Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig.

Today, the Doctrine of Creation, Part 22.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonablefaith.org.

We finished our lesson last time by raising the question of the origin of Satan.

Satan, as we've seen, is presented as a tremendous adversary of the work and

kingdom of God with whom we have to contend.

And this raises the obvious question of the origin of this being.

Since God is not evil and cannot create evil,

then how could there be such a being as Satan? When God created in Genesis chapter 1,

it says that he looked at creation and he saw that it was all very good. So how do you

explain the origin of someone like Satan and the demons? One thing that is very clear that we need

to insist upon is that scripture does not teach some sort of dualism.

It does not teach that there is God and anti-God who is equal and opposed to God,

that there is light and there is darkness, and that these are equally opposed to each other. This dualistic

view is completely foreign to both Judaism and Christianity, which think of God as the

sole source of all reality outside himself. Anything that is not God, anything that exists other than God, is created by God.

There isn't any reality apart from God that is uncreated. This is the burden of my book,

God overall, which defends God as the sole ultimate reality. So dualism

is simply out of the question. To give just one scripture on this, consider Colossians

1 verses 15 and 16. Colossians 1, 15 and 16. Speaking of Christ, it says,

He is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation, for in him all things

were created, things in heaven and things on earth.

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