Is Satan a real being or a metaphor?

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REAL!! VERY, VERY REAL!! Don’t think otherwise, please! That’s what he wants!
 
I have no doubt that both he, and his minions, do indeed exist. More of that supernatural stuff, I’m afraid.
 
What’s that seductive voice in your head saying?

“Come on, be rational. Is it really at all possible that the devil can exist? He’s simply a metaphor, for all of mankind’s evils…”

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

DON’T LISTEN TO IT!! FALSE RATIONALITY IS HIS FAVORITE TOOL!
 
Satan is very real.
The Church teaches us that among the Creatures of God are spirits called angels. God created them to be His messengers, to praise and worship Him, etc. He gave them a free will just as He has given us the freedom to choose good or evil; to live according to His Commandments as taught to us by the Church or to live outside that teaching.
We know from the Bible that at one point some angels turned against God, disobeying Him and effectively rejecting Him. These “fallen” angels as they are also known are the demons or devils.
These devils are the ones frequently called “satan”. As I understand it, “satan” is a Hebrew word which means “adversary” Satan, capital S is their prince, Lucifer.
 
odhiambo said:
Satan is very real.
The Church teaches us that among the Creatures of God are spirits called angels. God created them to be His messengers, to praise and worship Him, etc. He gave them a free will just as He has given us the freedom to choose good or evil; to live according to His Commandments as taught to us by the Church or to live outside that teaching.
We know from the Bible that at one point some angels turned against God, disobeying Him and effectively rejecting Him. These “fallen” angels as they are also known are the demons or devils.
These devils are the ones frequently called “Satan”. As I understand it, “satan” is a Hebrew word which means “adversary”
Yes, Satan is very real indeed!
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there’s more than one Satan?
 
Satan is the prince of the devils, but there are innumerable demons that do his work. All are pure spirits, having no bodies. They do not age, and are not limited by any sort of physical barrier.
 
itullian said:
Lucifer=Satan=Devil=Mefistofeles etc.

right?
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He is pre-eminent among the devils, but all fallen angels are considered to be devils. Note that Jesus referred to Judas as “a devil” It might be helpful to think of ‘Devil’ as Satan and ‘devil’ as one of his minions.
 
Fallen angels arent they the ones that interbreeded with people and resulted giants, so they must have had a human body?
 
The body of the fallen angels was not an illusion because their seed produced giants…
Did Satan fall before tempting Adam or after? Why he didnt became mortal ?(maybe only the fallen ones became mortal?)
 
itullian said:
not just a metephor for our animal side?
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From the Catechism:

**2851 In this petition, evil is not an abstraction, but refers to a person, Satan, the Evil One, the angel who opposes God. The devil (dia-bolos) is the one who “throws himself across” God’s plan and his work of salvation accomplished in Christ.
**
 
itullian said:
your thoughts?
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Yes, he is real- the god of this World, the Lord of this Kosmos.

But not like a ‘personal’ being, rather a personification of this World, the fallen order, the human experience of suffering, pain, desire.etc. Our souls are exiled in his Kingdom, this garden of earthly torment, futility and meaninglessness- this shadow play of vanities.

So, of course Satan is real, but he is also a metaphor. In the same way God is real, but is also a metaphor.

All language is intrinsically metaphoric. Everything mediated be language and thought is metaphor. Thus there is no antithesis between reality and metaphor. Reality itself is only a metaphor.
 
Satan is as real as they come. He’s neither an abstraction, nor a metaphor, nor a half-giant, but a spiritual being of immense power who is wholly bent to destroy us and draw us away from God. Luckily, we have many other angels on ours and God’s side, and with God’s power behind them, Satan is powerless to harm us unless we let him. Make no mistake about Satan’s reality, no abstraction or metaphor could be so destructive.
 
itullian said:
your thoughts?
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The idea of Satan historically developed along with monotheism and the divisin of what was considered a “whole” and seamless world int a bifurcated view, or dichotomy. In other words, as the idea of a good God developed, so, almost necessarliy, did the idea of a balance, or personalization of evil. Both of these were natural, as all forces in Na ture and in mind were personalized in order to be able to relate to them, and put them outside oneself. And that idea of putting things outside oneself, or personalization/projection, is a crucial and very overlooked part of human mentality.

Lucifer, or The Light Bearer, refers originally to awareness as such. It “fell” and opposed God by doing what makes us human: we see falsly see the world as me and it untill we accomplish what the mystics all aim for. At that time there cannot be a me and it, because the reality of one’s relationship with God is percieved in clarity.

That is why Satan is called the “adversary.” Satan is the personification of that aspect of our awareness that devides. It is in “opposition” to God because God is ALL in all. And that is the actual symbolism of the “fall” and the Garden. It is the myth of the ascent of Man to the state of awareness in which he can make distinctions and not equate the world with himself. In the fullness of maturity, or Union with God, it is seen how what appeare in the animal state as “I and the world are one” in an unthinking way, to the human “there is the world and me in it–and conflict” to I and my Father are One; not I do the work, but the Father in me…" which is the statement of the accomplished adept.

So we can see that all this is a natural progression in the symbols of the state of our awareness. So yes, it is symbolic, but is symbolic of something very real and potentially, well, in the great majority of people, very misleading. And that is the point of religion, as is the point of the levels of the parables: to educate us. “Re-legio” means to tie back to. The mortal mind gets tied back to devine ideas until it can see for itself that the religion was a scaffolding to use until the structure of Soul is accomplished. Once the building is done, or the Temple of the Holy Spirit is built, the scaffolding can come down. In the mean time it is essential and very useful!
 
I also thought this was interesting, relative to how people view Satan:
But who prays for Satan? Who in eighteen centuries, has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most, our one fellow and brother who most needed a friend yet had not a single one, the one sinner among us all who had the highest and clearest right to every Christian’s daily and nightly prayers, for the plain and unassailable reason that his was the first and greatest need, he being among sinners the supremest?
  • Mark Twain’s Autobiography
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itullian said:
your thoughts?
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:tiphat:

Did Jesus chase metaphors out of people?

Did metaphors enter swine that headed over the cliff?

Did a metaphor bring Job to ruin?

Did Jesus speak to, and be tempted by, a metaphor during those 40 days of desert?

Did a metaphor deceive Eve?

Did God make the most beautiful metaphor among His angels?

Satan is defined a number of ways, but I believe Scripture is clear that metaphor is not one of them.

🙂
 
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