Exorcisms in Jesus’ Ministry

The first of the two exorcism accounts I wish to look at is Jesus’ exorcism of a multitude of demons out of a man at Gerasa (Mk 5:1-27; Mt 8:28-34; Lk 8:27-39).2 This account is the most developed, dramatic and detailed exorcism narrative in the Gospels.

Casting out Legion. Here we find Jesus confronted by a demonized man who lived amid the tombs of this town (Mk 5:3; Mt 8:28; Lk 8:27).3 Mark’s account depicts the man as possessing a terrorizing supernatural strength, to the point where

Now, however, someone “strong enough”—stronger than the “strong man” (Mk 3:27; Mt 12:29; Lk 11:21-22)—had arrived to subdue him. As in many other accounts, the demons knew who Jesus was and what he had come to do, for they caused the man to run up to Jesus and to shout “at the top of his voice, ‘What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me’” (Mk 5:7). Interestingly enough, Mark and Luke both note that this was said after Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man (Mk 5:8; Lk 8:29), making this the only account in which it seems that Jesus’ word did not immediately effect an exorcism.4 Some demons, Jesus elsewhere teaches, are harder to cast out than others (Mk 9:14-29), and it may be that the sheer numerical force of the demons that challenged Jesus prolonged this exorcism.

His first command having apparently failed, Jesus investigates further (perhaps to find out more precisely what he is up against).5 So he asks the demon what his name was, to which the demon replied, “My name is Legion; for we are many” (Mk 5:9; Lk 8:30).6 Knowing they cannot ultimately withstand the Son of God, the demons then beg Jesus not to be sent “out of the country” (Mk 5:10; Luke has “into the abyss,” 8:31). Instead, they ask to be sent into a local herd of swine. Surprisingly, Jesus acquiesces to their request.

The plan seems to backfire on the demons, however, for instead of finding a permanent abode that would allow them to stay in the region, the pigs immediately rush headlong over a cliff and drown (Mk 5:11-13; Mt 8:32-33; Lk 8:33-34). Where they went after that—whether to another area or to the “abyss”—is not clear. But it is clear that they did not get what they wanted, which seems to have been Jesus’ plan all along.

The result is that the man is returned to his “right mind” (Mk 5:15; Lk 8:36), but the townspeople are filled with fear, apparently at the realization that one even stronger than the demons who afflicted this man is in their midst. Perhaps assuming, as many others had done, that Jesus was driving out demons by the power of the strong man himself (Mt 12:24), they beg Jesus and his disciples to leave, which they do (Mk 5:16-17; Lk 8:36-37).

This account has a number of noteworthy features. First, the shift from the singular to the plural on the part of the demons is interesting and quite puzzling to most Western readers, though it is not at all unfamiliar to either ancient or modern exorcists. It may mean that one dominant demon initially spoke, or that the collective identity of demons is such that they can speak in either the singular or the plural.

In any case, what is far more significant is their collective name, “Legion.” This is a military term denoting a large army unit. Jesus used the term (in the plural) to refer to a vast army of heavenly warriors (Mt 26:53), and in the Roman army (which, significantly, occupied the whole area) it customarily referred to a unit of six thousand soldiers. This term as a name for the demons afflicting this man, then, reveals how thoroughly demonized he was.7

Indeed, given their name “Legion,” we should not be too surprised when Mark tells us that the number of pigs the demons entered when they left the man was two thousand (Mk 5:13). The Gospels include several other references to multiple demonization (e.g., Mk 1:22-23; Lk 4:24; 11:26; Mt 12:45), but the next highest number we read of is seven, the number of demons cast out of Mary Magdalene (Lk 8:2; Mk 16:9).8 In any event, the passage reveals that Jesus and the Gospel authors assumed that the world was virtually infested with demons, that the number of these demons was indefinitely large, and that people and animals were capable of being demonized by any number of these unclean invaders.9

The military term “Legion” is also significant in that it designates this multitude of demons as being a subgroup of a much larger army. Like the Romans in the eyes of Jews, Jesus saw the kingdom as an army which had invaded territory (the earth) that did not rightfully belong to it. And in this particular passage, a “Legion” of soldiers within this Satanic army had illegitimately captured a person. Jesus comes, however, to reclaim territory that belongs to his Father and bring it under his rightful rule. Hence when Jesus shows up, the legion of demons must leave.10

The demons’ desperate plea to remain in the area by entering a local herd of swine is also significant. Ancient people generally associated particular demons with particular regions (especially around tombs and desert regions, Lk 8:27, 29; 11:21), and this seems to be reflected in this passage.11 The desperation of their cry makes it appear that these degenerate spirits somehow needed to remain in this region, as though (perhaps) this were some sort of geographical assignment they had received from their chief and had to obey.12

Ancient people often believed that certain kinds of demons needed to reside in something, and this belief is also consistent with this account.13 Why the need to go into swine as opposed to just existing on their own? The demons’ existence appears to be parasitic. They seem to be like spiritual viruses that cannot survive long on their own; they need to infect someone or something.14

This belief may be reflected in Jesus’ teaching in Luke 11:24-26 (cf. Mt 12:24-25):

This passage presents the reverse principle of the teaching just before it, namely, that Jesus was stronger than the “strong man” who guards his house, and that his ministry was about overpowering this tyrant and “dividing his plunder” (Lk 11:21-22). In other words, what applies to the kingdom of God also applies to the kingdom of Satan. The teaching states that when a demon has been cast out of a “house,” one can expect it to return with stronger reinforcements to attempt to reclaim what it regards to be its territory. It needs “rest,” and it will do whatever it needs to do to find it.

