Satan and the Corruption of Nature: Seven Arguments

The basic vision of the early Church concluded that everything in nature that obviously looks contrary to YEHOVAH’s character appears that way because it is contrary to YEHOVAH God. It didn’t arise from the omni-benevolent hand of the Creator (as the atheists of their day and ours object) but was rather due to the activity of an evil “ruling prince” and “the demons his followers."

Man…trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law --
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shrek’d against his creed”
-- Tennyson, In Memoriam

Tennyson nailed it. We trust that YEHOVAH God is love, but we also believe that YEHOVAH is the Creator of nature, and nature simply does not seem to point to a God of love. Parasites, viruses, bacteria, diseases and cancer kill millions and torment millions more, humans and animals alike. Earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, mudslides and volcanoes do the same. And the animal kingdom is, as Tennyson said, “red in tooth and claw.” (So is the human kingdom for that matter). The creation looks almost as much like it was created by a cosmic predator (I Peter 5:8) as it does like it was created by an all loving, peaceful, benevolent Creator. There seems to be a “Lucifer Principle” at work in the world, as Howard Bloom noted. “Nature does not abhor evil,” he says. “[S]he embraces it” (The Lucifer Principle, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995).

This is the problem of “natural” evil, and it’s arguably the most formidable objection that can be raised against the belief in an all-powerful, all good God. (I shall put “natural” in quotes when referring to “natural” evil to signify that I don’t believe there’s anything “natural” about it.) Evil that humans inflict on one another can be explained by appealing to free will. But how are we to explain evils where there is no human agent responsible?

Charles Darwin’s own faith suffered in the face of the incredible suffering he witnessed in nature. In a letter to a friend he commented, “What a book a devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel works of nature!” (Francis Darwin, ed., More Letters of Charles Darwin, 2 vols. [New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1908], 1:94).

Theists have traditionally argued that YEHOVAH God has a greater purpose for allowing “natural” evil to exist in creation. They argue that through “natural” evils, YEHOVAH is teaching us, punishing us, refining us, or something of the sort. Other less traditional theists have argued that these things are inevitable side effects of other positive things in creation, such as allowing for creation to exemplify its own creativity and spontaneity.

I believe both views contain some insight as well as many problems. But what I’d like to do in this article is suggest that both views fall short because they fail to acknowledge the role that Satan and fallen Powers play in creation. In his great book Mephistopheles (Cornel University Press, 1986), Jeffery Russell said, “No theodicy that does not take the Devil fully into consideration is likely to be persuasive.” This is my conviction in a nutshell.

I’m going to argue that we cannot adequately explain “natural” evil unless we accept that Satan and other rebellious cosmic forces have had a corrupting influence on creation. This isn’t to deny that there aren’t other important things to consider in explaining “natural” evil. But my contention is that if we leave Satan and other nefarious spirit-agents out of the picture, no explanation of “natural” evil can be adequate.

I contend that animal suffering is an evil that needs to be accounted for by theists who believe that YEHOVAH God is all good and all powerful. Many have tried to argue that animals don’t really suffer, but their arguments are simply unconvincing. (For a superb refutation of these arguments, as well as an eye-opening account of how animals suffer in our Industrial Farms, see Matthew Scully’s book, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy. It’s brilliant.)

Consider this: All developed societies punish people when they inflict unnecessary pain on animals. This practice only makes sense if we share a fundamental conviction that animal suffering is an evil that should be avoided and remedied when possible. So, if we accept that YEHOVAH God is the Creator of nature, and if it’s true that nature sometimes (often!) makes animals suffer, then it seems we have to either:

Option (a) obviously isn’t viable for people who believe YEHOVAH God is all good. Option (b) is a possibility, but I’ve frankly never found a convincing argument in its defense. An all-powerful God surely could have created an animal kingdom where survival doesn’t hang on devouring other animals, for example. So, we’re left with option (c). This is the option we presuppose when we hold humans culpable for inflicting suffering on animals.

