How was the snake evil if sin had not yet happened?

[LemonAndLime]

When was it that the devil was “created” (in other words, when was he expelled from Heaven). I ask this because I’ve always been confused about the snake - apart from the fact that it talked, was it the devil controlling it? Or evil in general? I thought that neither evil nor sin existed in Eden.

 

[Nita]

It was the devil.

Rev 20:2 And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years,

 

[LemonAndLime]

It was the devil.

Rev 20:2 And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years,

So Satan was cast down from Heaven before Adam and Eve were created?

 

[Nita]

So Satan was cast down from Heaven before Adam and Eve were created?

The devil had sinned and rejected God before he tempted Adam and Eve in the garden.
As to the expression “cast down from Heaven”, it all depends upon what one means by it. Scripture indicates Satan still communicates with God.
Job 1:6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them. 1:7 The LORD said to Satan, “Whence have you come?” Satan answered the LORD, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.”

Rev 12:10 And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, "Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.

My way of understanding it is that Satan has been cast out of Heaven in the sense that he no longer experiences the love and joy of God, etc. … This was satan’s choice when he rejected God – rejected God’s will, rejected God as his god.
Satan is a spirit, so the “casting out” needs to be understood in a manner proper to beings who are pure spirit and not subject to time and space in the manner that is part of physical beings.

 

[Cat_Herder]

So Satan was cast down from Heaven before Adam and Eve were created?

Yes. the Book of Revelation is not in chronological order.

 

[COPLAND_3]

I wrote a commentary on Genesis 1-3, here is an excerpt…

The serpent is the Devil, that is Satan, in which serpent is used figuratively (see Rev. 20:2). Some great commentators have suggested that the Devil was speaking through a snake just like how an angel spoke through a donkey to Balaam in Number 22, either way Satan is the tempter here. CCC 391

Satan fell in a couple different ways, the first fall was from his heavenly rank as we see in Genesis 3, the other was more completely at the Crucifixion when a third of the angels went with him.

 

[rcjones]

One possibility is that the Garden existed outside of time until the fall, and the serpent wasn’t cast out until the fall.

If his deception of Eve and his wishing to exalt himself (by making Adam and Eve his servants rather than God’s) occurred at the same time, then his being made to crawl on the earth and being cast down are the same event.

We just don’t have enough information for a sure chronology.

 

[StrawberryJam]

Hardly seems like any kind of punishment to cause the devil from the beggining to have to crawl around without arms or legs.
Snakes do it all the time.

Where is the punishment he had to endure again? Oh, that comes at the end right?

 

[thistle]

I wrote a commentary on Genesis 1-3, here is an excerpt…

Satan fell in a couple different ways, the first fall was from his heavenly rank as we see in Genesis 3,** the other was more completely at the Crucifixion when a third of the angels went with him**.

How do we know this?

 

[Nita]

Hardly seems like any kind of punishment to cause the devil from the beggining to have to crawl around without arms or legs.
Snakes do it all the time.
…

Here are some thoughts regarding the topic by St. Chrysostom, Tirinus, and Menochius, given in the footnotes of the Haydock Bible ( haydock1859.tripod.com/id329.html ):
Ver. 14. Cursed. This curse falls upon the natural serpent, as the instrument of the devil; who is also cursed at the same time by the Holy Ghost. What was natural to the serpent and to man in a state of innocence, (as to creep, &c. to submit to the dominion of the husband, &c.) becomes a punishment after the fall. (St. Chrysostom) — There was no enmity, before, between man and any of God’s creatures; nor were they noxious to him. (Tirinus) — The devil seems now to crawl, because he no longer aspires after God and heavenly things, but aims at wickedness and mean deceit. (Menochius)

 

[LemonAndLime]

Hardly seems like any kind of punishment to cause the devil from the beggining to have to crawl around without arms or legs.
Snakes do it all the time.

Where is the punishment he had to endure again? Oh, that comes at the end right?

I’ve always thought that Adam’s punishment was unfair. He had to farm to get food. Well, women have to do that too. Where’s his gender-specific punishment without being sexist? Also, I’m pretty sure that childbirth never had the possibility of being painless. It’s a big baby coming out of… how was it never going to hurt?

 

[StrawberryJam]

I’ve always thought that Adam’s punishment was unfair. He had to farm to get food. Well, women have to do that too. Where’s his gender-specific punishment without being sexist? Also, I’m pretty sure that childbirth never had the possibility of being painless. It’s a big baby coming out of… how was it never going to hurt?

I remember a Carol Burnett skit where she compared having a baby to stretching her lower lip over her entire head. I think the gender specific punishment for men was having to pretend grilling is hard work. The whole playing with fire thing, it’s in the blood of a man.
Maybe for a time, it was stressful deciding how many concubines one wanted or could support? Got me there.

 

[LemonAndLime]

I remember a Carol Burnett skit where she compared having a baby to stretching her lower lip over her entire head. I think the gender specific punishment for men was having to pretend grilling is hard work. The whole playing with fire thing, it’s in the blood of a man.
Maybe for a time, it was stressful deciding how many concubines one wanted or could support? Got me there.

I’ve heard that too, I’ve also heard it’s like snorting a grapefruit out of your nostril.

I think their punishment might be lack of sense of direction and then too much pride to ask for directions, so they would be eternally lost without women.

 

[StrawberryJam]

I’ve heard that too, I’ve also heard it’s like snorting a grapefruit out of your nostril.

I think their punishment might be lack of sense of direction and then too much pride to ask for directions, so they would be eternally lost without women.

That is graphic imagry I will have to push out of my memory.
I like to bring up that and other points about the anatomy when people argue for intelligent design, but that is a bit off topic.

Going back to punishments, I did realize there is a big one. It doesn’t really make sense to me but it is in there. Matt 5:28-30 there is that whole punishment of the man who even looks at another woman with lust. Now, the charge there is it is equal to adultery.
That’s another place I object. I can see the charge of fornication there, if one must have a charge for that. Unless I am mistaken, adultery does not involve unmarried persons. Okay, l hear everyone thinking to themselves why so picky about that? That’s not the point I hear. The point is there is a lot of men out there that are sinning like mad. And, for all that sinning there ought to be a punishment right? That’s what’s important about that passage.

I find passages just like that one all the time, and I nearly have a bald spot on my head from all the times I have scratched it trying to sift through all the stuff that sounds wacky.

 

[grannymh]

When was it that the devil was “created” (in other words, when was he expelled from Heaven). I ask this because I’ve always been confused about the snake - apart from the fact that it talked, was it the devil controlling it? Or evil in general? I thought that neither evil nor sin existed in Eden.

The devil was originally a created angel. For good information, read paragraphs 391-395 in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition. One can put the word paragraph and its number in the Catechism’s search bar in link www.scborromeo.org/ccc.htm

Considering the “snake” as “evil in general” is a wishy-washy watered down interpretation of Genesis. which does not relate to Catholic teaching.
It does not matter if one thinks of the snake as a symbol or an embodiment – it was the real Satan who was tempting Adam to break his relationship with God.

Blessings,
granny

The human person is the apple of God’s eye.
(example of reality and figurative language)