The Evangelical Universalist Forum

What is the role of Satan?

Evangelical Universalism
#1

Coming from a universalist perspective, what do we say the role of Satan is? If, in the end, we are all going to freely repent and be reconciled to our creator what was the need in God’s plan for a spiritual adversary such as Satan?

My own thought is that part of the reconciliation process may include overcoming temptation and evil. The adversary could be involved in such a process perhaps? The overcoming of the attempts of the adversary to draw us away from reconciliation is actually part of the reconciliation process itself?

#2

for me, satan is probably not an ontological entity. i believe him to represent what is worst in human nature on a collective level. i think also the Girardian interpretation that calls the scapegoating mechanism in society Satan. in this sense, satan will cease to exist when all is well.

if satan exists as a person, then he would simply be the first to fall prey to free will’s temptation to rebel…and as such he would be reconciled one day as well. for now, he is part of the process that helps redeem us…much to his chagrin, i am sure (if he’s a person).

#3

Personally I think that we should remember that the bible talks of a fall. To put it another way we are at the crash site, not in the first class cabin.

I incline to thinking of Satan as a person, or at least a malignant intelligence, separate from human evil. However this was not his original nature or function. My thought, and here I agree with CSL, is that he originally had some local function, but turned evil and took the human race with him. CSL illustrates this: when Ransom in Silent Planet finds a map of the solar system, the symbol for the eldil with responsibility of Earth has been excised with a chisel.

As to his nature I suspect that he is the person who takes delight in the suffering of others. Flying an airliner into a building or opening fire on a shopping mall full of children are his idea of a great day out. In the longer term I think that he may not repent, but may be the only being to be annihilated.

#4

I’m with James on this one. Satan is not a person. Unless he’s Rupert Murdoch. Or Benny Hinn. Or Simon Cowell. Or that bloke on the ‘Go Compare’ adverts. OMG, he is a person.

:wink:

#5

Corpselight,

If you are disinclined to believe in Satan as a personal being, what is your take on the demons of the gospels that Jesus casts out and silences?

Thanks,

Caleb

#6

Hi Caleb - can I butt in here? –

Although the Satan is often personified (apart form when Jesus says to Peter ‘get thee behind me Satan’) I tend to think of Satan as the opposite of personal – as everything in the cosmos that denies and degrades personality and proper relationship. As such I think it’s a mistake to think of Stan as having ‘being’ as such – Satan, like evil, is more like non-being (and people that have written about truly evil people have often commented on their shoddy banality).

Satan is the (false) accuser – other names for him mean the liar, the one who tempts to despair, the stumbling block etc.
I think the demons are also of this nature – they are non personal but spoken of as if they are personal (so that we can comprehend them in some way). When Christ casts them out he always does so in a way that affirms the personhood of the persons afflicted by them.

The role of Satan is not to be overcome by Satan

Blessings

Dick

#7

One last general observation - to my mind the big danger of seeing Satan and demons as personal forces rather than impersonal ones is that it’s always a temptation then to cast real people in the role of Satan and demons. So I believe in Satan and demons - but not too much and not as beings like human beings.

#8

Physical work can be done only when a potential difference exists. eg. A steam engine can do work only when the pressure in the boiler is greater than the pressure in the air. Basically, energy runs “downhill”, doing work on the way.

When God created the heavens and the earth, he created a vast potential difference. Heaven was filled with light. The earth was shrouded in darkness. As light moves from heaven to earth, useful work is done. The flow of God’s goodness into the evil hole that exists “beneath” heaven is inherently creative.

Evil is the absence of Good. If Good includes positive personality, Evil will include negative personality, personality vacuums, person-shaped shadows that feed on positive personality like spiritual leeches. A chaos monster and her spawn inhabit the Deep in which we live, and they’re hungry. Fortunately, He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world. We are God’s children by adoption. In Christ, God himself has become our kinsman and champion. These leech-faced non-things will get more than they bargained for when they sink their suckers into us. “Who shall deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

As God’s light flows into our dark spaces, useful work is done, and a new creation comes into being.

