Buffy, God, and the Devil

Cafe Society
21

I have a feeling a lot of it has to do with mentioning the big G and Satan starts getting into touchy territory, whereas dealing with made up demons and gods, or even more archaic ones most people don’t believe in anymore (Odin, Zeus, Osiris, etc) makes it that much easier to create your own stories and make them fit however you want. You can’t go and have God come down in Buffy’s hour of need and wire fu the crap out of a slew of vampires, that would just be silly. Also, as pointed out before, the storyline was originally something simple, as can be garnered by the fact it’s called “Buffy: The VAMPIRE Hunter.” When Weadon first came up with the idea (you know, that movie that came out like, ten years ago or so), he never meant for it to go beyond vampires. All this demon stuff even caught Buffy off guard in the first episode. If she’s a vampire hunter, why’s she dealing with all this other crap? Most of the series is being made up as they go along, and as I said, it’s more fun to make up more demons and monsters and ghoulies and such so the show doesn’t just become “Buffy: Defender of Christ”.

Also, many people seem to forget that the Bible does talk about other gods. The Jews believed other gods existed, and had witnessed their power on several occassions. It just so happened that Yahweh happened to be the baddest mother on the block. So the fact that they include other deities in the series and call them “gods” isn’t anything shocking or counter to Judeo/Christian beliefs, and doesn’t discredit a single, all-powerful God. And as pretty much any priest or holy person will tell you, God hardly ever actually intervenes in person. “He works in Mysterious Ways.” Hence, no wire fu.

From the characters’ standpoint, also, when you deal with other deities constantly, it’s no suprise that there’d be a question of one true God. Especially when He doesn’t send down lightning whenever you feel it would be really beneficial to help stop evil from destroying the world. I’ve always felt that Angel, though, does imply that there is the existance of a singular, all powerful God, even though they don’t come right out and say it.

As for the quote from the first season about demons running around earth before humans came along, there is a beliefe that, before God separated light and darkness, the earth was a world of demons and dark things. This goes to the second creation story, where the earth was really just a mass floating in a shapeless void (not the “7 Days” story). It wasn’t until God created/separated light and darkness that these demons were banished away from the Earth and it was made habitable for all other life. So, Giles’ little story isn’t in contradiction with Judeo/Christian beliefs at all. It’s just another one of those little tales that doesn’t get out much (like the story of Lilith).

22

“Buffy: the Vampire SLAYER” How the hell’d I get “Hunter”? Oh yeah, White Wolf.

Just out of curiosity, have we seen any scenes where vampires were repelled by Stars of David at all in this series?

23

I remember a wonderful scene in the movie “Fright Night,” where the vampire laughs at Roddy McDowell brandishing a cross and says “You have to have faith for that to work on me.”

A similar scenario is played out in Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot, when Father Callahan is facing the vampire Barlow with his cross. Barlow tells Callahan to throw the cross down and fight him, but Callahan doesn’t do it. At that moment, the cross (which had been glowing brightly) begins to fade, and eventually Barlow steps forward and wrenches it from Callahan’s hand. Callahan didn’t have enough faith to face Barlow on his own, and as a result his ability to use the cross as a shield/weapon was lost.

BtVS, in the church scene mentioned above, seems to fall in with that line of thinking. The cross alone isn’t enough to drive away a vampire. One has to have faith to channel the power of the cross. Now, the argument can be made that the necessary faith can simply come from believing “crosses work on vampires,” because that’s the way it’s always been portrayed in popular Western literature. I choose to believe (because it fits in with my personal beliefs) that the faith necessary to power the cross comes from a relationship with Christ.

One can make an argument either way within the Buffyverse, though.

24

In the story Legend, they hint at the fact that a vampire’s repulsion to the cross is all psychological. There’s no real reason it should effect the vampires, except for the fact that they envision themselves as evil, and being in the presence of something “pure” reminds them of their true dark nature, and that’s the fear that drives them off. Of course, it takes a more scientific look at vampirism, but it’s still an interesting concept.

25

In a more theological sense, I think TFE is actually quite close to Christian myth/belief, apart from how the arc was playerd out during S.7.

