In this post, theologian Roger Olson explores a question I’ve been thinking about for many years now (as recently as last week, in fact): Where the Devil is Satan (in Contemporary Christianity)?
He explores some reasons we Christians (by which he says he mostly means his fellow moderate evangelical Christians; but it goes without saying that his words apply even more to many United Methodists) avoid talking about the devil. In my experience, this reason resonates:
A second, related reason, I think, is our moderate Protestant craving for cultural respectability. Belief in a literal Satan and demons seems, however nuanced, guaranteed to bring scorn from sophisticated people living under the influence of the Enlightenment.
Having been someone who previously didn’t believe in a literal Satan and demons (at least through seminary), this reason resonates with me. I used to be embarrassed by those quaint descriptions of demon possession and exorcism that are so prevalent in three of the four gospels. Satan was merely the personification of impersonal, undirected evil. He was symbolic, not literal.
The first chink in my armor of unbelief began to appear in an Augustine theology class taught by an English lay Catholic theologian named Lewis Ayres. We were discussing a passage from Augustine that allotted to the devil a greater share of responsibility for evil in the world than I could reconcile with my liberal Satan-as-symbol belief.
I said, “Wait a minute, Dr. Ayres. I hardly need Satan to explain why I do evil. I sin just fine without resorting to ‘the devil made me do it.’ I don’t get it. I don’t understand the role that a literal Satan would play in human sin.”
Dr. Ayres replied, “Just because you don’t understand what he does doesn’t mean he doesn’t exist!”
“Fair enough,” I said. But I was thinking, “Lewis Ayres believes in a literal Satan?!”
I can’t tell you how important this exchange was: here was a very smart, intellectual Christian—a professor at Candler of all places—who believed in Satan. I’m sure many other profs did, too, but Dr. Ayres was the first one to say so out loud.
Why was Satan such a taboo subject?
I blame it on Enlightenment thinking, which reasons that since believing in one invisible something that we can’t access directly through our senses (namely, God) is hard enough, why make Christianity that much harder by adding hundreds, thousands, millions(?) of invisible somethings called angels and demons?
This is silly, of course. If you believe that one thing outside of time, space, and matter (who isn’t really a thing, but you know what I mean) created everything, including us humans, how much harder is it to believe that he also created invisible angelic beings, some of whom, like humans, chose to rebel against God?
My point is, once you’re over the hump of believing in God—assuming that’s a hump to be gotten over—believing in Satan and demons is easy. And if you ask me, there certainly seems to be ample evidence for his existence, especially given the history of the 20th- and 21st-centuries.
Our modern skepticism about Satan, therefore, corresponds to modern skepticism about the resurrection. What do those very liberal Christians who want to reduce Jesus’ resurrection to a spiritual experience within the hearts of his disciples think they’re gaining? If we already believe in a God who intervened in the universe at least once (to call it into being), how much harder is to believe that he intervened on other occasions?
My point is, whether or not Christianity is an intellectually “respectable” thing to believe in, it won’t be because you’ve gotten rid of the bodily resurrection or angels and demons. So you may as well believe in those things, too.