Casting Out Demons Before Constantine: Exorcism, Christian Identity, and the Contest for Religious Authority in the Early Church

Exorcism was one of the practices through which early Christians publicly distinguished their religious claims from surrounding ritual cultures. This article surveys Christian exorcistic discourse before Constantine, concentrating on Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen. It argues that exorcism functioned simultaneously as pastoral practice, apologetic evidence, and boundary-making rhetoric. Early Christian authors claimed that the name of Jesus expelled hostile spirits without the elaborate techniques they associated with magic, thereby presenting Christian power as derivative of Christ rather than manipulative ritual expertise. The article also cautions against reading apologetic claims as straightforward statistical evidence of everyday practice. What these sources reliably reveal is that exorcism occupied an important place in Christian arguments about truth, divine authority, and the defeat of demonic powers.