Church doctrines, official or otherwise, that are generally unfounded infuriate me as much as Jacobus Arminius would have infuriated Calvin, had they lived at the same time. One set of doctrines in particular that bother me are those concerning Satan and other demons. The thing that bothers me most is that there is very little revealed about the nature of either in the Bible. Furthermore, many doctrines ignore what actually is in the Bible. Today most Christians, or at least most that I've met, view demons and Satan as supreme evil beings to be reviled and hated and we have some power over them when we encounter them (the amount of power varies by denomination). They also believe that Satan was once called "Lucifer" and was God's most beautiful creation and rebelled against God because he wanted more power. They believe that demons are angels that decided to follow Satan rather than God. And they believe that these creatures live in the same "hell" that they believe non-Christians will inhabit after death. Some even believe that Satan and demons will torment people in this hell. I'll start by presenting, to the best of my knowledge, what the Bible does say, and then I'll point out what the Bible does not:
- There is mention of Lucifer, although I do not believe that it has anything to do with Satan. Check out other translations, the word "lucifer" is only translated as a proper name in King James. In fact, the passage as a whole does not seem to imply Satan at all when read in any other translation, in my opinion.
- Satan may be able to come into the presence of God, and he might ask God permission to tempt people in certain ways, if Job is a factual account (A similar scene is painted in Zechariah, and Luke).
- Satan convinced David to take a census (what?)
- Satan tempted Jesus in the desert
- Jesus calls Peter Satan one time
- When Jesus casts out demons He says He is casting out Satan
- Jesus claims that He "saw Satan fall like lightening from Heaven" and that Christians have authority from God over all kinds of demons
- Satan enters Judas when he betrays Jesus
- Paul talks a lot about Satan being the cause of temptation and the root of evil, and says that people in sin should be "handed over to Satan" for awhile, anyway
- Paul claims that Satan stopped him from traveling to Thessalonica
- Revelation is full of stuff about Satan that I don't dare to touch, but it seems that he will be destroyed at some point
- Jesus agrees to some demons request to send them into pigs. They claim that there is an "appointed time" for Jesus to torment them, and it hasn't come yet. He doesn't hate them as much as Pentecostal do, apparently (since He lets them go into the pigs... unless this is that "appointed time" and that wasn't)
- Demons go through hard times when they aren't possessing people, and they go back to people they have possessed sometimes... and apparently they bring a party with them sometimes.
- Satan was God's most beautiful creation
- Satan was ever good
- Demons were once angels
- Satan caused demons to be what they are
- Satan and the demons live in hell
- Satan has any power over people after they die
- Satan rebelled against God
- Satan or demons can interact with inanimate objects directly
- Satan or demons can cause bad things to happen to you, like your car breaking down
- Paradise Lost = Biblical truth
11 comments:
Part 1 of 2
Interestingly enough, you left out of your list perhaps the most important passages in all the Scriptures dealing with Satan:
Isaiah 14:12-15. This is a taunt ostensibly directed at the King of Babylon, but unanimously believed by the Fathers to be actually about Satan originally and only later applied to an earthly ruler. Also note that, while the RSV uses the proper name “Day Star”, that is nothing more than a translation of the Greek heosphoros; Lucifer in Latin.
Your pomp is brought down to Sheol, the sound of your harps; maggots are the bed beneath you, and worms are your covering. "How you are fallen from heaven,
O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low! You said in your heart,`I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will make myself like the Most High.' But you are brought down to Sheol, to the depths of the Pit.
Ezekiel 28:12-16. A nearly identical passage to that in Isaiah. There is much reason to believe this poem was a common narrative about Satan for the Jews that was often applied to any who are/were the enemies of God.
Son of man, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him, Thus says the Lord GOD: "You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering, carnelian, topaz, and jasper, chrysolite, beryl, and onyx, sapphire, carbuncle, and emerald; and wrought in gold were your settings and your engravings. On the day that you were created they were prepared. With an anointed guardian cherub I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; in the midst of the stones of fire you walked. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, till iniquity was found in you. In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned; so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and the guardian cherub drove you out from the midst of the stones of fire.”
