“Who Was That Fork-tailed Man?”

John 8: 44: “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him ….” There has arisen in much of the Church a doctrine that the devil started life as an archangel, but he fell in pride from his holy state. Isaiah chapter fourteen and Ezekiel chapter twenty-eight are cited as proof texts for this legend. But Jesus punctures this tale when He says that Satan was always a murderer. This precludes any age of innocence and subsequent moral collapse. In Jesus’ view, the devil was created the devil. My vote is with Jesus. As for Isaiah and Ezekiel, there are other explanations for those passages.