The Gospels frequently (but not always) attribute infirmities to demonic activity (I’m using “infirmities” here to cover all forms of illness, disease and disabilities). In Luke 13, for example, the Messiah comes upon a woman who has a deformed back and says, “How long should this woman, a daughter of Abraham, suffer under Satan’s oppression?” (vs. 16). Peter summarized the Messiah’s ministry in Acts 10 by saying that the Messiah went about freeing people from Satan’s oppression by healing them of their diseases. In fact, the word the Gospels sometimes use for disease or infirmity is mastix, which literally means “flogging.”

Now, there are three points that I think are significant about this as it concerns the issue of accounting for “natural” evil.

First, there’s no reason to think that a scientist couldn’t give a perfectly natural explanation for these infirmities that the Bible attributes to Satan and demons. They are, on one level, simply the “natural” results of “natural” processes working in accordance with the laws of nature.

This establishes that there’s no intrinsic incompatibility with attributing infirmities to spirits, on the one hand, and explaining them in natural terms, on the other. This is actually a very important point, since the most common objection to the view that spirits are responsible for some aspects of “natural” evil is that these evils can be accounted for scientifically.

Second, and closely related to this, if infirmities are the natural result of natural processes operating according to the laws of nature, on the one hand, while also being, at times, the result of demonic activity, on the other, then it seems that the laws of nature as we now find them must to some extent be demonically influenced. In fact, the New Testament says that Satan holds the keys of death (Hebrews 2:14). Yet, death is a “natural” result of “natural” processes operating in nature. This should be enough to tell us that natural processes can, in some cases, and to some extent, be satanically influenced.

Third, for Satan and demons to be involved, on any level, with bringing about infirmities, they must be able to affect matter. And if they can affect matter to bring about human infirmities, on what basis can we argue that they can’t affect matter to bring about other aspects of nature that seem incompatible with the perfect goodness of YEHOVAH God?

On top of this, we need to remember the incredible stature and authority ascribed to Satan in the New Testament. He is called (among other things) the “lord” (archon) of the world (John 12:31, 14:30; 16:11), the principality and power of the air (Ephesians 2:2) and the god of this age (2 Corinthians 4:4). He is said to control the entire world (I John 5:19) and to own all the authority of all the kingdoms of the world (Luke 4:5-7). In this light, why should we think it impossible that this fallen archangel, along with his minions, has messed with the natural order of things?

Consider also that humans have the capacity to affect natural processes, for better or for worse. For several millennia we have brought about new breeds of domesticated animals, for example. And today, we’re acquiring the power (Lord help us!) to genetically engineer everything from ears to fluorescent fish. If we as intelligent free agents have the “say-so” to impact the natural order, why think spirit agents uniformly lack this capacity?

So, we have solid biblical reasons to conclude that spirits can affect matter and mess with the general order of things. This provides us with an important component of an adequate explanation for why nature is so “red in tooth and claw,” despite having been created by an all-good, peaceful, Creator.

When people think of the Bible’s creation story, they naturally think of Genesis 1 and 2. What most don’t realize, however, is that Old Testament scholars generally agree that there are dozens of other passages that refer to YEHOVAH’s act of creation. And what’s significant about these other creation accounts is that they all involve YEHOVAH God battling forces of evil and/or chaos. This is what scholars refer to as the chaoskampf (meaning, “conflict with chaos”) motif of the Old Testament.

Some of these passages explicitly state they are describing creation, while others are determined by scholars to be creational accounts on the basis of the way they parallel the creation accounts of Israel’s ancient near eastern neighbors. Some of these accounts depict YEHOVAH God battling hostile personified waters that were believed to encompass the earth, while others talk of cosmic beasts (e.g. Leviathan, Rahab, Yamm) that all ancient near eastern people believed threatened creation (see, eg. Psalm 29:3-4; 104:3-9; 74:10-13. 89:9-10; Proverbs 8: 27-29; Job 9:13; 38:6-11; Habakkuk 3:8-15). Biblical authors are uniformly confident that YEHOVAH can handle these cosmic foes. Yet, His victory is considered praiseworthy precisely because these foes are real and formidable.

