The New Testament’s Conception of the Demonic Realm

In most respects Acts and the Epistles follow quite closely the terminology of the apocalyptic thought of their time in referring to the demonic realm.2 But they identify the head of this realm as Satan much more consistently than apocalyptic writings do, though Paul also refers to him as Belial (2 Cor 6:15).3 In most other respects the identification of this chief evil ruler (Eph 2:2) is thoroughly in keeping with apocalyptic thought.

The variety of apocalyptic terms. Satan is also referred to throughout these writings as “the devil” (Acts 10:38; 13:10; Eph 4:27; 6:11; 1 Tim 3:6-7; 2 Tim 2:26; Heb 2:14; Jas 3:15; 4:7; 1 Jn 3:8, 10), the “god of this world” (2 Cor 4:4), the “evil one” (Eph 6:16; 2 Thess 3:3) and “the enemy” (1 Tim 5:14). He is further identified as “the tempter” and “the serpent” of Genesis 3 (2 Cor 11:3; 1 Thess 3:5; Rev 12:9; 20:2). Paul also identifies him as an “angel of light” (2 Cor 11:14), while John taps into the Old Testament traditions of Leviathan and identifies him as “the great dragon” (Rev 12:9; 20:2). None of this terminology is unique to the New Testament.

The many references to lesser demonic figures follow the same pattern. As in the Gospels, they are often referred to simply as demons (Rom 8:38; 1 Cor 10:20-21; 1 Tim 4:1; Jas 2:19; Rev 9:20; 16:14; 18:2). Other times they are referred to as messengers or angels (Rom 8:38; 1 Cor 6:3; 11:10?; 2 Cor 12:7; Gal 1:8; Col 2:18; 1 Pet 3:22; Jude 6; Rev 12:7, 9).

Still other times, especially in Paul, we find suprahuman beings, some good and some evil, referred to in more esoteric apocalyptic terminology. Hence Paul sometimes refers to what appear to be high-level angelic beings as archai or archontes (“rulers” or “principalities,” Rom 8:38; 1 Cor 2:6, 8; 15:24; Eph 1:21; 3:10; 6:12; Col 1:16; 2:10, 15). He seems to be referring to other high-level classes of beings with the terms exousiai and dynameis (“powers” or “authorities,” Rom 8:38; 13:1?; 1 Cor 15:24; Eph 1:21; 2:2; 3:10; 6:12; Col 1:16; 2:10, 15), and to still other classes of heavenly beings with the terms kyriotetos (“dominion,” Eph 1:21; Col 1:16), kosmokratores (“cosmic powers,” Eph 6:12), thronoi (“thrones,” Col 1:16) and pneumatika (“spiritual forces,” Eph 6:12).4 Finally, he is in all probability referring to something akin to “angels of nature” with his phrase stoicheia tou kosmou (“elemental spirits of the universe,” Col 2:8, 20; Gal 4:3, 8-9).5

It is more than likely that these terms overlap with one another in some instances, but in general it seems clear that some sort of hierarchical distinction is being made.6 In this regard, neither Paul nor any other New Testament author is unique. These various ways of referring to different classes or types of good or evil divine beings were already in place in the apocalyptic thought of Paul’s day. For example, 2 Enoch relates a vision in which the seer saw,

Similarly, 1 Enoch contains a prophecy of the end times that states that God will summon

Indeed, not only were concepts circulating in Jewish culture, but as Arnold argues, they are found in Gentile texts as well.9 Thus while these terms may indeed be somewhat opaque to us, in all likelihood they were not so to Paul’s original audience.

The opaqueness of this terminology to us, however, means that we are clueless as to exactly how Paul thought the demonic realm was structured. That the “world in between” was hierarchically structured is as clear for Paul as it was for Jesus.10 But like Jesus, and quite unlike many apocalyptic writers of his day, Paul never speculates on the details of the ranks and functions of the various levels of demonic beings.

The significance of the powers. A number of studies in relatively recent times have elucidated the cosmological and societal dimension of these concepts as used in Paul and in apocalyptic thought in general. To summarize the trend in a general fashion, since the publication of two short monographs by Heinrich Schlier and Hendrikus Berkhof, a number of scholars have argued in the direction that the “powers” and “authorities” in Paul’s terminology refer principally to “structures” created by God to preserve order within creation in general and within human society in particular.11 Paul, it is argued, saw these structural forces as originally (and hence inherently) good, but as having become corrupt through the Fall. Hence, as they are now, they are hostile to God and stand in need of redemption.12 Polluted with human sin, these forces become ends in themselves, and hence have become destructive idols. Indeed, they now form the skeleton of “the present evil age” (Gal 1:4). They thus need to be subjugated to the authority of Christ and made to serve his lordship.

Christ’s crucifixion, it is sometimes added, was carried out under the authority of these powers. But it is this very crucifixion that in principle liberated these forces from their diabolic dimensions. The church, ministering within the interval between “the victory achieved” and “the victory manifested,” is therefore called to bear witness against the diabolical corruption of these forces, and thereby to work to restore them to their original God-created place. Quite understandably, this line of interpretation has been strongly advocated by certain Anabaptist and liberation theologians who have become keenly aware of structural evil.13

There is, I believe, a great deal that is profoundly correct with this analysis of Paul’s thought. The abstractness of Paul’s language and the terms he employs suggest that he has in mind general rather than particular phenomena. His use of such phrases as “rulers,” “powers,” “dominions,” “thrones” and “elemental spirits” depicts these forces as exercising a great deal of influence over general regions, realms or aspects of creation and society. As such, they are qualitatively different from the many references to particular demons that we find throughout the New Testament.

These “powers” seem not to hassle individuals so much as foundational structures of the whole cosmos and therefore of society. At the very least, then, there seems to be something more general, more powerful and more sinister (because less obvious) about the operation of the “powers” than there is about the work of particular demons. Paul’s terminology seems to suggest this much, especially when read against an apocalyptic background.

