The Devil and His Demons

In the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan Creed, it says, "I believe one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, and of all things visible and invisible." We Orthodox Christians believe in the existence of invisible things as well as visible things. Some of the invisible things are the angels.

Among the angels, there are holy angels who live in obedience to God and unholy ones who disobey Him. The angels consist of nine choirs: seraphim, cherubim, thrones, powers, dominions, authorities, principalities, archangels, and angels. There may be other choirs of angels, but these are the only ones that we know of and that are mentioned in the Bible.

The unholy angels are called demons. Their leader is Satan. There are different ranks among the unholy angels, just as there are among the holy ones.

Sometime before the creation of man, Satan led a rebellion against God in Heaven and got one third of the angels to follow him. (Rev. 12:3,4) Pride was the first sin. (Isaiah 14:12-15) Jesus the Son of Sirach said that "pride is the beginning of sin." (Ecclus. 10:13) It was the sin of pride that evolved into the sin of rebellion and sparked the Satanic revolt in Heaven.

After the creation of man, Satan developed the sin of envy. He envied man and wanted to cause his downfall. (Wisdom 2:24) He encouraged man to sin by lying to him and thus caused his death. (Gen. 3) The sin of envy produced the sins of deceit and murder. Jesus said that Satan is "a liar" and was "a murderer from the beginning." (St. John 8:44) He said that he comes to steal, kill, and destroy. (St. John 10:10)

Later, after the creation of man, some angels of the lowest order fell into the sin of lust. They saw the female offspring of man and desired to mate with them. (Gen. 6:1-4) These fallen angels, according to some ancient writers, are the ones who introduced man to the occult arts of astrology and witchcraft.* In the Hebrew text of Isaiah, the name of a female demon is mentioned. Her name is Lilith. (Isaiah 34:14, NRSV) According to a Jewish myth, she seduced Adam and became his first wife.** According to Babylonian mythology, she seduces men in desert places. In the Book of Tobit, the name of another demon is mentioned. His name is Asmodeus. He lusted after a young Hebrew woman named Sara and killed her first seven husbands before they could consummate their marriages with her. (Tobit 3:7,8; 6:12-17) So, there are male and female demons who lust after humans and even try to encourage them to lust. In demonology, these demons are called incubi and succubi. An incubus is a male demon who lusts after human women. A succubus is a female demon who lusts after human men.

St. Paul told the Ephesian Christians that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against spiritual hosts of wickedness, that is, the demons. (Eph. 6:12) The demons are still working to cause the downfall of man. They oppose any of attempts of man to acquire the likeness of God and participate in the divine energies. They inspire people to do evil, encourage hate, and try to put man against man. They promote greed, covetousness, lust, sexual immorality, and sexual perversions. They try to undermine any work of God. They encourage the spread of heresies. Many of the modern heresies are just ancient ones taught by modern people.

We are supposed to abstain from every form of evil. (I Thess. 5:22) We need to shun sin in all of its forms. In the process of trying to abstain from evil, however, we often encounter attempts by the demons to pull us into evil. There is an ongoing warfare going on for the souls of humans.

Steve

* When, therefore, the number of men had begun to increase, God in His forethought, lest the devil, to whom from the beginning He had given power over the earth, should by his subtilty either corrupt or destroy men, as he had done at first, sent angels for the protection and improvement of the human race; and inasmuch as He had given these a free will, He enjoined them above all things not to defile themselves with contamination from the earth, and thus lose the dignity of their heavenly nature. He plainly prohibited them from doing that which He knew that they would do, that they might entertain no hope of pardon. Therefore, while they abode among men, that most deceitful ruler of the earth (II Cor. 4:4), by his very association, gradually enticed them to vices, and polluted them by intercourse with women. Then, not being admitted into heaven on account of the sins into which they had plunged themselves, they fell to the earth. Thus from angels the devil makes them to become his satellites and attendants. (The Divine Institutes, Book II, chapter XV, by Lactantius, 260-330 A.D., vol. 7, p. 64, Ante-Nicene Fathers)

