The Evangelical Dictionary of World Religions

DALAI LAMA XIV (TENZIN GYATSO). Tenzin Gyatso (b. 1935) is the current Dalai Lama, the fourteenth in a lineage of Buddhist masters that began in Tibet in 1391. In the Gelugpa sect of Tibetan Buddhism, each Dalai Lama is thought to be an incarnation of the compassionate Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. From the late fourteenth century until the 1960s, each successive Dalai Lama held the dual position of Tibet’s highest-ranking government ruler and its most influential spiritual leader. Tibetans typically refer to the 14th Dalai Lama as Yeshin Norbu (wish-fulfilling gem) or Kundun (the presence).

History. Tenzin Gyatso was born Lhamo Thondup on July 6, 1935, to a farming family in northeast Tibet. When Lhamo was two years old, it was determined by a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks that he was a likely candidate to be the reincarnation of the recently deceased 13th Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso (1876–1933). At six years of age, Lhamo began to study Tibetan Buddhism formally. In November 1950, at age sixteen, Lhamo was installed as Tibet’s top political leader, though he was soon deposed by the Communist government of neighboring China. At twenty-two, Lhamo was officially pronounced to be the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama and took the spiritual name Geshe Tenzin Gyatso. In March 1959, not long after Tenzin had received a high-level degree in Buddhist philosophy from the Jokhang Temple in Lhasa, Tibet, Chinese troops invaded Tibet. Tenzin had little choice but to flee. He relocated in Dharamsala, India. Subsequently he has worked in exile in various capacities as part of an attempt to end human rights abuses in Tibet by the Chinese military and to restore the political autonomy and culture of Tibet. This work has included meetings with dozens of prominent world leaders, including Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) and former US president George W. Bush (b. 1946), and was the basis for his receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 and a Congressional Gold Medal in 2007. On July 5, 2005, the day before his seventieth birthday, the Chinese government refused Tenzin’s request to return to Tibet before his death. Despite discussion of his retirement in 2007 and undergoing gallstone surgery in October 2008, the Dalai Lama continues to promote Buddhism (especially its Mahayana form) in the US and Europe and is unquestionably the leading figure associated with Buddhism in the West. This was evidenced by his participation in a World Religions Dialogue interfaith conference in Gujarat, India, in January 2009.

Teachings. Though displaying many of the distinctive emphases found in the Vajrayana-Tibetan Buddhist tradition, most of the Dalai Lama’s teachings focus on the basics of Buddhism, especially the Four Noble Truths. Tenzin identifies these four truths as the nature of suffering, the origin of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path to the eradication of suffering. Other key instructions of the Dalai Lama concern how to awaken to the illusory nature of normal human perception and how to attain happiness by grasping the emptiness of things in the phenomenal world. Tenzin propounds a system of ethics that includes a strong commitment to nonviolence (though he allows for abortion in a number of cases) and the avoidance of war, striving for world peace, eschewing all forms of hatred, and broad religious tolerance, though he also is reported to endorse homosexual rights (despite holding a generally negative view of human sexuality). In recent years, the Dalai Lama has been at the forefront of academic discussions concerning the relationship of religion (especially Buddhism) and modern science.

See also ISLAM, BASIC BELIEFS OF

Bibliography. I. al-Faruqi, “On the Nature of Islamic Da’wah,” International Review of Mission; J. L. Esposito, ed., The Oxford History of Islam; C. T. R. Hewer, Understanding Islam: An Introduction; L. Poston, Islamic Da’wah in the West: Muslim Missionary Activity and the Dynamics of Conversion to Islam.

J. Bjornstad

DAY OF JUDGMENT, ISLAMIC. The day of judgment (Arabic, yawm al-qiyamah) is the day on which, according to Islamic eschatology, the universe will be destroyed and all human beings who have ever lived will be bodily resurrected and judged by Allah. Those whose deeds are pleasing to Allah will be rewarded with entry to Paradise (Qur’an 2:82). Those who are rejected by Allah will be cast into eternal torment (Qur’an 3:85). The topic of al-Qiyamah is second only to that of strict monotheism in importance in Islam. Belief in the day of judgment is the fifth of the Pillars of Faith in Islam (see Quran 2:62; 54:52–53), belief in which is considered a test of Islamic orthodoxy by nearly all Muslims. No one except Allah knows the timing of Qiyamat, the magnitude and extent of which will be so enormous and all-encompassing that it will result in the obliteration of the entire world. An unimaginably loud and deafening trumpet blast (produced by the angel Hazrat Israfeel) will indicate that Qiyamat is under way, knocking the entire population of the earth into a state of unconsciousness. Just after this blast, Allah will unleash the devastating series of cosmic cataclysms that precede the resurrection and judgment.