Hence it seems appropriate to follow this scholarship and diagnose, say, idolatrous nationalism, or systematic political corruption, or societal racism, or Western materialism and so on as falling under the category of the “powers” Paul is referring to. It also seems appropriate, therefore, to understand part of the church’s mission as its call to rise up against these powers. We are, in this understanding, called to take back for the Father all aspects of creation that do not conform to the lordship of Christ. Hence we are to fight systematic evil as forcefully as we are to fight individual evil.14 Through prayer and social activism we are to labor toward exorcising the corrupted powers that structure fallen society as earnestly as we are to labor in exorcising individual demons out of individuals. This is a message that the church has needed, and still needs, to hear. This whole line of interpretation concerning Paul’s terminology has served to remind us of this fact.

There is a downside to this approach, however, at least as some have carried it out. Following a tendency found in Schlier and Berkhof, a number of influential scholars have suggested that Paul altogether identified these “powers” with the “structures of earthly existence.”15 Paul “demythologized” the personal demonic apocalyptic understanding of these terms and construed them as impersonal aspects of God’s good creation.16 In other words, this view contends that the “powers” were not transcendent personal beings for Paul. Hence the only volition these “powers” have, according to this view, is the volition people who are under them give them.

For example, in discussing Colossians 1:16, Wink argues that “thrones” refers to “the institutionalizing of power in a set of symbols that guarantee its continuity over time,” “dominions” refers to “the ‘sphere of influence’ the ‘throne’ possesses,” and “principality” refers to “the incumbent in office . . . the investiture of power in a person.” “Power” refers to “the legitimations and sanctions by which authority is maintained.”17 These “powers,” Wink adds, are not simply human structures; Wink is not, strictly speaking, anthropologically reductionistic. But neither are the powers distinct from human structures, according to Wink. Rather, they are “the inner aspect of material or tangible manifestations of power,” or “the inner or spiritual essence, or gestalt, of an institution or state or system.”18 Hence while these “Powers do not . . . have a separate spiritual existence,” for Wink, they nevertheless are not “simply a ‘personification’ of institutional qualities.” Rather, they exist “as a real aspect of the institution even when it is not perceived as such.”19

One can easily understand why this reading of Paul would be attractive in our contemporary setting. It at once both squares with the modern proclivity to deny the actual autonomous existence of “the world in between” while also squaring with our post-World War II experience of the destructive potential of structural evil. Nevertheless, there are several problems with it.

First, it is difficult to deny that Paul had personal agents in mind when we read him in the light of the apocalyptic literature of this day. The parallels with Paul’s terminology in apocalyptic and magical literature strongly suggest that Paul had personal beings in mind. For example, it is easy to see how moderns such as Schlier and Wink could take Paul’s reference to “the ruler of the power of the air” (Eph 2:2) as a demythologized reference roughly equivalent to, say, “spiritual atmosphere.”20 But, as Clinton Arnold has demonstrated, it is difficult to maintain that Paul himself was demythologizing anything, for in his culture “air was regarded as the dwelling place of evil spirits in antiquity.”21

Indeed, references to various “spirits of the air” abound at this time, and none of them can easily be taken as a metaphor for “spiritual atmosphere.” For example, Beliar is called “an aerial spirit” (Testament of Benjamin 3:4), and in various magical texts people are protected from “every demon in the air” by calling on “the one who is in charge of the air.”22 In this light, the “ruler . . . of the air” Paul speaks of can hardly be understood as an impersonal atmospheric force. Rather, the expression refers to a personal god who controls the world by controlling “the air” (cf. 2 Cor 4:4).

Second, Paul clearly attributes to these “powers” something like personal activity, implying again that he sees them as personal agents. Hence immediately after calling Satan “the ruler of the power of the air,” he adds that he is “the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient” (Eph 2:2). The “ruler” is clearly a personal agent, and Paul’s portrayal of him as intentionally inspiring disobedience is strictly in keeping with similar portrayals of Satan in apocalyptic literature (cf. 1 Cor 5:4-5; 2 Cor 2:11; 11:14; 6:15).23 So too, Paul’s portrayal of demons as personal agents is completely in keeping with the apocalyptic thought of his day (1 Cor 10:19-21; 2 Cor 12:7).

Along the same lines, “our struggle” (pale) as believers is “against the rulers, against the authorities” (Eph 6:12), who are intentionally set against us as they carry out “the wiles of the devil” (6:11). This seems to go well beyond any demythologized conception of them as the “gestalt of institutions.” So too, Colossians 2:14-15 implies that the powers are “armed” (and hence can be “disarmed”) and can be humiliated, while still other passages imply that they can be subjugated, they can worship, they can rebel, they can be destroyed, and they can be reconciled. Such characterizations are not easy to square with the view that Paul is merely speaking about impersonal cosmic structures. It seems, rather, that Paul placed the “powers” on the same personalistic, transcendent, ontological level as he did Satan, demons and angels.24

In this respect, Paul’s characterization of the “powers” differs from the way he speaks when he is clearly talking about structural aspects of creation. This is my third point. Paul and other New Testament authors frequently refer to such things as “the world,” “the flesh” and “sin” as structural realities of this fallen existence from which people need to be freed.25 While these realities are frequently personified, they are never portrayed as having any autonomous existence over against the people who constitute them.26 Hence they are never portrayed as independently fighting against God or as ultimately submitting to God. In this respect, they differ from the “powers” Paul refers to, and this difference is one more indication that the “powers” are more than structural aspects of the cosmos.27

Finally, it is important to note that Paul explicitly distinguishes between “powers” in heaven and “powers” on the earth. Christ, Paul says, created all things “in heaven and on earth, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers” (Col 1:16). Through his victory on the cross, he shall reconcile to himself all these things, “whether on earth or in heaven” (Col 1:20; cf. Phil 2:9-11; Eph 1:10). Paul is clearly differentiating between powers on earth and powers in heaven, and hence the latter “powers” cannot be exhaustively reduced to the former.

