Myth or Reality?
In the desperate conflict Christ waged, in which He lost His life, was He mistaken? Was it really 'the prince of this world' He bad to face-a terrible supernatural being whose bate for God was as dark and as deep as bell? Or was He deluded?
That He believed in a personal devil whose dominion He came to shatter; that He commanded demons to come out of their victims; that He was convinced that if He were to save man He must show up the Prince of Darkness in his true light, and break his power over human hearts; that He really believed these things, no student of the Scriptures would for a moment pretend to deny'
F J. Huegel
NOTE SOME STATEMENTS that are a fair representation of a very large cross-section of theological opinion in our day: No present-day system of philosophy gives any place
to the Diabolos of Scripture.
Edgar Brightman
The toothy red imp with tail and trident has become a secular figure of fun, and many theologians have ban ished a personal devil to the realm of myth.
J. I. Packer
Until the Age of Enlightenment (A.D. 1650-1780) belief in an objectivised personal devil and his minions was all but universal amongst theologians. Today however, it is generally recognised that belief in Satan, the leader of the fallen angels, etc., is not a satisfactory answer to the problem of evil. It still leaves us to ask the question how evil got into the world which God created and saw was "very good." But as a pictorial way of representing the existence of superhuman evil forces in the universe, Sa tan and his hosts call our attention to a very important question for theology
Alan Richardson
Reasons for those attitudes are many First and fore most, perhaps, are the grotesque, fantastic representa tions of the devil, which in the past travestied the sober and restrained language of Scripture. Popular concep tions are based more on the word pictures of Dante and Milton than on divine revelation.
The medieval picture of a half-man, half-beast with horns, cloven hoofs, and tail, is a masterly gambit of the devil to make himself appear so ludicrous as to get him self laughed out of court. No being could be less like 'the anointed cherub," "the angel of light" who is next to Christ in power and worldly authority Ebrard main tained that all the objections raised by philosophers are not against the devil as portrayed in the Bible, but against false conceptions of him invented in the past and perpetuated in modern literature.
Owen C. Whitehouse, an avowedly advanced biblical critic, concludes his article inHastings' Dictionary of the Bible with: "That Satan exists as a personal centre of evil influences, physical as well as moral (for the two are closely associated), is the undoubted teaching of the Bible."' That being the case, the concept of a personal devil is rejected only on the a priori grounds that it is too grotesque for refined minds to accept, or that it does not supply the whole answer to the problem of evil.
THE ONLYAUTHENTIC SOURCE
The only authentic source of knowledge of the realm of the unseen is the divine revelation of the Scriptures. All else is speculation, with no one view more authorita tive than another. Where Scripture is silent, or speaks with reserve, the expositor will do well to advance only tentative opinions. But where Scripture has spoken clearly, we have heard all we need to know, and our opinions need not be tentative.
The Bible reveals truths that intellectual research or psychic investigation have never revealed. A. T. Pierson wrote:
One of the grand proofs that the Scriptures are God-inspired is found in the air of absolute positiveness and infallible certainty with which these occult mysteries are treated. There is no timid feeling after truth, or hesitat ing utterance about it, but a consistent body of teaching concerning the unseen realm, that has at least this to commend it, for the first and only time, it gives man a simple and satisfactory solution of perhaps his greatest problem. Here is teaching that has about it finality; it is the utterance of One who speaks as confidently as about the most common facts or phenomena, and treats what is hidden from the senses as a familiar commonplace. He who after vain attempts to find in man's hypotheses and philosophies any solid ground to rest upon, comes with open mind and heart to inquire at God's living oracles, gets an answer to all his inquiries and a sure basis for faith and hope.
His contention was that, to the believer, the realm of the unseen is an indisputable reality whose existence and importance are never argued in Scripture, but as sumed.
Referring to the growing disbelief in a personal devil among theologians, Maldwyn Hughes says:
Many theologians are opposed to it on the ground that it introduces an ultimate dualism into the universe. But this is not so unless the Divine attributes of omniscience, omnipotence and omnipresence are ascribed to Satan. The existence of a demonic intelligence no more neces sarily implies dualism than does the existence of sinful man. Without seeking to dogmatize, it may be remarked that belief in the diabolic personality rests on the same general ground of experience as belief in the divine personality. But since the latter belief is comforting and the former belief disturbing, people overlook the paral lelism7
THE DEVILS INCOGNITO
The very names applied to Satan by our Lord argue his personality. Murder is not a mere abstraction and does not exist apart from a murderer. There is no lie without a liar (John 8:44). In the Bible, moral evil is uniformly viewed as the product of personality It exists only in the wills of personal beings, whether human or superhu man. To think otherwise is not rational.
