Is Satan Symbolic?

[The Sum of Awe]

While there is a lot of symbolism in the Bible, I personally believe Satan is a real created being-fallen angel who is trying to get people to worship him as God and who is trying to bring all the destruction, pain, death and misery he can. I believe he is trying to blind man's eyes to God's love and wonderful plan of salvation and trying to take as many people to Hell as he can. That's just my own belief is all.

Doesn't greed and hate do the same exact thing?

 

[The Sum of Awe]

if Satan was only a symbol for human greed and hate, then we would have to say that Jesus was as much affected by greed and hate as everyone else.

Jesus was tempted by the devil in the gospels. Satan offered him power and rulership over all the kingdoms of the earth. So if the OP's question had any basis, then the account about the temptation came from within Jesus himself and this would make Jesus 'blemished' with the same sinful desires of mankind.

However, If Satan was a real person, as the scriptures portray him to be, then he is the cause and promoter of sinful desire and mankind is not inherently flawed.... as Jesus sinlessness shows that mankind has the potential to be sin free.

Why can't Jesus have some wickedness in himself? Maybe he could control it very, very well.

 

[Pegg]

Why can't Jesus have some wickedness in himself? Maybe he could control it very, very well.

wickeness stems from corrupt desires

Jesus was not corrupt in any way, so he had no bad desires....he was a perfect man. If he had wickedness within his heart, he would have most likely joined Satan in rebellion against God.

 

[Ekanta]

Doesn't greed and hate do the same exact thing?

As I understand it:
Desire is when you want something.
Greed is when you get it and want more.
Hate develops when you dont get it. You hate what you got instead or the cause of not getting what you wanted.
So desire leads to either greed or hate.

 

[horizon_mj1]

if Satan was only a symbol for human greed and hate, then we would have to say that Jesus was as much affected by greed and hate as everyone else.

Jesus was tempted by the devil in the gospels. Satan offered him power and rulership over all the kingdoms of the earth. So if the OP's question had any basis, then the account about the temptation came from within Jesus himself and this would make Jesus 'blemished' with the same sinful desires of mankind.

However, If Satan was a real person, as the scriptures portray him to be, then he is the cause and promoter of sinful desire and mankind is not inherently flawed.... as Jesus sinlessness shows that mankind has the potential to be sin free.

To be human is to be blemished; Christians forget that Jesus wanted His Father Worshiped, not Himself. People also claim "Jesus saved them"; wrong again, He gave Humanity the tools to "save themselves through His examples". Evil Incarnate can not inhibit a Human body in its entirety, it is only in part; if you want to look at this part of the Bible in particular in a "spiritual" light, why does everyone think that Satan had a body when He tempted Jesus; does it state this verbatim?

 

[horizon_mj1]

wickeness stems from corrupt desires

Jesus was not corrupt in any way, so he had no bad desires....he was a perfect man. If he had wickedness within his heart, he would have most likely joined Satan in rebellion against God.

So you do not see God as an Entity of Good and Lucifer as the an Entity of Bad. Corrupt desires are created from wickedness, but there are many other sources as well (it would be quite naive to think otherwise).

 

[Adramelek]

So in other words, Satan, Lucifer, Old Scratch, etc. are just different names for different parts of a single Deity's personality?

To me, yes, that is one way of puting it. However, handles such as "Old Nick" or "the Man Downstairs", etc., have no real lagitimate value in my mind. It's like calling the Christian God the "Man Upstairs" or the "Keeper of the Store".

 

[horizon_mj1]

To me, yes, that is one way of puting it. However, handles such as "Old Nick" or "the Man Downstairs", etc., have no real lagitimate value in my mind. It's like calling the Christian God the "Man Upstairs" or the "Keeper of the Store".

I agree

 

[javajo]

Doesn't greed and hate do the same exact thing?

Yeah, they are both pretty bad. I was just saying I believe Satan is a real being and not just symbolic of those things. Although he is a symbol of that sort of thing as well. I'd venture to guess most ppl see him as symbolic and not as an actual being but when I read it, that's how it seems to come across to me personally, but we all have our own slant or perspective on things so I see where you're coming from.

 

[The Sum of Awe]

As I understand it:
Desire is when you want something.
Greed is when you get it and want more.
Hate develops when you dont get it. You hate what you got instead or the cause of not getting what you wanted.
So desire leads to either greed or hate.

Not what I meant.

I meant doesn't the hate and greed together do the same exact thing as what you said in your last post?

