Greater Suffering Producing Greater Zeal

"Let us then, when we desire to effect any thing great and noble, not regard this, the greatness of the labor which it brings, but let us rather look to the gain. Mark, for instance, Paul, not therefore lingering, not therefore shrinking back, because 'there were many adversaries;' but because 'there was a great door,' [1 Corinthians 16:9] pressing on and persevering. Yea, and as I was saying, this was a sign that the devil was being stripped, for it is not, depend on it, by little and mean achievements that men provoke that evil monster to wrath. And so when thou seest a righteous man performing great and excellent deeds, yet suffering innumerable ills, marvel not; on the contrary, one might well marvel, if the devil receiving so many blows were to keep quiet and bear the wounds meekly….So then, though we be in peril, beloved, though we suffer ever so greatly, let us with the greater zeal apply ourselves to our labors for virtue's sake." (John Chrysostom, Homilies On First Corinthians, 43:6)

The Tempter as shapeshifter

1. One of the oddities of Gen 3 is how the Tempter is introduced with so little exposition or backstory, as if the original audience would be familiar with a character like the Tempter. The name of the Tempter is a pun or triple entendre, so it has a dual identity. There's the image it projects and then there's its true identity. This suggests the Tempter is an entity in the tradition of shapeshifters. Agents that alternate between identities. Agents that may appear to be animals but that's not their true identity or original identity. Conversely, agents that appear to be human, but they've undergone a transformation. 

2. The tradition of shapeshifters is ethnographically quite diverse. Two standard academic monographs are Montague Summers, The Werewolf in Lore and Legend (Dover 2003 reprint) and Sabine Baring-Gould, The Book of Werewolves (2002 Blackmask Online). There's also American Indian folklore about skinwalkers and totemic animal spirits among Plains Indians, desert southwestern tribes, as well as Algonquian tribes (e.g. Manitou). cf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ae_Xw8IlW8

3. Shapeshifters are naturally impossible, but within the worldview of Christian supernaturalism and pagan witchcraft, they may be realistic. It's necessary to sift evidence for shapeshifters from different phenomena:

i) Orphaned feral children misidentified as werewolves

ii) Lycanthropy as a psychotic condition (e.g. Dan 4). 

iii) People who aspire to be animals (e.g. (Berserkers). They may aspire to be possessed by an animal spirit or actually be transformed into an animal. That, however, is a kind of playacting. 

iv) Distinguishing folkloric shapeshifters from literary and cinematic shapeshifters. 

4. The role of magic also requires sifting:

i) Witchcraft spawns lots of mythology and legend that have no basis in fact. Ingrown folklore that's passed on. 

ii) Defamatory accusations of witchcraft. 

iii) Conversely, cultivating a reputation for witchcraft can have propaganda value by making the individual an object to be feared and placated. 

iv) A distinction between having the ability to be shapeshift and the ability to hex others: S. Augustine declared, in his De Civitate Dei, that he knew an old woman who was said to turn men into asses by her enchantments. Sabine Baring-Gould, The Book of Werewolves (5).

5. It may not be coincidental that shapeshifters are often associated with the desert. That's the case in American Indian folklore, and it has biblical parallels. Consider the ambiguous references in Isa 13:21 & 34:14. And the further fact that the Devil tempted Jesus in the desert. 

6. Of even greater potential interest is whether Lev 16:8 and 17:7 allude to goat demons in the desert. Occultic shapeshifters.

This might resonant with to the original audience for Gen 3, because the Israelites were living in the desert at the time Genesis was written. So even though Gen 3 recounts an incident that happened millennia before, the idea of a malevolent shapeshifter may well be a recognizable entity in their experience. 

This also explains the fluid identity of the Tempter, not only in Gen 3 but Rev 12 and 20. An evil spirit (fallen angel) with an animal name and reptilian imagery or symbolism. 

Who is the Devil Incarnate?

1. Maybe this isn't worth writing about, but when so many Americans get their theology from Hollywood movies, perhaps some clarification is in order. 

2. The Bible has an Antichrist figure. He's not the devil, but a high-ranking human agent of the devil. Preterists tend to view the Antichrist as a personification for oppressive pagan or secular regimes. 

Futurists regard the Antichrist as an individual whose advent is a precursor to the return of Christ. He has a twofold role: as a sorcerer and a world leader. In Rev 13, these are split up. 

The "Antichrist" is a Johannine title, but it's used to designate a parallel figure in Paul (2 Thes 2:1-4). Same figure, different nomenclature. The Antichrist has OT motifs. 

3. Hollywood has developed its own legend of the Antichrist. In the mythology of Hollywood movies, the Antichrist is in some sense the Devil Incarnate. The Devil Incarnate is a fictional character, not a biblical figure. 

