Download or read book Illness and Healing in the Early Christian East written by Anne Elizabeth Merideth and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Mental Disorders and Spiritual Healing written by Jean-Claude Larchet and published by Angelico Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work, the third panel of a triptych dedicated by the author to the notion of illness derived from the patristic and hagiographic texts of the Christian East from the first to the fourteenth centuries, makes an essential contribution to the history of mental illnesses and their therapies in a domain very little studied until now. Confronted by the numerous problems still posed today in understanding these illnesses, their treatment, and their relationship to those who are sick, he shows the importance offered for reflection and current practice by early Christian thought and experience. After indicating how the Fathers understood the psyche and its relationship with body and spirit, the author gives a detailed analysis of the different causes they attribute to mental illness and the various treatments recommended. At the same time he shows how, relying on fundamental Christian values, they manifest a constant solicitude and respect for the sick, and how they are at pains to integrate them into community life and have them participate in their own healing, foreshadowing in this way the needs and aspirations of our own time. The last part discloses the deep significance of one of the strangest and most fascinating forms of asceticism the Christian East has known: 'folly for the sake of Christ', a madness feigned with the goal of attaining a high degree of humility, but also a way well-suited, through a close experience of their condition, to help those who are often among, today as in the past, the most destitute. Jean-Claude Larchet is docteur des lettres et sciences humaines, docteur en theologie, and docteur d'Etat en philosophie. The author of Therapeutique des maladies spirituelles (Paris: Editions de l'Ancre, 1991) and The Theology of Illness (Crestwood, New York: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2002), he is a specialist in questions of health, sickness, and healing. He is today one of the foremost St Maximus the Confessor specialists.
Download or read book Medicine and Health Care in Early Christianity written by Gary B. Ferngren and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2016-08 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on New Testament studies and recent scholarship on the expansion of the Christian church, Gary B. Ferngren presents a comprehensive historical account of medicine and medical philanthropy in the first five centuries of the Christian era. Ferngren first describes how early Christians understood disease. He examines the relationship of early Christian medicine to the natural and supernatural modes of healing found in the Bible. Despite biblical accounts of demonic possession and miraculous healing, Ferngren argues that early Christians generally accepted naturalistic assumptions about disease and cared for the sick with medical knowledge gleaned from the Greeks and Romans. Ferngren also explores the origins of medical philanthropy in the early Christian church. Rather than viewing illness as punishment for sins, early Christians believed that the sick deserved both medical assistance and compassion. Even as they were being persecuted, Christians cared for the sick within and outside of their community. Their long experience in medical charity led to the creation of the first hospitals, a singular Christian contribution to health care. "A succinct, thoughtful, well-written, and carefully argued assessment of Christian involvement with medical matters in the first five centuries of the common era . . . It is to Ferngren's credit that he has opened questions and explored them so astutely. This fine work looks forward as well as backward; it invites fuller reflection of the many senses in which medicine and religion intersect and merits wide readership."—Journal of the American Medical Association "In this superb work of historical and conceptual scholarship, Ferngren unfolds for the reader a cultural milieu of healing practices during the early centuries of Christianity."—Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith "Readable and widely researched . . . an important book for mission studies and American Catholic movements, the book posits the question of what can take its place in today's challenging religious culture."—Missiology: An International Review Gary B. Ferngren is a professor of history at Oregon State University and a professor of the history of medicine at First Moscow State Medical University. He is the author of Medicine and Religion: A Historical Introduction and the editor of Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction.
Download or read book The Healing Imperative The Early Church and the Invention of Medicine as We Know It written by Mike Aquilina and published by Emmaus Road Publishing. This book was released on 2017 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you; heal the sick in it and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’” —Luke 10:8-9 When Jesus sent seventy disciples on ahead of him, part of their mission was to heal the sick. In fact, they were supposed to heal the sick before they preached the Gospel. Best-selling author Mike Aquilina calls this command the healing imperative. And it’s an imperative that ushered in the world of modern medicine. The Healing Imperative: The Early Church and the Invention of Medicine as We Know It reconstructs the fascinating history of a uniquely Christian institution: the hospital. Underlining how the virtues of charity and hospitality motivated the first generations of Christians, along with Jesus’ explicit command to heal the sick, Aquilina shows just how revolutionary the actions of Christian doctors and nurses were and how they transformed society in ways that still reverberate today. The radical developments in health care spearheaded by Christians influenced culture, society, and civilization. As The Healing Imperative proves, now more than ever, the compassion of Christians is needed to guide the world of medicine. Jesus’ command still resonates, and Aquilina urges us to respond.
