The Devil, Demons & Dogmatism

...God could not have created an)' creature evil...

...The Jews of Jesus's day, like other ancient peoples, experienced themselves as helpless before the mysterious phenomenon of sickness and disease...

...Such prayer never excludes medical assistance but rather obliges its use...

...Only eleven percent of those questioned expressed belief in the existence of a devil...

...The usual arguments offered for the devil's existence consist of the references in the Old Testament to Satan, in the New Testament to Satan and Jesus's casting out of demons, and, for Catholics, official Church allusions to the devil, particularly those of the IV Lateran Council...

...The Vatican's response to Haag was an unsigned document published June, 1975, in L'Osservatore Romano, (reprinted in 1975 in The Pope Speaks) under the title, "Christian Faith and Demonology...

...Expert" opinion was sought from a Jesuit priest in Frankfurt...

...Not an evil God but a creature had to become the scapegoat...

...Anneliese, an intense, devout girl, believed it as well...

...No such study has been, done in America of late, but in 1965 sociologists Charles Y. Glock and Rodney Stark, Religion and Society in Tension, (Chicago, Rand McNally), published their findings indicating that, at that time, "overall, thirty-eight percent of the Protestants and sixty-six percent of the Roman Catholics feel certain about the Devil's existence...

...The circumstances surrounding the death of the 23year-old university student have been described in detail in the German press...

...Does one shrug his shoulders and say with Baudelaire that "the best trick, strategy of the devil is to persuade people that he does not exist...

...Since no one seriously regards the devil as personal in the same, univocal sense as human persons, only "somehow personal" by analogy, the issue has become: is evil a neuter force or "somehow personal...

...The traditionalist Catholic upholding the same belief does so because of an unhistorical, literal interpretation of Church doctrines...

...An intermittent series of exorcisms was undertaken...

...Herbert Haag, a Commonweal: 71 Swiss Catholic priest and professor of Old Testament at the University of Tiibingen, has been a foremost critic of traditional teaching on demons and the devil...

...The Bible and the official teaching of the Church have no intention of developing a doctrine concerning evil, Satanology...

...They also thought the world was flat...

...He concludes that, although the existence of Satan has never been the object of an explicit affirmation by the magisterium, this is only because the question was never put in those terms...

...This world view also came to be taken for granted by corresponding later Church pronouncements, without, however, the requirement that it must be seen in detail as a binding part of the Church teaching...

...or when they aim at frightening people with menace instead of arousing them to trust in God, who can have no serious competition in this world...

...Unlike later Christian tradition (and some contemporary theologians), the Judaism of Jesus's day distinguished sharply between the devil and demons...

...A month later the already lurid aspects of the case were sensationalized even more when one of the exorcists appeared on television and in the course of the interview played one of the 43 tapes...

...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ROY SCHEELE A FRESR SLANT After the shower the orchard slope was slick with yellow leaves...

...Viewed at a glance, the entire discussion may seem trivial, a quibble over words...

...From 1969 to 1973, while still in high school, Anneliese was treated by a doctor near her home for occasional convulsive seizures...

...Those signs of the times have become, next to Scripture, tradition, the Church's liturgy and spirituality, a source for theological reflection, a locus theologicus...

...Jesus' healing of the sick was envisioned quite understandably as the casting out of demons, since they were invariably held responsible for physical ailments...

...The late Jewish attempt to absolve God from responsibility for evil by blaming Satan is most explicitly demonstrated by two parallel texts...

...and the intention of IV Lateran was not to teach the existence of the devil or demons but rather to condemn the unbiblical dualism of the Cathars, who, like the earlier Persians, taught that there are two creative principles, not just one...

...The Persians found a dualistic solution intellectually satisfying: reality is dominated by two opposing forces or principles, two gods...

...Desperate, they suspected that their daughter was possessed...

...The Pope declared in the address that the devil is "a dark, hostile agent...

...Martin's editorial was followed by a two-part article on how charismatics can discern evil spirits and drive them out...

...She refused food or drink, wasting away to some 60 pounds...

...Demonology can prove highly suggestive to a sensitive psyche or a hyper-active imagination like Anneliese Michel's...

...Exorcism, he says, should not be understood as driving out devils with magic...

