Sarah Coakley (editor) - Spiritual Healing: Science, Meaning, and Discernment

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

4035 Park East Court SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

www.eerdmans.com

2020 The John Templeton Foundation

All rights reserved

Published 2020

Printed in the United States of America

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ISBN 978-0-8028-7093-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Coakley, Sarah, 1951 editor.

Title: Spiritual healing : science, meaning, and discernment / edited by Sarah Coakley.

Description: Grand Rapids, Michigan : William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: An interdisciplinary assessment of the phenomenon of spiritual healingProvided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020016399 | ISBN 9780802870933 (paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Spiritual healing. | HealingReligious aspects.

Classification: LCC BL65.M4 S6735 2020 | DDC 203/.1dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016399

Unless otherwise noted, quotations from Scripture are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

This book is dedicated, with gratitude and admiration, to Mary Ann Meyers, gracious and patient enabler of the science and religion debates.

Contents

PART ONE
BIBLICAL AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

PART TWO
WHAT SCIENCE SHOWS US

PART THREE
PHILOSOPHICAL INSIGHTS

PART FOUR
ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND PASTORAL PERSPECTIVES

Introduction

Spiritual Healing, Science, and Meaning

Sarah Coakley

The Scope of This Book

This is a book about spiritual healing, its significance in todays medical and cultural worlds, its understanding in scientific terms, and its meaning and explanation in theological categories. It will be of equal interest to the general reading public and to specialists whose disciplines are utilized in it. After all, no one in this life escapes the threat of illness, distress, disease, and ultimately death; the elusive prospect of healing, from whatever ails one, therefore has a certain timeless and universal allure.

The scope of this book is thus both ambitious, in interdisciplinary terms, and yet also intentionally focused, in what it sets out to explore and clarify. Its main interest is in how meaning-ascription and interpretation of healing events provide a crucial underlying fulcrum for the efficacy of healing. But this is not, as we shall see, the same thing as reducing healing to wish-fulfillment, let alone to self-delusion; even at the level of brain-event, it can now be shown neuroscientifically that interpretation plays a key role in the experience of pain and illness, and thus also in the alleviation or transformation of these states. but as the essays in this book will demonstrate, this is by no means always the case, nor need it be. All experiences of disease and healing come with meanings attached; the interesting thing is what shifts those meanings and with what effect.

A distinct, but obviously related, issue is under what conditions it is rational to ascribe a healing to some metaphysical force beyond the realm open to investigation by empirical science and medicine. Indeed, not only is this disjunctive alternative an unnecessary one scientifically; it is also one that may not represent the most subtle theological option on offer either. I shall return to a more substantial discussion of this theological issue in a later section of this introduction; but suffice it here to note in anticipation that the various choices to be made in explaining spiritual healing lead not only, and inexorably, into metaphysical reflection of various sorts but also into important areas of spiritual and moral discernment: assessing the spiritual significance and ethical import of healings is not an optional addendum to the issues discussed here but often a key factor in an evaluation of their wider cultural or religious importance.

What Is Spiritual Healing? A Semantic Clarification

We cannot proceed further in this introduction to the books aims and goals, however, without a somewhat chastening semantic clarification of what spiritual healing connotes and how the authors in this volume have been required to specify their task in illuminating it. Perhaps it will be clear from what I have written already that at least one crucial ambiguity in the use of the term spiritual healing is unavoidable but needs careful comment nonetheless.

The term spiritual healing , that is, may simply refer, first, to any healing that is not strictly physical, that is, which relates to the psychic, or non-somatic, or spiritual elements of the self. On this definition, it is the locus of the healing that is being described as spiritual. Of course it need not follow on this definition that the body is not also affected in any such healing (indeed the apparently intrinsic unity of the psychosomatic self makes it likely that there will also be at least some somatic effect); They do so because they do not themselves wish to speculate theologically or perhaps do not regard themselves as competent to do so; but they nonetheless think that there are plenty of illuminating things to say about spiritual healings, qua human events. There are usually also correlative things to say about how these human events have social location and meaning as well; in these contexts, one may then speak of the spiritual dimensions of healing.

A second rendition of spiritual healing, in contrast, refers to a healing that is effected directly by God (or by other purported spiritual forces), or by God assisted by human others, secondarily and cooperatively. On this definition, it is the source of the healing event that is being described as spiritual (that is, God or the divine). It will be clear immediately that these two meanings of spiritual healing are not mutually exclusive (although one refers to the locus , and the other to the source , as spiritual): where the latter is at stake, the former will almost always be involved as well. But it is important again to note that the former may be discussed on its ownand with considerable intellectual profitwithout any specific presumptions being made about the latter. The interest then comes in bringing these discussions together, as is attempted in this book; but the initial distinction remains vital.

One of the reasons why it is hard to keep these different definitions strictly distinct, however, is that the related noun spirituality now so popular and so widely and ambiguously useddrops a pall of confusion, even mystification, on the whole matter and thus makes it difficult ab initio to maintain clarity about what might be involved in a spiritual healing. A word of caution about this term, too, is therefore necessary at this point, even though it is not much utilized in this book.

The noun spirituality is a relatively modern one, in contrast to the adjective spiritual ( pneumatikos in Greek), which is used very commonly in the New Testament and earliest Christianity, and especially by Paul, to refer to the effects of the Holy Spirit on all Christians in virtue of their baptism.

A final point of semantic clarification that needs to be made at the opening of this book relates to our other key term, healing . For this, too, is a multivalent notion; and perhaps the first and most important point of clarification here is that a healing may not necessarily connote a physical cure (although, of course, it can). But even a dying person can be healed in a significant sense relating to his or her psychic life, past experiences, or relationships with others, and this in turn may manifest itself in certain physical, albeit short-term, ameliorations of symptoms. Moreover, and cutting across this first distinction, healing may in some cases occur almost instantaneously and suddenly, or, rather differently, as part of a process of gradual transformation. And, finally, the locus of the ailment (and accompanying healing) may once again be varied: a specific bodily affliction, a mental illness, the effects of past abuse, a problem of unrepented sin, or a transindividual state of disorder (whether social, political, or institutional). One of the deeper complexities of healing, of course, is that these problems are often confusinglyand indeed unconsciouslyintertwined. As we shall see, this gives extra significance to the problem of reordered meaning and narrative in the phenomenon of healing.