6-1 The Real Devil: Some Conclusions

A Network Of Bible Truth

One true understanding tends to lead to another, just as one erroneous understanding leads to another false interpretation. Newton scholar Steven Snobelen concludes that Isaac Newton's rejection of the trinity and his firm belief in only one God led him, in turn, to reject the idea of a personal devil. I've written elsewhere of the error of the trinity, particularly in The Real Christ. If God is indeed the only God, the only source of power, then quite simply there's no room for the devil, at least not in the way 'he' is commonly understood. But beyond this- our view of the devil affects our view of God in more practical ways. The assumption that God will not permit the innocent to suffer has led to the need to create the idea of a personal devil in order to explain away the awful vistas of suffering and injustice we see all around us. But however we understand it, or try to understand it, the fact is that the God of the Bible does permit the innocent to suffer- the extraordinary mental and physical sufferings of His beloved Son being perhaps the clearest example. As ants are to a man, so are we to God. We can never hope to understand exactly why He permits sin and evil to be as they are. But ultimately we believe that somehow, some when, in the return of Jesus Christ to earth, His Kingdom will triumph. Then we will finally understand, only then will we join the dots and see the full picture, in every dimension of its beauty- and that for me is one of the Kingdom's joys I look forward to the most. For me, the good news of God, of His Son and His Kingdom, runs as a thread throughout the Bible; each truth dovetails with others.

This network of Bible truth sadly has its opposite- a network of false understanding. The further one goes into that, the more seriously unanswered questions and contradictions arise, which in turn lead to the desperation and frustration so many feel when they think deeply about the problem of sin and evil. Here are a few of them:

- Our trials and problems are designed by God to result in our spiritual development. Yet if the devil supposedly brings them, how can he also be seeking to stop our spiritual growth and hinder us from salvation?

- Likewise it is supposed that the devil brought about the death of Jesus, and some of the early church 'fathers' claimed that the blood of Christ had to be paid to the devil as a kind of ransom for souls (although the Bible is utterly silent about that). Yet clearly enough, the death of Jesus is the source of our salvation and forgiveness; indeed it was through the death of the cross that the devil was destroyed (Heb. 2:14). So how could the devil bring about the death of Jesus if this was exactly what was required for human salvation? Moreover, the death of Jesus was part of God's plan from the beginning, foreshadowed back in Eden by the slaying of animals to provide a covering for Adam and Eve (cp. Rev. 13:8). The death of Jesus was by "the determinate will of God" (Acts 2:23; Heb. 10:9; Gal. 1:4). So, does the devil do God's will, or not? The classical answer is that no, the devil works against the will of God. And yet why then claim that the devil brought about the death of Jesus and demanded His blood? For the death of Christ was in fact the very apex of the will and purpose of God.

- The idea of the devil requiring a ransom, namely the blood of Jesus, arose from the idea that the ransom could not be the life of a mere man, but it had to somehow be God's life. Hence was encouraged the tragically wrong idea that Jesus is God. This idea was pushed by Basil and Gregory of Nysa. Augustine faced the 'hard question' as to why exactly satan hates Christ by saying that this was "inevitable" because Jesus was God. I see no logical reason why this was "inevitable"- for me it reflects how one wrong concept [e.g. that Jesus is God Himself] leads to another [i.e. that Satan therefore hates Jesus].

- The idea [pushed by Clement and Origen, developed by Milton in Paradise Lost] that Jesus and Lucifer were somehow brothers, part of a dualist cosmos in the beginning, split between good and evil, required Jesus to have personally pre-existed - an idea without support in the Bible. It should be noted that the Persian dualist myth that there was a god of good balanced by an evil god also stated that the two gods were originally twin brothers- and this clearly influenced the thinking of the "fathers" on this point.

- It has to be noted that many of the pagan myths about gods in conflict featured a hero, who was a god, fighting an adversary who was also a god, and winning. The fact standard Christianity became influenced by this thinking set up a tendency to think that the hero, Jesus, was also God and therefore personally pre-existed at the beginning of time, when the conflict supposedly occured. Several times in this study we will have to comment that the development of the non-Biblical idea of the Trinity was both influenced by, and in turn influenced, the development of the extra-Biblical idea of a personal Satan figure.

- Plutarch, a first century writer, defines the view of demons prevailing in the first century Meditteranean world as being that demons are intermediaries between gods and humanity, who speak through the oracles and prophecies of their priestly representatives on earth. He says that demons are a form of human 'immortal souls' (1). The schizophrenic at Gadara "dwelt among the tombs"- presumably because of his conviction that he was actually incarnating a dead person. When cured by Jesus, he ceased hanging around those tombs. The doctrine of demons and that of the immortal soul hangs together; and 'immortal souls' are definitely not part of Biblical revelation. If we read the New Testament references to the surrounding idea of 'demons' and conclude that therefore those surrpunding religious views are correct and demons exist, we are signing up to belief in immortal souls. Josephus brings out the same connection between the 1st century demon belief and immortal souls in Wars Of The Jews 1.47,82,84; 6.47. P.G. Bolt likewise traces the connection between Jewish beliefs in ghosts, and demons (2). Significantly, on the two occasions the disciples lapsed back into their old beliefs and thought that Jesus was a ghost, their own transcripts of the incidents prove how wrong they were- existence is in bodily, actual terms, and not as disembodied spirits (Mk. 6:49; Lk. 24:39).