Now, the language of YEHOVAH God resisting hostile waters or cosmic monsters is obviously mythic. Yet, if we accept this material as divinely inspired, as I do, we have to ask the question, “What do these mythic portrayals convey?” And whatever else we might say in response to this question, we would have to conclude that these passages teach that YEHOVAH God faces opposition on a cosmic level when He creates and preserves the world.

How are we to reconcile these passages with the Genesis creation account where there seems to be no conflict? It’s not clear. I argue that we can plausibly insert them between verses 1 and 2 of Genesis 1 (this is known as “the gap theory,” since it posits a gap between these two verses). YEHOVAH God created all that exists (vs. 1) but we find it to be “formless and void” in verse 2. What happened in between, I suggest, was the angelic rebellion and the corruption of creation.

The chaoskampf material never addresses where the forces of chaos came from, but I submit the New Testament provides us with a ready answer. For here we learn about the rebellion of various angels, headed up by Satan (2 Peter 2:4; Jude 6; cf. I Timothy 3:6; Matthew 25:41). We’re not told when these angels rebelled, but given the chaoskampf material, and given the scientific evidence for a suffering-filled creation long before the advent of humans, it seems evident they fell long before humans were created.

In light of all this, I see no reason to assume that nature as we now find it is in every respect nature as YEHOVAH God intended it to be. Rather, it seems reasonable to me to conclude that the warfare between good and evil permeates the very fabric of the creation. C. S. Lewis said somewhere that “There is no neutral ground in the universe; every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan.” Given the material we’ve just reviewed, I don’t regard it as an absurd claim to make. C. S. Lewis also speculated somewhere that the violence in evolutionary history might be plausibly explained by the influence of anti-God forces. And given the material we’ve just reviewed, I don’t regard this as an absurd claim either.

In Genesis 1:29-30 the LORD says to humans: ”I give you every seed–bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move on the ground -- everything that has the breath of life in it -- I give every green plant for food” (emphasis added).

Notice, YEHOVAH God didn’t give animals to each other to eat. Nor did YEHOVAH God give animals to humans to eat. This is reiterated in Genesis 2 when the LORD tells Adam he was “free to eat from any tree in the garden” (vs. 16-17). Adam was not free to eat any of the animals.

It seems, then, that the food chain in YEHOVAH’s ideal creation was non-carnivorous and non-violent. I have to of course grant that there’s room for debate over how literally or figuratively these passages should be interpreted. But even if one sees these chapters as mostly, or even totally, figurative, I don’t see how one can get around the implication that YEHOVAH’s ideal creation was, and is, non-violent.

That non-violence was part of YEHOVAH’s original design for creation is reiterated when YEHOVAH God makes a new covenant with humanity after the flood. The covenant of Genesis 9:1-4 parallels the covenant of Genesis 1 very closely, except now YEHOVAH God concedes the reality of fear, dread and violence in creation. To Noah and his sons the LORD says:

Notice that, in contrast to Genesis 1, the entire animal kingdom now has “fear and dread” toward humans. Also in explicit contrast to Genesis 1, YEHOVAH God now allows humans to eat meat (so long as the blood is drained out), just as YEHOVAH previously allowed humans to eat vegetation. This sharp and explicit contrast highlights the fact that YEHOVAH’s ideal creation included no fear, dread or violence.

I submit that the fear, dread and violence that we now find permeating nature no more reflects YEHOVAH God’s ideal for nature than the fear, dread and violence we presently find in ourselves reflects YEHOVAH’s ideal for us.

Related to this, scripture teaches us that someday the creation will be free from this fear, dread and violence. This supplies further proof that fear, dread and violence were never part of YEHOVAH God’s creational ideal. Isaiah gives us an eschatological vision of the coming Kingdom of YEHOVAH God when he writes:

When the reigns of YEHOVAH God and the Messiah are fully established on the earth, the fear, dread and violence between animals, on the one hand, and between animals and humans, on the other, will completely cease. YEHOVAH’s ideal for creation will be attained. There will be a “new heaven and a new earth” (2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1).

We of course find it hard to imagine what this renewed world might look like or how it would operate. We simply can’t conceive of a lion that eats “straw like an ox.” But this is simply because the only lions we are familiar with are the kind that eat other animals instead of straw. Paul teaches that the natures of humans and animals in the coming kingdom will be as different from the way they are now as a plant is from its original seed (I Corinthians 15:37-44).

