What I’m really asking is: is Satan (or the Devil) a spirit being i.e a fallen angel and therefore are there evil spirits?
I’ve always found this a fascinating subject and having just been reading a thread on Calvinism being compatible with universalism where Johnny happened to mention he didn’t believe in Satan, I was curious to know why Johnny and any others here don’t believe in Satan and/or demons.
My position is a reluctant one: I must conclude that there are beings that mess with humans (even though this seems quite crazy to me). I only come to this conclusion because of certain Bible verses that clearly describe this. I have no experience of demons or Satan or any weird stuff like that. I’m not one to blame ‘the enemy’ on my short comings or bad stuff that happens, and so I don’t give these beings much thought at all, so really they may as well not exist for all I care. Johnny’s comment intrigued me, and having just read Rob Bell’s book ‘Love Wins’ and an interesting comment he makes about these spirit beings, I think it would be good to determine what or who Satan or the devil is and what demons are? I can foresee a theological minefield when considering the idea of a ‘fallen angel’ but then is that really any different to a fallen human??
Here’s my evidence to prove demons exist (and this is the same point Rob Bell mentions in his book):
When Jesus encounters a man who is ‘demon posessed’ in Mark 5, he has a conversation with this ‘mad’ man. I would argue that if the man has some sort of psychosis or madness or other medical problem going on, how likely is it, that he would know who Jesus is: ‘the Son of God’? This is privelleged knowledge that is only revealed by the Spirit (unless you are a spirit with a good vantage point). Why would ‘these spirits’ ask to be moved elsewhere? If the man’s brain is not working properly, wouldn’t it have made sense for Jesus to heal the man’s brain and hence the madness would disappear- it would not need to be moved on to other creatures? This account makes no sense if I try to take make the ‘unclean spirits’ just an illness or disease. Why would an illness worry about being ‘tormented before the appointed time?’ I would much rather this was just a case of epilepsy or something like that, but then the way Jesus deals with this illness is really weird, if it’s just an illness. Blind eyes or shrivelled limbs don’t get the same treatment, only ‘unclean spirits’ have intelligent conversations and mention knowledge only privvy to God (and the spirit realm?).
Then there is that verse that says ‘our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against…the wicked spirit forces in heavenly places.’ Eph 6:12.
How do we explain these two examples of wicked spirit beings?
Catherine, you’ve leapt over all the easier-to-dismiss/reinterpret verses right to the tricky ones!
those verses are, in short, why i am agnostic on the existence of demons and the devil, rather than just denying fully, though i err on the side of skepticism.
i guess for the 40 days of fasting…well i am reluctant to state categorically that Jesus suffered strange hallucinations that helped Him “come into His own” and start His ministry…well, there might be something to that. 40 days of fasting would be a great way to induce hallucinations! the temptations He had did not require an outside entity…surely those temptations would’ve been forefront in any mind born of woman…with the power of God nascent inside them. you could feed yourself…you could do amazing feats of superhuman power…you could rule the world. but Jesus rebuked these temptations (if not an external temptor).
the trickier one for me is the devil cast into the pigs. that’s VERY hard to ignore or reinterpret…anyone else got any thoughts?
my one point would be that despite this group of entities knowing something they shouldn’t have known, it’s not necessary for them to be “fallen angels”. it could be that there are spiritual beings that lurk on this earth. it’d explain some paranormal events, for example (though i’ve yet to hear of one that has any ring of truth to it and isn’t so contrived as to obviously be a story). it could be that such beings are corrupted by our sin the same way the earth is (well according to some views of Genesis anyway. this gets complicated! and i’ve not figured it all out either!) it could be that they were ghosts (spirits of dead people unable to rest for whatever reason), or it could be that there is some truth to the idea of a Jungian collective consciousness, and that such a possession is a node of pure negativity coupled with strange insight (maybe it was necessary for that node to know of Christ’s identity for Him to have power over it?) and maybe such a node could be forced to influence a group of pigs (though this seems so odd for Christ to do something nasty to animals like this). one question begged by the whole situation is if the demons were so scared to be homeless (cast out of the man), why did they kill the pigs? surely a pig as a home is better than whatever alternative they faced when evicted from the human? where did they go after they killed the pigs?
it’s an odd situation, and i wonder if there’s a point being missed in the way we read it nowadays, but also missed by those that would’ve taken it literally in the past.
