A hitchhiker’s guide to the underworld

What is the underworld? What are evil spirits and demons? Should we fear death and the devil, and does Jesus really make a difference with these things? Tony Payne talks to Peter Bolt, author of Living with the Underworld, to get some answers.

Tony Payne: So what do you mean by ‘underworld’?

Peter Bolt: ‘Underworld’ simply means ‘the realm of the dead’—the place that dead people go after they die. In classic Greek mythology, the underworld was a place below the ground. The Greeks had elaborate pictures of what it looked like—with rivers and swamps and various places. As time went on, the underworld actually became located above the ground in what's called ‘astral immortality’: the air, the places between the earth and the moon, and above the moon, were conceptualized as spaces where people went when they died as well. So the ‘underworld’ is simply where dead people go.

TP: Is there really something down there? Could we tunnel down and find it? And what are the implications if we can't?

PB: The answer is both “Yes” and “No”: we can tunnel down and find it because, for centuries and across cultures, humans have buried their dead. So when we die, we do literally go below the ground in burial (though I know cremation has changed that somewhat). There is a place below the ground called the grave, and the grave is a horrible thing because it means death, decay and rotting-ness. It's a place from which there is no return.

In terms of the elaborate pictures of the world beneath the ground, we could tunnel all we want but we won't find that sort of thing. It's also the case with space travel: we could fly around the moon and find that those astral spaces aren't there either. Our modern understanding of the world has helped us to see that these are metaphors rather than realities.

But at the same time, our modern understanding of the world has helped us to know that there are ways of conceptualizing reality: scientists talk about parallel universes and other dimensions. These are the kind of things that ancient mythologies were trying to communicate—that when you die, you leave here, and that there's a sense that you go to another place—another dimension or realm. Of course, that's what the Bible says: there's another world—a heavenly world, a reality behind the metaphor.

TP: Is the Old Testament concept of sheol essentially similar to the ‘underworld’?

PB: Yes. The Old Testament used ‘sheol’ to mean ‘the place of the dead’. There are other terms like ‘the pit’ which is just another name for ‘the grave’. But there was this sense that sheol was a larger realm, populated by more than one, whereas a grave tends to be populated by just one. However, not much was said about sheol and not much was known about it except that it was a place that wasn't as pleasant to be in as this world.

TP: You talk about metaphor and reality —that the underworld spaces are a metaphoric way of describing the dark place that you go to when you die. Is it less real because it's a metaphor?

PB: No, it's not less real; it's just like another dimension beyond what we can see, touch and feel—a realm beyond our senses. We can certainly conceptualize what that other dimension might be like without saying it's less real—much like an astronomer talking about the other end of the universe. The other end of the universe is not less real, and we can at least conceive of it as being a real place, even though we might have to lapse into metaphorical language to speak about it because it's beyond our everyday experience. For example, the ‘other end of the universe’ must be a metaphor because how do we know there is an end? It's the same kind of thing with the underworld: it's not less real, it's just beyond our experience at the moment. When we do go from here to another place, it will be very real for us.

TP: One of the most powerful points you make in Living with the Underworld is that we tend to behave as if we're the first ones to have thought of this understanding of metaphor and how it relates to reality. We tend to think that the ancient writers weren't aware of metaphor, and that they thought of these things literally—that if you could tunnel down, you'd find the swamp.

PB: Yes, we act like 20th or 21st-century western imperialists, looking back on the ancient days and thinking they were all idiots. This often comes through, for example, with the idea that apparently they all thought the world was flat and we know it's round. But it doesn't take much knowledge of the ancient Greeks to realize that they worked out the world was round because the sailing ship's hull disappeared over the horizon before the mast did, and, in fact, some had even done experiments to prove that the world was round.

Some of the ancient Greek writers such as Plato and Plutarch didn't see it as myth or metaphor versus reality; they thought that myth and metaphor were other ways of explaining reality when you couldn't use the normal sort of logic or reasoning but had to move beyond it. They saw the two things as supporting each other. If you asked Plutarch whether there was a world under the ground with rivers and different places, I think he'd say, “No”. He saw that if you believed that these things were real, with all the details of the myths, that was like believing a fairy story. But if you asked him whether myths had a function, he would probably say “Yes”: they fire our imagination so that our imagination can feel what is true—feel reality at a deeper sort of level.

TP: Let's talk about some of the beings that inhabit these underworld spaces—demons and unclean spirits, for example. What are they?

PB: We often want to know what things are so that we can understand them and, therefore, cope with them a little bit better. Unclean spirits and demons are two terms from two different cultures for the same kind of beings. ‘Unclean spirit’ is a more Semitic¹ term, whereas ‘demon’ is more of a Greek term. Described simply, they're non-bodied beings that cause harm to humans. We see Jesus encountering them in the Gospels.

