Word: devilment
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. [Ephesians...
BAUDELAIRE ONCE SAID that the devil's deepest wile is to persuade humans that he doesn't exist. There is no danger of Malachi Martin making that mistake; he is convinced that Satan and the Pit do and always have existed. Modern Christians who no longer believe in hell or the devil as realities will find in Martin's Hostage to the Devil a well-articulated, and disturbing reaffirmation of traditional doctrines about evil and Lucifer...
...possessed in Hostage to the Devil all make conscious choices to turn away from Christian teachings. A priest, misled by his worship of the rational methods of science, doubts the basis of Christ's divinity; a transexual distorts the meaning of gender and of love; and a young coed rejects the Catholic verities and asserts there is no difference between good and evil, "that all values are subject only to one's personal preference." The degree to which each person is demonically possessed differs. Martin is careful, however, to only suggest reasons for possession; he maintains that Satan's actual...
...imposing figure, a supremely learned scholar whose pride leads him to seek knowledge and power normally denied to mortals. Both wise man and fool, he scoffs at the moral givens of his age and experiences the inevitability of divine punishment as a result. Having bartered his soul to the devil, Faustus undergoes a gradual spiritual degradation--a degradation whose dramatic impact depends on the demonstrable grandeur of his initial aspirations. When that grandeur is lacking--as it is in this production--the proud doctor is debased to the level of a foppish magician whose downfall is pitiable but hardly tragic...
...shortcomings of Pajaczkowski's Faustus are thrown into sharper relief by the masterful performance of Greg Landis as Mephistophilis. The embodiment of controlled torment, Landis remains sympathetic even while hissing damnation. When the memory of his own loss of grace moves him to warn Faustus of the devil's snares, Landis projects a dignity never fully attained by his victim...