Undivided
The undivided church
The root of the tree, and the reason a tree is the right shape: every body below inherits the same gospel exorcisms and the same New Testament vocabulary.
In its own terms
What this body is doing
Carried as a node rather than as a body with positions, because it is the common inheritance rather than a party to the argument. What every later church has in hand before it decides anything is here: the gospel scenes in which spirits are cast out, the commission to the disciples, and the practice of exorcism at baptism attested from the second century onward.
Dating it as ending in 1054 is a convenience, and the corpus should say so. The Great Schism is a date historians use for a separation that took centuries and was complete on neither side when it happened.
Where it stands in the tree
Descent
Bodies that separated from it
- Eastern Orthodox1054
Papal authority, the filioque clause, and a long accumulation of language and practice. Demonology had nothing to do with it, which is the point: the different answers below are downstream of an argument about something else entirely.
- Oriental Orthodox451
The Chalcedonian Definition, and whether Christ is acknowledged in two natures or out of two. Six centuries older than the Great Schism, and routinely left off charts that begin at 1054.
- The Latin West1054
The same separation, seen from the other side.
The same questions asked of every body
What the corpus cannot yet say
This body is carried without positions, on purpose. It is either a junction in the tree — a stage every later body descends through rather than a party to the argument — or one the corpus holds no primary text for. Filling six answers in from general knowledge would produce exactly the confident, uncitable summary this site exists against.
Are the gifts still given?
Not established here. Not an exorcism question, and the one that decides the rest. A body holding the gifts ceased with the apostles has no room for a deliverance ministry; a body holding they continue has no reason to license one.
Who may act?
Not established here. The first thing a rite settles, usually in its opening rubric, and the sharpest divide between an office and a gift.
What counts as evidence?
Not established here. Where a tradition decides it is dealing with a spirit rather than an illness, a grief, or nothing at all.
Where is the spirit?
Not established here. All four inherit gospel scenes in which spirits are in people. What each adds beyond that is the largest difference between them.
Whom do the words address?
Not established here. A formal difference a reader can check by counting clauses rather than by weighing tone.
What restraint is written in?
Not established here. Every one of these traditions knows the practice can harm. What each does about that is what popular accounts leave out.
What closes the matter?
Not established here. Whether the encounter ends, and who declares it, separates a rite from an ongoing practice.
This page records what a body holds and where that is written down. It takes no position on whether any of it is true, and nothing here is instruction — the rites are described by what they contain, never as something to follow.