2 Peter 2:4. A testament to the common belief among Jews of the 1st century that angels did fall from heaven and are now the inhabitants of hell.
For if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to pits of nether gloom to be kept until the judgment;
Jude 1:6. Same as 2 Peter 2:4.
And the angels that did not keep their own position but left their proper dwelling have been kept by him in eternal chains in the nether gloom until the judgment of the great day.
Revelation 12:1-17. A brilliant literary account of Lucifer’s nature, rebellion, fall, and aim.
And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery. And another portent appeared in heaven; behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child when she brought it forth; she brought forth a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which to be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days.
Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they were defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world -- he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, "Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death. Rejoice then, O heaven and you that dwell therein! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!"
And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had borne the male child. But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time. The serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, to sweep her away with the flood. But the earth came to the help of the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river which the dragon had poured from his mouth. Then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the sea.
Part 2 of 2
So, now let me take issue with some of your specific points with some gold ol’ fashioned proof texting:
Satan was God's most beautiful creation: Ezekiel 28:12-13
Satan was ever good Ezekiel: 28:15, Jude 1:6
Demons were once angels: All of the above passages
Satan caused demons to be what they are: Revelation 12:1-17
Satan and the demons live in hell: Isaiah 14:12, 2 Peter 2:4, Jude 1:6,
Satan has any power over people after they die: Revelation 12:10, 16-17
Satan rebelled against God: All of the above passages
Satan or demons can interact with inanimate objects directly: Revelation 12:9
Satan or demons can cause bad things to happen to you, like your car breaking down: Who knows
Paradise Lost = Biblical truth: All the above passages.
Finally, this is sort of the important thing that I would like to take issue with:
“I think that one of the greatest strengths of the "emerging church" is its propensity to ask "Why do we believe what we believe and should we continue to do so?" And in this case I think that the answer is clear: we have no reason to believe much of what we do about evil spirits, therefore we should not believe it any more.”
I think that one of the greatest weaknesses of the “emerging church” is its incredible ignorance and confidence. There is an amazing Hebrew tradition surrounding Satan (both canonical and extra-canonical), there are amazing works done by ANE historians on the role of Satan in Mesopotamian cultures, there is a remarkably deep and rich theology of Satan present in the Church Fathers, and about a dozen official doctrinal statements from the Church clarifying everything you could ever want about Satan.
Take, for instance, the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). The opening sentences of the Canons of that Council set out a creed of orthodox faith. Among the first things listed is the following:
The devil and the other demons were indeed created by God good by nature but they became bad through themselves; man, however, sinned at the suggestion of the devil.
In Christianity, individual believers don’t get to decide what they believe; that is done in the Scriptures and by the pronouncements of the Church interpreting those Scriptures. There is a wealth of justification for and teaching on an orthodox belief about Satan and, if one would spend a bit of time, one could find that these aren’t things we simple should or, as Christian, even could not believe any more. Milton did not write Paradise Lost in a vacuum. It wasn’t written as a theology per se, but it was written with orthodox theology in mind. It would be a great place to look for a reminder of what Christianity has to say about Satan.
J Morgan, I find the passages you have included to be wholly unconvincing. First, I have to say your statment that we should allow doctrine to be decided "by the pronouncements of the Church interpreting those Scriptures" to be rather confusing. What "Church" do we subscribe to when trusting interpretation? The Catholic teachings? Methodist? Lutheran? You get my point, they all interpret scripture different ways. People just choose to take the party line of whatever they individually have believed. Perhaps that isn't ideal, but the reality today is that there is no Church interpretation of most passages.
Your passages about Angels being cast into hell seem to me to have nothing to do with demons. These passages specifically say that those angels are bound until judgement, not set loose on the world to tempt men.
I will not touch anything from Revelation because I don't trust anyone to have an accurate interpretation. I think it is just as likely that those events you mention in Revelation are future prophecy as they are records of the past. I'm sorry, but I cannot be convinced to believe anything from interpretations of Revelation that cannot be plainly seen in other scriptures. I'm not saying we should throw it away altogether, but I am saying that I don't trust interpretations of it at this point in my life.
