👹 Satan's Origins

Estimated time to read: 23 minutes

The Hebrew term śāṭān (שָׂטָן) is a generic noun meaning “accuser” or “adversary”, and is derived from a verb meaning primarily “to obstruct, oppose”. ... When used without the definite article (simply satan), it can refer to any accuser, but when it is used with the definite article (ha-satan), it usually refers specifically to the heavenly accuser, literally, the satan.

— Satan, Hebrew Bible, Wikipedia

 

In the Old Testament, "the devil" is pretty vague and nonspecific. As shown above, Satan is more of a title or role than a literal character who is physically present. That idea changes in the New Testament.

 

Satan is a figure or a concept that I find really fascinating. He serves as a convenient scapegoat and/or boogeyman who is responsible for all ills in the whole world... at least, from the perspective of Christianity. The word Satan when not used as a proper noun is comparable to "opponent," "accuser," or "adversary." Context around the word can heavily imply whether it's a mortal human filling the role of "a satan," or even an "angel of the Lord" being "a satan."

Linguistics are surely more complicated than I realize, because the role "satan" at one point became a proper noun, much like how the word "god" became a proper noun. This implies pretty heavily that there is only one "God" or one "Satan" with whom we have any concern.

How did satan go from "a guy causing problems" to "a singular malevolent, supernatural being bent on destroying everything good or happy"? Well, it all seems to stem from one of Mormonism's preferred questions of the soul: what happens after we die?

 

Origin

Hell

Something that I'd like to spend more time reading about is how the construction of the Bible is really a confluence of Hebrew, Aramaic, Roman, and Greek cultures. Having not yet done that, I will now begin to write about things I have only a superficial understanding of.

[Sheol is] a place where both the righteous and the unrighteous dead go, regardless of their moral choices in life. ... [It] may be interpreted as either a generic metaphor describing 'the grave' into which all humans invariably descend, or an actual state of afterlife within Israelite thought.

— Sheol, Wikipedia; See also the LDS Bible Dictionary entry.

 

Sheol appears to be thought of as simply fate, rather than a consequence for anything. As I understand it, in ancient Hebraism, an "afterlife" wasn't really a relevant consideration; we're just here to serve God's will and live life, but there isn't a "reward" after death for how well one fulfilled those duties towards God.

When the Hebrew text gets translated into Greek in ancient Alexandria, rather than introduce an entirely new word to the clergy, folks just replaced sheol with Hades, the mythological God of the dead. Context using his name can also refer to his spooky, misty & gloomy domain in the underworld where dead people go irrespective of how "good" they were, by whatever metric.

Neither Sheol nor Hades are places for punishing misbehavior, they're simply the place(s) you go after dying. It sounds like a close enough semantic match that it probably won't lead to any disagreement or confusion at any time for the subsequent 2,300 years.
_{spoiler alert: it did.}

 

Moving back to Hebrew culture, we have Gehenna, a valley close to Jerusalem. It appears to have been the de facto standard location of "we burn things here" anciently. While other religions were vying for cultural prevalence, ancient kings of Judah (Ahaz and Manesseh) used this location for sacrificing children into a fire. The prophet Jeremiah didn't like that much, so the location had its name changed to sound more totally metal: the valley of slaughter. I found an online Jewish Encyclopedia which says that this name means the place was cursed. That probably won't have any impact on the translation process in 1611 CE commissioned by King James.
_{spoiler alert: it did.}

 

This is all relevant simply because philosophy considered the groundbreaking possibility of "what if we're still conscious after we die... and also everything sucks? Gehenna was at one point in time a shitty place where things get burned. What if existence is like that after death?" Today, this idea appears to be a tenant of Jehovah's Witnesses' Watchtower (1, 2.) The best (only) connection I've found for this idea is a 1200 CE Rabbi named David Kimhi, but I have yet to find a satisfying primary source for this. The comparison of an afterlife to this variation of Gehenna, a shitty place that is always burning, probably won't have any impact on the ~1550 CE Council of Trent which canonized an afterlife of "eternal damnation." (1, 2, 3)
_{spoiler alert: it did.}

 

Hell's Leader

I'm not certain if Greece or Rome had close enough ties to Pagan Norse such that their respective mythologies would overlap, but the Norse figure Hel presides over Helheim. By my understanding, the suffix -heim means "location of," which makes Helheim the place of the "god" of the dead; it is the netherworld where the dead go.

