WCC Consultation: Health Faith and Healing
Response
to Dr Grundmann’s paper
(2001
“Response to Christopher Grundman”. International Review of
Mission. XC:41-45.)
A.
Issues Raised by Grundmann
Grundmann
identifies a number of important truths about healing:
1.
It is a pan‑religious, pan‑cultural reality not specifically
tied to Christianity nor to the divine.
2.
It has become a more urgent issue in our global context where most of the
new emerging religions both Christian and non‑Christian focus on the
promise to heal their adherents.
3.
In this way they are responding to “the global socio‑cultural
situation at the turn of the millennium”.
4.
Western medicine as healing
has played a major role in fighting disease but is not adequate to deal with all
“diseases” (I will call them illnesses).
5.
Attempts to integrate healing ministries into mainline Christianity have
raised a number of problems regarding the interpretation of the healings done
and often cause other problems of power struggle, rivalries and authority.
6.
Theologically, healing and salvation are linked in the paradigm of
creation and salvation as illness is linked to the fall.
7.
Healing is linked to issues of “congregation building” (church
growth?). Since witnessing of healing is an issue of perception (of both the
individual and the community) questions of the discernment of spirits and the
role of the Holy Spirit become central.
8.
Healing preserves the Church from false spiritualisation by binding it to
the concrete incarnate side of life.
9.
In its eschatological dimension, healing is not just liturgy, the laying
of hands or prayer but the quest for a realised eschaton in all dimensions of
life: a sign of salvation. But it is not the fullness of the eschaton as death
still comes.
10.
Further study is required on the available healing forms within the
Church, bibliographies and issues of hermeneutics regarding the nature of
healing.
B. My
Response to Grundmann
I
would like to put together some of these important ideas in a slightly different
form to indicate a way of dealing with the question of Health, Faith and healing
from a Missiological perspective. I have five points:
1.
The cultural nature of sickness and healing (responding to Grundmann
1‑5 above).
2.
The mission to heal: A fundamental part of the mission of Jesus.
3.
Inculturation as Missiological model for healing (Grundmann 6‑10
above).
4.
The inculturation model in the healing process (Grundmann 6‑9
above).
5
Some pressing theological issues ( Grundmann 5‑7 above).
1. The
cultural nature of sickness and healing
Culture
can provide us with a key to understand the issue of Christian healing and
indeed all healing. The nature of the Christian mission to heal throughout the
ages has responded to cultural factors such as world view, values and beliefs,
throughout history. So its expression in the Greco Roman world, the middle ages,
the modern period and the postmodern period reflects this truth (Bate 1999a). In
fact we can clearly point to the cultural nature of illness and healing since
these are psycho cultural states to do with the perception
of wellness. The construction of illness out of disease is a cultural process
(Bate 1995:102; 1999:105)
2. The
mission to Heal: A fundamental part of the mission of Jesus and the Church
We cannot deny that healing was a central part of the mission of Jesus
and that he mandated this mission to his disciples (Hagner 1993:263ff). Jesus
was involved in three principal activities: He preached Good News, he healed the
sick and he died on the Cross. All of this is good news though some appears to
be good good news and others “bad” good news (Bate 2000: 52‑54).
Stevan Davies (1995) has suggested that Jesus was
a “spirit healer” in the anthropological sense of this term. We know
from scripture that Jesus heals by dunamis (power) unfortunately translated “miracle” and that the
healing was either sotso which is also
the word for salvation or therapeuo
which is not physical healing but a total healing the human being (Beyer 1973).
The Church has no mission of its own but the continuation of the mission
of Christ. In Matthew 10, Jesus mandates the disciples to continue his own work:
cast out unclean spirits; heal every disease, preach the kingdom of heaven is
close, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, and cast out demons (Hagner 1993; see
also Bate 2000) Many of these things are seemingly hard in a Modern culture
under the enlightenment. So perhaps the culture needs evangelisation. They are
“relatively” easy in other cultures.
When healing is done the Church grows and when it is not done the Church
declines. So there is an issue of discerning the presence of the Holy Spirit
here.
3. Inculturation
as Missiological Model for Healing
Inculturation
is the best theological model for dealing with the mission to heal since it is
concerned with the cultural nature of the Church and its mission (Bate 1995,
1999). Inculturation is often understood as the relationship between a local
church and its own culture (Roest Crollius 1986) or the emergence of the local
Church (Bate1995, 1999). In the so called new churches, inculturation has to
deal with deconstructing unnecessary western forms of Christianity from the
missionary period of plantation and reconstructing local Christianity.
