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Archie T. Wright, Satan and the Problem of Evil: From the Bible to the Early Church Fathers (Minneapolis: Fortress Academic, 2020).

Abstract

"Archie T. Wright’s Satan and the Problem of Evil: From the Bible to the Early Church Fathers (2020) offers a comprehensive historical‑theological analysis of the development of the Satan figure as a response to the perennial problem of evil. Building on his earlier work on the origins of evil spirits, Wright situates Satan within the tradition of Second Temple Jewish apocalypticism, tracing how adversarial figures evolved from the relatively subordinate ha‑śāṭān of the Hebrew Bible into a cosmic enemy of God and humanity. Through detailed exegesis of texts such as 1 Enoch, Jubilees, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the New Testament, and early patristic writings, Wright argues that the personalization of evil in the figure of Satan was a conceptual solution to the tension between belief in an all‑powerful, good God and the manifest reality of suffering, sin, and injustice. He examines how the New Testament writers, especially Paul and the Synoptic evangelists, portray Satan both as tempter and as ruler of the present age, whose power is decisively undermined by Christ’s death and resurrection yet not fully eradicated until the eschaton. The study then traces the appropriation and development of these motifs among the early church fathers, showing how they synthesized Jewish apocalyptic traditions, Greco‑Roman cosmologies, and Christian theological concerns into a more systematic demonology. Methodologically, the work combines historical‑critical, tradition‑historical, and theological perspectives, illuminating the continuity and transformation of Satanological thought. Wright concludes that the rise of the Devil as the personification of evil reflects not only religious innovation but also an urgent pastoral and philosophical effort to address the mystery of evil in human existence."--ChatGPT