Satanic Autonomy

I was told early in my Christian Walk( I've always thought that term was cheesy, wish we would get a new one.), that Satan did only what he was permitted to. A baptist pastor told me this, and I was reminded of it last Tuesday.

My Current Pastor has been showing up bi-monthly for a Q&A, though, to be sure very few questions are answered (we just get more and better ones!), However, He actually did allow me to pin him down- (He was possibly thrown off balance by my lightning-fast change of subject.) When I asked him if he believed in Satanic Autonomy. He answered No. This is not a rare stance, and I one that I held myself until recently... I don't know if he has taken that opinion out of his doctrinal library and placed it on the table for reexamination or not, but I certainly have.

I think constantly. Most of us do. Occaisionally, when reading, or just being aware of the stream of conciousness flowing through my brain, a thought/concept kinda "jumps" up a little... pops into bas-relief and I will either give it closer consideration or slam my open mind shut in discomfort. (There's a post there, I think.), But I think that these instances, and any thought, for that matter, have three possibly origins: Divine, Demonic, Or ME.

Anyway to get off the rabbit trail, I jumped to this common conclusion as well, after reading the Bible. The Passage in Job where Satan is told what he can do to ruin Job's life, a " you can go this far, but no farther" sort of thing is perhaps the most noted scriptural instance where a first read would let a man think that Satan is a puppet... another little blurb is when Simon Peter has blustered about how tight he is with Jesus, but the Light of the World responds by informing Rocky, that the shallowness of his loyalty will be exposed before the rooster crows. I think this is in Luke. Just prior to this, Jesus tells Peter that Satan asked to sift him "like wheat".

To me, this is deep stuff. I ponder this from the intellectual shallows of my 9th grade education, and I wonder if this/these passage are sufficient to support the doctrine of Satanic Dis-Autonomy (is that a word?). I don't think so. For reasons I will detail in my next post, I will explain why I no longer believe this is Chiseled in Stone, and that Satan may quite possibly be a free agent, acting on his own agenda. :D