If I may be so bold as to respond with a link: http://moot-blog.blogspot.com/2009/02/trouble-with-evil.html
Ian Mobsby, of Moot (here in London) posts on this subject (Evil). Of particualr note is his last comment regarding the person he met who has studies “Evil” at doctorate level. That sure would make an interesting subject.

I wanted to note that posting has been easy lately–just like the good old days. No captchas, no lost messages, no timing out … I hope people will plunge in again and start talking. Plus “evil” sounds like a good topic!

Scot, you and I have had exchanges on this topic before, but I am replying for the benefit of your reader. The discussion on demons and Satan often leaves out the fact that they (these entities) and their fates are directly connected to eschatology and end-times. And that where a first-century fulfillment of end-times prophecy becomes very helpful.
In a covenant eschatology context, all these things have already happened in the first century (the coming of the Kingdom of God, the return of Christ, the destruction of Satan and institution of the New Jerusalem, the Bride and Church of Christ), at or around the fall of the Jewish Temple in A.D. 70. Consequently, Satan and demons have been destroyed (regardless of what or who you think Satan was) – of course, this is my opinion and it is largely formed in a preterist context.
Now I know that does not in essence deal with “the problem of evil” but it does explain to some extent the purpose and fate of the “adversary.” It has even been posited that Satan has been always a portrayal of man’s self, i.e. to see Satan, just look in the mirror; through Christ and his atoning work, Satan has been defeated and forever destroyed.

“I’m wondering how you approach such texts in the Bible?”
Usually pretty literally. Though old-fashioned conservatives like me are often called “modern,” this is a place where all Bible-believing Christians are obliged to be a bit pre-modern. Jesus seems to take the existence of demons and the devil as literally true, and so we would be wise to do so as well.
“How could he betray the Lord?”
I’m kind of fascinated by the theory (maybe hypothesis is better) that Judas thought he would goad Jesus and/or God into action (namely, instituting the messianic kindgom as Judas understood it) by putting Jesus in danger. If that’s true, then all Satan had to do was lie to him about it being a good idea, that God certainly wouldn’t allow Messiah to be harmed. (Which raises the question of whether Satan knew about the plan for the cross.)
But we also get the little bit that Judas was a thief. Like James and John, he might have been looking for the notoriety or power that would come from being part of Jesus’ group only without any actual love for Jesus. He may have been following Jesus for selfish reasons from the start. Was he who Jesus had in mind when he said that some who cast out demons would be told, “I never knew you?”
“I am struggling with the role of Satan … in our lives.”
What is that saying, our enemies are the world, the flesh, and the devil. I believe the devil’s real and poses a real threat, but I doubt he has to get his hands dirty all that often. Just my two cents.

Well, I disagree with Virgil (3), but I’m glad we’re getting some thoughts on this. Having seen demons come out of folks and getting to know their background afterwards, let alone the NT as a whole, I can’t accept the “destroyed” view, though I agree eschatology is important here. As the reign of God, and incorporating humans functionally and fruitfully into it, has become the paradigm I use for understanding what God is doing in the world, the reign of Satan and his cohorts has taken a very serious but also very practical tone for me. Just like the Trinity is at work, both directly and through people, seeking to incorporate people into Christ’s Administration on earth, healing the damages of Satan’s leadership, ushering in the functioning government of God through Christ; demons are also at work, seeking to maintain and extend their influence and leadership of humans. It’s not head-spinning, it’s selfish ambition, bitterness (James), and other typical forms of evil. Just as God still wants to lead and empower people into his good works, Satan still wants to lead into his destructive actions. God has decided to redeem humanity and creation into his good (active) Administration, and that necessitates removing the functioning leadership of Satan and his allies–that’s what we’re being redeemed from, if we are. That is our context. Satan hasn’t been destroyed (yet); he’s been disarmed; not everyone knows it, but our wrongdoing doesn’t have to keep us apart from God anymore; God has the ‘right’ to work intimately with us without violating his own law. But Satan can still lie; he’s got, at least, inertia, the power of persuasion, and plenty of people still following. When we ask the Father to “let his kingdom come,” we’re also asking for the real and functioning kingdom of Satan to be removed. It’s unfortunate that unseen forces are so uncomfortable for us in the West to think about or accept, but I certainly see no evidence that they are inactive in the world, nor did the apostles seem to think they were long after Christ’s ascension, let alone resurrection.
Directly on the question, though, for those who accept their continued existence, I don’t think it’s particularly helpful to think “Christians’ can’t be demonized,” mainly because we have ceased to define “Christian” primarily as one who has (and continues to) come out of the administration of darkness and functionally (fruitfully) into the administration of God’s Christ. Because we’ve (re)cast “Christian” chiefly in terms of who is forgiven rather than who is seeking to end their actual cooperation with evil and give their cooperation to Jesus above all (being a disciple/seeking first God’s administration), the “demons can’t touch us” ideas sound like we’re just trying to find a legal loophole to save us instead of dealing with the uncomfortable realities and paying the cost of setting our sights on increasingly fruitful cooperation with Jesus. That, and we have heightened fear about what we don’t understand. Satan is a spirit who is (present tense) “at work in those who are disobedient.” As long as we try to define “Christian” too much by legal status and not enough in terms of whom we are following and seeking to cooperate with, we won’t know how to defend ourselves or others against demonic beings, or even really understand the role of the Holy Spirit.