In that respect the Antichrist is a diabolical parody or travesty of the Christian Incarnation. Christ and the Antichrist are both symmetrical and diametrical figures. 

4. The two best examples are Rosemary's Baby and The Omen. In Rosemary's Baby, the devil impregnates a woman, thereby spawning a human/diabolical hybrid. He's not the Devil Incarnate but the devil's son. 

5. The origin of the Damien in The Omen is somewhat murkier. He isn't born to Katherine. Her child is said to be stillborn (actually the victim of infanticide), and there's a switch at birth. Damien's "mother" is a jackal, a surrogate mother. But Damiel certainly as a diabolical pedigree. 

6. In terms of Hollywood genetics and Antichristology, the Antichrist could be the Devil Incarnate in the Apollinarian sense that the Antichrist is the Devil with a human body. The Devil is a rational spirit and his mind takes the place of the human soul. That would be a dualistic model: two natures: a human body possessed by Satan. 

In vampire lore there's the question of whether the victim loses its soul, or if this is case of possession or multiple personality disorder where one personality is dominant while the other is suppressed. This this is fiction, there is no right answer. 

7. Of course, the Devil Incarnate is often used as a facetious metaphor. 

Seamonsters

1. If you were a director, filming Gen 3, how would you visualize the Tempter? As Michael Heiser has noted, the name of the Tempter is a triple entendre: snake, diviner, shining one. 

2. One question is whether angels, or certain kinds of angels, are shapeshifters. The seraphim and cherubim seem to be shapeshifters. Indeed, the technical designation is Tetramorph. 

3. Another issue is whether there's any relationship between the Tempter and the river or tributaries of Eden. In Dan 7, the prophet has a dream or night vision of hybrid sea monsters rising from the ocean. And in Rev 13, John has a vision of a hybrid sea monster rising from the ocean.

Related examples include Leviathan (Isa 27:1 Ps 74:13-14).

4. In Rev 12, the Devil originally appeared to be a serpentine constellation. The background of the night sky is like an ocean. 

5. Perhaps, in Gen 3, the Tempter originally emerges from  the river like an anaconda or sea-monster, then assumes a more humanoid shape when engaging Eve in conversation. 

The curse might indicate a shift from an aquatic to a terrestrial zone, which would be quite a comedown. 

The predominate imagery is serpentine. The iconography of the medieval dragon seems to be anachronistic. However, ancient Jews were certainly familiar with the Nile crocodile, and the fire-breathing reptile in Job 41 resembles a Nile crocodile with some legendary enhancements or accessories. 

This list doesn't include extinct prehistorical snakes like Titanoboa and Gigantophis. 

The dominion of death and the devil

14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery (Heb 2:14-15).

Fear of death exerts enormous coercive power over unbelievers. It's a key weapon in the Devil's arsenal. The coronavirus has illustrated the coercive power of death. 

Part of that lies in the element of uncertainly. The virus is like a stalker. You don't know when, where, or how hard it will hit a particular region. 

Fear of death can easily cause normally friendly, trustworthy people to turn on each other if they feel that you pose a threat to their safety. Competitive survival dissolves the glue of civilization.

The coronavirus generates a dilemma. On the one hand, it may be the kind of pathogen you need to get ahead of. You may need to take preemptive measures, even drastic measures, to contain it and control it. If you procrastinate, it's too late to undo the damage. One side blames the other side for dragging its heals. 

On the other hand, we don't know enough about the coronavirus to know the scale of the threat or what's most effective. As a result, public officials are enacting uninformed policies. Policies that are wrecking the economy. So there's the perceived need to act early, combined with the danger of acting prematurely. 

There's a comparison between knows and unknowns. The dire projections might be accurate or widely exaggerated. But we do know the damage it's wreaking on the economy. That has lethal consequences, too. 

Moreover, it's not clear that preemptive measures are what's required. One proposed solution is based on social isolation, but another proposed solution is based on herd immunity. Let it naturally spread to stimulate the immune system and trigger the development of antibodies in the population (while we feverishly work on next-generation vaccines). Don't these two solutions tug in opposite directions? 

What if you can't afford to be wrong, but you don't know what's the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do? What if one cup contains the antidote while the other cup contains poison? You can't tell which is which. 

It's striking how the fear of death causes so many humans not only to surrender basic freedoms, but their livelihood. Their current and future financial security. 

Christians should take reasonable precautions against gratuitous harm–assuming we know what precautions are reasonable. But we're not paralyzed by the prospect of death. The devil can't usage that as leverage to make us follow his orders. Betray each other. The devil is like an SS officer who gives you a choice: you can shoot one of your comrades to save the life of another comrade; if you refuse, he will shoot both. Christianity frees us from that morally corrupting coercion. 

