Lucifer aka Satan

[nebo113]

if Lucifer sinned before Eve, why does she get all the blame for sin?  Serious question.  I'm not a Biblical scholar, nor a believer, but am genuinely curious.

[marshwiggle]

if Lucifer sinned before Eve, why does she get all the blame for sin?  Serious question.  I'm not a Biblical scholar, nor a believer, but am genuinely curious.

She doesn't. Lucifer got cast out of heaven,(among other things), and Eve, Adam, and the serpent all got punishments. (And, despite the fact of people being born with original sin, everyone is responsible for their own sins, so no-one avoids blame.)

[mamselle]

Part of what also happens in Hebrew Scriptures is that different strands of the story were recorded over several hundred years by more than a few writers who, while all inspired by God's spirit (by affirmation of the Scriptural canon) are telling different parts of the story.

Someone else will be able to exegete this better than I (tired froman  teaching) can, at the moment but there are at least two contributing threads to the Genesis passages that deal with this: the Priestly strand (P) that stands for regulated living and the enforced holy law, and the Jahvistic thread (J) that focuses on the person and nature of God, the (subliminal, but at times apparent) presence (or anticipation of the presence of the second member of) the Trinity, and the giftedness of human--indeed, all--life. 

Prophetic vision and language are also not always linear, and the causality to which prophetic observations allude is not always visibly direct. That does not mean there's no logic and no causality, though.

Unfolding time, multivalent causalities, and the patience of faith are also involved.

The inspiration for the evil act is not Eve's but the serpent's (the personification of Evil, or the Devil) and Adam is not without agency in the matter, either. (His line, "The woman gave me and I ate" is the lamest bit of mansplaining ever...at least from the standpoint of, "You could have said, "No....").

Satan's choice to rebel against God and try to set up a counterfeit realm on Earth--to make himself a counterfeit God, as it were--is that of a renegade angel, basically. The fact that people keep getting mixed up over whom they might best follow and end up being poor choosers has to be allowed because God respects human free will, and the potential for redemption is a part of the situation.

Revelations 20 has more text on this. There are also extended sort-of-midrashic medieval commentaries, like da Voragine's "Golden Legend" segments on St. Michael, et al., that develop the issue further, and various preachments over the past few millenia, under various confessional umbrellas, take these issues in a number of different directions.

There's a pretty, early carol, "Gabriel of High Degree," that has as its chorus, "Ave fit ex Eva," (i.e., "Ave", or 'Hail'--as in "Hail, Mary"--is made out of "Eve," or 'Eva,' in other words, Mary's birthing of Jesus is taken as transformative, with the word 'Eva' reversed to spell 'ave') that also addresses this in a way.

Underlying the whole thing is, as noted above, the awareness that humans often need to make choices. They need to remember what they've been taught about what God expects of them, and pay attention to that when making those choices. They need to not be beguiled by voices that appeal to their vanity or that create a confused causality by pushing things in a direction they've been told not to take.

And while, at the time it was written, the blame was put on Eve, reversing the order of actions--with Adam being tempted first, and Eve following after, would have only changed a few parts of the issue.

Now, as someone who has strong feelings about the inappropriateness of using Scripture to justify misogyny, as this passage has been used, but remains a person of faith, as I try to be, I've also wrestled with it.

But then, I often flip the genders, or make them neutral or plural for inclusivity's sake, when doing my daily readings, so that I don't feel left out, because the bigger picture is, I'm pretty sure that God doesn't want me (or anyone else) to feel left out because some curmudgeonly people of any given persuasion want to vaunt themselves at my expense.

That would be setting themselves up as counterfeit Gods, and we've already seen where that leads....

M. 

[Puget]

Lucifer doesn't appear in the Torah or other Jewish scriptures at all-- that's entirely a Christian construciton.
There are a few brief references to "satan" (i.e., in Job) but it literally just means "adversary", and from context is clearly more like opposing counsel in a court-- an angel assigned to argue the other side. So there's no reason to expect Genesis to align with those much later Christian traditions.

