A Father Learning to Love: April 2014

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Satan: Lifting the Veil - Part 8: God’s Sifter

Before we get into the first example of this theme, it should be noted that Jesus’ ministry is full of agrarian metaphors. Farming was much more common of a profession back then, and Jesus often used farming metaphors to teach spiritual principles. Another common theme within the Bible is the concept of purity - and the Bible would often use metaphors to convey this concept: like sorting through the weeds and the harvest, the refiner’s fire, sorting the sheep and the goats, etc. In Luke 22:31-34, Satan appears in one of these metaphors - before Jesus prophesies that Peter will deny him, he says in this passage “Satan has demanded permission to sift you as wheat.” An observant reader will have noticed a similarity between this Satan and the Satan of Job - Satan cannot do anything without first acquiring God’s permission! But even more so, what Satan is asking to do is not evil - it is a necessary function! An agrarian society would have immediately recognized that this is so - wheat has to be sifted in order to remove the chaff, which is tough and not at all enjoyable to eat. So here Satan is still a servant of God! He is serving a function as God’s sifter - straining out the impurities of the disciples through trial by fire. If Peter had been more aware of his frailty (displayed in his denial of Jesus the night of the trial), he would not have been so quick to respond with his egocentric bravado. Peter needed to be humbled by a trial, and Satan serves this function, to humble Peter - which results in more gentleness and self-control.

The second example of Satan serving a necessary function comes in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians - in chapter 5 of this letter, we discover that one of the members of this church has been engaging in “immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife.” Interestingly enough, Paul immediately follows this up with a rebuke of the congregation - saying that they have become arrogant, rather than mourning. Paul then places the blame for the necessity of the consequences upon the congregation! And he states in verse 5:

I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

Once again, we see that Satan is serving a necessary function - sifting this member of the congregation in much the same way that Peter was sifted. And the hope is that through this process, this member will be saved!

But there is a follow-up to this story in the next letter to the Corinthians - in 2 Corinthians 2:5-11, it seems that Paul is gently alluding to this same member. He says that the punishment was sufficient, and they should forgive, comfort, and reaffirm their love for this man! It seems that “the Accuser” has become the church’s inner spirit of self-righteous judgment and accusation here - they became overzealous in their application of the law, and when the excommunication worked and the member tried to come back, the congregation would not let him! This is a striking parallel to the overzealous prosecuting attorney of Job and Zechariah 3! And Paul notices this - he urges the congregation to forgive, so that “the Accuser” will not take advantage of them! So once again, we see that “Satan” is not a being of pure evil - but often grows from a correct application of the law that gets out of control and becomes overly-enthusiastic because it is lacking in mercy!

There is a very similar case briefly mentioned in I Timothy 1:20, where Paul mentions two members who were similarly “handed over to the Accuser, so that they will be taught not to blaspheme.” Here Paul is advocating a sort of passive justice - releasing these men out of his community in order that they may face the true consequences of their ways. From within the community, the consequences of these mens’ sin might not have been clear. The waters would have been muddied - they would have tried to blame any consequences of their actions on other factors, and the church itself would have suffered the accusation of these men and might have fallen into self-doubt. But by releasing these men out of the community, Paul is putting them out where they cannot blame any consequences of their actions on other factors - they only have themselves to blame if things go wrong. But as in 2 Cor. 2:5-11, Paul surely must be hoping that the men will return to the community after repenting.

Satan’s Desire for World Domination

What are we going to do tonight, Brain?

I started the last section with an example of Peter’s ego-centrism. Before I get into a parallel story demonstrating this characteristic, I feel that the reader might wish to remind themselves: Peter was a beloved disciple of Jesus, despite this character flaw! And, I think, Jesus even taught Peter how to use this as a strength - to use his enthusiasm as fuel, driving him forward through hardships as he went about the work of building the kingdom.

Nevertheless, we have another appearance of “Satan” in connection to Peter in Matthew 16:21-28. The passage starts with Jesus informing his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer at the hands of the authorities there, and even be killed. Peter’s ego shines through once again, and he takes Jesus aside to rebuke him. The reasons behind this might be missed for the reader who already knows the end of the story - why wouldn’t Peter understand Jesus’ purposes if Jesus was going to be resurrected? But Peter didn’t think this way - Peter was living within the thought world of a conventional Jewish messiah.

You see, Jesus was not the only - nor the first - Jewish messiah figure. There were dozens of Jewish Messiah claimants within the history surrounding Jesus. And almost all of them tried to establish the “kingdom of God” through violent means. They thought that the kingdom of God was going to come about as all kingdoms did: by overthrowing the current power structure through military might. And in every case, when these messiah claimants died, their following dispersed - a dead messiah was a failed messiah. So when Jesus says he’s going to die, Peter hears this as Jesus giving up on his mission to establish the kingdom of God. So Peter thinks he’s doing Jesus a favor by rebuking him here - “this will never happen to you!”, he says.

But Jesus whips right around and says (verse 23):

“Get behind me, Satan*! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.”
* [A more accurate translation might use the word “adversary” here, as you’ll find in the YLT version.]

Now, I think that this verse is a huge clue to identifying Satan - because we have to ask: if Satan is a literal being who is pure evil, why is Jesus calling his beloved disciple Peter by that name? Are we to believe that Peter is Satan? Or is Satan thrusting his hand into Peter, puppet-style, and controlling him through supernatural ventriloquism?