Snake river

This may be a suggestion without merit, but I'll float it for consideration. Streams and rivers have a serpentine appearance. Of course, the resemblance isn't close, but to human imagination there's a suggestive association. Rivers as serpentine metaphors. 

A river (or four tributaries) is a prominent feature in the Garden of Eden. It's essential to the life of the garden. Irrigates the orchard, provides drinking water for the humans and animals.

Could it be that one reason for the serpentine symbolism of the  Tempter that it trades on the visual and subliminal association between snakes and rivers? Just as the river is a source of life, the Tempter is a counterfeit life-giving savior? 

Defeating evil

The book of Revelation is chockfull of violence and warfare. Once issue is how literally take this imagery. At one end of the continuum, a reader may believe events will unfold as described, as if this is film footage of the future.

At the other hand of the spectrum is the view that this is symbolic imagery for a bloodless psychological struggle between good and evil. Spiritual warfare. Fighting for the soul. 

There's a gain of truth to that, but there was real warfare in the 1C Roman Empire. Christians suffered physical persecution and martyrdom. And that continues throughout church history.

I remember as a boy reading Perelandra for the first time. I was blown away by the sensuous sceny of the floating islands on the copper seas.  

However, I found the fight scene towards the end jarring and unsatisfactory. Ransom is gradually losing the debate with the Un-Man. He isn't necessarily losing the argument. He has truth on his side. But the Uh-Man, as a mouthpiece for Satan, is his intellectual superior. He's been around since creation. He tells the Queen beguiling lies. Incrementally, her resistance weakens. 

And that point Ransom gives up on debate and resorts to violence. On the face of it, reading it for the first time, that seems like an artistic co-out. A cheat. As  if Lewis took the action in one direction but was unable to resolve it on its own terms, so he abruptly changes course.

But coming back to it years later, there's wisdom in his denouement. Lewis was a WWI vet. And he lived through WWII. He was depressed by the prospect of another war. I once watched an interview with Freeman Dyson describing what it was like to be a college student in England on the eve of the war. The atmosphere was claustrophobic and fatalistic. The English could foresee that the Wehrmacht was coming for them. Coming to their shores. It was unstoppable. So you had to wait for the inevitable. Were you doomed? Was resistance futile?

It's best to resolve conflict through reason, but sometimes people choose evil over reason. They can't be reasoned with. They put themselves beyond the reach of reason. So they can only be defeated through superior force, not superior argument. Having goodness and truth on your side are not enough if that's the very thing evil loathes. Although Revelation uses stock martial imagery, although the imagery is stylized, it may portend real warfare. 

The role of Lucifer

In the cosmology of Lewis's Space Trilogy, as I understand it, each inhabited planet has a guardian angel. Mars is an explicit example. And Lucifer was the guardian angel for earth. 

Mind you, that schema raises the question of where the guardian angel was for Venus. Why did he not repel Weston, especially after Satan took possession of Weston? Seems inconsistent. What's the point of Venus having a guardian angel if he doesn't protect it from Satanic invasion and assault? 

But perhaps in Lewis's mind, the guardian angel couldn't interfere with the temptation. That had to run its course. 

Be that as it may, an additional point of interest is that Lewis's fictional cosmology may have an albeit very slender basis in Scripture. On one reading of Ezk 28, Lucifer is the guardian of the garden. 

That identification turns on a crucial ambiguity in the Hebrew syntax of v14. There are two ways to render it:

You were an anointed covering cherub

You were with an anointed covering cherub

Does it describe the fall of Adam or the fall of Lucifer? Is Adam the guardian of the garden? Is Adam depicted in exalted angelic terms–as if he's a cherub? Or is Lucifer the guardian? 

Does the narrative describe one character or two? Is Adam the guardian or is he with the guardian? 

Scholars are divided on how to render the syntax. And that in turn affects the identification of the figure(s) in the narrative

Suppose we go with the view that Lucifer is the guardian. That answers some questions or solves some problems. It explains why the Tempter was in the garden in the first place. It might explain why Eve wasn't surprised or taken aback by the Tempter–if he was a visible sentinel. It explains the reference to other cherubic sentinels in Gen 3:24–who replace him. And it explains why NT identifies the Tempter with Satan. 

What's the implied chronology? Presumably, Lucifer had to be created before Adam. And either created before God made the garden or around the same time God made the garden. So Lucifer was guarding it before Adam was created and put there. At that point he coexisted with them in the garden. He fell before or after Adam (and Eve?) were created. 

