This article is partly based on an autoethnographic qualitative research methodology. According to Ellis and Bochner (2000:733), autoethnography is a way to understand a certain culture or a group of people through the eyes and perspective of a researcher who is personally involved with the objects of the research. My personal experience, observations and reflections over a period of 40 years of cross-cultural gospel ministry in South Africa and several other African countries contributed to the insights presented in this article. Personal pastoral interaction with many suffering people, church leaders and theologians who will be referred to in the article, underscore similar findings of other authors also referred to in the article.

The words of C.S. Lewis in the introduction to his classic The screwtape letters (1942) are very relevant for South Africa and Africa:

This timeless caution is particularly true when we follow the history, literature and theological debates on Satan and demons and critically weigh contemporary missions and ministry practices (Buys 2015), and clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience (Col 3:15 – NIV) in the midst of intense suffering and deep pastoral needs of people.

In his thorough treatment of the subject of demonology, Leahy (1990:7) bemoans the fact that there is much vagueness and, at times, error in the Protestant ministries when Satan and the demons are mentioned. According to him, nothing of any importance has been written on the subject from a Reformed standpoint since John L. Nevius, a Presbyterian missionary in China, wrote his Demon possession and allied themes in 1894.

What Manala (2004) wrote about the relevance of the theology and ministry of the Hervormde Kerk in Suidelike Afrika is also applicable to other types of Reformed churches in Africa.

Van Wyk (2004) from the Hervormde Kerk, also pleads for more theological consideration of witchcraft, when he wrote:

In an in-depth qualitative research article, Janse van Rensburg (2010) states about the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa:

In a missiological research study on healing ministry among the Zulu speaking people troubled by evil spirits, Sietse Veenstra (2003) explained how the Reformed churches (nickname: ‘Doppers’) are quite open to do more intensive study on demonology and several theologians called for the equipping of pastors to do relevant pastoral ministry in this regard. He also pointed out how relevant an in-depth knowledge of witchcraft practices is for cross-cultural ministry in KwaZulu Natal (cf. also Vergeer 2002).

Although the main task and desire of the Christian is to grow in amazement and wonder of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus as Lord (Php 3:8), it is part of Paul’s instruction that Christians must put on the whole armour of God so that they may be able to stand against the schemes of the Devil (Eph 6:11 – ESV). Geisler (2016) points out that ‘Of the twenty-nine references to Satan in the Gospels, Jesus made twenty-five of them.’

Thus, the study of Satan and demons is a major facet of God’s revelation that provides knowledge, insight and discernment about Satan’s character, purposes and spiritual wickedness. That may enable Christians to withstand in the evil day and, having done all, to stand firm (Eph 6:13).

The 17th century Puritan, Tomas Brookes (1984) formulated as follows:

The development of secularism in the Western world elevated the secular to the point where it is believed that nothing exists beyond that which can be seen and measured. Leahy (1990:132) quotes several ‘liberal’ theologians who discount the biblical account of demonic activity. In their view, angels, whether fallen or unfallen, including the Devil, belong to the realm of myth, and reflect an outside and pagan influence on the writers of Scripture. In his dissertation, accepted by the Free University of Amsterdam under supervision of Dr. A. van de Beek, Dr. L.F. de Graaff (2004) defended the opinion that angels disappeared to a growing extent from Western churches and theology.

The worldview that there is nothing transcendent to which the secular is accountable, led to many people being ignorant of the nature and schemes of Satan and therefore they become sitting ducks for his attacks (Sproul 2011:30).¹

Some on the other hand go way beyond the teaching of Scripture and find a demon behind every problem they face as described by Watkins (1990):

In his sincere pastoral concern for young Christians, Paul wrote that we should not be outwitted by Satan because of ignorance of his strategies (2 Co 2:11). Paul also warns that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light (2 Co 11:14, 15).

Merrill Unger (1991:20) says that in Early Church history, writers such as Justyn Martyr, Lactantius and Augustine dealt with this subject, but ‘For nearly a millennium and a half, for some strange reason, the true Biblical doctrine of demons was hardly spoken of.’ By the 19th century, he (Unger 1994:viii) says: ‘… the whole subject was sneered at by many as a superstitious idea which we had well get rid of, or was quickly passed over in theological circles’.

