HomeWhereas, in his Gospel, Luke quite often refers to demoniacs, that is people possessed by demons, in the Acts he never uses this expression. Instead he refers to "unclean spirits", "evil spirits" and, in one place, a "spirit of Python". There are only a few references, and it may be helpful to review each of them.
"Also a multitude gathered from the surrounding cities to Jerusalem, bringing sick people and those who were tormented by unclean spirits, and they were all healed." (Acts 5:16)
This verse links with verse 12, and is referring to the miraculous powers given to the apostles after the Lord Jesus had ascended to heaven. There is no indication as to the ways in which spirits "tormented" those suffering from them. However, remembering that Luke was a doctor, it may be significant that, as in his Gospel, he speaks of the sufferers, along with "sick people", as being "healed". It is as if he considers them to be affected by illnesses of some kinds. It would be compatible with the descriptions in his Gospel if those referred to as "sick people" were suffering from illnesses of the body, and "those tormented by unclean spirits" from illnesses of the mind.
"For unclean spirits, crying with a loud voice, came out of many who were possessed, and many who were paralysed and lame were healed." (Acts 8:7)
Here this is the work of the Lord through Philip in the town of Samaria. Again, no details of how the spirits affected those possessed are given, apart from them crying out when the spirits were removed. However, those with "unclean spirits" are set alongside others suffering from specifically bodily afflictions, compatible again with the view that the former were illnesses of the mind. Also, as we shall see in a later chapter, it may be significant that there were many people possessed by unclean spirits in this particular town.
"Now God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out of them." (Acts 19:1l-12)
In these verses, Luke refers to those who were "sick" in two categories, those with "diseases" and those with "evil spirits", again as if both groups were afflicted by illnesses but of distinct kinds.
It is only Luke, in the Acts and in his Gospel, who uses the phrase "evil spirit". As mentioned in the second chapter, the Greek word behind "evil" seems to emphasise more strongly than that for "unclean" the idea of something wicked and morally corrupt. The incidents recorded here took place in Ephesus, a centre of worship of Artemis (also known as Diana), the goddess of fertility. It was also a place where there was widespread practice of "magic" (verse 19). Both of these features involved behaviours condemned in Scripture as immoral. It may be that this was why Luke chose to use this particular word here, rather than the one translated "unclean".
Acts 19:13-20: also at Ephesus, these verses describe how seven itinerant Jewish exorcists attempted to remove evil spirits by using the name of "Jesus, whom Paul preaches".
Again, the incident tells us little about the actual nature of evil spirits, except that, in this case, the affected man was possessed by extraordinary strength, a feature shared with the man in the Gospels who believed himself to be possessed by a "legion" of demons, and one sometimes observed in certain types of mental illness. Some would claim that the man's declaration "Jesus I know, and Paul I know ..." implies the special knowledge of a supernatural spirit but, as we have seen in relation to similar utterances in the Gospels, this is not necessarily so. Paul was in Ephesus for two years and, as a result of his preaching, "all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus" (v. 10). So this man, in common with other Ephesians, could have come to know something of Paul's teaching about Jesus, without it being supernaturally revealed to him. The fact that he refers to Paul, as well as to Jesus, supports this.
But, taken all together, these incidents in the Acts do not give us much to help us understand the actual nature of demons and unclean spirits. There is, however, another incident in Acts 16 which, though in some ways different from the others, and from those in the Gospels, nevertheless clarifies a number of points and opens up some valuable lines of enquiry. This is the incident of the slave-girl possessed by "a spirit of divination", which is dealt with in the next chapter.
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