"While he wants Christians to be careful not to demonize everything, he noted that too many believers have been seeking to rationalize away the devil and stressed that doing away with the devil is a threat to belief in God.
"I once heard some people say: 'I have come to the awareness of the existence of God through the awareness of the existence of the devil, because I have seen it.' This statement has a relative value, but it is true that, if the figure of the devil is missing, one also loses sight of the figure of God itself. In this sense, the death of the devil can accompany or precede or favor that of God because it makes the concept of God very abstract," Dermine said.
"It makes faith arid and intellectualistic and makes us forget that we really need to be saved, helped and protected by the Lord. We must bear in mind that our faith consists in the effective presence of a loving God, and reasoning is not always the best way to reach God," he said. "