Bibliography. Vincent J. Cornell, Voices of Islam; S. Q. M. M. Kamoonpuri, Basic Beliefs of Islam for Secondary Schools; J. I. Smith and Y. Y. Haddad, The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection.

R. L. Drouhard

DEIFICATION, CHRISTIAN VIEW OF. Also called theosis and divinization, deification is “the central theme, chief aim, basic purpose, or primary religious ideal” of Eastern Orthodox Christianity (Clendenin, 120). The classic formulation of the teaching comes from section 54 of On the Incarnation of the Divine Word, by the fourth-century Christian writer Athanasius of Alexandria (d. 373): “The Word of God Himself . . . assumed humanity that we might become God.” Early Christians did not have trouble describing their future hope in terms of “becoming gods” because they took Jesus’s quote of Psalm 82:6, “I said, ‘You are “gods,”’” at John 10:34, to be a reference to “those . . . who have received the grace of the ‘adoption, by which we cry, Abba Father [Rom. 8:15]’” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.6.1; cf. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 124). The explicit use of deification language begins to appear already in the mid-second century. Its earliest occurrences are in Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 124 (after 135 and before 164); Theophilus of Antioch, To Autoclycus 2.27 (ca. 180); Clement of Alexandria (d. 215), in Exhortation to the Greeks 1 and elsewhere; and Irenaeus of Lyons (d. ca. 202), Against Heresies 4.38.1–4. Clement’s deification language is heavily colored by contact with the conceptual world of Platonism, so it is ultimately Irenaeus who will contribute most directly to the development of the Orthodox doctrine. Some, however, of what is later made explicit in the Orthodox doctrine is still only implicit in Irenaeus. This is important to remember, especially since scholarly discussion of the doctrine’s history has been skewed in recent decades by a widely circulated misquotation of the preface to book 5 of Against Heresies that has Irenaeus saying, in language very close to what we see more than a century later in Athanasius, “If the word has been made man, it was so men may become gods.” Actually the passage in question says nothing about becoming gods, only about becoming “what He [Jesus] is Himself” (quod est ipse). The misquotation in the present literature appears to have originated in the linking of a loosely phrased statement of the traditional formula to Irenaeus by the prominent Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky (e.g., The Vision of God, 35; see Clendenin, 117, 127; Lash, 147).

Irenaeus does, however, use deification language when giving reasons for not blaming God that “we have not been made gods from the beginning, but at first merely men, and at length gods” (Against Heresies 4.38.4). But again in the context he finds justification for the language in his “Christian” reading of Psalm 82:6. In Irenaeus’s mind, deification parallels Paul’s concept of our adoption in Christ (Rom. 8:15–17), an understanding that has continued in Orthodox theology down to the present time: “The meaning of theosis in the New Testament is the adoption of man” (Stavropoulos, 185).

To the ears of Western Christians, who have tended to view the work of Christ more from the perspective of how it leads to the forgiveness and rescue of sinners, rather than how it restores the divine image and/or likeness lost in the fall, the language of deification can come across as jarring or even blasphemous when initially encountered. Such alarm, however, wanes when it is understood that the doctrine has always been carefully qualified so as to make it absolutely clear that the language implies no real ultimate confusion between mortal humans and the eternal, unbegotten God: “Although ‘engodded’ or ‘deified’ the saints do not become additional members of the Trinity. God remains God, and man remains man. Man becomes god by grace but not God in essence” (Ware, 125).

