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JUBILEE EDITORIAL: ISSUE 5 PAGE NO.

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Facing the Challenge

RANDALL CURRIE RANDALL CURRIE is a contributing editor of Jubilee. He is a founding member of the trustee board of the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity and currently serves as the board chair.

He also serves on the board of Westminster Chapel in Toronto, a church plant started in 2008. He is employed in the Investment Industry for a major Canadian investment firm and lives and works in Kitchener with his wife Giselle.

They have four adult children.

WHILE NOT WHAT ONE might expect in a traditional editorial, we are asked with enough frequency about the purposes of the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity (EICC), that we decided to devote this space to answering that question, and to do so for the wider audience of Jubilee recipients.

In a quotation that is less than adequately documented, but nevertheless commonly attributed to Martin Luther, Christians are warned of their propensity to fight the battles of other eras. Luther writes: “If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.”

No doubt, Luther’s “point” was primarily to defend the sovereignty of God in salvation.

Still, the underlying message has important implications for today. As the ecclesia, the called out people of God, we must identify “where the battle rages” in our particular historical context, and then commit to remaining loyal in the battle at that precise point, not at some other point more to our liking. At the EICC we think that the challenge facing Christians today is at least two-fold.

THE CULTURE The first of these is cultural. One does not have to be a theologian or social commentator to recognize the speed with which our culture has come to reflect the religion of Secular Humanism. In just about two generations, the entire frame of reference and the criteria for the evaluation of

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all ideas, policies, and increasingly law has become secular in nature. I use the term “religion” to describe Secular Humanism because Secular Humanism, like all worldviews, is a totalizing perspective. Its principle characteristic is that it seeks to ground the source of all definition and meaning in Time and Nature. In fact the word “secular” involves the meaning, “of the world.”

Recourse to revelation from God, the Sovereign Word of God and the eternal counsel of His will for understanding is deemed irrelevant by such an outlook.

Given that the underlying conflict involves the most basic of assumptions, and not merely methodologies and conclusions, it is not surprising that one of the most visible marks of a secularizing society is an open and growing hostility toward the Christian faith generally, and toward expressions of the Lordship of Jesus Christ specifically. When man and his reason are held to be at the centre of all things, or are considered the beginning of all things, no other gods need apply. In such a world man has become the source of law, liberty, salvation, and even life itself. From these assumptions will flow a systematic anthropology which serves as the interpretive framework for determining what will be considered both plausible and the ultimate good.

The results of this social experiment – man as the centre of all things – are tragically manifest all around us. They can be seen in the breakdown of the family, social decay, decadence, violence in our cities and communities, in the redefinition of marriage, the redefinition of sexuality and gender, and in the actions of an increasingly invasive secular state intent on exerting its ideological influence over education, churches and individuals.

Unknown to many will be Canada’s alarming suicide statistics, which suggest that what is being created in such a society is not a culture of

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hope and life but rather one of death and despair.

That these results are predicted in the book of Proverbs will come as a surprise only to the current generation, the first in centuries to be biblically illiterate: “But he who sins against me injures himself; all those who hate me love death” (Prov. 8:36).

THE CHURCH The second challenge, it might be said, is from within the church. I think it is a truism to say that “as the church goes, so goes the culture.” After all, it is not the non-believer who is to be the ethical preservative – the salt of the earth – and who is to live and work in the presence of God – the light of the world (Matt. 5). This is the mandate of redeemed men and women, filled and led by the Holy Spirit, whose mature faith James tells us will be evidenced by their good works (Jas. 2), and who will in all endeavours, whether in word or deed, seek to honour Christ and to bring glory to God (Col. 3:17). This should make clear the need for evangelism and conversion, leading to discipleship and faithfulness to all that Christ taught and commanded.

We agree with those who see a sort of functional dualism at work in large swaths of the church today. This dualism expresses itself most obviously in the unwitting adoption of humanistic premises that would invoke false distinctions between the sacred and secular, public and private, fact and value, and the material and spiritual realms.

The Bible knows nothing of these distinctions.

The Psalmist (24:1) writes that “the earth is the LORD’s and everything in it, the world and all who live in it.” Countless other passages in both Testaments confirm this Lordship and authority of Jesus Christ over all aspects of creation and human experience. Simply put, all of life is religious and is a context for faithful testimony to the supremacy of Jesus Christ who is the Lord of all (Col. 1:15-20).

As the church surrenders to these humanistic assumptions, it necessarily retreats to practicing an

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essentially privatized and mostly pietistic Christian faith. As a private religious matter then, the Gospel concedes its authority and distinctive message of hope and truth.

Many readers will be aware that in our day, what constitutes the Gospel is not entirely agreed upon. This is true even among committed Christians whose self-evident love for the Lord is not in question. And there is certainly room for varying levels of optimism in terms of the Gospel’s progress in history. But we think it needs to be said that when the church loses its vision for the authority of Christ both in heaven and on earth, and the fullness and scope of the redemptive power and purposes of God in history, then what remains is in danger of becoming a truncated Gospel with limited application to our lives.

Describing the modern church’s condition under the effects of these humanistic assumptions, Lesslie Newbigin writes that what we are left with is a church that has essentially …secured for itself a continuing place, at the cost of surrendering the crucial field… it is not that the church can’t be a protagonist for certain values, that it can’t have success… the church can grow in numbers, people can be encouraged… but the awesome and winsome claim of Jesus Christ to alone be the Lord of the world, is effectively silenced.1

“when the church loses its vision for the authority of Christ both in heaven and on earth, and the fullness and scope of the redemptive power and purposes of God in history, then what remains is in danger of becoming a truncated Gospel with limited application to our lives.”

While agreeing with Newbigin about the impotence of a domesticated and privatized Gospel in confronting sin and proclaiming the Lordship of Christ (Ps. 115), experience is proving that, however unintentional, this surrender of the public realm in order for the church “to secure its continuing place”, may itself prove a naïve strategy.

Insurmountable as these difficulties can sometimes appear when viewed by sight, the Gospel of Jesus Christ remains the power of God unto salvation (Rom. 1:16). And the same resurrection power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead (Phil. 3:10), has the power to reconcile, renew, and transform all of human experience. The arm of the Lord has not become short. And so we SPRING 2012

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work. Not because we think we can wield the power of the Spirit, bringing in the Kingdom of God by our efforts as if we were the architects.

Rather because we are called to be workers in the Kingdom, and godly labour done according to Scripture and for His glory is never done in vain (1 Cor. 15:58).

THE WAY FORWARD As the challenge is two-fold, then so too are the efforts of the Institute.

“As believers become better equipped to defend their faith, they find greater confidence and boldness to carry the message of the Gospel to every dark place.”

First, we want to engage, with growing effectiveness, those who would be the cultural influencers of our time, including those skeptical of the Christian faith. We are doing this through credible Christian apologetics and social criticism by means of writing, speaking, and media opportunities.

Second, our goal is to be a resource for pastors, church leaders, and thoughtful lay persons in order that they might be better equipped to formulate, articulate, and effectively defend a biblically faithful Christian philosophy of life over and against all non-believing philosophies.

And we are committed to these two tasks through four channels.

Jubilee is the Institute’s tri-annual research publication. Each issue addresses a particular aspect of human experience and seeks to unpack in a meaningful way what we believe are biblically faithful understandings. The content of Jubilee is most often provided by scholars and theologians, some of whom are also Fellows of the Institute.

In this issue for example, Health and Salvation, we are attempting to help Christians grasp more fully that life and health itself are bound up within the Gospel’s very design and purposes. Dr. Carl Percival shows us that while the Christian faith does not exclusively explain the origins of medicine and healthcare, it uniquely provides the basis for the concepts of human dignity and care for the weak. It also provides the necessary foundations for scientific exploration and discovery which underpins medicine in virtually every discipline. Jennifer Forbes shows us that as we turn away from the Word of God as the source of life and hope, we can expect to find only struggle,

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burdensome effects and, increasingly, despair. Dr. David Robinson sketches an historical outline of healthcare in the early church illuminating the counter cultural way in which our forbearers understood, organized and laboured in this critical field. Joe Boot’s article, “Health, Salvation and the Kingdom of God,” encouragingly makes clear the all-encompassing scope and purposes of salvation.

Our “How Then Shall We Answer” conference series is proving to be an important time of worship, teaching, personal fellowship and strengthening of the body of Christ. The conference has grown each year and we look forward to many more years of challenging biblical instruction.

We continue to provide keynote speaking, preaching and teaching into varied settings.

Christians from every walk of life are hungry for a public Gospel that can be winsomely presented and defended as the objective truth about the human condition, about what is real, about the scope and limits of human knowledge, and about ethics, how we ought to live.

Yet to be developed is our training seminar, summer school, and student curriculum programs. As resources become available we hope to create opportunities for more intensive and personal instruction.

These four streams of activity by the EICC are undergirded by four core values. They are Regeneration, Education, Apologetics and Proclamation (REAP). In closing I will outline just two of these.

The first is Regeneration. Undergirded by a distinctly Biblical foundation and the commitment to prayer, the EICC is concerned for transformation and cultural engagement at all levels, beginning with the individual, followed by the family, the community, the academy, and the socio-cultural order, seeking to apply the Lordship of Christ in all areas of life and thought (1 Tim. 6:3-5; 2 Cor. 10:4-5; Ps. 2:10-12; Gen. 1:28, 9:1; Matt. 28:18).

