65
Grindheim comments, “The judgment scene in Matt 25:31-46 is a fitting
conclusion to the teaching on judgment throughout the Gospel of Matthew.
Those who are completely dependent on Christ for their salvation will come to
him and learn from his mind-set of generosity. Their attitudes and works will
correspond. Freely receiving their salvation from the grace of Christ, they are
not concerned with justifying themselves. Instead, they are preoccupied with
emulating the generosity and boundary-breaking acts of mercy that Jesus has
modeled” (331).
While it is not a dimension that I can fully discuss in this paper, the actual
presence of the demonic, or of what seems to be the demonic, does seem to
possess some empirical validity. It is within the past ten years or so that a
portion of the scientific/medical community has begun to address a rather
disturbing phenomenon, and it is this: that certain patients, confined to
psychiatric wards, respond positively and only to exorcism. In fact. Dr. Patrick
McNamara, former head of neurology at Boston University Medical School,
acknowledges the existence of “unholy spirits” that have an existence separate
from the individual, that can and do invade the dreams of certain patients, that
can and do at times inflict terrible harm on these individuals, and that can only
be explained as a kind of free-floating image associated with the human genome
and therefore grounded in the natural world. Finally, popular writer and
psychiatrist M. Scott Peck has written several books in which he documents
several actual exorcisms, among them People o f the Lie and Glimpses o f the
Devil.
Recall that in his novel The Possessed (titled Demons in a 1995 edition),
Fyodor Dostoevsky addresses the role of the demonic in shaping the thought of
the pre-Modem Russian intellectual and ruling class. In his own Dr. Faustus,
Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann addresses the role of the demonic in the rise
of the Third Reich in Germany.
Works Cited
Arendzen, John. “Manichaeism.” The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 9.
New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. Web. 15 Jan.
2014.
Asma, Stephen T. “Soul Talk.” The Chronicle o f Higher Education
(2010) ProQuest. Web. 9 Jan. 2014.
Bard, Bryan. ‘“ Breaking Bad’ inspires real life criminals: Murdered girl
dissolved in acid.” examiner.com. 20 September 2013. Web. 27
February 2014.
Choksy, Jamsheed K. “Manichaeism.” Encyclopedia o f Sex and Gender.
Ed. Fedwa Malti-Douglas. Vol. 3. Detroit: Macmillan Reference