Truth Unites - Can Christians Believe in Ghosts?

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

Gavin Ortlund explores whether Christians can believe in ghosts, offering a biblical perspective that challenges pop-culture ideas while taking the supernatural seriously.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

Can Christians believe in ghosts? This may seem like a strange question, but this is surprisingly relevant. Actually, an amazing number of people in the modern world do believe in ghosts or ghosts-like entities of some kind or another. Or they have doubts when they're staying in a big Airbnb on a windy night or after you've watched a horror movie, this kind of thing. Back in 2007, a poll found that one out of three Americans, slightly more than one out of three, believe in ghosts. Maybe that number would be even higher, almost 20 years later. So this is something that we should think about. If we just roll our eyes at this and say, well, of course not, then we actually miss something

interesting happening in our supposedly secular culture where we find this growing and sometimes disturbing fascination with ghosts and other folkloric entities like fairies and goblins and werewolves and zombies and vampires and even weirder stuff than that. And actually, Christianity has a more surprising and more emotionally satisfying response. to this trend, then sometimes we even realize, let's unfold an answer here quickly by asking two questions. First, what do we mean by ghosts? This term is somewhat vague in the pop culture sense. You might think of kind of wispy, white, human-like figures floating around a haunted house or something like this, terrorizing people. But basically, and more broadly, the term typically

refers to the soul or the spirit of a dead human being that appears to the living. It can be used a little differently than that too. Now, we do find some rare instances in the Bible where a deceased human being is recalled to earth. But when this happens, it's still different from what we typically call ghosts. So, for example, these occurrences in the Bible involve the righteous being recalled from heaven. They're not terrorizing anyone. They're not hanging around a haunted house. house, they're very special and specific purpose. So in the Transfiguration of Christ, we find Moses and Elijah appearing with Jesus. Another interesting case would be Samuel being summoned by the medium of Endor in 1st Samuel 28. This is one of the most perplexing passages. Man, I have wrestled

with this passage. I'm still actually not sure how to read this. Is this a demon appearing as Samuel, or is it Samuel himself being recalled from the intermediate state? I don't know, but on any construal, it's not really a ghost. One of the things we're going to talk about is demons are liars, and they often don't tell you who they really are. But I cannot recall any occurrence in scripture where a deceased human being is recalled from hell, or comes in a way that would be spooky or is terrorizing people or hanging around for an extended period of time or anything like that. The biblical teaching about what happens to human beings after we die we sum this up with the idea of the intermediate state. So this is what happens to human beings

prior to the final resurrection and the final judgment that will be for all. And essentially, what we're told is we return to our creator. We go back to God and we give an account of our lives and are judged for our lives. Ecclesiastes refers to our death as our body returning to the earth, but our spirit returning to God. And the Bible teaches that after we die, we face judgment for our life. And so after a human being dies, we enter into a state either of enjoying God's presence with him or being cast away from him, awaiting final judgment. And now, some people do argue that ghosts could be souls in purgatory. If you're curious about purgatory, I have a whole video addressing that topic. But even if you believed in purgatory, you'd have to make a further argument

to say that those who are in purgatory are somehow wandering throughout the earth or doing the things that we think of ghosts doing. So I think the essential biblical answer to this question is no. The dead are not here among us. Rather, they are in the places that we frequently call heaven or hell. And the few cases where a human being is recalled to earth are special circumstances that aren't really what we call ghosts. However, let's ask a second question, because this is where it gets interesting. Is there anything supernatural going on with what people think are ghosts? And according to Christianity, the answer could be, yeah, maybe. We as Christians believe in a world that is absolutely shot through with the supernatural.

