HEALING IN MEDICINE AND THEOLOGY

F​rom Rev Dr John Wilkinson’s work “The Bible and Healing.” (Eerdmans, 1998)

Medicine has become a body of scientific knowledge combined with an accumulation of skills in the diagnosis and treatment of disease which exists as an independent discipline not necessarily related to any other. (the case could be made that this is true with regards to medical MISSIONS as well, my comment) While ‘healing’ has become a weasel word, often emptied of specific meaning and used in various contexts, some of which are less honorable than others. (pg 1)

If we are to understand the relation of the concept of healing to both medicine and theology, it is obvious that we must try to define more exactly what we mean by healing….we shall use the word healing in accordance with the observation that ‘as ordinarily used this word means the restoration to normality of deranged physical functions but in the wider meaning which a Christian view of man requires, healing is the enabling of a person (here I have taken the liberty to replace the author’s original word ‘man’ with person)  to function as a whole in accordance with God’s will for her/him’. This means that healing is neither medical charlatanism nor theological limboism, but included both the practice of orthodox medicine and the making of people whole in a theological sense.
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Healing extends to all areas of human life and being. It cannot be confined to the body and the purely physical phenomena of the repair of wounds and the union of fractures. If human beings are indivisible entities, as we believe them to be, any disturbance of their health affects them as a whole and it it is to be effective, healing must also extend to the whole of their life and being. (the last 2 paragraphs from page 2)