Versus:
Pro tip; self-contradiction doesn’t advance your argument. Before posting, check what you’ve said previously in case you’ve forgotten.
Oh I don’t need to do precisely that. Satanology and demonology are separate subjects, and in the literature the different writers of the New Testament books are treated separately also. So an author may consider that one New Testament writer did not believe in demons (or at least that it is not clear whether or they did), whilst accepting that other New Testament writers did believe in demons. I need only demonstrate the debate on the issues in the relevant literature, and the arguments against the idea that the New Testament writers uniformly held the satanological and demonological views which are commonly attributed to them (especially by lay Christians). Comments such as these, for example.
‘To describe the particular outworkings of that evil power he Paul uses a variety of conceptualities, and it remains unclear whether he [Paul] conceives of serried ranks of evil beings (fallen angels, demonic spirits) or simply of a single focus of hostility to God of cosmic proportions (that is, not reducible to psychological or sociological neuroses) with many particular manifestations in the lives of individuals and societies.’, Dunn & Twelftree, ‘Demon-Possession and Exorcism in The New Testament’, Churchman (94.219), 1980.
Of course there’s more. According to Högskolan, there is ‘some disagreement as to how real the devil was for John’,[1] with some commentators believing the devil in John is ‘a literary personification of sin rather than as an independently acting being.’[2] Thomas notes John never uses satan and demons as an etiology of illness, and ‘shows no real interest in the topic’;[3] he also says ‘Neither James nor John give any hint that the Devil or demons have a role to play in the infliction of infirmity’.[4]
Caird says ‘it is a matter of some delicacy to determine how far the New Testament writers took their language literally’,[5] and proposes satan may have been a personification to some in the early church (including Paul), rather than a person.[6] Wahlen notes that in Luke ‘illness is never described as the result of demonic activity’,[7] and Ferngren concludes ‘The evidence, however, does not suggest that Jesus shared the demonology of his Palestinian contemporaries’.[8]
Wesley Carr’s work is one you should definitely start with.
Carr, Wesley. Angels and Principalities: The Background, Meaning and Development of the Pauline Phrase ‘hai archai kai hai exousiai.’ Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
[1] Torsten Löfstedt, “The Ruler of This World,” Sven. Exegetisk Aarsb. 74 (2009): 54.
[2] Löfstedt, “The Ruler of This World” , 58.
[3] John Christopher Thomas, The Devil, Disease and Deliverance: Origins of Illness in New Testament Thought (A&C Black, 1998), 162.
[4] Thomas, The Devil, Disease and Deliverance: Origins of Illness in New Testament Thought, 301.
[5] G. B. Caird, New Testament Theology (Oxford University Press, 1995), 110.
[6] Caird, New Testament Theology , 110.
[7] Clinton Wahlen, Jesus and the Impurity of Spirits in the Synoptic Gospels (Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 173.
[8] Gary B. Ferngren, Medicine and Health Care in Early Christianity (JHU Press, 2009), 45.