“Satan is not evil by nature, but by will and action. In Satan there is no truth whatsoever; he is absolute falsehood and deception. Satan is not just a negation or deprivation of good, but a positive force with free will that always chooses evil….The devil and evil spirits know that God exists and recognize true and devoted Christians, but pious Christians discern the plans of the devil. The devil, however, constantly employs every method of deception to enslave man to satanic forces and causes rebellion against God. He is the cause of corruption and disorder, a parasitic power in the world that will ultimately be destroyed by the power of God in the "last days." Because there is no compromise between God and the devil, the struggle will continue until the end…The whole human race, by the death of Christ on the Cross, received deliverance from the authority of the devil, and everyone who makes use of this saving weapon is inaccessible to the demons.” (Rev. George C. Papademetriou, Ph.D., Saint John Maximovitch)
“Jesus here calls the devil “the wicked one,” commanding us to wage against him a war that knows no truce. Yet he is not evil by nature, for evil is not something derived from any nature as created but is what has been added to nature by choice. The devil is the prototypically evil one, because of the excess of his evil choices and because he who in no respect was injured by us wages against us an implacable war. Thus we do not pray “deliver us from the wicked ones” in the plural but “from the wicked one.” (St. John Chrysostom)
“…there is mystery in the cosmos because the cosmos is related to God. There will always be some aspects of the created order we cannot fully comprehend….not only is there a natural goodness in creation as established by God, creation is also subject to the Fall of humans and a separation from God. There is also evil present in the universe, and this too must be recognized, something modern science is not comfortable with [at least partially because ideas of the devil and demons are so over exploited in popular thinking]…In John Milton’s famous Puritan epic Paradise Lost, he recast the devil as a principled revolutionary, an almost romantic rebel. There is far more of Milton than of Scripture in the average Christian of today’s understanding of the devil, what his goals and purposes are, and how he came to be who he is today.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh, Fr. Stephen De Young)
“In an inexplicable manner, holy humility elevates us about all created things and preserves the grace of God in our life. Let’s bear in mind, then, a wise warning that says: ‘the devil doesn’t eat or drink, so in theory he’s the greatest ascetic, but that doesn’t make him any the less evil… Humility’s the only weapon that defeats the devil, it’s the necessary requirement for salvation, the mystic divine force which enfolds all within itself. Wherever humility blossoms, there flows the glory of God, there the eye of the plant of the soul blooms into an unfading flower…Sometimes we think the devil is at us and we need to take authority over him. But what is really happening is that God is after us and we need to repent and clothe ourselves with humility. Then we are better prepared to take authority over the devil.” (St. Isaac the Syrian, Neal Lozano)
“…what we dwell on, whether it be what is holy or what is unholy, will determine the state of our hearts. If the self concentrates on the ungodly, the tongue, an organ of the body, will express our sacrilegious nature. But if the person feeds on what is godly (such as the scriptures and spiritual reading), there will be no place in body, mind, or soul for the Devil, temptations, and sin. The prayer of Paul will be answered, and the self will be wholly sanctified.” (Fr. Basil)
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