Another way this infinite distinction has been expressed is by saying that when 2 Peter 1:4 says we “participate in the divine nature,” it refers to participating in the divine energies (cf. Col. 1:29), but not in the divine essence or being. In terms more familiar to Western ears, it might be said that the deified come to share in God’s communicable attributes but not his incommunicable ones. Being united with Jesus in his death, we come to share in his own divine life. But it is all of him and none of us. And this distinction was perfectly understood from the beginning. Irenaeus, indeed, finds it expressed in the very passage he uses to justify calling Christians gods in the first place. For even though Psalm 82:6 says, “You are ‘gods,’” Irenaeus goes on to point out that, “since we could not sustain the power of divinity, He adds, ‘But ye shall die like men,’ setting forth both truths—the kindness of His free gift, and our weakness” (Against Heresies 4.38.4). The same point was made by Athanasius; we partake of Christ’s divine life only because Jesus first partook of our mortal flesh: “But if death was within the body, woven into its very substance . . . the need was for Life to be woven in instead. . . . The Saviour assumed a body for Himself, in order that the body [i.e., our bodies], being interwoven as it were with life, should no longer remain a mortal thing, in thrall to death, but as endued with immortality and risen from death, should therefore remain immortal. For once having put on corruption, it could not rise, unless it put on life instead” (On the Incarnation of the Divine Word 44).

When properly understood, then, the Orthodox doctrine of deification is perfectly biblical. The Western church is used to speaking of Christians as becoming sons of God by grace without ever imagining that, in doing so, it might lead some to view these Christians as claiming equal status in the Godhead with Jesus. The same is true of the Eastern church when it speaks of becoming gods by grace. In addition to the famous passage in 2 Peter already cited, there is also much in the writings of the Bible that can be seen as supporting the language or at least the conceptual framework of the doctrine of deification. It is declared in 1 John 3:2 that “when Christ appears, we shall be like him” (NRSV), and in 2 Corinthians 5:21 that “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” In John’s Gospel, Jesus prays that believers will be one as he and the Father are one (17:21; cf. 10:30), yet it is without in any way losing sight of Jesus’s unique relationship with God as both preexistent Word and only begotten of the Father (1:1 and 18). The Son has divine life in himself (5:26). We have it only through the Son (3:36; 6:53–54, 68; 10:28), and only as we abide in him (15:1–7). In addition to this, there is the larger teaching on humanity as creatures made in the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1–2) and on Christ as the second Adam (1 Cor. 15:45–49). The principal objection against using the language of deification, therefore, is only that it is based on a misapplication of Psalm 82:6 and John 10:34. Contrary to the opinion of early Christian writers who contributed to development of deification terminology, those passages simply do not refer to Christians.

Unlike in the Eastern church, where the doctrine of deification has always been regarded as a controlling concept in the doctrine of salvation, in the Western church it is scarcely known. Still we do occasionally find it, as, for example, in the eighth-century Celtic theologian John Scotus Eriugena (d. ca. 877), who declares: “He [Jesus] came down alone but ascends with many. He who made of God a human being makes gods of men and women” (Prologue to the Gospel of John 21). The great Western father Augustine of Hippo (d. 430) also uses the language of deification: “For God wishes to make thee a god; not by nature, as He is whom He has begotten, but by his gift and adoption” (Sermon 166.4). Deification language has even been preserved as part of the Roman Catholic Mass, where it currently appears as part of the Liturgy of the Euchariast: “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.” On the Protestant side, we find it, for example, in the lyrics of the great Methodist hymnologist Charles Wesley (d. 1788): “He deigns in flesh to appear, / Widest extremes to join; / To bring our vileness near, / And make us all divine” (“Let Heaven and Earth Combine”). Or again, speaking more broadly of trinitarians as such, Ralph Waldo Emerson writes in his journal entry for February 14, 1827: “The Trinitarian urges a natural & sublime deduction from his creed when he says of the Saviour that as he became a partaker in our humanity so we also shall become partakers in his divinity.”

Bibliography. D. B. Clendenin, Eastern Orthodox Christianity: A Western Perspective; S. Lash, “Deification,” in The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology; V. Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church; Lossky, The Vision of God; D. V. Meconi, SJ, and Carl E. Olson, eds., Called to Be the Children of God: The Catholic Theology of Human Deification; N. Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition; C. Stavropoulos, “Partakers of Divine Nature,” in Eastern Orthodox Theology: A Contemporary Reader; J. Vajda, “Partakers of the Divine Nature”: A Comparative Analysis of Patristic and Mormon Doctrines of Divinization; K. Ware, The Orthodox Way, rev. ed.

