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Superstition needs a bogyman -

It's not that any religion needs a pantheon that ranges from good to evil, as the Christian religion appears to have developed. It's just that the idea sort of seeped in over the centuries. If you look at the Old Testament, you'll see few mentions of Satan, and only in a few books. In Job, Satan is a minion of God's who makes a friendly wager over Job's soul.

The very idea of some supernatural being that is an enemy of God doesn't appear hardly at all. The original Jewish religion had no need for it, and the Jews might have stoned anyone who mentioned such an idea. You really don't see any character like Satan as we know of the idea today before you encounter stuff that was written AFTER the end of the captivity in Persia.

I'm sure the debate is most entertaining in an esoteric sort of way. :)

There are many interpretive styles that we use in our attempts to understand what is present in the bible. When we think about it, the same thought applies to our attempts to understand the notion of "God". One of the styles of means that we use to understand questions like this are the "use of anthropomorphisms". In its essence,we need to put ideas or concepts in human terms so that we can begin to think about the concept or topic and then be able to discuss it.

To me, Satan refers to what we call "the evil that we see in the world around us". It's easier to think about the concept having a body and or a real existence so that we can understand it and many counter-act it.

There is a social and religious bias/interpretation or understanding for what constitutes evil and sin. When we discuss the topic of Satan, we need to keep this in mind as well.

So, is there or is there not a "Real Satan"? I personally don't think so. Satan is our anthropomorphism to talking about the sin and evil that we discern to be in the world around us or for that matter "in us" (as authors or perpetrators of sin and evil--humans aren't always angelic).

I hope this has been clearly articulated.

JoeJoe

The same anthropomorphic debate can be stretched to the concepts of heaven and hell. We need to humanize them as concrete places with tangible things like golden streets and pits of fire. Do they really exist or are they more of a "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" type of mental clarity--seeing the "true meaning of life" so to speak? Pretty much only the Abrahamic faiths see "Heaven" as a real place. Not to over simplify, but your other religions see it as a state of clarity or awareness.

Take It Further

I really appreciated your comments. I have been personally struggling with some of my own thoughts regarding what I wrote in the above. My unwritten thoughts have been validated in a sense as your thoughts regarding heaven and hell certainly ring true for me anyway. Thanks for your thoughts.

Joejoe,
Thanks for the kind words. I think anyone who doesn’t struggle with their own faith is actually being blinded by that same faith. We have to be able to question things and be able to make points and counterpoints—to ourselves and others—or else we have nothing to substantiate our beliefs, whatever they may be. I personally grew up as a PK and was generously encouraged to investigate things and question things by my parents. If anything, growing up as the son of a preacher has definitely taught me not to take things at face value whether it be a sermon, a scripture, or any other means of conveying theology. Dad was just Dad to me even though society puts special credence in what he professed as his beliefs because of the position he held. I personally stretch that same philosophy into how I examine things like the Bible or other sacred writings. I’m not saying faith is wrong or in anyway a bad thing because it’s not. Just be able to back it up with some thought on your own part and not just because someone with a cross around his neck said so—or a fancy dress and a pointy hat as someone referenced the Pope in the other post.

To be sure, there is no red, pointy-tailed Halloween Devil, but the Scriptures are indeed VERY clear on this matter. There is a fallen, archangelic creature that opposes the work and principles of the God of the Bible. The Bible portrays a universe that is permeated with personhood: God, angels, demons, and a Deceiver - not just an empty chasm of impersonal matter with no Designer or Judge.

While agree with Namtac that the OT is short on Satan passages, compared to the NT; the whole story does begin with such a figure, who tempted the original pair. And then there is Job, believed to be the oldest literature in the Scriptures. And Demons are a part of every ancient religious system, and evil spirits also abound in all venues. I'm not saying that give total credence to these elements, but it does sort of beg the question.

The whole image of Shaitan, the deciever, has been so juvenalized and distorted by Hollywood, and even church literature, that the real evil angelic power has been virtually eradicated from the modern human mind. And anyone who assents to Christianity must deal with the fact that Jesus VERY MUCH believed in Satan, and speaks and interacts with him, openly opposing his machinations.

The theology of evil, and Satan's part in it all, is much too involved to get into here, but suffice it to say, I DO believe in Satan - the biblical one, not the pop caricature.