I mean, freedom of choice, the ineffable plan, Satan tempting Jesus. TFE was much closer to all that, than Glory, who was basically a very strong bitch. Did we catch TFE telling lies? Not that I can remember. The minions were regular humans who started to worship TFE and was turned into Bringers, after embracing that faith - freedom of choice again. The Lord and The Devil, letting people decide for themselves what side to take and gathering the souls for the upcoming apocalypse. Even though TFE was never said to be the Devil, the advversary, I think it fits quite well with Judeo/Christian tradition.

26

I just odn’t understand why people are so insistent that the Christian God exists in the Buffyverse, even going so far as to say they just “never mention him”. In canon, they don’t know if he exists. Period. The answer is “nothing solid.” The Lord wasn’t at his house.
I don’t think Joss would have invented the FE and limited himself so closely by basically making it the devil. Especially since he’s gone out of his way to make it clear that souls aren’t spiritual, that heaven is a concept, that vampires can withstand crosses, and that the only deity not mentioned or shown to intervene in any real way is the Christian one. I know that Joss is an atheist, and based on interviews, I think he has strong feelings against any authority figure (including, it seems, fathers) so I really don’t think he’d create an entire Universe, and put the guy he probably “rebelled” against at the helm.
Now, what I think is interesting is that Spike, who had Christian imagery surrounding him all season, was the one to defeat the FE. Was Joss drawing a purposeful parellel with the story of a sacrfice and a possible resurrection or was he simply pulling from popular elements of religious literture that has reoccurred more than once since even before Christianity? I think it’s the latter option, if that’s what he was doing at all.

27

Gaspode, thanks for the link, that was interesting. Buffy is a parable? Joss Whedon wrote Toy Story and Speed? That was surprising.

SolGrundy, I didn’t mean to sound so accusatory, I’m just annoyed at how Buffy herself can be unsure of God’s existence when she’s seen firsthand what crosses and holy water can do.

I’d always thought the Slayer’s existence itself was proof God was at work (this was before the Slayer’s origins were revealed). The second essay from Gaspode answers the question the vampire asked: “Where’s the thing I was so afraid of? You know, the Lord? . . . Well, we’ll just have to start killing off His people, see if He shows up.” Then who should walk in, but the Chosen One (one of them). So God did intervene, through Buffy and Faith (as an aside, is Buffy short for anything?). I’d also totally forgotten the evil Willow story ended with the Prayer of St. Francis sung by Sarah McLachlan, mainly because I thought that finale was pretty dumb.

I remember this, was the Master burned when he touched the cross and he just ignored it, or did it really not affect him? I’d thought he did it just to show he was a badass (look at me, I’m still smiling even though I’m experiencing excruciating pain).

An alternative theory to the faith thing is that all the vampires Buffy has fought have probably been nominally Christians, and God is punishing them for their treachery. Maybe Jewish vampires are burned by the Star of David, Shinto ones by paper wards, etc. This goes with Miller’s theory of multiple gods, which I liked the most.

scr4’s theory also makes sense, but why would Christians be the only ones who use those symbols if they were proven to be effective? After all, like pepperlandgirl said, crosses are pre-Christian symbols. And it doesn’t explain holy water, which is just ordinary water that’s been blessed by a priest. Though there are a few stories of ordinary people casting out demons with water they blessed themselves. This holy water thing can go both with the faith theory and the multiple gods one (actually, the two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive).

DocCathode and FriarTed’s idea of a hierarchy of gods is also interesting. Oops, I see SolGrundy is in on it too.

Miller, maybe the gods are content to let their creations fend for themselves, and so stay aloof. Humans have free will, two arms, two legs, and a brain – maybe the gods figured that’s enough to last us. Humanity apparently hasn’t done too, too badly against the forces of evil. After all, the First Evil has had countless millennia to conquer the world, but evidently the world’s champions have always prevailed. I was waiting for someone to point this out on Buffy, but no one ever did.

