2 Nephi
28:22 records a prophecy of Nephi:
And behold, others he [Satan] flattereth away, and
telleth them there is no hell; and he saith unto them: I am no devil, for there
is none--and thus he whispereth in their ears, until he grasps them with his
awful chains, from whence there is no deliverance.
This
prophecy predicts, in part, that there will be individuals and groups that will
deny the existence of Satan. Of course, there are naturalists who, naturally
(pun intended) will reject a supernatural Satan (as well as demons), but within
the broad Christian perspective, there are some small groups and individual
thinkers who have rejected the existence of Satan and/or demons as an article
of faith.
This
movement of thought grew after the publication of the Book of Mormon in 1830; a
very influential work was by John Epps in 1842, The Devil. This volume
played an important role in the theology of John Thomas, an English medical
doctor, who, in 1848, would become the founder of the denomination which would later
be called the “Christadelphians”; much of Epps arguments were adopted
in Thomas’ 1849 book, Elpis Israel. Rejection of supernatural evil is
a core doctrine of the Christadelphian movement (one is excommunicated from the movement if they embrace such a doctrine; belief in it is rejected by their Birmingham Amended Statement of Faith).
That the “no
supernatural devil” concept was taking ground in certain quarters of the USA
and elsewhere is evident by the fact that Josiah Priest had to write an entire
book defending the traditional view of Satan and demons in his 1839 tome, The Anti-Universalist.
In the
demonology of the Christadelphians, and other groups (e.g., Church of the
Blessed Hope), the Bible does not teach a personal, supernatural devil.
Instead, “the devil” is any adversary, and often an external personification of
man’s personal sinful desires. Furthermore, “demons” are a first-century mannerism
of speaking about mental illnesses, with the New Testament authors using the
language of their time (“accommodation”) to convey their message. Duncan
Heaster, a leading Christadelphian apologist, has written an entire book on the
“no-devil” doctrine, The Real Devil. Duncan Smith, an Unitarian
apologist, rightly labelled the book, exegetically, “a joke.”
That those
who claim to privilege the biblical texts and yet deny the ontological existence
of supernatural evil are often on an exegetical fishing trip but without their
fishing poles. For instance, the New Testament authors clearly believed that “demons”
were separate personalities from the people they possessed. In Luke 4:41, we
read:
And demons also came out of many, crying out,
and saying, Thou art Christ the Son of God. And he rebuking them suffered them
not to speak; for they knew that he was Christ.
In Koine
Greek, “demon” is a neuter noun, δαιμόνιον. The KJV translates this term as “devil”
in the above text (thus my change to the text). The pronoun “them” in this
verse is also a neuter, αὐτὰ, which refers back to the “demons,” not the people
(which would have resulted in Luke using the masculine). Clearly, Luke
believed that the demons were personalities with distinct existence from the
bodies they possessed.
Interestingly,
most of these groups also hold to “soul-sleep” or “soul-death,” and preach that
“hell” is the grave/the death-state, mirroring Nephi’s prophecy that they would
deny the existence of “hell.”
Perhaps one
could make the claim that this prophecy is, in part, fulfilled by such a
movement of thought within this sphere of the broad Christian movement. If such is a case, we have a prophecy that finds some fulfillment after the publication of the Book of Mormon in 1830.
