Philosophical Approaches to the Devil

Benjamin W. McCraw, Robert Arp, Benjamin W. McCraw, Robert Arp

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317392217
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría filosóficas

This collection brings together new papers addressing the philosophical challenges that the concept of a Devil presents, bringing philosophical rigor to treatments of the Devil. Contributors approach the idea of the Devil from a variety of philosophical traditions, methodologies, and styles, providing a comprehensive philosophical overview that contemplates the existence, nature, and purpose of the Devil. While some papers take a classical approach to the Devil, drawing on biblical exegesis, other contributors approach the topic of the Devil from epistemological, metaphysical, phenomenological, and ethical perspectives. This volume will be relevant to researchers and scholars interested in philosophical conceptions of the Devil and related areas, such as philosophers of religion, theologians, and scholars working in philosophical theology and demonology.

Part I Divergent Conceptions of the Devil

1 Devil in the Details

Tracing the Biblical Genealogy and Origin of the Satan-Lucifer Myths

Adam D. Neal

DOI: 10.4324/9781315678788-2

Nearly every human culture has demonstrated some sense of moral divinity, a hierarchy encompassing good and evil within a broader cosmological worldview. In particular, this has often coalesced into visions and myths about a figure of ultimate evil. Within this broader mythic spectrum, what can be said specifically of the biblical vision of good and evil, of God and the Devil? In the contemporary diversity of biblical religiosity, there are many different stories and variations on the theme, but how much of it is from the Bible? A widely held view is that Lucifer, a light-bearing angel, fell at or shortly before the creation and fall of Adam and Eve in Eden, taking with him a third or so of the angelic host to an insidious underworld kingdom from whence he will enter again at the end of time to wreak annihilation on what is left of the dying world. While elements of this story, or mythos as it will be referred to, as it posits a specific narrative and theology, are indeed biblical, upon closer examination a great deal of the Lucifer mythos is extra-biblical; the resulting question is, where did the rest come from?

In recent scholarship, two positions have evolved that seek to answer the question of where the idea of Lucifer cosmically battling God in an unending war originates, if not from the biblical sources. One answer has been that the biblical stream incorporated elements of the Persian religion, Zoroastrianism, and in so doing brought in dualistic emphases that evolved a preexisting Hebrew figure, ha Satan, or “the adversary,” into a dualistic anti-god. Another stream of thought argues that, while some dualistic elements can be traced to Zoroastrianism, the real evolution of Lucifer as the anti-god figure happened well after the Persian period, indeed after the writing of the New Testament. The Western Latin church, in particular, contributed to the development of the dualistic anti-god, as it translated the term for the morning star into the Latin Lucifer. The fallen star in Isaiah 14 thereby became the dualistic antagonist of God. This figure was then adapted through the art and literature of the Middle Ages, particularly in Dante, resulting in the modern tale of the fallen angel of light. So what is to be made of the Lucifer mythos? How one interprets the nature and role of the Devil will have direct and extensive consequences for the nature of good and evil and thereby prove determinative of ethical paradigms based on the biblical worldview.

The Lucifer Mythos

So, who exactly is the Devil? If you were to go around and ask what the proper name of the Devil is, you might hear a lot of different answers: Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Baal, Mammon, or maybe just the Evil One. In a certain sense, all of these answers are true, as they all represent a cluster of ideas that can be generally referred to as “evil.” Evil can be defined in many different ways, but it is often clustered with death, suffering, pain, greed, idolatry, loneliness, hate, violence, and so forth. Yet the question always lingers, what are these various names referring to exactly? Are they demons? For that matter, what is a demon? Where does any of this come from?

At some point many, if not most, modern Westerners have likely come across what will herein be referred to as the Lucifer mythos. It runs something like this: Once upon a time, before the dawn of physical creation, there was GOD (in Hebrew YHWH).¹ GOD brought into being immaterial/spiritual beings first, and then material creation. When the original humans, Adam and Eve (Gen 2–5), were created in the Garden of Eden, one of the angelic beings, Lucifer, an archangel (highest order), the bearer of light and the most beautiful of angels, was consumed with jealousy (or some sort of negative emotion) against the humans and sought their ruin. So Lucifer turned himself into a snake (or at least convinced the snake to go along with his plan), tempted the humans, and they of course fell to his temptation. In the process, Lucifer was cast out of Heaven and became the ruler of a place better known as Hell, where he would coax the weak and sinful of the world for an eternity of barbequing sinners (not to be flippant, but that's how it goes) until sometime near the end of physical creation when the big nasty fellow will be loosed upon the world with his evil minions to wreak havoc for a while until being put away one last time in a final climactic battle. The end.