In one of my earlier posts in this series, I alluded to the possibility that Satan is a literary device - much like “Sophia” in the Proverbs. “Sophia” is not only a female name, but is also Greek for “wisdom”, and so, since Proverbs speaks of God’s wisdom as a woman calling in the streets (see Proverbs 1:20 and 8:1) many scholars have taken up the practice of substituting “Sophia” when talking about the wisdom of God. And if we began to profess belief that “Sophia” was an entity with her own free will and her own personality, we might be doing the same thing that has happened to “Satan” (the accuser). But this passage practically demands to be taken poetically! Jesus is not saying that Peter is a dark demon from the nether realms with supernatural powers - he is using poetic personification to illustrate a spiritual reality! In this passage, Peter shows that he believes Jesus should be acting as the other Jewish Messiah claimants have always done, and is trying to instill the worldly ambition of the Domination System into Jesus, and Jesus is rejecting it! Because violent rivalry only produces further violent rivalry - as any historian will tell you! Rene Girard wrote:

A seductive tempter who suggests to us the desires most likely to generate rivalries, Satan prevents us from reaching whatever he simultaneously incites us to desire. He turns into a diabolos (another word that designates the obstacle/model of mimetic rivalry). Satan is skandalon personified, as Jesus makes explicit in his rebuke of Peter.

So in this passage, we might say that “Satan” actually represents the Domination System itself - and this should come as no surprise, as the accusing nature of humanity often produces a desire for domination, and despises the loss of ego. But here we can find a curious reversal - Jesus uses the word “skandalon” (translated “stumbling block”) in verse 23. And this word is also used in I Corinthians 1:23 to describe how Jesus’ death functions for the Jews, paralleled with the way it is seen as foolish by the Gentiles ("stumbling block" in this verse is "skandalon"). And if we continue reading the Matthew passage, verses 24-25 show that death by crucifixion is not only a strategy for Jesus, but he actually wishes for his disciples to follow him in this strategy! Death by crucifixion is Jesus’ strategy for conquering Rome - a complete reversal! Caesar conquers by hoisting people up on crosses - but king Jesus conquers by offering himself up to be crucified! And this remarkable loss of attachment to one’s very own life seems to be the only way to defeat the accusing nature - for the Accuser feeds on ego, and so in order to defeat "him", one must experience a loss of ego.

This passage - and many others - are meant to expose to us the complete worthlessness of the myth of redemptive violence. But so often, theologians come up with ways to twist the Bible in order to affirm this myth and render violence itself as sacred - as the so-called “Penal Substitutionary Atonement” theology of Anselm does (and, by the way, the church got along fine without this theory for the first thousand years of its existence and I don’t think its invention has helped it much since, either). This theory renders the skandalon of Jesus’ death empty - rather than scandalizing us, it affirms our violence. God himself could find no way to solve evil without using violence, and so He killed His own son! But the theory of Penal Substitution falls apart when you realize its self-contradicting nature - God, in this theory, plays both the role of the victimizer and the victimized. How can a perfect being - devoid of neurotic tendencies - scapegoat Himself?

But Penal Substitution relies on a selective reading of the scriptures, and fails to account for verses like John 15:25, which places the blame solely on those who crucified Jesus, and states that they hated Jesus without a cause. How can they hate Jesus without a cause if God needed them to kill Jesus? Wouldn’t God be the cause?

And if this was really how it went down, then how is it that the author of 1st John can declare that God is love? (I John 4:8, 16) How can a being who personifies love be a worse father than most earthly fathers? I mean, if you heard a story about a Dad who had one son that did something that made him angry, and so he turned around and killed the other so he wouldn't be angry any more, would you say "wow, what a loving father!", or "that guy is abusive and needs anger management classes"?

In Matthew 5:48, Jesus says to "be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" - this comes immediately after a teaching to love enemies (see Mt. 5:43-48). So if we believe that the way God loves enemies is to displace all his righteous anger towards them onto his son, does that mean whenever someone hurts us we have to kill our own children in response? Actually, if you think about that one, this is often what happens - we often take the frustrations we have from dealing with our jobs out on our families. And I don't think Jesus was endorsing this.

But if God really wanted sins to be "paid for", why did Jesus quote Hosea 6:6 in Matthew 9:13 when he said: "But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’"? And in case you missed the importance of this statement, Jesus quotes the same verse again in Matthew 12:7! And why would the author of Hebrews say (in 10:8): "Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them"? Why would the writer of Psalm 40:6 declare that God does not desire sacrifice nor require burnt offering? This is affirmed again and again in passages like Ps. 50:8-15, 51:16-18, 69:30, Isaiah 1:11, and Jeremiah 6:20. And perhaps the biggest challenge to the idea that God could not be satisfied without a blood sacrifice is Micah 6:7-8:

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
    with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
    the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
    and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
    and to walk humbly with your God?

While substitutionary atonement theories declare that violence was necessary in order to satisfy God, a non-violent atonement theory such as Christus Victor allows us to see violence for what it is - completely pointless! By presenting a completely innocent victim, and declaring that we still hated him - without reason - the scapegoat mechanism is revealed, and we can cast it aside. And then our innocent victim - Jesus - points outward at our enemies and reveals that there is never a good reason to hate, and there is never a good reason for violence of any kind. Rather than legitimizing violence and making the scapegoat mechanism sacred, the Gospels are supposed to reveal the true nature of violence and show us how it destroys us just as we destroy the victims that we choose.

And it is only through this revealing of violence as empty and meaningless that we are also able to unveil and dethrone the Accuser. It is only through this unveiling that we can see how - through the mechanisms of the Accuser - we actually hurt ourselves as much as we hurt our enemies.

Rene Girard demonstrates this idea later on in the same article I cited earlier:

On the one hand, Satan is the instigator of scandal, the force that disintegrates communities; on the other hand, he is the resolution of scandal in unanimous victimization. This trick of last resort enables the prince of this world to rescue his possessions in extremis, when they are too badly threatened by his own disorder. Being both a principle of disorder and a principle of order, Satan is truly divided against himself.

In the last line of this quote, Girard references a saying of Jesus - Mark 3:26:

If Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but he is finished!

When we accuse our neighbors and treat them as enemies, we rise up against ourselves, and in so doing we become self-defeating. And as long as we make our violence sacred - as long as we believe that some problems can only be solved through violence - we will fail to unveil this truth. We will continue to try to dominate and conquer others, and this will continue to contribute to cycles of violence which are ultimately self-defeating chaos.

