My reply to Immo
My reply to Immo’s comments on Is there such a thing as “secular medicine”? – Part 3 became so long that I decided to make it a less formal post than my others. So here’s my reply to Immo.
Immo: Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I hope you'll read more of my posts, in particular Chronic Disease: Two Worldviews posted in March, 2006 and the comments posted there. This issue is very complicated, and I interacted briefly with one thoughtful brother there which I won’t repeat here.
I want to first comment on the Christian contribution to sanitation. Can you give me a reference to the observation of Jewish midwives contributing to improved sanitation. I have excerpts from a book written in 1860 by J.P. (Ignaz P.) Semmelweis who studied childbed fever, finally determining statistically that hand washing made the difference – that’s really abbreviating all he went through to get to his conclusion. In the portion of this book that I have and all the googling I've done on it so far, there is no mention of any Jewish influence – nor any Christian influence for that matter. (I’m still looking for a complete copy to verify this.) He did note that midwives washed their hands, but their faith wasn’t noted, whether Jewish, Christian, atheist, etc., or that their faith had any clear bearing on their practice. I'm reading a book right now that makes the assertion that Christian theology hindered the development of the current germ theory and sanitation measures because of theology.
In Matthew 15:1-3, Jesus defended the practice of the disciples of not washing their hands when they “ate bread.” The practice was simply a tradition of the leaders of Israel and not law. If hand washing was important, why did Jesus not urge His disciples to do so, not for tradition’s sake but for health’s sake? That doesn’t mean they never washed their hands before eating, but it would indicate that it wasn’t considered important to Jesus. Add that if hand washing was so very important for health, why was it not mentioned in the OT law? Yet, the value seems to have been proven today. Has something changed, and if so, what?
All the required washing was ceremonial ablution only some of which might be considered health related. For example, a woman has certain cleansing to perform after menstruation. The focus seems to be solely ceremonial, as with the emission of semen by a man. Washing was to take place after each emission. We don’t recognize any health-related value to these today. But after relieving oneself, far from the camp and burying it, there is no mention of any washing at all required, ceremonial or otherwise. These washings seem to be strictly ceremonial.
Here's one recurring problem: without a doubt, people who professed to be Christians or Jews have made significant contributions to science. In reality, until the last 200 years or so, that was almost everyone in the West – at least nominally. Yet, I'm coming up empty on any substantive or material contribution of Judaism or Christianity to these scientific theories. They didn’t draw something out of their theology or religion to form their theories. All these Christians and Jews got the content of the ideas and theories from pagan and occult practices, worldviews and thinking. For example, the Pythagorean belief that number was reality, even more so than the world we can directly observe, led to the current mathematical modeling of the world in physics and other sciences. The Pythagoreans worshipped number and were a secretive, sacrificial cult. The motivation for Copernicus and Kepler to place the sun at the center of the solar system came from neo-Platonism which had a kind of sun cult, the sun becoming associated with Jesus for Christian neo-Platonists.
What I’d love to find are examples of purely-Christian thought, rather than pagan thinking with a possible Christian veneer, that led to modern scientific discoveries. Even two Christians who wrote the Soul of Science with the thesis that only Christianity could have fostered modern science because of its view of reality failed to provide even one example of it. They did state that they believed Kepler was driven by his Christian worldview to resolve a discrepancy in his understanding of the orbit of Mars with the data, but they provide no support or argument for it. They simply made the assertion.
So, if you can point me toward documentation of at least this one instance of a Jewish contribution, I'd appreciate it. Even then, however, will we be able to come up with it from the Scriptures or was it merely the tradition of men? I don’t think the Scriptures recommend the practice of washing hands when caring for a woman in childbirth or any kind of medical care. The Scriptures don’t forbid it nor do they recommend it – they are silent on the matter. So, even if it were a practice of Jewish midwives, it would be hard to show it came from the Lord.
The two toughest issues for me are Luke the physician and the lack of godly alternatives we seem to have. Luke, the “beloved iatros” (Colossians 4:14) – iatros is the Greek word for physician and also for healer – makes one wonder as you asked, what kind of physician and did he practice it after meeting Jesus? Or might it be “Luke the beloved healer” with the gift of healing. But one early-Christian writer refers to Luke as practicing medicine as a profession. That would seem to eliminate the “gift” of healing. I think he would have refused payment for God’s free gift. One thing is for certain, however, that it was not like today’s medicine and was probably Greek “secular” medicine – Hippocratic medicine. It was most likely not medicine associated directly with pagan cults, I would think. The Bible, however, is amazingly silent on the issue of “secular” medicine. That silence could be taken as tacit approval or a complete lack of need for it. Of course, the silence does not extend to pharmakeia – that, at least in some form, being completely condemned. But, in any case, Luke muddies the issue for me.
