Why is Satan irredeemable?
In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate
Satan poses a unique problem to a theory of volition. Consider
the following points:
- He chose and
continues to choose to disobey God
- He knows that disobeying God will result in his own doom
- He knows that he can repent (yet does not even attempt
to do so)
- He knows the above as a certainty — he not only
thinks 2–3 are probable, but that they are necessary
A consideration of the above points will certainly strike one
as odd. Satan does not seem to be acting in a sane manner, let alone
rationally.
Yet he is clearly not irrational. If he were
irrational — if, say, he had a disordered thought process such that he could
not link antecedents and consequents or reason through different actions and
evaluate what will best achieve his goal— then he would not be so successful in
deterring us humans. Yet he seems to have no trouble with having a goal and
carrying out the requisite actions needed to achieve that goal i.e. in leading
humans astray.
Nor does he seem to be insane in the sense of being out of
touch with reality. He seems to know and appreciate the points 2 & 3 above,
both of which are the features relevant to reality. His insanity seems to be
his unwillingness to repent.
In this essay, I want to argue that Satan is not motivated by
rage, envy, revenge, pride, or even despair, but by spite.
What does Satan desire?
The general story of desire is something like this: when we
desire, we are aiming to get something. When I desire a banana, I am disposed
to act in such a way so as to get the banana. Satan desires something, so he is
motivated or disposed to act in a way to get that desire.
“Satisfying” a desire is a specific jargon term. It means that
the desire is achieved, i.e. satisfied. This may not result in a happy state of
mind. My desire may be misled — I may desire a banana without knowing that I am
allergic to them. The satisfaction of the desire for the banana would result in
hives, yet the desire would have been satisfied in some minimal sense.
Why even think that Satan desires anything at all? After all,
desire is not necessarily the only thing that can motivate action. Some action
is non-volitional; my action of jumping when I am scared is not because I chose
to do so, but because of an instinct or a reflex. It seems wrong to say that
Satan’s long-standing decision to misguide mankind is due to something
like a reflex. After all, it is clearly a determination that he makes, a
reasoned (if perverse) determination with a clear logic (Qur’an 7:16–17, all
translations are from Abdul Haleem):
“And then Iblis [Satan] said, ‘Because You have put me in the wrong, I will lie in wait for them all on Your straight path: Then I will come to them from before them and from behind them and on their right and on their left, and You will not find most of them grateful [to You].’”
But maybe there are other mental states that can motivate volitional
action. Consider beliefs. If I believe that it is good for me to eat a
banana because it will give me vitamin K, I will be motivated to eat. But
belief doesn’t seem to be a sufficient condition to necessitate an
action. Perhaps Satan believes it is good (his good or the general good)
to set people on the false path. He seems to think it is his right to do
so — note that he says that God has put him in the wrong, rather
than the reverse. But this belief does not seem to motivate action. Rather,
it seems that my belief that bananas are good for me trigger a desire in
me to eat something. The desire is motivating the actions.
So we can say that Satan may believe he is in the
right — that he is performing a good by misguiding people — but we still don’t
know (a) why he thinks this is good; and (b) what sort of desire this triggers
in him.
So Satan desires something because he is making decisions to
achieve a goal over a very long period of time. His decisions are motivated by
some desire. Of course, the obvious desire is to land humans in Hell. But what
is the triggering desire, what is “keeping him going,” so to speak? Why does he
find this to be a valuable goal?
What is spite?
Spite is a unique phenomenon. It may be triggered by another
emotion or event or mental state, say by shame or by rage, but it seems to be
constituted by something else entirely.
In Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky, the
narrator reports that he is the most spiteful man alive. (We later learn that
his spite has been triggered by shame.) He says:
“I got to the point of feeling a sort of secret abnormal, despicable enjoyment in returning home to my corner on some disgusting Petersburg night, acutely conscious that that day I had committed a loathsome action again, that what was done could never be undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing, gnawing at myself for it, tearing and consuming myself till at last the bitterness turned into a sort of shameful accursed sweetness, and at last — into positive real enjoyment! Yes, into enjoyment, into enjoyment! I insist upon that. I have spoken of this because I keep wanting to know for a fact whether other people feel such enjoyment? I will explain; the enjoyment was just from the too intense consciousness of one’s own degradation; it was from feeling oneself that one had reached the last barrier, that it was horrible, but that it could not be otherwise; that there was no escape for you; that you never could become a different man; that even if time and faith were still left for you to change into something different you would most likely not wish to change; or if you did wish to, even then you would do nothing; because perhaps in reality there was nothing for you to change into.”
