War in heaven

The Biblical record suggests that Satan has three broad powers: the power to tempt (of course archetypically in Genesis 3); the power to trouble and oppress (as we see in the gospel accounts of demonic oppression - the explicit link to Satan is made in Luke 10); and finally the power to accuse.

From Scripture it seems clear that, as terrible as Satan's power to tempt and trouble certainly is, it is his power to accuse which is most terrible.  Zechariah 3 contains a powerful vision of Joshua the High Priest standing before the LORD's angel and being subjected to the accusatory force of Satan.  The terrifying thing about the vision is that Joshua is dressed in filthy rags.  That is to say, Joshua - the High Priest, the one who is to represent Israel before the thrice-holy God, the holy pinnacle of the people - is besmeared with sin and guilt, presumably both his own and the representative guilt of the nation.  Satan accuses him before God, and look: his guilt is apparent.  He is literally wearing his guilt.  The accusation surely must stick.

The terrifying thing about Satan's power to accuse is that it is really just a species of telling the truth.

In the vision, God and his angel (!) intervene: not to deny the truth of Satan's accusation, but to take away Joshua's guilt.  That's the only way he can be a "brand plucked from the fire".  He needs, and gets, new clothes: righteousness, salvation.

The logic of how that happens - and how it can be right - is not explored in Zechariah, except to demonstrate that God is free to be merciful.  In Revelation 12 I think we do see some of the logic, albeit wrapped in apocalyptic.  Here we see war in heaven: Michael and his angels versus "that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan" with his angels.  Michael is triumphant, the devil is cast down.  There is no room in heaven any longer for Satan.

Lest we be tempted to see this as a representation of a primeval fall of the devil, the context is clearly the birth of Israel's Child, the one who is born to rule all the nations, who is caught up to God and his throne.  Here in a couple of verses we have the whole career of Christ, and it is the completion of his great work which leads to the successful assault of Michael and his cohorts on the forces of Satan.

When Jesus went up to his throne, having conquered sin and death, Michael arose (see Daniel 12!) and made war on Satan, casting him down.  Satan can't appear in heaven anymore.

In Revelation, the saints who see this sight rejoice over Satan, and in particular they name him "the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them day and night before our God".  But he no longer has access to our God.  His power to accuse is taken away.

Satan's power to accuse me always rested on my objective guilt.  But my guilt is taken away by the Lord Jesus.  So what accusation can he bring?  The military victory of Michael rests on the sacrificial victory of the Lord Jesus Christ.  And it is a complete victory.

Satan can still tempt and trouble, and he will do so.  But his power to accuse is taken away.  He can act against us on earth, but Michael and all the hosts of heaven stand armed with the proclamation of Christ's victory to prevent him from ever acting against us in heaven.

Apocalyptic and Conspiracy

One of the things that frustrates me about modern life (and, by the way, don't ever ask me to recite the list of things that frustrate me about modern life unless you have a decent chunk of time to spare and nothing constructive to do with it) is that we are now all conspiracy theorists.  We have been so indoctrinated with cynicism that we are incapable of taking anything at face value; we always want to know what is really going on, and we all assume that whatever it is that lies behind the facade it is certainly sordid.  Oh, it looks like compassion, but it is really a power-play.  It looks like the pursuit of high ideals, but it is really all about money.  Practically the only thing we can accept as straightforward and true is the idea that nothing is straightforward and true.

It seems to me that this attitude is crippling our society and making public discourse impossible, as everyone knows that their side is the bearer of the truth which everyone else wishes to suppress.  Everyone knows that the media is biased against the Tories, everyone knows that the establishment is ganging up on Corbyn, everyone knows that religion is just about power and sexual repression, everyone knows that we are being lied to all the time.  And because all our thought now is conspiracy theory, we can't talk to each other: we just react with disbelief that the other person can't see what is really going on.  And of course every apparent event or action is explicable by the conspiracy theory, and so nothing can count as evidence against my own view.

The blame for this has to be fairly apportioned.  Philosophically, Nietzsche, Marx, and I guess Freud, must surely bear their share.  They taught us that everything is really about power, money, and sex respectively.  Between them, they raised the critical thinking that characterised the Enlightenment to the level of blanket suspicion, and in so doing of course killed off the Enlightenment itself.  But alongside them, we surely have to blame politicians, religious leaders, and others, who in so many cases have shown that suspicion was warranted, and that there really was something dark lurking behind the pleasant words and seemingly pleasant actions.

But there are deeper, and less arbitrary, roots of this attitude.  Certainly Marx drew on them, albeit in a hostile way.  These roots are Biblical.  Read the book of Daniel, or Revelation.  The message of these books is essentially: it may look as if one thing is going on (specifically, it may look as if God is defeated), but what is really happening is that God's plan is being worked out according to his timetable (and leading inexorably to his ultimate victory).  How is this not just another conspiracy theory?  It has to be admitted that no evidence is allowed to count against it.  It has to be admitted that the intention of these books is explicitly to unmask an otherwise unknown reality.  So how is this different?

I suppose the question that needs to be asked is one of authority.  How did Nietzsche, or Marx, or Freud, or your average Corbynista, come to see the reality that is otherwise hidden?  It cannot be based on empirical observation - it is the lens through which the world is viewed, it is too big for any data to sustain it, it is the substratum on which the facts themselves are built.  So how do they know?

The Biblical answer, the epistemological anchor for its own grand conspiracy 'theory', is the death and resurrection of Christ - because this one event is large enough (by virtue of involving the eternal Son of God in the history of the world) to anchor the grand interpretive scheme and to give it validity.  If in the one event, the forces of death and evil are overcome, then the defeat of death and evil is what is really going on in the world.

And hopefully the grand conspiracy loosens the hold on us which the other lesser theories wish to exert.