In the context in which these words are spoken, it is clear that this principle applies not only to individuals but to whole generations. Hence, after giving this teaching, Jesus adds, “So will it be also with this evil generation” (Mt 12:45), implying that it is possible for an entire generation to be demonized by multitudes of demons.15 An apocalyptic conception of demonic national gods is perhaps implied here.16 As much as such a notion may clash with our modern Western individualistic assumptions, in the light of our modern experience of Nazi Germany, we should perhaps not reject it too quickly.17

It is dangerous to have Jesus simply cast out a demon; one needs to follow him, to have the kingdom of God present in one’s “house” as well. Hence he prefaces his teaching by saying, “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters” (Lk 11:23). He concludes by saying, “Blessed . . . are those who hear the word of God and obey it” (v. 28). The only protection against the kingdom of darkness is to belong to the kingdom of God. When an individual, or an entire generation, resists the kingdom, they open themselves up to significant demonic activity.

Finally, the whole teaching is based on the premise that demons are “restless,” like one traveling in a desert without water, until they locate a “house,” whether this be a person, a region, a nation or a generation. Having “abandoned their own home” by rebelling against their Creator (Jude 6), these spiritual parasites perpetually seek to make another being their host. Reading in this light, we can perhaps better understand why “Legion” begged Jesus to let them remain in the “house” of their “country,” by entering the “house” of the swine.

Delivering a demonized child. The second account concerns Jesus’ exorcism of a young boy (Mk 9:14-30; Mt 17:14-21; Lk 9:37-45).18 Coming down from the mountain upon which Jesus had been transfigured before Peter, James and John (Mk 9:2-12), Jesus finds his other disciples arguing with certain “scribes” or “teachers of the law” in the midst of a great crowd of people (Mk 9:14-16). The issue, it turns out, concerns a man’s demonized son and why Jesus’ disciples could not exorcise the demon from him. In some detail, Mark recounts the distraught father’s predicament as well as his plea to Jesus.

Jesus expresses his frustration with this “faithless generation,” implying that it was in part a lack of faith that prohibited the exorcism, and then quickly moves to help the young boy (Mk 9:19; Mt 17:17; Lk 9:41). As soon as the demon in the boy sees Jesus, he throws the boy down on the ground in a fit or convulsion (Mk 9:20). Jesus is apparently impressed by the severity of this case of possession, for he then asks the father, “How long has this been happening to him?” (Mk 9:21), to which the father replies, “From childhood. It has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him; but if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us” (Mk 9:21-22; Mt 17:15).

In Mark’s narrative the need for faith is then reiterated as Jesus tells the man, “All things can be done for the one who believes.” The father responds with a tentative but honest confession of faith: “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mk 9:23-24). This is apparently enough for Jesus, for he proceeds to “rebuke the unclean spirit” saying, “You spirit that keeps this boy from speaking and hearing, I command you, come out of him, and never enter him again!” (Mk 9:25; Mt 17:18; Lk 9:42). The exorcism is successful, but (according to Mark) only after the demon “shrieked” and “convulsed him violently,” leaving the boy so lifeless that the crowd thought he was dead (Mk 9:26).

Following this scene, Mark and Matthew include a conversation Jesus has with his disciples concerning why they had been unsuccessful in driving the demon out of the boy. In Mark, Jesus’ response is that “this kind can come out only through prayer” (Mk 9:29), while in Matthew Jesus attributes their inability to a lack of faith (Mt 17:20).19

Three things about this account are especially noteworthy. First, the terrorizing characteristics exhibited by this child and by the Gerasene demoniac are typical of demonizations and exorcisms as they were understood throughout the ancient world. For that matter, they are typical of cases of demonizations and exorcisms reported throughout the world today. Experiences of radically demonized people having sporadic supernatural strength, becoming mouthpieces for demons, convulsing on the ground, foaming at the mouth, becoming stiff and rigid, and so on, were frequent in ancient times and are common on the missions field yet today. Indeed, the relative absence of such phenomena in our culture over the last several hundred years has been something of a historical anomaly, though even our culture seems to be experiencing more of these phenomena in recent years.20

Operating from within this naturalistic cultural anomaly, many liberal New Testament scholars have attempted to explain cases of demonization and exorcism such as the one recorded in Mark 9 as merely primitive ways of describing and dealing with epilepsy or similar disorders. Hence the boy that Jesus treated, they would hold, was probably an epileptic.21 But if one grants that this account in the Gospels is at least minimally rooted in actual history—and few today deny it—this explanation must be judged as inadequate, for it does not fully explain what transpired.22

This exclusively naturalistic explanation fails to account either for why the boy fell into convulsions when he saw Jesus or for why the seizures involved suicidal behavior. Nor does it account for why Jesus’ exorcism worked, why the demon “shrieked” when it left (though the boy had been mute), or how Jesus, the Son of God, could have misdiagnosed the boy’s condition (while still getting the cure right). Finally, it does not account for why some today still exhibit these characteristics when a demon is being exorcised, though they are not epileptic.