These [the angels who had intercourse with human women] were the inventors of astrology, and soothsaying, and divination, and those productions which are called oracles, and necromancy, and the art of magic, and whatever evil practices besides these men exercise, either openly or in secret. (The Divine Institutes, Book II, chapter XVII, by Lactantius, 260-330 A.D., vol. 7, p. 65, Ante-Nicene Fathers)

** The New Revised Standard Version of Isaiah says:

Wildcats shall meet with hyenas, goat-demons shall call to each other; there too Lilith shall repose, and find a place to rest. (Isaiah 34:14, NRSV)

Lilith, according to ancient Jews and Babylonians, was a female demon. A Jewish myth said that she was Adam's first wife and that Adam had intercourse with her before having intercourse with Eve. Maybe some of this myth is true and some of it is false. Maybe she seduced Adam, but was not his first wife. Maybe she seduced him after he had some children with Eve. 99.99% of Adam's biography is missing from the Bible. We do not have a full, detailed account of Adam's 930 years of mortal existence.

Bibliography

Ante-Nicene Fathers, edited by Alexander Roberts, D.D. & James Donaldson, LL.D., volumes 1-10, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, Massachusetts

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, edited by Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D., volumes 1-14, Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., Peabody, Massachusetts

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, edited by Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D. & Henry Wace, D.D., volumes 1-14, Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., Peabody, Massachusetts

The First Fall of the Angels and the Origin of Sin

Sometime before the creation of man, one of the angels rebelled against God and led other angels in a massive revolt against Him. The name of this angel is Lucifer. He has been given other names as well. He is commonly called Satan.

Pride was the first sin. It was because of pride that Lucifer rebelled.

How has Lucifer, that rose in the morning, fallen from Heaven! He that sent orders to all the nations is crushed to the Earth. But thou saidst in thine heart, I will go up to Heaven, I will set my throne above the stars of heaven: I will sit on a lofty mount, on the lofty mountains toward the North: I will go up above the clouds: I will be like the Most High. But now thou shalt go down to Hell, even to the foundations of the Earth. (Isaiah 14:12-15, LXX)

Lucifer in his pride wanted be like God. He wanted to rule the universe. In Ecclesiasticus it says:

The beginning of man’s pride is to depart from the Lord; his heart has forsaken his Maker. For the beginning of pride is sin, and the man who clings to it pours out abominations. Therefore the Lord brought upon them extraordinary afflictions, and destroyed them utterly. (Ecclesiasticus 10:12, 13, RSV)

In Proverbs, it says:

Pride goes before destruction, and folly before a fall. (Prov. 16:18, LXX)

Lucifer led a rebellion in Heaven against God because of his pride and that resulted in his downfall. He was cast out of Heaven along with one third of the angels.

And there appeared another wonder in Heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.  And his tail drew the third part of the stars of Heaven, and did cast them to the Earth: and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born. And she brought forth a Man Child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her Child was caught up unto God, and to His throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days. And there was war in Heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in Heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the Earth, and his angels were cast out with him. (Rev. 12:3-9)

The fallen angels are called demons.

According to St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Lucifer (or Satan) was an archangel.