...In an earlier account, 2 Samuel 24, 1, we find: "The anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, 'Go, number Israel and Judah.'" A later version of the same incident in 1 Chronicles 21, 1 reads: "Satan stood up against Israel and incited David to number Israel...

...The teaching Church has never made any direct, solemn pronouncement about the existence of the devil...

...the devil "is alive and well on planet earth...

...his existence was never denied...

...Vatican Council II in its Constitution on Revelation spoke of God revealing Himself and his hidden purpose (#2...

...Satan did not belong to Jesus's message but to the world view of his age...

...Theologians, parish priests and bishops alike have found themselves compelled to take positions on the questions: Does the devil exist...

...The issue central to the book of Job is one still vexing to critical, reflective faith, the problem of evil and its origins...

...As a matter of fact, Rudolf Bultmann notwithstanding, there is a sizable minority of Americans using lights, radios and modern medicine for whom the New Testament spirit world is very much a reality...

...Rather, their concern is only to say that God and only God is stronger than evil...

...Satan serves as something of a prosecuting attorney...

...Jewish monotheism could not tolerate any deity other than the one God of Israel...

...According to Hal Lindsey of The Late Great Planet Earth, ("over 2,000,000 copies in print...

...It is not uncommon," he stated, "for someone who has recently committed his life to Jesus and experienced the release of his Spirit to also experience, perhaps for the first time, the active assault of Satan in direct or subtle temptations, or in a bondage contributing to compulsive behavior...

...Ralph Martin, for example, one of the national organizers and architects of the charismatic movement, published an editorial in their magazine, New Covenant, (April, 1974) on how charismatic renewal means not only a new experience of the Lord but also new sensitivity to the reality and work of Satan...

...15, 1972, reaffirming traditional Catholic teaching...

...Christian revelation is not a divine communication of data about otherwise unknowable "somehow personal" evil spirits...

...It is the view of the episcopal authorities that consequences must be drawn for the Church's discipline, scientific theology and pastoral practice...

...It is remarkable not only for what it says but, more, for what it does not say...

...The exorcists of Klingenberg may have been a far cry from those of Loudon or the witch-hunters of Salem, but their firm belief in the existence of a personal devil and the possibility of diabolic possession was no less real than their 17th century exemplars...

...Though often enough caricatured into a cartoon character or comedy routine, the symbol of the devil is not as harmless as Mother Nature or the tooth fairy...

...the key to their freedom was taking authority over the evil spirit at work there...

...The Old Testament does not provide any further information about the devil...

...It is hardly any wonder that the gospel's characterize Jesus's cure of an obvious epileptic as an exorcism...

...it did not have to...

...Commonweal: 73 In the Old Testament, Satan appears in texts stemming directly from Israel's encounter with Persian dualism...

...Unfortunately, in neglecting the fantastic mythological origins of the belief, in taking the legends of the apocrypha literally, Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, bear a history of witch-hunts, inquisitions and the execution of innocent victims for sorcery and communication with the devil...

...Any inexplicable misfortune came to be attributed to demons, whose primary purpose was to afflict life and limb...

...The death of Anneliese Michel last summer after a prolonged series of exorcisms at her home in Klingenberg unleashed a storm of outrage and controversy in West Germany...

...Or does one side with Rudolf Bultmann in the opinion that "one cannot use electric light, turn on a radio, or when sick have recourse to medical science and modern clinics and at the same time believe in the New Testament spirit world...

...Demonology is dangerous...

...Commonweal: 75...

...Exorcisms are apparently becoming not infrequent among charismatic circles, and if pastoral leaders are beginning to find increasing numbers of Catholics becoming obsessed with fantasies of diabolic presence and activity, the leadership of the charismatic movement is not without responsibility...

...Evil as a neuter concept is something very real, often massive, sometimes mysterious...

...But moral evil proceeds from the abuse of human freedom and not from some spiritual menace outside us...

...Another solution had to be found to the problem of evil and innocent suffering...

...He is "the Satan," literally, "the adversary" or "the accuser...

...It is not only thoroughly natural but to be expected that Jesus, as a man of his time, and the New Testament, as a culturally conditioned historical document, reflect the assumptions and attitudes of first century Judaism...

...People in that day may well have thought evil spirits were the principal cause of illness...

...Obviously, sociology is not a criterion for determining the truth or falsehood of Church teaching...

...Jesus's preaching of God's kingdom and mercy was seen as a struggle against evil, personified as a matter of course by the figure of Satan...

