John C. Peckham
Now that the forces and the laws of nature have been discovered, we can no longer believe in spirits whether good or evil… . It is impossible to use electric light and the wireless [the radio] and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the NT world of demons and spirits.1
So wrote Rudolf Bultmann in 1941, exemplifying the still common claim that modernity has abolished the very notion that Satan and his demon cohorts might exist or play any role in the world.
Given the post-Enlightenment hostility against the very idea of demonic agencies, it is easy for even Christians to think in terms that dismiss, downplay, or ignore the demonic realm. I am convinced, however, that conceding this ground—even if only implicitly—would be a significant error. The motif of cosmic conflict—of ongoing conflict between God’s kingdom and a demonic realm—is deeply embedded in Scripture, prominent down through the ages of the Christian tradition, and, I believe, provides critical resources for understanding the Christian faith.2
Anyone who reads the New Testament will repeatedly and strikingly encounter what Bultmann called “the NT world of demons and spirits.”3 In his classic book Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis recounted his own experience in this regard, writing:
One of the things that surprised me when I first read the New Testament seriously was that it talked so much about a Dark Power in the universe—a mighty evil spirit who was held to be the Power behind death and disease, and sin… . Christianity thinks this Dark Power was created by God, and was good when he was created, and went wrong… . this universe is at war … [and] it is a civil war, a rebellion, and that we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel. Enemy-occupied territory—that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.4
Yet, the very notion of a cosmic conflict between God’s kingdom and a demonic realm brings a host of questions and potential objections to mind. In this two-part essay, I will very briefly engage three broad questions that I consider highly significant. First, is it plausible to believe Satan and demons exist and play a role in this world? Second, how could there be any conflict between the omnipotent God and any mere creature or creatures? Third, how does positing a cosmic conflict help to understand Christian faith or advance the Christian worldview?
Relative to the question of plausibility, at first glance the belief that demons exist and play a role in this world might seem outlandish and open to ridicule. Indeed, Alvin Plantinga explains, many claim “that it is extremely implausible, in our enlightened day and age, to suppose that there is such a thing as Satan, let alone his cohorts.”5 However, Plantinga continues: “Plausibility, of course, is in the ear of the hearer, and even in our enlightened times there are plenty of people who think both that there are non-human free creatures and that they are responsible for some of the evil that the world contains.”6
In this regard, the historian Jeffrey Burton Russell notes that “the devil has always been a central Christian doctrine, an integral element in Christian tradition.”7 Further, the vast majority of humans past and present have believed in spirits and there is a real danger of ethnocentrism relative to simply dismissing such beliefs. According to Kabiro wa Gatumu, many non-Western Christian “scholars regard the Western church as having failed” to “give sufficient or serious attention to the topic of supernatural powers” due to “anti-supernaturalistic prejudice” inherited from the Enlightenment.8
Moreover, Plantinga rightly notes that it is “less than clear that Western academia has much to say by way of evidence against the idea” and he considers it “not at all unlikely, in particular not unlikely with respect to Christian theism” that beings such as Satan and his cohorts “should be involved in the history of our world.”9 In this regard, Garrett DeWeese contends that rejecting the reality of “spiritual beings” entails that one “dismiss totally the worldview of both the Old and the New Testaments, and indeed of Jesus himself.”10
The gospels alone are filled with references to the devil and demons opposing God’s kingdom. Among many other instances, the gospel of Matthew alone recounts that Jesus was tempted by the devil in the wilderness (e.g., Matt 4:1-11), repeatedly confronted and “cast out demons,” declaring “the kingdom of God has come” over and against the kingdom of Satan (Matt 12:28, 26), and explicitly identified the devil as his enemy who opposes Christ’s good work and sows evil in the world (Matt 13:37-39; cf. Matt 25:41).11 Here and elsewhere, as Brian Han Gregg puts it, “the conflict between God and Satan is clearly a central feature of Jesus’ teaching and ministry.”12
If the gospel accounts of what Jesus said and did are reliable, as I am convinced, they are, then the notion of a cosmic conflict is eminently plausible; indeed, it is part and parcel of the core of the Christian worldview—the gospel story itself. This story may appear to be “foolishness” to some who think they are wise, but “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom” (1 Cor 1:23-24). Accordingly, Paul exhorts Christians to be prepared “to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:11-12).13
Yet, many questions remain about how a cosmic conflict between God and mere creatures could occur and how such a notion matters for the Christian worldview. These two questions will be addressed below.