I see no reason why we shouldn’t conclude that this same difference applies to the distinction between YEHOVAH’s original ideal for creation and the violent creation we presently find ourselves in. In the beginning YEHOVAH God’s creation was non-violent. In the end YEHOVAH’s creation shall be non-violent. And this is enough to tell us that there’s something fundamentally wrong with our present violent creation.

What’s wrong with it, I submit, has something to do with the one who is called the lord of the world (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11), the god of this age (2 Corinthians 4:4) and the principality and power of the air (Ephesians 2:2).

Genesis 3 gives us an account of the “fall” (or “rebellion”) of humans. In my view, insufficient attention has been paid to how this passage describes nature being affected by this rebellion. Between verses 14 and 19 we learn that because of the fall:

There is, of course, an age-long debate over how literal or figurative we should interpret this passage. I’ll return to this at the end of my discussion, but it need not concern us at the moment. However one interprets this passage, it clearly teaches that nature fundamentally changed as a result of the human rebellion. The world we now live in is cursed. This means that the laws of nature that have naturally brought about hostile snakes, pain in childbirth, hard-to-till soil, thorns and thistles and death are not altogether “natural.” They do not conform to YEHOVAH’s creational ideal. They rather reflect a nature that has been cursed.

Something similar is arguably entailed by the Messiah’s rebuking of the storm (Mark 4:36-39). As a number of scholars have argued, the Messiah is here treating the storm as something demonic. The narrative is a reenactment of YEHOVAH’s battles with the raging seas in the Old Testament. This suggests that the Messiah is carrying on YEHOVAH’s age-long battle for creation, which in turn suggests there are demonic forces at work in creation as we presently find it that YEHOVAH God must battle against.

The Messiah’s cursing of the fig tree (when it wasn’t even the season for figs!) also seems to point to the demonically cursed nature of the present creation (Mark 11:12-14). In the apocalyptic worldview of the Messiah’s day, barren fig trees were considered cursed by Satan. As N. T. Wright and many scholars have argued, this suggests that the Messiah cursed the fig tree as an act of “reversing the curse.” In YEHOVAH’s original creational design, trees would always produce fruit. As Origen, Tatian, Athenagorus and other early church theologians argued, all barrenness, droughts, famines and other “natural” disasters result from the effects of demonic powers at work in the world.

Paul also expressed the view of creation as cursed when he said that ”the creation was subjected to frustration” and that “the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (Romans 8:20-22). Whatever else Paul intends by saying creation is subject to “frustration” or “futility” (mataiotais), it certainly includes the fact that everything dies. Yet, death is as natural as anything can be, according to the laws of nature as they presently operate. In fact, the law of entropy (2nd law of thermodynamics) is one of the most fundamental laws of physics. Yet, if Paul (and Genesis) is correct, this law does not reflect the Creator’s creational ideal.

According to the author of Hebrews, it rather reflects the anti-creational goals of Satan. Yeshua the Messiah came to “break the power of him who holds the power of death -- that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). Put all of this together, and it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the creation has been subjected to Satan, the lord of death, decay and destruction.

First, both in Genesis 3 and in Romans 8 it is YEHOVAH God, not Satan, who cursed the earth and subjected creation to frustration. Does this not make YEHOVAH God responsible for the sorry state of the present creation and thus undermine my argument that Satan is behind it? I don’t see that it does.

So too, I suggest we envision YEHOVAH God as cursing creation by allowing Satan to do what he wants to do -- namely, curse creation. Had Adam and Eve remained obedient to YEHOVAH God, this hostile cosmic power would have been kept at bay. But once the Adamic couple allowed themselves to be co-opted by YEHOVAH’s archenemy, they opened the floodgates for Satan and his minions to enter into the realm that humans were supposed to have dominion over. (Below I’ll address what area this might have included).

This doesn’t make YEHOVAH God responsible for the corruption of nature. The fault lies on Adam and Eve and on Satan and other cosmic powers for freely choosing to go against the will and designs of the Creator. YEHOVAH God simply set up the laws that stipulate that disobedience has disastrous consequences.