So where does this come from? The two primary biblical texts here are the opening chapters of Genesis and the book of Revelation. How one interprets Genesis is key as it will considerably condition how one reads Revelation. A crucial issue here is to consider where exactly angels enter the scene. Genesis Chapter 1 narrates the creation of the cosmos from its most basic elements (light/dark, land/sea, up/down) to its most complex (stars, plants, animals), culminating in the creation of humans, who bear the unique image of the creator deity. Yet there is quite simply no mention of the creation of the heavenly realm or its inhabitants, the angelic host.² They are very likely among the plurality of the divine voice in 1:26–27, where humans are created in “our image,” but never are their origins given. The first unambiguous reference to angels comes many generations after the first humans are cast out of the Garden in Genesis Chapter 6. Just before Noah is introduced, there is a peculiar mention of the sons of GOD lying with the daughters of men and begetting a race of super-humans, who were the heroes of old (Gen 6:2–4). But once again, the existence of angels or the sons of GOD is assumed but never explained. So there is no clear mention of where angels come from; but what about the temptation of Adam and Eve in the Garden? That was the Devil, right?

Sort of. If you read this passage (Gen 3) purely literally, there is simply no mention, whatsoever, of a supernatural agent involved. Reading literally, there is a talking snake that is cunning and has a mean streak, but no mention of any Devils, demons, or Lucifers hanging about telling the snake what to do. There is also no indication that the snake is anything other than a natural inhabitant of the Garden, and the peculiar power of speech is not otherwise commented upon. The details are rather minimal, but there is still absolutely no mention of supernatural activities with the temptation of Eve and Adam by the serpent. So where does Lucifer come into things? What about a fallen angel taking a third of the heavens with him?

Ha Satan—The Adversary

Reading through the Hebrew Bible (what Christians refer to as the Old Testament) for mention of the Devil and demonic sorts of activity, it might be surprising how little there is. For a book that many point to as the source and locus of the supernatural worldview, there is surprisingly little mention of supernatural agents and few explanations of divine activity. This is particularly shocking in light of the ancient world's penchant for divine dramas. Simply consider the Greeks: their gods were doing all sorts of stuff, having sex with each other, with humans, cursing and blessing, and getting wasted. Every god had an origin at some point, until you get so far back that it is hazy and nobody knows (or cares), but by goodness the gods that were alive back then were a lively bunch. Contrast this to the Hebrew Bible; if the books of Daniel and Revelation are taken off the table (more about them shortly) you might be surprised to find very few references to angels, much less demons.

A couple of the very few mentions of demonic activity in the Hebrew Bible demonstrate that what is labeled as evil is a force of divine activity that is strictly controlled by the almighty LORD. First, in the saga of the kings Saul and David, after a series of mistakes, Saul's throne was revoked by GOD and David was anointed to replace him. Yet Saul was still acting as king, so GOD brought David into Saul's court through a roundabout ploy (1 Sam 16:14–23). GOD sent to Saul an evil/unclean spirit (Hebrew: ra'ruach) to torment him as punishment for his failures, and only David's soothing music could drive the spirit away. Second, and more importantly, in the book of Job, the prologue (Job 1–2) depicts a series of conversations in the court of GOD with a character called ha Satan—the Satan, which is Hebrew for adversary or accuser. This term is used more generally for one impeding or standing in the way, as with Balaam's near fatal brush with an angel in Numbers 22:22–41.

More specifically, the term held the legal connotation of being an opposing legal advocate, as with a modern district attorney. This role seems clear in Job as well, as ha Satan is approached by GOD and asked about Job's being such a great guy, as he is repeatedly said to be “upright and blameless, one who feared GOD and turned away from evil” (Job 1:1, 8; 2:3). In response to GOD's prompting the Satan about whether he had considered Job, the classic wager is set whereby, in the first round, the Satan is given power over all of Job's life; only his body could not be harmed. In the second round, this restriction is taken away as well, and only death is not permitted. Thus, even as the actions of the Satan are of an evil bent, killing Job's family, ruining his life, and plaguing him with sores, none of it is done without the clear sanction from GOD. How, then, does one get from this view of ha Satan as a nasty sort of fellow with a sharp wit and biting tongue, who is more than happy to make a house fall down on your extended family, to a divine rebel leading an ultimate war against heaven? Some scholars have looked to the East, to Persia, for this dualistic influence.