In any case, in the context in which the Gospels were written, the physically violent and grotesque behaviors sometimes exhibited by demonized people appear to be simply the physical byproducts of an evil, parasitic force living its life through that person. When these behaviors occur during exorcism, they are perhaps the physical manifestations of a spirit who is fighting for its life to stay in its “house.” Why this occurs sometimes and not others we are not told, though one guess, based on this passage, is that it has something to do with how long the demon has been there, and thus how thoroughly entrenched the demon is in the “house.” Hence Jesus responds to the boy’s convulsing behavior by asking, “How long has this been happening to him?” (Mk 9:21). However, it may also have something to do with the kind of demon that was occupying the “house” (viz., how strong it is), as evidenced by Jesus’ statement: “This kind can come out only through prayer” (Mk 9:29).23

A second significant feature of this story concerns the simple fact that we here find a young boy being demonized. Indeed, not only does the exorcism involve a young person, but we learn from his father that he had been in this condition since “childhood” (paidiske), an expression that suggests he was like this from infancy. This point is highly significant, for it tells us that demonization, as it is understood by Jesus and the Gospel authors, was not something for which the demonized person was responsible.

Nowhere does Jesus imply that the demonization of a person is his or her fault, even in the case of Mary Magdalene, out of whom Jesus cast seven demons (Lk 8:2).24 As Raymond Brown notes, for Jesus and the Gospel authors, “demoniacal possession is not so much the result of a league with Satan as an expression of bondage under Satan’s dominion.”25 Deliverance was a sign of the coming kingdom of God, not a sign of various individuals’ moral improvement. The kingdom of God advances as victims of the kingdom of Satan are freed.

Jesus expressed intense anger toward those who were immoral, such as the self-righteous Pharisees, but he never suggested that they were demonized. Toward the demonized, however, he never expressed anger; rather, he exhibited only compassion. As Langton notes, “Pity rather than anger characterizes the attitude of Jesus toward the possessed. . . . He treats them as if they were the victims of an involuntary possession.”26 Indeed, he treats them as though they are casualties of war. For, in his view, this is precisely what they are.

This observation strongly contradicts an assumption that many Western Christians hold: that matters in the spiritual realm are supposed to be fair. The assumption is that God would not allow a person to be demonized unless they deserved it. If a person is demonized (and we actually recognize this as a possibility, which is rare), it is held that the person must have willed the evil spirit to occupy them, or must have done something (e.g., dabbled in the occult) that opened them up to becoming demonized. Demonized people, the assumption therefore goes, must be (or at least must have been) fundamentally bad people.27

This assumption is another version of the simplistic theology that Job’s three friends endorsed in their cruel attack on Job. The only two variables in any spiritual equation, it assumes, are God and the human individual. Since God is all-good, if a bad spirit has invaded someone, it must be the person’s fault. But both the Gospels and the book of Job resist this simplistic way of thinking.

These works assume that there is a very real “world in between” in which reside conscious, free beings who, like human beings, possess power to influence others, for better or for worse. They are, in short, morally responsible. They can therefore fight with each other and victimize human beings, quite apart from (indeed, quite against) the will of God.

In other words, just as evil adults can and do sometimes victimize children against their will and God’s will, just as rapists victimize women against their will and against God’s will, and just as despotic political powers victimize their subjects against their will and against God’s will, so demonic spirits can apparently sometimes victimize people against their will—and against God’s will. As we have already seen, the biblical assumption is that the spiritual realm is not all that different from the physical realm. Indeed, the one is simply a continuation of the other.

This means that life on all levels can be and often is profoundly unfair. This should not surprise us, for we experience life on earth as profoundly unfair. This is the price we pay, or at least the price we risk paying, for a cosmos composed of a vast multiplicity of free, morally responsible agents. People can and do misuse their freedom and power and thereby victimize others. For this reason, life on earth is often full of conflict, deep pain and gross injustice. But why should we think things would be different in the “world in between”? If history flows forward in a quasi-democratic fashion here below, for better or for worse, why think that the “world in between” is run as a strict dictatorship? Scripture, we have seen, certainly does not support such a notion.

If we have difficulty accepting that things are sometimes grotesquely unfair on a spiritual level, it is likely because we have trouble really believing in the “world in between” (i.e., physical rapists are “more real” to us than demons) and really believing that this world could be in a genuine state of spiritual war. It is also likely because we have a great deal of trouble believing that these spiritual beings are free. We are, to some extent, influenced by a pagan, unbiblical and narrow definition of God’s power as control. Following Augustine, and after him the central tendency of the classical-philosophical theistic tradition, we are often inclined to postulate a secret “divine blueprint” behind everything, making everything, good or evil, somehow an extension of God’s good (but very mysterious) will. Thus we have trouble accepting the relevance of the “world in between” for the good and evil of the world we experience. For if the “world in between” is not constituted by free beings such as ours is, it is not relevant to the problem of evil at all.

It is clear from Jesus’ warfare ministry, however, that the common modern assumption that life in the spiritual realm is fair is simply wrong. God’s will is not the only will, on earth or in the “world in between,” and thus there is no guarantee that either of these spheres will exhibit more justice than injustice. In Jesus’ view, as in apocalyptic thought (and, to some extent, as in the Old Testament), the “world in between” is characterized by warfare, and the earth is part of its battleground. Hence people, even innocent children (as in the passage under discussion), can sometimes become casualties of this war.

There is no suggestion in the Gospels that Jesus believed that demons or evil angels were carrying out a secret providential plan of God, despite themselves. Rather, Jesus treated each case of demonization as an instance of spiritual rape: an alien force had illegitimately and cruelly invaded a person’s being. In the passage we are considering, the invading force had “robbed” this child of his speech and hearing and had attempted to rob him of his life as well. The enemy, Jesus elsewhere tells us, always comes to steal, kill and destroy (Jn 10:10). Judging from Jesus’ ministry, one would have to say that nothing could be farther from the will of his loving Father than this.