First, one could simply reject the claim that there was violence and suffering prior to the human fall. This is the view of young earth creationists. This is a possible solution to our question, but it’s frankly hard to seriously consider a view that the vast majority of scientists in the field think is absurd. I’ve read (but not thoroughly studied) on both sides of the debate, and I have to say I side strongly with the scientific consensus on this one.

Second, many Christian academics interpret the story of the fall to be a myth that expresses the truth that humans are fallen but that cannot be taken literally. The fact that both the Messiah and Paul treats Adam and Eve as historical figures simply reveals their first century cultural conditioning. I believe there are a number of theological problems with this view that we cannot enter into at present. But clearly if someone accepts this perspectives there would be little problem accommodating the view that Satan was corrupting nature prior to the arrival of humans with the biblical teaching that Adam’s rebellion opened the floodgates for Satan’s corrupting activity. If the biblical teaching on the fall is mythic, it has no implications for how we understand history.

Third, a number of scholars have argued that one may plausible postulate a “gap” between verses 1 and 2 of Genesis chapter 1. (Hence this view is sometimes referred to as the “gap” theory). In this view the world became corrupted by demonic forces for millions of years and then was judged, reducing it to a state of being “formless and void” (tohu wabohu). YEHOVAH God then restored creation, which is what the remainder of the Genesis account is about, and set a new line of humans in charge of it. When they rebelled, however, they once again allowed the demonic forces to curse the world.

To put the matter succinctly, Sailhamer argues that when people read the Genesis account as though it were an account of creation as a whole, they are reading the account anachronistically. When ancient people thought of the earth (eretz), they thought of the land they knew or of a particular parcel of land that was under consideration. They had no concept of the earth as a planet. Sailhammer further argues that the various things that are formed over six days of creation (light, sun, stars, vegetation, etc.) are spoken of phenomenologically -- that is, from the perspective of one situated in this land. And it is the finished production of this specific land -- not the whole of the cosmos -- that is declared “good” by YEHOVAH God. [Interestingly enough, a number of earlier conservative Bible commentators, such as Merill Unger, held this view].

If this interpretation is accepted, we should see Eden as a newly formed beachhead of YEHOVAH’s rule on an otherwise corrupted planet. YEHOVAH God populated Eden with newly created, non-carnivorous animals (Genesis 1:31) that reflect His creational ideal of non-violence. As His intended viceroys, He put humans in charge, commanding them to guard (samar) the garden (Genesis 2:15) and subdue (kabas) the earth. The goal was to gradually advance their rule by overcoming forces of evil and restoring creation. Our commission was, and yet is, to carry out YEHOVAH’s will “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). When the Adamic humans rebelled, however, they opened the floodgates of demonic forces into Eden and it quickly became part of the corrupted creation. On this interpretation, this is what Paul refers to when he says sin and death entered the world (eretiz) through Adam.

The New Testament teaches that the Messiah died not just to redeem YEHOVAH's people Israel; he died to restore the entire creation. In Colossians 1:19-20 Paul says that “God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in [the Messiah], and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” Now, if “all things” needed reconciliation, this tells us that nature as we now find it is not nature as YEHOVAH God originally intended it. So too, Paul says the whole creation is groaning to be “liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). When YEHOVAH's people Israel are reinstated as the rightful rulers of the earth, reigning with their Elder Brother the Messiah, the creation will groan no more and will no longer suffer decay (2 Timothy 2:12; Revelation 5:10). (Paul, like all other Judahites of his time, saw the earth as the center of, if not synonymous with, creation). Clearly, the creation we currently live in is not in every respect the creation YEHOVAH God originally spoke into being. It’s been corrupted.

As James Kallas noted, the New Testament concept of “salvation” isn’t limited to YEHOVAH's people Israel. He writes:

Just as we humans impact everything under our authority for better or for worse, depending on the decisions we make and the kind of people we become, so spirit agents impact everything under their authority, for better or for worse, depending on the decisions they make and the kind of agents they’ve become.

