In preparation for the next two weeks’ sermons on spiritual warfare, I just started this out-of-print book by Michael Green called I Believe in Satan’s Downfall. Roger Olson recommended it over on his blog. I can already tell it’s going to be awesome! If you’re an author who wants to break through my natural defenses, write well. Of course, you better back up that good writing with good ideas, but have you noticed that you usually don’t have one without the other?
Regarding belief in a literal Satan, Green writes:
I do not see how anyone who regards the Scriptures as at all normative for belief or behavior can possibly avoid the conclusion that this is the firm and unwavering teaching of the Bible, and that therefore any simple rejection of such uniform and decisive teaching needs a great deal of justification. It simply will not do to say, “Oh, we can’t believe that these days.” Since when has any of the biblical revelation fitted neatly into what could be believed these days? If unaided reason were enough to disclose God to us, the Almighty might have spared himself the trouble both of revelation and of incarnation.[†]
† Michael Green, I Believe in Satan’s Downfall (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), 26.
Great book! All of Green’s books are fantastic. I love his book on the Holy Spirit.
Clay, this book punches me in the gut in part because I was, at one time, the oblivious liberal on the subject of Satan. Green quotes back to me the arguments I used to make—in my head if not to parishioners. Satan is a symbol. We don’t need him to explain evil. Jesus was mistaken about the demonic because he was limited by the incarnation, etc.