27.11.2019

The origin of Satan according to the Bible. Satan, the Lord and the Sacred Meaning of the Three Chapters of the Book of Job. Devil in Christianity

The name "Satan" comes from a Hebrew word meaning "to resist." In the early books of the Old Testament, written before the Babylonian captivity (that is, before the 6th century BC), the word satan is used in the sense of "adversary." In the episode that tells about the journey of Balaam, the Angel of the Lord "stands ... on the road to hinder (satan) him" (Numbers 22:22). Wherein the word satan did not necessarily refer to a supernatural adversary. So, the Philistines refused to accept David's help, fearing that in the battle he would go over to the side of the enemy and become their satan, that is, the enemy (1 Sam. 29:4).

The word "Satan" in its more familiar meaning appears in two later passages written after the Babylonian captivity. Here Satan is an angel who belongs to Jehovah's entourage and acts as an accuser of sinners before God. In the Book of the Prophet Zechariah, approximately dating from the end of the 6th century BC. e., a vision is described in which the high priest Jesus appears before the judgment of God. At the right hand of Jesus stands Satan, "to resist him," that is, to act as an accuser. This passage only hints that Satan is overzealous in his task:

God rebukes him for trying to accuse a righteous man (Zech. 3:1-2).

In the first two chapters of the Book of Job, written about a hundred years later than the Book of Zechariah, Satan is still the accuser of sinners, but here his malice is already quite obvious.

Here is the story of how the sons of God, and among them Satan, appear before Jehovah. Satan reports that he “walked the earth and walked around it,” and, according to the author of the book, these words should have sounded ominously: after all, the function of Satan, obviously, included the search for unrighteous people. Then Jehovah praises Job as a sinless and God-fearing man; Satan, however, objects to this that it is not difficult for Job to be God-fearing, for he is happy and rich. As a test, Jehovah allows Satan to kill Job's children and servants and destroy his livestock. However, despite all these disasters, Job refuses to curse God, philosophically declaring: "The Lord gave, the Lord took away; blessed be the name of the Lord!" But Satan, not content with this, cunningly advises Jehovah: "...skin for skin, and for his life a man will give everything he has; but stretch out Your hand and touch his bone and flesh - will he bless You?" Jehovah allows Satan to afflict Job with leprosy, but Job remains faithful to the Lord.

William Blake. Satan Heaps Troubles on Job

In this episode, Satan shows a firm determination to undermine Job's faith in God and acts as the direct executor of the judgments that fell on Job. However, he is acting in full accord with God's direction and appears to be fulfilling useful feature. He seeks to reveal the sinfulness that is inherent in every person by nature. But later, apparently, because of such a fierce zeal, Satan was disgusted with God no less than with people. In the 1st Book of Enoch, which was not included in the Old Testament, but influenced the early Christians, a whole category appears - Satans, who are not allowed into heaven at all. Enoch hears the voice of the archangel Phanuel, "chasing away Satan and forbidding them to appear before the Lord and accuse the inhabitants of the earth." In the same book, "punishing angels" appear, apparently identical to Satans. Enoch sees them preparing instruments for the execution of "the kings and rulers of this land, to destroy them."

Based on this idea of an implacable angel accusing and punishing people, the medieval and modern Christian image of the Devil developed over time. When the Old Testament was first translated into Greek language, the word "satan" was passed as "diabolos" - "accuser", with a hint of the meaning "false accuser", "slanderer", "slanderer"; from this word the name "Devil" arose.

Later Jewish writers tended to distinguish between good and evil principles and presented Jehovah as an absolutely good God. The actions of Jehovah in some biblical episodes seemed to them absolutely incredible, and therefore they were attributed to some evil angel. The first version of the story of how David numbered the people of Israel and thereby brought God's punishment on the Israelites is contained in 2 Kings (24:1), which is dated to the beginning of the 8th century BC. e. Here Jehovah himself inspires David with the idea of taking a census. But retelling the same episode in the 1st Book of Chronicles, the author of the 4th century BC. e. shifts the responsibility for this act from God to Satan:

"And Satan rose up against Israel, and stirred up David to number Israel" (1 Chronicles 21:1). This is the only instance in the original text of the Old Testament of the use of the word "Satan" as a proper name.

In still later Jewish texts and in Christian doctrine the image of Satan is becoming more and more distinct. Satan is gradually gaining strength, turning into a great opponent of God and man, and almost (but not completely) leaving the power of the Lord. Many have wondered why Satan, originally a useful, though rather unpleasant, servant of Jehovah, eventually falls from the Lord's favor and becomes His enemy. One of the possible answers to this question is given by the legend about the so-called Guardians, the grain of which is contained in the Book of Genesis. When the human race multiplied on earth, "the sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were beautiful, and took them to their wives, which one they chose." In those days, "there were giants on earth," and the children who were born from angels to human daughters were "strong, glorious people from ancient times." Perhaps this fragment only served to explain the legends about the ancient giants and heroes; however, willingly or unwittingly, the following verse connected it with the reign of evil on earth: "And the Lord saw that the corruption of men on earth was great, and that all the thoughts and thoughts of their hearts were evil at all times." That is why God decided to make a great flood and destroy mankind (Gen. 6:1-5).

Several allusions to this story can be found in other books of the Old Testament, but the first complete (albeit later) version appears only in 1 Enoch, in fragments apparently dating back to the 2nd century BC. h. “And it happened that when the human race multiplied, in those days beautiful and beautiful daughters began to be born among people. And the angels, the sons of heaven, saw them and desired them, and said to each other: Come, let us choose wives for ourselves among the daughters of men, and let us have children." These angels belonged to the rank of Guardians who do not know sleep. Their leader was either Semyaza or, according to other fragments, Azazel. Two hundred Guardians descended to earth - to Mount Hermon. There they took wives "and began to go in to them and indulge in filth with them." They taught their wives witchcraft and magic, and also passed on to them the knowledge of healing properties plants. Azazel taught men how to make weapons - swords, knives, shields. In addition, he introduced people to the vicious art of cosmetics.

Mortal women began to give birth to children from the Guardians - mighty giants, who eventually ate all the food supplies. "And when people could no longer feed them, the giants turned against them and devoured mankind, and they began to indulge in sin with birds and beasts, reptiles and fish, and devour each other's flesh, and drink the blood."

Then God sent the archangel Raphael to imprison Azazel in the desert until the day of the Last Judgment, at which he would be condemned to eternal fire.

The rest of the Guardians were forced to watch the angels kill their children. Then God ordered the archangel Michael to shackle the Guardians and imprison them in the gorges of the earth until the day when they would be cast into the fiery abyss for eternal torment. Demons emerged from the bodies of the dead giants and settled on the earth, where they still live, sowing evil and destruction everywhere.

One passage sympathetically suggests that the sin committed by the angels was due not so much to lust as to the desire for family comfort, which, unlike humans, the celestials were deprived of. This is the first hint of a later tradition about the envy that some angels began to have for a person. God tells the angels that they are not given wives and children, because they are immortal and do not need procreation. But in later epochs the idea prevailed that evil, bloodshed and forbidden arts appeared on earth because a monstrous crime against the laws of Nature was committed. The carnal union of the angelic, divine principle with the mortal, human, gave birth to monsters - giants. It is possible that on the basis of the legend of the Guardians, medieval beliefs about sexual relations between witches and the Devil arose. And, in essence, this whole legend turns out to be, as it were, a diabolical parody of the main mystery of the Christian faith - the mystery of the descent of God to a mortal woman and the birth of the Savior.

Some church fathers, including St. Augustine, rejected the legend of the Guardians and associated the origin of evil with the uprising of the supreme archangel, who rebelled against God, obsessed with pride.

They found confirmation of this version in the famous fragment from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, which in reality is a prophecy about the deplorable fate of the king of Babylon:

Lucifer is the Daylighter of the Dawn.

"How you fell from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! trampling down the nations was crushed on the ground. And he said in his heart: I will ascend into heaven, above the stars of God I will exalt my throne and sit on the mountain in the assembly of the gods, on the edge of the north; and I will ascend to the heights cloudy, I will be like the Most High. But you are cast into hell, into the depths of hell" (Isaiah 14:12-15).

This is how the Christian tradition was born about the Devil's attempt to equal God himself and about the expulsion of the rebel from heaven. This version of the answer to the question of why the early Biblical accuser Satan fell from Jehovah's favor turned out to be especially successful, since it was consistent with the tendency of later Jewish and Christian authors to elevate the original status of Satan almost to the position of an independent deity. At the same time, it was argued that before the fall, the rebellious archangel bore the name Dennitsa, and after the fall he began to be called Satan.

The cited fragment from the Book of the prophet Isaiah is connected, perhaps, with the legend of the beautiful morning star who lived in Eden, clothed in sparkling gems and bright light. Possessed by insane pride, he dared to challenge God himself. "Daytimer, son of the dawn" in the original Hebrew sounded like Helel ben Shahar, that is, "day star, son of the dawn."

