Suffering and the Nature of Healing

Suffering and the Nature of Healing explores the central relationship between the Incarnation of the Word of God as Jesus Christ and the nature of healing within the understanding of traditional Christianity. This understanding and teaching regarding sin, suffering, and death have had tremendous impact on the care of the sick. With increased secularization, the unique perspective of traditional Christianity is largely being lost from health care. There is much in modern health care that is very good and could be recognized and blessed as consistent with traditional Christian teaching and practice; there is much that is not.

The first part of the book explores the human dilemma posed by suffering. The second part examines the nature of the encounter between the suffering person seeking help and the persons offering to help. The third and final part addresses the possibility of healing independent of cure, even in the context of death. Thus, this book will review the relationship of modern health care practice to traditional Christianity and the Church’s understanding of health, disease, and healing, in order to give a better sense of how traditional Christianity can more effectively interface with secular health care.

Daniel Hinshaw is an Orthodox Christian layman and practicing physician. He teaches Palliative Care as a Professor of Surgery at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, at Transilvania University in Brasov, Romania, and as Visiting Professor of Palliative Care at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in Yonkers, New York.

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