A friend asked today what I thought about demons, angels, and the like. I sketched out a few remarks that covered a lot of territory before we had to call an end to the conversation. So let me lay out here a few more of the specifics of how I think about demons and the demonic.
And let me begin with some of the usual ways these things are constructed.
First, there are the Literalists. The Literalist takes the passages in the Bible about demons and spiritual powers literally. The Literalist, thus, has a robust notion of spiritual warfare and believes in the reality of demonic possession (although they might believe this to be a very rare and extreme event).
I have a couple of problems with this position.
First, ontologically, it's just hard to believe in demons in the modern, scientific age. To quote Walter Wink's Naming the Powers: "We moderns cannot bring ourselves by any feat of will or imagination to believe in the real existence of these mythological entities that traditionally have been lumped under the general category 'principalities and powers.' We naturally assume that the ancients conceived of them and believed in them the same way we conceive of and disbelieve them. We think they thought the Powers quite literally as a variety of invisible demonic beings flapping around in the sky, occasionally targeting some luckless mortal with their malignant payload of disease, lust, possession, or death". So we pretty much, in our "scientific" minds, label that delusional or psychotic, and thereby deny them.
Now, like Wink, I'm not sure this modern disbelief is a good thing (more on that in a bit), but let's be honest: It is rough taking this stuff seriously.
But, my bigger issue with this Literalist approach is moral: Namely, they often end up seeing all non-Christians as demon possessed. Or at least under the influence or thrall of demons. I call this "The Frank Peretti Problem". His This Present Darkness, so popular in some circles, does this thing too often. It's great for fiction, but really had theology.
There's a moral problem if you always see your neighbors in cahoots with the Satan and all his legions. If you're seeing demons everywhere, it's a bit hard not to demonize others.
On the opposite end of the spectrum from the Literalist position we have the Liberal position. The Liberal will follow Rudolf Bultmann and other liberal theologians in the process of demythologizing the New Testament. Specifically, Bultmann suggests that the mythological structure of the New Testament is irrelevant to its deeper meaning. To quote Bultmann: "Our task is to produce an existentialist interpretation of the dualistic mythology of the New Testament along similar lines. When, for instance, we read of demonic powers ruling the world and holding mankind in bondage, does the understanding of human existence which underlies such language offer a solution to the riddle of human life which will be acceptable even to the non-mythological mind of today?" He says "yes". The language of demons isn't speaking to a ontological situation (the "dualistic mythology" of physical and spiritual). Rather, demons are speaking to an existential situation, feeling enslaved to dehumanizing and violent forces. We understand demons existentially rather than literally.
So two positions. Where do I fit? Personally, I lean toward the Liberal position. And yet, I don't want to reduce the notion of "the demonic" to existential philosophy. I think the demonic is a real, even spiritual, force in the world. In this I resonate with the Literalist camp. This is why I gravitate toward the work of Wink, Stringfellow and Yoder. These thinkers help me thread the needle on this topic (as best as it can be threaded). They allow me to see demons as "real" in a way I find intellectually respectable.
The first thing I want to highlight, is what I tried highlighting in my previous post about "miracles". We've moved from an enchanted world to a disenchanted one. Sin is replaced by sickness. God is pushed and squeezed out of the world, so any divine action must be miracle. We aren't bad, we're sick. We aren't evil, we're ill. This trend has had both good and not-so-good effects. On the good side we don't treat schizophrenics with exorcism anymore. On the bad side we've lost the language of evil and the demonic. The notion of evil is from an ancient enchanted world and it struggles to find a place in the world of psychology, sociology and biology. And yet, we still want to use the term. There are deeds and people who seem to warrant the label evil. For example, we want to apply the word evil to Hitler and to call the Holocaust demonic. But what, in a scientific era, do we mean by those terms?
Science seeks to explain things. To identify causes and reduce phenomena to underling mechanisms. To approach Hitler scientifically is to try to understand, sociologically and psychologically, why Hitler did what he did. We examine his family life, his genetic makeup, his culture. But in trying to explain evil, identifying its causes, we unwittingly tame it. To explain evil, to understand evil, is to lessen evil. True evil can't be explained by psychology or history. Evil is inherently inexplicable. That's the source of its horror.
The problem of the demonic in our world, then, is first a problem of language and imagination. We have trouble narrating and envisioning a world in which the material stuff of science is pregnant with the spiritual world.