When we analyse spite, we come across some peculiar features:
- It has a
sort of embittered enjoyment.
- The
enjoyment is constituted by, and not despite, the depravity and finality
of one’s actions. The sense of self-degradation is crucial to spite.
- Spite causes
a sort of freezing of self-evolution; one closes off the possibilities of
change for oneself.
- By closing
off the possibilities of self-improvement (and self-degradation, too,
though for a different reason: because there is no lower point that
one can degrade to!), one feels a sense of ‘accomplishment’ in reaching
some heretofore forbidden nadir. There is a sense of pride in the
degradation.
- The closing
off of possibilities for the self involves a sort of giving up of
responsibility. It is as though one has placed her free will at the
doorstep of fate, saying, “You have given me this, I hate it, I refuse to
live up to it, and I leave the responsibility of this to you.” By giving
up responsibility, one starts to blame fate, and hates fate. But because
one is aware that actions are in fact chosen by her, she experiences the
“gnawing” of her conscience.
- Spite
requires a self-image in order to be enjoyable; if one does not have a
sense of self-degradation, but was just degraded, then one would be
merely humiliated. But because of being aware of one’s
degradation, one can instead (choose to) revel in it.
- Spite feeds
off of immoral actions that create a self-image.
- The actions
themselves may be relatively banal; rather, it is the awareness of
having fallen, acknowledging that one has fallen, and refusing
to get up, but instead revelling in it, that spite requires.
The irredeemability of spite
Spite is different from anger, shame, pride, and despair,
though they all seem to culminate it and be concentrated within the spite. The
crucial difference between them is that the spiteful person is generally
irredeemable. This is because her decisions and attitude don’t stem out of lack
of knowledge or mental ability; rather, they originate in a fundamentally
perverse orientation to all the relevant facts. There is no appeal that
one can make to a spiteful person to bring them out of their spite.
Consider Gollum in The Lord of the Rings. Prior to
meeting Frodo, he is not aware of his degradation because he is so blinded by
his lust for the Ring. Frodo’s compassion pulls him out of this ignorance into
an awareness of his degradation. However, rather than revelling in it, he is
ashamed of himself, and so he betters himself. He is not spiteful. It is only
when he feels betrayed by Frodo that he is both degraded and aware of
his degradation. At that point, he is spiteful. Were Frodo to be kind to him
again, he would not accept it out of spite.*
How can one persuade a spiteful person to change her ways? You
cannot tell her that she is harming herself, because that is exactly why it is
spite and not just revenge. You cannot tell her any new fact that would change
her knowledge of the situation because she is aware of the situation fully*.
You cannot appeal to the good of others, because that is exactly who the spite
is directed against. You cannot somehow ‘strengthen’ her will, because her will
is completely fine: she is just determined to act against her own interest and
the interest of all others for the sake of spite. Spite is its own end.
Arrogance: Compare this to an arrogant person.
A person who is merely arrogant is unaware or unwilling to acknowledge a
truthful fact; namely, that their good qualities do not originate from
themselves, or that they do not in fact possess their good qualities. In fact,
an arrogant person may completely agree that arrogance is bad, but simply deny
that she is herself arrogant. She is a type of deluded. (Compare this to the
Underground’s narrator; he is not deluded about being spiteful. That is
precisely the source of his sick enjoyment.)
Anger: What about anger? An angry person clearly desires
something bad, but not because it is bad, but because she is overcome.
If one could explain to the angry person that her anger will result in harm for
herself, it would ‘rouse’ her out of her anger. Anger is a type of block on
rational thinking or a type of weakness of the will. That is why a person who
is about to get into a fistfight requires physical restraint, but later
appreciates being restrained and may even apologise to the person she would
have harmed. It is as though she does not appreciate the consequences of her
actions because at the moment of anger, nothing is visible to her but the
anger.
Envy: Envy is similar to spite (but different from jealousy).
An envious person will go very far to equalize the disparity between herself
and the envied person. She may even harm herself in the process. However, she
is ultimately not aiming at something bad (in her view). She does not
see herself as degraded. If she does, she is ashamed of herself. She denies
that she is harming herself. There is a lack of self-awareness, a sort of
ethical blindspot, that her envy causes. Igor in Othello is a good
example of someone who was envious. He did harm himself, but that was
accidental to his main goal: to harm Othello. He did not intend to get
harmed; that would have defeated his purpose!
