Hi Andrew.
I’ve finally gotten my hands on COSM, and I have two questions for you, when you get the chance: - You seem to conflate, at least on occasion, the concepts of ‘first resurrection’ and ‘survival of Israel’. Is this intentional? I think I may be misreading you because other times you’ve argued that the ‘first resurrection’ is a gift (essentially the gift of ‘heaven’) to those suffering saints who die during the transition from one age to the next. Is this correct? - Second, if you do in fact think that Paul hoped for a ‘first resurrection’ of the martyrs, what is your mental picture of such a resurrection? You seem to be a physicalist in most of your posts (at least, you don’t think our immaterial ‘souls’ go floating to any particular location when we die), but this stands in tension with Paul’s view of a first resurrection, does it not? Or would you argue that the first resurrection (if Paul’s hope was well founded—and I don’t see any reason to think it wasn’t) is in fact a bodily resurrection like Jesus’ with the only exception being that eschatological martyrs are resurrected, in a sense, directly to heaven (to reign with Christ)? I realize this second question isn’t so much a question of biblical scholarship as it is of metaphysics, but I’m curious as to how you picture this in your mind. - Also (question 2.1), and this has little to do with COSM, do you think Jesus and Paul (and company) thought of Satan as a ‘personal’ being? What of ‘demons’? Lots of questions, I apologize.
All the best, -Daniel-
Re: COSM
Happy to answer the questions, Daniel:
1. I would say that the ‘first resurrection’ is John’s term for a hope that is specifically associated with the survival of Israel during the crisis of the end of the age of second temple Judaism. There is a sense in which the restoration of Israel is itself (metaphorically) a resurrection from the dead (cf. Ezek. 37; Hos. 6), but the NT doesn’t make too much of this idea. More important, I think, is the thought that those who lose their lives out of faithfulness to YHWH during this critical period will be raised and vindicated as part of the general restoration of the people of God.
2. I think you’ve basically got it right, not least in your comment about metaphysics. Resurrection would normally belong to the renewal of the whole of creation - that is what happens at the end of Revelation. But since creation is not made new at the time of eschatological crisis, the martyrs have nowhere else to go, so they are raised (as was true also for Jesus, the pioneer of their confidence) to be with God in heaven until the final enemy is defeated.
2.1 I suspect that the question ‘is satan a personal being’ would not have made too much sense to Paul. It strikes me as too dualistic in its assumptions. Satan as a spiritual actor in the story about Israel is intimately bound up with the concrete experience of political-religious opposition - Rome above all. The same is true in principle for demons - they are an expression of the fact that Israel is under pagan domination, opposed by Satan.
Andrew
Re: COSM
Thanks for your thoughts Andrew.
Many of my questions are questions I ask as an amateur theologian. Perhaps my categories are dated, but as a student of philosophy, it tickles my fancy to develop of tentative system of sorts in which to place the biblical data I mine from those more informed than I. Hence my musings on the metaphysics behind the ‘first resurrection’.
My question about Satan (and demons) as ‘personal’ was posed because I’m wondering about the place of exorcisms in the emerging church. My pastor (Greg Boyd) ardently defends the thesis that ‘Satan is real (and his demons are too)’. This is, I believe, primarily because of some odd experiences he and some of his friends have had, which seem to best make sense in something of a dualistic worldview. What I’m trying to do is think of better way to frame questions of ‘satanic’ and ‘demonic’ opposition in a way that does justice both to ‘paranormal’ phenomena, and to Scripture. Some of Jesus’ language certainly seems to ‘fit’ well with a dualistic worldview, contra Walter Wink’s talk of the ‘Powers’ which works well on a systemic level, but falls on its face when trying to explain demonization. Between liberal reductionism and conservative dualism, what are our options?
Thanks for the interaction. Cheers, -Daniel-
Re: COSM
http://www.opensourcetheology.net/node/1125 You can read my full post about this subject.Instead of me posting it again.
Demons and whatnot
Freespirit, thanks for your input. Yours is what one might call a typically ‘liberal’ reading of the biblical text. Or at the very least, it’s how my self-proclaimed liberal friends tend to read those passages. It certainly coheres better with the current scientific worldview.
