Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Q&R: What is Satan? Who tempted Jesus? Brian Zahnd & Bradley Jersak

Question:

How are we to understand “Satan” or “the satan”?

Brian Zahnd:

I don’t know that we fully can, but I understand the satan to be a cosmic spiritual-psychic phenomenon arising from idolatry and accusation, reaching its ultimate form in anti-human empire.

Thus, for Isaiah, Lucifer is the King of Babylon who falls with the fall of Babylon. The satan is more than a metaphor, but less than a person; by that I mean the satan, though a very real and dangerous phenomenon, does not actually possess ontological being. The satan, like evil itself, is parasitic in nature. It cannot exist independently because it is not created by God. The satan can only exist by colonizing a host. If there is no host for the satan, the satan ceases to exist at all. Indeed, the devil is presented in Revelation as having “great wrath, because he knows that his time is short.”

Though the satanic is properly a phenomenon and not a person, the satanic phenomenon is so real, so powerful, so deadly, so destructive, that we cannot help but personify the satanic as Satan. This is probably a necessary and helpful move.

And if we associate the satanic with a fallen angel, surely it arises from an instinctual understanding that the very worst is nothing but the diabolical corruption of the very best. 

Question:

If the satan is not a person, who or what tempted Jesus in the wilderness?
What are Matthew 4:1-11, Mark 1:12, Luke 4:1-13 all about then?

Bradley Jersak:

That is a great question and—full disclosure—involves theological speculation. Nothing we can dogmatize. But let's start with a few aspects of the story of Jesus’s temptation in the wilderness, seven points about which we have some confidence:

• We know that Jesus faced and overcame a three-fold temptation in the wilderness.
• Oddly, all three Synoptic Evangelists describe the Spirit leading Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by "the devil" or “the satan.”
• When Jesus resists the devil, Matt. 4 quotes Jesus as saying, "Get away from me, Satan."
• We are confident that Jesus was there alone without other human witnesses.
• Therefore, we know that Jesus himself reported the temptations to his disciples, whose testimony the Gospels later record for us to read.
• In his account, Jesus personifies the devil or Satan. He believed this was the best way to tell us the story.
• We know that sometimes when addressing Satan, Jesus was not literally talking to a being called Satan, but specifically to any person or idea that tries to tempt him to bypass the Cross. E.g., He says to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan" (Mark 8:33, Matthew 16:23).

Again, Jesus is not at all averse to describing the works of the devil using personification... and this is why the claim that Satan is less than a person is still speculation, even if well-founded theologically. We don't make a dogma of it. We are, rather, challenging whether the assertion that the devil IS a literally a person, a fallen angel, or a sentient being should be taught as doctrine.

But now to your question. IF Satan is less than a person, what was Jesus dealing with? Michael Hardin, who wrote a booklet called "The Satan" (https://www.clarion-journal.com/files/fb-posts-on-the-satan-e-book1.pdf) suggested to me that we might think of the Satan in Matthew 4/Luke 4 as "Jesus' potential shadow side." What does that mean?

Romans 8 tells us that Jesus came "in the likeness of sinful human flesh," and Hebrews 2 and 4 insists that in the Incarnation, Jesus’s humanity was in every way like ours, tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. Similarly, Gregory the Theologian said that Christ assumed every aspect of human nature in order to heal every aspect of human nature.

SO, if the temptations of Jesus were real (they were), we might speak of his temptations as approaching him externally (as the devil or satan). Jesus talked that way. But we might also think about temptation as an authentic part of the human condition—suggestions from the flesh or passions calling us to grasp our destiny autonomously (as with Adam and Eve). As part of the human condition, Jesus had to face and overcome those impulses personally and on behalf of us all. Why? (1) For him to be fully human and (2) for salvation to extend to every aspect of our humanity.

Hardin’s description then needs to be read VERY carefully. Did Jesus have a 'shadow side'? Michael doesn’t say that. He says *potential* shadow side... meaning (1) the temptation was authentic, (2) temptation is intrinsic to human nature, (3) but Christ faced it fully and overcame it entirely.

IF Satan is not a person, Jesus nevertheless felt personifying his struggle was the best way to describe it, exactly like my alcoholic friends describe "wrestling with their demons." They aren’t claiming to be “possessed,” but recognize how externalizing the temptations can be helpful in resisting them.  