The message of Jesus, which he carried out even to the point of death, was that loving our enemies is the way to defeat them. Thich Nhat Hanh writes about this:

When Gandhi said that love is the force that can liberate, he meant we have to love our enemy. Even if our enemy is cruel, even if he is crushing us, sowing terror and injustice, we have to love him. This is the message of Jesus. But how can we love our enemy? There is only one way – to understand him. We have to understand why he is that way, how he has come to be like that, why he does not see things the way we do. Understanding a person brings us the power to love and accept him. And the moment we love and accept him, he ceases to be our enemy. To “love our enemy” is impossible, because the moment we love him, he is no longer our enemy.

MLK and Thich Nhat Hanh

Could it be that we're even called to love our...Accusers?

At this point, we need to take a closer look at the act of Jesus' atonement, and its meaning, before we go back to examining the appearances of the Accuser and his demons. In my next post, we will examine the scapegoat mechanism and its connection to Satan.

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Table of Contents:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Two Case Studies
Part 3: Serpent = Satan?
Part 4: What is Satan's Real Name?
Part 5: Accuser
Part 6: A Son of God?
Part 7: God's State Prosecutor
Part 8: God’s Sifter
Part 9: Azazel
Part 10: Desert Temptation
Part 11: What Does a Jewish Messiah Look Like?
Part 12: Bow Down to the Domination System
Part 13: Proclaiming Jubilee
Part 14: The Evil One
Part 15: The Angels of the Nations
Part 16: The Gerasene Demoniac
Part 17: Further Lessons on Exorcism in the Bible
Part 18: Driving Satan from Heaven
Part 19: The Unveiling of the Beast of Rome
Part 20: Unveiling the Beast Today
Part 21: Jesus and the Domination System
Part 22: Violence
Part 23: Death
Part 24: The Advocate
Part 25: Conclusions?

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Satan: Lifting the Veil - Part 7: God's State Prosecutor

The final appearance in the Old Testament of this mysterious being - and once again I would like to point out, only one of three (!) appearances as a character - is in Zechariah 3:1-7. The scene is laid out as a heavenly courtroom - it almost resembles a congressional hearing for an official whose actions are being questioned (think: the Benghazi hearings, and compare how Hillary Clinton was questioned to this scene). Once again, Satan (ha satan - literally “the accuser”) seems to be a member of God’s governing body, playing the role of a prosecuting attorney, with Joshua as the defendant. But in this scene, it seems that he’s taken this a bit too far, and God has had enough of it.

Once again, it seems that this passage deserves a bit of context. Zechariah’s ministry took place during the Persian reign of Darius the great - during Israel’s exile in captivity. Many of Zechariah’s audience would have been questioning at this point: “where is God? Why has He allowed us to go through so much trouble? Haven’t we suffered enough at this point? Our forefathers must have done something really, really bad to upset God so much that He’d punish us like this.”

So you can see how this vision is not meant to be taken as a literal story of something that happened, but is rather a very symbolic representation of Israel’s current situation. Joshua is labeled as a high priest in this vision - high priests played a very symbolic role in Jewish liturgy as the mediators between the Jews and God, and so the character of Joshua in this vision is also playing a mediating, representative role as well. Joshua represents the whole nation of Israel, and is dressed in filthy rags - representative of the past sins of the nation of Israel which other prophets had identified as the cause of Israel’s exile and captivity.

So the Accuser is still not a being of pure evil here. The case he’s made against Joshua was the conventional wisdom of generations of prophets! Israel had been tried and found guilty, and was bearing the consequences! Here, “Satan” is merely echoing what everyone believed God’s attitude towards the Israelites was at that time. So what we see here is that the Accuser in this passage is not actually demonic, but is a representation of the inner or collective voice(s) of condemnation within the community. Many sensitive people hear this inner voice repeating accusations of guilt or inferiority tirelessly, and often there is a degree of truth in these accusations.

But this passage is a message of hope for the audience - God comes to the defense of the accused! God is saying “enough is enough!” God rebukes the accusing voices of the community and speaks in the accused’s defense - Israel is a “brand plucked from the fire”, and God removes their “filthy garments” and clothes them instead in “festal robes” and a clean turban, which represents freedom from guilt and the promise of future blessings.

In this passage, the accuser demands strict justice based on inflexible, legalistic principles. This sort of “‘justice” is spirit crushing. But God tempers justice with mercy. The takeaway of this passage is that when we hear a “voice” telling us to deal harshly with people who have “broken the rules”, we should ask if this voice is indeed from God, or if God would call us to use mercy. This vision presents a message to anyone who feels persecuted by their inner voices of accusation - “that’s not God speaking - God is your defense attorney.”

This passage presents a tension with other views presented in the Old Testament, where the evil spirit is from God (see I Samuel 18:10 and 19:9). It asks us to question this supposed origin - “God doesn’t attack - He defends”, it gently calls to us.

Do Not Judge, Or You Become Satan

At this point, I’d like to take a quick detour to the New Testament, where we can find a parallel story that presents a very similar image. In the book of Jude, verses 8 and 9 alludes to a lost legend from the “Assumption of Moses”. According to this legend, when Moses died, the devil claimed his body on the grounds that he had murdered an Egyptian. Once again, the pattern is the same as in Zech. 3 and Job: the devil is an overzealous servant of God with a strict and merciless view of the law. There is some truth to the accusation, but God calls Michael to rebuke this accuser because of the legalism which does not make room for mercy. But what’s interesting about this passage in Jude is that it says that when the angel Michael argued with the devil, he “did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment” - and so the writer of Jude is making the argument that if Michael doesn’t dare to condemn this devil for slander, how can we presume to judge... anyone? If we pronounce a reviling judgment, we end up taking on the role of the accuser ourselves!

