Is Satan actually working for God?

[rocklobster]

Note: the following is from my local paper. It is a wire from Religious news services.
Satan is not evil, he just has a dirty job.That's the argument put forth by Henry Ansgar Kelly, an English professor and former Jesuit who led the inaugral Satan seminar at the Catholic Biblical Association's August meeting in Chicago. Attended by about two dozen Bible scholars and academics, the Satan seminar included a spirited examination of the few ancient texts that mentin the prince of darkness.Kelly, a profesor of English at UCLA who has written a new biography of Satan, said he managed to persuade a few colleagues of his thesis: that Satan is not the enemy of God but the employee of God. Satan's job, Kelly said, is to smoke out bad people so only the truly victorious will reach heaven."He wants to test (humans), he's suspicious and he doesn't care about his methods," Kelly said.Highlighting his role in the Book of Job, Kelly said Satan is a member of the divine "old guard bureaucracy.""He's a hated member of the government, like an IRS agent or (former U.S. Senator Joseph) McCarthy.""It was the early church fathers who recast Satan as 'the evil one', and as God's opposite," Kelly said.In what he hopes will be an annual seminar, Kelly may have many more chances to persuade his colleagues. Very few, he said, "know that I've got something new on Satan."
Now for my thoughts on the article above.I'm not sure I buy into this. On one hand, it does seem plausible. But I strongly disagree on the grounds that it is both Calvinistic (which I thought Catholicism had struck down.) and negative. I feel this is almost heretical. If we humans were as bad off as Satan apparantly believes, Heaven would be a ghost town. (And actually, in a way, Heaven is a ghost town.) I'd rather believe the church fathers' ideals about Satan, because it creates balance. God has to have an opposite because there is so much suffering caused by free will. (I'm not saying that free will is a bad thing here. I'm glad I have it.) By saying Satan is merely an "employee" of God, it's almost like saying there is no evil in the world. And that there is no hope for salvation. I don't want to believe that.

[Technomancer]

This is not a new idea, and has in fact been kicked around for some time. Some interpretations of the book of Job for example, motivate this understanding.

[QtheQreater]

May I insert here that this fellow is speaking of God in human terms? That God is just like us? I, for one, believe this theory to be a load of garbage.

In the book of Job, Satan wasn't acting on God's orders...he was trying to prove God wrong. God permitted him to do all those things to Job to show that Job really was upright. But Satan wasn't "working" for God!

[uc pseudonym]

I cannot see this thread having much discussion that falls within CAA's debate boundaries. Even if there was complete consensus, the thread would boil down to bashing the original argument, which would serve no constructive purpose.