There is also a rich interpretational tradition that doesn't frame the Genesis text as being about sin and punishment, but rather humanity growing up-- once you've eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you can't remain an innocent child in paradise, you have to get on with the messy business of being an adult, which your parent might want to protect you from, but ultimately knows they can't (and why put the tree *right there* if it wasn't meant to happen?).

[Parasaurolophus]

Technically, does Lucifer (/Satan, whoever) actually sin? My understanding is that the concept only applies to the post-Edenic world.

[mamselle]

I can't look them up at this moment, but I think references in Ezekiel and Isaiah are taken to refer to Lucifer, 'that bright angel,' (as described in the Gospels).

Again, I'd want to check those out but my understanding was that the concept of personified evil didn't only postdate the Christian canon.

M.

[Hegemony]

if Lucifer sinned before Eve, why does she get all the blame for sin?  Serious question.  I'm not a Biblical scholar, nor a believer, but am genuinely curious.

Eve only gets all the blame for human sin. The idea is that she instigated the sin that caused humankind to be expelled from the Garden of Eden. The sin of Lucifer/Satan was of a different order. Now, you may say, "But if Satan hadn't tempted Eve, she wouldn't have sinned." But an important point is that Eve had free will; the fact that someone offered her the opportunity to sin doesn't mean she's blameless in the situation. And as the consequences for Lucifer's sin were visited upon the fallen angels, the consequences for Eve's sin are visited upon fallen humans.

That's pretty much the doctrine, anyway.

[marshwiggle]

if Lucifer sinned before Eve, why does she get all the blame for sin?  Serious question.  I'm not a Biblical scholar, nor a believer, but am genuinely curious.

Eve only gets all the blame for human sin. The idea is that she instigated the sin that caused humankind to be expelled from the Garden of Eden. The sin of Lucifer/Satan was of a different order. Now, you may say, "But if Satan hadn't tempted Eve, she wouldn't have sinned." But an important point is that Eve had free will; the fact that someone offered her the opportunity to sin doesn't mean she's blameless in the situation. And as the consequences for Lucifer's sin were visited upon the fallen angels, the consequences for Eve's sin are visited upon fallen humans.

That's pretty much the doctrine, anyway.

But it's not attributed exclusively to Eve.

"As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive"  among others.

[Puget]

I can't look them up at this moment, but I think references in Ezekiel and Isaiah are taken to refer to Lucifer, 'that bright angel,' (as described in the Gospels).

Again, I'd want to check those out but my understanding was that the concept of personified evil didn't only postdate the Christian canon.

M.

Key word "taken". Taken by Christians to refer to. This is a bigger discussion obviously, but Christians do an awful lot of reading into non-Christian texts through their own traditions. Which is fine, so long as you recognize that's what you're doing.

[marshwiggle]

There is also a rich interpretational tradition that doesn't frame the Genesis text as being about sin and punishment, but rather humanity growing up-- once you've eaten from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you can't remain an innocent child in paradise, you have to get on with the messy business of being an adult, which your parent might want to protect you from, but ultimately knows they can't (and why put the tree *right there* if it wasn't meant to happen?).

The big problem with that interpretation is that it suggests that all moral prohibitions are inherently arbitrary. Does it make sense that a person, as part of "becoming an adult", should lie and cheat unless and until there are sufficient social consequences to make it an unwise choice?

For parents, the younger one's kids are the more rules must be followed "because I said so"; not because the parent is being secretive, but because the child can't yet grasp the complexity of the reasoning behind it. Having to push every boundary just because it's there is a very dangerous and painful way to live.