The contrast between these two spheres of power is also brought out by Paul in Ephesians 6:12: “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.” To be sure, earthly structures of power can exercise much destructive influence over God’s creation, but these are not what the Christian’s struggle is primarily against. These earthly “powers” are, for Paul, simply tools used by far more significant powers “in the heavenly places.” It is, therefore, against these that we must principally struggle. The point is, as much as Paul might see demonic activity in structural societal evil, he clearly does not equate the demonic powers with structural societal evil.

In sum, Paul viewed the various cosmic “powers” as transcendent personal beings, created by God and ordered in a hierarchical fashion. At least some of these powers have now become evil and thus have to be fought against by the church and overthrown by Christ.

The Activity of the Demonic Realm

As we have seen, Satan, demons and the hostile cosmic powers were understood in the New Testament to be in principle defeated through Christ’s ministry, death and resurrection. It was, however, further understood that Christ’s victory had not yet been fully applied to the world at large, and for this reason the non-Gospel New Testament authors generally did not understand demonic activity to have lessened since the time of Christ.28 This “in-between time” is the time in which we live, and hence understanding this literature’s teaching on the ongoing activity of the Satanic kingdom during this time is important for our assessment of the problem of evil, at both an intellectual and a spiritual level. Thus we do well to conclude our overview of the New Testament’s teaching on the demonic realm by briefly surveying what Acts and the Epistles have to say about the Christian life as warfare, and what they have to say about how this warfare will end.

The “god of this world.” Though it was understood that Jesus dealt a fatal blow to the Satanic kingdom, the authors of Acts and the Epistles affirm the rule and influence of this kingdom no less strongly than did Jesus. Satan is still viewed as “the god of this world” (2 Cor 4:4), “the ruler of the power of the air” (Eph 2:2) who heads up a rebel kingdom (Rev 9:7-11) and through whom he still controls “the whole world” (1 Jn 5:19).29 He is the “adversary” who “like a roaring lion . . . prowls around, looking for someone to devour” (1 Pet 5:8). Thus, as in Jesus’ view, this literature continues to see the world as being fundamentally evil (Gal 1:4; Eph 5:16). Indeed, because the world is yet saturated with a diabolical influence, putting people outside the church as a form of chastisement is seen as turning them over to Satan (1 Cor 5:1-5; 1 Tim 1:20; cf. 1 Tim 5:15).

As in the Gospels, and as in apocalyptic thought generally, Acts and the Epistles portray this demonic kingdom as being directly or indirectly behind much of the evil in the world. In Romans 8:34-39, for example, Paul implies that demonic powers can bring about “hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword” (death), though he insists that none of these things, and none of the demonic powers, “will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (8:39). Further, Paul identifies a certain tormenting “thorn in the flesh” as resulting from “a messenger of Satan” (2 Cor 12:7), and he encourages the Corinthians to turn an unrepentant person “over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh” (1 Cor 5:5).30 Clearly, for Paul, Satan is an ever-present reality ready to inflict physical suffering whenever able to do so.

Finally, in the apocalyptic vision of Revelation, Satan is named “Abaddon” and “Apollyon” (Rev 9:11)—the “destroyer”—who in the last days is permitted to head up a vicious attack of demonic forces (symbolized as locusts) upon the earth, using plagues, fire, “natural” catastrophes and death as their weapons (Rev 9; 6:12-17). Hence the “loud voice in heaven” proclaims, “woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you with great wrath, because he knows that his time is short” (Rev 12:10, 12).31

Further, the “god of this world” is understood to be a primary influence behind all sin. He is portrayed as “the tempter” (1 Thess 3:5; 2 Cor 11:3; 1 Cor 7:5), and all who surrender themselves to his influence are “children of the devil” (1 Jn 3:8, 10; cf. Acts 13:20). Hence Peter asks Ananias, “why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?” (Acts 5:3).

Satan is also the master deceiver according to this literature. According to Paul, Satan blinds the minds of all unbelievers so they cannot receive the truth (2 Cor 4:4). He, along with his lesser cohorts, is ultimately behind all false teaching (1 Jn 4:1-4; 2 Jn 7), enslaving people in legalism, astrological superstitions, false doctrines and false philosophies (Gal 4:8-10; Col 2:8; 1 Tim 4:1-5). So too, according to Paul, sacrifices offered to idols are really “offered to demons,” and those who offer such sacrifices are “partners with demons” (1 Cor 10:20). Demons seem to be the driving force behind idolatrous religious practices.

Satan’s power to deceive is further illustrated by the fact that he, or his messengers, can appear as “an angel of light” or “an angel from heaven” teaching false doctrine (2 Cor 11:13; Gal 1:8). He and his legions can, and will, perform “counterfeit miracles, signs and wonders” as a means of deceiving “those who are perishing” (2 Thess 2:9 NIV; cf. Rev 13:2). Indeed, so powerful is Satan’s ability to deceive that he is even portrayed as deceiving entire nations (Rev 20:3, 8, 10) and is called “the deceiver of the whole world” (Rev 12:9).

Satan’s war against the church. The demonic kingdom is still prevalent in the world according to the New Testament. But following its pattern with Jesus in the Gospels, this kingdom focuses most of its activity on hindering the ministry of the church. Where the kingdom of God is being spread, there the kingdom of darkness will be most at work.

Hence Paul tells the Thessalonians that he and his companions wanted to come to them “again and again—but Satan blocked our way” (1 Thess 2:18). Just as Paul understood the “rulers of this world” to be at work provoking the crowds and authorities to crucify Jesus (1 Cor 2:8), so too, it seems, he saw the activity of Satan behind the crowds who prevented him from fellowship with the Thessalonians (cf. Acts 17:1-9). The contrasting of Paul’s earnest desire with Satan’s obstruction also says something about Paul’s view of just how powerful and successful Satan could be in his opposition to the ministry.32 There is here no hint of the later Augustinian assumption that God is truly sovereign only if his will can never be thwarted.

