Question guide
Draft · being fact-checkedDid God create the devil?
The Bible never tells how the devil came to be. Colossians 1:16 puts every heavenly power in creation without naming him, and Revelation 12 names him without describing his origin. The Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant answer, that God made him good and he fell by his own choice, is assembled from scattered passages read with tradition. Its key texts, Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14, address the kings of Tyre and Babylon; the Satan reading is attested from Tertullian and Origen. Early writers disagreed on the cause: neglect of duty (Athenagoras) or envy of humans (Irenaeus). Other traditions differ: the Qur'an has God make Iblis from fire, Jehovah's Witnesses say God created the person who became the Devil, and Latter-day Saints call him a spirit son of God. Whether these events happened is beyond evidence. Crenshaw argues blaming the devil leaves the problem of evil, since an all-powerful God could stop him.
The creation passages cited here do not name the devil. Revelation names him but does not describe his creation. Christian teaching that God created him good and he later fell draws on interpretation and tradition. Evidence cannot settle whether these events happened.
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