A Christian View Of Healing

Both the Old and New Testaments are filled with references to the healing of disease. Healing is an important metaphor for understanding the nature and significance of God's love for us and of salvation in Christ. This article describes healing from a biblical point-of-view and lays the foundation for imaging the role that liturgy has as a vehicle of pastoral care.

Healing is no stranger to the Judeo-Christian tradition. In the Hebrew Scripture, God affirms, "?I am the Lord, your physician?" (Exod. 15:26). A central description for God's work in creation is that of healing. Healing is one expression of God's special care for people: "?I am the Lord, your healer?" (Exod. 15:26b). God orders people with power and destroys enemies and deceivers. God's will for the people, a will that is not without condition, is imaged through that of God as healer. Both disease and health originate with God: "?I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand?" (Deut. 32:39). God relates to people both positively and negatively. In Hosea, God is represented as being in despair over Israel's seeming incurableness. In Jeremiah, Yahweh affirms, "?Your hurt is incurable, and your wound is grievous. There is no one to uphold your cause, no medicine for your wound, no healing for you?" (Jer. 30:12–13). Yet God's compassion is infinite; God simply cannot abandon Israel. Both the discipline and the healing of Israel is from God, "?Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them?" (Hos. 11:3). Yahweh heals the diseases, which have their origin in God and are the consequences of human infidelity and sinfulness. Often the situation of Israel is compared to someone who is left without medical help. "?Is there no balm in Gilead? Is their no physician there? Why then has the daughter of my people not been restored??" (Jer. 8:22). While many texts refer to the healing and the sickness of individuals, the healing from Yahweh is primarily for the reconstitution of Israel. The importance of these various texts lies in the fact that Yahweh is represented as the restorer and orderer of human life. In the New Testament, Jesus' miraculous healings are presented as the signs that the Messiah has arrived and the kingdom of God is in our midst. Among the powers of the Messiah is the power to heal the sick (Luke 7:21; also Matt. 11:4–6). Jesus' healings are presented in the Gospels as the product of his charismatic power. From a historical point of view, Jesus stood in the tradition of Jewish charismatic healers. Touching is a very important aspect of Jesus' ministry of healing. In fact, in the Hebrew Scriptures, the language of the senses is used to express God's compassion. God is the one who sees our afflictions, who hears our cries, and who feels our pain. The ministry of Jesus represents God as a salvific God, a God of life. Jesus' ministry of healing is in line with his constant emphasis upon compassion. The root meaning of compassion is "?being moved by?" another's situation at the very core of one's being. Not only does compassion characterize Jesus' ministry and is the basic ground for his deeds of healing; but for Jesus, God is also the compassionate one. Jesus invites his disciples to be imitators of God's compassion: "?Be compassionate, even as your Father is compassionate?" (Luke 6:36). Jesus' movement must be characterized by compassion. In fact, Jesus sent his disciples out to continue his ministry of healing (Mark 6:7–13; Matt. 10:5–10; Luke 9:1–6). In the letter of James, we find the classic New Testament text on the implementation of this ministry (5:14–16). Jesus performed healings on the Sabbath in defiance of the law (Mark 3:1–6). He healed individuals, who were considered on the margin of society, such as a tax collector (Luke 19:1–10). He healed individuals outside the land of Israel (Mark 7:31–37). In his healing, he rebuked the forces that seem to make people sick (Luke 13:16). Illness is viewed by Jesus as a destructive and deteriorating force. Any attitude that would glorify sickness is alien to Jesus' attitude. Jesus as the Savior is the great physician (H. Beyer, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 130 ). Toward a Theology of Healing While healing is an important element of Jesus' ministry and redemptive work, it has never been a major concern of theology. A theology of healing is quite absent from the Christian tradition. Developments in many areas of theological concern and the rediscovery of the importance of the healing ministry in the charismatic movement demand a theology of healing. Such a theology presupposes first of all a definition of health. Health is often understood as merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Yet the preamble of the charter of the World Health Organization attempts to convey a holistic view of health: "?Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.?" To this definition, one should add a spiritual element. The root of the word implies completeness, wholeness. Yet unlike disease, which is frequently recognizable, tangible, and rather easily defined, health is a more nebulous reality, difficult to define and never in a state of perfection. A theology of healing must emphasize the centrality of the concept of personhood and the principle of totality. Health must be defined in such a way as to encompass the total good of the person. Christianity insists that we see healing and disease with the eyes of faith. It offers the triadic framework of Creation, Fall, and redemption as its basic worldview. The framework can be expressed in the following way:

"¢ Creation: original blessing, light, freedom, integrity, peace, health;

