Official statements on the Devil

[Mr Dave]

A friend of mine is doing some writing about the Devil and wanted to know if there were any official denominational positions/statements about the Devil, apart from the fact that he is a fallen Angel.
He's after official statements, not individual personal views.

 

[St_Worm2]

A friend of mine is doing some writing about the Devil and wanted to know if there were any official denominational positions/statements about the Devil, apart from the fact that he is a fallen Angel.
He's after official statements, not individual personal views.

My church, the EFCA, has little to say in our Statement of Faith, but I know the Roman Catholic "CCC" has a bit more. Here it is:

II. THE FALL OF THE ANGELS
391 Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God, which makes them fall into death out of envy.266 Scripture and the Church's Tradition see in this being a fallen angel, called "Satan" or the "devil".267 The Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: "The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing."268

392 Scripture speaks of a sin of these angels.269 This "fall" consists in the free choice of these created spirits, who radically and irrevocably rejected God and his reign. We find a reflection of that rebellion in the tempter's words to our first parents: "You will be like God."270 The devil "has sinned from the beginning"; he is "a liar and the father of lies".271

393 It is the irrevocable character of their choice, and not a defect in the infinite divine mercy, that makes the angels' sin unforgivable. "There is no repentance for the angels after their fall, just as there is no repentance for men after death."272

394 Scripture witnesses to the disastrous influence of the one Jesus calls "a murderer from the beginning", who would even try to divert Jesus from the mission received from his Father.273 "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil."274 In its consequences the gravest of these works was the mendacious seduction that led man to disobey God.

395 The power of Satan is, nonetheless, not infinite. He is only a creature, powerful from the fact that he is pure spirit, but still a creature. He cannot prevent the building up of God's reign. Although Satan may act in the world out of hatred for God and his kingdom in Christ Jesus, and although his action may cause grave injuries - of a spiritual nature and, indirectly, even of a physical nature- to each man and to society, the action is permitted by divine providence which with strength and gentleness guides human and cosmic history. It is a great mystery that providence should permit diabolical activity, but "we know that in everything God works for good with those who love him."275
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[Mr Dave]

Thanks very much

 

[St_Worm2]

Thanks very much

You're welcome

 

[MrPolo]

Check out also Pope John Paul II's Catechesis on the Angels (granted these are sermons given to a "general" audience, but that is a function of his "office" and I don't see anything in here that isn't worthy for a Catholic to believe.) Have your friend keyword search "satan" or "devil" if he doesn't want to read it all.

 

[outOftheLoop]

there is a book on exorcisms by the chief exorcist in Rome, Fr Amorth

i think a researcher on the devil should read that book.

i have a lot of experience w/ the devil, but then, all devout Christians can say that..

 

[rainkid]

There is a tradition within Anglican churches going back at least to 1737 that states that the Devil does not literally exist. However, this is not a universal thought of all Anglicans.

 

[Hairy Tic]

A friend of mine is doing some writing about the Devil and wanted to know if there were any official denominational positions/statements about the Devil, apart from the fact that he is a fallen Angel.
He's after official statements, not individual personal views.

Here goes:

Pope Paul VI - Confronting the Devil's Power | Catholic-Pages.com - an Address of Pope Paul VI

http://ccc.scborromeo.org.master.com/texis/master/search/?sufs=0&q=devil&xsubmit=Search&s=SS - 10 of 18 hits for the devil from the CCC (which is the standard catechism for the whole Catholic Church)

 

[he-man]

A friend of mine is doing some writing about the Devil and wanted to know if there were any official denominational positions/statements about the Devil, apart from the fact that he is a fallen Angel.
He's after official statements, not individual personal views.

Reading Isa 14:4, "That you shall take up this proverb against the **king of Babylon,** and say, How has the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased!", it becomes clear that this is the king of Babylon and his nation that is being spoken of here.

While this mythological information is available to scholars today via translated Babylonian cuneiform text taken from clay tablets, it was not as readily available at the time of the Latin translation of the Bible.

Thus, early Christian tradition interpreted the passage as a reference to the moment Satan was thrown from Heaven. Lucifer became another name for Satan and has remained so due to Christian dogma and popular tradition.

Early Bible fundamentalist Unitarians and Dissenters like Lardner, Mead, Farmer, Ashdowne and Simpson, and Epps taught that the miraculous healings of the Bible were real, but that the devil was an allegory, and demons just the medical language of the day.

Much of the popular history of the Devil is not biblical; instead, it is a post-medieval Christian reading of the scriptures influenced by medieval and pre-medieval Christian popular mythology.

1. Originally, only the epithet of "the satan" ("the adversary") was used to denote the character in the Hebrew deity's court that later became known as "the Devil." (The term "satan" was also used to designate human enemies of the Hebrews that Yahweh raised against them.) The article was lost and this title became a proper name: Satan. There is no unambiguous reference to the Devil in the Torah, the Prophets, or the Writings.
2. T. J. Wray, Gregory Mobley The birth of Satan pp.66-68
3. has been erroneously interpreted by some to mean Satan, "the Devil", but such is not the case. The Hebrew Bible views ha-satan as an angel ministering to the desires of God, acting as Chief Prosecutor.

Carus P. History of the Devil and the Idea of Evil

Thomas Hobbes (1651); Arthur Ashley Sykes (1737); Richard Mead (1755)
Ashdowne, ‘‘AN INQUIRY INTO THE Scripture Meaning of the Word SATAN, AND ITS SYNONIMOUS TERMS, The DEVIL, or the ADVERSARY, and the WICKED-ONE’, page 40, 1794
Burke, J. Christianity in the Witch Hunt Era, 2008
In 1737 Sykes published ‘An enquiry into the meaning of demoniacks in the New Testament’ going further than Joseph Mede’s exposition of the ‘Doctrine of Demons’ by rejecting any belief in the existence of demons and regarding those possessed as simply suffering from mental illness, as the later work of Dr. Richard Mead. He also rejected the devil as a supernatural evil being, taking the allegory argument of John Epps.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_teaching_about_the_Devil