The ancient Jews, Arabs, Greeks and Romans identified the morning star (the planet Venus) with a male deity. In Greek she was called "phosphoros" (Phosphoros), and in Latin - "lucifer" (Lucifer); both of these names mean "light-bearer". It has been hypothesized that the legend of Lucifer is based on the fact that the morning star is the last of the stars visible at dawn. She seems to challenge the rising sun, which is why the legend arose about the rebellious morning star and the punishment that befell him.

The legends about Lucifer and the Guardians connect the origin of evil with the fall of the celestials, who succumbed to the sin of pride or lust and were condemned to punishment in hell. These two legends naturally combined:

The Guardians began to be considered minions of Lucifer. Hints of such an interpretation are contained already in the 1st Book of Enoch. In one of its fragments it is said that the Guardians were seduced by the Satans, who led them astray from the true path and led them to the path of sin; elsewhere, Azazel, the leader of the apostate angels, is described as "a star that fell from heaven" By the 1st century AD. e. Lucifer, Satan and the Guardians united in a single tradition, to which the story of Eden was added. In the 2nd Book of Enoch, it is said that the archangel Satanail tried to become like God and tempted the Guardians to rise with him. All of them were expelled from heaven, and Satanail, wanting to take revenge on God, tempted Eve in Eden. According to the apocryphal text "The Life of Adam and Eve" ("Vita Adae et Evae"), Satan was expelled from the host of angels because he disobeyed God and did not want to worship Adam. Michael told him that God would be angry with him for this, but Satan replied: "If he becomes angry with me, then I will set my throne above the stars of heaven and will be like the Most High." Upon learning of this, God cast Satan and his followers to earth, and Satan seduced Eve in revenge. Here, the idea of the sin of pride that overwhelmed the Devil is combined with the legend of angels' envy of man.

There is not a single hint in Genesis that the serpent that tempted Eve was the Devil; however, Christian authors tend to state that it was either the messenger of the Devil, or the Devil himself in disguise. On this basis, St. Paul developed the fundamental Christian dogma, which is that the fall of Adam betrayed all subsequent generations of people into the power of the Devil and doomed them to sins and; but then God sent His Son to earth to free people from this punishment. If Adam, disobeying God, made people mortal, then Christ, voluntarily accepting, gave people eternal life: "As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive" (1 Cor. 15:22).

Jesus and his disciples apparently believed that The devil has power over this world- or, at least, over worldly fuss, luxury and pride. The Gospel of Matthew tells how the Devil, tempting Christ in the wilderness, showed Him "all the kingdoms of the world and their glory" and uttered the words that then formed the basis of Satanism: "... all this I will give to You, if you bow down to me "(Matt. 4:8-9). In the parallel episode of the Gospel of Luke, the Devil specifically stipulates that he has been given power over all the kingdoms of this world:

“I will give you power over all these kingdoms and their glory, for it is delivered to me, and I give it to whom I want” (Luke 4:6). Jesus calls the Devil "the prince of this world" (John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11), and St. Paul - "the god of this world" (2 Cor. 4:4). The Gnostics later interpreted these fragments in their own way: they claimed that the Devil rules this world because it was he who created it, while God is alien to man and far from what is happening on earth.

Another late trend in the formation of the image of the Devil was to identify him with Leviathan - a monstrous primordial dragon or serpent that once challenged Jehovah. Isaiah says that God will strike "a leviathan that runs straight, and a leviathan that bends" (Isaiah 27:1). It is possible that the tradition of Jehovah's victory over Leviathan is connected with the Babylonian and Canaanite traditions. In Babylon, they annually celebrated the victory of the god Marduk over the great Tiamat, who tried to overthrow the gods and take their place. In Canaanite Baal kills sea dragon Lofana (Itn), or Leviathan:

"When you struck Leviathan, slippery, (And) put an end to the writhing, seven-headed Tyrant ..." *.

In the Revelation of John, Leviathan and the Devil - possessed by pride and deserving severe punishment of the opponents of God - are identified with each other. There is a huge dragon with seven heads. Its tail draws a third of the stars from the sky and casts them down to earth. "And there was a war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought against them, but they did not stand, and there was no longer a place for them in heaven. And the great dragon, the ancient serpent, called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world, is cast down to the earth, and his angels are cast down with him. Then a triumphant voice is heard from heaven: "... the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accuses them before our God day and night." And this voice proclaims woe to those who live on earth, "because the devil has come down to you in great anger, knowing that he has not much time left" (Rev. 12:3-12).
In this grandiose vision, almost all the main motives of the later Christian idea of the Devil are combined: "Satan", accusing people before God; a war in heaven, in which the Lord's army is led by the archangel Michael; the overthrow of Dennitsa-Lucifer from heaven; fallen angels (fallen stars) are his henchmen; seven-headed dragon Leviathan; and, finally, the belief that the vengeful fury of the Devil has descended upon the earth. It is not entirely clear whether the description of the Devil as a "seducer" referred to the episode of the Serpent of Eden, but many generations of Christians who read this passage in the Book of Revelation almost certainly identified the "old serpent" with the tempter of Eve.

It was the Christians who glorified the Devil, almost making him equal in rights with God.

Convinced of the impeccable goodness of God, they nevertheless felt the frightening proximity of the great supernatural Enemy, the quintessence of all evil in the world. Catholics began to explain the fall of the Devil as a sin of pride; this version became orthodox and remains so to this day.

In the Middle Ages and at the dawn of the New Age, the Devil remained frighteningly real and close to almost every Christian. He featured in folk tales, theatrical performances and Christmas pantomimes; the priests now and then commemorated him in their sermons; with a sinister look, he followed the parishioners with church frescoes and stained glass. And his minions were everywhere - invisible to mere mortals, omniscient, vicious and treacherous.

Evil is attractive in its own way, and the more power the Devil was given in the imagination of people, the more attractive this image became.

The devil, like God, was usually depicted in the guise of a man, and Christians believed not least in the rebellion of the supreme archangel against God because this legend touched some hidden strings of the human heart. Lucifer was perceived as a rebellious person, and pride, oddly enough, seemed to be a more worthy reason for the fall of angels than lust, which seized the Guardians. As a result, the image of the Devil acquired romantic features. In Milton's Paradise Lost, this greatest of the rebels appears as a fearless, strong-willed, determined rebel who did not want to bow before a superior force and did not resign himself even after defeat. Such a powerful image involuntarily inspired admiration. Considering how magnificent and grandiose the devil's pride and power were, it is not surprising that in some people a desire was awakened to worship the Devil, and not God.

People who worship the Devil do not consider him evil. That supernatural being, which in Christianity acts as the Enemy, for the Satanist is a kind and merciful god. However, the word "good" in relation to the Devil in the mouths of his adherents differs in meaning from the traditional Christian understanding. From the point of view of a Satanist, what Christians consider good is actually evil, and vice versa. True, the Satanist's attitude to good and evil turns out to be ambivalent: for example, he experiences perverse pleasure from the knowledge that he is doing evil, but at the same time he is convinced that his actions are actually righteous.

Devil worship like good god naturally entails the belief that the Christian God the Father, the Old Testament Lord, was and remains an evil god, hostile to man, trampling on truth and morality. In the developed forms of the satanic cult, Jesus Christ is also condemned as an evil entity, although in the past sects accused of devil worship did not always share this opinion.

Arguing that God the Father and God the Son, the creators of Jewish and Christian morality, are in fact the bearers of evil, Satanists, of course, come to the denial of the entire Judeo-Christian moral law and the rules of conduct based on it. The adherents of the devil are highly preoccupied with sense gratification and worldly success. They strive for power and self-affirmation, satisfaction of carnal desires and sensual passions, for violence and cruelty. Christian piety, with its virtues of self-denial, humility, spiritual purity and purity, seems to them lifeless, faded and sluggish. With all their hearts they are ready to repeat after Swinburne: "You have won, O pale Galilean, and the world has lost its color from your breath."

In Satanism, as in all forms of magic, any act traditionally condemned as evil is highly valued for its special psychological and mystical effects. According to devil worshipers, it is possible to achieve perfection and divine bliss, for example, through ecstasy, in which participants in a sexual orgy lead themselves (often including perverted forms of sex, homosexuality, masochism, and sometimes cannibalism). Because the Christian church(especially the Roman Catholic) is perceived as a disgusting sect of adherents of an evil deity, then its rites should be parodied and profaned. Thus, Satanists not only express their devotion to the Devil, but also transfer to Satan the power that is contained in Christian rites.

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Devil(from Church Slavonic devil, Ancient Greek διάβολος - “ slanderer") - one of the angels who fell away from God, even before God created visible world. Subsequently - one of the names of the head of the dark forces.

