Reply #1: I haven't read much theology [View All]

[Lydia Leftcoast]

(that's next year in my EFM course), but unless you want to be a Manichean (I have read church history), with Satan cast as the evil counterpart to God, you have to view Satan as the personification of the evil impulses that everyone has.

Sometimes those impulses will be so strong that they seem like an external force.

The idea of Satan could have originally been an extension of the notion of demon possession, which most of us would now recognize as mental illness. If you've ever had dealings with a mentally ill person who has good days and bad days, you may have noticed that on the good days, the person talks about their actions on bad days as if they happened to someone else. Thus it may seem as if the person has been taken over by some other entity.

And if there are demons, they need a leader, right?