The other week, I posted on Robert Oester’s article ‘the Curious Career of Satan’. Since then, he’s commented on what I wrote, specifically this:

How do we reconcile the Old Testament picture of evil being God’s responsibility (and all that entails), and modern concepts of the struggle between good and evil? Does the New Testament paint that picture, or is it something later Christianity projected onto the text? Was this projection something that started before or after solidification of the canon?

His response was this:

I don’t know Damian, so I’m probably not being fair to him here, but he seems to be asking, “Is the development of the character of Satan something that is in the NT [and therefore something important], or something that happened after the NT was written [and therefore something to be ignored].” That seems to me to be a chicken-and-egg question: one that probably doesn’t have an answer. Rather, there must have been an interplay between canon development – as certain texts that mention Satan became more widespread in the Christian communities – and the development of ideas about Satan. Neither one came first: both developments happened at more or less the same time.

My understanding of canon development is that the canon – which records a specific understanding of Satan’s role – was chosen because it was a record of the developing ideas that became regarded as Orthodox. Hence, of course, there was an interplay between development of canon and development of ideas: They reflected each other.

My questions were slightly different:

• Did the New Testament record a specific understanding of Satan that is seemingly different from the Old Testament understanding of Satan?
• Did post-first-century Christianity develop these ideas and project it onto the text?
• Did this projection occur before or after solidification of the canon?

Now I’m not sure Robert understood my reasons for answering these questions. I want to attempt to reconcile two seemingly contradictory understandings of evil. The first regards God as the ultimate arbiter of Good and Evil; the second regards Satan as one part of a weak dualism, where whilst he will inevitably fall, he is very similar to a god himself. To me, this second understanding causes (understandably) some theological issues. This is why I’m curious about what opinions people have on the New Testament Satan and its relationship to his Old Testament counterpart. Now I don’t have access to many early Christian texts, and I’m not well read in them, but I’m confident that some record of early Christianity’s thoughts regarding this issue must exist; this is why I ask about if Christianity post-dating the writing of the New Testament developed these ideas and projected them onto the New Testament. It’s been known to happen. Finally, I asked about the location of this projection: That is, if the canon might have solidified around a weak-dualist understanding of Satan, or if the weak-dualist understanding was developed around the canon we’re familiar with.

Now, there are no true answers to these questions, but I’m open to any opinions, ideas, or texts that people are willing to give.