The strong opposition of the kingdom of darkness against the church is also seen in that Satan is portrayed as continually at work to bring trials to Christians in order to discourage them (1 Thess 3:5; cf. Rom 8:35-39). He is also at work to entrap church leaders, apparently by slandering their reputations, according to Paul (1 Tim 3:7). For this reason Paul, following the advice of Jesus, prays that leaders would be protected “from the evil one” (2 Thess 3:2-3; cf. Mt 6:13). What is more, in Paul’s understanding, Satan is prowling to devour young Christian widows (1 Tim 5:11-15) as well as young churches by inciting divisions among them. Hence as he encourages them to preserve unity in the body (Rom 16:17-19), Paul reassures the Roman Christians that “the God of peace will shortly crush Satan under your feet” (Rom 16:20).33

The Satanic kingdom is also heavily at work in trying to deceive believers (1 Tim 4:1-7) and to pollute their minds with falsehood. Indeed, one of the primary areas of spiritual warfare, according to Paul, is the believer’s mind:

Elsewhere Paul urges believers: “Do not be conformed to this world”— the world governed by Satan’s regime—“but be transformed by the renewing of your minds” (Rom 12:2). The Christian’s mind, for Paul, is a battlefield between the evil one who blinds and the Savior who brings light (2 Cor 4:4-6).

The heart of the believer is a battlefield as well, according to Paul. Hence he encourages Ephesian believers: “do not let the sun go down on your anger,” and do not “make room for the devil” (Eph 4:26-27). The proximity of these verses may suggest that suppressing legitimate anger is one of the ways people give the devil a region in their life (“room,” topos) out of which he can operate to further pollute their heart. In any event, the teaching presupposes that the enemy is constantly present, seeking to gain an entrance into the believer’s life.

This conception is also presupposed in Paul’s instruction to young widows “to give the adversary no occasion to revile us” (1 Tim 5:14), as well as in his instruction to all believers to “put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil” (Eph 6:11). In Paul’s view, the devil and his kingdom are as pervasive in this fallen world as the air we breath (cf. Eph 2:2; 1 Pet 5:8). The atmosphere of the world is diabolical, with the enemy persistently seeking to find an entrance into the believer’s heart.

The notion that the believer’s heart is a battlefield also lies behind Paul’s encouragement to the Corinthians to follow his example in forgiving others “so that we may might not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs” (2 Cor 2:10-11). One of Satan’s “designs” is apparently to cause believers to harbor unforgiveness. This again gives the devil a “room” in the believer’s heart; it can drive the repentant person in need of forgiveness into despair (2 Cor 2:7); and it can bring about divisions within the body of Christ as well.34 When any of this occurs, Paul is saying, we have been “outwitted.” The teaching presupposes not only that Satan is ever present, seeking “an occasion” to work destruction, but that he is very crafty in the way he works.

The Christian Life as Warfare

In the light of all this, it comes as no surprise that one of the most frequent ways the Christian life is portrayed throughout the New Testament is that it is the life of a soldier. While many contemporary Western readers of the Bible instinctively take this to be nothing more than a catchy metaphor for the Christian life, in the context of the New Testament it is meant quite literally.35 To follow Jesus is to do battle with the ever-present prince of darkness.

Exorcisms in Acts. As in Jesus’ ministry, this warfare can sometimes involve actual exorcisms, according to Acts. While there are only four references in Acts to exorcisms, the way they are recorded, combined with the numerous references to exorcism in the postapostolic church, indicates that exorcism was a standard part of early Christian life.36

The first reference in Acts comes by way of a summary statement of Luke: “Many signs and wonders were done among the people through the apostles. . . . A great number of people would also gather from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing the sick and those tormented by unclean spirits, and they were all cured” (Acts 5:12, 16). The passage mentions, as a matter of course, that freeing people from evil spirits was a standard aspect of the ministry of the apostles. We are not surprised, then, when we read that Philip exorcised many shrieking evil spirits out of people while evangelizing Samaria (Acts 8:7), or that Paul exorcised a spirit of divination (literally “spirit of python”) out of a “slave girl” who was apparently hindering his ministry by undermining his credibility (Acts 16:16-18).37 As in the ministry of Jesus, exorcisms seemed to be an assumed aspect of the early church’s ministry.

Finally, the regularity of exorcisms in the early church is perhaps also revealed in Luke’s unusual account of the seven sons of Sceva. They, along with other Jewish exorcists, were unsuccessfully trying to exorcise demons “by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims” (Acts 19:13-14).38 At one point an evil spirit whom they were trying to exorcise said to them, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?” Through the man, the demon then “mastered them all, and so overpowered them that they fled out of the house naked and wounded” (16:15-16).

Though this particular account is unusual in some respects, it nevertheless confirms what we know from other sources: practicing exorcism was quite common in first-century culture, both among Jews and Greeks.39 In this light it would be odd if the early church had not regularly practiced exorcisms. What set the early church and Jesus apart from these other exorcists was not that they practiced exorcism but that they were so successful at it.40 Hence the Jewish exorcists were trying to borrow their power by using their “formula.”

But the regularity of exorcism in Paul’s ministry, as in Jesus’, is perhaps further revealed by the fact that the demon knew very well who they were, but did not know who the Jewish exorcists were. As in the Gospels, demons seem to know who their real opponents are, and they fear them. Other exorcists, however, they can apparently at times intimidate and physically abuse.

Putting on spiritual armor. There is no question but that Jesus’ successful exorcism ministry was carried over into the early apostolic and postapostolic church. But this was not the only, or even the primary, way that the Christian life as warfare is portrayed. For Paul, the whole of the Christian life is an act of warring against the enemy. As a matter of course, Christians are to “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power,” which means putting on “the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil, . . . 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 6:10-12).

For this reason, “truth,” “righteousness,” “the gospel of peace,” “salvation” and “the word of God” are all portrayed as various aspects of “the whole armor of God” used by the Christian to ward off demonic attacks (Eph 6:14-17). Moreover, faith itself is portrayed as a “shield” by which we “quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one” (6:16).41 With all this armor, Christians are to “stand firm” and to “keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints” (6:13-14, 18). The first charge (histemi) is to “hold your ground against” an assailing force,42 while the second is to be ever watchful of an ever present enemy. The battle motif here is thick, and this is not some rare battle Paul is talking about. He is talking about the whole of the Christian life.

