What Bible Passages Actually Describe Satan’s Origin and Fall?

You're right that the biblical material on Satan's origin and fall is fairly scant.  The only explicit reference to Satan's Fall is found in Jesus teaching and in Revelation. Here they are:

Luke 10:18 He replied, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven." NIV

Rev 12:7-9  And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8 But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9 The great dragon was hurled down — that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him. NIV

Jesus obviously doesn't give us a whole lot of information, but the basic idea is still important: if Satan "fell" that means his origin was once "on high".  John agrees, the Dragon's starting place was heaven.  Some debate whether this war takes place before human history, or during the end times drama that John is describing, or around the time of Jesus birth.  It does follow a reference to Christ's birth (Rev 12:1-6), nevertheless, we know that Satan was ALREADY cast down to earth as the Creation Narrative (Gen 3) showed.  

The serpent figure was long associated with Satan therefore his fall must predate not only the arrival of Christ, but also the creation of man.  Thus we can infer a lot from just these two passages: that Satan must have been one of God's creations, one of his angels and his rebellion happened in prehistory and he was not alone in his rebellion, taking many angels with him.  This agrees with what's revealed in Jesus ministry who refers to "the Devil and his angels" (Matt 25:41) and with Job where the Accuser comes to the heavenly court with the "Sons of God" and thus must have also himself been an angel.

The Old Testament has other controversial passages that came to be associated with the origin and fall of Satan even though their overt reference was to specific human kings. For example, Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 which I'll comment on later.  They refer to the King of Babylon and Tyre respectively, but came to be seen as descriptors of Satan's origin and fall. 

Why did the Jewish mind make this inference?  The Jewish mind was trained on Scripture and the most fundamental idea about God in the Bible is that God is Good and God is Self Existent. God is not contingent on anyone or anything else for his being. This is summarized in His covenant name, "Yahweh" - literally "I AM". The Jews began to draw inferences from this one bit of revelation. For instance... If the self existent God is good, then goodness must be primary; badness must be secondary. 

They parted from Pantheistic thought that tended to see good and bad in balance. Jews said they were at war!  Pantheists said they were both eternal.  The Jews said one is eternal, the other doomed to fade away.  And they said that God is the hero in the war who we should be cheering for - "the LORD is a warrior!" and "the God of gods".  Badness they realized, has no intrinsic value. Everything a bad man does, he does for some good end, to increase his power or pleasure or wealth (which were inherently good things). Badness therefore was a parasite. Goodness was the real thing.

So the spiritual powers in the world that drove evil (and all Bible writers agreed that there were spiritual powers in the world) must have been, at one point, good since everything came from a good God. Badness was, therefore, only "corrupted goodness", there is nothing that is bad for it's own sake. In this way, without explicit revelation, the Jews (and the later Christians) accepted the idea that all evil powers started good and the greatest evil power started as the greatest thing God ever made.

This 'spiritual intuition' of the Jews agrees with and is built on what is explicitly known about Satan elsewhere, that he was a creation of God, that he was an angel originally good, that he rebelled against God in prehistory (as mentioned).  But it also explains perhaps why the Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 passages came to be associated with Satan even though they are not explicitly about him.  Here they are:

Isa 14:12-15
How you have fallen from heaven,
O morning star, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth,
you who once laid low the nations!
13 You said in your heart,
"I will ascend to heaven;
I will raise my throne
above the stars of God;
I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly,
on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain.  
14 I will ascend above the tops of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High."
15 But you are brought down to the grave,
to the depths of the pit. NIV

Though this is about the King of Babylon, the reference to a "star" brings to mind Job 38:7 which calls angels "morning stars" celebrating God's work at creation.  The Hebrew word for morning star is a reference to Venus so early Christian translations of Isaiah substituted the Latin term for that star, Lucifer.  This is where Satan got that name.  But originally all Isaiah meant was "morning star" – he was not giving us Satan’s name.

A lot of criticism is cast on Christians who use this passage to flesh out our understanding of Satan's origin and fall.  It is not explicitly about that, they say.  True enough.  However, given what WAS explicitly known about Satan from Genesis, and Job, the Jews already in the inter-testamental period began to associate this passage with Satan.  Those early interpreters (and later the church fathers) had much less of a problem than post Reformation scholars in seeing "layers" to Scripture.

Without denying that this passage was first about Babylon's king, it's eternal scope and cosmic language ("fallen from heaven", "enthroned on the sacred mountain", "make myself like the Most high") brought to mind spiritual forces beyond an earthly king.  "Mountain", "Brightness", "Stars", "sons of God" are all standard O.T. language for the unseen realm, and spiritual forces, used ubiquitously (Job 38, Psalm 82, Gen 6).  And no doubt as God's people began to see more and more clearly the workings of spiritual forces of evil, the idea that a human king was merely a mimic or reflection of a true spiritual master, was entirely plausible.