It's difficult to squeeze the fall of Lucifer (and other angels) into a six-day timetable. But if Gen 2 is separate from Gen 1, as a localized creation of the garden, that frees up more time (even assuming we regard Gen 1 as strictly chronological). 

That said, it's precarious to lay too much weight on an ambiguous passage of Scripture. But it does have the explanatory power to fill some gaps or tie up some loose ends. 

People of the lie

What does Rev 21:8 mean? It can't mean anyone who ever lied is doomed to hell. That would mean there's no point in unbelievers converting to Christianity. Most pagan gentiles lied on a regular basis. It can't mean it's too late for them to become Christian because their behavior as liars damns them in advance. 

In the larger context of Revelation, it has reference, not to tactful lies or altruistic lies (e.g. lying to protect the innocent). Rather, the "lie" in Revelation is false worship. Counterfeit religion. Diabolical heathenism, in defiance of the true faith. In Revelation, the "lie" is paganism. Idolatry. To be a devil-worshiper, under the guise of polytheism. You live in service of that lie. You live in service to a systematic lie about God. 

Not coincidentally, that's how the word is used in 1 Jn 2:22 & 5:10. A religious lie. Likewise, Jn 8:44. If's not as if Satan tells altruistic lies. That's not the kind of lie in view. Rather, he lies about God. He deceives people about God. He leads them astray from the one true God. 

Fatalism at the cross

There are different ways to define fatalism. Freewill theists use fatalism as a synonym for Calvinism or predestination, but that's confused. In Reformed theology, there's a predestined chain of events leading up to a particular outcome. In fatalism, by contrast, the outcome is the same regardless of the preceding events.

Another definition is where  people unwittingly fulfill an oracle by attempting to avert it. In that sense, the Bible has some fatalistic episodes. One example is the Joseph cycle (Gen 37-50) where his brothers try to thwart the prophetic dream, but their evasive actions ironically facilitate its realization.

A greater example is where Satan engineers the Crucifixion to defeat the Son of God, blind to the fact that Jesus wins in the long-term by "losing" at the cross. In the plan of God, the Crucifixion is a tactical loss. A way to achieve strategic victory. Although Satan may be a criminal genius, his evil blocks his ability to enter into the mind of God. In his effort to defeat Jesus he unwittingly defeats himself. God ironically  used Satan as a means to foil Satan. 

Wolves, werewolves, and demons

To my knowledge, there's a very short list of superior werewolf movies, and even those aren't truly great movies. Mind you, there may be additional examples I'm not aware of.

Unless I've overlooked something, directors have failed to develop the dramatic potential of the werewolf character. It alternates between mundane human and savage instinctive animal. 

The problem is a failure to creatively explore and exploit lupine intelligence. To take a comparison, cats are interesting to watch in motion. How they move. Feline reflexes and feline stalking patterns. But in my observation, there just isn't a whole lot going on behind the eyes. 

By contrast, wolves strike me as being far smarter than cats. I don't just mean domestic cats but lions, leopards, and tigers. Wolves remind me of psychopaths. Amoral, pitiless malevolence. Of course, wolves lack the higher intelligence to be evil. But there's a certain analogy.

By the same token, wolves project a kind of inhuman diabolical cunning. Again, that's just an analogy. 

There's just something about lupine intelligence that seems to operate on a higher wavelength. When we look into the eyes of a wolf, it connects with the human viewer–almost like it understands us.  Something we recognize in ourselves, but chilling. Like looking in a mirror, where what you see looking back at you is both familiar and alien.  More akin to human intelligence than, yet inhumane in way similar to a psychopath: he has a human IQ but lacks natural empathy for fellow humans. Something is fatally missing. It's not surprising that heathen Indians felt a particular affinity for wolves. 

If directors, especially Christian directors, had greater imagination, the werewolf would be a good way to model demonic psychology. Or even the fall of angels, like the shift from werewolves in their human state to their lupine state–which parallels the change that fallen angels underwent. They remain angelic, but twisted. 

Where was God?

As I've explained before, the problem of evil in general, in the stereotypical formulation, has no traction for me. But I find certain kinds of examples personally aggravating. Cases like James Younger are examples where the problem of evil has some emotional pull for me. 

The dilemma is that, in many situations, God doesn't protect the innocent and he doesn't enable others to protect the innocent. God doesn't use his power to intervene, and he doesn't empower others to take up the slack. Now this particular case may eventually get better, but there are other cases like it without any mitigation (in this life).  

But having said all that, it's not as if examples like this drive me into the arms of atheism, or make me even slightly sympathetic to atheism. For one thing, secular progressives are spearheading this atrocity. Evil can't push me into the arms of atheism when atheism is itself a major source of evil. 