Download or read book Healing in the Early Church written by Andrew Daunton-Fear and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph presents the most comprehensive investigation yet made into the healing activity of the Early Church. In contrast to early skeptics like B. B. Warfield, the author is convinced there was a vigorous healing ministry in the centuries that followed the apostles, though it fluctuated somewhat and changed its mode. Exorcism is prominently attested throughout the period. The pre-Nicene Fathers recognized its great apologetic value as a dramatic demonstration of the superiority of Jesus Christ over pagan gods. Interest in healing miracles per se appears to have been particularly characteristic of the less educated members of the Church and those who were chaste in their devotion to the cause of Christ. Amongst these groups gifts of healing were found, becoming rare it seems by the mid-third century, but well attested again later in monastic circles. In the pre-Nicene period anointing with oil (in the name of Christ) was clearly an avenue of healing and, though mentioned comparatively rarely, may have been widespread as part of the regular ministry of local clergy to the sick. Baptismal healing, physical as well as spiritual, also took place. In the post-Nicene Church the shrines of the martyrs became a prominent locus of healing. Devotion to this cult may have been encouraged by Church Fathers as an acceptable alternative to magical practices. But evidence suggests syncretism did occur and martyr's relics could be invested with quasi-magical awe. Most Fathers were positive about the medical profession, seeing it as an avenue of God's work, and in the late fourth century one pioneered the hospital which then spread throughout the eastern Mediterranean. In an appendix to his work, the author sets down nine pointers from the healing activity of the Early Church, and his own experience, to assist those engaged in the healing ministry today.
Download or read book Illness Pain and Health Care in Early Christianity written by Helen Rhee and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2022-10-22 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What did pain and illness mean to early Christians? And how did their approaches to health care compare to those of the ancient Greco-Roman world? In this wide-ranging interdisciplinary study, Helen Rhee examines how early Christians viewed illness, pain, and health care and how their perspective was influenced both by Judeo-Christian tradition and by the milieu of the larger ancient world. Throughout her analysis, Rhee places the history of medicine, Greco-Roman literature, and ancient philosophy in constructive dialogue with early Christian literature to elucidate early Christians’ understanding, appropriation, and reformulation of Roman and Byzantine conceptions of health and wholeness from the second through the sixth centuries CE. Utilizing the contemporary field of medical anthropology, Rhee engages illness, pain, and health care as sociocultural matters. Through this and other methodologies, she explores the theological meanings attributed to illness and pain; the religious status of those suffering from these and other afflictions; and the methods, systems, and rituals that Christian individuals, churches, and monasteries devised to care for those who suffered. Rhee’s findings ultimately provide an illuminating glimpse into how Christians began forming a distinct identity—both as part of and apart from their Greco-Roman world.
Download or read book Disability Medicine and Healing Discourse in Early Christianity written by Susan R. Holman and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-08-04 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using contemporary theories drawn from health humanities, this volume analyses the nature and effects of disability, medicine, and health discourse in a variety of early Christian literature. In recent years, the "medical turn" in early Christian studies has developed a robust literature around health, disability, and medicine, and the health humanities have made critical interventions in modern conversations around the aims of health and the nature of healthcare. Considering these developments, it has become clear that early Christian texts and ideas have much to offer modern conversations, and that these texts are illuminated using theoretical lenses drawn from modern medicine and public health. The chapters in this book explore different facets of early Christian engagement with medicine, either in itself or as metaphor and material for theological reflections on human impairment, restoration, and flourishing. Through its focus on late antique religious texts, the book raises questions around the social, rather than biological, aspects of illness and diminishment as a human experience, as well as the strategies by which that experience is navigated. The result is an innovative and timely intervention in the study of health and healthcare that bridges current divides between historical studies and contemporary issues. Taken together, the book offers a prismatic conversation of perspectives on aspects of care at the heart of societal and individual "wellness" today, inviting readers to meet or revisit patristic texts as tracings across a map of embodied identity, dissonance, and corporal care. It is a fascinating resource for anyone working on ancient medicine and health, or the social worlds of early Christianity.
