It’s a good question.
I haven’t heard it with a “St”, but that Satan is also known as Lucifer (lightbringer; in several languages it means match as in firestick) or Luzbel among many other names and that he’s a fallen angel (or rather, the boss of the fallen angels) is pretty much standard Christian theology. Or demonology, rather, because the one thing The Black Angel has never been considered is a god, much less a God.
It made total sense.
All is explained in the documentary series Lucifer.
That’s my mistake there. I thought angels names started with the st for saint like saint Peter.
Well yeah. But he has seniority.
It just that I don’t think I’ve ever heard the term St. Lucifer before.
An atheist dies and goes to hell. The devil welcomes him and says:”Let me show you around a little bit.” They walk through a nice park with green trees and the devil shows him a huge palace. “This is your house now, here are your keys.” The man is happy and thanks the devil. The devil says:”No need to say thank you, everyone gets a nice place to live in when they come down here!”
They continue walking through the nice park, flowers everywhere, and the devil shows the atheist a garage full of beautiful cars. “These are your cars now!” and hands the man all the car keys. Again, the atheist tries to thank the devil, but he only says “Everyone down here gets some cool cars! How would you drive around without having cars?”.
They walk on and the area gets even nicer. There are birds chirping, squirrels running around, kittens everywhere. They arrive at a fountain, where the most beautiful woman the atheist has ever seen sits on a bench. She looks at him and they instantly fall in love with each other. The man couldn´t be any happier. The devil says “Everyone gets to have their soulmate down here, we don´t want anyone to be lonely!”
As they walk on, the atheist notices a high fence. He peeks to the other side and is totally shocked. There are people in pools of lava, screaming in pain, while little devils run around and stab them with their tridents. Other devils are skinning people alive, heads are spiked, and many more terrible things are happening. A stench of sulfur is in the air.
Terrified, the man stumbles backwards, and asks the devil “What is going on there?” The devil just shrugs and says: “Those are the christians, I don´t know why, but they prefer it that way”
Yes, it is a joke, but I think it is meaningful in this debate.
It comes from Isaiah 12, a rather vague prophecy/poem referring to a “Hillel Ben-Shachar” (“bright one, son of the dawn”) falling from heaven. For whatever reason, the original Greek translation rendered the name as “Lucifer”.
Petey isn’t an angel, but the normal kind of saint: a regular guy who is supposed to be in Heaven (in this particular case, for having been the guy JC chose as the first Pope). A couple of angels do get the “saint” stuck in but it’s mainly because they’ve been stuck with patronages, their names used as people names, etc (mainly it’s Michael and Raphael, for some reason Gabriel doesn’t get the “saint” so much); since “saint” means “someone who is in Heaven / in the presence of God / buddy-buddy with the Big Guy”, Satan is pretty much the opposite of one.
I prefer Niven’s Inferno to Dante’s.
Hell is God’s last ditch effort to get through to people. The excessive punishments are there just to make you wake up and accept God. But, like in kayaker’s joke, most humans think they deserve punishment. Very few “get” it.
I found Niven’s Inferno to be one of the most religious books I’ve ever read.
Ah, OK, thanks. The “visual aids” thing does make sense, too; I’m thinking here of all the stained glass windows in churches and such, and the idea of the Poor Man’s Bible.
Isaiah 14. It is prophetic-sounding, and verses 12 through 15 do sound like they could be referring to the fall of some celestial entity who challenged God:
BUT, if you scroll up to verses 3 and 4, and look at the thing in context (and I’ll also use a more modern translation):
Emphasis added. So, the whole “Lucifer / morning star” bit is from a poetic passage that’s explicitly addressed to the king of Babylon; and whoever we’re talking about here is explicitly referred to as a “man”. In context, the whole “O Lucifer, son of the morning!” / “morning star, son of the dawn!” thing is just a mocking reference to the flattering titles given to an Ancient Near Eastern despotic ruler (I think it was the late Isaac Asimov who compared it to calling Louis XIV of France “the Sun King”), the talk about “ascending to the heavens” and “raising my throne above the stars of God” is just the usual overweening pride of an all-too-human wicked and idolatrous king; and the whole “prophecy” is just the usual sort of Old Testament / Tanakh prophecy: “Ooh, our enemies [meaning other big powerful kingdoms; e.g., Babylon] are totally gonna get theirs someday, just you wait! And their big fancy king will go to his grave, like all men must!”
Some Christians will probably say that it’s some kind of dual-purpose prophecy, with an immediate temporal or historical meaning (The Ancient Near Eastern kingdom of Babylon will fall and its king will be laid low) AND an eschatological meaning (“Babylon”, that is the Forces of Darkness and Evil, will be destroyed and its King, the Devil, will be cast down into Hell); but, well, when you start “interpreting” things that way the biblical texts rapidly become sort of Rorschach inkblots, and tell you whatever you want to hear.
The Devil went down to Georgia. Hasn’t he suffered enough?