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Thinking about Demons and the Demonic*

How best to approach the subject of the demonic? Along with the serious historical and theological questions about how to interpret accounts of demons and demon-possession, whether in the world of the New Testament or in the world today, there also has to be a frank recognition that – for all sorts of reasons – the task is, as we might say, ‘devilishly difficult’! It is interesting, by the way, that demons and the demonic still haunt our language: ‘I can’t imagine what possessed me’; ‘They behaved like monsters’; ‘Are you out of your mind?’; ‘What’s got into you?’; and so on. It is as if we need vivid language for making sense of our inner and outer worlds, a language of malevolent power, invasion, possession, corruption and irrationality to give voice to our sense, in various times and places, that our attempts to construct and sustain an orderly moral universe are under threat or can be sustained no longer. I cite a few examples. First, at the most benign end, one thinks of how effectively C. S. Lewis – shaped and informed, no doubt, by his deep immersion in medieval and Renaissance language and imagery of the demonic – makes gently ironic use of devils like Screwtape in the service of a popular and widely appreciated exposition of Christian character and morality. Second, in darker vein, eminent sociologist David Martin, in the context of a sermon, testifies to the reality of what he calls ‘disorderly powers’ and ‘dark, driven energies’: