We today likely invest more time and effort than any society in human history seeking to retain or restore health; many industries, some generating trillions of dollars of annual revenue, minister to every aspect of our physical or mental well-being. Nonetheless, the idea at the center of these vast and varied efforts remains elusive: What exactly is “health”? The World Health Organization (WHO) defines it as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity,” but this raises as many questions as it answers: What kinds of bodily or mental conditions should count as “disease or infirmity” as opposed to mere variations within a normal range? On what basis should we distinguish “mental” from “bodily” well-being? What is “social well-being,” and who gets to decide?  

These questions, and others like them, invite us to go beyond merely describing human anatomy and physiology, to reflecting normatively on how life might be well for human persons in (at least) their bodily, mental, and social dimensions. But precisely because these questions open onto such fundamental issues as the nature and ultimate purpose of human existence, answers to them will necessarily vary, at least to some extent, across cultures, contexts, and traditions. With regard to health, as with many of the most interesting and contested aspects of our lives, there is no “view from nowhere.” Every account is a distinct vintage which necessarily savors of the soil from which it has sprung. 

One of us (Tyler) has authored a new book, A Theology of Health, which attempts to advance the discussion by providing an account of health specifically from the Christian tradition. Much has previously been written on the theology of health care, e.g. on what it means to be a good clinician from a theological perspective. However, much less has been written from a theological perspective on the concept of health itself. This book attempts to fill that gap, specifically by pursuing the idea that health — as the term’s derivation from the Proto-Germanic hailaz (or “whole”) suggests — is fundamentally a matter of “wholeness,” whether of organs and systems within the larger body, of mind and body within the person, or of the person within the communities and environments that enfold and shape them. 

The Health of a Body and the Health of a Person

An important distinction to the meaning of health is, in fact, that we have two concepts of health: the health of the body and the health of the person. Our narrower concept of the health of the body concerns the body’s parts and systems being and functioning as normal so as to allow for the full range of characteristically human activities. 

The broader concept of the health of the person is essentially synonymous with flourishing, or complete human well-being. Both the narrower and the broader concepts of health arise in our ordinary language concerning health. Each can even be employed within a single sentence, such as: “Every day he just sits in his room; he is physically healthy, but he is not a healthy person.” 

A theology for both the health of the body and the health of the person necessitates distinction. Some of the conceptual confusions and puzzles around health in fact arise from failure to recognize these two distinct concepts and to clarify which is in view in any particular context. 

3 Dimensions of Health

A Theology of Health’s central theses, to which each of its three parts correspond, draws out three dimensions of health from a Christian theological perspective:

  1. Health can be understood as wholeness as intended by God, either of the body, or of the person.
  2. The cause of ill-health is sin — which can take the form of individual wrongdoing, societal injustice, or the fallenness of creation- all of which are both constitutively and causally related to ill-health. 
  3. Restoration and fulfillment of health is salvation, anticipated in the life of Jesus Christ, to be lived out through the work of the Church, and for whose final completion we are still waiting. Or, more succinctly, in the words of Augustine, “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”

Although theologians have been slow to address the concept of “health” directly, the theological tradition has arguably had a deep interest in the topic from the beginning, as the Latin and Greek terms which we ordinarily render into English as salvation (salus, sōtēria) could equally well be translated as health. For instance, when the Pharisees rebuked Peter for attributing his healing of a paralytic to the power of Jesus working through him in Acts 3, he protested, “There is health (sōtēria) in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be healed (sōthēnai)” (Acts 4:12). Peter, like Christ, certainly did not understand health in a narrowly bodily sense, though, as this story and Jesus’ many miracles of healing illustrate, they by no means neglected that dimension either. Rather, health in the New Testament sense is precisely the restoration of wholeness to all that has been rent and damaged, whether bodies, minds, souls, communities, or indeed the whole of the cosmos.

This is the notion of health which A Theology of Health seeks to clarify and commend. 

The Healing We’re Neglecting

We have, as a society, done a remarkable job discerning how public health efforts can preserve health and prevent disease and how medicine can bring healing in the context of illness. However, our success in these regards have arguably led us to neglect other pathways to health and healing — psychological, relational, and spiritual pathways, for instance. Extensive research documents the powerful effects of purpose and hope and psychological well-being on health. Extensive research has likewise documented the power of relationships, of community, and of love on health. Similarly, extensive research has documented the effects of religious and spiritual community participation on health — both the health of the body and the health of the person. While not neglecting more traditional efforts at health and healing, we should also pursue, embrace, support, and make better use of these psychological, relational, and spiritual pathways as well.

The power of love and of forgiveness have likewise arguably been neglected within our efforts at health promotion. Love — whether from family, or friends, or colleagues, or God — seems to powerfully alter well-being. It is something that we all desire to receive, and to give, and greater effort could be made in thinking how to do so within society. The WHO’s proposed right to the “highest attainable standard of health” is arguably not attainable if we neglect love. To promote love we also need to address issues of wrongdoing and suffering and hurt. While a variety of approaches are necessary, including the pursuit of justice, in order to restore love, we also need forgiveness.