The Gods Who Deceive
The Ark of the Lord in the Temple of Dagon, By Battista Franco - This file was donated to Wikimedia Commons as part of a project by the National Gallery of Art. Please see the Gallery's Open Access Policy., CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81957446
Lately I have found myself believing more and more in the reality of the demonic. Not that I ever particularly disbelieved in them, but I am moving from a vague sense of their existence to an acute belief. A few factors have caused this progression.
Philosophically, David Bentley Hart’s work on the supernatural provoked me with many thoughts. In the chapter Being (Sat) of his book The Experience of God, he makes a case that, because of the contingency of all observable natural things, we must believe in some sort of supernatural: a necessary reality above the natural. This is hardly unique to him, nor even to Christianity. He quotes not only Thomas Aquinas, but also the Muslim theologian Ibn Sina and thinkers like Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s work on Hindu metaphysics. This argument is primarily used for the existence of a timeless, necessary, and all powerful being, usually called God. However, it also raises the question of what else could be beyond nature, and how a supernatural or spiritual realm interacts with our own.
Historically, our society is by far the minority in our large-scale skepticism about the spiritual. Even the most rationalistic Greeks believed in some form of spiritual reality, and many believed they could interact with it. Augustine of Hippo made demons central to his history of the world, claiming that they orchestrated much of Roman history and infected the hearts of men, drawing them away from Jesus (see the first half of City of God, starting with 2.23-25). This reflected Christian history before him, and fed into it after him. Almost every theologian from Aquinas (Summa I Q 114) to Calvin to Jonathan Edwards believed that the demonic had some role in our lives.
Globally, while there are many trends throughout the world which I will not seek to analyze, the West is largely a skeptical minority. Traditional African culture is deeply immersed in the belief in spirits, malevolent or otherwise. Similar beliefs permeate Indigenous American culture. In some ways, the spread of rational materialism started to look to me like an imperial imposition on cultures which never would have come to these ideas on their own.
At the same time, I’ve started to see the importance of the descriptions of demons in the Bible. As G.K. Chesterton points out, serving as an exorcist was one of Jesus’s primary practical roles in His community ( Matt. 8:28-34, Mark 1:21-28, Luke 9:37-43, Luke 10:17-20, etc. etc.).
Finally, I have heard explanations of demonic activity which simply made sense. G.K. Chesterton has a moving account of civilizations in Part 1 Chapter 6 of his book The Everlasting Man. He considers the question of why many of the worst atrocities we might consider barbaric originated in highly developed cultures. He claims that sophisticated cultures can turn toward demons and be influenced to work atrocities in an attempt to mold the world around them. His quintessential example of this is Carthage, the great commercial empire which sacrificed live babies on their altars for generations.
Another source, the biblical book of Micah makes the point differently. Micah chapter 1 critiques the Israelite worship of Pagan gods and carved images (Micah 1:7). Then, chapter 2 and 3 critique the oppression of the poor and inhumanity to their fellow men. They covet fields and seize them, they tear off people’s skin and eat their flesh (Micah 2:2, 3:2-3). These two issues seem unrelated to Western eyes, but for the Israelites they went hand-in-hand. A wrong worship of God leads us to a wrong treatment of our fellow humans. Demonic worship can manifest in child sacrifice (as it did in Israel during Micah’s ministry, 2 Kings 16:3), or it can manifest itself more subtly, in economic oppression and the dehumanization of the poor and weak.
Ross Douthat, a NY Times columnist, with a similar interest in the supernatural, also recently touched on the question of the demonic in an article on political tribes blaming their enemies for shootings and acts of violence. He spoke about disunity and hatred as a malignant spirit, and concluded by saying:
“Diabolos” in Greek means “accuser,” and in that sense the dark spirit that inspires these crimes suffers a defeat when we react with unity and solidarity rather than immediate recriminations.
Whereas it gains a victory every time we respond by immediately blaming our political rivals and trying to prove over the bodies of the dead that, yes, our ideological opponents are even more evil than we thought.
From these explanations, one might ask, are demons active in American life today? I think so, in many subtle ways. The oppression of the poor, the clinical murder of the unborn, and our relentless political divisions and hatreds all have some affinity with the historical issues above. But my final question is, how should we then live? Should we adopt some new superstition, throwing back salt or walking around ladders in the vain hope that it will keep back the demons? Of much more concern, what if you think you have done something demonic, or are under the subtle oppression or deception of demons? I will once again turn to Scripture on this question. The Apostle Paul, in writing to the Church at Colossae, seems to have been dealing with a very spiritualistic opposition group. He repeatedly mentions “the elemental spirits of the world” (Col. 2:8, 20), “rulers and authorities” (2:15), and the worship of angels (2:18). However, he does not go into these questions very profoundly – instead he simply focuses on the person of Jesus.
He, not the spirits, is the Image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. Through Him and for Him all invisible things were created, and all rulers and authorities were created. This heavenly figure died, yet He rose from the dead, being the head of His body, the Church. He is reconciling all things to Himself, including us, who were His enemies (Col. 1:15-22). He is the head of all rule and authority; in Him God made us alive, canceling the record of debt which stood against us with its legal demands. He disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities, putting them to shame (2:10-15). Even if we have shared the table of demons, at Jesus’ table, that guilt fades away. It is nailed to His cross.
In all the fears we might have, for ourselves, for our society, for the haunting of demons, Paul gives an answer. In fact, for Paul, the whole question is one more of idle curiosity than real concern. Why would we concern ourselves over spirits when we have Christ? In the person of Jesus we do not need to fear the demons, He has triumphed over them.
Louvre Museum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Baal_thunderbolt_Louvre_AO15775.jpg
Recommended Reading:
If you're interested in learning more, I would recommend C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters as a great place to start. Lewis is not interested in any of the metaphysical or historical questions I've broached here, but he zeroes in on the personal question, of what effect a demon could have in your own life and heart. Thus, even if you are unsure about the actual existence of demons you could read it simply as a treatment of the human heart and its failings.
Clarifications:
Now, lest one or more Classics Professors yell at me over my careless semantics, let me be clear. I primarily use the word demon, as the historical Christian tradition has, to refer to a class of spirits or angels who were created good by God, but fell into sin and now act malevolently against God and humanity. I also think that most polytheistic worship, to Baal or Zeus or Thor, was and is in some sense worship of these spirits. This seems to be reflected in the description of the fall from heaven in Revelation 12:7-17 and the characterization of idols in 1 Cor. 10:20 and I think it is a powerful explanatory model for the spiritual questions of this world. However, I would also point out that there is nothing essentially Christian about belief in the supernatural or spirits. Above are references to Muslim, Hindu, Pagan, and other traditions, and they would have their own systems for explaining spiritual activity in the world. The use of the word δαίμων (daimon) reflects this diversity of traditions. The ancient Greeks used it to refer to a number of spiritual entities, including the Olympian gods, and Socrates used it to refer to the spirit which whispered advice to him. However, as Augustine points out (City of God 9.19), in his day, and still in our own, the Christian narrative and connotations are the primary ones attached to the word ‘demon,’ and I use it in that sense.