"¢ Fall: deprived human condition, blindness, bondage, brokenness, estrangement, disease; "¢ Redemption: restored human potential, enlightenment, liberation, reintegration, reconciliation, health. A theology of healing must be anchored within this framework; the major operative elements have to be a theological anthropology and an anthropological soteriology. From an anthropological perspective, all forms of dualism have to be avoided. The body-soul unity is a necessary implication of the doctrines of the Creation and the Resurrection. The human spirit lives in and through expressive embodiment because the human person is a psycho-physical unity. Within this anthropology, woman and man should not be considered as a composite of several levels, such as body, soul, and spirit, but as a multidimensional unity. Different dimensions of human reality do not lie one alongside the other. In every stage of life, all dimensions are potentially or actually present. Salvation itself can be described as an act of healing. In many languages, the root of the word salvation indicates this. The Greek word soteria comes from saos; and the German word heiland from heil. All of these different roots mean "?whole, not yet split, disrupted, or disintegrated.?" Ultimately healing in the sense of salvation implies victory over death itself. In the New Testament, the concept of salvation implies the deliverance of human beings from all forms of evil, from sickness, from mental illness, from demonic powers, and ultimately from death. The concept of reconciliation emphasizes the restoration of a broken relationship. Redemption connotes freedom from various forms of bondage; the term salvation is a rich and complex one and cannot be restricted simply to the restoration of broken relation with God. It encompasses the total good of the person; and in that sense it connotes the process of healing. There can be no total dichotomy between eschatological salvation and salvation in this world, between "?secular?" history and salvation history, between healing for eternal life and healing for this life. For salvation to be truly human, salvation must have some experiential dimensions. It must reflect at least partially what salvation implies. To indicate this mystery the Greek Fathers spoke of the divinization of woman and man. No human techniques of healing can ever remove fully the various forms of suffering that afflict humanity. Victory over suffering is essentially partial and limited. It would be false to understand salvation uniquely as meaning perfect wholeness, for such wholeness means ultimately liberation from finitude and basically from mortality. Ultimate salvation does not in any way imply that salvation comes to humanity simply from outside. Salvation is from within, from what occurs here within our human context. The New Testament gives us an expression of this: one is judged ultimately according to one's compassion (Matt. 25:34–40). According to the New Testament, salvation involves two movements that are not to be separated: a movement beyond the world, eschatological in nature; and a movement within this world, towards wholeness in life through the gifts of the world, such as medicine, rest, and friendship. While within the Christian perspective there are values higher than life, life in and of its dimensions is of real value. Jesus' ministry of healing continues in the church and takes place in charitable, charismatic, and sacramental ways. Healing takes place in the tradition in the church of caring for the sick in hospitals and other institutions. The charismatic ministry of healing is very much present in the contemporary church. The sacramental ministry of healing, while expressed in the Eucharist and penance, is most fully operative in the sacrament of the anointing of the sick. The evolution of this sacrament is indicative of the many problems involved in developing a theology of healing. In the early church, the sacrament was understood primarily as an unction for healing. But step-by-step, this was transformed into unction as a preparation for death and had more to do with forgiveness of sins than with bodily healing. It was eventually perceived as the final sacrament for the dying. The healing intended was a spiritual healing. In the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (S.C. 73ff) and in Pastoral Care of the Sick: Rites of Anointing and Viaticum (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1983), the original purpose of the unction is restored as a sign and prayer for the return to physical health. The new rite is intended to help us understand human sickness in the context of the whole mystery of salvation. Here the gift of bodily health is looked upon as ancillary to the good of the soul. Yet the restoration of physical health remains uncertain. It must be admitted that the ultimate triumph over sickness and evil is achieved eschatologically (Rom. 8:18–20). Sickness and suffering are not unqualifiedly contrary to the will of God. The mystery of God's will for life remains paschal in nature; the suffering of Christ, in light of the Resurrection, was not a defeat of God's will. Yet the church's ministry of healing is an affirmation of the primacy of life and its ultimate victory over death, a victory proleptically achieved in the resurrection of Jesus. All healing then must be understood as originating in God as the giver of life. No healing can be effective in separation from the structures of life itself. Finally, a contemporary theology of healing must address the basic question of addiction as a pervasive situation. Any addiction is a limitation of the freedom of human desire. It involves the severe loss of willpower and brings about a radical distortion of reality. Now the basic metaphor used in the Scriptures for sinfulness is that of bondage or slavery, from which one must be delivered into freedom. Addiction is related to sin. It is the bodily and psychological dimension of sinfulness. Deliverance and healing from addictions is a freeing of the will in its journey to God. Our addictions hinder our seeing the truth. Healing of addictive behavior is freeing, an experience of God's salvific presence. It is the relived experience of the Exodus, the experience of spiritual deliverance.