The historical developments, the realities of struggles with witchcraft in Africa and the ignorance of young people who grew up in Reformed churches, raises the question: What answers may Reformed perspectives, based on traditional Reformed hermeneutics, offer for a balanced pastoral approach in dealing with demonology?²

In order to exercise the same pastoral concern for the people, God has entrusted to our care pastors and theologians who need to know the historical developments and present-day trends of thinking concerning Satan and demons.

Christian thought about Satan remained fairly consistent until the 17th and 18th centuries.

From about 1850, the ushering in of the Age of Enlightenment (Rath 1999–2003:96) started as a consequence of rationalism industrialisation and the rise of modern science. Human reason and intellectual proof was advocated as the primary source for legitimacy and authority. Millions in the Western world were influenced to embrace an overoptimistic view of the so-called ‘scientific approach’.

Religious persecutions and wars also pushed people toward scepticism about religion. Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud helped to create a worldview according to which supernatural powers could not interrupt the natural realms of cause and effect. Since then, a growing number have dismissed the Devil as a figment of human imagination or as the ‘psychology of the ancients’ no longer relevant in efforts to explain evil today. In the radical form, expressed by Nietzsche: God is dead, Satan is dead (Hinson 1992:472).

A rapidly growing number of theological and philosophical scholars developed a method of interpreting Scriptures in which they demythologise and allegorise the biblical records on evil spirits. Rudolph Bultmann (1958:17) – soon followed by many others – made an attempt to make the message of the Bible fit a European enlightenment paradigm that, he reckoned, did not share the worldview of the 1st-century Mediterranean people. He argued that the biblical language on the spirit world and the miraculous was merely a human way of speaking about God and not describing what was happening in actuality.

This kind of theologising, marginalised the Devil more and more to the periphery in Christian thinking and stimulated a worldview with a flaw of the excluded middle (Hiebert 1982; Moyo 1994:59–60).

The growing movement of liberal theology in some mainline churches in South Africa is leading to a total denial of the existence of Satan and demons. Janse van Rensburg, a theologian of the Dutch Reformed Church, highlighted this in his book with the title: The occult debate (1999). He made it clear that epistemological views on occultism within the Reformed tradition have drastically parted their ways in South Africa. During the General Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church in 2007, a report on a ministry of deliverance denied the existence of the Devil and claimed that it would be unscientific to embark on an empirical research in this regard (Dutch Reformed Church 2007:18–30). Kirkpatrick (2007:19) expressed a view at the seminary of the Dutch Reformed Church in Pretoria that any ministry of deliverance or theological discussion on demon possession and other forms of demonic influences are to be perceived as nonsensical (cf. also Janse van Rensburg 2010:679–697).

Theologians of this camp speak about the Devil with a tongue-in-the-cheek attitude. They refuse to believe in the existence of the Devil as a person and ridicule the whole idea. This denial of Satan’s real personal existence usually takes the form of defining the idea of Satan as the mythical personification of evil, but not actually as a being who really exists. Schleiermacher (as quoted by Viljoen & Floor 2006) wrote:

Schleiermacher expresses the opinion that believing in the Devil is merely a form of escapism. However, people who have done research on the field of occultism and people who are involved in a ministry of deliverance would simply not accept such an assumption (cf. De Beer & Van den Berg 2007:24–30; Ouweneel 1978).

Another development is that of Hendrikus Berkhof (1952:25) who, in following Karl Barth, argued that Paul’s language concerning the powers in Ephesians and elsewhere was an attempt by the 1st-century person to describe real social, economic, psychological and political structures that affected their everyday lives. He also denies the existence of a personal being called the Devil, insisting that it is a ‘collective symbolization of evil’ and ‘the collective of weight of human fallenness’. Rather than personal evil spirits, these forces are the inner or spiritual principles of an institution or nation – the culture, ethos and gestalt that affect how things are run.

