92. The Demoniacs, Considered Generally. (Chapter 9. The Miracles of Jesus.) (The Life of Jesus Critically Examined) (Studies on Bible & Early Christianity)

While In The Fourth Gospel, the expressions "to have a demon" and "being a demoniac," appear nowhere except in the accusations of the Jews against Jesus, and as parallels to "to be mad" (viii. 48 f.; x. 20 f.; comp. Mark iii. 22, 30; Matt. xi. 18): the Synoptics may be said to represent demoniacs as the most frequent objects of the curative powers of Jesus. When they describe the beginning of his ministry in Galilee, they give the demoniacs a prominent place among the sufferers whom Jesus healed (Matt. iv. 24; Mark i. 34), and in all their summary notices of the ministry of Jesus in certain districts, demoniacs play a chief part (Matt. viii. 16 f.; Mark i. 39; iii. 11 f.; Luke vi. 18). The power to cast out devils is before any thing else imparted by Jesus to his disciples (Matt. x. 1, 8; Mark iii. 15; vi. 7; Luke ix. 1), who to their great joy succeed in using it according to their wishes (Luke x. 17, 20; Mark vi. 13).

Besides these summary notices, however, several cures of demoniacs are narrated to us in detail, so that we can form a tolerably accurate idea of their peculiar condition. In the one whose cure in the synagogue at Capernaum is given by the evangelists as the first of this kind (Mark i.23ff.; Luke iv.33ff.), we find, on the one hand, a disturbance of the self-consciousness, causing the possessed individuals to speak in the person of the demon, which appears also in other demoniacs, as for example, the Gadarenes (Matt. viii. 29 f. parall.); on the other hand, spasms and convulsions with savage cries. This spasmodic state has, in the demoniac who is also called a lunatic (Matt. xvii. 14 ff. parall), reached the stage of manifest epilepsy; for sudden falls, often in dangerous places, cries, gnashing ^{P.455} of the teeth, and foaming, are known symptoms of that malady. The other aspect of the demoniacal state, namely, the disturbance of the self-consciousness, amounts in the demoniac of Gadara, by whose lips a demon, or rather a plurality of these evil spirits, speaks as a subject, to misanthropic madness, with attacks of maniacal fury against himself and others, Moreover, not only the insane and epileptic, but the dumb (Matt. ix. 32; Luke xi. 14; Matt. xii. 22, the dumb demoniac is also Blind) and those suffering from a gouty contraction of the body (Luke xiii.11ff.), are by the evangelists designated more or less precisely as demoniacs.

