Customer Reviews

Healing and Christianity

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Kelsey's review of healing in the history of Christianity was excellent. I greatly appreciated his tour through the apostolic church, early church Fathers and the comparison between the early church's relationship to healing and that of the mideival and Reformation church's. His treatment of the historical place of healing is top-notch and makes this book a worthy read by anyone interested in Christian healing. Kelsey shows how healing has gone from being a central act of the church to being perceived as contrary to God's use of sickness as a tool for punishment, discipline and penance. The church then anoints people for death rather than healing. Kelsey shows the inconguity of this approach to sickness with the gospel and early church. This is an important book to reform the church's view and practice of healing. When Kelsey was writing this book, his emphasis on the relationship between body, soul and Spirit was more innovative than it is now. His assertions are still welcome.

Kelsey then takes what I consider a tangent from the stream of the book that is healings place in Christianity. He spends considerable time on the views of Carl Jung and then concludes the book with attempting to synthesize Jung's philosophy with Christian healing. This latter third of the book devoted to Jung seemed off-path and even misguided. In it, Jung is the center and focus rather than God or Christian teaching. Many would consider Jung at odds with Christianity (see The Healing Presence: Curing the Soul Through Union with Christ). Despite this section of the book, Kelsey's work is recommended.

Excellent overview by a scholar from the Episcopal as well as Christian perspective. Not at all dated.