Download or read book Healing in the History of Christianity written by Amanda Porterfield and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-08-25 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amanda Porterfield offers a survey of ideas, rituals, and experiences of healing in Christian history. Jesus himself performed many miracles of healing, and Christians down the ages have seen this as a prominent feature of their faith. Indeed, healing is one of the most constant themes in the long and sprawling history of Christianity. Changes in healing beliefs and practices offer a window into changes in religious authority, church structure, and ideas about sanctity, history, resurrection, and the kingdom of God. Porterfield chronicles these changes, at the same time shedding important new light on the universality of religious healing. Finally, she looks at recent scientific findings about religion's biological effects, and considers the relation of these findings to ages-old traditions about belief and healing.
Download or read book Christian Healing After the New Testament written by R. J. S. Barrett-Lennard and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 1994 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To learn more about Rowman & Littlefield titles please visit us at www.rowmanlittlefield.com.
Download or read book Soul and Body Diseases Remedies and Healing in Middle Eastern Religious Cultures and Traditions written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-07-31 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aiming to develop a less studied literary genre, this book provides a well-rounded picture of spiritual and physical diseases and their remedies as they were ingrained in the imagination and practices of Middle Eastern Abrahamic cultures, with a special emphasis of Christian communities (Greeks/Byzantines, Syrians, Armenians, Georgians, Ethiopians). The volume traces traditions dealing with the onset of a disease in the body and soul, the search for remedy, the maintenance of healing, and the engagement of these processes with faith—either through their affirmation in the public sphere or remaining within the personal framework, as in monastic traditions. A recurring presence in religious literature and the history of the intellectual world, the confrontation between disease and healing may well still be current for our modern understanding of the paths to seeking and maintaining the health of one’s body and soul, without excluding the factor of faith as a core principle.
Download or read book The Book of Healing Volume 2 written by Rick Sampson and published by . This book was released on 2017-06-15 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on New Testament studies Dr. Rick Sampson presents a comprehensive historical account of healing and medicine in the first five centuries of the Christian era. He first describes how early Christians understood disease. He examines the relationship of early Christian medicine to the natural and supernatural modes of healing found in the Bible. Despite biblical accounts of demonic possession and miraculous healing, he argues that early Christians generally accepted naturalistic assumptions about disease and cared for the sick with medical knowledge gleaned from the Greeks and Romans. Dr. Sampson also explores the origins of medical philanthropy in the early Christian church. Rather than viewing illness as punishment for sins, early Christians believed that the sick deserved both medical assistance and compassion. Even as they were being persecuted, Christians cared for the sick within and outside of their community. Their long experience in medical charity led to the creation of the first hospitals, a Christian contribution to health care.
Download or read book Medicine and Religion written by Gary B. Ferngren and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2014-03-19 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the interplay of medicine and religion in Western societies. Medicine and Religion is the first book to comprehensively examine the relationship between medicine and religion in the Western tradition from ancient times to the modern era. Beginning with the earliest attempts to heal the body and account for the meaning of illness in the ancient Near East, historian Gary B. Ferngren describes how the polytheistic religions of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome and the monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have complemented medicine in the ancient, medieval, and modern periods. Ferngren paints a broad and detailed portrait of how humans throughout the ages have drawn on specific values of diverse religious traditions in caring for the body. Religious perspectives have informed both the treatment of disease and the provision of health care. And, while tensions have sometimes existed, relations between medicine and religion have often been cooperative and mutually beneficial. Religious beliefs provided a framework for explaining disease and suffering that was larger than medicine alone could offer. These beliefs furnished a theological basis for a compassionate care of the sick that led to the creation of the hospital and a long tradition of charitable medicine. Praise for Medicine and Health Care in Early Christianity, by Gary B. Ferngren "This fine work looks forward as well as backward; it invites fuller reflection of the many senses in which medicine and religion intersect and merits wide readership."—JAMA "An important book, for students of Christian theology who understand health and healing to be topics of theological interest, and for health care practitioners who seek a historical perspective on the development of the ethos of their vocation."—Journal of Religion and Health