Again, if Jesus used personification, he recognized it was as a good way to describe our battle with temptation. Why? From contemporary counseling practice and addition recovery, we have learned ways to resist temptation by externalizing destructive impulses and disowning as a false self, rather than wrongly over-identifying with it and assuming the shame of the temptation (e.g., “I am evil”).

On the other hand, the main reason to proceed to demythologizing the devil's personhood is when people skirt their agency and responsibility, saying, "The devil made me do it," as if giving in to temptation is not something they need to own. So says Paul, “By one man, sin entered the world, and death through sin” (Romans 5:12). 

For more on the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness: https://brianzahnd.com/tag/satan/

Wake Up. Jonah: A Midrash - Eric H. Janzen

Wake Up. Jonah

 

Jonah sat down, cleaned the dust from his sleeves, and leaned on his staff. His discoloured skin showed prominently now in the sunlight. How many days was it since he had so unceremoniously been delivered onto the sands of the beach? He shuddered and shook his shoulders. The memory was too unpleasant to dwell on. 

Reaching up to shield his eyes, he looked down on the city below. Such a wretched place. “I spent three days wandering among them, giving them the warning You asked me to give. Do you know what that was like?”

The wind gusted and blew around him. Jonah closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“They are bloodthirsty, immoral, unclean, and care nothing for proper rules of living! Their violence is unmatched in the world.” Jonah drove his staff into the dirt. 

The wind moved on leaving Jonah in the stillness of the day’s heat. He was thirsty but water brought back the terrible memories of his journey. Before he could stop his mind, it cast itself back to the moments of his drowning, deep beneath the ocean. Dragged down by grasping currents, Jonah was certain he would die. The saltiness of the sweat on his lips now reminded him of the terrifying taste of the sea.

There, in the dark depths, buried under the fathoms, he had seen the gates. He passed beyond the roots of mountains and heard the heavy doors of death close up tight. 

Tears, salty as well, flowed from his eyes as his heart lived in that moment once more. Jonah bent his head and whispered. “When the eyes of my soul dimmed and all grew dark as when a man faints, I remembered You. With the last of my life’s being, I sent my prayer up through the deeps to You, hoping You would hear me in Your holy temple.”

The wind swirled around him. Small towers of dust swirled up from the ground. Jonah lifted his chin but kept his eyes closed. “Yes, you lifted me out of the pit and you saved me,” he said. His lips came together and drooped. He opened his eyes and colour appeared in his cheeks. He pointed at the city below. “I told them what was going to happen but I know… I know the truth, do I not? It’s why I ran the other way!”

Jonah stood and leaned on his staff. He was still weak from the days in the fish and his skin was still healing from the… vomit. He paced about his small camp and watched the city closely. He imagined them dressing up in their hideous garments, hugging whomever they pleased, and proclaiming a feast for everyoneregardless of who they were. These Ninevites were the worst! He gave them forty days to rethink their sins, to change their ways. Forty days? “Not possible!”

Jonah sat down hard, closed his eyes, and fell asleep. 

In a dream, he saw the streets of the city. Peasants, artisans, nobles, soldiers, criminals, and the other vile ones, all were pondering the message he gave them. They began standing and turning around together pointing in the opposite direction. Jonah inwardly groaned. He tried to wake up but he could not. He felt the wind blowing in the dream and he saw the king’s court, the king’s throne, and the hateful king of the Ninevites… weeping, tearing his royal robe, and putting on sackcloth. 

“Bring me ashes! Bring us all ashes!” His command echoed through the dream. 

Jonah awoke with a cry. It was night. He stared up into a clear, star-filled sky. “I knew it,” he muttered. 

He fixed his gaze on the stars as they shimmered and danced far above. “They’ve listened,” he growled. “And You, in Your patience that never gives way to anger quick enough, have shown them gracious mercy. Your abundant, loving-kindness has once again proven more powerful than your willingness to do harm! I look the fool! I hate these people! Kill me! I would rather be dead than watch them live with your affirmation and approval! How could you do this to me?”

The wind gusted and kicked up dust into his face. Jonah sputtered and spat. “Yes!” he cried out. “It is right for me to be angry!”