Unfortunately, it seems in a previous epoch there was some sort of mass rebellion among agents who had great authority over material creation, and they used this authority against YEHOVAH God as they tried to throw His creational project off track by corrupting it. YEHOVAH God couldn’t simply destroy these rebellious agents, for freedom is intrinsically irrevocable.

If YEHOVAH God gives an agent x amount of “say-so” to use this way or that way (that is, if YEHOVAH makes an agent genuinely free), YEHOVAH can’t revoke it simply because He disapproves of the agent using it in a certain way. If YEHOVAH God did revoke it, then He clearly didn’t give the agent x amount of “say-so” to use this way or that way. In other words, if YEHOVAH God revokes freedom whenever an agent tries to use that freedom in ways He doesn’t approve of, He clearly didn’t give it in the first place.

So YEHOVAH God must, for a limited amount of time (conforming to the amount of “say-so” He originally granted to agents) put up with and work around the corrupting influence of spirit agents -- just as He must put up with and work around the corrupting influence of human agents.

So the scenario I at present tentatively envision is this: evolutionary history reflects YEHOVAH God advancing His creational objectives, despite the corrupting influence of diabolic cosmic forces. This is why evolutionary history -- and nature and the animal kingdom today -- reflect both the marvelous creativity of YEHOVAH God as well as the ugly corrupting influence of demonic powers.

By this means, YEHOVAH God finally arrived at the Adamic creation of human beings, which was His goal all along. Unlike everything that preceded us, we were to be (and yet are to be) the rightful rulers of creation, administrating YEHOVAH’s loving providence “on earth as it is in heaven.” We were specially designed in the image of YEHOVAH God and, I believe, we were free from the corrupting influence of the oppressed creation. With the creation of Adamic humans YEHOVAH God formed a sort of beachhead (Eden) from which He would advance and ultimately bring an end to the warfare that had engulfed His creation. We were to partner with YEHOVAH God to take back the earth.

But Adamic humans, like spirit agents, have free will, for love is impossible without it. And, unfortunately, like many spirit agents, we Adamic humans used our “say-so” to rebel against YEHOVAH God and go our own way. We thus surrendered our dominion over to the very powers we were supposed to protect Eden from and acquire dominion over -- at least as it concerned their influence on the earth.

And so it is that YEHOVAH’s goal of reigning with Adamic humans on the earth has had to take a much longer and more circuitous route. The biblical narrative is a peek at what this route looks like. Ultimately, YEHOVAH’s union with Adamic humanity in the Messiah, which I believe was at the center of His plan from the get go, had to become a “rescue operation” that involved the Messiah in the suffering of the crucifixion. And it is by means of the this radical “rescue operation” of love that YEHOVAH God in principle restored Adamic humanity, recovered the earth, and reconciled the entire creation.

Some day, what is true “in principle” shall be manifested as fact. And that is the Kingdom of YEHOVAH God. When the Kingdom of YEHOVAH God is fully manifested, the lion will lay down with the lamb and eat straw like an ox. The creation will be free of diabolical influences, and we of Israel shall reign with the Messiah over Israel with YEHOVAH God reigning over the entire earth forever.

The final argument for the thesis that “natural” evil is due to the work of nefarious spirits comes from the early church fathers. These authors obviously aren’t inspired and thus can’t hold a candle to the authority of the Bible. At the same time, their proximity to the Messiah and the New Testament church gives their teachings more weight than theologians of later periods, all other things being equal. While we can certainly detect various pagan influences in some of these second and third century fathers -- especially in their increasingly Hellenistic conception of YEHOVAH God -- we have many reasons to think that their basic theology and worldview was inherited from, and remained true to, the apostolic tradition.

What’s significant for our purposes is that the primary way these early theologians explained evil in nature was by appealing to the work of Satan, powers and demons. These fathers uniformly believed that angels, like Adamic humans, were created free and given a sphere of influence and responsibility over creation. As with Adamic humans, angels could use this influence for good, as YEHOVAH God intended, or they could choose to use it for evil. They understood that this is simply what it means for YEHOVAH God to genuinely give us free will.