Critically, the goal of the EICC is not to capture the machinery of the state, nor is it the Christianization of society. Our prayer is that through the regenerating and renewing work of the Holy Spirit, men’s and women’s hearts will be inclined Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

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to seek first the Kingdom of God, and to regulate their lives in terms of God’s revealed will in Scripture. We are more than content to leave the outcome of that to the Lord.

The second is Apologetics. The Apostle Peter instructs believers that they should “always be ready to give a defense [apologia] to everyone who asks for a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet. 3:15). The defense of the Christian faith (apologetics), then, is the responsibility of every Christian. As believers become better equipped to defend their faith, they find greater confidence and boldness to carry the message of the Gospel to every dark place. The EICC seeks to take every thought into captivity to Christ by equipping believers to reach, impact, and revive a nation for Christ and His Kingdom. We do not assert that Christianity is probably true, or that it appears to be the best explanation; rather that it is a total certainty which rests upon Scripture’s self-attestation as to its authority and truthfulness. Through biblically faithful apologetics, the EICC endeavours to support and equip believers and Christian leaders so they may articulate, defend, and manifest the truth and righteousness of Christ and His Kingdom (Tit. 2:8; Prov. 22:6; 2 Tim. 2:15).

What is the purpose of the EICC? To encourage, support, strengthen, and call the church back to her proper place as the “pillar and support of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15) so that “through the church the manifest wisdom of God might be made known…” (Eph. 3:10).

We want to thank all those who have partnered with the EICC over the past three years through prayer and financial support, by sharing EICC resources with friends, by contributing skills and scholarship, and by encouraging us in our vision.

We are increasingly confident that with the blessing of God and the sacrificial help of many builders (Neh. 3) the city of God will see great advance in our day. 1

Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Michigan: Wm. B. Erdmans Publishing Co., 1986), p. 19

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REV. JOE BOOT REV. JOE BOOT is the founder of the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity and the Senior Pastor at Westminster Chapel in East Toronto. Before this, he served with Ravi Zacharias for seven years as an apologist in the U.K. and Canada, working for five years as Canadian director of RZIM. A theology graduate of Birmingham Christian College, England, Joe earned his M.A. in Missiology with the University of Manchester. His apologetic works have been published in Europe and in North America and include ‘Searching for Truth,’ ‘Why I Still Believe,’ and his latest volume, ‘How Then Shall We Answer.’

Joe lives in Toronto with his wife Jenny and their three children Naomi, Hannah and Isaac.

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Health, Salvation and the Kingdom of God “Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored?” Jer. 8:22 (ESV) THE ASHES OF EDEN AND THE NEW CREATION Few things are more humbling, or remind us more of our mortality and frailty, than epidemics of disease. Most school children, at least when I was growing up, had heard of the Black Death, the most devastating plague ever to strike Europe; we even sang a playground rhyme about it. It is reckoned that the pestilence of 1347-51 killed twenty million people in three years; that was about one quarter of Europe’s entire population at the time. Most scholars in the field believe the Black Death was bubonic plague, a flea borne bacteria yersinia pestis, passed to humans by the bite of an infected flea. The effects of the bacteria on the human body are dreadful to review. After a six-day incubation period, chest pain, coughing and breathing problems are attended by the vomiting of blood, fever and dark skin blotches caused by internal bleeding (by which it acquired the name of Black Death), as well as painful swellings in the lymph nodes in various parts of the body. Delirium, coma and death usually followed quickly. This was a terrifying experience for any community to endure, and such threats are as real today as they ever were. The medical self-confidence of the twentieth century has been shaken more than once. In 1918-1919 an incredibly virulent influenza pandemic swept the world like a shockwave, killing more than twenty-five million people. We have been relatively powerless against the devastations of AIDS across the world, and there are many other deadly viruses that loom, such as the Marburg and Ebola viruses. Such pathogens remain one of the greatest threats to human health and well-being, and many experts say it is not a question of if, but rather when, the next major plague will strike us.

Despite the so-called ‘wonder drugs’ of the postWWII era, we remain powerless or ineffective against many diseases and illnesses, from cancer

to diabetes, to CJD, to Alzheimer’s, to heart disease, and a host of other conditions. The bottom line is that despite all our technical, diagnostic, and scientific headway, we are still perpetually bowed before death, disease and decay.

This should not surprise any Christian. Biblical revelation makes it abundantly clear that the whole human person has been affected by sin, both body and soul. At the Fall, the whole of creation itself was cursed, and subjected to futility and corruption. The doctrine of the Fall means that as a consequence of sin, death, disease and suffering entered into God’s good creation (Gen. 3:4-24; Rom. 8:19-23; 1 Cor. 15:21-26) and we are all affected by it. Indeed, outside of the gospel it overwhelms us with a sense of futility.

Renowned geneticist Dr. John C. Sanford, a former evolutionist and professor at Cornell University, in his landmark work, Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome, shows that mutations have put all forms of multi-cellular life on a fasttrack to extinction. He reveals that in human beings, accumulated mutations (genetic copying mistakes) in our DNA put our race very close to ‘error catastrophe.’1 In short, we are dust and to dust we are returning. Yet according to Scripture, our experience of disease and sickness, suffering and death, is an aberration. Somehow, despite the ‘normality’ of our endurance of these things in life, they nonetheless leave us with the sense that things should not be this way; that disease and death are an imposition, a foreign body, an alien pathogen that does not belong in the world.

In the biblical perspective, the diseased character of the world is critical to understand because it speaks directly to the plan of salvation, redemption and restoration in the covenant. Because of the work of Christ, the second Adam, the Scriptures speak not only of the salvation of souls, but of the whole person, and of the redemption of the entire creation (Rom. 8:22-24; Col. 1:19-20; 2 Cor. 5:17-19; Eph. 1:7-10; 2 Pet. 3:13). When Jesus preached the gospel, he also healed the sick, as a visible manifestation of the kingdom of God, indicating by doing so the direction of history toEzra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

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ward the new creation. Indeed the forgiveness of sin and healing of the body are very closely associated throughout Scripture (Ps. 103:3; 2 Chr. 7:14; Luke. 5:23; Matt. 9:1-8; 10:8; Jas. 5:1416). The outworking of the gospel in history, as time moves toward the restoration of all things in Jesus Christ, is total healing or wholeness for the whole man. Citing the prophet Isaiah, St Peter writes, “by his wounds, you have been healed” (1 Pet. 2:24).

The resurrection of the body is the final and ultimate fulfilment of total salvation, with Christ’s resurrection standing in history as the guarantee of our full and final healing (1 Cor. 15:20-22).

St Paul tells us that “the first man Adam became a living being, the last Adam became a life-giving spirit ... the first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven ... just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven” (1 Cor. 15:47-49). According to the Christian worldview, because of the work of the cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, all things are being made new by the Spirit of God. Death, sorrow, crying and pain are finally to be done away with forever (Rev. 21:1-5). This is the essential meaning of history found in Scripture by which we understand the full scope of the work of salvation.

HEALTH AND SALVATION In the English language the word health comes from the old English root hal which means ‘whole.’ The words holiness, wholeness, health, and healing all have a common root. The whole person is one in whom all parts are in perfect harmony, working together properly. Health then is an aspect of salvation. The Latin word salve from which we derive our English word salvation, likewise has at its root the word health – so salvation is total health of body and soul, which culminates in the resurrection (Phil. 3:21). When we are regenerated in Jesus Christ, the principle of health and life is now at work within us, and we grow in terms of the principle of wholeness – health and holiness in every aspect of life. It follows from this that care for the body is a religious concern, and an important part of our duty as Christians.

Therefore, seeking the health and physical wellbeing of others is a priestly calling and ministry Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

as we serve as a kingdom of priests (Rev. 5:10) in the reconciliation of all things to God. It is no surprise, then, to find that in the Christian tradition the doctor has had a priestly role and vocation in bringing care and treatment to the sick. The biblical view of medical care and health care is Levitical in origin and continued in the New Testament era. Laws are found in Scripture and in Jewish applications of Levitical law concerning social gatherings, personal hygiene, circumcision, unclean animals, and sexual relations, which all furthered public health.2 Furthermore, wells could not be dug near burial or waste ground, water was to be boiled before drinking, and waste had to be burned outside the camp. If these laws had been followed consistently in a rudimentary way during the Middle Ages, many communities would have likely been spared many outbreaks of disease and plague. It is also interesting to note that if ancient Greek medicine had followed what the Scriptures teach, that “the life of every creature is its blood: its blood is its life” (Lev. 17:14), the foolish practice of blood-letting would not have prevailed for the centuries that it did.

“in the Christian tradition the doctor has had a priestly role and vocation in bringing care and treatment to the sick.”

In Jesus’ parable of The Good Samaritan, we see wine being used as a disinfectant, and oil employed to soothe bruises. Luke the evangelist, it seems, was himself a doctor, and is called ‘the beloved physician.’ St Paul prescribes treatment for Timothy, urging him to take wine for his troubled stomach and other ailments (possibly from drinking bad water: 1 Tim. 5:23). We now know that wine has many health benefits when taken in moderation. Red wine helps the stomach convert potentially harmful chemicals into less dangerous molecules before they are circulated in the body.

