What is a demon?

Vivificat - From Contemplation to Action ^ | 11 January 2012 | TDJ

[Teófilo]

Author: Fr. José Antonio Fortea | Source: Summa Daemoniaca: Tratado de Demonología y Manual de Exorcistas (Spanish Edition)

Brethren, Peace and Good to all of you in Jesus’ Name.

For awhile now I’ve been meaning to share with you a translation of Question #1 of Fr. José Antonio Fortea’s work, Summa Demoniaca. Fr. Fortea’s work is a huge undertaking, a treatise on demonology and exorcism. In it he goes much more in depth into this issue that many other writers I know. I want to share this question with you because I wish to use it as a “jumping board” to other issues I want to discuss with you, such as the nature of evil, war, homicide, sexual abuse, and the like. Yep, I know, “heavy issues” that I can only speak about only if I build first an authoritative foundation and Fr. Fortea’s work - and as you will see later, one by Venerable Fr. John Hardon, S.J. - will provide such a foundation. Let us pray that the Holy Spirit assist us in this endeavor and strengthens us in order to provide answers to a world thirsty for the Truth. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

[Translation note: Fr. Fortea recurs frequently to ellipses, expressions in which the subject of the sentence is not explicitly stated, but it is known and implied in the sentence. This works well in Spanish but in English it adds ambiguity and fog that may lead the reader to misunderstand. I’ve added those subjects in brackets to aid the translation. I’ve also added some questions for meditation and reflection at the end].

What is a Demon?

A demon is a being of a spiritual nature condemned for eternity. He doesn’t have a body, nor does he possess matter of any subtle kind in his being, nor anything like matter at all. His existence is singularly spiritual. Spíritus in Latin means breath. Since they lack a body, demons do not feel the slightest inclination toward any sin committed with a body. Therefore, gluttony and lust are impossible in them. They can tempt men to sin in those matters but demons only understand those sins in a merely intellectual way, since they lack bodily senses. The sins of demons are, therefore, exclusively spiritual.

Demons were not created evil. They were offered a test at the time of their creation, the test they had to undergo prior to acquiring the vision of the Divine Essence. Before this test, they saw God but they didn’t see His Essence. Even the very verb “to see” is an approximation, for the angels’ vision is an intellectual vision.

Since many will find difficult to understand how angels could see or know God without seeing or knowing His Essence, [it could be said in the way of] a comparison that they saw God as a kind of light and heard Him as majestic, holy voice but his Countenance remained hidden from them. All things considered, although they could not penetrate His Essence, they knew that He was Holy, the Holy among Holies.

Before acquiring the beatific vision of His Divine Essence, God tested them. While undergoing the test, some obeyed and some disobeyed. Those whose disobedience became irreversible became demons. They themselves became what they are. No one made them that way.

There were phases in the angelic psychology before they turned into demons. These phases didn’t take place in our material time, but in the aeon. (What’s this aeon will be explained later in this work).

Since they took place in the aeon, these phases would seem to us human beings as having occurred almost instantaneously. However, what to us would seem so brief, to them it was a long time indeed. The transformation phases from angel to demon were as follows: First, they doubted; a doubt that disobeying the Divine Law was better than not. At the moment in which they voluntarily accepted the possibility that disobeying God was an option to consider, they sinned. In the beginning, accepting this doubt constituted a venial sin which little after little evolved toward grave sin. Yet in the beginning, none of them during this first phase were willing to move away from God, not even the devil. That happened later, when what they had chosen with their will began to settle into their intellects, despite the judgment of their own, very same intellects reminding them that such disobedience went against reason. But their wills kept moving away from God and as a consequence, their intellects began accepting as true the evil thing their wills had chosen. Their intellects continued to consolidate their error. The will to disobey continued to consolidate, becoming deeper in its determination; their intellects continued to seek more and more reasons to increasingly justify their stance. This process led them in the end into mortal sin which took place at a concrete moment, [in time, in the aeon] through an act of their will. In other words, each angel reached a moment in which he not only wanted to disobey, but also chose to have an existence outside the Divine Law. It was no longer that their love for God had grown cold, that theirs was not a minor disobedience to something predetermined that was hard for them to grasp, but that in their wills appeared the idea of a destiny apart from the Trinity, an autonomous destiny.

