The Concept of Health

Abstract

"Since the early emergence of Christianity, the provision of health care has been an important ministry for the Church; or more specifically, care of the ill and dying. Consistent with the instructions provided by Christ in his ‘End Time Discourse’ (Matthew 24-25), the ill and dying were to be visited, and they should be offered care and compassion. Not unlike Mother Theresa did in 20th century Calcutta, so the earliest Christians, and particularly the early religious orders, adopted the task of compassionately assisting the needy, especially those who were both sick and destitute, or otherwise abandoned by society. [2] The First Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., known best for the adoption of the Nicene Creed, urged the Church to provide care for the sick (as well as for strangers, widows, and the indigent), and ordered the construction of a hospital in every cathedral town. However, these early hospitals, as the name reveals (Latin: hospes = stranger, guest), were almshouses that offered a roof to strangers and the estranged rather than providing medical or even health care in the modern sense of that term. And this remained their primary function for the next 1500 years. [3] Hence, to suggest that the early Church was engaged in health care proper would be incorrect. Indeed, there are many indications that the Church did not consider medical care proper to be a primary ministry. Amundsen points out, “many early Christians and Church Fathers . . . insisted that God . . . either inflicts or permits disease and the practitioner of the secular healing arts thus works against divine purposes. Wide acceptance by Christians of the medical art as consonant with the sanctified life of faith took centuries” (27)."(pg 85-86)