1-6 The Devil And Satan In Recent Thought
Even with my back to the world, I hope I'd stand for Bible truth regardless
of what anyone else thought. We must do and believe what is right before
God, rather than what is smart and trendy before our surrounding society.
But I realize that for many, the rejection of the idea of a superhuman
Satan is a major issue, and for some this may be their first encounter
with any alternative idea. To provide somewhat of a human cushion for
the changeover of thinking, a slightly softer landing, I've referenced
throughout this book the views of many who have made this rejection of
pagan superstition in favour of Bible truth. And in this section I wish
to give some more recent examples. But name dropping of supporting voices
is irrelevant in the final analysis- for we must each unflinchingly set
our face to understand the problem of sin and evil in accordance with
God's truth, as revealed in the Bible.
Stephen Mitchell
Stephen Mitchell, in a much acclaimed and well publicized book published
by none other than Harper Collins, observes that throughout Job, “there
is no attempt to deflect ultimate responsibility by blaming a devil or
an original sin”(1). And Mitchell says this in the context
of commenting upon Job 9:24, where having spoken of the problem of calamity,
Job concludes: “Who does it, if not he [God]?”. And of course at the end
of the book, God confirms Job as having spoken truly about Him. Mitchell
observes that Job ends “with a detailed presentation of two creatures,
the Beast and the Serpent… both creatures are, in fact, central figures
in ancient near-eastern eschatology, the embodiments of evil that the
sky-god battles and conquers… this final section of the Voice from the
Whirlwind is a criticism of conventional, dualistic theology. What
is all this foolish chatter about good and evil, the Voice says,
about battles between a hero-god and some cosmic opponent? Don’t you
understand that there is no one else in here? These huge symbols
of evil, so terrifying to humans… are presented as God’s playthings”.
And so Mitchell comes to the very same conclusions as we have outlined
here- there is in the end only God, and He is not in struggle with any
super-human ‘devil’ in Heaven. And this is in fact the whole lesson of
the book of Job. Even if such a mythical being is thought to exist, as
it was in Job’s time, the essential point is that God is so much
greater than such a puny ‘devil’ that He can play games with him. John
Robinson, one time Anglican Bishop of Woolwich, came to some similar conclusions,
albeit less clearly expressed, in his classic In The End God (2).The
Christian psychotherapist Paul Tournier also came to the same view about
the devil which we've outlined elsewhere. He expresses what we've said
Biblically in more modern jargon: “[We must] unmask the hidden enemy,
which the Bible calls a devil, and which the psychoanalyst calls the superego:
the false moral code, the secret and all-powerful veto which spoils and
sabotages all that is best in a person’s life, despite the sincerest aspirations
of his conscious mind”(3).
Elaine Pagels
Others have come to the same conclusions by different paths. Students
of the history of ideas have found that the idea of a personal satan just
isn't there in the Old Testament; and yet they've traced the development
of the idea through the centuries, noting how various non-Christian ideas
have become mixed in, a tradition developed and then picked up more and
more accretions as time went on.
Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton University, is perhaps
the highest profile writer and thinker to express agreement with our position
about the devil. Her best selling book The Origin Of Satan is
well worth a read if you're interested in this theme (4). She
begins where we have done- that Christianity and Judaism taught only one
God, and this left no place for a devil / satan in the orthodox sense.
We have said time and again that one true doctrine leads to another, and
Pagels grasps that clearly. One God means no devil. Simple as that. And
so she comments: “Conversion from paganism to Judaism or Christianity,
I realized, meant, above all, transforming one’s perception of the invisible
world”. And this had a radically practical outworking- as does belief
in any true Bible doctrine: “Becoming either a Jew or a Christian polarized
a pagan’s view of the universe, and moralized it”. The pagan worldview
would've felt that anything like a volcano or earthquake was a result
of demonic activity. But instead, the Bible clearly describes the volcanoes
that destroyed Sodom as coming from the one God, as judgment for their
sins (Gen. 19:4). People were not just victims of huge cosmic forces;
they had responsibility for their actions and met those consequences.
We can easily miss the radical implications of the moral way the Bible
describes such things which were otherwise attributed to demons /pagan
gods. There was a huge political price attached to rejecting belief in
‘demons’. Rusticus, prefect of Rome, persecuted Christians because they
refused “to obey the gods and submit to the rulers”. The Romans considered
that their leaders were agents of the gods; and if the gods didn’t exist,
then the Roman leadership lost its power and authority. For this reason,
the Romans called the Christians ‘atheists’.