Maybe different pantheons and gods vie for humanity’s allegiance, similar to the way there are different factions of evil (see Jasmine’s Beast slaughtering Wolfram & Hart). Though some mythological gods were so destructive they might as well have been demons. For example, the Etruscans worshipped a winged goddess who flew around stark naked and cut the throats of prisoners of war, though I can’t seem to remember her name. Ironically, her image was one of the inspirations for angels that later Christian artists drew upon. Anyway, I’m not sure if you can call those gods a force for good, in opposition to the First Evil.

pepperlandgirl, Buffy’s description of heaven is actually pretty close to what the Abrahamic religions see it as (Judaism, Christianity, Islam). The harps and halos (haloes?) thing is just popular imagery; theologically heaven is an eternal moment of love. And as for Buffy not seeing God: one Islamic theologian described heaven as simply a stopping point or a resting place on the journey towards God, and many Judeo-Christian thinkers agree with this.

And, the soul is just a convenient plot device, huh? I guess I should have figured it was something like that. And the chip thing didn’t make sense to me, either. I mean, Spike punched Anya to prove she was fully human. Does that mean the chip had human-detecting sensors? I thought it only punished Spike when he believed he was hitting humans. But oh well.

By the way, here are some other examples of the divine in Buffyland:

  1. Olaf the Troll God, whose hammer Buffy smashed Glory with.

  2. Ra, whose avatars (I think they were avatars), the Ra-Tet, the Beast killed. Yeah, Ra wasn’t actually shown, but the Ra-Tet were supposed to represent Ra’s progression across the sky, implying his existence.

  3. Odin’s priestesses, which the Beast killed. I think they worshipped Odin, anyway. El Elvis Rojo reminded me of them.

  4. The Buddha, whose Tibetan followers’ meditation techniques helped Oz control his werewolf tendencies.

I wonder if we’ll see any of the evil counterparts of these religions in Angel. Are the Frost Giants, Seth, and Asmodeus going to show up there?

By the way, I thought it was clear I was talking about humans, Otto. Sure, the Greeks and Romans had diviners, augurers, oracles, haruspices, soothsayers, and other interpreters of the Sibylline books, but they never had magicians, wizards, sorcerers, witches, or druids. Their mythical heroes can’t even talk to animals or do the superhuman things heroes from other mythologies can. The Greco-Roman gods seem to have mostly been content to toy with humanity, occasionally throwing us a bone like horses, or giving Hector a few more hours of life (which was spent running for his life, so I’m not sure how worthwhile that help was). Note that Prometheus was technically a Titan, not a god, and was in fact punished by Zeus for helping humans. So I’m still unclear on why witches call upon the Greco-Roman gods, when they’re apparently such fickle creatures.

28

I’m going with what Gaspode said about why God doesn’t help humans too much in Buffyland. Free will is meaningless without freedom, including the freedom to choose evil. Like I said before, humans in the series have everything that they need to fight evil. The will to do so is up to them.

29

Just out of curiosity, the whole “Crosses were pre-Christian symbols” thing doesn’t make much sense to me, so if one of the proponents of it can clarrify, that would be great. I know the concept of crusifiction had been in practice for hundreds of years before Christ came along, but what religious significance did it have before that? If there was none, I can’t see vampires living B.C. being hurt by them, but could understand why they would be after the fact, because it’s the religious significance that gives the symbol power. Also, in the first couple of episodes where Buffy’s supplies were all located in a trunk in her bedroom, they pretty much consisted of stakes, holy water, and communion waffers. All Christian symbols, all effective, which leads to believe that, in the Buffyverse, the Judeo/Christian God does exist. What his significance is, though, is the real question.

30

I object to the inclusion of Olaf on the grounds that he wasn’t a “god” until such time as the writers decided they needed to give Buffy a whompin’ weapon. Same reason I object to Buffy’s death being able to stop the Dawn-opened hell portal because “the monks made her out of me.”

31

Otto, I don’t know about the Troll God thing (I agree, he wasn’t a God until they needed the weapon, and in Selfless it’s pretty clear that Anya didn’t make him a God). But I don’t have an objection to Buffy being able to close the portal. The writer’s felt they established in Blood Ties that they literally had the same blood. They have not have done a great job of it, but it wasn’t a last minute “we need an out” sort of deal.