Apparently the polyphenols in red wine trigger the release of nitric oxide, a chemical that relaxes the stomach wall, helping to optimize digestion.

It has other benefits as well; it can act as a relaxant aiding sleep, it can settle nerves and tremors, and reduce the risk of heart disease. 3 The apostle James also urges prayer and the application of oil to the sick – possibly more than just a ritual anointing, as Christian healing is both spiritual and physical. In the biblical view, the body belongs to God, not to man or Satan, and is to be looked after as the temple of God (1 Cor. 6:19).

This conviction led to a very negative view of suiSPRING 2012

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cide, a practice which had been glorified at times in parts of the ancient world. Medical historian Roy Porter thus notes concerning the church:

“The apostle James also urges prayer and the application of oil to the sick – possibly more than just a ritual anointing, as Christian healing is both spiritual and physical.”

Jewish traditions of help and hospitality were extended, and Christ’s instruction to his disciples to care for the sick and needy assumed institutional form through the appointment of deacons charged with distributing alms. By 250 A.D. the church in Rome had developed an elaborate charitable outreach, with wealthy converts providing food and shelter for the poor ... Leontius, Bishop of Antioch from 344-358 A.D. set up hostels in his see; around 360, Bishop Eustathius of Sebasteia built a poor house; and St Basil erected outside the walls of Caesarea ‘almost a new city’ for the sick, poor and leprous.4

This emergency care and hospitality led on to simple efforts to provide rudimentary treatments.

A hospital was founded by Fabiola (d. 399), a wealthy convert who dedicated herself to furthering health among the sick in Rome. St Jerome wrote the following of Fabiola: [she] personally tended the unhappy and impoverished victims of hunger and disease. I have often seen her washing wounds which others – even men – could hardly bear to look at ... she founded a hospital and gathered there the sufferers from the streets, and gave them all the attention of a nurse ... how often she carried home, on her shoulders, the dirty and poor who were plagued with epilepsy! How she washed the pus from sores which others could not even behold.5

Porter, no friend of Christianity, is forced to admit: “Greek and Roman paganism had acknowledged no such duties.”6 By the mid-sixth century the church in Jerusalem had a hospital with two hundred beds. St Sampson’s in Constantinople was even bigger. Here minor surgical operations were performed and there was even a wing for eye disorders. By 650 A.D. the Pantokrator in Constantinople had a hierarchy of physicians, a home for the elderly, a leper house, and even teaching facilities. Porter’s summary is significant: “Christianity planted the hospital: the wellendowed establishments of the Levant and the scattered houses of the West shared a common religious ethos of charity.”7 Indeed Porter also asks, “Without the Christian virtue of charity would such hospitals have existed at all?”8 SPRING 2012

The story of the substantially Christian character of medical practice and the doctor’s vocation goes on through the Middle Ages into the modern world, and is fascinating in its own right.

For centuries, monks and clerics were the only body of learned people, and so they commonly practiced medicine. Many medical students at universities in Northern Europe also entered holy orders. Higher order clergy after the Lateran council of 1215 could also practice medicine, but not for financial gain. Contrary to myth, the church encouraged medical research and did not ban dissection (though the body had to be that of a criminal and was required to have a Christian burial afterward). The Benedictine rule stated that “the care of the sick is to be placed above and before every other duty, as if indeed Christ were being directly served by waiting on them.”

As a result the monasteries became key medical centres across Europe. The medieval hospital was a Christian foundation. In England, by 1400, there were almost five hundred hospitals, including London’s Bartholomew’s, which dates from 1123. These were all funded by the Christian church, as there was no such thing as state welfare.

PASTORS AND DOCTORS There was remarkable overlap between the practice of medicine and the work of the Christian pastor, because both were seen as aspects of the work of salvation. This continued for centuries.

The Puritan pastor Richard Baxter, in seventeenth century England, taught himself medicine and treated his parishioners, because there was no doctor in his town! Medicine was thus seen by Christians from the early centuries as a holy and priestly calling, so much so that by the fifth century it became a common requirement that doctors, like monks, be celibate. It is interesting that the tradition of privileged communication between a doctor and patient mirrors the privileged communication between a pastor and his congregants. When we confess to a pastor our sin, we are effectively confessing to God through his servants as we seek spiritual healing and health. Over my years in ministry I have had people come to me and confess all manner of sins, seeking a route to make restitution and to find healing and restoration in their lives. Likewise when we go to the doctor, we are confessEzra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

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ing to certain physical infirmities, and a similar kind of self-humbling is required in submitting ourselves to physical examination for the purpose of healing and health. Both forms of confession are privileged (confidential) communication that is closed to others, and both are religious in that they are done in search of healing, wholeness, and salvation. As the church has retreated from its task of ministering a gospel that deals with sin, doctors today often find their office more like a confessional, where they listen to all manner of confessions from people seeking a sympathetic ear and counsel. In both cases there is a religious trust placed in the pastor or doctor. The family doctor was historically seen as a family friend who was involved in bringing children into the world and caring for their physical well-being throughout their lives, just as the pastor cared for their spiritual well-being.

The doctor or physician has then a priestly calling as an aspect of God’s salvific purpose of redemption and healing. The very term doctor, in Latin, means ‘teacher,’ from docere (“to teach”).

From the early church, a doctor was one who taught Christian doctrine, and so the great teachers were called ‘doctors.’ This is the origin of the university doctorate degree for advanced teaching. The earlier term for the medical practitioner was physician, from the Greek concept of a natural philosopher or expert in physics. In the Western world then, in popular usage, we have essentially taken a term applied to Christian teachers of salvation and applied it to the medical profession; an abstract and impersonal title, ’physician,’ became the more personal and relational title of ‘doctor.’ For the Christian world, the doctor was one upon whose words and actions people depended for their physical care and treatment as an aspect of God’s grace and healing work in history.

MATERIALISM, MAGIC, OR BIBLICAL FAITH Clearly then, the medical practitioner, whether a surgeon, general practitioner, dentist or specialist in any given field, has a high calling and one which must be carried out in terms of God’s word and purposes for creation. The philosophy which informs the practice of medicine is therefore critical. In the pagan worldview the doctor Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

(physician) was a god or a semi-incarnate agent of a god, like Asklepios, the chief god of healing who was the first Greek god received into the Roman pantheon. This meant that medical healing was interwoven with occultism and magic in the Greco-Roman world, and relied on oracles in the healing tradition of Asklepieia. The pagan and superstitious character of Greek medicine comes through in the famous Hippocratic Oath. While the oath has many admirable aspects, like a commitment to confidentiality and opposition to both abortion and euthanasia,9 nevertheless Greek medicine was weakened by its chaotic polytheism and superstitious character. The beginning of the Oath reads, “I swear by Apollo the healer, by Aesulapius, by Health 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.”10 Because pagan medicine saw the physician as representing the gods of healing by whom they were bound with oath, there were unrealistic expectations of doctors. After all, since they had the powers of the gods, they should be able to heal whomever they chose, so if a patient wasn’t healed, perhaps it represented ill-will on the part of these agents of the gods.

This led to the idea of total liability for the physician – a belief that meant if a physician lost a patient he might lose his right hand or even his life.

If you represent the gods, you have the liability of a god. The Greek gods were of course more properly heroes – divinized people. As Pliny made clear, “Deity only means nature.” This was the naturalism or materialism inherent in pagan philosophy. A hero or a physician might command or manipulate nature by their craft, secret knowledge or skill, and so were seen in some sense as divine, but there was no transcendent God in pagan philosophy; it was the physicians’ participation in and manipulation of nature that made them demi-gods, who were consequently viewed as having the liability of supermen if they failed.

“Clearly then, the medical practitioner, whether a surgeon, general practitioner, dentist or specialist in any given field, has a high calling and one which must be carried out in terms of God’s word and purposes for creation.”

In the Christian view, however, no man or woman can have total liability or total responsibility.

That is for God alone. Our powers of healing are extremely limited. We can ask the living God to heal, but if He does not act supernaturally, we are limited to treatment, observation, and diligent scientific study – we cannot manipulate reality and work miracles. Doctors can do their best and SPRING 2012

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“The litigious risks facing doctors in modern medicine are largely due to the resurgent paganism of our age in the form of materialism.”

no more. Criminal negligence is one thing; human fallibility is another. The litigious risks facing doctors in modern medicine are largely due to the resurgent paganism of our age in the form of materialism. Just as we have seen a massive resurgence of occultism in our time, we have likewise seen a colossal resurgence of severe malpractice suits against doctors. Rationalistic materialism and occultism have always grown and flourished together, because if there is no transcendent creator God, the only hope in history is man’s manipulation and control of the ‘powers of nature.’

This fact is closely linked to the resurgence and proliferation of all manner of alternative therapies from acupuncture and homeopathy, to osteopathy, Freudian psychotherapies, and yogic meditation.11 If nature is the only god there is and if the expert ‘physicist’ or ‘physician’ is the one who can manipulate those powers, then the demand placed upon ‘medicine’ is total competence to overcome all problems. If the doctor or therapist fails to heal me, then he must have been negligent or incompetent and he is therefore liable. This leads to greater and greater expectations of control over medicine, with legislation to ensure that patients get all the benefits while doctors get all the penalties.

