Probatio Diabolico, or Devil's Proof, is a legal requirement to prove an impossible proof. Things like Devil’s proof exist in our legal system because despite our best efforts, our laws are imperfect vehicles of justice. Striking a balance between different competing rights, duties and privileges is almost impossible, and any rule or test will inevitably serve to protect certain people at the expense of others and unfairness will inevitably creep in. But just because we haven’t figured out a perfect system of justice here on Earth does not mean that a perfect system does not exist. While laws may shift and vary from country to country, or, in the U.S., even from state to state, God's laws, on the other hand, are eternal and unchanging and are the same laws that exist at every point in time and space. These laws have been communicated to us by imperfect men and women who are nonetheless filled with the Spirit of God, and, to the extent that each of us attempt to apply them, we also do so as imperfect men and women who at least some of the time are also hopefully filled with the Spirit of God. The point is that while God’s laws are perfect, they are only ever carried out by imperfect servants. This leads us to the dilemma that lies at the heart of anyone who has ever questioned the existence, the power, the benevolence, or the purpose of God and His plan for us. We can see this unresolved tension most clearly in the Devil’s temptations of Jesus Christ. “If thou be the son of God... do this.” “If thou be the Son of God... do that.” Satan is setting up these Devil’s proofs. He wants Jesus to prove an impossible proof by inviting him not to prove Himself as the actual Son of the actual God, but rather to misuse His Divine nature to act contrary to God’s laws in order to perpetuate a false and warped view of God that Satan has conjured up. Jesus repeatedly affirms that He can only act according to God’s eternal and immutable laws, and that He would be happy to prove His divinity all day long through His obedience to God’s laws but never in any other way. If we ever find ourselves at a crossroads where we are asking God to prove to us that what He asks of us is really for our good, then we need to make sure that we haven’t been caught up in a devil’s impossible proof where we have developed an incorrect understanding of God and yet we still want God to act not according to His own will but according to our own twisted sense of what we think His will ought to be. In Jesus’s most desperate moment, when He wanted more than anything to substitute God’s will for some other way, He nevertheless invited His Father to give to Him God’s proof that the infinite suffering Jesus was staggering under was still worth it. I hope that rather than abandon the true and living God for our Devil’s Proofs that only ever make things worse and offer no comfort or hope at all we will instead always choose to wait for the Celestial proofs that will not only help everything to make sense but will also make everything right in the end.
