Demons 101

#45: “Demons 101” by Brendon Wahlberg
In the gospel of Mark, we read about Jesus casting out demons from people. “That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. And the whole city was gathered around the door. And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons” (Mark 1: 32-33). There are many passages concerning demons in the four gospels, but what do we really know about demons? What are they? Where do they come from? What do they do, and why?
Demons seem to be common in the New Testament. Their existence is taken for granted and is unexplained. Demons, like angels, are not described or defined in any systematic way. All we can find are scraps of information scattered about scripture. All we can do is try to make a coherent picture out of those pieces. We cannot even look to older scriptures for more information; there are no demons in the Old Testament. Some English translations mention “demons” in a few places in the Hebrew Bible, but a more careful translation shows that those passages (such as Deuteronomy 32:16-17) are really talking about idols. Neither Testament gives any particular origin for demons. The Bible can’t tell us where they originally came from or how they came to be. The pagan Greeks thought of demons (they called them daimons) as lesser deities. Perhaps Greek ideas about demons were imported into Jewish theology between the two Testaments, and then altered.
Was a demon merely the same thing as an illness?
It is tempting, in the modern scientific world, to explain the nature of a demon as equivalent to a mental or physical illness, and to say that the people of the first century simply did not understand such things, calling them “demons” out of ignorance. But that is not what the New Testament says. The passage at the beginning of this article is one example of how the Bible distinguishes between sickness and demon-possession (being a “demoniac”). Another is found in Matthew: “So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and he cured them.” (Matthew 4:24) Some of the people who came to see Jesus were sick and some had demons. These were two different things, although they could be confused because the presence of a demon could cause disease symptoms in a person (such as convulsions - Mark 9:20).
What is the nature of a demon?
A demon is a spirit (Matthew 8:16) and not a physical being. There are many of them, and more than one can inhabit a person (Luke 8:2, Mark 5:9). It is unclear why they inhabit people, but scripture says they are evil (e.g. Luke 7:21) and unclean, so their reasons are no doubt evil. It may be that they try to exist in places like the desert, but are unable to find rest there, so they inhabit people (Matthew 12:43-44). Some demons are more evil than others (Matthew 12:45). They are said to torment people (Acts 5:16) and indeed, their presence can bring madness (Mark 5:5), muteness (Matthew 9:32), or blindness (Matthew 12:22). A demon can talk through the voice of the possessed person (Luke 4:33-36), and they are intelligent enough to recognize the authority of Jesus and to fear his power to cast them out and back into the abyss (Matthew 8:29-31, Luke 8:31). Demons are said to teach lies to men (1Timothy 4:1) and to be able to tell the future (Acts 16:16). They can have a sort of name, for example, “Legion” (Mark 5:9). And, they did seem to know that their time of being able to possess people had a built-in ending (Matthew 8:29). It is possible that demons were made by Satan and worked for him (Revelation 16:13-14).
If Demons are evil, why did God allow them to possess people in the first century?
I said that there were no demons in the Old Testament. Actually, there is one possible exception in the story of King Saul. “Now the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him. And Saul’s servants said to him, ‘See now, an evil spirit from God is tormenting you. Let our lord now command the servants who attend you to look for someone who is skilful in playing the lyre; and when the evil spirit from God is upon you, he will play it, and you will feel better.’” (1 Samuel 16:14-16) In this passage, God sends an evil spirit (possibly a demon?) to torment Saul, possibly to manipulate him into sending for David.
The passage makes some commentators uncomfortable because it is God who sends the evil spirit. Yet, God has power over all things, including evil spirits. If God has power over evil spirits, then God has power over the demons of the New Testament period, and could conceivably prevent them from possessing people in the first place. It’s another example of the question of: why does God allow evil to do its work?
It is possible that there was a divine purpose in allowing demon possession in the first century. The following passages suggest that purpose. Jesus said, “But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you.” (Matthew 12:28) “The seventy returned with joy, saying, ‘Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!’ He said to them, ‘I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.’” (Luke 10:17-18)
The various signs and miracles that Jesus performed with God’s power were meant to prove that the Kingdom of God had arrived. Jesus demonstrated his power over many aspects of the world, including disease (curing sickness), the forces of nature (calming a storm), and even death (raising Lazarus). It may be that God allowed demons to possess people so that Jesus could demonstrate his power over the world of evil spirits as well, providing one more important sign of the coming of the Kingdom of God. After that purpose was accomplished, and the Apostolic age had passed, demons were no longer allowed the power they once had, and demon possession became a thing of the past. Certainly, aside from “Exorcist” movies, we see nothing in the modern world to indicate that demons have the power to inhabit people any more.
In the modern age, it is easy to question the entire existence of demons. But if we do, we have to ask ourselves whether we truly respect scripture and the gospel accounts of Jesus. The New Testament assumes that demons are real, and the gospels are clear about Jesus treating demons as real, and dealing with them in a real way. It is hard for me to imagine Jesus merely humoring the superstitions of the people of the time, and pretending to cast out imaginary beings from people while secretly healing their actual mental or physical illnesses. That would not be the behavior of the same Jesus who made such a point of telling us the truth all of the time.
In the end, we must at least keep our minds open and allow for the possibility that demons exist exactly as described in the New Testament. If that is true, then we should also be grateful that our century is so very different from the first century CE, and that we are free from the threat of unclean evil spirits on top of all the many mental illnesses and diseases from which we still do suffer.