Finally, while Paul does not specifically mention prayer as part of the Christian’s “armor,” in this context it is most certainly seen as a warfare strategy, just as it was in the teaching of Jesus. Immediately after mentioning “the word of God” as “the sword of the Spirit” Paul adds, “Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication” (6:18). As if this were not enough, he adds further, “To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints.” The injunction to “keep alert” while we pray is yet another clear indication that prayer is here portrayed as something a soldier does. It is, in short, an act of war.43

The same theme is found elsewhere. Using similar terminology, Paul reminds the Thessalonians to put on “the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation” (1 Thess 5:8), for they are “children of light and children of the day” and “are not of the night or of the darkness” (5:5). Paul tells the Roman Christians to “lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light” (Rom 13:12), the Ephesians to “take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them . . . by the light” (Eph 5:11, 13), and the Corinthians not to participate in evil, for “what fellowship is there between light and darkness? What agreement does Christ have with Beliar?” (2 Cor 6:14-15).44

Paul’s language of “light” and “darkness” in these three passages is reminiscent not only of John but also of the Qumran community, which (in good apocalyptic fashion) perceived the entire world as caught up in a cosmic struggle between light and darkness.45 Paul’s use of this terminology, then, as well as his explicit identification of darkness with Belial and his further reference to military armor, are more indications of just how thoroughly his view of the Christian life was colored by the warfare motif.

Reflecting the same outlook, Paul tells Timothy to “share in suffering like a good soldier of Christ Jesus” and reminds him that “no one serving in the army gets entangled in everyday affairs; the soldier’s aim is to please the enlisting officer” (2 Tim 2:3-4). So too he refers, quite incidentally, to Epaphroditus and to Archippus as “fellow soldier” (Phil 2:25; Philem 2; cf. 1 Cor 9:7).

Thus the Christian life is for Paul a life of spiritual military service. It is about being a good soldier (2 Tim 2:4), about “fighting the good fight” (1 Tim 1:18; 6:12), about “waging war” (2 Cor 10:3), and about “struggling” with a cosmic enemy (Eph 6:12). Given his view of the everpresent reality of Satan and his kingdom, and given his understanding of what Christ was about and what the church is supposed to be about, it is hard to see how he could have viewed the Christian life differently.46

At the very least, it should be evident that any perspective which would construe the spiritual warfare motif as being incidental to the New Testament is seriously mistaken. Whether the motivation be to minimize the “mythological” elements of the New Testament or to maximize the classical-philosophical model of the sovereignty of God by downplaying indications of a genuine and pervasive battle, the attempt to sidestep the centrality of the warfare motif fails. As was the case with the life and teachings of Jesus, God’s conflict and victory over Satan lies at the heart of the proclamation that the early Christians brought to the world.

The reality of the battle. The ongoing war that the early Christians understood they still had to participate in constituted the only “problem of evil” they knew or cared about. It was the problem of living out the kingdom of God in a world under siege from the kingdom of Satan. It was not an intellectual problem but an existential and spiritual problem. It was a problem to resolve by spiritual activism, not by intellectual contemplation and pious resignation.

These authors never pondered “why bad things happen to good people,” for they lived with a warfare worldview that expected bad things to happen to good people. If the world is as thoroughly saturated with evil forces as they envisaged, then nightmarish suffering would not come as a great surprise. They understood (because Jesus taught) that, if the Lord of all creation suffered at the hands of these evil forces, they could hardly expect to fare better (Jn 15:20-21; cf. 1 Cor 2:8). The New Testament tells “good people” to expect bad things!

We must once again note that all of this presupposes that the war between God and Satan, the war in which humanity itself is centrally caught up, is a very real war. That is, it presupposes, at the very least, that God genuinely has to fight Satan. To suggest, as the classical-philosophical tradition tends to argue, that the forces of evil always play into the hand of God, that God is secretly in control of the activity of Satan and demons, and thus that these evil forces always end up carrying out God’s sovereign purposes is to undermine completely the reality of this war and render wholly unintelligible the driving motif of the entire New Testament. What is more, it is to generate an unsolvable problem, for now we cannot rationally avoid the heinous conclusion that God is ultimately responsible for what Satan, his demons and evil people do.

The Origin and End of Satan and Fallen Angels

But how do these rebel creatures get their power to rebel? And if God does not control them, what guarantee is there that God shall ultimately defeat them? We have hovered around the New Testament’s answer to this question several times in the last few chapters, but we do well to conclude this study by examining in more detail what the New Testament says regarding the origin and ultimate demise of Satan and his rebel kingdom.

The catastrophic fall. From what has been said, one cannot deny that the warfare motif of the New Testament presupposes a dualistic worldview of sorts. At the very least, there is clearly a God/non-God duality of power. In other words, significant powers exist with some measure of autonomy over against God, with whom God must therefore work or against whom God must genuinely fight.

But this dualism, as intense as it is, never crosses over into metaphysical dualism in the New Testament. That is, never does the New Testament come close to affirming that the forces that oppose God are metaphysically ultimate, such as later Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism affirmed. Rather, the powers that oppose God are uniformly understood to be created by God. They are not eternal, and they are not infinite. Hence while they can and do genuinely oppose God and wreak destruction throughout his cosmos, they never pose a threat of overthrowing God. But if the cosmic powers were all created by God, and if God is perfectly good, how is it that these created powers now are evil? Unlike much of the apocalyptic literature of their day, the New Testament authors never offer extravagant speculations to answer this question. Indeed, these authors reflect almost no concern about this question at all. In my view, their relative silence on this matter is not due to their thinking that an answer to this question was irrelevant, or to their thinking that there was no answer. Rather, it is due to the fact that they considered the answer to this question obvious.