The devil is a creature that God created good, kind, luminous (the Greek word "Eosphoros" and the Latin "Lucifer" mean "light-bearer"). As a result of opposition to God, divine will and divine Providence, the light-bearer fell away from God. Ever since the fall of the light-bearer and some of the angels from God, evil has appeared in the world. It was not created by God, but was introduced by the free will of the devil and demons.

At the dawn of the existence of created being, even before the creation of the visible world by God, however, after the creation of angels in spiritual world there was a huge catastrophe, which we know about only by its consequences. Part of the angels, having resisted God, fell away from Him and became hostile to everything good and holy. At the head of this backslidden host was Eosphorus, or Lucifer, whose very name (lit. "light-bearing") shows that he was originally good, but then of his own free will "and by autocratic will changed from natural to unnatural, puffed up against the one who created him God, wanted to resist Him, and the first, having fallen away from good, found himself in evil ”(John of Damascus). Lucifer, who is also called the devil and Satan, belonged to one of the highest ranks of the angelic hierarchy. Other angels also fell away with him, which is allegorically narrated in the Apocalypse: “... And a great star fell from heaven, burning like a lamp ... and it was struck ... a third of the stars, so that a third of them was eclipsed” (Rev. 8:10, 12).

The devil and the demons ended up in darkness of their own free will. Every rational living being, be it an angel or a person, is endowed by God with free will, that is, the right to choose between good and evil. Free will is given to a living being so that, by exercising in goodness, it can ontologically partake of this goodness, that is, so that goodness does not remain only something given from outside, but becomes its own property. If the good were imposed by God as a necessity and inevitability, not a single living being could become a full-fledged free person. “No one has ever become good under compulsion,” say the Holy Fathers. Through unceasing growth in goodness, the angels had to ascend to the fullness of perfection up to the complete assimilation of the super-good God. Some of them, however, made a choice not in favor of God, thereby predetermining both their own fate and the fate of the Universe, which from that moment turned into an arena of confrontation between two polar (albeit unequal) principles: good, Divine and evil, demonic .

Demons do not know the thoughts of a person, but they certainly know the thoughts that they themselves inspired this person. Again, they cannot know whether we have accepted these thoughts or not, but they guess it by our actions. As for thoughts from God or some natural ones, they can guess them from our behavior, but they cannot know them exactly.

A demon (or demon) cannot enter inside the human soul; only the Lord can penetrate there by a supernatural Divine action. The demon can live only in the body of a person, mastering to one degree or another his spiritual or bodily manifestations, i.e. either a possessed person occasionally undergoes seizures, or completely loses control of himself.

A demon can enter a person's body under the influence of witchcraft - unless, of course, a person resorts to God's help, does not confess, does not take communion, does not pray. And maybe some kind of God's allowance, for enlightenment.

The only thing the devil is capable of is to give a person some kind of sinful thought, for example, the thought of suicide. And he does this not because the inner world of a person, his heart, is open to him, but only focusing on external signs. Having inspired a person with some thoughts, the devil is not able to control what will happen to them next. And if a person knows how to distinguish which thought came from God, which from his own human nature, and which from the devil, and to reject sinful thoughts at their very appearance, the devil will not be able to do anything. The devil becomes stronger as the sinful or passionate thought enters the human mind.

The Revelation of St. John the Theologian says: the final victory of Christ over Antichrist, good over evil, God over the devil, will be won. In the Liturgy of Basil the Great, we hear that Christ descended into hell with the Cross in order to destroy the kingdom of the devil and bring all people to God, that is, by His presence and thanks to His death on the Cross, He permeated everything that we subjectively perceive as the kingdom of the devil. And in the stichera dedicated to the Cross of Christ, we hear: “Lord, Thy Cross has given us a weapon against the devil”; it also says that the Cross is “the glory of angels and the plague of demons”, it is an instrument before which the demons tremble, the devil “trembles and trembles”.

How the devil works

The devil bent a man to himself through a lie, deceived a man, the forefathers accepted a lie under the guise of truth. “From that time on, our nature, infected with the poison of evil, tends voluntarily and involuntarily towards evil, which is presented as good and pleasure to a distorted will, a perverted mind, a perverted feeling of the heart. Arbitrary: because we still have a remnant of freedom in choosing good and evil. Involuntarily: because this remnant of freedom does not act as total freedom; he operates under the inherent influence of the corruption of sin. We are born this way; we cannot but be like that: and therefore we all, without any exception, are in a state of self-delusion and demonic delusion.” The return of a person to God is extremely difficult, almost impossible, impossible on the part of one's own forces, due to the blocking of the path to the Truth by "countless seductive false images of the Truth." The devil dresses up the demands of our passions in plausibility, uses the pernicious inclinations of our fallen nature to keep us in his nets. One of the types of seduction, according to St. Ignatius, there is that we consider ourselves eternal on this earth. A sense of immortality has been implanted in us from God, but we do not see that because of the fall, both our immortal soul and body are stricken with death, we forget about the hour of death and the coming judgment.
However, the worst thing is that, due to our blindness with which we are born, we are satisfied with our condition, we are careless, we admire our blindness. “Despite my terrible sinfulness, I rarely see my sinfulness. Despite the fact that in me goodness is mixed with evil, and it has become evil, as fine food mixed with poison is made by poison, I forget the plight of the good that was given to me at creation, damaged, distorted when it fell. I begin to see in myself my goodness whole, undefiled and to admire it: my vanity carries me away from the fruitful and fat pasture of repentance to a distant land! to a rocky and barren country, to a country of thorns and tares, to a country of lies, self-deception, and death.”
The sacrament of Baptism we have received, according to St. Ignatius, of course, restores our communion with God, returns freedom, again grants spiritual strength, henceforth the Holy Spirit co-presences a person throughout his life. We receive even more than the original man had in his immaculate state: in Baptism we put on the image of the God-man. But, along with the received power to reject passions, the freedom to submit to them again was left, as “in the sensual paradise it was left to the will of the primordial man either to obey the commandment of God, or to disobey it.” Moreover, Baptism did not destroy the property of fallen nature to give birth from itself mixed evil with good to test and strengthen our will in choosing the good of God. “At baptism,” says St. Ignatius, - Satan, who lives in every person of a fallen nature, is expelled from a person; It is left to the arbitrariness of a baptized person either to remain in the temple of God and be free from Satan, or to remove God from oneself and again become the habitation of Satan. St. Ignatius compares the action of Baptism with grafting a knot from a noble apple tree to a wild apple tree. Branches should no longer be born from the trunk of a wild apple tree, they should be born from a noble apple tree. Referring to St. Isaac the Syrian (Sk. 1, 84), St. Mark of the Ascetic (Sermon about Baptism), Xanthopulov (Ch. 4, 5, 7), St. Ignatius says that in Baptism Christ is planted in our hearts, like a seed in the ground, this gift is perfect in itself, but we either develop it or stifle it with our lives. The state of renewal received in Baptism "needs to be maintained by living according to the gospel commandments." It is necessary to prove one's loyalty to Christ by preserving and increasing the gift received from Him. But, St. Ignatius quotes the words of St. John Chrysostom that we keep the glory of Baptism for only one or two days, and then extinguish it with a storm of worldly cares. The spiritual treasure is not taken away, but is under the veil of our darkening, and even then Christ abides in us, only we, by revitalizing our old man, have taken away from Him the opportunity to accomplish our salvation. “By doing evil after baptism, delivering activity to the fallen nature, reviving it, a person loses more or less spiritual freedom: sin again receives violent power over a person; the devil again enters into a person, becomes his master and leader. Only, as St. Ignatius, “the power of sin creeps into us imperceptibly: imperceptibly we lose spiritual freedom”, we do not see our captivity, we do not see our blindness precisely because of blindness. “Our state of captivity and slavery is revealed to us only when we begin to fulfill the gospel commandments: then our mind with bitterness rises up against the mind of Christ, and our heart wildly and hostilely looks at the fulfillment of Christ’s will, as if at our own death and murder. ; then we will experience the sorrowful loss of freedom, our terrible fall.
But the lost returns again already in the sacrament of Repentance, "one who was born and then died can come to life through repentance." Having entered into a struggle with sin in ourselves, into this subtlest invisible warfare, which is filled with mental work, having begun the work of repentance, which is “the consequence and effect of the grace planted by Baptism,” we will again achieve revival for us, the active discovery of this mysterious thing given to us in Baptism. the gift of God's grace, which consists "in the union of human nature with God's nature and in the healing of the first from touching the second." And “if only God can change the nature, then the consciousness of the damage produced in nature original sin, and humble prayer for the healing and renewal of nature by its Creator, is the strongest real weapon in the fight against nature. Whoever has felt the poverty of a fallen nature, he has really, by his very life, realized the need to commune with Christ, he already hopes not for himself, not for his blindness, not for his fallen strength, but only for Christ, for help from above, he rejects his own will, everything sacrifices himself to God, aspires to Him with all his mind, heart, with all his being, and this is what fulfills the unceasing feat of mental work.

