Imagine you’re playing a very serious game of Clue. You’re wearing a fedora with the brim pulled down low, and every five minutes you say something that you hope sounds like Humphrey Bogart. You may even be packing heat. You’ve played the game well, and you are zeroing in on who-done-it. You know where the dirty deed was done and you know how it was done, but you’re not sure who did it. It could either be Professor Plum or Miss Scarlet. It is your turn. The good news is you’re holding the “library” and the “lead pipe” cards so you can play them to smoke out your culprit. In your best Humphrey, you snarl, “Library, lead pipe, Professor Plum.” No matter what happens, you will soon know which of your suspects did it. The woman to your right shows you a “Professor Plum” card. You give her a little smirk and say your favorite line from The Maltese Falcon, “You’re a good man, sister.” You now wait your turn; and then, it is here. You announce that you are going to make an accusation. Everyone is surprised. How could you have narrowed it down so fast?  You pick up the confidential pack and smirk. “I accuse Miss Scarlet in the ballroom with revolver.” Since you know you are right, you add a little quote from the Falcon, directing it to Miss Scarlet: “I hope they don’t hang you, precious, by that sweet neck. Yes, angel, I’m gonna send you over. The chances are you’ll get off with life. That means if you’re a good girl, you’ll be out in 20 years. I’ll be waiting for you. If they hang you, I’ll always remember you.” And you open up the solution pack; and there it is, revolver, ballroom and Radio Host Reggie Rust!?! You throw down the cards in disgust and shout: “Who in the name of Sam Stinkin’ Spade is Radio Host Reggie Rust?  

That’s how I feel when I encounter a story about demons in the New Testament. I feel cheated. I feel angry. I feel bitter. Demons play a rather large role in the gospels, but we have no idea about who they are, where they come from and whether they are real or not. And when I am reading along and find yet another exorcism, I find myself feeling so miffed, I can’t even focus on the point of the story.  Instead, I feel swindled like I’ve been wasting my time on a dime-store who-done-it that I picked up at the beach, figuring, surely, I could solve it, only to have a completely unknown character get introduced in the last chapter and find out she is the perpetrator. Yes, I am that annoyed. To make matters worse, when I go looking for answers, I can’t find any that satisfy my curiosity. They do not have their origin in any Old Testament story (and certainly not in Genesis 6). The places where evil spiritual beings appear in the Old Testament are dramatically different from “evil spirits” in the New and may actually depict malevolent political forces and sinful and unjust worldly systems. Worse yet, there is no background information given in the New Testament that sets up one of the accounts when Jesus confronts a demon. But wait, there is more bad news. The whole notion of demons that spread throughout Second Temple Judaism and gained great popularity, originated not in some Second Temple prophet or priest, but in the writings of some now-forgotten Babylonian seer (do you really want to get your theology on some street corner in Babylon?). And while every country picked up on his idea of demons inflicting harm on the human race, including Israel, I still don’t want anything to do with it. I don’t care how popular this view is; if it is not aligned with the Bible, I don’t want it. To add insult to injury, when scholars in Second Temple Judaism had a similar concern about the lack of biblical evidence, they decided to highjack a bizarre reading of the flood narrative and posit that as their proof. But that dog won’t hunt, at least not in my house. And that has led me to conclude that demons do not exist, but are literary characters used to depict the conflict between God and the forces of evil in our fallen, sinful world. Case closed.

There is just one problem, Jesus confronted demons. He even spoke to them. They answered his questions. They inflicted people with various diseases and hardships.  He cast them out. And if Jesus believed demons were real, then I think I must also believe they are real, even if don’t necessarily want to believe. So, case is open again.    

And all of this leads us to ask a very important question: What do we think? Are demons a part of our world today or not? I wish I could give you a straightforward answer, but the best I can do is give seven reasons why I don’t believe demons exist (this week) and seven reasons why I do believe in demons today (next week). So, let’s begin with my seven top reasons to deny that demons exist.  