32

as for “Cross as Pre-Christian symbol”, ancient ones included the Crosswheel/SunCross (circle with cross inside), the Tau- either X or T, the Ankh, and the Fylfot/Swastika.

now- as to the vampire-repellant aspects of the Cross, even if it does not repel them, it does hurt them- Angel dancing with Buffy the first time we see what he is, because when they part, we see that her cross has burned his chest; Spike in the last season draping himself on the Cross as he hopes for forgiveness & love while it burns into him

33

Oh yeah, I agree that they established that Buffy and Dawn were related by the monks. What I object to specifically is the throwaway insertion in the season finale of Buffy’s dialog “the monks made her out of me.” That was never established and that, more than the “it’s the same blood, it’s Summers blood” bit, struck me as the why of Buffy’s ability to close the portal. This would also indicate that Buffy’s blood could open the portal which rather makes the whole point of having a separate Key moot, but I digress into a blatant thread hijack at this point…

I’m surprised no one’s mentioned Captain Tightpants yet in this discussion. Caleb was one of the more overt symbols of Christian religiosity in the series if I understand his origin correctly, along with the Knights of Byzantium who are about the only characters who specifically are shown to worship God by name. They even have clerics with big crosses and everything. O’ course Glory mopped the desert floor with them, crosses and all, but there ya go.

34

Yeah, but Glory wasn’t a vampire, and when they hunted, they used swords and things like that, not lightning bolts and “Wrath of God” type of attacks. I think that tends to be everyone’s big beef. Whenever someone calls on any other deity in the show, there’s swirls of wind, lightning, fireballs, or glowing stuff. When someone prays to God, there’s silence.

35

Maybe God, being God, doesn’t feel the need to show off.

36

That’s what I’m thinking, but this thread is full of skeptics.

37

Not to mention his acting. Sorry.

I’m with pepperlandgirl that the theology is deliberately left vague, using established mythology when it’s useful and inventing other stuff as necessary. As she says, Joss is an avowed atheist, so all the supernatural stuff on Buffy is pretty much just storytelling fodder for him; it’s not like he’s trying to make a statement of his philosophical beliefs, like on Touched by an Angel. Obviously, the hardcore fans need to fill in all the gaps to make the world more satisfying (the same way other fans need to explain how transporters or lightsabers work, for example), but that’s not what the show’s about, really. It’s about loyalty and friendship and trust and maturity. The rest of it’s just window dressing.

38

So, your evidence that the Christian God exists in the Buffyverse, is that he’s never really mentioned, “nothing’s solid”, he’s never showed up, nobody worships him, and nobody gives indication that they even believe he exists (except for Riley), coupled with the fact that Joss is an atheist? The only time someone has asked for him to intervene on her behalf was when Dru prayed to him, even became a nun, but that didn’t stop Angelus from raping and killing her. Hardly a ringing endorsement there. At least when Willow asked Osiris for help, he had the decency to show up and tell her to forget about it.

39

But no one’s ever explained why Buffy thinks God’s existence isn’t “solid” when she has personally used God’s symbols to fight evil. Yes, you can come up with alternative theories about why those work, but the simplest explanation is that the hand of God is at work.

Tangentially, I wonder if a vampire’s insides would burn if he swallowed some communion wafers or drank sacramental wine, like that one vampire that Buffy tricked into drinking holy water?

There’s something else I’ve wondered about. I remember that there was a nun who recognized Angel for a vampire as soon as she saw him, and I’d like to know how she did that. Did she sense a disturbance in the Force or something? I mean, one of the reasons vampires can prey so easily on people is that they can pass for humans. Giles said Buffy can sense vampires, but that’s with special Slayer powers. Are very religious people more in tune with the universe or something?

PS
Yes, I agree that Olaf’s hammer might as well have been called the Divine Hammer of Deus ex Machina. However, I figured Buffy was able to close the portal because it was her destiny, like the First Slayer said. You know, like all Slayers are destined to give their lives for the sake of the world.

40

Actually, the simplest explanation is that it’s a TV show whose writers use the symbols and storytelling devices that are most convenient without regard for what that might imply about the show’s cosmology.