However, I’d really like to explore two questions:
- The first, and most important, is how the biblical authors themselves thought of these experiences. Did Luke and Mark really think Jesus was only casting ‘bad thoughts’ out of people? If so, why is the casting out necessary? Couldn’t Jesus have just reasoned with them, or taught them the truth, like he does elsewhere? So in other words, I’m looking for a historically plausible interpretation of demon/angel/Satan talk in the NT that doesn’t fall into the typical conservative dualism, but yet avoids the more liberal ‘mythical’ reading. I’m unsure as to whether your view does that.
- Second, as a philosopher, I’m interested in the metaphysics of demonization. One of my pastors had an experience of demonization where some professors were praying over him, and something displaced his consciousness and started talking back to them through his body, but he experienced the scene as an observer. What the heck was going on here? This is obviously related to the broader philosophical question of consciousness, but for those of us who are wary of facile dualism, it’s deeply problematic, or at least enigmatic. Do ‘demons’ have ‘wills’? Are they really ‘fallen angels’ (i.e. angels that rebelled against God)? If so, does that mean they have hopes, dreams, aspirations, all like human beings? If that’s the case, then they really start to sound like disembodied humans… which I think is problematic. So how are we to think of these ‘entities’ in our post-modern context?
-Daniel-
Re: Demons and whatnot
JOB 12:11 Does not the ear try words? and the mouth taste his meat? I dont know how liberal Iam.Smiles.
I think they where in touch with reality(jesus and soforth).Its one of those things where truth is a hard word.I wonder about my christian friends with snakes and charms also the other strange things they do.But if they believe it you may as well comfort him in his thoughts. You will note however the word doctrine.implying more than a spiritual power but a set of standards,
MK 1:27 And they were all amazed, insomuch that they questioned among themselves, saying, What thing is this? what new doctrine is this? for with authority commandeth he even the unclean spirits, and they do obey him.
But it could be argued this is the doctrine of exosism.
PROV 21:16 The man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead.
Re: Demons and whatnot
How much of a difference is there really between Wink’s sociological account of the powers and a psychological account of demonization that treats it as an aspect of personality - for example, the subconscious mind temporarily taking over? If ‘satan’ is a certain type of story that the Bible tells about socio-political opposition to the people of God, aren’t ‘demons’ likewise a story that is told about the extreme oprression of the individual in the people of God as a consequence of the overarching situation?
Whatever we may make of the truthfulness of these stories and whether we still need to tell them, I would suggest that the Bible does not allow us to separate out the two different ways of speaking about evil. If the stories about satan and demons have validity, it is because they are stories about political and personal realities.
My big question, which arises from the eschatology of The Coming of the Son of Man, has to do with the ‘binding’ of Satan when Rome is defeated. It seems to me that the experience of satanic opposition is so closely associated with the extreme opposition of Rome to the people of God - to the extent that when Babylon the Great is defeated, Satan is bound and cast into the abyss - that we may be in a position now where we don’t have to talk about satan. In my view the ‘Son of man’ has been vindicated and given the kingdom, and is therefore no longer accused by the adversary/accuser of Israel.
We may be left, I suppose, with localized echoes of that conflict, where again socio-political opposition to the people of God feels like satanic opposition, when it seems appropriate to use the more dualistic narrative. But I do think that biblically we have to take very seriously the effects of the eschatological watershed of the victory over Rome.
Re: Demons and whatnot
Andrew’s conclusion fits entirely within the eschatology of COSM, but the links he suggests which lead to his conclusion are tentative - and rightly so. The ‘eschatological watershed of the victory over Rome’ is something that happened, if at all, in an invisible realm, and was never conclusively played out in history - unlike the coming of the Son of Man as judgement on Jerusalem. Which must lay the concept open to question.
Like most of the rest of the NT, NT demonology becomes a historical phenomenon in the ‘fully realised’ COSM eschatology, and of no on-going relevance for today. Which must also lay the COSM eschatology open to question.
It’s always possible that what we call today ‘demonic possession’, ‘demonisation’, or ‘demonic oppression’ may be using historically obsolete categories, and even confusing psychological with spiritual categories, but just when modern scholarship has reached a definitive judgement, the experience of those who think and believe otherwise rises up to disturb the paradigm. The practice of demonic expulsion today continues to follow the model used by Jesus and the apostles: the command, and the deliverance, with the same results. The practice must always be subject to critical, theological and biblical scrutiny, but it just can’t and won’t be explained away. We should take its contemporary relevance seriously.
