Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 Conceptual issues in spiritual healing
- 2 The historical Jesus and healing: Jesus' miracles in psychosocial context
- 3 The theology of spiritual healing
- 4 Healing the spirit: mystical Judaism, religious texts and medicine
- 5 Conceptualizations of spiritual healing: Christian and secular
- 6 The psychodynamics of spiritual healing and the power of mother kissing it better
- 7 Spiritual healing in the context of the human need for safeness, connectedness and warmth: a biopsychosocial approach
- 8 Modelling the biomedical role of spirituality through breast cancer research
- 9 Spirituality and health: assessing the evidence
- 10 Relating spiritual healing and science: some critical reflections
- 11 Concluding integration
- Bibliography
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 Conceptual issues in spiritual healing
- 2 The historical Jesus and healing: Jesus' miracles in psychosocial context
- 3 The theology of spiritual healing
- 4 Healing the spirit: mystical Judaism, religious texts and medicine
- 5 Conceptualizations of spiritual healing: Christian and secular
- 6 The psychodynamics of spiritual healing and the power of mother kissing it better
- 7 Spiritual healing in the context of the human need for safeness, connectedness and warmth: a biopsychosocial approach
- 8 Modelling the biomedical role of spirituality through breast cancer research
- 9 Spirituality and health: assessing the evidence
- 10 Relating spiritual healing and science: some critical reflections
- 11 Concluding integration
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Spiritual healing is a topic that has been strangely neglected in the academic literature. Most books on spiritual healing are written by enthusiasts, and make no attempt to advance our understanding of it in a dispassionate way. Spiritual healing is being increasingly widely practised, in both religious and non-religious contexts, and there is an urgent need to understand it better.
The present book is a contribution from the joint perspectives of science and religion. The dialogue between science and religion has become a rich field of interdisciplinary enquiry in recent years. However, rather surprisingly, spiritual healing is a topic that has so far been completely neglected in that literature. That is all the more surprising as the related topic of divine action has attracted particular attention. I hope that the chapters of this book advance our understanding of spiritual healing from the perspectives of both science and religious studies. The basic assumption is that, if spiritual healing is to be understood, it is important not to neglect the perspectives of either science or religion. It is implicit that neither science nor religion can provide a complete account of spiritual healing on their own. Some of the most interesting issues about spiritual healing arise at the point where these two perspectives intersect.
This book had its origins in a three-day symposium, jointly chaired by Sarah Coakley and me, which took place under the aegis of the John Templeton Foundation's Humble Approach Initiative.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Spiritual HealingScientific and Religious Perspectives, pp. xiii - xivPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011