Those who persevered in this thought and decision commenced a process of justification of their decision. They began a process in which they tried to convince themselves that God wasn’t God; that God was but just another spirit. He might have been their Creator, but thought that He had flaws, errors. They started to caress the possibility already present in their intellects: the possibility of an existence apart from God and from his norms. This existence apart from God appeared to them as a freer existence. God’s norms, the obedience owed to Him and to His will, appeared progressively to them as something oppressing, too heavy [a burden]. They began seeing God as a tyrant to be faced-down in a quest to free themselves from Him. In this new phase of estrangement it’s not that they simply sought a destiny apart from God, but that God himself appeared to them as an obstacle in the path to that freedom. They thought that the beauty and felicity of the angelic world could have been greater and freer without an oppressor. Why is there a Spirit above all other spirits? Why is it that His will must be imposed over all others’? We are not children, we are not slaves, they must have thought. God was no longer an element that has been left behind, but was someone who had begun to turn into something evil to them. Thus, they began to hate Him. God’s calls to these angels to return to him were seen in turn as unacceptable intrusions. In this phase, their hatred toward God grew in some more than others.

It may be surprising than an angel may come to hate God. It needs to be understood that to them, God was no longer the Good, but the Obstacle, the Oppressor, the Chain of the Commandments. This hatred was born from the energies of the angelic wills who resisted the calls from God who sought after them as a father. To tell it in terms intelligible to us, their hatred was born as a logical reaction of a will who must cling to its decision of abandoning the father’s house. It’s like saying that someone who wishes to leave his father’s house, does so in the beginning simply because he wants to leave, but then the father calls after him repeatedly and the child ends up saying leave me alone. God called after them because He knew that the longer their wills were estranged from Him, the more they would cling to their estrangement.

Of course, many of the angels who had become estranged at first returned. This is the great struggle in the heavens spoken of in Revelation 12: 7-9:

Then war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels battled against the dragon. The dragon and its angels fought back, but they did not prevail and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The huge dragon, the ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who deceived the whole world, was thrown down to earth, and its angels were thrown down with it.

How is it that angels can fight among themselves? Since they lack a material body, what kind of weapons can be used? An angel is a spirit, therefore the only combat they can engage in is of an intellectual kind. Their war was an intellectual war. The only weapons they could wield were intellectual arguments. God sent grace to each angel to return him to fidelity, or to keep him in it. The [good] angels gave arguments to the rebel ones to compel them to return to obedience. The rebel angels retorted with their reasons to justify their posture and to introduce rebellion among the faithful ones. In this angelic conversation involving thousands of millions of angels there were casualties on each side: there were rebel angels that returned to obedience and there were faithful angels that were convinced or seduced by the evil reasoning [expounded by the rebels].

Their transformation into demons was progressive. With the passage of time - since the aeon is a kind of time - some hated God more, some less. Some became more prideful, others not as much. Each rebel angel began deforming more and more, each one in a set of specific sins. In the same way, but in reverse, the faithful angels became progressively holier. Some angels became holier in one virtue and others holier in another. Each angel focused on one or another aspect of the Divinity. Each angel loved with a measure of love. That’s why within the ranks of the faithful angels there started to be many distinctions, according to the virtues that each angel practiced the most.

Each angel had its own nature given by God, but each angel sanctified himself in a measure proper to the grace God granted to him in a manner corresponding to the angel’s will. Again, this is true for the demons too, but in reverse. Each demon received his nature from God, but each one deformed himself according to his own estranged ways.

That’s why the battle stopped when each one ended up pigeon-holed in his own posture irreversibly. The moment came when only accidental changes registered in each spiritual being. For the demons, the moment came in which each one kept himself firm in his imprudence, jealousy, hatred, envy, pride, egolatry, etc.

The war came to an end. They could have continued arguing, talking, disputing, exhorting each other for thousands of years in human terms, but only accidental changes would have taken place. It was at that moment when the angels were admitted to the Divine Presence while demons were allowed to their estrangement, to their state of moral prostration that each one had elected for himself.

As one can see, it’s not that demons are sent to an enclosed place of fire and torture, instead, they are left as they are, abandoned to their freedom, to their will. They are not taken anywhere since there is no place to take them. [Since they lack material bodies] they occupy no space, therefore there is no place to which to take them. There are neither tools of torture, nor flames that could torment them, nor chains that can tie them. Nor did the faithful angels entered any place. They simply received the grace of the beatific vision. The heaven of the angels, and the demons’ hell, are states. Each angel carries his own heaven within himself no matter where he is. Each demon, wherever he is, carries within his spirit his own hell.