interesting to discuss!
my skepticism about the devil is that i don’t think we need any excuse to reach our potential for evil. we don’t need anyone whispering in our ear. James says we are tempted by our own inner desires. Jesus said only what comes from within corrupts us…not any external source (though He is talking specifically of food here).
couple that with the fact that i am convinced that all the spiritual warfare/exorcism/occult paranoia i was raised to not question (though i DID question it!!!) ended up being a load of nonsense. not a single instance could i take for objective proof, and never was there a time when it couldn’t be explained in a more natural way.
some of these entities were meant to know things about people they shouldn’t have known…well that’s a trick practiced by psychics called cold reading. it IS a trick…there is nothing to it. i find it easy to believe someone with an unknown talent in it could subconsciously do it during an “episode”
Good questions, Catherine. And some really good answers James .
I’m with you, James, on most of what you say. Personally, as I have said before on another thread, I don’t have a problem with seeing the devil, even in the wilderness temptation passages, as an allegorical figure, or as a personification. If I may just quote myself, for clarity (poor form I know, sorry ):
As for Ephesians 6:12, “the powers of this dark world and … the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms”, well, I guess I read this as a vivid and powerful metaphor for something which Paul and his contemporaries didn’t - couldn’t - understand as we do today, ie the power of the unconscious or subconscious mind, psychopathology and all that Freudian Jungian stuff.
Perhaps an analogy might help me explain where I’m coming from. I do not believe Genesis is *literally *true. Six days of creation, Adam and Eve, God walking in the Garden of Eden, a talking serpent. I mean, a talking serpent! I ask you And since when did God have feet to go walking about on anyway? No, don’t believe any of that.
But …
I *do *believe Genesis *is all true *! Every word of it!
Now what I mean by that seemingly contradictory load of old toffee is that for me Genesis is true as mythic truth, as a story illustrating a fundamental reality about how things are and came to be, that God created the world, the universe and everything, but via mechanisms which nobody writing thousands of years ago could possibly understand, and which we only very dimly understand even today (I mean modern cosmology, quantum physics and all that). And that there is something special about humanity, that we are somehow ‘made in the image of God’ (whatever *that *means).
For me, it’s the same with Satan, demons, demon possession and the powers of darkness. For me, there is a real, literal truth about evil - the evil within us, and the evil that permeates the world - which is vividly portrayed in the stories in the NT. Whether Paul - or Jesus, for that matter - believed in literal devils doesn’t matter to me. They were men of their time, and people in that time did believe in such things.
Now maybe Satan is a ‘real’ person. Maybe demon possession really is real – then and now. Personally I doubt it very much, but of course I don’t know for sure. But for me it doesn’t matter. For the ‘truth’ remains true either way. Evil exists. It can corrupt and damage and devastate us, and others. We must be on guard against it, and only through faith in Jesus Christ will we ever be able truly to overcome it.
Blaming my screw-ups, my lies, my betrayals, the hurt I have done to people I love, on Mephistopheles and his pitchfork wielding acolytes is, for me, a cop-out. I am responsible for my sin. Me. Not the bad guy with the horns and the tail.
I don’t know if I believe in Original Sin, at least not the orthodox definition of. Okay, I am born into this vale of tears with an inherited tendency to go off the rails in all sorts of ways. But I’m still responsible for it when I do. But that’s another story …
Peace and love to you Catherine – and you too James, my metal-loving mate
You may enjoy this thread by Aaron, concerning angels (unfortunately the conversation is upset frequently). I started reading it a few months ago and haven’t quite finished it, but I found it fascinating. I actually hold to quite a traditional Enochian/Miltonian angelic fall. Not because I’ve thought about it that deeply, but because it simply makes sense to me, concerning the existence of evil, free will and evolution. I’m looking forward to any ensuing conversation about it.
Regarding the temptations of Christ, it is quite possible that the whole account is just a parable (one mountain can’t show you all the kingdoms of the world) and that he was just wrestling with his own (very human) nature. In my mind, they show us how Yeshua responded to the many socio-political temptations he faced (whether by personal Satan or not). Yeshua rejected the religio-political kingship he would have received by feeding the poor, ruling kingdoms or claiming his crown. Yeshua was a humble servant and reigns as a humble servant forevermore.
