Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties

Some cable TV channels are running shows on apparitions and hauntings. Needless to say, that’s not the most reliable source of information. To put this in proper perspective, I’ll be quoting some excerpts from an old book by John Warwick Montgomery:

Everyone enjoys a good ghost story. But are ghosts “real”? And if they are, what are they and how is their reality to be correlated with established biblical teaching? What is to be said for the spiritualist movement in its endeavor to establish contact with those who have passed to the other side?

Ghosts are most definitely real. At least, some ghosts are…Facts are relatively easy; it is the interpretation of them that is often hard! When faced by such data as those just presented [137-40], many persons simply refuse to accept them because they think that the interpretations will destroy their faith (in non-Christian materialism; in Christian judgment after death; etc). Some viewpoints–such as materialism–are indeed in tension with spectral evidence; but others–including orthodoxy Christianity–are certainly not. Consider the following multi-level explanatory scheme.

1.Ghosts as telepathic hallucinations arising from the minds of the living…however, it hardly seems to be able to account for the powerfully objective focus of so many ghost accounts, particularly when more than one person sees the ghost at the same time, or independently at different times.

2.Ghosts as telepathic hallucinations arising from the minds (brains) of the dead…MacLellan’s theory, by its shift of emphasis from the living to the dead, handles problems not covered in 1., but it fails in those cases where the specter represents a person whose brain has been cremated (death by fire) or totally destroyed in some other way.

3.Ghosts as residual human aura. The aura is a radiating luminous envelope or cloud projected from and surrounding the body. It is sometimes referred to as the “subtle body” or “etheric body” or (when separated from its body) the “human double.” A tremendous literature exists on this subject…Most ghostly apparitions involve suicide, passion, violent death, or high emotional tension of some kind; perhaps extraordinary emotion is the trigger that releases the aura to “haunt” for a time the places familiar to the deceased person–and especially those places connected with the emotional trauma. Ghosts generally represent recently–or fairly recently–deceased persons. Since the aura gradually fades away after death, this would serve to explain why few ghosts of Roman soldiers are reported these days! If the more violent the death-trauma or emotional level of the decedent, the longer the “life” of his aura, then castle ghosts could be accounted for, since the stories associated with them almost always involve hideous events of one kind or another. Note that the aura is not the person; thus this explanation says nothing whatever against the immediate arrival of the deceased person at his appropriate eternal habitation, even while his aura continues for a time to walk the earth.

4.Ghosts as the dead themselves, on their way to the reward determined once for all by their relationship or lack of relationship with Christ on earth, but not yet entered fully into that reward…no postponement or possible reversal of the judgment at death is suggested. Only the time-lag between death and heaven, or death and hell, is extended to account for ghostly phenomena that show more self-direction than the “human aura” would allow for, and yet to not engage in either angelic or in demonic missions for the living.

5.Ghost as the damned sent back to haunt the living or as Satanic counterfeits of the dead.

6.Ghosts as the saved sent back to earth by God for a special mission. Elijah and Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration seem to be clear instances of this phenomenon (cf. particularly Mt 17:3,8).

These six explanatory levels offer the tools for dealing with most attested spectral phenomena. Sometimes one interpretation will best fit the data, sometimes another.

Principalities and Powers (Bethany 1973), 136-43.

10 comments:

  1. 7. Ghosts as souls in Purgatory appearing to Christians on earth to request prayers for the repose of their souls.

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  2. Ben,

    Souls from Purgatory could be included in Steve's (John Warwick Montgomery's) sixth category. You're correct in pointing out that souls from Purgatory would be part of the equation from a Roman Catholic perspective. But the readers should know that we've made a case against Purgatory in the past, such as here, so we exclude it from the range of options.

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  3. Ben, does Catholic theology allow the departed to take a weekend furlough from Purgatory to visit the living?

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  4. Ben, does Catholic theology allow the departed to take a weekend furlough from Purgatory to visit the living?

    The souls in Purgatory cannot do so at will, but God can send them on specific missions, just as He can the souls in Heaven. There are stories in the lives of the saints (St. Pio of Pietrelcina, for example) of souls appearing to them from Purgatory to request prayers.

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  5. Thanks, Ben. Can you refer me to some authoritative source of Catholic doctrine which corroborates your claim?

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  6. I could also mention Hamlet's ghost. Of course, Shakespeare was writing fiction, but nevertheless his theology is very Catholic.

    Anyway, this is an interesting post, since a friend of mine recently told me that she and her siblings saw "ghosts" with some frequency as they were growing up. This post offers a wider range of possible interpretations than I had thought of. Apparitions from the saved seem unlikely candidates to describe her experience, since apparitions of souls sent by God are purposeful, and deliver a clear message, whereas the activity of her "ghosts" was quite unintelligible. So, my inclination was to attribute it all to the demonic. But Montgomery offers various preternatural alternatives, and although I'm skeptical, I'll give them some thought.

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  7. Thanks, Ben. Can you refer me to some authoritative source of Catholic doctrine which corroborates your claim?

    This is not something the Church teaches as authoritative doctrine. It is a feature of the lives of the saints: devotional literature which the Church recommends to the faithful. See Purgatory by Fr. F.X. Schouppe, S.J. The authority behind these stories is not the testimony of God himself, but the testimony of those who claim to have experienced them. While Catholic doctrine certainly requires that it should be possible for God to send the souls in Purgatory on missions to earth, it does not require that He should ever actually do so. Nevertheless, I have good reason to believe these stories, and no reason to reject them.

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  8. BEN DOUGLASS SAID:

    "This is not something the Church teaches as authoritative doctrine. It is a feature of the lives of the saints: devotional literature which the Church recommends to the faithful. See Purgatory by Fr. F.X. Schouppe, S.J. The authority behind these stories is not the testimony of God himself, but the testimony of those who claim to have experienced them. While Catholic doctrine certainly requires that it should be possible for God to send the souls in Purgatory on missions to earth, it does not require that He should ever actually do so. Nevertheless, I have good reason to believe these stories, and no reason to reject them."

    When you say you believe these stories, who, exactly, do you believe? The saint? The biographer? Or the entity that claims to be a purgatorial soul?

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  9. When you say you believe these stories, who, exactly, do you believe? The saint? The biographer? Or the entity that claims to be a purgatorial soul?

    I believe the saint. If the information comes second hand then that adds the possibility that the person relating the story is spinning tales. But I find this improbable in individual cases, hence the collective probability of them all being made up is miniscule.

    As to whether the entity is not actually a purgatorial soul, but a demonic counterfeit, that possibility is excluded for me by the soul's behavior: encouraging a saint to pray for a good thing. Obviously, since you do not believe in purgatory, this will not be a convincing argument for you: naturally, demons would want to encourage belief in a false doctrine which vitiates the Gospel.

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  10. "Demons would want to encourage belief in a false doctrine which vitiates the Gospel."

    Both demonic spirits and damned spirits.

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