5-20 The God Of This World

2 Corinthians 4: 4: “In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them”.

See 2-4 “The Jewish Satan”.

The Eastern (Aramaic) text reads: "To those in this world whose minds have been blinded by God, because they did not believe"

Note in passing that it is darkness which blinds men’s eyes (1 Jn. 2:11), i.e. not walking according to the light of God’s word. There is only one God- not two.

Rom. 11:8 says that God blinded Israel to the Gospel; 2 Cor. 3:14 says that their minds were blinded or “hardened” (RV) as Pharaoh’s was. Whoever “the god of this world” is or was, God worked through it and is therefore greater than it. For something to be called “the god of this world” does not necessarily mean that it is in reality “the god of this world”; it could mean ‘the thing or power that this world counts to be God’. Thus Acts 19:27 speaks of the goddess Diana, a lifeless idol, “whom all the world worshippeth”. This doesn’t mean that the piece of wood or stone called Diana was in reality the goddess of this world.

Even if it is insisted that satan exists as a personal being, the question has to be faced: Who created satan? Is his power under God's control, or not? Time and again the 'satan' and 'demon' passages of the Bible indicate that however we are to understand these terms, God is more powerful, God is in control. The book of Job shows how the satan there had all power given to him by God. The power of the Lord Jesus over 'demons' makes the same point. And in that context, note how Ex. 4:11 assures us that God is the one who makes people deaf, but Lk. 11:14 speaks of how such muteness is apparently caused by demons. Clearly, God is in control. This world, with all the evil and negative experience in it, has not been left under the control of some out-of-control evil being. With this in mind, it should be apparent that the 'god of this world' can't mean that the world is under the control of satan rather than God. Rather, "the god of this world" [aion] "can also be read as merely a personification of all the forces of this aion that would thwart the success of the Christian message" (1)

Notes

(1) Neil Forsyth, Satan And The Combat Myth (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989) p. 275.