For this reason, Jesus devoted his ministry to getting these “spiritual rapists” off their victims, by exorcism, by healing or by both. He didn’t waste time searching for a hidden divine will behind evil, asking “How could God do this?” or “Why would God allow this?” Nor did he ever try to get people to piously resign themselves to God’s supposed “secret plan for their lives” in the face of evil. Jesus’ ministry was a ministry not of resignation but of revolt. He was about revolting against the cruel tyranny of a world ruler that was oppressing God’s people. He was about seeking to give back to people, and to win back for his Father, what the enemy had stolen and destroyed. He was about restoring humanity to its rightful place of dominion over the earth, and thus about empowering humans to rise up against the cosmic thief who had stolen this from them.

Indeed, we are not going too far if we claim that Jesus’ very existence as the God-man on earth was an act of revolt. As we shall see more fully in chapters eight and nine, the ultimate reason why Jesus became a man, carried out his ministry, died a God-forsaken death on the cross, and rose again from the dead was to destroy the devil and place under his foot all his cosmic enemies (e.g., 1 Jn 3:8; Heb 2:14). The incarnation, then, was an ultimate act of war, as the early church saw consistently.

Far from teaching any sort of pious resignation, Jesus’ whole being, his very God-man identity, was God’s ultimate revolt against the devil’s tyranny. Rather than teaching us to see the hand of God in all circumstances, Jesus’ very being, and certainly his deeds and his teachings, were about teaching us to revolt against the enemy in all circumstances in order to make our circumstance a place where we can discern the hand of God. From this perspective, one ought never to pray to accept “as from a father’s loving hand” an event like Zosia’s torture. We ought rather to pray only that we and others will be empowered to rise up against the human and angelic evil forces that bring such nightmares about.

This whole scenario, however, obviously raises significant questions concerning traditional assumptions Christians have made about the exercise of God’s omnipotence, as we saw in chapter one. For example, what does it mean to affirm that “God is in control of the world” in the light of the fact that throughout the Gospels Jesus assumes that Satan and his army are significantly in control of certain people’s lives and, indeed, of the entire world?28 How is it possible to live in peace, content with one’s situation, if one is also called to live a life of revolt against evil?

We need to address such questions at a later time. Presently a more fundamental task occupies us, the task of simply letting Scripture speak to us and perhaps confront some of our traditional Western assumptions. For Christians who affirm the authority of the Word over their own presuppositions, this is always the first and most important task in any theological endeavor.

The third and final interesting feature of this narrative concerns the fact that the disciples were unable to cast this demon out of the boy. As Mark and Matthew tell the story, the point of the narrative is to drive home the need for faith in God if the kingdom of God is going to expand against the kingdom of Satan. We are told that the disciples lacked faith and had not prayed enough in treating the boy (Mk 9:29); all the people involved lacked faith (Mk 9:19); even the boy’s father had only a wavering faith (9:24). Hence the attempted exorcism had been unsuccessful.

In contrast to this, Jesus says, all things are possible to one who believes and is willing to pray, including exorcising tenacious demons like the one possessing this young child (Mk 9:23; cf. Jn 11:40). This reliance on the power of God alone and this emphasis on simple faith and prayer as the means by which God’s power is manifested and the kingdom of God is established set Jesus’ exorcism and healing ministry apart from the exorcistic and healing activities of his contemporaries. It was customary for various exorcists and healers of this time to employ a wide variety of magical devices, lengthy incantations and power names (e.g., deities) in the attempt to exorcise demons, protect people from evil spirits and heal various diseases.29 But a number of recent studies have demonstrated that such techniques played little or no role within the exorcistic methods of Jesus and his disciples.

John Rousseau sums up the contrast well:

It was Jesus’ reliance on the Holy Spirit, activated through faith and prayer, that more than anything else set his ministry apart. Indeed, the only weapons we ever see employed by Jesus in his deliverance ministry are faith and prayer. When faith is strong and (therefore) prayer is persistent, this passage teaches, the enemy is ultimately powerless against the onslaught of the kingdom of God. When faith is weak and prayer is lacking, however, demons that are strong and deeply entrenched in a person can apparently succeed in resisting exorcism.

It is also significant that the faith Jesus is talking about is not the faith of the person who is demonized. Unlike many of his healings, in none of Jesus’ exorcisms does he ask the demonized person to have faith. It is, rather, on the faith and prayers of others that their deliverance depends. In the same way that demonization is the result of what free agents (viz., unclean spirits) do to persons in victimizing them, their deliverance seems to be contingent upon what other free agents (people of faith) do for these victimized persons.

Understandably, this inspired perspective also may not rest easy with some of us, conditioned as we are by both an Augustinian and an Enlightenment heritage. Not only does it presuppose that spiritual beings like demons are real, free and have power to influence others—all of which, we have said, we Westerners generally have difficulty accepting. It also presupposes that a person’s deliverance from these spirits may be contingent upon what others do for the person. While we take such contingency as obvious on a physical level, it goes against the Augustinian, classical-philosophical, blueprint model of providence to suppose that it characterizes the spiritual level as well. But from a scriptural perspective this is the case.

In the same way that a person’s deliverance from a potential rapist may completely hang upon whether others hear her call and respond, so too events in the spiritual realm seem at times genuinely contingent upon what people do or do not do. This passage presupposes that, at least at times, whether prisoners are set free from demonizing oppressors is genuinely contingent upon whether others exercise faith and pray for them. The general principle seems to be that we are, to a large degree, morally responsible for one another. Hence the destiny of each one of us is contingent not only on decisions we make but also on decisions made by others regarding us.