The point of no return is the moment in which an angel sees God’s essence.That’s because after seeing God nothing will change the angel’s mind; after seeing God, the angel will not choose to do anything that would minimally offend Him. The angel’s intellect understood that offending Him would be tantamount to choosing dung over a treasure. [For the angel], sin became impossible after this moment. Before entering heaven the angel understood who God was; he understood what God’s holiness supposed, his omnipotence, wisdom, love...After the angel was admitted to contemplate His Essence, he didn’t only understand it, but he then saw it. That is, the angel sees His holiness, love, wisdom, etc. Once the [angelic] spirit sees [God’s essence] he is filled with such love, such veneration, that he would never, under any condition, would want to separate himself from It. Hence, sin becomes impossible [for the angel].

The demon remains irremediably tied to his choice from the moment God decides not to insist any more. The moment in which God stops sending graces of repentance is that moment, since every grace of repentance can only be overcome by the demon’s reaffirmation of his hatred. There comes a point in which God sees that sending more graces the demon’s way serves only to reinforce the demon in his choice. There comes a point in which the God who is Love turns His back and allows his son to continue on his way, allowing the demon to pursue his life apart [from Him].

From one vantage point we could say that there isn’t a unique moment in which the angel transforms himself into a demon, since we’re dealing with a slow, gradual, evolutionary process. But from another vantage point we could say that there was a precise moment in which the angelic spirit had to choose between rejecting or not his Creator, no matter how long the previous (and succeeding) process had been.

It has been stated before that within this process it is possible to turn back, that’s the war in heaven spoken about in Rev. 12: 7-9. But there’s a point in the war in which the demons drew further and further away. There was no sense to keep insisting. The Creator respected the freedom of each.

The devil is depicted in pictures and sculptures as deformed and that’s an appropriate representation, since he is a deformed angelic spirit. He’s still an angel, it’s only his intellect and will which is deformed and nothing else. In everything else he’s still as angel as he was after being created. In definitive terms, the devil is an angel that has chosen his destiny far from God. He is an angel who wants to live free, without anything holding him down. The interior loneliness in which he will find himself world without end, the jealousy he feels when he understands that the faithful ones enjoy the vision of an Infinite Being, moves him to blame himself for his sin time and time again. He hates himself, he hates God, and he hates those who provided him with reasons to estrange himself from God.

Yet, not all demons suffer in the same way. During the war, some angels became more deformed than others. Those who deformed more, suffer more; those who deformed less, suffer less. Again, we must remember that their deformity lies in their intellect and will.

Their intelligence is deformed, darkened, for the proper reasons with which a given angel justified his departure, his liberation. The will imposed to the intellect its decision and the intellect saw itself impelled to justify that decision. The [angelic] intellect functioned as a justification mechanism, to argue what his will impelled him to accept. As we can see, this process has an extraordinary similarity to the process of debasement seen in human beings. We should not forget that we human beings are enfleshed spirits. If we set aside for a moment the sins proper to the body, the internal psychological process that leads a person to join the mafia, or become a guard in a concentration camp, or a terrorist, is substantially the same process [as with the angels who became demons].

That’s because a man’s sins are sins of his spirit, even when he commits them with his body.

A child has a childhood and so does the angel as soon as he was created, because he lacked experience. Human persons receive temptations from other people, so did the angels from their kind. Men can be led to sin by means of [purely] mental constructs such as the motherland, a family’s honor, and the well-being of a child. An angelic spirit also holds before him great intellectual constructs that, although different from those held by humans, supposes a complex correlation between the angelic world and the human world known to us.

We human beings are also spiritual beings although we are endowed with bodies, and we only have to look deep within us to understand how one can fall into sin, how one can debase oneself. When we do so, it is then when the sin of the angels become easier to understand, when it is not as remote from us as we may think.

Questions for Discussion and Reflection

1. Fr. Fortea stated that there was a point in time in the process of estrangement when God stops granting graces of repentance. Fr. Fortea also stated that there is a “complex correlation” and similarities between the angelic world, and ours. Think about this: do we face a moment ourselves in which God stops granting graces of repentance and leaves us to our choices? What would that moment be?

2. Suppose that a human being dies having committed many venial sins, including intrinsically evil deeds which they committed without having full knowledge of the intrinsic evil of the deed, or which they were forced to commit, or were unable to fully and willingly acquiesce. They don’t deserve hell but they cannot enter the Beatific Vision immediately due to their ignorance and impurity, although they are redeemed by Christ. What would be the state of those souls after their particular judgment? Can they receive grace? If not, who can receive them for them? What would be their final outcome?

3. Remember this: demons are finite, angelic beings who debased and estranged themselves from God. They were created good and in time - a time called the aeon. They are not all-powerful nor can they act outside of God’s permission. They are fixated forever in their hatred of God - and as we shall see, humankind - and therefore abandoned to their ultimate choice forever. They carry hell within them. They have no power over those who are in God’s grace and if they do, it is because God allows it to harness some ultimate good.

