God vs. Satan

Great Debates
1

Can anyone clear up the relationship between these two?

There are more than a few questions I have with this symbiotic relationship.

Let’s make some parameters before heading into this, as I know different religions have different ideas on death and where you go…

In this question, when you die, you go to heaven or hell. There are no other choices, like limbo or purgatory.

Heaven and hell exist.

The devil runs hell, god runs heaven.

Now, with those few parameters, how does it work when one dies?

Does your soul always go for an evaluation, or do you go directly to where you are supposed to go? All of the jokes about meeting St. Peter at the pearly gates aside, it seems that many people beliee that you are judged on “judgement day” (great name!), and you are told then if you are worthy of entrance to heaven or not.

This makes no sense to me, as I would think that all of your exploits during your lifetime would be well documented in heaven and hell, so no judgement day would be necessary. When you die, you go directly to heaven or hell, with no evaluation period. Besides, most people should have a pretty good idea of where they are going regardless of what they do in the last 24 hours before actually croaking.

If you believe that there is a period of time where you are judged, is there also a judgement day for hell? Does the devil have to take all of heaven’s rejects? If so, why? Can the devil reject someone and toss their soul to heaven? Why does God always get the first and last day in this matter?

Does God empower Satan? Meaning that does God have the ability to crush Satan if he wishes, and free every soul in Hell, or is Satan an autonomous entity?

If God created Satan, and has control over him, why put up with him? Why not instead make bad people suffer in their real life span, when lessons could actually be learned and behavior changed? If God is ok with you acting like an asshole and making many other people’s lives miserable while you are in this world, why is he ok with it? Why not punish the wicked here on earth, where other living people can see the results of evil behavior firsthand, instead of waiting until they die?

Satan seems to have a lot of power. He can buy ones soul, for example. Why does God permit it to be for sale? And if you truly are wicked, and didn’t have to sell your soul to get what you wanted here on earth but rather went out and took it by whatever means necessary, why would Satan punish you? Wouldn’t he reward you for being the same thing he embodies, which is pure evil?

Does Satan derive his power from God, (I.e. he has only the power that God grants him), or is he an independent contractor, able to do as he pleases?

Do God and Satan ever meet and discuss anything? Potential soul swaps if mistakes were made?

I am having trouble understanding why Satan would basically do God’s bidding by punishing the wicked. This exactly what the heavenly-bound people would want, but why should God care what Satan does with them? If Satan is forced to accept heavens rejects, why can’t he treat them any way he sees fit? It seems to me that if Hell has to be an awful place, then God has created Hell, and also He created Satan to rule over Hell. Is this correct?

When was Satan created? Was it right after Eve bit the apple, or did god have him story boarded out before he put any people on the earth?

Did Eve go to Hell?

I think this is a good place to start from. There are enough questions here that should get the discussion going. I am serious about this question, and I put it in GD because I know religious subjects usually end up here.

Also, I don’t want any discussion on purgatory and limbo, two absurd concepts that I personally don’t believe in and quite frankly muddle the issue at hand. I don’t like the idea of purgatory as some sort of way station you have to sit around in until you are paroled to get into heaven, and I don’t like the idea of unbaptized people being punished by not being permitted entrance to heaven because someone pours water on their heads or not.

2

As far as I can tell, for everything to be consistent then God basically makes all the decisions and Satan has no power except for what God allows him. So basically, Satan serves God (as does everyone, necessarily, if God is omnipotent and omniscient), and God decides who goes to heaven and who goes to hell.

3

You seem to be confusing the biblical descriptions of Satan with more modern pop-culture motifs. In the Old Testament Satan is a servant of God. His role is to test the loyalty of humans to God*. IIRC in Hebrew Saitan/Satan means “adversary”, however it points to his role as Mankinds adversary rather than Gods.
Of course why an all-knowing deity needs to test someone to find out if they are loyal is never stated.*
**Something something, free will, something.

4

Indeed. Satan and the angels and demons are leftovers from the time before Yaweh had evolved into “the only God that exists”. They are the old gods from when the Jews believed in more than one god.

When the Jews started to write down the bible they were in the phase where Yaweh had become chief god, top dog, and the other gods had been reduced to his little helpers.

You are setting parameters in your question that can not be explained if you take those parameters for granted.

5

Ok, then lets remove those parameters. If we can do this without discussing Limbo and Purgatory, then fine with me.

So you are saying that in the OT, Jews believed in multiple gods? This is new to me. Is this similar to the Roman and Greek gods? Or is the one true God just the winner of a power struggle according to the OT and the Jews?

as. and as far as hell, is it a similar story, where Satan is not by himself, but has a staff of demons and he won the power struggle for the underworld?

I hope my question makes sense. Not meant to offend anyone.

6

No, I’m saying that shortly before the OT was starting to be written (around 600 B.C.) Jews still believed in multiple gods.

What do they teach kids these days…

It was similar to other Canaanites, Phoenicians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Egyptians, yes.

The Jews lived in 2 countries Israel and Judah and got conquered by the Assyrians.
As a pacification measure a large number of Jews was transported to new land in Babylon. This is when they started to write their stuff down.

Sort of.
This is an intermediate stage in the devellopment of Yaweh. From polytheistic to dualistic.

The Assyrians got defeated by the Persians and Israel, Judah and Babylon now fell under Persian rule.
The Persians had a dualistic religion. Ahuramazda had become chief god and Ahriman ‘his opponent’ the other gods had become ‘lesser gods’.

See the similarity between God + Angels vs Satan + demons?

