Question: Please! Can you handle the issue of the ORIGIN of evil/sin? It disturbs me a lot! Can this theory of it having its origin in heaven hold water? And who is SATAN (my grandmother 100+yrs old, asked me this last yr. It was then that I discovered that I don’t know who Satan is).
Elitwatz from Tanzania
Response:
Theodicy Further Explained
Last time we said that, Christian Theodicy argues that for God in his omnipotence (all-power) to deal with Sin preventively is an abuse of power (omnipotence) and a violation of the conscience human right to choose between freely expressed alternatives (Job 1:10, Genesis 2:16-17). The Identity and agenda of God as distinguished from both the identity and agenda of Sin can only be rectified if the power (Sin) is allowed full access to the creation of God with both its activities and the free-will of man uninterrupted (Job 1:6-12). For God to be a just and righteous God (Theodicy), his omniscience must not participate in the perceptive faculties of man as he decides. Man has to be independent of divine influence regardless of the fact that both man and Sin are placed in the realm of divinity. This is what the question in Job 1:9 that says; “Does Job fear God for nothing?” communicates.
It must be understood at the outset that Christian Theodicy is not apologetics for a God who is an alternative good. In other words, if God is good to those free-will beings who have chosen him, evil as well is good to those other free-will beings who have chosen it (Genesis chapters 2-3). Theodicy is not a section of philosophical relativism (preferences). While divine credibility is consistent when God doesn’t interrupt Sin-Power and human choice, theodicy teaches that the credibility of God is not restricted to him not involving himself in the volitional affairs of man and the Sin-Power but also in his claim of Goodness (Genesis 2:17, Psalm 25:8, 10).
Distinguishing Satan from Yahweh
In the Bible, Satan is largely understood from an anthropomorphic (human characterization of the strange) point of view. Therefore, we have all been taught since childhood that Satan is a being and therefore the cause of Sin and sinning as well. The name Satan, however, stems from the Hebrew word “śaṭan,” a term whose definition includes “adversary” and “accuser.” (Comay and Brownrigg. “Satan,” pp. 404). According to scholars and Bible students like Lucas Sweeney; In the Hebrew Bible, śaṭan was thus never used as a proper name and served merely as a term to identify an adversary. In the Hebrew Bible, there was no Satan with a capital S, and in early Hebrew traditions, there was no devil, demons, or Hell. Evil and suffering in the world instead had another source; God himself (Isaiah 45:7).
It is this primitive understanding of who God is and how he operates by the Jews as presented in the Canon of the Old Testament that establishes what I normally call the Judaism Cult in the Bible and at the same time having these narratives in the Bible invokes the question of theodicy that I have previously addressed. How could a loving and benevolent God allow so much suffering and pain on earth? According to Gregory Mobely and T.J. Wray in their book The Birth of Satan; Tracing the Devil’s Biblical roots (New York, Palgrave Macmillan 2005), pp. 85-87. The eventual answer to this question (can God be both evil and good?) within the religion of ancient Israel was found during the Persian period, 539-332 BCE, the period in which Persia controlled the entire Near East, including Israel.
Perhaps the earliest point in Satan’s history may have its roots in the Persian Empire, which in turn influenced ancient Judaism. The ancient religion of Persia was Zoroastrianism, based on the teachings of a religious philosopher named Zoroaster who may have lived around 600 BCE. Among his teachings was the compelling idea of dualism. According to dualism, evil does not stem from the good God or spirit known as Ahura Mazda, “wise lord,” within the faith. Instead, there existed a separate evil being known as Ahriman, “fiendish spirit,” also known as Angra Mainya, “evil spirit,” that created death, disease, and lies.
People had to choose whether to follow Ahura Mazda on the path of good or Ahriman on the path of evil. The idea from Persia that God himself was separate from evil would have been an acceptable answer to the early Jewish theodicy question and would have explained how there could be such suffering in a world created by a loving God. From this was born the idea that God did not personally create suffering himself, but that he would instead use other lowly figures to complete such tasks with his approval. This idea would lay the foundation for Satan’s entrance into the world. It is therefore obvious that the patriarchal religion and the religion of Israel through the period of monarchies did not have the idea of Satan as an opposing side to God but had Yahweh as the source of both good and evil (Isaiah 45:7, Job 2:3; Exodus=10 plagues on Egyptians, Numbers 25:6-13; Hosea 13:4,9,16; etc.).
Can absolute Good exercise Evil?
To distinguish the source of evil from the source of good, therefore, was a theology developed in the exile. Who Satan is therefore through scriptures depends on whether you are reading the Bible with the Christian lens or with the former Jewish eyeglasses that look at God as the source of both evil and good. This understanding is still exercised in modern Judaism and other religions like Islam and some protestant cults. Logically, God cannot be ‘absolutely’ good if he is still the source of evil and neither can he be ‘absolutely’ evil if out of him comes a single goodness.
Next, how Satan is presented in the scriptures will be discussed.
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