[apl68]

Interpreting the early parts of Genesis in light of the Christian New Testament, the crucial point is that humanity--all of us--exists in a condition of having fallen from God's grace due to choosing the wrong thing.  Since we are unable to undo this condition on our own, Jesus, God the Son, lived a sinless life as a human being, was put to death for our sins, and rose from the dead.  Our choice now is to either to admit our need for God's grace and accept Jesus' offer, and follow Jesus from that point on, or not to.  Pretty much summed up in a nutshell in the quotation from John in my current sig line.

What the original Fall actually looked like at the time can only be speculative.  Is the Genesis account an actual record of events?  Is it an allegory of something too messy and complicated and long-ago to sum up otherwise?  I don't know.  I do know that human history, and the human present, contain abundant evidence of human fallenness.  We need redemption.  I know I do!  It's an offer I certainly don't dare pass up.

[little bongo]

From Douglas Adams' The Restaurant at the End of the Universe:

"'Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says, do what you like, guys, oh, but don't eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting "Gotcha". It wouldn't have made any difference if they hadn't eaten it.'

"'Why not?'

"'Because if you're dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won't give up. They'll get you in the end.'"

I have no further comment on Adams' take on the story, except to remind everyone that it's always a good idea to know where your towel is.

[hmaria1609]

When I was in college, I remember the priest spoke during his homily how Adam was blaming God while he was at it when he said "the woman whom you made."  Great going, Adam! Whenever I've heard that reading at Mass, I think back to that bit.

[mamselle]

I can't look them up at this moment, but I think references in Ezekiel and Isaiah are taken to refer to Lucifer, 'that bright angel,' (as described in the Gospels).

Again, I'd want to check those out but my understanding was that the concept of personified evil didn't only postdate the Christian canon.

M.

Key word "taken". Taken by Christians to refer to. This is a bigger discussion obviously, but Christians do an awful lot of reading into non-Christian texts through their own traditions. Which is fine, so long as you recognize that's what you're doing.

Agreed, and I do not mean to try to co-opt one tradition's view of its writings to my own viewpoint.

But for those of us who confess Christ, there is a sense of continuity, too, as apl68 notes. The 'trouble' starts when Paul starts developing the more intrinsic parts of that tradition (which he did know well) as conterminous with the views Christianity had begun to espouse, and people started taking those as given...or centuries later, not bothering to learn the various strands of tradition very carefully or appreciate their various viewpoints for themselves.....and then judging those who held to the earlier tradition as wrong, to which I do not agree.

There are also, as you say, several layers of discussion on this--in Job, for example, the discussion between God and the "one who wanders here and there on the Earth" is taken as a dialogue between God and Satan. And there are differences (I did start looking them up this AM, before I had to teach) even in some (but not all, I realize) Judaic and Islamic traditions; sources I found held the concept to be a more generally Abrahamic one, as well.

This resource looked interesting; not being an Hebraic scholar I probably can't evaluate it as well as it might deserve, but the discussion seemed balanced and well-rooted in specific sources.

   https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195393361/obo-9780195393361-0056.xml

This recent book might be of interest as well:

   Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the supernatural worldview of the Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015).

And there's a blog post on it (by a more conservative Christian writer who seems to work hard at being non-polemical) that engages with that and other texts, and at least offers a sort of well-reasoned pilpel on the issues:

   https://www.biola.edu/blogs/good-book-blog/2021/why-michael-heiser-is-probably-wrong-about-satan-in-the-book-of-job

I might not agree with all his other holdings, but he does seem to wrestle with it respectfully.

Also: Full confession: I've never read Doug Adams....

I realize that's more heretical for some than anything else I could say, but there it is...

M.     

[little bongo]

Also: Full confession: I've never read Doug Adams....

I realize that's more heretical for some than anything else I could say, but there it is...

M.   

Oh, not heretical. I'm pretty sure we all have a "I can't believe you've never read so-and-so" on our personal lists somewhere. And I must admit my own intellectual curiosity is stirred by the sources you and the other posters have noted.

I'm definitely in agreement with the observation about Adam trying to pin the ultimate blame on God. The writers of the scriptures may or may not have been divinely inspired, but they knew human nature very well.