There is dualism in any account of the nature of reality which includes the supernatural. To believe in God is to be, in a sense, a dualist (unless you are a monist). The root problem for the modernist (though largely not for the postmodern) is any suggestion of a supernatural dimension to reality.
I too would see Wink’s contrast of personal spiritual beings with societal structural evil as being harmonised through a corporate expression of what can happen on an individual level. In God-denying systems which influence whole societies and cultures - such as imperial Rome, atheistic communism or atheistic capitalism - people are capable of subhuman acts en masse. Such systems may appropriately be described as evil in certain aspects of their character. In the sense in which they may grip and control and degrade those involved, ‘demonic’ or ‘demonised’ may not be an inappropriate category with which to describe them.
The presence of demonic affliction in the NT, and in Israel in particular was more than a ‘story’: it was a genuinely felt spiritual experience. To Roman social oppression must be added the reason why Rome was in Israel at all - Israel’s continued lack of forgiveness of sins. Return from exile had not provided this - Israel was still, in that sense, in exile from God. Such an exile was an open door to spiritual affliction. Israel’s rejection, in the main, of Jesus, was a sign of her faithlessness to JHWH - and her refusal to accept forgiveness of sins on JHWH’s terms. But then as now, many did accept this forgiveness of sins, which was demonstrated in healings, miracles, deliverances, and crucially, in the inclusion of the socially and religiously marginalised.
Individual stories have interesting individual applications to the larger narrative. The deliverance of the Gadarene demoniac took place in a region culturally colonised by gentiles. The expulsion of the demons (‘Legion’)into the pigs was perhaps a sign of this background. The people begged Jesus to leave the district - perhaps because they saw him, spiritually and therefore politically, as challenging the powers in the district, and also themselves as willing subjects to the powers. The Gadarene was told not to leave the district - perhaps because he now had authority in that district over the powers - to declare the kingdom of God (in both the COSM version of kingdom and the normal one). In this story, the personal, spiritual, political and structural/social narratives come together harmoniously.
C.S.Lewis said there are are two equal and opposite errors to be made about Satan and demons: one is to see them as medieval figures with horns and pitchforks; the other is to disbelieve in their existence altogether. I think he was right.
Re: The Coming of the Son of Man
One of the hesitations I have in embracing something like the psychological model has to do with the apparent independence of the ‘spiritual’ realm. In debates over human composition, the key question is whether or not what we call the ‘soul’ survives the death of the body. Those who say yes are dualists of some sort, those who say no are physicalists of some sort (and I’m fairly certain there’s no middle ground).
In ‘demonology’, the analogous question is whether or not an ‘evil spirit’ can ‘survive’, as it were, from one body to the next. Whether the same demon can cause havoc in more than one body. While in most situations something like the psychological explanation seems to work, other situations tend to favor the dualistic interpretation. A few examples: any time there’s spooky action at a distance (levitation, flying objects, and so on—this doesn’t really seem to happen in the biblical story); anytime ‘demons’ recognize Jesus’ authority/divinity (how do they know?); and the annoying story of the pigs. How does one give an honest accounting of the story of demons being sent from a single man to a herd of pigs under a psychological model of demonization?
While the spiritual seems intimately tied to the socio-economic and political conditions, there are hints in the biblical text (or so it seems to me) that there is an underlying reality which is not exhausted by those very same conditions.
Also, while we may have some pleasure at dismissing naively dualistic worldviews from our ‘enlightened’ perspective (I’m speaking for myself here), it’s my understanding that something like a dualistic worldview has been common to a large majority of world civilizations, and that our Western culture is something of an oddity, anthropologically speaking. It won’t do to just dismiss an understanding of the world which seems to permeate world history (or will it?).
As usual I’m full of questions, with no splendidly good answers.
-Daniel-
Re: The Coming of the Son of Man
LK 5:22 But when Jesus perceived their THOUGHTS, he answering said unto them, What reason ye in your hearts?
ROM 2:15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their THOUGHTS the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)
LK 24:38 And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled? and why do THOUGHTS arise in your hearts?
LK 2:35 (Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,) that the THOUGHTS of many hearts may be revealed.
Re: The Coming of the Son of Man
I’ve left out alot so you can see the devil.
21Then said Jesus again unto them, I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come.
30As he spake these words, many believed on him.
31Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;
32And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
34Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.
36If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.
37I know that ye are Abraham’s seed; but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you.
