Theology and Medicine

Much recent Christian theology has sought to reconsider the significance of the body in theological reflection. At the same time, a number of areas of suffering traditionally associated with the experience of sin have come to be reinterpreted, for good reasons, as medical disorders without moral valence. The result is that the doctrine of sin has become increasingly dissociated from the body in contemporary theology. This article addresses this dissociation by exploring the difficulty posed to interpreters by the correlation in Psalms 32 and 38 between unforgiven sin and bodily suffering and dysfunction. After showing that this correlation has been a source of significant difficulties for modern interpreters, the essay concludes by examining the potential of an Augustinian reading of these Psalms in terms of the relationship between mortality and original sin.

The rising number of non-communicable disease (NCDs) is a global health challenge. According to WHO, non-communicable diseases account for 38 million of the 56 million deaths each year. That is more than half of the cause. This includes cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic lung diseases. Health promotion can help address non-communicable disease like the control of hypertension. Health promotion contributes to controlling hypertension “through enabling people, to increase control over their health and its determinants, thereby promoting and sustaining good health. The health education of each clergy member of a particular region will be the health promotion activity effective for this NCD program. The purpose of the campaign is to persuade hypertensive church pastors to adopt a healthy lifestyle. This is best done by teaching individuals about hypertension and equip them with skills how to prevent it.

One of the issues that have divided the contemporary society is the estimation of the methods, procedures and means connected with creating a human by the extracorporeal fertilization with an embryo transfer (FIVET). Since on the one hand the in vitro fertilization belongs to the highest achievements of contemporary medicine and makes possible to fulfill the desire of a fatherhood and motherhood for childless and infertile married couples. However on the other hand the so-called ‘artificial fertilization’ generates many problems and controversies of moral, legal, psychological and social naturę that are often disregarded. The article touches the problem of in vitro fertilizations from a perspective of orthodox Church teaching and orthodox bioethics. The estimation of extracorporeal fertilizations in a frame of the orthodox bioethical reflection concentrates around following questions: the status of the embryo and the holiness of the human life, the meaning and character of the procreation intercourse, weighing the problem of the childlessness and infertility, the sense and dimension of the parenthood (motherhood and fatherhood) and the character of the means, methods and procedures of the in vitro fertilization with an embryo transfer.
On the basis of official Church documents and also numerous statements of orthodox priests and theologians the author points out that the orthodox Church firmly objects to in vitro fertilizations madę according to the now recognized procedures. Nevertheless, guided by mercy it determines the conditions, fulfilling of which could, considering the marital welfare, let the spouses undergo the procedures of the extracorporeal fertilization. It must be stressed that the talked about conditions mean rather a consent, then an acceptation, and they are an expression of Church economics. Official Church positions and also statements of priests and theologians do not obtrude and do not force anything from the faithful. Through a quiet reasoning, based on Church teaching, they try morę to persuade the spouses to weigh abstaining from these means. Besides they show the tolerance borderline of Church, behind which there is only a univocal and firm objection and a pray for returning for the lost.

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This paper argues that a new genre of therapy has appeared in the arena of contemporary spiritual alternative healing, which expresses an outlook never-before-seen in the history of medicine: postmodern therapy. Postmodern therapeutic methods (PTMs) express a popularization of postmodernist philosophy in regards to language's role in the therapeutic process, expressing a novel cosmology. These methods are illustrated in the paper, and then analyzed in comparison to two other groups of methods: traditional/occult magic, and modern medicine. Finally, PTMs are characterized as neo-magic, bearing features similar to modernistic outlook on the one hand, and features similar to pre-modern magic outlook on the other hand. Thus, these new outlook demonstrate a double appropriation and rejection of perceptions viewed as contradictory – traditional magic and secular science.

Bogactwo prokreacyjnych odniesień w Piśmie Świętym skłania do postawienia pytań o znaczenie tekstu biblijnego jako materiału wyjściowego w rozważaniach nad statusem istoty ludzkiej w łonie matki. W czasach biblijnych nie dysponowano jednak szczegółową wiedzą biologiczną na ten temat. Pomimo tego, teksty biblijne, jako objawione przez samego Boga, stanowią podstawę żydowskiej refleksji medycznej, filozoficznej i teologicznej na temat statusu conceptusa i nasciturusa. Rozważania na temat prenatalnego rozwoju człowieka są obecne także w Talmudzie. Biblia i Talmud zaś stanowią podstawę religijnego żydowskiego prawa stosowanego - Halachy, które określa status człowieka przed urodzeniem. Niniejszy tekst stanowi próbę rozpoznania tego tematu w refleksji rabinicznej, która wspiera się właśnie na tych trzech filarach - Piśmie Świętym (Torze), Talmudzie i Halasze.

"Around the age of five, I met the Devil. The Black Devil, to be precise... He began to appear in my room as a huge gorilla-like creature, and he scared the shit out of me. I experienced his presence as terrifying and even (the way I remember it), physically painful. He came back so often that eventually I just seemed to know his name.... When I was five years old, I underwent surgery to lengthen my Achilles' tendons. This procedure allowed my heels to rest flat on the floor, and thus allowed me to begin the process of learning to walk. Just after my fifth birthday, I also "accepted Jesus into my heart" and began--with my mother, former stepfather , and younger brother--to live my life within a Canadian Evangelical Protestant subculture....Black Devil came back so consistently that I eventually found the courage to bring it up with my mother. I told her about this thing that was in my room, and how scared it made me. The way I remember it, she replied, "You now belong to Jesus. If it comes back, say, 'Satan, in the name of Jesus, go away!" My mother does not remember that conversation (and I have wondered if I dreamt it), but it changed my life. I now had a way of defending myself against this evil and tormenting presence. Whenever it would return, I would invoke the name of Jesus, and eventually it would go away."

Doctor work is connected with the whole history of man. During the Old Testament we see the services of physicians in the persons of prophets who carried out the ministry from God's will and without the necessary training. In the New Testament image of physicians services becomes from Jesus Christ. Doctors services we find represented by some of the apostles, particulary by the Evangelist St. Luke. The doctors work is not generally unterstood as the provision of ondemand services, but this service is focused on the good of man, which is healthy and life. So the physician confirms its activity value of life not only as a biological phenomenon, but especially as a personal act of existence.

Die lange Tradition des Gebrauchs philosophischer und theologischer Sprache in der Medizin reicht zurück bis in die Antike. Trotz des Sieges des Szientismus in der Wissenschaft im 20. Jahrhundert erfahren einige Begriffe eine Übertragung auf die medizinische Theorie und Praxis. Am Beispiel der Psychiatrie in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts soll gezeigt werden, wie Begriffe der hermeneutischen Phänomenologie und katholischen Theologie in die Medizin übernommen wurden, und damit neue Inhalte in die Medizin trugen. Der Beitrag stellt Beispiele aus den Werken von Gebsattels und Binswangers in den Mittelpunkt. Deren philosophische und theologische Begriffe werden vorgestellt und deren Funktion in der Entwicklung der Psychiatrie erläutert.