WHAT IS A SPIRIT?
Photo by Jack Sharp on Unsplash.
For all the stories of “disenchantment” out there, people seem to be pretty convinced by and large of the existence of beings that we could generally describe as “spirits.” In Alton, IL, where I live and am writing this article, there are dozens of spots guaranteeing a “haunted tour” year-round, with additional ones popping up during the month of October. For some of the folks visiting and leading these tours, the practice is all about Halloween fun, complete with creepy costumes and smoke machines. But for others, both visitors and guides, these tours are places for serious spiritual experiences. One will hear people speak of presences that they’ve felt in certain places or certain times, or of feeling like they were “not alone.” I know a woman who recalls visiting a haunted church tour in downtown Alton once, and she reports that the encounter she experienced on that tour continued to terrorize her for several years afterward until she experienced a deliverance from it in prayer.
Often in both mainline Christian and academic contexts, the discussion around the existence of spirits begins with a foregone conclusion that they do not exist. The New Testament scholar Rudolf Bultmann once wrote, for instance, “we cannot use electric lights and radios and, in the event of illness, avail ourselves of modern medical and clinical means and at the same time believe in the spirit and wonder world of the New Testament.” (1) Yet, as contemporary sociological studies show, the stark dichotomy Bultmann assumes between the usage of modern conveniences and the belief in a “spirit and wonder world” can indeed coexist and even in ever more inventive ways. One such study, cited by Jason Josephson-Storm in his The Myth of Disenchantment, states that at least 73% of Americans believe in at least one paranormal or supernatural concept, and most of those concepts pertain to the existence of spirits. (2)
So what are spirits, really? And what do Christians believe about them, in doctrine and in practice? Should we go about our lives frightful or superstitious, concerned about the potential threats that may lurk in special days or special activities? Or should we rise above such spiritualistic nonsense, confident that our modernity protects us from such pagan concepts as demonic possession and supernatural harassment?
I.
As guiding principles into our questions here, I take the following claims for granted: first, that people everywhere and at all times have long been aware of the presence of the “other world,” the world of spirits. One sees this in startling variety across religious and cultural traditions, from the practice of passersby leaving gifts at shrines to honor resident kami in Shintoism to the Mexican Día de los Muertos in which families create altars welcoming their departed loved ones back to the home. In some traditions, there are practices in which a shaman is actively possessed by some spirit or power in order to gain access to foresight or wisdom; in other traditions, there are rites for the removal of spirits who do not belong. Considering so many and so varied approaches to the spirit-world, I take a second claim, which is slightly more controversial: I do not believe that we should not dismiss these practices outright as primitive or pagan or unscientific. Ever since French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss rejected the prejudice that assumed that premodern societies were less intelligent than modern ones, students of contemporary anthropology have sought to avoid the patronizing dismissal of the non-material. (3) If we take up their approach and look with open eyes at the history of spirit-practices in the world, we realize that it is we “moderns” who dismiss the spiritual world we cannot explain with science,, who are the odd ones out.
This is true within the worldviews of the people depicted in the Bible as well. In the Gospels, for instance, the people clearly understand that “unclean” or “demonic” spirits exist and can harm human lives. As Jesus is going about from place to place, and as the Apostles continue His ministry in the Book of Acts, He routinely encounters demonized individuals and rebukes the spirits that possess them (cf. Matthew 4:24; 8:16; Mark 5:1–13; Acts 5:16; 8:4–8; etc.). In these stories, the people seem to be aware that their neighbors are afflicted by something other than normal sickness, and they all report their surprise at how readily and easily Jesus and the apostles handle such supernatural afflictions. There is even a story in Acts in which a group of exorcists (who we can safely assume are quite familiar with their then-contemporary practices for effective exorcism!) attempt to do an exorcism “Paul’s way,” by calling on the Name of Jesus, and, surprisingly, it doesn’t work: the demonic spirit responds to them, saying, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you?” (Acts 19:11–20) What is shocking to the New Testament world is not that spirits exist or that humans can find methods for dealing with them (these two claims are almost universal in the history of religious practices), but that Jesus and His followers handle the spirits so easily. The basic logic, as reported by the Gospel of John, is that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5 NIV).
