The philosophy of Satan
Who really is Satan or Lucifer?
Every culture in the world has its own mythology, thus, an image of Satan was formed in the collective memory of all peoples as the embodiment of inherent evil. Today’s modern image of Satan can be traced back to Persian Zoroastrianism. This wasn’t a monotheistic religion in modern sense, but rather an only known dualist religion. Here evil is also a deity, a counter-god. Angra Mainyu is the evil nemesis of a good god, Ahura Mazda, means the lord of wisdom. The concept of embodied evil thus migrated to the Abrahamic religions and Gnosticism.
We meet Satan for the first time in the Hebrew Old Testament, in the book of Job, which is the oldest book of the Old Testament, and after the Genesis.
What this means is that we suffer for a reason, and that is because we allow Satan to tempt us.
But why is he doing this?
In the Bible the Satan is no longer a counter-god, but only a rebellion fallen angel, only a creature like anyone else. Lucifer is not reconciled with this dedicated status to him for obvious reasons. Because it’s better to be a lord in the hell than being servant in the heaven. Satan rebels against this by tempting everyone he can. He tempted the first humans, Adam and Eve, tried to tempt the Lord (Book of Job), and the son of Lord, Christ (Gospels).
But why is he rebelling like that?
The answer might be because the Satan has no divine power, he is just like us, a creature. Therefore, he can only rebel against the divine world order by borrowing the power of others, tempting others against themselves. When the Satan tried to tempt Jesus in the desert, he targeted his weakest point, the basic needs of body (the desire of flesh).
Let’s not forget that Jesus had already fasted in the desert for forty days.
Satan, on the other hand, could not give Jesus anything that he did not already have, or could not attain by his own power. Satan couldn’t turn stone into loaf for instance. He asked Christ for doing so, and worshiping Devil in return. He didn’t only want something for nothing, but he wanted everything for nothing.
Jesus answered to this challenge that way, it is written, not only bread feeds man. Tempting the son of Lord must be failed.
How does Satan tempt the son of man?
Lo, the God created world is imperfect. There are a lot of suffering, that prove the God doesn’t care about you. Why sould you care about this vicious God? First, the Satan accuses God with not caring the world, because it’s not good enough. It’s not perfect. And if this is the case, the human can do it better. Get rid of God, and be a God of yourself. Make a world perfect.
Satan is very astute and clever with this temptation. He doesn’t call human directly to worship Lucifer instead of God. It will happen anyway as an inevitable side effects of getting rid of God. Because feeling no necessity to be good is nourishing Devil. And the temptation is dual.
As you can see in the Book of Job, the Devil can prove to the God, lo, the worship towards you is hypocrisy from side of people. They worship you if they don’t have to suffer. But once they are inflicted with suffering they begin to blaspheme you.
What is the temptation of totalitarianism?
The Platonic worldview, we can achieve the perfect society even in this world by creating our own value system, getting rid of God?
What is the temptation of nihilism?
We do not believe in believing anything?
What is the temptation of hedonism?
Any kind of suffering is too much price for getting meaning of life?
St. Augustine stressed, we humans are not capable to attain the perfection by any means neither in level of individual nor society. We have no divine capacity to create our own value system. And if we ever try it, we challenge our own divine inclination to admit we are hopelessly imperfect. In other words, suffering is inevitable. If we try to get rid of suffering, we inevitably create more suffering.
In conclusion the Satan has no capacity to harm us, we have. The misotheist misconception that the God must be hateful and vicious, which is exactly the Satanic temptation. But if this is true, can we believe in the existence of good at all? And do we feel the need to be good? If God is evil, we can’t be good, because there’s no such thing as good in this case. And if good does not exist, what do we measure evil against? In that case the evil can’t exist either, because it’s evil compared to what. The conception of evil God is thus an oxymoron, a logical fallacy.
If God exists on the other hand, must be the greatest. And greatest can’t be evil, because he created everything including not only good, but our conception of good as well.
The atheist proposition: there’s no God, there is no Devil. Perhaps it’s true, but this alone does not make the issue pointless. The question is whether there are good and evil regardless their embodied manifestation. Or can truth exist independently of our mind? Because there’s no material or scientific evidence for this.
Lucifer’s cynicism knows no bounds, even those who judge in the name of God serve him. Original sin is human vanity, as the source of almost all sins. One who considers himself as moral standard, and feels a superiority to judge others, is the true Luciferian sinner. And the only claim he puts into debate, he believes in God, thus he is virtuous, but you are not. It’s not even a debate, rather accusation. The accuser destroys your reputation in order to win debate without arguments.
What would Jesus have said?
Your intentions are human and not divine. Get away from me Satan.
Thanks for reading me!
A fascinating discussion is worth comment. I do think that you ought to publish more about this issue, it may not be a taboo matter but typically folks dont speak about such topics. To the next! Cheers!!
Itís difficult to find well-informed people on this subject, but you seem like you know what youíre talking about! Thanks