#9

thanks Dick, that’s helpful :smiley: i’m basically in your camp here on this topic.

i confess my feelings on the subject are not easily supported with a “plain reading” of Scripture (though to be fair, our main topic here on this forum meets that criticism sometimes, fairly or unfairly :wink: ). However, i believe many of what were called possessions were actually mental illnesses being diagnosed with the thought of the time. it makes sense, if someone believes they have a demon, and everyone around believes it, and science hasn’t yet evolved to call it “Multiple Personality Disorder” as an example, then Jesus could very easily still heal the problem using the language of the day (and (if Trinitarian theology is true, as i believe) if Jesus put aside His majesty and power when He became human, then He may have put aside some future knowledge as well…i believe He did this and operated wholly under the direction of His Father through the power of the Holy Spirit, as an example of how we should also behave, then Jesus would not have actually known the real psychological causes of various mental illnesses…He wouldn’t have needed to).

the reason i am so conservative in my beliefs here is that i have seen AWFUL fruit born by the spiritual warfare doctrines. rotten, stinking, poisonous fruit. and if i am to know the worth of a doctrine or a teacher by their fruit, then i can know that the likes of Bob Larson, Jack Chick and others who emphasise the power of an army of demons to the point of sensationalism are horrid blasphemers…and that to me puts my mind into doubt about the existence of the enemies they claim to do battle with (but really are working for, if they exist). i swiftly would like to distinguish what i’m talking about here from the more common belief in demons and satan that does not work out as fear-mongering for the sake of lining a wallet. i know many who believe in literal demons and the occult and are not guilty of spreading poison…but i have seen the dark side of these doctrines as i’m sure many others have, and feel that it can be quite destructive.

to go back to what the Prof is saying above…the bits of us and the bits of society that destroy personhood…that is satan…those are demons. not persons in their own right, but forces (possibly born of us) that deprive us of what makes us human.

if this is all wrong and there is really a Prince of Darkness sat in hell on a throne of bones with millions of toady demons…well then my Universalist view of God’s great mercy and redemptive power includes them in the final reconciliation. the ultimate victory of God over evil by saving Satan himself. i can think of no greater victory, and i would be so happy to see it!

#10

Hi James –

I know I’ve said this on a thread once before but I’ll give a reprise here. I once read a very interesting book by a Greek Orthodox doctor looking at the spiritual healing teachings of the ancient Fathers of the Greek Church. I no longer have the book but I remember that they all understood the Pauline doctrine of the threefold nature of human beings – body, soul/psyche, and spirit as being central to understanding disease, and they took great care in diagnosing where the disease was actually coming from (they admitted that a disease could be purely physical, purely psychic,o r purely spiritual, but it might be some combination too). They identified the psychic level of our being as the seat of our emotions and this is where the issue of demonic possession was pertinent to them. So possession was identified with some sort of emotional disturbance and their response to a possessed person was to treat them with great kindness and gentleness and in no way see the possession as the person’s fault. And the rite of exorcism when used was low key and gentle - anointing with oils etc. (How very different from much of the Western tradition where possessed people have always been subjected to fearsome rites, physical abuse, and also blamed as willing partners in possession.) Their idea of a spiritual illness was an absence of virtue in a person and this sort of illness could only be cured by a training in the virtues of charity, temperance etc.

All the best old china

Dick

#11

P.S. I see that I being mildly dyslexic have just gone and called Satan, ‘Stan’ above. :laughing: Now that’s getting personal. Allan I like your idea of non-being as negative personality. And I’d agree that evil sucks people in and is a parasite off of being.

I think need to bear in mind that -

Negative personality is nothing like real substantive personhood. Them devil and the demons are often portrayed as having energy, vitality, and dramatic panache or even a wicked sense of humour. But all of these are misconceptions and literary conceits. Evil only has banality about it even if it dressed itself up in kitsch glamour.

Also of course evil is stupid - it is ultimately self defeating no matter how terrible its penultimate works may be

Blessings

Dick

#12

I grew up in mainline protestant denominations and spiritual warfare was not talked about. Then I remember hearing Bob Larson on the radio in high school and being disturbed at the sensationalism of it all. Then I started to take spiritual warfare more seriously as I started listening to John Eldredge and reading Wild at Heart. It was the first time I ever heard it presented in a compelling and non-hokey way.

That was before my days of Universalism, but still, logically, the idea of a powerful angelic being rebelling makes sense. If humans beings can rebel, why not angelic beings? To those of you who do not believe in demons or Satan as distinct personal beings, do you also not believe in angels as distinct personal beings?

Hermeneutically, I think the biggest evidence is how demons are portrayed in the Gospels.

  1. Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness seems pretty clearly to present a personified devil.

  2. Matthew 8/Mark 4/Luke 8, Jesus heals the two-demon possessed men and sends the demons into pigs. The demons ask Jesus to send them into the pigs.

  3. In Luke 4, the Jesus casts out a demon from a man in the synagogue, and the Demon speaks to Jesus here as well:

   and a few verses later:

One other point of evidence for me is first hand accounts I have heard from people who have had hauntings or who have had demonic encounters who had seriously dabbled in the occult.

Ultimately, Lewis is helpful here to me as he says we need to avoid the extremes of ignoring spiritual warfare and Satan or of focusing on it excessively.

