Hi Derek

Thank you for your comment at Provoketive Magazine (http://provoketive.com). We’re creating a space of rich conversation about life, faith, justice and culture without judgment. Our desire is to provoke the reader’s imagination through conversation and open up spaces of dialogue, learning, and hope.  We want to invite you to come back soon and continue to participate in the conversation. 

Thank you,
Jonathan Brink
Provoketive Magazine

You posted the following comment:
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Well, I see why you call your blog "provoketive". :)

David, you strike me as a smart guy. So I'm going to be blunt: Aren't we the kettle calling the pot black when we admit, "Now, to be clear, I don’t believe that a being called Satan exists."

For starters, if the church has always believed that a being called the Satan existed - and it has! - than that is orthodoxy. To say that you don't believe that a being called Satan exists is to admit that <i>you</i> have strayed from Church orthodoxy, not the other way around. Now if you wish to establish your own orthodoxy, well that's all fine and dandy. 

Secondly, and this is where I appeal to your good sense and smarts, this blog article has fundamentally confused the Church orthodox belief in the Satan with a dualism of sorts. Sure the Church has run amuck at times with colourful depictions and fantastic images of the Satan, particularly in the Medieval period and in some branches of radical charismatic wings in our own day. And yes, <i>at times the Church has fallen into a kind of dualism</i>, <b>but that is not the orthodox Christian understanding of the Satan</b>.

So, in conclusion, this post is not well reasoned. Sorry. Oh, and it seems to me that your views have been shaped, in large part, by bad teaching regarding atonement, Satan and God. Sorry for that too. :-(