The Problem of Demon Possession

I have already admitted that the New Testament references to demons are not easy to understand. But let us be clear about one thing. This is not only a problem to those of us who believe in the human-nature devil. It is just as big a difficulty to those who believe in a supernatural devil.

The first three Gospels describe a number of incidents of which this is typical:
"A man from the crowd cried, 'Teacher, I beg you to look upon my son, for he is my only child; and behold, a spirit seizes him, and he suddenly cries out; it convulses him till he foams, and shatters him, and will hardly leave him ...' Jesus answered, '... Bring your son here.' While he was coming, the demon tore him and convulsed him. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit and healed the boy" (Luke 9:38-42).

Descriptions of Illness
This describes the curing of a very sick boy. Matthew's account of the same event (17:14-18) shows that the lad was suffering from the illness called epilepsy, or fits. All the other cases of demon possession in the New Testament involved people who were either epileptic, mad, deaf, dumb, blind, or paralysed. The killer diseases like leprosy and fever are never blamed on demon possession in the Bible.

If we assume that God intends us to take these stories of demon possession at their face value, we are left with three extremely difficult questions.

First, are we to assume that the Bible has been proved wrong by modern medical science? In the time of Christ most people (though not all) believed that certain illnesses were caused by demon possession. This is especially true of epilepsy, which was once called, "the sacred illness".

But nowadays doctors are aware that this is not so. They know the real cause of these diseases and they know how to treat them. Every year doctors successfully treat thousands of cases of epilepsy with drugs. But what people call "exorcism"—the attempt to cure diseases by casting out demons—is regarded in the medical profession as a bad joke. Doctors know that on the very, very rare occasions whan exorcism seems to work, it is only a case of "mind over matter".

Consequently nearly all doctors are convinced that primitive people long ago were mistaken. Many of the ancient Greeks believed in demon possession, but nowadays we know that they were wrong: there is no such thing. Are we to believe that the inspired writers of the New Testament made the same mistake? Surely not!

The second question is equally worrying. The dictionary tells us that "demon" was a word the Greeks used to describe many of the false gods they worshipped. The apostle Paul, like all the other New Testament writers, wrote in Greek, and in the following two verses he used the word "demon" twice to mean a heathen god:

"What do I imply then? That food offered to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be partners with demons" (1 Corinthians 10:19,20).

If the cases of demon possession described in the Gospels were real, then it would seem that demons were real—until we pause to think what this would mean. As we have already seen, in Greek, the language of the New Testament, the word "demon" actually means "a god". So if—and it is a very big "if—the early Greek-speaking Christians thought that demons were real, this would imply that they believed false gods were real, also.

The third point is that God Himself claims responsibility for deafness, dumbness and blindness—all complaints that are blamed on demons in the New Testament. He said to Moses:
"Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him dumb, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?" (Exodus 4:11).
It is hard to believe that God would ever have said such a thing if it is really demons that make men dumb, or deaf, or blind.

For these three reasons a great many Bible-believing Christians refuse to believe that God wishes us to take the demon possession stories of the New Testament literally. Even those who believe in a supernatural devil often feel like this. Like the Christadelphians, they consider that there must be a better explanation of the New Testament's references to demons and unclean spirits.

Looking for a Better Explanation
One thing is quite certain. Not everybody in the Greek-speaking world at the time of Jesus believed in demon possession.

The most famous doctor that ever lived was a Greek called Hippocrates. He lived in the fifth century before Christ, and even after 2,400 years our own doctors still have a very great respect for him.

Some of his books have been preserved. One of these is a treatise on epilepsy. In this he said that the popular belief in demon possession was not true. Epilepsy must be treated by medical care, said Hippocrates, just like every other disease.7

For about the next 600 years, until the second century after Christ, all the best educated Greek doctors were taught this.8 Some of this teaching must have filtered down to the common people, although how many of them believed it we do not know, because neither history nor the Bible tells us.

What the Bible does tell us is that the Jewish religious teachers called Pharisees believed in both a supernatural devil and demon possession. Matthew 12:27 shows that they even practised exorcism.
But this does not prove that demons were real. Far from it. The Pharisees were very frequently in the wrong, and in the end they helped to crucify the Lord Jesus Christ. On one occasion he said to them:
"For the sake of your tradition, you have made void the word of God" (Matthew 15:6).

The Pharisees' belief in demons may help to explain why there are so many references to demon possession in the Gospels. But we must always remember that many of the Pharisees' beliefs were mistaken.

It would be extremely interesting to know exactly what the writers of the New Testament believed about demons. Alas, they have not seen fit to tell us. All they have done is to drop a number of little hints, and then leave us to draw our own conclusions. It will be interesting to see what we can learn from those hints.

A Careful Look at the Gospels
The following verses from Matthew's Gospel have something very useful to tell us about demon possession, if we study them carefully.
"That evening they brought to him many who were possessed with demons; and he cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick. This was to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah, 'He took our infirmities and bore our diseases'." (Matthew 8:16,17).

The words that Matthew quotes are taken from Isaiah, chapter 53. Both the Old Testament prophecy and its fulfilment in Jesus are in two parts, thus:

The Prophecy (Isaiah, quoted by Matthew)
1. He would take our infirmities
2. He would bear our diseases
The Fulfilment (reported by Matthew)
1. He cast out demons, or spirits
2. He healed the sick.

