Satan Falling from Heaven (Luke 10:17-20)

In her monograph on magic and the demonic in Luke-Acts (entitled The Demise of the Devil ), Susan Garrett offers some illuminating comments on Jesus’ declaration that He watched Satan fall from heaven like lightning (Luke 10:17-20):

1) She argues persuasively that Jesus is speaking prophetically of a future fall of Satan. She appeals to the parallel between Jesus’ “I was watching” and the similar phrase that Daniel uses to introduce his prophetic visions (cf. Dan. 7:2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13). Jesus is not saying that Satan fell during the mission of the 70 (Luke 1:1ff), but that the triumphant mission of the 70 foreshadows and is an initial victory in the battle with Satan that will ultimately lead to Satan’s fall.

2) One reason Garrett sees the statement as prophetic is that Satan returns later in Luke to exercise authority during Jesus’ arrest, trial, and death (cf. Luke 22:36). Like many commentators, she points to the contrast between Jesus’ instructions to the 70 (no provision or protection) and the instructions to the disciples after Judas’s plot gets underway (22:36). As she puts it, “Jesus’ enigmatic instructions suggest that a momentous change in the distribution of power and authority (corresponding in some way to the distribution of material goods) is occurring. Whereas before the apostles had ‘lacked nothing’ (22:35), now that will alter: the authority and consequent protection on which they could earlier rely will vanish. The necessity for a ‘sword’ symbolically indicates that the new situation will be one of marked hostility, even violence” (p. 54). During the “hour” in which “the authority of darkness” is exercised, the disciples will be bereft of divine protection and, like Jesus Himself, will be forsaken by the Father.

3) Garrett sees this “hour” as primarily pointing to the period between the crucifixion and the resurrection or ascension. During that period, Satan is given mastery but He will fall from heaven at the ascension. Perhaps, but I wonder if the “hour” should be extended beyond the end of Luke into Acts. Perhaps we are to understand the instructions in Luke 22:36 as applying to the whole of the apostolic mission, until AD 70. This would suggest that this whole period is something of an extension of the cross, a “filling up of the fulness of the sufferings of Christ.” Ultimately, the blood of the apostles and early martyrs that hhas been mingled with the blood of Jesus will be avenged, and Satan will come to his final demise at the fall of Jerusalem and the collapse of the old order.