Note the above you are abrahams seed then you are not because of the wanting to kill him.
39They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the works of Abraham.
40But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham.
41Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God.
42Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me.
43Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word.
44Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
45And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.
46Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me?
47He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.
WOW.How sin blinds the eyes(Conscience).But jesus opened many eyes.
EPH 2:3 Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the Lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.
1TIM 6:9 But they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful Lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition.
We all have them
2TIM 2:22 Flee also youthful Lusts: but follow righteousness
Regeneration and renewing of the mind
2COR 4:16 For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.
EPH 4:23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;
ROM 12:2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the Renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
TIT 3:5 Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;
Here we see our accuser
ROM 2:15 Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their THOUGHTS the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;)
There wasnt a real beam in the eye.
MT 7:5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.
Demons and swine
29And, behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? art thou come hither to torment us before the time?
30And there was a good way off from them an herd of many swine feeding.
31So the devils besought him, saying, If thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine.
32And he said unto them, Go. And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters.
33And they that kept them fled, and went their ways into the city, and told every thing, and what was befallen to the possessed of the devils.
34And, behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus: and when they saw him, they besought him that he would depart out of their coasts.
Here we see at the end of this chapter, the revealed meaning.From the study of bible we know pigs are UNCLEAN.We know a flood is represented as people.We see the people asking him to leave.From all the other scripture we can now reason it out.
Matt 8 .29 tells of peoples thoughts(conscience)was effected by his presence.The swine representing unclean experinces within people who could not open up(Tormented within).Wished to have leave of his presence and desired to go with the flood of people(whole city came out to meet him).And perished with the other like minded people.
So first people were tormented then they went to the swine(abigger group of people=herd)and likewise into the flood of the masses.
Re: The Coming of the Son of Man
Daniel - Doesn’t ‘dualism’ normally refer to a rather extreme separation of spirit and matter, and not just whether one believes in a supernatural dimension? My understanding is that ‘dualism’ was an idea developed in the light of Descartes, whose system seemed to separate mind and matter, and only secondarily God and matter. This latter separation became a feature of modernist thinking - deism rather than theism. But this need not be the case with Judaeo-Christian belief - to my mind, the most satisfyingly holistic of all belief systems.
Why is the story of the pigs annoying? To my mind, this is one of the most satisfying of the deliverance stories. It bears so many levels of narrative interpretation. And why does there need to be a purely psychological interpretation - if the existence of the supernatural is assumed? In this story, as in all the other stories, to use Andrew’s terminology, if there is a Roman narrative reflected in the stories, there is certainly, and I would say more prominently, a narrative of Israel - and just how desperate her condition had become before JHWH.
An illegitimate dualism is the over-personalising demons - such as visualising them seated on a bench in hell, with placards like ‘anger’, ‘fear’, ‘lust’, etc around their necks, waiting to be sent on a mission to find a body to inhabit. Nevertheless, there are identifiably personal elements to demons: they recognised Jesus, were afraid of their final destiny, and could be expelled from the individuals they tormented. I liked Noel Moules’s description of Satan (and demons) as ‘quasi personal’. If personality depends in the end on some kind of relationship with God, then personality disintegrates the further an individual gets from God. In this sense, ‘personal’ must be used in a very modified sense in relation to Satan or demons. To quote C.S.Lewis again, Satan is ‘God’s shadow’.
Re: The Coming of the Son of Man
Forgive me for commenting on this thread without having yet read Andrew’s book. I am in the PhD program in history, and all of my theological reading has to be done during semester breaks.
I appreciated Peter’s comment on C.S. Lewis’ view of the reality of the demonic. I agree. I have particpated in some exorcisms and, while I recognize that there may be neurological and emotional components, there seems to be some spiritual reality as well.
I have more questions about dualism versus monism. Someone (freespirit, I think?) said above: “Those who say yes are dualists of some sort, those who say no are physicalists of some sort (and I’m fairly certain there’s no middle ground).”
I have come across increasing criticism recently of what is referred to as “dualism” within the church, although it is most often traced back to Plato, or neo-platonism. I had not considered the connection with Descarte.
At the same time, I also see numerous critiques of philosophical “monism” as being outside of classical orthodox Christianity. The critique is that monism blurs the distinction between Creator and creation.
So, where does that leave us? Is there a middle ground that is genuinely compatible with a Judeo-Christian worldview? Is it “pluralism”? or some kind of philosophical trinatarianism?
