A Christian Theology of Embodiment, Suffering, and Death in Relation to the Practice of Medicine
Autumn Ridenour, PhD Candidate, Boston College
The practice of medicine is shaped by the limits and possibilities of the human body. Christian theology has helped form our understanding of these bodily limits and possibilities throughout history. Three theologians in particular, St. Augustine, Karl Barth, and W.H. Vanstone describe the significance of the body for human identity as it relates both to death and the experience of ‘passive agency’ as medical ‘patients.’
For fourth century theologian St. Augustine, death represents great loss as the soul is severed from the human body. Unlike his philosophical interlocutors such as the Neoplatonists, Manicheans, and Stoics, Augustine values the body in relation to the soul as constitutive of human identity. Given the body’s privileged status for human identity, Augustine legitimizes human emotions and an ethics of compassion when experiencing death and human loss.
Likewise, 20th century theologian Karl Barth values the interdependence between the soul-body relation for human identity. While Barth dialectically agrees with much of Augustine’s premise regarding lament associated with death as loss, he also offers significance to human weakness, dependence, and our status as ‘patients’ or passive agents in conjunction with the theology of W.H. Vanstone. By turning to Christology and the person of Christ who passively receives the world in the gospel narratives describing Jesus’s path to Gethsemane, Vanstone and Barth offer hope and moral worth to those individuals enduring bodily loss as ‘patients’ within the medical community.
Materials to be drawn upon (edited for reasons of space):
Augustine, St. Confessions. Translated by Henry Chadwick.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
________ . City of God. Translated by Henry Bettenson. New
York: Penguin Books, 1984.
_________. Expositions of the Psalms, 121-150. In The Works
of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, part
3, vol. 20. Translated by Maria Boulding, 135-6. Hyde
Park, NY: New City Press, 2000.
__________. On Christian Teaching. Translated by R.P.H.
Green. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
_________. On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manichees,
Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis, The Literal
Meaning of Genesis. Translation by Edmund Hill, O.P. and
Matthew O’Connell. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2002.
__________. The Trinity. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1991.
Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics, 4 vols. Edinburgh: T&T Clark,
1960.
________. The Christian Life: Church Dogmatics IV, 4 Lecture
Fragments. Trans. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981.
Vanstone, W.H. The Stature of Waiting. London: Morehouse
Publishing, 1982.
Verhey, Allen. The Christian Art of Dying: Learning from Jesus.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011.
The practice of medicine is shaped by the limits and possibilities of the human body. Christian theology has helped form our understanding of these bodily limits and possibilities throughout history. Three theologians in particular, St. Augustine, Karl Barth, and W.H. Vanstone describe the significance of the body for human identity as it relates both to death and the experience of ‘passive agency’ as medical ‘patients.’
For fourth century theologian St. Augustine, death represents great loss as the soul is severed from the human body. Unlike his philosophical interlocutors such as the Neoplatonists, Manicheans, and Stoics, Augustine values the body in relation to the soul as constitutive of human identity. Given the body’s privileged status for human identity, Augustine legitimizes human emotions and an ethics of compassion when experiencing death and human loss.
Likewise, 20th century theologian Karl Barth values the interdependence between the soul-body relation for human identity. While Barth dialectically agrees with much of Augustine’s premise regarding lament associated with death as loss, he also offers significance to human weakness, dependence, and our status as ‘patients’ or passive agents in conjunction with the theology of W.H. Vanstone. By turning to Christology and the person of Christ who passively receives the world in the gospel narratives describing Jesus’s path to Gethsemane, Vanstone and Barth offer hope and moral worth to those individuals enduring bodily loss as ‘patients’ within the medical community.
Materials to be drawn upon (edited for reasons of space):
Augustine, St. Confessions. Translated by Henry Chadwick.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
________ . City of God. Translated by Henry Bettenson. New
York: Penguin Books, 1984.
_________. Expositions of the Psalms, 121-150. In The Works
of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, part
3, vol. 20. Translated by Maria Boulding, 135-6. Hyde
Park, NY: New City Press, 2000.
__________. On Christian Teaching. Translated by R.P.H.
Green. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
_________. On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manichees,
Unfinished Literal Commentary on Genesis, The Literal
Meaning of Genesis. Translation by Edmund Hill, O.P. and
Matthew O’Connell. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2002.
__________. The Trinity. Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1991.
Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics, 4 vols. Edinburgh: T&T Clark,
1960.
________. The Christian Life: Church Dogmatics IV, 4 Lecture
Fragments. Trans. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981.
Vanstone, W.H. The Stature of Waiting. London: Morehouse
Publishing, 1982.
Verhey, Allen. The Christian Art of Dying: Learning from Jesus.
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011.