When the Christian faith entered the mainstream of history, however, there was a new emphasis on learning, teaching, knowledge, and healing. Instead of being akin to the magician, the doctor became more like the rabbi or pastor, coming alongside to care, treat, and help, rather than acting as a demi-god able to exercise power and control over a person as an aspect of nature.

It took many centuries, however, for the pagan assumptions and esoteric beliefs of Greek medicine to be shaken off. Certainly the Greeks had a positive interest in anatomy and observation.

However, Greek medical doctrines that were essentially philosophical in character dominated medicine for more than a millennium due largely to the work of Galen (b. A.D. 129). Galen’s father, a wealthy architect, steered his son in the direction of medicine. He went on to serve as a physician to gladiators and emperors. Amongst his noted medical views were the ideas that vital and animal spirits operated in the arteries, and that fever was due to imbalance in the four humours. He took the Platonic doctrine of a threefold division of the soul and applied it to

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medicine in the realm of anatomy and body functions. He sought to bring together, in a unified philosophy, anatomy and Greek logic, leading to his belief that he had an explanation for everything: “It is I and I alone, who have revealed the true path of medicine.”12 It was not until the sixteenth century and the medical chemistry of the Protestant Von Hohenheim (Paracelsus) that a reformation of medicine away from these faulty premises began (though it was admittedly a very shaky start by today’s standards). Thus the stultifying homage to ancient medicine began to be cut away like a dead weight. As Porter notes, “His commitment to the discovery of truth through observation and experiment was a breath of fresh air. And it became the inspiration of the new medicine emerging in the ‘scientific revolution’ stirring at about the time of his death.”13 He was followed by Van Helmont who made headway rejecting the Galenic elements, humours, and qualities as empty verbiage. In the seventeenth century, the Christian doctor William Harvey went further still, demonstrating the circulation of the blood. Harvey believed in the authority of the Bible and the deity of Christ, which motivated his work. He openly acknowledged that his search for purpose in nature and use of a scientific method was the result of God’s creative wisdom and order. Modern medicine never looked back.

Today, however, a naturalistic materialism that denies the creator God of scripture has returned with a vengeance. Whilst use of a scientific method continues in medicine, no overarching purpose, order, or design is acknowledged, and no supervening moral or ethical structure guides the process of development. Instead, despite the inability of the inductive method to produce certain truth, and despite medicine’s status as an ever-changing ‘soft science,’ nevertheless the contemporary demi-gods amongst the medical elites make grand pronouncements about alleged ‘truths of nature.’ These doctrines are then applied in hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies to the detriment of people’s health – policies on gender identity, mental health, and abortion being just three critical examples. 14 Naturalistic materialism is our dominant philosophy of medicine which today directs the killing of the unborn, the euthanizing of the elderly, the redefinition of sexuality and gender, and, increasingly, the advoEzra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

Health, Salvation and the Kingdom of God 13

cacy of infanticide. 15 Thus, people are reduced to little more than biochemical machines, produced by blind evolutionary processes and social conditioning. This return of Greek doctrine in the form of naturalistic evolution has led to critical medical mistakes. For example, about 98% of the DNA in the nuclei of our cells does not consist of genes. This non-coding DNA was largely written off as ‘junk,’ useless leftovers from an alleged evolutionary past. It turns out, however, that this DNA appears to play a critical role in whether or not genes are active. Molecular biologist and leading geneticist, John Mattick, stated that, “the failure to recognise the implications of the non-coding DNA will go down as the biggest mistake in the history of molecular biology.”16 Furthermore, without a basis for medical ethics, our technological materialism says that “if we can we will.” This means that a great gap has opened up between the science of medicine and the practice of medicine - what is practiced is often not backed by reliable science at all and we have a return to a techno-magical vision of healing. Now people demand a chemical pill to cure every ill, from viruses (which don’t respond to antibiotics) to sadness or unhappiness, and doctors are convinced by pharmaceutical companies to buy into this medicalization of society, and the ‘latest is best’ theory of medicine, prescribing ever new generations of questionable drugs.

Great challenges therefore lie ahead. Just as the early church took up the task from a theological starting point, we again need to rebuild a true theology and science of medicine. Today, Christian medical professionals and doctors must recover and rebuild a biblical vision of care and healing, one that addresses the whole person, on the basis of biblical principles, solid scientific studies, and responsible research. Christian medical professionals must recover their priestly role as those who teach, treat, and care, while resisting the pagan drive to become pseudo-magicians who dole out ‘cures’ by the barrel. The Christian church needs to help Christian medical professionals to regain their place as those advancing the kingdom of God by bringing health and wholeness to people’s lives in terms of the purposes, law and design of God. 1

Carl Wieland, One Human Family: The Bible, Sci-

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ence, Race and Culture (Georgia, Atlanta: Creation Book Publishers, 2011), p. 144 2 Whilst the primary purpose of circumcision in Scripture is clearly set forth as being a sign of the covenant, we can now see that this law also furthered public health amongst the people of God as well, which is a mark of the wisdom of God. Likewise, dietary laws marked the set-apart character of the Israelites to holiness, and we now also know that many of the forbidden foods represent a significant health risk to humans because of the creature’s habitat, diet or other characteristics.

3 My concern here is not to encourage people to drink, if their conscience is at variance with alcohol consumption. The point is simply that St Paul was interested in the treatment and health of Timothy’s body and that his prescription shows a first century awareness of the medicinal value of wine. Alcohol has many such uses and was regularly prescribed by doctors for treating various ailments in North America, even during the prohibition years.

4 Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), p. 87 5 Porter, The Greatest Benefit, p. 88 6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid., p. 110 9 Would that modern medicine could affirm the same.

10 Porter, The Greatest Benefit, p. 63 11 We are condemning only the superstitious and occultic use of alternative medicine, not the ethical and scientific pursuit of healing outside the mainstream offerings of western medicine.

12 Porter, The Greatest Benefit, p. 77 13 Ibid., p. 205 14 For a full discussion of the impact of materialism on medical science, see Franklin E. Payne, MD, Medical Ethics: Building on John Frame and His Work, John J. Hughes (ed.) Speaking the Truth in Love: The Theology of John M. Frame (New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 2009), pp. 802-828 15 As a shocking example, some ‘intellectuals’ in the medical community are now advocating the legal killing of babies after they have been born in all cases where abortion is presently permitted, based on the materialist assumption that neither foetuses nor newborns can be regarded as actual persons.

See, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?, first published in the, Journal of Medical Ethics on February 23, 2012 as 10.1136/medethics-2011-100411.

Available online at, www.jme.bmj.com 16 Cited in Wieland, One Human Family, p. 78

“Whilst use of a scientific method continues in medicine, no overarching purpose, order, or design is acknowledged,”

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14 DR. CARLISLE PERCIVAL

DR. CARLISLE PERCIVAL is Medical Director and CEO, Santa Cruz Surgery Center. He is a specialist in Anesthesiology and has been in the medical profession for over thirty years. Dr. Percival is a native of Ohio where he went to college and medical school. He moved to California in 1980 to complete his specialty training in anesthesiology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

The Imago Dei in Healthcare I WOULD LIKE TO TELL YOU that all of modern medicine is an innovation of Christianity. That of course would be untrue. The Egyptians were performing trephine craniotomies three thousand years ago; the Babylonians and the people of India were also practicing medicine as an organized, systematic tradition. There were other pre-biblical cultures which studied and practiced medicine as well. I would be remiss if I did not mention the Greeks with Asclepius and Hippocrates both of whom are pre-Christian but not pre-biblical; likewise the biblical Hebrews may not have been famous for medicine but they were on the forefront of public health and hygiene. No, Christianity is not responsible for the introduction of medicine but I will argue that biblical principles are the bedrock of healthcare as we know it today and that there are three biblical pillars on which it is based.

I think it would be illuminating to first discuss what is not foundational to modern healthcare.

I am and have been an anesthesiologist in private practice for over thirty years. For more than twenty years, I have been practicing in a small to medium-sized city on the central coast of California. I am fond of saying that if anyone believes that our civilization or society’s healthcare system is truly the product of a Darwinian mechanism then all he or she must do to be disabused of this notion is to spend a night or two with me on call at the hospital. We routinely devote our hours and precious resources to caring for those who from a Darwinian point of view should least survive. These folks would be the most obvious members to cull from the herd according to a Darwinian perspective. They are drug addicts who have infected themselves with dirty needles, participants in gang fights, the very old, the very young or the very sick without much prospect of a good long-term prognosis and most if not all of these without the means to pay for their

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services. No, certainly from a Darwinian outlook these folks are not fit and should be left to die, particularly the ones who have not yet attained or still have reproductive ability, because that’s the way Darwinian evolution works.

In chapter three of The Origin of Species, which is entitled, The Struggle for Existence, Darwin states, “...of the many individuals of any species which are periodically born, but a small number can survive.” He goes on to state, later in the chapter, “the struggle will almost invariably be most severe between the individuals of the same species,” and if he were correct then surely this is the way that evolution must work. Darwin called the results of this struggle “natural selection” but he mentions the term created by his colleague, Herbert Spencer, “survival of the fittest” as the expression which is more accurate and convenient. You can easily see that if we were actually struggling for limited resources in the way that Darwin describes then we would not offer these people healthcare; for surely if they are at, or are yet to attain, reproductive age, then they are undoubtedly from the shallow end of the gene pool, if I may coin a phrase. And what of those who are beyond reproductive age? Well, even though they can no longer pollute the gene pool, they are decidedly consuming vast amounts of resources that would be better used on those of us who can positively contribute to the amelioration of the collective genome.

