Father Spitzer tackles evil in this detailed tome titled Christ versus Satan. While deeply theological, the book is also pastoral, demonstrating the existence of spiritual evil in the world today and in the past, while offering hints for overcoming it (such as this spontaneous prayer to galvanize faith: “Lord, You are the just judge; You take care of it” (315) whispered whenever one feels filled with indignation, anger, and a craving of retribution). The book is therefore part Thomas Aquinas, part Fulton Sheen.

In the first half of Christ versus Satan, Spitzer sets forth thorough, objective proofs for the existence of good, God, evil, and the Devil, detailing, inter alia, several documented exorcisms and numerous well-attested miracles. Spitzer also demonstrates – through a careful sifting of scripture – what the Lord taught about Satan and how He prevailed over him. Then in the second half of the book, Spitzer outlines the various tactics of Satan in relation to the eight deadly sins (Spitzer includes the sin of vanity as the eighth) and strategies for resisting and ultimately overcoming them by means of habitual virtues and the three divine powers of faith, empathy, and conscience.

Christ versus Satan must be contextualized with Father Spitzer’s larger body of work, specifically what he terms his Quartet – jointly titled Happiness, Suffering, and Transcendence – and his Trilogy – Called Out of Darkness; Contending with Evil Through Church Virtue – of which this book is the first of three.  The four individual books making up the Quartet are titled Finding True Happiness (2015), The Soul’s Upward Yearning (2015), God So Loved the World (2016), and The Light Shines on in the Darkness (2017) (all from Ignatius Press), and they supplied successive quantities of evidence on the reality of transcendence, specifically: the reality of the human soul, God, and the incarnation. The proofs are of at least five types. There are: empirical data, logical proofs, scientific conclusions, historical testimony (e.g., Marian apparitions, Eucharistic miracles, and miracles associated with the intercessions of saints), and anecdotal reports (i.e., of life after death). Spitzer recommends that readers first consider rational conviction or “intellectual conversion” before proceeding to “spiritual conversion,” and finally, to “moral conversion.” Too many catechesis courses do not adequately explore the evidence of transcendence and simply launch directly into moral and theological pronouncements, he opines. Later, more than forty percent of young people abandon faith when they are led to believe that there is a contradiction between science/logic and faith.

The shared target of all seven books (that is, the Quartet and the Trilogy) is to counsel individuals on how to “negotiate the challenge of conversion in the contemporary world” (19). Father Spitzer describes his purpose in writing the books as designing “a rational and scientific mindset to restore credibility and understanding of the … realities and foundations of” (241-42) contributive spiritual fulfillment. Those foundations include proof of God, the soul, the incarnation, the cosmic struggle between good and evil, “[t]he need for the Church, virtue, and prayer to contend” (242) with that struggle, and the necessity of objective moral principles to prevail in that struggle.

Following these foundational proofs, Father Spitzer maps a comprehensive battle plan of spiritual combat, with thoughtful minutiae on every troop movement, offensive technique, and defensive tactic. He insists that the first engagement must be to convince the believer of the articles of faith, including the real existence of the Devil, since the Evil One’s primary deceptive tactic is to convince individuals of his nonexistence. (The third chapter’s declarative chapter title sums it up: “The Devil Is Real.”) Imagine how easy it would be for a general to prevail on the battlefield if he were able to first convince his foe that his enemy did not exist!

This trenchant, elevating book is filled with guideposts and tips for achieving strong religious and moral conversion based upon prayer, scripture, and membership in a community of faith.