As I am spending more and more time with young secular post-moderns with a mish-mash of new age spirituality, this is a rather important point for me.
thanks
joseph holbrook
Re: The Coming of the Son of Man
I don’t know if it is middle ground, but the Judaeo-Christian worldview is neither monist nor dualist.
It is not dualist, in the sense that it does not aver, with Plato, a real and perfect world of spirit forms behind the less real and imperfect world of matter, rejecting the second in favour of the first.
It is a ‘this-worldly’ faith, in the sense that it affirms God’s purposes for creation, and is the most materialistic of faiths, in affirming the goodness of creation. In Revelation 21, God’s dwelling is said to become that of man; heaven and earth are reunited - which completes the ultimate goal of creation.
It is probably a much more ‘this-worldly’ faith in the ‘now’ than many Christians believe - heaven and earth being far more inter-penetrated than is often affirmed, and God’s plans being for his purposes on earth now, a salvation coming down to earth, rather than a salvation rescuing people out of the earth.
‘Dualism’, in the sense that I believe most people use it, is a Christian heresy rather than orthodoxy. It seems particularly to have arisen out of modernism’s squeezing of ‘faith’ into a realm outside of the natural world, perceived to run according to natural laws which did not require faith in a supernatural God.
To some extent, the Christian faith fell for the trap in the modernist period, and actually retreated into the space modernism had designed for it - becoming a faith which often had little sense of connection with the natural world (the various Christian reform movements being a notable exception), and even wrongly rejecting the natural world in favour of a world yet to be. It perhaps often tended unduly to become a faith whose focus was heaven, and what was to be experienced beyond death, rather than a faith which affirmed God’s purposes for his creation in the here and now.
Re: The Coming of the Son of Man
When I use the word ‘dualism’, I intend to signify the philosophical view that human nature is dual: we are composed of body and soul. The first ‘payoff’ of such a view is that humans can survive their deaths. This is the standard contemporary evangelical view. It is usually accompanied with an assumption that angels and demons are made of the same non-physical ‘stuff’ as our souls, and operate within that realm (though they can interact with the physical realm much as our souls do).
The real problem for me, is that I tend towards physicalism, philosophically speaking—the view that humans are (entirely) physical creatures (and that therefore if we ‘survive’ our deaths, or are resurrected, it is only a gift of God, and no power innate to our ‘souls’). While I am a physicalist (I’m not fond of the term ‘materialist’, since it could be misunderstood) as far as human nature is concerned, I’m not sure I want to say everything is physical (what of God?). More specifically, I’m curious as to whether one could give an account of the ‘demonic’ (or ‘angelic’) in (roughly) physical terms (akin to how Wink describes ‘the powers’ without appealing to non-physical weirdness).
This may be one area where the drive for unification and systematization is blocked by the actual data. Perhaps we’re (I’m?) not smart enough to figure this out…
Of course, before this philosophical question can be answered, there’s the biblical question of what view best fits the data of Scripture too…
Re: The Coming of the Son of Man
The pay-off of a body/soul composition of human nature isn’t necessarily that humans can survive their deaths. If both are created by God, both can be destroyed - or recreated. Even Jesus said - “fear the one who can destroy the body and soul in hell.” - Matthew 10:28. (I assume here he means God, not Satan). The preceding verse suggests that ‘soul’ is something which exists within the body, but cannot be physically harmed in the same way as the body. I’ve an idea that the immortality of the soul is an ancient Greek idea - not Christian, or even evangelical.
Re: The Coming of the Son of Man
Although, as Andrew would be quick to point out (and rightly so!), the Matthew 10:28 passage occurs in the context of Jesus commissioning the Twelve to announce the coming judgment on Israel (and the Way of the Savior as its alternative). In which case, the following verses (same chapter) are essentially paraphrasing the same claim:
“32 So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, 33 but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.” (ESV)
The question here is one of vindication, not of human constitution (though the language of Jesus is here more easily distorted to the latter question than in other passages). ‘Soul’ seems more collective here—as in the ‘soul’ of Israel (which was destroyed in Gehenna).
But even without that (in my opinion, much more satisfying) reading, your point still stands that the soul need not be assumed to be immortal (though, interestingly enough, this means that this kind of dualism, from a philosophical perspective, can’t escape the same challenges as physicalism, when it comes to questions of the continuity of post-mortem identity… but that’s not what’s in question here).