Jesus echoes this same sentiment when he tells his audience in the sermon on the mount:

Matthew 7:1-2
Do not judge so that you will not be judged. For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.”
(Parallels Luke 6:37)

And the writer of 2 Peter picks up this theme in 2 Peter 2:10-11 when he writes about corrupt beings who indulge in the desires of the flesh, despise authority and “revile angelic majesties”, but in return the angels “who are greater in might and power do not bring a reviling judgment against them before the Lord.”

The book of Sirach (or, as it is sometimes called, Ecclesiasticus) - which is part of the canon for Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Anglican Christians - has this to say in verse 21:27:

When the ungodly curseth Satan, he curseth his own soul.

Could it be that all along, the Bible has been trying to tell us that by calling anyone “Satan” we become the Accuser ourselves? Do we become satanic merely by believing in a being of pure evil for which there is no hope of redemption?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in “The Gulag Archipelago”:

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

The Devil’s Morality

I totally just wanted an excuse to use this...

Taken together, the picture presented by the passages I’ve outlined in this post is that an overzealous, legalistic view of the law often ends up producing the very evil that the law is supposed to protect us against. Satan presents a strange paradox - the moment you believe you have found “him”, you find instead that he functions as a mirror pointing right back at your very own self. So perhaps the one sin we should be most careful to avoid is slander. Perhaps we should never pick a side and pit ourselves against those who are not “in our tribe”, whilst blindly accepting everything our side claims to be true. For, as I pointed out before, the model of Galatians 3:28 shows us that to be “in Christ” is to live without labels - without status or tribe - but instead to be part of the universal collective.

Satan, in the Old Testament picture we’ve found, believes himself to be the threshold guardian of the law, and yet has no concern over his own state of righteousness, instead focusing the law outward to accuse. But within the contrasting picture of God that these passages draw out, God’s chief characteristic is mercy. And this is the one characteristic that the Accuser in these passages lacks. In “New Seeds of Contemplation”, Thomas Merton wrote (this is from perhaps the most brilliant chapter in the book, which can be found in its entirety here):

This is the chief mark of the theology of hell, for in hell there is everything but mercy. That is why God himself is absent from hell. Mercy is the manifestation of his presence.

The theology of the devil is for those who, for one reason or another, whether because they are perfect, or because they have come to an agreement with the Law, no longer need any mercy. With them (O grim joy!) God is “satisfied.” So too is the devil. It is quite an achievement, to please everybody!

The people who listen to this sort of thing, and absorb it, and enjoy it, develop a notion of the spiritual life which is a kind of hypnosis of evil. The concepts of sin, suffering, damnation, punishment, the justice of God, retribution, the end of the world and so on, are things over which they smack their lips with unspeakable pleasure.

There is a sad irony to the fire and brimstone preachers who terrify their congregations with horror stories about this Satan character, using fear to keep their audience from questioning dogma, but all the while lending their passive support to the economic and political systems which enslave and suck the very life out of entire generations. We can be so good at finding Satan behind every door and hiding in every bush whenever our selfish, ego-driven goals do not come to fruition. And the media makes sensations of the individual cases of most-likely psychologically troubled individuals who are supposedly “possessed”, but all the while we ignore the dominating elements within the corporate systems that act like a cancer - spreading globally through greed whilst treating employees like robots and driving wages to near zero through the “race to the bottom”. But, if Satan is indeed a shadowy supernatural being behind all evil in the world, why would he be so concerned with an individual when he can possess an entire civilization through our own greed and desire for power? Is our modern society really so different from the ancient background of Job - we still live by the Deuteronomic code, worshiping the CEO’s, rich actors, and politically powerful while slandering the destitute beggars. We talk of trickle down wealth while we offer up sacrifices to the gods of Wall Street as we scoff at those ignorant people of ancient religions - but are we really so different? “The gods never died”, writes Carl Jung: “they merely became diseases.” So, denying the existence of “demons” does not help if we do not apply the remedy. But on the flip side, legitimizing them may actually contribute to the ailment.

In my earlier series on hell, I spent a bit of time in one post talking about the supposed heresy of Origen. One of the reason Origen’s detractors found his theology to be so distasteful was that he believed that in the end, even Satan and his demons would be redeemed. Origen came to this conclusion because he found no wiggle room within the Biblical passages which implied God’s universal salvific purposes. But the question I am led to ask is: what if we discovered that, by extending mercy even to the devil himself, we find that he never truly existed in the first place - but in his place was only another son of God, who had merely become lost in his overzealous application of the law?

In my next post, we will begin to examine the New Testament passages where Satan is mentioned.

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Table of Contents:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Two Case Studies
Part 3: Serpent = Satan?
Part 4: What is Satan's Real Name?
Part 5: Accuser
Part 6: A Son of God?
Part 7: God's State Prosecutor
Part 8: God’s Sifter
Part 9: Azazel
Part 10: Desert Temptation
Part 11: What Does a Jewish Messiah Look Like?
Part 12: Bow Down to the Domination System
Part 13: Proclaiming Jubilee
Part 14: The Evil One
Part 15: The Angels of the Nations
Part 16: The Gerasene Demoniac
Part 17: Further Lessons on Exorcism in the Bible
Part 18: Driving Satan from Heaven
Part 19: The Unveiling of the Beast of Rome
Part 20: Unveiling the Beast Today
Part 21: Jesus and the Domination System
Part 22: Violence
Part 23: Death
Part 24: The Advocate
Part 25: Conclusions?

Monday, April 28, 2014

Satan: Lifting the Veil - Part 6: A Son of God?