...Maybe the picker missed it, or maybe his reach fell shy...

...One wonders, where are the bishops, priests, and theologians who are leading or serving as consultors to the charismatic movement...

...Diabolos, from whence the English word devil, was a Greek translation for Satan...

...All the more incongruous, therefore, is the fact that Pope Paul should feel pressed into delivering a defense for the existence of a personal devil at this time...

...More far-reaching in implications for Christian faith and practice than the material question of the existence of a personal devil is the formal issue of fundamentalism or dogmatism...

...THE DEVIL, DEMONS & DOGMATISM RONALD MODRAS / s i t time to say farewell to the devil...

...The legends of the apocrypha become common coin in intertestamental and New Testament Judaism...

...Is there such a thing as diabolic possession...

...Both postures are essentially the same, confusing divine revelation with factual information, in this instance, about a spirit world inhabited, among others, by fallen angels...

...In the light of these recent statements issuing from the Vatican, it is little wonder that the uproar in Germany over demonology has seen a number of high ranking churchmen there declare that the existence of a personal devil is a dogma binding in faith...

...that often we experience in ourselves an urge to do evil...

...So long as the Bible and Church teaching are given a literal, fundamentalist interpretation, there will be belief in a "somehow personal" devil...

...The gospels speak of Jesus casting out demons, not devils...

...The very name of the town conjures up images of a quaint make-believe village nestled somewhere among the pages of a children's book of stories taken from the Brothers Grimm...

...She returned at Easter from Wiirzbcrg to her parents' home in Klingenberg, where two exorcists offered the prayers going back to the 15th century Rituale Romanum...

...their offspring become evil spirits or demons who roam the earth, working physical affliction and destruction...

...According to IV Lateran, "the devil and the other demons were created good by God according to their nature, but they made themselves evil by their own doing...

...Formal ecclesiastical approval was sought and obtained from the Bishop of Wiirzburg to proceed with the rites of solemn exorcism...

...The conservative Protestant who holds firmly to belief in the devil does so because of an uncritical literal interpretation of the Bible...

...Then early in the year the convulsions increased both in number and ferocity...

...The Pope Speaks, 17 [1973] 317...

...Both popular belief and rabbinical tradition took for granted the existence of a spirit world divided into angels and demons...

...The unnamed author of the 1975 Vatican statement regards this as a "dogmatic statement...

...Despite the number of references, though, tile devil remains a decidedly peripheral figure in the New Testament...

...The reference in the epistle of Jude to sexually active angels is but one of numerous allusions to demons in the New Testament...

...Is it not striking that atheists do not seem to suffer from diabolic possession...

...John's Seminary, Plymouth, Michigan, and the author o/ Paths to Unity (Sheed and Ward) and Paul Tillich's Theology of the Church (Wayne State U. Press...

...A glance at the worldview of the Bible shows that people in the biblical period could not conceive of the world without demons...

...She wrote her thesis and intended to conclude her studies in pedagogy sometime last year...

...The evangelists after him described his acceptance of his mission and rejection of an alternate life style as repudiation of a temptation coming from the devil...

...What caught the eye then was the one remaining apple in the upper boughs, so ripe the color'd fallen through the skin...

...The heated, often acrimonious dispute in Germany over exorcism and the devil has come down to the question: may a Catholic see evil as neuter or must it be viewed as personal...

...6), as it was by the rest of the author's Jewish and New Testament contemporaries...

...His research into the biblical and extra-biblical foundations for the Christian tradition on demonology resulted in 1969 in a short popularly written "meditation book," entitled Abschied vom Teufel, (Farewell to the Devil...

...The overwhelming majority rejected the notion...

...So too the Church's liturgical and devotional life, influenced by popular belief, simply accepted Satan's existence as taken for granted...

...The II Vatican Council did acknowledge, however, that it is the Church's duty to scrutinize the "signs of the times" and interpret them in the light of the gospel...

...The New Testament took over without question the assumptions of late Jewish folklore, corresponding as it did basically to the animism of pagan Greek demonology...

...There are lessons to be learned from Klingenberg not only by bishops in Germany and leaders of the charismatic movement here in America...

...Just as the New Testament simply accepted as factual the legends of the apocrypha, so too the Fathers of the Church and later Christian tradition unquestioningly accepted as matter of fact the allusions to Satan and demons in the New Testament...

