God as the Devil
The teaching of God as the Devil has been an accusation leveled at various Christian heretics from the 2nd century to the medieval period. In the modern period authors, such as Thomas Paine, have made the case that the Biblical god is a divine force that wreaks suffering, death, and destruction and that tempts or commands humanity into committing mayhem and genocide.
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[edit] Judaism
In the Hebrew Bible God is depicted as the source of both light and darkness, as in Isaiah 45:6-7.[1] However this concept of "darkness" and "evil" is not equivalent to "the devil," a later development in Jewish thought.[2]
[edit] David's Satan
Many authors have questioned the apparent contradiction correspondence in two Biblical passages. Their significance has been debated by Biblical scholars through the ages,[3] where an action attributed to God in 2 Samuel 24:1 is apparently attributed to Satan in 1 Chronicles 21:1.
[edit] Christianity
[edit] Heretics in The Early Church
There is no first hand evidence that any heretic of the early church ever described the God of the Bible as the devil.
Tertullian accuses Marcion of Sinope, the first major heretic of Christianity in the 1st century AD, that he "[held that] the Old Testament was a scandal to the faithful … and … accounted for it by postulating [that Jehovah was] a secondary deity, a demiurgus, who was god, in a sense, but not the supreme God; he was just, rigidly just, he had his good qualities, but he was not the good god, who was Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ."[4] The Church condemned his writings as heretical.
John Arendzen (1909) in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) mentions that Eusebius accused Apelles, the 2nd century AD Gnostic, of considering the Inspirer of Old-Testament prophecies to be not a god, but an evil angel.[5]
Hegemonius (4th C.) accuses the Persian prophet Mani, founder of the Manichaean sect in the 3rd century AD, identified Jehovah as "the devil god which created the world"[6] and said that "he who spoke with Moses, the Jews, and the priests … is the [Prince] of Darkness, … not the god of truth."[7]
According to their critics, these heretics referred to the Abrahamic God variously as "a demiurgus",[4] "an evil angel",[5] "the devil god",[6] "the Prince of Darkness",[7] "the source of all evil",[8] "the Devil",[9] "a demon",[10] "a cruel, wrathful, warlike tyrant",[11] "Satan"[12] and "the first beast of the book of Revelation".[13]
[edit] Heretics in the Middle Ages
Likewise there is no first-hand evidence that any medieval heretic ever called the God of the Bible the devil.
Nicholas Weber in the Catholic Encyclopedia article Albigenses (1907) notes that the enemies of the Albigenses, a Christian sect in 12th- and 13th-century France, a branch of the Cathari, accused them that their doctrine held that "the creator … of the material world … is the source of all evil … He created the human body and is the author of sin … The Old Testament must be either partly or entirely ascribed to him; whereas the New Testament is the revelation of the beneficent God."[8] They ultimately came into conflict with both the civil order and the Church which lead to the Albigensian Crusade.
[edit] Modern times
[edit] Thomas Paine
The 18th-century Anglo-American philosopher Thomas Paine wrote in The Age of Reason that "Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the Word of God."[10]
[edit] Walter L. Williams
American anthropologist Walter L. Williams has written a revision of the story of Jesus which presents "God as Satan, the evil doer rejected by Jesus in the New Testament confrontation during Jesus' retreat in the desert."[12] In the Old Testament, God offers all of Canaan to Abraham if he will worship God. Genesis 17:8 "I will give the entire land of Canaan, where you now live as a foreigner, to you and your descendants. It will be their possession forever, and I will be their God.” In the New Testament, Satan offers all the kingdoms on earth to Jesus if he will worship Satan. Luke 4:6-7 “I will give you the glory of these kingdoms and authority over them,” the devil said, “because they are mine to give to anyone I please. I will give it all to you if you will worship me.”
[edit] See also
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Peter D. Quinn-Miscall Reading Isaiah: poetry and vision p93 2001 - 224 "I make peace and I create evil. I the Lord make all these things. (45:6-7) "I create evil" is a shocking statement that is usually softened in translations, except for KJV."
- ^ Dictionary of deities and demons in the Bible DDD p245 ed. K. van der Toorn, Bob Becking, Pieter Willem van der Horst - 1999 "The value of this complex dualism and eschatology for some factions of post- exilic Judaism was that it provided an ... the source of both opposites: "I form light and I create darkness: I make wholeness and I create evil" (Isa 45:7)."
- ^ See, for example:
- 2 Samuel 24:1 vs I Chronicles 21:1 by Sidney Dosh, Jr., Biblical Heritage Center, undated
- Divine Intermediaries in 1 Chronicles 21: An Overlooked Aspect of the Chronicler’s Theology by Paul Evans in Biblica, 2004
- ^ a b
"Marcionites". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. - ^ a b "Gnosticism". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913.
- ^ a b Manichaeism by Alan G. Hefner in The Mystica, undated
- ^ a b Acta Archelai of Hegemonius, Chapter XII, c. AD 350, quoted in Translated Texts of Manicheism, compiled by Prods Oktor Skjærvø, page 68. History of the Acta Archelai explained in the Introduction, page 11
- ^ a b Albigenses by Nicholas Weber in Catholic Encyclopedia, 1907
- ^ Martin Luther by Oswald Bayer in The Reformation Theologians: An Introduction to Theology in the Early Modern Period, edited by Carter Lindberg, Wiley-Blackwell, 2002 (partial text available at Google Books). See The Evil One; God as the Devil; God's Wrath, page 58..9.
- ^ a b The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine, 1794, Part I, Chapter VII, Examination of the Old Testament
- ^ A Book of Blood: Biblical atrocities on Ebon Musings, undated
- ^ a b Walter L. Williams, private correspondence (quoted here with permission), March 19, 2009, referring to The Essential Teachings of Jesus and Mary by Walter L. Williams, unpublished manuscript, December 24, 2008, excerpts available at The Community Of Jesus And Mary
- ^ The Old Serpent Chained by "Son of man", Author House, 2006. (Full text of book available by clicking "Free Preview", then "Download the free eBook".)
