[November 2003 journal entry]
I recently met with a group of seven Christian physicians – from a variety of theological traditions -- to facilitate a review/revision of their ‘ministry statement’ (which commits them to respect and encourage one another in the shared resolve to provide medical care for the poor). The discussion revealed the extent to which several of the seven physicians who align with Calvinistic theologies (which reduce all events/experiences to divine sovereignty/will) and the underlying mental habits (e.g., uncritically accepting ‘religious’ T/O paradigm presuppositions re ‘God’, ‘scripture’, ‘Christ’, ‘creation’, . . .) struggle to integrate such with the scientific mindset and mental habits characteristic of modern medicine. Some of the physicians proposed to distinguish patient conditions that can be medically modified from patient conditions that cannot be so modified, with ‘divine sovereignty’ associated with the latter conditions. I reminded them (1) that this approach entails a ‘God of the gaps’ theology, (2) that patient conditions once considered not modifiable have, due to medical/surgical advances, later become modifiable, and (3) that individual patients often have conditions that are modifiable up to a point beyond which their conditions are no longer modifiable. We discussed two ‘forks in the road’ – (1) the ‘human freedom understood as returning to your divinely intended nature’ (pre-modern) path or the ‘human freedom understood as autonomy’ (modern) path and (2) Erasmus’ cautious optimism that a few latent seeds of spiritual life survive in human beings or Luther’s/Calvin’s categorical insistence that the spiritual health/life of all human beings was completely destroyed by ‘the Fall’. Concerning the latter ‘fork in the road’, I suggested that Erasmus took an ‘anchor dragging’ approach to the ‘renaissance’/‘humanist’ current of ideas; Luther/Calvin, an ‘anchor firmly caught’ approach. Erasmus was cautiously open to some degree of optimism or confidence about human beings; Luther/Calvin, threatened and categorically opposed.
