Mrs. Minor died of dysentery in 1855, at age 46, and her small farming colony near Jaffa soon died too. Kreiger and Goldman's unassuming but fascinating account of obscure doings in faraway places is a tribute to a very American woman's passion and practicality in the service of religious commitment. Two Thousand Years of the Human Fascination with Evil. Columbia Univ., 2000. There's no awe left, only interpretation, which becomes explanation.
Myth declines into motive, and motive to excuse.
Wickedness is psychologized, sociologized, rationalized, infantilized into exculpation. The Man of Perdition is part of this lost symbolism, but the potent figuration of a vigorous force will not go away however much we banalize it. Omnipresent in traditional Christian discourse until the 18th century and sporadically since then, the Man of Sin, the Great Denier, has practically dropped off the screen. No one in our day has delved more deeply into the subject, and no one knows more about it, than McGinn. He has written a lot on the theme, but this is his most compendious short book.