So there are all these ghost shows on TV. People go investigating haunted sites, they find ghosts, and often, combat the ghostly infestation with prayer, exorcism, or some other Christian rite or practice.
Now, my religious instruction is paltry and I haven’t considered myself a Christian (or any kind of -ian) since I was a kid. But these shows have got me to wondering: does Christian doctrine explicitly allow for the possibility of departed souls becoming trapped on earth, or otherwise interacting with the living? Or do they, as I thought, go forthwith to either heaven or hell, depending on their merits? Are Christians who believe in ghosts committing a heresy, or is everything hunky dory, eschatologically speaking?
In Catholicism, exorcism is for the devil/demons, not for ghosts.
I am not aware of any Christian group that would consider either a belief or a lack of belief in ghosts to be heresy. Catholicism does not address ghosts, particularly, but I do not know whether any other denomination has specific declarations on the topic.
It is popular among a number of people who are outside mainstream religions to adopt or “borrow” rites from more established denominations and then attach their own meanings to the purpose of those rites. The TV shows, pretty much all entertainment efforts with no regard for facts or serious beliefs, are employing those tactics, (along with jiggling their cameras, adding odd sound effects, and flashing flights), to create the impression that they are actually investigating and addressing various phenomena.
Well, Jesus himself spoke to the ghosts of Elisha and Moses, so the standard Christian doctrine is that ghosts *can *interact with the living. Beyond that, the details get fuzzy. Some sects say that that only Jesus could talk to ghosts because they came from heaven and he ruled heaven. Some sects say that ghosts can leave hell if the devil gives them permission. Others say that ghosts are fairly mundane expressions of souls trapped in limbo.
Jehvovah’s Witnesses. Official doctrine is that ghosts do not and can not exist, and any ghosts seen are illusions projected by demons. Belief in ghosts is seen as completely incompatible with church doctrine. The JWs get around the issue of Jesus talking top ghosts by claiming that they weren’t ghosts at all, just illlusions conjured by Jesus to illustrate a point.
The security level at the gates of Hell have been a bit overstated.
As said ghosts are in the bible so it is permitted. But is it commonly demons that are being ‘combated’ by Christians, which are to many fallen angels. Angels can and do commonly appear on earth in scripture. Summoning a ghost of a departed person, to some, is taken as they are really being deceived and they are summoning a demon who will appear as that ghost. I’ve heard it said by a pastor that the ghost that Saul went to summons was probably a deceiving demon, the door that Saul opened, seeking wisdom and knowledge outside of God, allowed this door to open.
I used this in a high school paper to argue that Hamlet’s father was a demon, and, moreso, that Hamlet should have known this. (I also here the appeal to vengeance, which would only prolong the king’s sentence in limbo.
Descriptions of ghosts (references to the word “spirit” that aren’t an abstraction like ‘we each have a spirit,’ but are clearly talking about an independent entity) only appear 4 times in the Bible. In 3 cases it sounds more like other biblical descriptions of demons rather than formerly living humans and the last sounds like what we call astral projection because the spirit in question isn’t a dead person, either.
Some religions believe you immediately go to heaven or hell. Others believe that the dead rest until judgment day, and will all be judged at the same time, so no one who has yet died has had their fate judged. Believing in either and ghosts both doesn’t make a lot of sense because neither possibility has room for spirits wandering the earth still.
It is more a case of how the author would have chosen to portray him, rather than what he would have been in the real world. Given the political/social situation in England at the time, it’s unlikely that a playwright seeking patronage would have made his hero Roman Catholic or even acknowledging Catholic doctrine.
As noted above, there is plenty of room if you accept that the Devil would let spirits out of Hell to torment or mislead the living. That is perfectly consistent with the beliefs stated.
True, it has no scriptural basis, but the idea of the Devil ruling in hell, rather than being a prisoner, also has no scriptural basis but is widely accepted. So that’s not a flaw.
The brand of fundamentalist evangelical Christianity to which I subscribed for a number of decades (but no longer do) taught that what our culture would regard as a ghost - viz, the disembodied spirit of a deceased person - is not actually a ghost, but rather, a demon, sent from hell to trick God’s people into not taking the occult seriously.
In other words, that’s not the disembodied spirit of Abraham Lincoln sometimes showing up at The White House. That’s a demon pretending to be the disembodied spirit of Abraham Lincoln sometimes showing up at The White House.
That’s what they teach in Southern Baptist churches, which are the largest Protestant denomination in the USA.
The Biblical incident mentioned above is commonly referred to as “Saul and the Witch of Endor.” According the the narrative, after the death of the ancient Hebrew prophet Samuel, Saul, the King of Israel, no longer received the divine guidance of God. He therefore sought out a witch to summon the spirit of Samuel. The witch raises Samuel’s ghost, who prophesies doom and gloom and so on.
Interpretations of the events that follow vary. In Judaism, some scholars/commentators describe the witch as a ‘ventriloquist’, implying that the spirit she summoned was simply a hoax. Others take the narrative at face value and accept that, evidently, it is possible to raise the spirits of the dead.
In Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant teachings generally agree that what was summoned was a demon, or alternatively a demonic illusion, and not the actual soul of a deceased person. Catholic Encyclopedia on Necromancy and ghosts
Jewish folklore (which is non canonical despite some of it being arguably older than our canon) speaks of dybbuks. A dybbuk is the, generally malevolent, soul of a human being trapped between this world and the next. A dybbuk may cause various scary effects and even possess a person. A righteous rabbi employing the right means may drive the dybbuk out of the possessed person. The dybbuk will exit the body through a toe, leaving a small exit wound.
I am not making any of this up.
There’s a Yiddish opera The Dybbuk about a spirit plaguing a young woman.
Marvel Comics had IIRC a dead man brought back by Doctor Doom as a draconic monster called The Dybbuk.
The Monster In My Pocket series of toys, which was made by obviously knowledgeable people drawing on myths from around the world, included a dybbuk figure.
The largely awful graphic novel Greenberg The Vampire included a dybbuk possessing a character.
Oh, and a few years ago somebody on Ebay claimed that they had a small cabinet haunted by a dybbuk. Their story matched nothing I know about dybbuks. IMHO If you’re gonna make up a story about a dybbuk, the monster should behave like a dybbuk.