But which one, Nikos? As Namtac pointed out, in the fable of Job, Satan is a member in apparently good standing in God's court, where evil is not supposed to be able to enter. It is only with the rise of apocalyptic Judaism, around the time of the Roman occupation, that the Satan figure as the Adversary of God arose, to fuel the hope that God would soon overthrow the evil worldly order and replace it with that of the Son of Man (whom Jesus often refers to as someone distinct from himself). Genesis doesn't say that the serpent was the devil; that interpretation was added later to reflect changing theological perspectives. When you impose a unity on the Bible which none of the original writers intended, you miss the perspective each writer gave to his or her work, and distort the meaning of many passages. Thus, when you impose Paul'e interpretation of Genesis onto Genesis, you seriously distort the latter, and make it say things it doesn't say.
In short, the Bible is NOT "VERY clear" about Satan, or much of anything, as proven by the incredible variety of conflicting interpretations there are. A book that is VERY clear isn't interpreted in thousands of contradictory ways.

Kuranes, I loved your response and your sense of history as it relates to biblical interpretation. I'm of the same perspective that you are. I don't need to reiterate what you just wrote.

Thanks, Joejoe. We need to remind the literalists that there are other ways to read the Bible, and that those ways can deepen faith and biblical insight.

Kuranes, et al.

How does not being able to believe that what is written in the Bible is actually true help to "deepen faith and bibical insight?" It seems to me that just the opposite is true; if you can't believe what you read in the Bible, why bother? Books that are not literally true are known as FICTION. If the Bible is the divinely inspired Word of God, then we must take as authoritative, musn't we? More to the point, if the Bible is the inspired word of God setting out God's plan for mankind, then it must be read in "unity" musn't it? If it is not divinely inspired, then it is just another book, isn't it?
Or is the Bible simply a sacred smorgasboard; you take what you want and leave the rest?

Which leads me to my next point. Christianity differs from other "religions" in that it is more than just a theoretical exercise; it is based on the fundamental belief that Jesus is the Son of God and that He was crucified, dead and rose on the third day and that, as Jesus told Nicodemus, no one can be saved unless they are born again. Christianity, in a word, is a personal relationship with Jesus. If He was not the Son of God and was not resurrected, then we may as well stay in bed on Sunday.
To take your analysis further, do you believe that one can consider themselves a Christian and not believe in the divinity of Christ?

Reading the Bible simply as a piece of literature deprives one of much of the meaning of it. Absent faith, and the guidance of the Holy Spirit (two things that I see missing in much of the so-called scholarly interpretations - take Ehrman, for example) and its historical context, the Bible can seem archaic, and confusing at best. Read in light of itself, i.e. unity, and the message of God's plan of salvation for us all, however, the Bible is rich and inspiring and like an Ogre - has lots of layers that one peels everytime one reads it.

A recurring theme throughout the Bible is that God allowed sin to enter the world through Adam and Eve's exercise of free will and gave Satan (aka The Devil) dominion over a lost world. The argument that the serpent in the garden of Eden was not Satan is silly. He is called the "great deceiver" and it is clear to anyone with a basic knowledge of the Bible that that was Satan. (If the snake is not Satan, who is he?) As to Job, the idea that this is a recounting of a friendly wager between God and Satan is also frivolous. First, Satan is referred to as Satan, which means the "accuser" - hardly a name attributed to a buddy of God. Consistent with my earlier point, God gave Satan dominion to do what he wanted with Job (except kill him).

The idea that Satan doesn't exist, or his nature changed makes sense only if the Bible is a collection of unrelated books which are decidedly not the inspired word of God.

Antonio, you ask quite a few “if” questions as it pertains to the Bible—if you can’t believe the Bible, if it wasn’t divinely inspired, if so it must be read in unity…et cetera. Your argument is contingent upon those on the other side of the argument conceding the affirmations of those “if”s when I strongly doubt we’d be so inclined. I would tend to agree with joejoe and Kuranes as it pertains to exercising the mind and how reading the Bible, even if you don’t “believe” every word of it, is crucial to understanding one’s own faith. The best way to develop your own stance on any controversial issue to gather all the data that is provided and then evaluate its validity on your own merits to formulate your own opinion, especially as it pertains to something such as religion which we all have to agree we can’t concretely know the right and wrong answers. Data can be concrete or abstract and we as humans have to evaluate the gray areas in between. Even things which are presented as facts can be skewed and propagandized over time.

