Ethical dualism suggests that there are two independent underlying principles in any helm of reality and the forces of these two principles are equal. A good example is that of good versus evil, and that there will always be evil where there is good and good where there is evil and these two will always compete against each other and since their forces are equal, there will probably be no outright winner ever.
On the other hand, the Bible teaches of there being the forces of good and those of evil and goes on to assert that good always triumphs over evil. This means that God being the force of good and Satan being the force of evil will always exist, but God always triumphs over Satan. The common understanding of dualism suggests that God and Satan are two eternal and equal forces that will always struggle until eternity.
Those who say that God created evil in the form of Satan, often quote the Bible as saying that God is the only eternal self-existent being, which means that Satan must have been created by God since he is not self-existent. The Bible also goes ahead to state that God created everything including spirits and angles.
This suggests that God created Satan, but since the Bible says that after He created the heavens and earth he saw that everything was good, therefore, Satan must have been created by God.
The source of Satan’s evil nature can therefore be attributed to the free will that God gave all people in His creation, who poses a free moral agency, which means that Satan chose to be evil all by himself and that is why he was cast to earth as the book of Isaiah 14:12-17 suggests.
The Bible gives many cases of conflict between God and Satan and out of these there are those that Satan won and others where God won.
One of the examples of cases where Satan won is where Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and God had to kick them out of the Garden of Eden. Another case is where Satan convinced the people to stop worshipping God and instead adopt the worshipping of idols. He also did win when the people rejected and killed Jesus.
Cases where God triumphed over Satan are also mentioned in the Bible and they happen to be more than those where Satan won. In the Bible we are told in the book of Revelation 12:7-9 that there was a war in heaven and the angles of the Lord triumphed over Satan and his angles and he was, therefore, cast from heaven and to earth.
There is also the story of Job who was tested by God when he allowed Satan to torment him, but he still remained faithful. There was the case of Jesus where he was tempted by the devil in the wilderness and also where he cast out demons from a man, which show that He had immense power over the devil.
The sinless life, death and resurrection of Jesus is also an evidence of God’s victory over Satan and every time a sinner becomes a Christian marks the loss of the devil and the Bible says there is joy in heaven when this happens.
The Bible says that we should have faith in God to protect us and strengthen us against the wiles of the devil. This means that people often yield to temptation and commit sin due to their lack of faith in God and are, therefore, left vulnerable and unprotected.
Bibliography
Matson, William. The Adversary: His Person Power and Purpose a Study in Satanology. New York: Kessinger Publishing, 2005.
Seidman, Chris. Before stones become bread: becoming more like Jesus by resisting temptation. New York: College Press, 2006.
Verbeek, Elizabeth. The Blood of the Lamb of God. New York: Xlibris Corporation, 2011.