The devil's incognito is one of the cleverest tricks in his bag. Denis de Rougemont writes inLa Part du Dia ble:
But the devil, who is possessed with desire to imitate truth in twisting it, says to us, "I am nobody What are you afraid of? Are you going to tremble before the non-existent?" . . . Satan disappears in his successes and his triumph is his incognito. The proof that the devil exists, acts, and succeeds lies in the fact that the intelligent world does not believe in him any more.
THE KEY QUESTION
To one who believes Christ to be the Son of God in the fullest sense of that term, and who accepts the Scrip tures as the inspired and authoritative revelation of God, one key question bears on the subject of the reality of the devil and his demons.
That question is, "Did Jesus believe in the existence of a personal devil and his demons, or was His conception of only impersonal but powerful forces of evil in the universe?" The way we answer that question will determine our whole ap proach to the subject. If our Lord disbelieved the exis tence of a personal, malignant devil, then we need not hesitate to share His disbelief.
If our Lord's words on the subject are taken objective ly, the conclusion, whether He was right or wrong, is that He believed and taught that He engaged in conflict with a personal tempter in the wilderness temptation. The language carries no other construction. He spoke and acted as though there was a personal devil, whose dominion over men He had come to shatter, whose pow er He had come to render inoperative. He claimed that on His cross sentence was passed on "the ruler of this world" and that his doom is sure.
Some have pointed out that in the parable of the sow er Jesus interpreted His teaching as referring not to im personal evil but to a personal evil one (Matthew 13:19). If Jesus had only impersonal evil in mind, His words would be devoid of meaning. Three views have been advanced to explain Christ's apparent belief in a personal devil and attendant evil spirits:
1. Our Lord, living in a primitive and unscientific age, shared with those of His own day a superstitious belief in a personal devil, but both He and they were mistaken. He had been granted only the degree of knowledge essential to His mission to earth. In other matters He shared the errors and superstitious beliefs of His age
2. Jesus did not share those mistaken beliefs, but He accommodated His speech and actions to what was generally believed in His day His mission was to teach spiritual truths, not science, and He did that in the language of the people. This argument has been stated more subtly: There can be no doubt, it runs, that Jesus spoke as though Satan was a reality, but it is open to argument that He was simply using the thought forms of His age, without making any pro nouncement on their truth or otherwise.
3. He believed in the existence of a personal devil, and in this He was correct. The first suggested explanation, which represents Christ as sharing the errors and superstitions of His day, strikes a direct blow at His omniscience. It involves a denial of His claim to a knowledge of the unseen world from which He claimed to have come and also impugns the integrity of Scripture.
The second suggested explanation involves even more serious factors. It would show Jesus to be not only less than ingenuous, but also positively untruthful, for He purposely conveyed an impression contrary to the truth. It represents Him not as instructing but as deceiving His disciples, as encouraging superstition rather than teach ing truth.
It presents Him in a light entirely inconsistent with His claim to be a teacher sent from God, since it represents Him as personifying diseases and actually ad dressing them as demons. But most incredible of all, it represents Him as making use of an unfounded supersti tion to substantiate His claim to divine authority, since His delegation to His disciples of power to cast out demons was regarded as a divine attestation of His mis sion.
Consider the implications of the first two suggested explanations. If either is true, we are left with a sinful man, less than God, and of limited intelligence-the exact reverse of the picture of Him the gospels uniform ly portray Further, the foundations of our confidence in Him as Saviour and Lord are shattered. If we cannot place confidence in His teaching on this point, what grounds do we have to believe His teaching about God the Father and salvation?
If He equivocated in what He taught about Satan, how can we be sure that He was not equivo cating when He spoke about God?
True, He clothed His teaching in striking figures and picturesque language, but He did not use those figures and language to convey concepts that were the opposite of truth. He whois the Truth could not and would not speak anything but absolute truth. If He did, He was not the sinless Son of God.
We are left with the third explanation. Jesus did be lieve in the existence of a personal devil and attendant evil spirits, and His belief was grounded in fact.