Posted on 09/05/2006 8:51:22 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
For centuries, popular culture has treated Satan as God's nemesis – an angel consumed by pride and cast out of heaven to run his own evil empire.
But Henry Ansgar Kelly says poor Satan has gotten a bad rap. For decades he has pleaded the devil's case, arguing that Satan is simply one of God's celestial agents with the dirty job of gauging humanity's virtue.
While that job has made Satan cynical and jaded over time, Dr. Kelly said, it doesn't make him the mastermind of evil.
"Christian tradition has laid a lot of blame on Satan for things they're causing themselves," said Dr. Kelly, 72, a former Jesuit exorcist and now a medieval scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles and author of three books about the devil. "I am pessimistic about human nature. I think we are totally capable of doing what we have done. You can blame it on psychosis if you want."
But you can't blame it on Satan, he said.
During a three-day "Satan Seminar" at Loyola University Chicago last month, Dr. Kelly – the author of Satan: A Biography (Cambridge University Press, $19.99) – preached his controversial gospel to an understandably tough crowd of biblical scholars.
But after three days, students found themselves with a newfound appreciation for the celestial agent who, according to Dr. Kelly, acts as God's heavy.
"I assumed what is assumed in popular culture – that Satan is evil personified," said Stephen Binz, a writer from Little Rock, Ark., who develops materials for Roman Catholic adult faith formation. "This reaffirms that God is in charge of the world – its history and its future."
Dr. Kelly's attempt to exonerate Satan comes just months after the unveiling of the so-called Gospel of Judas.....
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
INTREP - Wrong!
Antichrist (you read it right) will bring peace and prosperity on Earth
CC&E
Wow. This man will have to answer for the souls who perish because of this heresy. He's dealing poison.
God created the Universe, but Satan is a creation (crutch?) of the human mind.
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