Despair: Despair seems to be a necessary though not sufficient
condition to be spiteful. A despairing person may act in all sorts of ways that
harm herself and be aware that they are harmful, but she is desperate. There
is no bitterness. A despairing person does not find enjoyment in her state or
actions. She may be pushed by a sense of recklessness or nihilism, but not by
the pleasure of doing something bad. That is why despair is less harmful
than spite. All spiteful people are desperate, but not all despairing people
are spiteful.
Spite is different from (though related to and often in tandem
with) other motivations because the spiteful person knowingly desires the bad qua
its badness. She finds pleasure in her actions insofar as they are harmful
to others and even to herself. She is not acting due to lack of
knowledge* or weakness of the will. Because of this, a truly spiteful person is
inveterate. The only thing that will appease the spiteful person is for
others to become perverse. She requires reality to be changed, rather than
changing herself. (Consider the Underground man: what could you say to him for
him to change his ways?)
This is why the spiteful person cannot truly desire the
good. If she recognised it as good, it would not be spite. Her spite is founded
on the fact that she knows that it is bad — she is fully aware of
her enormous degradation in doing bad for herself and for others. Yet she
persists. Because of this, spiteful actions give the impression of irrationality
and insanity. Why would you knowingly act against your own good and take
pleasure in that fact? Why can’t you just stop finding it pleasurable? Because
you are spiteful.
*in some cases of spite — the tragic ones — the spite may have
been triggered by lack of knowledge or a misunderstanding. Gollum is a good
example of this. But there are other, more complete forms of spite, where
ignorance is not an excuse.
Was Satan spiteful?
I now wish to turn to the Holy Qur’an to determine if we can
find evidence of the Satanic attitude. I quote here the passage from Surah
A’raf (verses 10-18):
"We established you [people] on the earth and provided you with a means of livelihood there — small thanks you give! We created you, We gave you shape, and then We said to the angels, ‘Bow down before Adam,’ and they did. But not Iblis: he was not one of those who bowed down.
God said, ‘What prevented you from bowing down as I commanded you?’ and he said, ‘I am better than him: You created me from fire and him from clay.’ God said, ‘Get down from here! This is no place for your arrogance. Get out! You are contemptible!’
but Iblis said, ‘Give me respite until the Day people are raised from the dead,’ and God replied, ‘You have respite.’
And then Iblis said, ‘Because You have put me in the wrong, I will lie in wait for them all on Your straight path: I will come at them- from their front and their back, from their right and their left- and You will find that most of them are ungrateful.’
God said, ‘Get out! You are disgraced and banished! I swear I shall fill Hell with you and all who follow you!’"
We find that Iblis’ (Satan’s) downfall is initiated by disobedience. Yet disobedience is not why he is banished. Instead, God asks him why he did not bow down.
Satan’s reply is where we glean the knowledge of his pride. He
had a sense of superiority to Adam (peace be upon him), being made of fire
while Adam was made of something as lowly as mud, and so could not appreciate
why he would bow down to him.
We see that God refers to him as having kibr, i.e.
arrogance or pride. He is a type of deluded. Rather than God’s commandment
correcting his inflated sense of self, he takes this to be a betrayal of God
to him. This is why he says that God has led him astray. God is
responsible in Satan’s eyes, because He either deluded him or because He did
not agree with Satan.
Satan wanted God to say something like this: You are right,
Satan, that Adam is inferior to you. He wants God to repent! But God
does not say this. Instead, He reproaches Satan for his arrogance and says that
he is disgraced — of course, how could he not be, given what he wanted from
God?
But He has not yet said that Satan will go to Hell. Arrogance
can be repented from; it is redeemable and indeed repentance from arrogance can
be a cause of further humility.
But rather than repenting, Satan asks for respite. This is how
we know that he has become angry and then spiteful. Rather than repenting or at
least leaving quietly, he now wants to harm the Being Whom he sees as having
wronged him. And since he knows he cannot harm God, not really, he will try to
“punish” God by misleading His most beloved creation. He blames this state of
affairs on God — God has put Satan in error by refusing to admit that Satan is
superior to Adam, and so it is God’s fault, and God will pay for
it even if Satan has to pay for it himself! He tells God this because he wants
Him to know — he wants Him to feel pain, sorrow, regret. He wants Him to twist
the world upside down to accommodate Satan’s arrogance. Satan’s spite is
founded on impertinence about God.
