4-12 Demons: Why Didn’t Jesus Correct People?
God isn't so paranoiac or primitive as to need to
'cover His back' all the time when He speaks, endlessly footnoting,
as it were, His statements, lest they be misinterpreted. He speaks
and writes quite calmly in the language of the time. The description
of death as being ‘gathered [s.w. taken, assembed] to one’s people’
(e.g. Gen. 49:33) is hard to square with basic Bible teaching about
death as unconsciousness. The idiom clearly is based upon the false
idea that a dead person goes to be with their relatives after death.
But the wrong idea isn’t corrected, and the idiom is used.And the
Son of God likewise wasn’t so primitive as to get involved in tit-for-tat
doctrinal argument of the kind JWs and Adventists revel in. His
style was to show by His miracles and by His person that God’s Truth
is so evidently superior to the tradition and superstition of men.
When the disciples thought He was a ghost, relapsing for a moment
into their previous belief systems, the Lord didn’t read them a
lecture about the death state and the fact we don’t have an immortal
soul. He rebuked their lack of faith and explained how the OT prophecies
required His resurrection (Lk. 24:37-45). Grasping that, and the
fact that in absolute reality the risen Jesus was standing with
them, meant of itself that all belief in ghosts etc. was sidelined
into oblivion. It is worth noting that Matthew, Mark and Luke use
the ‘demon’ language, because those records are basically a transcript
of the Gospel they taught to unbelievers. John’s Gospel, which seems
more aimed at believers facing pressure from Judaists and Gnostics,
omits any reference to them. The Lord uses demon language in connection
with healings in rural Galilee rather than in the presence of more
educated people in cities like Jerusalem- because presumably it
was in the rural areas where the inability to grasp a direct denial
of ‘demons’ would have been more deep rooted. It has been observed:
“Demon possession in the Gospel accounts is not a geographically-uniform
phenomenon. Specific cases of demon possession in the synoptics
occur in regional clusters, always in northern regions such as Galilee,
rather than occurring throughout every location in which Christ
travelled and performed healings. Conversely, there are no descriptions
of demon possession in Judea or Jerusalem in the four Gospel accounts.
Moreover, there are several summaries of demon possession in Galilee
and the northern regions that imply demon possession was a common
and even characteristic phenomenon in this area. No comparable statements
for the Judean area are found in the Gospel records. Finally, certain
ostensibly physical pathological conditions, such as blindness,
deafness and muteness are sometimes attributed to demon possession
in the north, but are never so characterized in the south, even
though descriptions of these conditions do occur in texts commenting
on the Judean ministry”. Clearly enough, the Bible writers reflected
the perceptions of the people about whom they wrote. If they were
writing about Galileeans, they spoke of healing the mentally sick
in terms of demons being cast out; but they don't use this language
in speaking about Jerusalem. The Encyclopaedia Of Religion And
Ethics clarifies further: "Galilee was the centre of Palestinian
demonology, and it will almost invariably be found that the Galileean
teachers accepted, whilst the Judean teachers rejected, the existence
of spirits" (1).
2 Kings 17:9 speaks of Israel doing “secretly those
things that were not right”. There was no ultimate secret, for God
knew their ways, and their actions were manifest on “every high
hill and under every green tree” (:10). The ‘secrecy’ was in that
they thought their deeds could be kept secret from God. And the
record reflects their wrong perspective with no further comment.
It is for us to perceive it. And the same is true with the matter
of demons. This is one reason why the apparent error isn’t corrected.
God so wishes to reach out to unbelievers and misbelievers
that His word makes allusion to their beliefs without specifically
correcting them or criticizing them- in order to try to persuade
them of a better way. Take Luke’s genealogy of Jesus. He frames
it to have 77 genealogies leading to Christ- and he mentions that
Enoch was seven generations from Adam. But the uninspired book of
Enoch claimed that the final judgment was to come 70 generations
after Enoch (1 Enoch 10:12-14). Surely Luke’s idea, or rather
God’s idea behind the inspiration of Luke, was that those
familiar with Enoch would hear bells ringing when they met the word
‘Enoch’- and would be wondering what was to come 70
generations later. And as they read on through Luke’s genealogy,
they would find the answer- the final judgment is in essence in
the person of Jesus.