Zoroastrian Dualism

In 539 BCE, the armies of Cyrus the Great of Persia captured the mighty citadel capital city of Babylon and, in so doing, inexorably altered the political history of the near eastern region. More to the point, Cyrus's great victory was heralded by the Jewish captives in Babylonia as a sign of divine favor that heralded their much awaited return home and restoration into the land of Judah/Israel. This occasion was so momentous that the scroll of Isaiah even refers to Cyrus as an anointed one, a messiah; in fact, Cyrus remains the only non-Hebrew named as such in the Bible (Isa 45:1). This shows pretty clearly that the Jews held the Persians in high esteem, especially when compared with the Babylonians, whom they ridiculed with their sacred writings and traditions (consider the tower of Babel), much like the Egyptians before them (Exodus portrays Pharaoh as a pretty dumb fellow, certainly not a demi-god). But not the Persians; while the Persians weren't perfect, they were much more beneficent to the Jews than the Babylonians had been before them, and the sagas of Ezra and Nehemiah attest to this in particular. Cyrus's declaration of freedom to the Babylonian captives was even included twice in the sacred Jewish Kethuvim or Writings, at the end of Second Chronicles and again at the beginning of the book of Ezra. While Nebuchadnezzar was depicted as rooting around like a beast foraging while suffering from some sort of extreme mental derangement in the book of Daniel, the Persian kings Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes are consistently presented as paying honorific homage to the Jewish deity through their decrees and support for the Jewish Temple restoration efforts. Indeed, of all the foreign cultures and empires that the Hebrew-Jewish peoples encountered in the biblical record, the Persians are presented in the most positive light.

While most of the cultures that the Hebrew-Jewish tribes had encountered were classic polytheists replete with pantheons and idols, the Persians had a rather distinctive and peculiar form of religion known today as Zoroastrianism, founded by the prophet Zoroaster/Zarathustra in the axial age (ca. 660–583 BCE). What distinguished this particular religion was that it was a highly dualistic bi-theism. These gods were in a perpetual and eternal war; there was a good god of light, Ahura Mazda, and a nasty evil god, Ahriman. Mazda wanted only good things for humanity, but the forces of Ahriman were always trying to destroy what was good. As Gerald Messadié writes in his A History of the Devil:

The Gathas teach that, in the beginning, there were two spirits, and each made a choice. The first, Ahura Mazda, chose the good and became the “Wise God,” a clear forerunner of our God; the second, Ahriman—Angra Manyu, the spirit of Evil—chose the bad and became the God of Evil, whose worshipers are the “followers of the lie,” dregvant, who are led astray by the untruth or druj. Iran thus witnessed the first appearance of the Devil. (1996, 83)

This sort of radical dualism, the Zoroastrian thesis argues, was indirectly imported into the Hebrew culture and writings, thereby influencing the development of the Hebrew Bible and its theology. What Zoroastrianism connected with in the Hebrew religion was ha Satan of Job, a figure that did nasty things but was on a short leash. Accordingly, through influences on the writing of Daniel in particular, which demonstrated a striking genre known today as apocalyptic, the divine court's adversary ha Satan was transformed into the cosmic rebel leading the forces of evil against the armies of good.

New Testament Ruler of the World

So now we have a potential candidate for the source of the Devil's war with GOD in Zoroastrian dualism, but the vital question remains: how much was imported into Judeo-Christianity and when? Some scholars, such as Messadié, cited above,³ argue for a strong and early influence, particularly as evidenced in the intertestamental period (between the writing of the Old and New Testaments, around 400 BCE—CE 100), which had become increasingly interested in angels and demons and cosmic conflict.⁴ The Qumran community (Dead Sea Scrolls) was particularly apocalyptic, as they felt that the reigning regime in Jerusalem (the Sadducees) were false prophets and so they awaited GOD's direct intervention, fire and brimstone, and angelic armies. This is most clearly evidenced in what has been labeled the War Scroll (1QM), which depicts a final battle between the forces of the Sons of Light and of Darkness.

Yet as interesting as the War Scroll is, it is slight in comparison to the scope of the apocryphal text of First Enoch, which is recognized as canonical only by Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Churches. This text, which is purported to have been written by the Enoch of Genesis 5 but is generally dated by scholars to the intertestamental period, describes the Great Deluge of Noah in considerably more detail. In particular, it claims that the angels that descended to take women as wives made a pact together, and the leader of this group, Semjaza, made the other angels swear an oath to him. The angels, who are numbered at 200, take wives, and their progeny become great giants that end up consuming so much that they couldn't be sated and so turned on the humans to devour them as well (7:3–4). Meanwhile, the angels teach to their human companions all manner of technological advances, such as alchemy and metallurgy, which in turn allows for the production of weapons and the advent of warfare (8:1–3). Thus, the actions of the angels and giants are directly linked with the reasoning for flooding the earth (10:1). As a result of teaching the humans ever greater sins, the angels are banished from the heavenly realm and become the class of angels known as Watchers, mysteriously mentioned in the Nebuchadnezzar episode of Daniel 4 as the emissary that announced his coming madness, who are waiting for the final judgment wherein they will be destroyed (10:12).

It is clear, then, that apocalyptic dualism was a popular motif for the period of the New Testament, but is the New Testament itself dualistic and can we find Lucifer there? Once again, references to demonic forces are rather few in the New Testament but still more numerous than in the Old. Paul does sometimes refer to elemental spirits (Gal. 4; Col. 2) and the evil ruler of this world (Eph. 6:12), but most of the references to diabolic activity are in the Gospels. These references can be divided into two groups, the temptations ...