If you wanted to go a little bit further and look at what else was said in the ancient world about these beings, both terms are also regularly and consistently used to refer to spirits of people who have died—that is, ghosts. In Semitic understanding, unclean spirits lived in places you'd expect to find ghosts—for example, deserts and graveyards. The same was thought about demons in the Greek world. In both cultures, these beings were used by magicians to cause harm to others as well.

TP: Thinking about ghosts is quite a mind shift for us. When I think ghosts, I think Ghostbusters or Casper.

PB: Yes, a number of movies pick up on the sort of understanding of ghosts that you find in ancient literature. Take Casper's three filthy uncles, for example. Ghosts were considered filthy because they come from the underworld, the world of rottenness, decay and stench.

TP: In Western culture, we find a lot of these ideas a little hard to cope with. They bump up against our ordinary, everyday reality. We don't think about ghosts. That's all superstition. But it's interesting that third world countries (or two-thirds world countries) are much quicker to say that the reality described by the metaphor is very real and that they've met it. This point is made frequently when missionaries come back from places like Asia and Africa.

PB: That's right. Western countries have been influenced greatly by the gospel of Christ, and the gospel has pushed out of Western countries what we call superstition. Witch doctors, diviners, and people who heal and cause harm through magical means—these occupations were also found in Europe before the gospel's impact. In countries where the gospel's penetration hasn't been as deep, these things are still there. I was in Uganda last year and I saw the same thing: in the villages, there were witch doctors, diviners, and sorcerers for good and for evil. Sometimes the Ugandan government is even worried by the sorts of practices they get up to. So there's truth in what the missionaries tell us.

However, there are several errors we can make. The minor error is to think that this kind of spectacular presence of evil is not present in Western countries. At the moment, as the gospel recedes from the West, we are seeing a revival of these things. It's not just in our movies and television shows where there's a fascination for this kind of thing—mediums, ghost whisperers, and so on. You'll find that people are actually talking about evil spirits in a way in which they haven't done before. They mightn't be talking openly—perhaps because they're afraid of what other people might think of them—but I think there's certainly an increasing fear of things related to the underworld.

But the major error is to assume that because you don't have the spectacular presence of evil, this means that the devil is not active. In Western lands, as we've come to declare there is no devil and have ceased to believe in him, that's probably one of the greatest victories he's won over us. In the New Testament, when Jesus confronts the devil in the famous temptation scene, the devil says that everything in this world has been given to him (Luke 4:6). That's actually true—not that God's not in charge, but that, in a real sense, the things of this world are the devil's. Education, politics, culture—all these things have been handed over to him. Even to think like a human being is to think the things of the devil, as Peter discovered (Mark 8:31-33). And so, in the West, even though we mightn't see the spectacular, a society that pushes God out is just as demonic as a society that has the devil on every corner.

TP: According to the New Testament, one of the devil's chief powers is the power of death. The devil is the prince of death, demons and unclean spirits. He's the one who wields the power of death. Perhaps the clearest and most famous passage about Jesus' work and the devil is Hebrews 2:14-15:

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Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

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What does it mean for the devil to have “the power of death”, and how does he keep us in “lifelong slavery”?

PB: Even though the devil is present in the New Testament (he's there in the margins so we're not told much), he's consistently shown to be our accuser. Because we're sinners, there's always something he can accuse us of. So we are always in his grip. But technically, because we're sinners, we come under God's judgement of death: we die because we sin. That's where him having the power of death comes about: if he can accuse us of our sin, and God's penalty for sin is death, then he can always call upon that penalty to be rightly applied.

How does he hold us in lifelong slavery? Well, we don't like to think about death. But the fact that we will rot in the grave forever actually means that our life rots as well, as we're held in the grip of the grave. Deep inside of us, we have a fear of death: it's there all the time—practically from when we're born—even if we're not always consciously aware of it. It rots away at our existence. That's what some of the philosophers call ‘existential Angst’—anxiety about our existence—and what the Bible calls the “fear of death”.

Now this has a feedback loop in that not only do we die because we sin, the New Testament shows us that we also sin because we die. As we try to save ourselves from the grave, we do all kinds of things to find security against this existential Angst. We find that security in all the wrong places—places other than God. That's what the Bible calls sin. So the devil—the accuser who knows he can accuse us and bring death upon us—ends up holding us in lifelong slavery to him through this fear.

TP: So the Western equivalent of the sorcerer or witch doctor would be the whitegoods salesman, perhaps?

PB: Yes. Things like whitegoods promise security: we tend to believe the lie that if we have enough of the things of this world, we will stay in this world forever. This is what Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount when he spoke of pagans running after food, drink and clothing (Matt 6:25-32): we think that if we eat well, drink well and wear well, then we will wear well—we'll last longer and live better. All of this tries to stave off the grave: we think we don't have to be afraid of it because we're living pretty well. So, yes, the whitegoods salesman is probably the equivalent of the sorcerer.