...What must be taken into consideration with all human speech, holds true for such statements as well: they must be understood from the background of the contemporary situation and out of the context in which they are found...

...Toward the end of 1973, before a definitive medical diagnosis was given, Anneliese's parents, pious Catholics, consulted a local priest...

...If God is loving and good, how do you explain all that is wrong with the world...

...The exorcisms were extensive enough to permit the recording of 43 tapes...

...No doctors were called...

...So how does one react to the popular rejection of a belief in devils...

...As for man, his sin was at the prompting of the devil...

...He had long been familiar with exorcisms, in fact, had two books on the subject to his credit in which he described how he himself had undertaken exorcisms "with success...

...The article appeared with the note that "The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith commissioned an unnamed expert to prepare this Frenchlanguage study, which it strongly recommends as a sure basis for grasping the teaching of the magisterium on 'Christian Faith and Demonology' " The language of the Roman document makes it clear that it had been occasioned by Haag's book...

...It is in the teaching of the Gospel and in the heart of the faith as lived that the existence of the world of demons is revealed as a dogma...

...Anneliese's seizures had been occasional enough for her to persue her work at the university...

...Once Satan had become the scapegoat for evil in the world, it was necessary to evict him from the heavenly court...

...to regard him as a self-sustaining principle who, unlike other creatures, does not owe his origin to God...

...Placing the authorship of evil upon Satan was not enough, however...

...There is a destructiveness of which we are capable, a forcefulness to hatred that cannot be weighed or measured...

...The family doctor refused to sign a death certificate without calling in the local prosecutor, and an investigation was launched to determine whether her death was caused by criminal negligence...

...The cruelty and viciousness, the utter inhumanity exemplified in our time by Auschwitz, the atrocities perpetrated in Vietnam cannot be explained without recourse to the inexplicable dark side of human nature...

...To reject the notion of a personal devil is "not simply a challenge to a secondary element of Christian thought but a direct denial of the constant faith of the Church, its way of conceiving redemption, and (at the source of both of these) the very consciousness of Jesus himself...

...As bizarre as this conception may seem to us, the veracity of this account of angelichuman intercourse was simply presumed by the New Testament epistle of Jude (vs...

...On July 1st, she died of "malnutrition and dehydration...

...The Pope went on to say that "it is a departure from the picture provided by biblical and Church teaching to refuse to acknowledge the Devil's existence...

...Among the flood Of articles and statements that have followed the wake of Anneliese Michel's death, one voice commands particular attention...

...But as early as 1965, the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith would have found more Southern Baptists (92 percent) and more members of Holiness and Pentecostal sects (90 percent) agreeing with its position on the devil than American Roman Catholics...

...After discussing some of the circumstances of the exorcisms at Klingenberg, the Wiirzburg statement coneludes with a plea to theologians to undertake interdisciplinary research with behavioral scientists so as .to clarify the questions behind phenomena like Klingenberg...

...But neither the mysteriousness of evil nor the authoritative teaching of the Church requires Catholics to believe in the existence of the devil as a person...

...The imagery is that of the royal court of heaven where justice is dispensed in much the same fashion as it was when these texts were written...

...A Neuter Mystery The Pope, in the address mentioned above, spoke of evil as "a terrible reality, mysterious and frightening...

...Noteworthy, however, was a statement five weeks after Anneliese Michel's death by the Bishop of Wiirzburg, Joseph Stangl...

...Unable to provide a rational explanation, they tended to ascribe sickness to the work of evil spirits...

...it is "nothing else than the prayer of the Church" for a person who cannot pray himself...

...or to explain the Devil as a pseudo-reality, a conceptual, fanciful personification of the unknown causes of our misfortunes...

...After careful investigation, he I I FATHER RONALD MODRAS is assistant professor of Systematic Theology at St...

...unfortunately all English translations do not necessarily maintain the distinction of the original Greek...

...Along with other influences, there may well have contributed the direct experience that evil often assails us like an inescapable power...

...As a student at the University of Wiirzberg, she received treatment from a neurologist there, all without success...

...These demons or evil spirits were not the archenemy of God so much as the bane of physical and material existence...

...So long as credence is given to a personal devil, there will be belief in the possibility of possession...

...And what the Old Testament does not tell us, the apocrypha do...