The idea of these sufferers presupposed in the Gospels and shared by their authors, is that a wicked, unclean spirit or several, have taken possession of them (hence their condition is described by the expressions daimoniwn, to have a demon, to be a demoniac), speak through their organs, (thus Matt. viii. 31, oi( daimonej parekaloun au)ton legontej) and put their limbs in motion at pleasure, (thus Mark ix. 20) until, forcibly expelled by a cure, they depart from the patient. According to the representation of the evangelists, Jesus also held this view of the matter. It is true that when, as a means of liberating the possessed, he addresses the demons within them (as in Mark ix. 25; Matt. viii. 32; Luke iv. 35), we might with Paulus regard this as a mode of entering into the fixed idea of these more or less insane persons, it being the part of a psychical physician, if he would produce any effect, to accommodate himself to this idea, however strongly he may in reality be convinced of its groundlessness. But this is not all; Jesus, even in his private conversations with his disciples, not only says nothing calculated to undermine the notion of demoniacal possession, but rather speaks repeatedly on a supposition of its truth; as e. g. in Matt. x. 8, where he gives the commission, Oast out devils; in Luke x.18ff.; and especially in Matt. xvii. 21, parall., where he says, This kind goes not out but by prayer and fasting. Again, in a purely theoretical discourse, perhaps also in the more intimate circle of his disciples, Jesus gives a description quite accordant with the idea of his contemporaries of the departure of the unclean spirit, his wandering in the wilderness, and his return with a reinforcement (Matt. xii. 43 ff.). With these facts before us, the attempt made by generally unprejudiced inquirers, such as Winer, to show that Jesus did not share the popular opinion on demonical possession, but merely accommodated his language to their understanding, appears to us a mere adjustment of his ideas by our own. A closer examination of the last-mentioned passage will suffice to remove every thought of a mere accommodation on the part of Jesus. It is true that commentators have sought to evade all that is conclusive in this passage, by ^{P.456} interpreting it figuratively, or even as a parable, in every explanation of which the essential idea is, that superficial conversion to the cause of Jesus is followed by a relapse into aggravated sin. But, I would like to know, what justifies us in abandoning the literal interpretation of this discourse? In the propositions themselves there is no indication of a figurative meaning, nor is it rendered probable by the general style of teaching used by Jesus, for he nowhere else presents moral relations in the garb of demoniacal conditions: on the contrary, whenever he speaks, as here, of the departure of evil spirits, in Matt. xvii. 21, he evidently intends to be understood literally. But does the context favour a figurative interpretation? Luke (xi. 24 ff.) places the discourse in question after the defence of Jesus against the Pharisaic accusation, that he cast out devils by Beelzebub: a position which is undoubtedly erroneous, as we have seen, but which is a proof that he at least understood Jesus to speak literally of real demons. Matthew also places the discourse near to the above accusation and defence, but he inserts between them the demand of a sign, together with its refusal, and he makes Jesus conclude with the application, "Even so shall it be also to this wicked generation." This addition, it is true, gives the discourse a figurative application to the moral and religions condition of his contemporaries, but only thus: Jesus intended the foregoing description of the expelled and returning demon literally, though he made a secondary use of this event as an image of the moral condition of his contemporaries. At any rate Luke, who has not the same addition, gives the discourse of Jesus, to use the expression of Paulus, as a warning against demoniacal relapses. That the majority of theologians in the present day, without decided support on the part of Matthew, and in decided contradiction to Luke, advocate the merely figurative interpretation of this passage, appears to be founded in an aversion to ascribe to Jesus so strongly developed a demonology, as lies in his words literally understood. But this is not to be avoided, even leaving the above passage out of consideration. In Matt. xii. 25 f. 29, Jesus speaks of a kingdom and household of the devil, in a manner which obviously outsteps the domain of the merely figurative; but above all, the passage already quoted, Luke x. 18-20, is of such a nature as to compel even Paulus, who is generally so fond of lending to the hallowed personages of primitive Christian history the views of the present age, to admit that the kingdom of Satan was not merely a symbol of evil to Jesus, and that he believed in actual demoniacal possession. For he says very justly, that as Jesus here speaks, not to the patient or to the people, but to those who themselves, according to his instructions, cured demoniacs, his ^{P.457} words are not to be explained as a mere accommodation, when he confirms their belief that the spirits are subject to them, and describes their capability of curing the malady in question, as a power over the demons. In answer also to the repugnance of those with whose enlightenment a belief in demoniacal possession is inconsistent, to admit that Jesus held that belief, the same theologian justly observes that the most distinguished mind may retain a false idea, prevalent among his contemporaries, if it happen to he out of his peculiar sphere of thought.

Some light is thrown on the Gospel conception of the demoniacs, by the opinions on this subject which we find in writers more or less contemporary. The general, idea that evil spirits had influence on men, producing melancholy, insanity, and epilepsy, was early prevalent among the Greeks as well as the Hebrews: but the more distinct idea that evil spirits entered into the human body and took possession of its members was not developed until a considerably later period, and was a consequence of the dissemination of the oriental, particularly the Persian pneumatology among both Hebrews and Greeks. Hence we find in Josephus the expressions "demons entering into the living, settling themselves there," and the same ideas in Lucian and Philostratus.

