Thanks for all the replies, been thinking about the theory of the devil being an Instrument of God and wanted to provide insightful feedback so have read each post and considered them greatly the last few days, or week, whatever its been until I felt ready to respond.
The Christian Gospel calls us to faith, hope, and love. Don’t be searching to hard for the devil’s world, cause it surely will find you if you look hard enough.
Not really searching for the devil, no worries. Dont own a Ouija board so safe there. Since Im not considering him being good or evil its more about the role and purpose of the entity itself in reference to biblical literature.
Exhorting someone to do the obvious wrong is not as effective as deceiving them. Instead of exhorting them to do an obvious evil action, he turns them away from the relationship with God. He contradicts what God says, and by doing so he calls into question God’s love and provision for them. In effect, Satan calls God a liar.
this meshes with my theory if you are referring to when the devil challenged Jesus to be the messiah in such that he is acting as a system of checks and balances as his angelic genetics so to speak require him to do, insuring it is not a false messiah. God never said dont go test Jesus and then the devil did it anyway, not in those terms. In that case the devil didnt choose to ignore or not listen to God, moreso it seems as a tool the essence of his role was to fulfill that task which overrides his ability to understand any reason being that the devil is an entity created by God for some specific, elevated purpose like all Angels who were created by God and those above them.
He and other angels rejected God’s love and goodness, had pride, and were sent/left from God’s presence. They chose to do things their own way rather than God’s - an act that is sin, for us and them.
I think due to the lack of subject matter from what I am researching, please feel free to point me in the right direction, I think this point that the devil flat out rejected God, is something that is in the realm of stuff we cant understand as humans, because that isnt flat out written anywhere to cite that the devil said he rejected God or that God acknowledges the resignation or rejection of the devil…
Adam and Eve’s sin was that they disobeyed God; God had said “Don’t eat this fruit,” and they did. Satan tempted them to do it, but they DID it, which means they were wrong, too.
This might go the point for me of is the devil is an instrument of God. Adam and Eve would still be in that place if they didnt eat that apple content to stay there doing nothing, this I resign myself to thinking that maybe we dont know what all completely happened. Maybe those humans just got the message wrong about not eating the fruit or didnt understand it all being that their human. That leads into a whole diff discussion on the nature of original sin, which I feel either way fits into the dogmatic teachings that humans have free will which could be construed as that original sin to choose to live in Gods light or the dark, like in the garden sit there and do nothing but be lazy, or go out and be human.
The rest of it - whether Satan has access to heaven (Job seems to say yes, but Satan is evil and evil cannot be in God’s holy presence), what exactly he did before he left heaven, how much if anything he knew of the future and God’s plan, how and when the angels were given a choice to obey and love God or not, etc…outside of what Scripture tells us and what the Catechism explains, a lot of this we just don’t know for sure. And it’s not given to us to know…it’s not really our business, KWIM?
I understand your curiosity, and you’re not the first nor the last to wonder about these things.
This seems to be the direction I am leaning now, that its unknowable in many aspects, which leaves it open to discussion but without supporting material one way or the other its just unknowable.
You keep returning to this point of Adam and Eve being Lazy. Why is it that you think this? The bible doesn’t really go into what their day to day activities were, so how do you know that they were ‘not being human’?
Mostly because they werent doing what humans do, creating poetry, building cars, having sex. Calculating their contribution to society while in the garden isnt possible because there is nothing they did to contribute since there also wasnt a society, which is why I feel the devil lit the fire under them as people say to go be human and not just be lazy, that is where my idea for them misinterpreting the whole dont eat fruit thing or our understanding of it.
Recently while thinking on this issue I hit a brick wall with our Catholic teachings is we do have exorcists. I spent some time looking into people who were “possessed”, just a little bit of research but the symptoms are the same no matter if its today or a thousand years ago it seems. I didnt go into detail but it seems the same. None of that seems good, so that throws the whole instrument of God idea out the window unless I could think of a way to explain it as not being bad. Which of course possession is bad, it surely would inhibit someones care of their family, or a job, or any other aspect of being human and seems to offer no benefit to the individual that I can find. While the people dont run around being evil, the lack of any benefit is what I find hard to match with the devil being an instrument of God. Unless these people are possessed by some other form of entity that isnt the devil, maybe I could blame it on those Nephilim people, its something Im still trying to square if I am to keep that working theory going.