By the time of the 4th Latern Council the Church was steeped in Roman myth. They believed that Mary was without sin and was a virgin until they died. They believed that "Saints" could help answer prayers after they died, and they believed that works earned salvation, to some degree. Should I also believe those things? Any Church doctrine needs to have direct Biblical backing or it cannot be trusted. Just because a Church council in the 13th century said something does not make it fact.
You make the claim that because the Jews believed certain things about Satan that we should too. The Jews had a rich history of Deutornonomistic theology that is countered by the prophets and by Jesus. Should we believe that too? These same Jews killed Jesus because they valued their tradition over Scripture, let's not make the same mistake.
And no, Paradise Lost is not based on Orthodox Christianity or Theology or History, for that matter. The Bible is clear that Adam was with Eve when she was tempted (Eve turned to Adam), he wasn't somewhere else totally unaware of what was going on.
Also, the end of this "Orthodox" work presents a very unorthodox Arian view of Christ, which is a heretical viewpoint that believes He wasn't God, but merely a perfect human example of how to live and die.
“I have to say your statment that we should allow doctrine to be decided "by the pronouncements of the Church interpreting those Scriptures" to be rather confusing.”
Oh, my point wasn’t that we “allow” doctrine to be decided by the Church; it is that doctrine has been set by the Church. It isn’t our place as faithful laity to allow anything.
“What "Church" do we subscribe to when trusting interpretation? The Catholic teachings? Methodist? Lutheran?”
I mean The Church of Jesus Christ. I mean the Church Fathers, the canons of the ecumenical councils of the Church of Jesus Christ, I mean the writings of the Doctors of the Church, I mean the writings of Saints, I mean apostolic letters from bishops of the Church. These are all doctrines that are set long before the question “what Church” had any meaning. Doctrines set by churches subsequent to the Great Schism, the Protestant Reformation, the English Reformation, etc. – no matter the sect – are of less authority than those set by the Church before those schisms. Yet, they still have some authority. Among the Roman Catholic, the Orthodox, the Anglican, and very many Protestant Churches, you will find wide agreement on these doctrines (usually by making reference to the Fathers and ancient Church.
“By the time of the 4th Latern Council the Church was steeped in Roman myth.”
What you are calling “Roman myth” is what Christians call Tradition. This results when the Church – to whom Christ vested all His authority – give authoritative interpretations of the Scriptures or provide doctrines that are extra Scriptural but nonetheless true. The Trinity is a great example. Would the “emerging Church” throw out the Trinity as “Roman myth” because it is not clearly articulated in the Scriptures and is a pronouncement of the Church?
“They believed that Mary was without sin and was a virgin until they died. They believed that "Saints" could help answer prayers after they died, and they believed that works earned salvation, to some degree. Should I also believe those things?”
Yes you should believe those things. That is certainly what most of the Church Fathers believed. That is what every Christian believed until the 16th century. I don’t know what to say; it isn’t Roman myth it is Christian doctrine.
“Just because a Church council in the 13th century said something does not make it fact.”
Actually, in Christianity, when a Church council does say sometime it becomes fact. That is the nature of authority. If you read the Gospels sometime, you will find that Christ leaves His authority to His apostles (read: to His Church) and not to the Scriptures. Now, I will concede, as I have above, that this statement was made with diminished authority because it doesn’t necessarily represent the fullness of the Church (because of the date of that Council). Nonetheless, it seems in line with the teachings of the Church since the Apostles.
“You make the claim that because the Jews believed certain things about Satan that we should too. The Jews had a rich history of Deutornonomistic theology that is countered by the prophets and by Jesus. Should we believe that too?”
Right. Our shared faith is not a jigsaw puzzle, where well thought out pieces fit perfectly together at the end to make a clear and perceptible picture. We believe lots of things that are in tension with each other and we trust that, through God’s mercy, it is all true. Here is the thing: Jesus, His apostles, and many of the Church Fathers believed these things. Simply because they weren’t included in canonical accounts doesn’t mean they weren’t deemed to be true theologies by those who wrote those accounts.
