. And just as a missing atomic number on the periodic table is a sure indicator of an as-yet undiscovered element, a blank space in the spectrum of being isn’t empty. We just can’t see what’s there.
And what’s there is living, sapient, purely spiritual being.
AKA angels.
And as every second-grader before the Millennial generation used to know, demons are evil angels.
But it’s to be hoped that none of my regular readers needed that exposition, because anyone who still thinks demons aren’t real is too oblivious of what’s happening around him to make it.
Demons are pure intellect and will
As pure spirits, demons don’t have senses, which are faculties of the flesh. That means they don’t obtain information the same way humans do.
Think of your mind like a wad of Silly Putty. Your senses impress images on it, like newsprint the putty’s pressed against. Your intellect then performs a process called abstraction that derives concepts from the particular sense impressions you take in.
The key takeaway there is that humans learn by abstracting from particulars to generalities. So you learn what a dog is by seeing enough four-legged, wet-nosed, barking critters to grasp the mental category of “dog” and file particular dogs under it.
Angels and demons work in reverse. They’re created with infused knowledge of all the categories they need to fulfill their original purpose. So St. Raphael was created knowing what “fish” are and from his infused knowledge of that category was able to identify the particular fish whose burned organs could ward off Asmodeus.
That also means your guardian angel has, since the moment of his creation, known everything about you as it pertains to your sanctification. Make sure to say hi to him now and then.
The flip side of that coin is if the angel originally created to be your guardian angel refused the job and fell. In that case, it’s a good bet he’s now your tempting demon. Who still knows your full potential for sin and the exact buttons to push to tempt you.
Get why these things aren’t to be taken lightly yet?
Demons can’t change their minds
Since demons are 100% composed of intellect and will, it follows by necessity that once they make a decision, they can’t change it freely.
The quick and dirty reason is that since intellect and will are the faculties responsible for decision making, demons make every decision with their full being. Their wills are undivided by fleshly passions, unlike ours.
Think about it. There are really just two reasons you change your mind about a decision you made:
- You didn’t have full use of your reason at the time (you were tired, drunk, high, in the heat of passion, etc.)
- You lacked sufficient knowledge of all the factors involved in the decision and its full consequences (unintended bad outcomes gave you second thoughts).
If you’ve followed the post so far, you can already see why neither of those conditions can apply to demons.
- They are their reason, so it’s always firing on all cylinders.
- They’re created with infused knowledge of everything they need to know – especially all the details and consequences of their first choice to serve God or not.
So it’s not like during its first microsecond in Hell, any fallen angel thought This is way worse than I expected! I want a do-over.”
Nope. Every demon knew, in precise detail, just what rejecting God would mean.
But they did it anyway.
And given the chance, they’d do it again.
Because they’re evil.
It’s a sad state of affairs that folks need the concept of evil explained to them, but here we are.
Demons are damned forever
Since every demon’s first choice upon creation was to reject God, that choice damns them, and they cannot – and would not if they could – change that choice, they’re all stuck with the consequences for all eternity.
“OK, smart guy,” some Redditors are mouthing through cheeks stuffed with Dorito paste, “that’s nice speculation, but you got references to back it up?”
Just kidding. What they’re mashing into their phones is really “Source? SOURCE!?”
And yes.
First up, from The Catechism of the Catholic Church:
- 391 Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God, which makes them fall into death out of envy. Scripture and the Church’s Tradition see in this being a fallen angel, called “Satan” or the “devil”. The Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: “The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing.”
- 392 Scripture speaks of a sin of these angels. This “fall” consists in the free choice of these created spirits, who radically and irrevocably rejected God and his reign. We find a reflection of that rebellion in the tempter’s words to our first parents: “You will be like God.” The devil “has sinned from the beginning”; he is “a liar and the father of lies”.
- 393 It is the irrevocable character of their choice, and not a defect in the infinite divine mercy, that makes the angels’ sin unforgivable. “There is no repentance for the angels after their fall, just as there is no repentance for men after death.”
- 414 Satan or the devil and the other demons are fallen angels who have freely refused to serve God and his plan. Their choice against God is definitive. They try to associate man in their revolt against God.
“But Catechism not infallible! Muh Eastern Schism! Muh Reformation! You got that scripturally justified?”
Yep.
Then he shall say to them also that shall be on his left hand: Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels.
-Mt. 25:41
(Emphasis mine)
As Catholic Answers lead apologist Jimmy Akin points out, it’d be pretty weird for the all-knowing God to prepare everlasting punishment for Satan and the demons if He wasn’t gonna need it.
In fact, Jimmy explains the whole business in far pithier terms than me in this video:
“Big deal,” goes the final objection. “Fantasy demons don’t have to be 1:1 matches for demons IRL. Authors can make them redeemable if they want.”
Of course they can. Authors could write stories in which elephants are giant spacefaring mollusks.
But none of them do.
When they come up with fantastical critters that differ so fundamentally from real-world beings, SFF authors think up original names for them.
As others have pointed out, the Sympathetic Demon trope has now become rather cliché.
It’s Star Trek gluing spoons to actors’ heads and calling them aliens.
A story with an eons-old being powerful enough to throw planets around who made one terrible choice he’s too proud to ever renege on, and which renders him implacably evil, is far more compelling than a busty bat-winged waifu the beta MC can save with hugs.
But all of those literary demerits pale before final nail in the Sympathetic Demon meme’s coffin …
It’s subversive.
As one Twitter skeptic so helpfully put it …
That’s the frame a writer must at least tacitly accept to justify his stories about redeemable demons.
A worldview that acknowledges the cosmic hierarchy sketched above can’t accommodate it. Positing demonic repentance in Current Year requires adopting some degree of materialism.
Again, is this me ordering people not to write stories with this trope? No. Am I calling anyone who does an avowed materialist? No.
Modernist thought has just made materialism so pervasive that everyone takes it in by osmosis. Most of us aren’t conscious of it.
What I am saying is that the greatest trick the Devil pulled wasn’t convincing the world he doesn’t exist.
It was tricking the world into simping for him.
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