Angels and demons are very active. And something interesting is that there's lots of different kinds of angels and demons. We don't know exactly the full extent of that. People have speculated about the different rankings of angels and so forth in church history. We don't have an entire list of this. There's a lot we don't know. But we do see this. And so it's entirely possible, and I want to impress this on our hearts to understand this matters for how we live,

that when people are, people may be encountering some demonic being, when they actually think they're experiencing whether it be a ghost or a deceased loved one who appears to them or a spirit guide who's offering comfort or some kind of visionary religious figure giving them a message. I mean, people have all these strange paranormal and seemingly supernatural experiences. And I don't think the biblical response is to say, oh, all of that is just totally naturalistic and fake. There can be supernatural events going on involving demons. A couple of things to observe biblically here. First, demons can and do lie. They can deceive us about what they are. We have no reason to think that the demons are always going to be honest about who they are.

In fact, remember, Paul says that Satan himself disguises him. himself as an angel of light. If Satan were to appear in your living room one night to attack you, he probably wouldn't look like a big red monster with, you know, a pitchfork or something like that. He'd probably try to show up and try to pretend he's an angel. And a repeated teaching about Satan is that he is cunning, he is crafty, he is deceptive, and so forth. Second thing to observe is there's all different kinds of demons and even some very strange things we find in the scripture. In Mark 9, Jesus refers to a particular kind of demon that cannot come out by anything but prayer. And stemming from this point, we can just observe that there's a lot of diversity and

strangeness in the experience of demons. We think of the Legion that are in Mark 5, 9, and then they're cast into a herd of pigs, crazy stuff. That's in the Bible. You know, we have to have a category for that. Or we think of the seven demons in Mary Magdalene. Apparently, multiple demons can all be inhabiting the same person in some way. And we could stack up other strange things like this, but the point to make is that in many cases where someone thinks they're encountering a ghost or something like a ghost,

of course, it can be just a misunderstanding or a hoax or something like that, but it can be a genuine contact with the supernatural, even some pretty weird supernatural stuff. So the point we're making is Christianity has space for explaining lots of different strange and supernatural experiences. I'm going to put up, I think this is an important point for us to think through.

I'm going to put up on the screen a spectrum here where on the one side you see pre-modern views, animism, polytheism, lots of other things where basically the thinking is spiritual stuff is everywhere. And then on the other side, modern, western, secular views, though increasingly in the non-West as well, that tend to think that physical nature is the whole show. Okay, so you've got, you know, most human beings throughout space and time have looked around at the world and said, this place is haunted. There's good and bad enchanted spiritual stuff all over the place. And then on the other hand, you've got the modern Western tendency, which tends, though, as we're saying, very inconsistently, to see things just as physical. Now, too often here's what Christians

who have been influenced in the modern West, such as myself, a lot of us, what we do is we go with option two and then just add God. Sometimes then as an afterthought will add angels and demons, but they don't really make a big difference. But actually, Christianity has a lot more in common with these other pre-modern perspectives on the other side of the spectrum and invites us to see spiritual realities everywhere shot through the world.

The physical universe from a Christian perspective is not like an autonomous mechanical entity, like a watch just clicking away on its own. Rather, it is providentially overseen at every moment and in every minute little place by both God and the angels. and it's also inhabited full with demons. I mean, it's kind of comforting to think about this.

There is not one rock on Mars that is not infinitely known by God. There's not one blade of grass pushing up out of the earth that is not sustained by God, attended to by God, and the angels. So, you know, I've talked about this a lot in other videos. I did a whole video on the stars. What is a Christian way to think about stars? And I make the case that you can't really think well about stars without thinking about angels. What about trees?

In this video, I say, argue that there's a Christian way of looking at trees and people like C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien can help us think about that, and they are drawing from classical Christian thought, like Augustine of Hippo, who says, to the sublime angels are subjected every bodily nature. Or Thomas Aquinas, who says that angels and corporeal natures unite in constituting one universe. Now, I go into that in those videos, you can explain that. And of course, I'm drawing from the Bible as well, all this interesting language about powers and principalities for the angels and the demons. See this article also for fuller treatment, if you want more on this, all of this link to the video description. The point to make here is that from a Christian perspective,

the world is crammed with supernatural entities. They're very active. Angels and demons in their various iterations and forms are all over the place. And so the world is full of the supernatural, and that does include the scary, dark supernatural entities that we call demons. Two comments about that. Number one, don't be enamored by the demons. The demons are boring losers. They're not interesting. They're predictable.

