Biblical commentary on the New Testament - The Christian ...

610 Luke X. 17, 18.
the many miracles wliich they did. This might appear to them of
special importance, as it presupposed a control over the mighty
kingdom of evil.) Most deeply is this representation drawn from
the life. A secret joy seizes a man when he finds that he acts with
an energy more than human, for example, that through him the
spiritually dead are awakened. In this joy there is the implied
testimony that man is called to act with power from on high, but
there lies in it also a temptation so dangerous, that the Saviour,
though he acknowledges the joy as right and well-founded, yet
warns them at the same time against giving themselves up to it
without watchfulness, and exhorts them to keep fully in view the
foundation of that real joy which can never lead astray.
Ver. 18.—Singularly remarkable is the declaration of the Lord,
which, in Luke, follows immediately after the expression of joy on
the part of the disciples. Inasmuch as he makes a transition from
the daij-iovia to Satan himself, without any occasion for it, and in the
circle of his immediate disciples, we must say that here is an addi-
tional passage (compare on Matth. xiii. 39) leading us to infer that
the Saviour himself teaches the existence of a prince of darkness,
and that this doctrine is by no means to be looked on as a Jew-
ish superstition. Here would have been the place, even on the sup-
position of Christ's accommodating himself to the views of the multi-
tude, in which to point out the unfounded and ruinous nature of such
a bielief, and to advise (in accordance Avith the views of some) that
the use of the idea by way of accommodation, be restricted to cases
of necessity. But in the expression itself, " I beheld Satan," etc.,
the " beheld" (deupelv) is, of course, not to be understood of bodily
sight, but of spiritual contemplation, for the object seen was itself
spiritual. The nature of spiritual vision, however, involves the conception
of the future as present. We may, in explanation, compare
the parallel passage, John viii. 56, where Jesus says of Abraham,
"he saw my day" (d6e ri]v i]iJ,Epav t?)v ijxfiv'). As here in prophetic
vision Messiah and the whole Messianic future is represented as
present in spirit to Abraham, so the Saviour in this passage says
that he beheld as a present event the annihilation of the dominion
of evil. The preterite tense idecopow, I was beholding, therefore,
must be referred not merely to the period during which the seventy
were absent, but to past time in general, so that the meaning would
be—for a long time have I seen in spirit the power of evil as van-
quished. For, the cures wrought by the disciples, are obviously to
be considered not as the causes, but as the effects of the overthrow.
Because the power of evil was broken by the Saviour's appearance
in the midst of mankind, and through him the energies of a higher
life were imparted to the disciples, therefore could they do such deeds.
It was impossible, however, for the deeds of the disciples to effect that