Satan is not a proper name in the Hebrew Scriptures but a title — ha-satan, 'the adversary' — that names the role this fallen being plays in the divine economy. In Job 1 and 2, the Adversary stands among the sons of God and accuses Job, asking permission to test the patriarch's faith. In Zechariah 3, the Adversary stands at the right hand of Joshua the high priest to oppose him, and the Lord rebukes him: 'The Lord rebuke thee, O Satan.' From the beginning, the Adversary is a being who accuses, who tests, and who opposes — but always within limits the Lord sets.
In the New Testament, the Adversary takes on the full personal weight of an enemy. Christ confronts him in the wilderness (Matthew 4) and refuses each of his three temptations with Scripture. Christ tells Peter in Luke 22:31 that Satan has demanded to sift the disciples like wheat. In John 8:44, Christ calls him 'a murderer from the beginning' and 'the father of lies.' Paul names him 'the god of this world' who has blinded the minds of unbelievers (2 Corinthians 4:4). Revelation 12 identifies him as 'the great dragon… that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.'
The patristic reading of all of this is consistent. The Adversary is a creature, not a counter-deity. He is permitted what God allows and no more. His weapons are accusation, deception, and the appeal to fear. His doom is fixed: the same Revelation that names him 'the deceiver of the whole world' also describes him cast down, bound, and finally thrown into the lake of fire. The drama of redemption is not the drama of an evenly matched conflict. It is the slow unveiling of a victory already secured at the Cross.
Christ resisted his temptations in the wilderness, broke his accusations at the Cross, and by the Resurrection has begun the public unbinding of every soul the Adversary held in fear of death (Hebrews 2:14–15).