R. V. Huggins

DEIFICATION, MORMON VIEW OF. The doctrine of deification, with its language of “becoming gods,” appears in the arena of Mormon apologetics. Although we do find occasional earlier references to the similarity between the Mormon and the Orthodox teaching on deification (e.g., Hunter), the current interest did not arise until the 1970s and 1980s, after two Mormon scholars, Philip L. Barlow and Keith E. Norman, became interested in the subject while pursuing advanced degrees. Interestingly, both seem to have made the discovery independent of each other and both while studying at Harvard. Barlow would receive his doctorate from Harvard, but Norman would go on to get his from Duke, where he would write a dissertation titled “Deification: The Content of Athanasian Soteriology” in 1980. Already by 1975, Norman had placed some of the results of his research on deification before the LDS community in an article appearing in the first issue of Sunstone magazine. Barlow would also contribute an article on the subject to Sunstone in 1983. Even though both Norman and Barlow are of a more scholarly than apologetic temper, these two articles (supplemented more recently by Norman’s dissertation, which was published in 2000—without Norman’s participation and much to his surprise upon seeing it in print—by the Mormon apologetic organization Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies [FARMS]) would serve as the basis and source for the Mormon apologetic that would afterward develop.

The primary supporter of the new deification apologetic is another LDS writer who was also at Duke while Norman was there and who has since become one of Mormonism’s most popular writers and apologists: Stephen E. Robinson. Robinson develops his apologetic around the famous couplet of the fifth president of the LDS Church, Lorenzo Snow: “As man now is, God once was; As God now is, man may become.” “Latter-day Saints,” Robinson writes, “share the ancient biblical doctrine of deification (apotheosis) with Eastern Orthodoxy. Several of early Christianity’s theologians said essentially the same thing as Lorenzo Snow” (“God the Father,” 2:401). Robinson sees particular significance in the similarity between Snow’s couplet and the traditional formula as commonly misquoted from Irenaeus: “If the word became a man, it was so men may become gods.” More recently Mormon apostle Dallin Oaks similarly asserted that the LDS understanding of the future life “should be familiar to all who have studied the ancient Christian doctrine of deification or apotheosis” (“Apostasy,” 86).

In reality, of course, any similarity that seems to exist between Lorenzo Snow’s couplet and the traditional formula is only apparent and has to do only with a similar structuring and the use of similar words. The underlying concepts being described in the two cases, however, are infinitely different. In the traditional formula, it was the Son who became human; in Snow’s couplet it was the Father. In the traditional formula, Jesus became human in order that by joining his nature with ours he might enable us to become what we never had the potential to be—it was only because Jesus had divine life within himself that we could partake of divine life through him. In Snow’s couplet, God the Father had been a man and had trodden the same path on his journey to godhood that we must each now tread on our own journeys to godhood. In the traditional formula, we share in the attributes of God in some limited sense by virtue of the fact that we were created (and re-created) in the image of God, becoming “gods” by grace only because we have been united with Christ, who is God by nature. In Snow’s couplet, we do not so much become gods as grow up into the gods we already are by nature, being part of the same “species” or “race” as God: “Gods and humans,” writes Stephen E. Robinson, “represent a single divine lineage, the same species of being, although they and he are at different stages of progress” (“God the Father,” 2:549). We are the literal spirit children of our heavenly parents: “[We are] formed in the divine image and endowed with divine attributes, and even as the infant son of an earthly father and mother is capable in due time of becoming a man, so the undeveloped offspring of celestial parentage is capable . . . of evolving into a God” (Smith, Winder, and Lund, 30). Ultimately, then, “all the personal attributes which are ascribed to God by inspired men, we find in ourselves” (Charles W. Penrose, quoted in Hunter, Gospel, 107).

