The early Christian church encountered opposition from pagans such as Celsus who claimed "it is blasphemy...to say that the greatest God...has an adversary who constrains his capacity to do good" and says that Christians "impiously divide the kingdom of God, creating a rebellion in it, as if there were opposing factions within the divine, including one that is hostile to God".[37]
In other Christian beliefs (e.g. the beliefs of the Christadelphians) the word "satan" in the Bible is not regarded as referring to a supernatural, personal being but to any "adversary" and figuratively refers to human sin and temptation.