The only troubling continuity (‘troubling’ for someone like me who wants to be a physicalist) here is that of the ‘demons’ cast out from a man to a herd of pigs (how can there be continuity between the demonization of the one and the demonization of the other, from a metaphysical perspective, if ‘demonization’ refers only to a malfunction—of some sort—of the brain?). I may be getting us off track, but it seems to me that if the emerging church wants to continue in a tradition that embraces exorcism as a valid practice, it must give a (at least somewhat) satisfactory account of “what’s going on” in such instances.
Am I making sense?
Re: The Coming of the Son of Man
Daniel - the context of Matthew 10:28-33 is the extension of the mission of Jesus through the commissioning and sending of the disciples, in which the casting out of demons was to play a significant part - Matthew 10:1. In this task, they would encounter opposition and persecution. They were not to fear those who could kill the body but not the soul; rather they were to fear the one (God) who could destroy body and soul in hell. The phrase ‘before the Son of Man comes’ - verse 23 - is echoed in the ‘coming of the Son of Man’ language in Matthew 24, where it is immediately associated with judgement on Jerusalem and its temple - but take a look at all the problems which arise if this is made to be the exclusive fulfilment of the phrase. Observe its usage elsewhere in the NT (1 Thessalonians, Revelation) where it clearly does not refer to an AD 70 judgement of Jerusalem.
Matthew 10 has an immediate context, but speaks beyond that (the disciples were not on this occasion to be handed over to the authorities and killed) to subsequent 1st century experience, and beyond that to followers of Jesus throughout time. The message they were to proclaim, “the kingdom of heaven is at hand” - 10:7, is defined in the following verse: “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons” - Isaianic signs of the coming kingdom as the reign of God amongst his people, a reign which is more closely associated with the Isaianic outpouring of the Spirit than a single historic event of judgement.
Maybe the emerging church should draw the obvious conclusion about demonisation - that it is a reality, and that the church should be equipped to deal with it when it is encountered. This would involve recognising demonisation as more than a malfunction of the brain. The emerging church would be better equipped to recognise demonisation if it spent some time in parts of the world beyond Europe and N. America, where it is a much more obvious phenomenon. It is a phenomenon in the developed world, but masked by a more polite exterior. Even in the developed world however, the increasing interest in pyschic phenomenona and the paranormal, amongst other things, is creating a fertile environment for the operation of the demonic. The emerging church might also develop a better practice of casting out demons than the bizarre and theatrical showmanship with which it has often been associated.
I wonder why you want to be a ‘physicalist’? There are so many characteristics of human behaviour which cannot be given a purely physical explanation - and point to a source beyond the physical, though requiring the physical body as a medium for their expression. What about love, compassion, altruism, the motives behind self-sacrifice, forgiveness, mercy, and so on? Likewise the aesthetic sense: love of beauty, the desire to be creative, the artistic drive. None of these things can be described purely in terms of physical function.
On the other hand, there is a good case to be made out for a faith much more firmly rooted in material creation than has tended to be the case, in which the significance of our lives as created beings is given much greater attention.
Re: The Coming of the Son of Man
I wish to debate this and give you trust.give me some time and I will
Re: The Coming of the Son of Man
Hi there. Im just ading my two sense. Its just a story. The other day a friend of mine told me of his friend who confronted a few spiritualists at work. When he did one of the spiritualists started to growl and bark and go a bit crazy. Then he stopped and the other spiritualist started acting mad. Anyway this guy phoned one of his elders to come and help. The elder came over calmed down the spiritualists and prayed for them till they were back in their sane minds. The rest of the poeple at his work were in shock and the elder explained to them what had just happened which went something like this: ‘these guys were possessed and when Jesus’ name was mentioned they started to manifest’ Supposedly many of the coworkers said they were keen to invite Jesus to be a part of their lives. Also my church just went on a mission trip to the rural areas of Mozambique and they came back saying that the place was full of witch doctors and many of the people were hunched over and were sick, and manifested wierd behaviour towards christians. So many came back convinced of demons and satan as personal beings kind of like the stories in the gospels. How does one explain this in a non-personal way? These are stories i have heard and i know how stories can be inflated to fit a preferred way of seeing, but theres some stong evidence that those who dable in withcraft, etc… are effected by a very real spitiual realm like the guys Moses took on.