Incarnation
The incarnation of the demons has been a problem to Christian demonology and theology since early times. A very early form of incarnation of demons was the idea of demonic possession, trying to explain that a demon entered the body of a person with some purpose or simply to punish that one for some allegedly committed sin. But this soon acquired greater proportions, trying to explain how demons could seduce people to have sexual relationships with them or induce them to commit other sins. To Christian scholars, demons didn't always have to manifest themselves in a visible and possible tangible form. Sometimes it was through possession.
Read more about this topic: Christian Demonology
Famous quotes containing the word incarnation:
“All men, in the abstract, are just and good; what hinders them, in the particular, is, the momentary predominance of the finite and individual over the general truth. The condition of our incarnation in a private self, seems to be, a perpetual tendency to prefer the private law, to obey the private impulse, to the exclusion of the law of the universal being.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Service ... is love in action, love “made flesh”; service is the body, the incarnation of love. Love is the impetus, service the act, and creativity the result with many by-products.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 3, ch. 3 (1962)
“They have their belief, these poor Tibet people, that Providence sends down always an Incarnation of Himself into every generation. At bottom some belief in a kind of pope! At bottom still better, a belief that there is a Greatest Man; that he is discoverable; that, once discovered, we ought to treat him with an obedience which knows no bounds. This is the truth of Grand Lamaism; the “discoverability” is the only error here.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)