Luke 4:33-37

2 d. Luke 4:33-37. Should the possessed mentioned by the evangelists be regarded simply as persons afflicted after the same manner as our lunatics, whose derangement was attributed by Jewish and heathen superstition to supernatural influence? Or did God really permit, at this extraordinary epoch in history, an exceptional display of diabolical power? Or, lastly, should certain morbid conditions now existing, which medical science attributes to purely natural causes, either physical or psychical, be put down, at the present day also, to the action of higher causes? These are the three hypotheses which present themselves to the mind. Several of the demoniacs healed by Jesus certainly exhibit symptoms very like those which are observed at the present day in those who are simply afflicted; for example, the epileptic child, Luke 9:37 et seq., and parall. These strange conditions in every case, therefore, were based on a real disorder, either physical or physico-psychical. The evangelists are so far from being ignorant of this, that they constantly class the demoniacs under the category of the sick (Luke 4:40-41), never under that of the vicious. The possessed have nothing in common with the children of the devil (John 8). Nevertheless these afflicted persons are constantly made a class by themselves. On what does this distinction rest? On this leading fact, that those who are simply sick enjoy their own personal consciousness, and are in possession of their own will; while in the possessed these faculties are, as it were, confiscated to a foreign power, with which the sick person identifies himself (Luke 4:34; Luke 8:30). How is this peculiar symptom to be explained? Josephus, under Hellenic influence, thought that it should be attributed to the souls of wicked men who came after death seeking a domicile in the living. In the eyes of the people the strange guest was a demon, a fallen angel. This latter opinion Jesus must have shared. Strictly speaking, His colloquies with the demoniacs might be explained by an accommodation to popular prejudice, and the sentiments of those who were thus afflicted; but in His private conversations with His disciples, He must, whatever was true, have disclosed His real thoughts, and sought to enlighten them. But He does nothing of the kind; on the contrary, He gives the apostles and disciples power to cast out devils (Luke 9:1), and to tread on all the power of the enemy (Luke 10:19). In Mark 9:29, He distinguishes a certain class of demons that can only be driven out by prayer (and fasting?). In Luke 11:21 and parall., He explains the facility with which He casts out demons by the personal victory which He had achieved over Satan at the beginning. He therefore admitted the intervention of this being in these mysterious conditions. If this is so, is it not natural to admit that He who exercised over this, as over all other kinds of maladies, such absolute power best understood its nature, and that therefore His views upon the point should determine ours?

Are there not times when God permits a superior evil power to invade humanity? Just as God sent Jesus at a period in history when moral and social evil had reached its culminating point, did not He also permit an extraordinary manifestation of diabolical power to take place at the same time? By this means Jesus could be proclaimed externally and visibly as the conqueror of the enemy of men, as He who came to destroy the works of the devil in the moral sense of the word (1Jn 3:8). All the miracles of healing have a similar design. They are signs by which Jesus is revealed as the author of spiritual deliverances corresponding to these physical cures.

An objection is found in the silence of the fourth Gospel; but John in no way professed to relate all he knew. He says himself, Luke 20:30-31, that there are besides many miracles, and different miracles (πολλὰ καὶ ἄλλα), which he does not relate.

As to the present state of things, it must not be compared with the times of Jesus. Not only might the latter have been of an exceptional character; but the beneficent influence which the gospel has exercised in restoring man to himself, and bringing his conscience under the power of the holy and true God, may have brought about a complete change in the spiritual world. Lastly, apart from all this, is there nothing mysterious, from a scientific point of view, in certain cases of mental derangement, particularly in those conditions in which the will is, as it were, confiscated to, and paralyzed by, an unknown power? And after deduction has been made for all those forms of mental maladies which a discriminating analysis can explain by moral and physical relations, will not an impartial physician agree that there is a residuum of cases respecting which he must say: Non liquet?

Possession is a caricature of inspiration. The latter, attaching itself to the moral essence of a man, confirms him for ever in the possession of his true self; the former, while profoundly opposed to the nature of the subject, takes advantage of its state of morbid passivity, and leads to the forfeiture of personality. The one is the highest work of God; the other of the devil.

The question has been asked, How could a man in a state of mental derangement, and who would be regarded as unclean (Luke 4:33), be found in the synagogue? Perhaps his malady had not broken out before as it did at this moment.

Luke says literally: a man who had a spirit (an afflatus) of an unclean devil. In this expression, which is only found in Revelation 16:14, the term spirit or afflatus denotes the influence of the unclean devil, of the being who is the author of it.

