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The Theological Basis of Medicine
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
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‘I swear by Apollo the healer, by Aesculapius, by Health 1 and all the powers of healing, and call to witness all the gods and goddesses that I may keep this Oath and Promise to the best of my ability and judgment.’ These words form the opening sentence of the Hippocratic Oath and they bear eloquent testimony to the theological basis of medicine in Ancient Greece. This close association of theology and medicine characterised the thought and practice of all peoples until the Renaissance, and it still appears most natural to the inhabitants of Africa and Asia who have not been influenced by Western thought. But with Western thought the Renaissance marked the dividing point between theology and medicine so that today medicine is suspicious of theology and jealously resists any approach from the side of theology. The result is that medicine has come more and more to deal with concrete situations and particular problems, and the doctor by his training is unfitted to discuss general principles for he is given no guidance during his training since, in most cases, his teachers have little guidance to give.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1955
References
page 142 note 1 The Medical Works of Hippocrates, translated by Chadwick, John and Mann, W. N., (Blackwell, 1950), p. 9.Google Scholar
page 142 note 2 See for example the letter from the Professor of Medicine at Manchester University in the Lancet of 5 Nov. 1949 (Lancet, 1949, ii, 862). The letter was in reply to an address given to medical students at Birmingham by Dr Fisher, Archbishop of Canterbury and published in the Lancet of the previous week (Lancet, 1949, ii, 775). Professor Platt rejects the doctrine while accepting the ethic of Christianity, and concludes his objections to Christian doctrine by saying that ‘we prefer agnosticism to unacceptable hypothesis’.
page 143 note 1 A good illustration of how a philosophy can hamper research is afforded by the Lysenko controversy in the U.S.S.R. T. D. Lysenko, a Russian biologist of doubtful ability, in 1948 persuaded the Central Committee of the Communist Party in the U.S.S.R. to declare that Soviet biology rejected the orthodox Mendelian genetics, and that in future Soviet genetics and biology would follow the teaching of I. V. Michurin, a Tsarist biologist. Orthodox Mendelians were dismissed and dishonoured and their laboratories closed. A statement issued by the Praesidium of the Academy of Sciences in the U.S.S.R. included the following paragraph: ‘Michurin's materialist direction in biology is the only acceptable form of science because it is based on dialectical materialism and on the revolutionary principle of changing Nature for the benefit of the people. Weismannite-Morganist idealist teaching is pseudo-scientific, because it is founded on the notion of the divine origin of the world and assumes eternal and unalterable scientific laws. The struggle between the two ideas has taken the form of the ideological class-struggle between socialism and capitalism on the international scale, and between the majority of Soviet scientists and a few remaining Russian scientists who have retained traces of bourgeois ideology, on a smaller scale. There is no place for compromise. Michurinism and Morgano-Weismannism cannot be reconciled.’ Julian Huxley comments on the reports of this controversy that they ‘constitute a melancholy landmark in the history of science’. The whole controversy is summarised with relevant quotations by Huxley, Julian in Nature, 1949, 163, 935 and 974Google Scholar, and in his book, Soviet Genetics and World Science (Chatto & Windus, 1949).Google Scholar
page 144 note 1 Rodger, T. F. in Textbook of Medical Treatment, edited by Dunlop, , Davidson, and McNee, , sixth edition (Livingstone, 1953), p. 884Google Scholar. Dr Rodger is Professor of Psychological Medicine at Glasgow University.
page 144 note 2 ‘To say that a theology of medicine is needed may sound pretentious, but something like it is necessary if Christian doctors are to understand their duty clearly’—Jenkins, Daniel (Editor), TheDoctor's Profession (S.C.M. Press, 1949), p. 16Google Scholar. Dr Clement Chesterman criticised this statement in his review of the book for this journal (S.J.T.,4, 105). He did so on the ground that to introduce theology into the troubles of the sick room was to cause ‘inevitable controversy’, but this is to take a narrow view of the function and content of theology.
page 145 note 1 Brunner, Emit, The Mediator (Lutterworth Press, 1934), p. 403 n.Google Scholar Cp. John Calvin, Institutes, Book 2, chap. 12, paras. 5–7.
page 145 note 2 Brunner, Emil, The Divine-Human Encounter (S.C.M. Press, 1944), p. 102.Google Scholar
page 145 note 3 Denney, James, The Death of Christ (Hodder & Stoughton, 1903), p. 325.Google Scholar
page 146 note 1 Pet. 2.21. The word translated ‘example’ occurs only here in the New Testament. It is the word ὑπoγραμμ⋯ς which means either the top line of letters provided for copying in a child's copy-book, or an architectural outline or artist's sketch left to be coloured or filled in by others. See Selwyn in loc, and compare George Macdonald: ‘The Son of God suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like his.’ (Unspoken Sermons, First Series.)
page 147 note 1 Stewart, J. S., Heralds of God (Hodder & Stoughton, 1946), p. 78.Google Scholar
page 148 note 1 Arthur Hugh Clough, The Latest Decalogue.
page 148 note 2 Temple, William, Thoughts in War Time (Macmillan, 1940), p. 31.Google Scholar
page 148 note 3 Quoted by Garlick, Phyllis, The Wholeness of Man (Highway Press, 1943), p. 69.Google Scholar
page 149 note 1 One discussion will be found in Sperry, Willard L., The Ethical Basis of Medical Practice (Cassell, 1951), chs. 11 and 12Google Scholar, and the other discussion is in Theology Today, 8, 194–212 (July 1951). In both discussions the two sides of the question are presented.
page 150 note 1 Forsyth, P. T., The Justification of God (Duckworth, 1916), p. 139.Google Scholar
page 150 note 2 Mark 5.30; Luke 8.46.
page 150 note 3 Birch, Allan (Editor), Emergencies in Medical Practice, third edition (Livingstone, 1952), p. 454.Google Scholar
page 151 note 1 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam, XXII, 3.
page 151 note 2 See Kennedy, H. A. A., St. Paul's Conception of the Last Things (Hodder amp; Stoughton, 1904), p. 267 f.Google Scholar In connexion with this idea it is worth recalling that our English word ‘cemetery’ is by derivation a dormitory or sleeping place.
page 151 note 3 Marcus Dods in the Expositor's Bible on First Corinthians, p. 384.
page 152 note 1 Rev. 21.4.
page 153 note 1 The following books are relevant to our topic and they appear to represent almost the whole range of literature available apart from that dealing specifically with medical missions:
Garlick, Phyllis L., The Wholeness of Man (Highway Press, 1943)Google Scholar;
Garlick, Phyllis L.Man's Search for Health (Highway Press, 1953)Google Scholar;
Jenkins, Daniel (Ed.), The Doctor's Profession (S.C.M. Press, 1949)Google Scholar;
Schlemmer, André, The Crisis in the World of Thought (I.V.F., 1940)Google Scholar;
Seddon, H. J., The Christian Heritage in Medicine (Published for the Christian Medical Fellowship by the I.V.F., 1952)Google Scholar, and
Paul Tournier, Bible et Médicine (Delachaux et Niestlé, Neuchâtel, 1952). We have not seen the work of Dr Tournier, but we understand that he is the leader of a group of Swiss, French and German doctors who have given a great deal of thought to what the Bible has to say to a medical practitioner about his work. He has published three previous books, Médicine de la Personne (now in its tenth edition), Technique et Foi, and Désharmonie de la Vie Moderne. The book given above, Bible ei Médicine, is said to provide in its most mature form what is most valuable in the previous studies.