Will the Real Satan Please Stand Up?
Recognizing, Realizing, and Resisting Evil, Part 1
Talk about the Devil
“The Devil made me do it.”
“You're a little devil aren't you?”
“The devil you know…”
In popular culture, the Devil is a many-faceted symbol. Perhaps more often than not, the Devil symbolizes forbidden fun. We dress kids up in devil costumes on Halloween because it's fun. We allude to the devil when speaking of mischievous behavior because it’s fun. The devil is intimately tied to sex because it’s fun. Beyond such representation, we don’t really take this Devil very seriously.
That is unless you are a conservative Evangelical or fundamentalist.
For them, the Devil is a very real entity that seeks to turn people away from Jesus Christ and ensnare them in the pits of hell for all eternity. Yes, the Devil is still behind all those forbidden fun things we do. But unlike popular culture and the way it trivializes the Devil, for them, the Devil (“Satan”) is not to be trifled with.
So, it’s safe to say conservative Evangelicals take Satan very seriously. But, what about progressive Christians? What do we think of Satan?
Before we can even begin to talk about that, we first have to look at the sacred texts from which Satan comes as progressive Christians do: through a historical-critical lens.
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Satan in the Hebrew Bible
The word “Satan” originates from the Hebrew “hah sah-tahn” (spelled funny to help with pronunciation). You might be surprised to find out that “Ha Satan” simply means “the accuser”.
To understand the idea of the accuser, imagine a courtroom setting. You have the prosecutor, the defense, and the judge. Satan functions within the context of the legal system as the prosecuting attorney. The prosecuting attorney fulfills an important role within the context of the justice system, and thereby serves justice, which is symbolized by the judge.
Satan’s role in the text is not to be the “enemy of God”, the one who's trying to undermine God. On the contrary, Satan is the one responsible for testing what we might think of today as “quality control”. Satan tests people to see if their hearts are truly aligned with God. Thus, Satan serves God by doing what Satan does. The service of Satan is an expression of the Divine will.
Within the context of this theology, Satan brings trials and tribulations to test faith. Remember, according to this theology, both good and evil come from God. The work of Satan is just a part of that.
The Angel of the Lord
Let's put Satan aside for a moment and look at another interesting figure in the Hebrew Bible: the Angel of the Lord.
This entity was one of the ways God worked in this world. Early on, Jews understood this entity to be the presence of God in an earthly situation. So, for all intents and purposes, the Angel of the Lord was God.
Now, keep in mind that earlier Jewish theology believed that everything, both good and bad, came from God. On the surface, it’s easy enough to accept. But then there is the problem of evil. How could it be that their God was really the source of all the evils they experienced? It didn’t make sense. They somehow needed to understand the source of evil differently.
Which brings us back to the Angel of the Lord.
As theologians struggled with this idea that God was intentionally and personally responsible for all the evil that befell the people, they realized they needed to separate the evil that happened to them from the God who intended for them to flourish. The solution: distance the Angel of the Lord’s identity from God.
Over time, the Angel of the Lord became a separate, independent entity. The Angel of the Lord became responsible for enacting the darker side of God's will in the world but was no longer equated with God’s very self.
Let’s look at a couple of texts that illustrate the shift.
First, Genesis 16:7–8a, then going to verse 13.
The angel of the Lord found [Hagar] by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?”... So she named the Lord who spoke to her, “You are El-roi,” for she said, “Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?”
Notice how the author clearly identifies the Angel of the Lord with the very presence of God. The Angel of the Lord is the manifestation of God on Earth.
In later texts, however, we read passages like 2 Samuel 24:15–16a, where God intends to punish Israel through famine for David’s disobedience.
So the Lord sent a pestilence on Israel from that morning until the appointed time, and seventy thousand of the people died, from Dan to Beer-sheba. But when the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord relented concerning the evil and said to the angel who was bringing destruction among the people, “It is enough; now stay your hand.”