I actually really like the way John Eldredge deals with this subject. He speaks of strongholds and agreements. Basically, his idea is that strongholds are those spots where we allow demonic influences to gain a foothold. To hang around and harrass us. It’s when we keep toying with something that is harmful to us rather than taking the matter up in prayer. Agreements are those things where we have agreed to something that is demonically inspired. It can be an idea, an intention, a desire. (“I’ve been hurt, so I’ll never let anyone close again”, “I will never be happy until I have that car”, “Jesus must die because he will destroy our world”.) Obviously, he has a lot more to say about how to get rid of demonic influences and how to discern their presence. But when it comes to how even believers can be under demonic influence, this explanation makes a good amount of sense to me.
Honestly, I can’t think of scripture verses which specifically talk about this process, although it is consistent with ideas about what we ought to think about and such. But it is a construct which has worked well for me in my life and other people who I have shared it with.

The most sane exposition of this topic is by Klyne Snodgrass in the NIV Application Commentary “Ephesians” pp 351-361; also see pp 334-350.

This is an area that I haven’t forayed into at all. I remember hearing stories from or about Dr. Derek Price or Prince and others.
It does remind me of the line from “the usual suspects”, the greatest trick the devil pulled is getting others to believe he doesn’t exist.” or something of the like.
Sorry, don’t have more to add, just learning from you all.
Phil

This is personal with me. When I a young person, I had a fascination with the Occult. I would read books on the subject.This led to harassment by demonic entities,experiences which I won’t go into in this post. Not until I went to college did I sleep with my lights off.
As someone stated, a person can,wittingly or unwittingly,open themselves up to these entities. Similarly,these parasitic presences like to feed off sinful and distorted moral and psychological predispositions, like an opportunistic infection.
Something that I also learned:that they are deathly afraid of the power of the Jesus,the name of Jesus and the Cross;and as believers we have authority over them,which must be exercised. In reality,we are, in various ways,touched by the demonic–even our Lord Jesus was!
One can come to the point,after much protestation by the Holy Spirit, give oneself over to these influences to become twisted so as to willingly become a serf of Satan, like Judas. YHWH respects our free will;that is a sacred corollary to true love. These are just a few observations.

It’s worth noting that Judas wasn’t the only apostle that Jesus called a devil. And the pharisees were “sons” of the devil because they did his will and acted like he does. Peter, when he tried to talk Jesus out of the cross, got “Out of my way, Satan!” The explanation is telling: Peter ‘had in mind the things of men (not the the things of God)’ which led to being an agent of Satan to tempt Jesus. So, too, with us the issue of who we will unconciously cooperate with due to what we have ‘in mind’ is an ever present issue, even after we confess and trust that Jesus is the Messiah. No one can be or stay a disciple of Jesus without picking up their cross every day. If we’re not working with him, we’re working against him, because we can’t stop acting in this world, guided by what we have ‘in mind’.
I love how Jesus could say that even though Satan was coming one last time to try to pull him from following the Father, that Satan “had nothing in [him]“–nothing Satan could pull that Jesus wouldn’t let go of and keep following the Father. He truly loved the Father with all his heart, soul, mind and strength, and others as himself, so he obeyed only the Father even to death and was the Father’s true son, refusing to further or embody Satan’s or anyone else’s agenda in this world. That’s the way of life that Jesus makes available to us and calls us to. That this is now a real option–that we can be a welcome and functioning part of God’s healing operations in this world (shutting down our cooperation with Satan & death) and enjoy the many benefits of being in the Trinity’s family business–this is the good news. This real, daily, opportunity–to be an agent and true son of God and Love rather than Satan to those around me–is what gives me the motivation to pick up my cross as often as I manage to do so. It doesn’t matter to me whether I serve Satan’s purposes with or without his direct involvement or prompting, only whether I serve such ends instead of Christ’s, and what I can do to make progress as Christ’s apprentice and agent.
Guess this stuff motivates me, no?

