Demons and Christianity

Occams Barber said:

Sounds like a scene from a B grade movie.

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I was cribbing form The Screwtape Letters.

As I, and others, have said, if you want a majority Christian viewpoint, read that.

Occams Barber said:

Do you have any firsthand experience of this type of demonic temptation or do demons usually avoid you?

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Now just have a bit of a think about the unfriendliness of that remark.

Did a demon whisper that in your ear, or are you just a not very nice person?

Radagast said:

I think he's talking about what E.E. "Doc" Smith called "a residuum of non-material malignancy against which all the physical weapons of all the universes would be completely impotent."

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So like a voodoo bad juju kind of thing?

Here is another example...

I'm having lunch with my mum in a country town.

Half way through eating I feel a disturbance deep in my Spirit.

I stand up and say to my mum follow me somethings not right, I'm loosing my peace.

We walk outside and down the path - I sense exactly what direction it is coming from.

Sure enough I stop at the boundary and look, and the neighbour is divining for water...

Radagast said:

According to Pew Forum, 21% of U.S. Christians are mainline (liberal) Protestants. The percentage is lower in places like Africa, so "the Christian world at large" is probably pretty conservative.

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Right, although in the US (and I think some other places), the Catholic church is effectively mainline, even though official doctrine isn't.

Deut 18:9-14 lists practices that are 'detestable' and spiritually dark.

Divination is among them.

There is a demonic spirit behind it.

hedrick said:

Right, although in the US (and I think some other places), the Catholic church is effectively mainline, even though official doctrine isn't.

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The "mainline" concept doesn't really apply to Catholics.

Some are liberal, some are conservative, but all are officially committed to a bunch of conservative theology.

We are not to converse with or seek help from the spirit world. Doing so establishes demonic bondages in your life and God calls us to freedom...

A 'positive outcome' is no justification for disobeying God's requirement to be dedicated to Him alone and not dabble in darkness.

A Spirit of divination was cast out in Acts 16:16.

Correct me if I am wrong but I thought this was the Christian Apologetics forum - I dont think we need to apologise for stating what we believe.

You could find an atheists forum and discuss Christianity in safety if you would be more comfortable.

Ive been around a while as well - did you read my testimony thread?

Mutual respect I can live with, being gagged is a different issue.

By the way I can't convert anyone - He does that.

Radagast said:

According to Pew Forum, 21% of U.S. Christians are mainline (liberal) Protestants. The percentage is lower in places like Africa, so "the Christian world at large" is probably pretty conservative.

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Yeah, that's what I was trying to express in the following sentence.

I think this forum is still extremely conservative, even taking that into consideration, because of being predominantly American. There's stuff out there that isn't well represented here. I'm thinking of conservative theologians in Britain who would count as liberal by American standards, so... are they conservative or liberal when compared to the forum? Probably liberal.

Occams Barber said:

So... they finally reopened the bars in New York?

OB

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Eh? It's really not that hard to give a science fiction spin to the idea of demonic activity, which, if true, would make it as "natural" an occurrence as alien visitation would be. You can't really say that something has to be supernatural when it really doesn't. Come on, a bit of imagination!

Silmarien said:

I think this forum is still extremely conservative, even taking that into consideration, because of being predominantly American.

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Well, I'm saying the opposite, actually. The average African Christian, for example, would be shocked at how liberal this forum is. And Africans make up a big slice of global Christianity: see this map.

Occams Barber said:

There's also a bias in the population I'm sampling in this thread. I suspect that CFers lean towards the conservative end of the Christian spectrum. The CF pop is also predominately American. This means that the opinions I'm seeing here are predominantly vocal, conservative Christians with a culturally US viewpoint.


I'm a bit cautious about the alien/demon correlations you've mentioned. I don't see aliens as supernatural entities and even I would concede the possibility aliens exist somewhere although not necessarily hiding out on this planet. Aliens, if they are out there, are by definition natural life forms. I also include simple life like molds or bacteria under the general heading of aliens.

I concede that the popular conception of aliens is probably an intelligent being who flits around locally in a flying saucer but even this interpretation does not require they be supernatural. Demons on the other hand are definitely supernatural. What I'm saying is that belief in demons may not equate with belief in aliens.
OB

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The "Conservative end of the Christian spectrum"? What does that even "mean"? Does it mean something like "...these are Christians who don't want anyone telling them how to interpret the Bible..."? What are conservative Christians conserving, really? And what are so-called "Liberal Christians" liberating themselves from, really?