Table of Contents:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Two Case Studies
Part 3: Serpent = Satan?
Part 4: What is Satan's Real Name?
Part 5: Accuser
Part 6: A Son of God?
Part 7: God's State Prosecutor
Part 8: God’s Sifter
Part 9: Azazel
Part 10: Desert Temptation
Part 11: What Does a Jewish Messiah Look Like?
Part 12: Bow Down to the Domination System
Part 13: Proclaiming Jubilee
Part 14: The Evil One
Part 15: The Angels of the Nations
Part 16: The Gerasene Demoniac
Part 17: Further Lessons on Exorcism in the Bible
Part 18: Driving Satan from Heaven
Part 19: The Unveiling of the Beast of Rome
Part 20: Unveiling the Beast Today
Part 21: Jesus and the Domination System
Part 22: Violence
Part 23: Death
Part 24: The Advocate
Part 25: Conclusions?

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Satan: A Son of God?
The next appearance of Satan as a character in the Bible is in the book of Job. Now, Job is a very interesting book, as the genre is a little hard to place. One of the first things any critical reader will note about the book is that it begins with a prologue written in the style of prose, goes from there into a series of rather lengthy poetic narratives and monologues, and then finishes off with an epilogue written in narrative style. It is because of this structure that some scholars have surmised that perhaps Job was originally intended to be performed as an ancient play (see this link for one place that talks about this). This highly poetic style of Job and the possibility of the book being in the genre of a play should be considered for interpretive purposes - meaning that we ought to consider whether the appearance of Satan as a character in this book should be interpreted as factual or symbolic.

If that makes you nervous, consider the words of the Genesis Rabba, a Jewish midrashic text:

Job probably never existed, and if he did exist, the events recorded concerning him never took place. The whole narrative is intended as a moral lesson.

The point of Job is not what happened - story is far more powerful than that. The point of Job is to ponder Theodicy.

The historical context of the book is of interest in the examination of the meaning of Job. The authorship of this book is unknown, but the most recent scholarship regarding the dating of this work puts it somewhere between the 7th and 4th centuries, B.C., with the 6th century being the most likely for a variety of reasons. That would make it probable that Job was written during the time of the Persian empire.

The symbol for Ahura Mazda

The context of the Persian empire is interesting for two reasons. First of all, the Persian empire during this time was the birthplace of the first truly dualistic religion - Zoroastrianism. Scholars also note the importance of Zoroastrianism in history as a movement of cultures from polytheism to monotheism. Zoroastrians believed that there is one, universal, transcendent, supreme deity of wisdom and uncreated creator who is the beginning and the end - Ahura Mazda. However, Ahura Mazda was not the creator of one particular thing - druj. The concept of druj is a bit nuanced, so it must be contrasted with its opposite - asha. Asha is the equitable laws/order of the universe, the observable reality, the course of all things. Druj contrasted this, and were the violations of this order and against creation, and thus were violations against Ahura Mazda. So druj is very similar to the concept of chaos.

Now, as I said before, Ahura Mazda did not create druj. And here’s where the true dualism comes from - rivaling Ahura Mazda was the evil spirit of chaos and destruction, Angra Mainyu (called Ahriman in the Zurvanite version of Zoroastrianism). Angra Mainyu was the evil twin brother of Ahura Mazda who dwelt in the darkness below, and all druj was attributed to him. This context is interesting to note, as I’m sure you will notice many parallels between the idea of this character and the shape that Satan took over time.

The second contextual clue that is important to the development of Satan in the book of Job is the history of Persia’s network of spies - the king employed these spies who would be called by the title of “Eye of the King”, “King’s Eye”, or “King’s Ear”. This network was somewhat similar to the USA’s FBI and CIA networks - these spies functioned as roving intelligence agents who would probe the colonies for disloyalty, and report back to the king as to the state of his empire. This should be a very interesting piece of context, as the book of Job may be drawing on this context to develop the character of Satan. This is not unheard of, as the Jewish Apocalyptic tradition of literature would often take familiar political, historical, and mythical images and creatively rework them to reveal truths to its audience.

Satan in the book of Job seems to be a combination of these two concepts - the King’s Eye and Angra Mainyu - acting as both an accusing intelligence officer and an agent of chaos. But Job puts a very interesting twist on these concepts. In Job 1:6 (NASB - which seems to match the YLT translation the closest), it says that “the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan (literally “ha satan” - “the accuser”) also came among them.” Did you catch that? Satan is numbered among the sons of God. It doesn’t say he snuck in. It doesn’t say he had to beat up some guards to get in. He just comes right on in with the rest of the sons of God. He is a fully credentialed member of God’s court in this passage - not a fallen angel of darkness, banished into the realms of the underworld.

In the passage that follows, his role resembles that of a District Attorney - most likely drawing on the role of the “King’s Eye”, which would have been quite familiar to Job’s audience. He’s performing a function of God’s government - a servant of God! The fault of Satan in this passage is not that he is pure evil, but more that he plays his role a little too well - he’s overzealous! You might even notice some similarity between this character and the Pharisees of Jesus’ time.

At this point, it almost seems as though we should stop calling this character “Satan”, and simply refer to him as “the Accuser” (it is, after all, the literal translation). The question I might pose would be along the lines of: is this character meant to be taken literally, and should we take the passages in Job where this character appears as proof that there is a supernatural being represented here? Or, does this character fulfill a literary function, similar to the way that Proverbs portrays “Wisdom” as a woman crying out in the streets? (See Proverbs 1:20 and 8:1.) Are we meant to take this as proof that there is a being named Satan (literally: the Accuser), or is this a plot device to get the ball rolling?

Moving on: as the plot develops, God says “have you considered my servant Job?” It seems that God and the Accuser have talked about him before. God regards Job as a unique case - "there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil.” (Job 1:8) But the Accuser is not convinced - as we see in verses 9 through 11 - he believes that the only reason Job is this way is because Job has had a really nice life, filled with nice things and happy circumstances. The Accuser thinks that if God took away some of these blessings, Job would curse God - you can really see the “King’s Eye” role playing out here in a way that is a bit overachieving. It’s not enough that Job was blameless - the Accuser has to prove that he would not have been, if he had been tested with the right circumstances.