One of the difficulties related to this discussion is the fact that the deification apologetic was growing in popularity among LDS apologists at the same time that the LDS leadership was taking steps to suppress the memory of the traditional Mormon account of the history of the Mormon God, that is, of why and how the Father came to be human in the first place. In this process, LDS president Gordon B. Hinckley has even gone so far as to publicly deny knowledge of this traditional Mormon teaching (Ostling and Ostling, 296). The apparent goal of this effort is to transform the LDS God into something more like the traditional idea of God as an ultimate being. The traditional LDS God was only one in an apparently endless sequence of Gods in which each new generation of Gods was not essentially different from the ones that went before. As humans now both have a God and have the potential of becoming Gods themselves, so the present God, when he was “as man is,” had a God and had the potential of becoming God himself. This teaching indeed goes back to Joseph Smith: “If Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and . . . God, the Father of Jesus Christ, had a Father, you may suppose that he had a Father also. Where was there ever a son without a father?” (Millennial Star, 24:109–10). The most recent work actually published by the LDS Church that speaks plainly about the history of God is an institute manual titled Achieving a Celestial Marriage (1992), which was finally taken out of circulation in 2002: “Our heavenly Father and mother [sic] live in an exalted state because they achieved a celestial marriage. As we achieve a like marriage we shall become as they are and begin the creation of our own spirit children” (p. 1). Some observers see this shift away from the traditional view as a positive thing, hoping that perhaps the LDS Church is quietly dropping the older view and looking to the doctrine of deification as a pattern for establishing a new and more Orthodox view of God. Others, however, have been more skeptical, noting that although official LDS Church publications and public-relations materials are very careful to exclude any discussion of the history of God, less official works still contain very explicit statements about it. As recently as 1998, for example, the following passage from nineteenth-century LDS apostle Orson Pratt was approvingly quoted in a book published by the LDS Church–owned Deseret Book Company: “The Father of our spirits has only been doing what his progenitors did before him. . . . The same plan of redemption is carried out by which more ancient worlds have been redeemed” (Matthews, 115).

Where differences are admitted to exist between the LDS and the Eastern Orthodox doctrines of deification, or theosis, they are normally explained away on the LDS side by an appeal to the Great Apostasy, the time when, according to Mormon theology, the ancient church was supposed to have lost its authority and fallen away from the teachings of Christ. The general methodology used by many Mormon writers for sifting the evidence is well stated by LDS apologists Daniel C. Peterson and Stephen D. Ricks in the context of discussing the doctrine of deification. Mormons, they tell us, “are in an enviable position here. Given our belief in the apostasy, we fully expect there to be differences, even vast differences, between the beliefs and the teachings of the Early Church Fathers and Mormon doctrine. Any similarities that exist, however, are potentially understandable as survivals from before that apostasy. When any similarities, even partial ones, exist between Latter-day Saints beliefs and the teachings of the Fathers but are absent between contemporary mainstream Christendom and the Fathers, they can be viewed as deeply important” (76; italics original). It is curious that the authors miss the fact that the use of this formula turns all early evidence, no matter what it is, into proof of Mormonism—either proof of Mormon doctrine or proof of the Mormon doctrine of the Great Apostasy. Any similarities between the current LDS doctrine about becoming Gods and the ancient doctrine of deification, no matter how superficial, are interpreted as fragmentary remnants of the original teachings of Jesus and the apostles. Any differences, no matter how significant, are credited to the corrupting influence of the Great Apostasy. The final determiner of what constitutes the influence of the Great Apostasy is alleged to be current Mormon teaching. Naturally, so fallacious a methodology tends to blind its users to the real import of the ancient evidence.

Bibliography. Achieving a Celestial Marriage; P. L. Barlow, “Unorthodox Orthodoxy: The Idea of Deification in Christian History,” Sunstone; D. B. Clendenin, Eastern Orthodox Christianity: A Western Perspective; M. R. Hunter, The Gospel through the Ages; S. Lash, “Deification,” in The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology, edited by A. Richardson and J. Bowden; V. Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church; Lossky, The Vision of God; R. J. Matthews, “The Doctrine of the Atonement: The Revelation of the Gospel to Adam,” in Studies in Scripture, vol. 2; Millennial Star (LDS periodical); R. L. Millet, N. B. Reynolds, and L. E. Dahl, Latter-day Christianity: 10 Basic Issues; K. E. Norman, “Deification, Early Christian,” in Encyclopedia of Mormonism, edited by D. H. Ludlow, 4 vols.; Norman, Deification: The Content of Athanasian Soteriology; D. Oaks, “Apostasy and Restoration,” Ensign; R. N. Ostling and J. K. Ostling, Mormon America: The Power and the Promise; D. C. Peterson and S. D. Ricks, Offenders for a Word: How Anti-Mormons Play Word Games to Attack the Latter-day Saints; S. E. Robinson, Are Mormons Christians?; Robinson, “God the Father,” in Ludlow, Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 4 vols.; J. F. Smith, J. R. Winder, and A. H. Lund, “The Origin of Man,” Ensign; C. Stavropoulus, “Partakers of Divine Nature,” in Eastern Orthodox Theology: A Contemporary Reader, edited by D. B. Clendenin; J. Vajda, “Partakers of the Divine Nature”: A Comparative Analysis of Patristic and Mormon Doctrines of Divinization; K. Ware, The Orthodox Way.

