Last night, in a study I was leading about demonic spirits and deliverance, a standard question came up. I think it’s a good question and one that comes up frequently. I didn’t have time last night to answer it adequately, so I thought I would try to do a better job in a this and one more blog. The question was, “Why do most churches avoid teaching about demons and deliverance today when demons and deliverance are so prevalent in the pages of the New Testament?”
The answer to this question goes beyond discussions of demons and deliverance to the very heart of any supernatural or miraculous events in the Bible…including the resurrection. The 18th century ushered in what has been labeled, The Age of Reason. Much had happened in previous decades to upset the established order of Western Europe. Abuses in the Catholic Church had prompted Martin Luther to protest and the ensuing Protestant Reformation undermined the dogma and political hold of the Catholic Church. As the Catholic Church came under fire, so did the biblical theology on which Rome stood. What was dangerous to question before, was suddenly fair game for European intellectuals. Not only was the Catholic interpretation of scripture challenged, but scripture itself became a target.
At the same time, science and medicine were making great strides.
Reason and logical deduction became the new bywords of “modern society.” In the cultural atmosphere of Western Europe and the United States, science and reason became the new gods. In the context of “the Age of Reason,” science and medicine became the proclaimed hope of mankind.
This 18th century perspective invaded universities and the schools of theology within those universities. Suddenly, the scientific method was deemed the only valid way to discover truth. Reality only consisted of those things that could be observed, measured, and reproduced in a laboratory. Undoubtedly, there had been some dark days of superstition and inquisition in the centuries before the Age of Reason, but, instead of the pendulum swinging to a balanced middle position, it swung to the far side and a movement began to deny not only Biblical revelation as a source of truth, but also to deny the existence of God altogether.
The big fizz about Darwin’s theory of evolution was that if offered a natural mechanism that seemed to make God unnecessary. Of course, the fossil record and numerous other scientific discoveries have left the theory untenable, but even the brightest minds of today doggedly hold on to it as a way to deny God and any personal accountability to a God. The intellectuals of the 18th century, including theologians in major universities, began to “reason away” the supernatural aspects of our faith as events recorded through the lens of superstitious and backward people. Many began a movement to “demythologize” the scriptures and give naturalistic explanations to the miracles recorded in God’s word. Miracles simply weren’t scientific.
That thinking affected even Bible believing Christians and preachers who were not willing to throw out the miracles of the Bible but found an intellectually respectable middle ground. Their position was that the miraculous accounts of scripture were indeed true, but were limited to “Bible times.” Their view was that although God intervened in the lives of his people in miraculous ways throughout the Bible, he curtailed those supernatural activities somewhere around the end of the first century and has not been in the miracle business since. In today’s world, God still acts on behalf of his people, but only through natural means. This position is called cessationism and is the most prevalent view in American churches today.
This view is based on the assumption that the only reason Jesus and the apostles performed miracles was to validate who they were: Jesus as the Son of God and the apostles as his inspired representatives. Once the New Testament church was established and the Bible was completed and confirmed through first-century miracles, there was no longer any need for such supernatural events and, therefore, God has only worked through natural means for the past 2000 years. Any claim to the contrary, they say, is misguided at best and heretical or deceptive in worst cases.
As a result, when churches pray for the sick today, they rarely pray for supernatural healing but rather for God to guide the doctor’s hands. When a person is tormented by mental or emotional anguish, the church does not consider demonic affliction but simply turns God’s people over to the medical community (many of whom are unbelievers) and over to medications. When cancer is diagnosed, our first call will likely be to M.D. Anderson rather than to the elders of the church to come and pray for healing (see James 5:14-16). You can see that in the American church, we trust God to forgive our sins but we trust science, medicine, and government for the rest.
More on this in my next blog.