Throughout history, overtly evil socio-political systems such as the idolatry of the Roman Caesars, the anti-Semitism of Hitler’s Nazism, the evil of human slavery, the atheism of the Communists, the dehumanisation of Apartheid, the wickedness of the ethnic cleansing in parts of Africa, racism and terrorism of all forms, and the greed of capitalism have all demonstrated the extent to which the evil powers can influence world systems and seek to thwart the blessings of humanity.

In covert forms, evil powers continue to influence humanity in the addiction of people in the drugs culture, in postmodern hedonism, the explosion of the pornographic industry, the disdain for the sanctity of human life, and the tyranny of secularism which denies people their true liberty to serve God. In personal pastoral counselling experience, I observed that young people who got involved with satanic covens all became hooked on drugs, pornography and eventually violent bizarre and troubled behaviour.

Through the tragic history of Western civilisation since 1914, the onset of the First World War, the Devil, as a person who is evil, has also made a comeback. The unimaginable evilness of evil in the 20th century convinced many people to believe in the Devil again. Christopher Nugent (1989:30), a historian at the University of Kentucky, has labelled the period beginning with the Third Reich ‘The kingdom of night: A century of Satan’. He points out how the Western world has begun to lose its faith not in religion, but in science and the autonomous human reason. Secularism has produced two devastating world wars; industrialisation has created a series of mounting ecological disasters, and the West has begun to lose its faith not in religion, but in science and the autonomous human reason. The moral crisis of our time, says David Harvey (1990:41), is a crisis of Enlightenment thought. The ‘inevitable’ triumph of atheistic secularism did not happen. At a conference of the Europe branch of World Reformed Fellowship at Utrecht in October 2007, Peter Jones (2007; cf. also Jones 1979), in his paper with the title ‘Paganism, the step-child of secularism’, pointed out how wide and deep issues like witchcraft, alternative healing and occultism is spreading in Western Europe.³ He referred to Andre Malraux who, in the middle of the 20th century at the high point of the achievements of secularism, predicted that the 21st century would be religious. Jones also agreed with postmodern deconstructionist, Mark C. Taylor, professor at Williams College, who observed that the 21st century would be dominated by religion in ways that were inconceivable just a few years ago. ‘The irony is delicious’, says theologian Don Carson (1996:100), ‘the modernity which has arrogantly insisted that human reason is the final arbiter of truth has spawned a stepchild that has arisen to slay it’ (cf. also Lovelace 1976:65–90).

One example is that, in postmodern New Age circles, one finds an obsession with and many speculations about angels. With regard to angels – which overlap with the doctrine of demonology – Noll (1998:11) makes the following remark: ‘To theologize about angels is a most dubious undertaking in our day. But to ignore the subject of angels is to miss one of the comeback stories of the century.’

In postmodern circles, the view is propagated that one should seek to communicate with angels in light of a belief that every human being has a guardian angel. Such a guiding spirit is regarded as more approachable than God and therefore you should pray to your guardian angel. They also believe in healing angels and comforting angels (cf. Joubert 1997:53). The New Age Movement also encourages people to discover their psychic abilities. Interest in spiritism, witchcraft and clairvoyance (predicting the future) has drastically grown among all layers of society. Celebrities, receiving entertainment awards, publicly credit their ‘spirit guides’ for their success. The contemporary question for many today is not the medieval query about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but how one may contact, converse with and ‘hug’ one’s guardian angel.

African people treat demonology with great respect. Their worldview has given much space to these phenomena. Therefore, when the West meets the non-West, there has previously been difficulty in reconciling differences. Demon activity is very real for African people as being pointed out by several scholars from South Africa and Africa (Kathide 2007; Kato 1975; Manala 2004; Mbiti 1975; Nyirongo 1997; Turaki 1999).

In South Africa, the HIV pandemic has led to a new explosion of witchcraft, steeped in occult rituals and practices, and witchcraft medications (cf. sociological research of Ashforth 2001). People are so desperate to find healing from HIV and AIDS that witchdoctors and wizards have grabbed the market to advertise potions and rituals for healing. Research projects have revealed that muti shops around Soweto have become a major economic endeavour (Gossmann 2012). I have personally been at the sickbeds and deathbeds of terminally ill AIDS patients who were mixing sangoma muti [witchdoctor or traditional healer medications]⁴ with antiretroviral (ARV) medication that cost them around R2000 – more than the ARV medication – with the reasoning that it will call on ancestral spirits to rescue them from the ‘bad luck’ of demonic spirits.

