Luke Burgis: evaluation

Transcript context

…Do you think he, and maybe you, have a Manichean approach to Christianity, if demons are relevant? Well, demons are fundamental to Christianity. The gospels are full of stories of Jesus driving out demons. The Gerasene demoniac is the most famous example of that. He says, “We are legion,” and this is the quintessential gospel story where the demonic has and always has an element of contagion because the entire herd is infected by this demon and is driven off into the sea. There’s nothing Manichean about that to me, living in a world where demons are real, where evil is real, and exorcisms are real. I’ve known my fair share of exorcists, and they seem to be on the rise, by the way, from what the data shows. Most of it’s anecdotal. I don’t know how rigorously they’re actually tracked. I think they are by the church, but that is not public data. Anecdotally, it seems like they’re on the rise. Manichean is kind of there’s good, and then there’s evil, and we have to purify. Just admitting a world that might have the demonic element in it, there’s nothing Manichean about that. If you think of Shiite Islam, which sometimes is compared a bit to Catholicism, relative to Sunni Islam at least, do you feel any affinity to that approach? Obviously, it’s missing the Trinity and Jesus and many other fundamental things from your point of view, but is there any kinship?…

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