It boils down to three options: God, Satan, or atheism. But atheism is diabolical. And it hardly makes sense to switch sides from God to the Devil because of evil–when evil is Satanic. So however vexing the problem of evil can be, God remains the only option, the only ultimate solution. 

Yes, Virginia, there is a real devil

Here's a personal anecdote (which I post with permission) by a long-time Tblog reader who was into the occult prior to his Christian conversion: 

Just before being saved, I was attending prayer meetings with this group of charismatic roman catholics (this isn't the weird part, believe it or not). One night one of the priests was speaking and his voice kind of faded out as this very oppressive, palpable darkness filled the room. It wasn't so much a lack of light as it was an unbearable sense of evil. After a while, I could clearly make out the sound of cloven hooves stalking around nearby. When I was saved that night, I had a vision of sorts - one in which I saw two paths, at one end was Satan and at the other was the Lord. I went towards Christ and I was immediately filled with the realization that everything in Scripture was true. All the stories about David, everything about the Apostles, I knew that the whole thing was true from the first page to the last. 

With regard to the sound of hooves, I know that this is a popular cliche and that if Satan has any physical form at all then maybe he doesn't actually have goat horns and hooves etc. But who knows, he might be willing to use that form in order to fulfill expectations. As for the vision, I sometimes wonder if that was really the result of my imagination or not. Jesus looked kind of the same way that you see him in paintings. Satan looked like a being cloaked in smoky, shadowy darkness. Perhaps if it was a real vision, I would be more sure of it.

No country for good men

The following post on Rod Dreher's website is from a homosexual man named Matt in VA who makes makes a number of insightful observations about homosexual culture: "The Wild West Of Male Sexual Desire".

Matt in VA's post is well worth reading in its own right. However, in my post here, I simply use it as a jumping off point to discuss different matters. Also, my thoughts don't have an entirely cohesive theme, just a loosely connected one at best.

The fall of Lucifer

Two traditional prooftexts for the fall of Lucifer are Isa 14 and Ezk 28. Although Isa 14 isn't directly about the fall of Lucifer, it employs civil war in heaven imagery. The losers are expelled. The interpretation of Ezk 28 is complicated by ambiguous syntax. A neglected passage is Isa 24:21-22, which suggests disobedient angels. 

The clearest OT passage might be Dan 10. It has four figures, three of whom seem to be angelic. There's Daniel. Then there's a good angel, who might be Gabriel or a cherub (see Iain Duguid's commentary, 180-81). The good angel is blocked by "the Prince of Persia," who appears to be an evil territorial spirit. The Prince of Persia is then overpowered by the Archangel Michael. The fact that the Prince of Persia has the ability to obstruct the good angel suggests that some fallen angels are more powerful than some heavenly angels. 

Although this doesn't narrate the fall of angels, it seems to presume their downfall. There are only two logical options: either they were originally evil or else they became evil. 

This also raises the intriguing question of where the Prince of Persian ranks in the infernal chain-of-command. As a territorial spirit, we might consider him to be a Satanic subordinate–if we think Satan has a wider sphere of influence than a territorial spirit. 

On the other hand, Satan is a finite agent. He must concentrate his efforts. At the time, Israel was in exile. And ancient Israel was the locus of God's earthly kingdom. So perhaps the Prince of Persia is Satan himself. At that time and place, Israel was the primary thing for Satan to oppose. And the base of operations temporarily shifted to the exilic community. In terms of diabolical strategy and allocation of resources, it makes sense for Satan to direct his efforts at the exilic community. 

Admittedly, this is somewhat speculative. There's not a lot to go on. At a minimum, the passage is an indirect witness to the angelic fall. But the angelic villain in this passage may well be Satan himself. That would dovetail with other altercations between Satan and the Archangel Michael (Jude 9; Rev 12:7-9).

Fallen angels

It's striking how little the Bible explicitly has to say about the fall of angels. Just a few scattered, sometimes ambiguous passages. 

Liberals say the theology of fallen angels is a Second Temple development (e.g. 1 Enoch). And because it's a later development, this is legendary embellishment or pious fiction. Tacked on at a later date. But there are basic problems with that characterization: 

i) Even in the NT, reference to the fall of angels is scant. Even in the Gospels, Satan isn't classified as a fallen angel. Yet the theological narrative of fallen angels was already in place by then.

ii) Even if we grant liberal dating for the sake of argument, they also tend to date the Pentateuch to the Exilic period, so on their own dating scheme, the fall of angels isn't an especially late development in relation to the OT narrative.

iii) Although Scripture doesn't say much about the fallen of angels, the OT has a lot to say about angels generally, as well as moral evil generally. This goes all the way back to the Pentateuch, including Genesis in particular. So angels and moral evil already figure in the earliest stages of the OT plot. 