The Lord spoke the word of Truth to men as they were able to hear it (Mk. 4:33); like Paul, He became all things to all men, so that by any means He might save some (1 Cor. 9:22). The Lord Jesus used well known medical techniques in His ministry (Mk. 7:33; Jn. 9:6); not because He needed to use them, but in order to somehow get His hearers at ease. And so, it seems to me, He used the language of demons. He dealt with people in terms which they would be able to accept. In Paul’s case, being all things to all men meant that at times He sacrificed highest principle in order to get through to men; He didn’t just baldly state doctrinal truth and leave his hearers with the problem of whether to accept it. He really sought to persuade men. He magnified his ministry of preaching to the Gentiles, he emphasized the possibility of Gentile salvation, “If by any means I may provoke to emulation [‘incite to rivalry’] them which are my flesh [the Jews], and might save some of them” (Rom. 11:13,14). This hardly seems a very appropriate method, under the spotlight of highest principle. But it was a method Paul used. Likewise he badgers the Corinthians into giving money for the poor saints in Jerusalem on the basis that he has boasted to others of how much they would give (2 Cor. 9:2), and these boasts had provoked others to be generous; so now, they had better live up to their promise and give the cash. If somebody promised to give money to charity and then didn’t do so, we wouldn’t pressurize them to give. And we wouldn’t really encourage one ecclesia to give money on the basis of telling them that another ecclesia had promised to be very generous, so they ought to be too. Yet these apparently human methods were used by Paul. He spoke “in human terms” to the Romans, “because of the infirmity of your flesh” (Rom. 6:19 NIV); he so wanted to make his point understood. And when he told husbands to love their wives, he uses another rather human reason: that because your wife is “one flesh” with you, by loving her you are loving yourself. ‘And’, he reasons, ‘you wouldn’t hate yourself, would you, so- love your wife!’. The cynic could reasonably say that this is pure selfishness (Eph. 5:29); and Paul seems to recognize that the higher level of understanding is that a husband should love his wife purely because he is manifesting the love of Christ to an often indifferent and unappreciative ecclesia (5:32,33). And yet Paul plainly uses the lower level argument too.
God Himself frequently does this kind of thing: He comes down to the terms and language of men in His zeal to save. He invites the Jews to put Him to the test: if they paid their tithes, He would bless them with fruitful harvest (Mal. 3:10). And yet surely the whole message of God’s revelation is that we are to accept His hand in our lives, that obedience won’t automatically bring blessing now, that we are not to put our God to the test (Dt. 6:16 cp. Mt. 4:7) but to trust in Him and the coming of His Kingdom to resolve all things. And yet Yahweh seems to come down from these high principles in Malachi’s time, to try to convince them of the logic of devotion to Him. And most personally, Yahweh Himself had stated in His own law that to divorce a wife and then re-marry her after she had been “defiled” was an act of abomination to Him, and would defile the land (Dt. 24:4). And yet in full knowledge of this, and with conscious allusion to it, Yahweh begs His defiled, divorced wife Israel to return to Him (Jer. 4:1), even though the land was defiled by her (Jer. 3:9; 16:18). Here we see the utter self-abnegation of Yahweh, God of Israel, that He might save His people.
And so the Lord’s use of the language of the day regarding demons is surely another example of the zeal of the Father and Son to communicate to men. We like Paul must catch this spirit. Sweating over grammar books to learn a language, patiently instructing and answering the objections of those still in darkness, making ourselves all things to all men at whatever inner cost, whatever barriers against others we have to tear down within our own world-views, never sacrificing truth or principle but ever seeking to communicate God’s salvation to men and women “as they [are] able to hear it”.
God meets people where they are; and His Son was no different. He deals with
people according to their perceptions, even if those perceptions
are wrong. Exactly because the Jews thought that the mere existence
of the temple meant the presence and acceptance of God amongst them,
“therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field,
and Jerusalem shall become heaps” (Mic. 3:12). And perhaps something
similar is going on in the NT’s use of demon language. For those
who think that God is so weak that He is in conflict with other
demi-gods, He confirms them in their wrong perception. He meets
them where they are, however, and to the sensitive mind, reveals
Himself as truly Almighty. In Phil. 2:10, the Lord Jesus is said
to have been given power over all beings in heaven, earth and the
nether-world. The Romans understood the world to be divided into
these three spheres of the cosmos. But this passage is based upon
Is. 45:23, which says that God has total supremacy- and this has
been granted to His Son. As I understand it, Paul is reasoning that
if God is all powerful, and if that power has been given to the
Lord Jesus, then whatever cosmology there is around, belief, e.g.
in a nether-world, well, in that case, Jesus has all power over
that as well. The same argument applies to demons. If they exist,
well the essence is that they are well and truly under the Lord’s
control and aren’t essentially powerful. Paul doesn’t
so much ridicule the idea of a nether-world, rather he takes the
view, as Jesus did in His dealings with the demon issue, that God’s
power is so great that their existence is effectively not an issue.
