Will The Real Devil Please Stand Up: Sifting Through Truth And Tradition

[pogi]

I know I can get a bit “out there” but I’m still trying to at least loosely tie it to something that is taught in scripture.

I would tie it to spirit.

If the light of Christ relates to both physical and spiritual perception (D&C 88:11), an opposing substance (if it exists--as if the opposite of an apple exists) would have to as well, but such a substance hasn’t been identified in scripture in the same way light has. But I see no problem with anyone believing it, either.

Satan has been identified in scripture as the opposition to Christ, yet they both have spiritual properties, while one has physical properties and the other does not. We should consider light and darkness to have the same properties, and oppose each other in the same way. In other words, darkness does not and cannot oppose light physically, just as Satan does not and cannot oppose Christ physically. Spiritually speaking, on the other hand, almost every page of scripture speaks of the opposing spiritual forces of light and dark.

D&C 93:31 -- sheer refusal to see.

Refusal to see is use of agency. One could not have, or use, agency save he is enticed by one or the other (2 Nephi 2:16). If light is what entices us toward God, what is it that entices us toward Satan and allows agency to exist?

In other words, if nothing opposed spiritual light, one could not choose but to see.

I have enjoyed the exchange as well, thanks for your thoughts.

Edited December 19, 2012 by pogi

[CV75]

I would tie it to spirit.

I keep going back to D&C 88:11-13, which seems to teach that at some fundamental level, physical and spiritual light are the same thing and are manifest in our power to see physically, intellectually and spiritually, and in the first place, in the Lord’s power to govern and send forth this light.

Darkness is commonly defined as the absence of light, but light is not defined as the absence of darkness (but rather a radiation that makes things visible to those organisms with the wherewithal to process and interpret images—this of course can be used figuratively to describe spirituality). Anything that makes things invisible is only deflecting or absorbing existing light, and must be a form of energy or matter itself, which I take to mean scripturally as a form of the light that is in all things in the first place.

Fundamentally then, it seems that God and Satan are made of the same stuff, though they many possess different amounts of it and do different things with it. Since all intelligence is co-eternal, we likewise are made of the same stuff. So there isn’t anything in opposition to this stuff, except perhaps non-existence, or space (if space means “nothing”).

A total absence of light then could be merely space, which doesn’t last for long once God enters the picture (Abraham 3:24; D&C 88:37). And in the scriptures space is often a reference to time, not place, so there may be some ramifications there.

Anyway I’ll keep thinking on it.