^{P.458} Of the nature and origin of these spirits nothing is expressly stated in the Gospels. Justin and the Rabbis more nearly particularize them, as spirits that torment the living, the souls of the giants, the offspring of those angels who allied themselves to the daughters of men: the rabbis further add the souls of these who perished in the deluge, and of those who participated in building the tower of Babel; and with this agree the Clementine Homilies, for according to them also, these souls of the giants having become demons, seek to attach themselves, as the stronger, to human souls, and to inhabit human bodies. As, however, in the continuation of the passage first cited, Justin endeavours to convince the heathens of immortality from their own ideas, the opinion which he there expresses, of demons being the souls of the departed in general, can scarcely be regarded as his, especially as his pupil Tatian expressly declares himself against it; while Josephus affords no criterion as to the latent idea of the New Testament, since his Greek education renders it very uncertain whether he presents the doctrine of demoniacal possession in its original Jewish, or in a Grecian form. If it must be admitted that the Hebrews owed their doctrine of demons to Persia, we know that the Devils of the Zend mythology were originally and essentially wicked beings, existing prior to the human race; of these two characteristics, Hebraism as such might be induced to expunge the former, which pertained to Dualism, but could have no reason for rejecting the latter. Accordingly, in the Hebrew view, the demons were the fallen angels of Gen. vi., the souls of their offspring the giants, aud of the great criminals before and immediately after the deluge, whom the popular imagination gradually magnified into superhuman beings. But in the ideas of the Hebrews, there lay no motive for descending beyond the circle of these souls, who might be conceived to form the court of Satan. Such a motive was only engendered by the union of the Greco-roman culture with the Hebraic: the former had no Satan, and consequently no retinue of spirits devoted to his service, but it had an abundance of Manes, Lemures, and the like, all names for disembodied souls that disquieted the living. Now, the combination of these Greco-Roman ideas with the above-mentioned Jewish ones, seems to have been the source of the demonology of Josephus, of Justin, and also of the later rabbis: but it does not follow that the same mixed view belongs to the New Testament. Rather, as this Grecized form of the doctrine in question is nowhere positively put forth by the Gospel writers, while on the contrary the demons are in some passages represented as the household of Satan: there is nothing to contravene the inference to be drawn from the unreservedly Jewish character of thought which reigns in the synoptics, even were it implied, is totally different from that of demonical possession. Here it would he a good spirit who had entered into a prophet for the strengthening of his powers, as according to an inter Jewish idea the soul of Seth was united to that of Moses, and again the souls of Moses and Aaron to that of Samuel; but from this it would by no means follow, that it was possible for wicked spirits to enter into the living.

It is well known that the older theology, moved by a regard for the authority of Jesus and the evangelists, espoused the belief in the reality of demoniacal possession. The new theology, on the contrary, in consideration of the similarity between the condition of the demoniacs in the New Testament and many naturally diseased subjects of our own day, has begun to refer the malady of the former also to natural causes, and to ascribe the Gospel supposition of supernatural causes, to the prejudices of that age. In modern days, on the occurrence of epilepsy, insanity, and even a disturbance of the self-consciousness resembling the condition of the possessed described in the New Testament, it is no longer the custom to account for them by the supposition of demoniacal influence: and the reason of this seems to be, partly that the advancement in the knowledge of nature and of mind has placed at command a wider range of facts and analogies, which may serve to explain the above conditions naturally; partly that the contradiction, involved in the idea of demoniacal possession, is beginning to be at least dimly perceived. For, apart from the difficulties which the notion of the existence of a devil and demons entails, whatever theory may be held as to the relation between the self-consciousness and the bodily organs, it remains absolutely inconceivable how the union between the two could be so far dissolved, that a foreign self-consciousness could gain an entrance, thrust out that which belonged to the organism, and usurp its place. Hence for every one who at once regards actual phenomena with enlightened eyes, and the New Testament narratives with orthodox ones, there results the contradiction, that what now proceeds from natural causes, must in the time of Jesus have been caused supernaturally.