While the apocalyptic literature offers no agreed upon answer to when and why evil forces “fell,” all the apocalyptic authors who deal with the issue agree that the evil forces did fall. These powers chose to rebel against their Creator and to throw off his plans and his lordship.47 The Old Testament view that sin is the result of free decisions of human beings to rebel against their Creator is applied to cosmic beings to explain their sinfulness. Indeed, as we have seen, the Old Testament itself occasionally approaches this insight (Gen 6:1-4; Ps 82; Is 14:12-14; Ezek 28:1-19; cf. chapter five). Like human beings, cosmic beings are free; thus for these authors, the sinfulness of cosmic beings is in principle no more inexplicable than is human sinfulness. For Jews who believed that God was both perfectly holy while also being the Creator of all that exists, it is hard to see how they could have reached any other conclusion.

This is, I submit, a fundamental assumption of the New Testament. The origin of evil among the cosmic powers is much like the origin of evil among human beings. Neither they nor their apocalyptic counterparts ever saw the need to explain freedom itself any further. For them, freedom itself was an “ultimate explanation.” These Jews possessed no metaphysical proclivity to investigate the matter further (even if such an investigation were metaphysically possible).48 They knew only that they and all humans were free to choose to obey or to disobey God, and that if they disobeyed God this was not God’s fault. They understood cosmic powers in the same fashion.

In the New Testament we therefore find no discourses on the freedom of cosmic powers, any more than we find discourses on the freedom of human beings. But we do find much that presupposes that humans are free, and some passages that presuppose that cosmic powers are free. For example, Jude 6 refers to “the angels who did not keep their own position, but left their proper dwelling.” These, the author says, are now “kept in eternal chains in deepest darkness for the judgment of the great Day.” Then, Jude adds,

It is impossible to determine whether Jude is tapping into some strand of the Watcher tradition—hence referring to the “fall” of Genesis 6—or whether he has some other angelic rebellion in mind. At the very least, his reference to these angels not keeping “their own position” and abandoning “their proper dwelling” suggests that he has in mind something like the Old Testament view of gods given authority over nations, or the apocalyptic conception of angels given charge over various aspects of nature.

In any event, what is important for us to note is that Jude assumes that the fall and punishment of these angels is directly parallel to the fall and punishment of sinners in Sodom and Gomorrah and with ungodly people in Jude’s own day. Like these latter examples, the angels freely rebelled against God and were morally responsible for their evil decisions. As we have seen a number of times, for ancient Jewish authors in general, things “in the heavenlies” were not seen as being all that different from things here on earth. Hence the freedom and moral responsibility that characterized humans were also seen as characterizing angels.

This same understanding is reflected in 2 Peter 2. Here Peter is arguing that ungodly people (specifically, teachers of heresy) will certainly be punished, while godly people shall certainly be rescued from condemnation. To make this point he says:

Again, we cannot say with any confidence what specific event Peter has in mind when he speaks of the condemnation of sinning angels. He may be tapping into the Watcher tradition, or perhaps he has in mind a precreation fall. In any case, this issue is irrelevant to the more fundamental point we are making: Peter reflects the New Testament assumption that angels can and do sin, just as people can and do sin; and angels, like people, are morally responsible for their sinning. They are therefore punished, just as rebellious people are. When they sin, in other words, they are not carrying out some preordained plan of God. Rather, they are rebelling against God’s preordained plan.

A similar conception lies behind Paul’s instruction to Timothy not to make a recent convert an overseer “or he may be puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil” (1 Tim 3:6). The implication seems to be that conceit had something to do with the devil’s fall (perhaps recalling Is 14:13-14) and that those who become conceited as the devil did can fall into a similar condemnation.49 The willful fall of Satan and his angels is also assumed in Jesus’ teaching that those whom he does not know on the judgment day are “cursed” and will depart “into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Mt 25:41). This passage not only assumes that Satan and his angels are, like people, morally responsible for their fall, but also, interestingly enough, that hell was intended for (“prepared for”) them, not for humans.

Thus hell is first and foremost the destiny of God’s cosmic enemies, not us. If humans go there, it is because they have willfully aligned themselves with the ones for whom it was prepared. As was the case in examining Christ’s work on the cross, we once again get the distinct impression that humans have been caught up in cosmic events that are far beyond the domain of human history. We are blessed or cursed by how we align ourselves in the fight between two cosmic kingdoms. We either share in Christ’s victory, or we share in Satan’s defeat. But we are, in either case, always only the secondary participants, never the main players.

Behind the whole conception is the understanding that these two kingdoms are divided for moral (not metaphysical) reasons. Their separation and their subsequent warring are not “in the eternal nature of things.” The war is not coeternal with God, nor was it created by God. Rather, it is the result of a catastrophic misuse of freedom given to Satan “and his angels.” Because it was a moral decision, Jesus is implying, it shall be punished. This is what hell is for.

The ultimate victory of God. From the perspective of the New Testament, there is no possibility that the enemies of God shall escape this destiny. God has ordained temporal parameters around the freedom of angelic and human creatures, just as God has ordained parameters around the scope of this freedom. Hence the ability of any within the angelic or human society of God’s creation to rebel freely against God shall someday come to an end. Apparently out of integrity for the gift of freedom he has given, God endures for a time the wrath of these destructive rebels. To do otherwise would undoubtedly render the gift of freedom disingenuous.50 While the gift of life God gives to those who choose him is eternal, the gift of freedom to choose against him is apparently not. Hence there shall come a time, Scripture declares, when God shall conclude this cosmic epoch by fully manifesting throughout his cosmos the victory that he has already won through his Son.

This declaration is at the same time a proclamation of heaven to the elect and a warning of hell to the reprobate. To those who have used their freedom to enter into a covenantal relationship with their Creator, the New Testament’s eschatology is rapturous joy. The nightmare of the war shall finally be over. Love shall finally reign throughout God’s creation. There shall be no more sin, no more pain, no more tears, hunger or death. The creation shall be all that God created it to be, all that he has fought for it to be, and all that he died for it to be. All who suffered life as a nightmare, such as the young Zosia, shall be vindicated. In a way we can scarcely begin to imagine, the sufferings of this nightmare, the Lord promises, will be dwarfed by the joy of creation’s fulfillment when he in all his love and glory shall reign (Rom 8:18-25; 2 Cor 4:17-18; 1 Pet 1:6-9).