R. V. Huggins

DEMONS AND DEMONIZATION IN THE BIBLE. The term demon comes from the Greek words daimōn and daimonion and refers to supernatural beings with extraordinary powers and functions. In biblical literature, demons, including Satan, are described as fallen angels who are waging an aggressive war against God and humankind.

Demonology in the Old Testament. The Old Testament discusses demonic beings and their activity very little. The best-known encounter between humans and a demonic being is first mentioned in Genesis 3, where Eve is tempted by a creature identified as the serpent, whose identity according to Revelation 12:9 is Satan, the master of deception and corrupter of humankind. The Genesis 3 account of the fall is paradigmatic with respect to the modus operandi of demonic forces. The temptation demonstrates a well-organized, directed approach to luring human beings into ultimate rebellion against God.

First Chronicles 21:1 records the incident when David was influenced by Satan to take a census, which displeased God and brought about judgment against Israel. Job 1 and 2 describes Satan’s challenge that Job’s loyalty to God is due to God’s benevolence toward Job. Through the ages, many have interpreted Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 as describing the original state and fall of Satan (or Lucifer, which is the Latin translation of “star of the morning” in Isa. 14:12), though biblical scholars generally question this interpretation. Satan and fallen angels were originally created equal with respect to moral consistency. They were created not evil or good but with the freedom to bring about whatever moral differences would occur in their personal existence. The fall of Satan and angels shows that even with unblemished reasoning powers, a person can be led by temptation to destructive decisions. Angels with an acute awareness of God’s omnipotence still succumbed to folly by their own choice.

In Zechariah 3:1, Satan comes before God to accuse Joshua. Other references to malevolent spiritual beings include Daniel 10:13, where Daniel is hindered by the prince of Persia, against whom Michael the archangel is dispatched. Saul is tormented by an evil spirit (1 Sam. 16:14). Leviticus 17:7, Deuteronomy 32:17, and Psalm 106:37 refer to sacrifices offered to demons.

Classical Greek Writers and Demons. Demons and demonic activity as understood in pre–New Testament classical Greek sources differ substantially from what is attested in the New Testament. Platonic writings describe a threefold division of all animals endowed with a rational soul: gods, demons, and human beings. Gods occupy the highest region (heaven), humanity the lowest (earth), and demons serve in the intermediate (air). Demons are superior to human beings and possess immortality but have the same passions as human beings. Plato’s Cratylus, Laws, and Symposium provide insights into the classical Greek world’s understanding of demonic beings and their activity. In Cratylus 397 and 398, Plato engages Socrates and Hermogenes in a discussion about names. It is argued that a name is nothing more than a word used to describe an object. Socrates asks Hermogenes what follows the name and concept of “gods,” to which the reply is demons, heroes, humans. Socrates, quoting Hesiod, states that demons are guardians of mortals. Socrates goes on to state that demons are good and noble. In the Symposium 202, demons (daimōn) are great spirits who act as intermediaries between the gods and human beings. Later Platonism also taught this view of demonic activity. The Laws 4.713 states that demons were appointed by Cronos (a benevolent ruler of the primeval world) to ensure the peace and tranquility of mankind. Augustine challenged the Platonic view of demons and found the mediatorial concept in Platonic demonology to be devastating to the coherency of the Platonic system. The gods relied on demons for mediatorial work because their abode was so far away. Therefore, the aerial demons supplied the gods with information on the affairs of human beings, but this presents several problems. First, if the gods are superior to demons, it seems useless to depend on them for relaying information. Demons would use methods that are inferior to the gods’ abilities to gather the same things. Second, the problem of distance is equally flawed, for it shows that the gods are incapable of overcoming distance, which is a sign of weakness. The gods, then, are less than competent in ruling over human beings because they cannot escape their dependence on subordinate beings for information.