Now this deserves a bit more context, I think. I believe that one of the purposes of the book of Job was to critique, present tension for, and give nuance to another piece of Biblical literature known as the Deuteronomic code. The Deuteronomic code was a set of laws and standards that the Israelites were to live by, and it ends with Deuteronomy chapter 28, wherein the Israelites are told that if they follow this standard rigorously - carefully keeping every commandment within the previous chapters - God will bless them. Their cities will prosper, their wives will be hot and their children well-behaved, their crops will grow plentifully, people will sing their praises, they’ll get to meet all their favorite celebrities, they’ll own a Porsche, etc. But - the Israelites were told - if you don’t obey every law within this code, you will be cursed - people in the city and the country will curse you, your wife will be ugly and your children will be brats, your crops will wither up, your health will suffer, your car will break down on the highway, etc. (Ok, I’m putting this in more modern language - but this is the gist of it.)

Now, this code was quite onerous to many, as it was often used to justify oppressive rulers who lived in extravagant wealth - they’d point to everything they had and say “see? I must’ve done something good!” And to top it off, whenever someone got sick, or was born into poverty, or got hurt, or something along those lines, people who legalistically applied the Deuteronomic code would say that these people must have done something bad, and so they must deserve their troubles. In the beginning of John chapter 9 we see that people are still following the code of Deuteronomy 28 - Jesus and his disciples see a man born blind, and the disciples ask Jesus whether it was the blind man who sinned or his parents? Because if you live by the principle of Deuteronomy 28, it's logical to assume that this man was blind because he was being punished for sins, right?

Today, in America’s political landscape, this code is still applied! Many people like to assume that anyone who is “on welfare” must be lazy and irresponsible - the Deuteronomic code is alive and well!

But the book of Job functions as a critique of this code - Job is righteous, but bad things happen to him! Throughout the book, Job’s friends repeatedly insist that Job must have done something bad, and this is why bad things happened to him. But he repeatedly insists that he is blameless - and in the beginning God declared that Job was a righteous man as well! And in the end of the book, God rebukes Job’s friends, says they’ve misrepresented Him, and puts Job in charge of dealing with them “according to [their] folly” (see Job 42:7-8). So this functions almost as an overturning of the Deuteronomic code - or at least gives it a nuance that wasn’t noticed before. Because we see through this story that we can’t just assume that if someone follows all the rules, nothing bad will happen to them - nor can we assume that anyone who is going through a rough time must have done something bad to deserve it either!

Note also that in the story from John 9, Jesus also contradicts the Deuteronomic code, and says that neither the man nor his parents sinned and caused the man's blindness (see verse 3). In addition, we see this tension played out in other passages. For example: while Ex. 34:6-7 states that the Lord will "[visit] the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation", Deut 24:16 contradicts this and states that "parents shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall children be put to death for their parents", and Ezek. 18:20 also states that "a child shall not suffer for the iniquity of a parent, nor a parent suffer for the iniquity of a child".

Back to Job - the author is also playing a bit of a balancing act here. You see, while on the one hand he is rebuking those who applied Deuteronomy 28 legalistically, on the other hand he seems to be critiquing the views of the other side as well. You see, while on the one hand, many of the members of Job’s audience would have been Deuteronomy 28 followers, on the other hand, there were most likely members of the audience who would have resented Deuteronomy 28. And these audience members would have resented the rich, the rulers, the plutocrats, the land-owners, etc. These audience members might have felt a bit of pleasure when the Accuser said “put forth Your hand now and touch all that he has; he will surely curse You to Your face.” (See Job 1:11.) They may have even derived a bit of pleasure from all the tragedies that Job endured. And to this section of Job’s audience, there was also a rebuke - Job didn’t curse God, and so he was truly a righteous man!

This point is really drawn out in the second chapter of Job - the conversation between God and the Accuser is repeated almost word for word here, but God adds a little phrase in verse 3:

Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man fearing God and turning away from evil. And he still holds fast his integrity, although you incited Me against him to ruin him without cause.

This verse is a word-for-word repeat of Job 1:8, except for the addition I’ve italicized above. And this was a common literary technique in Hebrew poetry - often, authors of Hebrew poetry would emphasize a point by repeating a phrase, but altering it just slightly enough to call attention to that alteration. In this case, the author of Job wants his audience to observe that Job really is blameless, and the Accuser had no cause whatsoever to test his loyalty to God. You might wonder if those audience members who resented the Deuteronomic code and wanted to see Job harmed might have been squirming in their seats at this point.

For this section of the audience, the book of Job delivers a bit of a gut punch by revealing that the character of Job actually cared about those who would have resented the Deuteronomic code - in Job 29:12-13, Job says:

I delivered the poor who cried for help,
And the orphan who had no helper.
The blessing of the one ready to perish came upon me,
And I made the widow’s heart sing for joy.

So you can see that the author of Job is playing a delicate balancing game here - he’s contradicting the views of one section of his audience who held the Deuteronomic code a bit too legalistically, and at the same time he’s encouraging the other side of his audience to see the goodness in the character of Job.

With this context in mind, you can see how the character of the Accuser in Job is not a character of pure evil either - he is an overzealous member of God’s court who fulfills the role of District Attorney, and actually resembled Job’s audience in a number of ways.

But what might be even more interesting is that this character doesn’t take the blame for the tragedies that Job endures. All throughout the conversations between Job and his friends, “Satan” is never mentioned! In fact, when Job finally does question God about what’s happened to him, God doesn’t come out and say “hey dude - it wasn’t me! It was Satan!” God seems to take the blame here! Actually, if you were reading carefully, you would have noticed in the second chapter that the Accuser had no power to do anything! In verse 5 of this chapter, the Accuser says: “put forth Your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh; he will curse You to Your face.”

