How Should We Think About the Devil?
It comes as a surprise to many Christians to discover that, despite the popular imagery of a scary-looking red devil with horns, a forked tail, and a pitchfork, the Bible itself offers no physical description of such a creature. We inherit that imagery from a combination of certain pre-Christian pagan gods and medieval literature such as Dante’s Inferno in the 14th century. The Bible itself offers us only symbolic imagery, titles, and descriptions of what the devil is and does.
‘Satan’ comes from Old Testament Hebrew (śāṭān) and ‘the devil’ from New Testament Greek (diábolos). Originally, Satan was understood as an adversary, or accuser; the devil as a slanderer, or deceiver. In early Christianity, these characteristics became merged into a single figure and in due course, additional names were added, such as Lucifer and Beelzebub, though they have no biblical background as such. Interestingly, the Hebrew Baʿal Zəvûḇ (which the KJV translates ‘Baalzebub’) is the name of a local Philistine god in 2 Kings 1:2–3, which means, “Lord of the Flies.”
As well as the Bible having very little to say about the nature of the devil, the same is true of demons (Satan’s agents). Christians commonly take it to be the case that demons are fallen angels (angels that rebelled), led by the devil who was a very high-ranking angel (an archangel), but there are no express biblical statements to that effect. Christians have inferred these ideas from biblical texts that are symbolic and apocalyptic (‘typological’) in nature. They developed in church tradition from the time of the early Church Fathers through the Middle Ages.
In De Principiis (‘On the First Principles’), Origen writes: “Regarding the devil and his angels, . . . the teaching of the Church has laid down that these beings exist indeed; but what they are, or how they exist, it has not explained with sufficient clearness. This opinion, however, is held by most that the devil was an angel, and that, having become an apostate, he induced as many of the angels as possible to fall away with himself, and these up to the present time are called his angels.” Tertullian, Clement, Irenaeus and Augustine shared broadly the same view.
There is a stream within Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity that finds what we call ‘demonology’ (the study of the devil and his demons) enthralling, to a point (I suggest) where it becomes unhealthy, if not obsessive. It develops highly detailed ideas, through a creative imagination, that can only be called ‘folk theology’—in other words, ‘made up’! Demonic hierarchies, territorial spirits, “binding” the enemy, demon-hunting, and an over-fascination with the occult are all in that category—teachings that were first systematised by 20th-century figures such as Derek Prince, C. Peter Wagner, and, more recently, the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR).
There are some very real problems with this kind of overblown theology of the devil and demonic activity, not least when it gets into the “the devil made me do it” category. Blaming the devil for the evil that we do can be a cop-out for taking personal responsibility (“owning” our actions), not least because if it’s “him, not me” to blame, then it’s fostering a narrative in which I am a victim as much or more than a perpetrator.
Moreover, it overstates Satan’s power and significance, as if some cosmic war has been raging for millennia between the forces of good and evil, with victories and defeats being suffered on each side as the battles rage, but this is simply not how the Bible presents things. Satan is not God’s equal and opposite locked in a supernatural power struggle for cosmic domination.
There’s a famous misquote attributed to C. S. Lewis, “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.” What he actually said was rather more nuanced. In the Preface to The Screwtape Letters, he wrote: “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors, and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.” Both overstating and understating their existence and power are errors.
It is certainly true that a personification of evil and evil forces hostile to God and the things of God is reflected in Scripture, which we ought not to write off as simply fanciful ancient world superstition. We see Jesus “being tempted by the devil” in Matthew 4/Luke 4 (though quite how that “works” is interesting—presumably, as with us, this would have been a battle in his thought world). The devil is identified by Peter as a source of oppression in Acts 10:38, when he describes “how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil . . .” So, too, in the epistles. Ephesians speaks of not making room for the devil (4:27) and putting on the whole armour of God so that we may be able to stand against his wiles (6:11), though neither injunction depends on a personification of evil as such.
The first mention of a creature traditionally associated with Satan in Scripture is that of the talking serpent in the garden, in Genesis, though it is not identified as such. The divine "penalty” for its deception of Adam and Eve is to crawl on its belly: figurative language, rather than literal language (theological truths are in mind here, not anatomical truths—snakes don’t talk).
In the early church creeds, we see no mention of the devil or demons. This is not to say there was no concurrent belief in them, of course, but we see no developed formula. It’s not until the 13th century that we encounter a statement by the Fourth Lateran Council as part of its lengthy treatise: “The devil and the other demons were indeed created by God good by nature, but they became bad through themselves.” Once Protestant confessions appeared, from the 16th century, we see further and more detailed references (such as in the Augsburg Confession and the Westminster Confession).
Personification language in Scripture is not exclusive to the devil and demons. It features in relation to sin and death, which are also presented as enemies of human life and thriving. These are all enemies defeated by Christ through his death and resurrection, notwithstanding that the victory he won awaits its final consummation. We may at times appropriate his victory through prayer, but we should never forget that it’s his victory—a victory in which, aside from praying, we play absolutely no effective role. In other words, waging spiritual warfare is not a power or gift that we acquire and deploy with techniques that we can practice and learn.
The concept of balance and nuance in these matters, and centring our own role on prayer, may sound boring compared to the excitement of engaging in supernatural warfare with occult forces. But the Christian life was never supposed to involve becoming like spiritual video gamers in a cosmic conflict on God’s behalf.
So, a personification of evil and evil forces is certainly visible in the Bible, but as with so many things about the Christian understanding of Scripture, we need to be reading it correctly (genre especially) and be aware of the risk of a combination of folk theology and beliefs rooted in pre-modern (post-biblical) thinking taking over, assuming a life of its own in the present.
Personal enemies of human life and human thriving, like the personified “thief” of whom Jesus spoke in John 10:10 (that, in contrast to Jesus’ life-enhancing mission, comes only to “steal, kill, and destroy”), are not the exclusive way we might picture how sin and evil are active in the world. For example, we might think of them as like viruses or bacteria, infecting human life: enemies that spread, evolve, and reproduce; similarly stealing, killing, and destroying lives. Biologists debate whether a virus is, by definition, a living thing, but a bacterium certainly is. Obviously, no biblical metaphor could reflect that imagery because science at the time was unaware of it.
When the ancients described medical conditions, they spoke of the visible effects; they had a very limited understanding of the causes. The biblical writers had no access to modern medical diagnoses any more than their peers did. So, for example, they would likely attribute what we now know as schizophrenia to causes such as demonic activity. This does not mean there is no such thing as demonic activity and that it could not cause such symptoms. But it does mean that, when we read biblical accounts concerning (for example) Jesus healing sickness, we should not be dogmatic because “the Bible says.” We should focus on what really matters—the healing, not the stated cause. We must read the text as a text of its time, not automatically attribute timelessness to it by default. We should not ignore medical science in favour of the Bible, especially when people’s health and well-being are involved. The Bible is not looking to win a “my truth is better than your truth” contest against medical science.
Whichever way we choose to picture how sin and evil work in this world—and we’re not limited to one picture or depiction—there most certainly seems to be a reality to their existence and influence beyond being the naturally occurring products of human hearts.