Inculturation is principally the task of Christians of the local church
of that place. The dialogue is between a local church and its own
culture. There are two fundamental criteria that a local church should hold to
in the endeavour of inculturation: compatibility with the Gospel and unity with
the universal Church.
Inculturation has Christological, pneumatological and ecclesiological
dimensions and so can respond to the theological issues raised by Grundmann.
4. The
inculturation model in the healing process.
With
regard to healing, inculturation must concern itself both with the local
cultural healing system and with revisiting the Church’s mission to heal. The
goal is how to fulfill the mission to heal in an inculturated way as indeed
Jesus and the apostles did. This
requires dialogue between the healing praxis in the mission of the church and
the praxis of healing within local community. This latter will be expressed
within local cultural categories.
When the local community is a fully inculturated local church these two
praxes will be the same. This was often the case in the modern period when the
Church’s healing ministry was done within the medical model of western culture
through the medical mission of the Church (See Wilkinson 1974). Today both in
the postmodern West and in non‑Western countries this is not the case,
hence the need for inculturation.
Christians of the local Church are called to a reappraisal of the
Church’s mission to heal in terms of their own understanding of the meaning of
healing. Clearly such an understanding will also be in terms of their own
Christian tradition (Christian culture). This reappraisal is a theological act
by the local Church.
In reflecting on the local cultural healing practices and the emergence
of a Christian ministry of healing within this culture, the criteria of
compatibility with the Gospel and union (unity) of the Church must be respected.
Such reflection by the local Church eventually requires a theological judgement.
See Bate (1995; 1999) for how this was done in the South African context.
Christians of different local churches must come together to share on
these matters. The cultural context is now different as it has global
connotations containing values such as human solidarity, interdependence and
global Christian unity. In this dialogue the same two criteria of inculturation
should be respected. This, I suppose, is the purpose of a meeting like this.
Such dialogue should include a search for some commonalities between different
approaches and mutual understanding of differences in practices.
5 Some
pressing Theological issues
Discernment
of spirits (See Grundmann 7 above). Not all “healing” is healing. We need to
investigate “coping healing” (Bate 1995;1999) with clear theological and
spiritual criteria. We require a theology of healing based in scripture and
linked with tradition which will recognise the culturedness of all tradition and
promote inculturated theological solutions. Especially important is the
re‑linking of salvation and
healing as sotso and therapeuo. In some languages they are closely linked or the same
and such cultures require a clear healing ministry (eg in Zulu).
We must widen the notion of healing to include, psychological,
sociological, cultural, economic dimensions of human well‑being.
The greatest healer in South Africa at the moment is the minister of
water affairs and not spirit healers. We should use the human sciences in our
theology to revisit the notion of human life and well being. At present these
are too closely tied to the organic scientific culture. We should look for
commonalities in the healing process instead of being confused by the plethora
of processes and techniques. Some of these include
a.
Curing disease is the organic medical model of sickness and health
whereas healing illness as the human psycho‑cultural model.
b.
Healing illness involves emotion transfer from unwellness to wellness.
c.
Healing involves ritual process which allow the emotions to be transacted
by means of an accepted (believed in) symbol system. The symbols carry the
emotions and are transacted by the healer.
d.
Healing often involves trance, altered states of consciousness and
dissociative states
e.
The role of faith is central. Healing is always through faith. As
Christians we are called to believe in the Christian belief system. This is
life.
References
Bate,
S C 1995. Inculturation
and Healing: Coping‑Healing in South African Christianity.
Pietermaritzburg: Cluster.
1999
The Inculturation of the Christian
Mission to Heal in the South African Context.
NY: Edwin Mellen.
1999a
“Catholics and Traditional Healers in History” Grace
and Truth 16,1:51‑63.
2000
“Matthew 10: A Mission Mandate for the Global Context”. In Okure, T. ed. To
Cast Fire Upon the Earth. Pietermaritzburg: Cluster. Pp 42‑56.
Beyer,
H W 1973. s v @@@@@@@@ ktl. ThWNT.
Davies,
S L 1995. Jesus the Healer. NY:
Continuum.
Hagner,
D A 1993. Matthew 1‑13: Word
Biblical Commentary Vol. 33A. Dallas: Word.
Roest
Crollius A 1986. Inculturation: Newness and Ongoing Process. in Waliggo, J.M., Roest Crollius, A., Nkéramihigo,
T., Mutiso-Mbinda, J. Inculturation: Its Meaning and Urgency.
Kampala: St. Paul-Africa pp. 31‑45.
Wilkinson, J 1974. “The mission charge to the twelve and modern medical missions”. SJT 27, 313‑328.