On another note, and to answer your question, yes, I’m a Christian who questions the divinity of Christ. I’m a Christian because of the lifestyle I grew up as celebrating Christian holidays and living my life like the majority of other white, middle class families in the south. I’m a Christian simply because of where I was born and who my parents were. Had I been born to a native tribe in the Amazon Rainforest, would God most of us have come to believe in love me any less and would my personal relationship with him be of any less value to me? Not that I can see

If you claim the Bible is a unity, how did it get that way? To treat only the books of the canon and no others as the inspired Word of God implies that the church was somehow inspired to pick all, and only, the right books. Where does the Bible authorize such a belief? And what about the fact that the Bible of the vast majority of Christians, the Roman Catholic Church, contains more books than the Protestant version? Isn't that the church that put the Bible together in the first place? If they were wrong about the seven "deuterocanonical" books (which Protestants call the Apocrypha), how can they be trusted about the ones you do accept? When I was a Catholic, I read those "extra" books with just as much satisfaction, and got just as much wisdon and guidance from them, as from the others. Why aren't they in all the Protestant Bibles?
If you take the Bible as a unity, you prevent yourself from reading each book as the author intended: as a single work, in itself, with its own perspective and insight. Reading Mark's view of the Passion, for example, leads to a different impression than Luke's account. In Mark, Jesus dies alone, in deep despair, thinking himself forsaken even by God. I find this picture very moving, and relevant to similar times in my own life when I have felt the same. But if we impose upon that picture Luke's self-aware Christ, totally in control and self-possessed, we lose the pathos of Mark's account, and some of the joy and surprise of the resurrection is also lost. If you read the accounts as a unity, all inspred by the same God, then the contradictions and irreconcilable accounts make God look loke a bad writer who didn't notice that there were two creation stories in Genesis, and two birth stories of Jesus which shared hardly any details. Sloppy workmanship. But when you realize that these are different accounts by different authors, each of whom used the same stories and oral traditions about Jesus to set down his own theological insights, then you have a variety of viewpoints each with its own story to tell, instead of a confused mishmash of contradictions in which you still don't know what's true; you just pretend that the contradictions don't exist and impose the theological traditions of the church upon the text to make it make sense.
Whether you can understand how they do it or not, the fact is that thousands of Christians lead lives of devotion and obedience without believing that every word of the Bible fell like a pearl from the mouth of an inerrant deity. I know such Christians, and their faith in Christ is every bit as strong as anyone else's. Like it or not, it's a fact, and that means it can be done. It allows many people to believe the Gospel who couldn't believe it if they had to believe in talking snakes and magic trees and a donkey that saw angels and talked about it afterwards. Not to mention a God of infinite love and compassion who commands genocide and child abuse, and condones slavery. Rejecting infallibility rescues God from all kinds of cruelties and brutality, of which both testaments are full.
But even if you have to chuck the Bible out the window as a guide for us today, and study it because of its enormous influence on our art, literature, and culture, it is well worth the study. And you will have the advantage of reading a book that makes sense, as an anthology of books written by human beings like us, for a particular purpose and in a unique historical context. When I look at the Bible as a human book, and recognize its flaws, I don't have to twist my logic into contorted knots trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. What a relief! And I don't need to be so prickly and defensive, which, to be honest, does not fill the typical unbeliever with a desire to be like you and have what you have.

Christian:

The "ifs" are in my post to demonstrate an "if this" "then that" relationship between two concepts. It is a frequently used rhetorical method. The point that I was making is that if one believes x, then reason tells us that one must necessarily believe y. The validity of my argument does not depend on someone else agreeing with it; it is true regardless. For example, if the Bible is not the divinely inspired Word of God, as Christians believe, then it is a book of fiction or worse. Christ told His followers that He was the Son of God and that He would rise from the dead after three days. If these are not true, then Christ was either a lunatic or a prevaricator, and certainly not someone that we should look to as a "good man" and a moral icon. You cannot have it both ways. Either Jesus was who He said He was or He was a nut. We all must decide for ourselves which it was.

