What if Satan Repented?

(And not to mention Job does repent)

Would this research come from an impartial source?

Here is some more of my work on universal reconciliation, just to note the intended audience would be those who ‘believe’ :

The sources I used is the bible, usually the NIV, sometimes the NASB and New World as I have 2 JW in my audience and they are very into their version, and the interlinear versions of Hebrew and Greek texts available on the internet, usually this one John 1 Interlinear Bible
And would occasionally look up meaning of the original words using google.

Um… but that’s the false argument made by one of Job’s friends.

They claim that he must have sinned, so he deserves all the suffering he gets. Hence the phrase “Job’s comforters”.

Then later God himself appears in a whirlwind and says that Job’s friends are a bunch of pricks, and they were talking crap (or words to that effect). :smiley:

But he says he’ll forgive them if Job asks him to.

The only thing that Job repents for is denouncing God for being unjust - after the undeserved suffering was inflicted on him.

Seeing as how the Bible is supposed to be the inspired word of God, would you call it impartial? Also, doesn’t this source give conflicting information as to Satan’s role and motivation?

May be of interest:

Encyclopedia Britannica article on ‘Satan and the origin of evil in Christianity’ (Britannica is always worth reading)

Catholic Encyclopedia article on the Devil

Catholic Encyclopedia article on Evil

The OP strongly implies looking at this within the context of the mythology of the Bible, by using terminology and naming as common when discussing it within that framework.
Your point here and in an earlier post is like arguing “well, that’s just because it was in the script, man” , when discussing why the guy in Fightclub doesn’t realize at first he’s multiple characters.

Bold mine, you missed the point, that was not the reason for Job’s repentance. Notice what Job was doing in the beginning and then what he was doing in the end, there was a great difference, Job changed.

The difference is Job was offering sacrifices by himself for his sons and others, thus those people enjoyed going on uncorrected by God, as Job paid for their sins out of his flocks, even without them knowing. In the end they brought their offerings from their flocks for Job to sacrifice on their behalf.

Also Job had 4 friends, not 3, one didn’t have to repent. But that quote in Job 33 was God talking anyway.

One could posit that angels do not have free will… but in that case, how could one of them rebel in the first place? Surely, if Satan had enough free will to rebel, then he also has enough free will to repent.

On the other hand, these are eternal, not temporal, beings we’re talking about. A human can have one decision at one time, and then a different decision at another time, because to a temporal being like a human, different times are different. But to an eternal being, all times are alike. Every moment is the moment when Satan chose to rebel, just as every moment is the moment when Gabriel or Michael chose not to rebel. They can’t change their minds later, because there is no later.

This “script” has more than one writer, so even if we propose to stick to canon for the purpose of this discussion, confusion abounds.

a) That’s a poor argument, since God himself says repeatedly in the beginning that Job is “blameless and upright”.

b) No, Job 33, is NOT God talking. It’s Elihu son of Barakel the Buzite.

In Job there is a pretty clear message that it is a foolish idea to speculate about what God might or might not do, or why, or wherefore.

dup

The Satan of the Old Testament did the bidding of God and therefore has nothing to repent for in the first place.

At what point, and officially for which sects, did Satan develop from a metaphorical tempter into a Miltonian figure rebelling against God (to the extent this is supposed to be possible)?

So if Satan does God’s will by punishing bad people, that makes Satan good, right?

In that case, folks from that era who gave in to temptation could plead entrapment on Judgement Day. Due to the nature of eternity, this already has and hasn’t happened.

If we are talking Biblical canon, then yes. If we are talking about the concepts of “good” and “evil” that we have developed over the last few millennia, then I’m afraid the entity that most needs to repent is God.

Satan’s role as a punisher of evil didn’t evolve until the concept of hell was incorporated into Christianity. Jewish tradition doesn’t have eternal punishment for anyone and is pretty vague on the afterlife in general.

In Judaism, Satan is a general tempter entity. Sometimes it seems to be a person or angel, like in Job, sometimes it’s just a kind of force of nature. Either way, he’s not a big deal in the overall mythology because Judaism isn’t a religion focused on sin and punishment. Our guilt is mostly about how often we call our mothers.