The Key to Health

While it is generally believed that the day of the Renaissance man -- the one who could by dint of intelligence and hard effort still encompass all the branches of knowledge adequately -- is gone due to the explosion in knowledge, there needs to be at least a collusion between physician and pastors over the matter of the spirit and body in health and illness. If no one can encompass it individually, then the Church with its gifts should try to do it corporately.

Christianity is the only key to full health and the best key to health even in a limited, physical sense. Medicine needs help of the gospel ministry in accomplishing this. Medicine is under the Gospel. It functions too often as though it were apart or parallel. The pastor and physician are ideally co-laborers, not adversaries. We exist in a hierarchical relationship. The pastor represents to us the overarching Word of God. The physician is under the gospel -- both the natural science aspect and the spiritual aspect. The gospel applies to all of life. Medicine is not excluded. The special problems of the relationship of spirit and body, their sometimes unfathomable blend, require that we work together, both under the Word of God.


Excerpts from Physician and Pastor: Co-Laborers