The devil then is the first author of sin, and the father of the wicked: and this is the Lord’s saying, not mine, "that the devil sinneth from the beginning" (I John 3:8; St. John 8:44): none sinned before him. But he sinned, not as having received necessarily from nature the propensity to sin, since then the cause of sin is traced back again to Him that made him so; but having been created good, he has of his own free will become a devil, and received that name from his action. For being an Archangel he was afterwards called a devil from his slandering: from being a good servant of God he has become rightly named Satan; for “Satan” is interpreted "the adversary." And this is not my teaching, but that of the inspired prophet Ezekiel: for he takes up a lamentation over him and says, "Thou wast a seal of likeness, and a crown of beauty; in the Paradise of God wast thou born" (Ezek. 28:12,13, LXX): and soon after, "Thou wast born blameless in thy days, from the day in which thou wast created, until thine iniquities were found in thee." (Ezek. 28:15) Very rightly hath he said, "were found in thee;" for they were not brought in from without, but thou didst thyself beget the evil. The cause also he mentions forthwith: "Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty: for the multitude of thy sins wast thou wounded, and I did cast thee to the ground." (Ezek. 28:16,17, LXX) In agreement with this the Lord says again in the Gospels: "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from Heaven." (St. Luke 10:18) Thou seest the harmony of the Old Testament with the New. He when cast out drew many away with him. It is he that puts lusts into them that listen to him: from him come adultery, fornication, and every kind of evil. Through him our forefather Adam was cast out for disobedience, and exchanged a Paradise bringing forth wondrous fruits of its own accord for the ground which bringeth forth thorns. (Catechetical Lectures, Lecture II, paragraph 4, by St. Cyril of Jerusalem, 318-386 A.D., vol. 7, pp. 8-9, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series)

God did not create any of the angels to be sinful. He did not create sin. The angels that followed Lucifer, like Lucifer, sinned out of their own free choice. They chose to sin. Sin is the absence of good. It is not an addition to one's nature. It is a subtraction from what God created. When Lucifer and his angels sinned, they lost the original beauty of holiness that God had given them.

Note also that the angels, being rational, are endowed with free-will, and, inasmuch as they are created, are liable to change. This in fact is made plain by the devil who, although made good by the Creator, became of his own free-will the inventor of evil, and by the powers who revolted with him, that is the demons, and by the other troops of angels who abode in goodness. (An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book II, chapter 27, by St. John of Damascus, 645-750 A.D., vol. 9, part 2, page 40-41, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series)

But if this is so, they say, whence comes evil? For it is quite impossible that evil should originate from goodness. We answer then, that evil is nothing else than absence of goodness and a lapsing from what is natural into what is unnatural: for nothing evil is natural. For all things, whatsoever God made, are very good (Gen. 1:31), so far as they were made: if, therefore, they remain just as they were created, they are very good, but when they voluntarily depart from what is natural and turn to what is unnatural, they slip into evil.

By nature, therefore, all things are servants of the Creator and obey Him. Whenever, then, any of His creatures voluntarily rebels and becomes disobedient to his Maker, he introduces evil into himself. For evil is not any essence nor a property of essence, but an accident, that is, a voluntary deviation from what is natural into what is unnatural, which is sin.

Whence, then, comes sin? It is an invention of the free-will of the devil. Is the devil, then, evil? In so far as he was brought into existence he is not evil but good. For he was created by his Maker a bright and very brilliant angel, endowed with free-will as being rational. But he voluntarily departed from the virtue that is natural and came into the darkness of evil, being far removed from God, Who alone is good and can give life and light. For from Him every good thing derives its goodness, and so far as it is separated from Him in will (for it is not in place), it falls into evil. (An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book IV, chapter 20, by St. John of Damascus, 645-750 A.D., vol. 9, part 2, page 94, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series)

God did not want those angels to sin, nor does He want us to sin.

He hath commanded no man to do wickedly, neither hath he given any man licence to sin. (Ecclesiasticus 15:20)

For Thou art not a God that desires iniquity; neither shall the worker of wickedness dwell with Thee. (Psalm 5:4, LXX)

Sin originated with one of God's creatures, Lucifer, but it never came from God Himself.

Steve

Bibliography

Ante-Nicene Fathers, edited by Alexander Roberts, D.D. & James Donaldson, LL.D., volumes 1-10, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, Massachusetts

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, edited by Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D., volumes 1-14, Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., Peabody, Massachusetts

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, edited by Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D. & Henry Wace, D.D., volumes 1-14, Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., Peabody, Massachusetts