Casting Out What?

I wrote an initial post considering possession and related issues, Jim Anderson at Decorabilia was kind enough to push me to think about this further. In a comment on Mr Anderson’s post, I pointed out I had noticed some comments in Jacob Milgrom’s (smaller)Leviticus book which seemed appropos. That passage is as follows:

The basic premise of pagan religion are (1) that its deities are themselves dependent on and influenced by a metadivine realm, (2) that his realm spawns a multitude of malevolent and benevolent entities, and (3) that if humans can tap into this realm they can acquire the magical power to coerce the gods to do their will. The eminent Assyriologist W.G. Lambert has stated, “The impression is gained that everyday religion [in Mesopotamia] was dominated by fear of evil powers and black magic rather than a positive worship of the gods … the world was conceived to be full of evil demons who might cause trouble in any sphere of life. … Human as well as devils, might work evil against a person by the black arts, and here too the appropriate ritual was required.”

The Priestly theology negates these premises. It posits the existence of one supreme God who contends neither with a higher realm nor with competing peers. The world of demons is abolished, there is no struggle with autonomous foes, because there are none. With the demise of demons, only one creature remains with “demonic” power – the human being. Endowed with free will, human power is greater than any attributed to humans by pagan society. Not only can one dfey God but, in Priestly imagry, one can drive God out of his sanctuary. In this respect, huans have replaced demons.

The pagans secured the perpetual aid of a benevolent deity by building him/her a temple-residence in which the deity was housed, fed, and worshipped in exchange for protective care. Above all, the temple had to be inoculated by apotropaic rites — utilizing magic drawn from the metadivine realm — against incursions by malevolent forces from the supernal and infernal worlds. The Priestly theologians make use of the same imagery, except that the demons are replaced by humans. Humans can drive God out of the sanctuary by polluting it with their moral and ritual sins. All that the priests can do is periodically purge the sanctuary of its impurities and influence the people to atone for their wrongs.

However, it seems clear that later Biblical writers don’t hold this viewpoint. Angels, demons, and a plethora of other non-human or extra-human entitites fill later (probably mostly post exilic) writing. Are we to take them all as figurative? Certainly it seems the New Testament writers do not, nor the Early Fathers of the Church on down to Aquinas (and later) do not. Does this then mean, that the Priestly writer denies the existence of beings other than God without having a physical nature and perhaps then a Universe in which Man is the only creature in His own image aka Mr Whedon’s Serenity/Firefly universe with no intelligent alien life? Furthermore this quote is drawn merely from the Introduction to Mr Milgrom’s book, and while I’ve skimmed much of the first two volumes of his full Levitical treatment, which is just a tad more lengthy (3 volumes Anchor Bible series). Furthermore I wasn’t reading those books with these thoughts in mind and don’t have a ready response for where Milgrom might go with his thoughts on the miraculous and the efficacy of powers derived from the “metadivine realm”.

Mr Anderson deals with a number of points brought up in my first post.

• First he dismisses my initial point that for the vast majority of human history demons, magic, possesion, and “meta-divine” influences on human fates were firmly believed and not a point of question. It is only in this last century or so, as technology transformed our world into one with the illusion that we are masters of our own fates that we think that technology and science also hold all the answers to questions we might ask. My point is made less perhaps toward Mr Anderson, who it seems considers this question seriously, and instead at those who dismiss it out of hand (see the quotes with which I conclude this little essay). As Mr Anderson notes, my aside that their insights into human nature might have been keener was correctly noted as a somewhat irrelevant aside, but a tip of the hat to those like Plato and as well the Priestly theologians when compared to say … Dr Phil and what passes as human insight today, especially in popular culture.
• Second, he examines my initial ansatz regarding demons that they, like men, perhaps when they influence the physical world directly need to do so through physical agents. Thus when they cause mental illness, like toxoplasmosis have a physical parasitical manifestation which is amenable to modern psycho-active therapies. He asks:
  

  If demons, for the longest time, have necessitated exorcism for their removal, why is it that all of a sudden we can control them with the right drugs? Does “demon possession” really explain anything about typical possessed behavior, at least that which has been observed by disinterested parties?

  The first question is pretty simple, the possessed required exorcism before such drugs, because before such drugs existed they weren’t an option. After their development, they are certainly more predictable in their results. Secondly, it may be that all mental illness is not caused by demons … but that doesn’t mean none is either. The last question is the more difficult. How explanatory is this ansatz after all? At this point it’s a wash, for on the one hand like other illnesses who is struck by illness is on the one hand under the purview of Dame Chance where on the other unseen agents. Inasmuch as neither has any explanatory powers whatsoever its something of a wash. On the other hand, one side might be prey to Existential angst and Mr Neitsche’s abyss and the other claims to Paul of Tarsus, “and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” (Romans 5:5 ESV) and … that might be worth something.

• Thirdly, Mr Anderson points out that technology has hope of solutions via technology i.e., biochem and genetics. There he says, “we have a shot at an answer. We can search for a chemical imbalance, a tell-tale virus, a genetic marker”. And I’m not suggesting we abandon science in our search for cures. I’m am however suggesting that we also do not at the same time abandon prayer, God, and the Holy Spirit from our arsenal when seeking health and happiness for men.

I’ll close with two extended quotes from Jurgen Moltmann The Coming of God. In these passages Herr Moltmann is speaking primarily eschatology, but his ideas have some relevance to the discussion at hand.

The scientific and technological seizure of power over nature was the other way in which Europe set out towards the modern world. In the century between Copernicus and Newton, the new sciences stripped the world of its magic and took from it the divine mystery, ‘the world soul’, so as to ‘enslave’ it (the purpose behind Francis Bacon’s scientific theory), and in order to make the human being ‘the master and possessor of nature’, as Rene Descartes put it somewhat later in his Discourses on the Method. [...]

Experimental reason now took the place of the reason guided by tradition. It is not ‘what has been said from time immemorial’ that is true, but that which can be proven by experiment. Modern instrumental reason pushed out the older, receptive reason, turning an organ of perception into an active and aggressive human potency. Faith in the reason that had direct access to God did away with the historically mediated faith of the church.

and

The decipherment of nature through l’esprit de la geometrie provided the motivation and legitimation for the modern sciences. But is the realty of nature translucent? The intelligiblity of nature that was premised incited the search for the all-embracing ‘world formula’. Or is nature only ‘calculable’ to the extent to which it can be dominated? Does nature withdraw into her own mystery the more her phenomena are deciphered?