Satan: the personal spiritual adversary who tests, accuses, afflicts, and opposes God and his people.
Satan works as a name in the New Testament, but it began as an ordinary word for an opponent. Behind it lies a Hebrew word meaning an adversary, an accuser, or someone who physically stands in the way. The Greek form the writers used was borrowed from Aramaic, the everyday language of Jesus and the first Jewish believers, where it meant "the adversary." So even when the word functions as a personal name, it still carries the sense of an enemy who blocks, attacks, and accuses.
Across the New Testament this one figure is shown from many angles. He tests, as when he confronts Jesus in the wilderness or asks to sift Simon Peter like wheat. He accuses and afflicts, standing behind Paul's blocked travel, the painful thorn in Paul's body, and the woman kept bent over for eighteen years. He enters and drives a person, as with Judas. And he rules the present evil age as the head of a kingdom that Jesus came to overthrow. These are not different beings or different meanings of the word; they are the activities of one adversary.
The New Testament can also turn this name on a human being. When Peter tries to steer Jesus away from the cross, Jesus rebukes him with the name he had used for the tempter in the wilderness, telling him, "Get behind me, Satan," and so places Peter, in that moment, on the side of the adversary. In Revelation a hostile local group is branded a "synagogue of Satan." In these places the word is aimed at people, not to claim they are the cosmic enemy in person, but to expose whose purpose they are serving.
The New Testament also names this same being in several other ways. It calls him the devil, an ordinary Greek word that stresses slander and false accusation; the evil one; Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons; and the ruler of this world. Revelation 12:9 gathers the names together, calling him the great dragon, the ancient serpent, the one called the devil and Satan. All of these point to one and the same figure.
In the New Testament this adversary is real and dangerous, yet never an equal rival to God. He acts only within the limits God allows, and the writers present him as already defeated at the cross and awaiting a final end.
Nuances
How far to press the rebuke "Get behind me, Satan" spoken to Peter in Mark 8:33. Peter has just objected to Jesus' prediction of the cross, and Jesus answers a human disciple with the name Satan. The word is elsewhere the name of the cosmic adversary, so scholars dispute whether here it merely characterizes Peter's stance as opposed to God's purpose or identifies Peter, in this moment, with the adversary who voiced the same temptation in the wilderness. The form of address is grammatically ambiguous and cannot decide it.
- minorityThe words characterize Peter's stance as adversarial rather than identify him with the cosmic enemy; Peter is playing the part of an opponent to God's plan and is called out for it.; R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark (New International Greek Testament Commentary, Eerdmans, 2002), 337-340
- majorityPeter, by resisting the cross, has stepped into the role the adversary played at the start of the Gospel, voicing the same temptation Jesus had already rejected in the wilderness; the force is closer to identifying Peter with that adversary than to a faded common noun.; Joel Marcus, Mark 8-16 (Anchor Yale Bible 27A, Yale University Press, 2009), 611-616; Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark (Hermeneia, Fortress Press, 2007), 407-408
How far to press the rebuke "Get behind me, Satan" spoken to Peter in Matthew 16:23, where Matthew also calls Peter "a stumbling block." Matthew has already used the name Satan for the tempter in the wilderness (4:10) and now applies it to a disciple. Scholars dispute whether the name merely characterizes Peter's opposition to God's purpose or ties Peter to the adversary's role, deliberately echoing the earlier temptation. The form of address is grammatically ambiguous.
- minorityThe name characterizes Peter's stance as adversarial to God's plan rather than identifying him with the cosmic enemy.; R. T. France, The Gospel of Matthew (New International Commentary on the New Testament, Eerdmans, 2007), 638-640
- majorityMatthew deliberately binds this rebuke to the wilderness temptation of chapter 4, so that Peter, resisting the cross, is placed in the adversary's role and voices the same temptation Jesus rejected there.; W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, vol. 2 (International Critical Commentary, T&T Clark, 1991), 663-666; Ulrich Luz, Matthew 8-20 (Hermeneia, Fortress Press, 2001), 380-382
Disputed
Whether the core sense the word inherits is "accuser, prosecutor" or "attacker, executioner".
- majorityThe core force is judicial accusation: the adversary is primarily a prosecutor, which is why the Septuagint rendered the Hebrew term with a Greek word for a slanderer.; Werner Foerster, 'satanas', TDNT VII, 151-163; Peggy L. Day, An Adversary in Heaven: satan in the Hebrew Bible (Scholars Press, 1988); Victor P. Hamilton, 'Satan', Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 5
- minorityThe underlying verb never means "to accuse" but "to attack"; the figure is fundamentally an executioner who carries out punishment, and only late in this development begins attacking the innocent.; Ryan E. Stokes, 'Satan, YHWH's Executioner', JBL 133 (2014): 251-270; Ryan E. Stokes, The Satan: How God's Executioner Became the Enemy (Eerdmans, 2019)
Whether the Greek word functions in the New Testament as a proper name or still as a title meaning "the adversary".
- majorityIt functions as the proper name of the single cosmic adversary; the article kept with it is a leftover of its determined Aramaic origin rather than a live word for "the".; BDAG, s.v. Satanas; EDNT (Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament), s.v. Satanas
- minorityThe word remains essentially a title, "the adversary", and is still heard as a common noun in some settings such as the rebuke of Peter.; Henry Ansgar Kelly, Satan: A Biography (Cambridge University Press, 2006)
Whether the New Testament already presents this figure as a cosmic rebel against God or still as God's subordinate agent.
- contestedThe New Testament already works within a developed picture of a rebellious cosmic adversary set against God.; Neil Forsyth, The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth (Princeton University Press, 1987); Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan (Random House, 1995); Loren T. Stuckenbruck, The Myth of Rebellious Angels (Mohr Siebeck, 2014)
- contestedIn the New Testament the figure is still God's subordinate agent of testing and discipline, not yet an independent rival; the full rebel picture is a later Christian development.; Henry Ansgar Kelly, Satan: A Biography (Cambridge University Press, 2006)
- contestedThe figure is in transition across this period, developing from God's executioner toward God's enemy, and is fully the cosmic antagonist only by the time of Revelation.; Ryan E. Stokes, The Satan: How God's Executioner Became the Enemy (Eerdmans, 2019)