How a Liturgy of Whisky, Patristic Theology, and Virtue Theory can help Christian Physicians to Remember Medicine’s Purpose
Gray Kolde, MD student, Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine
In the ancient world, Medicine was understood as a practice oriented towards maintaining and regaining health, which itself was seen as serving some greater moral story. For Christians, this greater story is the creative and salvific work of the Triune God, with its climax in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In his book The Theology of Illness, Larchet demonstrates how the early Patristic Fathers prioritized the story of God’s salvation when considering health as they situated all health decisions within it, allowing them to articulate definite limits for Medicine.
Such limits are not so readily definable under the purview of contemporary bioethics, whose ultimate goods are individual autonomy and patient choice. Much of the discourse of contemporary medicine is dominated by this language of choice. From medical education and health systems design to clinical care, much thought is given to who gets to choose and what choices should be available. Physicians are increasingly referred to as “providers”, implying a responsibility to provide and enact patients’ choices. This “provider” terminology indicates a shift from the ancient understanding, articulated by Plato, of health and its maintenance through Medicine as serving the pursuit of the good life. In the United States today, medicine is commonly understood as a good or service available for purchase like any other. In this context, the only conceivable limits for Medicine are the choices of individual consumers. Unsurprisingly, burnout and moral injury run rampant in the health professions, and physicians often lament the time and energy they spend on tasks that feel ultimately meaningless to the overall safeguarding of health for their patients. Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre provides a diagnosis for Medicine’s symptoms in After Virtue: the lack of a moral story in which to place the practice of medicine. Contemporary bioethics has lost any sense of being oriented toward something greater.
As with the diagnosis, part of the remedy to Medicine’s malaise may come from Scotland as well. In the Scottish Highlands, despite being a mere day’s drive from London, one of the epicenters of the scientific revolution, the veil between the material and the spiritual remains thin. Similarly to the early Patristic Fathers, there is an understanding that people are connected to some greater story. One of the ways which the Scotts maintain their sense of connection is through drinking rituals. In this paper, I will consider the Gaelic word slainte—meaning both health and salvation and said as part of a liturgy for sharing whisky—in conjunction with the theology of the early Patristic fathers and the thought of Alasdair McIntyre and other more modern virtue theorists. In doing so, I hope to draw out the importance of remembering the relationship between health and salvation for the work of the Christian physician and for understanding the limits of medicine.
Such limits are not so readily definable under the purview of contemporary bioethics, whose ultimate goods are individual autonomy and patient choice. Much of the discourse of contemporary medicine is dominated by this language of choice. From medical education and health systems design to clinical care, much thought is given to who gets to choose and what choices should be available. Physicians are increasingly referred to as “providers”, implying a responsibility to provide and enact patients’ choices. This “provider” terminology indicates a shift from the ancient understanding, articulated by Plato, of health and its maintenance through Medicine as serving the pursuit of the good life. In the United States today, medicine is commonly understood as a good or service available for purchase like any other. In this context, the only conceivable limits for Medicine are the choices of individual consumers. Unsurprisingly, burnout and moral injury run rampant in the health professions, and physicians often lament the time and energy they spend on tasks that feel ultimately meaningless to the overall safeguarding of health for their patients. Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre provides a diagnosis for Medicine’s symptoms in After Virtue: the lack of a moral story in which to place the practice of medicine. Contemporary bioethics has lost any sense of being oriented toward something greater.
As with the diagnosis, part of the remedy to Medicine’s malaise may come from Scotland as well. In the Scottish Highlands, despite being a mere day’s drive from London, one of the epicenters of the scientific revolution, the veil between the material and the spiritual remains thin. Similarly to the early Patristic Fathers, there is an understanding that people are connected to some greater story. One of the ways which the Scotts maintain their sense of connection is through drinking rituals. In this paper, I will consider the Gaelic word slainte—meaning both health and salvation and said as part of a liturgy for sharing whisky—in conjunction with the theology of the early Patristic fathers and the thought of Alasdair McIntyre and other more modern virtue theorists. In doing so, I hope to draw out the importance of remembering the relationship between health and salvation for the work of the Christian physician and for understanding the limits of medicine.