Platonism, in teaching the three levels of animal forms (gods, demons, and humans), relegated humanity to the very least of the three beings. Yet humanity is superior to animals in reason and understanding and superior to demons in that human beings live virtuous and good lives. Furthermore, those who are God’s elect will someday acquire immortal bodies, but demons will suffer punishment.

Demons and the Intertestamental Period. In the intertestamental literature, demons are malevolent beings that afflict humankind and are associated with various sins. An evil demon named Asmodeus is mentioned in Tobit 3:8, 17. Scholars note that The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs contains an extensive demonology. Demons, or evil spirits, are deceitful and cause error (Testament of Reuben 2.1; 3.2–3; Testament of Judah 20.1; 23.1).

New Testament Demonology. The New Testament presents a more fully developed understanding of demons, one that is consistent with the demonology presented in the Old Testament and intertestamental literature. Demons are incorporeal beings that oppose God and seek the destruction of humanity. Numerous incidents of demon possession and deliverance are recorded in the Gospels (Matt. 4:24; 8:16, 33; 9:33; 17:18; Mark 7:26; Luke 4:33; 8:29; 11:14) and Acts (16:16–18). Scripture indicates demons are intelligent and knowledgeable, but they are not omniscient. They have a clear understanding of the person and nature of God. Demons are monotheistic according to James 2:19, which states demons believe that God is one, or is the true God, and fear him. They also know who Jesus is and recognize his authority over them according to Luke 4:33–35, 41 and Acts 19:15–16. They specifically call Christ the Holy One of God, which identifies Jesus Christ as the Messiah (cf. Luke 1:31–34). The confession of demons regarding Christ’s messianic status is explicitly stated in Luke 4:41, according to which demons acknowledge Jesus to be the Christ. Demons also understand the gospel (Acts 16:16–18). The slave girl follows Paul around and proclaims he is preaching the way of salvation. Based on the biblical record, demons are orthodox in their understanding of who God and Christ are and of the means of salvation. Thus they aggressively seek to distort and misrepresent these truths.

Satan in particular is well versed in the use of Scripture, which he quotes in Matthew 4. In 1 Timothy 4:1, demons are described as both deceitful and the authors of false doctrine. The existence of complex doctrinal systems contrary to orthodox Christianity indicates demons’ exceptional ability to reason. Augustine says that demonic beings are fully capable of decision making and have acute reasoning powers. The demonic realm also apparently lacks hierarchy or authority structure. In Ephesians 2:2, Satan is identified as the ruler of the air (according to Plato’s threefold division of animals, demons occupy the air) and as being in authority over demons (Matt. 9:34; Luke 11:15).

Post–New Testament Demonology. The church has historically played an important role in combating spiritual evil by carrying out exorcisms and requiring believers to renounce the devil as a condition for baptism. However, in its dealing with demonic forces, the early church did resort to extraordinary practices that have little or no scriptural support. Exorcism, the practice of expelling demons from the possessed, is attested in the New Testament. Jesus cast out demons, as did Paul. However, exsufflation, the act of breathing against the evil spirits, has no biblical support but was a common practice with the early church fathers.

The early church used baptism as a time for renouncing the devil and his demonic cohorts. This is known as the baptismal renunciation. Origen and Augustine characterized the devil as the ruler of this world, and they considered it essential that during the ceremony of baptism the candidate for baptism publicly renounce the devil wholeheartedly.

Demonization. Demonization is a complex and controversial issue that continues to be debated frequently among theologians and biblical scholars. By definition demonization describes the condition of one who is demon possessed. Some theologians argue that the translation “demon possession” is incorrect, for demons do not technically own anyone. The preferred translation would be “demonization” or “demonized,” for these terms convey the idea that, at worst, demons control or invade individuals, but they don’t possess.