In our Enlightenment skepticism, we created a dualism that haunts Christian thinking about the demonic.
Science has created means -- biology (medicine, genetics) and the social sciences (psychology, sociology, anthropology) -- to explain human behavior. And when science has done its work with cases like Hitler we still feel that there is a residual, that some aspect of Hitler cannot be reduced to a scientific account. What we call evil is the experience of that residual. And, thus, by definition, evil can't be a scientific term. Evil is the malevolent residual that cannot be "explained" by the disciplines of psychology or psychiatry.
Evil, in other words, in the enchanted word we use in metaphysical talk about supernatural faith. Evil is theological. So is its related demonic.
I'm not granting ontological status to this residual. Science would deny it then. I'm talking phenomenologically, experientially about what this residual might be.
That's the power of this language. It has a deep tradition in the Bible and in Christian theology. Just not the way that Peretti and others use it.
So, what does the Bible say when it talks about the demonic?
The primary way the New Testament talks about all this is with a particular phrase: "Principalities and powers". It occurs 10 times in the NT -- twice in Luke (12.11 and 20.20). There, the phrase refers to human political institutions. The other 8 times (1 Corinthians 15.24, Colossians 1.16, 2.12, 15, Ephesians 1.21, 3.10, 6.12 and Titus 3.1) clearly see a blend of physical and spiritual.
And that's important.
There's often long lists associated with these powers: Chief priests, rulers, people, scribes, synagogues, kingdoms, thrones, angels, authority, glory, majesty, dominion, life, and death. What we see in these lists and associations related to the powers is the continued conflation of the physical and the spiritual.
This insight is so critical that I want to elaborate. Too often, church people latch onto Ephesians 6.12 to justify fanciful notions of "spiritual warfare". No doubt, Ephesians 6.12 is singling out "heavenly" powers. However, we can't understand this language without coming to grips with how conflated, mixed and blended the physical is with the spiritual when the biblical writers refer to "the powers". That is, the notion that demons are disembodied spirits, disconnected from physical manifestations of power and authority, is a distortion of the biblical understanding. As we've seen, the notion of power, even demonic power, is much more closely aligned with politics than with anything we find in the fictions of Hollywood or Frank Peretti novels. If you want to imagine a demon think of City Hall. Don't think of the Exorcist.
"The powers" encompass both the physical and the spiritual, invoking them together. In short, no conversation about the demonic can occur without a conversation about a physical manifestation of power, very often a political power.
Things brings us face-to-face with a very real problem. The Bible conflates the physical and the spiritual all the time. As one example, the Exodus was both a political conflict -- the emancipation of slaves -- and a spiritual conflict (the war between two nation gods). This is the same conflation we noted in the biblical language of "the principalities and powers". The cosmic conflict is manifested in a political conflict. It's a very physical battle between two rival gods.
In the Christian view, the world is full of all sorts of claimants to divinity. Pharaoh, Caesar, Mars, Mammon, you name it. We've simply collapsed that enchanted world by disenchanting it. That's a mistake the Bible won't let us make.
In the biblical view, God is "the Most High", certainly, but there are still other gods. When those other gods get out of line, God judges and establishes order. Just look at Psalm 82. In that case, the spiritual and the political are always connected.
Jesus' temptation only makes sense in light of this acknowledgment. The "nations" are under the Satan's rule. Not God's. The rebellious princes of the nations -- demons -- are servants of Satan. And, once again, we see the conflation of the demonic with the political. Political power is the reward for Satan worship. Satan worship isn't about wearing black, drinking blood or drawing pentagrams, the stuff of Hollywood imagination. Satan worship, biblically understood, is joining the "the nations" (America included!) in their oppression of the poor and weak.
This conflation of the physical/political and the spiritual is all through the book of Revelation. Babylon -- a real political reality, even if it's code for "Rome" -- is in cahoots with the demonic.
So, let's look at Ephesians 6.12 in this light. How are we consider the claim that "our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms". I think it very clear what Ephesians 6.12 is not talking about. Ephesians 6.12 isn't talking about spooky, malevolent, spiritual entities that fly about seeking to "attack" Christians. Rather, when we take in the whole vision of Scripture, from beginning to end, we see pretty clearly what Ephesians 6.12 is talking about. Specifically, the power structures of the world are in disarray, in rebellion against God. These power structures are not inherently evil. The "princes" and "kingdoms" were ordained and appointed by God. But like humans, these power structures rebel against God. They are fallen. And as fallen heavenly entities they go from being "angels" to being "demons". Our spiritual battle is against these power structures which, according to the biblical writers, originate from and are grounded in the heavenly realm. Our fight is not against "flesh and blood", human beings caught up in these power structures, the people "possessed" by the demonic. The fight is against the fallen power structure itself.