The earliest fathers thus believed that, just as YEHOVAH God had given humans “say-so” over the earth, which we could use for better or for worse, so YEHOVAH God also gave “say-so” over aspects of the cosmos, and to some degree over humans, to angels.

For example, Athenagorus -- who in my mind is one of the most insightful of the earliest fathers -- argued that “the Maker and Framer of the world distributed and appointed…a multitude of angels and ministers…to occupy themselves about the elements, and the heavens, and the world, and the things in it, and the godly ordering of them all.” Then he adds,

So too, Origen -- who in my mind was the single greatest thinker in the early church -- held that every aspect of nature was under the care of “invisible husbandmen and guardians” (Against Celsus, 8.31). St. Gregory at a later date reiterates the prevailing view of the early church when he says, “In this visible world…nothing can be achieved except through invisible forces” (Dialogues, IV.5).

“Natural” evil was consistently explained in the early church as resulting from these spirits rebelling against YEHOVAH God and thus abusing their authority over creation. Hence, for example, Origen argued that famines, scorching winds and pestilence were not “natural” in YEHOVAH’s creation: they were rather the result of fallen angels bringing misery whenever and however they were able (Against Celsus, 8.31). These rebel guardians were also “the cause of plagues…barrenness…tempests… [and] similar calamities” (Against Celsus,1.31).

Along the same lines, Tertullian argued that “[d]iseases and other grievous calamities” were the result of demons whose “great business is the ruin of mankind.” When “poison in the breeze blights the apples and the grain while in the flower, or kills them in the bud, or destroys them when they have reached maturity…” one can discern the work of these rebellious guardian spirits (Apology 22). For Tertullian, as for Origen and Athenagorus (and we could add Tatian, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria and others), creation doesn’t consistently reflect the beauty of its Creator because it has been, and is being, corrupted by demonic forces.

Following the teachings of the New Testament, these early theologians all understood that the leader of the rebel army that ravaged nature was Satan. In the words of Athenagorus, Satan was “the spirit” originally entrusted with “the control of matter and the forms of matter” (A Plea, 24). The entire material creation was to be administrated by this highest ranking angel, according to this theologian! Unfortunately, this “spirit” used its free will to rebel against YEHOVAH God. He now exercises his tremendous authority over material creation against YEHOVAH God. He abuses “the government entrusted to [him].” Given the nature of moral responsibility, YEHOVAH could not simply revoke Satan’s sphere of influence. Hence, Athenagorus argued, “the prince of matter exercises a control and management contrary to the good that is in God” (A Plea, 25).

Reflecting the basic vision of the early Church, Athenagorus concluded that everything in nature that obviously looks contrary to YEHOVAH’s character appears that way because it is contrary to YEHOVAH God. It didn’t arise from the omni-benevolent hand of the Creator (as the atheists of his day and ours object) but was rather due to the activity of an evil “ruling prince” and “the demons his followers" (A Plea, 25).

Much more could be said about this, but I hope this suffices to show that the early church fathers all saw creation as a war-torn battlefield. It had been corrupted to its very core. And this is why nature is violent, both towards animals and people. I don’t believe this view would have arisen in the church were the foundation for it not laid in the apostolic tradition. These early fathers are simply working out the implications of the biblical view that Satan is the “lord of the earth,” the “ruler of the air” and the “god of this age” who “controls the entire world.” I believe they were on the right track.

If I and the early church fathers are correct, we don’t need to search for good divine purposes behind “natural” evil any more than we need to search for them behind evil that humans inflict on one another. All evil, “natural” or otherwise, is ultimately due to wills other than YEHOVAH God.

So next time a tsunami wipes out an entire village or an earthquake massacres thousands of people; next time you consider the millions dying from AIDS or the millions tortured by parasites; next time you hear about the millions suffering from drought and famine, or consider the untold pain of millions suffering and dying from any number of other diseases, don’t say “This is the work of God.” Say rather, “An Enemy has done this” (Matthew 13:28).

Hope of Israel Ministries -- Proclaiming the Good News of the Soon-Coming Kingdom of YEHOVAH God Here On This Earth!

Hope of Israel Ministries
P.O. Box 853
Azusa, CA 91702, U.S.A.
www.hope-of-israel.org

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