As such, it is not surprising in the sacrament of Baptism, the Church’s foundational rite of entrance, one finds a built-in exorcism liturgy. Following the use of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, one encounters the following series of questions:
Q. Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?
A. I renounce them.
Q. Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?
A. I renounce them.
Q. Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?
A. I renounce them. (4)
It is worthwhile to meditate on the implications of this trifold renunciation. The last one is the most familiar to those of us formed and shaped by the common American religious milieu: to seek to follow God involves the personal rejection of sin in one’s own life. (5) And the second-to-last seems quite vivid to those of us witnessing time and again the deployment of evil power in the world, and the unceasing hunger of such powers that roam about seeking whom they may devour. But the first renunciation is unique in that it implies the supernatural world present in the Biblical narratives and the experience of pre- and non-modern peoples. When Paul wrote that “our struggle is not against blood and flesh but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12), he seems to have both natural and supernatural authority in mind. (6) The baptismal liturgy directs the new Christian to renounce simultaneously the nuclear threats of a violent superpower and the fierce might of oppressive regimes, the creeping and seductive powers of sin operating on us from within and without, as well as the demonic reign of supernatural forces and their hidden influence.
II.
But just what is the domain of power of such forces? A couple years ago, I was part of a church that met in a large old house. The pastor of the church committed adultery and then abandoned her husband, leaving him to live alone in the house. It was an extremely traumatic event for everyone involved in the church, but especially for the husband. Not long after all this came to light, the husband began reporting that he was unable to sleep. I and a fellow Pentecostal in that church felt a spiritual unease about it. We let him know what we felt (as good Pentecostals, we would never attempt an exorcism without someone’s express permission!), and we asked if we could pray around the building with him and try to cast out the evil spirit that had been sensed there. He was a good-humored guy, but he wasn’t much familiar with Pentecostal practices, so I’m not sure how much he believed in what we had to say.
My friend and I began canvassing the house, praying in tongues and calling upon the power of the Spirit and proclaiming the Name of Jesus, and as we did so we experienced an enormous pressure coming from one corner of the building. I was used to feeling such pressures which our tradition calls the “gift of discerning spirits”, but I had never quite felt a pressure such as this before. If I’m honest, I actually felt a little scared, and I was very grateful I had decided to enter into this with a friend by my side. When we reached the place of the highest pressure, only then did we discover that the room in question was in fact the main bedroom. Above the head of the bed was an object the husband later identified as a gift from the pastor, and my friend and I discerned the pressure coming from it. We recommended to him that he burn it. He was able to sleep easily from that night on.
I don’t tell this story as an example of exorcism done right, or even because I fully understand what happened on this occasion. I’ve often found myself looking back on this situation and trying to account (in a scientific manner) for all the elements: the intense pressure I experienced emanating from the bedroom before I even knew it was the bedroom; the immediate removal of the affliction once the object was destroyed; even the odd metaphysics that one has to negotiate to comprehend the series of removals by which an object might become “possessed” (if that is even the proper term for what had happened). What my Pentecostal heart takes for granted, my philosophy of religion begins to analyze, and while my working theory of late has something to do with human attachments and the phenomenology of curses, it does not exactly matter why such things can happen. What matters more for our purposes here is that prayer and the proclamation of risen Christ and a willingness to listen to the Spirit and discern can in fact empower us to see people delivered from active demonization in their lives.