Besides grating against our modern acute sense of individualism, the understanding that an individual’s fate might be significantly contingent on the free decisions of others obviously stands in tension with both the Augustinian blueprint model of providence and the teaching on prayer that often accompanies it. The view that the purpose of prayer is not to change God or change things but only to change us is a pious-sounding teaching many evangelical Christians instinctively accept as true.31 This is, after all, the only understanding of prayer that is logically compatible with the Augustinian understanding of God as omni-determinative, impassible and altogether timeless. The only trouble with it is that it is altogether unscriptural.

The primary purpose of prayer, as illustrated throughout Scripture, is precisely to change the way things are. Crucial matters, including much of God’s own activity, are contingent upon our prayer. Consider the following small sampling of passages relevant to prayer:

It seems that whether we pray, how faith-filled our prayer is, how persistent it is and even how many people agree together in prayer are all factors that have a real effect in getting God to move and thus in changing the world (cf. also Jas 1:6-8; Mt 18:18-19). So it is not surprising to find Jesus attaching a real urgency to prayer (e.g., Lk 11:5-13; 18:1-8), and believers are therefore to strive to be involved in it on a nonstop basis (1 Thess 5:17).32

This is, in fact, the general teaching of Scripture, if only we read it in a straightforward manner. According to Scripture, prayer can save a nation (Ex 32:10-14), and the lack of prayer can destroy it (Ezek 22:30). Faith-filled prayer moves God to bless, and the lack of prayer moves God to curse (2 Chron 30:18-20; Lk 18:1-8). Prayer can cause God to change his mind, saving cities that he had previously prophesied would be destroyed (Jer 18:6-10; Jon 3:7-10) and adding years to a person he had previously said would soon die (Is 38:1-8). Also, as we have seen in the Gospel passage under consideration, faith-filled prayer empowers one to free other people from demons, while the lack of faith-filled prayer leaves these very people enslaved.

In a warfare worldview, things genuinely hang upon what free, morally responsible beings do or do not do. What this view may lose by way of providing believers with security it gains by way of inspiring believers to take responsibility. In terms of building the kingdom, the main thing we do, as Jesus both teaches and demonstrates, is to exercise prayer and faith. When disciples do this, no demonic obstacle to the kingdom, however formidable, can stand in their way (Mt 21:21-22).

Jesus’ Mastery over Rebellious Nature

As we saw in chapters two and three, the Old Testament reveals some awareness that nature, while created good, has somehow gone awry. The cosmic monsters and hostile sea, which (on the restoration view) had to be contained for the present world order to be established, still surround the earth and perpetually threaten its order. Hence both Yahweh and his earthly viceroys must continually fight back the forces of evil that plague the world.

We have further seen that this awareness that something in nature has “gone bad” is significantly elaborated and transformed in the apocalyptic tradition. Here it is no longer Leviathan, Rahab or Yamm that are the key players, but angels who were given charge over various aspects of nature and who rebelled. They function in much the same way as the sea monsters in the Old Testament, except in a more intensified form. They threaten the order of God’s good creation. Under the leadership of Satan (or some corresponding figure), these angels work to afflict the world with earthquakes, famines, hailstorms, diseases, temptations and many other things that are not part of God’s design for his creation.

Though Jesus occasionally referred to “deaf and mute” demons as well as to different “kinds” of demons, and though Paul (we shall see) speaks about various levels of spiritual beings, the New Testament as a whole says little about these matters. Still, there are suggestions that Jesus and Paul accepted the apocalyptic view that demonic powers could adversely affect nature. More specifically, some of Jesus’ nature miracles, if interpreted against this apocalyptic background, seem to suggest that he saw himself as battling demonic “nature” strongholds. I shall examine two such miracles in detail and make general observations about several others.33

Muzzling a rebellious sea. The most significant of Jesus’ miracles over nature for our purposes is undoubtedly Jesus’ calming of the raging sea (Mk 9:36-41; Mt 8:18-27; Lk 8:22-25). While crossing the Sea of Galilee one evening, Jesus and his disciples got caught in a fierce storm. The boat looked like it was going to go under, and the disciples were thrown into a state of panic. Jesus, however, was sleeping(!). When they woke him, he “rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’” (Mk 4:39). It immediately obeyed. He then chastised his disciples for lacking faith, and they marveled at his power to command even the winds and sea (v. 42).

What is most significant about this passage is that the description of Jesus “rebuking” the wind (found in all three Synoptic Gospels) and his commanding the waves to be “quiet” sounds remarkably like exorcism narratives in the Gospels. Indeed, as I noted in the last chapter, the root meaning of phimoo, translated here as “quiet,” means to “muzzle” or “strangle.” Both Mark and Luke thematically open up their accounts of Jesus’ ministry with accounts of his “muzzling” a demon (Mk 1:25; Lk 4:35). It therefore appears that this theme is being carried over into this nature miracle. That the account is followed in all three Gospels by the episode of Jesus casting out “Legion” strengthens this impression. It thus appears that in “muzzling” this storm Jesus is muzzling yet another demon. As James Kallas puts it: “If language means anything at all, it appears that Jesus looked upon this ordinary storm at sea, this ordinary event of nature, as a demonic force, and he strangled it.”34

What is more, all the Gospels portray Jesus as frequently exorcising demons by “rebuking” (epitimao) them (e.g., Mk 9:25; Mt 17:18; Lk 4:41; 9:42). The term, as used in these contexts, denotes more than a mere reprimand. In keeping with the Old Testament and apocalyptic traditions of Yahweh “rebuking” his enemies, the term denotes an authoritative exercise of God’s power in subduing his enemies. It accomplishes what it speaks.35

