The Vocation of Healing: Attending Bodies and Souls
Autumn Ridenour, PhD., Assistant Professor, Merrimack College
Jeffrey Bishop ends his groundbreaking THE ANTICIPATORY CORPSE asking the question as to whether only theology might save medicine. Likewise, Gerald McKenny’s TO RELIEVE THE HUMAN CONDITION critiques modern medicine as captive to the Baconian project of control. Such control shapes bioethics and medical ethics into practices based on changing social definitions that determine the meaning of the body, sickness, and disease. Or as Bishop argues, material and efficient causation become the primary (rather than secondary) cause of medicine in which matter, power, and utility shape praxis. These insights align with arguments made by Allen Verhey and Daniel Callahan in their critique of modern medicine’s desire to control human nature with cure-based medicine, aiming to eliminate every possible cause of disease if not death itself as part of human nature.
The result consists in the disenchantment of medical practice and medical ethics that becomes subject to ever-changing social norms, wills, and desires. What is needed, instead, is to “re-enchant” medical practice through the lens of vocation. Here drawing upon the wisdom of Christian theology found in Protestant theologians Martin Luther and Karl Barth that prioritizes not only all professions as part of God’s call, but also union with Christ as central to moral agency, I argue mortality is part of the arc of human nature and should be included within the comprehensive goals of medicine. Rather than “medicalize” birth and death through illusive control, these experiences should be spiritually and socially re-contextualized as passages pertaining to human identity in which healthcare facilitates the best possible care for our bodies and souls.
Continuing concern for the care of body and soul, I subsequently turn to Robin Gill’s emphasis on the distinction between ancient healing and modern cure in the New Testament Gospel narratives. His analysis helps illuminate the physical and spiritual components of healing care demonstrated toward the sick. Here medical care takes on a sacramental dimension in which care for the body includes care for the soul as exemplified in the Roman Catholic practice of corporeal and spiritual works of mercy. In the end, holistic healthcare calls its community members to accompany the sick and dying along their physical and spiritual journey that envisions medicine as both an art and science.
Jeffrey Bishop ends his groundbreaking THE ANTICIPATORY CORPSE asking the question as to whether only theology might save medicine. Likewise, Gerald McKenny’s TO RELIEVE THE HUMAN CONDITION critiques modern medicine as captive to the Baconian project of control. Such control shapes bioethics and medical ethics into practices based on changing social definitions that determine the meaning of the body, sickness, and disease. Or as Bishop argues, material and efficient causation become the primary (rather than secondary) cause of medicine in which matter, power, and utility shape praxis. These insights align with arguments made by Allen Verhey and Daniel Callahan in their critique of modern medicine’s desire to control human nature with cure-based medicine, aiming to eliminate every possible cause of disease if not death itself as part of human nature.
The result consists in the disenchantment of medical practice and medical ethics that becomes subject to ever-changing social norms, wills, and desires. What is needed, instead, is to “re-enchant” medical practice through the lens of vocation. Here drawing upon the wisdom of Christian theology found in Protestant theologians Martin Luther and Karl Barth that prioritizes not only all professions as part of God’s call, but also union with Christ as central to moral agency, I argue mortality is part of the arc of human nature and should be included within the comprehensive goals of medicine. Rather than “medicalize” birth and death through illusive control, these experiences should be spiritually and socially re-contextualized as passages pertaining to human identity in which healthcare facilitates the best possible care for our bodies and souls.
Continuing concern for the care of body and soul, I subsequently turn to Robin Gill’s emphasis on the distinction between ancient healing and modern cure in the New Testament Gospel narratives. His analysis helps illuminate the physical and spiritual components of healing care demonstrated toward the sick. Here medical care takes on a sacramental dimension in which care for the body includes care for the soul as exemplified in the Roman Catholic practice of corporeal and spiritual works of mercy. In the end, holistic healthcare calls its community members to accompany the sick and dying along their physical and spiritual journey that envisions medicine as both an art and science.