‘When an unclean spirit goes out of a person’: An Assessment of the Accommodation Theory of Demon Possession and Exorcism in the Synoptic Gospels (original) (raw)
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The Religious Grounds of Possession and Exorcism in the History of Christianity
In the Holy Bible, we are face with some evil creatures that are considered as enemies of God, Jesus Christ, and Christians. Perhaps, the most significant and tangible declaration of presence of these creatures is in possessing human beings, and on the other hand, the role of Jesus and his apostles in the expulsion of them. In this article, we have first dealt with the concept of possession and exorcism, then, exemplums and implications existing on this subject in the Old Testament and New Testament have been mentioned in detail, and the subject is thematically classified. And at last, a brief chronicle of exorcism in the history of the Christianity has been presented This query indicates that, unlike religions such as Islam, in which issues such as exorcism fit within the realm of the popular and informal religion, in Christianity, especially Catholicism, the approach towards this issue, in the normative religion and the popular religion, is intertwined, and it is almost impossible to separate them. In fact, exorcism is the junction, sharing point, and even the rivalry between the normative and the popular religion. Therefore, the Catholic Church insists on monopolizing the rituals associated with it.
Pneuma in Greek and ruah in Hebrew should be understood impersonally as “wind, invisible power”. Daimonia are indefinite half-divine powers, occasionally personified (Jas 2.19). These “evil powers” are never equated with Satan, and only some enemies of Jesus made them satanic agents. “Unclean” means “unholy, belonging to the profane, earthly sphere”. “Evil” means “malicious”. Accordingly, the Gospels imply that so called “possession” is an insane behaviour with unknown causes; from pour point of view they could be medical, moral, or satanic. The authors of the Gospels and Jesus himself followed the popular way of speaking without judging it. However, on the literary level, the descriptions of such cases in the Gospels are similar to the other stories of healings and they should not be separated from them. They are not too similar to the apocryphal descriptions of exorcisms. Even if Jesus was perceived as exorcist, the Gospels do not really support this view.
The (Re)Invention of Biblical Exorcism in Contemporary Roman Catholic Discourses
Religion & Theology, 2022
Exorcism is flourishing once again in the Roman Catholic Church today. Discourse on the topic has been influenced by the publications of exorcists such as Malachi Martin and Gabriele Amorth. They claim biblical precedence and commissioning for their duties as exorcists and seek to emphasise their credentials by interacting with modern medicine. At the same time, they provide descriptions of demonic possession which surpass and even contradict the accounts found in the Gospels. We analyse the claims of modern exorcists concerning demons, those they possess, and how they are expelled, and evaluate these against the evidence in the Gospels. We discover that the narratives constructed by modern exorcists involves both a dramatisation of the supernatural that exceeds the exorcisms of Jesus, and the 'medicalisation' of exorcism as a means to legitimise the practice as a valid alternative or complement to modern medicine and psychology.