Edit: Regarding the suggestion that Yeshua rejected “claiming his crown”, this is referring to the suggestion of Hyldahl that, according to the Mishnah’s prescriptions, the death penalty for blasphemy was by being thrown from a tower in the temple wall (likely to be the pterygion, translated “pinnacle”) into the Kidron valley (followed by stoning, if necessary). Had Yeshua initiated his own punishment for his claims, and had he been spared from the consequences, his divine kingship would have been secured without suffering servitude. This motif is recurrent in that Yeshua is frequently invited to avoid suffering for his claims.]
i have to admit i watched a film called Devil by M Night Shyamalan, which is actually really good, and had to admit it’d be kinda “fun” (in a dark, twisted way) if there WAS a devil who played games for souls on this earth. that film was more about forgiveness anyway. the devil was actually a tool that brought forgiveness and redemption to a couple of people. i should put this in the movie thread, really!
also, i WISH snakes could talk. my managerie is not the most verbose apart from the odd grumpy huff, or if my hog island boa is in a mood a full on bellows impression
but i digress!
the Bible is clear that evil exists, but it’s less clear on the source. the two verses i mentioned above from James and one of Jesus’ quotes leads me to believe that evil is very human, and that it lurks in us all. the rest was speculation.
personification of human evil makes alot of sense, and we can easily give this personification a name…but we have to be careful we do not completely divorce that personification from its human source.
i’ve come to think of some of what Paul mentioned in Ephesians as being human government as well. certainly the great beast with 10 heads in Revelation is a metaphor for a human alliance of some kind…we are told the heads symbolise kings, and that means it is controlled by men.
Thanks for the replies so far. You’ve certainly given me some things to think about. I’m going to check out the thread that We Are All Brothers recommends.
I’ve been thinking about the account of Job. Unlike the ‘serpent’ in Eden, the story tells of ‘sons of God’ and an accuser, Satan, talking to God. Surely the accuser in this account is a person other than Job, but is it a human or a spirit person? If it is a human, then how can a human cause all the things to happen to Job? This account seems to be saying that God allows accusers or satans, to meddle with humans in all areas of their lives even to the point of death.
Anyway, I’ll contine to check these things out and come back to you.
I don’t know, Catherine, but I suspect it is possible that Job might be a parable. Like I said, I’m not sure one way or the other, but it’s something to consider.
That said, I do believe there are demons, or at least, things that respond in a matter that cause us to perceive the response of an intelligent being. We see this in Jesus’ ministry, particularly in the story of the pigs, as well as other instances where the demons spoke from the demonized person and said things the demonized person couldn’t have know. Jesus speaks of them in a highly personal way, and while it’s possible to see that as allegory intended to speak to ‘children’ in a way they/we can understand, it’s also possible that He was being literal about literal beings.
We believe in a God who spoke the universe into existence (by whatever means you like to believe). We believe in a God who sent His Son to rescue us by killing/destroying our enslavement to the kingdom of the flesh and resurrecting us into another kingdom of spirit; a God who inhabits us by His Spirit and knits us into one with one another; a God who will make us immortal (or has already, in a sense). I’m assuming that we all believe these things – maybe some here don’t. But this is the God, imo, presented in scripture, whether you make the whole book allegorical or whether you take it to ridiculous levels of literalness. Why would we then find it difficult to believe that He has created things (spirits) that we can’t see or sense in the natural world? Or that those spirits have (like us) the freedom to rebel if they choose? To be deceived? To be antagonistic to His plans and toward us?
Maybe He didn’t, but given the NT accounts of demonization, as well as modern accounts (though not in the western world, as a rule) I don’t think it’s all that much of a stretch to believe that these things happen(ed) in a literal sense. Jesus explained in one case that the demon is cast out of a man, wanders in dry places seeking rest, and finding none, returns and, finding the ‘house’ empty, swept, and decorated, brings along even more demons/spirits wickeder than itself, and the last state of the man is worse than the first.
So while it may make sense to see the adversary as an anthropomorphic being, at least in most cases, it doesn’t work as well for me to see demons as symbolic of mental illness or personal faults and temptations and weaknesses. Jesus rebuked them and cast them out. In fact, He often spoke in very similar ways to illnesses. “He rebuked the fever and it left her.” It’s possible that ‘they’ are something ‘other,’ as maybe bits of ‘bad code’ that act like intelligent agents but really aren’t. Still, if Jesus dealt with them as though they were intelligent agents, perhaps that is just the simplest and most effective way TO deal with ‘them’ whether or not they are in fact supernatural entities of spirit.