Darwin goes on to state in the next chapter, “we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed.” Were this true, we surely would not squander our valuable resources on individuals who possess these injurious traits; yet we do just that. Furthermore, we actually go very much out of our way to make sure that those who are not the fittest do survive and we try the hardest for those who are individuals of our same species. These actualities, that is, this Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

The Imago Dei in Healthcare 15

lack of struggle with members of our own species and the preservation of these injurious traits are precisely the antithesis of Darwin’s prediction. I would go on to say that Darwin’s predictions are incorrect about humanity in general but suffice it to say that a Darwinian mechanism certainly is not the basis for our healthcare. No, modern western healthcare, which has become the model for healthcare all over the world, is based on biblical principles.

The first biblical pillar of modern healthcare concerns itself with the care of those unable to care for themselves, precisely the type of people mentioned above. This starts in the first chapter of Genesis (1:26-27) where we are told that we are made in the image of God. Christians are instructed to love one another as God loves us.

There are dozens of examples, but here are some representative scriptures: Psalm 82:3-4, “Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”

Proverbs 31:8-9, “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.”

Jeremiah 22:16, “‘He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?’ declares the Lord.”

Matthew 25:40, “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”

And most importantly, Romans 5:8, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

There are a few threads here that intertwine with healthcare. First, this idea of a God who loves us so much that He would die for us, led early Christians to behave in a like manner, bringing water for the thirsty, bread for the hungry and blankets for the cold. Even in the absence of modern medical technology, such care often makes the difference between recovery and death.

Additionally, because Christians believe that the grave is not the end, they were more inclined to put themselves at risk during epidemics and Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

plagues. Rodney Stark discusses this in his book, The Rise of Christianity. Stark goes on to write, “It is also worth noting that the famous classical physician Galen lived through the first epidemic during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. What did he do? He got out of Rome quickly, retiring to a country estate in Asia Minor until the danger receded.” Christians were known to do just the opposite; not only did they remain to care for each other but for others as well. Paul Johnson, in A History of Christianity, quotes the emperor, Julian the Apostate (361-363), who dripped with disdain for Christianity in writing to a pagan priest, “The impious Galileans (Christians) support not only their poor, but ours as well; everybody can see that our people lack aid from us.” This Christian principle of caring for the weak, the poor, the outcast, those who would seem to be undeserving, has become institutionalized in our culture and is emulated by other cultures. It is now expected within most countries, even though secularized, that healthcare should be offered to all regardless of their ability to pay.

The second biblical pillar supporting healthcare is science. The advances in medical technology are and continue to be nothing short of breathtaking. While there might have been a few others, the vast warp and woof of the fabric of modern science is made up of Christians. Scholastics like Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon pioneered the scientific method. Those who later built on their work such as Galileo, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and many others, were also Christians. These Bible-believing scientists understood, as stated in Psalm 19, that the heavens declare the glory of God, that the laws and the statutes of the Lord were perfect and trustworthy, and that we are called to know God by knowing about his created works, his natural revelation. The first, the great and the enduring universities were all Christian institutions such as those at Padua, Bologna, Oxford and Paris; it was here also that the enduring great schools of medicine began. These great schools of medicine that spread across the continent, and indeed the world, gave us the science from which we get our present day evidence-based medicine. The word “science” comes from the Latin word “to know” and the way that we know things is through the scientific method, which is the backbone of west-

“The first biblical pillar of modern healthcare concerns itself with the care of those unable to care for themselves, precisely the type of people mentioned above.”

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ern, inductive science. This process is one of hypothesis, prediction and testing and it comes right out of the Bible (Deut. 18:22; Matt. 1:22; 2:15; 2:23; 3:15; 4:14; 5:17; 8:17; 12:17; 13:14; 13:35; 21:4; 27:9; Luke 24:25-27; 24:44; 1Thess.

5:20-21).1 Biblical principles are positively the soul of science.

“healthcare and Christianity complement one another and work together hand in glove. As the gospel spread across the world, the hospital went with it.”

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We care for our sick in a manner that unifies our charity, beneficence, and altruism with our science, and this brings us to our third biblical pillar: unity in diversity. This is exemplified by the hospital. At these institutions, we have various branches of medicine including surgery, obstetrics, pediatrics and the like. In addition to physicians, there are nurses, orderlies and other ancillary health personnel such as pharmacists, dietitians, and physical therapists. This idea of having many services available to many patients in one location and thus being able to address their therapeutic, nutritional and rehabilitative needs, as well as being centers for teaching, originated before the Christian era in Roman, Greek and Indian cultures. However, examples of such previous institutions are isolated. It is not until the Christian influence of first the Roman and then the Byzantine Empire that the hospital system was mastered, perfected, disseminated, and perpetuated. In addition to the hospitals commissioned by the Roman and Byzantine rulers across their empires, many monasteries provided complete care for patients, including having gardens for growing medicinal herbs. There is a reason why this idea of a multi-dimensional, multi-disciplinary institution conforms so well with Christianity, and once again it is because it is consistent with Christian doctrine. First, only in Christianity do we have a triune God: three persons, one God. Second, we have the body of Christ with many members as presented in Romans 12:4-8 and 1 Corinthians 12:12-30. These both speak of diverse members or entities coming together as an integrated whole. This is why healthcare and Christianity complement one another and work together hand in glove. As the gospel spread across the world, the hospital went with it. The Christian European countries might have had other motives for colonizing faraway lands but with the colonizers always came God’s people with schools and hospitals. Once again, this Christian idea of building and providing

hospitals has become secularized and institutionalized in our manifold governments. Go to any ranking of the top ten or twenty hospitals in the world and you will find that they are all in the United States and Europe. These are countries whose governments and cultures are unequivocally built upon Christian principles. Though many have forgotten the origin of these principles, there can be no question from whence they arose.

Many believe, and I am one, that the church, the “body of Christ,” has abdicated its role to a large degree in the provision of healthcare. I sometimes imagine the question being put to Jesus the same way that the Pharisees asked him about taxes being paid to Caesar, “Lord, to whom should we tithe our money for the provision of healthcare?” I imagine that Jesus would respond, “You hypocrites, show me this healthcare. Whose likeness and whose inscription are on it?” References Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species. New York: Crowell, 1860.

Johnson, Paul. A History of Christianity. New York: Atheneum, 1976.

Stark, Rodney. The Rise of Christianity: a Sociologist Reconsiders History. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996.

Editor’s Note: It can be fairly extrapolated that fulfilled prophecy proves that God’s sovereignty governs all causes and conditioning factors, and proves His absolute control of all things. In that sense, it helps us see that God’s Word upholds and guarantees the future and predictability of reality on the basis of His truthful and faithful activity. For example, God promised Noah the consistency of the seasons till the end of time in Genesis 8:22.

This does not prove empiricism as a philosophy (i.e., sense experience and scientific inductive method as only route for knowing truth), but creation alone and God’s prophecy regarding death and decay at the Fall help establish the predictability or uniformity of nature in terms of the Word of God. Without this guarantee, there is nothing about the scientific method that proves anything; with it we can actually make deductions (certain judgments) based on the affirmations of the Word of God.

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Following the Footsteps of the Great Physician: Health Care in the Early Church MARK’S GOSPEL RECORDS an account of a woman “who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse” (Mark 5.25-26 NRSV). When she heard about Jesus, however, she pressed through the crowds – “if I just touch his clothes, I will be healed” (Mark 5.28). She was right. The bleeding stopped the instant she touched his cloak and she was delivered from all her suffering.

This woman’s experience under many physicians was common in the ancient world. One of the enduring legacies of the early Church was its reformation of both the delivery of health care and the prevailing popular views of sickness and wellness. The following article outlines the story of this reformation in ancient health care. After a brief overview of health care in the ancient world, I consider three episodes in the development of early Christian health care: 1: the Christian response to the plagues of the third century; 2: the organization and delivery of monastic health care in the fourth century; and 3: the construction of the first hospital, which was part of Basil the Great’s Basileiados, a multifaceted institution that provided medical, social, and educational services.

HEALTH CARE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD The family or household was the primary locus of health care in the ancient world.1 In general, people were not well. Ignorance of basic hygiene meant that people frequently suffered from diarrhoea, dysentery, cholera, gastroenteritis, hepatitis, leptospirosis, and typhoid.2 Family health care typically took the form of caring, rather than curing. Family members bathed, fed, dressed, and comforted those who were sick in the household.

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Outside of family care, there were physicians in antiquity; however, they were not licensed and many so-called physicians were quacks. Even those with medical training practiced with mixed motives. As the second-century physician Galen described the doctors of his day, “some practice the medical art for monetary gain, some because of exemptions granted them by the laws, some from love of their fellow men (dia philanthropian), others again for the fame and honour that attend the profession” (De plac. Hip. et Plat. 9.5.4).3 Doctors rarely practiced because of philanthropia, love for humanity. Fame and money were the primary motivations, and a doctor’s reputation and income depended on the success of his treatment, which meant he was reluctant to treat severe or chronic illness.