In significant parts of African Christian circles, there is no difficulty at all in accepting the existence and reality of the influence of evil spirits. Confusion in this regard in Nigeria and the Congo is so bad that Pentecostal pastors demand large amounts of money to exorcise evil spirits from vulnerable children to assist their parents or caregivers to be liberated from all sorts of illnesses which are caused – according to their beliefs – by children who are possessed by a demon (cf. Ellison 2018).

Any first-time visitor to an African initiated church service in any of the cities of West, Central and Southern Africa will be most impressed by the frequent reference to the Devil and his demons. I observed prayers for exorcising demons binding Satan and delivering the oppressed in several church services. Not only are the worshippers conscious of the battle against evil spirits, but many church members and preachers specialise as ‘prayer warriors’ who wage spiritual warfare against evil spirits.

A number of African scholars have argued that the situational context of Africa demands a contextualisation that regards specific teachings as special cases for Africans. As eloquently put by Emmanuel Asante (2001:358), ‘Understood as deliverance not only from one’s sinful selfhood but also from evil forces, salvation must address the concepts of evil and sin in the African context.’ It makes no sense to the African to deny the presence of evil powers or to have a Saviour who could not provide a complete and decisive victory over such powers.

Asante (2001) further explains:

The concept of generational curses is an endemic worldview in parts of Africa (Makashinyi 2019). In Christian circles, it is based on an invalid understanding of Old Testament phrases such as ‘visiting the iniquity of the fathers unto the third and fourth generations of those who hate God’ (Ex 20:5; 34:7; Nm 14:18; Dt 5:9). Marilyn Hickey (2000:13) defines it as ‘an un-cleansed iniquity that increases in strength from generation to generation affecting the members of that family and all who come into relationship with that family’. A failure to emphasise God’s sovereign grace and the complete victory of Christ over such generational spirits, only fosters a mentality that paralyses believers.

What Joseph Quayesi-Amakye (2015) states about phenomena in Ghana is typical of many African countries:

The same teachings about deliverance became very popular in the US through Frank Peretti’s two spiritual warfare novels, This present darkness (1988) and Piercing the darkness (1989), which captivated so many readers that more than 3.5 million copies have been sold.

In riveting storytelling, Peretti manages to excite imaginations on how evil spirits may operate to influence the daily happenings in villages and towns across the USA and in the world at large.

Although merely novels, Peretti’s creative accounts have quickly influenced a theological worldview in some evangelical circles that they now see demons underneath almost every mug in the kitchen or table in the study and behind every bush. Without intending to do so, he has facilitated a systemisation of the evil powers in the world far beyond what the Bible teaches (see Guelich 1991:33–64 for analysis of Peretti).

Somewhat contemporaneous with the publication of Peretti’s works, Peter Wagner (Donald A. McGavran Professor of Church Growth at Fuller Theological Seminary) became a leader of a growing spiritual warfare movement that promotes direct power encounters with demons and territorial spirits as a vital aspect of effective missions. Wagner (1993:200) says: ‘The real battle for both world evangelisation and social justice is a spiritual battle and our principal weapon of spiritual warfare is prayer.’

At the International Lausanne II Conference in Manila in 1989, the spiritual warfare movement gained an official hearing from evangelical leaders when a ‘Spiritual Warfare Track’ was established under the direction of Charles Kraft. The establishment of the AD 2000 United Prayer Track and the Spiritual Warfare Network under Wagner’s leadership further strengthened the movement. Since then, conferences on spiritual warfare have been held throughout the US. This fixation on our supernatural enemy has given rise to a phenomenon of books on ‘spiritual warfare’: by last count, over 400 books have been published on this subject in the 1990s!