And so, as various cultures intermingled, we have Hebrew Sheol which is similar to Greek Hades. Germanic languages took Norse Hel and added an extra L, and now Christianity's Hell exists as an afterlife like Sheol, but it is also a shitty, burning place much like Gehenna. Hades has a ruler by the same name, and so does Hel, so I suppose it's only fair that this idea of Hell as an afterlife should also have a supervising figure.

 

If our ultimate objective is to get into some kind of Heaven, the good afterlife, but there's an opponent, accuser, or adversary getting in our way, then... maybe there's some kind of satan intent on getting mortals to Hell, the bad afterlife? That Council of Trent seemed to conclude that.

This conclusion may have been an influence on an Italian fellow named Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri, who wrote a divine comedy we know of today as Dante's Inferno. This comedy depicts nine concentric circles of torment, each circle representing a specific sin that its denizens were guilty of. In the bottom-most pit of is Lucifer, acting as a Satan, whom Mormonism calls "a son of the morning."

 

Perhaps a properly educated theologian could point me to better resources, but for today, I'm satisfied with the above context and explanation of Satan's origins. The KJV New Testament mentions "hell" a several times, but doesn't seem to be saying "this is a shitty place that burns forever and you'll go there if you sin." That idea, by my estimation, appears to be borne of the Catholic church's ~1550 council that determine its doctrine.

For some extra context: 58 years prior to the Counsel of Trent was a guy named Christopher Columbus, sailing on an ocean blue. Columbus ultimately dies before the Council takes place, leaving him ignorant of any consequence for his wrongdoings. All of his crimes against humanity, along with those committed by Spain's earliest inquisitors were not executed with any notion of eternal consequence. They weren't trying to spare people from Hell by coercing baptism, because Hell didn't exist yet. They weren't scared of going to Hell themselves for torturing false confessions out of "heretics," because Hell didn't exist when the initiative began. Lacking that idea of an unpleasant afterlife, I suppose it would be easy for them to rationalize that "yeah, God is probably into this," tuning out the agonized screams of Phillippino's. Spain's inquisitors could use whatever means necessary to get more baptisms with no thought for consequential damnation. It just wasn't part of the theology. This kind of thing evidently does not offend God, but calling someone a Mormon does. 🤷 I don't make the rules.

 

In Practicum

As you can see, I've got some critical thoughts about Christianity in a broad sense, but I know enough to know that I don't know enough. I grew up inside of Mormonism, stepped away from it, and today I recognize that it's unfair to assess all variations of Christianity through that paradigm.

Part way through writing this page I attended a Catholic Mass with a buddy of mine. It was an illuminating experience to see core tenants of one faith get interpreted in such a radically different way. I'll try and narrow the scope of my commentary down to just Mormonism before that pesky Dunning-Kruger effect causes me to make more of a fool of myself. Each time I feel that I have a good understanding of things, I discover that the lore is deeper than I had thought. Mormonism is only one offshoot of Christianity, but the above context is necessary for where I'm trying to go.

 

Mormonism's Teachings

On a broad, general scale, Mormonism teaches that:

• There are churches
• Churches can be either true or false
• Only one of them is true
• Hey, wouldn't you know it—it's us, we're the true one! We are "the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth." How convenient.

