United Methodist Seminary Tackles Spiritual Warfare

“What Scripture and church tradition teach about there being a wider spiritual reality of angels, demons, and miracles was relevant back in biblical times, and it may become relevant again at some point in the distant future. But it is simply not relevant for us today. For our present lives on Earth, we live in a completely naturalistic closed system, and religion is limited to what we think, say, and do within this closed system.”

Few United Methodists would state an anti-supernaturalistic worldview so baldly.  But sometimes we act as if that is what we believe.

Let’s face it: anything that disrupts our sense of control over our lives is deeply unsettling to all with the sinful impulse to seek to be our own gods. And this certainly applies to practices and accounts of divine healings and exorcisms that are generally associated with charismatic traditions, no matter how directly they are rooted in the Scriptures shared by all branches of orthodox Christianity.

Roger Olson (with whom I certainly do not agree on everything) recently wrote a thoughtful essay on how even many evangelical Baptists in this country have become “Embarrassed by the Supernatural.”

But now within the United Methodist Church, we have at least one of our official U.S. seminaries that actually treats super-natural aspects of biblical Christian faith as real for the past as well as the present: United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio.

They now have multiple conferences devoted to the theme of divine healing. And last December, they pushed further against the comfort zones of respectable upper-middle-class American Protestantism by hosting a two-day conference devoted to “Spiritual Warfare and Deliverance.”

This third annual Holy Spirit Seminar was co-sponsored by United and Aldersgate Renewal Ministries.

Conference speakers observed that our denominational culture has lost clear ways of talking about the Devil.

William J. Abraham, Albert Cook Outler Professor of Wesley Studies at Perkins School of Theology, noted that the world needs “a clear diagnosis of evil.” He listed some of the secular world’s explanations: “It all comes down to sex and potty training” (Freud), “The world needs revolution!” (Marx), people who, like John Wesley, believe in the Devil and “little people” need to be brought out of the Dark Ages (science), or “If we can figure out what’s really going on in people’s heads, we can fix it all” (neuroscience).

For its part, much of the church now “borrow from secular notions to understand what’s gone wrong” while ignoring crucial resources within Christianity itself. We United Methodists “are suckers for every good cause” and “want to fix the world without a clear diagnosis of what’s wrong with the world.” In his own talk, Peter Bellini, a missiology professor at United, noted that our United Methodist Church “has bet the farm on idea that we can just change social systems to bring the Kingdom of God.”

But none of this will “turn the world around,” Abraham insisted. The heart of the problem of our fallen world is explained in Genesis 1-11: “We’ve been put in a good creation; we found ourselves mistrusting because we believed half-truths about God; so then we rebelled.” “Evil is not just an absence of good,” but also “a real turn to evil,” in which we can know very well that something is wrong and still “consciously choose it, and then celebrate it.” On a personal note, Abraham shared that what ultimately brought him from atheism to Christian faith “was the seriously Christian vision that the world has gone wrong, and only the Gospel is going to bring it back.”

When we try to explain away the numerous biblical accounts of demons and exorcisms (not to mention New Testament commands related believers continuing to combat demons), we end up falling into the same theological liberalism, with its foundation of anti-supernaturalism, that has plagued our denomination for over a century.

As Bellini pointed out, accepting that “Jesus was just using the language of his day” in talking about demons and did not literally mean what he said would lay the foundation for denying the resurrection and other biblical miracles.

Abraham described how some take a “Devil of the gaps” approach, insisting that science has ALL the answers, and that even when there are apparently demonic situations for which science cannot presently provide answers, “we should just stay the course” to eventually find a perfectly naturalistic explanation while categorically ruling out super-natural ones. Like Bellini, Abraham also saw how such thinking would not stop at explaining away spiritual warfare, but “ultimately dismisses miracles, the virgin birth, the physical resurrection, and goes to the heart of the Christian faith.”  In Wesley’s time, other Protestants tried to demonstrate that all present-day day miracles Catholics claimed were false, while drawing a line to say that the New Testament recorded actual history of such things taking place in the past. But the founder of Methodism “realized you shouldn’t play that game.”

Spiritual Warfare in Practice

Speakers noted that Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have well-developed rites and traditions for exorcisms, with every diocese of the former today having its own designated exorcist.

Meanwhile, Abraham quipped, “We Methodists don’t just believe in backsliding, we practice it!”

The Perkins professor somberly explained that there are “invisible, spiritual, and incorporeal” agents out there who “are not detectable by any scientific instruments” but “are made manifest by certain unusual phenomenon” and are seeking “to destroy the created order.” He observed that the subject of demonic activity is one of “hard facts and phenomena that are extremely well attested across cultures and across time.” He described life on Earth for Christian believers as “a constant battle against evil.”

Esther Acolaste, a native of Ghana and Assistant Professor of the Practice of Pastoral Theology and World Christianity at Duke Divinity School, was clear that we really do have a very real enemy. One who seeks “to attack the faith of the believer” and of the entire Christian community. Our true enemy is eager “to turn people into sinners” and to turn Christians into church members who “pay lip service to John 3:16 but do not live it out.”