In my next post, I will attempt to describe what’s this aeon time, quoting freely from Fr. Fortea’s explanation and comparing it to some philosophical notions of time that I’ve been reading of late in a special edition of Scientific American. I hope - truly truly hope that the discussion would be enlightening.

[tired&retired]

“May the Lord Jesus Christ open your eyes.”

That too is my prayer. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for offering it on my behalf. I welcome any and all prayers of increased understanding of Jesus Christ. My Fathers Mansion has many rooms and the higher you go, the more rooms there appear to be. If I am not on the right path, a rightful prayer will be like fire on my head and guide me to the correct path. I welcome all of them. It gets narrower and harder to follow the higher you go and guidance from above to stay on the path is always welcome.

Thank you again and Blessings to you on furthering your relationship with Jesus Christ.

[dsc]

“It does state in Jude that the angles that left their first estate (life form) are now in chains in Tarsus I do believe.”

Jude 1:6. And the angels who kept not their principality but forsook their own habitation, he hath reserved under darkness in everlasting chains, unto the judgment of the great day.

(Principality...That is, the state in which they were first created, their original dignity.)

“These angles left their spiritual bodies and took on flesh so as to mate with the daughters of man. That was their great sin taking on flesh and that is why they are in chains.”

I didn’t find anything on that in Jude.

[tired&retired]

“These angles left their spiritual bodies and took on flesh so as to mate with the daughters of man. That was their great sin taking on flesh and that is why they are in chains.”

There are people who believe that Jesus’ great sacrifice was not dying on the cross. His great sacrifice was His lowering Himself to our level to be born in the flesh. Dying is a blessing when you consider that you will no longer be separated from your Father.

You could say that Jesus saved us as He came to show us how to break out of the bondage(chains) of the flesh. Remember His words as He sent out the disciples.. “The things that I do and more, you too shall do in my name.”

[guitarplayer1953]

That is back in

Gen 6:2 2 That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. (KJV)

[dsc]

Genesis 6:2. The sons of God seeing the daughters of men, that they were fair, took to themselves wives of all which they chose.

“The sons of God…The descendants of Seth and Enos are here called sons of God from their religion and piety: whereas the ungodly race of Cain, who by their carnal affections lay grovelling upon the earth, are called the children of men. The unhappy consequence of the former marrying with the latter ought to be a warning to Christians to be very circumspect in their marriages, and not to suffer themselves to be determined in their choice by their carnal passion, to the prejudice of virtue or religion.”

[Cvengr]

mark

Concur. The damned things exist and I wouldn’t wish them on anybody.

Our life is better lived through faith in Christ in all things.

It might be argues that some do not have bodies. That doesn’t mean they cannot have physical impact upon our bodies.

They also are able to influence and even possess some of our souls, our mental faculties.

But much more impressive and loving is the influence and indwelling of God the Holy Spirit in every believer in the Church Age.

They are out there. They’ve been out there for thousands of years and can read the behavior and thinking of men fairly well. They still will be made footstools beneath His feat and later sent to proper abode.

[guitarplayer1953]

If the son of God are the children of Seth the Satan is a child of Seth

Job 1:6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them. (KJV)

[dsc]

Job 1:6. Now on a certain day, when the sons of God came to stand before the Lord, Satan also was present among them.

“The sons of God…The angels. Satan also, etc.. This passage represents to us in a figure, accommodated to the ways and understandings of men, 1. The restless endeavours of Satan against the servants of God; 2. That he can do nothing without God’s permission; 3. That God doth not permit him to tempt them above their strength: but assists them by his divine grace in such manner, that the vain efforts of the enemy only serve to illustrate their virtue and increase their merit.”

To say that he was “present among them” does not mean that he was one of them. Actually, it strongly indicates the opposite.

[tired&retired]

Totally agree with you..

[guitarplayer1953]

so what theological book are you parroting?

[dsc]

“so what theological book are you parroting?”

Parroting?

Gee, I’m sorry, I thought we were having a discussion.

I often quote other people when they’ve said something better than I could or better than I have time to. I really don’t think that’s uncommon.

I don’t care to enter into a quarrel.

[guitarplayer1953]

what does your books say about this passage

Gen 6:9 9 These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.

What is the perfect in this passage mean?

[guitarplayer1953]

Your post with it different definitions appeared to be out out of a book or a theological web page if it was not my apologies. There is no biblical basses or biblical reference that they are both the same. From this point of view it could be carried out that all those who are not of the line of seth are of the seed of the snake and therefore we have just invented a new biblical reference that the seed of the snake are of a certain race. See how this is dangerous.

