You may recall from previous articles that my answer to this is “no.” I though tit might be helpful to flesh out why, by engaging with some arguments that Jon Thompson makes in his book “Deliverance.”
Thompson’s argument can be summarized as follows.
- That when the Bible talks about demons and deliverance, the term it uses is “demonisation” rather than demon possession and this can refer to multiple ways in which demons might interact with us.[1]
- The people who met with Jesus and were healed or received deliverance were told that their faith had made them well. This means that they were in effect believers and counted as prototype Christians. They had faith in the Lord.[2]
- Christians who argue that you cannot be demonized post conversion are over promising, just like the Prosperity Teachers. The Christian is not free from the wiles of the devil.[3]
- The Holy Spirit inhabits or possesses the Spirit, so that in your Spirit you cannot be demonized but this leaves free those other areas of your life where sin can also indwell. [4]
Now, I agree with Thompson that “demonized” is a more literal interpretation of the word used in New Testament deliverance contexts. However, it is worth observing that in those contexts, the evil spirits are commanded to come out from the person, so that there is a clear issue fo the person being indwelt and under the influence of a spirit who is in effect, like a parasite increasingly consuming and taking over their host. In that respect, whilst the Greek equivalent of “possession” may be absent from the text, this is a bit of a red herring, the concept of being possessed where we mean a form of indwelling similar to our understanding of being indwelt by the Holy Spirit is clearly in mind.
The people coming to Jesus are commended for their faith but this faith is specifically their trust in Jesus to deal with the specific issue they have come for. We should be careful to overread more into the texts than is present. There are specific occasions where Jesus observes that their faith means they are forgiven however, this does not happen in every case. In any case, that a person comes to Jesus in faith means that it is when they meet with him that they are changed, converted if you like. So this means that before they have met with Jesus, we should not consider them as believers. In any case, in the cases of demonisation we must also observe that the people are often not coming to him for deliverance but either he seeks them out as with Legion or the demon itself reveals its presence. We may also note that these miracles predate the sending of the Spirit.
It is a rather disingenuous approach to compare the suggestion that you cannot be demonized post conversion with prosperity of perfectionism teaching. The argument is not that the person is free from the attacks of the enemy but rather that they cannot be indwelt by an evil spirit.
The fourth point, that the Holy Spirit possesses the Spirit but this leaves other parts of the person free for possession is based on an Aristotelian world view and anthropology rather than a Biblical one and therefore misunderstands the language of Spirit and Flesh in the Bible. Specifically, that world view is the same one we see in Roman Catholic teaching which distinguishes between a higher (spiritual) and lower (physical/beastly) self). This of course led to the distinction between mortal and venial sins. It is also at the root of gnostic thinking where spirit is good and physical matter bad.
Scripture instead portrays us as whole persons. This means that the whole person is fallen and affected by sin (total Depravity) and is also filled by the Holy Spirit and under the Lordship of Christ.
I would also observe that the presumption of demonisation in believers tends to work on the belief that demons are well concealed and need careful and specialised discernment to detect. This runs contrary to what we see in The Gospels and Acts where demonisation is overt not least because the demons have a habit of revealing their presence in a person.
The idea of Christians requiring deliverance from evil spirits requires quite the misreading of Scripture, a faulty theology and a faulty anthropology.
[1] Thompon, Deliverance, 67.
[2] Citing personal correspondence with Charles Craft, Thompon, Deliverance, 134.
[3] Thompon, Deliverance, 131, 134.
[4] Thompon, Deliverance, 131, 134.
Faithroots 