It is, however, a short step from the existence of angels in general to evil angels in particular. Likewise, the origin of moral evil is a natural question to ask. Is that confined to the human realm? Or does it have a parallel in the angelic realm? And given the interaction between men and angels in Scripture, it's a short step to the idea that evil angels as well as good angels intersect with human history. So there's no overriding reason to assume this is a late theological development.

Godzilla

7 Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, 8 but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. 9 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 (Rev 12:7-9).

Scholars often puzzle over how the serpentine tempter in Gen 3 comes to be associated with the devil–as well as dragons. By the same token, scholars debate whether the adversary in Job 1-2 is Satan or a morally neutral character. However, we might view this as part of a larger dragon/sea-monster motif in Scripture, viz. 

12 By his power he stilled the sea;

    by his understanding he shattered Rahab.

13 By his wind the heavens were made fair;

    his hand pierced the fleeing serpent.

(Job 26:12-13)

18 His sneezings flash forth light,

    and his eyes are like the eyelids of the dawn.

19 Out of his mouth go flaming torches;

    sparks of fire leap forth.

20 Out of his nostrils comes forth smoke,

    as from a boiling pot and burning rushes.

21 His breath kindles coals,

    and a flame comes forth from his mouth.

(Job 41:18-21)

9 Awake, awake, put on strength,

    O arm of the Lord;

awake, as in days of old,

    the generations of long ago.

Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces,

    who pierced the dragon?

10 Was it not you who dried up the sea,

    the waters of the great deep,

who made the depths of the sea a way

    for the redeemed to pass over?

(Isa 51:9-10)

“Behold, I am against you,

    Pharaoh king of Egypt,

the great dragon that lies

    in the midst of his streams,

that says, ‘My Nile is my own;

    I made it for myself.’

4 I will put hooks in your jaws,

    and make the fish of your streams stick to your scales;

and I will draw you up out of the midst of your streams,

    with all the fish of your streams

    that stick to your scales.

(Ezk 29:3-4)

   but you are like a dragon in the seas;

you burst forth in your rivers,

    trouble the waters with your feet,

    and foul their rivers.

(Ezk 32:2)

13 You divided the sea by your might;

    you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters.

14 You crushed the heads of Leviathan;

    you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.

(Ps 74:13-14)

9 You rule the raging of the sea;

    when its waves rise, you still them.

10 You crushed Rahab like a carcass;

    you scattered your enemies with your mighty arm.

(Ps 89:9-10)

In that day the Lord with his hard and great and strong sword will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea (Isa 27:1)

In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon, Daniel saw a dream and visions of his head as he lay in his bed. Then he wrote down the dream and told the sum of the matter. 2 Daniel declared,“I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea. 3 And four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another (Dan 7:1-3)

And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems on its horns and blasphemous names on its heads (Rev 13:1)

Not coincidentally, the Garden of Eden is located in and around four rivers (Gen 2:10-14). Eden could either be situated in Armenia or what is now the Persian Gulf (an extension of the Indian Ocean). Like Eden, Babylonia is located in and around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Egypt is associated with the Nile and the Mediterranean. Patmos is situated in the Aegean sea. An ancient equivalent of Alcatraz. 

So the geography of the area is conducive to the evolution of a sea-monster/river-monster motif. These monsters are liminal creatures that personify the boundary between the natural world and the supernatural world. In that regard, they parallel biblical angelophany. Angels occupy both sides of the boundary, moving back and forth between our world and their indigenous realm (e.g. heaven, the netherworld). They enter our world from their own domain (e.g. chthonic spirits and deities). 

Scripture plays on this flexible motif, where dragons and sea-monsters are metaphors for the enemies of God and God's people. Although that includes human adversaries like Pharaoh, yet he himself was a front-man for the Egyptian pantheon. 

Perhaps, then, we should associate the adversary in Job 1-2 with Rahab (Job 26) and Leviathan (Job 41). Likewise, perhaps we should associate the tempter in Gen 3 with occultic sea-monsters and river-monsters. And that in turn is a guise for the dark side.  

Why did Lucifer fall?

Why did Lucifer fall? Short answer: beats me!

It's a perennial theological question. Ultimately unanswerable. God knows. Some heavenly angels and fallen angels may know. Satan knows, unless he's in denial.

Because Milton wrote an epic poem on the fall of man, he had to have a theory, a backstory, to pad out one chapter of the Bible. 

