The Devil Made Me Do It
having canceled the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him. Colossians 2:14-15 NASB
The rulers and authorities – The Midwestern Baptist Seminary commentary on these two verses provides fodder for the “Devil.” Its explanation is as follows:
First, what does it mean that, at the cross, Jesus “disarmed” Satan and his rebel angels? The answer is found in verse 14: Satan had no record of debt with which to accuse. Jesus snatched Satan’s means of accusation right off his forked tongue. This is the primary way he was disarmed. The repentant sinner’s record, then, is erased. It seems Satan’s strategy was to accuse and damn by means of a guilty record, but through the substitutionary and atoning blood sacrifice of Jesus, there is now no record with which to charge. That much we can discern from Colossians.
Second, how did Jesus put Satan and his rebels “to open shame” (ESV)? The language used describes a parade. Jesus ‘made a spectacle’ of Satan by defeating him on the cross and at the tomb. Satan was rendered powerless, and then becomes something of a cosmic joke. He was showcased in the theater of God before his own rebel entourage and before the angels of heaven.
But the verses don’t say this. In fact, these verses don’t mention Satan at all. The two Greek words are archḗ (ruler) and exousía (power), but in the plural form. According to Paul, Yeshua’s act on the cross made a public display of the impotence of rulers and authorities. As I recall, Satan isn’t mentioned in the cross narrative either. Could it be that Paul is speaking of the actual Roman and Jewish rulers and authorities who thought that they had settled the issue of this man when they put him to death? That seems quite a bit more likely than importing the idea of Satan.
And on that score, we should make note of the general approach of the Tanakh to the issue of other divine beings. Kaufmann notes:
The Bible nowhere denies the existence of the gods; it ignores them. In contrast to the philosophical attack on Greek popular religion, and in contrast to the later Jewish and Christian polemics, biblical religion shows no trace of having undertaken deliberately to suppress and repudiate mythology. There is no evidence that the gods and their myths were ever a central issue in the religion of YHWH. And yet this religion is non-mythological. Fossil-remains of ancient myths cannot obscure the basic difference between Israelite religion and paganism. It is precisely this non-mythological aspect that makes it unique in world history; this was the source of its universal appeal.[1]
We might say the same thing about Yeshua’s teaching. Aside from a few well-placed insults to religious hypocrites, he does exactly what the prophets do—he ignores the whole concept of the Devil. It should come as no surprise to scholars of the Hebrew Bible that “Satan” is basically an after thought, an office, not a person, and worth virtually no consideration. The Western Church, assimilating pagan ideas, birthed the Devil we know—that super-powerful evil being capable of derailing life at a moment’s notice. When it comes to C. S. Lewis, we can reasonably ignore The Screwtape Letters as a work of imaginative fiction.
I grew up in a world with a Devil. I was taught to be afraid of “him.” I took the “below the radar” approach, believing that as long as I didn’t do anything really spiritual, he wouldn’t consider me a threat and would leave me alone. Then I could just get on with my life without worrying that he would beset me with misery. But I had to keep my head down and just be a passive follower. God might be a bit disappointed, I suppose, but at least I wouldn’t end up like Job. I was essentially a behavioral pagan in cognitive Christian disguise. Everyone around me thought the same thing, except those spiritual warriors who “rebuked Satan” and imagined that they were given power over him. But bad things still happened to good people, so I suppose the spiritual world of Satan and his minions was a world of unpredictable chaos. One that needed to be avoided at all costs. Of course, I didn’t pay much attention to the fact that the Tanakh pays almost no attention to Satan. I was a born-again New Testament Christian and there were plenty of people around who took all that “Devil” stuff very seriously. It was like Marvel comics—the super being Satan was all evil and the super Jesus Messiah was all good and they were locked in an eternal battle until, at last, one day sometime in the future the Devil would be thrown into the lake of fire and then I could be free of him. But until then, well, that’s a different story.
Maybe I should have read the prophets a bit more carefully.
Topical Index: Devil, Satan, pagan, rulers, authorities, Colossians 2:14-15
[1] Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Religion of Israel, p. 20.
Marvel comics is a good way to punctuate the point of your post. Another illustration of this is when someone says God is in control but they are under Satanic attack. But wait a minute, if God is in control, how can someone be under Satanic attack? Better look again at the story of Job. Disturbing as the story is, apparently Satan can not attack unless God allows it.
Perhaps satan cannot attack a Tzadik without God’s permission?
I still wrestle with the idea of the devil. Having come out of the New Age movement and having demonic activity in my life since early early childhood years before I knew anything about the Christian idea of the devil, my experience tends to trump the idea that the devil and his minions don’t exist. That’s not to say that it’s not the truth. Maybe I was just mentally ill before my deliverance experience. But then how is it that in an instant I was free from it all including total freedom from a chain-smoking addiction? This is a puzzling topic for me even to this day.
It’s not that Satan doesn’t exist. That’s the Office of the Accuser. It’s real–at least as real as the Job story. It’s just that the4 Tanakh pays NO ATTENTION whatsoever to this entity (office). The focus is on God and our choices, not on the manipulation by some evil power. Of course, all that changes when we get to the first century. Hellenism brought a lot with it and it has influenced religion ever since. Maybe Satan as a personal being exists now since humanity birthed him sometime after we adopted Zarathustra’s point of view.