 

[Lahunken]

Before I became a Christian, I thought that the name Satan came from the Sanscrit word "sat", truth, and that real truth was the "devil" of organized religion. For, did you notice that everything is trying to run down? It's the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The world is like the bubbles in a shaken bottle of water, all trying to run down and undifferentiate back into nonexistence. Our consciousness is caused by the capacitance and ectropy (the opposite of entropy) of the neurons of the arising reticular formation in the medulla oblongata in the brain, holding and imposing consciousness upon the magnetic circuit that is our individuality. Notice that when the capacitance of those substance P neurons is reduced by a solvent, like ethanol(booze), ether, acetone, etc., our consciousness is reduced. But, time passes instantly for the unconscious. Instantly, you can awaken elsewhere, in the future. In order for a magnetic circuit to undifferentiate into permanent nonexistence, it's Planck distances will have to match the Planck distances of that (the opposite polarity) into which it totally undifferentiates. But, was a resurrected bubble ever found? Bubbles manage to undifferentiate into oblivion. It's the pressure of ambient repulsions that force undifferentiation. But, it doesn't say anywhere in the Bible that we are immortal. Rather, it says, "The soul that sins shall die", "Only He (God) is immortal", etc.
The forbidden truth is, the heart of every pleasure is a moment of nonexistence. The body has evolved by selective evolution to veil this. But, meditation upon the "Lost Word" (see Yahoo's Alchemy61) and put "eyennn" in its search slot to transcend that veil) will transcend that veil. Notice that substance P neurons impose consciousness upon us. Dopamine shields us from this pain. If you took a dopamine blocker you would feel the pain of living, "The pain of living Ace, the pain of living".

 

[totolina]

According to the Bible, greed and hate are def. attitudes that surround Satan's enviroment.

 

[On_a_Quest]

As far as the Bible goes, I think Satan is supposed to be taken as a real person. I assume that the various writers of the Bible believed that there was God and there was an opposition in the form of the Devil.

Personally, I don't believe in Satan and I take him to be a symbol of human vices more than anything else. Satan doesn't tempt people, but he is a symbol of human tendency to give into temptations. With regards to the passage on Jesus being tempted by the Devil, when I read that passage, I usually imagine Satan as a person and not symbolically. However, there are many things about the way the Bible was written, compiled, and preserved over the centuries that prevents me from putting very much stock in the reality of the story.

On the other hand, looking at Satan as a symbol of evil leads to thinking about God as a symbol of good (as has already been discussed in this thread). I see how the whole Bible can simply be taken as a giant symbol for the inner struggle of humans between good and evil. While that theory does make sense, it doesn't really fly with me because I can't believe that God doesn't exist. I suppose I feel that a world without Satan is fine, but a world without some kind of God doesn't make sense to me.

I'll stop before I diverge more... need to think about this a bit.

 

[Manss]

satan (shaitan) is upmost principal of seduction and surely who that be so , can be symbol of all badness. Of course some his human followers gradually become worse than him, as far as , satan don't accept them to be under his command ( due to their infamy)

 

[John Thiel]

It sez Satan talked to Christ. If that conversation was with a symbolic person, the whole Bible is a work of symbolism. I think it is a truism that people who don't believe Satan exists don't believe God exists either, if the Bible is their reference.

 

[Bob Dixon]

Satan isn't some devil goat guy.
He's two things:

A. The symbol of evil
B. The Grand Prosecutor

But the King of Hell who wants to steal your soul? I don't think so.

 

[Hawkins]

What if, Satan of the Bible, is meant to be a symbol for the human greed and hate? Just as the Angel of Death is a symbol for death?


Then, wouldn't make sense when the Bible is saying that Satan will rise to end the world, that it is just our own hate destroying ourselves, but Jesus (could be symbolic for good?) will save us and take us to heaven.

The Bible said that the Archangel Michael ever had an argument/dialogue with Satan. And it is believed by Christians that Isaiah described him as a cherub with its original name Lucifer.

Somehow from my own study, he is a cherub with a big skull and a set of white teeth which occasionally gnashing. When stretched he assembles a bird like cherub, but when he moves in Hades, he assembles a snake. That is, he moves as a snake with a rather big head and when he stops and stretches himself, he's like a bird like creature (or dragon like).

If by chance you meet with him, you probably may notice how he's correctly described in the Bible (except for the big skull and white teeth part which are not specially mentioned). And at the moment when you meet with him, another Bible description may be useful, "there will be weeping and the gnashing of teeth".

 

[joea]

Without God, there is no Satan or the devil; the word devil comes from the word "deva.....and deva means divine.....so there must be some connection?

 

[blackout]

Satan isn't some devil goat guy.
He's two things:

A. The symbol of evil
B. The Grand Prosecutor

But the King of Hell who wants to steal your soul? I don't think so.

Satan is a great many other things than these.

It all depends on who you ask.

 

[Hawkins]

The Bible said that the Archangel Michael ever had an argument/dialogue with Satan. And it is believed by Christians that Isaiah described him as a cherub with its original name Lucifer.

Somehow from my own study, he is a cherub with a big skull and a set of white teeth which occasionally gnashing. When stretched he assembles a bird like cherub, but when he moves in Hades, he assembles a snake. That is, he moves as a snake with a rather big head and when he stops and stretches himself, he's like a bird like creature (or dragon like).

If by chance you meet with him, you probably may notice how he's correctly described in the Bible (except for the big skull and white teeth part which are not specially mentioned). And at the moment when you meet with him, another Bible description may be useful, "there will be weeping and the gnashing of teeth".

And whenever I talked about my study, people can't help but taking it as a fairy tale. We will wait and see, and you'll be surprised by how accurate that things are described here.