ANSWER by Bro. Ignatius Mary, OLSM on May 6, 2004

Dear Simon: You ask a false question. Not everything is in the Bible. The Bible itself says that not every teaching of Christ is in the Bible (John 21:25). The doctrine of "the Bible alone" is a man-made doctrine that did not exist until Martin Luther. In the first through the third centuries Christian did not have a New Testament. The New Testament, as we know it, was not settled until the fourth century. (see Canon of the New Testament for a detailed discussion of this. The bottomline is that the Bible is a result of Oral Tradition. When the Church was deciding which letters were Scripture and which were not, one of the criteria was whether or not the letter was consistent with Oral Tradition. The Word of God, God's Revelation, is what we call Sacred Tradition. Sacred Tradition is composed of Oral Tradition and Written Tradition (see Scripture and Tradition). St. Paul teaches that we are to hold fast to Tradition whether it is oral Tradition or written Tradition (2 Thess 2:15) Again not everything is in the Bible. The Bible is a book containing religious truth. It is not a book of clinical counseling, medicine, history, science, etc. The Bible contains elements of those things but it is not a manual for anything other than religion. Even in religion it does not contain every detail. If we were to do only what is in the Bible, we would have to abandon all Church buildings and begin holding church services in fields and homes. Calling pastors "reverend" is not in the Bible. Sunday School is not in the Bible, preaching over a sound system is not in the Bible. The details of how to do Pastoral Counseling with a trouble soul is not found in the Bible. And the Bible does not contain a manual for Deliverance Counseling or Exorcism. It does contain some examples of exorcism, but those examples are not the end and total of information about the nature and methods of exorcism. As for as I know there was only one case, in all of history, where a human spirit was allegedly involved with demons in possessing a person. That case is detailed in the book, "Begone Satan". We do not posit this possibility as a dogmatic fact, only as a possibility that appears to be supported by the clinical observations in the case recording in the "Begone Satan" book. Could that human spirit been a demon in disguise? Possibly. Theoretically could a human spirit be involved in a possession. Well the Bible does show us that human spirits can come to the earth. Moses and Elijah appeared with Jesus at the Transfiguration. I would imagine, however, that such evil human spirits could only do this with a demon escort and not on his own. In any event, the indication of the possibility of this comes from a real case of exorcism. Nevertheless, whether this is possible or not doesn't matter. The methods to get rid of evil spirits (be they human or demonic) is the exact same methods. God Bless, Bro. Ignatius Mary For Assistance with Spiritual Warfare problems please go to our How We Can Help You page. For a direct link to sample Spiritual Warfare prayers see our Spiritual Warfare Prayer Catalog