The following quotations from Pagels exactly reflect our own conclusions:
“In the Hebrew Bible…Satan never appears as Western Christendom has come
to know him, as the leader of an “evil empire”, an army of hostile spirits
who make war on God…in the Hebrew Bible, Satan is not necessarily evil,
much less opposed to God. On the contrary, he appears in the book of Numbers
and in Job as one of God’s obedient servants- a messenger, or angel,
a word that translates the Hebrew term for messenger (mal’ak)
into Greek (angelos)… In biblical sources the Hebrew term the
satan describes an adversarial role. It is not the name of a
particular character… the root stn means “one who opposes, obstructs,
or acts as an adversary”... But this messenger is not necessarily malevolent…
John dismisses the device of the devil as an independent supernatural
character… Paul holds a perception that Satan acts as God’s agent not
to corrupt people but to test them” (pp. 111, 183)”.
But Elaine Pagels isn't just out there on her own. Neil Forsyth comments
likewise: “In… the Old Testament, the word [satan] never appears as the
name of the adversary… rather, when the satan appears in the Old Testament,
he is a member of the heavenly court, albeit with unusual tasks”(5).
Several respected commentators have pointed out the same, especially when
commenting upon the ‘satan’ in the book of Job- concluding that the term
there simply speaks of an obedient Divine Angel acting the role of an
adversary, without being the evil spirit being accepted by many in Christendom
(6). Commenting on the 'satan' of Job and Zechariah, the respected
Anchor Bible notes: "Neither in Job nor in Zechariah is the Accuser
an independent entity with real power, except that which Yahweh consents
to give him" (7). A.L. Oppenheim carefully studied how the figure
of a personal satan entered into Hebrew thought; he concludes that it
was originally absent . He considers that their view of a Divine court,
or council, such as is hinted at in the Hebrew Bible, was significant
for them; but they noted that in some Mesopotamian bureaucracies there
was a similar understanding, but always there was an "accuser"
present, a 'satan' figure (8). And the Jews adopted this idea and thus
came to believe in a personal satan.
How Did Christianity Adopt Pagan Beliefs?
Pagels and other writers tackle the obvious question: Where, then, did
the present idea of a literal evil being called satan come from, seeing
it’s not in the Bible? They trace the idea back to pagan sources that
entered Judaism before the time of Christ- and then worked their way into
Christian thought in the early centuries after Christ, as mainstream Christianity
moved away from purely Biblical beliefs(9). But pushing the
question back a stage further, why and how did Judaism
and later Christianity pick up pagan myths about a personal devil and
sinful Angels and mix them in with their belief system?Pagels quotes sources
such as the Jewish Book of the Watchers to show how there was
a clear belief that each person has a ‘guardian Angel’, and when conflicts
arose, people judged as ‘wicked’ or ‘evil’ came to be charged with therefore
having a ‘wicked’ or ‘evil’ Angel controlling them. And it was an easy
step to assume that these ‘wicked Angels’ were all under the control of
a personal, superhuman Devil as widely believed in by surrounding pagans.
The book of Jubilees (e.g. 15:31) made the association between pagan gods
and demons. Jewish apostates who believed in the pagan gods, or who were
accused of believing in them, were then seen as being somehow in league
with them. And thereby those ‘demons’ were felt to be real beings, because
the people they supposedly controlled were real people.
The Essenes were a Jewish sect who were in conflict with the rest of
the Jews, whom they believed were condemned to damnation. They expressed
this conflict between them and others in terms of a cosmic conflict between
God- who they believed was on their side- and a personal Satan,
whose followers they believed their enemies on earth were supporting.
The more bitter the political conflict within Israel, the stronger was
the appeal made to a supposed cosmic battle between good and evil, God
and Satan. The result of this false doctrine was a demonizing of ones’
opposition. And the same can easily happen today. The value of the human
person is forgotten about, if we believe they are condemned, evil people
who are the devil incarnate. The orthodox ‘devil’ can’t be reconciled
with. He can only be destroyed. And if we demonize people, we can never
reconcile with them, only seek to destroy them. Here is where doctrine
is important in practice. If there is no personal satan up there, and
all people, our enemies included, are simply struggling against
their own nature… then we can reach out to them, as fellow strugglers,
understand them, seek to reconcile with them and seek their salvation.
