Claim #5: Satan doesn’t rule over hell, and in the Bible “Satan” is a force, not a person.
Satan reigns in Hell, with pitchfork and tail. (In the Bible, Satan is mostly an impersonal force.)
Sweeney is half right. Satan does not rule in hell, pitchfork in hand. His fate is to suffer in God’s eternal punishment along with the rest of the demons and anyone else who has rejected Christ (see Revelation 20). Of course, he is not ignorant of his fate, so rather than waste the last several thousand years trying to beg forgiveness from God, he’s instead been trying to take as many humans with him as he can.
Satan is not, however, an “impersonal force.” In Job 1, he directly speaks and interacts with God in the throne room of Heaven. In Luke 4, he has a conversation with Jesus (do impersonal forces have conversations?). In Luke 10, Jesus said he saw Satan’s fall from Heaven. In Revelation 12 and 20, we also learn that Satan was the snake in the Garden of Eden, and that he’s going to wage war on God at the end of human history.
In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis wisely observed, “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors, and hail a materialist or magician with the same delight.”
It’s one thing to claim Satan is an impersonal force. But you can’t use the Bible for that argument.