But we must not think that God’s victory concerns only human welfare. To the contrary, as Christ’s work was cosmic before it was anthropological, so too the biblical proclamation of God’s ultimate victory concerns the cosmos as a whole before it centers on us. The whole creation now travails under the curse of the illegitimate tyrant who has seized it, and the whole creation shall ultimately benefit when this “god of the world” is toppled and creation is freed.

Hence when the Lord has finally destroyed this anticreation tyrannical Leviathan, he shall “restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets” (Acts 3:21 NIV). When he finally vanquishes his cosmic nemesis Yamm, there shall be “no longer any sea” in the kingdom (Rev 21:1 NIV). In sharp contrast to the war that has been raging for eons, God shall at this time “gather up all things in [Christ], things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph 1:10), so that his presence may fill “all in all” (Eph 1:23; cf. 4:10). Again, among the benefactors of this cosmic restoration are all those humans who have simply said “yes” to the gracious invitation to accept his love and fight on his side.

But what then is to become of those angelic hosts who have fought against God’s plan from the start, and of all those humans who have willingly been co-opted in this futile attempt at a cosmic mutiny? The manifestation of Christ’s victory shall at the same time be the manifestation of their defeat. When light shall be fully manifested, darkness must thereby be brought to nothing. When love shall reign universal, there shall be no longer any place among the living for hatred, apathy, greed, jealousy or any such disposition. When divine justice shall rule, all that is wrong, all that will not be reconciled, shall be punished. In short, when God’s presence and glory shall fill “all in all,” there simply shall be no place in the kingdom for anything or anyone that continues to resist him.

This is the central point of Scripture’s teaching on hell. Scripture’s teaching does not seek to satisfy some morbid curiosity we might have about the details of this “place” by giving us a literal snapshot of it, though many church fathers and leading figures in the church (e.g., Tertullian, Aquinas) unfortunately took at least some of the remarkably wide variety of graphic apocalyptic images literally. The point of the New Testament’s teaching is rather to express the certainty, universality, severity and finality of God’s victory over the evil one, and in the strongest possible terms to warn those of us who can yet do something about it that aligning with the evil one will have nightmarish consequences. In rejecting God, one is rejecting all that is love, life, joy, goodness and peace. How could existence without these be anything less than a nightmare? Indeed, as some of the images of damnation in Scripture make clear, it is a stretch even to call it “existence.”

One set of warnings in the Bible describes hell as almost the complete absence of being. For example, Scripture describes the fate of Satan, his legions and all those humans who have aligned themselves with him as being cast into a cosmic version of the dump outside Jerusalem in the valley of Hinnom (Gehenna).51 These are now unsalvageable broken vessels who do not and will not do what they were created to do. They are, therefore, total waste, refuse. Whereas they once had the possibility of sharing in God’s triune life throughout eternity, they are tragically now good for nothing, fit only for destruction.

All such rebels, therefore, shall be brought to nothing (Mt 10:28; Mk 1:24; 1 Cor 1:19; 3:17; 6:13; 15:24-26; 2 Thess 2:8; Phil 1:28; Heb 2:14; 10:39; Jas 4:12; 2 Pet 2:12; 3:10-11; Jude 10). Under the weight of God’s justice, they shall all “perish” (apollymi, Lk 13:3; Jn 3:16; 10:28; 1 Cor 1:18; 2 Cor 2:15; 4:3; Rom 2:12; 2 Thess 2:10; 2 Pet 3:9). They are like chaff that is burned up in a fire that cannot be quenched (Mt 3:12; 13:30; cf. Is 1:31). Similarly, in the light of God’s universal rule, Scripture declares that these rebels shall “be no more. . . . like smoke they vanish away. . . . the posterity of the wicked shall be cut off” (Ps 37:10, 20, 38). They “shall be as though they had never been” (Obad 16) and “like a dream when one awakes” (Ps 73:20).52

Along slightly different lines, having rejected the Author of life itself, these defeated rebels can now be compared to dead, rotting, worminfested corpses (Rom 6:21, 23; Jas 1:15; Is 66:24; Mk 9:48). From yet a slightly different angle, these raging rebels can be compared to people who are thrown out of the banquet, cast “into the outer darkness” (Mt 8:12; 22:13; 25:30).

The central point of all such graphic images is clear: there is no place for the wicked, angelic or human, in the kingdom of God. When the light and life of God’s triune love and life shines sovereignly over the whole of creation, all that is darkness, all that is against love and all that is against life must (to mix metaphors) be vanquished, extinguished, destroyed, burned up and relegated to the garbage dump “in the outer darkness.” Again, this is not said to satisfy all our questions about the “topography” or “temperature” of Gehenna (hell) but to warn all who can still change to do so if they need to. The message is: all enemies of God, angelic and human, shall certainly be defeated, they shall certainly be justly judged; and this judgment shall certainly be nightmarish for them. To describe it as endless fiery torment is not to exaggerate its terror (Rev 14:9-11; 20:10; cf. Mt 25:41, 46; Lk 16:24).53 In choosing against God, Satan and all who follow him are forever choosing against life and love. Nothing could possibly be worse.

Conclusion: The Centrality of the Warfare Perspective

The most fundamental point in the last five chapters is that the New Testament is thoroughly conditioned by a warfare worldview. In this view the whole of the cosmos is understood to be caught up in a fierce battle between two rival kingdoms. This view entails that the earth has, quite literally, become a fierce war zone and a desecrated battlefield.

In chapters six through eight we saw that Jesus entered this war zone to set up the rightful rule of God over against the illegitimate rule of Satan. Jesus’ healings, miracles, exorcisms, resurrection, as well as much of his teaching, make sense only as various aspects of a unified ministry within the context of this worldview.54 In chapter nine we saw that within this apocalyptic context the early church understood the central significance of Christ’s death and resurrection. The cross and resurrection were, above all else, the act by which God vanquished his archenemy. Our salvation is at once the liberating result of this conquest and one further means by which God is reclaiming the earth for his glory.