Silence surrounded him. He watched the dawn and scowled at the city below.

 

The day was going to be hot. Jonah shifted uncomfortably. He threw small rocks at the ground. Sweat beaded and flowed from his forehead. He was angry and now he was miserable. Suddenly, beside him, a small shoot appeared from the ground. Jonah watched and as a plant began to grow, his anger and misery turned to awe. Within a very short time, the plant had grown large and tall. He was sheltered in its life-giving shade and his heart was grateful. 

The next day, a worm ate away at the plant, and it died as swiftly as it had come to life. A wind out of the east rose and made the heat of the day even worse than it was before. Jonah stared at the dried, yellowed remains of his precious, shadow-providing plant. His hands opened and closed into fists. He squeezed his eyes shut, felt a deep pressure build in his chest, and then he shouted. His rage shook his body. 

A wind swirled around him, a counter-movement out of the west. Jonah’s eyes snapped open. “Of course, I am angry that this precious vine died. It was beautiful and worthy. I needed it to survive.”

The western wind moved all around him like a small tornado and a voice spoke out of the swiftly moving air. “You love this one plant with such deep passion, yet it only lived a short time.Yet, you are angry to the point of death over the thousands of human lives in the city below that I love and have shown mercy? You would see them judged with destruction because you hate them, they are your enemies. But, Jonah, you are My prophet. How can you not see what I see? They are my children just as much as you are. I brought you here to warn them not so that we could gloat over their deaths. Rather, I sent you to wake them up and look! They have awoken just as I knew they would. They were never worthy of my anger but have always been worthy of my grace, mercy, forgiveness, and abundant love. Look! Behold, there is coming a day when all of my children will hear this good news.”

“I want to die,” Jonah said. “How can you show this kind of love toward your enemies?”

“Only enmity is my enemy, Jonah,” the voice from the wind said. “If the salvation of your enemy enrages and offends you, then you have not yet grasped the fullness of the good news, the love, the grace, and the mercy that flows from my heart.”

The wind departed. Jonah trembled. He looked down at the city of his enemies then westward toward the presence that had just left him. He sat down on the ground in the dirt and allowed the heat to wash over him. 

“Wake up, Jonah!” He raised his face to the sun. “Wake up!”

 

Why Reject the Ontology of Demons? Eric H. Janzen (response by Wm. Paul Young)

Why Reject the Ontology of Demons?

1. Spiritual Integrity—By rejecting demon ontology, we stop using them as scapegoats to avoid our responsibility as humans for our sin and evil actions.

2. Spiritual Freedom—By rejecting demon ontology, we stop believing in evil, unseen beings who wield fear-filled power. We overcome the demonic by becoming freed from the roots within us and world systems/ powers that energize the demonic phenomenon. Christ has made this possible. 

3. Spiritual Restoration—By rejecting demon ontology, we are able to raise the bar of redemption to a height worthy of Jesus: Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection is the Redeeming Life that encompasses all of Reality, and all created living beings within that reality. Thus, All will be redeemed and restored to God. This restoration of all things is a radically beautiful vision that only God could accomplish as Divine Love. And, perhaps we should say, only Divine Love would genuinely desire to restore All and our transformation/theosis enables us to glimpse this beauty.

4. Spiritual Consistency—By rejecting demon ontology, we preserve the revelation of God that Jesus has shown us. Namely, that God is Love and not Violent. God’s heart is to restore all of creation both visible and invisible. Rejecting demon ontology means that we will not witness God change nature and utterly destroy created beings. 

Wm Paul Young Replies

This is fantastic, Eric. And resonates. 

 

You could also say that rejecting demon ontology is freedom from demon idolatry (in that many build their lives and identity around their necessary existence). 

 

“I feel the earth move under my feet;
I feel the walls come tumbling down”

-- Carole King

 

Editor's note: See also Bradley Jersak, "Spiritual Warfare and the Paganizing of Christianity?"

Carl Truman: Sic et Non - Ron Dart

Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Crossway, Wheaton: 2020).

Carl R. Trueman, Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution (Crossway, Wheaton: 2022).

