Cast out devils - error corrected

On Friday morning I came to page 6:26-27 in Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Healing sermon, where she quotes the following passage from the gospel of Mark:

And these signs shall follow them that believe;

In my name shall they cast out devils… (Mark 16:17, 18 (to 2nd ;)) 

Later,  in our Reading Room, my daughter and I watched the first half of Alec McCowan’s “Solo performance of St. Mark’s Gospel”*. What a masterpiece it is: delivered without notes except for a tiny copy of the Gospel open on the table but turned face down. A mighty demonstration of the actor’s art!

Mr. McCowan informed his audience that he would be presenting Mark’s gospel as given in the King James Version of the Bible. This is significant, because it meant that he would be including the final chapter (#16), a chapter omitted from some translations. In fact, Chapter 16 is very significant from the Christian Science position, for it includes the previously quoted passage**.

Get to the point, you may well cry! Right! At the beginning of the performance, Alec seemed to be emphasising casting out devils. Now, probably he wasn’t emphasising, but the phrase cast out devils stood out to my ear.

Alec was well into chapter 1 (right after the healing of Simon’s wife’s mother in verses 30 and 31) when he delivered*** these words:

And at even, when the sun did set, they brought unto him all that were diseased, and them that were possessed with devils.

And all the city was gathered together at the door.

And he healed many that were sick of divers diseases, and cast out many devils; and suffered not the devils to speak, because they knew him. (Mark 1:32-34)

And a little later:

And he preached in their synagogues throughout all Galilee, and cast out devils. (Mark 1:39)

Further passages follow:

• ·                 In Chapter 3, verse 9, Jesus ordains the twelve disciples and gives them power to cast out devils, while in verse 22 the scribes criticise Jesus, saying that he cast out demons by Beelzebub.
• ·                 Chapter 6:13 records that the disciples “cast out many devils”. Later, John complained: “Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and he followeth not us; and we forbad him, because he followeth not us.” Jesus said, Forbid him not; for there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me. For he that is not against us is on our part” (Mark 9: 38-40).
• ·                 Mark 16: 9 - “Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils.”

Next, I consulted BibleStudyTools.com’s entry under Bible Verses about Satan –

The devil is identified with several figures in the Bible including the serpent in the Garden of Eden, Lucifer, Satan, the tempter of the Gospels, Leviathan, and the dragon in the Book of Revelation.

This site then quotes the New International Version (NIV) of the following passage:

1 John 3:8 The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.

Noah Webster’s 1828 Dictionary gives many words for "devil" in other languages, but here is one definition:

In the Christian theology, an evil spirit or being; a fallen angel, expelled from heaven for rebellion against God; the chief of the apostate angels; the implacable enemy and  tempter of the human race.  In the New Testament, the word is frequently and erroneously used for demon.

Mrs. Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures defines the term devil in the Glossary:

DEVIL. Evil; a lie; error; neither corporeality nor mind; the opposite of Truth; a belief in sin, sickness, and death; animal magnetism or hypnotism; the lust of the flesh, which saith: “I am life and intelligence in matter. There is more than one mind, for I am mind,-- a wicked mind, self-made or created by a tribal god and put into the opposite of mind, termed matter, thence to reproduce a mortal universe, including man, not after the image and likeness of Spirit, but after its own image.”

In Christian Healing, following the “cast out devils” quote from Mark 16:17-18, Mrs. Eddy goes on to do some defining: "The word devil comes from the Greek diabolos; in Hebrew it is belial, and signifies "that which is good for nothing, lust," etc. The signs referred to are the manifestations of the power of Truth to cast out error; and, correcting error in thought it produces the harmonious effect on the body" (p. 6:27-4).

Joyce Voysey

* Ed. some excerpts for the interested reader

** Ed. Mark 16: 17, 18 is in fact the chosen text of Eddy’s sermon.

*** Ed. In his inimitable and utterly captivating style

**** Ed. How refreshing is Mrs. Eddy’s explanation over all the others!