So what about indulgences? What about the inquisition? You make the case that whatever is decided by a church should be held as truth, but the Church is full of men and men get things wrong, no matter how pious they may be. Even Peter had to be corrected by Paul, at one point. Luther became an anti-Semite before he died. Gnosticism and Marcionism were common in the early Church even among some bishops who may have written some great letters. They are still common today. The Bible is clear that the Jews were wrong about some things -- we shouldn't still believe those things just because they did. Rather we should learn from their mistakes. Doctrines like the Trinity are taken directly from Scripture. You can logically make sense of most of the doctrine from the council of Nicea without making any leaps. I don't believe that the same can be said about a great many doctrines that were handed down by councils and Church leaders, among these are:
Purgatory
Indulgences
The divinity of Mary
The dichotomy of the soul and body
Penance
Works based salvation
The need for a formally ordained Priest to administer all sacraments
Those are just a few examples that come readily to mind. I cannot accept that we should allow other men to make doctrine that is not clear in Scripture. I know that men cannonized these Scriptures and other works may have been included had they not, so we are already trusting them some by accepting these Scriptures. I am not saying that other works and edicts of men are without merit. Rather I am saying that we should compare everything to Scripture and if enough evidence cannot be found to logically and clearly support a man's work then it should not be accepted as doctrine. The Church may be right about Satan and demons -- I'm not proposing that they have it wrong and I have some right answer. Rather I am saying that we don't really know many details about them and we should stop pretending we do.
“So what about indulgences? What about the inquisition? You make the case that whatever is decided by a church should be held as truth, but the Church is full of men and men get things wrong, no matter how pious they may be.”
I am not arguing that what the Church teaches is true in some absolute sense; I am arguing that what the Church teaches is true for Christians. It literally is Christianity, take it or leave it. It is a question of authority, both Jesus’s and His apostles’.
Of course the Church gets things wrong in the absolute sense, but they don’t get it wrong in the Christian sense. That’s why the Church should always be engaged in reformation. And even if they did, it isn’t for laity to correct that; that is just not part of Christianity.
That said, there are something things that are beyond reform; things that function at a definitional level (i.e. things that ARE Christianity, for better or worse).
“The Bible is clear that the Jews were wrong about some things -- we shouldn't still believe those things just because they did. Rather we should learn from their mistakes.”
I am not a biblical scholar, but I don’t think there is a single instance where “the Bible” indicts Jews as being wrong about anything. Your view was very popular among Medieval scholars and Protestant Reformers, but a lot of work has gone into showing that it is a really misguided notion. Jesus, for instance, doesn’t think that the Pharisees were wrong about anything per se; He just wanted them to realize that Judaism as such was incomplete. Paul, for another, didn’t think Judaism was flawed at all, he just thought that his contemporaries profoundly misunderstood Judaism. Nowhere in the Bible is Judaism indicted.
“Doctrines like the Trinity are taken directly from Scripture. You can logically make sense of most of the doctrine from the council of Nicea without making any leaps.”
I mean, that is just ridiculous. It assumes that the Scriptures predate the Christian belief of Trinity and that this notion was derived from Scriptures. None of that is true. Christianity was explicitly Trinitarian long before there was a canon. Interestingly, the earlier deniers of the Trinity appealed to apostolic letters (i.e. the New Testament) to make their case that there WAS no Trinity. The first canon of Scripture (very close in many ways to our NT) was put together by Marcion himself to justify, among other things, his rejection of the Trinity. It only seems “logical” to you on the other side because the Church has taught it; it was not obvious at all in the 2nd and 3rd century
You are just thinking about Christianity completely backwards; the Church put together the Bible to justify and codify what it already believed, not the other way around. Christianity was not deduced from the Scriptures (to which Christ grants absolutely no authority), it was taught by apostles (to whom He grants ALL authority). The Scriptures are a TESTAMENT to that, not that itself.