Jesus is interesting. Be fascinated with Jesus. I say this because I think sometimes people feel this unhealthy draw toward that stuff. And I want people to say, no, that's not interesting. What's interesting is Jesus. Even if you're interested in, like, like if you're tempted toward, some of these like going to a fortune teller and these kinds of things, if you're tempted toward that,

my friend, may I tell you, the Holy Spirit will speak to you. Go to God with those desires and let the Holy Spirit minister to your heart. Just like if you struggle with drunkenness, don't just try to fight that. Go to the Holy Spirit. That's why the verse says, do not be drunk with wine. Instead be filled with the Spirit. The Holy Spirit wants to give you so much better, so much more.

You don't need to go to the dark spirituality. The light is interesting. The light is fascinating and the light is what will last forever. Go to the good spirituality. Anyway, I hope that makes sense what I'm saying there. Second thing, and to finish with is don't be afraid of demons. So we're saying, you know, if people have an experience with something that they think is a ghost, there could be something going on. What I want to say to Christians, particularly here, those who've surrendered their lives to Jesus. Surrender to him, follow him, commit your way to him and do not fear. Jesus has authority over every dark power in this world. You don't need to be afraid. Here's a wonderful verse I love to remember that the demons shudder when they

think of God. Picture a conference call going on in hell, so to speak. Around the table, the demons are plotting. There's a phone in the middle and they got their legal pads and they're thinking, planning out their evil schemes and suddenly one of them says, ah, remember Jesus? And there's a color. collective shudder and groan around the table, and they all kind of look down awkwardly and don't know what to say, and they're realizing we can't do anything about him. He's an unstoppable force. You know, we're dead in the water when it comes to him. The demons shudder at the name of Jesus. Jesus has authority over every dark power, and therefore we can truly be fearless. So long as we're trusting in Jesus, they cannot harm us ultimately. They can plague us and harass us, but they can't drag us down to hell. our everlasting salvation is secure, and even what they can do, God will turn to good.

The reason for that is Jesus himself submitted to all the ghosts and ghost-like things of the world on the cross, meaning he submitted himself, he surrendered himself to the experience of death at the hands of sinful men and the demons think they're winning. But through his resurrection, we have the ultimate guarantee that the darkness cannot swallow the light. Every time it tries, the light will swallow the darkness. And we can be a part of that forever if we know Jesus. Recently, final thought here.

I was in New York City last week from the time of my recording this. We meet together with some of the apologists that I most admire in this world. We get together and pray for each other and brainstorm and talk. And I was, you know, I've kind of actually lately hit a wall in my studies. Strangely enough, I'm like, I'm not sure what my next project should be. I've done so many of the things I wanted to do. Thanks for watching my videos. I've just, you know, all these projects.

I'm like, yeah, I did the video on William Tyndale. I did the video on the Lord Liar Lunatic argument. You know, all these videos, I've done them. They're out there. And I'm like, okay, what are then? And I have some, but I'm kind of planning ahead and I'm kind of asking for advice. And I was talking to one pastor, and he was talking about the occult. And what a need is from an apologetic standpoint to address it.

Now, when I preach about spiritual warfare, the demons, etc., I often, not always, but sometimes I do feel like there is a backlash. My kids will get sick. They'll be weird nightmares. you just go through these seasons where you feel the sense of oppression. But so, you know, I have to confess, in my heart, there was a hesitation like, oh, man, do I really want to tackle a topic like that? And then the next thought at my heart was bring it on.

Let's not live in fear. What can Satan do to us, ultimately? And this is the point I try to emphasize in my video on Satan. You can see the thumb on screen. For all these will be linked below. Check out that for more on this. But the point for us to make is, are ghosts, real, no, not in the pop culture sense, but there are a lot of somewhat comparable supernatural

realities that do exist that may purport to be something like a ghost. But we don't need to live in fear of them, because when you surrender your life to Jesus Christ, the one who died and rose again for your sins, for you to be forgiven and reconciled the God, no darkness can ultimately touch you.