Do devils contribute to human evil doing? What do orthodox Christians believe about this issue?

Some religions conceive God as the author of both good and evil in this world. Others imagine two supreme, co-equal creators of the world, one good, one evil. Zoroastrianism comes to mind.

Orthodox Christians have always defended the belief that the uncreated God is the author only of good. Evil comes solely from creatures. It is hard to find thinking Christians of any denomination who do not agree that humans are created capable of doing both good and evil. That comes with our freedom. All evil therefore flows from the free choice of created intelligent beings--both corporeal and non-corporeal.

For the past 2000 years almost all Christian theologians and leaders have added that humans are not the only creatures with will and knowledge. There is also an order of created spirits. Some spirits opted for evil. Most opted for good. Those opting for evil are generally called demons, devils or, as individuals, Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer, etc.

Orthodox teaching has always been that God merely permits evil spirits to  tempt humans to sin. That story began with Eve, serpent and fruit of a tree.

A popular book surveying this field is Peter Stanford’s 1996 THE DEVIL: A Biography.  It is well researched and Stanford has published a number of common sense but critical books about religious history.

That Christians, both theologians and peasants, have always believed in personal devils Stanford lavishly demonstrates. But that belief is now weakening. The basis for the belief is obvious: many, many New Testament passages, notably in the Gospel of John. Jesus was tempted by a devil in face-to-face dialog and also cast out devils. Much of the New Testament is about Jesus’s conquest of Satan. Paul, too, faced the Devil who prevented him from, for example, visiting the church at Thessalonica (I Thess. 2:17-19).

Peter Stanford finds the Devil far less likely to appear in Catholic pulpiteering than even 30 years ago. Lucifer is officially unmentioned by Methodists, problematic among Episcopalians but still a living reality to Southern Baptists, and notably to Reverend Billy Graham.

Church leaders today are cautious because they remember that their predecessors once went to extremes and were far too ready to find conscious tools of Lucifer in harmless old women and misguided but well intentioned heretics.

To me the core element which God through the Church reveals  about demons is that evil does not just happen. Nor can it be entirely  explained as wrong internal choices by autonomous humans. Some human sinning is actively promoted by non human creatures. Why does God permit this? We do not know--yet. It is a mystery never to be plumbed in this life.

Through freely yielding to Satan, Adam and Eve lost for all of us the grace of original holiness. Thanks to Satan human nature is wounded, disoriented. Orthodox Christians accept both a personal devil and human original sin. They know that evil cannot be eradicated by natural means alone. Hence, Satan tempting us continually to evil bears some responsibility for  “serious errors in the area of education, politics, social action, and morals” (CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, section 407).

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