Hence it again appears that Jesus is speaking an authoritative word against an enemy in order to subdue him. Indeed, as some have argued, the identical language of Jesus rebuking and subduing hostile waves and Yahweh’s rebuking and subduing hostile waves in the Old Testament can hardly be coincidental (see Ps 18:16; 104:7; 106:9).36 It is as though Yahweh is, in the person of Jesus Christ, once again confronting his archenemy Yamm in the chaotic and threatening waves of the Sea of Galilee.37

I would therefore argue that we have good reason for supposing that the Gospels are not just being poetic in saying that Jesus “rebuked” the sea, nor was Jesus speaking poetically when he “muzzled” it. Understood in an apocalyptic context, these terms should be taken literally. Behind this storm Jesus perceived a demonic power, perhaps here strategizing to kill him and his disciples. To cite Kallas again: “Rain may be normal, but to Jesus, when nature goes berserk and tries to drown men and wipe them off the earth sucking them down to a watery grave, this is demonic and he treats it like a demon.”38

Thus, as he always did in confronting the demonic, Jesus rebuked it, strangled it and thereby returned the sea to the state God created it to be in. One stronger than the strong man who had hitherto controlled the seas had arrived and bound him up. As usual, those who beheld this feat were amazed.

This understanding of a “natural phenomenon” and potential “natural disaster” as manifesting a demonic power inevitably strikes those of us who have had our thinking shaped by the scientific and Enlightenment revolutions as exceedingly strange, if not absurd. It is perhaps appropriate, however, to remind ourselves that we are among the few people-groups in world history for whom this would be the case. Unless we are to be guilty of a chronocentric, Eurocentric, myopic prejudice, this awareness of how out of sync our own worldview is by global standards must cultivate in us a certain humility, especially those of us who already have reasons for accepting the Gospel perspective as authoritative.

The barren fig tree. Another of Jesus’ nature miracles may help illustrate the warfare motif of Jesus’ ministry and its impact on his view of nature. It is the unusual account of Jesus cursing the barren fig tree, and it constitutes the only destructive miracle of the Gospels (Mk 11:12-14; Mt 21:18-19). Here a hungry Jesus goes to eat from a fig tree only to find it barren. He therefore curses it: “May no one ever eat fruit from you again” (Mk 11:14). It consequently “withered away to its roots” (v. 20). This is a rather bizarre account, if for no other reason than because Mark explicitly states in his narrative that the reason why the fig tree had no figs was because “it was not the season for figs” (v. 13).

Many scholars have tried to make sense of the text by arguing that the tree is meant to symbolize the religious leadership of Jesus’ day.39 The fact that Mark sandwiches the account of Jesus’ cleansing the temple into the middle of his narrative lends some credibility to this thesis (Mk 11:15-19). But if this were the main point of the narrative, one would not have expected Mark to add that “it was not the season for figs.” This seems to undermine the culpability of the tree, and hence of unfruitful religious leaders—if this is the central point Jesus was trying to make. One might also have expected Jesus to have made some explicit statement to this effect to drive home the point, but he did not. Instead, both Matthew and Mark have Jesus draw a lesson about the power of faith and prayer from his cursing of the fig tree (Mk 11:20-26; Mt 21:19-22). Thus, while I certainly believe there is a reference here to the rejection of the Messiah on the part of Jewish leadership, I cannot see this as the central point of the story.

Another possible dimension is added to our reading of this account if we analyze it against the background of the apocalyptic thought of Jesus’ day. In the apocalyptic worldview, the entire world is understood to be under a demonic curse, which affects even the “natural” order of the world. The angels-turned-demons in charge of various natural functions are now bent on wreaking havoc with the creation. Everything from plagues to earthquakes to famines to rain storms could therefore be attributed to demonic activity. It is, we shall later see, an understanding that is not foreign to the New Testament.

In this light, the expectation for the kingdom of God included an expectation for a restoration of the natural order to the state God originally created it to be in. As throughout the New Testament, apocalyptic thought envisaged a time when the whole cosmos would be restored (Acts 3:21; Rom 8:19-22; Col 1:18-20; 2 Pet 3:13).40 When God is finally victorious over all his enemies, they believed, there would be no more famines, floods, plagues, war, tears, sin or death. There would, as Revelation 21:1 puts it, be “a new heaven and a new earth.” The demonic curse on the cosmos would itself be cursed, and the rule of God, with the viceroyalty of humanity, would be reestablished.

Read in this light, Jesus’ cursing of the fig tree perhaps takes on new meaning. In apocalyptic thought, fruit trees that failed to give fruit, or whose fruit was infected, were considered objects of Satan’s curse.41 In other words, barren trees and famines were understood to be the result of Satan’s dominion, and when God’s rule is reestablished, these curses shall themselves be cursed. Hence we may in this passage perhaps understand Jesus to be cursing the demonically cursed fig tree as a means of demonstrating that he has come to restore creation to its proper order and vanquish the work of Satan. In symbolically “cursing the curse,” his ministry spells the beginning of the fulfillment of the apocalyptic hope.

Moreover, as R. H. Hiers and J. D. M. Derrett have argued, in some quarters of apocalyptic thought fig trees in particular had taken on a symbolic messianic function. The fruitfulness of fig trees became a prototype of the blossoming of creation when the Messiah comes and God’s rule is reestablished.42 In this light, the cursing of the fig tree can perhaps be understood as illustrating not only the “cursing of the curse” but also the fallen creation’s resistance to the Messiah. When God sets out to restore his creation through his Messiah, creation had better respond! In line with the first and more conventional interpretation considered above, we may perhaps also read in this a reference to the refusal of Israel’s religious leaders to acknowledge their Messiah.

