It can in the sense that the self, the ego that works against the teachings of Jesus is the satan. Not a being, rather a barrier.
As an entity, this is best left for those with vivid imaginations.
Struggling for spiritual understanding and perfections or morals, the adoption of virtues produces a kind of knowledge that is superior to childlike innocence and blind acceptance. Most Christians blindly accept this satan as an entity, a fallen angel no less. Knowledge tells us though that no such being exists. It is a devise used to identify anything that blocks us on a path to God.
There is not a single reference to satan being a fallen angel in the OT.
There is not a single reference to satan in a real sense as a proper name for an entity in the entire OT.
Satan only starts to form into an entity after the Persians took control of Israel. They had within their religious belief, Zoroastrianism, a separation of good and evil, God of goodness and a god of darkness and one had to choose who to follow.
In the OT God took complete responsibility for both goodness and evil.
Isaiah 45:7 “I form light, and create darkness, I make weal and create woe: I the Lord do all these things”
This didn't sit well and Jewish theodicy was only too happy to borrow the evil god and begin the difficult task of personifying it into a real being.
Come the NT they then had to rework many of the OT stories and reinsert a satan being into all the places that no such being existed. So the snake in Eden that was never associated with satan became satan and so on.
What we do know is that satan has been so deeply embedded into the belief system now that no Hell preaching, earth destroying, eternal misery loving Christian is going to give this being up after he took so long to make.
There is a very simple equation, the more one believes that satan is a real and greatly influential being the less one believes in the real God.