I mean no disrespect but it is clear that you have no idea what it means to be a Christian. The old saying is that God has no grandchildren. What this means is that we are not, as you suppose, Christians by birth or by upbringing or by culture. Christ makes this point explicitly to Nicodemus, whom He told that unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of heaven. Moreover, there are fundamental tenants that are essential to Christianity and one cannot consider oneself a Christian if they do not believe them, because by not accepting the tenants, the empty Christianity of its meaning. These tenants are:
1) Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary - He was fully man and fully God (if He wasn't born to a virgin, i.e., immaculate conception, then He was not the second Adam, but rather was from the line of the first Adam, and infected with original sin, and, therefore, could not have been the blemish free sacrifice that God needed to bridge the divide between man and God that was created by man's sin) 2) Jesus was crucified, dead and burried and arose on the third day (if Jesus was not crucified, then there was no atonement for our sins; if he did not arise from the dead then He is not the Son of God, but rather a regular man who died and again, not the perfect sacrifice) 3) and sits at the right hand of the Father (1-3 are pretty much the Nicean Creed)

Whether one is a Christian does not depend upon where one lives or where one grew up or who your parents are. Rather, it is a choice that all of mankind must make. (Christianity is growing very quickly in China). As C.S. Lewis said, who you say Jesus is, is the most important decision you and I will make as it will determine how we live our lives and how we will spend eternity.

In the world we live in, unfortunately, we have all been taught that truth is relative (this statement itself is an oxymoron, of course). We are taught that we are the arbiter of what truth is. This is sort of self-esteem gone terribly wrong. The truth exists regardless of what you or I believe. It is our duty to learn the truth. (Winston Churchill is quoted as saying something to the effect that men occasionally stumble over the truth; most, however, get up and go on about their business as if nothing had happened.

Antonio wrote: "if the Bible is not the divinely inspired Word of God, as Christians believe, then it is a book of fiction or worse. " I call this the fallacy of limited options, and it is very popular in the Christian world. These are not the only possible alternatives, Antonio. We can look at the Bible as an ancient book of wisdom or philosophy, like the Essays of Seneca or the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, mixed in with history, legend, myth, and fable. We can read it for instruction and entertainment even if every word is not inscribed by God Himself on tablets of gold in letters of silver; we can read it as we would any other anthology, taking those teachings as seem wisest to us and leaving the rest. You Christians do this anyway, even though you don't admit it. Besides, we can learn a lot from works of fiction as well.
You commit the same fallacy again with Lewis' old "Lord, liar or lunatic" argument. There are other alternatives, most notably that Jesus the historical man never actually claimed to be God, and that that claim was put into his mouth by the author of John's Gospel decades later, after legends and theological reflection had accumulated. I know you don't agree with this, but you must admit that it is a fourth option, one which renders the whole argument invalid. I can think of other options as well, but why bother? You have to accept the Gospels as accurate history for the argument to make sense, which practically amounts to assuming your conclusion as a premise.
The "if -- then" argument can work against your position on inspiration, too. For instance, "if" God is truth itself, "then" he would not send a lying spirit to decieve Ahab's prophets (2 Chron. 18:18-22); yet the Bible says he did just that; not only that, but Jeremiah says flat out that "O Lord, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived." Jer. 20:7. Ezek. 14:9 says, "And if a prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet." God sends delusion in 2 Thes.2:9-12, and despite having decreed that all liars shall be cast into the lake of fire, Rev. 21:8, he rewards Rahab for lying to protect his spies, and Jehu for lying to, and murdering, the priests of Baal (2 Kings 10:18-21, 25, 30). In Ex. 1:15-20, God rewards the Hebrew midwives for lying to Pharaoh. He actually commands people to lie: Moses and Aaron (ex. 3:18);Samuel in 1 Sam. 16:2. These and many other examples demonstrate to the open-minded that the God whose actions the Bible describes cannot possibly be the God whose character it defines.
And just to be precise, the phrase "immaculate conception" refers to the conception of Mary, Jesus' mother, who in Catholic dogma was conceived without original sin. It does not refer to the conception of Jesus. This whole idea of original sin, BTW, besides being repugnant to all justice, contradicts the Biblical teaching that no one should be punished for the sins of his father or ancestors (Ezek. 18). Of course, this doesn't prevent God from slaughtering thousands of people because David took a census (2 Sam. 24). Not to mention the fact that according to science, there never was a "first Adam" anyway, so Jesus could not have been the second. I know this is painful to contemplate; I love the doctrine of the Second Adam; I think it is beautiful, profound, everything but true. I was very sorry to have to give it up. But if you are serious about your claim that truth exists regardless of anyone's belief to the contrary, then you have an obligation to investigate all sides of the controversy, not just those that agree with you. Start with Neal Shubin's book, "Your Inner Fish." It was an eye-opener for me.

I have really enjoyed this discussion. I am motivated to go back to the books and update my biblical knowledge.

Joejoe