- False understandings of Satan are connected with erroneous views of hell. If the wicked are to be tormented in hell, then who torments them? Thus the idea of the devil and demons with pitchforks, tridents etc. had to be created. Yet the Biblical understanding of hell is simply of the grave; and the punishment of the wicked is the "second death" (Rev. 2:11)- and Biblical death is without any question a state of unconsciousness.

- Perhaps worst of all, the idea that there is a dualistic universe [a good God and an evil one] has become so entrenched in the minds of some that to take away the existence of the devil, is to say God doesn't exist. John Wesley famously wrote: "No Devil, no God". This, surely, is why so many mainstream Christians today are so insistent that acceptance of a personal Satan's existence is utterly vital to the Gospel, and is almost a salvation issue with them. To say the evil god doesn't exist is, for them, implying that the true One doesn't either. It's like the Middle Ages all over again- anyone who denied the existence of Satan was cast out as an atheist. This is how strong the network is within and between false interpretations of the Bible. God is, an ultimately good God, who seeks to do us good in our latter end; and His Almightiness and supremacy disallows the serious existence of any cosmic 'god' in opposition to Him. That's not atheism- that's, if you like, theism as it should be.

The Changing Scene

The Barna Group, a research firm, found the following in a survey of American Christians in 2006 [published on www.barna.org]:

* 55 percent view Satan as symbolic of evil rather than a real entity.

* 45 percent of born-again Christians don't believe Satan is real.

* 68 percent of Catholics think of Satan only as a symbol and deny the word refers to a personal being.

This general picture is independently confirmed by other research (3). And yet church leaders are full of talk about a personal satan, using it as a threat to get people to pay tithes, come to church, etc. But they're out of step with what people are really thinking. Seeing that flesh-pleasing, giving in to the Biblical 'devil', is more and more evident in Christian society, I don't take these figures as necessarily being good news. What I see is that people have seen through the absurdities of believing in a personal satan. But they've not necessarily replaced it with anything better; let alone grasp the huge challenge which there is to realize that our own mind is indeed our major adversary, our satan, and we are to battle against it every moment in the power of God's Spirit.

Whilst belief in the devil and demons as literal beings is in decline, I can't stress strongly enough that this doesn't mean that people understand the truth about these matters. The basic mythology lives on in new guises. Our modern culture, with its predilection for science, has replaced sinful Angels and demons with aliens coming to earth on flying saucers and violating women. Such 'science fiction' has gotten a deep grip within society and culture. And never before have we seen so much demonizing of others as 'the enemy', rather than an acceptance that it's our own human sin which is the essential enemy. Moslems are demonized by Christians just as they were at the time of the Crusades; just as Russians, Communists, black people, non-trinitarians, divorcees, those who chew gum in church etc. were at different times by the Christians of the 20th century. It seems we're ever seeking for a fresh way to externally define 'the enemy', 'Satan', and yet always missing the crucial, quintessential issue- human sin and self-deception.

We have spoken of the huge influence of dualism- the idea that there is a god of good and a god of evil. If there's a God, there has to be a devil; if there are Angels, there must be demons; if there's heaven, there must be hell. And we've sought to show that dualism isn't at all what the Bible teaches, in fact it's the very opposite. One pleasing trend of the last few decades has been the now widespread recognition amongst many Christians that 'hell' refers simply to the grave; and that the reward and hope of the righteous is God's eternal Kingdom on earth, and not going to Heaven on death. It seems to me that the rejection of the Heaven / hell dualism must be taken further, to include the rejection of the idea of a personal Satan, and allowing God to be "all in all" in our understanding. Dualism is very attractive to our judgmental human minds; it lends itself to categorizing life and society in a simplistic binary manner, into Us and Them, Cowboys and Indians, Hero and Villain, Friend and Foe... whilst all the time missing the essential Christian point that the ultimate struggle is within the human mind.

Psychologists suggest that there is something within the human psyche that needs to fear, that wants to fear. Just look at the huge success of terror stories, movies, images, Stephen King novels; and the way that the media realizes that their global audience laps up fear and sensationalism about terror. One common thread throughout all the pagan forerunners of the 'personal satan' idea is that the pagan concepts all involved the generation of fear and terror. True Christianity aims to "cast out" such fear through its revelation of the ultimate love of God (1 Jn. 4:18). So many control systems have played upon fear of the devil- to bring children into subdued obedience, flocks into submission to pastors, etc. It's now high time to realize that this is not how the true God works. "For fear has torment" (1 Jn. 4:18), and this is exactly what true understanding of the cross of Christ saves us from. God isn't a psychological manipulator, and He doesn't coax us into submission through fear. And yet it could be said that humanity is increasingly addicted to fear. People may mock fearing a Loch Ness monster, werewolves, funny sounds at night... but they still buy in big time to fearing a personal Devil. There's something in us that wants to fear something; that just loves the popular idea of a personal Satan. This is why it's hard to budge this mentality. But hopefully these studies have helped you in that direction. As the tragedy of 21st century humanity unfolds yet further, it's more than time for a radically new way of thinking about Satan, and ourselves.

Notes

(1) See Plutarch, Oracles In Decline in D. Russell, ed., Plutarch: Selected Essays And Dialogues (Oxford: O.U.P., 1993).

(2) P.G. Bolt, "Jesus, The Daimons And The Dead", in The Unseen World, ed., A.N. Lane (Exeter: Paternoster, 1996).

(3) Andrew Delbanco, The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil (New York: Farrar, 1995).