Let's use an historical example. Slavery in America was a fallen power structure. It was a demonic power supported by church and state, written into our founding political documents. Thus the real fight against slavery was to be waged in this "heavenly realm", against the thing -- slavery -- that "possessed" us. The fight wasn't against the slave owner. We are not to demonize the human being caught up in evil. Rather, we are to liberate both slave and slave owner from the demonic possession. Our fight is not against flesh and blood but against the powers.
Thing is, a survey of human history demonstrates that we can't solve these problems on our own. Evil has always been crusting over and eating away at human cultures. So we needn't dismiss the demonic as just a historical mindset that we can progress out of. The myth of human progress died a bloody death in 1914.
All creation is ordered to the advantage of life. Order is called out of chaos in Genesis 1. But human rebellion -- and all creation with us -- created something of its own: Disobedience. And through that disobedience, death. That's our story of Genesis.
While those structures were created for good, they're now fallen. We can't live without them, nor they without us. The demonic isn't just a problem "out there". It's in us, too. It's the cancer that eats on the divine graces of life.
So the demonic -- these fallen powers -- await the obedience of Jesus for their salvation. Given that the destiny of humanity is intimately associated with the power structures of human existence, salvation is both structural (I've used the word "political") and personal (or moral). Salvation isn't simply being "forgiven" for having sex or cheating on your taxes. Salvation is cosmic in scope, the redemption of both Man and the Powers.
Colossians 1.15-20 plays an essential role in my understanding what the demonic is, and in narrating salvation from (and of!) it. It's vision is try to be; it's eschatological. But it's a very tangible hope in a very tangible, incarnate God.
Rather than disembodied spirits, I see demons as a way of narrating the physical and spiritual world together in disobedience to God's gift of ordered life. This language names aspects of human life that can't be reduced to genetics, medicine, brain science or particle physics. You can use genetics and particle physics to describe Auschwitz. But not to describe what happened at Auschwitz.
Because talking about the demonic in the way I do opens up the Church to exercise one of its most important tasks: Prophecy. Prophecy is needed as it proclaims the emancipation of God from the status quo. God is often captured and enslaved by the Powers-That-Be who use God as a warrant for preserving current power structures -- with the Big people on top and the Little people on the bottom -- and to justify violence. Prophecy is residual language, proclaiming that God is larger than the current power structures. God is outside the power, God cannot be reduced to the political. The prophet, thus, stands in this margin, proclaiming God's judgment against the Powers. "God isn't FOR you", the prophet cries, "God is AGAINST you".
Without this prophetic stance, the dualism that separates the spiritual from the physical/political makes sense. But only Christians who still read Jeremiah and Micah are prepared to deal with the demonic biblically.
We tend to use "heaven" as above and "earth" as below language. But I don't think that's biblical. Instead, we should use inside/outside language. The "spiritual" or "heavenly" realm is the "inside" aspect of physical arrangements, the "spirituality" (inner life and logic) of nations, political parties, businesses, institutions, markets, churches, and ideological movements. When we think of the "spirit" we are talking about the inner life of the nation, the spirituality of its inhabitants and political structures. For example, socialism has a spirituality as does capitalism. America has a spirituality different from, let's say, France, Canada or Iran.
So when we talk about "fighting against powers in the heavenly realm" we are talking about waging a war against the spirituality of America or capitalism or other sorts of power arrangements. In this light, for example, consumerism is seen as a demonic power, a form of spirituality, an object of worship, a location of idolatry or spiritual enslavement. Thus, as Paul says, we don't fight against "flesh and blood", the people shopping in the malls this Christmas season, we fight against the Power, the spirituality that enslaves American hearts and minds.
Granted, again, all these are just notes. I'll try to take up tomorrow how all this relates to the particular accounts of demons in the Gospels (using Mark 5 and 9 as paradigmatic). But there are strong hints here already about what I think. Just, as I always say in class, "connect the dots" ...