[guitarplayer1953]

Your post with it different definitions appeared to be out out of a book or a theological web page if it was not my apologies. There is no biblical basses or biblical reference that they are both the same. From this point of view it could be carried out that all those who are not of the line of seth are of the seed of the snake and therefore we have just invented a new biblical reference that the seed of the snake are of a certain race. See how this is dangerous.

[dsc]

I’m sorry, but I don’t really understand what you are trying to say.

How about we just let it drop?

[Red Boots]

ping for later

[guitarplayer1953]

sure but your the one who said that the Sethiets were the sons of god and I have said that there is no scriptural bases for that statement. And lots of scripture to debunk it.

[dsc]

According to Bush’s Notes on Genesis, the word translated here as “sons of God” is a Hebrew word, Elohim. The following passage explains the meaning of the word, “Elohim.”

2. The sons of God. Heb. (don’t have a Hebrew font) sons of the Elohim. Chal. ‘sons of the eminent ones.’ That is, the descendents of Seth, Enos, and the other pious patriarchs who were separated from the posterity of Cain and formed the visible church. The appellation no doubt has reference to Gen. 4.26, where the same class of persons are said to be ‘called by the name of the Lord;’ i.e. to be the sons and servants of God in contradistinction from others, the seed of Cain, who are merely called ‘men.’ The term Elohim is occasionally applied to persons of distinguished eminence in place or power, such as judges, magistrates, &c. but is here probably used to denote a distinction of a *moral* kind, such as resulted from their likeness to God, their maintaining his worship, and obeying his laws. The persons designated included, it may be presumed, all, or nearly all, those enumerated in the preceding chapter as forming the line of the faithful from Seth to Noah, who though pious and devout themselves, were yet unfortunate in their children. They unhappily swerved from the precepts in which they had been trained, forsook the counsels of their fathers, relaxed the strictness of their walk, and, yielding gradually to temptation, formed unhallowed connections with the worldly and profane, and thus opened the floodgates of a universal corruption of morals.

This is just one more example of how a single person attempting to translate his copy of the Bible in a vacuum will always fall into error.

When Saint Jerome undertook to translate the Bible into Latin in the 4th century, he had access to many resources unavailable to those who have tried to prepare other translations. For starters, he was 13 centuries closer to events than those who prepared the King James Version. To get some idea what that means, read some English written in the 17th century, then read some Chaucer as originally written, and finally, read Beowulf in the original old English. Better yet, have someone versed in old English read you some of it.

Saint Jerome had access to Jewish scholars who had studied the Torah for decades, and stood on the shoulders of a line earlier Jewish scholars stretching back many centuries. These scholars didn’t have to ponder a passage of Hebrew to get its gist; they understood it like we understand the breakfast conversation in our own homes.

He had access to native speakers of Aramaic who weren’t as far removed from the Aramaic of Jesus’ time as we are from the English of Shakespeare’s time. Ditto Koine Greek. Aside from that, he was inspired by the Holy Spirit, while some later translators show no sign of such inspiration.

Having been a professional translator for some 20-odd years, I know that it is often impossible to translate a passage without a good deal of background knowledge. Saint Jerome had a degree of context that no subsequent translator could approach.

Some passages, such as John 3:16, can be easily understood by just about anyone. Other passages are completely opaque without context.

Then, too, there are things that are just lost because of our remove from the era. For instance, in John 2:4 Jesus says to His mother, “Woman, what is that to me and to thee?” A lot of people think that sounds pretty harsh, but the obscure little linguistic point there is this: those words were a popular, humorous catchphrase in Aramaic that was going around at the time, kind of like “Where’s the beef?” or, “No soup for you.” It was a bit of good-natured banter that in no way indicated that He didn’t care about the people giving the party.

Genesis 6:2 is extremely likely (almost certain?) to be misinterpreted by a person who is unaware that the passage refers to the sons of the “Elohim” as explained in Bush’s Notes.

What I’m getting at is this: If you’re an ordinary person like me (and I hope that isn’t too self-congratulatory), you cannot just pick up your Bible at any old time of the day and be certain of understanding what you read. If you have been taught the correct interpretation of some passages, you should be all right there. But if you haven’t, or are reading a passage for the first time, there is a very real danger of getting it wrong.

The four Gospels do not contain every word that Jesus ever spoke, nor can you rely on may translations to give you the information you need to understand.

[guitarplayer1953]

And where might I find this proper teaching of the Word of God?

[ZX12R]

How does the author know all this detail?

His imagination supplies it in large quantity. Demons simply do not exist. Likewise, ghosts and goblins.