There is no other baptism (1, 2). You do it the way we say, or it's illegitimate. The only way to return to God is through us. We are your only option. All other churches are at best an imitation, and at worst they are something of the devil. In fact, a point of order made abundantly clear to Joseph Smith (maybe) is that he must join no other church, "that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight; that those professors were all corrupt[.]"

How is this all related to Satan? Well... Per his namesake, he's here to cause problems. If the only path to salvation has adjectives like "strait" and "narrow," "and few there be that find it," then someone whose role of deceiver, opponent, adversary, etc. has a pretty clear purpose: to obscure that narrow point of entry.

 

Book of Mormon & Free Will

I've got a separate page of notes digging into the Book of Mormon more thoroughly, if you're interested. For the context of Satan, here are some practical highlights:

It is the keystone of our religion. Contains the fulness of the gospel (maybe), . Evidentiary of the restoration. Without this book, there is no salvation. Right? Right.

A very strange paradox in this book is that it's a key component of God's plan for us to be saved, and yet the book is missing so many key elements of the restored church. Mormonism cannot exist without this text. Mormonism does not exist inside of the text, either. Another dimension of that conundrum includes teachings that are present in the Book of Mormon, but absent in the modern church's practices. One example of this is Hell, which was totally a relevant factor for Jewish families as early at 600 BCE. Before examining that, we'll first examine what this book of scripture says about free will.

11 For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, ... righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad.

16 Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself. Wherefore, man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other.

— 2 Nephi 2:11, 16

 

30 And now remember, remember, my brethren, that whosoever perisheth, perisheth unto himself; and whosoever doeth iniquity, doeth it unto himself; for behold, ye are free; ye are permitted to act for yourselves; for behold, God hath given unto you a knowledge and he hath made you free.

— Helaman 14:30

Suspiciously absent from Helaman's assurance of free will is the stipulation that mankind needs to be enticed one way or another. You're just free.

Does this mean that God designed humans to act for themselves, or did God design humans to be unable to act "save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other?" I see scriptural passages to make both arguments. I suppose that in practicum, this means that we can use prophetic, divine scriptural text to argue in favor of whichever angle you prefer in conversation. Just the way God intended 👍

If the "proper" understanding of free will is that we are, by design, unable to act without enticement, then you're going to run into problems as as you delve further into this topic of free will. We need a minimum of two options in order for us to have choice, I suppose. There has to be opposition, or else free will doesn't matter. Jesus isn't going to provide that opposition, so... I mean, I guess someone has to do it...

 

War in Heaven

One unique teaching within Mormonism (that is absent from the Book of Mormon) is the "war in heaven" (1, 2), which sounds like it should be a literary conflict taken to epic proportions. In practice, it's much less fascinating. The premise is that "[b]ecause our Heavenly Father chose Jesus Christ to be our Savior, Satan became angry and rebelled." In our pre-mortal life, we didn't have physical bodies, so "[t]he premortal war was fought with words, ideas, debate, and persuasion." We just argued over whether we liked Jesus or Lucifer, and how free will plays into the equation. That's it, that's the war.

Something that is not clear to me in this pre-mortal war is how it affects the origins of "evil." The inciting incident was God choosing Jesus to be our Savior. ... To save us from what, exactly? The presentation of the Plan of Salvation™️ was prior to Lucifer's rebellion; there was no devil, no Satan, no tempter. At this point in time, before Lucifer's counter-offer is presented, he's just a guy like you or me.

But, he just had to open his big, dumb, mouth and suggest an alternative to God's plan with its alarmingly low success rate. Lucifer proposes "if we're prone to making bad decisions that will jeopardize our eternal wellbeing, how about we tone it down and put up some safeguards against unending damnation? How about... we just let 100% of us come back?"

How does God respond to this idea?

 

In the eternal scale of things, is this the birth of "evil" as a concept? Lucifer expressing that he wants everyone to return to God? That is the axiom of evil?

