"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.

Comments

[Bradley Jersak]

Gabe asked,

...if the satan is not a person, who or what tempted Jesus in the wilderness?
What was that all about then?

It's a great question and would involve speculation. But let's start with a few aspects of which we have some confidence:

1. We know that Jesus faced and overcame a three-fold temptation in the wilderness.
2. Oddly, both Matthew and Luke describe it as the Spirit leading Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted by "the devil."
3. When Jesus resists the devil, Matt. 4 quotes Jesus as saying, "Get away from me, Satan."
4. We are quite sure Jesus was there alone without other human witnesses.
5. Therefore, we know that it was Jesus himself who reported the temptations to his disciples, who then recorded what we read.
6. In his account, Jesus personifies the devil or Satan. He believed this was the best way to tell the story.
7. We know that sometimes when addressing Satan, Jesus was not literally talking to a being called Satan, but specifically to anyone who would tempt him to bypass the Cross. E.g., He says to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan."

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. We don't make a dogma of it. We are, rather, questioning our certitude of making a dogma that the devil IS a person.

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 says he was in every way like us, tempted in every way as we are. Gregory the Theologian said that Christ assumed every aspect of human nature to heal every aspect of human nature. SO, if the temptations of Jesus were REAL, we MIGHT speak of those as coming to us externally (as the devil or satan, as Jesus does). But we MIGHT ALSO think about temptation as an authentic part of the human condition, suggestions from the flesh about finding our destiny autonomously... a condition that Jesus had to face and overcome on behalf of us all (1) for him to be fully human and (2) for his salvation to extend to every aspect of our humanity.

Michael's description would then need to be read VERY carefully. Did Jesus have a 'shadow side'? *Potentially*... meaning both (1) the temptation was authentic, (2) intrinsic to human nature, (3) but which Christ faced and overcame. IF Satan is not a person, then Jesus still felt personifying that struggle was the best way to describe it, exactly like alcoholics might describe "wrestling with their demons."

But I would add again that if Jesus used personification, he thought it was a good way to describe it, perhaps to show us how to resist temptation by externalizing it as a false self, rather than wrongly over-identifying with it and assuming the shame of the temptation. The main reason to demythologize the devil's personhood is when people skirt their responsibility and say "the devil made me do it," as if giving in to temptation is not something they need to own.

[Gabe Landes]

This post was very helpful! It did bring one question to mind: if the satan is not a person, who or what tempted Jesus in the wilderness? What was that all about then?

[Florian Berndt]

One of my big questions was how we can trust in the ontology and personhood of God if we question the ontology of spirits opposed to His love - in particular in regard to Holy Spirit. Shortly after that question arose I had a visionary experience for which I only found the words to articulate it after I got introduced to Simone Weil's cosmology. In essence, in order for us to grow into personhood and participate in the kenotic flow of the Triune life of God, there had to be 'space' for 'other' than that life. Out of that vacuum arose the lie of separation, the adversarial/satanic spirit/influence that Paul called the spirit/influence of the cosmos/world(system) - 1. Corinthians 2:12. John writes about the effect of Holy Spirit in the world, and it is interesting how the Hebrew and Greek terms for spirit are the same as breath, wind etc. Jonathan Mittchell renders the alternative translation as 'breath-effect'in his New Testament. It is here that I am far more inclined towards the Eastern conception of the Trinity, in which Holy Spirit continuously proceeds from the Father as the Source through the Son to us (John 15:26), rather than simply three divine persons sharing in one divine essence (I know, I am oversimplifying). In other words, the Spirit of God is personal, because She proceeds from the Origin of personhood and actually makes personhood as the very Spirit of relationship possible. In contrast, as your son was shown, the demonic and the satanic arise not from personhood, but from elements that arise from the state of anti-personhood, so to speak - humanities orphan mentality, based on the lie of separation. Hence, 'the father of lies' (one begets according to one's own nature). Hope that makes sense...:)

[Florian Berndt]

Yes!!! This is exactly the direction my thoughts have been going for a number of years now concerning this issue - even wrote a n article on it that is somewhere on my old computer. There were a lot of hurdles I had to overcome and like you,I think there are still a lot of questions, but I fully can get on board with what you wrote here, and believe it helps us far better to address the problem of evil than our old mythologies allowed. In fact, I believe those mythologies have their origin in the original lie, hindering us to look at the real issues at hand.

[Loyd]

Interesting thoughts that need further discussion, for sure. I find it also an interesting implication in regard to the 'aseity' of God. I have sometimes quipped that evil doesn't 'exist' per se, at least not in the necessary sense. We all know evil is real, but it is negation of good/righteous/holy/God-ness.

[Greg]

I remember how Dr. Dan Allender, Christian psychologist at the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, once said that "the satan" is not a "person." I appreciate your thoughts on this important topic and, too, recognize the mysterious, yet real dynamics of "evil." I wonder how God wants us to learn from our brothers and sisters from the Majority World.