The Bible Dictionary declares: “Latter-day revelation confirms the biblical teaching that the devil is a reality and that he does strive to lead men and women from the work of God.“
In his preface to the 1961 edition of The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis wrote:
The commonest question is whether I “really believe in the Devil.”
Now, if by “the Devil” you mean a power opposite to God and, like God, self-existent from all eternity, the answer is certainly No. …God has no opposite. No being could attain a “perfect badness” opposite to the perfect goodness of God….
The proper question is whether I believe in devils. I do. That is to say, I believe in angels, and I believe that some of these, by the abuse of their free will, have become enemies to God and, as a corollary, to us. These we may call devils. They do not differ in nature from good angels, but their nature is depraved. Devil is the opposite of angel only as Bad Man is the opposite of Good Man. Satan, the leader or dictator of devils, is the opposite, not of God, but of Michael.
What is interesting here is that Lewis’s understanding of devils is so similar to LDS belief and at the same time so different.
Lewis’s understanding that devils are fallen angels fits nicely with the LDS view, though the angels he speaks of were not premortal men and women, but distinct beings from ourselves. In many ways the view of Satan as the opposite of Michael is interesting in light of the LDS knowledge that Adam was Michael, even if Lewis did not intend it in this way.
For Lewis, God and Jesus are one and the same being. From an LDS point of view, however, where we know that Jesus is God the Son, and a being distinct from God the Father, and with our additional understanding of the council in heaven, the competing plans, and Satan’s desire to play the role of Messiah, I think that LDS members tend to view Satan as the opposite of Jesus, not of Michael.
Also our view of God the Father as an exalted Man, and the co-eternality of Intelligences, differs from Lewis’s belief in a single, self-existent eternal being and may have some bearing on Lewis’s assertion.
In the Restored Gospel, who is the Devil? Is he the opposite of God the Father? God the Son? or of Michael/Adam? Perhaps trying to place him in an equal and opposite position to a specific other is an artificial, man-made concept and he does not represent an opposite of any of them but is merely oppositional at whatever level he can get away with.
What is the place of the Devil in an LDS Taxonomy of Beings?