St. Stephen is remembered in the church as one of the first deacons chosen by the apostles (Acts 6:5) and the first Christian martyr following the resurrection and ascension of Christ (7:58-60). The church has also, however, maintained and handed down a great deal more information about this important saint. Like St. Paul, St. Stephen had been a student of the rabbi Gamaliel, a figure who appears briefly in the New Testament (5:34; 22:3), but becomes a massively important figure of authority in later Talmudic Judaism. The Mishnah, in particular, is composed primarily of the statements and opinions of famed rabbis on particular topics of the Torah, and Gamaliel’s opinions are featured prominently. While St. Paul’s level of rabbinical, as…
In the post which began the current series, the figure of the Devil and his fall from membership in God’s divine council was discussed. Having served as a cherub or seraph, a guardian of God’s throne, he sought to supplant God in the lives of newly created human beings out of envy, resulting in his being cast down to Sheol to reign over the dead in a kingdom of dust and ashes in Genesis 3. This figure, though clearly seen in the understanding of death and Christ’s victory over it in the New Testament and the liturgical tradition of the Orthodox Church, lacks many of the common features and characteristics of Satan. He was not, per se, an archangel, certainly…
In the previous posts of the present series, the Devil and a group of fallen angels were discussed. The former was cast down into Sheol, or Hades, to devour and rule over the dead. The latter were confined in chains in the Abyss for their crimes until the end of the world. In another previous post, the angelic beings to whom the nations were assigned at the tower of Babel, who later became corrupt and sought the worship of the nations they were to govern were described. These beings did not fall as the others and remain in the heavenly places according to St. Paul (Eph 6:12), though they are judged at the resurrection of Christ (Ps 82) and their…
In a previous post, the giants of the Old Testament, who came into being through demonic sexual immorality, were discussed. Only brief comments were made at that time about their angelic “parents”. These angelic beings, however, play an important role in the unfolding of the Old Testament and in New Testament theology. In another post, the three events of Genesis 1-11 which might be termed a ‘fall’ of humanity were discussed. It was commonplace in the Fathers and other early Christian writers to speak about the sinful state of humanity remedied by Christ in terms of one of these three events, with the other two subordinated, but which event varied. St. Irenaeus sees all three in terms of the sinful…
The figure of the Devil or Satan as a personal spiritual being appears at a few distinct points in the scriptures in which his origin and identity are described. The Biblical picture of this entity, however, is very often distorted by later popular Christian literature and modern popular culture. There is far more of Milton than of scripture in the average Christian of today’s understanding of who the Devil is, what his goals and purposes are, and how he came to be who he is today. The various demons and devils of scripture, the subject of the next several posts, are often merged together or arranged into some kind of hierarchy, or more recently bureaucracy, in a way that is…
