Hallucination, or Divine Revelation?
The Atlantic
“Madness” used to be considered an affliction of the spirit—demonic possessions, or Godly visions. Now it’s treated as a medical issue. What does this mean for contemporary believers?
What is the difference between a homeless man who claims to speak to God and a saint who says the same? When I posed this question to Andrew Scull, the author of the recent book Madness in Civilization: A Cultural History of Insanity, he chuckled and cited a quip by the philosopher Bertrand Russell: “From a scientific point of view, we can make no distinction between the man who eats little and sees heaven and the man who drinks much and sees snakes.”