As for oil, I take it as simply applying oil. But I cannot see how to take it as a medicinal application, and we can’t see today how it could be of any real aid in the vast majority of cases. To say that it was understood to be medicinal raises a problem: the Scriptures (in James 5) would be promoting something as being of medicinal value which in reality is of no medicinal value at all in most cases. Thus, the Scriptures would not be reliable in this matter. Thus, I do not think the intent is medicinal. So it would have to be seen as being more symbolic – of the Holy Spirit? – or simply soothing to a person suffering. I really don’t know which way to go with that, yet. I just have trouble seeing it as the Scriptures supporting the medicine of the day, which today is believed to be largely false. See the comments attached to Chronic Disease: Two Worldviews for further comments on this.
The second problem I mentioned is still outstanding: if there is a problem with modern medicine in whole or just in part, what do we do with medical issues that modern medicine can easily handle when the Biblical recommendations fail? Let me put it this way. If a person you knew were paralyzed, and there was a fetal stem cell therapy which could restore the use of his legs and put him back to work earning a living for his family, would you recommend he stay paralyzed awaiting the Lord’s healing, or should he avail himself of the stem cells from an aborted fetus? It may seem like a different issue, but it’s not all that different. Perhaps another example would help, very current in Africa. If modern medicine fails, and Christians know a witch doctor who has success with that issue, is it okay for them to go to the witch doctor? This is a real issue for our brothers and sisters in Africa. Is healing the ultimate goal regardless of the modality or cost? The reality is that I know of no Christian, except for those we consider kooks, which refuse medical care on the basis of conscience. Those who do refuse, seem to have extreme views, people die, and they face charges when a minor under their care dies or suffers needlessly without the shunned treatment. I can understand their point of view, but they and I am at a loss to explain why strict adherence to the Scriptures fails to provide the hope of healing the Scriptures seem to raise for us. Recourse to pagan means seems the only option.
Let me ask: what would happen if there were a fetal stem cell therapy – a distinct possibility today – which could restore a paralyzed child’s use of his legs, in part or wholly, and the child’s parents refused the treatment because of the source of the stem cells – an aborted fetus? Would those parents then be charged with neglect? Actually, I doubt that even Christian parents would refuse the therapy, no matter where the stem cells came from. It’s so easy to reason, in this case, that the fetus has already been killed, they hadn’t killed it or ordered it killed, so why not benefit? Isn’t it just the same as harvesting organs from an adult murder victim. The issue is very complex, just from the standpoint of ethics, let alone any potential compromise with the teaching of Scripture because of pagan origins entering the equation.
James 5, Mark 16, the existence of the gift of healing and other passages, even in the OT, seem to raise the expectation of the Lord healing rather than relying on contemporary medicine – contemporary in whatever day. If that healing fails, do the Scriptures allow for or even encourage the use of whatever means to obtain healing? If not, where do we draw the line? Is that line drawn based on the severity of the ailment or the nature of the cure? That’s not an easy question to answer, if you think about it. If you say the severity of the ailment, then any cure will do if the ailment is serious enough or painful enough. If you say the nature of the cure, then a person should be willing to die, continue to suffer pain or remain paralyzed if no acceptable cure is available. All this is assuming, of course, that Biblical healing hasn’t “worked.” As one brother put it to me, “It just doesn’t work.” Some say it sometimes works, but modern medicine seems the most reliable and safest route. The better question, then, is why? The easy answer is that God doesn’t work that way anymore, but I don’t think the Scriptures support this. If it is His desire to work that way today, the answer to why He isn’t could be very disconcerting.
An interesting comment in regard to looking first to God for healing was made by some English Christians in the 16 th and 17 th centuries. They believed it impious to look to God in any matter until all natural means had been exhausted. In other words, God was a last resort. At first, this bothered me until I read a comment by one Christian who, when called to minister to people dying of some deadly disease like the plague, refused to go believing it a greater abomination to do so when all that was needed was to improve the sanitation in that part of town, and the people wouldn’t get sick in the first place. While he seems a bit cold hearted, the reasoning isn’t without merit. If a person is wasteful with his money and asks God to fix his woeful financial situation, we would rightly tell him to stop praying and start a budget.
On guilt by association: first, the pagan gods are no gods, they are demons (Psalm 106:37, 1 Corinthians 10:20). If they were just sacrificing to blocks of stone and nothing more, there would be no concern at all, but demons are involved in their lives. There is also the issue of “doctrines [teachings] of devils” which people adhere to (1 Timothy 4:1). Second, I agree that the mere similarity of things is of little consequence. What is of concern, however, is learning “doctrines of demons” from pagans and incorporating those ideas into our thinking and beliefs. That is syncretism, and that is my concern.
Enough thoughts for this post. Thanks for taking time to read and comment.
