What Frank Peretti and Justice Antonin Scalia Have in Common

Frank Peretti became a best-selling author and a household name in late 1980s when he published a Christian novel called This Present Darkness. He followed with an equally successful sequel called Piercing the Darkness.

Peretti’s skillful use of fiction gave us a glimpse into the powerful forces of evil that plot and scheme to bring about destruction in the world. He personified evil, exploding the idea that the devil and his demons are a lingering myth from a medieval era. His novels were based on the words found in Ephesians 6 and Daniel 10 that point to an invisible war happening all around us.

Today, it is not popular nor considered intellectual to believe in the devil. However, even Antonin Scalia has something in common with Frank Peretti. The late Justice of the Supreme Court believed in the devil. Scalia, a devout Catholic, was an intellectual’s intellectual who always defended his faith against intellectual elitism. In Scalia's posthumous book titled On Faith, his son Reverend Paul Scalia, a Catholic priest, writes about his dad’s faith,

Indeed, he delighted in coming to the defense of those believers the Washington Post once called “largely poor, uneducated, and easy to command.” His famous “Not to the Wise” speech was one such example, as was his mischievous baiting of an incredulous New York Magazine reporter with talk about Satan: “I even believe in the Devil. … Of course! Yeah, he’s a real person. Hey, c’mon, that’s standard Catholic doctrine! Every Catholic believes that. … If you are faithful to Catholic dogma, that is certainly a large part of it.”

I agree with Scalia and Peretti. Belief in the devil and his demons is also standard dogma for Protestants. Even Jesus believed in the devil and spoke often of him.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Ephesians 6:12