And so it seems to me that the personal satan myth became popular because
it lent itself so conveniently to the demonization of others, by making
out that they are actually in league with some cosmic force of evil, whereas
we [of course!] are on the side of the good. And so Christians demonized
their enemies and then even those within their religion who differed from
them, just as the Jews and later the Essenes had done. This all suggests
that false doctrine nearly always has a moral dimension to it, or an [im]moral
justification, a making of the way easier, a pandering to our natural
inclination rather than that of God.
Many scholars have pointed out that the Old Testament is silent about
a 'satan' figure as widely believed in by Christendom. The Genesis record
says nothing at all about sinful angels, a Lucifer, satan being cast out
of Heaven etc. There seems significant evidence for believing that the
idea of a personal devil first entered Judaism through their contact with
the Persian religions whilst in captivity there. Rabbinic writings don't
mention a personal satan until the Jews were in Babylon, and the references
become more frequent as Persian influence upon Judaism deepened. This
is why the monumental passages in Isaiah [e.g. Is. 45:5-7], addressed
to the captive Jews, point out the error of the Persian idea that there
is a good God in tension with an evil god. Classically, the devil is understood
to be a being with horns and a pitchfork. If we research why
this should be the case, we soon find that the Bible itself is absolutely
without any such images of satan or the devil. But we do find these images
in pagan mythology- Pan, Dionysius and other pagan gods were depicted
as having horns, long tails etc. In the British isles, let alone ancient
Rome and Greece, there were traditions of 'horned gods' being the source
of evil- e.g. the Cernunnos amongst the Celts, Caerwiden in Wales, etc.
In so many ways, apostate Christianity adopted pagan ideas and brought
them into its theology. These horned gods, with forks and long tails,
became adopted into a false Christianity as 'the devil'. But the Bible
itself is absolutely silent about this- nowhere is there any indication
that satan or the devil is a personal being with horns etc.
Other studies in the history and developments of religion have shown
that religious systems usually begin without a specific 'satan' figure;
but as people struggle with the huge incidence of evil in the world, they
end up creating such a figure in their theologies. It seems many people
have a deeply psychological need to blame their sin, and the sin of others,
on something outside of them; and so the idea of a personal satan has
become popular. It's somewhere to simplistically dump all our struggles
and disappointments and fears of ourselves and of the world in which we
live. The struggle to understand, believe and love a God who portrays
Himself in His word as the ultimate and only force, in a world of tsunamis,
earthquakes, mass catastrophe- is indeed difficult. It's something all
His children have to wrestle with, as children struggle with their parents'
decisions and actions towards them which seem to them so unloving, unreasonable
and pointless. It's surely a cop out to give up, and simplistically decide
that our God isn't actually the only force and power around, but actually
there is an evil god out there too. But this is indeed a cop out, as well
as reflecting our own lack of faith and acceptance of the one true God
simply because we don't ultimately understand Him, and because He doesn't
act how we think He should act.
The Devil In John’s Gospel
Students of John have also at times been driven to the understanding
that actually, John's writings do not at all support the common idea of
the Devil. John’s Gospel seeks to correct the false idea of a huge cosmic
conflict. John frequently alludes to the ideas of light versus darkness,
righteousness versus evil. But he correctly defines darkness and evil
as the unbelief which exists within the human heart. Again, from this
distance, we may read John’s words and not perceive the radical, corrective
commentary which he was really making against the common ideas of a personal
Satan existing in Heaven, involved in some cosmic conflict up there. The
real arena of the conflict, the essential struggle, according to John,
is within the human heart, and it is between belief and unbelief in Jesus
as the Son of God, with all that entails.