The question goes to the origin of evil. How is the first sin possible? Sinners sin, but how does one become a sinner in the first place? What's the first step?

And it's wider than the fall of Lucifer. While Scripture is rather elliptical on the subject, there's an indication of a large-scale prehistoric revolt in heaven. So how do we explain the fall of so many angels? Indeed, the virtually simultaneous fall of so many angels? Why did Lucifer have so many followers? 

There are different ways of approaching the answer. It's like asking, what makes Harry Lime a villain? At one level, Lime is a villain because that's how Graham Greene wrote the character. But in principle there could be a backstory to explain why he's so amoral. 

By the same token, we can say Lucifer fell because God predestined him to fall. But there's still the question of motivation.

The problem or paradox depends in part on what assumptions lie behind the question. One way of posing the question is to ask, How can one fall from perfection to imperfection? 

But was Lucifer perfect? What does that mean? We might distinguish between three different things:

i) To be nice

ii) To be happy

iii) To be good

We're apt to think that if you're not good, then you're evil. But is it possible, at least initially, to be on a knife-edge between good and evil? An agent that has the unrealized potential to be good or evil?

We might also distinguish between a perfect agent and a perfect world. If an agent originates in a perfect world, does that ipso facto make him a perfect agent?

It's easy to be nice if you have it easy. It's easy to be happy if you have it easy. It's easy to be generous if you're rich, because it doesn't really cost you anything. 

Consider horror flicks about spoiled rich kids who take a trip. They're classmates. The smart set. They like each other. They're nice so long as the situation is nice.

But if they suddenly find themselves in a survival situation, then the veneer of amiability peels away. Classic fair-weather friends. If they're in competition for survival, they turn on each other.

Because all their wants and needs were provided for, they have no inner resources to tap into when that's removed. It's a cliche that a crisis brings out the best in some folks and the worst in others.

To take another example, suppose you have a teenage boy or girl who's self-absorbed. But then there's a crisis in the family. A parent or sibling becomes disabled or deathly ill. The teenager must take up the slack. There are three possible outcomes:

i) The crisis may reveal that the teenager had hidden reserves. That was there all along, but it took a crisis to bring it to the surface. The teenager was self-absorbed because there was no pressing need, and not because he was uncaring or inconsiderate. But when the crisis arises, he pivots. He adapts. He takes up the slack.  

ii) The crisis may reveal that the teenager is unprepared to face the challenge. It's a struggle. The crisis forces him to cultivate the necessary virtues. The need to meet the challenge is the process by which he develops what he needs to meet the challenge.

iii) He may walk away. He may abandon the ailing family member. Initially, he may make a token effort, but it's too demanding. It crimps his style. It's no fun. 

What if antelapsarian heaven was like a tropical paradise for angels. That's the only world they ever knew, from the moment of their inception. What if God then did an angelic trial by ordeal like he did to test Job or Abraham? What would be the reaction? Would that have a clarifying effect? 

Admittedly, this is mere conjecture, but it extrapolates from God's dealings with humans. And it transposes some insights from the soul-making theodicy to an angelic key.  

Cosmic fall

I received some interesting feedback from several commenters on this post:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-fall-of-angels.html

Trent

What do you think of Heiser's books on the subject of fallen angels in the OT? If I recall he thinks The accuser in Job is not a devil or demon at all.

Lydia

I would think the book of Job would be a prima facie counterexample. Whatever else it is, it isn't intertestamental! At least it shows the concept of a cosmic bad guy around earlier.

i) I'm inclined to date the Book of Job to the time of Solomon's international court, which had contacts with neighboring countries. A little Renaissance. I'm guessing the historical Job, while not an ethnic Jew, was a worshiper of Yahweh in the way some NT gentiles ("Godfearers") were converts to Judaism. That may also account for the Hebrew dialect Job is written in. 

ii) I don't have a firm opinion regarding the identity of the antagonist in Job 1-2. He's morally ambiguous. He clearly has no concern for Job's welfare. 

Moral ambiguity is consistent with the Devil in the sense that the Devil conceals his malevolence to lull the unsuspecting. 

iii) One hermeneutical issue is whether it's anachronistic to ID the antagonist as the devil based on NT theology. Is that retrojecting later developments into Job?

That depends in part on how we regard the Bible. Some scholars simply view the Bible as uninspired sectarian fiction. For them, the devil evolves in the same way literary characters like Faust and Mephisophiles evolve. Or Batman. 

iv) But even if we affirm the plenary inspiration of Scripture (as we should!), some conservative scholars think it's illegitimate to use the NT to interpret the OT. Rather, we ought interpret each book of the Bible according to the information available at the time of writing. This distinction crops up in debates over amillennialism and dispensationalism. 

