Hey, kids! It’s time to talk about the personification of evil!
But I want to offer this disclaimer: I do not have a concrete response to give you about the true nature of Hell or Satan. I’m only saying that we don’t necessarily know all the things we think we know. Also, I’m not gonna delve into all the symbolism and imagery in the Book of Revelation right now, because that whole giant mess will require its own lengthy, individual blog post.
What do we know about Satan?
First of all, it should be fairly obvious that our common depiction of the Devil as a grotesque, red-horned, fiery goat-person wielding a pitchfork isn’t accurate (or based on anything remotely biblical). Rather, that image began popping up in the 11th century, influenced by elements of Greek mythology, primarily Pan, the god of mischief, and the satyrs, who were traditionally known as lewd and obscene.
So what does the Bible actually say? Well, the Hebrew scriptures use the word satan (שָּׂטָן) which literally means “adversary” or “accuser,” although it alternately refers to both human adversaries and spiritual or angelic adversaries. When used in a spiritual sense, it reads less like a proper name and more like a title, role, or occupation. Moreover, it’s never used to denote a purely evil figure, but rather a heavenly prosecutor of sorts who may tempt, accuse, or punish, but only within the will of God. As a matter of fact, the first time such an adversary is mentioned in the Old Testament is in Numbers 22:22, and he’s identified as the Angel of the Lord. The Hebrew satan was translated in the Greek Septuagint as diabolos (διάβολος), which literally means “slanderer,” then into Latin as diabolus, and finally into English as devil.
Both the serpent in the Garden of Eden and the “Light Bringer” (Lucifer in Latin) mentioned by Isaiah were retroactively identified with Satan by early Christians, although the Hebrew scriptures made no such parallel. With regard to the former, the serpent is only ever described as one of God’s created animals, albeit a clever one, and not a demonic deity (although the first several chapters of Genesis are likely symbolic parables anyway). As for the latter, Lucifer is a Latin translation of the Greek heōsphoros (Ἑωσφόρος), itself a translation of the Hebrew Hêlêl ben Šāḥar (הֵילֵל בֶּן-שָׁחַר), which means “shining one” or “son of the morning.” All of these terms were well-known epithets for the planet Venus, and when the term appears in Isaiah 14, the writer is specifically addressing the King of Babylon (probably Nebuchadnezzar II). Origen was the first theologian to identify the name Lucifer with Satan, an idea popularized in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, but later thinkers such as John Calvin and Martin Luther considered it an error.
Interestingly enough, Jesus is also called “the morning star” — phōsphoros (Φωσφόρος), another Greek word for Venus — in 2 Peter 1:19. So… ya know… there’s that.
The teachings of 5th century theologian Augustine of Hippo are typically considered to include the most fundamental depictions of evil in medieval Christianity, embracing a slightly more dualistic view of Satan as God’s archenemy, influenced by Augustine’s youthful Manichaean beliefs (as opposed to the “heavenly prosecutor” view of the ancient Hebrews). Thus Satan became more of a concrete entity to represent spiritual struggle and pain. Medieval Christians also combined their theology with European pagan beliefs, creating a detailed folklore about metaphysical evil that culminated, in my humble opinion, with the elaborate and syncretic symbolism present in Dante Alighieri’s Nine Circles of Hell.
What do we know about demons?
The idea of demons as fallen angels is not present in the Old Testament. Rather, the translators of the Greek Septuagint used the catch-all word daimon (δαίμων), meaning “godlike,” to refer to personifications of abstract concepts like hatred, lies, disease, and pestilence, much as they did in Greek mythology. The term was also used in reference to foreign pagan deities, generally in the context of ritual sacrifice.
Demons are mentioned 55 times in the New Testament, and 46 of those references are related to demonic possession. In the Synoptic Gospels, demons are primarily seen as personifications (and ultimately the causes) of pain, suffering, and various other maladies, both physical and mental. In fact, the stories of Jesus casting out demons are usually mentioned in the context of disease, paralysis, seizures, leprosy, madness, etc. However, in some of the epistles (specifically 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy), demons are described in the context of pagan gods and ritual sacrifice, as in the Hebrew scriptures.
If you ask me, that leaves us with two possible interpretations: Demons could indeed be literal malicious spirits (i.e. fallen angels) who roam around tormenting mankind, or they could simply represent a pre-Enlightenment understanding of disease and mental illness, much as they did until the mid-19th century. Such misconceptions can even be seen in prominent theologians like Augustine, who wrote that “all diseases of Christians are to be ascribed to demons,” and Luther, who similarly wrote that “Satan produces all the maladies which afflict mankind, for he is the prince of death.”
I’m not saying I know for certain one way or another, but it is entirely possible that Jesus himself only spoke of “casting out demons” in order to utilize concepts that his followers would readily understand, since they clearly believed that demons were the cause of various physical and mental maladies. In other words, healing and exorcisms could have been essentially synonymous.