The social stigmatization of sickness is another aspect of ancient health care. Sickness was seen as a consequence of moral weakness. Good health was a mark of both moral virtue and religious piety; sickness was a mark of moral failure and impiety. As the ancients saw it, the peace and stability of the polis depended on the virtue and piety of its citizens. Cicero believed that the success and advance of the Roman Empire was sustained by the piety of the Romans. 4 As long as the Romans maintained their piety, the gods would continue to bless the Empire. Sickness was evidence of impiety, which threatened the peace and stability of the Empire. Thus, people who were severely or chronically ill were stigmatized and ostracized, for the sake of public piety and divine favour.

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17 Dr. David Robinson

DR. DAVID ROBINSON is an Associate Pastor at Westminster Chapel in Toronto. He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Theology from St. Michael’s College (in the University of Toronto). He is a specialist in the history and theology of Early Christianity and has taught courses in Church History at St. Michael’s College and Knox College (in the University of Toronto), and at Tyndale University College. He has published articles in Studia Patristica, Worship, Humanitas, and Revista Vida y Espiritualidad. He lives in Toronto with his wife Megan and two children, Samuel and Leah.

Given the centrality of the family and the unreliability of physicians, a person without family support, such as a widow, orphan or refugee, was in a desperate situation. The only other options were patronage and philanthropy; however, both SPRING 2012

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the patronage system and ancient philanthropy were a means to social prestige and political advantage. Benevolence to the poor and destitute did not serve these ends. The poor and destitute had little recourse to social aid outside the family.5 Add to this the social and religious stigmatization of sickness and it becomes clear why the poor and destitute had no access to health care in the ancient world.

THE CHRISTIAN RESPONSE TO THE PLAGUE OF CYPRIAN

“Cyprian urged the Christians to practice the mercy of Christ by turning the attention of their charity to pagans.”

The early Christian view of sickness and delivery of health care is illustrated by the Christian response to the Plague of Cyprian in AD 250. This pandemic, which is named after a contemporary bishop of Carthage in North Africa, spread across the Roman Empire and lasted two decades. According to Cyprian’s description, the symptoms included diarrhoea, vomiting, infectious sores in the mouth and eyes, and gangrene of the limbs.6 The disease was often fatal and many who survived were left crippled, deaf, or blind. While most people abandoned the sick and fled Carthage, Cyprian exhorted Christians to stay and care for victims of the plague, whether fellow Christians or pagans. Cyprian urged the Christians to practice the mercy of Christ by turning the attention of their charity to pagans.7 Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria in Egypt, provides another contemporary account of the plague: Most of our brother-Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of the danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy; for they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbours and cheerfully accepting their pains ... The heathens behaved in the very opposite way. At the first onset of the disease, they pushed the sufferers away and fled from their loved ones, throwing them into the roads before they were dead and treating the unburied corpses as dirt.8

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Dionysius’ account is corroborated by Eusebius’ account of the Christian response to a plague that broke out in AD 312-313: Alone in the midst of this terrible calamity [the Christians] proved by visible deeds their sympathy and humanity. All day long some continued without rest to tend the dying and bury them; others rounded up the huge number reduced to scarecrows all over the city and distributed loaves to them all, so their praises were sung on every side, and all men glorified the God of the Christians and confessed that they alone were pious and truly religious: did not their actions speak for themselves? (Hist. ecc. 9.8)9

The Christian response to the pandemics of the third century was not ad hoc or haphazard. For two hundred years, the church had organized and institutionalized ministry to the poor, the destitute, and the sick. Ambulatory health care was a part of the church’s diaconal ministry. When the plague struck in AD 250, Christians were not only willing to care for the sick, they had organized and trained personnel ready to deliver such care.10 MONASTIC HEALTH CARE The fourth century is one of the most important centuries in church history for two reasons: (1) the distillation and articulation of doctrine and (2) the rise of monasticism. While most monks lived in the desert, some lived in solitude (anchorites), and others lived in community (coenobites). Coenobitic monks lived in monasteries and their communal life was ordered by a set of rules (e.g., Benedict’s Rule). Health care was regulated by monastic rule and provided within the monastery. In fact, most monasteries had an infirmary where monks had access to health care, which, by ancient standards, was second-to-none.

Monasteries had a medical staff, administration, and facilities that provided both inpatient and outpatient care. In terms of personnel, the monasteries were staffed with doctors, nurses, porters, elders, stewards, and lay caregivers.11 Many monastic doctors were doctors who had renounced their life in the world and entered the monastery.

They offered a broad range of medical treatments,

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Following the Footsteps of the Great Physician: Health Care in the Early Church 19

from various therapies to the prescription of pharmaceuticals, and even complicated surgery. Prior to the monastery in the fourth century, there were no nurses and no nursing practice in the ancient world.12 Monastic nurses were charged with feeding, bathing, and providing palliative care for their patients. According to Augustine’s Monastic Rule: “The care of the sick (aegrotantium cura) – whether they are convalescent or suffering from any bodily weakness even if there is no fever – should be entrusted to a particular person so that he may obtain from the storeroom what he sees each one needs” (Reg. 3, 5.8).13 Whereas the diet of a healthy monk normally comprised bread and water, sick monks were treated to a full menu of comfort foods, such as fresh bread, wine, meat, eggs, anchovies with oil and salt, charlock with oil and salt, raw and cooked vegetables, gruel, various cheeses, honey, stewed plums, and pastries.14 Elders and stewards served as triage officers, who discerned (diakrisis) what kind of care an ailing monk required. Because the infirmary provided food and comfort otherwise forbidden to monks, elders and stewards had to discern whether a monk was faking an ailment. Thus, the stewards and elders discerned whether the cause of a monk’s malady was physical or spiritual. Penance may be the required remedy.15 Monastic health care integrated both spiritual and medical treatment. Basil the Great, bishop of Caesarea (in Cappadocia, modern-day Turkey), represents the early Christian view of medicine when he writes in his Long Rules: “the medical art was given to us by God to relieve the sick” (Reg. fus. 55).16 Basil argues that the practice of medicine should not be rejected because it is abused by some doctors; rather, he calls on Christians to show the benefits of medicine by its proper use. Even so, he warns against putting the hope of one’s health in the hands of doctors: “we should neither repudiate this art altogether nor does it behoove us to repose all our confidence in it; but, just as in practicing the art of agriculture we pray God for the fruit, and just as we entrust the helm to the pilot in the art of navigation, but implore God that we may end our voyage unharmed by the perils of the sea, so also, when reason allows, we call in the doctor, but we do not leave off hoping in God” (Reg. fus. 55).17 MediEzra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

cal treatment cannot substitute hope for healing from the Great Physician.

As for spiritual treatment, a whole repertoire of spiritual remedies was tried: prayer, exorcism, laying on of hands, application of holy water and oil, and the sign of the cross. The best physicians were not necessarily those who had medical training. As Athanasius reports in his biography of Antony (one of the early monks): “through him the Lord healed many of those present who suffered from bodily ailments; others he purged of demons, and to Antony he gave grace of speech.

Thus he consoled many who mourned, and others hostile to each other he reconciled in friendship, urging everyone to prefer nothing in the world above the love of Christ” (V. Ant. 14).18 Athanasius explains that God worked through Antony because “the state of his soul was one of purity” (V. Ant. 14). In other words, he prepared for his healing ministry by training in holiness, rather than medicine.

Intercessory prayer was an important part of monastic health care. Again, Athanasius writes concerning Antony: “frequently the Lord heard the prayers he offered on behalf of many people.

And Antony was neither boastful when he was heeded, nor disgruntled when he was not; rather, he gave thanks to the Lord always. He encouraged those who suffered to have patience and to know that healing belonged neither to him nor to men at all, but only to God who acts whenever he wishes and for whomever he wills” (V. Ant. 56).19 The monastic approach to health care integrated both spiritual and medical treatments for sickness. The possibility of miraculous cure did not dissuade monks from learning and applying medical remedies, and the availability of medical remedies did not deter them from praying for divine healing.

“The possibility of miraculous cure did not dissuade monks from learning and applying medical remedies, and the availability of medical remedies did not deter them from praying for divine healing.”

BASIL THE GREAT AND THE BASILEIADOS IN CAESAREA No one contributed more to the institutionalization of early Christian health care than Basil of Caesarea. The church has bestowed on Basil the epithet magnus (“the Great”), in large part for the significant contribution he made to the theological, ethical, and liturgical life of the

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Following the Footsteps of the Great Physician: Health Care in the Early Church

“he frequently called on them to invest their money in heaven’s treasury, rather than earthly pleasures.”

church. Shortly after his installation as bishop of Caesarea in AD 370, Basil began work on a network of buildings which came to be known as the Basileiados. Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil’s close friend, called the Basileiados a “new city,” which was more admirable and wonderful than anything else constructed in the ancient world, including the Gates of Thebes, the walls of Babylon, the Pyramids, and the statue of Colossus.20 The Basileiados provided facilities and staff to serve the needs of the poor and homeless, strangers and refugees, the elderly and infirm, orphans, and the sick.21 Doctors and nurses treated the sick and provided palliative care for the elderly and infirm, and teachers educated the orphans; however, it was the ministry to lepers that stood out for Gregory of Nazianzus. He describes the lepers who came to the Basileiados as a “terrible and piteous spectacle of men who are living corpses, whose limbs have died, who were driven away from their cities and homes and public places and fountains, and even from their own loved ones” (Or. 43.63).22 Basil exhorted Christians not to despise lepers. Despite his own noble ancestry and reputation, he greeted them as brothers and personally bathed and cared for them. Basil’s care for lepers set an example for others: The effect produced is seen not only in the city, but in the country and beyond. Even the leaders of society have vied with one another in their philanthropy and magnanimity towards [the lepers].

