At the time of Christ, popular belief undoubtedly exaggerated the influence of evil spirits. Savage, Life after Death, 113—“While God was at a distance, the demons were very, very near. The air about the earth was full of these evil tempting spirits. They caused shipwreck at sea, and sudden death on land; they blighted the crops; they smote and blasted in the tempests; they took possession of the bodies and the souls of men. They entered into compacts, and took mortgages on men's souls.” If some good end has been attained in spite of them they feel that “Their labor must be to pervert that end. And out of good still to find means of evil.” In Goethe's Faust, Margaret detects the evil in Mephistopheles: “You see that he with no soul sympathizes. 'Tis written on his face—he never loved.... Whenever he comes near, I cannot pray.” Mephistopheles describes himself as “Ein Theil von jener Kraft Die stäts das Böse will Und stäts das Gute schafft”—“Part of that power not understood, which always wills the bad, and always works the good”—through the overruling Providence of God. “The devil says his prayers backwards.” “He tried to learn the Basque language, but had to give it up, having learned only three words in two years.” Walter Scott tells us that a certain sulphur spring in Scotland was reputed to owe its quality to an ancient compulsory immersion of Satan in it.
Satan's temptations are represented as both negative and positive,—he takes away the seed sown, and he sows tares. He controls many subordinate evil spirits; there is only one devil, but there are many angels or demons, and through their agency Satan may accomplish his purposes.
Satan's negative agency is shown in Mark 4:15—“when they have heard, straightway cometh Satan, and taketh away the word which hath been sown in them”; his positive agency in Mat. 13:38, 39—“the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy that sowed them is the devil.” One devil, but many angels: see Mat. 25:41—“the devil and his angels”; Mark 5:9—“My name is Legion, for we are many”; Eph. 2:2—“the prince of the powers of the air”; 6:12—“principalities ... powers ... world-rulers of this darkness ... spiritual hosts of wickedness.” The mode of Satan's access to the human mind we do not know. It may be that by moving upon our physical organism he produces subtle signs of thought and so reaches the understanding and desires. He certainly has the power to present in captivating forms the objects of appetite and selfish ambition, as he did to Christ in the wilderness (Mat. 4:3, 6, 9), and to appeal to our love for independence by saying to us, as he did to our first parents—“ye shall be as God” (Gen. 3:5).
C. C. Everett, Essays Theol. and Lit., 186-218, on The Devil: “If the supernatural powers would only hold themselves aloof and not interfere with the natural processes of the world, there would be no sickness, no death, no sorrow.... This shows a real, though perhaps unconscious, faith in the goodness and trustworthiness of nature. The world in itself is a source only of good. Here is the germ of a positive religion, though this religion when it appears, may adopt the form of supernaturalism.” If there was no Satan, then Christ's temptations came from within, and showed a predisposition to evil on his own part.
Possession is distinguished from bodily or mental disease, though such disease often accompanies possession or results from it.—The demons speak in their own persons, with supernatural knowledge, and they are directly addressed by Christ. Jesus recognizes Satanic agency in these cases of possession, and he rejoices in the casting out of demons, as a sign of Satan's downfall. These facts render it impossible to interpret the narratives of demoniac possession as popular descriptions of abnormal physical or mental conditions.
Possession may apparently be either physical, as in the case of the Gerasene demoniacs (Mark 5:2-4), or spiritual, as in the case of the “maid having a spirit of divination” (Acts 16:16), where the body does not seem to have been affected. It is distinguished from bodily disease: see Mat. 17:15, 18—“epileptic ... the demon went out from him: and the boy was cured”; Mark 9:25—“Thou dumb and deaf spirit”; 3:11, 12—“the unclean spirits ... cried, saying, Thou art the Son of God. And he charged them much that they should not make him known”; Luke 8:30, 31—“And Jesus asked him, What is thy name? And he said, Legion; for many demons were entered unto him. And they entreated him that he would not command them to depart into the abyss”; 10:17, 18—“And the seventy returned with joy, saying, Lord, even the demons are subject unto us in thy name. And he said unto them, I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven.”