Demons, demons

Bes- translation of the Greek word demon, which in Homer, Hesiod and others means something between gods and people, and in Plato and the souls of dead good people. According to the beliefs of the ancients, such souls became patronizing geniuses that influenced personal well-being. Socrates often speaks of his "demon". In the Seventy, this word is used to reproduce the Hebrew words “gods” (Ps. 94, 3), “devils” - shedim (Deut. 32, 17), “infection” (Ps. 90, 6 - “noonday”, - “ pestilence that devastates at noon"), etc. In Josephus Flavius, it is always used about evil spirits. Demons, according to his definition, are the souls of wicked people ("Jude. War", VII, 6, 3). In the New Testament, this term is used several times in general in the sense of pagan gods or idols (Acts 17, 18; 1 Cor. 10, 20), but usually - about evil spirits or devils, who, although they believe and tremble (James 2, 19 ), recognize Jesus as the Son of God (Matt. 8, 29), but the essence is the servant of their prince - Beelzebub - Satan (Matt. 12, 24). See under the next Beelzebub, Devil, Satan.

Source: Orthodox Theological Encyclopedia

Evil Powers in the Old Testament

There is evidence of the presence of demonic beings in the world already in the book. Genesis, which describes the temptation of the first people by the serpent. However, ideas about evil forces have been formed for a long time, including some elements borrowed from folk beliefs. When describing the actions of the dark forces, "the folklore that inhabits the ruins and desert areas with a diverse vague presence, interspersed with wild animals: these are hairy satyrs (Is 13.21; 34.13 LXX), Lilith, the female demon of the nights (34.14) ... They are assigned cursed places like Babylon (13) or the land of Edom (34). The rite of purification prescribes to betray to the demon Azazel the goat on which the sins of Israel are laid (Lev 16. 10) ”(Brunon J.-B., Grelot P. Demons // Leon-Dufour. Dictionary of Biblical Theology Stb. 45). The development of the Old Testament demonology, apparently, is also indicated by the discrepancy in 1 Chr. 21. 1: “And Satan rose up against Israel, and stirred up David to count the Israelites,” where the author of the book ascribes to Satan what is in the text of 2 Kings 24. 1: “ The wrath of the Lord again kindled against the Israelites, and he aroused David in them to say: Go, number Israel and Judah” - is made dependent on the wrath of the Lord. This comparison of texts shows the direction in which Old Testament theological thought is developing in understanding the actions of evil forces. Initially, this thought tries to avoid an open opposition between the world of good (God) and the world of evil (Satan), so as not to give rise to dualism, to which the Israelite people were pushed by the pagan environment. Therefore, in some cases, Satan is depicted appearing before the Lord along with other angels, called in the Book of Job "sons of God" (Job 1. 6); in others, his initial fall and self-deification are described using the image of the king of Tyre: “Son of man! Weep for the king of Tyre, and say to him: Thus says the Lord God: You are the seal of perfection, the fullness of wisdom, and the crown of beauty. You were in Eden, in the garden of God... you were an anointed cherub... you were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, until iniquity was found in you... you sinned, and I cast you as unclean from the mountain of God, cast you out... Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty, because of your vanity you destroyed your wisdom; for this I will cast you to the ground; I will give you to shame before kings” (Ezekiel 28:12-17). The repeated mention of evil forces in the Old Testament texts is also found in connection with the often arising temptation to propitiate demons with the help of magical rites and spells. Evil forces at the same time actually turned into gods, since they were worshiped and sacrifices were made. For the Israelites, these were "new" gods "whom they did not know" and "who came from neighbors" (i.e. pagans); The Bible directly calls such gods demons (Deut 32:17). God sometimes allowed this temptation for the Israelites to test their love and loyalty to Him (Deut. 13:3). However, Israel frequently betrayed God by offering "sacrifices to demons" (Deut. 32:17). At the same time, treason sometimes turned into a monstrous crime, for the Israelites “offered their sons and their daughters as a sacrifice to demons” (Ps 105.37-38). They also resorted to the help of dark forces in those cases when, following the example of the pagans, they were engaged in divination, conspiracies, and sorcery. In 1 Samuel 28. 3-25, the case of the sorceress of Endor, who summoned the spirit of the prophet at the request of Saul, is described in detail. Samuel. The wicked queen Jezebel was also engaged in sorcery (2 Kings 9.22). King Manasseh "and guessed, and soothsayed, and brought the callers of the dead and magicians" (2 Kings 21. 6). Ahaziah "sent messengers to question Beelzebub, the deity of Ekkaron" (2 Kings 1.2, 3, 16). All these are “abominations” (Deut. 18:12), against which God warns His people: “You must not have a soothsayer, a fortuneteller, a soothsayer, a sorcerer, a charmer, calling spirits, a magician and asking the dead” (Deuteronomy 18:12). 10-11). All these servants of demonic forces only build illusions of their power; they are always overcome by the power of God. Joseph, thanks to the Spirit of God living in him, prevails over the soothsayers of Pharaoh (Genesis 41); Moses is stronger than the Egyptians. sorcerers (Ex 7-9); Daniel puts to shame the Chaldean "mystery and soothsayers" (Dan 2; 4; 5; 14). Therefore, the demonic host is defeated not by magic spells, which the religion of Babylon resorted to, but by prayer to God, who can forbid Satan to perform his evil actions (Zech. 3.2), and to arch. Michael, who, together with his army, is constantly fighting with demonic hordes (Dan 10.13; Tov 8.3).

In the OT, there is not only voluntary submission and service to demonic forces. The latter could themselves attack a person and even inhabit him, as evidenced by the influence of an evil spirit on King Saul, from whom “the Spirit of the Lord departed” (1 Samuel 16:14; 18:10). The Book of Tobit (6.8) mentions the torments endured by people from evil forces, naming one of the Persian demons. the name Asmodeus (3. 8).

Demonology in the New Testament

It is revealed through the prism of the struggle and victory of Jesus Christ, and then Christians over the devil. The Son of God was incarnated for this, "to destroy the works of the devil" (1 Jn 3:8) and "to deprive by death of power that which has the power of death, that is, the devil" (Heb 2:14). Christ's struggle with the prince of darkness begins with a temptation in the desert, although reminiscent of the temptation of the first people, but incomparably stronger.