The motif of cosmic conflict is prominent in Scripture and throughout the Christian tradition, but often neglected today. While from a modernistic, anti-supernaturalist perspective, the notion of a cosmic conflict seems implausible, from the vantage point of Christian theism as depicted in Scripture and most of the Christian tradition, the notion is eminently plausible; it is deeply embedded in the very story of the gospel of Christ.
Yet, does the notion of a cosmic conflict even make sense? How could there be a conflict between the omnipotent God and mere creatures? No creature could oppose God in terms of sheer power—Scripture explicitly excludes the possibility of cosmic dualism (cf. Col 1:16-17; Rev 12:12). There could only be a cosmic conflict if the conflict is not one of sheer power, but a conflict of another kind. In my recent book, Theodicy of Love, I made a case that Scripture presents this conflict as a primarily epistemic conflict; a conflict over slanderous allegations against God’s character lodged by the devil in the heavenly court, which God’s work of redemption is in part aimed at defeating (for the good of all persons in the universe, who otherwise could not trust and love God unreservedly as the perfect harmony of the universe requires).14
An epistemic conflict over character cannot be settled by sheer power; only by demonstration of one’s righteousness can allegations against one’s character be defeated. A Governor accused of corruption could not defeat allegations against her by a show of force. Similarly, by their very nature as epistemic claims against God’s character, the devil’s slanderous allegations cannot be settled by the mere exercise of divine power, but require some open demonstration.
And the work of Christ itself provides this demonstration. On one hand, Scripture teaches that the devil is:
1) the deceiver of the whole world from the beginning (Rev. 12:9; Matt. 4:3; cf. John 8:44; Acts 5:3; 2 Cor. 11:3; 1 John 3:8; Rev. 2:10),
2) the slanderer and accuser of God and his people in the heavenly court (Rev 12:10; cf. 13:6; Job 1–2; Zech 3:1–2; Jude 9), and
3) the usurping ruler of this world (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11; cf. Matt. 12:24-29; Luke 4:5-6; Acts 26:18; 2 Cor. 4:4; Eph. 2:2; 1 John 5:19; Rev 12-13).
On the other hand, in direct contrast, Jesus:
1) “came into the world, to testify to the truth” (John 18:37),
2) supremely demonstrated God’s perfect righteousness and love via the cross (Rom 3:25-26; 5:8), thereby defeating the devil’s slanderous allegations in the heavenly court (Rev 12:10-11), and
3) will finally destroy the kingdom of the devil, who “knows that his time is short” (Rev 12:12; cf. Rom 16:20), and Christ “will reign forever and ever” (Rev 11:15).
At every turn, then, Christ’s work undoes the work of the devil. And, according to 1 John 3:8, Jesus “was revealed for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil” (cf. Gen 3:15) and to “destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb 2:14).
Yet, for the devil to have “the power of death,” he must have been afforded such power. For there to even be a conflict in the first place—even an epistemic conflict—God must have granted some significant power and jurisdiction to the devil to oppose him. Yet, one might ask, why would God grant Satan any such jurisdiction? If allegations against one’s character cannot be defeated by the exercise of sheer power, it might be that there was no preferable way for God to defeat the enemy’s allegations except to allow an open hearing and demonstration. Such an open hearing, however, would require some parameters in which the devil and his cohorts are allowed to operate in opposition to God, which I refer to as “rules of engagement.”
Such rules of engagement would afford Satan and his cohorts some power and limited authority that they cannot exceed, such that the domain of darkness is both limited and temporary (Rev 12:12; cf. Job 1-2). However, because God always keeps his promises and commitments, such rules of engagement would also (morally) limit the exercise of God’s power to prevent evils that (temporarily) fall within the devil’s jurisdiction. Elsewhere, I have argued that numerous instances in Scripture provide evidence that some such “rules” are operative in the cosmic conflict.15
Notably, in this regard, during the wilderness temptation Satan claimed that “all the kingdoms of the world” had “been given over to” him (Luke 4:5-6). And, Jesus himself repeatedly called Satan “the ruler of this world” (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11; cf. 2 Cor 4:4), which makes sense if the devil has been afforded some genuine rulership over this world. Further, in numerous instances, the casting out of demons and other miracles appear to be linked to (among other factors) faith (Matt 17:20; Mark 6:5) and prayer (Mark 9:29).
