AN ODD STORY recorded by Jerome about a 4th-century monk from Egypt, Anthony the Great, raises an interesting question: Are there demons that want to be saved?
According to the story, Anthony traveled into the desert looking for Paulus, the first hermit. After some travel, Anthony encountered a centaur and asked him where to find the servant of God. The centaur pointed and then ran off. Anthony decided to travel in that direction and soon came across another fantastic creature “with hooked snout, horned forehead, and extremities like goats’ feet.”
After praying for protection, the creature offered him “the fruit of the palm-trees to support him on his journey,” and then said this:
“I am a mortal being and one of those inhabitants of the desert whom the Gentiles deluded by various forms of error worship under the names of Fauns, Satyrs, and Incubi. I am sent to represent my tribe. We pray you in our behalf to entreat the favour of your Lord and ours, who, we have learned, came once to save the world, and ‘whose sound has gone forth into all the earth.’”
Is this story plausible? As much as we’d like to think so, we think not. Demons, such as the goat-demon described in this story (and like Pan in our last episode), are the spirits of the giant Nephilim destroyed in the Flood.
Salvation was promised to humans. It’s not likely that satyrs (goat-demons, the se’irim of the Old Testament) would ask for the means by which they could be saved.