The Case Of John's Gospel
It has been widely recognized that John's Gospel often refers to
the same themes found in the Synoptics, but in different language
and from a different perspective. The account of the virgin birth
as the word being made flesh is one such example. Another would
be the effective repeating of the great commission in different
terms. Yet another would be the description of water baptism as
being born of water (Jn. 3:3-5). The accounts of casting out demons
which we have in the Synoptic Gospels are not found in John- not
in so many words. But I suggest that the essence of it all is there
in John, too. The battle between Jesus and the 'devil' is referred
to there frequently. He is accused of being in league with the devil
(Jn. 7:20; 8:48; 10:20); but He labels His critics as being of the
devil (Jn. 8:44). And in that same passage He redefines their view
of " the devil" as being a question of doing sinful "
desires" . Judas is portrayed as being " of the devil"
(Jn. 6:70,71; 13:2,27). John speaks of an epic struggle between
life and death, light and darkness, truth and error, faith and unbelief,
God and evil / sin. In this struggle, the forces of evil have no
real power over the Lord Jesus; He is greater than them and overcomes
them to such an extent that they are effectively non-existent for
those in Him. The Synoptics speak of the opposition to Jesus as
being from Scribes, Pharisees etc. John describes this opposition
as the Jewish 'satan' or adversary to the Lord. John presents the
opposition to Jesus from the Jews as being symbolic of evil and
sin itself. Effectively, the more literal accounts of the Synoptics
are saying the same thing- that the Lord showed that the power of
God is so great that effectively, demons don't exist as any realistic
force in the lives of both Jesus and His people. John puts this
in more epic and symbolic language- the forces of evil were overcome
and revealed to be powerless by the Lord Jesus, ultimately expressing
this through His death. And perhaps that's why John's Gospel doesn't
speak of the Lord casting out demons- because his record has made
it clear enough that effectively, those things don't exist (2)
.
The whole account of the crucifixion in John shows how the Lord
gave His life up of Himself; the Jews and Romans had no power to
take it from Him, and throughout John's accounts of the trials and
crucifixion, it is apparent that it is the Lord and not His opponents
who is in total control of the situation. Even though 'the devil'
is seen as a factor in Judas' betrayal of Jesus (Jn. 13:27,30),
it is clear that Jesus was delivered up [s.w. 'betrayed'] by the
"determinate counsel [will] and foreknowledge of God"
(Acts 2:23). It wasn't as if God fought a losing battle with a personal
satan in order to protect His Son from death. The way that the Lord
Jesus is 'sat down upon' the Judgment Bench, as if He is the authentic
judge (Jn. 19:13), is an example of how the Lord Jesus is presented
in John as being totally in control; His 'lifting up' on the cross
is portrayed as a 'lifting up' in glory, enthroned as a King and
Lord upon the cross(3) . Other examples
of John bringing out this theme of the Lord being in control are
to be found in the way He confronts His captors (Jn. 18:4), questions
His questioners (Jn. 18:20,21,23; 19:11), gets freedom for His followers
(Jn. 18:8), and makes those come out to arrest Him fall to the ground.
Notes
(1) Article "Demons and Spirits (Jewish)", Encyclopaedia
Of Religion And Ethics ed. James Hastings (Edinburgh: T. &
T. Clark, 1911) Vol. 4 pp. 612,613. The article provides full documentation
from the Talmud for this statement.
(2) This is developed at length in S. Garrett,The
Demise Of The Devil (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1989).
(3) For justification of reading the Greek kathizo
as a transitive verb ['to sit someone down'], see I. de la Potterie,
'Jesus King and Judge According To John 19:13', Scripture
Vol. 13 (1961) p.p. 97-111 and Wayne Meeks, The Prophet-King
(Leiden: Brill, 1967) pp. 73-76. |