The same inference was made by Jews and later by Christians for

Ezek 28:12-17
'You were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. 13 You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you: ruby, topaz and emerald, chrysolite, onyx and jasper, sapphire, turquoise and beryl. Your settings and mountings were made of gold; on the day you were created they were prepared. 14 You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones. 15 You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you. 16 Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned. So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, O guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones. 17 Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. So I threw you to the earth; I made a spectacle of you before kings. NIV

Again this is FIRST about a human king of Tyre, no question.  But after a long taunt against him, Ezekiel's language in verse 17 suddenly swings toward an eternal, cosmic scope and brings an observant reader to think about the heavenly realm.  

The language as it refers to the King of Tyre therefore must be clear hyperbole, yet could it be literal if referring to the a spiritual King of Darkness?  Note the terms used: "model of perfection", "you were in Eden", "you were... a guardian cherub (a name for an angel)", "you were blameless", "mount of God".  It's not impossible to see this as flowery descriptions of the King of Tyre's wealth and power and reputation... but the references strongly suggest another layer, as other prophetic literature has multiple layers of meaning.  Was this king really "perfect or blameless"?  No.  In what way was he a cherub?  It's a stretch.  But, as it reflects a spiritual puppet master BEHIND such a proud and shiny king, it's no stretch at all.

So I don't dismiss the Isaiah or Ezekiel passages as clues to Satan's origin and fall as easily as some scholars do.  Some, so fearful of reading into scripture something the author never intended, may diminish the richness of God's Word as a source of revelation with layers of meaning.  I grant that if we go outside the author's stated intent we are in speculative territory and we must be reserved. However, the application of these passage for clues to Satan's origin and fall have long precedent in Jewish thought before Christ and in the church, and they are perfectly consistent with what we ALREADY know from other explicit scriptural teaching. 

In fact, do we really rely on these passages as sources of Satan information that we can't get anywhere else in the Bible?  I think the answer is no.  So why use them as such?   Because their language is prophetic and profound, and because here more than anywhere else do we get the sense of what Satan as "angel" really means:  that he was PERFECT; that he was GOOD.  Even this creature could turn against God.  They also underline that he and God are not coequal combatants in a dualistic struggle.  No, Satan’s counterpart is Michael, not God – who has no counterpart.  And God will have the last say, good will eventually win.  

Finally, these passages prophetically and eloquently flesh out knowledge given to us in 1 Tim 3:6 - that whenever it happened, pride was Satan’s downfall and could be ours as well.

Who Were The Sons of God From Genesis 6?

QUESTION:  What is your take on the "sons of God" mentioned in Genesis 6:2?

ANSWER:  Thanks, for the question.  There’s been a ton of speculation about this cryptic little passage.  Basically there’s three viable answers to the identity of the “Sons of God”:

• Sons of Seth
• Sons of Mighty Rulers
• Fallen Angels

Some scholars think that the reference to the “sons of God” means the descendants of Seth. He was the father of the “good” line of descendants from Adam.  These scholars assume that a reference is being made to this “good line” (Semites) by calling them “sons of God”.  And so the author is saying that the Semites polluted their progeny by intermarriage with women of Cain’s tribes outside of Seth’s line.  The children of these unions were great, but their alliance with the "daughters of men" were clearly unholy.  Support for this view comes from the story in the children of Israel, when similarly many of their men were seduced by the women of Moab, which brings God's swift judgment. (Numbers 25:1-4)

Other scholars don’t accept the Seth interpretation because no mention is made of Seth in the passage… and so they opt for a “Mighty Rulers” view.  This theory says great rulers, or kings married commoners and perhaps acquired large harems to demonstrate their power.  These intermarries corrupted them, even though their progeny were great princes of renown.

Both of these views have the advantage of not requiring us to accept the difficult idea that angels actually copulated with human beings.  But their weakness is that neither deals well with the text. 

For example, “sons of God” is never a euphemism for people in Scripture – except when David is one time called “God’s son” Psalm 2:7 – a passage that has big messianic overtones.  It is rather used almost exclusively as a euphemism for angels.  (Job 1:6, 2:1, Ps 82:6 etc). 

There are a few places where the word “God” in the Old Testament is used loosely to refer to rulers/judges, but these are rare and never include the “Son of” piece which uniquely refers to angelic beings in all other cases.  And what makes this case stronger is that “sons of GOD” are juxtaposed with “daughters of MEN” in this passage – to draw a contrast and to underline the unnaturalness of the union and the reason why the offspring of these unions are clearly not normal people (6:4).