The crisis which breaks out (Luke 4:34) results from the opposing action of those two powers which enter into conflict with each other, the influence of the evil spirit, and that of the person and word of Jesus. A holy power no sooner begins to act in the sphere in which this wretched creature lives, than the unclean power which has dominion over him feels its empire threatened. This idea is suggested by the contrast between the epithet unclean applied to the diabolical spirit (Luke 4:33), and the address: Thou art the Holy One of God (Luke 4:34). The exclamation ἔα, ah! (Luke 4:34) is properly the imperative of ἐάω, let be! It is a cry like that of a criminal who, when suddenly apprehended by the police, calls out: Loose me! This is also what is meant in this instance by the expression, in frequent use amongst the Jews with different applications: What is there between us and thee? of which the meaning here is: What have we to contend about? What evil have we done thee? The plural we does not apply to the devil and to the possessed, since the latter still identifies himself altogether with the former. The devil speaks in the name of all the other spirits of his kind which have succeeded in obtaining possession of a human being.

The perdition which he dreads is being sent into the abyss where such spirits await the judgment (Luke 8:31). This abyss is the emptiness of a creature that possesses no point of support outside itself, neither in God, as the faithful angels have, nor in the world of sense, as sinful men endowed with a body have. In order to remedy this inward destitution, they endeavour to unite themselves to some human being, so as to enter through this medium into contact with sensible realities. Whenever a loss of this position befalls them, they fall back into the abyss of their empty self-dependence (vide subjectivité).

The term Holy One of God expresses the character in which this being recognised his deadly enemy. We cannot be surprised that such homage should be altogether repugnant to the feelings of Jesus. He did not acknowledge it as the utterance of an individual whose will is free, which is the only homage that can please Him; and He sees what occasion may be taken from such facts to exhibit His work in a suspicious light (Luke 11:15). He therefore puts an end to this scene immediately by these two peremptory words (Luke 4:35). Silence! and Come out. By the words ἐξ αὐτοῦ, of him, Jesus forcibly distinguishes between the two beings thus far mingled together. This divorce is the condition of the cure.

A terrible convulsion marks the deliverance of the afflicted man. The tormentor does not let go his victim without subjecting him to a final torture. The words, without having done him any hurt, reproduce in a striking manner the impression of eyewitnesses: they ran towards the unhappy man, expecting to find him dead; and to their surprise, on lifting him up, they find him perfectly restored.

We may imagine the feelings of the congregation when they beheld such a scene as this, in which the two powers that dispute the empire of mankind had in a sensible manner just come into conflict. Luke 4:36-37 describe this feeling. Several have applied the expression this word (What a word is this! A. V.) to the command of Jesus which the devil had just obeyed. But a reference to Luke 4:32 obliges us to take the term word in its natural sense, the preaching of Jesus in general. The authority with which He taught (Luke 4:32) found its guarantee in the authority backed by power (δύναμις), with which He forced the devils themselves to render obedience. The power which Jesus exercises by His simple word is opposed to the prescriptions and pretences of the exorcists; His cures differed from theirs, just as His teaching did from that of the scribes. In both cases He speaks as a master.

The account of this miracle is omitted by Matthew. It is found with some slight variations in Mark (Mark 1:23 et seq.). It is placed by him, as by Luke, at the beginning of this sojourn of Jesus at Capernaum. Instead of ῥίψαν, having thrown him, Mark says, σπαράξαν, having torn, violently convulsed him.

Instead of What word is this? Mark makes the multitude say: What new doctrine is this? an expression which agrees with the sense which we have given to λόγος in Luke. The meaning of the epithet new in the mouth of the people might be rendered by the common exclamation: Here is something new! According to Bleek, Mark borrowed his narrative from Luke. But how very paltry and insignificant these changes would seem! According to Holtzmann, the original source was the primitive Mark (A.), the narrative of which has been reproduced exactly by our Mark; whilst Luke has modified it with a view to exalt the miracle, by changing, for example, having torn into having thrown, and by adding on his own authority the details, with a loud voice, and without having done him any hurt. Holtzmann congratulates himself, after this, on having made Luke's dependence on the Proto-Mark quite evident. But the simple term word, which in Luke (Luke 4:36) supplies the place of Mark's emphatic expression, this new doctrine, contradicts this explanation. And if this miracle was in the primitive Mark, from which, according to Holtzmann, Matthew must also have drawn his narrative, how came the latter to omit an incident so striking? Holtzmann's answer is, that this evangelist thought another example of a similar cure, that of the demoniac at Gadara, the more striking; and to compensate for the omission of the healing at Capernaum, he has put down two demoniacs, instead of one, to Gadara...! How can such a childish procedure be imputed to a grave historian?