Is Satan a freedom fighter?

[Redzeppelin]

I do not subscribe to your argument, and you have a Christian God, not a universal God with all the follies of popes and priests.

There are other faiths and if you present the biblical idea of creation there were Hindus' own, Buddhists have their own.

To say your God created and is the master of the universe and the rest of Gods are subordinated to your God is a baseless notion.

Rise above all these narrow sentiments and discover a universal God that can appeal to all.

There is only one God, Blaze. The so-called "universal God" IS the Christian God as far as I'm concerned. Muslim's view Allah as the "universal God" and Jews view Yahweh as the "universal God."

Sure, I understand that other faiths have their vision. I don't understand how that's relevant to what I posted.

Only "baseless" depending upon what you choose for a foundation for your assertion; mine's based on the Bible. Do you have something more authoritative than that to challenge me with?

[Redzeppelin]

I think the religious angle some of you guys are taking this to is ridiculous.

Well, don't mince any words here, fella. Some of us aren't that impressed with your take on this topic either...

If anything the poster's statement is meant in a political sense, it makes sense to consider a counter-acting force as the natural political enemy to be reviled by the leader figure. The whole situation is a metaphor for dictatorships, the violent revolutionaries who overthrow them and probably seek nothing else except the same aim, and the morally ambigiuous idiots who actually bother to get all hot and bothered about their theological positions on a literature forum and a post based on fictional characters!!

Again, not sure who made you the arbiter of what is sensible or not - the characters are "fictional" to YOU; the issue is a metaphor to YOU. For some of us, it is reality and a topic worthy of discussion. Your boiling it all down to political philosophy is interesting, but the theology of the question can't simply be dismissed away, try as you might.

For all intents and purposes, God and Satan as defined in this novel are separate characters from the theological canon. And even in the situation of a Bible, its still a book, with what some consider fictional tropes and characters.

All you've really said in this post is "I don't believe in the Bible." Fine - but is that it? Or have you more?

[blazeofglory]

There is only one God, Blaze. The so-called "universal God" IS the Christian God as far as I'm concerned. Muslim's view Allah as the "universal God" and Jews view Yahweh as the "universal God."

Sure, I understand that other faiths have their vision. I don't understand how that's relevant to what I posted.

Only "baseless" depending upon what you choose for a foundation for your assertion; mine's based on the Bible. Do you have something more authoritative than that to challenge me with?

I have no authority as such and no scholastic disposition in point of fact. I glean these ideas from reading yours and the rest of other posters' and based on that I inferred my notion of it. This is argumentation and a classical and timeless issue and we never can satisfy each other. Religions and ideals are always militaristic things and religions have been always more detrimental than beneficial to humanity. History endorses this fact. Now the difference between your points and mine is I never assert my religion, that is Hinduism fanatically and you do it zealously to the extent of claiming that the Christian God is true and the Biblical scheme of the creation of the universe is valid and the like. This narrows down our understanding of human nature and our portrayal of the world we live in. Humanity at times becomes warring entities when such narrow dogmas rock us. While you put forth yours I did mine and there is nothing between us and the rest of other readers or posters judge us. We leave it to them.
However my plea is rather than becoming geo or religion centric let us be humane and cultivate humanitarian values. We will do something to keep the world clean of fanaticisms and fundamentalisms that is plaguing the universally relentlessly

[Redzeppelin]

I have no authority as such and no scholastic disposition in point of fact. I glean these ideas from reading yours and the rest of other posters' and based on that I inferred my notion of it. This is argumentation and a classical and timeless issue and we never can satisfy each other.

I appreciate your honesty here. This has less to do with "scholasticism" than it does the foundation of our claims as to the character of God. The different religions that exist do so largely through their disagreement upon the character of God. As such, most religions are mutually exclusive because their claims often involve contradictions. Your vision of God, then, is a puzzle created by pulling different pieces and assembling them into a whole. I find that problematic because that strikes me as creating God according to your vision. Doing so essentially allows you to create a being who doesn't really exist because how can you be sure the pieces you have chosen are the correct ones? Either all religions are wrong, or one of them is right; they can't all be right (because they contradict each other and the most basic rule of logic is that a thing cannot be true and false at the same time). While I respect your method, its results cannot be relied upon with any stability.

Religions and ideals are always militaristic things and religions have been always more detrimental than beneficial to humanity.

I find your use of universals interesting. "Always"? Really? I find that a difficult position to maintain. As well, people who attack religion conveniently side step the numerous social/charitable things religions do in this world. The idea that religion has been more harmful than beneficial is simply not defensible.

History endorses this fact. Now the difference between your points and mine is I never assert my religion, that is Hinduism fanatically and you do it zealously to the extent of claiming that the Christian God is true and the Biblical scheme of the creation of the universe is valid and the like.

