Devil is responsible for deaths?

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105lynne

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My husband quoted scripture (of course, I can’t remember where to find it) where it says that God is not responsible for death, only Satan is. He claims that God is of life and the giver of life, therefore He cannot be responsible for death. I’m baffled! What is the Church’s teaching on this? Am I totally wrong for thinking God’s in control of such things? My husband also claims that no sufferings or diseases are from God. I’m confused. Thoughts??
 
of course God is behind death. How else would He call any of us home if not for us crossing from life into death and from death into eternal life?
 
That’s rather a Gnostic view of nature, and I doubt it’s an accurate one. Genesis claims that death and disease came into the world because mankind sinned, but I think it’s more accurate to say that a disordered view of suffering came in because of sin. Death is simply a part of the process of life: it clears out aging or injured organisms so that God can continue to bring new life into the world and continue to renew His creation. Disease is, for better or worse, a frequent agent of death: the organisms that cause disease are simply feeding off a weakened being (human, animal or plant) the way that other living things feed off other living things, whether it’s a cow eating grass or a pack of wolves eating a deer. Nature, it seems, is amoral, whereas only humans have a clear, transcendant concept of morality, since we’re made in God’s image and likeness.
 
Prior to Original Sin, Adam and Eve possessed preternatural gifts which included an impassibility of body which preserved them from illness, injury, and physical aging, and of course physical death.

Physical death became a possibility for human beings as a result of the fall from grace in the original sin. This sin, basing ourselves on the biblical narrative, was instigated by a temptation from Satan. Thus I think you could say that Satan indirectly has brought about all human death through tempting our first parents to sin. That doesn’t, of course, mean he is involved in some kind of direct supernatural action to bring about individual deaths.

God, of course, is in control of all history at the highest level of consideration, but on a more proximate level there are evils He merely permits to occur through the free decisions of creatures rather than ordaining and actively bringing them about for their own sake. Physical death would be one of these evils.
 
Ok, I think I found what he was talking about. Hebrews 2:14

King James Bible (Cambridge Ed.)
Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil;

He uses the King James version. But I view the word “death” as death of the soul, not necessarily physical death. My husband is so adamant that he’s right about this. sigh why would God create life and then say “ok, Satan, you take it from here…” Makes no sense to me!
 
This is about spiritual death, also called the second death in Rev 2:11 (although physical death was also a consequence of original sin). Death is a consequence of sin (see Romans 6:16). Thus, the devil had power over humanity through the power sin had over our lives. As the letter to the Romans said, we were once slaves to sin— and that means death. The passage in Hebrews says that Jesus was born into humanity and died so that he could take back the power that satan had over us. He freed us from the slavery to sin and it’s consequence of eternal death. So, satan no longer has the power over us as long as we accept Jesus’ free gift of salvation.

Regarding physical death, well, that is just a consequence of original sin we all still have to deal with. You could say that the devil had a role in our physical deaths by way of original sin. But he does not generally “cause” us to die… that is just part of human nature now. We have finite bodies. In the beginning, I suspect that Adam and Eve had glorified bodies (or something like it) and they gave that up for all of humanity when they sinned. At any rate, Jesus did not “fix” that for us and so it is appointed to all mankind to endure physical death. If Jesus had intended to remove the consequence of physical death then I suppose he could have— and baptized believers would not die. However, that is not God’s plan. As far as God’s power over death and satan’s power St. Thomas Aquinas said, “A judge has one kind of power of death: he can punish people with death; a criminal has a different kind of power of death–a power he usurps by killing another …]. God has the first kind of dominion over death; the devil has the second kind, for he seduces man to sin and leads him to death.” This was quoted in the Navarre bible study for Hebrews.
 
Prayer_Warrior said:
This is about spiritual death, also called the second death in Rev 2:11 (although physical death was also a consequence of original sin). Death is a consequence of sin (see Romans 6:16). Thus, the devil had power over humanity through the power sin had over our lives. As the letter to the Romans said, we were once slaves to sin— and that means death. The passage in Hebrews says that Jesus was born into humanity and died so that he could take back the power that satan had over us. He freed us from the slavery to sin and it’s consequence of eternal death. So, satan no longer has the power over us as long as we accept Jesus’ free gift of salvation.

Regarding physical death, well, that is just a consequence of original sin we all still have to deal with. You could say that the devil had a role in our physical deaths by way of original sin. But he does not generally “cause” us to die… that is just part of human nature now. We have finite bodies. In the beginning, I suspect that Adam and Eve had glorified bodies (or something like it) and they gave that up for all of humanity when they sinned. At any rate, Jesus did not “fix” that for us and so it is appointed to all mankind to endure physical death. If Jesus had intended to remove the consequence of physical death then I suppose he could have— and baptized believers would not die. However, that is not God’s plan. As far as God’s power over death and satan’s power St. Thomas Aquinas said, “A judge has one kind of power of death: he can punish people with death; a criminal has a different kind of power of death–a power he usurps by killing another …]. God has the first kind of dominion over death; the devil has the second kind, for he seduces man to sin and leads him to death.” This was quoted in the Navarre bible study for Hebrews.
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Wonderful answer!!! Thank you!!
 
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