Paper, pt 1

Below is the first half of a paper I'm writing for my Great Books class. I'll post the second half as soon as it's complete...

Connections: Augustine and the Believer's Health

“I will praise Thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are Thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.”[1] Indeed. We, as human beings, are an amazing creation. Made in the image of God, we have intelligence, strength, and the opportunity for spiritual life. Yet, despite these blessings, life often goes terribly wrong, particularly where health is concerned. Why does sickness so plague the human race? Christians know that we lost our immortality when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden; but how does that apply to our bodies in general? Could it be that there is a direct link between sin and disease? St. Augustine, in his work The City of God, argues that when a man’s soul rebels against God, he loses authority over his body, leaving the flesh open to decay.

In Augustine’s mind, anything that God created – angels, men, the natural world – is good by nature.[2] In Genesis, He looked at His handiwork and “saw that it was good”[3] because all was in its natural order, serving His purpose. Man, being a reflection of God’s Personality, was the pinnacle of His creatures: he had a body like animals, to link him to the physical world, but was also given a soul, to link him with the Divine. God ruled the soul, and the soul ruled the body: it was as it should have been. As long as Adam and Eve remained obedient to God’s single command, they retained their eternal life and perfect health.

Connected with this blessing was a warning. If they disregarded His word, and ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they would “surely die.”[4] From the very beginning of Scripture, God time and again equates sin with death and destruction. In Deuteronomy,[5] He promises His obedient Children health, prosperity, and joy; to the rebellious ones, He guarantees sickness, failure, and anguish, with their lives ultimately ending in either foreign captivity or painful death.

“…if the soul and reason do not themselves obey God…they have no proper authority over the body…”[6] When a person sins, it is his soul which rebels against God, for the soul contains a man’s will. Augustine would argue that, once a soul has rejected the authority of the Creator, it loses control over its physical abode. At this point, the body is exposed to the decaying effects of un-repented sin. A great deal of research done by various Christian ministries (Pleasant Valley Church and Wellspring Ministries, among others) has revealed that most “incurable” diseases are physical consequences of spiritual sin.

What is sin? Most people have a rather narrow understanding of the word, imagining it to be the breaking of a Commandment or of Levitical Law. It is interesting to note that Vine’s defines sin, or “lawlessness,”[8] much more broadly: “This definition of sin sets forth its essential character as the rejection of the law, or will, of God and the substitution of the will of self.”[9] Sin therefore, is anything contrary to God’s will. Holding resentment against a friend is a sin, since we are told to forgive one another. [10] Fear and anxiety are sins, for how often does God tell us to “fear not”[11]and “be anxious for nothing”?[12] Following this line of reasoning, might one also say that a man could be sinning, though doing nothing explicitly bad? Jesus, the Perfect Man, only performed “the will of the Father who sent [Him].” As Christians, should we not strive to do the same? Feeding the poor is noble, but if it is not God’s purpose for that particular man to do so, he is in sin. He is substituting his own will for that of the Father’s.

That brings us to the crux of the argument: how, exactly, does the rebellion of the soul cause disease of the body? “For the corruption of the body…is not the cause but the punishment of the first sin…”[13] When Adam and Eve sinned, they immediately suffered the consequences of their actions. They had been told that if they ate of the forbidden Tree, they would surely die. Though the physical death God promised to them was delayed, their souls were immediately severed from that hither-to constant connection with their Father. In a sense, they died right then. Christ defines eternal life in John 17:3, “And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” Our first parents certainly knew “the only true God”; their direct spiritual connection and relationship with Him would have equaled life eternal in His eyes. Under that definition, then, they lost their lives when they disobeyed Him, because they gave up their relationship (their “knowing” Him) for having their own way.

This is not to say that they suffered only one death at the Fall. Rather, when their souls died, the life of their immortality died. As soon as they rejected the connection with God, they forfeited their physical lives as well. “…the sinful soul…made the flesh corruptible." [14]The sin of the soul was the cause for the death of the body. “Fear the Lord and depart from evil. It will be health to your flesh, and strength to your bones.”[15] Throughout Scripture, God links obedience to His Word with bodily, not just spiritual, health.