4 Easter - Thursday - Will the Real Satan Please Stand Up?

Text: 1 Thessalonians 2:13-20 (see below)

Yesterday, I wrote about the first of three renunciations that appear in the Baptismal liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer. What is fascinating is that in many baptismal rites in various Christian traditions, there is a connection with the forces of evil to a figure who is called either Satan, as in the current Prayer Book, or the Devil, as in previous Prayer Books in the Anglican tradition and other denominations (Methodist and Presbyterian, for example).

The question I want to reflect on is simply this: What does the Church mean when we use words like Satan or the Devil?

The Bible has a few, not many, references to a figure named Satan or the Devil. My favorite and most intriguing reference in the Hebrew Scriptures appears in the Book of Job. The author of that great work refers to a being named Satan who resides in the heavenly court. I have always found Satan’s role to be troubling in this passage for he convinces God that the faithful Job should be put to the test and placed under tremendous adversity, suffering and pain. And God says, "Okay."

Satan receives his greatest support in the writings of the apocrypha and these texts obviously had their impact on the early Church for we read in the New Testament that the Devil causes illness, spread lies, and opposes the Lord of Life. There are thirty-three references to Satan in the New Testament and thirty-two citations to the Devil. This figure is also referred to as the tempter, Beelzebul and the evil one.

I have always been “tempted” to pause at the end of the renunciations in the Baptismal liturgy and ask the congregation present: what did we just do? Do you really believe that there is a Satan? And if so, what is Satan’s being like? Or do you believe that Satan is more a metaphor for explaining the puzzling subject of evil? How say you?

My wager is that any Episcopal congregation would be evenly split on the issue. One side clearly defending the metaphorical approach and the other defending perhaps a horned figure dressed in red. Let’s briefly look at both options.

Daniel Stevick wrote a defense of Satan as metaphor in the supplement to Prayer Book Studies 26. Referring to the three renunciations of evil, Stevick said: “the phrasing is meant to relate the heart of the persistent human distortion of God’s purpose to the terms of our modern experience. The first refers to a basic unmanageably in history. A discreative power is at work. Even with good intentions, destructive things are done, and we call consent to that perversion of life. The second refers to the ordering of human affairs, on large and small scales, in ways that oppress and demean persons and misuse God’s creation. The third refers to that within us which mistakes our own priorities, finds evil attractive, and assigns final allegiance to something less than God.” (Prayer Book Studies 26, pages 96-97)

The Episcopal Church is not alone in understanding Satan as a non-person. In the Methodist tradition, Satan is never mentioned in the renunciation portion of the Baptism service: do you “renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of this world, and repent of your sin?” I was recently at a Presbyterian service in Akron, Ohio. In their Book of Common Worship it speaks of “evil and its power” but no mention of Satan. In the New Zealand Prayer Book, Satan is again left out as baptismal candidates are asked only to “renounce all evil influence and powers that rebel against God.”

Okay, so there is a precedent for understanding Satan as a metaphor for evil. But what about the other side? What about those persons who understand the Devil as real and tangible?

Let’s go back to the year 1976 and read the writings of one of the great voices of the Episcopal Church, Charles Price. Reflecting on Satan as an actual personality, Price wrote: “There are strong reasons for restoring the mention of Satan. Christian faith has traditionally dealt with a personal and focused spirit of evil as well as with a personal and focused Spirit of God. Apart from that focus, it would be difficult to understand how the death of Jesus could be thought to have any once-for-all significance, expressed in important, though admittedly symbolic, language as the ‘conquest of Satan.’

“In the Biblical tradition, Satan himself is a creature, finally under God’s control, a ‘fallen’ angel (cf Isa. 14:12-21; Ezek. 28:13-19; rev. 20:1-3). Christianity does not subscribe to the radical or ultimate dualism espoused by the Satanism and demonism which have come to some prominence in recent years. Christianity is to be sharply distinguished from such teaching by its controlled dualism. God alone is ultimate, and even Satan is finally to be beaten down under our feet (The Great Litany, page 152). But Satan stands for a reality in the Christian understanding of evil, the reality of an evil beyond human control though not beyond God’s control. Other more contemporary language may some day be found to express the same reality. Preachers and teachers will try and do just that.  But a personal Satan appears in crucial passages of the New Testament, especially in the temptations of our Lord. Satan has been named in Christian liturgies down through the centuries. It is appropriate to keep some reference to him in the baptismal rite.” (Introducing the Draft Proposed Book, Prayer Book Studies 29, page 71-72).

I tend to fall more in this understanding of Satan. But a note of caution. We Christians tend to be quite lazy when it comes to working out the intricacies of our faith. A horned man with goat legs, a tail and red skin has nothing to do with a Biblical understanding of the evil one. These visuals that are used over and over again at Halloween, for example, or in the Stars Wars triology, find their origins in pagan mythology rather than the Christian tradition. If we are going to speak about the Devil and give him his due, then we should be more attentive to the details of historical fact and development of a system of belief.

Also, it seems that if Christians make Satan out to be a physical creature we must be careful to guard ourselves against a dualism that certainly will spring up in our conversation. Again, I encourage Christians to go back to the Biblical texts and read for themselves what is said and meant in passages such as Isaiah 14 or Job 1 and 2.  Satan is presented in these scriptures as part of a heavenly court.

This brings into question a whole host of other questions: do we believe that angelic beings are real or should be understood in symbolic or metaphorical ways. Satan cannot be equal to God – for then you have a real theological quandary. And if God alone is all powerful and the Creator and Maker of all things, the question becomes is God ultimately responsible for evil? Now, we have opened a can of worms!

But that is my point! As Christians we say and do things in our liturgies from Sunday to Sunday taking it all in without truly working through it. Faith comes alive when you know what you believe and why you believe it. And to take it one step further, you can make a defense of what you believe because you have done the hard work of wrestling with the Scriptures, the doctrines and dogma of the faith.

Tomorrow, we will reflect together on that second renunciation - worldly evil. I hope you will join me.

Love One Another- Brian

1 Thessalonians 2:13-20

We also constantly give thanks to God for this, that when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God’s word, which is also at work in you believers. For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you suffered the same things from your own compatriots as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out; they displease God and oppose everyone by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. Thus they have constantly been filling up the measure of their sins; but God’s wrath has overtaken them at last. As for us, brothers and sisters, when, for a short time, we were made orphans by being separated from you—in person, not in heart—we longed with great eagerness to see you face to face. For we wanted to come to you—certainly I, Paul, wanted to again and again—but Satan blocked our way. For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? Yes, you are our glory and joy!