Temptation of Christ in the Desert

The ancient serpent again follows the path of deceit, hiding behind the texts of the Holy. The Scriptures he uses as arguments for his lies (Mt 4:1-11; Lk 4:1-13). Confounded by Jesus Christ, he leaves Him "until the time" (Luke 4:13). However, the struggle of the Savior with Satan and his dark kingdom does not stop throughout His public ministry. The phenomenon, with which Christ has to meet quite often, is the possession of people. The wide spread of this disease at the turn of the OT and the NT was not accidental: the coming of the Messiah occurred at a time when the spirit of the people was extremely weakened, and their moral strength was largely lost. According to Christ, an “unclean spirit” enters a person only when he finds the dwelling of his soul “unoccupied, swept and cleaned”, of course, not to meet God, but to instill dark forces in him. “Then (the unclean spirit. - M. I.) goes and takes with him seven other spirits worse than himself, and having entered, dwell there” (Mt 12. 43-45). The direct presence of malevolent forces in a person causes him great suffering (Lk 8:27-29), but the demonic influence in such cases does not become absolute. Under any circumstances, God "commands unclean spirits with authority, and they obey Him" (Mk 1:27). Not only Christ Himself has the power to cast out demons, but also His disciples (Mark 16:17; Luke 9:1; 10:17). At the same time, the possession of such power is not an exclusive gift: “... do not rejoice in that, that the spirits obey you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20). In the Gospel parables, Christ describes, in addition to being possessed by demons, other methods of influence of demonic forces on a person. The parable of the sower and the seed says that the seed of the gospel preaching does not always find favorable ground in people's hearts. Sometimes this is hindered by the devil, who “takes away the word (of God. - M.I.) from their hearts, so that they do not believe and be saved” (Lk 8.12). In the parable of the wheat and the tares, a picture of the world is drawn, which “lies in evil” (1 Jn 5.19), where good, the Source of which is God, lives next to evil, which the devil “sows” ( Mt 13. 24-30, 37-39). Demon-possession can be not only the result of a person's immoral life, but also a way of his upbringing. Yes, app. Paul delivered the Corinthian incest "to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit might be saved" (1 Corinthians 5:1-5). Any diabolical temptation can be educational in nature, if it is perceived and endured properly. Ap. Paul writes about himself: “... so that I would not be exalted by the extravagance of revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, the angel of Satan, to afflict me, so that I would not be exalted. Three times I prayed to the Lord to remove him from me. But the Lord said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:7-9). The actions of the dark forces are usually accompanied by deceit and deceit, because the devil “did not stand in the truth, for there is no truth in him; when he speaks a lie, he speaks his own, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (Jn 8:44). Satan can even take on “the form of an angel of light” (2 Cor 11:14), and the coming of the Antichrist “according to the work of Satan” will be accompanied by “every power and signs and lying wonders” and “every unrighteous deceit” (2 Thess 2:9-10 ). “The idea to lie to the Holy Spirit” (Acts 5.1-3) was also inspired by Ananias “the father of lies”, and Judas’ betrayal took place after “the devil ... put this criminal intention into his heart” (John 13.2). The consent of Judas to betray Christ became a truly satanic sin, therefore after this Satan freely enters the heart of the traitor (Lk 22:3). Jesus Christ directly calls Judas the “devil”: “… did I not choose you twelve? But one of you is the devil” (Jn 6:70). In facing app. Peter's rebuke: "Get away from Me, Satan" (Mt 16:23) - Christ, according to some interpreters, calls Satan not the apostle, but the devil, who continued to tempt Him and to whom Christ had already addressed with the same words (Matthew 4:10). “He (Jesus Christ. - M.I.) looked for a moment through Peter and saw behind him his former enemy ...” (Lopukhin. Explanatory Bible. T. 8. S. 281). The Jews, blinded by malice, attributed demonic possession to John the Baptist (Mt 11:18; Lk 7:33) and even to Christ Himself (Jn 8:52; 10:20). However, a demoniac can neither heal the sick (Jn 10:21) nor cast out demons (Mt 12:24-29; Lk 11:14-15). “If Satan casts out Satan, then he is divided against himself: how will his kingdom stand?” (Mt 12:26; compare: Mk 3:23-27). Jesus Christ defeats the devil not “by the power of Beelzebub, the prince of demons” (Mt 12.24), but by the “Spirit of God” (Mt 12.28) - this means that the “strong”, that is, the devil, is already “bound” ( Mt 12:29), “condemned” (Jn 16:11), and “will be cast out” (Jn 12:31). However, he does not stop the fierce struggle both with Christ (Jn 14:30) and with His followers. He asks the apostles to sow "like wheat" (Lk 22:31). “Like a roaring lion,” the devil “walks about…seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8); he has "the power of death" (Heb 2:14); Christians he "will cast ... into prison" (Rev. 2:10). The apostles who did the work of the gospel gospel, Satan puts all sorts of obstacles (1 Thess 2:18). Therefore, explains App. Paul, “our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spirits of wickedness in high places” (Eph 6:12). However, "the fiery darts of the evil one" (Eph 6:16) should not strike fear into Christians. Dark spirits "tremble" before God (James 2:19); violence, which they oppose to the power of God, is in fact powerless. If a person shows obedience to God and resists the devil, he will immediately “flee” from him (James 4:7).

Being spirits, the dark forces are not limited by space, but prefer to be in the places they love. If the Old Testament texts call such places predominantly pagan temples, then the NT repeatedly speaks of demons invading people. At the same time, the demon-possessed themselves were sometimes forcibly driven by the spirits of darkness into lifeless and gloomy places, into deserts and tombs (Luke 8:29; Mt 8:28). The request to send them to a herd of pigs, with which they turned to Jesus Christ (Mt 8:31; Lk 8:32), can be explained by the fact that pigs, according to the Old Testament law, were classified as unclean animals. In the Revelation of John the Theologian, it is reported that Babylon, for its debauchery, “became a dwelling place for demons and a haven for every unclean spirit” (18. 2), and Pergamum, in which paganism flourished and a fierce struggle was waged against Christianity, became a city “where Satan lives ”, who arranged his “throne” in it (2. 13).

The activity with which Satan operates in different historical periods depends on how much God allows him to manifest his evil will. Having won a victory over Adam and Eve at the beginning of history (Genesis 3.1-7), the enemy of the human race turned into a “prince”, by the will of which (Eph 2.2) many others. people lived throughout the entire Old Testament period (Heb 2:15). They walked "in darkness" and lived "in the land of the shadow of death" (Isaiah 9:2). As slaves of the devil, they became "dead" because of their own sins and transgressions (Eph 2:1-2). And only with the Incarnation did the hope arise that "the prince of the world will be driven out" (Jn 12:31).
Through His suffering, death, and resurrection, Jesus Christ really defeats the devil and acquires full power “in heaven and on earth” (Mt 28:18), and thanks to this victory, “the prince of this world is condemned” (Jn 16:11) and is bound in his actions (Rev 20:1-3). The thousand-year period, for which the “ancient serpent” was “bound” (Rev. 20.2), is defined by interpreters as the period from the Incarnation to the Second Coming of Christ (Aug. De civ. Dei. XX 8), when the devil no longer can fully express. After this period, he will be released "for a little time" (Rev. 20:3) and will appear not only as a tempter of individuals, but also as a deceiver of the whole world. Then he will appear as an “angel of the abyss” (Rev. 9:11), as a “beast coming out of the abyss” (Rev. 11:7), and in the person of the Antichrist, in whom he will dwell, he will manifest his destructive energy to the highest degree. However, he will not triumph for long; together with the Antichrist, he will be thrown "into the lake of fire" (Rev. 19:20). His theomachism will turn out to be so obvious that it will eliminate any need to be present at the Last Judgment to determine his further fate. The devil and the angels tempted by him, rejecting God, thereby rejected eternal life, replacing it with existence in death, which is nothing but eternal torment (see the articles Hell, Apokatastasis).

Demon nature and hierarchy

The sin of Lucifer damaged only his nature. In its consequences, it was not like the original sin committed by Adam and Eve and which left its mark on the entire human race. The rest of the angels who sinned after Lucifer fell “through an example, through the influence that one person can have on other personalities ... Lucifer dragged other angels with him, but not all fell ...” (Ibid., p. 252). The nature of the angels who stood in goodness did not undergo any changes due to the fall of demonic forces.

Possessing a spiritual nature, the dark forces, like the angels who remained faithful to God, apparently also have some kind of physicality (see Art. Angelology), but they are not subject to the laws of physiology. The idea that angels can have sexual intercourse with people, inspired by an erroneous explanation of the text of Genesis 6. 1-4, is not recognized by the Church. Tov 6.15 says nothing in their favor, where the demon appears as loving the bride of Tobiah, for demonic love always appears “with a minus sign”. The incident with the bride of Tobiah found an explanation in Christ. ascetic literature, which describes in detail the carnal battle of the ascetic with the demons of fornication.

The dark forces represent the realm of evil, which is headed by the devil himself (cf. Lk 11:18), who carried him away in his fall, as St. John of Damascus, "the infinite multitude of angels under his authority" (Ioan. Damasc. De fide orth. II 4). Some interpreters, considering Revelation 12:3-4, 7-9, which says that the “great red dragon”, “the great dragon… called the devil and Satan”, “drew a third of the stars from heaven and threw them into earth”, it is believed that the stars here symbolize angels who have fallen away from God along with the devil (Lopukhin. Explanatory Bible. T. 8. S. 562-564). Despite the fact that the fall of the angels brought disharmony and disorder into the created world, the realm of evil itself is a certain structure, based on the hierarchical principle. App. testifies to this. Paul, who called certain ranks of the devil's hierarchy "principalities", "authorities", "world rulers of the darkness of this world" (Eph 6:12; Col 2:15). Since some of these names are used by the apostle and in relation to good angels (Eph 1.21; Col 1.16), it is not completely clear how the hierarchy of the fallen angelic world is structured. There are 2 assumptions, according to which the angels included in it either remained in the same rank in which they were before the fall, or their rank is determined by the intensity of their atrocities (Ioan. Cassian. Collat. VIII 8).

Source: Orthodox Encyclopedia

The Devil and the Origin of Sin

As an evil being trying to harm a person and lead him into sin, Satan clearly appears in the book of Genesis, which tells how he, having entered the serpent, tempted our first parents and eventually persuaded them to violate the commandment of God - to eat the fruit from the forbidden tree ( Gen.3); further, the same evil being is the devil in the book of Job (Job. 1:6-12, 2:1-7). The book of Chronicles says that "Satan rose up against Israel and stirred up David to number the Israelites" (1 Chronicles 21:1). Here Satan appears to have excited David to count the Israelites and thus dragged him into sin, which David himself confessed before God (1 Chr. 21:8) and for which the Lord punished the people of Israel with pestilence (1 Chr. 21:14).

