Devil in Christianity
figure equated with Satan in Christianity
In Christianity, the Devil, also known as Satan, is a malevolent entity that deceives and tempts humans. Frequently viewed as the personification of evil, he is traditionally held to have rebelled against God in an attempt to become equal to God himself. He is said to be a fallen angel, who was expelled from Heaven at the beginning of time, before God created the material world, and is in constant opposition to God. In Christian tradition, the Devil has been identified with several biblical figures and motifs, including Lucifer, Satan, the serpent in the Garden of Eden, the tempter of the Gospels, Leviathan, Beelzebub, and the dragon in the Book of Revelation.
Early scholars discussed the role of the Devil. Scholars influenced by neoplatonic cosmology, like Origen and Pseudo-Dionysius, portrayed the Devil as representing deficiency and emptiness, the entity most remote from the divine. According to Augustine of Hippo, the realm of the Devil is not nothingness, but an inferior realm standing in opposition to God. The standard medieval depiction of the Devil goes back to Gregory the Great. He integrated the Devil, as the first creation of God, into the Christian angelic hierarchy as the highest of the angels (either a cherub or a seraph) who fell far, into the depths of hell, and became the leader of demons.
Since the early Reformation period, the Devil has been imagined as an increasingly powerful entity, with not only a lack of goodness but also a conscious will against God, his word, and his creation.
The public source identifies “Devil in Christianity” as figure equated with Satan in Christianity. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Devil, Christianity and figure.
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This entry incorporates text from “Devil in Christianity” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.