Matthew evidently regarded Isaiah's words as referring to two kinds of illnesses: (1) infirmity, and (2) disease. His own names for these were: (1) demon possession, and (2) sickness.
What Matthew called "demon possession", Isaiah called "infirmity". And Matthew himself says that the words in Isaiah and his own words are describing the same event.

It certainly looks as if, to Matthew, the language of demon possession was just a way to describe a kind of illness.

Now look at this passage from another Gospel.
"There met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit... He (Jesus) had said to him, 'Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!'... And the unclean spirits came out, and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea" (Mark 5:2-13).

Notice the words in italics. Mark begins by saying that the man was possessed by one spirit. Jesus thought so, too; he commanded that one spirit to come out of the man. But in fact, as the end of the story shows, the man had been possessed by a great many spirits.

If we try to take this story literally we are bound to end up in a hopeless tangle. Either there was one spirit, as Mark says at the start, and as the Lord Jesus also said, or there were lots of spirits, as Mark says at the end. How can we explain this contradiction, if we believe the spirits were real beings? Obviously, we cannot.

But if Mark was only using the expression, "possessed with an unclean spirit", as just another way of saying, "ill", there is no contradiction and no problem. In that case, "possessed with a whole legion [a lot] of spirits" would simply mean, "very, very ill".

Perhaps you think that this solves one problem, but creates an even bigger problem. You may find it hard to believe that the Gospel writers could speak about demon possession if they did not really believe in demons.

Picture-Language
If you feel like that, then look at it this way. We use words only to convey ideas. It is the ideas that are important, not the words themselves. Often we use words in what looks like the wrong way, but this does not matter so long as we convey our meaning to the other person.
For an example of this, look back to page 8 of this booklet, where Venus was referred to as a star. If I had been writing a scientific paper, that would have been a dreadful blunder. Venus is not a star, it is a planet, which is a very different thing.

But that did not matter. You grasped my meaning perfectly, despite the loose use of a word. It probably never occurred to you to say to yourself, "This poor fellow doesn't know the difference between a star and a planet." And if you had thought that, you would in fact have been wrong. The poor fellow knew very well that a star is not a planet, but it suited his purpose to ignore that fact.

Here is another example. Today lawyers generally refer to floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters as "Acts of God". But this does not mean that all lawyers believe in God! They are merely using a convenient phrase that most people understand, even though some may be misled by it.
Similarly, it is likely that many Jews spoke of demon possession without actually believing in the existence of demons. Speaking of demons was a vivid piece of picture-language to describe some very nasty types of illness. All Jews loved to speak in parables, and this way of describing sickness would have sounded much more natural to them than it does to us.

Two Ways of Saying It
Now for some more evidence to support this point of view. Consider the following account of a miracle:
"A man came up to him [Jesus] and kneeling before him said, 'Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly; for often he falls into the fire, and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him '." (Matthew 17:14-16). Matthew's plain words give us a very clear picture. The boy was ill and needed healing. But then Matthew goes on to say:
"And Jesus rebuked him, and the demon came out of him, and the boy was cured instantly" (verse 18).
This really is a surprise ending. What started as a simple story of an illness turns out to be a tale of demon possession in the finish.

Demons and Illnesses
How can we understand this apparent confusion on Matthew's part? There seems to be only one reasonable explanation. Matthew knew that mysterious illnesses (such as the epilepsy from which this boy suffered) and "demon possession" were really one and the same thing. So it was a natural thing for him to slip from one form of language to the other.

Matthew does much the same thing in another chapter:
"Then a blind and dumb demoniac [the word means 'person possessed with a demon'] was brought to him, and he healed him" (Matthew 12:22).

So does Luke:
"In that hour he cured many of diseases and plagues and evil spirits" (Luke 7:21).

The normal words that go with "demons" and "evil spirits" are "cast out", while the words "cured" and "healed" go with "illnesses". But here the two separate ideas are interwoven. Matthew tells of a demoniac who was healed, and Luke tells of people who were cured of evil spirits. Once more the Gospel writers are giving us some clues as to what their real beliefs must have been. Evidently to them demon possession was only another name for illness.

Why Did They Do It?
One last question remains. Why did Jesus and his apostles describe illness in this strange way, when it would have been a lot simpler just to call it illness? Unfortunately we have no way of answering this question without guessing. We really do not know why, because God has not seen fit to tell us.

As a matter of fact the Lord Jesus did many things that we cannot explain. Once, when he needed a certain sum of money, he sent Peter to the lake to catch a fish, and a coin of just the right size was found in that fish's mouth (Matthew 17:27). Why did Jesus choose that extraordinary way to obtain money? We do not know.

Rebuking the Wind and Waves
When he calmed a storm on the lake he actually talked to it. He "rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, 'Peace! Be still!' " (Mark 4:39). Similarly, when he cured one woman of a serious illness, he "rebuked the fever, and it left her".

Why did Jesus talk to the wind, the sea and the fever? Were they alive and able to hear what he said?
Obviously not! We cannot tell why Jesus chose to talk like that to the storm and the fever. But, whatever the reason, we can be sure that it was not because the wind and the water and the fever were living beings.

It is like that with demon possession. We do not know why Jesus and his disciples sometimes spoke as if demons were real. But, whatever the reason, we can be sure that it was not because demons were living beings.

As we have seen, the Bible provides plenty of evidence that there are no fallen angels, and no spirit beings in rebellion against God. Nothing can alter that fact, even though we may not understand the reason for the use of "demon language" in the New Testament.