Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) was a famous Dutch rationalist philosopher. He believed that pure unaided reason can tell us everything we need to know. He believed that God is the same as Nature (pantheism). In other words only God exists. He contended that brilliant boffins (like him) can prove conclusively that the devil does not exist.
Although Spinoza is very difficult to read (no funny stories), we can outline his worldview pithily:
- God is identical with Nature
- Organised religion is wrong
- Jesus was not God
- Miracles are impossible
- There is no heaven and hell
- The Bible is full of superstitious nonsense
- Nature is governed by ironclad laws
- Necessity rules everything and everyone
- Free will is a fiction
- Humans must follow ‘reason’ to find a secular happiness
Frans Kuyper (1629–1691) was a Dutch writer who wrote against Spinoza‘s 1670 treatise Theological – Political Treatise which mocked and ridiculed the Christian faith. Kuyper had some remarkable experiences that convinced him that Spinoza had got it completely wrong with respect to the existence and power of Satan.
He outlined these fascinating experiences in one of his books.
In Kuyper’s home in 1660 a man walked on and laid down on a hot pan in the fire for long periods without being burned in the least. When Kuyper asked the man questions in Latin, he replied in Latin, although he knew no Latin. He uttered fearful curses against God in a language he had never learned! Frans Kuyper witnessed this with other people present.
On September 3, 1677, in Rotterdam, in the midst of friends a twenty-five year old woman was seized with “strange fits, like a possession.”
The woman had to be held down in her seat by various leaders of the Rotterdam church community. Then two men released the woman, at which point “she rose about a foot in the air and stood upright, without any support.”
“A voice spoke from her saying she was the devil.”
Frans Kuyper was not himself present during this dramatic incident but he later met the woman personally to investigate her condition. She “fell into a fit,” and Kuyper related how he pulled out his Greek New Testament and read Mark 9:14-29, a passage about the healing of a boy possessed by evil spirits. Kuyper explained what happened:
“Upon which the woman fell into a fearful rage. The woman recognized the passage even though she did not know a word of Greek or any other language except her native Dutch.”
Kuyper added: “And when I read the passage about Michael defeating the devil in Revelation chapter 12 she said in perfect Greek “The angel beat us”.
Frans Kuyper is not the only person to have witnessed these strange happenings.
With respect to the devil debate I am impressed by T. K. Oesterreich, a German ‘agnostic’ scholar who wrote a book in 1921, Possession: Demoniacal and Others, Among Primitive Races, in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Modern Times.
Oesterreich, at first, considered these odd states as emotional disturbances or illnesses, interpreting such conditions as psychiatric in nature in the spirit of Sigmund Freud. Like Freud he originally interpreted possession cases as hysteria, severe neurosis and psychosis. However he could never explain how such severely disturbed people could levitate, possess ‘impossible’ clairvoyant knowledge, speak or understand unlearned foreign languages and display incredible superhuman strength.
Shocked, baffled and challenged by so many eyewitness accounts he changed his mind. He concluded that states of possession must go beyond the ‘natural’ world to reflect ‘spiritist’ paranormal realities.
Oesterreich included thousands of accounts of and references to such cases from all over the world, showing again and again how both anthropologists and historical chroniclers have found ample evidence that these possession cases have always existed.
Without doubt Spinoza and his lively coterie of atheists, deists and pantheists have far more followers in the western world today than those who agree with Frans Kuyper but here is my challenge. Was Spinoza, the arch rationalist, telling us the truth about the devil? Or should we trust Kuyper’s eyewitness accounts and the extensive and formidable research of T.K. Oestereich?
Mark is a lively storyteller and the author of four books, including The Spy, the Rat and the Bed of Nails: Creative Ways of Talking about Christian Faith. His work is focused on storytelling and how this can help us to communicate the Christian faith. He has written many articles for the Baptist Times, RE Today, Youthscape, Direction magazine and the Christian Teachers Journal.
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3 Comments
Hugh Grear · June 23, 2025 at 7:04 pm
I have to admit that Spinoza is not my kind of philosopher. His worldview seems utterly reductive, and seems like an attempt to remove all the joy experienced in life. I have. Not personally experienced any of the phenomena described by Kuyper, but I am convinced that he is a reliable witness, and an honest man. As a former lawyer, witness evidence is important to me. The court deal with it all the time, and you have to weigh the evidence and the character of the witness. Well done, Mark, for exposing Spinoza and his mates as unreliable, closed minded, and, frankly, dull.
Tim Bowman · June 24, 2025 at 6:18 pm
Interesting stuff. I too have witnessed demonic possession, and the evidence seems irrefutable. I also spent my first years in a haunted house [a rectory] where there was much poltergeist activity. This carried on long after we had left, despite church sanctioned attempts at exorcism. Apparently the spirit/ spirits only left after the incumbent vicar lost his rag one night and ordered it/ them to be gone in the name of Jesus. There has been no trouble since.
Dave Hopwood · June 30, 2025 at 12:23 pm
Thanks for this Mark, and for the insights you share here,. I don’t know much about philosophy but I do think so much of life points to more than the physical and visible. Also I have just read a book by Glen Scrivener – The Air We Breathe – in which he points out that our worldview in the West is inspired by Jesus. We all breathe Christian air but don’t realise it. Our values (equality, care for the marginalised, progress, freedom) derive from the Christian revolution. Just a thought. Thanks again.