Now if someone withdrew or removed the air that is between the Earth and Moon, he would destroy the unity and communion of the universe for there would be an empty and unconnected space in the middle. In just the same way, those who refuse to leave us the race of daemones make the relations of the gods and men remote and alien.
- Plutarch, On the Obsolescence of Oracles
It is held that God created the angels before man - according to some fathers, before the creation of the material world - on the first day along with light. Angels are immaterial and associate with light, air and the heavens. As their name suggests, they are the "messengers" of God. Angels are not of the same order as God and should not be prayed to (although certain of them - SS. Raphael, Gabriel and Michael - have been transformed into saints and may be prayed to).
At some very early point there was a rebellion among the angels. A group of them, led by Satan, wished to place their thrones higher than God's (Isa. 14:12-15). Some say that it was the sin of envy (phth=F3nos) that motivated their revolt while others say that it was arrogance (alazone=EDa). The effect was the same in any case: Satan and his attendant angels were cast down from the heavens (Luke 10:18) and compelled to reside variously on earth or beneath the earth. The attributes causing their downfall, as well as those of being a liar, tempter, thief and enemy, all came to be closely associated with Satan and the fallen angels. By the end of the New Testament period, Christian tradition made no rigid distinction between "fallen angels" and "demons."
There is considerable patristic variance as to whether Satan fell before or after Adam and Eve. At issue is the question of human free will. Did Adam and Eve naturally envy the position of God, or did Satan take the form of the serpent and constrain them to do so? Orthodox tradition places the fall of Satan before the fall of Adam and Eve but does not deny free will its place either. Human choice, both in Eden and after the fall, allows Satan an opening that he may exploit. After the fall humanity entered a difficult period, separated from God, suffering pain and then death after which the souls of the dead were collected by Satan and kept in the underworld (Gal. 4:3-10).
The figure of Christ offered humans an escape from this cycle of torment. His life set a moral example by showing how human free will could concentrate on the attainment and expression of virtue, thus confounding and defeating the Devil. Christ also demonstrated direct power, through exorcism, over the various demons that possessed people and caused spiritual illness. This power he passed on to his twelve (Matt. 10:8; Mark 6:7; Luke 9:1) and seventy apostles (Luke 10:9). Beyond these achievements on earth, it was through death and resurrection that Christ truly overcame the Devil. Like other souls he descended into hell but, as he was the Son of God and had committed no sin, the Devil had no power over him. On the contrary, Christ defeated the Devil and threw open the gates of Tartaros, thus allowing the souls of those suffering in the shadow of Adamic sin to ascend to heaven. As the Orthodox sing in Church every Easter, "Christ is risen from the dead, having trampled death by death, and having granted life to those in the graves." This victory was not, however, final. The souls of the righteous may ascend to heaven but they await a final judgment before they may inherit the kingdom of God. Christ's resurrection marked the end of the Devil's unchecked power over man, but it did not finally abolish the problem of evil. Humanity has remained thus suspended between faith in Christ and the promptings of the Devil. Until the second coming evil must still be combated by adherence to virtue and righteousness.
According to Orthodox theology the human being is comprised of body (soma) and soul (psykhi). Human nature is thus a composite of good and evil. The body is the temple of the Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19), and in Orthodox thought both body and soul will be resurrected at the second coming, a view that explains the Orthodox reverence for holy relics. Nonetheless humans must cultivate their spiritual natures, which can lead to the realization of their "likeness" with God. The flesh, by contrast, is often the source of base desires that must be overcome, for they lead to sins such as lust, gluttony, lasciviousness and adultery, which delight the Devil. At Galatians 5:16ff. Paul writes:
I say then, walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the spirit against the flesh: these things are in conflict with each other: so that you are unable to do that which you might wish. But if you conduct yourselves according to the Spirit, you are not under the law.
Now the works of the flesh are manifest. They are: fornication, impurity, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft (pharmakeia), malice, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, intriguing, dissensions, factions, envyings, drunkenness, revelries and things similar to these. I forewarn you, as I have already warned you, those practicing such acts will not inherit the Kingdom of God.
But the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.
The variety of mortal or deadly sins has long been listed and amended in the Orthodox tradition, especially by ascetic monks such as Evagrius of Pontos or Joh Climacos who were most involved in the attempt to overcome them. Chief among these sings are pride (yperiph=E1neia) and envy (phthonos), which caused the fall of Satan and Adam and Eve. Some lists divided sins of the flesh from those of the spirit (e.g., Gregory of Sinai). One sin was said to lead to others. St. John Climacos pictured the various sins as impeding progress up the ladder (thirty steps) that must be surmounted on the way to union with God. Also represented on the rungs of the ladder were virtues that needed to be assimilated to enable further ascent. Prominent among these was discernment (diakrisis), while love (agapi) occupied the highest rung on the ladder. The person who aspires to virtue attracts the most opposition from the Devil. As Climacos wrote, "an active soul is a provocation to demons, yet the greater our conflicts, the greater our rewards. There will be no crown for the man who has never been under attack, and the man who preserveres in spite of any failures will be glorifies as a champion by the angels." The obvious exemplar was Christ, whose temptation in the desert is recorded in each of the synoptic Gospels. This was a model not only to the long succession of ascentics and monks, but to Christian laity generally. The Devil's power may be fairly illusory, or dependent on a person's strength of will, but this is all the more reason why one must attain the presence of mind, the discernment, not to give in to it. If, in moments od demonic siege, one remembers to recite a passage of Scripture, or simply the name "Jesus Christ," the demon will vanish. Holy objects such as icons, blessed bread or most prominently a cross (the verys ymbol of Christ's death and his conquest of the Devil) also protect individuals or households if they are worn or displayed.