If there are such rules of engagement in the cosmic conflict, it may be that God strongly desires to prevent every evil occurrence (consistent with omnibenevolence) and has the sheer power to do so (consistent with omnipotence), but in some instances doing so would be against the rules of engagement to which God has committed himself (for the good of the universe).
This manifests one way that a cosmic conflict framework might illuminate Christian faith and advance the Christian worldview. Namely, a cosmic conflict perspective might provide a framework that helps in thinking about the problem of evil, particularly relative to the evidential form of that problem (regarding why there is so much evil in the world). Put simply, if we are indeed living in “enemy-occupied territory,” as C. S. Lewis put it, then we might expect our world to look something like a war zone. In the words of Jesus in the parable of the wheat and the tares, “An enemy has done this” (Matt 13:28).
This framework itself raises many other questions that space does not permit me to address here, but if there is a cosmic conflict with rules of engagement to which God has agreed for morally sufficient reasons, God’s action in the world against evil might be temporarily limited (morally) in a way consistent with God’s omnipotence and omnibenevolence. Such a cosmic conflict framework might shed light not only on the problem of evil, but also on a number of related problems that stand alongside it, including the problems of (seemingly) selective miracles, petitionary prayer, and (apparent) divine hiddenness. Specifically, if God’s action in the world is (morally) limited according to some rules of engagement in the cosmic conflict, whether or not God makes his presence known or works a miracle in a given situation might be partly tied to such rules, which themselves might be (dynamically) linked to other unseen factors like prayer and faith. And, it might be that the rules of engagement are such that petitionary prayer might (under certain circumstances) increase God’s (moral) jurisdiction to act in ways that, without such prayer, would not have been morally available to God.16
There is much, much more to say about all of this and a great many other related issues and questions, but whatever one thinks about the specific lines of thought briefly introduced here, I am convinced that advocates of the Christian worldview should pay close attention to the cosmic conflict that is deeply embedded in the very story of the gospel. If the universe is indeed “at war,” then (as Lewis put it so well) “there is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second is claimed by God, and counterclaimed by Satan.”17 If so, Christians should be well-prepared to “stand against the wiles of the devil” (Eph 6:11).
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1 Rudolf Bultmann, New Testament Mythology and Other Basic Writings (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 4, 5.
2 This essay draws on material from my book, Theodicy of Love: Cosmic Conflict and the Problem of Evil (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018).
3 Bultmann, New Testament Mythology, 5.
4 Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 45-46.
5 Alvin Plantinga, “Self-Profile,” in Alvin Plantinga, ed. James E. Tomberlin and Peter van Inwagen (Dordrecht: D. Riedel, 1985), 42.
6 Plantinga, “Self-Profile,” 42.
7 Russell, Satan: The Early Christian Tradition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), 226.
8 Kabiro wa Gatumu, The Pauline Concept of Supernatural Powers: A Reading from the African Worldview. Paternoster Biblical Monographs (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008), 52, 51.
9 Plantinga, “Supralapsarianism or ‘O Felix Culpa,’” in Christian Faith and the Problem of Evil, ed. Peter van Inwagen (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 16.
10 Garrett DeWeese, “Natural Evil: A ‘Free Process’ Defense,” in God and Evil, ed. Chad Meister and James K. Dew (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2013), 63.
11 Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the NRSV.
12 Brian Han Gregg, What Does the Bible Say About Suffering? (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2016), 66. For much more on this, see Peckham, Theodicy of Love, chapters 3-5.
13 For an excellent discussion of Paul’s many references to celestial beings opposed to God’s kingdom, see Clinton Arnold, Powers of Darkness: Principalities and Powers in Paul’s Letters (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1992).
14 See John C. Peckham, Theodicy of Love: Cosmic Conflict and the Problem of Evil (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018), chapters 3-5.
15 See Peckham, Theodicy of Love, chapter 4.
16 For more on this, see John C. Peckham, “The Influence Aim Problem of Petitionary Prayer: A Cosmic Conflict Approach.” Journal of Analytic Theology 8 (2020): 412–432.
17 C. S. Lewis, “Christianity and Culture,” in Christian Reflections, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), 33.