I'm sorry - I'm hard-pressed to find the "zealous" nature of my posts. Would you mind pointing that out? I simply assert the vision of God I believe to be true - just as you do. And why shouldn't I assert that? Isn't that what you do? And why shouldn't I think my vision is correct? Why believe in Christianity (or Judaism or Islam, etc) if I don't fully believe in its truth? I do not understand why you write what sounds like criticism of my defense of my faith.

This narrows down our understanding of human nature and our portrayal of the world we live in. Humanity at times becomes warring entities when such narrow dogmas rock us. While you put forth yours I did mine and there is nothing between us and the rest of other readers or posters judge us. We leave it to them.
However my plea is rather than becoming geo or religion centric let us be humane and cultivate humanitarian values. We will do something to keep the world clean of fanaticisms and fundamentalisms that is plaguing the universally relentlessly

While your view may be "wider," that is largely because you have assembled a God who is not based upon any standard. Religions generally have a sacred text that is the basis of the faith - a document that establishes the parameters of the belief. If you subscribe to no real faith per se and rather have assembled your idea of God piece-meal, well I suppose you could believe that you have a "wider" view than me, but that width is largely a product of refusing to subscribe to a clear vision of God in favor for one you've created for yourself.

I respect your final plea, but the problem is this: there needs to be a stable "ground" as to the character of God. Without that, he becomes whatever you and I want, and at that point, we can (via our humanly-shaped diety) justify whatever we want - and then the terror begins.

[Sebas. Melmoth]

Satan is a vain liar and murderer.

[hoope]

Satan is a vain liar and murderer.

Agree.. and much more ..he's teh worst of all..and he drives people to do wrong as well..

I mean ..why do we even discuss this.. Every one knows Satan .. !!

[Redzeppelin]

Agree.. and much more ..he's teh worst of all..and he drives people to do wrong as well..

I mean ..why do we even discuss this.. Every one knows Satan .. !!

I wish this were true. CS Lewis argued in his book The Screwtape Letters that the two most dangerous things we can do is to a) take Satan lightly, or b) to cease to believe that he's real. Both actions result in our underestimation of his power. The modern era has largely made Satan into a mythical bogeyman.

[Heteronym]

Mikhail Bakunin, one of the intellectual founders of modern anarchism, considers, in his book God and the State, Satan the first freedom fighter and the emancipator of Mankind. From his act of rebellion and by convicing Adam and Eve to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, Bakunin argues, Mankind moved from being mere field beasts to being individuals in control of their own lives.

[Sebas. Melmoth]

individuals in control of their own lives.

Question: ultimately how much control does one really have?

[Buh4Bee]

I thought of it more in terms of the ego whispering do that...do that...

What I am understanding from the flow of the conversation is that Satan gave us free will by his act of tricking Adam and Eve to eat the apple. But this is wrong, God gave us free will. If he had not, Adam and Eve would never have been to bite the apple.

[MANICHAEAN]

"The devil is a gentleman" used to be a common saying throughout Europe.
"Prince" was in fact Satan's rank.
He is called in the Gospel the "Prince of the World" (John 12:31). He is also known as Prince of Darkness, Prince of Death and Prince of Cherubim.

One of the more interesting viewpoints I've found on this topic is Hesse's "Damian", a modern version of the Christian morality play, a representation of the struggle between Good and Evil for the soul of man.Thus he writes "In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross."

Is this feasible? Well Scripture states "He shall be his own God, knowing good and evil" and "He shall be as God" (Genesis 3:5). And the traditional means by which the Christian Devil or Antichrist is supposed to subvert souls is through cunning argument or false exposition of the Scriptures e.g.Eve.

At the heart of any continuous body of work there is always present a set of assumptions about the nature of man and, more particularly, about the limits of the human. Black & white polar opposites are the "hero" and the "villain", but thats too simplistic. The borderline figure who defines the limits of the human - customarily from the farther side - has been called alternately: the other, the alien, the outsider, the stranger, or if you wish the Devil. Take Shakespeare's Sonnet 144:

Two loves I have of comfort and dispair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still.
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman colored ill.
To win me soon to Hell, my female evil Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
----
I guess one angel in another's Hell.
Yet this shall I ne'er know,
But live in doubt Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

Leaving aside, if possible, Shakespeare's attitude to women, another aspect of his work of course revolves around the aspects of witchcraft & magic, mainly the black magic with the witches being the practitioners of Satan. Historians seem to indicate that witches are the remnant of a pre-Christian cult of the Mother, too exclusive to be tolerated by Christianity.

Is the Devil a Freedom Fighter? Yes, he is fighting for his views though one must be circumspect regards his motivation. He is also not called "The Fallen Angel" for nothing. In Scripture again, only one man was able to stare down the Devil without fear in the desert beyond the Jordan.

