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Monday, September 23, 2019

Satan casting out Satan

1. Reports like this raise questions regarding the status of non-Christian or occult exorcism:


This issue crops up, not only in reference to Catholic exorcists, but also cult members and witchdoctors. (By non-Christian, I'm not necessarily including Jewish exorcists. God might well honor exorcisms performed by Jews in OT and Second Temple Judaism.)  

2. I assume the standard Christian objection to the possibility of non-Christian/occult exorcism is this:

25 Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand. 26 If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then will his kingdom stand? 27 If I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your own exorcists cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges. 28 But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you. 29 Or how can one enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property, without first tying up the strong man? Then indeed the house can be plundered (Mt 12:25-29). 

3. Although I haven't done a survey, I presume many readers think what he says precludes occult exorcism. If their interpretation is correct, then we must summarily discount all reported cases of occult exorcism, however well-documented. 

4. Consider a different interpretation: Christ is using a tu quoque argument. Posing a dilemma for his accusers. Whichever way they answer they will lose the argument. Reinforcing this interpretation is the fact that v27 takes the explicit form of a tu quoque argument. On that interpretation, Jesus isn't ruling out occult exorcism, but responding to his accusers on their own grounds and putting them on the defensive–without endorsing the assumptions of the argument. A tu quoque argument is a kind of ad hominem argument or argument from analogy–where the speaker temporarily adopts the opposing viewpoint for the sake of argument. 

5. Assuming that leaves open the possibility of (successful) occult exorcism, what might be the motivation? One can imagine the dark side using occult exorcism as a tactic to delude the masses into following a false religion. The demon cooperates with the exorcist because that lends credibility to the false religion. So that wouldn't be a case of the dark side working at cross purposes. Rather, it collaborates with human representatives of a false religion to lead people astray. 

6. Here's another possible motivation. I guessing that many Christians think the dark side has a militaristic command structure with Satan at the top. Demons take orders from Satan and his lieutenants. The dark side is a unified "army of darkness". 

Perhaps, though, the dark side is more like rival crime families. The fact that they all hate God doesn't mean they like each other. Indeed, given the psychology of evil, demons may well detest each other. They hate everything. Maybe the dark side is riven with turf wars and competing power centers. 

Or it might be like a military dictatorship where betrayal is the mechanism of promotion. Subordinates collude to frag their commanding officers and take their place.  On both comparisons, the dark side is both united and disunited. United in common opposition to God and the good, but disunited insofar as they jockey for dominance among each other. 

7. Apropos (6), maybe some demons are more powerful than others. Maybe some angels are more powerful than others, by divine creation, and when they fall they retain the power disparity. If so, perhaps the most powerful demons are bullies who like to push around weaker demons. In that respect, a stronger demon might overpower a weaker demon and expel him from a demoniac just to throw his weight around. 

This is all speculation, but it's consistent with the phenomenon of occult exorcism. It proposes different backstories to explain the phenomenon. Although they go beyond revelation, they have a starting-point in revelation. A possible inference. 

8. What Christ says has specific reference to the demonic realm, but it may be the case that humans can be possessed by the souls of the damned as well as demons. If so, that falls outside the immediate purview of Christ's statement. 

9. Another issue is whether there are follow-up studies on occult exorcism. Is it permanent? Witchcraft can be effective, but there's a catch. It replaces one thing with something worse. Occult healing or exorcism is a curse in disguise.  

10. A possible objection to the alternate interpretation (4) is that if Christ's riposte is merely a tu quoque argument, then he failed to directly refute the allegation. So where does that leave the allegation?

Assuming the alternate explanation is true, perhaps he resorted to a tu quoque argument because a direct refutation would be too complex to articulate in that setting. But if his answer leaves the allegation hanging out there, is there a way to refute it?

i) From a tactical or strategic standpoint, one can understand how the dark side might play along with exorcism if that promotes an evil religion, steering people away from God and redirecting them into the hands of Satan. If, however, the Christian faith has the opposite effect, then the Jewish allegation is counterproductive. The Christian faith is liberating people from depravity and occult bondage.

ii) That allows us to differentiate purer forms of Christianity (e.g. evangelicalism) from more adulterated forms (e.g. Catholicism) or cults (e.g. Mormonism) or paganism (e.g. witchdoctors). So the success of exorcism in divergent religious contexts has different, but consistent explanations.   

iii) In addition, Christianity has a special relationship to Judaism that's lacking in paganism or even Islam. If Christianity is false, then God has allowed a false religion to completely obscure the true alternative (rabbinic Judaism), as the perceived successor to Judaism. In that case, rabbinic Judaism is like a candle at high noon. You can barely see it because the overwhelming brightness of the alternative all but drowns it out. Moreover, Muhammad wasn't an exorcist or wonder-worker, so there's no comparison at that level. 

4 comments:

  1. Luke 11:19-20 probably refers to exorcism by unbelievers. And demons aren't the only candidates for the entity behind a possession or something similar to a possession. I briefly outlined some of the explanatory options in the comments section of a thread last year. Unbelievers frequently have some level of success in influencing spirits, including in situations that are often categorized as possessions. See my post here on some relevant phenomena in the Enfield case, for example. Christians ought to do more research on these issues. They shouldn't expect the Bible to address every issue involved, it doesn't address every issue, and they're often careless in how they interpret what the Bible does say.

    We also need to be careful about the claims made by people like the ones Dreher is discussing in his article. They know a lot about what they've experienced, but there's also a lot they don't know, about their own experiences and others'. Seeing demons in too many places isn't much of a solution to seeing them in too few. And given the unresolved status of the situation this couple is going through, we need to be cautious accordingly about how much significance we assign to their impressions, counsel, and such.

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    1. It wasn't so much that story about the Manhattan couple but the previous story that story references that involves a witch doctor for lack of a better term.

      I agree that we have our interpretation. I'm not sure it is careless per se. But situations like this help us reevaluate if we're seeing those cases correctly.

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  2. I think the Catholic Church often teaches falsely, but I wouldn't say Catholic exorcisms have to be a case of Satan casting out Satan. It seems to me that a particular Catholic exorcist could be casting out demons by the power of Jesus.

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    1. i) I think God can empower the "wrong" person to perform an exorcism out of mercy for the demoniac or because of divine goals downstream, which the exorcism upstream will facilitate.

      ii) I think it can also depend on the time or place. For instance, if God wanted to save medieval Italians, the Catholic church was the only vehicle at that time.

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