Professor Kelly argues from Luke iv that Satan is a minister of God in charge of the world.
“He’s a government heavy, whose main job is to test human beings and to accuse them of their misdeeds, but he is cynical and overzealous in performing his duties,” the professor says. “We can think of an unscrupulous and feared official investigator or prosecutor, like J.Edgar Hoover or senator Joseph McCarthy.”
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August 18, 2006 at 12:42 pm
Wait, so Hoover and McCarthy are just victims of bad PR too?
August 21, 2006 at 7:04 pm
This is an idea that was prevalent long before Luke. Most notably, Satan appears in Job as a servant of God. (“Hey, have you seen my servant Job? He’s so cool!” “Oh, I bet if you took away all the good stuff you’ve given him, he’d curese you to your face!” You think so? OK, it’s a bet!” etc., etc.) Perhaps this version of Satan might be best thought of as Manager of Quality Assurance and Testing. This usually reminds me of the William Burroughs quote wherein he quotes Satan from Job (imagine in Ol’ Bill’s rapy voice); “I am a man of the world. Going to and fro and walking up and down in it.?
August 22, 2006 at 7:48 pm
@Thistle – not necessarily, but even amongst liberals they don’t quite have the same reputation that Satan does.
@Bill – Kelly quotes stuff from Job as well, I think. The story of Job was one of the first things that really made me start questioning the whole Christianity thing when I was a kid. God hanging out with Satan making bets about torture just didn’t jibe with me.