Download or read book Health Care and the Rise of Christianity written by Hector Avalos and published by Hendrickson Publishers. This book was released on 1999 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In "Health Care and the Rise of Christianity" Avalos helpfully turns our attention to the care of bodies as fundamental to the growth and expansion of early Christianity. Response to basic issues" such as cost, access to care, and perceived efficacy" helped to fashion an early Christian system of health care that was distinct from contemporary approaches. Avalos raises eminently relevant questions about the role of ideas and practices of health care in the attractiveness of new religious movements, both historically and today." " Nancy L. Eiesland, Candler School of Theology, Emory University "Professor Avalos brings his considerable expertise in medical anthropology to the study of health care systems in the ancient cultures out of which Christianity arose. His analysis of the role played by health care in the advent of Christianity is carefully constructed through cross-cultural and interdisciplinary methodologies, and presented in a readable format which makes his results easily accessible to the specialist and layperson alike. This book is a must for anyone interested in the topic, or concerned about the ethical and long term implications of a modern health system care in crisis." " Carole R. Fontaine, Andover Newton Theological School
Download or read book Thorns in the Flesh written by Andrew Crislip and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2012-09-06 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The literature of late ancient Christianity is rich both in saints who lead lives of almost Edenic health and in saints who court and endure horrifying diseases. In such narratives, health and illness might signify the sanctity of the ascetic, or invite consideration of a broader theology of illness. In Thorns in the Flesh, Andrew Crislip draws on a wide range of texts from the fourth through sixth centuries that reflect persistent and contentious attempts to make sense of the illness of the ostensibly holy. These sources include Lives of Antony, Paul, Pachomius, and others; theological treatises by Basil of Caesarea and Evagrius of Pontus; and collections of correspondence from the period such as the Letters of Barsanuphius and John. Through close readings of these texts, Crislip shows how late ancient Christians complicated and critiqued hagiographical commonplaces and radically reinterpreted illness as a valuable mode for spiritual and ascetic practice. Illness need not point to sin or failure, he demonstrates, but might serve in itself as a potent form of spiritual practice that surpasses even the most strenuous of ascetic labors and opens up the sufferer to a more direct knowledge of the self and the divine. Crislip provides a fresh and nuanced look at the contentious and dynamic theology of illness that emerged in and around the ascetic and monastic cultures of the later Roman world.
Download or read book Essential Readings in Medicine and Religion written by Gary B. Ferngren and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2017-09 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient Near East -- Greece -- Rome -- Early Christianity -- The Middle Ages -- Islam / by M.A. Mujeeb Khan -- The early modern period -- The nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries
Download or read book The Care of the Brain in Early Christianity written by Jessica Wright and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2022-12-14 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The care of the brain in early Christianity is a history of the brain during late antiquity. Through close attention to ancient medical material and its transformation in Christian texts, Jessica Wright traces the roots of cerebral subjectivity--the identification of the individual self with the brain, a belief very much still with us today--to tensions within early Christianity over the brain's role in self-governance and its inherent vulnerability. Examining how early Christians appropriated medical ideas, Wright tracks how they used the vulnerability of the brain as a trope for teaching ascetic practices, therapeutics of the soul, and the path to salvation. Bringing a medical lens to the religous discourse, this text demonstrates that rather than rejecting medical traditions, early Christianity developed through creatively integrating them"--Publisher's website.
Download or read book Who Healeth All Thy Diseases written by Michael Stanley Stephens and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who Healeth All Thy Diseases is a history of divine healing and 19th-century health reform in the Church of God, one of the earliest and most influential pre-Pentecostal radical holiness movements. The Church of God taught that Wesleyan entire sanctification was creating a visible unity of saints that restored the New Testament church of the apostles. As the movement grew and experimented with the implications of visible sainthood, physical healing--miraculous divine healing and the physical perfectionism of health reform--became integral to the life and theology of the Church of God, shaping everything from proof of membership and evidence of ministerial authority to childrearing practices and acceptable clothing styles. Physical healing manifested and embodied the movement's claim that God was healing the universal church (the Body of Christ) by cleansing individuals from the corruption of inbred sin. By 1902, the prevailing opinion in the Church said that divine healing was an essential aspect of the gospel, use of medicine was sinful, and every minister had to exhibit the gifts of healing. In the early 20th century, the Church's theology and practices of healing became increasingly problematic. Tragic failures of divine healing, epidemics, medical advances, court trials, mandatory inoculations of schoolchildren, and general opprobrium combined to prevent a simplistic equation of the Church of God and the church of the apostles. By 1925, the Church had reversed its radical, anti-medicine doctrines. Church members continued to affirm that Jesus answered prayers for healing, but they no longer claimed to know exactly how he would answer prayers. With that loss of certainty, healing lost its power to serve as evidence of holiness and its central place in the history of the Church of God.