Rob
Immo: Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I hope you'll read more of my posts, in particular Chronic Disease: Two Worldviews posted in March, 2006 and the comments posted there. This issue is very complicated, and I interacted briefly with one thoughtful brother there which I won’t repeat here.
I want to first comment on the Christian contribution to sanitation. Can you give me a reference to the observation of Jewish midwives contributing to improved sanitation. I have excerpts from a book written in 1860 by J.P. (Ignaz P.) Semmelweis who studied childbed fever, finally determining statistically that hand washing made the difference – that’s really abbreviating all he went through to get to his conclusion. In the portion of this book that I have and all the googling I've done on it so far, there is no mention of any Jewish influence – nor any Christian influence for that matter. (I’m still looking for a complete copy to verify this.) He did note that midwives washed their hands, but their faith wasn’t noted, whether Jewish, Christian, atheist, etc., or that their faith had any clear bearing on their practice. I'm reading a book right now that makes the assertion that Christian theology hindered the development of the current germ theory and sanitation measures because of theology.
In Matthew 15:1-3, Jesus defended the practice of the disciples of not washing their hands when they “ate bread.” The practice was simply a tradition of the leaders of Israel and not law. If hand washing was important, why did Jesus not urge His disciples to do so, not for tradition’s sake but for health’s sake? That doesn’t mean they never washed their hands before eating, but it would indicate that it wasn’t considered important to Jesus. Add that if hand washing was so very important for health, why was it not mentioned in the OT law? Yet, the value seems to have been proven today. Has something changed, and if so, what?
All the required washing was ceremonial ablution only some of which might be considered health related. For example, a woman has certain cleansing to perform after menstruation. The focus seems to be solely ceremonial, as with the emission of semen by a man. Washing was to take place after each emission. We don’t recognize any health-related value to these today. But after relieving oneself, far from the camp and burying it, there is no mention of any washing at all required, ceremonial or otherwise. These washings seem to be strictly ceremonial.
Here's one recurring problem: without a doubt, people who professed to be Christians or Jews have made significant contributions to science. In reality, until the last 200 years or so, that was almost everyone in the West – at least nominally. Yet, I'm coming up empty on any substantive or material contribution of Judaism or Christianity to these scientific theories. They didn’t draw something out of their theology or religion to form their theories. All these Christians and Jews got the content of the ideas and theories from pagan and occult practices, worldviews and thinking. For example, the Pythagorean belief that number was reality, even more so than the world we can directly observe, led to the current mathematical modeling of the world in physics and other sciences. The Pythagoreans worshipped number and were a secretive, sacrificial cult. The motivation for Copernicus and Kepler to place the sun at the center of the solar system came from neo-Platonism which had a kind of sun cult, the sun becoming associated with Jesus for Christian neo-Platonists.
What I’d love to find are examples of purely-Christian thought, rather than pagan thinking with a possible Christian veneer, that led to modern scientific discoveries. Even two Christians who wrote the Soul of Science with the thesis that only Christianity could have fostered modern science because of its view of reality failed to provide even one example of it. They did state that they believed Kepler was driven by his Christian worldview to resolve a discrepancy in his understanding of the orbit of Mars with the data, but they provide no support or argument for it. They simply made the assertion.
So, if you can point me toward documentation of at least this one instance of a Jewish contribution, I'd appreciate it. Even then, however, will we be able to come up with it from the Scriptures or was it merely the tradition of men? I don’t think the Scriptures recommend the practice of washing hands when caring for a woman in childbirth or any kind of medical care. The Scriptures don’t forbid it nor do they recommend it – they are silent on the matter. So, even if it were a practice of Jewish midwives, it would be hard to show it came from the Lord.
The two toughest issues for me are Luke the physician and the lack of godly alternatives we seem to have. Luke, the “beloved iatros” (Colossians 4:14) – iatros is the Greek word for physician and also for healer – makes one wonder as you asked, what kind of physician and did he practice it after meeting Jesus? Or might it be “Luke the beloved healer” with the gift of healing. But one early-Christian writer refers to Luke as practicing medicine as a profession. That would seem to eliminate the “gift” of healing. I think he would have refused payment for God’s free gift. One thing is for certain, however, that it was not like today’s medicine and was probably Greek “secular” medicine – Hippocratic medicine. It was most likely not medicine associated directly with pagan cults, I would think. The Bible, however, is amazingly silent on the issue of “secular” medicine. That silence could be taken as tacit approval or a complete lack of need for it. Of course, the silence does not extend to pharmakeia – that, at least in some form, being completely condemned. But, in any case, Luke muddies the issue for me.