The Bible never specifically links demons with fallen angels, and the two weren’t theologically equated until the second and third centuries. The word angel, from the Greek angelos (ἄγγελος), was translated from the Hebrew mal’āḵ (‘מלאך‘), and each one simply means “messenger.” Much like satan (accuser), it’s more of a functional term or job description than anything else. And while the Bible certainly mentions angels who have sinned and were cast out of Heaven, they’re never really described in the same way as demons, who (again) are almost always associated with either pagan gods or various types of physical or mental illness. In other words, we know a lot less about “fallen angels” than we might think.
Much of what we think we know about demons actually comes from the apocryphal Book of Enoch, which is rejected as non-canonical by most Jewish and Christian churches.
What do we know about Hell?
Nowadays most people picture Hell as this dark, fiery, cavernous dungeon where sinners are poked, prodded, and tortured for all eternity, and they picture Heaven as this tranquil, otherworldly paradise in which all the righteous have halos and float around on clouds while angels sing old-timey hymns. But I don’t think either image is very accurate. In my humble opinion, both are beyond the realm of human physical description. Instead, Heaven is simply the state of being in the direct presence of God, and Hell is the state of being entirely separated from God. If you ask me, that’s pretty much it.
You may be surprised to learn that the term Hell appears nowhere in the original biblical texts. It’s a modern English word derived from the Old English Hel, which refers to both the goddess of the underworld and the underworld itself in Norse mythology. We just borrowed it when the first English Bibles appeared during the 1500s. However, three words in scripture are commonly translated as Hell:
- Sheol: A Hebrew word (שְׁאוֹל) that can be interpreted as either a metaphor describing the grave, or it may represent an presumed state of afterlife where both the righteous and the unrighteous go after death. In Hebrew scriptures, it seems to be a generic underworld, similar to Hades in Greek mythology, and it was even translated as such in the Greek Septuagint. This is the primary term used, as it appears 66 times in the Old Testament, mostly via prophecy or poetry. It sometimes appears alongside the Hebrew word Abaddon (אֲבַדּוֹן), which means “destruction” or “ruin.”
- Gehenna: A transliteration of the Valley of Hinnom (which became Γέεννα in Greek), a real historical location outside the walls of Jerusalem where they burned garbage and where lepers and outcasts were sent. The Old Testament also includes references to the priests of Moloch using it for child sacrifices, after which it was cursed by the prophet Jeremiah. The word is used 13 times in the New Testament, almost exclusively by Jesus, for its imagery of refuse and perpetual fire.
- Tartatus: A Greek word (Τάρταρος) for the deep abyss in Hades that is used as a dungeon of torment and suffering for the wicked as well as the prison for the mythical Titans. It is used only once in the entire Bible, as the destination of fallen angels (possibly in syncretism with the Titans).
It’s worth noting that only one of these is a purely Judeo-Christian term: Sheol (again, the grave in Hebrew). Gehenna was an actual flaming garbage dump, Tartarus was a concept borrowed from Greek mythology, and Hell was a translation borrowed from Norse mythology.
So what’s the point? Well, the rather cartoonish image of Hell that I described earlier mainly comes from Dante’s Inferno – which was written in the early 1300s and is extremely Catholic in its theology – along with ancient Hebrew cultural references to Greek myth or a place where garbage was burned. So no, I don’t remotely think that Hell is some elaborate, flaming torture chamber specifically created by God to punish nonbelievers – or a place at all, really; I just think it’s the state of total separation from God. However, if God is indeed the source of all life, love, joy, peace, light, truth, etc., then by default, Hell must be the absence of all these things, and thus is marked by darkness, isolation, and chaos. Could it also simply be the state of total annihilation? Nothingness? Maybe so. Much smarter men than me will still be arguing this issue long after I’m gone, so I’m not even going to pretend to know the answer.
For his part, C.S. Lewis wrote that “Hell is a state of mind…. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind — is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly.”
Okay… so what can we learn from all this?
For those of us who believe in the prospect of Heaven, the gift of eternal life through Christ must refer to something other than just our continued existence after death, assuming that the soul carries on in some aspect regardless of its destination. On the other hand, the possibility also exists that the soul is not inherently immortal and only gains immortality under the prerequisite of being “born again” in the first place. This idea might provide clarity to Matthew 10:28, which states that “both soul and body” are destroyed in Gehenna – if your soul were destroyed, you would cease to exist altogether.
Either way, it stands to reason that “eternal life” does not begin after our physical death (as we’re often led to believe), but rather, it begins whenever our hearts are opened to God’s love and grace. As such, “salvation” is not necessarily about rescuing us from Hell, but about rescuing us from ourselves and the spiritual death that persists without divine love. In other words, both salvation and damnation begin now, on this world, in this life. Again, as Lewis wrote, “when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say, ‘We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven,’ and the Lost, ‘We were always in Hell,’ and both will speak truly.” In my humble opinion, the lesson is that we should spend our lives neither fearing Hell nor waiting around for Heaven; instead, with the command to love God and love others, we are called to create a reflection of Heaven on Earth, fractured though it may be.
The Eagle and Child 