...If there are demons to be exorcized in the Church, their twin names are dogmatism and fundamentalism...

...Here too we find the fateful account of spirits lusting after the comely "daughters of men...

...Given the considerable changes in American Catholic thought this last decade, that study undoubtedly requires updating...

...The tone of the article is adequately demonstrated by the author's remark, "I have prayed with people suffering from physical ailments such as allergies, menstrual difficulties and epilepsy, where neither medication nor prayer for healing helped...

...On the day after the statement of the Bishop of Wiirzburg, the Wikkert Institute of the University of Tiibingen published the results of a survey taken in West Germany on belief there in the devil...

...It is worth noting, however, that the revised Catholic liturgies of both Baptism and the Eucharist have considerably reduced any mention of the devil...

...It lay in a mitigated form of dualism...

...There is nothing in the Old Testament about a fall of angels...

...There is more to heaven and earth than can be punched out onto a computer card...

...The Bishop of Wiirzburg goes on to describe what has been regarded as diabolic possession as simply "serious illness," or, less frequently, what mystics have de4 February 1977:72 scribed as the experience of being abandoned by God...

...Professor Haag has described belief in the devil as unchristian, ultimately rooted in paganism...

...In several doctrinal pronouncements of the Church, mention is made of the devil...

...Christian faith is the personal response to the revelation of a personal God, preeminently through the life and person of Jesus Christ...

...The lot fell to Satan...

...Instead of entering into direct confrontation with Haag's study of the roots of Christian demonology, the document simply recites the catalogue of references to devils and demons in the New Testament, the Church Fathers, the liturgy and the IV Lateran Council...

...The bishop deserves to be quoted at some length: "The New Testament says, Jesus drove out demons...

...Certainly no Catholic or Protestant, no matter how critical or contemporary, would differ with that...

...In writings not found in the canon of Scripture, in Enoch, the book of lubilees, and The Life of Adam and Eve, we find the story of the revolt of Satan and his angels and the rdentifieation of the devil with the serpent in Genesis 3 who tempted Eve...

...Anneliese's condition grew worse...

...When one considers the context in which such expressions are found, it is obvious that whenever there is mention of devils or demons, ultimately the issue is always the power of God...

...one benign, to whom all good is attributable, the other malevolent, responsible for all evil...

...Evil is not merely an absence of something but an active force, a living spiritual being that is perverted and that perverts others...

...In the best known of these, the book of Job, Satan is numbered among the "sons of God," a member of the heavenly court with the thankless task of searching out evil deeds and accusing sinners before God...

...It created a reaction in the Vatican as well as conservative Catholic circles in Germany and resulted in an address delivered by Pope Paul to a general audience on Nov...

...Maybe he liked its look against the sky...

...The Jesuifs conclusion was that the signs pointed to diabolic possession...

...Simply cataloguing these references in Scripture and Christian tradition accomplishes nothing, however, without an appreciation of the mythic origins of the Jewish legends on which all of them are based...

...In conjunction with other scholars, Professor Haag published another book in 1974, TeuJelsglaube (Belief in the Devil), this one 544 pages of scientific scholarship, documenting the apocryphal and ultimately pagan roots of biblical demonology...

...How can innocent suffering and natural catastrophes be explained without ultimately placing the blame on God...

...Statements about evil or about the devil are false, therefore, and contradict the spirit of the New Testament and Church tradition, when, differentiatingly, they claim to know something about the nature or behavior of devils or demons...

...Lindsey's pop fundamentalism in interpreting apocalyptic literature and references to the devil in the New Testament have convinced and affected not only conservative Protestants but charismatic Catholics as well...

...Jesus made allusions to the devil among his parables and images...

...But the story is not meant for children and neither is it make-believe...

...For the first time in an official statement from a member of the Catholic hierarchy, demonology and possession are described with no word about the devil as a personal evil spirit...

...In the meantime, the neurologist consulted earlier submitted a quite different diagnosis: Anneliese suffered from epilepsy...

...found that the necessary criteria were there: rejection of saints, knowledge of a language never studied, revelation of mysterious, unearthly happenings...

...The IV Lateran Council in 1215 spoke of the devil and other demons as created 4 February 1977:74 good by God but becoming evil by their own doing...

...The teaching of a Council, however, like that of Scriptare must be interpreted according to its intention...