In the same way as the concept of ‘demons’ somewhat recedes throughout
the Gospels, and the point is made that God’s power is so great that effectively
they don’t exist- so it is with the ‘Devil’. Judaism had taken over the
surrounding pagan notion of a personal ‘satan’. And the Lord Jesus and
the Gospel writers use this term, but in the way they use it, they redefine
it. The parable of the Lord Jesus binding the “strong man”- the Devil-
was really to show that the “devil” as they understood it was now no more,
and his supposed Kingdom now taken over by that of Christ. The last Gospel,
John, doesn't use the term in the way the earlier Gospels do. He defines
what the earlier writers called “the devil” as actual people, such as
the Jews or the brothers of Jesus, in their articulation of an adversarial
[‘satanic’] position to Jesus. My point in this context is that various
respected and widely published scholars have concluded likewise: “John
never pictures satan.. as a disembodied being… John dismisses the device
of the devil as an independent supernatural character”(10)…
“In John, the idea of the devil [as a personal supernatural being] is
completely absent”(11). Raymond Brown- one of the most well
known Roman Catholic expositors of the 20th Century- concludes
that ‘Satan’ doesn't refer to a character in ‘his’ own right, but rather
is a title referring to groups of people who play the role of
adversaries or tempters(12).
Other Writers
20th century theologian Jim Garrison gave a lifetime to analyzing the
relationship between God, the Devil and evil. He finally concluded that
there is no Devil, and that God creates real evil, and uses it somehow
for the ultimate good in the 'bigger picture' (13). Petru Dumitriu likewise
concluded that Satan is "a needful symbol of radical evil",
and that humanity is the ultimate source of much of the evil we experience:
"In all creation there is nothing as cruel as human malice... evil
is a refusal of the very notion of guilty intent, of culpability, of sin"
(14). Flannery O'Connor's novels and writings expressed all this in popular
form. Her last novel, The Violent Bear It Away, really plays
on this theme deeply (15). "There ain't no such thing as a devil...
I can tell you that from my own self-experience. I know that for a fact.
It ain't Jesus or the devil. It's Jesus or you" (p. 39).
Fyodor Dostoyevsky And Satan (Reflections by Ted Russell)
The Brothers Karamazov by the great nineteenth-century
Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky is one of the gravest and most
absorbing novels ever written; yet it in no way promotes a belief in
an immortal Devil. In a book of impressionistic realism, Dostoyevsky
is concerned with the anguish caused by the dual nature of man, in which
a mythical Satan has absolutely no role, function or place, and therefore
does not intrude. In fact, the only time Satan is introduced at
all, is, late in the series, when Ivan hears that Smerdyakov’s murder
of Fyodor was the result of his (Ivan’s) nihilistic words and actions,
suggesting that the father’s murder would be a blessing to the whole household.
He returns to his rooms, falls ill with fever and delirium, during which
he is haunted by a realistic spectre of the devil which suddenly
emerges from his soul, revealing his true nature to himself. Up till now,
Ivan’s nihilism had no room for conscience, at all. Belatedly, and long
overdue, that latent conscience is born in him by the sudden awareness
of the evil consequences of his overtly professed philosophy. Significantly,
Ivan’s feverish vision of awareness is lost on his audience; it is not
believed in by any in the court to whom he confesses it. It is, actually,
a message from Dostoyevsky to his readers.
If Dostoyevsky had wanted to bring in a real, external Satan, he would
have introduced him earlier, in the most famous section of the book (The
Legend of the Grand Inquisitor) where, in an inn, Ivan disclosed to
Alyosha that he believed in God, but that he could not accept God’s
world. What the two discussed there was the dual nature of
man, which has been the continuing theme of the whole novel. There, Ivan’s
account of another of his delusional dreams, this time in poetical form,
spells out his case against Christ, and his anger at a God who permits
innocent children to suffer. But it is not through the mouth of a Satan,
but of a worldly wise old Inquisitor during an auto-da-fe - an
execution by burning of heretics - in 16th century Seville. A stranger
appears in the village, and performs a miracle. The people identify him
as Christ. The Grand Inquisitor appears, and arrests the stranger, intending
to burn him at the stake next day. He reproaches the stranger: “Is it
Thou?”, he asks, ”You had no right to come. We have corrected thy work.”
Ivan’s implication is that Christ’s message is far too hard for any to
follow, no one can ever reach His impossibly high standards. No one wants
freedom; all they need is security. So, the Church has changed the standards,
to an achievable norm - and so who needs Christ now? The Inquisitor offers
Christ liberty if He will go and “come no more.” According to Ivan, his
poetical dream has Christ accepting the Inquisitor’s offer. He silently
kisses the old man’s lips as He leaves, disappearing forever.
But it doesn’t end there. The dream is all in the mind of Ivan.