For remaining earthly souls Christian morality lays more emphasis, not on the acts of man but on their attitudes. Or as Augustine put it "Love, and do what you will."

[Alexander III]

Honestly my take from a christian mytoglogical point of view is that there is no hero. God clearly is described with attitudes of a tyrant, which wished complete control and unquestioning subjects. However it seems clear that he does this out of good will. He is an entity to ar detached from humans and angels to understand their minds. I mean from a logical and practical point he understands them perfectly and that is his fault, he failed to see that they are not logical and rational creatures, he is simply to high in the starts to know of the gutter. Thus he acts as he knows that from a logical and rational point he is a tyrant but he does this for their own good and prosperity, which would be trough if it were not that the angels and people are not rational.

Satan is a freedom fighter, akin to the partisan fighting the nazi's, and the americans shrugging of monarchy. How ever he comes of not better in this story from a moral point of view. Like god his intentions are good, but he losses himself. I think he is the best demonstration of why freedom is the most dangerous concept known to man, he find untamed freedom and looses his reality in it. he unlike god cannot handle unlimited freedom and soon his original concepts are replaced by delusions, delusions to be a god, delusions that the evil he performs is necessary, delusions that nothing his his fault but it was the others that ruined him.

In conclusion is is a rather misanthropic tale, both parties have the aim to do good, yet due to their limitations or in god's case over limitations, they only understand the world from their perspective and loose focus of the concept of the soul of others, until both are slowly lead to the path of extremism, which makes them both relatively and unintentionally evil. the tale shows the danger of extreme freedom and of extreme repression, it is a tale which teaches to avoid the extremes and that bliss can only be found in the middle grounds.


My interpretation comes from the notion that I read the Bible not as holy scripture but just another work of literature from antiquity. If we look at history we can see that the metaphor of God appears in the church, having good intentions but loosing themselves in tyranny, and oddly enough satan also appears in the church, rebellion against the worldly and the tyranny of pagans and materialism,a and loose morals, which ends with being lost in freedom and having more vice than the finest libertine.

[Redzeppelin]

Honestly my take from a christian mytoglogical point of view is that there is no hero. God clearly is described with attitudes of a tyrant, which wished complete control and unquestioning subjects. However it seems clear that he does this out of good will. He is an entity to ar detached from humans and angels to understand their minds. I mean from a logical and practical point he understands them perfectly and that is his fault, he failed to see that they are not logical and rational creatures, he is simply to high in the starts to know of the gutter. Thus he acts as he knows that from a logical and rational point he is a tyrant but he does this for their own good and prosperity, which would be trough if it were not that the angels and people are not rational.

The being you describe as "God" here has nothing to do with the Being described by the Bible. You might wish to re-read the primary source of our understanding of Him a bit more closely because you've clearly missed much of what it had to say about the His character.

I read the Bible not as holy scripture but just another work of literature from antiquity. If we look at history we can see that the metaphor of God appears in the church, having good intentions but loosing themselves in tyranny, and oddly enough satan also appears in the church, rebellion against the worldly and the tyranny of pagans and materialism,a and loose morals, which ends with being lost in freedom and having more vice than the finest libertine.

Interesting view - though, again, if you had done your research you might have discovered that the Bible is far different from all other "mythologies" from ancient cultures.

[Heteronym]

What I am understanding from the flow of the conversation is that Satan gave us free will by his act of tricking Adam and Eve to eat the apple. But this is wrong, God gave us free will. If he had not, Adam and Eve would never have been to bite the apple.

If a father knows that matches are dangerous and that a child is liable to play with matches and get burned, a father will do everything to keep the matches away. But what does caring father God do? He puts the matches right in the middle of the garden. Isn't that what cops call entrapment?

The fact that God is omniscient and yet allowed Man to fall is one of those matters that Christians never managed to neatly explain or justify. Either God is not omniscient and so he can't be God, or he's uncaring because he allowed his children to fall, and so we shouldn't put much faith in such a figure. Because a father who stops a child from getting burned is not disrespecting her free will. He's just doing his role.

The figure of Satan is fascinating because, for whatever motives he had, he alloed us to realise our full potential as men, instead of letting us remain in bondage, cared for like farm animals by a totalitarian farmer.

[MANICHAEAN]

I agree Heteronym that the figure of Satan is fascinating. Once you go beyond the standard character simplistics.

He fell from "pride". But if he were originally a good angel, would he have pride?

I've got the kind of mind that when I hear that Humpty Dumpty fell, I ask myself "Did he fall, or was he pushed?" Alas we will never know.

Personally your remark about (Satan) "he allowed us to realise our full potential as men" is a bit rich. If anyone gave us the freedom it was God through the attribute of free choice. There is one Jesuit school of thought that of the opinion that it is not so much what God commands, as what he allows. Thus he is realistic enough to accept weakness in reality & yet still forgive.