Do Episcopalians Believe In Satan?

Do Episcopalians believe in Satan?

Today’s gospel is Luke 10:1-11,16-20. The Lord appoints seventy missionaries and sends them out to prepare the way for his own arrival, and they return and report to him. At verse 18 Jesus says “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.” (KJV). More than fascinating, this is arresting, distracting, stops me in my tracks. Jesus himself speaks of the adversary (Greek σαταναν). How should I understand Him? 

As Luke uses the quotation in this setting, Jesus may simply be affirming the report of the seventy that they were able to cast out demons. But lifted out of Luke’s context and taken on its own, the independent sentence is Jesus’ own word that there indeed is an enemy, even a personal enemy, in the midst of us, even within us, working against us and working against the love of God within us. 

As a progressive Christian, I don’t understand Satan as an individual being, the evil one in the Job drama, that’s too literal for me. Might I be wrong? Is my rejection of belief in the existence of a personal Satan itself a victory for the adversary? That’s what C.S. Lewis is all about in The Screwtape Letters, isn’t it, Satan’s greatest hope is that I won’t believe in him at all.

What does the Episcopal Church believe and teach? Look at our Examination of candidates for Holy Baptism:

Question     Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?

Answer        I renounce them.

Question     Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?

Answer        I renounce them.

Lex Orandi Lex Credendi, the law of praying is the law of believeing: is it possible for me in my postmodern intellectual sophistication to scoff condescendingly and reject the idea that Satan exists, and yet still be true and faithful to the teaching of my church? It is not.

TW+