SALVATION: Divine Therapy

Theology Today, Oct 2004 by Guroian, Vigen

Jesus then means according to the Hebrew "Savior, " but in the Greek tongue "The Healer"; since he is physician of souls and bodies, curer of spirits, curing the blind in body, and leading minds into light.

-St Cyril of Jerusalem (c.315-87), The Catechetical Lectures 10

Long before St Cyril of Jerusalem took up the vision of divine therapy in the fourth century, it was already firmly established in the Christian imagination. Jesus' healing miracles, the good Samaritan story, and, of course, the resurrection itself played no small part in making this so. Could there be any doubt, based upon the testimony of the Gospels, that Jesus Christ is the physician of our souls and bodies and that salvation through him cures our mortal sickness and restores us to wholeness and health? In his Catechetical Lectures, St Cyril turned to this venerable theme in order to prepare candidates for baptism and admission into the eucharistie life of the church. In all likelihood, he did so not only because he believed that the theme of divine healing illumines the deepest truths about salvation, but also because he recognized that it is existentially compelling.

Over the centuries, Christian theologians and apologists have, of course, employed other biblical images effectively to speak about salvation. The bucolic metaphor of the good shepherd who gathers and guards his flock (Matt 18:12-4, Luke 15:4-7, John 10:1-18), the military metaphor of spiritual combat led by Christ the victorious warrior (Matt 12:29, Luke 11:21-2, Eph 6:11-2), and the juridical metaphors of Christ the deliverer (Rom 3:24-6, Heb 11:35) and the ransom (1 Tim 2:6, Gal 3:13) from sin and death are among the most notable of these images.

St Ephrem the Syrian (c.306-73), who, like St Cyril, wrote in the fourth century, insists that the Divine Word "wore" these images and metaphors as garments of his incarnation. "He [Christ] clothed Himself in language," writes St Ephrem, "so that He might clothe us in His mode of life." These images of shepherd, warrior, deliverer, physician, and the like, do not, however, "apply to His true Being: / because that Being is hidden," he adds.1 They are not literally attributable to his eternal identity. They are not his divine name.2 Nonetheless, God has depicted through them how he effects salvation for us. They are God's temporal modes of self-revelation by which God has rendered himself comprehensible to us in some manner and made the divine grace visible to us. In other words, God has worn these images as sacramental signs of our salvation.

St Ephrem understood that none of these metaphors and images can stand alone or completely illumine the meaning of salvation. Yet, at a particular moment in civilization, one of these metaphors or images may enjoy special power to reach and touch human hearts and minds. I believe that the therapeutic vision and its trinity of physician, treatment, and cure have this power today, mainly because of the pervasive presence of medicine in modern life.

So then, we should neither repudiate this art [of medicine] altogether nor does it behoove us to repose all our confidence in it; just as m . . . agriculture we pray God for fruits, and as we entrust the helm to the pilot. . . but implore God that we end our voyage unharmed . . . so also, when reason allows, we call in the doctor, but not leaving off hoping in God.

-St Basil of Cacsarea (c.330-79), The Long Rules

For contemporary people, the medical professional is a symbol of great power over life and death. Many think of the physician and the pharmacist as if they were shamans or medicine men who possess virtually magical powers of protection against the demons of sickness and death. Many cling to every piece of news about breakthroughs in pharmaceuticals and treatments for diseases. These hopes and expectations are fraught with material and spiritual dangers, not only because they are often unrealistic, but also because they make an idol of scientific medicine. The therapeutic vision of salvation can help us to recognize this idolatry and its dangers, so that we gain an understanding of the true relationship and the crucial difference between physical cure and spiritual rehabilitation. It can assist us in ordering the goods of life appropriately and proportionately in relation to a compassionate, forgiving, and healing divinity.

Therapeutic ideas about wellness, wholeness, and fulfillment proliferate in our culture, and they certainly have found their way into the churches and the consciousness of ordinary Christians. Much too often, we receive and accept these notions uncritically, without sufficient reference to Christian teaching or sacramental discipline. Many of these contemporary therapeutic ideas are simply poor science, like the popular diet plans that come and go. Yet, gradually, they can displace what remains of historic Christianity's God-centered anthropology and vision of salvation. I suspect that, if the vision of divine therapy were stronger in the minds of contemporary Christians, this displacement would not happen so easily, and ordinary folk would have a surer sense of the right balance between appropriate dependence upon scientific medicine and dependence upon prayer, as St Basil recommended.