This post continues the series of reflections on the core Christian teaching that God had to become a human being who suffered died and rose from his grave to a new way of life. God had to do this in order to restore human beings to the regain the capacity to be as they ought to be. The series began Moral Harm and Non-being. It must be emphasized that no originality is claimed for what I propose and no claim that I am proposing teachings of the Catholic Church.

One crucial notion,previously introduced is that moral evil is non-being in so far as it is a condition of an agent differing from what it ought to be. The notion proposed in this posting is that God is in a struggle- a warfare against intelligent forces in opposition to there being what ought to be. The intelligence of these forces is Satan!

Who is Satan?

Assume for this posting, God created an intelligence with a will free to choose as God wills it to act and to be or choose not to act and to be as God wills. Suppose this being is almost equal to God in intelligence and creative power. Suppose further that this being chooses not to act and be as God wills. Such a being could plausibly be described as Satan.

I argued in an earlier posting God cannot destroy Satan when Satan is described as in the previous paragraph.

Subsequent posting will develop the notion of Satan to make it plausible that this Satan opposes God and tries to corrupt the human race. Here I want to close by citing two reasons why I am introducing the notion of Satan in opposition to God. One is that the Christian tradition portrays God as in a struggle against evil forces. C.S. Lewis emphasizes this in his Mere Christianity. Secondly, and of most importance to me is that I want to understand Jesus’ suffering and death as something God had to do is save us from the Satanic forces trying to keep humanity permanently as one of his forces. I want to avoid interpreting Jesus’ suffering and death as punishment He required for humans not acting and being as they ought to be.

I hope eventually to show how Satan exacerbates our sexual temptations. Readers my be interested in my book on sexual morality.

My book Confronting Sexual Nihilism: Traditional Sexual Morality as an Antidote to Nihilism was released by Tate Publishing on March 11, 2014. Email kielkopf.1@osu.edu for a free copy of my book.

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