I'm not going to adjudicate that general issue in this post. Rather, I'd like to make a narrower point in relation to Job. Let's take a comparison. At one stage of his career, Dwight Eisenhower was MacArthur's chief of staff. He went on to become a top general, and then a two-term president. 

Suppose you were reading a period newspaper report about MacArthur which mentioned Ike. You know things about Ike which the reporter didn't at the time of writing. You know about the rest of his career. You know what he became. You read the account from a retrospective viewpoint. In a sense that's anachronistic. That's not something the reporter could have had in mind. Nevertheless, it's the same person. Ike has diachronic identity. He's the same individual moving forward and backward in time. So even if there's a hiatus between the viewpoint of the reporter and the viewpoint of the reader, there's nothing wrong with bringing later information to bear when reading that earlier account.

By the same token there's nothing inherently illicit about interpreting the antagonist in Job in light of NT theology. That's assuming they are, in fact, the same individual. That would still have to be established. My point is that there's nothing illegitimate in principle about taking that later frame of refernce into consideration when we attempt to identify the antagonist in Job.

Patrick

I guess another option (maybe?) is if the false prophet could have been naturally born with certain abilities a la what people like Stephen Braude say?

i) One issue is whether paranormal abilities are extraordinary abilities which some humans naturally have–or mediumistic abilities, which they acquire directly (e.g. dabbling in the occult) or indirectly (inherited from ancestors who dabbled in the occult). 

ii) In addition, the paranormal is a grab bag, so it's possible that some paranormal abilities are natural abilities while other paranormal abilities are mediumistic abilities. 

James

1. Could the signs and wonders that the false prophet performs simply be smoke and mirrors, without a supernatural cause? The false prophet may have gotten lucky in predicting an event, or been able to facilitate an illusion of a sign and wonder.

2. Could the false prophet perform the sign and wonder with the help of another god in the pantheon? I struggle somewhat with this solution. There are places in Deuteronomy that acknowledge the existence of other gods. At the same time, Moshe Weinfeld presents a cause in Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School that those are Deuteronomy's sources, and the author of Deuteronomy himself depersonalized the others gods.

3. Could the false prophet perform the sign and wonder with the help of a demon? I am not sure if they believed back then that demons could do miracles. My understanding is that demons could be souls of dead people who did not have a peaceful transition in the afterlife, and they mainly afflicted people rather than trying to deceive. 

Then again, doing a search, Deuteronomy 32:17 appears to equate false gods with shedim (which English translations renders as devils or demons); the word does not appear often in the Bible, and I do not know much about it offhand. It is in the same song that appears to acknowledge the existence of other gods (Deuteronomy 32:8-9).

i) It's my impression, based on cross-cultural ethnographic data, that magic is typically attributed to empowerment by an external agent. A common paradigm is temporary possession. Or dream incubation. Or incantations to compel or manipulate supernatural agents to do the bidding of the witchdoctor. A different but related example is ritual cannibalism to absorb the courage of a enemy warrior. 

Within the thought-world of the ancient Near East, I assume a successful false prophet would be viewed as a sorcerer. Someone channeling occult power. To my knowledge, that's the standard paradigm of witchcraft.

ii) In heathenism, that could be viewed as ancestral spirits, evil spirits, or "gods". In Christian theology, the taxonomy is based on a protological narrative of fallen angels, as well as an eschatological narrative regarding spiritual warfare. Pagans didn't have that narrative, so they will have a different taxonomy. 

How does the OT classify pagan numina? Given the view of Yahweh as the sole Creator, pagan numina would be at best supernatural creatures. Heavenly or fallen angels. Of course, that's a bit circular since the question at issue is the extent to which the OT has a doctrine of a cosmic fall. In that regard, a neglected text is Isa 24:21-22, which seems to allude to a "war in heaven" motif. 

The fall of angels

The OT doesn't have much explicitly to say about the fall of angels. Whether Isa 14 & Ezk 28 allude to that primordial event is contested. Scholars commonly claim that the fall of angels represents an Intertestamental development. Indeed, that Satan evolved in Second Temple Judaism. However, I'd like to consider a neglected text:

If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, 2 and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, ‘Let us go after other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us serve them,’... (Deut 13:1-2).

That raises an interesting question: what's the source of a false prophet's supernatural knowledge (foresight) and supernatural power (miracle)? In theory, he might be empowered by God. However, that runs counter to the companion passage:

But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die (Deut 18:20).

Yet if God is not the source, then by process of elimination, doesn't that leave evil spirits as the source of the false prophet's superhuman abilities? 

But in that case, were they always evil, or did they become evil. If so, that entails a declension from their original condition.