Clinton Arnold (1992) challenges us to ‘get the upper hand on [demons] before they get it on us’. He evaluates such aspects of contemporary spiritual warfare as ‘demolishing strongholds’, ‘demon possession’, ‘binding the strong man’, ‘strategic level spiritual warfare’ (SLSW), ‘warfare prayer’, ‘territorial spirits’, ‘spiritual mapping’, ‘identificational repentance’, the ‘genealogical transmission of demons’, ‘deliverance ministries’, ‘power encounters’ versus ‘truth encounters’, et cetera. Some of the claims made by spiritual warfare writers are alarming.

This approach fits well with traditional African worldview and is embraced in parts of Africa. With regard to the concept of territorial spirits, Opoku Onyinah (2004:337) points out that it is ‘the notion that the demons assume a hierarchy with powers of greater and lesser ranks, and having specific geographical assignments’. Derived from Daniel 10, the teaching emphasises that territorial spirits wield their influence over particular geographical regions, tribes, people groups, neighbourhoods and other significant social networks. The result of their influence is to change the course of the social, economic and political situations in the world.

Systematising this teaching further, some interpreters on the continent of Africa have speculated that these demonic powers have specific names that are required to be known if spiritual warfare is to be successful. In yet a further interpretation, the concepts of ancestral spirits are merged with territorial spirits to produce a doctrine that requires nations to exorcise the demons of economic mismanagement and corruption before the African continent may begin to prosper (Asamoah-Gyadu 2004:389–406).

All these extremes create the necessity for a comprehensive understanding of a biblical and valid hermeneutically based perspective on demonology.

As David Powlison says: ‘A great deal of fiction, superstition, fantasy, nonsense, nuttiness, and downright heresy flourishes in the church under the guise of “spiritual warfare” in our time’ (quoted by Taylor 2012).

It often distracts the attention from the real warfare which we need to wage and mislead Christians to bypass the most important issues for the church and God’s kingdom.

In considering the publications about Satan, demons and angels, it is apparent that paths within theological approaches and church practices around demonology separate on opinions about the authority of Scripture and valid hermeneutics.

It seems that those who deny the ontological existence of Satan and demons, and those who become obsessed with the Devil and demons have one thing in common. They do not take the authority of Scriptures seriously and, as a result, they apply a hermeneutical approach in their interpretation of passages and its applications on phenomena that, in fact, denies the unity of Scripture and the basic Reformational rule that Bible passages should be understood within their context, that the goal or scopus of a text should determine the meaning of a passage, and doctrine should be formulated through comparing various passages that deals with the same truths (Sacra Scriptura sui ipsius interpres). As Berkouwer (1975) formulates:

Heyns (1978) formulates the same principle as follows:

This inevitably leads to the epistemological question of how one comes to the truth. Crucial questions that should be asked are the following:

Scott Moreau (as quoted by Van der Meer 2008:28) rightly states: ‘As Evangelicals we can never allow personal narratives to replace the investigative methods of history, the social sciences and theology which have stood the test of time.’

Reformed Christians have always primarily put their faith in the Lord who has revealed himself in his Word. It is his Word that has the authority in our lives. This means that our personal experience is never the authority upon which we base our beliefs on Satan and demons.

The words of the Holy Spirit in Scriptures teach, rebuke, correct and train Christians. Personal experiences or the experiences of anyone else, no matter how wise or learned they may appear, may never become primary sources of faith.

Considering all the data in the New Testament demonology, it may briefly be summed up as follows (Oesterley 1906:442):

It would be most unscientific to ignore the fact that, in spite of many points of similarity and even of essential identity, the demonology of the Gospels offers something sui generis and differs significantly from Jewish beliefs in the times of the New Testament. Oesterley (1906) points the following differences out:

Non-believers who are worshipping false gods are in fact worshipping demons. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:20: ‘… what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God’.

When God commissioned Paul, he sent him to turn the Gentiles, the unsaved, ‘from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God’ (Ac 26:18).

Not only does Satan hold the unsaved under his reign, but he also blinds the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the gospel (2 Cor 4:4).

By worshipping demons, participating in practices of divination, telling fortune or interpreting omens, or being a sorcerer, a charmer, a medium, a necromancer or one who inquires information from the dead, people open themselves up to demonic control. Such things are an abomination to the Lord so that eventually their thoughts, their deeds and their identity more and more become dominated by an alternate personality – by another being (Koch 1986; Ouweneel 1978).