No place there, at all, for Satan. Christ has come with impossible requirements
for man. The Church, realizing the impossibility of Christ’s requirements,
has changed it all, and kissed Christ off. That’s all we need, Ivan the
nihilistic Intellectual argues. Alyosha, however, knows better. Zossimar
has taught him that the true Christian faith, if not that which the
Church has tampered with, is not as helpless as Ivan would have it.
The standard it demands is certainly attainable, and does work. Active
love is far more important than anything that Ivan’s totalitarian system
could ever reach. Had not Zossimar said:
“ ... love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love
in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed
and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal
does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding
as though on the stage. But active love is labour and fortitude, and for
some people too, perhaps, a complete science”.
The theme of the novel is that of a father and his four sons (born of
three different mothers) and the effect of sensuality and inherited sensuality
on them and on all with whom they come in contact. The father is murdered,
and in the course of the consequent investigation the reader is led to
consider all the possible paths for mankind.
Dimitre, the sensuous oldest son, depicts the way of the senses; Ivan,
the atheistic, intellectual son, represents Western intellectualism, arguing
that all things are permissible; Alexey (called Alyosha), the third son,
is a gentle boy influenced by Zossimar, an elder in the nearby monastery
(whose positive teachings are central to the novel); and Smerdyakov (the
actual murderer), the illegitimate son representing the debased way of
scepticism and secularism.
Dostoyevsky prefaces his novel with a quotation from the Gospel of John,
that relates to the underlying theme of the book: “Verily, verily, I say
unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth
alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit”. Throughout the novel,
each brother must learn this truth in his own experience: “Fall to the
earth, die, and, then be reborn”.
There is no Satan in The Brothers Karamazov. Zossimar’s unassuming
but firm Christian teachings continue to be central to the whole of the
novel, and constitute a complete rebuttal to Ivan’s Grand Inquisitor
mythical legend - a poetic, invented dream that meets its catharsis
in the final, self-revelation to Ivan, in his moment of truth. For his
later dream’s self-revelation that his other half is a “private devil”
- the bad side of his dual nature ( “the real spectre in his soul”) -
is consistent with what he had, himself, initially and tentatively postured
to his brother Alyosha in the preamble to The Grand Inquisitor:
“I think the Devil doesn’t exist and, consequently, man has created him,
he has created him in his own image and likeness”.
Notes
(1) Stephen Mitchell, The Book Of Job (New York: Harper Collins,
1992).
(2) John Robinson, In The End God (London: James Clarke, 1950).
(3) Paul Tournier, The Person Reborn (New York: Harper &
Row, 1975) p. 6.
(4) Elaine Pagels, The Origin Of Satan (Harmondsworth: Allen
Lane / The Penguin Press, 1996).
(5) Neil Forsyth, The Old Enemy: Satan And The Combat Myth (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1987) p. 107.
(6) See P. Day, An Adversary In Heaven: Satan In The Hebrew Bible
(Atlanta, GA: Scholar’s Press, 1988) pp 69-106.
(7) C.L. Meyers and E.M. Meyers, The Anchor Bible: Haggai, Zechariah
1-8 (New York: Doubleday, 2004 ed.) p. 184.
(8) A.L. Oppenheim, "The eyes of the Lord", Journal of
The American Oriental Society Vol. 88 (1968) pp. 173-180.
(9) In addition to Pagels op cit, see Knut Schaferdick, “Satan
in the Post Apostolic Fathers” in Geoffrey W. Bromiley, ed., Theological
Dictionary Of The New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971) Vol.
7 pp. 163-165 and George F. Moore, Judaism In The First Centuries
Of The Christian Era (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1927) Vol. 1.
(10) Elaine Pagels, op cit pp. 100,111.
(11) Gustave Hoennecke, New Testament Studies (Leipzig: Heinrichs,
1912) p. 208.
(12) Raymond Brown, The Gospel According To John (Garden City,
NY: Anchor, 1966) pp. 364-376.
(13) J. Garrison, The Darkness Of God: Theology After Hiroshima
(London: S.C.M., 1982), especially pp. 8,173,174.
(14) P. Dumitriu, To An Unknown God (New York: The Seabury Press,
2005) p. 59.
(15) Flannery O'Connor, The Violent Bear It Away (New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007).