If demons ARE real, I don’t see a real likelihood that they are fallen angels. Maybe there is a class of angels so lowly that they would be the ‘demons’ Jesus cast out. Or maybe demons are something else – something not well-fleshed-out in scripture. In the pre-Adamic creation hypothesis, the demons would be the restless souls of the world that was destroyed before the creation told of in Genesis. There is some scriptural basis for thinking this was in the minds of the people who penned Genesis (which may have been written during the Babylonian captivity). The opening statement, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form, and void” reads in the Rotherham:
And in the Concordant Literal Version:
It’s not much to base such a BIG theory on, but it would explain a lot if it were true. I remain undecided on the matter. Believers in this posit that Lucifer had the reigns of this first go at the earth, and he destroyed his cities; the memories of which have perished forever. (I think that might be in Isaiah, but it’s in one of the major prophets.) Of course, given the scripture writers’ penchant for colorful speech and hyperbole, this could also refer to the actual king of Tyre.
I don’t know. It’s an interesting thought, and no one knows whether it’s true or just bosh. But . . .
You know what? However that falls out, we LIKE stories like that. We WANT them to be true. We WANT the heroic and epic and magnificent to be the real stuff. I do, anyway. We all have our own version of that. My husband’s fantasy is the heroism of war; of men defending what is right and good against the Hitlers and etc. who symbolize evil. He is NOT in love with real war, with its heartbreak and mangled flesh and burned children – it is the fantasy, the heroism that draws him. The epic battle is not supposed to be mundane, dang it. It’s supposed to be, well, epic! For me, Middle Earth speaks more alluringly. We all see things differently, of course. I wonder whether all these pictures of the great battle between good and evil might fall far, far short of the reality when we are able to see it?.
Isn’t it CS Lewis who said that hunger presupposes the possibility of food; thirst the presence (somewhere) of water; and sexual desire the existence of sex? We have an epic appetite for the magnificent, the grand, the incredibly beautiful and heroic. Could it be that our belief is too small and not too large?
Now of course demons are just, well, goblins – not even orcs, most of them. The magnificent thing is the heroism of the Prince of Peace, who outstraps Gandolf and Aragorn and all the rest by such a distance as to make them look like children. In order for there to be a Gandolf or an Aragorn, however, there must be a Sauron. If there is no enemy, there’s just not much of a story there. And why are we like this? Why do we want there to be a story big enough to make our jaws hit the floor? Could it be that we want this because it is a God-created part of us? Because HIS story is the epic beyond all epics?
I do not expect to come to the Day of the Lord and say in my heart, “Well, that was a kind of a let down. But I guess . . . it must just be me. It’s good – yeah, great. This is what we get, and that’s great. I must just not be seeing it right . . . .”
If it’s non-literal, it’s still got to be fulfilling and God must be GREAT. Because that’s what we long for. That’s what we were made for. That is who He made us to be.
Why are we uncomfortable about taking the accounts of Satan and demons at face value? Why is it important to spiritualize these accounts or consider them to be “non-literal” or allegorical or whatever? I don’t get it.
I’m not uncomfortable with taking it at face value. Only a lot of people who seem to be rational and thoughtful brothers and sisters do question what is meant by these things – whether they’re literal or metaphorical. So I respect them and concede that it’s possible they may be right. I don’t NEED to know. It works just fine for me to think of it either way. Jesus treated the whole issue as literal, whether that was something He did in order to relate to the culture, or because it WAS literal. So it makes sense for us to treat it the same. Obviously it worked for Him.
But I’m always wondering about things. I think it’s worth mulling over. Are they right or wrong? Or maybe a little of both? Whichever way I lean (if I lean), it isn’t going to make any difference in my life, and I won’t be in the slightest evangelical about it. People can see it however they like and it won’t bother me. It doesn’t seem to me that it matters a lot. I just like to know things, if I can. What do you think yourself, Paidion?
Cindy, thank you for your lovely post. You always word things so beautifully.
I personally, am not uncomfortable about taking Satan and demons literally. I’m just interested in the truth of the matter.