Demonised people are not just hallucinating when they say that they are hearing voices. They are really hearing voices. They are not just manifesting another personality that they invented from trauma to cope with suffering. This is what some people do, but maybe they have rather opened themselves up through lies, temptations, accusations, spiritism, demonism, occultism and addiction to the point where they actually have demons – unclean spirits at work in them and through them to destroy them. Richard Gallagher (2016), a board-certified psychiatrist and a professor of clinical psychiatry at New York Medical College recently stated in an article in Washington Post:

Medication can help for some who have a physical condition, but those who are demonised, need Jesus. They also need repentance and truth, and the indwelling presence and power of God the Holy Spirit so that they will be controlled by the power of God and not the power of the enemy.

Demons do not own or possess any Christians. A Christian is God’s sole possession. However, Christians can open themselves up to demonic influences. Even though they belong to God, they can participate with Satan as Peter does on one occasion where Jesus had to say to him: ‘Get behind me, Satan’ (Mt 16:23; Mk 8:33). Satan did not fill and control Peter, but Peter was listening to him, speaking for him, working for him. So Jesus rebuked Satan and ultimately Peter’s work with him. An unbeliever can end up like the demonised man who was totally controlled. Believers can end up like Peter, participating in the enemy’s work even though they belong to Jesus.

The most important fact about Satan that Scripture gives us is that he is a defeated foe. Colossians 2:15 tells us that Jesus Christ disarmed the powers and authorities, and ‘made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the Cross’. Satan has lost the big war. He is now engaged in guerrilla warfare against us and we can defeat him in this day-to-day struggle. Paul’s instruction to put on the full armour of God is a command.

Christians clearly have the identity (being in Christ), the authority (being seated with Christ) and the mandate to resist Satan and his demons. They do so not based on their own goodness, but because of Christ’s finished work on the cross. Because the One who is in us is greater than the one who is in the world (1 Jn 4:4), Christians can successfully stand against demonic schemes. Their weapons in this ongoing struggle include their authority as seated with Christ at the right hand of God, far above every power (Eph 1:15–2:6), the name of Jesus (Phlp 2:10), their spiritual armour (Eph 6:18), prayer (a must in all cases – Mk 9:29), simple resistance (Jm 4:7), forgiveness (Eph 4:26–32), and exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit (Gl 5:22–23; Eph 4:22–29; 6:10–18).

I agree with Collins (1976:239), Gallagher (2016) and Quayesi-Amakye (2016) that it is necessary to ‘demystify’ demonic activities. People need to be assured of God’s sovereign control over all satanic hordes, including witchcraft. They also need to be taught to know what the Bible says about the Devil and his strategies that thrives on Christians’ ignorance of their position in Christ. Pastors must take up their roles as spiritual shepherds of the church so that unwarranted prophetic excesses can at least be minimised. In order to help pastors and Christian counsellors to practice proper discernment when they counsel people suffering from demonic possession or warning signs of occultism and witchcraft, they should opt for teamwork including psychological and psychiatric experts as well as prayer support of spiritually mature Christians

Paul notes that, through the church, ‘the manifold wisdom of God’ will be made known to the principalities and powers. As the church, as the bride of Christ, extends the gospel, the very presence of the church is a declaration of the manifold wisdom of God to these evil powers. John Stott’s explanation (as quoted by Asumang 2008:8) of this verse is not just poetic, ‘The multi-racial, multi-cultural community is like a beautiful tapestry … History is the theatre, the world is the stage, and the church members in every land are the actors.’

The testimony of the Scriptures regarding Satan and demons is clear and cohesive. They are angelic entities who oppose God’s sovereign control. They seek to work out their unholy rebellion by influencing people to live in a way contrary to God’s expressed intentions. At the same time, they remain under his sovereignty and can be used by him to affect the divine plan. Christians must submit themselves to God and resist the attacks of Satan and his hosts. To do so, they must be aware of the basic truths presented in Scripture concerning not just the ontology of Satan and demons, but their methods, as they attempt to influence people’s lives. Once aware, they are to take their stand in Christ and oppose the working of demons, whether personally, corporately or in the structures and systems of society.