“I cannot accept that we should allow other men to make doctrine that is not clear in Scripture…. I am not saying that other works and edicts of men are without merit. Rather I am saying that we should compare everything to Scripture and if enough evidence cannot be found to logically and clearly support a man's work then it should not be accepted as doctrine.”
I think part of the problem here is that you are making this false dichotomy: Scriptures on the one hand and “works of men” on the other. There are differences between the Scriptures and the teachings of the Church, but they aren’t what you are arguing.
From my vantage point (and this is not something the Fathers would have agreed with), it is obviously true that doctrines and dogmas and teachings by those who have inherited apostolic authority are flawed because the inheritors themselves are flawed. It is also obvious that the same can be said of the Scriptures. Tons of flaws and errors there, too. The Church is Christ in an imperfect world, so It is made up of imperfect members by grace. Until His return, that is all we have. Everything is flawed and imperfect about Christianity, the Scriptures, too. But, for better or for worse, that is Christianity. The Church is not a testament to Christ’s perfection, but a testament to His grace. Yet, there is nothing else to which Christ has given authority until He returns.
All authority in this imperfect world has been inherited by imperfect people and they have and still do teach imperfect things. Yet, they are the things – no matter how imperfect – that are taught with the authority of Christ. A certain degree of humility needs to come with those teachers, but a greater degree of humility needs to come with those believers.
Doctrines are nothing more than proxies for Divine Truth in an imperfect world: This is what we are to believe until all is redeemed and we can finally see clearly the Truth of it all. Until then, we only see as in a glass, dimly.
I agree in many ways with your synopsis of the situation. However, I do not see that as justification of continuing in belief of things that are only in Tradition and do not seem to have a strong Scriptural basis. Yes, the Scriptures, at least the New Testament, were put together to codify belief, but they were supposed to have been written by (or an account of teachings by) people taught by Jesus himself. Even these people were not perfect, as witnessed by when Paul has to correct Peter. However, they are the best bet we have of a correct view. Furthermore, these are the writings that the same Fathers you mention felt were correct and complete enough to codify their beliefs. Therefore, I would contend, if it isn't in the Bible then the Fathers either believed there wasn't enough evidence or it wasn't important enough. They were wise enough to recognize that subtle herecies were rising -- often without malintent -- even in the first generation after Christ. That is why works by the Fathers were not included in the Canon. If the Fathers themselves believed that their works were inferior to the Scriptures they cannonized, shouldn't we, too? And therefore shouldn't we hold all doctrines, even those of the Fathers, up to cannonized Scripture? How else are we to combat herecies like Marcionism and Gnosticism that are convincing logically? Why did the Fathers combat them, and on what grounds? We cannot simply allow a Church-wide vote to determine doctrine that is not supported scripturally. In the Old Testament we see many times when there are only a few prophets trying to uphold the truth against an entire nation turned pagan. We cannot simply say that the majority, even the majority of leaders, is always right. History shows that the majority can be led into herecy.
Some examples of what I mean by the Bible showing the Jews were wrong in their belief as a nation: they were wrong about Deuteronomistic theology, and they were clearly wrong about who the Messiah would be and what he would accomplish. There are all the times they became pagan, but I'm not really talking about that. I'm talking about cultural Tradition that turned out to be misguided or off base.
“these are the writings that the same Fathers you mention felt were correct and complete enough to codify their beliefs. Therefore, I would contend, if it isn't in the Bible then the Fathers either believed there wasn't enough evidence or it wasn't important enough.”
Or that it was common knowledge to those in the culture of the 1st-4th centuries. You have to remember that nobody was planning on there being a Church 2000 years after Christ’s birth. There are huge assumptions made in the Scriptures that aren’t codified and explicit because there was never a notion that people outside the immediate cultural context would read these testaments. We were not planned for.
“They were wise enough to recognize that subtle herecies were rising -- often without malintent -- even in the first generation after Christ. That is why works by the Fathers were not included in the Canon. If the Fathers themselves believed that their works were inferior to the Scriptures they cannonized, shouldn't we, too?”