I’ve read the other thread that ‘We Are All Brothers’ linked to earlier, and it covers all the areas I had been wondering about (apart from Job I think). On the whole, I think the argument for literal demons and Satan i.e fallen angels is weaker than the argument that Satan is usually the personification of sin or a human accuser and that demons are misunderstood illnesses.
I have a few unresolved problems :
If the demons are not separate entities, then why didn’t Jesus or the apostles correct people’s assumptions? Jesus corrected the Sadducees regarding the resurrection. He told them: ‘You are in error…’ Matt 22:29. If there is no such thing as fallen angels’ offspring possessing people, then surely Jesus could have easily corrected people’s erroneous beliefs and explained that it’s just an illness He was curing?? I don’t see it as a big deal. And as Jason Pratt mentioned in the other thread, surely Paul could have set the record straight with the girl who had a spirit of divination and tell everyone that the girl was suffering an illness of her mind and to prove it, they would heal her. Why enforce people’s wrong beliefs by addressing the illness as if it were a person?
If the Apostles knew that there was no such thing as fallen angels or their offspring possessing people, then why would they quote from ‘dodgy’ books that upheld such beliefs i.e the quote from the Book of Enoch in Jude?
A possible answer for the first question, would be that Jesus used the erroneous beliefs of the time, that people suffered in the fires of hades, in His Rich Man and Lazarus parable, and so we see that Jesus didn’t always correct false beliefs, but actually used them (don’t understand why He’d use false beliefs??).
for me, Paidion, i wonder why people are content to take it literally? i have seen the fruit of certain viewpoints about demons existing literally, and it has been BAD.
i tend to judge doctrines on the fruit produced, and i saw rampant fear, wickedness, arrogance, paranoia, judgementalism, false deliverances…the list goes on.
and at the end of a day…i in my own heart know that i don’t need an external temptor to convince me to do wrong. i can jolly well do it myself.
so i don’t “need” a devil to exist…to borrow what Cindy said so well (i too am a Middle Earth fanatic!), the Sauron i face is inside me, my own destructive, hateful nature. the image of God in me is darkened.
for me it’s just that i don’t “need” a demonic force to literally exist to complete my view of the world. in fact, given what i’ve personally seen of the abuse of this doctrine, i’m reluctant to do a “plain reading” of this, especially when the authors of the Bible were men of their time, and thus they took this sort of thing for granted. just as i don’t believe in sorcery/witchcraft/astrology, i also don’t believe in their views on mental illness and the like.
i guess for me, despite how exciting we want life to be (though we never realise that to be exciting, lots of bad things have to happen to us or our nearest and dearest. in fact, a well known curse from the Counterweight Continent in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is “may you live in interesting times” ), life is usually not bothered by entertaining us, and just ticks along. i find this to be true of alot of exciting theories as well, such as the paranormal, the existence of the Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis, etc. life just isn’t that exciting! especially Atlantis. i reckon they’ll find that that was just Pangea. dull dull dull!
but who knows…you’re right! we might hunger for epic events in a way that implies they must exist. personnally i think the opening ceremony of heaven might satisfy our need for drama though
I think Jesus and the disciplies were of their time. let me qualify that…i don’t mean that Jesus didn’t know any better, but i mean He either took off His omniscience when He became human (Hebrews says He does alot of stuff like that, so i don’t see a huge stretch to include this), and BECAME as knowledgeable about science and some unimportant aspects of cosmology as anyone else of that time (albeit not enough to impede His message)…OR that He deliberately didn’t correct things then because it wasn’t yet time (God seems to like timing things and not doing everything all at once…He trains us slowly as a patient Father). there are other things He might’ve corrected more dramatically (by our standards) but He left alone…for example slavery existed in that culture, but He (and the apostles after) did nothing to correct this (at least not directly!!!) and while Jesus did some subversive work to liberate women and show that foreigners were also God’s children, He didn’t ever come out and directly SAY it. He just laid the groundwork, which the Holy Spirit caused us to eventually build upon.
edit: i can see how a non-Trinitarian could potentially have an easier time with this! if Jesus was human and not GOD, then the fact His knowledge appears to agree with His times and not have a great deal of hints of what’s to come scientifically is less of a problem than if He’s meant to know everything and censor His speech!