I just find that in contrast to politics, this whole identification process when evaluating Christians is a bit vague, especially when considering the degree and kind to which any one of 'them' believes in the Diabolical.

And does it really matter that much? If the New Testament writers seem to express some level of more substantive belief in the 'demonic' over and above a mere mythic understanding of collaborative human social evil, then why is it surprising if various Christians today adopt at least some conceptual schema about the nature of diabolical powers that doesn't just deflate itself to the level of mythicism?

I for one am not a political 'conservative,' but by typical definition, I may still qualify as a moral or ethical "conservative." What I'm conserving, I don't quite know.

As for my theological beliefs, I'm an Existentialist who takes a more or less NEO-Evangelical approach to the bible and to the common, Trinitarian Christian faith, but in this existential approach, while I don't claim that I can 'know' that demons exist, I very much think I perceive a demonically structured political world in which we attempt to move and live: demons don't hide behind every bush, under every rock and in every nook and cranny. Rather, they're seemingly distributed ethereally throughout the world, mostly remaining imperceptible to us, yet looking for opportunities to influence what are to us, prima facie, like common, everyday political and psychological situations in human life.

So, maybe keep in mind that the way in which the substance of the topic of this thread is "seen" by Christians in various times and demographies isn't so much an American thing as it is a choice of where one thinks the epistemic nature of the Bible should lead one in making any substantive conclusions.

Radagast said:

Well, I'm saying the opposite, actually. The average African Christian, for example, would be shocked at how liberal this forum is. And Africans make up a big slice of global Christianity: see this map.

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Hmm, that is a fair point. I don't know all that much about African Christianity except that it leans quite socially conservative. Would it be more conservative than American Evangelical Protestantism? I was under the impression that aside from some of the native churches, it sprung out of Evangelical missionary activity.

My major concern with saying that the world leans more conservative than the United States would be the question of what Catholicism looks like globally.

2PhiloVoid said:

The "Conservative end of the Christian spectrum"? What does that even "mean"? Does it mean something like "...these are Christians who don't want anyone telling them how to interpret the Bible..."? What are conservative Christians conserving, really? And what are so-called "Liberal Christians" liberating themselves from, really?

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For the purposes of the forum, I would say that it comes down to inerrancy: you're a conservative if you accept it and a liberal if you don't. If you're an inerrantist, you probably have to accept the existence of demons, but if you're not, it could go either way.

I don't think this is a great definition of theological conservativism, by any means, since I would consider myself to be somewhat theologically conservative, and you are more so than I am, but compared to the forum at large, we're liberals.

Occams Barber said:

As I've said in another post I suspect the more liberal churches may be too embarrassed to openly admit to demon belief even though it does appear to be deeply buried in the Christian psyche.

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I think it is indeed deeply buried, and one reason is that in the New Testament they are represented as sentient beings. In Matthew 8:28-34, for example, they have a conversation with Jesus that ends with them striking a bargain with him.

Silmarien said:

For the purposes of the forum, I would say that it comes down to inerrancy: you're a conservative if you accept it and a liberal if you don't. If you're an inerrantist, you probably have to accept the existence of demons, but if you're not, it could go either way.

I don't think this is a great definition of theological conservativism, by any means, since I would consider myself to be somewhat theologically conservative, and you are more so than I am, but compared to the forum at large, we're liberals.

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Well said, Sil!

Silmarien said:

I don't know all that much about African Christianity except that it leans quite socially conservative. Would it be more conservative than American Evangelical Protestantism?

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Have you been hiding under a rock or something?

The biggest issue in the Anglican community over the past few years, it seems to me, is the fact that African Anglicans are so much more conservative than American ones. This has led to the creation of GAFCON, and threatened to split the Anglican Communion.

Likewise the current split in the United Methodist Church (UMC) is driven by the fact that African Methodists are more conservative than the average American Methodist.

Silmarien said:

My major concern with saying that the world leans more conservative than the United States would be the question of what Catholicism looks like globally.

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I know less about Catholics, I'm afraid.

Silmarien said:

Hmm, that is a fair point. I don't know all that much about African Christianity except that it leans quite socially conservative. Would it be more conservative than American Evangelical Protestantism? I was under the impression that aside from some of the native churches, it sprung out of Evangelical missionary activity.

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Evangelicals in the US have mellowed, whereas that doesn't seem to be the case in Africa. Reasons for that are beyond the reasonable scope of this thread.