Perhaps even more curious is that Satan completely disappears from the plot after performing the role of testing Job’s faith, and never makes a reappearance afterward! And even when Satan was a character, the audience still can’t tell who’s “to blame” for Job’s calamities - he has no power on his own, and has to ask God’s permission, and even has to ask God to do some of it Himself! It’s almost as if the author is saying “hey, this idea of dualism doesn’t really solve the problem! You still have the nagging question of why bad things happen anyways! Because even if there is an evil supernatural being who rivals God, he's still not in charge and can’t do anything without God’s permission - so can we really assign the blame to him? God still has to allow it - so you are still left asking why.”

In “The Devil Wears Nada: Satan Exposed”, author Tripp York explores this same issue:

One of my students, rather unintentionally, helped me make a little sense of this Jobian quandary. Granted, I don’t think it’s going to make me sleep any better at night, but it is worth considering. He said, “You know, it’s a scary thing to be one of God’s favorites. Not just for you, but, as we learned from this story, for your loved ones. It makes you a little nervous if your parents are righteous people.”

It is true; the closer you are to God the more likely you are to experience a world of hurt. If you don’t believe me, first, stop listening to Joel Osteen, and, second, just ask Job, Abraham, Moses, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Jonah, Hosea, the disciples, the martyrs, the majority of saints throughout Christian history, pretty much the entire history of the Jewish people and . . . it seems like I am forgetting someone . . . oh yeah, Jesus.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Because your Father loves you—and us—so much.

It is one hell of a story.

So once again, I must ask - is “Satan” meant to be taken as a literal being, or is “he” just a plot device to get the plot rolling so that the audience can wrestle with the bigger questions that this book presents?

In the next section, we will examine the third, and final appearance of Satan in the Old Testament.

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Table of Contents:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Two Case Studies
Part 3: Serpent = Satan?
Part 4: What is Satan's Real Name?
Part 5: Accuser
Part 6: A Son of God?
Part 7: God's State Prosecutor
Part 8: God’s Sifter
Part 9: Azazel
Part 10: Desert Temptation
Part 11: What Does a Jewish Messiah Look Like?
Part 12: Bow Down to the Domination System
Part 13: Proclaiming Jubilee
Part 14: The Evil One
Part 15: The Angels of the Nations
Part 16: The Gerasene Demoniac
Part 17: Further Lessons on Exorcism in the Bible
Part 18: Driving Satan from Heaven
Part 19: The Unveiling of the Beast of Rome
Part 20: Unveiling the Beast Today
Part 21: Jesus and the Domination System
Part 22: Violence
Part 23: Death
Part 24: The Advocate
Part 25: Conclusions?

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Satan: Lifting the Veil - Part 5: Accuser

Table of Contents:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Two Case Studies
Part 3: Serpent = Satan?
Part 4: What is Satan's Real Name?
Part 5: Accuser
Part 6: A Son of God?
Part 7: God's State Prosecutor
Part 8: God’s Sifter
Part 9: Azazel
Part 10: Desert Temptation
Part 11: What Does a Jewish Messiah Look Like?
Part 12: Bow Down to the Domination System
Part 13: Proclaiming Jubilee
Part 14: The Evil One
Part 15: The Angels of the Nations
Part 16: The Gerasene Demoniac
Part 17: Further Lessons on Exorcism in the Bible
Part 18: Driving Satan from Heaven
Part 19: The Unveiling of the Beast of Rome
Part 20: Unveiling the Beast Today
Part 21: Jesus and the Domination System
Part 22: Violence
Part 23: Death
Part 24: The Advocate
Part 25: Conclusions?

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Accuser
I started my exploration of the Old Testament appearances of our ideas of Satan by declaring that Satan is only mentioned three times in the Old Testament as a character. But what you might find interesting is that there are a number of other cases where Satan appears in the Old Testament as a word.

You see, “Satan” comes from the Hebrew word for “accuser”, “adversary”, “challenger”, “difficulty”, or “distraction”. Most often when you find “Satan” in the Bible, it actually originally appeared as hasatan (or ha satan) - with the leading “ha” providing a definite article, rendering the translation as “the accuser”, or “the adversary”. But “satan” is just a word, like any other word in their language. And you will find it used as such.

For example, in Numbers 22, there is a story set during the nation of Israel’s conquest of the land of Israel. The king of Moab - Balak - knows Israel is coming, and he’s heard of their successful battles - so he is afraid. So Balak sends for Balaam, who is a sort of prophet. Balak wants Balaam to put a curse on Israel. At first, he cannot convince Balaam to do so, but in verse 20, God tells Balaam to go ahead and go with them. Strangely enough, without any indication of why, we see God acting a bit bipolar and becoming very angry with Balaam in verse 22 when he obeys God's own command. And if you check one of the more literal translations of this verse - such as the YLT version - you’ll see that the verse mentions God sending a messenger (translated in some versions as “angel”) to stand in the way as an adversary. The original language here is “satan”. You will see a similar use of the word in verse 32 as well. So an angel performing a task that was given to him by God is a “satan”.

Clearly, this word is not meant to denote a being of pure evil here, but rather is meant to convey the performance of a functional role - the role of an obstacle, or adversary.

Another interesting example of the use of this word appears in a story about David - in I Samuel 27, David decided that in order to be safe from Saul’s anger towards him, it might be a good idea to hide out for a while in the land of the Philistines. So he takes some of his men and they hide out in Gath under the care of a man named Achish (gesundheit). In chapter 29, we find that David and his men are even serving in the Philistine army during this time! But the Philistine army in this chapter is preparing to attack Israel, and the fact that David and his men are amongst the forces makes one of the commanders a little uncomfortable, and so he asks about “these Hebrews”. Achish sings the praises of David and his men, but in verse 4 we find that this doesn’t satisfy the commander, who wants David and his men to be sent away. And once again, if you check a more literal translation of the verse such as the YLT version, you’ll see the word adversary (literally: ha satan) is used. The commander is saying that if they bring David and his men along into a fight against David’s own people, David and his men will surely take on the role of an adversary - the role of a satan. Once again, this word is not meant to indicate that David is a supernatural being of pure evil, but merely speaking about a role he might perform under the circumstances.

