Considerations for Answers
QUESTION: Will the Devil be redeemed?
It's a simple question with broad implications: Will the Devil be redeemed?
ANSWER: Thats up to God. It's not mentioned in the Bible, so I would not be able to honestly tell you. But I believe the chance of the devil accepting Christ as his savior is about as likely as evolution being true.
Given the amount of balbutive cut & pasted into the answers section of this topic, I suppose I ought to be thankful at a short dose of originally-composed balbutive.
Primarily, I'm targeting evangelism; quite frankly, I could care less what any one person believes as long as it brings them some illusion of happiness and prevents them from harming others. But among the evangelized message of Christians is the idea that Jesus' forgiveness in infinite. Or, in the politically-brilliant turn of phrase,
God's forgiveness is ongoing and limitless, and available to all who truly accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior (
Christian Reunion.org, "God's Infinite Mercy").
Within its context, it makes sense, but the phrase--quite common in variation around the Christian evangelical body--is deceptive. God's forgiveness is
not limitless, as the Acceptance Clause indicates. Thus, it lends an air of dishonesty to simple evangelism. Forgiveness is forgiveness, and is not conditional. If, for instance, I waited for everyone who sins against me to repent before I undertook forgiveness, I would have gone on a shooting spree by now. Furthermore, the Bible itself draws limits to God's forgiveness, as W.B. McCartney notes:
The Bible would not tell us that there is an unpardonable sin without telling us what that sin is. Matthew 12:32, Mark 3:28,29 and Luke 12:10 definitely tell us (and these are the words of the Son of God) that blasphemy against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Holy Spirit of God will not be forgiven either in this world or in the world to come. (
reference)
One can delineate all they want in modern society: Muslim extremists, homosexuals, single mothers,
ad nauseam. These people's souls are, apparently endangered by the state they are in. And yet the evangelical litany of forgiveness goes on.
McCartney explains:
Man being created a "free moral agent" is wholly responsible for what he believes and what he refuses to believe; therefore, the sacrifice of Christ does not provide pardon for "unbelief", and unbelief becomes the unpardonable sin.
Left to the common perspective of reward and punishment, the issue of God's Will becomes as cloudy as the issue of His Forgiveness. Yet even a practical assertion that one cannot save one who does not wish to be saved falls short. A condition comes about, then, by which it is suggested that what man perceives determines
actual reality, when in fact, if God is what is asserted, such a condition is nonsense.
And thus, with sectarian disagreements, Catholic pedophilia, and a host of condemnations of this or that brand of people, the whole thing becomes a convoluted heap of contextual deceptions--I've known evangelical Christians, for instance, to assert a Lucan passage about crushing the enemy to justify their belligerence toward other people while simultaneously mocking very specific calls to compassion and forgiveness in Matthew 5 and 25. Admittedly, this becomes a question of whether one has truly accepted Christ, or merely claimed such acceptance, but that perspective paints the Christian mission as a failure when we compare the number of claimed Christians to the number of true Christians.
So we can cut through all of the sins and get to the actual heart of the issue:
Will the Devil be redeemed? For the Devil, chief among all sinners, is condemned to eternal fires (Matthew 25.41).
It seems then, that the same limit is applied to God's "infinite" forgiveness and mercy, that the Devil must repent in order to deserve forgiveness. We might call it "conditional infinity", or term the forgiveness as "conditionally infinite".
And the condition is acceptance of the Word of God as expressed through a politically-conventional Bible; could not Irenaeus have come up with a better reason for limiting the Bible to four gospels than he did?
Irenaeus embellished the point by arguing that just as there are four regions of the world and four directions of the wind, so there are four pillars of the gospel God had given the world. The number four Irenaeus took to be direct evidence of the authenticity of the gospels: the world-wide church could possess neither more nor less than a four-fold gospel. (
"How the Canon was Formed")
So the problem becomes the fact that unless the Devil is redeemed at the very end, the evangelizations, at least, of infinite mercy and forgiveness, are deceptive and meant to con people into faith with petty appeals to greed. (Should "salvation" be the only reason for accepting Jesus? Does one who converts out of fear of condemnation
truly accept Christ?)
So people are left with a deceptive evangelization, a politically-assembled "revelation" of God unto mankind, and a body faithful that doesn't actually know what it is their consciences are subscribing to.
It becomes vital, on the one hand, that the Devil be redeemed, else God's mercy is not infinite, especially in light of God's alleged omniscience and omnipotence. For the Devil was created by God, who is, as the Supreme Authority of the Universe, aware prior to Satan's creation what this combination of angelic attributes would bring, and chose to go forward anyway. Add to that an ongoing debate about whether or not angels can
learn, and Satan quickly becomes the victim of an empty and pointless scheme by God, who knew of man's impending fall before it happened, and chose this route as well. But if God is not responsible for the condition of His Creations, and the Devil will not be redeemed, then Christianity is in a sorry state because of the number of people who assert infinite mercy and forgiveness.
However, if the Devil is, in the end, redeemed, all is still not well. Does it not seem pointless, then, to invent evil, subject Creation to evil, and then demand Creation begs forgiveness for its immersion in evil which, as we see, is by God's Will?
From that standpoint, evangelism is still problematic.
A good deal of it lies in how the faithful view their God, but often the dichotomy between Biblical reality and perceived faith is massive to the point of defying reconciliation.
And I think the issue strikes after the heart of the failure of Christianity to function harmoniously with the rest of human society. The supremacist bent inherent to the religion has been taming itself in the public expressions as people become more educated--a hopeful sign--but also reinvests itself with great vigor in the undereducated. However, the United States--my home--is currently embroiled in a holy war led by a President who claims Christianity (I'm reading an interesting article on that subject as we go along, but it's not quite relevant without doubling the length of this post.)
It seems to me that if the question of the Devil's redemption can be resolved, the myriad mistaken faiths alleged to be Christian will become more apparent to everyone. It will be harder for aggressive and condemning people alleging Christian faith to continue treating the world in such a manner, which will have the effect of alleviating the growing tension between Christianity and the rest of the world, and thus offer a more open road to God and Christ, resulting in a greater number of genuine converts.
But I patently reject that (A) it's up to God, and (B) the probability is low because the Devil will not repent. If it's left to the Devil's repentence, it is not up to God. Except that God, without whom nothing in this Universe happens, created the Devil specifically for this role. Furthermore, forgiveness is not nearly infinite if it comes with such a condition.
And that's the importance, as I see it, of the Devil's redemption. There are versions of Christian faith which can avoid such difficulties, but I've found such ideas are not popular among the faithful. I always wonder what their excuse will be come Judgment Day; after all, God won't be conned by mere declarations of faith, for the Lord knows what is written in each man's heart; after all, the Lord hath written it.
"The best thing in Heaven is supposed to be the sun; it shines on green mountains, and melts the Devil's gun." (Rheostatics, "Dope Fiends and Boozehounds")
thanx,
Tiassa