T,
I don’t know exactly what you mean by “can’t be demonized.”
Few, I think, would suggest that Christians can’t be influenced by Satan.
But I think it’s safe to say that he can’t set up dwelling in a Christian. After all, those who believe have been “sealed with the Holy Spirit.” We are already “possessed,” and I don’t think a demon would find us a hospitable environment.

Amen, Scott W. Thank you for testifying.

John Frye – I don’t happen to have Snodgrass’s fine tome at the ready – are there any particular thoughts you could sum up in a nutshell? Or is it one of those things where you really have to read the whole section for yourself?
I’ve heard a lot of ideas about this stuff, growing up in the church and attending various “Spiritual Warfare” conferences and all. An idea that seems silly to me that I heard once had to do with neutering demons and casting them into the pit. If that worked, why didn’t Peter and Paul just have a major spay/neuter party and get it over with for us all? Maybe I’m not being fair to the idea but it seemed “out there” to me.
A couple thoughts that do seem to stick: from time to time, there do seem to be credible manifestations of some sort of evil presence in some people’s lives. And, one of the most important things against such evil is truth. Keep walking in the Spirit and leading others to do the same. Step by step, as a person believes more truth and less error about him/herself and God, that person is more and more free, seems to me. That is a core idea that I think I took away from Neil Anderson (it’s been a while). I think he may have it right on that count. Looking back over this last paragraph, I could see someone making the case that it isn’t so much truth as it is the presence of the Spirit. Either way, a daily walk per Gal 5, Eph 4, Col 3 seems to be the answer.

I tend to deal with those texts the same way I do with Revelation: against the Holy Roman Empire. Judas under the influence of Satan is Judas under the influence and even the control of the Empire (or enemy). It needn’t be so obscure as to require a metaphysical ‘entity’.
BTW, ChrisB, I would actually argue that the hermeneutic you suggest is postmodern rather than premodern, as is any attempt to return to some supposedly unspoiled era in the aftermath of the Enlightenment.

MatthewS, I agree.
ChrisB,
My recollection, I could be wrong, is that the “sealed with the Holy Spirit” passage is not obviously concerned with the level of influence a demon could conceivably have with a person, whether through wounding, serious wrongdoing, occult, etc. In fact, I don’t think the scriptures really deal with the subject in a clear and technical kind of way; they generally give stories and use various pictures like “foothold”, “stronghold”, etc. Rather than get bogged down in these metaphors, the bigger issues to me are (i) that we are all either seeking greater and greater cooperation with the government of God via apprenticeship to Jesus, or we are moving in the opposite direction, which is demonic, directly or indirectly, in varying depths and with various ill effects, and (ii) what our part in the ongoing displacement of the kingdom of darkness by the functioning government of God can and should be.
The only times I’ve personally ever seen demons obviously show themselves in people (unexpected, violent and distorted shaking) before getting thrown out involved people who had walked the Romans Road already, and one of them had supposedly been a Christian for a long time, a member of a Plymouth Brethren church. She’d had an abortion years before, regretted it deeply, kept going to church, but almost killed herself as the shame of it grew within her, telling no one. She didn’t seem crazy at all, just really, really sad (then, after the demon was thrown out, really, really glad). The other was a new believer (maybe a year), very dear teenage girl, who had grown up in a very abusive home, but obviously started to brighten after her conversion. But she had used her imagination for years as a place where she could be violent to her abusers and others, but had begun to stop doing this after she gave herself to Jesus. Maybe neither woman was really a “Christian” before the exorcism; maybe they both were and this was another step in the process towards their restoration. I tend toward the latter, especially regarding the younger girl. Regardless, God’s desire was to get these people whole and free from Satan’s deep influence and leadership in a very substantial way, and keep them moving in that direction, and the process, at least at one point in time, looked much like the expulsions Jesus did. The debates that took place afterward about whether these women were “in” or “out” beforehand seemed to miss the point, but also seemed inevitable when the definition of “Christian” is too much “yes” or “no” re: heaven and too little of “more” or “less” re: God’s government on the earth growing via the Holy Spirit and the Church. But to the extent that we reorient the point of Christianity (of which our legal status with God is a part) as God healing the entire cosmos, progressively making us all into growing examples and agents of his work, simultaneously removing Satan’s functional holds on us, then some of this stuff may happen even after the Holy Spirit gets inside for the first time without too much shock to the Church.

Get thee to Internet Monk…