  1. Most of the diseases that people in the Second Temple period understood as often being caused by demons, we now would ascribe to natural causes (not demonic). We can take that a step further: Many of the diseases back then were understood only to be healed by an exorcism, but today we know that such healings could be accomplished by specific medical procedures (and no exorcism).  In other words, while back in the ancient world demons were seen as causing all sorts of infirmities, we no longer believe demons stand behind such illnesses. This suggests that demons may not be literal beings, but code words for various sicknesses that inflicted people.
  1. Let me build on that as a separate point: Perhaps Jesus is only calling these things demonic because of their evil intent to destroy, whereas we might see them simply as natural diseases, disorders and deadly viruses. An example might help. If we stub our toe on the stupid table, we do not literally think the table has a low IQ, but we refer to it that way because of its clear obvious intent to inflict harm on our toes. Now, these maladies are evil (hence the label “demon”), but they are not spiritual beings. They are destructive sicknesses found in a fallen, bent world. However, in Jesus’ world, they called these things evidence of demonic activity.  
  1. We need to ask the question: Do we really need demons to explain the evil in our world? I don’t think so. Everything bad that happens can be traced back to natural disasters or human depravity. And if we believe in total depravity and human freedom and freedom creativity, then we don’t need demons. We don’t need demons to spread sin; we can do all of that by ourselves. We don’t need demons to commit ghastly crimes against humanity; we can do all of that by ourselves. We don’t need demons to spread disease and cause disasters; we can do all of that by ourselves. Do we really need demons to explain the horror of our world? I do not believe so. We are perfectly able to create our own hell on earth all by ourselves. And therefore, maybe we don’t need demons to explain our world today.
  1. It is clear that God often accommodates himself to the culture he is addressing. He spoke in a way that people could understand without their heads exploding. For instance, God accommodated himself to the ancient world whenever he talked about cosmology and the sun revolving around the earth and the earth being flat. We see this even in the great Christological hymn in Philippians 2 where we see that odd statement that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth which fits the ancient world’s perceptions of a three-tiered universe, but not ours (that’s accommodation). Is it possible that Jesus was accommodating himself to the people around him when he encountered “demons”? Is it possible that in these episodes, Jesus is simply accommodating himself to the thoughts and beliefs of his day? Why would Jesus do this?  Because his point is not to teach about demons, but to show that he is Lord over all. In every occurrence where Jesus encounters a demon, the point is always that Jesus is the victor over all spiritual forces. That fact explains why we never learn anything about demons (where they come from, what they do, what their end goal is, etc.) in any of these accounts. However, we do learn more about Jesus, the omnipotent king of all creation, because that is why these stories are being told.
  1. As mentioned above, I just don’t trust Babylonian theology; and if the idea of demons has its origin there, I’m not sure I want nothing to do with it. I want biblical support, not Babylonian.
  1. To find biblical support for demons in Genesis 6 and the flood narrative is an exercise in futility.  Genesis 6 never mentions demons. Its purpose is not to detail how demons came into existence. In fact, its purpose is not even to act as an introduction to the flood. Instead, it is better understood as a conclusion to the genealogy of chapter 5. And therefore, we lose our only biblical support for the whole idea of demonic spirits.
  1. While my exposure is significantly limited, I have not seen any evidence of any demonic force in my life or world (that I am aware of). I have heard of demonic activity from second- or third-hand accounts or from accounts I wouldn’t necessarily trust, but since I have not seen anything demonic, I tend to want to deny their existence. Seeing is believing. Not seeing leads to not believing. This does not deny spiritual warfare or the presence of angels or a spiritual reality behind our physical world, but it raises a big question about whether demons actually exist or not.

So, what are we to make of all of this? I would argue we can’t make anything of it because we haven’t heard the other side yet. But next week, we will look at those seven positive points, and I will conclude this series by giving five ways on how we ought to live.  

Thanks again, to Matthias Henze for his excellent and intriguing book, Mind the Gap: How the Jewish Writings between the Old and New Testament Help Us Understand Jesus (Fortress Press, 2017). I hope it has been a very insightful 13 weeks, and we still have one more to go! But next week, we will wrap things up.