Again, we see that God informs Satan that his spite will be
fruitless — that God will put men in Hell insofar as they are followers of
Satan. For a spiteful person like Satan, it is a double whammy. Rather than
somehow insulting God, he has learned that God will consider misguided humans
to be disgraced like Satan.
It is Satan’s perversity that ultimately banishes him from
God’s presence and good will. It is not his arrogance — that certainly
triggered his disobedience, and his initial tension with God. But his arrogance
leads to spite and that is why he refused to, and continues to refuse, to
repent.
That is why Satan is irredeemable. He is irredeemable because
the only thing he would be appeased by is a lie by God. God does not negotiate
with terrorists, you could say. If you knowingly cut off your nose to spite
God, God will let you do so.
Satan must be spiteful because he has the features of a
spiteful creature: he knows all the relevant facts, he is able to enact his
will without issue, he is willing to harm himself for the sake of his desire to
misguide others, and he is irredeemable. Certainly he must also be enraged,
proud, and envious of man. But ultimately, it is his spite that drives him in
his perennial quest to misguide man. It is the only thing that could drive
him and prevent him from seeking God’s forgiveness.
So what does Satan desire? He desires to harm mankind and
himself as he (thinks he) has been wronged. He wants to spite God by presenting
him with his own blackened heart. He wants to shirk accountability for his choices
and blame them on God. For this he is willing to suffer in Hell.
Satan is cursed because the desire to spite God can never be
satisfied, he cannot be pulled out of his spite, and it necessarily results in
harm to himself.
What can we learn from Satan’s spite?
Why does it matter that Satan is spiteful?
First, it challenges the idea that we all desire to act for
the sake of the good. Satan seems to be acting because he knows it is bad and
harmful. In some very minimal sense this is “good” or agreeable to him, but not
in a robust sense.
Secondly, we know that God has promised to forgive people who
repent, but spite is the one vice where there is no ability to repent. If a
person is spiteful enough, she is deaf to anything but her own desire to ‘get
back’ at others. She has condemned herself, though God has not.
Ultimately, we learn from the story of Satan that one cannot
ask for perversity. Though one can sin, repent, sin some more, and keep
repenting — indeed, God seems to have created us for this very cycle — one
should not begin to derive pleasure from degradation.
That is why shame is important. Shame reminds us that
degradation is bad. It may not stop us from sinning, but it prevents us
from becoming perverse. It is crucial to feel ashamed for one’s actions
so that one does not fall into the pleasure of spite, the morbid enjoyment in
self-degradation. It is crucial that we do not become Underground men.
Many of us are spiteful against God. Sometimes it is triggered
by sadness, say by the loss of a loved one. We cannot understand and so we
begin to blame God. We say: You should repent for what You have done. Sometimes
it is triggered by anger. In every case, there is an element of self-hatred
building on God- or fate-hatred. We want God, or somebody, to be responsible
for our choices. We hate responsibility, we hate knowing that we hate it, and
we hate whoever gave it to us.
The symbolism of fire
Lastly, I wish to comment briefly on the symbolism of Satan
being made from a smokeless fire. In Islamic myth, Satan is a djinn, which
is a species of creature that possess free will and are made from smokeless
fire. Djinn are not necessarily bad; like us, they can decide to act ethically
or not. But let us think about the symbolism of Satan’s fire.
There is an obvious relation between fire and anger. When one
thinks of a fiery person, we think of an unruly, often enraged, person.
When one is very, very angry, she may begin to feel consumed by a sort of
enraging fire.
But fire also possess another unique quality: it is
self-consuming. In its rage, fire destroys its very source. Its destructiveness
isn’t interesting for destroying other things (many phenomena do that), but for
destroying itself. This is similar to Satan, and to spite in general. He
destroys his chance at felicity by being spiteful and refusing to repent.
Conclusion
There are some who say that the Satanic tale is driven by
love. He loved God so much that he could not bear to bow down to anybody else.
He loves God because he continues to ‘play the role’ of the villain for the
sake of God’s plan for man. Indeed, it is difficult to read narratives of Satan
without seeing him as a sort of tragic hero.
But love too can be perverse. Even if Satan loves God, he is
demanding from God something that is fundamentally at odds with reality.
Spiteful people can be in love, but their love is tainted by their spite. Their
love wishes to debase others, rather than uplifting themselves.
I pray that God forgives us and grants us guidance to His
mercy, love, and beauty. And God knows best.
-MM, March 2nd, 2019
