Posted by Carlos on January 31, 1999 at 02:36:45:
In Reply to: Good point, and some not so good ones. posted by blue on January 30, 1999 at 18:44:05:
blue said:
You have a point well taken, that many professing Christians have built doctrines that are just as alien to the Bible as any doctrines anyone else has concocted. And Mr. Paine's writings on the incoporation of Greek, Roman, and Egyptian mythology into Christendom via the Roman Catholic church is absolutely correct. But I know of no denomination calling themselves Christian who has ever elevated Satan to the status Mr. Paine states, and that is the real crux of Chapter V.
Here is a portion of chapter V which you previously quoted:
"In order to make for it a foundation to rise upon, the inventors were under the necessity of giving to the being whom they call
Satan a power equally as great, if not greater, than they attribute to the Almighty. They have not only given him the power of
liberating himself from the pit, after what they call his fall, but they have made that power increase afterwards to infinity. Before
this fall they represent him only as an angel of limited existence, as they represent the rest. After his fall, he becomes, by their
account, omnipresent. He exists everywhere, and at the same time. He occupies the whole immensity of space."
I will grant that Paine falls toward hyperbole here, and I will grant your assertion that no Christian denomination has ascribed powers these extensive to the devil.
However, and here I must rely on my own religious background (Mormon), there are at least some sects that believe Satan and his minions are heavily involved in the day to day temptations of human beings, and are constantly throwing roadblocks in the way of believers and enticing them to sin. In that sense, Satan may be said to be "omnipresent" - many Mormons, at least, believe he is capable of tempting everyone all the time. Likewise, certain evangelical sects with which I am somewhat familiar believe that the devil holds great sway with humanity, and is the cause of virtually all suffering and "sin".
Leaving Paine for a moment, but relying on his methodology, I find very little evidence of Satan in the OT. Elaine Pagels, in The Origin of Satan makes a convincing argument that the idea of a devil or Satan as we now know it did not evolve until NT times. So, while we may quibble about Paine's rhetoric, his thesis that Christianity created the bogeyman called Satan seems to be accurate.