#13

Caleb,

I liked Eldridge’s book about walking with God or hearing from God – don’t remember the title exactly. Maybe you’ve read this, or maybe Wild at Heart included the same thing, but I’d be interested in your take on Eldredge’s view of what spiritual warfare looks like. He had this long routine he said he goes through every day, taking authority over demons, invoking protection over his friends and loved ones, self, etc. I do think there is a personal devil and personal demons (whatever they are), but this thing about spending so much time every day “taking authority” over them seems kind of legalistic. It just doesn’t ring true for me. What do you think?

Blessings, Cindy

#14

No, I’m not into “taking authority” over demons or anything like that. For me its more like this: lately I’ve been having some rough days–discouragement about work, finances, some anxiety, so today I’m in church, just not feeling like talking to folks, or annoyed at my pastor for some of his Calvinist and infernalist views.

Anyways, I’m just having all this negativity floating around in my head recently, and I think to myself today in church: “I am a target.” How much of what I’m going through is attacks by the Enemy, perhaps because of my newfound beliefs in Universal Reconciliation, and God is calling me to take a prophetic role in my church? That’s the last thing the Enemy wants. And the idea kind of galvanizes me and strengthens me and motivates me to be more intentional articulating my beliefs to those around me. It encourages me and reminds me that God has a plan for me and that there is Opposition to that plan. I think the Evil One absolutely delights in the fact that the church has had a majority infernalist stance for most of its history.

#15

Thanks, Caleb

I think you’re right, probably. Of course, if it “works” for a person to talk to the evil forces and demand they leave off their attack, that’s reason enough to do it. And I wouldn’t even say the person was foolish to do it or try it. Once in a while I’ve done that myself, albeit briefly. Lately though, I’ve been contemplating that we’re told to to take our own thoughts into captivity to the obedience of Christ. That is to say, whatever it takes we need to follow Jesus’ advice not to worry and fret about things, to forgive those who hurt us, not to be afraid but instead trust in Father as we ask for His protection and help. I wonder what it means exactly, “resist the devil and he will flee from you.” Maybe something along those same lines – taking thoughts into captivity. What ever way a person needs to think about this is probably just fine. The idea of reciting Eldridge’s long, long “prayer,” taking authority over demons and any possible way they might attempt to slip past our protections to hurt us and our loved ones just feels like bondage to me, though. Maybe to someone else it would be reassuring. Anyway, It troubled me so I’m glad to hear your thoughts on it. :slight_smile:

Oh, and one more thing. I think it’s important to take seriously the first part of that scripture I mentioned: “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you; resist the devil and he will flee from you.” It’s so hard to resist by taking thoughts into captivity to the obedience of Christ if we aren’t genuinely in communion with Him and submitted to Him. THEN it’s a lot easier to let those tormenting thoughts (from inside or from without) break up on the shore of His sheltering love.

Thanks!
Cindy

#16

My approach is pretty simple. Satan is a personal being who commits sin. He has no purpose, in the sense that sin is not part of any plan. It is gratuitious and surplus to God’s requirements. It is the result of poor choices by freewilled agents. In the end, satan will be reconcilled.

#17

The fall of the rebel angels – now that’s a story that is not told in any clear detail in our Bible so it’s hard to hold forth about; but I’ll grant there are plenty of hints (the story of the Nephalim Watchers in Genesis is associated with it in Jewish tradition). ‘Let all the angles of God worship him’ –when the story of the rebellion is fleshed out in extra Biblical tradition it concerns the creation of Adam and God commanding that the angels should bow down to Adam – but Satan refuses. And in the Christian re-telling of this story it is the Christ (the divine humanity) that Satan refuses to bow down to.

Perhaps it’s all meant to be a bit unclear - the rebellion happens in eternity rather than time so we can only understand it by imperfect analogy. Caleb, I think that Jack Lewis made a good about the dangers of belief in Satan – believing in Satan too much or not believing in Satan enough. I stick to my strategy for not believing in Satan too much . Satan and the demons are real entities but I try to remember they are not personal in the sense that we commonly use the word. Jesus calls demons by their names – this I see as part of the redemptive process. He’s making them obedient by drawing them back in to personhood and thus divesting them of their powers to depersonalise. That’s my nuance on this topic - but I think there is a latitude of beliefs here within Christian tradition.

#18

to make things a little muddy, and probably more confusing as to why i struggle to believe in a baroque prince of hell, or even demonic entities full stop…i did an exorcism myself once. it was a fairly traumatic thing to have to do…not fun or sensational. the results were reasonably amazing. however, looking back, i don’t see anything about the experience that couldn’t be explained psychologically, without getting into too much personal detail. the excorsee(? :laughing: ) talks about it as a nervous breakdown now.

i was spoken to by “something” that spoke through them, but there isn’t any reason to think it wasn’t a rogue personality that responded to healing in the name of God the way many others do, despite getting this or that detail wrong (God knows His business).