God's response isn't spelled out clearly enough for me to distill into a cheeky animated GIF, but ultimately Lucifer "rebels" with big ol' air quotes. The scriptural passage quotes Lucifer as saying "I will redeem all mankind, that one soul shall not be lost, and surely I will do it; wherefore give me thine honor." Whatever God did or said in response to this request for "thine honor" is what drove Lucifer to become "Satan, yea, even the devil, the father of all lies, to deceive and to blind men, and to lead them captive at his will, even as many as would not hearken unto my voice" as Moses 4:4 outlines.

 

Now, beginning at this moment of "rebellion," we have an adversary. We didn't before. Lucifer didn't rebel against anything until there was a plan of salvation to rebel against. This leads me to wonder if God's plan featuring Jesus as a Savior depended on Lucifer coming up with this idea that none of God's children should be disqualified. Did God intend for one of His beloved children to rebel and become the devil? If so, that's kind of shitty. By the way, according to modern prophets, God's love "cannot correctly be characterized as unconditional," in case you thought for some reason that your Father in Heaven wasn't going to withhold acceptance even before you obtained a physical body. 🤷

 

Foreordination

How does foreordination impact free will? How does it impact agency? If God is omniscient, meaning He knows the outcome and the end result... do we actually have free will?

In the premortal spirit world, God appointed certain spirits to fulfill specific missions on earth. This is called foreordination. Foreordination does not guarantee that individuals will receive certain callings or responsibilities. ...

Jesus Christ was foreordained to carry out the Atonement, becoming “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”

— Foreordination, Topics and Questions

 

So... How does free will fit into foreordination? Did Jehovah choose to suffer for the sins of all of humankind throughout all of human history? The above quote certainly says that Jesus was chosen, selected, foreordained by God to do it. It doesn't really say one way or the other if Jesus had volunteered to suffer for all sins of n billion souls.

Wait, hold on, now. If a devilish Satan is integral to our free will, agency, and the whole point of us gaining experience here on earth, then Lucifer has to be considered as part of the Plan of Salvation.

... Was Lucifer foreordained to become Satan?

 

The doctrine of foreordination applies to all members of the Church, not just to the Savior and His prophets. Before the creation of the earth, faithful women were given certain responsibilities and faithful men were foreordained to certain priesthood duties.

— Foreordination, Topics and Questions (link above)

 

Is Satan a priesthood office?

Perhaps not, because the careful wording in that quote delineates that women (notorious for not having priesthood authority) get foreordained for vague, nonspecific "certain responsibilities," compared to the 💪 masculine 🍆 manly-men ♂️ with balls 🏈 who get foreordained for "priesthood duties."

 

I can't say that this is doctrinal, but... the geometry I'm seeing puts together the idea that Elohim picked one of his (conditionally) beloved children to be the scapegoat; not just one, but risking up to and including 33% of his own children, doomed to suffer in bitterness so that the remaining 67% could be happy. Not sure why they never present it that way in the Friend magazine.

 

Book of Mormon on Hell

Do we believe in hell?

We have a different view of hell than the images of lava, fire, and pitchforks portrayed in movies. For those who choose not to follow God in life, their spirit will go to a temporary hell when they die. In this case, “hell” refers more to a state of mind than an actual place. Pain will come from regret and sorrow—not from fire and brimstone.

— Come Unto Christ (UK); Common Questions, Life after death; this 'common question' segment on Life after death is present in regional English language pages, but not in the English-Global version. 🤔

 

That's a direct quote from the public-facing, introductory-level overview of Mormonism. I wonder what the foundational scriptural text has to say about it?

Rather than quote entire Book of Mormon verses, I'll list some key words or phrases with a corresponding link for you to verify in case there's some kind of "context" I'm overlooking.