In the same way, there are clear indications in the New Testament that the devil leads a person into sin. First of all, his very name is "tempter" (Matt. 4:3; 1 Thess. 3:5), that is, tempting a person to sin. Satan is a tempter even in relation to Jesus Christ (Mt.4:1-11; Mk.1:12-13; Lk.4:1-13). In the wilderness, where Jesus Christ withdrew after baptism, Satan appeared to Him and began to deceive Him with all his tempting means, such as: “with the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:16). But Jesus Christ resolutely resisted all the temptations of Satan, so that the latter had to withdraw from Him and acknowledge his powerlessness to lead the Son of God into sin.
The influence of the devil on the origin of sin in the human race is clearly recognized by the Savior in His parable of the seed and the tares (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43). “The kingdom of heaven,” he says, “is like a man who sows good seed in his field. When the people were sleeping, the enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and left” (Matthew 13:24-25). “The field,” according to the Savior, “is the world, the good seed are the sons of the Kingdom, and the tares are the sons of the evil one; the enemy who sowed them is the devil” (Matthew 13:38-39). Thus, evil in the world appears, according to the Savior, as sown or proceeded from the devil. According to the Gospel, Satan inspired Judas to betray Jesus to the chief priests and scribes (Luke 22:3; John 13:2, 27). The apostle John also clearly recognizes the devil as the originator of sin when he says: “He who commits sin is from the devil, because the devil sinned first. For this reason the Son of God appeared, to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). Here the sinful actions of man are directly called the works of the devil. This means that the devil influences their origin; hence they are called his works. In the words of the Apostle Peter, in which he warns Christians against the wiles of the devil, we also find an indication of the participation of the devil in the origin of sin. “Be sober, watch,” says the apostle, “because your adversary the devil walks around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Here the devil appears as an adversary of man, trying to destroy him; and he destroys a man when he leads him into sin.
It is clear from the places presented in the Old and New Testaments that the devil influences the origin of sin in man.

What should be the attitude of a Christian towards the devil?

Today we see two extremes. On the one hand, among modern Christians there are many who do not believe in the reality of the devil at all, who do not believe in his ability to influence their lives. Some people think that the devil is a mythical creature in which the evil of the world is personified. On the other hand, there are many people who attach exaggerated importance to the devil, who are convinced that the devil influences all aspects of a person's life, and see his presence everywhere. Such believers are constantly afraid that the forces of the devil will affect them one way or another.

On this basis, there are many superstitions, from which church people are not free. Many "folk remedies" have been invented that would prevent Satan from penetrating a person. For example, some people, yawning, cross their mouths so that the devil does not enter through it. Others manage to cross their mouth three times in one yawn. I have heard talk about an angel sitting on our right shoulder, and a demon on our left: making the sign of the cross, we are baptized from right to left, throwing the angel from the right shoulder to the left, so that he would fight the demon and defeat him (accordingly, Catholics who are baptized from left to right throw the demon onto the angel). This may seem ridiculous and absurd to some, but there are people who believe in it. And, unfortunately, these are not jokes, but real conversations that can be heard in some monasteries, theological seminaries, and parishes. People who think this way live in the belief that their whole life is permeated with the presence of the devil. I once heard how a hieromonk, a graduate of a theological academy, taught believers: when you get up in the morning, before putting your feet into your slippers, cross your slippers, because a demon sits in each of them. With such an attitude, all life turns into torture, because it is all riddled with fear, constant fear that a person will be “spoiled”, jinxed, that evil spirits will be brought on him, etc. All this has nothing to do with the Christian attitude towards the devil .

In order to understand what a truly Christian attitude towards the devil should be, we must turn, firstly, to our worship, to the sacraments, and, secondly, to the teaching of the Holy Fathers. The Sacrament of Baptism begins with spells addressed to the devil: the meaning of these spells is to drive out the devil nesting in a person's heart. Then the newly baptized, together with the priest and the recipients, turns to the west. The priest asks: “Do you renounce Satan, and all his works, and all his army, and all his pride?” He answers three times: “I renounce.” The priest says: "Blow and spit on him." This is a symbol that contains a very deep meaning. "Blow and spit on him" means "treat the devil with contempt, pay no attention to him, he deserves nothing more."

In patristic, in particular monastic, literature, the attitude towards the devil and demons is characterized by calm fearlessness - sometimes even with a touch of humor. One can recall the story of St. John of Novgorod, who saddled a demon and forced him to take him to Jerusalem. I also remember the story from the life of Anthony the Great. Travelers came to him, who walked for a long time through the desert, and on the way, their donkey died of thirst. They come to Anthony, and he says to them: “Why didn’t you save the donkey?” They ask with surprise: “Abba, how do you know?”, To which he calmly replies: “The demons told me.” All these stories reflect a truly Christian attitude towards the devil: on the one hand, we recognize that the devil is a real being, the bearer of evil, but, on the other hand, we understand that the devil acts only within the limits set by God, and can never transgress these limits; moreover, a person can take the devil under control and control him.

In the prayers of the Church, in liturgical texts, and in the writings of the Holy Fathers, it is emphasized that the power of the devil is illusory. In the arsenal of the devil, of course, there are various means and methods by which he can influence a person, he has vast experience in all kinds of actions aimed at harming a person, but he can use it only if the person allows him to do so. . It is important to remember that the devil cannot do anything to us if we ourselves do not open an entrance for him - a door, a window, or at least a crack through which he will penetrate.

The devil is well aware of his weakness and impotence. He understands that he has no real power to influence people. That is why he tries to persuade them to cooperate, to assist. Finding in a person weakness, he tries in one way or another to influence him, and often he succeeds. First of all, the devil wants us to fear him, thinking that he has real power. And if a person falls for this bait, he becomes vulnerable and prone to "demonic shooting", that is, those arrows that the devil and demons shoot into a person's soul.

How to deal with the devil

The Holy Fathers have a teaching about the gradual and gradual penetration of a sinful thought into a person's soul. You can get acquainted with this teaching by reading the "Philokalia" or "The Ladder" of St. John of Sinai. The essence of this teaching is that a sinful or passionate thought at first appears only somewhere on the horizon of the human mind. And if a person, as the Church Fathers say, “stands guard over his mind,” he can reject this thought, “blow and spit” on it, and it will disappear. If a person becomes interested in a thought, begins to consider it, talks with it, it conquers more and more new territories in the mind of a person - until it covers all of his nature - soul, heart, body - and does not inspire him to commit sin. .

The path for the devil and demons to the soul and heart of a person is opened by various superstitions. I would like to emphasize that faith is the exact opposite of superstition. The Church has always waged a tough fight against superstitions - precisely because superstition is a surrogate, a substitution of the true faith. A truly believing person realizes that there is a God, but there are also dark forces; he intelligently and consciously builds his life, is not afraid of anything, placing all his hope in God. A superstitious person - out of weakness, or stupidity, or under the influence of some people or circumstances - replaces faith with a set of beliefs, signs, fears, from which some kind of mosaic is formed, which he takes for religious faith. We Christians must abhor superstition in every possible way. It is necessary to treat every superstition with the contempt with which we treat the devil: "Duni and spit on him."

The entrance to the devil into the human soul is also opened through sins. Of course, we all sin. But there are sins and sins. There are human weaknesses that we struggle with - what we call petty sins and try to overcome. But there are sins that, even if committed once, open the door through which the devil enters the human mind. Any deliberate violation of the moral norms of Christianity can lead to this. If a person systematically violates, for example, the norms of married life, he loses spiritual vigilance, loses sobriety, chastity, that is, holistic wisdom that protects him from the attacks of the devil.

Dangerous, moreover, any duality. When a person, like Judas, begins to cling to other values in addition to the basic value that makes up the religious core of life, and his conscience, his mind and heart split in two, the person becomes very vulnerable to the actions of the devil.

I have already mentioned the so-called "reprimanding". I would like to dwell in more detail on this phenomenon, which has deep historical roots. In the Ancient Church, as you know, there were exorcists - people who were instructed by the Church to cast out demons from the possessed. The Church has never perceived possession as a mental illness. We know from the Gospel many cases when a demon, several demons, or even a whole legion settled in a person, and the Lord cast them out by His power. Then the work of exorcism was continued by the apostles, and later by the very exorcists to whom the Church entrusted this mission. In the following centuries, the ministry of exorcists as a special ministry within the Church practically disappeared, but still there were (and still are) people who exorcise demons from the possessed, either on behalf of the Church or on their own initiative.

You need to know that, on the one hand, the demoniac is a reality that the Church faces in Everyday life. Indeed, there are people in whom a demon lives, which has penetrated into them, as a rule, through their fault - because in one way or another they opened access for him to inside themselves. And there are people who, by prayer and special spells, similar topics that the priest reads before performing the sacrament of Baptism, cast out demons. But on the basis of "reprimanding" there are many abuses. For example, I saw two young hieromonks who, on their own initiative, were engaged in casting out demons from the possessed. Sometimes they did this service to each other - one scolded the other for two hours. No visible benefit it wasn't from that.

