Paul Tillich on The Demonic (δαίμων)

“11. A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. 12. The demons begged Jesus, “Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them.” 13. He gave them permission, and the impure spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.”--Mark 5:1-20 (NIV): Jesus Restores a Demon-Possessed Man

“You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons.”
--1 Corinthians 10:21

  

People in the Ancient world believed in spirits and demons. The meaning of “demon,” δαίμων, (daimon) has changed  through the centuries when the concept did not originally have a negative connotation, but instead meant “a divine power," or “spirit.” The German word “Geist” means “spirit,” or “mind.” Plato wrote that it was a daimon that gave Socrates divine inspiration. It was commonly believed in Palestine that if the name of a demon could be known, one would have some power over the demon. Demons, or spirits were thought to live in unclean isolated places like tombs, caves, or away from water since water could destroy a demon. These spirits were active during the day and a danger to night travelers. Male demons were called “shedim.” Female demons “lilin," were thought to be especially dangerous to children, which is why children had guardian angels in Hebraic ontology (Matthew 18:10). In biblical times people believed that demons where the spirits of evil persons who had died and are still active in the world to carry out their evil plans. Genesis 6: 1-8, tells the story of deviant angels that seduced human women and whose children are demons. All diseases whether known or unknown, mental illness or somatic illness were attributed to demon possession. In the Gospel of Mark and Luke the manuscripts recorded the name of the town of Jesus encountering the possessed man as “Gerasenes” (Mark 5:1 and Luke 8:26) (AKJV); however, Matthew’s account (Matthew 8:28)(AKJV) has “Gergesenes” as the town’s name. It was most likely the town of Gadara which is only six miles southeast of the Sea of Galilee where the disciples likely landed. This spot on the shoreline had a large grazing area for animals and was near an ancient cemetery. The Alexandrian scholar Origen thought the town was Gergesa of which he personally knew about, but no one can be certain of the historical place. The discrepancy is most likely due to manuscript errors by persons not familiar with the geographical region. [1]

Tillich believed that his best-written works were those on the demonic, ‘Rechtfertigung und Zweifel’, (Faith and Justification), and his most popular book, The Courage to Be, (1952, pdf.). In Tillich’s semiotics the person and symbol participates in the Unconditional; however, the symbol itself is conditional. Mythological language is a symbolic language that allows the expression of the Unconditional that “designate the boundary line at which the symbolic and non-symbolic coincide” (Systematic Theology, Vol. II, pdf., p. 9). The Unconditional is the total, the infinite, “meaning itself” and  “the constitution of the sphere of meaning.”(“Tillich on God,” by Martin Leiner, in “The Cambridge Companion to Paul Tillich,” ed. by Russell Re Manning, pdf., p. 49). Tillich believed that symbols give consciousness the ability to experience other levels of reality by transcending—only a spatial metaphor is meant here--the ordinary rules of language to say the inexpressible. “The limit of my language is the limit of my world,” as Wittgenstein wrote. This other fuller dimension of reality is not another world above this world, but this world experienced with a greater depth of meaning.

There are multiple forms of the demonic in the realization of life. One demonic force, and the most important in Tillich’s theology, is that of ideological objectification that transforms people into objects, and things—that is the essence of dehumanization. There are “demonic structures,” or “structures of evil” that can determine our consciousness and decision-making. Tillich calls the demonic the “pseudo-Unconditional”(Ibid., p. 53). Demonization is essentially the exaltation of anything finite to the Unconditional, and identifies any symbol of the holy, for example, “with the holy itself”(Ibid., p. 104). In the New Testament demonic powers are the conflicts of power in history, and the “structure of destruction in personal and communal life”(Ibid., p. 53). Human power has periodic demonic upsurges that threaten all life on earth by affirming “a finite as infinite in the name of the holy.” Fanatical religious fundamentalism is the natural union of the religious with the demonic that threatens human life with “promises of supernatural rewards” (Ibid., p. 174). Religion, culture, and politics can all become demonic when put in place of the Unconditional. These demonic-destructive forces can even appear in the Church itself with sacramental activities, “in all holy objects, holy books, holy doctrines, holy rites”(Theology of Culture, Paul Tillich, pdf., p. 69). Tillich argued that the Church is to be the vigilant guardian that reveals these structures of self-sustaining dynamically generating creative evil in society in order to weaken its power.

The Demonic Possession of Roy Cohn

Unclean spirit come out! What is your name? “My name is Roy Cohn.” In the name of Jesus the Christ leave us so the American people can live! –A prayer.