Actually, most of the original canons did have epistles from the Fathers either in place of current epistles or in addition to them. That said, I wasn’t arguing that the Scriptures aren’t authoritative in a way that the writings of the Fathers aren’t; I was arguing that the Fathers understood much of what you are calling “things that are only in Tradition and do not seem to have a strong Scriptural basis” as being the correct interpretation of some of the passages I included in my original post.
They understood that the authority of Christ rested with the Church first and that the earliest authoritative teachings of the Church were written down as Testaments to orthodox Christian teachings. In that context, then, they understood their authority as inheritors of apostolic authority, as legitimating their interpretation of those Scriptures when it became clear that heresy was not quashed with the circulation of these testaments.
Now, their interpretations may seem “wholly unconvincing” to you, but that is just my point above. There are huge cultural assumptions of which most of us are unaware today that went into writing what would become the NT 2000 years ago. The Fathers were part of that culture and offer the most authoritative interpretation of those writings. Christianity privileges interpretations that are closer to the source. It particularly privileges those interpretations that are written with inherited authority.
So maybe interpretation is actually at the center of our disagreement. I mean, that is what doctrine is: authoritative teaching (or, put another way, authoritative interpretation). Christians have long held that, with regard to the Scriptures, some interpretations are not just “better” than others, but that some are authorized above others. That is to say that the truth value of the content of the claim and the authority by which the claim maker speaks it are not separate from each other (e.g. St. Paul butchers and intentionally misinterprets huge portions of the OT, but because he writes with the authority of an apostle of the risen Christ, his interpretation is by definition the Christian interpretation).
Maybe church doctrine IS roman myth - maybe they're the same thing. Maybe we shouldn't be so quick to make critical distinctions between faith, myth, truth, and history. I believe the things Standing's taken issue with regarding church history - specifically satan and mary, and the cult of saints - IS both Church doctrine and Roman Catholic myth at the same time. The further back we go towards the beginning of the faith, the harder it is to distinguish myth from doctrine and truth, just as it's hard to make pronouncements about the historicity of the oldest of the old testament despite it's absolutely essential place in Church history, tradition, doctrine, faith, etc.
I think tradition and myth are incredibly valuable - essential even - to our faith. Things that seem rather counter intuitive to us as protestant evangelicals today (like Mary's santification) are part of our history and the cutlure of our church whether we like it or not, and we need to recognize that, accept it, and try to understand how these doctrines/myths have shaped and directed our faith throughout it's history. I might be wrong, but I think this is j. morgan's point, and this is something I agree with.
Yet, regardless of tradition, Christianity is a religion of truth. It is a religion that draws its immense power largely from a claim towards absolute truth. If there's one thing church tradition has taught me, it's that our positions have often been wrong, and that doctrine and scripture interpretation have been changed by the highly educated and sometimes idiotic members of our clergy. Church doctrine places a strong emphasis on respecting tradition, and this needs to be upheld, but at the same time it has a strong tradition and moral commandment towards individual critical thinking. The balance between criticizing and accepting tradition is a hard line to walk, but one that we're going to have to attempt if we're to follow Christ honestly.
All this is to say that I think you're on the right line here, Standing, but that I side with j. morgan in thinking you might be a little quick to throw out centuries of church tradition. I think your criticisms are great, and I find our current obsession with Satan as distracting from clearly observing our own sin, and believe much of our current "doctrine" about Satan to be absolutely false, just like you. I don't know if it's something I could defend well, however, but it's a great conversation to start.
If you want to relive the past, we talked about this sort of thing some when talking about inerrancy on my blog, here:
http://redhurtmachine.blogspot.com/2005/10/inerrant-truth.html
I think now it's a question of what we think doctrine and tradition are. I don't think doctrine or tradition have any necessary claim to "truth" - it's simply what's happened, and it's our job to square with that if we're going to call ourselves Christian, true or not.
Roman Myth IS a part of church tradition, history, and doctrine. Whether this is good or not is a different issue.
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