There are cases when priests arbitrarily take on the role of exorcists, begin to attract possessed people and create entire communities around themselves. I have no doubt that there are priests who possess divine healing power and are really capable of casting demons out of people. But such clergy must have the official sanction of the Church for this. If a person assumes such a mission on his own initiative, it is fraught with great dangers.
Once, in a private conversation, one fairly well-known exorcist, an Orthodox clergyman, around whom crowds of people gather, admitted: “I don’t know how this happens.” He said to one of the visitors: “If you are not sure that you are really possessed, it’s better not to come there, otherwise the demon can come out of another person and enter you.” As you can see, even this well-known and respected exorcist did not fully master the processes that occur on the basis of “reprimanding”, and did not fully understand the “mechanics” of expelling demons from one person and entering them into another.

Often people with certain problems - mental or just life - come to the priest and ask if they can go to such and such an old man for a reprimand. A woman once approached me: "My fifteen year old son he doesn’t listen to me, I want to take him to a reprimand.” The fact that your son is naughty, I answered, does not mean that he has a demon. To some extent, disobedience is even natural for teenagers - through this they grow up, assert themselves. Reporting is not a panacea for life's difficulties.

It also happens that a person shows signs of mental illness, and relatives see this as the influence of demons. Of course, a mentally ill person is more vulnerable to the action of demons than a spiritually and mentally healthy person, but this does not mean that he needs to be reprimanded. It takes a psychiatrist to treat the mentally ill, not a priest. But it is very important that the priest be able to distinguish between spiritual and mental phenomena, so that he does not mistake mental illness for demonic possession. If he tries to heal mental defects by reprimanding, the result may be the opposite, just the opposite of what was expected. A person with an unbalanced psyche, getting into a situation where people scream, squeal, etc., can cause irreparable harm to his spiritual, mental and mental health.

In conclusion, I would like to say that the action, power and strength of the devil are temporary. For a while, the devil won back a certain spiritual territory from God, a certain space on which he acts as if he were the master there. At the very least, he tries to create the illusion that there is an area in the spiritual world where he rules. Believers consider hell to be such a place, where people find themselves mired in sins, who have not repented, who have not embarked on the path of spiritual perfection, who have not found God. On Great Saturday, we will hear wonderful and very profound words that “hell reigns, but does not last forever over the human race”, and that Christ, by His redemptive feat, His death on the cross and descent into hell, has already won the victory over the devil - the very victory that will be final after His Second Coming. And hell, and death, and evil continue to exist, as they existed before Christ, but the death sentence has already been signed for them, the devil knows that his days are numbered (I'm not talking about his days as a living being, but about the power that he temporarily disposes).

"Hell reigns, but does not last forever over the human race." This means that humanity will not always be in the position it is in now. And even the one who ended up in the kingdom of the devil, in hell, does not lose the love of God, because God is also present in hell. Saint Isaac the Syrian called blasphemous the opinion that sinners in hell are deprived of the love of God. The love of God is present everywhere, but it acts in two ways: for those who are in the Kingdom of Heaven, it acts as a source of bliss, joy, inspiration, for those who are in the kingdom of Satan, it is a scourge, a source of torment.

We must also remember what is said in the Revelation of St. John the Theologian: the final victory of Christ over Antichrist, good over evil, God over the devil, will be won. In the Liturgy of Basil the Great, we hear that Christ descended into hell with the Cross in order to destroy the kingdom of the devil and bring all people to God, that is, by His presence and thanks to His death on the Cross, He permeated everything that we subjectively perceive as the kingdom of the devil. And in the stichera dedicated to the Cross of Christ, we hear: “Lord, Thy Cross has given us a weapon against the devil”; it also says that the Cross is “the glory of angels and the plague of demons”, it is an instrument before which the demons tremble, the devil “trembles and trembles”.

Films about the devil and demons:

Angels and Demons. Law of God with Archpriest Andrei Tkachev

Book Angels and Demons. Secrets of the Spiritual World”

What sins should be avoided the most?

And here is what the French poet of the 19th century Charles Pierre Baudelaire wrote: “The greatest cunning of the Devil is to convince us that he does not exist.”

Where did he come from? Long before the appearance of man, the Earth itself, and even the material Universe, spiritual personalities already existed. The Bible calls them angels or sons of God. All of these were originally perfect, but one of them himself decided to go against God. The name Satan was given to him only after
he departed from God, and it means "adversary", "enemy", "accuser". That is what he became when he rebelled against God, his father.

Why did he do it? Satan wanted everyone to worship him and not God. Once he tried to achieve the worship of Jesus Christ himself, when he lived on earth. In the 4th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, where in question about the temptations in the wilderness, obviously the devil himself is meant. Christ does not enter into negotiations with him, but rejects all his proposals. But calling him "Satan" He does not necessarily use this word, borrowed from Hebrew into Greek, as a proper name: it may be a designation of the role played by the devil during Christ's sojourn in the wilderness. He was his enemy, sought to lead astray.

How did he become Satan? Since people worshiped God, he decided to slander him. Fraudulently, he achieved the worship of the first people - first Eve, and then Adam. He told Eve that if she violated God's commandment, she would become like God. And as a result, Satan became a god for her.

This fallen angel, the name Devil was also given, which means "slanderer" in translation. After he embarked on the path of sin, he began to persuade other angels to his side.

How strong is Satan's influence?
In order to hide the traces of his crime, the criminal destroys all the evidence. But when there is an investigation of a crime, one thing is obvious, if there is a crime, then there must be a criminal. Satan is guilty of the fact that humanity has become mortal, so Jesus Christ rightly called him "The Killer of Man." When he talked to Eve, he did not confess to her who he really was, but used a snake to talk, so Eve thought she was talking to a snake. Now he also does not show his true face, because it is easier to deceive.

Jesus Christ made it clear that Satan is a criminal who rules the world from behind the scenes. Satan arranged this system in such a way that most people followed him without even knowing it.

Today's world is full of lies, hatred, corruption, hypocrisy, wars, crime. And so is the world. No wonder the Bible calls the Devil "the god of this system of things."

This means that we are not defenseless before the devil. On the contrary, God does everything to protect us as much as possible from the influence of Satan, He gives us His Cross, the Church, the sacraments, the Gospel, Christian moral teaching, the possibility of constant spiritual improvement. It gives us periods like great post when we can pay special attention to the spiritual life. And in this our spiritual struggle, in the struggle for ourselves, for our spiritual survival, God Himself is next to us, and He will be with us all the days until the end of time.

The patristic experience today. Part 1. #Osipov A.I.

If God is good, why is there so much evil in the world?

Astronauts who have seen the Earth from orbit tell how beautiful, calm and majestic it looks. Can something bad happen on such a beautiful planet? But, having barely returned to Earth, they realize that not everything is so safe here!

There are wars, tears and blood flow. Every day we hear news of new terrible events. This has become so commonplace that we don't really care - until it touches us!

Have you ever wondered why good people suffer as much as bad people? Why do innocent people become victims of crime and violence? Why kind people it's so hard, and the evil ones enjoy life? Why do innocent people die through the fault of a drunk driver, while he himself gets off with light bruises?

Planet Earth is tormented by earthquakes, floods, fires and other disasters! The number of deformed children and orphans has increased. Millions of earthlings are starving and have no roof over their heads. And the question torments the hearts of people: "IF GOD IS SO GOOD, WHY IS THERE SO MUCH EVIL IN THE WORLD?"

Is it all in God? Or perhaps there is another force that opposes the Lord? What is this power called? Where does it start? What does he do? Will it last forever or will it end?

Only the Bible can answer these questions.

Does Satan exist?

Yes, indeed, there are opposing forces in the Universe! These are the forces of good and the forces of evil, the forces of heaven and the forces of hell. God is not to blame for the evil that is happening on planet Earth! God is the Creator of love and blessings. Satan created hatred and suffering. Let's turn to the Bible for confirmation: "God is love" (1 John 4:8). “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have extended my favor to you” (Jeremiah 31:3). God's love is eternal! God never changes!

The Bible also characterizes the devil: “He was a murderer from the beginning and did not stand in the truth, for there is no truth in him; when he speaks a lie, he speaks his own, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

We are in the center of the cosmic drama - the conflict between power and lawlessness, between the Creator and Satan, the fallen angel.

We are not spectators, but participants in the action, because we are involved in this struggle, whether we like it or not.

Believing that Satan is just a myth or phenomenon leaves us completely unprepared to face sentient being which he really is. The apostle John empathizes with us in Revelation 12:12: "Woe to those who dwell on earth... because the devil has come down to you in great rage, knowing that he has not much time left."

Ap. Peter compares him to a roaring lion: “Be sober, be vigilant, for your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

Is God the creator of Satan?

We need to know: WHO IS SATAN, WHAT IS THE BEING AND WHERE DOES IT COME FROM? Jesus Himself answers this question:

“I saw Satan fall from heaven” (Luke 10:18).