Sic et Non (Yes and No)

Carl Trueman has emerged, in the last few years, as a rather popular thinker and commentator on our late modern and postmodern versions of the ideology of liberalism. A couple of his early books (The Creedal Imperative & Luther on the Christian Life: Cross and Freedom) kept him safely confined in a more insulated religious ethos, but with the publishing of the more demanding The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (2020) and the more readable version of the larger tome, Strange New World (2022), Trueman has positioned himself well as an interpreter of our contemporary ills and the roots and genealogy of such a cultural disease. How should Trueman’s read of our present malaise be engaged, and how should his read of its origins be accepted or questioned?

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self is divided into 5 Parts: 1) Architecture of the Revolution, 2) Foundations of the Revolution, 3) Sexualization of the Revolution, 4) Triumphs of the Revolution, and 5) Concluding Unscientific Prologue. Rod Dreher wrote the “Foreword,” and each Part has a handy “Epilogue”. There can be no doubt that the notion of the “self” (and its protean-like meanings and interpretations) has been a focus in the West for the past 500 years (not as Trueman seems to think since Rousseau and tribe forward). Trueman does draw from Taylor’s comprehensive Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989) in his approach to the topic, but Trueman lacks the comprehensive breadth and depth of Taylor. There is no doubting the fact, though, that there is, from a certain perspective, a definite and decided inward turn to the subject and inner self within the West as a part of the quest for meaning and the search for a meaningful identity—such is the journey of identity politics. Taylor recognizes in such a turn, there can be an indulgent and narcissistic view of the self, but there are, in such a turn, possibilities for a more authentic self to emerge—how is the difference to be discerned?

"The Devil... from the Arché" - Bradley Jersak

Brooke Quist, a new friend of mine through Open Table Conference, blew my mind. He was asking for my thoughts on who or what Satan (the satan) or the devil is. After sharing a few of the thoughts I’ve gleaned from René Girard, Michael Hardin, Brian Zahnd, and especially my son Dominic Jersak, Brooke was eventually able to get a word in edgewise with his own discoveries.

He told me how he had been praying for illumination on two texts from the Johannine corpus (John's Gospel and first epistle):

John 8:44  You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

1 John 3:8  The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.  

I’ve spent a fair bit of time on these texts, pondering how the New Testament regularly describes all people as God’s children—most overtly in Ephesians 3:15 and Acts 17:28, but also assumed in the parable of the prodigal sons (Luke 15). How, then, do John and Jesus himself, think of Christ's opponents as children of the devil? Elsewhere, I’ve concluded that they’re referring simply to children-by-imitation, rather than by nature.  

But what jumped out at Brooke was in a different register. In the Gospel passage, Jesus describes the devil as “a murderer from the beginning.” And in 1 John, the devil has been sinning from the beginning.

As Brian Zahnd has pointed out, John 8 is reflecting on the first murder at the foundation of human civilization—Cain’s fratricide in Genesis 4. And he was there in humanity’s foundational sin: “through one man (Adam), sin entered the world” (Romans 5:12).

But wait. The devil has been this way for how long? A murderer and sinner since when? From the beginning—ap’ archē (ἀπ’ἀρχῆς). That word, arché, is the same “beginning” as in Genesis 1:1 (Greek Septuagint — In the beginning, God created…) and John 1:1 (John 1:1 — In the beginning was the Word). It’s a far fuller expression than from the start (protos). It’s more like from the very foundations or from the ground up.        

And suddenly, I saw the implications for Christianity’s dominant “Satan origin story.” By way of review:

We believed that the Devil or Satan began as Lucifer, God’s principal archangel and worship leader, but through jealousy and rebellion, fell from heaven with a third of the angels, who became demons. But the truth is that the biblical basis for that storyline is extremely thin and often requires dubious leaps. The tradition is funded more by intertestamental Jewish literature (especially Enoch) and Babylonian mythology, amplified in medieval Christianity, perfected in William Blake's Paradise Lost, to where we inherited and assumed their demonology as dogmatic truth.

But contra that narrative, Jesus tells us the devil has always been a murderer from the beginning, the arché. Further, Jesus says, the devil’s native language (literally, “he speaks out of his own” — ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων λαλεῖ), and his first tongue is lying.     