Others have had their cooks, splendid tables, dainties from confectioners, exquisite carriages, and soft, flowing robes; Basil’s care was for the sick and the relief of their wounds, and the imitation of Christ by cleansing leprosy, not by a word, but in deed. (Or. 43.63)23

Gregory’s eulogy for Basil reveals something about the broader impact of early Christian health care: the destigmatization of sickness. The Basileiados not only provided health care, welfare, and education to the poor and destitute, it proved that Christian philanthropia, after three hundred years of charitable service, had changed the popular perception and assumptions of sickness. Even lepers were no longer stigmatized and ostracized, but welcomed and treated as brothers and sisters in Christ.

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The success of Basil’s Basileiados depended upon two main resources: monks and money. It was primarily staffed by monks, many of whom, like Basil, had renounced the luxuries of fine cuisine, exquisite carriages, and soft, flowing robes.

Gregory of Nazianzus described the Basileiados as “the storehouse of piety, the common treasury of the wealthy, in which the superfluities of their wealth, and even their necessities, are stored, in consequence of [Basil’s] exhortations, freed from the power of the moth, no longer gladdening the eyes of the thief, and escaping both the emulation of envy and the corruption of time” (Or. 43.63).24 The Basileiados provided free health care, because Basil did not flinch at exhorting the wealthy to generous giving. His extant sermons reveal that he frequently called on them to invest their money in heaven’s treasury, rather than earthly pleasures.25 CONCLUSION I suspect many readers were not aware of the impact Christianity had on the history of medicine and health care. Before the advance of Christianity, chronic or severe illness was viewed with suspicion and many people shared the experience of the woman in the Gospel account. After spending all their money on physicians, their condition had only worsened. Those without family care had little recourse to health care. The church, however, acted as a surrogate family, which cared for both its own members and those outside the family. It also reformed and regulated the delivery of health care. Visitors to a monastery or the Basileiados received reliable medical treatment.

Finally, early Christian delivery of health care integrated both medical and spiritual treatment.

Training in medicine also required training in holiness. The early Christian approach to health care called for a diagnosis of body and soul, and prescribed both pharmaceuticals and penance. Latin: familia, domus; Greek: oikos. The family included biological kin, adopted kin, servants, slaves, apprentices, employees, and boarders.

Andrew T. Crislip, “The Monastic Health Care System and the Development of the Hospital in Late Antiquity,” Ph.D. diss. (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 2002), 69; Suzanne Dixon, The Roman

1

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Following the Footsteps of the Great Physician: Health Care in the Early Church 21

Family (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 30.

2 Gary B. Ferngren, Medicine & Health Care in Early Christianity (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2009), 116.

3 Greek text and English translation: On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato (Books VI-IX), ed. and trans. Philipp de Lacy, Corpus Medicorum Graecorum, Bd. V 4, 1, 2 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2005), 564, 565. Cf. Helen King, “Using the Past: Nursing and the Medical Profession in Ancient Greece,” in Anthropology and Nursing, ed. Pat Holden and Jenny Littlewood (London: Routledge, 1991), 7–24; Ferngren, Medicine & Health Care in Early Christianity, 87–95.

4 Cicero, De haruspicum responsis 9.19 (Concerning the Response of the Soothsayers 9.19). Bildad the Shuhite represents the pagan view of illness in his response to Job’s suffering (Job 8.1-10).

5 Ferngren, Medicine & Health Care in Early Christianity, 87.

6 De mortalitate 14 (On Mortality).

7 Pontius of Carthage, Vita Cyprianii 9 (Life of Cyprian).

8 Dionysius’ account given in a letter preserved

by Eusebius, Hist. ecc. 7.22 (The History of the Church, trans. G.A. Williamson [London: Penguin, 1989], 237).

9 The History of the Church, 291.

10 Ferngren, Medicine & Health Care in Early Christianity, 113–23.

11 Crislip, The Monastic Health Care System, 25–34.

12 King, Using the Past: Nursing and the Medical Profession in Ancient Greece, 23.

13 The Monastic Rules, trans. Agatha Mary and Gerald Bonner (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2004), 119. On the treatment of the sick in other monastic rules, see Pachomius, Praecepta 4047 (Pachomian Chronicles and Rules, vol. 2 of Pachomian Koinonia, trans. Armand Veilleux [Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 1981]) and Basil of Caesarea, Longer Rules (Regulae fusius) 19, 55 and Shorter Rules (Regulae brevior) 155 (The Ascetic Works of Saint Basil, trans. W.K.L. Clarke [London: SPCK, 1925]).

14 Crislip, “The Monastic Health Care System,” 48–50.

15 See Basil of Caesarea, Long Rules (Reg. fus.) 55; idem., Shorter Rules (Reg. brev.) 155; cf. The First Greek Life of Pachomius (V. Pach. G1) 52.

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16

Saint Basil: Ascetical Works, ed. and trans. M. Monica Wagner, Fathers of the Church, no.9 (New York: Catholic University of America Press, 1950), 331.

17 Ibid., 336.

18 The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus, trans. Robert C. Gregg, The Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 42.

19 Ibid., 73.

20 Oratio 43.63. Oration 43 is a funeral oration for Basil.

21 Basil, Epp. 94, 150, 174; Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. 43.63; Theodoret, Hist. ecc. 4.16; Sozomon, Hist. ecc. 3.16.

22 English translation (slightly altered) by Charles Gordon Brown and James Edward Swallow (NPNF2, vol. 7: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf207.iii. xxvi.html).

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid.

25 See, for example, his sermon In divites (To the Rich).

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22 JENNIFER FORBES

JENNIFER FORBES is Director of the Safe Families for Children ministry, based in Toronto.

She has been actively involved with Kids Alive International Canada over the past 10 years, serving in Canada and Zambia.

Jennifer holds a BA in International Development from York University.

If My People: Family Healing and Regeneration Contemporary culture faces a myriad of social issues threatening the collapse of society. Of particular note is the moral failure of the nuclear family and its subsequent impact on social order.

Just five decades ago, family units were strong.

Families stuck together; divorce was not commonplace, and out-of-wedlock births were rare.

It was shameful for a father or mother to abandon their family and they were often ostracized for doing so. The needs of an individual were usually met by their immediate and extended family. When that did not occur, communities, churches, and charities stepped in.

With the sexual revolution and other societal changes, the family unit began to break down and norms associated with family function were warped. Rampant promiscuity, adultery, and other formerly prohibited sexual practices have since become widely normalized. With the sexual liberty of the individual came increased problems in the family. Today we see high divorce rates, and a significant rise in single-parent families, abuse, and the neglect and even abandonment of children – the weakest members of society. To justify our choices, we have brought into question the definition and function of the family, legalized abortion, and glorified promiscuity and sexual license.

Children do not fare well in broken families.

Studies show that children in single-parent homes are at higher risk of poor physical and mental health, more likely to drop out of school, more likely to be abused, and less likely to have healthy relationships in adulthood themselves.1 Broken families are more susceptible to dependence on welfare, and in Canada chronic poverty is linked to single-parenthood.2 Not coincidentally, overall levels of stress, anxiety and mental health issues

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have increased among adults as familial structures have broken down.

There are financial costs to family breakdown as well. In Canada, “the cost of serving broken families is almost $7 billion annually.”3 A similar study in the United Kingdom found that “the costs of sexual freedom and relationship breakdown to the taxpayer and wider economy are complex and difficult to calculate, but 100 billion pounds annually is probably a reasonable starting point: about twice as much as alcohol abuse, smoking and obesity combined.”4 The massive welfare costs and other problems incurred by family breakdown have led to political warfare between classes, and are tearing apart the fabric of our society.

Various solutions, cures, and answers pop up in public discourse and are implemented. Many of these fail. Others solve an immediate problem but fail in the long-term. Still others are band-aids which ameliorate the effects of a problem but do not see its eradication. In Mark 4:28, Jesus says “the earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.” We often want instant answers and solutions, but growth takes time, and so does problem solving. And no solution will be truly effective unless it addresses the central moral issue: sin. The problem of sin is not solvable on a technical basis. It is not a two plus two problem. Most cultural solutions to social and family breakdown are reductionist. The complex issues and conditions are often simplified to the point of minimizing, obscuring, or distorting them. Rather than diminution, we must turn to a holistic approach to familial and societal health. Such an approach must recognize the fundamental sin problem and the importance of the biblical model for the governance of soci-

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If My People: Family Healing and Regeneration 23

ety, the family, and the individual.

len many disciples for himself.

Regeneration begins first with the individual and then with the family. The individual must first be redeemed by the grace of God in Jesus.

He or she will then govern him/herself according to the law of God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, in love for God and fellow man. The redeemed individual then governs His family according to the statutes of the Lord and raises His children in the knowledge of Christ Jesus. His faithfulness to the Lord and commitment to his family is a rock in the foundation of a healthy society. “The family is both deeply private and unavoidably public; it holds a valued place outside the home, and is a crucial component of a thriving society. Families that work are like invisible shields: encouraging the individuals who form our communities in the public square, thereby helping them to thrive.”5 The family is God’s basic institution: it is man’s first church, first government, first school and more. The family controls property, inheritance, and carries out education, welfare and spiritual formation.