These descriptions of personal intercourse between Christ and the demons cannot be interpreted as metaphorical. “In the temptation of Christ and in the possession of the swine, imagination could have no place. Christ was above its delusions; the brutes were below them.” Farrar (Life of Christ, 1:337-341, and 2:excursus vii), while he admits the existence and agency of good angels, very inconsistently gives a metaphorical interpretation to the Scriptural accounts of evil angels. We find corroborative evidence of the Scripture doctrine in the domination which one wicked man frequently exercises over others; in the opinion of some modern physicians in charge of the insane, that certain phenomena in their patients' experience are best explained by supposing an actual subjection of the will to a foreign power; and, finally, in the influence of the Holy Spirit upon the human heart. See Trench, Miracles, 125-136; Smith's Bible Dictionary, 1:586—“Possession is distinguished from mere temptation by the complete or incomplete loss of the sufferer's reason or power of will; his actions, words, and almost his thoughts, are mastered by the evil spirit, till his personality seems to be destroyed, or at least so overborne as to produce the consciousness of a twofold will within him like that in a dream. In the ordinary assaults and temptations of Satan, the will itself yields consciously, and by yielding gradually assumes, without losing its apparent freedom of action, the characteristics of the Satanic nature. It is solicited, urged, and persuaded against the strivings of grace, but it is not overborne.”
T. H. Wright, The Finger of God, argues that Jesus, in his mention of demoniacs, accommodated himself to the beliefs of his time. Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 274, with reference to Weiss's Meyer on Mat. 4:24, gives Meyer's arguments against demoniacal possession as follows: 1. the absence of references to demoniacal possession in the Old Testament, and the fact that so-called demoniacs were cured by exorcists; 2. that no clear case of possession occurs at present; 3. that there is no notice of demoniacal possession in John's Gospel, though the overcoming of Satan is there made a part of the Messiah's work and Satan is said to enter into a man's mind and take control there (John 13:27); 4. and that the so-called demoniacs are not, as would be expected, of a diabolic temper and filled with malignant feelings toward Christ. Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 38—“The popular belief in demon-possession gave form to the conceptions of those who had nervous diseases, so that they expressed themselves in language proper only to those who were actually possessed. Jesus is no believer in Christian Science: he calls sickness sickness and health health; but he regards all disease as a proof and effect of the working of the evil one.”
On Mark 1:21-34, see Maclaren in S. S. Times, Jan. 23, 1904—“We are told by some that this demoniac was an epileptic. Possibly; but, if the epilepsy was not the result of possession, why should it take the shape of violent hatred of Jesus? And what is there in epilepsy to give discernment of his character and the purpose of his mission?” Not Jesus' exorcism of demons as a fact, but his casting them out by a word, was our Lord's wonderful characteristic. Nevius, Demon-Possession, 240—“May not demon-possession be only a different, a more advanced, form of hypnotism?... It is possible that these evil spirits are familiar with the organism of the nervous system, and are capable [pg 457]of acting upon and influencing mankind in accordance with physical and psychological laws.... The hypnotic trance may be effected, without the use of physical organs, by the mere force of will-power, spirit acting upon spirit.” Nevius quotes F. W. A. Myers, Fortnightly Rev., Nov. 1885—“One such discovery, that of telepathy, or the transference of thought and sensation from mind to mind without the agency of the recognized organs of sense, has, as I hold, been already achieved.” See Bennet, Diseases of the Bible; Kedney, Diabolology; and references in Poole's Synopsis, 1:343; also Bramwell, Hypnotism, 358-398.
(c) Yet, in spite of themselves, they execute God's plans of punishing the ungodly, of chastening the good, and of illustrating the nature and fate of moral evil.