Cohoon/Gary Debate on Satan

 
 
 Proposition: 
 The Scriptures teach that God created an angelic being that fell 
from grace and now is the epitome of evil known as "Satan."

Affirm:  Bobby Cohoon
Deny:  James Gary

Before getting into the main part of the affirmative, I want to 
clear up a few errors in the affirmative as stated. “Angelic 
being” should be replaced by “spiritual being” as we have no 
knowledge that Satan was an angel.  The word “grace” should be 
replaced by “righteousness” as Satan was never under grace, but 
he was righteous (grace has only been offered to man). In its 
most basic form the question is did God create a righteous 
spiritual being who fell from righteousness and became known as 
the epitome of evil, Satan. There is ample evidence to satisfy 
this question from the pages of the Holy Scriptures. Any 
deviation from the Holy Scriptures would be to follow the ideas 
of man in all their fallibilities. With that said I will now 
proceed with my first affirmative:

“Even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God” (Psalms 
90:2). Only God is eternal. Genesis 1:1 affirms this by saying 
“In the beginning God created….” While everything waited to be 
created, God already was. John wrote “In the beginning was the 
Word” (John 1:1). God already was before anything else came to 
be. The apostle Paul wrote of God’s “eternal power and Godhead..” 
(Romans 1:20). Isaiah called God “the everlasting God, the LORD” 
(Isaiah 40:28). God pre-exists EVERYTHING. Only God is from 
everlasting to everlasting! Science can create life in a test 
tube (and, only then using the building blocks already created by 
God), yet God is the life that has no beginning or end. The 
writer of Hebrews wrote “And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast 
laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works 
of thine hands” (Hebrews 1:10).  Of those works the writer of 
Hebrews wrote “They shall perish; but thou remainest” (Hebrews 
1:11).  It was written of Melchizedek, King of Salem and a type 
of Christ, “Without father, without mother, without descent, 
having neither beginning of days, nor end of life” (Hebrews 7:3). 
Only God is eternal. Only God has neither beginning nor ending of 
days. 

Moving on, there are some important questions that have to be 
answered to satisfy the first affirmative of this debate. First, 
I will look at the creations of God. John 1:3 states that “All 
things were made by him.” Everything WAS created by God. John 
follows up this statement with the following: “without him was 
not any thing made that was made” (John1:3b). God preexist all 
things in His eternal state, and God made all things. According 
to this verse not one thing was made that God did not create. In 
writing to the Colossians Paul affirmed what John wrote by saying 
“For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that 
are in earth” (Colossians 1:16). Paul took the mystery out of 
just what was created. He told us that everything, be they 
spiritual beings in Heaven or things on the earth, they were 
created by God: “visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, 
or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were 
created by him, and for him” (Colossians 1:17b). God created it 
all: the whole shebang. Not the tiniest of atoms were created 
without the Word of God. 

So far we have noted that God preexist all things as he is 
eternal. And, all things, be they on earth or in Heaven, were 
created by Him. We now turn to the nature of his creations.

God can create only GOOD. When God looked out over all he had 
created it was recorded that “And God saw every thing that he had 
made, and, behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). In writing 
to Timothy, the apostle Paul said, “For every creature of God is 
good” (1 Timothy 4:4). God can only make good. He is righteous. 
He can not create “bad.” His nature is such that he cannot create 
“evil”: “there is no iniquity with the LORD our God” (1Chronicles 
19:7). 

Does Satan exist? From Genesis to Revelation and all points in 
between Satan exists. Genesis 3:1 introduces us to Satan: “Now 
the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the 
LORD God had made.”  Revelation 20:2 tells us who that serpent in 
the garden was: “And he laid hold on the dragon, that old 
serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan.”  First Chronicles 21:1 
tells us “Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to 
number Israel.”  And, one must not forget that it was Satan who 
was the major antagonist in the book of Job: “So went Satan forth 
from the presence of the LORD, and smote Job with sore boils from 
the sole of his foot unto his crown” (Job 2:7). Scripture gives 
us more than ample evidence of the existence of Satan.

We now turn to the question of whether Satan was a spiritual 
being.  Turning back to the book of Job we read “Now there was a 
day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the 
LORD, and Satan came also among them” (Job 1:6). This shows us 
that Satan had access to God in Heaven. Other than a spiritual 
being no one has that “type” of access. Luke recorded “Then 
entered Satan into Judas surnamed Iscariot….” (Luke 22:3). How 
could one that was not spirit enter into another? Revelation 
12:7: “And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought 
against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels.”  Other 
than a spiritual being how could one fight a war in Heaven? We 
learn that Satan, the Devil, was cast out of Heaven: “the great 
dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and 
Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the 
earth, and his angels were cast out with him” (Revelation 12:9). 
If Satan were not a spiritual being he would not have been in 
Heaven. All scripture points to Satan being a spiritual being, 
not a fleshy being such as is man. To interpret anything more is 
to go beyond the bounds of the written Word. 

Having proven that God created all things, and that by his nature 
all he can do is “good,” we turned then to the fact that Satan 
exist, proving that if he exist he was created by God, as all 
things were. We examined the fact that Satan is a spiritual 
being, and now turn our attention to the question of whether he 
was created a righteous being.  In comparing the King of Tyre to 
Satan Ezekiel wrote “Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day 
that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee” (Ezekiel 
28: 15).  Satan was created in a state of righteousness. Jude 1:6 
tells us that many of those created in a righteous spiritual 
state left that righteous position: “And those angels not having 
kept their first place, but having deserted their dwelling-place, 
He has kept in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment 
of a great Day.” Satan was created in a righteous state which he 
abandoned. Satan exists. He was created by God. Thus, he was 
created in a state of righteousness. 

In Genesis 3:1-14 we learn of Satan in an already fallen state. 
Would he tempt man if he had not already fallen? The same already 
fallen Satan played a starring role throughout the book of Job. 
The Prophet Isaiah writes of Satan “How you are fallen from the 
heavens, O shining star, son of the morning! How you are cut down 
to the ground, you who weakened the nations!” (Isaiah 14:12).  In 
Revelation 20:10 it is said that Satan deceived the people. Would 
one of righteousness deceive others? No! He fell from that 
righteous state in which he was created. 

God is all that is from everlasting to everlasting. God created 
all. And, by his nature God can create nothing that is not GOOD. 
Satan not being a “un-cause” was a created spiritual being. Thus, 
Satan was created by God, and created in a righteous state. From 
this righteous state Satan fell.  Falling from this righteous 
state prompted Jesus to say the following in reference to Satan: 
“Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye 
will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in 
the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a 
lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of 
it.” (John 8:44).  John, in his first epistle, wrote “All 
unrighteousness is sin” (1 John 5:17). Satan introduced 
unrighteousness into the perfect world that God had created.  By 
doing so he became the epitome of all that is evil. 

I humbly submit this first affirmative. The Holy Scriptures back 
up this affirmative. To suggest that God did not create a 
spiritually righteous being that fell from that state of 
righteousness and became the epitome of evil would be to go 
beyond the Word of God and adhere to the ideas of men and false 
teachers. 

In Him,
Bobby Cohoon