Some reject this interpretation because Jesus said “angels are not given in marriage” (Matt 22:30) so angels, they say, must be sexless.  You can probably dismiss this objection, however, for two reasons.  First, because Jesus is talking about unfallen angels in their natural state, whereas Genesis is clearly taking about fallen angels in their “unnatural” state – that is, they’ve fallen from their position of authority and goodness (Jude 6) even though they keep much of their delegated power.  Secondly, Jesus point is probably not about the gender or sexuality of people or angels at all… it’s about the institution of marriage being obsolete in heaven. 

So the most natural interpretation, despite the “weirdness” of it’s conclusion, is that “sons of God” refers to mighty spirit beings, angels.

Almost ALL ancient Jewish and Christian commentators throughout history thought this way about the passage.  What you’ll note is that this is a very sober and unadorned version of similar ideas in ancient Greek and Roman mythology, where the gods do copulate with men and produce heroic offspring who are famous and do great deeds (Hercules, Achilles etc.)   Perhaps such a thing really happened in a different time – some hideous interplay between the physical and spiritual.  The difference is that the Bible’s record has no “once upon a time” feel to it, thus has a ring of authenticity, unadorned and straight forward.

If we accept the angel interpretation, we can’t know how this was possible.  We do know angels appear in human form in other places – sometimes people don’t even know the interaction is angelic until after the fact (Judges 6:12 & 22, Heb 13:2).  The Genesis text seems to open up the possibility that this ability extends past "visionary human appearance" to the angels adopting human genetics, since copulation happened and the human genome was clearly altered in their not-normal progeny.

Unquestionably this is strange!  But let's remember that today we are quickly coming to a place of being able to tinker with the human genome ourselves.  If mighty powers exist beyond us, they surely also possess this knowledge.  If you think such interference in our genetic destiny (if possible) seems proud and dangerous (as is our current forays into human genetic engineering), God seems to have agreed, as it coincided with his swift judgment.  And from that time on, it seems, the interplay between "the Powers" and humans was greatly curtailed.

So while we can't know how this happened, what we can know is that the result of these unholy unions is not just a curious oddity for the author.  The crossing of this line by the angels was something unspeakably evil – as it lead directly to the devastating judgment of the flood.

Would the Existence of Aliens Prove Fatal to Christianity?

QUESTION: Does the possibility of Extraterrestrial Life pose a threat to religion, Christianity or any of its fundamental beliefs about the natural world?

RESPONSE:  Thanks for articulating a very often-asked question.  To answer, we have to first discern what the fundamental principle in religion or Christianity is which excludes the very possibility of this universe containing other life forms.  In other words, what doctrine or Scriptural precedent precludes the existence of Alien life, such that the discovery of Aliens would be fatal to Christianity?

Before answering that, it's interesting to note that Christians have ALWAYS believed God created AT LEAST one other sentient, intelligent race in the universe.  Of course I am referring to angels.  So for Christians, the questions “do Aliens exist” and “are we alone in the Universe” have always been settled with a “yes” and a “no” respectively.

Aliens!

Angels, contrary to medieval art, are not deceased humans with harps on clouds, or fat babies with bows and arrows.  Angels are powerful beings of pure spirit. Most bible scholars would agree their creation predates both the earth and the appearance of humans on it.  The bible records angels sometimes appearing as humans – but in their nature they are nonhuman, non-corporeal, intelligent, morally free, sentient beings.

Despite this long-held belief in angels, the Alien question is thought to be fatal to Christianity for two reasons, one because it’s assumed to undermine the biblical narrative of human centrality and worth, and two because it’s assumed to undermine the biblical narrative about creation.  So let’s take these in turn:

Let’s call the first “the assumption of anthropocentrism” – the belief that the man-centered Bible must preclude other races on account of humanity’s unique relation to God.  If we accept this, and if Aliens were to be found, the Faith must collapse. 

But why should this be true?  It’s a false dichotomy.  Any parent with more than one child instantly sees it as such.  A parent can have more than one child, but the existence of another child does nothing to diminish the love, care and plans the parent makes for the first.

Even so, without denying the specialness of humanity to God, nor the eternal plans he made or the lengths he went to to save it, Christians can still affirm that God may have other races which are equally special to him, and for which he has equally wonderful and long term plans. (Lewis explored these possibilities in his science fiction books, Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra.)

What about Aliens and the uniqueness of the Incarnation?  Well, again if we believe God is dealing intimately with the “alien race” of angels without ever being incarnated as one of them, why couldn’t this be true of some other biological alien race?  Perhaps the redemption of the cross is universally applicable (literally!) and the discovery of Aliens would be further cause for mission.  This is speculative, but there’s nothing in the mere existence of those beings that is fatal to Christian theology about the cross.