The Bible assumes these beings exist and can work ill in the lives of people, and, yes, the Church has resources for opposing them—not just in the Baptismal rite but also in liturgies of renewal, of blessings for a new home, and so on. In my many years as a Pentecostal Christian I have met many demonized people. Some, as is most often the case, were experiencing a season of unexpected spiritual pressure that constantly drew out their worst thoughts and feelings, hung over them like a constant downpour, and couldn’t be fully explained by common psychiatric diagnoses such as depression, anxiety, etc. Other, more dramatic examples include people haunted by vivid nightmares, or struck by a sudden inability to sleep, like the friend mentioned above, and still others report even more intense experiences including partial paralysis, or somatic pains. And while symptoms such as these often might have psychological or neurological causes, for every story of supernatural oppression I have summarized in the lists above, I have also heard (and witnessed) radical stories of healing, of renewal, of deliverance. In fact, one of the chief features of the Pentecostal tradition that I represent is not its stereotypical obsessions with “fears of the Devil,” but, rather, the opposite: its confident confrontations and declarations of victory over the Devil. One song we Pentecostals tend to sing includes the repeated line: “he’s under our feet / he’s under our feet / Satan is under our feet”—stomping usually included.
In Pentecostal and charismatic practice, those who identify themselves as suffering under demonic oppression will often go to the altar and ask for prayers of deliverance, or they might even attend a designated “deliverance service.” At these services, elders or ministers of some kind will anoint the person with oil, lay hands on them, and pray over them (often in tongues, a phenomenon known as glossolalia), and in those prayers they will command the spirits to leave in the Name of Jesus. And most of the time the spirits leave (sometimes dramatically)! At least, most of the time, the person who was demonized will come back the next Sunday and share a testimony of how they slept for the first time in months or how the shadow over them disappeared and so on. This is not limited to the Pentecostal and charismatic worlds either, for the prayers of anointing and of exorcism and of healing in the Anglican and Catholic churches likewise understand themselves as proclaiming the power of Christ over the body and soul of the believer.
III.
With Catholics we could follow St. Thomas Aquinas’ reflections on the ontology of spirits at length and contemplate the essential qualities of angels and demons, and with Pentecostals we could gather field reports of what believers have witnessed and experienced. We could compile sourcebooks and theories and practices and rituals. But many different kinds of Christians agree that we live in “enemy-occupied territory,” as C.S. Lewis termed it. (7) Wherever Christians go on this earth, we will encounter pressure: forces outside of us that resist the goodness of the life of Christ within us. We have seen how such forces manifest in individual lives, and we can see them at play in the vitriol and violence that spill out in our social lives as well.
Here we would do well to meditate on the words of Bishop G.E. Patterson, a highly respected Pentecostal pastor and former leader of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC): “surrounded by enemies, but God delivered.” (8) In this sermon (and I strongly encourage you to watch the video!), Bishop Patterson simply enunciates the Scriptural word of exhortation—a true confession of the basic nature of faith in a Living God—and immediately the Church begins to respond in confirmation of its truth with shouts of loud acclaim and testimony. We Pentecostals tend to do this with some measure of exuberance, but this is the witness of the Church amid all the pressures rallied against us in the world. We may be “surrounded by enemies,” including evil spirits and invisible forces of darkness, but we do not need to feel afraid of them. In fact, in Jesus “all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16), and so we, the Church, in Jesus and with Jesus can stand confident in our knowledge of His Victory. God delivers us.
Rudolf Bultmann and Schubert M Ogden, New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 4.
See Jason Ānanda Josephson-Storm, The Myth of Disenchantment : Magic Modernity and the Birth of the Human Sciences, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 23-34.
Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), 1-33.
Book of Common Prayer (New York: Church Hymnal Corp, 1979), 302.
https://earthandaltarmag.com/posts/ex633vkml2tpez6r0bwnmvs95no3y9
Here, I might add, seems to be what Walter Wink was thinking when he wrote his series of critiques of “the powers” (Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984;
Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986;
Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992). Nothing I suggest in this article detracts from the possibility of real human evil active in the world, although the presence of evil spirits in the world certainly could contribute to the backdrop upon which such “powers” operate.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1952), xxx.
https://youtu.be/iIB9goMpxLI