Mark’s note that the cause of this barrenness was the climate may, in this apocalyptic context, simply once more illustrate the apocalyptic belief that even the climate has been adversely affected by the angelic fall. While we may deem fruit-killing winters to be the result of “normal” and “natural” weather patterns, it is possible that when God’s reign is restored, we will see just how unnatural many of these “natural patterns” are.

In any event, the main point of Jesus’ demonstration seems to be that he is bringing about a new kingdom in which every tinge of Satan’s work, every aspect of creation that does not bring forth fruit as God intended, shall someday be “withered to the root.” This is as true of fig trees and the whole “natural” order as it is of human beings. It is why in the eternal kingdom of God there shall be no famine and no hunger; neither shall there be unredeemed sinners. Everything that does not bear fruit, in harmony with God’s design, shall be cut down (cf. Lk 13:7). Under the rule of God, things shall be as they were always intended to be.

Only in this light does Jesus’ teaching about prayer and faith that he associates with this nature miracle begin to make sense. If Jesus’ whole ministry was about reversing the work of Satan by bringing about the kingdom of God and restoring humanity to its proper place of dominion over the earth, and if this was the ministry he was passing on to his disciples, then it makes sense for him to draw a lesson about faith and prayer from the cursing of the fig tree. As we have seen, these were their primary weapons against the occupying army they were now opposing.

If they too are to be about “cursing the curse,” about rebuking demons and healing people, about reclaiming the entire cosmos for the Father and restoring humanity to its proper place of dominion over nature, then they too must have faith. Faith, Jesus adds, has the power to do this. It can not only curse a cursed tree, he says; it can move mountains into the sea, and it brings answers to prayer (Mk 11:20-24; Mt 21:19-22). This is the power that alone shall bring about the kingdom of God.

This teaching on faith, however, becomes less intelligible in connection with Jesus’ cursing of the tree if we attempt to read his actions merely as a symbol for the fate of barren leadership. Indeed, if this was the only point Jesus was trying to make, then both his action and his teaching must be judged as exceedingly opaque.

Other nature miracles of Jesus. If read in the light of apocalyptic thought, other miracles of Jesus take on a warfare significance as well, though we need not discuss them at length now. Consider, for example, Jesus’ miraculous feeding of the multitudes (Mk 6:30-44; 8:1-10; and parallels). If, as apocalyptic writers believed, and as Jesus and Paul elsewhere suggest, famine is a work of the devil (Mk 13:8; Rom 8:35); and if Jesus came principally “to destroy the devil’s work” (1 Jn 3:8); and if hunger shall be absent from the kingdom of God when the creation is restored back to God (Rev 7:16), then should we not perhaps understand Jesus’ miraculous feeding of the multitude as in some sense an act of war against the famine-inciting devil?

Read in this light, Jesus can here be understood as demonstrating the reality of the kingdom of God, mediated through the viceroyalty of restored humanity, by countering the curse of hunger and the curse on the earth and sea, which do not readily yield up wheat and fish as God designed them to. Thus we can see him as providing an eschatological lesson about what creation will be like when the kingdom of God is fully realized, when the oppression of Satan is fully ended and hence when humanity’s power of dominion is fully restored.43 Food will no longer come by “the sweat of your face” (Gen 3:19).

Something similar could perhaps be said of Jesus’ power to make the sea produce fish when previously none had been caught (Lk 5:3-10; cf. Jn 21:1-8). God’s original design was to bless nature by having humans rule it, and to bless humans by having nature sustain them (Gen 1:20-31). When Satan became “ruler of the world,” however, humans and nature turned against each other. Instead of humans having dominion over the sea, the sea often has dominion over humans. Nature becomes a weapon in the hands of a hostile army. Under a demonic influence, the seas try to harm humans by force (as in Mk 4:36-41), by flooding (hence the Leviathan, Rahab, Yamm imagery), and by refusing to give up its produce. The God-man warrior for the kingdom, however, restores to his disciples, and wins back for his Father, both of their dominions over the sea. He subdues Yamm, and he thereby manifests kingdom authority over forces of darkness that pervert the natural order of God’s creation. Once again humans have the dominion over the fish of the sea that God’s earthly viceroys were always intended to possess and enjoy (Gen 1:26).

Finally, we should mention in this regard the several accounts of Jesus raising people from the dead, and that of Jesus himself rising from the dead. We may regard death as “a natural part of life,” but for Jesus and other apocalypticists it was not so. Indeed, throughout the New Testament, death is treated as “the last enemy to be destroyed” (1 Cor 15:26). It reigns as a foreign invader, given access to God’s children by their sin (Rom 5:12-17; 1 Cor 15:21; Jas 1:15; cf. Gen 2:16-17; 3:19-23). The one who holds “the power of death” is “the devil” (Heb 2:14), the one who has been “a murderer from the beginning” (Jn 8:44). Hence there is in this worldview nothing “natural” about death. At least as we presently experience it, death was never part of God’s design for creation.44 It is, rather, the ultimate “scourge” of the evil one.

In bringing the kingdom of God, therefore, Jesus came to destroy death by destroying “the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb 2:14; 1 Cor 15:56-57; 2 Tim 1:10). Indeed, according to the New Testament and the early postapostolic church, this was the central significance of Jesus’ atoning work on the cross and of the resurrection. Jesus’ exorcism and healing ministry finds its climax in this event.45 Hence when Jesus was told that Herod was trying to kill him, he responded, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work’” (Lk 13:32).

