The devil and Justice Scalia

There was a good bit of incredulity in my Twitter feed the other day in reaction to the interview with Antonin Scalia in which he confessed to belief in the devil. His response to the interviewer should have silenced the Twitterverse:

You’re looking at me as though I’m weird. My God! Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the Devil? I mean, Jesus Christ believed in the Devil! It’s in the Gospels! You travel in circles that are so, so removed from mainstream America that you are appalled that anybody would believe in the Devil! Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the Devil.

He’s absolutely right about the persistence of belief in the devil among American Christians, although it’s inaccurate to claim that “most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history.”