The demons continue to share many characteristics with the fallen angels. Satan is their leader (Matt. 9:34; 25:41). They are immaterial, sexless, formless, do not need food and have no carnal desires. They do not die and they may reside either in the air, on the earth or beneath the earth. In order to carry out their machinations the deomns are able to transform themselves and assume any gender or shape they please. In the New testament they are associated with locusts, scorpions, leopards, lions and bears. Satan is likened to a serpent or a lion, and in one passage (Rev. 13:11), has two horns and the voice of a dragon. Like the angels, demons may be ranked on the model of an army.
It is significant that Scripture does not go into elaborate detail regarding the form and features of Satan and his attendants. The first known Christian artisitic depiction of the Devil does not appear until the late sixth century. One suspects that people were already familiar with his features and needed no introduction, as they did to Christ. It may also be the case that this avoidance of formal detail exposes one of the dilemmas of Christian doctrine: If the Devil is immaterial (aylos), then it must, to some degree, have been contradictory to show the sort of interest in his form that would have given rise to an iconographic tradition. This would come later. Granted the delay of the second coming - still deemed imminent - the Church gradually came to give the Devil a more detailed consideration than had at first seemed necessary.
The Orthodox Church has always unambiguously considered the Devil inferior and subordinate to God. God created Satan and the other angels (Col. 1:16) who fell of their own free will. They continue, by this same autonomy, to dissent from God. The power of God is absolute, but Satan is allowed to operate within divine constraints. The Old Testament story of Job is important in Orthodox tradition for its representtation of Satan's subservience to God. Satan attacks Job with God's permission, destroying his wealth and covering his body with boils. Throughout these trials Job never "sins with his lips before God." Finally, God undues the Devil's mischief and gives Job double his original wealth and blesses him in the afterlife.
This story illustrates a paradox of Orthodox theology. How is it that if God is good, there can exist so much destructive evil in the world and so much unhappiness in the lives of humans? Orthodoxy responds that God is purely good and that evil comes from another source altogether: the Devil. This would appear, then, to resemble the dualist religions of Persia (Zoroastrianism or Manichaeism). However, the position of the Orthodox Church is consciously distinct and opposed to precisely these doctrines. During the course of the Middle Ages, the challenge of heretical dualist sects, such as the Bogomils, only sharpened the Church's stance on this matter. God does not himself send evil, rather, as in the story of Job, he only allows Satan's power of evil equal to the power of good inherent in Divinity. The Devil is inferior to God and dominated by him. The Orthodox mortal world emerges as an arena in which good struggles against evil, the kingdom of heaven against the kingdom of earth. In Life, humans are enjoined to embrace Christ, who assists their attainment of Christian virtues: modesty, humility, patience and love. At the same time, lack of discernment and incontience impede the realization of these virtues and thereby conduce to sin; sin in turn places one closer to the Devil. Since the resurrection of Christ the results of this struggle have not been in doubt. So long as people affirm their faith in Christ, especially at moments of demonic assault, there is no need to fear the influence of the Devil. He exists only as an oxymoron, a powerless force. The Church, Christ's mission on earth, assists the maintenance of protection in the body of Christ; it does so by offering a large, overarching framework of rites and sacraments. Participation in such rituals performatively brings the individual closer to Divinity and endows one with a purity and grace that weaken any hold the Devil could possibly have.
Byzantine demonology is substantially derived from the patristic synthesis laid down by John of Damascus. Witch hunts appear not to have taken place, as in the West, but there is widespread interest in the theme of demons not only among the common people but among scholars as well. The latter is instanced in two systematic tracts falsely attributed to Michael Psellos. In the longer of the two, Timotheos, or On demons, the unknown author uses the form of a Platonic dialogue to provide an overview of the opinions of the pagans and distinguishes six kinds of demons, which dwell in the vicinity of the moon, in the air, on the earth, in the water, under the earth and in the darkness. The author also states that the Euchites or Messalians, who are the focus of the dialogue, erred when they saw Satan as the Son of God, since he is simply the prince of lies, cast into the darkness because he thought he could be equal to God. Demonology is frequently connected with idolatry.
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Last modified: Mon Dec 14, 1998