Is it necessary to think of Jesus as omniscient during His time on earth? I don’t think I ever have. He emptied Himself to come here. He lived by the revelation of His Father through the Holy Spirit, just as we’re to do. He is our example to follow, and we can’t follow an example of omniscience. He didn’t know the day or the hour His prophecies would come to pass. I don’t think He knew anything supernaturally except from those things He received from the Father. It would have spoiled it if He didn’t have the same limitations (aside from being without sin) as we do. He came to be the second Adam, to lead all of us limited human beings into the Kingdom of God – here on this earth in our mortal, fallible bodies. So . . . no, I don’t know that there’s any reason to think that He had all knowledge during the years He walked here as a man.
Some really good, thoughtful reflections here, particularly from James and Cindy.
I agree with Cindy that Jesus “emptied Himself to come here” (nice way of putting it, Cindy ). It seems absurd to me to think of Jesus, in His human form as the Son, having the omniscience of His Father. Indeed, were that to have been the case, surely it renders such incidents as the woman with the bleeding touching his garment and Him asking “Who touched me?”, or the Eloi, when He shouted out on the cross at his seeming abandonment by His Father, absurd also?
I’d also agree with Cindy that the story of Job is most likely a parable, a mythic poem which embodies important truths. But as I have said a number of times before, I view a lot of the Bible, especially the OT, in that way. Hence why I remain strongly agnostic about the existence of Satan and his band of demonic helpers - in fact I’m with James all the way here. Like you, James, I believe I am responsible for my own sinfulness, and I don’t need a guy with a pitchfork and a tail to blame my bad behaviour on.
Johnny, have you seen Galaxy Quest? Not sure whether it would have crossed over to you guys or not. It was a spoof of Star Trek and of Trekkies, so you’d have to be at least semi-familiar with that phenomenon to enjoy it. I thought it was hilarious. But the ‘aliens’ in the movie had watched television shows from earth and believed them to be stories of real life. The protagonist, Tim Allen, says something like, “Well, what about Gilligan’s Island (a goofy 70’s US situation comedy)? Surely you knew . . .” and the aliens respond with great empathy,
“Oh, those POOR people!”
Sometimes I think we might be a little bit like that.
Several people who have posted in this thread have said much the same as you, Cindy. They “just want to know the truth.” I am impressed with that attitude. I, myself, am a seeker after truth and reality, and I rejoice to be able to do so together with other seekers. So many that we encounter today don’t seem interested in the truth, but just want to defend what they already believe.
A wise old Mennonite elder once said:
It seems to me that that is a fairly useful criterion. Thus in reading in the memoirs of Christ (now called “gospels”) about Jesus frequently healing diseases by casting out demons, leads me to think that Satan (“adversary”) and the demons are conscious entities. I’m also fool enough to believe the story of Adam and Eve, and the garden of Eden is basically “literal”, possibly even “the tree of life” and “the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” But I’m not evangelical about it!
Having said that I believe Satan and the demons are conscious entities, I appreciate Corpselight’s concerns:
As I see it, the demons love attention! They glory in a exorcism party! And so do some of the people who claim to be possessed by them. I think it wise to ignore Satan and the demons as much as possible. That’s what I do, and as far as I know, I am seldom bothered by them.
If Satan is a personality, I have no issue with that. But I think the concept of Satan… which means adversary… is more than that, and I believe the scriptures bear that out.
Satan is also a spirit… an attitude, if you will… of rebellion against God and His will. And every human, at one time or another, is confronted with that spirit of rebellion, which of course we are advised to resist. Jesus called Peter out as Satan when Peter tried to dissuade Jesus from the cross. Was He referring to the person of Satan? Or was He referring to the spirit… or attitude… of Peter standing against the will of God? I say the latter. Or when the disciples wanted Jesus
to destroy a village that had not received them well… was Jesus rebuking the person of Satan? Or was He rebuking the disciples for their spirit/attitude? Again, I say the latter.
When Jesus was tempted in the desert, if the story as related involved a personality named Satan, again, I’m okay with that. But when I think of the human Jesus, it seems logical that He would be tempted just as we are. Confronted with an attitude of rebellion against the Father’s will, He had the option of resisting or succumbing. He resisted. So, I guess I’m saying that the story works the same for me whatever the true nature of Satan.
As for demons? The scriptures sure seems to indicate individual personalities. But in any case, they are certainly **of **Satan, whether Satan be a fallen angel or merely a spirit of enmity against the Lord.