Passage	Notion
1 Nephi 14:3	"That great pit" which was founded by the devil "that he might lead away the souls of men down to hell"; "casting of it into that hell which hath no end."
2 Nephi 9:16	"they shall go away into everlasting fire ... and their torment is as a lake of fire and brimstone, whose flame ascendeth up forever and ever and has no end."
2 Nephi 9:26	The atonement delivers "from that awful monster, death and hell, and the devil, and the lake of fire and brimstone, which is endless torment;"
2 Nephi 26:10	"because they yield unto the devil and choose works of darkness rather than light, therefore they must go down to hell."
2 Nephi 28:23	"Yea, they are grasped with death, and hell; and death, and hell, and the devil" ... "they must go into the place prepared for them, even a lake of fire and brimstone, which is endless torment."
Jacob 7:18	"And he spake plainly unto them, that he had been deceived by the power of the devil. And he spake of hell, and of eternity, and of eternal punishment."
Mosiah 16:2	The wicked "shall have cause to howl, and weep, and wail, and gnash their teeth" and Jesus does not redeem them.
Mosiah 16:11	"resurrection of endless damnation, being delivered up to the devil, who hath subjected them, which is damnation[.]"

 

"Hell is temporary, and is not fire and brimstone." Right, okay. From those passages, I count 6 verses out of 8 describe Hell as eternal (or without end,) 5 out of 8 sound like it's a Proper Noun location, with three verses explicitly saying "fire and brimstone."

 

Hell is Anachronistic

Remember when we examined how cultural ideas of an afterlife, whether good, bad or neutral, took around a thousand years to become capital-H Hell? This idea of a punishing afterlife described as a lake of fire and brimstone is anachronistic to a Jewish family who had left Jersusalem in 600 BC (1, 2, 3). There is no way that Lehi or his family would anticipate that 2,100 years later, the Council of Trent would convene and decide that hell exists as a punishment, and is a place that is both shitty and burns forever.

It gets worse, though! The inciting incident of Ahaz, king of Judah performing human sacrifice by burning children alive as described in 2 Chronicles 28:3 and 2 Kings 17:17 hadn't happened yet when Lehi left Jerusalem. The LDS church's own seminary manual on 2 Chronicles saying that it sure looks like it was put together "sometime after 537 B.C." This is of a significance comparable to that of Deutero-Isaiah. Laban's plates of brass couldn't contain something that happened 63 years in the future. The heresy by Ahaz that later gets convoluted by the Council of Trent had not happened when Lehi left Jerusalem.

For the Book of Mormon to contain any teaching about Hell would require a bonafide big-brain workaround: God reveals to Lehi (completely off the records) that Hell is exactly as that apostate council from apostatized Catholicism had decided on. If this is what happens, that calls into question if the Great Apostasy happened or not.

 

The Book of Mormon teaches in no uncertain terms that Hell is very real. Whether it's metaphorical, symbolic, or literal, it is a burning punishment.

 

Definition of "Eternal"

I don't know how to express this in more verbosity: Eternal punishment for a finite crime is... just insane. That is such an unfathomably heavy consequence that we're put at an outrageous disadvantage against. In the scale of eternity, our mortal life is ephemeral, comparable to a fraction of a second... and God is going to judge us according to obedience in that short, transient moment in time, and condemn us for the rest of eternity.

Unless, of course, we were to assume a broader definition of the word "eternal."

 

You may need to explain that in the scriptures, the terms "endless punishment" and "eternal punishment" do not refer to the length of time people will suffer for their sins. The Savior said, “I am endless, and the punishment which is given from my hand is endless punishment, for Endless is my name” (D&C 19:10). Therefore, when He refers to endless punishment or eternal punishment, He is speaking of the punishment He will administer according to divine law and the requirements of justice.

— Lesson 24: Doctrine and Covenants 19:1–22, Doctrine and Covenants and Church History Seminary Teacher Manual

 

Oh, good. Cool. Eternal does not mean eternal. This reminds me of how getting married for eternity only (excluding time) which somehow can demonstrably prove that Joseph kept his pants on.

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