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Originally posted by fred

Does Meph believe that; or is he mirroring back to those he is arguing with?

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Originally posted by Iconoclast

Laika

Satan is a metaphor?

A metaphor stands before the throne and accuses the saints?

Revelation 12:10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, "Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night."

Iconoclast

If "Satan (literally "ha satan" - the accuser) as a being" was really metaphorical speech to help us humans conceptualize how our judgment and accusation of God and each other is pure evil then what would the interpretation of this passage be?

Wouldn't it mean that WE - really "the accuser" / "the judger" WITHIN us be thrown down? That WE will no longer accuse each other before our God day and night? Doesn't this make more sense?

thanks,
Iconoclast

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Romanadies, ORIGINAL SIN ACCORDING TO ST. PAUL

I. Fallen Creation

. . .

To try to read into St. Paul's thought any type of philosophy of a naturally well balanced universe with inherent and fixed moral laws of reason, according to which men can live with peace of mind and be happy, is to do violence to the apostle's faith. For St. Paul, there is now no such thing as a natural world with an inherent system of moral laws, because all of creation has been subjected to the vanity and evil power of Satan, who is ruling by the powers of death and corruption.[ 14 ] For this reason all men have become sinners. [ 15 ] There is no such thing as a man who is sinless simply because he is living according to the rules of reason or the Mosaic law.[ 16 ] The possibility of living according to universal reason entails, also, the possibility of being without sin. But for Paul this is a myth, because Satan is no respecter of reasonable rules of good conduct [ 17 ] and has under his influence all men born under the power of death and corruption.[ 18 ]

Whether or not belief in the present, real and active power of Satan appeals to the Biblical theologian, he cannot ignore the importance that St. Paul attributes to the power of the devil. To do so is to completely misunderstand the problem of original sin and its transmission and so misinterpret the mind of the New Testament writers and the faith of the whole ancient Church. In regard to the power of Satan to introduce sin into the life of every man, St. Augustine in combating Pelagianism obviously misread St. Paul. by relegating the power of Satan, death, and corruption to the background and pushing to the foreground of controversy the problem of personal guilt in the transmission of original sin, St. Augustine introduced a false moralistic philosophical approach which is foreign to the thinking of St. Paul [ 19 ] and which was not accepted by the patristic tradition of the East. [ 20 ]

For St. Paul, Satan is not simply a negative power in the universe. He is personal with will, [ 21 ] with thoughts, [ 22 ] and with methods of deception, [ 23 ] against whom Christians must wage and intense battle [ 24 ] because they can still be tempted by him. [ 25 ] He is active in a dynamic manner, [ 26 ] fighting for the destruction of creation and not simply waiting passively in a restricted corner to accept those who happen to rationally decide not to follow God and the moral laws inherent in a natural universe. Satan is even capable of transforming himself into an angel of light [ 27 ]. He has at his disposal miraculous powers of perversion [ 28 ] and has as co-workers whole armies of invisible powers.[ 29 ] He is the "god of this age," [ 30 ] the one who deceived the first woman.[ 31 ] It is he who led man [ 32 ] and all of creation into the path of death and corruption. [ 33 ]

The power of death and corruption, according to Paul, is not negative, but on the contrary, positively active. "The sting of death is sin,"[ 34 ] which in turn reigns in death.[ 35 ] Not only man, but all creation has been yoked under its tyrannizing power [ 36 ] and is now awaiting redemption. Creation itself shall also be delivered from the slavery of corruption.[ 37 ] Along with the final destruction of all the enemies of God, death--the last and probably the greatest enemy--will be destroyed.[ 38 ] Then death will be swallowed up in victory.[ 39 ] For St. Paul, the destruction of death is parallel to the destruction of the devil and his forces. Salvation from the one is salvation from the other.[ 40 ]

It is obvious from St. Paul's expressions concerning fallen creation, Satan, and death, that there is no room in his thinking for any type of metaphysical dualism, of departmentalization which would make of this world and intermediary domain which for man is merely a stepping stone leading either into the presence of God or into the kingdom of Satan. The idea of a three story universe, whereby God and His company of saints and angels occupy the top floor, the devil the basement, and man in the flesh the middle, has no room in Pauline theology. For Paul, all three orders of existence interpenetrate. There is no such thing as a middle world of neutrality where man can live according to natural law and then be judged for a life of happiness in the presence of God or for a life of torment in the pits of outer darkness. On the contrary, all of creation is the domain of God, Who Himself cannot be tainted with evil. But in His domain there are other wills which He has created, which can choose either the kingdom of God or the kingdom of death and destruction.

In spite of the fact that creation is of God and essentially good, the devil at the same time has parasitically transformed this same creation of God into a temporary kingdom for himself.[ 41 ] The devil, death, and sin are reigning in this world and not in another. Both the kingdom of darkness and kingdom of light are battling hand to hand in the same place. For this reason, the only true victory possible over the devil is the resurrection of the dead.[ 42 ] There is no escape from the battlefield. The only choice possible for every man is either to fight the devil by actively sharing in the victory of Christ, or to accept the deceptions of the devil by wanting to believe that all goes well and everything is normal.[ 43 ]

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Originally posted by Electra

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Originally posted by John Earp (in response to MephEternal)
1. Show from Scripture where it ever says that God's love is unconditional to all persons.

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For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

Denying God’s unconditional love for all people presupposes a limited atonement.

Electra (this is really me, not Mephi)

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For those of you who hold that God is love “in such a way” as Mephi has summarized above, could you please provide some sort of analogy to help illustrate how this is not a logical contradiction

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If a being IS anti-love, there’s nothing there to love. But he could yet MOURN for them, for he loves what they could have been and hates what they now are and what their destiny will be.

