A Brief History of Evil

Christians have this very specific picture of the story of satan in their heads, one that is at least to some degree founded on the Bible, but actually diverges from it more than they realize. The devil is not really much of a player in the Old Testament. In fact the name satan only appears in three passages. Now in the New Testament, he is a much bigger player. In fact, he is everywhere, he is the main antagonist of the Gospels. In the synoptics, it is really satan who is to blame for the death of Jesus. But the New Testament is really bringing together three independent Old Testament strands of thought.

The first can be found in the following places (for examples): Psalm 74:12-17, Job 3:8-10, Isaiah 51:9-10. Supplementing those read Genesis 1:1-9, Genesis 7:11-24, Exodus 14:21-22, and Daniel 7. In these passages, there is this ancient serpent or dragon, a watery beast that God killed before the world began. That beasts body became the great deep, the ocean of chaos out of which God makes the world. In fact if you read those passages in that order you can see a clear narrative, whereby God slays the dragon and out of it's watery body the world is created, only to later reassert itself at times in the form of the flood (the waters of chaos retaking the world), the Pharaoh and the Reed Sea, and then finally with actual beasts coming back out of the water in Daniel. So there is this idea that God created the world out of pre-existing Chaos, and indeed out of the body of a monster, and that sometimes that monster re-asserts itself, either by God's command (as a punishment upon some group) or on its own (to threaten God's creation).

The second motif is the War in Heaven story. The main texts for this are: Genesis 6:1-8, Numbers 13:25-33, Psalm 82 and Daniel 11. Here there is this idea that God has set angels over mankind, and they have either been derelict in their duties or have sinned against God. The Genesis passage gives lust as the reason, and Daniel just has this vision of different angels ruling over different countries and taking on the worst attitudes of nationalism. The idea is that angels have sinned and literally fallen, not to hell, but to earth. Here they set  themselves up as demi-gods, and have super-powered children who run amuck around the world. In Psalm 82, God judges the angels to whom He has delegated power to be unworthy of their positions, and thus they will be punished with death.

Finally is the satan story, which really only covers Job Chapters 1 & 2 and Zechariah 3:1-5. And satan is really just a stress tester for God. He goes around and tests things to make sure that they are as strong as they can be. He does cause trouble, but it is all at the behest of, and for the glory of, God. God needs to make sure His creation is as strong as it possibly can be, and that is satan's job. But part of his role is to accuse people, to act as prosecuting attorney in God's heavenly court. In this role, he is seen to sometimes go too far. In Zechariah he is chided by God for accusing and tearing down what was basically a good man who made a mistake.

Over time, the other two themes got subsumed under the satan theme. Perhaps this indicates that the Jews had come to see the problem of guilt, and its seeming intractability, as the primary problem that people face. If so, that would have an interesting consequence for soteriology and theories of atonement. In any case, satan came to be seen as the embodiment of all dark, chaotic and evil forces in the world and indeed the source of all rebellion against God. But it was not always so. The point is that the narrative many Christians have accepted about a satan who fell before the world was created, because of pride, and all that, is not a narrative really found in the Bible. Rather you have a jigsaw puzzle that can be put together in a multitude of ways. I do not believe that the standard story is the best way to do that. I have my own thoughts on the matter, which I am just starting to really develop. I leave you with one last thought: Mark Crawford and I were talking yesterday about all this and he mentioned a theologian who suggests that creation itself was an act of redemption. Bernard Batto makes a similar connection. I have long thought Batto was right and that creation and redemption are a unified act. The theological consequences of this line of thought, both good and bad, are huge.