You can also find similar uses of this word in 2 Samuel 19:22, I Kings 5:4, I Kings 11:14, I Kings 11:23-25, and Psalm 109:6 - and in none of these places do we find that the word is meant to convey the sense that a supernatural being of pure evil is present.

So when did the common, everyday word “satan” become a name? How did the character of Satan develop?

Who Did This - God or Satan?
The first appearance of “ha Satan” (the Accuser) as a character comes quite late in the game for the Old Testament. Prior to this appearance, the early Jewish faith had no place for him. There was no God but Yahweh, and thus whatever happened - whether it be famine or plenty, sickness or health, war or peace - was ascribed directly to the mighty hand of Yahweh. We see this mindset portrayed in Deuteronomy 32:39:

[T]here is no god besides Me;
It is I who put to death and give life.
I have wounded and it is I who heal,
And there is no one who can deliver from My hand.

So with the knowledge that the Israelites gave credit for everything to Yahweh, it should come as no surprise that He would send Moses out with a holy mission in Exodus 4:21-23, and then turn right around and try to murder him in verse 24! Yes, did you catch that? Moses did nothing - absolutely nothing at all - between verses 23 and 24, and yet once again, God appears to be bipolar and fickle! What really happened here?

This is the story of the first circumcision - which would later become a ritualistic sign of Jewishness for the males of the tribe. So we might wonder if perhaps Moses had developed an infection, and not knowing the science behind such things concluded that God had changed His mind and become angry with him...for...some strange reason.

This sort of thinking obviously caused problems for the early Jewish theologians. After all, Yahweh was supposed to be a God of justice (see Genesis 18:25)! How could these early Jewish theologians claim that their God was just, and then turn around and claim that He was the cause of everything that happened - good or evil?

And so, gradually, the Jews began to talk about the supernatural in more dualistic terminology - there were angels and there were demons; God and Satan. But the introduction of this terminology happened so late in the game that there are only three references to the character of Satan.

The first is a very interesting case indeed - and we can see how Jewish theologians at the time were not unanimous in this new form of thinking. In 2 Samuel 24:1, it says that God’s anger kindled against Israel, and He incited David to take a census of the people. This is some very descriptive language, and the casual reader might wonder: what’s the big deal with taking a census? Indeed, if you continue reading this passage, you’ll find that David feels extremely guilty about the census in verse 10, and then what proceeds is an account of God prescribing a pestilence as a sort of penance. So what’s so bad about a census?

The answer to this might be in Numbers 1:2-3:

Take a census of the whole congregation of Israelites, in their clans, by ancestral houses, according to the number of names, every male individually; from twenty years old and upward, everyone in Israel able to go to war.

So one purpose of a census is to find out how big of an army you have - in preparation for war. The census in 2 Samuel 24:1 might indicate that David is contemplating his nation’s military strength - perhaps David was considering widening Israel’s borders by invading the neighboring nations. Or perhaps David simply wished to have peace of mind - but felt he needed to find it through military strength rather than through trust in God.

Another passage - Exodus 30:11-16 - shows that the census was used as a method for taxation. So perhaps this census presented a harsh economic burden upon Israel.

Whatever the case, the writer of 2 Samuel struggled to explain the situation. And what makes the story even more interesting is that another Biblical writer who told the same story came up with a much different explanation for what happened.

In 1 Chronicles 21:1, the same story is being told, but this time it is not God who incited David, but Satan. Interestingly enough, this passage does not have the preceding “ha”, but merely uses the word “satan” - as if it were a name for a character. This is the very first appearance in the Bible of this character - and it should be interesting to note that the writers of 1 Chronicles and 2 Samuel were not in agreement of the particulars of the story.

Actually, if you do a careful comparison of the way the Chronicler, the writer of 1 and 2nd Samuel, and the writer of 1 and 2nd Kings tell the stories they share in common, you will find a number of differences. In particular are the theological differences between the Chronicler and the writer of 1 and 2nd Samuel. The Chronicler has a more rosy view of David and skips the story of Bathsheba altogether, and in general seems to have a much less wrathful version of God. In contrast, 1 and 2nd Samuel are speculated to have been written by a member of king David’s court, as there is plenty of juicy gossip to be found, with many intimate and gritty details that do not appear within the Chronicles.

Keeping this in mind, we can see that the writer of the Chronicles deals with the problem of explaining the same story that 2 Samuel tells by displacing God’s wrath upon a divine scapegoat - Satan. Satan plays the role of chief executor of God’s wrath - doing the things that God Himself is not comfortable with doing. Satan thus becomes a convenient theological tool - an explanation for everything that is hard to explain.

But, interestingly enough, the other two appearances of Satan in the Old Testament are quite a bit more nuanced.

In the next section, we will examine the appearance of Satan among the sons of God.

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Table of Contents:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Two Case Studies
Part 3: Serpent = Satan?
Part 4: What is Satan's Real Name?
Part 5: Accuser
Part 6: A Son of God?
Part 7: God's State Prosecutor
Part 8: God’s Sifter
Part 9: Azazel
Part 10: Desert Temptation
Part 11: What Does a Jewish Messiah Look Like?
Part 12: Bow Down to the Domination System
Part 13: Proclaiming Jubilee
Part 14: The Evil One
Part 15: The Angels of the Nations
Part 16: The Gerasene Demoniac
Part 17: Further Lessons on Exorcism in the Bible
Part 18: Driving Satan from Heaven
Part 19: The Unveiling of the Beast of Rome
Part 20: Unveiling the Beast Today
Part 21: Jesus and the Domination System
Part 22: Violence
Part 23: Death
Part 24: The Advocate
Part 25: Conclusions?