There are, however, still battles to fight. As we have seen in this present chapter, what has in principle been achieved has not yet in fact been manifested, for the fatally wounded kingdom of darkness still reigns upon the earth. Despite Christ’s victory, the New Testament continues to define the Christian life in warfare terms. The outcome of the war is settled, but there are still important battles to be fought. Fighting them is what the Christian life is all about. As Wingren puts it, “It is impossible for man in the days of . . . the Church, to have to do with God without at the same time, in some way, having to do with the Devil. These two . . . fill all existence.”55 The confidence and hope of the believer in all of this is that Christ has once and for all time vanquished the enemy, and that someday this victory over Satan and the cessation of all the evil that flows from him shall be perfectly manifested.

The warfare worldview and the problem of evil. The centrality of this warfare motif is the single most important observation to be made as one approaches “the problem of evil.” How one tries to resolve this problem depends entirely upon how one frames the problem. And how one frames the problem is decisively colored by the kind of world, the kind of God and the kind of evil that one thinks needs explaining. A young Jewish girl being tortured by a group of men means something completely different in a worldview in which it is believed that God’s will is always perfectly carried out than it does in a worldview in which it is believed that God’s will is often thwarted by evil cosmic forces.

It is all a matter of where one starts: do we start with a view of God as being at war with evil or with a view of God as controlling evil? Do we start with a view of the world as a hostage to an evil cosmic force or with a view of the world as one in which God’s will is perfectly carried out? Do we start with a view of evil as a hostile alien intrusion into God’s cosmos or with a view of evil as always and everywhere secretly fulfilling God’s sovereign, always beneficent, purposes?

The central thrust of this work has been to argue that if we model our approach to the problem of evil after the New Testament, we must in every instance opt for the former, not the latter, starting points. When we do this, we find that we are freed from ceaselessly inquiring into supposed divine reasons behind the world’s nightmares, and freed and empowered to rise up and combat these nightmarish features of existence as what God is unequivocally against. In other words, when we accept the warfare worldview of Scripture, the intellectual problem of evil is transformed into the practical problem of evil, just as it was in the New Testament.

In this worldview, the only “reason” why Zosia is tortured is because free beings, human and angelic, can will such atrocities. While the sovereign God can and will strive to bring some good out of the horrifying demonic event (Rom 8:28), the evil event itself exists only because free beings who are against God have willed it. The “ultimate reason” for this ghoulish torment lies there. If the words “good” and “loving” mean anything as applied to God, if Scripture’s testimony regarding the perfect character of God and the antidemonic ministry of Jesus mean anything, and if God’s power is to be construed as supremely admirable, as truly transcendent, not simply as coercive after the impoverished image of fallen human ideals of power, then we simply cannot suppose that it is ultimately God himself who is secretly willing Zosia’s nightmare for some supposed “higher” reason.

Coping with evil. Where does all this leave us in terms of our coping with the atrocities of our world? Whatever else may be said about the classical-philosophical blueprint model of God’s providence, it does provide the believer with a certain kind of security that the warfare worldview seems to lack—so long as one steers clear of concrete atrocities. A certain peace comes, for many at least, in resigning oneself to whatever (one believes) the hand of God might bring to one. Herein lies the appeal of the sort of traditional hymns spoken of in chapter one.

If, however, we can no longer find solace in the conviction that a mysterious providential plan governs every event in world history, in what can our hearts find hope? If Zosia’s torment is truly as gratuitous and barbaric as it appears, must we not despair?

It is, I think, undeniable that the warfare worldview on one level depicts a scarier world than the providential blueprint worldview, for the simple reason that opening one’s eyes to the reality of war is indeed scary. At the same time, this prospect strikes some of us as less scary than the prospect of living in an actual spiritual war but being ignorant of this fact. It certainly seems less scary than living in a cosmos that is being coercively run by a supreme being who secretly wills the torture of little girls —“for his glory.”

Yet even if we were to concede that the genuine contingency and real battles of the warfare worldview present a world that is scarier than the divine blueprint worldview, it would not follow that this worldview is less hopeful than the blueprint model. Precisely the opposite is the case, I would argue. The warfare worldview of the New Testament offers more hope, precisely because it unabashedly acknowledges the dismal and demonic state of the world in its present war-torn condition.

The hope that the New Testament offers is not the hope that God has a higher, all-encompassing plan that secretly governs every event, including the evil intentions of malicious angelic and human beings, and that somehow renders these evil wills “good” at a higher level. To my way of thinking, at least, that supposition generates a truly hopeless position. For if God’s will is already being done as Zosia’s eye sockets are bleeding, what have we to look forward to? If justice is, on some secret transcendental plane, already being served, what do we have to look forward to? If God is already vindicated because “the big picture” justifies Zosia’s torment “for the good of the whole,” then we really have no reason to hope that things will fare better for Zosia or ourselves in the world to come.

In direct contrast to all this, the ultimate hope that the New Testament offers is eschatological. As sure as the Lord came the first time to defeat his cosmic enemy and our oppressor in principle, just as certainly he shall return again to defeat him in fact. Because sickness, disease, war, death, sorrow and tears are not God’s will, and because God is ultimately sovereign, we can have a confident assurance that someday, when his foes are ultimately vanquished, God will end all sorrow, and every evil which causes such sorrow, and will wipe away every tear from our eyes (Rev 20:4). Precisely because our present suffering is not God’s will—however much he can now use it for our ultimate good—we can have an assurance that it shall not always be this way.

Indeed, Paul has the inspired audacity to proclaim that, when the kingdom has finally fully come, the glory and joy that we shall know will render all the sufferings of this present world insignificant. Whatever else this may mean, it means that God will somehow make it up to Zosia, and to her mother.

With such a promise, given in the vicinity of Zosia’s childhood screams, I close with the simple prayer that characterized the faith communities of New Testament times:

Maranatha: Our Lord, come! (1 Cor 16:22)