In our public education system, generations of children and teens are daily educated in the man-centred worldview of secular humanism.

Since the state administers healthcare, and has also become the predominant source of welfare and charity, we increasingly turn there for security and provision. With the twin idols of self and state there is no room left for the Lordship of Christ.

In the early church, Christians fed not only their own poor but also the Hellenic poor (whom the pagan priests neglected).6 Families that made up these churches exercised biblical hospitality for strangers in their homes. “For most of the history of the church, hospitality was understood to encompass physical, social, and spiritual dimensions of human existence and relationships. It meant response to the physical needs of strangers for food, shelter, and protection, but also a recognition of their worth and common humanity.”7 With the development of Western civilization, it was the Christians who again established schools, hospitals, and cared for the welfare of the poor, the fatherless, and sojourners. Around the time of WWII, the church began to relinquish these functions to the state. As a result, today we have public education, government healthcare, and a massive welfare state. Instead of exercising our God-given responsibilities as the priesthood of believers, we have abdicated many to the state and abandoned others all together. As a result, the church has lost much of its relevance to our society. Instead of the church acting as a prophetic witness to the culture, the culture of the world has infiltrated the church, and the enemy has stoEzra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

Rather than seeing believers become mature in Christ, walking in the wisdom and truth of the Bible, we have listened to the dictates of the culture to “not judge” and to “accept people for who they are.” Instead of proclaiming the gospel of salvation and exhorting people to live and move and have their being in Christ Jesus alone, we have left them to struggle in sin. Instead of calling people to freedom in Christ, we have let the enemy enslave people through the cultural guise of freedom of choice. As a result, rather than Christian families and churches built up in love, bringing healing to the nations as the Body of Christ, we have many languishing Christian families and churches becoming broken themselves.

In the time of Ezekiel the prophet, the people of God were floundering and he prophesied against the shepherds of Israel saying, “Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd, and they became food for all the wild beasts.”8 Through His prophet, the Lord declared that the neglect of the covenant by the shepherds (the leaders which included priests, magistrates and the heads of households) had led to the scattering of the sheep (the people of God). However, the Lord does not forget about His sheep, but calls His under-shepherds to fulfill their responsibilities once again.

“Instead of proclaiming the gospel of salvation and exhorting people to live and move and have their being in Christ Jesus alone, we have left them to struggle in sin.”

In the same prophecy in Ezekiel 34, the Lord addresses the flock, for they also have a role to play. They are first to condemn victimization in the flock, second to return to the provision of a SPRING 2012

24 If My People: Family Healing and Regeneration

“The distinctive of Christian charity is that it is a personal, voluntary act flowing from a heart redeemed by God’s grace, and it creates community bonds and leads to changed lives.”

faithful shepherd, and third to attend to the implications of renewal for the natural world. Jesus affirmed this in the new covenant when He first identified Himself as the “good shepherd”9 who restores His people, and then declared in the synagogue that “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”10 With these words, Jesus gave the church its marching orders. As they went out and preached salvation, they preached to the poor and rich alike. They healed the brokenhearted, ransomed captives, healed the spiritually and physically ill, and set free those bruised or crushed by oppression. They were the first charitable societies. If the church once again worked to heal the family and bind up the wounds of our culture, what would we see?

As mentioned, in Canada today we often turn to the government to meet most of our needs.

The poor, especially, do this for lack of alternatives. However, there is a widespread consensus that government welfare is not ideal. The government has stepped up to compensate for the failure of private, family, and church support to the poor, but it is in no way the right solution.

“The results of being on social assistance can be devastating. In a 2005 report examining the situation of people on social assistance in New Brunswick, study subjects described the terrible loss of self-esteem and the feeling of hopelessness from being on welfare.”11 One report in the UK showed how attempts by government to help the poor have failed. More young people are on welfare today than 10 years ago even after a 2 billion pound program dedicated to decreasing joblessness.12 Government charity is not a solution, but Christian charity uniquely is. The distinctive of Christian charity is that it is a personal, voluntary act flowing from a heart redeemed by God’s grace, and it creates community bonds and leads to changed lives.

The church must work to once again exercise its God-given responsibilities in education, healthcare, and welfare. For this to be possible, we must first recognize a serious sin that is pervasive in the church and repent of it and make restitution. The book of Malachi speaks to this:

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“I the LORD do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from My decrees and have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,” says the LORD Almighty. “But you ask, ‘How are we to return?’

Will a mere mortal rob God? Yet you rob Me. But you ask, ‘How are we robbing you?’ In tithes and offerings. You are under a curse—your whole nation—because you are robbing Me.”13

In North America today, less than 5% of Christians tithe.14 We rob God of our tithes and contributions. God does not need our money to act, but He has ordained the tithe to make provision for people and to declare His mercy. How can the church care for the lost in our land without this?

Because the people of Israel kept back the tithe which rightly belonged to God, they were cursed.

However, the Lord promises them that if they repent and present to Him the full tithe once again, He will bring rain on the land and meet their needs. Malachi continues: “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house. Test Me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe,” says the LORD Almighty. “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the LORD Almighty.15

There are struggling families in our communities experiencing financial crisis, unemployment, and homelessness. Others are dealing with substance abuse, illness or incarceration. During such crises, many parents are not capable of providing a safe and caring environment for their children.

Many urban families are socially isolated; due to migration and changing family patterns, their extended family is non-existent or not available.

The children in a family traumatized by crisis become especially at risk for neglect or abuse as their parents struggle to cope with crushing circumstances and emotions.

If neglect or abuse of a child or children occurs, or if there is suspicion of either occurring, parents can be reported to the local Children’s Aid SociEzra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

If My People: Family Healing and Regeneration 25

ety and their children apprehended and placed in foster care. Lengthy dealings with the court system can mean months or even years before children are able to return to their parents. In some cases abuse does occur and separation from the abuser is necessary. In many other cases abuse has not occurred but the family is in crisis and needs extra help and grace rather than further trauma through separation. The provincially-mandated system does not have preventative support measures for these families; this is where the church community of believers must step in.

The church is starting to respond to the needs of these families through the practice of Biblical Hospitality, organized by a ministry called Safe Families for Children (SFFC).16 SFFC is a network of churches and volunteers that extends the community safety net by providing support to parents in need. Having undergone careful screening and training, a Christian host family provides a loving environment where children can be safely placed in times of crisis. Host families are prompted solely by compassion, and serve without compensation. By temporarily freeing parents from the responsibility of caring for their child, SFFC provides them with time to address personal issues without fear of losing custody.

Through local churches, SFFC also provides support from volunteers who come alongside the parent and assist them in working through their crisis and also arrange for the provision of practical needs for the family. This ministry effort of churches strives to: prevent child abuse, deflect children from entering the foster care system, support and stabilize families, share the transforming gospel of Jesus Christ, and return the local church to the forefront of caring for the welfare of our communities.

In 2 Chronicles, the Lord declares: “If my people, who are called by my name, humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”17 Societal change starts with Christians, the people of God. We are to repent and turn to walk according to the law of God once again. Culture is an expression of what we worship. If we wish to see our society healthy and whole, we must revive our faith and remain faithful in worshipping Christ, obeying Him, and fulfilling the responsiEzra Institute for Contemporary Christianity

bilities He has given us – all found in Scripture.

We must assert the sovereignty and providence of God Almighty and Jesus as the reigning King.

Then, as Christians, we must exercise our authority as Christ’s vice-regents, law-defenders, and ambassadors to proclaim gospel healing to our culture and the application of Scripture to every area of life. Mrozek, A. & Walberg, R. (2009). Private Choices, Public Costs: How Failing Families Cost Us All. Ottawa: Institute of Marriage & Family Canada, (p.25).

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid. (p.5) 4 Brandon, G. (2011). Free Sex: Who pays? Moral hazard and sexual ethics. Cambridge Papers , 20 (4).

5 Mrozek, A. & Walberg, R. (2009). Private Choices, Public Costs: How Failing Families Cost Us All. Ottawa: Institute of Marriage & Family Canada, (p.8).

6 Schmidt, C. (1889). The Social Results of Early Christianity, trans. R.W. Dale, London: Wm. Isbister, (p.328).

7 Pohl, C. (1999). Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition, Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (p.110).

8 Ezekiel 34:2-6 (ESV) 9 John 10:11,14 10 Luke 4:18-19 (ESV) 11 Mrozek, A. & Walberg, R. (2009). Private Choices, Public Costs. How Failing Families Cost Us All. Ottawa: Institute of Marriage & Family Canada, (p.9).

12 Ibid.

13 Malachi 3:6-8 (NIV) 14 The Barna Group (2008). New Study Shows Trends in Tithing and Donating. http://www.barna. org/barna-update/article/18-congregations/41new-study-shows-trends-in-tithing-and-donating 15 Malachi 3:10-12 (NIV) 16 See website: www.safefamilies.ca (or in the U.S. www.safe-families.org) 17 2 Chronicles 7:14 (ESV) 1

“This ministry effort of churches strives to ... return the local church to the forefront of caring for the welfare of our communities”

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