As for oil, I take it as simply applying oil. But I cannot see how to take it as a medicinal application, and we can’t see today how it could be of any real aid in the vast majority of cases. To say that it was understood to be medicinal raises a problem: the Scriptures (in James 5) would be promoting something as being of medicinal value which in reality is of no medicinal value at all in most cases. Thus, the Scriptures would not be reliable in this matter. Thus, I do not think the intent is medicinal. So it would have to be seen as being more symbolic – of the Holy Spirit? – or simply soothing to a person suffering. I really don’t know which way to go with that, yet. I just have trouble seeing it as the Scriptures supporting the medicine of the day, which today is believed to be largely false. See the comments attached to Chronic Disease: Two Worldviews for further comments on this.
The second problem I mentioned is still outstanding: if there is a problem with modern medicine in whole or just in part, what do we do with medical issues that modern medicine can easily handle when the Biblical recommendations fail? Let me put it this way. If a person you knew were paralyzed, and there was a fetal stem cell therapy which could restore the use of his legs and put him back to work earning a living for his family, would you recommend he stay paralyzed awaiting the Lord’s healing, or should he avail himself of the stem cells from an aborted fetus? It may seem like a different issue, but it’s not all that different. Perhaps another example would help, very current in Africa. If modern medicine fails, and Christians know a witch doctor who has success with that issue, is it okay for them to go to the witch doctor? This is a real issue for our brothers and sisters in Africa. Is healing the ultimate goal regardless of the modality or cost? The reality is that I know of no Christian, except for those we consider kooks, which refuse medical care on the basis of conscience. Those who do refuse, seem to have extreme views, people die, and they face charges when a minor under their care dies or suffers needlessly without the shunned treatment. I can understand their point of view, but they and I am at a loss to explain why strict adherence to the Scriptures fails to provide the hope of healing the Scriptures seem to raise for us. Recourse to pagan means seems the only option.
Let me ask: what would happen if there were a fetal stem cell therapy – a distinct possibility today – which could restore a paralyzed child’s use of his legs, in part or wholly, and the child’s parents refused the treatment because of the source of the stem cells – an aborted fetus? Would those parents then be charged with neglect? Actually, I doubt that even Christian parents would refuse the therapy, no matter where the stem cells came from. It’s so easy to reason, in this case, that the fetus has already been killed, they hadn’t killed it or ordered it killed, so why not benefit? Isn’t it just the same as harvesting organs from an adult murder victim. The issue is very complex, just from the standpoint of ethics, let alone any potential compromise with the teaching of Scripture because of pagan origins entering the equation.
James 5, Mark 16, the existence of the gift of healing and other passages, even in the OT, seem to raise the expectation of the Lord healing rather than relying on contemporary medicine – contemporary in whatever day. If that healing fails, do the Scriptures allow for or even encourage the use of whatever means to obtain healing? If not, where do we draw the line? Is that line drawn based on the severity of the ailment or the nature of the cure? That’s not an easy question to answer, if you think about it. If you say the severity of the ailment, then any cure will do if the ailment is serious enough or painful enough. If you say the nature of the cure, then a person should be willing to die, continue to suffer pain or remain paralyzed if no acceptable cure is available. All this is assuming, of course, that Biblical healing hasn’t “worked.” As one brother put it to me, “It just doesn’t work.” Some say it sometimes works, but modern medicine seems the most reliable and safest route. The better question, then, is why? The easy answer is that God doesn’t work that way anymore, but I don’t think the Scriptures support this. If it is His desire to work that way today, the answer to why He isn’t could be very disconcerting.
An interesting comment in regard to looking first to God for healing was made by some English Christians in the 16 th and 17 th centuries. They believed it impious to look to God in any matter until all natural means had been exhausted. In other words, God was a last resort. At first, this bothered me until I read a comment by one Christian who, when called to minister to people dying of some deadly disease like the plague, refused to go believing it a greater abomination to do so when all that was needed was to improve the sanitation in that part of town, and the people wouldn’t get sick in the first place. While he seems a bit cold hearted, the reasoning isn’t without merit. If a person is wasteful with his money and asks God to fix his woeful financial situation, we would rightly tell him to stop praying and start a budget.
On guilt by association: first, the pagan gods are no gods, they are demons (Psalm 106:37, 1 Corinthians 10:20). If they were just sacrificing to blocks of stone and nothing more, there would be no concern at all, but demons are involved in their lives. There is also the issue of “doctrines [teachings] of devils” which people adhere to (1 Timothy 4:1). Second, I agree that the mere similarity of things is of little consequence. What is of concern, however, is learning “doctrines of demons” from pagans and incorporating those ideas into our thinking and beliefs. That is syncretism, and that is my concern.
Enough thoughts for this post. Thanks for taking time to read and comment.
Rob
Labels: anoint with oil, medicine, occult, pagan gods, pharmacy, pharmakeia, secular medicine, stem cells, worldview
posted by Rob Walsman | 11:05 AM
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