In order to remove this inconceivable difference between the conditions of one age and another, avoiding at the same time any imputation on the New Testament, Olshausen, whom we may fairly take as the representative of the mystical theology and philosophy of the present day, denies both that all states of the kind in question have now a natural cause, and that they had in the time of Jesus invariably a supernatural cause. With respect to our own time he asks, if the apostles were to enter our mad-houses, how would they name many of the inmates? We answer, they would to a certainty name many of them demoniacs, by reason of their participation in the ideas of their people and their age, not by reason of their apostolic illumination; and the official who acted as their conductor ^{P.460} would very properly endeavour to set them right: whatever names therefore they might give to the inmates of our asylums, our conclusions as to the naturalness of the disorders of those inmates would not bo at all affected.

With respect to the time of Jesus, this theologian maintains that the same forms of disease were, even by the Jews, in one case held demoniacal, in another not so, according to the difference in their origin: for example, one who had become insane through an organic disorder of the brain, or dumb through an injury of the tongue, was not looked on as a demoniac, but only those, the cause of whose condition was more or less psychical. of such a distinction in the time of Jesus, Olshausen is manifestly bound to give us instances. Where could the Jews of that age have acquired their knowledge of the latent natural causes of these conditions, or the criterion by which to distinguish an insanity or imbecility originating in a malformation of the brain, from one purely psychical, as not their observation limited to outward phenomena, and those of the coarsest character? The nature of their distinctions scorns to be this: the state of an epileptic with his sudden falls and convulsions, or of a maniac in his delirium, especially if, from the reaction of the popular idea respecting himself he speaks in the person of another, seems to point to an external influence which governs him; and consequently, so soon as the belief in demoniacal possession existed among the people, all such states were referred to this cause, as we find them to be in the New Testament: whereas in dumbness and gouty contraction or lameness, the influence of an external power is less decidedly indicated, so that these afflictions were at one time ascribed to a possessing demon, at another not so. of the former case we find an example in the dumb persons already mentioned, Matt. ix. 82; xii. 22, and in the woman who was bowed down, Luke xiii. 11; of the latter, in the man who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, Mark vii.32ff., and in the many paralytics mentioned in the Gospels. The decision for the one opinion or the other was however certainly not founded on an investigation into the origin of the disease, but solely on its external symptoms. If then the Jews, and with them the evangelists, referred the two chief classes of these conditions to demoniacal influence, there remains for him who believes himself bound by their opinion, without choosing to shut out the lights of modem science, the glaring inconsistency of considering the same diseases as in one age natural, in another supernatural.

But the most formidable difficulty for Olshausen, in his attempted mediation between the Judaical demonology of the New Testament and the intelligence of our own day, arises from the influence of the latter on his own mind-an influence which renders him adverse to the idea of personal demons. This theologian, initiated in the philosophy of the present age, endeavours to resolve the host of demons, regarded as distinct individuals, into a system of emanations ^{P.461} which indeed sends forth from itself separate powers, not, however to subsist as independent individuals, but to return as accidents into the unity of the substance. This cast of thought we have already observed in the opinions of Olshausen concerning angels, and it appears still more decidedly in his demonology. Personal demons are too repugnant, and as Olshausen himself expresses it, the comprehension of two subjects in one individual is too inconceivable, to find a ready acceptation. Hence it is everywhere with vague generality that a kingdom of evil and darkness is spoken of; and though a personal prince is given to it, its demons are understood to be mere effluxes, and operations, by which the evil principle manifests itself. But the most vulnerable point of Olshausen's opinion concerning demons is this: it is too much for him to believe that Jesus asked the name of the demon in the Gadarene; since he himself doubts the personality of those emanations of the kingdom of darkness, it cannot, he thins, have been thus decidedly supposed by Christ; hence he understands the question, What is your name? (Mark v. 9.) to be addressed, not to the demon, but to the man, plainly in opposition to the whole context, for the answer, Legion, appears to be in no degree the result of a misunderstanding, but the right answer-the one expected by Jesus.

