To Christ, Satan must bow
The Bible, in common with the ancient world, recognises there is ‘a transcendent dimension populated with a variety of immanent spiritual beings’. [24] Yet its understanding of this transcendent dimension, and how we should communicate with it, is unique because it locates all spiritual authority in YHWH, the God of Israel – and treats all supernatural power and knowledge obtained from any source other than YHWH as prohibited. Its approach to spiritual knowledge is exclusive, in contrast to the inclusive approach found in other contemporaneous societies.
In the New Testament, this exclusivity is reflected in Paul’s claim that God created all things ‘visible and invisible’ through Christ and for him (Colossians 1:16). This includes the spiritual world of angels (which itself includes different kinds of heavenly beings, such as the cherubim, the seraphim and the ‘living creatures’ around God’s throne; e.g. Ezekiel 1:5–14; Revelation 4:6–8).[25] Christ is also sovereign over evil angels (‘demons’), who are in rebellion against God, and who exert evil influence in the world, led by Satan, the head of demons.[26] Jesus recognised that evil spiritual powers were real and exorcising demons was a significant part of Jesus’ ministry (e.g. Luke 8:2).[27] Christians are in conflict with hostile spiritual powers, wrestling ‘[not] against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places’ (Ephesians 6:12). Yet all spiritual creatures are created beings and, though powerful, are all subject to Christ’s authority, as witnessed in Jesus’ earthly ministry (Mark 5:1–20) and in Jesus’ continuing ministry through the church, by his Spirit (Acts 16:16–18). As Paul writes in Philippians 2:9–11:
God has highly exalted him [Jesus] and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
To Christ, Satan must bow.
As a result of this exclusivity, witchcraft practices, common in the Ancient Near East, are prohibited to biblical Israel (e.g. Leviticus 19:26; Deuteronomy 18:10–11). For example, Ezekiel’s condemnation of the ‘soul-hunters’ (Ezekiel 13:17–19) is thought to have some parallels with the activities of Babylonian witches. Hunting for a ‘soul’ (nefesh) may have meant prowling around the streets with a view to secretly obtaining personal items belonging to a particular person (e.g. ‘hair… pieces of old clothing, or even dust on which the person had stepped’[28]). This could later be embodied in a manufactured image of the victim, which is then manipulated.[29] The upshot, according to Ezekiel, is that people are put to death ‘who should not die’ whilst others are kept alive ‘who should not live’ (verse 19), which may refer to the sort of ‘counterfeit resurrection’ associated with modern voodoo practitioners.
But the Bible’s prohibitions on witchcraft are not arbitrary. God’s good intention is for us to relate both to the ‘unseen real’ and the ‘seen real’ from the security of being in relationship with God, knowing him and trusting him for our lives and for the future. Accordingly, witchcraft is prohibited because it seeks to engage the spiritual world apart from God. As such, it pursues unrelational ways of trying to integrate the material and the spiritual realms. Witchcraft seeks to control and manipulate the spiritual and physical world; even if the purpose of the ritual is said to be benevolent. Control and manipulation spell death to any relationship and so witchcraft is the opposite of spiritual intimacy. As with any co-operation with the powers of darkness, we are robbed of our relational capacities. The subtleties of human character and personality are eroded. We become insensitive to others and lose the ability to read interpersonal signals and see our sin with clarity. Control and manipulation might look like cleverness but ultimately it isolates and dehumanises. Even so, giving up control, and the exercise of covert power, is hard.
The contrast between the biblical worldview and the world of witchcraft is well expressed in Psalm 91, which can be read as a celebration of the protective power of God over against demonic threats:
For he will deliver you … from the deadly pestilence; he will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler. (Psalm 91:3–4)
On this reading, the word translated ‘shield’ or ‘buckler’ (soherah, verse 4) refers to the encircling protection of God, inverting the idea of maleficent magic ‘surrounding’ a person. But this supernatural defence is all in the context of God’s ‘faithfulness’ (verse 4), of intimacy with God (‘Because he cleaves to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name’; verse 14) and being at home with him (verse 1). We do not need to know the future, or control events, or fear death, because we have intimacy with God, who is the end of all things.
Witchcraft, then, is a relational issue. It expresses our failure to enter into a relationship with God, to make discoveries about the spiritual and the material worlds in partnership with him, and to fully trust him with our lives and futures. Witchcraft robs us of spiritual reality. With a crooked finger, it points away from the speaking God who wants to be known, who always does everything that is necessary for us to enjoy a relationship with him – and who is not far from each one of us.
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