The devil lived in heaven! Unbelievable, but true! Holy Bible reveals to us the tragic story. Satan, or Lucifer ("light-bringer"), as he was formerly called, was a beautiful and powerful heavenly angel. So why did he indulge in sin?

Lucifer held the highest position among the heavenly angels. “You were an anointed cherub to cover, and I set you up for it; you were on the holy mountain of God, walking among fiery stones. You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created, until iniquity was found in you... Because of your beauty your heart was lifted up, because of your vanity you destroyed your wisdom” (Ezekiel 28:14-17).

This beautiful and wise angel desired the glory and reverence that belongs only to God. He craved power. This created angel wanted to rule the Universe himself instead of the Creator!

“And he said in his heart: “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit on a mountain in the assembly of the gods, on the edge of the north; I will ascend into the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High” (Isaiah 14:13-14).

Shortly before this, Lucifer began to spread the spirit of discontent among the angels. He began to cunningly destroy love and justice, with the help of which the Lord ruled the universe!

How did our world become subject to sin?

Planet Earth has just come out of the hands of the Creator in all its splendor and perfection. A perfect world and in it two perfect people - Adam and Eve, to whom God gave dominion over this world. Watching the first couple in their genuine love and perfect joy, Satan planned to lead them into doubt and rebellion against God.

God told Adam and Eve of His predicament with Satan and warned against his tricks.

Created with free will and free choice, they were free to choose to love God and follow Him or ignore His instructions. Their loyalty required a test.

God placed a special tree in the middle of paradise and gave the following instruction and warning: “But from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, do not eat from it; for on the day you eat of it you will die the death” (Genesis 2:17).

People could eat fruits from all the trees in the huge garden - except for one. And the requirement was not difficult. human faith love, devotion and obedience were tested by such a simple means.

A person is most vulnerable when he is taken by surprise. This is exactly what happened to the first people. Satan used his supernatural power to deceive them. The prince of darkness does not always approach openly, and, acting with flattery and cunning, he seduced the first couple. In disobeying God, they lost everything: happiness, perfect love, fellowship with God, their home and dominion over the Earth.

Free man or slave?

Reading the third chapter of the book of Genesis, we ask ourselves the question: “Why did God, knowing about the danger of the fall, allow Satan to tempt man?”

He allowed this, wanting man to love Him with all his mind and consciously respond to His love. The first people on earth faced a choice: listen to God or succumb to the flattering words of the tempter? What will they choose? The entire universe watched with bated breath.

And they made a choice, alas, not in favor of good. If God gave man a difficult test, one might doubt His intention. The very lightness of the prohibition made the sin great. By sinning, Adam and Eve lost their dominion, and Satan became “the prince of this world” (John 12:31). And to this day, he constantly tempts a person who has become a slave to his own sin.

Since then, everything bad has come: illnesses, quarrels, confusion, despair, fear, death. After the fall, God appeared to Adam and said, “Cursed is the earth for you; in sorrow you shall eat of it all the days of your life. It will bring forth thorns and thistles for you... In the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground from which you were taken; For dust you are, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:17-19).

They failed God's test. From masters they turned into slaves: "Don't you know that to whom you give yourself as a slave to obey, to him you are also servants..." (Romans 6:16).

Why didn't God immediately destroy the devil?

Before Lucifer's rebellion against God, there was no lie, no deceit. The idea that it is possible to speak lies has never occurred among the angels. When Lucifer began to accuse God, slandering Him, other angels could not understand that this was a sin. For their sake, the Lord could not destroy the first sinner without first showing the full gravity of his sin.

God could declare that Satan is a deceiver, a liar, a thief, a destroyer, and a murderer. But the angels created by the Lord had to understand this themselves. The Creator determined the time at which evil was to reveal itself to the end.

Satan manifested his hatred of God at the birth of Jesus, influencing the jealous mind of King Herod, prompting him to destroy the Infant in Bethlehem. But it seemed to Herod that it was not enough to take the life of one Jesus; he put to death many babies under the age of two years. This is Satan's handwriting: hatred, malice, violence, murder... But Satan's plan failed: Christ remained alive.

Satan does not calm down and continues to look for an opportune moment for his black work. After baptism, the devil, disguised as a heavenly angel, approached Christ in the wilderness. Satan could have received an eternal inheritance on earth if he had managed in any way to prevent Christ from fulfilling His mission of saving sinful people. But Christ triumphed over all temptations.

The defeated Satan withdrew, but not for long. He returned - this was followed by Golgotha. All his power was directed to preventing Christ from restoring the dominion that man had lost. It was the man's last chance for survival.

In the end, Satan succeeded in betraying Christ into the hands of a bloodthirsty crowd, and He died on Golgotha. God gave His Son, and the Son gave His life to change our destiny with you. Contemplating the cross of Calvary, the whole Universe saw that Satan is a source of lies and a murderer. His essence was finally revealed when he brought the innocent Son of God to death. The cross revealed to everyone another truth: Christ is the Savior of our world.

About His death on the cross, which brought salvation to people, Jesus said: “Now is the judgment of this world; now the prince of this world will be cast out; and when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to me. This He said, signifying by what death He would die” (John 12:31-32).

Satan directs all efforts to exterminate those for whom Jesus died on the cross of Calvary, and Christ died for everyone: “For God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life ” (John 3:16). The Word of God says, “The devil has come down to you in great anger, knowing that he has not much time left” (Revelation 12:12).

Great is Satan's hatred of God, His followers, and every righteous law. Without even a drop of love and compassion, he makes a person endure physical, mental and spiritual torment.

But God is stronger than Satan - He won the victory. And He gives us the assurance: “For I am the Lord thy God; I hold you by your right hand, I say to you, "Do not be afraid, I will help you" (Isaiah 41:13).

To repel all the attacks of Satan, strength is needed, it is hidden in God. You can ask Him for help in simple words, like this: “Dear Heavenly Father, I thank You for the victory that the Son of God won over Satan in this world. I thank You for the promise that Jesus will give me victory over the devil and my sinful life. I thank You for hearing my prayer. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen".

Thinking out loud:

The source of goodness is God: “God is love” (1 John 4:8).

The source of evil is Satan: “He was a murderer from the beginning and did not stand in the truth, for there is no truth in him; when he speaks a lie, he speaks his own, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

Evil originated in heaven: “And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought against them” (Revelation 12:7). Christ said, "I saw Satan fall from heaven" (Luke 10:18).

The cause of Lucifer's fall is pride: "Your heart is lifted up because of your beauty" (Ezekiel 28:17).

The devil brought the first people on earth into sin. He is still looking for his victims today: “Be sober, be vigilant, for your adversary the devil is roaring about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

(18 votes : 4.3 out of 5 )

St.
Elder Paisios
Met.
A. Tkachenko

Devil(Greek διάβολος - slanderer, defamatory) - who rebelled, for a reason, against and as a result lost his high angelic; satan head.

The evil activity of the devil, directed at people, is allowed by God, including for the sake of determining their freedom to.

The devil always wants a person only, his goal is the death of a person.
According to Holy Scripture, the beginning of sin comes from the devil. " Whoever commits sin is from the devil, because the devil sinned first»(). “Falling is to angels what death is to humans. For after the fall there is no repentance for them, just as it is impossible for people after death,” writes St. . " Then he will also say to those on the left side: Depart from me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.» () .

The devil becomes "the prince of this world" through his power over people who have fallen away from God. A person cannot exist autonomously in the spiritual plane, either he fulfills the good will of God, or he surrenders himself to the power of the devil.

Can the devil work miracles?

Being an angel by nature, the devil has certain possibilities in influencing the elements and objects of the visible world, exceeding the capabilities of man.

For example, in the Book of Job, a case is noted when Satan cast down fire from heaven (). The ascetic literature contains many examples illustrating the ability of Satan and his accomplices, demons, to perform deeds so impressive for a person that many of them, in in a certain respect may be called miracles. Suppose, in the second epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Thessalonians, it is directly stated that the lawless one, that is, the Antichrist, who will appear before the end of the world and become an instrument of Satan, will act “with all power and signs and lying wonders” ().

Therefore, Satan can do things that can amaze a person, strike his eyes, mind, feelings, imagination. But is it right to speak of these deeds, or the results of these deeds, as genuine miracles?

Strictly speaking, a miracle, understood as the fruit of a special supernatural influence on the objects and phenomena of our world, a special supernatural intervention in the natural course of things, is available only to God (we can conditionally say that it is also available to those who act in cooperation with God, for example, ascetics - miracle workers). Satan, acting contrary to the will of God, is able to exert on the objects and phenomena of the world the effect that corresponds to his natural abilities and only to the extent that the Lord allows. Thus, we can say that Satan is capable of a miracle, but a miracle is not in the exclusive sense of the word, but a false miracle (note that satanic miracles are also called false because they are directed against goodness, and often also to deceive the senses or human consciousness ).

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