The Devil Is Not The Polar Opposite of God

Polarity is not a commonly-discussed theme in Christianity, which is a shame because I believe the further development of Christianity depends on a deeper, intuitive understanding of the nature and reality of polarity.

If Christians think about polarity at all, most tend to conceptualize it as an arrangement of extremes, with the Devil at one end and God at the other. Though this conceptualization is understandable, it misses the point entirely, as Nikolai Berdyaev explains in his The Divine and The Human (bold and line breaks added):

Man seeks to find refuge from the tormenting question of evil in the realm of neutrality, and by doing so seeks to conceal his treachery to God. 

But in a deeper sense there is no neutrality; the neutral is on the surface. It might even be said that the devil is neutral. 

It is a mistake to assume that the devil is the polar opposite of God. The pole which is the direct opposite of God is again God, the other face of God; extremes meet. The devil is the prince of this world and takes cover in neutrality. 

One way to interpret the passage above is to recognize man as the other face of God and to regard the core of Christianity as the potential meeting of these extremes.