Philo, you might need to go back to the Bible

>>Islam despite all its retoric about monotheism teaches the reality of the spirit person - Satan. Mohomad claimed to have communed with him. Jesus never communed with a spirit...<<

Luke 4:5-8 (King James Version):

4:5 And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.
4:6 And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.
4:7 If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.
4:8 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.

So is this metaphorical or literal?

And will you use the same standards of truth/fiction literal/metaphorical on all holy books, or just the ones you find convenient?

Or perhaps I have completely missed your point

Your reference to the the tempter in Matthew is a reference to the leader of the Jewish stronghold of the zealots held out in the desert who plotted the overthrow of the Roman occupation. He offers Jusus a leading place in his forces if he would follow him. The text has been misrepresented by the Roman Catholic Church, and those that follow a belief in a literal spirit world. Jesus saw the zealots as not following the will of God and the service of God even to a foreign Government as Joseph and Daniel who were subject to foreign powers. The zealots way was death to the occupiers, contrasted to Jesus teaching of "Love your enemy, and pray for those that persecute you." Read Matthew 5 in the context of his recent past.

Sells complains that:

a) Christ, as God, is being attacked by the authorities of modern society known as scientists, because they have wrongly associated Christians with a belief in the spirit world;

b)True Christian belief excludes a belief in the spirit world.

Does believing in the spirit world put false belief before actual or true perception of reality?

What does the Bible say about spirits?

a) Jesus cast out unclean spirits in possession of the bodies, minds, souls of various individuals. He could because he created all creatures, including spirits;

b) Jesus is the author of all matter (the physical world) studied by scientists;

c) Jesus is God (Arius is wrong in saying he is just a creature).

Scientists study the matter created by God. If they can't believe in the spirit world, it isn't because of a simple theology.

Arius was a gnostic with a human imagination unable to grasp who God is. The ancients believed that the flesh/body/matter was evil, and hindered the rise of man to the heavens, where he could achieve godlike knowledge and status.

In order to rise, man/men had to leave behind their bodies (see Plato, Timaeus), upon which they could soar towards heaven.

Jesus as God enfleshed was abhorrent to Arius because in the gnostic scheme of things, there can be no connection between God and flesh (good and evil).

However, God proclaims in Genesis that creation before the fall was very good, rather than inherently evil.

Modern gnostics would banish all those associated with the flesh, attempting to distance themselves from evil/damnation/non-heaven. Those banished include females (more of the body), the lower class (pre9=ll, blue collar workers incl. firemen), etc. This is a delusion of distance between the gnostic self and evil, and is unblblical.

Scientists, attatched to the gnostic mind-body distinction, look down on the less intellectual who would recognize what Jesus did -- the
spirits he created (fallen/unclean).

One can study matter without referring to these spirits, by the way.

Jesus's creations, corporeal or spirit or both, are just that. Real. Existent. Undeniable. He is God, after all.

Philo,

Gnostic metaphysics describes, Monad, father of all, and the nature of God:

“It is not fitting to think of it as god or as something of the sort, for it is superior to deity; nothing is above it, for nothing has mastery over it. It is not inferior to anything, because it lacks nothing.” – Apocryton of John 2.33 [in Athanassiadi and Frede]

I posit, the above, would not suggest a Gnostic complementality regarding good and evil.

Similarly, in Christianity, Satan is subordinate to God. Herein, the Temptation of Christ, as a member of the godhead, appears problematic to me:

If Jesus Christ [of the godhead] is of the substance of God, how can He, ever, be tempted by the inferior Satan? Why even try? It's like the crooks always shooting at Superman, when they already know he is bullet proof.

-Q4U- With Zorocastorism, are God and Satan "equal" in its dualism structure?

In developing his Neoplatonic construct (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), Origen develops a graded system of sorts, suggesting the influence of Numenius and The Chaldean Oracles (O’meara): The Christian trinity seems to have been influenced by earlier trinities.


Spider,

I saw that TV show too. Fiction. Please note, words sometimes change gender in translation and people wanting to sell books ignore this fact.

There are plenty serious non-fiction studies on General Religiosity and Theocrasia, wish will put Christianity to the test, in an historical perspective, without the need for more popular titles.

Sells,

I know I am not welcome, here. I’m not back to stay.

What is it with you guys, that makes you invent a different question if you don't like the one that is asked?

Yes, that means you, Philo.

The extract I put in my post was Luke 4:5-8 (KJV).

"4:8 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan"

You respond with:

"Your reference to the the tempter in Matthew is a reference to the leader of the Jewish stronghold of the zealots.... etc etc."

My reference was absolutely not "the tempter in Matthew", but "the Satan in Luke".

Now, are you willing and able to answer my question? Or are you going to pretend I didn't ask it, but something different entirely, like whether the loaves were unleavened and the fish filleted?

Let me remind you again of the sequence.

You stated "...the spirit person - Satan. Mohomad [sic] claimed to have communed with him. Jesus never communed with a spirit"

I referred you to your principle document of record, the King James Bible, where it notes clearly that he did, in fact, commune directly with this Satan figure.

So which is right?

Is this to be read metaphorically or literally?

And do you use the same standards of truth/fiction literal/metaphorical on all holy books, or just the ones you find convenient?

Satan is a late creature to the occult fiction of the bible, these theological posturings always degrade into a schism in the book club.The authors meant different characters when they introduced satan, lucifer, the devil, abbadon, Apollyon, the serpent, Father of man, Belial, Beelzebub and angel of Light, the god of peace that the god of war cast out of heaven and possibly more if we chase the esoterics north, nestorists east and the gnostics south.

Its all Harry Potter of the 4th to 11th centuries.

Dungeons and Dragons to the tee.