Not a surprising similarity when you know that the Jews in Judah, Israel and those in exile were Persian subjects.

7

Let’s just say they should get a room.

8

One Bazillion Quatloos on God!!

9

Thank you for these answers. This is fascinating to me. I don’t know why, but I always assumed that there was no origin of God. He was just there (or here and there and everywhere). To think he was one of many who ultimately rose to the top of the “good” side, well this is a story I never heard in my Sunday school classes.

I do see the similarity between god + angels vs. Satan + demons. But I’m still unclear as to how they interact with their supporters (I keep thinking of God as the Snow miser, and Satan as Heat miser… Just for visual reference), as well as each other. For instance, Satan always gets heavens rejects. But does Satan get to reject anyone to Heaven? (Since those are the only two destinations, I’m guessing no.)

Question: of all of the “before the OT” events, are these written down and captured somewhere (like the OT) or are they part of the teachings you’ve learned along the way? Also, does this information give God and Satan an origin? Is Satan really a fallen angel?

10

The various authors of the Old Testament clearly believed in one supreme God, Yahweh, who they viewed as maker and ruler of the world. They also appeared to believe in other beings, including those whom the text identifies as gods of other nations. In ancient Hebrew there was a clear distinction between Yahweh and other “gods” that the Jews viewed as lesser. Modern language that uses the word “god” for both can lead to linguistic confusion.

Nobody can know for sure exactly what the ancient Jews believed at various stages of history. Some scholars, though not all, agree with what Latro said about none of the Old Testament being written before the Babylonian exile. Others believe that various parts may have been written earlier. No one can offer firm proof of when the older portions of the Old Testament were written.

11

And you won’t because it’s not part of Judaism or Christianity.

What is being described is an anthropological analysis of how monotheism arose out of polytheism. It’s not part of the religious philosophy. It’s more like understanding how some previous flood myths have been incorporated into the story of Noah by the authors of the scriptures.

12

There’s no physical hell. If you don’t go to heaven, you die all over for real, and that’s worse than any punishment.
It’s right there in the verse we all know, John 3:16

Not perish, but have everlasting life. Those are the options.
Just those two. There’s no hell.

13

That’s what so nice about the Bible-if you look hard enough, it will tell you pretty much anything you want.

14

You’re saying there’s something in the Bible that refutes John 3:16?

15

Part of the problem with trying to establish some concrete description is that the descriptions we have were not written down all at one time under one system of belief.

In the book of Job, one of the earlier written texts and the first in which he appears, Satan is the servant of God, acting in much the manner of an auditor trying to find flaws in the system. He is sometimes compared to a prosecuting attorney, (although with more powers than the typical modern prosecutor). He is given authority to abuse Job unmercifully to test Job’s faith in God.

Satan also appears, briefly, in 1st Chronicles, doing the same sort of “testing” of David.

Then, in Psalm 109 and in Zechariah 3, “the accuser” appears in much the form of a prosecuting attorney alongside a person being judged. However, it is not clear whether the word shaitan in those passages is intended as the name of a person or simply the description of the role of some metaphorical figure.
The Intertestamental works are those religious writings of the Jewish community that were never adopted as Scripture by the Jewish community and were written before the advent of Christianity. In some of those those works, Satan took on a different appearance, becoming an active opponent of God. It was in these works that the idea of angels rebelling and being cast out of heaven were developed.
In those works, Satan (or variants on the word Satan) identified the chief rebel angel. It is probable that these ideas were strongly influenced by the dualism of Zoroastrianism, (and its predecessor religions), with its competing gods of good and evil.

When the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew bible, was created, the word shaitan was translated using the Greek word diabolos in some places and rendered as the name Satanos in others. Diabolos gives us our word “devil” and remains in the adjective diabolical.

When Christianity arose, using the Hebrew Scriptures, but usually in the Septuagint translation, but also imbued with the concepts of the Intertestamental works, Satan was equated to “devil” and was identified as the leader of fallen angels whom God permits to challenge Him, although they will ultimately fail. With those influences, Christianity began to associate Satan with the serpent in the garden of Eden.
The only answer to the OP, therefore, is “whose version?”.
Modern Judaism, rejecting the Intertestametal works and ignoring later Christian beliefs still treats Satan in the manner of Job, (the only significant place he is mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures).
Christianity has a different take on who Satan might be, and there are enough variants of Christianity that we can even find some differences, there.

16

There are some teasing remnants in the OT itself, subject to interpretation. For example, Genesis contains exactly one reference to the existence of Greek-style demi-gods - Genesis 6:4:

Later cultural traditions associate these variously, for example, to the angels (either fallen or not). However, in historical terms, it seems pretty clear that this is a reference to an older tradition of mythological heroes who were considered of part divine descent, a common thing in mythology: anthropologically, in fact, the existence of an aristocratic caste claiming part-divine descent is so commonly associated with the “chieftainship” stage of social evolution as to be somewhat characteristic.

17

A short article about the different Christian views of Hell, complete with verses.

18

you realize there is alot more to the bible than a single verse, right?

19

The term I was taught to describe the form of theism where a certain deity is chosen to be the chief deity (as in ‘thou shalt have no other gods before me’) among many is Henotheism. It was first used in the early 19th century to describe the intermediate step between polytheism and monotheism.

20

That’s left over from Jewish belief where people just died, but would be resurrected at some future date. If you remember the very best Prophets (Elijah) were bodily brought into heaven, quite odd if all good Jews went. John is saying that Jesus would make everyone as worthy as the prophets. Clearly Christian theology moved on beyond this, unless you consider Dante’s view of hell as heretical.