Further, I’m not troubled that we get nothing about such Beings from the Bible.  Which is important to state, because inside this anthropocentric objection is another assumption: if Christianity really were true, it would give revelation of this fact to us.  And yet the Bible is silent on Aliens, ergo their discovery would be a Christianity defeater. 

But this objection fails for two reasons:  clearly, up to now, no Alien life has been found!  So it still may be that humans are God’s only going concern in the entire universe.  Two, even if Aliens were found, the Bible never claims to give us all knowledge of the universe, but only such knowledge as is necessary for our salvation.  Galileo’s famous dictum here applies, “God was interested in telling us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.”

Yes, the Bible affirms that humans are special, alone on earth we are “made in the Image of God.”  And it’s also true that Angels are seen serving/helping us as if that were their purpose (Heb 1:14).  And it’s also true Jesus said we matter more than the “many sparrows”. 

But should we assume by this that no other life forms are special to God?  Or that God has no workings with them and purposes which have nothing to do with us?  Far from it.  Over and over the Bible says the animals have great value to God, as he extols all the ways (some of which unknown to us) that they reflect his character and qualities.  (Job chp. 38-40).  And when God tells Jonah that he has pity on the city of Ninevah, laboring under sin, he mentions it’s cattle as part of the city he cares for!  In addition, Angels at times seem to be God’s primary concern, when even our redemption is painted as God’s act of warfare and glory directed at that race of exalted, powerful creatures (Eph 3:9,10; Col 2:8).

So with other intelligent, sentient life, and with other non-image bearing biological life – in both cases Christian scripture already tells us such life merely existing and having value to God is not mutually exclusive of humans having great worth, even preeminent worth on this world.

The irony is this:  the person who raises this objection usually means to take a stab at what they think is the inherent anthropocentrism of Christianity, not realizing that the Bible beat them to it:

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars,    which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?  You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.  Ps 8:3-5

But now the second assumption in this question is that Aliens would undermine Christian teaching about creation.  This objection really is just an offshoot of the creation/evolution objection.  Specifically this person assumes that the discovery of the size/age of the universe, combined with the theory of how life evolved on earth by mutation/natural selection means, A) the universe is teeming with life, and B) the Bible’s creation account has been falsified.

Regarding the truth of the Bible’s creation account, John Lennox gives a compelling Christian view of creation in 7 Days That Divide The World.  There he notes that the same way Christians eventually saw how Scripture accommodates a heliocentric solar system, we should also see the Bible’s creation account can accommodate long ages and the vast size of the universe.

So the only real problem is not aliens but unguided evolution which supposedly is making aliens all over the galaxy. 

But this objection is starting to backfire.  Even the most ardent Darwinian scientist will tell you that the theory is weakest at the point of the creation of the first self-reproducing cell.  There is currently no working materialist model of how life first arose on earth.  Why?  Assuming mutation/selection really works to create new structures and life forms (an unsubstantiated assumption as science is discovering), before there were ANY life forms, what does mutation/selection work on?  If life evolves by saved copying errors in DNA, what about before there was DNA?  Life from non-life is a massive mystery and we’re rapidly moving past the era when science naively thought time and the chance shuffling of chemicals could do the trick.

So ironically it’s at the point where the theory of life’s origin is WEAKEST that the proponent of Alien life has to be the most confident in it.  Exactly where we have no laboratory confirmation of how it happened on earth, we have to believe that life came from non-life literally millions of times “out there”.  Where does this confidence come from?  Not from the science, but from people's hopes or assumptions.

So while the discovery of other life in the universe wouldn’t be fatal to Christianity, the LACK OF DISCOVERY of other life in the universe may be fatal to materialism!  For the materialist, evolution should be “easy”.  It should be something that just happens, by chance random processes wherever the conditions are right.  And so the universe ought to be teeming with life.

S.E.T.I. Antenna Array

And that is what the early Alien Seekers assumed.  The Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) was a gov’t funded group of such seekers that spent millions of dollars looking for the radio signals of life forms which they assumed had to exist in the thousands if not millions.

But more discoveries put a damper on the Alien euphoria, not just the increasing failure of chemical theories of pre-biotic evolution, but also the multiplying factors necessary to support life.  Carl Sagan in the 1970’s presumed only 2 were needed so that if a planet had the right star and was the right distance from that star – wham-o – you’d have life spring up out of non-living chemicals eventually and inevitably.

Today, the factors have jumped from 2 to 200 and counting – making earth a very special place indeed.  This doesn’t even begin to touch the finely tuned nature of the universe as a whole.

So while the assumption is that the existence of Aliens is fatal to Christianity’s narrative about creation, it appears that if they do exist, they will only exist by the same intelligent design as designed us, and inside the same finely tuned universe we inhabit.  Needless to say, the discovery of an intelligently designed co-inhabitant of this finely tuned universe would not disturb my Christian faith in the least.