The Reformation led to the divide between Protestant and Catholic Christianity. This divide was bitter, and both sides eagerly demonized the other as in league with a superhuman Devil, because they were convinced that God was on their side, and their enemies therefore were of the Devil. This justified all manner of war, persecution and demonization. Protestants insisted that the Pope was Antichrist, whilst Catholics spoke of exorcising the demons of Protestantism. Martin Luther, leader of the Reformation, was obsessed with the theme of the Devil, throwing ink at him, breaking wind [passing gas] to scare him away, and ever eager to vent his obsession about the Devil in terms of his demonization of the Catholics1. Significantly, even Luther recognized that the passage about “war in heaven” in Revelation 12 didn’t refer to anything that happened in Eden, but rather was a description of Christian persecution at the hands of their enemies. Luther believed the common idea about Satan being hurled out of Heaven in Eden, but he recognized that Revelation 12 couldn’t be used to support the idea2. We discuss Revelation 12 in more detail in section 5-32. Catholic response was no less obsessive; the catechism of Canisius, a Catholic response to Luther’s Greater Catechism of 1529, mentions Satan more often than it does Jesus (67 times compared to 63 times)3. The Council of Trent blamed Protestantism on the Devil.
Calvin and the later Protestant reformers continued Luther’s obsession with the Devil. Like the apocryphal Jewish writings discussed in section 1-1-2, Calvin re-interpreted basic Bible passages as referring to the Devil when the Biblical text itself says nothing about the Devil. Thus Exodus 10:27; Romans 9:17 etc. make it clear that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart; but Calvin claimed that “Satan confirmed [Pharaoh] in the obstinacy of his breast” (Institutes Of The Christian Religion 2.4.2-5, Commentary on Matthew 6:13). So obsessive was the belief in the Devil that it became utterly fundamental doctrine for both Catholics and Protestants. But as always, a minority protested and held to the original teaching of Scripture. In 1642, Joseph Mede concluded that the language of ‘demons’ refers to mental illnesses rather than evil beings controlled by a personal Satan: “Joseph Mede denied that the demons of the New Testament should be equated with Satan, writing: “I am perswaded (till I shall heare better reason to the contrary) that these Daemoniacks were no other than such as we call mad-men and lunaticks; at least that we comprehend them under those names” (Diatribae. Discourses on divers texts of Scripture, delivered upon severall occasions). The claim has even been made that as a result of his Bible translation work, William Tyndale was led to reject the idea that Satan is a personal being, seeing the word means simply ‘an adversary’. Nick Stephens suggests that Tyndale’s 1530 book The Man of Sin rejects the orthodox view of Satan as a fallen Angel. G.H. Williams documents the united Catholic and Protestant persecution of the Italian Anabaptists around Venice because they denied both the existence of a superhuman Devil and the Trinity4. It’s significant that these two false doctrines tend to hang together—we will see later that Isaac Newton ended up denying both of them. We discuss the logical connections between them in Chapter 6. The Italian Anabaptists were forerunners of the protestors against the orthodox Devil doctrine which we discuss in section 1-5. One of the Anabaptists’ critics, Urbanus Rhegius, complained that they “denied the existence of the Devil”5.
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Author: Duncan Heaster
Keywords: Dostoevsky, Isaac Newton, Sir Isaac Newton, William Tyndale, Tyndale, Joseph Mede, Reformation, Protestant Reformation, Protestants, Catholics and Protestants, Martin Luther, Luther, Catholic war, war between Catholics and Protestants, Satanology, Demonology, demons, Adversary, Christ tempted, Christ tempted in the wilderness, Christ's temptation, Christ's temptation in the wilderness, Devil, Devil and Jesus, Devil tempts Jesus, diabolos, Evil angel, Evil Inclination, Evil nature, Evil one, Hara Yetser, Ha-ra Yetser, Hara Yetzer, Ha-ra Yetzer, Hara Yezer, Ha-ra Yezer, Jesus' temptation, Jesus' temptation in the wilderness, Jesus tempted, Jesus tempted by Satan, Jesus tempted by the devil, Jesus tempted in the wilderness, Jesus's temptation, Man's sinful nature, Personification of evil, Satan, Satan and Jesus, Satan tempts Christ, Satan tempts Jesus, Satan devil, Lucifer, Antichrist, Pope antichrist
Bible reference(s): 1 Chronicles 21:1, Job 1:6-9, Job 1:12, Job 2:1-7, Isaiah 14:12, Zechariah 3:1-2, Matthew 4:1-11, Matthew 12:26, Matthew 13:19, Matthew 13:38-39, Matthew 16:23, Matthew 25:41, Mark 1:13, Mark 3:23, Mark 3:26, Mark 4:15, Mark 8:33, Luke 4:2-5, Luke 4:13, Luke 8:12, Luke 11:18, Luke 13:16, Luke 22:3, Luke 22:31, John 6:70, John 8:44, John 13:2, John 13:27, John 17:15, Acts 5:3, Acts 10:38, Acts 13:10, Acts 26:18, Romans 16:20, 1 Corinthians 5:5, 1 Corinthians 7:5, 2 Corinthians 2:11, 2 Corinthians 11:14, 2 Corinthians 12:7, Ephesians 4:27, Ephesians 6:11, Ephesians 6:16, 1 Thessalonians 2:18, 1 Thessalonians 3:5, 2 Thessalonians 2:9, 1 Timothy 1:20, 1 Timothy 3:6, 1 Timothy 3:7, 1 Timothy 5:15, 2 Timothy 2:26, Hebrews 2:14, James 4:7, 1 Peter 5:8, 1 John 2:13, 1 John 2:14, 1 John 3:8, 1 John 3:10, 1 John 3:12, 1 John 5:18, 1 John 5:19, Jude 1:9, Revelation 2:9, Revelation 2:10, Revelation 2:13, Revelation 2:24, Revelation 3:9, Revelation 12:9, Revelation 12:12, Revelation 20:2, Revelation 20:7, Revelation 20:10
Source: “The Real Devil A Biblical Exploration.”
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