Jesus refers to his coming death and resurrection here as the consummation (teleioo) of his ministry. Satan and his legions would rise up against him (1 Cor 2:8), and demonic darkness would in fact momentarily reign (Lk 22:53; Jn 9:4).46 But through the very act of being crucified by the hostile cosmic powers, Jesus would ultimately overthrow them.

Indeed, as Jesus expresses it here, his preliminary victories over the evil one in his ministry all lead up to and find their ultimate meaning and fulfillment in this one event.47 For through his death and resurrection, “the ruler of this world will be driven out” (Jn 12:31). What is more, having robbed Satan of his chief weapon of condemnation (Col 2:14-15) and chief “scourge” of death (Heb 2:14), Jesus made Satan and all his cohorts into a “public spectacle” (Col 2:15), while Christ himself is exalted and enthroned at the right hand of God (Acts 2:32-36; Phil 2:9-11). When death itself is conquered, the one who is a “murderer from the beginning” (Jn 8:44) and who holds “the power of death” (Heb 2:14) will be utterly defeated, subjected, humiliated and destroyed.

In any event, it is clear that death as we now experience it is seen in the New Testament as an evil consequence of Satan’s tyranny over the earth. Hence it is not surprising to find that freedom from death (immortality) was seen as being one of the central aspects of the early church’s vision for the eternal kingdom. When the kingdom is fully realized, when the created order shall be restored back to the Father, death shall itself be destroyed (2 Tim 1:10), thrown into the lake of fire (Rev 20:14), so that in heaven there will “be no more death or mourning” (Rev 21:4). What Christ achieved on the cross will finally be manifested throughout his creation. Thus Paul can proclaim that even now, for those who believe, “Death has been swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor 15:54).48

Viewed in this light, the various accounts of Jesus’ raising people from the dead come to mean a lot more than simply nice miracles that Jesus did for people. Like his exorcisms, healings and other miracles over nature, they reveal yet another dimension of his war on Satan. As when he saw the sick and hungry, Jesus was moved by compassion toward those who had died and those who mourned, for he knew that these things were never intended to be part of God’s creation (e.g., Jn 11:33-35). They were, rather, the work of the devil, and it grieved and angered him to see it.

Hence the God-man warrior and bearer of the kingdom demonstrated kingdom power in overturning this enemy and anticipated his own consummate victory over Satan in raising Jairus’s daughter (Mk 5:41-43; Mt 9:18-26; Lk 8:40-56), the widow’s son at Nain (Lk 7:11-17) and Lazarus (Jn 11:1-44).49 All such resuscitations must be viewed as acts of war against a cosmic foe who had been mastering mortality for far too long.

The “inaugurated eschatology” of Jesus’ ministry. Yet, with the exception of Jesus, death still reigns over humanity. All whom Jesus resuscitated eventually died once again. This observation leads to the final point that needs to be made concerning Jesus’ miracles over nature. While Jesus proclaimed by word and deed that the kingdom had come with his arrival, and while the New Testament unequivocally proclaims that Jesus was victorious over the enemy in his ministry, death and resurrection (Col 2:14-15), both Jesus and other New Testament authors see the ultimate realization of this kingdom victory to be in the future. This constitutes the well-known “inaugurated eschatology,” or the “already-but-not-yet” paradoxical dynamism of New Testament thought.50 The kingdom has already come, but it has not yet been fully manifested in world history.

What this means is this: Jesus’ miracles over nature, as well as his healings, exorcisms and especially his resurrection, were definite acts of war that accomplished and demonstrated his victory over Satan. These acts routed demonic forces and thereby established the kingdom of God in people’s lives and in nature. But their primary significance was eschatological. People are still obviously being demonized; all people still get sick and die; storms still rage and destroy lives; famines are yet prevalent and starve thousands daily. But Jesus’ ministry, and especially his death and resurrection, in principle tied up “the strong man” and established the kingdom of God and the restoration of a new humanity in the midst of this war zone. In doing this, Jesus set in motion forces that will eventually overthrow the whole of this already fatally damaged Satanic assault upon God’s earth and upon humanity.51

Gustaf Wingren expresses this “already/not yet” dynamic well when he argues that with Christ’s resurrection

Jesus’ miraculous ministry, therefore, was not simply symbolic of the eschaton—in principle it achieved the eschaton. He in principle won the war, struck the decisive deathblow, vanquished Satan, restored humanity, established the kingdom; yet some battles must still be fought before this ultimate victory is fully manifested. Hence Jesus did not just carry out his warfare ministry; he commissioned, equipped and empowered his disciples, and the whole of the later church, to do the same. He set in motion the creation of a new humanity, one that again exercises dominion over the earth, by giving us his power and authority to proclaim and demonstrate the kingdom just as he did (e.g., 2 Cor 5:17-21; Mt 16:15-19; Lk 19:17-20; cf. Jn 14:12; 20:21).

Jesus thus gives to all who will in faith receive it his authority to break down the gates of hell and take back for the Father what the enemy has stolen, just as he himself has done (Mt 16:18). Now that the strong man has been bound, it is a task we can and must successfully carry out. In doing all this, we the church are further expanding the kingdom of God against the kingdom of Satan and laying the basis for the Lord’s return, when the full manifestation of Christ’s victory, and of Satan’s defeat, will occur.

We could spend our time and spiritual energy striving graciously to accept all this “apparent” evil as coming from the Father’s hand, supposedly in strict accordance with his omnipotent and unthwartable will, and supposedly in perfect conformity to his meticulous blueprint for world history. But it is difficult to conceive of any activity that would be further removed from the mandate we have received from our Lord. We are called to revolt!