One particular question about demonization that has caused considerable controversy is whether Christians can be demonized (invaded). In 1971 Old Testament scholar Merrill F. Unger published Demons in the World Today, in which he took the position that Christians could be “invaded” (or possessed, according to some reviews of the book) by demonic beings. This was a significant shift for Unger, who in a much earlier work, Biblical Demonology (a revision of Unger’s 1945 ThD dissertation), held that Christians could not be invaded by demonic beings but were subject to attacks from without by means of pressure, suggestion, and temptation. In a later work, What Demons Can Do to Saints, Unger addressed in much more detail the relationship between demons and true believers, arguing that Christians can be invaded. His research was significantly influenced by case studies, which prompted him to change his position. It is this application of what some describe as experiential theology that raises concern.

C. Fred Dickason has written extensively on demonology and the influence of demons on people. He contends that the idea of demon possession is incorrect, for demons do not possess people but are mere squatters. From the standpoint of biblical theology, which is theology derived directly from the clear statements of Scripture, there are no passages that conclusively support the demonization of believers. New Testament descriptions of alleged believers who seem to be victims of demonization include Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1–3) and Simon Magus (Acts 8). However, these instances are inconclusive and cannot be used to substantiate the belief that Christians can be invaded.

Whether Christians can be demonized is debated from the standpoint of systematic theology. The fact that Scripture is inconclusive on this issue does not preclude, it is argued, the possibility of believers being inhabited by demonic beings. A number of theological arguments are used to support the belief that demons can inhabit believers. It is argued that believers can lose their salvation if they sin continuously and repudiate Christ. This leads to the loss of salvation and eventual invasion by demonic beings. Some contend that Satan has the power to exert his will over people, including believers who are entrenched in sin (2 Tim. 2:26). Some, citing King Saul as evidence, argue that God may chastise believers for repeated sin by using demons as instruments of correction. Other ways in which believers can open themselves up to demonic invasion include seeking sign gifts, which can open one up to a deceiving spirit. Inappropriate participation in occult activities such as the Ouija board, divination, or necromancy (seeking contact with the dead) provides opportunities for demonization.

Opponents of the view that believers can be demonized contend that spatial constraints prevent the concurrent presence of both demons and the Holy Spirit. Salvation in Christ means we are no longer our own but bought with a price. Therefore, demonic beings cannot possess believers, for demons do not have the authority to take over those who belong to Christ. One common argument contends that demons and the Spirit of God cannot dwell in the same body because God is holy and evil spirits unholy, making close proximity impossible.

Both biblical and theological support for and opposition to the demonization of believers are inconclusive. What has contributed to the view that Christians can be inhabited by demonic beings and poses strong evidence for such a view is the existence of case studies by Christian counselors and those who have dealt with allegedly demonized Christians in varied ministries. The clinical evidence that has been amassed includes specific case studies by competent Christian counselors and theologians who have dealt with people who claim to be believers yet are afflicted by the presence of demonic forces within them.

Though the evidence from clinical sources for the demonization of believers seems irrefutable, it remains circumstantial. On the other hand, the biblical and theological evidence against such demonization is inconclusive.

Bibliography. C. Arnold, Powers of Darkness; M. Bubeck, The Adversary; Bubeck, Overcoming the Adversary; C. F. Dickason, Demon Possession and the Christian: A New Perspective; H. A. Kelly, The Devil at Baptism; S. Noll, Angels of Light, Powers of Darkness; S. Page, Powers of Evil: A Biblical Study of Satan and Demons; G. Riley, “Demon,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible; M. Unger, Biblical Demonology; Unger, Demons in the World Today; Unger, What Demons Can Do to Saints.

S. J. Rost

DEPENDENT ORIGINATION. At the heart of Buddhist metaphysics, the doctrine of dependent origination (Sanskrit, pratityasamutpada), also known as dependent arising, states that all the phenomena experienced by human beings make up a mutually interdependent system of entities that ultimately is an undifferentiated unity of existence. On this view, any given phenomenon can be said to exist (in a provisional sense) only because of its interrelationship with every other phenomenon; nothing has a genuine, substantive identity independently of everything else. Because all things are so conditioned and transient in nature, they are, in the final analysis, “empty.” The Buddha’s spiritual awakening was fundamentally a receiving of profound insight into the real nature of the world as dependently originating.