Bellini framed ministries of deliverance as a subset of healing.  He described it as unpleasant, “dirty work,” likening it to being “exterminators for the church.” Satan is “not our own worst enemy – we are,” as “[t]he Devil can only work off of what we feed him.” Among the things Bellini listed “that invite in the demonic” were occultic practices (“you’d be surprised how many people in your church are into it!”), trauma, abuse, sexual sin, “or any sin practiced enough.” Bellini explained that “Satan comes as an angel of light. He comes with our price – and we all have a price.”

Multiple speakers warned that we could not discount the possibility of real demonic influence driving false teaching in the church, especially in our seminaries.  After all, attacking the church’s leadership training centers would be a key strategic target for the enemy’s attacks.  And as one speaker reminded us, Scripture warns rather explicitly against people within the church itself following heresies “taught by demons.”

Both Abraham and Bellini cited examples of missionaries with Enlightenment, anti-supernaturalistic worldviews traveling far to spread the Gospel, only to be woefully inadequately equipped to reach and minister to the people in their mission fields.

Several speakers offered summaries of key characteristics of demonic activity, practical how-to principles for exorcisms, and accounts of their own experiences with such matters. I don’t know of any other official United Methodist seminary offering training in this area of ministry!

One of the most memorable stories was how Bellini, soon after his conversion from atheism, joined a friend in bold street evangelism. This led them to encounter some individuals who were deeply involved in the occult, and who told Bellini and his friend that they were praying curses upon them and performing séances directed with the goal of causing their deaths. One night, his friend woke up with an apparition of two of these occultist young women at the foot of his bed.  Then five minutes later, he received a phone call from one of them, who laughingly asked “Do you see us?” These two would regularly come to pray against the church of Bellini and his friend. Until one day, a lady in the congregation reported that she had received “a word of knowledge” and told these young women that they were practicing witchcraft. This prompted one of them to fall down screaming, until the two of them left the building.

Safeguards and Perspective

I was grateful to see this conference very intentionally include a large, healthy amount of cautions and safeguards against some of the excesses and extremes that taint the entire charismatic movement in the minds of many.

Abraham was very clear that “methodological naturalism needs to be our default,” meaning that “we need to first eliminate naturalistic causes” before rushing to blame demons for problems.  This was echoed by other speakers. During a Q+A session, Abraham expressed appreciation for one attendee’s concern that we not repeat the mistakes of a few centuries ago in which epileptic or deaf people were hurtfully called demon-possessed.

The consistent theme of the speakers was that we should seek a balance between the extremes of, as Acolaste put it, “demythologizing scripture” and “psychologizing every problem” on the one hand, or “thinking every problem needs a prayer for deliverance” on the other.

Bellini, a self-described “Metho-costal,” admitted that there was “a lot of kooky stuff” within the Pentecostal/charismatic movement such as unbiblical things or people constructing entire doctrines out of just a tiny fragment of Scripture. He explained that he very intentionally grounds his own Metho-costalism in a Wesleyan/holiness theological framework and not in the sort of gospel that lusts after worldly “health and wealth.” He was clear that “not everything is a demon,” that it is okay to take psychiatric medicines when needed, and that exorcism is “only for last-resort, extreme cases.” Our primary solution to the problem of evil, Bellini said, is the cross of Christ and our dying to ourselves.

Acolaste further cautioned attendees to learn from the biblical report of Sceva’s would-be exorcist sons that “exorcism is not for everyone” and “not to be done apart from the Christian community.” She further emphasized how we and other human beings “are not the main characters” in spiritual warfare.

In talking about the importance of a spiritual foundation of sanctification, the Presbyterian sounded almost Wesleyan at times. According to Acolaste, “the test of discipleship is “living for God daily.” But the Devil lies that we “can do and die for Christ” while avoiding this. We need “a life so turned to God that we become so allergic to sin that we can’t bear to have it around us.” The Duke Divinity professor also highlighted the indispensable importance of compassion for those for whom we are called to provide pastoral care, rather than judgment.

Neil Anderson, the former chair of Talbot School of Theology’s Practical Theology department, highlighted the centrality of forgiveness in Christian ministry, and the primary importance of focusing on genuine repentance and faith rather than on demons. He warned against talking about spiritual warfare in ways that get “church people to fear the Devil more than they fear God,” Who is so much more powerful.  Anderson is convinced that “unforgiveness is the biggest way Satan gets a toehold in the church.” He quipped, “Bitterness is like swallowing poison hoping the other will die.”

The accomplished church leader also stressed humility, saying that while he had all these degrees, “that means nothing in the Kingdom.” “You can know theology, and be arrogant, but you can’t know God and be arrogant,” Anderson said.

At the conclusion of this very memorable conference, David Watson reported that “a number of healings and divine deliverances” had taken place during its course. This included two women being dramatically healed of chronic back and neck pain.

The Holy Spirit can indeed still work miracles today, even among mainline Methodists.