Читать книгу The Warfare of the Soul: Practical Studies in the Life of Temptation - Shirley Carter Hughson - Страница 34

The question of the personality of Satan is one that we must briefly consider here. Do we believe in a personal devil? The answer to this question will show what is our attitude towards the spiritual conflict. We may go further, and say that it will show whether, in the last analysis, we believe there is any spiritual conflict.[11]

In these days when man is made the measure of all things, both divine and devilish, we often hear it said that every soul is its own tempter, that what revelation calls temptation is but the working out of a so-called "evil principle" that resides by nature in every human spirit.[12]

Of course, there is a partial truth in this, for when we yield ourselves to Satan's power by consenting to sin, we then become his servants, and just as one man often acts as Satan's agent in tempting another, so, too, we can act as his agent in tempting ourselves. But it is none the less his personal work though carried out through another.

To deny the personality of Satan involves one in all manner of denials of Scripture and Church teaching. Revelation declares that God made our first parents and pronounced them "very good."[13] Whence then arose the inherent "principle of evil" that wrought their temptation? Did God create in them and pronounce "very good" that which asserted itself so desperately against His will, or did it come from a personally directed intelligence outside of them?

Again, in the second Adam, if He is indeed the God-man, the Incarnate Jehovah, whence came His temptation? If it came from some principle within Him, then just in so far as His temptation was greater than ours must the evil principle dwelling in Him have been greater; and when we consider the extent of His temptation we must then conclude that His human nature had more inherent evil in it than that of any other who has ever braved the perils of the spiritual conflict.

Again, the verdict of the Christian experience of all ages has been that the more nearly men attain to the likeness of Christ, the more they are tempted. Does then the increase of the Christ-character give added virulence and strength to the evil that is within?

These illustrations of temptation show that those who reject the personality of Satan and of his evil angels, and substitute for it the idea of temptation arising from an evil principle within, are involving themselves in conclusions which strike at the very fundamentals of divine revelation concerning God and His relations to man.