In other words, these texts suggest the devil did not pre-exist in the beginning as God’s highest archangel. Lucifer was not a holy angelic leader who rebelled and fell into the archdemon existence as Satan. The devil, satan, has always been a murderer and liar from the beginning. So says Jesus.

This discovery creates new questions that require fresh wrestling on the following points:

1. This beginning cannot be the same beginning as the foundational arche of the cosmos, because Genesis 1 and John 1 agree that God-through-Christ-by-the Spirit created ALL things and that God declared the whole of creation “Good.”

That’s partly why the Lucifer mythology seemed necessary. God created all things and did not create anything evil, so if the devil is an evil creature, then it must have first been good and then become evil. So we developed a war in heaven / angelic fall narrative to squeeze between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. And it works until you read John 8 carefully.

2. But we’ve already seen where Jesus, John, and Paul identity the devil’s arché. The foundational act or moment ascribed to the devil is in the first lie (“you shall not surely die”), the first sin (turning from the Light of God), and the first murder (Cain killing Abel).

From this perspective, Satan has been evil from the beginning, and that beginning is founded on human sin. In that sense, the devil or satan or evil is not so much a sentient creature of whom God once said, “Let there be…and it was good,” but rather, the monstrous personification of human sin.

As the early church said, evil has no being as such, but is a privation of or turning away from the Good. As Dominic Jersak once said, “...created by people out of the ashes of war, tears of those who are afraid, and the stuff that people want that doesn’t belong to them—and takes on a ‘life’ of its own, turns on us, and torments us.” Or, as Brian Zahnd has so helpfully said,

The satan is more than a metaphor but less than a person; by that, I mean the satan, though a very real and dangerous phenomenon, does not actually possess ontological being. The satan, like evil itself, is parasitic in nature. It cannot exist independently because it is not created by God. The satan can only exist by colonizing a host. If there is no host for the satan, the satan ceases to exist at all. Indeed, the devil is presented in Revelation as having “great wrath, because he knows that his time is short.” Though the satanic is properly a phenomenon and not a person, the satanic phenomenon is so real, so powerful, so deadly, so destructive, that we cannot help but personify the satanic as Satan.

Brian thinks that personifying Satan is probably necessary and helpful. Certainly, the Bible talks about it that way, especially in the fall narrative, the prologue of Job, and the temptations of Jesus, Peter, and Judas.

Allow me an illustration of why this is so. I interviewed a counselor who works with children who molest other children and asked her, “Does anything work?” She described one approach that can help, which experts call “externalization.” She helps molesters identify their experience of an overwhelming impulse to assault other children—an impulse from within that arises from factors such as genetic dispositions, previous traumas, and/or broken propensities. And while the children are held accountable for their own acts, they are also seemingly powerless to resist those impulses.

So the effective counselor will begin by externalizing and personifying the impulse by asking,

“Can you feel it coming toward you before it happens?”

Yes.

“If you could imagine it coming toward you, what would it look like?”

e.g., A dark angel. An ugly monster. 

“And if you gave that monster a name, what would you call it?”

e.g., The devil. Freddy.

“And if we could see it coming, what ‘weapons’ would you need to resist it?”

e.g., a shield, a sword, angelic warriors, an unbeatable Champion.

My counselor friend was describing the basics of “spiritual warfare” that we’ve learned in Ephesians 6—but now discovered through therapeutic practice outside the Christian worldview!

The balance here is that, on one hand, the child doesn’t get to say, “The devil made me do it,” and absolve themselves. But it also distinguishes the heart of the child from the evil impulses themselves. This creates a breakthrough because it both empowers the child’s agency (you can resist the devil and it will flee from you). But it also begins to wash away the shame that comes by identifying themselves with (and empowers) the impulse.  

To me, that’s a powerful reason to personify the satanic forces at work in this world, while also owning humanity's role in generating them. And while I’ve thought through much of this for years, Quist’s prayerful exegesis of Jesus’ view of “the devil from the beginning” feels like a clincher to be taken seriously.

Some humble caveats: (1) these are speculations about mysteries, insufficient to be regarded as doctrine; (2) these are not the only relevant texts in Scripture or interpretations in the tradition; (3) this is one perspective on the demonic, which does not exclude other phenomena, including the diverse realities or experiences of angels, righteous or fallen, actual or symbolic.