HEALING

HEALING. In reading the Psalms, the primary hymnbook of the Jewish and Christian church, one cannot but come away with the impression that sickness and death are humankind’s most avaricious natural enemies, while wholeness and life are God’s most precious blessings. In general, healing fits into this scheme, not as a supernatural action, but as the restoration of a human being to natural vitality. Healing overcomes the sickness and suffering of the fallen world and restores its pristine wholeness, and for this reason is both spiritual and physical.

Theology put forward in Duet asserts that in God’s plan the good prosper and the wicked suffer. Popular interpreters of Duet, past and present, have drawn the further conclusion that if people suffer, with sickness for example, they must be wicked. Many societies since the time of Duet have engaged in the self-righteous and spurious occupation of postulating the wickedness of the sick, regardless of the actual contents of the book or the rules of logic. Such is the case with the first three friends of Job and with Jesus’ disciples who, when they met a man born blind, asked Jesus whether this man or his parents sinned so that he was born blind. Jesus’ response, that neither this man nor his parents sinned, denied the simple causality of sickness, sin (q.v.), and of inherited guilt.

Healing in the Church is looked upon as a sacrament (q.v.) that imitates the many healings of Jesus, is commanded by Scripture (Jas 5:13f.), and involves both soul and body. Historically, healers were not set apart by ordination but were recognized by their fruits. Special recognition is given by the Church to unmercenary healers, a class of saints (q.v.), who perform this sacred function without demanding money. In 20th-c. parochial use this sacrament has been suppressed for various reasons: a misunderstanding of the character of healing, confusion with “last rites,” a misguided devotion to the full text of the sacrament (seven priests repeating seven sets of Gospel readings, prayers, etc.) without sensitivity to its function, etc. At present some theologians are working toward the reinstatement of healing to its rightful place in the life of the Church’s sacraments.