Familiar Spirits

This year has marked the 150th anniversary of modern spiritualism whose official birthday was March 31 1848 at Hydesville, New York State, in the family of the Fox sisters. How do we now assess that movement in the light of Scripture and history?
Although the craze, like so many, began in America, spirit messages were already quite common among mesmerists in France and elsewhere in the 1840s. In fact, mediumship may be as old as the Fall, and there is, of course, one seance in Scripture, King Saul's visit to the woman of En-Dor.
There can be no doubt that attempts to communicate with those who have died are condemned in Scripture. The relevant texts have been published in hundreds of Christian responses to the modern movement, which was early seen by Adventists as itself a sign of the End.

Old Testament

In the Old Testament, both the ritual law and the prophetic movement united in condemning such attempts. Among the list of occult practitioners in Deuteronomy 18 is the 'consulter with familiar spirits', and these were all abominations. Contact with those who had familiar spirits had a defiling effect (Leviticus 19.31). A man or woman with a familiar spirit were among those who merited the death penalty by stoning (Lev. 20.27). Among the prophets, Isaiah asked: 'Should not a people seek unto its God? In behalf of the living should it seek unto the dead? To the law and to the testimony' (Isaiah 8.19-20).

New Testament

The New Testament has no change in its attitude to mediumship, except that the ecclesia did not take over the death penalties of the Jewish law. The apostle Paul clashed repeatedly with occultists, among them the owners of the pythoness at Philippi (Acts 16.16). There is no recorded attempt among early Christians to contact the dead. Whatever our views on the continuation of the spiritual gifts, they were in Scripture clearly pentecostal and involved the Holy Spirit or the Lord Jesus, not messages from ordinary individuals who had died.

Modern spiritualism

There soon emerged in the infant modern spiritualist movement a wide range of teachings subversive of the Christian gospel. Spirit teachings, though differing on many points, generally gave no support to such Scriptural foundations as the substitutionary atonement, the fallen nature of man and the true relation between Father, Son and Spirit. Moreover, there was an explicit protest in much early American spiritualist literature against Calvinism as then understood in New England (documented in Ann Braude's Radical Spirits, Beacon Press, USA, 1989).
After 30 years of diverse contacts with the psychic field, including service on the council of the Society for Psychical Research (which has no collective views), I should like to make some more controversial points.
It is notoriously difficult to show who (or what) a mediumistic communication comes from. The present generation of para-psychologists has not made much progress in understanding how mediumship functions, beyond confirming that it is related to hysteria and dis-association. I am aware of course that works of darkness are to be reproved rather than investigated - nevertheless, the opinions of doctors, for example, do have a place in our assessment.
There has been a revival among British spiritualists since 1990 of what are called psychical phenomena, usually in dark seances. Some British scientists are working closely in attempts to record such phenomena with the latest electronic gadgetry. We may not be far from works of psychic power which would exercise a dazzling effect on the public through the mass media.

No communication?

There has been a general tendency among Christians to assert dogmatically that there are no communications from the dead. Those who believe in soul sleep, or that all are extinguished or perish at death to be resurrected in the last days, would naturally deny such a possibility. But it has been widely felt by believers that the soul goes to heaven or to hell and remains there until the general judgment.
The return of Samuel at En-Dor (1 Samuel 28) has therefore been a problem. Both Jewish and Christian exegetes have sometimes denied that it was Samuel (demonic impersonation was Tertullian's explanation in De Anima). Where Samuel's presence has been accepted, it has usually been argued that this was exceptional, specially permitted by God, and not a usual happening.
Samuel, of course, gave no encouragement to such communication, asking: 'Why have you disturbed me?' In life, he had compared rebellion with the sin of divination (1 Samuel 15.23).
It is my impression that Scripture in 1 Samuel 28 is matter-of-fact about mediumship and accepts that communication with the dead can occur. Even the portrait of the medium of En-Dor is sympathetic, rather different from the lurid retellings of some preachers. At the same time, I repeat, no encouragement is given to seek such communication.
There is good evidence, short of proof, that some mediumistic communications are authentic. This is what often convinces witnesses ranging from the personally bereaved to the scientifically sophisticated.

Deception by spirits

At the same time, there is deception by spirits - I would say demonic deception, in which the purposes of Satan play a significant part. There is no reliability or trustworthiness in spirit communication generally.
Communicators have turned out not to be dead (in the case of missing soldiers, for example), wrong in their predictions about the future, in disagreement with others on religious or historical matters and frequently wrapped in vagueness. They may deliberately incite sin (see inset on David Icke).
I believe the best Christian view is to regard the reality of spirit communication to be unproven, but not to deny it as a possibility on occasion. We should certainly expound the many pitfalls and cases that show problems with the evidence, as they are presented in the literature, always taking care that we are not repeating old errors of fact (a regrettable tendency in this area where floating names, dates and quotations out of context abound).
Finally: 'By their fruit you will recognise them.' (Matthew 7.20). A correspondent wrote in Psychic World ('the voice of spiritualism') in August 1997 about a national spiritualist conference: 'I have just returned, and am still recovering from, the 1997 AGM at Ripon. I feel sorry for the people who had to clean the hall in which the conference was held. They must have had to mop up the venom by the bucketful!'.
Let us, in contrast, avoid such venom in our own discussions.

Leslie Price is an associate editor of Theosophical History.

Mediums in the Church?

According to writers in the spiritualist weekly Psychic News (April 25 1998), there were mediums in the church until about 382 AD when Jerome persuaded the Pope to make mediumship a crime. This oft-repeated but spurious claim, is based on a passage in a letter by Jerome (not to the Pope but to Marcella, an ascetic lady) in which he rejects Montanist prophecy.
While critics of Montanism, past and present, have seen the hoof of the Evil One in it, there is a difference between pentecostal aberrations and spiritualism. And far from the early church being a focus for the psychic, there is much in B. Warfield's argument in Counterfeit Miracles (1918) that such phenomena only multiplied after the paganisation of the church under Constantine.

Icke's experience

The cunning of some entities is illustrated by the experience of New Age prophet, David Icke, told in his autobiography In the light of experience (1993).
While working closely with a lady channeller, he began to receive messages that he should commit adultery with her. He was told it had already happened 'on the etheric' and that it was necessary 'for the greater good'. She began to receive similar messages. He felt that a force was taking him over. The channeller urged him to leave his wife who was 'weak'; failing in this, the channeller shared the situation with the press. A child was later born from the relationship. The story has echoes from the very beginning of modern spiritualism, when Andrew Jackson Davis and some other mediums formed relationships with their 'spiritual affinities' that violated the marriage bond.

Psychic research

In assessing published evidence about mediumship, one must be careful not only of the medium.
Every psychical researcher has heard of the investigation of the Boston medium Mrs. Piper, notably by Richard Hodgson. In October 1997, the British Society for Psychical Research published a re-examination of his main report. From the archives, it now appears that Hodgson reported himself present, even as taking notes, when absent; made very incomplete notes; and did not properly separate the medium from normal sources of knowledge. The original report is a century old, and has often been cited as offering excellent evidence of communication.

An assessment of modern spiritualism in the light of Scripture