If, however, the demons are, according to Olshausen's opinion, impersonal powders, that which guides them and determines their various functions is the law which governs the kingdom of darkness in relation to the kingdom of light. On this theory, the worse a man is morally, the closer must be the connection between him and the kingdom of evil, and the closest conceivable connection-the entrance of the power of darkness into the personality of the man, i.e. possession-must always occur in the most wicked. But historically this is not so: the demoniacs in the Gospels appear to be sinners only in the sense that all sick persons need forgiveness of sins; and the greatest sinners (Judas for example) are spared the infliction of possession. The common opinion, with its personal demons, escapes this contradiction. It is true that this opinion also, as we find for instance in the Clementine Homilies, firmly maintains it to be by sin only that man subjects himself to the ingress of the demon; but here there is yet scope for the individual will of the demon, who often, from motives not to be calculated, passes by the worst, and holds in chase the less wicked. On the contrary, it the demons are considered, as by Olshausen, to be the actions of the power of evil in its relation to the power of goodness; this relation being regulated by laws, every thing arbitrary and accidental is excluded. Hence it evidently costs that theologian some pains to disprove the consequence, that according to his theory the pos-^{P.462} sessed must always be the most wicked. Proceeding from the apparent contest of two powers in the demoniacs, he adopts the position that the state of demonical possession does not appear in those who entirely give themselves up to evil, and thus maintain an internal unity of disposition, but only in those in whom there exists a struggle against sin. In that case, however, the above state, being reduced to a purely moral phenomenon, must appear far move frequently; every violent inward struggle must manifest itself under this form, and especially those who ultimately give themselves up ^{P.463} to evil must, before arriving at that point, pass through a period of conflict, that is of possession. Olshausen therefore adds a physical condition, namely, that the preponderance of evil in the man must have weakened his corporeal organization, particularly the nervous system, before he can become susceptible to the demoniacal state. But since such disorders of the nervous system may occur without any moral fault, who does not see that the state which it is intended to ascribe to demoniacal power as its proper source, is thus referred chiefly to natural causes, and that therefore the argument defeats its own object? Hence Olshausen quickly turns away from this side of the question, and lingers on the comparison of the demoniac with the wicked; whereas he ought rather to compare the former with the epileptic and insane, for it is only by this means that any light can be thrown on the nature of possession. This shifting of the question from the ground of physiology and psychology to that of morality and religion, renders the discussion concerning the demoniacs, one of the most useless which Olshausen's work contains. Let us then relinquish the ungrateful attempt to modernize the New Testament conception of the demoniacs, or to judaize our modern ideaslet us rather, in relation to this subject, understand the statements of the New Testament as simply as they are given, without allowing our investigations to be restricted by the ideas therein presented, which belonged to the age and nation of its writers.

The method adopted for the cure of the demoniacal state was, especially among the Jews, in conformity with what we have ascertained to have been the idea of its nature. The cause of the malady-was not supposed to be, as in natural diseases, an impersonal object or condition, such as an impure fluid, a morbid excitement or debility, but a self-conscious being; hence it was treated, not mechanically or chemically, but logically, i.e. by words. The demon was enjoined to depart; and to give effect to this injunction, it was coupled with the names of beings who were believed to have power over demons. Hence the main instrument against demoniacal possession was conjuration, either in the name of God, or of angels, or of some other potent being, e. g. the Messiah (Acts xix. 18), with certain forms which were said to be derived from Solomon, In addition to this, certain roots, stones, fumigations and amulets were used, in obedience to traditions likewise believed to have been handed down from Solomon. Now as the cause of the malady was not seldom really a psychical one, or at least one lying in the nervous system, which may be acted on to an incalculable extent by moral instrumentality, this psychological treatment was not altogether illusory; for by exciting in the patient the belief that the demon by which he was possessed, could not retain his hold before a form of conjuration, it might often effect the removal of the disorder. Jesus himself admits that the Jewish exorcists sometimes succeeded in working such cures (Matt. xii. 27). But we read of Jesus that without conjuration by any other power, and without the appliance of any further means,he expelled the demons by his word. The most remarkable cures of this kind, of which the Gospels inform us, we are now about to examine.