Angels…well, as my vicar Dave Tomlinson said yesterday…it’s dangerous to believe too strongly in some things, but equally dangerous to disbelieve. i have less trouble with angels…but i feel they can be us just as easily as supernatural entities. some of the angelic sightings in the OT may even have been God Himself, veiled in some way so as not to kill everyone with His presence. the angels in the NT that rejoice at Christ’s birth…they appear to exist.

i love what Sobornost says about the naming of the demons being a way of re-personalising them. that echoes with another sermon at my church about Legion and the Pigs…he said the main point of that story is not to prove that demons exist as ontological entities…but that Jesus took an outcast who was so alone, so robbed of dignity that he didn’t even remember his own name. the first question Jesus is recorded as asking is “what is your name”…and He cloaked him and sat with him. as to the pigs? well maybe that’s proof of entities or non-entities, but it really seems like an odd set of events to me…

#19

Good, this is the biggest weapon of Arminianists against Universalists!

But for continuing the human race, God needed someone (Lucifer as person in the Bible)
to fulfill his Plan, as he mentioned in the Bible that he is the creator of both light and darkness, from the beginning he took
all the responsibility of our pains, sorrows, difficulties and …

The question is about the GOD’S SOVEREIGNTY VERSUS MAN’S FREE WILL and GOD’S PLAN
Bible mentions he had a Plan, so Satan is the part of the Plan!

There is absolutely nothing that exists or can exist outside of God’s sovereignty, which includes Satan.

Many don’t believe in him and this does not mean they will go to hell, he doesn’t expect them to believe him now,
one day they will believe him too, because he desires to do that!

Why Satan will be chained for thousand years? because God knows it is difficult for many to overcome Satan,
this is an unjust for us and even for God (but he is justice) that he created an enemy for us more powerful than us,
then for example almost 90% of the world consists of wicked people and only 10% will go to heaven!

That means few will be chosen and will REIGN with Christ to tell the Truth to those who will survive the tribulation! (by the will of God)
I noticed some of the Bible interpreters (like Ernest L. Martin) found a word (LOTTERY) in Gospel of John I think (I don’t remember),
I should review again, may be it was in another Gospel, I mentioned John because his Gospel is the Oldest.
for word LOTTERY I can say God chose all of us before the foundation of the world by Lottery (RANDOMIZE).
for example John was chosen to be one of the Jesus’ Disciples!

AMAZING!

All will be made Alive in Christ but EACH one in his own order, and the rest of the DEAD will be made alive in Christ in 2nd resurrection,
again BY THE WILL OF GOD!

Really, what is the purpose of destroying many and let few enter the Kingdom? :angry:

God is the God of living, not Misery!

He gave Christians the Glorious sign of his Plan (the Bible) which many didn’t understand it, (again by his will, he can harden or
open our heart by his will, according to the Plan!)

why All these years these manuscripts didn’t vanish? because of God’s will!
to fulfill his Plan: to preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom in the world, then expecting the World END!

Our salvation occurs because of the sovereign will of God and not because of the fallen will of man.

John 1:13
Who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

Salvation is not a matter of chance; first chance or second chance. Our salvation is the most glorious gift to us from God. Our salvation is one hundred percent the work of God’s grace from start to finish, and man is in no position whatsoever to boast about any aspect of his salvation. Each person is entirely dependent upon God for his salvation and all the glory goes to God. :wink:

#20

Hi Caleb

Sorry for my fatuous reply earlier. I really sympathise with your current situation. I’ve been going through a major spiritual slough for some time. I don’t want to bore you with my own problems, but apart from the sort of stresses you cite, one of the sharpest thorns in my flesh is my constant failure to live up to my beliefs :frowning: ).

Anyway, what I wanted to share with you was just this thought: Regardless of whether ‘the Enemy’ who assails us is really a personal devil or simply (as I believe) the negative psychological forces in our personality (guilt, anger, jealousy, fear etc), along with negative life events and the negativity in other people and things (I think this is what theologians call ‘structural sin’) it is an indubitable fact that we are assailed.

So yes, you are a ‘target’ as you put it. Yes, there is ongoing opposition to God’s plans - from demonic forces or human frailty and selfishness, or both. But with God’s help we can, in our better times, resist that Enemy, even overcome it.

Whatever, I wish you all the best, and hope things improve for you soon.

Shalom

Johnny