Range of beliefs on Satan within Christianity
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Are they Lucifer-turned-Satan as well?
In other words, are they the "head honcho," or are they the head honcho's underlings?
The Bible exposes Satan by name, and identifies him as Lucifer, God's chief angelic creation.
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I don't know much about Islam and the Arab culture, but apparently Iblis is kind of a mixture of good and evil. The jinns are also kind of a mixture. They are beings of fire that are otherwise not too different from humans.
Somebody more familiar with that culture can probably refine and correct my impression.
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Christian theologians vary in their ideas about Satan, it's very much a subject for discussion for them too. It could be possible to divide their thoughts into a majority and minority views. Also faith groups vary in how dogmatic they are about how acceptable it is to voice a dissenting position.
As for the apocryphal books, including Greek and ancient near east texts, these are a historical resource for present day theologians. Those writings help them understand how the numerous theologies intersected with one another in the ancient world.
In my view the lack of clarity on Satan is highly due to us having very little access to the spiritual realm. And even if we did, how capable are we in understanding what goes on there? John 3:12
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- Oct 17, 2015
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God didn't create Satan, man did. Satan (ha'shaitan) occurs by name in the Old Testament in the parable we call the Book of Job, and here it's clear that the angel Satan is not the Devil! The Devil is supposedly banished from the presence of God, yet in Job, Satan is allowed to talk with and to come and go from God's presence and on a mission for God yet! What's going on? Satan here is not "the Devil" but sort of God's prosecuting attorney, an unwelcome character but not an evil one. There is a very common perception that the 'Lucifer' in Isaiah 14:12ff refers to Satan, the supernatural personification of evil. This misconception comes from two sources. The first is wishful thinking in the sense that it is nice to think that 'the Enemy' will get his come-uppance eventually. The second has to do with the old caution that scripture is to be read only 'in context'. This requires going back and reading all of Isaiah 13 and the earlier verses in Isaiah 14. When this is done we suddenly realize that scripture is not speaking of a supernatural Satan at all but of a Babylonian king with an immense ego. Read Isaiah 14: " 4 you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon:" What follows is a long rant against this oppressive king filled with numerous reference to his human nature like Isaiah 14: "16 Those who see you stare at you, they ponder your fate: Is this the man who shook the earth and made kingdoms tremble, 17 the man who made the world a desert, who overthrew its cities and would not let his captives go home?" This passage is in no way a reference to Satan or the devil. The Jews did not originally believe in devils but they picked up this concept during the Babylonian Exile from the Persians who followed Zoroastrianism. The Zoroastrians believed in both a god of good (Ahura-Mazda) and a god of evil (Ahrulman) engaged in a cosmic struggle. The Jews picked up and ran with this idea. It was easy to cast YHWH in the role of the God of good. They took also the angel ha'shaitan (Satan) in the book of Job and recast that character as Satan the near divine force of evil. Up to that time, their concept of God was of a being responsible for everything, both good and evil. Isaiah 45:”7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.” is just one quote that demonstrates this. The Jews never connected Satan to the serpent in the Garden of Eden. It was the second-century Christian martyr, Justin of Samaria, who was first to argue that Satan appeared as a serpent to tempt Adam and Eve to disobey God. It was also the third-century Christian philosopher Origen of Alexandria who was the first to suggest that Lucifer actually was Satan or the devil. To most modern Christians, the concept of the Devil is a conflation of the serpent of Genesis, the Lucifer of Isaiah and the Satan of Job. This conflation is further supplemented by lurid medieval fiction like Dante's "Inferno".
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