Meaning the accuser ‘Satan’ is the name given in Christian tradition to the originator of all evil. Given that repeating patterns of temptation, accusation, vanity and violence have troubled us humans from the beginning, it is reasonable to posit an evil agency that ‘gets into’ the human drama. The alternative to doing this is to believe that humans themselves are the authors of evil, but this also is an accusation that allows no possibility of redemption or rescue. The advantage of positing a non-human author of evil is that this allows us to relate to one another without necessarily accusing one another over whatever has caused conflict in the past.

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