I know this is all speculative, but I'd like your input....
There are Catholic visionaries, most notably Anne Catherine Emmerich, who claim that Satan tempted Jesus the night of his Passion and seemed to try to talk Him out of the Passion. As I read the Fathers, it would seem that the reverse is true, that Satan wanted Christ to die. In his arrogance, the Prince of Lies apparently wanted to become God by killing God. The Emmerich-style visions seem to give Satan more knowledge and insight than he deserves.
I would think in the Orthodox approach, with Christ trampling death by death and entering into the brutal Cross, death in a shameful manner, only to rise again, Satan was naively trying to nudge him to the Cross. What Satan sees as folly and opportunity, God sees as victory. Augustine saw the Atonement as a mousetrap. That says a lot IMO.
I know it's all speculation, but it's a topic that crossed my mind and I'd love to hear all your thoughts. Did Satan want the Passion or not?
I'm afraid to reply to this question. The last time someone asked me this question I gave the same response as the one that follows and it would seem there were some strange and frightening consequences for me later on that evening, in the form of a hellish nightmare during which I was not actually asleep, and therefore could not wake up from. Lord have mercy.
In my humble speculation, faith is something that Satan does not -- could not possibly-- have. Satan, in order to be able to dwell in his narcissistic lie, chooses self-deception, the illusion that God is not real, or at least not legitimately supreme. True faith on the part of human beings, then, is problematic to him because it serves to weaken this illusion or false reality that he lives by. If he wished to cause Job, for example, to abandon his faith in God, it was because Job's failure would've provided him with evidence supporting his own illusion that God is not legitimate. It would therefore be the same in the case of a perfectly sinless human being such as Jesus. Such faith, such devotion to God on the part of a human would not seem possible if God were not for real and supreme. This is why Satan was so determined to succeed first in tempting him into various sins, including the sin of turning from His righteous ways in order to escape crucifixion. It is Christ's righteousness and truth, openly and publicly expressed, which made His death at the hands of evildoers inescapable: a fact He was well aware of. The mechanisms for sin and evil that Satan himself had incorporated into the world of mankind (society) were constructed in such a way that the killing of the bearer of Truth is automatic: a runaway train that Satan himself would find it difficult to stop, even if he wanted to. Men can be perfectly evil even without the presence and influence of Satan.
Anyway, Satan did not believe, did not wish to believe that Jesus was the Son of God. To Satan, the mere thought of this would've filled him with great torment. Thus, as he couldn't disprove Christ's divinity by tempting Christ into sinning, his last recourse was to allow the sinful mechanisms he'd erected in the hearts and minds of men to cause Him to be killed, so that this great Truth-bearer would be silenced through death. His death would be proof, for Satan, that Jesus was not divine.
This exhibits the difference between Satan and his followers: the ordinary demons. For when ordinary demons came face to face with Christ they were completely undone; unable to hold on to their illusion/self-deception at all when confronted with God's glaring presence in person of Jesus. They immediately cried in agony, openly proclaiming Him to be Son of God, begging Him, for example, to be allowed to enter into a nearby heard of swine, only to charge away in chaotic fear in their frenzied need to escape Christ's presence and the utter torment it wrought upon them, plunging into the sea. Satan's self-deception, on the other hand, his inability to percieve God's truth, is so far above that of common demons that he was able to still mostly deny God, even in the presence of Jesus, tempting Him as if He were merely an ordinary human being. This might be why Christ calls him the father of liars. His liar ability is supreme. He's the Grandaddy of all illusion, self-deception, and lies.