Pam, I agree with your trump card analogy. It takes but one experience of a personal encounter with the devil or his cohorts to convince one of not just their existence, but of their power, intelligence and influence. Such a personal encounter is more persuasive than all the philosophical arguments against his existence; just as the experience of the new birth far outweighs all the long winded arguments against the possibility of such a divine encounter by the Ruach.
It is YHWH alone that gives life and puts to death. He it is who smashes and heals and none rescues from His hand, (Deuteronomy 32:39 slightly altering the pronouns of Robert Alter’s translation) but it is clear throughout Scripture that He uses everyone and everything that He created, in both the heavenly unseen realms and the those upon the earth to carry out His will, be they earthly rulers and authorities or heavenly thrones, dominions, principalities, powers ( Ephesians 1:16).
I, for one, would rather fall on my face before Yah acknowledging both reality and His sovereignty and mysterious ways than be forced to become a contortionist and have to twist the meaning of enigmatic texts in order to explain them away. Wishing the devil away or denying his existence, influence or power seems to me to be no more than whistling in dark and ultimately an exercise in futility.
I am more in line with the recently deceased Dr. Michael Heiser and his magnum opus” THE UNSEEN REALM” than I am with Skip’s SEEN REALM theology, however logical, hermeneutical or comforting.
Okay, maybe I wasn’t clear. This is not about the existence or non-existence of a personal being called Satan. This is about the ORIGIN of the idea. You must admit that it is extremely curious that there is nothing in Moses about such being. You would think with all that is at stake in the exodus “he” would have at least been mentioned. But, no. Not a word. Why? Because the paradigm of Egypt needed to be set aside. It contained all sorts of good and evil gods who affected the lives of human beings. God shut that down, completely. But by the time we get to the post-captivity, all those evil creatures are back. Did you every wonder why they show up again? The paradigm shifts, and along with it, the inhabitants of the celestial realm. You might take a look at my previous post about Heiser’s book. I am not saying that such a being does not exist. I’m saying that our concept of him and the power we give him is post-Captivity thinking. Encounters aside, if we really believe God is in charge, why do we spend so much energy “fighting” the Devil?
Yes, you were clear, but apparently Michael Heiser’s thesis is either not clear to you or is outright rejected by you. Heiser’s UNSEEN REALM’s supernatural interpretation of Genesis, complete with its Watchers, Nephilim, and demons, which he exegetes are the Biblical foundations for the Genesis 6 flood narrative (to protect the Messianic blood line from non-human DNA consequence) and the conquest of Canaan led by Joshua with the necessity of putting those clans and cultures where there were giants (who somehow either survived the flood or were new offspring of the surviving Watchers) under a military herem, again to protect the bloodline from nonhuman DNA, but also against the very real threat of total world hegemony by a non-human species in a bloodless coup by genetic engineering and the diabolic evolution of a new species, with the potential danger of the eventual extermination of all Adam’s seed and an end of YHWH’s image/likeness experiment.
And while Moses may have not directly addressed the issue of ha Satan’s origin, influence, presence or absence there are certainly enough hints of ha Satans (or others) activities in these stories alone to merit serious theological investigation. And while the Books of Enoch and Jubilees are generally not considered canonical by most sects and comes centuries later (post-Captivity) therein is material enough to fill in all the gaps Moses generated by his silence.
And “ the paradigm of Egypt which (later) needed to be set aside (because it too) contained all sorts of good and evil gods who affected the lives of human beings” is but another example of your theory of history repeating itself as it moves in a cylindrical spiral in its march through eternity. And just as YHWH needed to shut down the alien Watchers, Nephillim and demons, so God had to later deal with the Egyptian polytheist death cult and “shut it down, completely”.
Of course, in reality, neither the flood, nor multiple harems, nor the 10 plagues completely achieved their goals and ha Satan, Samyaza Mastema et al. somehow survived and thrived through the ages and will continue to do so until the books of Daniel and Revelation play out in all their war, gore and whore-dom. So the question is not why do we spend so much energy “fighting” the Devil, it’s why does the devil spend so much energy “ fighting” against the King and His Kingdom?
Your reply made me smile. Thanks. Before you fully embrace Heiser’s view, take a look at Nahum Sarna’s comments on the Genesis 6 passage–and Jonathan Sacks too, by the way. Once more I remind you that the issue with the Pentateuch is silence, and arguments from silence rarely carry weight. Now, please understand that I am not suggesting there are no instances of the Hebrew ha-satan. Of course there are. But the word is applied to ordinary human beings as well as the “celestial” office in Job. So, unless the Devil has the ability to take on human form (which we have adopted from pagan thought), we should be very careful using references to ha-satan in the Tanakh as proof of the existence of a single being whose name is Satan. That’s not to say that by the time of the Hellenists and the influence of Persian theogony this being invaded Jewish and Christian thinking so much so that the idea was common in post-Captivity religion. And thinking produces experience. We experience what we believe to be true. Just ask the “flat earth” guys. Anyway, this seems to have hit a nerve and I really appreciate your enthusiasm in replying. Thanks again.