TP: How does Jesus destroy the devil? And why isn't he destroyed now?

PB: Well, this is one of the most beautiful parts of the New Testament. It's completely unexpected how Jesus destroys the devil. If you asked a Hollywood director to tell us how Jesus did it, he'd probably set up a massive, epic battle scene between the Son of God, on the one hand, and the devil and his minions, on the other. There would be some kind of huge clash in which Jesus would, by the skin of his teeth, defeat the devil. Unfortunately this kind of drama has fed into some Christian versions of how this victory took place—especially among the charismatic portion of Christianity.

But this misses the beauty and the wonder of the way Jesus actually did it. When the Son of God appeared, he came to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8), and he did it by dying on the cross. He defeated the devil, but he did it indirectly, not directly. There wasn't a huge clash. Instead, when Jesus died on the cross, he went saying that the ruler of this world—the devil—had no hold on him (John 14:30). In other words, the devil had nothing to accuse him of because Jesus was sinless. So Jesus died bearing the penalty for sin even though he wasn't a sinner: he took our sins upon himself—the righteous for the unrighteous, the just for the unjust—so that he might bring us to God (1 Pet 3:18). That's how he won the victory: because he took our sin upon himself and paid for it, the devil no longer has grounds to accuse us.

TP: So the devil has been destroyed in the same sort of way that our sin has been destroyed and that we have been perfected—that is, we are and yet, not yet.

PB: Yes, there's a reason why the end of the world didn't come: there's a period of grace in which the gospel is now going out to the nations of the world saying, “Come, the devil has been defeated. Your sins have been paid for. Forgiveness is yours. Eternal life is yours.” In this period, things aren't completely wrapped up; we're waiting for the end. Meanwhile, the devil still is active, trying to take the gospel away from people so that they don't hear about his crushing defeat on Calvary and believe it.

TP: How should we resist the devil now if he's still active, he still exists and he's still our foe?

PB: I think we should resist him by turning to the good news of the gospel and believing it. We don't turn to face him—we don't have Hollywood dramas either; instead, we hear the gospel, believe it and stand firm in the direction it takes us. As we live the life of freedom that Christ has bought for us instead of the life of slavery under the devil, we resist him.

TP: In terms of the devil's minions (if, indeed, they are his minions), how do we resist or deal with them? One of the things that you speak strongly against in your book is direct confrontation via some sort of deliverance ministry. I suppose we could say that at least those who practise such ministries are taking demonic activity seriously. Where have they gone wrong? How should we confront this kind of activity?

PB: Are they taking the devil seriously? Well, in one sense, that's true, but it's not the total picture. I would say they're taking the devil too seriously and not seriously enough. They're not taking him seriously enough in that they tend to think that the devil only works in the dramatic and spectacular. But he also works in ordinary life. Anything that takes you away from hearing the gospel and believing it is a demonic activity. So if a nice, respectable friend in the office laughs at you for your Christianity, that's just as demonic as a Buffy the Vampire Slayer being arriving on your doorstep.

But on the other hand, these people take the devil too seriously. This is where it's delightful to see that Jesus defeated the devil through indirect confrontation. The devil wants us to turn and face him, and treat him just as seriously as we treat God. But he's not worthy of that. We shouldn't be doing that. Even looking at him gives him too much attention. Jesus defeated the devil indirectly by dealing with our sin. Our eyes ought to be fixed upon him, not the devil. Unfortunately some of these deliverance ministries switch their eyes from Christ to Christ's enemies. It's a distraction: it treats the devil far too seriously and takes people away from Christ. The way we deal with the devil is not through a dramatic deliverance ministry but by believing and preaching the gospel, and continuing to do these things.

One of the other things I don't like about deliverance ministries is that they create fear in ordinary Christians. The New Testament's message is that fear leads to slavery (Rom 8:15, Heb 2:15). But we have been delivered by Christ to become children of God, not slaves: “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). So any kind of ministry that begins by creating fear in people—fear of the demonic hiding under every bush, fear of your family being cursed through something in the past, fear of stumbling across the devil's activity through something you weren't even aware of, fear of entering a haunted place—the same sort of fears as in the ancient world—anything that begins with this sort of fear is not Christian ministry because Christian ministry brings sonship, assurance, peace, joy, love and so on.

We don't need to have a dramatic confrontation with the devil; we need to just believe in Jesus Christ. We don't need to shout or yell at the devil; we just need to whisper softly to ourselves and others that Jesus has saved us.

Endnote

¹_‘Semitic’ refers to the wider culture that the Jews, the ancient people of Israel, belonged to.