Roy Marcus Cohn (1927-1986) was born into a Jewish family in New York City. Roy Cohn’s father, Judge Albert C. Cohn (1885-1959), was involved in Democratic politics and the father’s great-uncle was the founder of the Lionel Corporation toy train manufacturer. Roy Cohn was born into great wealth from both his parents and raised in an environment of opulence with unlimited educational resources at birth. Cohn was to become a new member of a mostly invisible American judicial oligarchy. At only fifteen years old Cohn was fixing traffic tickets for his teachers and illegally selling post office stations. Cohn was also a rabid anti-Semite.  Incredibly, Cohn was able to graduate from the Columbia Law School at the age of 20, and had to wait a year to pass the bar exam. This rabid fanatical anti-Communist believed that there was no right or wrong. With all the educational resources Cohn was born into he could not get beyond nihilism. With access to experienced lawyers in his father’s social oligarchic circles and Ivy league academic legal training, Cohn was able to damage and destroy untold numbers of American lives for many decades, and we are still feeling the effects of his actions to this very day. 

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was formed in 1938 to seek out Americans suspected of subversive activities and disloyalty, which included anyone who could be labeled socialists, communists, leftists, and liberals. Senator Joseph McCarthy and Cohn were not on the HUAC, but instead McCarthy chaired another committee called the Government Operations Committee and yet another subcommittee called the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in the U.S. Senate. As always, these shell committees are designed partly as bureaucratic insulation of one committee from another in case of scandal. From these various committee investigations more than 300 artists throughout America were blacklisted such as Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, and Yip Harburg who wrote song lyrics and parts of the movie script for “The Wizard of Oz.” Yip Harburg, possibility the greatest artist America ever had--who wrote, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” and “It’s Only A Paper Moon,”-- was blacklisted by the American judicial oligarchic system. Cohn was involved in the 1951 espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in which he committed numerous violations of judicial procedures which should not of led to their execution in 1953. From this public espionage trial the Director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, recommended Cohn as McCarthy’s chief counsel.

McCarthy, with Cohn as his chief counsel, began a series of sham investigations of the Army in 1953 that quickly led to their downfall. Evidently, McCarthy’s anti-Communist preaching became instead meddling in military affairs. The Army countered with an investigation of its own called the Army–McCarthy hearings which were about Cohn ordering Army officials to give preferential treatment to his gay lover, and oligarchic heir to the Schine hotel fortune, David Schine. This was a touchy issue. McCarthy was rumored to be gay. J. Edger Hoover was definitely gay and whose lover was his Associate Director of the FBI, Clyde Tolson. Political blackmail was their currency and power, but they were also protected. Both McCarthy and Cohn were disgraced by the hearings, but Cohn re-emerged to damage and destroy even more lives in the decades to follow.

The nihilist Roy Cohn would **** a corpse. In 1975 Cohn walked into the New York hospital room of the dying multi-millionaire Lewis Rosestiel who was comatose, put a pen into Rosestiel’s hand, and lifted a will to fake a signature making himself and Cathy Frank the beneficiaries. The stories are endless.

Many years later Cohn and his aide Roger Stone were key agents in swaying the 1980 Presidential election to a Reagan victory partly by Stone dropping off a suitcase full of money for liberal candidate John B. Anderson so to split Reagan’s political opposition in New York. Election manipulation was only one of Cohn’s activities. He was heavily involved in New York's Mafia scene and had numerous brushes with the law including professional misconduct, perjury, and witness tampering. And as if that was not bad enough, Cohn befriended the well-known New York mafia figure (at least well-known by law enforcement) Donald Trump who eagerly studied with religious passion Cohn’s criminal mind, illegal scams, intimidation tactics, defense strategies, and media management techniques.

There are two--but not mutually exclusive--ways to interpret the events surrounding Cohn’s life: the intentionalist view, and the structuralist view. The intentionalist view would interpret Cohn’s action as personal, psychological, and biographical. The focus would be on the subject’s character and psychology and this is certainly an important factor. On the other hand, this period of history could be viewed from a structuralist view that includes the political system, judicial system, social class, religious orthodoxy, and cultural norms of the time. The intentionalist point of view located on some hypothetical spectrum would tend to be “non-political” as it centers on the biographical factors behind these historical events. The structuralist view would be political since its focus is analyzing the socio-economic environment of the time. No single person could of possibly caused the wake of destruction that followed from Roy Cohn.

Maybe there can be a third theological interpretation of these events centered on the Geist of the age, or “Spirit” which can also mean the “Mind” of the age.

[1] See William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, Vol. I, Westminster Press Philadelphia, The Saint Andrew Press, Edinburgh, Scotland, First ed, 1956, p. 326). William Barclay describes demon mythology and gives a demythologized interpretation of Matthew’s account of Jesus and the possessed man. I am using Mark’s account because it is more detailed, but Barclay’s biblical commentary is more detailed in Matthew’s account.

…to continue Tillich on the Demonic with “The Demonic Attack on Sister Dianna Ortiz.”