A brief update, and details of my research

The rite of exorcism: a philosophical investigation

Apologies for the radio silence of the last few weeks - I have had my first ‘Annual Progress Monitoring’ for my PhD, for which I had to submit a draft of a chapter, and some other material. The deadline also happened to coincide with Ash Wednesday, which was St Valentine’s night (and I have just got engaged) so that 24 hours was something of a whirlwind of differing stresses and emotions!!! I am *really* enjoying the PhD.

I have much material waiting to be shared here. I read something the other day to the effect that, to do substack well, a writer needs to have a pipeline of material to tide them through the dry patches (or the distracted patches) so that the level of output is sustained. That seems like a good plan. It is still my intention to write one HTRI post a week, with other stuff fitting in around it. I shall sneak in PhD writings as well, when I can.

As a taster of what I’ve been working on academically, here is my ‘thesis plan’ - one of the documents I had to submit for the assessment (the draft chapter I submitted was a version of chapter 3 - it needs lots of work!).

Thesis plan for APM February 2024

The Rite of Exorcism: a Philosophical Investigation

Introduction

My aim with this thesis is to provide an understanding of the rite of exorcism that is illuminated by an understanding of religious language stemming ultimately from Wittgenstein – hence, “a Philosophical Investigation”. This will be achieved primarily through engaging with a leading interpreter of Wittgenstein, PMS Hacker, and will pay particular attention to Hacker's work on the philosophy of neuroscience. It will also draw substantially on the insights offered by Iain McGilchrist and his brain-hemispheric hypothesis ('The Master and his Emissary'). I hope to clarify the boundaries between neuroscience, psychiatric diagnosis (especially schizophrenia), and the nature of the religious language used by Christian ministers conducting the Ministry of Deliverance.

Chapter One: The demons in Christian tradition

This chapter will be an historical overview of how demons have been understood in the Christian tradition up to and including the treatment given by Aquinas. It will begin with an analysis of the biblical material, and Jesus' role as an exorcist, principally drawing on the work of Graham Twelftree. It will then expound the language of 'principalities and powers' drawing on the work of Walter Wink. It will then consider the language of demons in the desert fathers and the philokalic tradition, looking particularly at how the language of the passions (emotions) ties to questions of spiritual health (Evagrius, deadly sins, the noon-day demon). The chapter will conclude with a brief summary of the conception of demons and angels given by Aquinas in the Summa.

Chapter Two: The standard psychiatric perspective

This chapter will be an overview of how the dominant psychiatric tradition has understood the phenomena historically treated by clergy within the ministry of deliverance. After briefly looking at the history of madness it will explain the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) for understanding psychiatric disorders, and then look in particular at the understanding of what is known as schizophrenia. It will then engage with two particular critiques of that that understanding, from Mary Boyle (“Schizophrenia: A Scientific Delusion?”) and Louis Sass (“The Paradoxes of Delusion”), concluding that the psychiatric understanding of schizophrenia has merit but is more restricted in its validity than common psychiatric practice accepts. These arguments around schizophrenia will then be placed in the context of the broader metaphysical debates about the nature of psychiatry, drawing in particular on the work of Joanna Moncrieff and, separately, the recently proposed 'Power Threat Meaning Framework'.

Chapter Three: McGilchrist (1) – language, metaphor and the via negativa

This chapter will be an exposition of Iain McGilchrist's 'The Master and his Emissary'. It will outline McGilchrist's hemisphere hypothesis and discuss the links between different forms of brain damage and symptoms of schizophrenia, before focussing on the way in which different halves of the brain treat language in different ways, paying particular attention to the role of metaphor. It will describe the phenomenon of 'left hemisphere capture' and summarise the malign social consequences of that phenomenon. This will then be contrasted with the mystical discipline of the via negativa, arguing that the specific practice of 'negating the propositional' cultivates a correct sense of the nature of language, which helps to overcome the problems of 'left hemisphere capture'.

Chapter Four: McGilchrist (2) – the sense of the sacred and mental & societal health

This chapter will be a direct development from chapter four, looking specifically at McGilchrist's 'The Matter with Things', drawing connections between McGilchrist's insistence on the sense of the sacred being essential to the human search for truth in all spheres of knowledge, and the way in which the knowledge of God is seen as foundational to a right understanding of reality in the contemplative tradition. The conclusions that he draws for how human beings relate to and understand the world (philosophical issues, especially epistemology) will be expounded and then linked back to the discussion of schizophrenia, drawing especially on Louis Sass' 'Madness and Modernism'. This chapter will conclude that full mental health is impossible without a sense of the sacred, but that this can be impeded or completely prevented when there is brain malfunction.

Chapter Five: The language of neuroscience

This chapter will be a detailed exposition of, and engagement with, Hacker and Bennett's 'Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience', beginning with Daniel de Haan's critique of McGilchrist, (on the homunculus fallacy), and McGilchrist's response. This will clarify the boundaries of what can be claimed as knowledge from a psychiatric approach, and what can be claimed as knowledge from a more human-centred approach (to illustrate the difference: it makes sense to talk of a person being sad, but not to talk of a brain being sad). A key aim of this chapter is to 'delimit from within' the scope of a diagnosis of schizophrenia, ie to make clear exactly what is being claimed in the making of such a diagnosis, and what is left out. It will also make clear the nature (the metaphysical status) of McGilchrist's work.

Chapter Six: the nature of religious belief and practice

This chapter will begin to engage with Hacker's Tetralogy on Human Nature, expounding his understanding of belief and specifically the role of imagination in those beliefs (Volumes 1 and 2). This will also involve a dialogue with Graham Ward's work on belief, including his engagement with McGilchrist. It will clarify what sort of thing religious belief is, and provide a strong philosophical and theological grounding for the validity of religious beliefs and practices, with an emphasis upon the nature of drama, ritual and imagination in human life (ie right hemisphere practices). This will then be linked back to the contemplative tradition, expounding on the nature of the mystical path not as a search for a particular experience (Modernism, foundationalism) but as a training within a particular tradition of engagement with the world, and thereby (as a byproduct) a means of psychiatric health.

Chapter Seven: mental and emotional health and the nature of evil

This chapter will continue to engage with Hacker's tetralogy, now turning to his treatment of human emotions and in particular his discussion of the nature of evil (Volumes 3 and 4). It will give an account of how the language of evil forces functions in human society, specifically in Christian societies and make the case that the language of demons is not a failed attempt at a mental health diagnosis, which is a category error. There will be significant dialogue with the material from chapter one on the passions in the contemplative tradition, especially Christopher Cook's Philokalia and the Inner Life.

Chapter Eight: The drama of the rite

This will be the last substantial chapter of the thesis, and will be a specific application of all the foregoing to deliverance ministry. Beginning with a consideration of the nature of liturgical action, through an exposition of Wolterstorff's 'Acting Liturgically', it will then look specifically at the liturgical rite of exorcism itself. The intention is to answer the questions, What does it mean to say that a demon has been expelled? How is healing effected in the rite of deliverance? How is it different to the healing that is obtained through psychiatric care, and how can we discriminate between cases that need the former and cases the require the latter?

Conclusion: 'What is going on in an exorcism?'

“Christianity is not a doctrine, not, I mean, a theory about what has happened and will happen to the human soul, but a description of something that actually takes place in human life. For ‘consciousness of sin’ is a real event and so are despair and salvation through faith. Those who speak of such things (Bunyan, for instance) are simply describing what has happened to them, whatever gloss anyone may want to put on it.” (LW, CV)

In my conclusion I will indicate how all the foregoing might be given practical expression in the guidance for the Ministry of Deliverance in the Church of England.