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To me, love cannot persist forever by being pushed, there eventually has to be some pull. If you make a socket connect call and no port answers, there is no connection made, nothing can transfer from one to the other.

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Originally posted by Iconoclast

Laika

Satan is a metaphor?

A metaphor stands before the throne and accuses the saints?

Revelation 12:10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, "Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night."

Iconoclast

If "Satan (literally "ha satan" - the accuser) as a being" was really metaphorical speech to help us humans conceptualize how our judgment and accusation of God and each other is pure evil then what would the interpretation of this passage be?

Wouldn't it mean that WE - really "the accuser" / "the judger" WITHIN us be thrown down? That WE will no longer accuse each other before our God day and night? Doesn't this make more sense?

thanks,
Iconoclast

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Originally posted by Electra
The command “Love your enemies” applies to Satan insofar as he is portrayed as our enemy, whether literally or metaphorically.

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Good people love whoever deserves to be loved.
Loving people love.

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To love someone is to be FOR them.
To NOT love someone is to be AGAINST them.

Is God FOR or AGAINST Satan?

Most people say AGAINST because to them Satan MEANS the negative evil force NOT some person who is doing bad things.

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Originally posted by MephEternal

Ok, Iconoclast. I hear you.

BUT...

If one WERE to have the belief that Satan really WAS a real, though non-corporeal sentient being rather than a metaphor...then we would say that God (who IS love) would love Satan unconditionally, yes?

Just clarifying for all the nice people...

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Yes. There is just no escaping this in my opinion. IF Satan were an actual sentient being THEN God loves him unconditionally. This whole idea of Satan losing his personification or his Imago Dei and yet still being self-aware, able to deliberate and act within this world has serious problems with it.

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In my opinion all of the machinations folks are trying here are simply an effort to rationalize their deep intuition.

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MephEternal
We don't mourn for something that we are AGAINST, right?
Iconoclast
Bingo! Absolutely not - we rejoice.

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Originally posted by Iconoclast

Electra

To interpret every reference to the accuser as the pure evil within each one of us seems contrary to the intent of the language, whether it is literal or metaphorical.

Iconoclast

How is this any different than inflation? Don't we speak about inflation as an entity - something that we need to attack? But isn't inflation caused by individual behavior? Seems to me that the very intent of our language is to sharpen complex amorphous concepts into soemthing that we can associate logic with in such a way as to be able to take coherent action. This is what I see with all the references to Satan.

You might want to consider reading "Metaphors We Live By" to see how almost all of our abstract thought is metaphorical and how we confuse ourselves when we start taking our metaphors literally. Does time really "flow" (like a river). Some people take this metaphor literally and start thinking that the future really exists right now! Why, it is just upstream over there and it is about to "arrive".

The book was written by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. It is way cool stuff.

thanks,
Iconoclast

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It seems to me that we all must agree somehow that one's experience of God's love has a possible end (hell). That is all I have been contending for. This seems to me to be the resolution to how God's love can be for all and yet be conditional is that every sentient being starts out life being loved by God, and depending on how they form their character for or against God, they then either continue to be loved by God, or begin to be hated by Him. If this is not true, then all the Scriptures I posted earlier about God hating evil, being angry with the wicked, etc., we ought to excise from our Bibles as Jefferson did whatever didn't fit with his Deism.

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What Meph is saying:
God’s giving of love has no external conditions. The ONLY REASONS that God gives love to people are twofold:

1) God is love in God’s essential existence
2) There are people to love.

1 and 2 work out such that God unconditionally loves all sentient beings.

This unconditional love for all person does NOT necessarily entail:
--salvation for all people
--the absence of judgment (Judgment is a FORM of love)
--the absence of hatred (Love HATES anti-love)
--the absence of SELECTION (Covenants CAN be conditional!)
--the absence of MOURNING (Mourning a person’s loss is a form of love)

I’m saying this again to all the people that seem to think that saying that “God’s love is conditional” is necessary to reconcile any of the things above. It is NOT.

I would agree that:
--the RECEIVING of God’s love is conditional (by time limit of probationary period or self-soldification)
--entering into conscious relationship with God is conditional.
--being in mutually influential covenant with God is conditional. (Note: This has to be qualified by "mutually influential" because it is possible to have a UNILATERAL covenant binding upon only ONE person. Remember God's covenant with Abraham with the death walk?)

The list that I placed earlier is what others HAVE to end up saying:

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God IS love (perfect love, I suppose), in such a way that…
--God can choose to hate people.
--God is the only authoritative, justified, and consummate hater of persons.
--We are commanded to love our enemies, but God doesn’t have to.
--God only loves conditionally, not unconditionally.
--God’s love has a time limit.
This is in opposition to God loving all sentient beings unconditionally.
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This seems problematic. But NONE of this has to be said, nor do the untenable things in the first list have to be affirmed IF we say that the GIVING of God’s love is without

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How about we completely throw out the whole notion of "love the sinner, hate the sin" .

God hates sin.
I sin.
Therefore God hates me.

This I think is embedded deep within us. The "sinner in the hands of an angry God" picture. We try to cover this up by taking sin in our hand and saying, "that's not me" . All the while, God has spent thousands of years telling us, "yes it is" .

Then along comes 2 Cor.5:19 and says: "...that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. ". And guess what, we don't believe it. No way the God that hates sin can actually be reconciled to sinners. No way can God just fling the gates of heaven wide open and all we have to do is say "thank you Jesus" on our way in.

As long as we continue to tell ourselves that God "loves the sinner (me), hates the sin", we can continue to tell ourselves we're ok without Jesus.

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