“The punishment of the devil
was apparent in the torment of the
human body”: Epilepsy in
Ancient Christianity
Nicole Kelley


Peter Chrysologus, on the other hand, blames the boy’s condition on
his parents. Since (according to Mark 9:21) the boy had seizures even in
childhood, his own behavior cannot be the cause of his suffering. Jesus’
question
reveals how long it has been, he makes known the extent of time, he goes back
over his infancy, so that the cause of so great an evil not taint the offspring, but
the parent, who consigned the child entrusted to him by God to the service
of the devil, and as payment to demons, as Scripture says: “And they offered
their sons and their daughters to demons.” What sort of crime, what sort of
offense did infancy commit, so as to admit the devil into itself? But children
are possessed by a demon when they are offered by their parents to the devil
when they are given over to the demons’ keeping

can we connect to this to texts on blindness?

sp since kelly later qoutes Origen:

Origen casts aside this physiological and sympathetic etiology, asserting
that he believes the Gospel, where the boy’s illness is attributed to “an impure
dumb and deaf spirit.” (215)

it seems vtal that the spirit is both deaf and dumb, does the idea of possesion tie into the idea that for a demon to speak or move he needs a body?

Origen and the goodness of creation