I read that liberal protestants theologians think that the devil is an alegory?

Question

How wide is this belief. Here is my source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_in_Christianity but I have seen it elsewhere.

Answer 1

Interesting that you should call them "Liberals."

There are open minded theologians of both Protestant and Catholic faiths, though in the minority, who believe that the concept of Satan, or Lucifer, is just that, an allegory... a concept or construct used to explain evil and imperfection in a world supposedly controlled by a perfect God.

It is also true that many, though probably not most, theologians believe that many of the stories in the Bible such as the creation, the flood, the passover, etc. were not meant to be taken literally but are sometimes poetic allegories used to teach moral lessons, to enforce obedience, and/or to explain the otherwise unexplainable, as were the parables of Jesus.

Answer 2

You know what allegory is, right? It's when we use a person to represent something that isn't human. The Statue of Liberty is an allegorical being, a woman who represents Liberty, lifting her lamp beside the golden door, as the poem goes.

Many Jews and Christians believe that certain passages in the Bible are meant to be allegorical. Adam and Eve, for instance, were not a single man and woman but are allegorical, representing 'Man' and 'Woman'.

There were religions before Christianity that believed in two separate gods, one good and one bad, who fought each other over the earth, with the earth, and people, being simultaneously pulled both ways. This is called Manichaeanism. This way of looking at things was very popular with some early Christian 'church fathers', like Hyppolytus and Epiphanus. They believed that the earth was a battleground where God and the Devil fought, and in doing so they promoted the Devil to the way some Christians think of him today, as the root of all evil, constantly watching us, scheming, influencing our judgment, etc.etc.

But the Devil is not important to Jews at all, and a lot of both Jews and Protestants don't believe in him as a powerful generator of evil. Just as cold doesn't exist, it's just the absence of heat, and dark doesn't exist, it's just the absence of light, so 'evil' is just the absence of Good. In that way of looking at things, the devil is allegorical.

When you see a cartoon character faced with a moral decision, with a little angel on one shoulder and a little devil on the other, -that- is an allegorical view of the devil (and, for that matter, angels too!)

Answer 3

As a buddhist, I have a hard time understanding how anyone could NOT see him as an alegory... or God either for that matter...

We have the Yin and Yang to represent our philosophy on this matter...

If a person is picturing the red devil with the twisty beard, then they have been watching too many cartoons and have not actually researched their religion...
That character is a hybrid of things that are nowhere to be found in the Bible... just like "Hell" looks very much like Dante's Inferno...

I believe that most religious texts are metaphorical - regardless of what the fundamentalists say (because they are the ones we write metaphors for - so they may understand better how to see our complex world).

Answer 4

The Jews think that the Devil is not "banished", but rather, pointing out the sin in mankind.

Answer 5

I;m not a protestant but I consider it a metaphor or a figure of speech .

Answer 6

Odd, the Bible says he exists.