Here, the Angel of the Lord is a separate entity subordinate to God. This separation allows evil to happen according to the divine will, but God's hands remain technically clean.
I believe this separation of evil from the personality of God is incredibly important. The struggle was real for these theologians to figure out how God was related to the evil they experienced. And they didn’t work in a vacuum. There was another major religion on the horizon that surely influenced them as they developed their new theological perspective that turned a version of the Angel of the Lord into the source of evil, lies, and destruction
That religion was Zoroastrianism, the dominant religion of the Persian Empire.
Crash course in the Zoroastrian religion
According to Zoroastrianism, there were two main deities: an uncreated supreme being of goodness and light, and a being of darkness and evil who sought to oppose the wisdom of the supreme good being. History enacted the ongoing conflict between these two divine forces as the God of light sought to liberate and the god of darkness sought to corrupt and destroy.
Within this theological context, all human beings have a choice. They can choose the way of truth and goodness, or they can choose the way of lies and destruction. Not choosing isn't an option. Everybody chooses, whether they realize it or not. The choice one makes is reflected in one’s life.
Most noteworthy here is the strong dualism of good versus evil.
Goodness, truth, and beauty were rooted in and flowed from the ultimate uncreated Divine Source of all things. The evils of lies and destruction (as part of the created order) were lesser in power. Being lesser in power did not mean being impotent. Indeed, the power of evil to draw people away from the true path was real and not without consequence.
What was the relationship between this Zoroastrian dualism and the Jewish theology that separated the Angel of the Lord from God? I believe this dualism influenced Jewish thought and encouraged the centering of evil upon a separate power.
If you’ve been paying close attention up to this point, you're probably putting two and two together by now.
Into early Christian theology
By the time of Jesus, Zoroastrian dualism had strongly influenced Jewish theology, and we can see this dualistic influence clearly in the Gospels.
(Quick note: if you didn't know this already, Zoroastrian priests were called “Magi”.)
No longer was the God of Israel the source of evil. The source of evil was completely separate from God. And that source had a name: Satan.
This was a huge shift from the theology of “Ha Satan" as the accusing, prosecuting attorney who served the judge and was responsible for quality control. Now, Satan was a malevolent entity hell-bent on usurping God's Kingdom.
From the point of view of the earliest Christians, God was the source of all life and love, and Satan was the source of all destruction and evil. This black-and-white dualism became baked into their sacred texts as they told the story of Jesus for their communities.
In my opinion, the extent to which they adhered to this black-and-white theological worldview is up in the air. The Gospels were written specifically to teach. And sometimes, it's a lot easier to understand things in black-and-white than it is with shades of gray. It could be that this is why they emphasized the contrast so much. So we have to be careful when ascribing such strong dualism to the earliest Christian communities. They may have been strongly dualistic, but I suspect they were actually less so.
A progressive perspective
As I’ve noted, Evangelicals tend to take Satan very seriously. He exists and is a constant threat to everyone’s eternal soul.
Progressive Christians, on the other hand, tend not to think of Satan as a literal entity that creates evil in this world. Rather, we tend to think of Satan as the symbolic personification of radical evil. So, while we do not take Satan literally, we do take what Satan symbolizes extremely seriously. Radical evil clearly exists in our world, even if there is no independent entity directing it.
Unlike those earliest Jewish theologians, we do not see God as directing evil in any way. God does not give us evil events to punish us. God does not bring evil into this world to teach us lessons. God is not the source of evil, even though evil is somehow part of the created order.
Theologically, however, we share in the same project as those earliest Jewish theologians who wrote the biblical texts. Part of that project is to draw upon our culture’s understanding of reality to develop our own theologies that help us make sense of evil in the world. By coming up with our own answers, we are participating in that tradition, and by participating in that tradition those ancient texts become Scripture for us.
So, next week, I'm going to wrestle with the question, “What is evil?” I hope you will join me.
Peace, Bo
www.evolvingchristianfaith.net
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Credits
Thanks to Nightcafe for the cover art
Very, very interesting and informative!!