3-2 The Devil And Satan: The Hard Questions

The common understanding of the Devil as a fallen Angel and personal being throws up a huge number of unanswerable questions- unanswerable, at least, within Scripture. This led Shelley to point out that popular Christianity's view of the Devil was its weakest point: "The devil... is the weak place of the popular religion- the vunerable belly of the crocodile... Christians invented or adopted the Devil to extricate them from this difficulty [of trying to understand the existence of a good God and the reality of evil]" (1). The sheer volume of contradictory mainstream Christian explanations of Satan and the mass of unanswered questions they generate is all confirmation of this observation. Within the context of speaking about practical consequences of our beliefs in this area, I wish to list these questions. I do so because any basis for belief, any framework for understanding the Gospel, which has so many gaping contradictions and difficulties is hardly going to inspire a solid, dynamic, stable relationship with God. The issues of sin and evil are ever present in our daily lives; and I sincerely believe that without a sound way of understanding the issue, a hermeneutic if you like, these contradictions and apparently 'theoretical' difficulties will come to term in a disordered and insecure life. So very often, it is a struggle with these issues ['How could God do this or allow that?'] which leads to even a total loss of faith; and conversely, it is being able to make sense of sin and evil which allows God to confirm our faith through those negative experiences. So here are some of the questions thrown up by the mistaken ideas imported into Christendom on the devil issue- I catalogue them as part of my unashamed appeal for you to turn away from the common but false understanding of Satan which exists:

- If the Devil fell, what was the nature of his fall? What was his sin? Did he physically depart from Heaven and then go somewhere else? If so, where? Was it hell, or the earth, or somewhere in mid air? If it was to the earth, where did the devil land? The garden of Eden? Was it Christ or Michael the Archangel who defeated him? Who exactly threw him out of Heaven?

- Where exactly is the Devil now? If he's indeed a personal being, he must surely have a location? If Angels literally fell from Heaven, where are they?

- Did the supposed fallen Angels come down to earth to tempt humans to sin, or because they were cast down by God? If they were cast down by God in punishment for their sin, why then should humanity suffer because of that? Isn't that like punishing a psychopath by giving him a loaded gun and casting him out of the courtroom into a school playground? If they came down from Heaven to earth of their own volition and fell into sin on earth, then the whole idea of rebellion in Heaven etc. is contradicted.

- Could or would we sin if the devil didn't exist? If not, then surely we suffer and are punished unfairly for our sins? If we would, then to what extent is the devil responsible for our sins, seeing we would sin anyway?

- If the devil is a personal being, does he have a body? What does he look like? If he is claimed to be a "spirit being", then in what sense is he a person? Where is the Biblical evidence for the existence of 'spirits', or indeed, any existence apart from in a personal form?

- What is the relationship between the devil and the fallen angels / demons? How does their punishment differ from each other? Was the sin of the fallen angels different to that of the devil?

- Can the devil and those angels ever repent? Does he now have freewill? Did he ever have freewill? Was he originally of Christ's nature in Heaven? If Adam sinned but could repent, why could not satan and the supposed fallen angels also repent? As Milton observed in Paradise Lost: "Man therefore shall find grace / The other [i.e. satan] none" (3.131).

- When did the devil fall? Before creation? Before Adam was created? Afterwards? At the time prophesied in Revelation 12? At the time of Noah, when the sons of God married the daughters of men (Gen. 6)?

- Where did demons come from? The New Testament refers to the surrounding beliefs about demons- but in the first century, demons were thought to be the 'immortal souls' of the dead. Wicked immortal souls became wicked demons (see Josephus, Wars Of The Jews 6.47). If demons are the supposedly wicked angels who fell at the creation or in Genesis 6, how can they also be wicked 'immortal souls' of human beings? From where can the idea of 'immortal souls' be justified in the pages of a Bible which so insistently stresses the mortality of the human soul?

- According to misreadings of Ez. 28:15 "Thou wast perfect in thy ways till iniquity was found in thee" and Jn. 8:44 "the devil was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there was no truth in him", those who believe in a personal devil are faced with a contradiction- was the devil originally a sinner, or, was he once perfect but fell?

- How can the positive spiritual effect of Satan be explained? Men were delivered to Satan, so they might learn not to blaspheme (1 Tim. 1:20); deliverance to Satan results in "the destruction of the flesh" (1 Cor. 5:5)- and "the flesh" usually refers in the New Testament to the fleshly mind (Rom. 8:5-9; Eph. 2:3; Jn. 8:15). Surely all this makes sense if 'satan' merely refers to an adversary, and not to some cosmic being bent on making us sin?

- When was the devil punished, and how? At his fall to earth? At the crucifixion? During the ministry of Jesus, when He said He beheld satan falling as lightning? Or at the second coming?

- What exactly is our defence against the devil? Why would the devil get scared off by our Bible reading, uttering the name of Christ, getting baptized, wearing or touching a cross, making the sign of the cross, reciting charms and the other things suggested by the early church "fathers"?

- Seeing Jesus destroyed the devil on the cross (Heb. 2:14), how come that sin and evil are ever increasing in our world- if the devil indeed is responsible for them? And if the devil has been "destroyed", in what sense is this personal being still alive and active? How can the Devil be judged at the last day if he was destroyed on the cross? Surely the only way to make sense of all this is to see all the Biblical references to the Devil as not referring to one personal being, but rather to various human 'adversaries' and the power of sin.

- What are the devil's powers, what function does he perform in our world? Is he responsible for the effects of the curse placed on the earth after Adam fell? Does he operationalize it? Does he cause disasters? Does he cause moral sin in individuals?

- Gregory The Great and other Christian writers claim that God permits Satan to operate. Why, then, do we repeatedly read of evil coming "from the Lord" and being "sent" by Him (Am. 3:6; 1 Sam. 18:10; Is. 45:5-7 etc.)? Does God as it were respect Satan's 'rights' over us?

- Was the devil the serpent, or did he merely use the serpent? The Genesis record states that the serpent was punished by having to eat dust "all the days of your life"- hinting at his mortality. Does the Devil literally eat dust? What is the relationship between the snakes we know today, crawling on their bellies as they do, and Satan?

- Does each sin have its own demon / fallen angel? Does the devil enter our minds or our bodies? How does the devil tempt us? The Biblical explanation of the process of internal temptation within the human mind is clear enough (James 1:13-15; Mk. 7:15-23), and validated within our own experience. But how exactly does a personal devil tempt us and lead us to sin?

- Does the devil punish sinners after death, or administer condemnation to them? How does the devil work with God, if at all?

- What will the devil do in the Millennium, seeing he will be "bound"? Why does a literal being have to be "bound" to restrain him if he is so spiritually active?

- The cuse that came upon the earth and humanity after Adam's sin was from God, not the Devil- according to Genesis. What, then, did the devil do the earth after his supposed fall? From whence did the curse come- from God or the Devil? If [as is so often supposed] the Devil brought suffering and curse into the earth, how did he have power to curse the natural creation and the animals, who didn't sin?

Notes

(1) P.B. Shelley, On The Devil in The Complete Works Of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Roger Ingpen and Walter E. Peck (New York: Scribner's, 1965).