The Theology of Illness The Healing of Madness

The Theology of Illness  by Jean-Claude Larche

“This book offers us fresh insight into the mystery of evil, sin, and illness, and their place within our struggle toward holiness… It gives us renewed hope, by locating the “problem of pain” in a profoundly theological framework, in which ultimate resolution of the mystery of illness and suffering is provided by the healing touch of Christ Himself, the Physician of our souls and bodies.” – John Breck, from the Foreword.

Jean-Claude Larchet’s The Theology of Illness, already translated into several languages, now appears in English and explores biblical and patristic perspectives on sickness and redemptive suffering. The questions Larchet considers are fundamental: the origins of sin in a fallen world, its impact on physical health, and the healing of human nature by the incarnate Son of God. He explains healing as a means of glorifying God, stressing again the crucial role of prayer and sacramental grace in promoting genuine health. When illness plunges us into unfamiliar territory, even to the point of death, Larchet teaches us to marshal spiritual reserves in a society dominated by technology and materialism. In a time when the physician has been dubbed the high priest of the god of Modern Medicine, Larchet encourages us to situate these crucial experiences within the framework of their relationship to the unique reality of the Holy Trinity.

Jean-Claude Larchet is an Orthodox layman and a professor of philosophy in a French lycée in Strasbourg.

Purchase, “The Theology of Illness“, in English from Light & Life Publications

HT: Eastern Orthodox Librarian

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Healing Mental Illness by Jean-Claude Larche

Moscow. January 17. INTERFAX – A Russian-language translation of “Healing Mental Illness: the experience of the first centuries in the Christian East”,
the work of the French theologian and doctor of philosophy, Jean-Claude Larche was published in Moscow.

The book is dedicated to understanding madness from the Orthodox point of view, drawing on patristic and hagiographic literature of the I-XIV centuries; it
recounts the experience of healing mental illness by holy fathers, who, unlike psychiatrists, examined the person, took into account the totality of the human
being (spirit, soul and body).

The author hopes that the experience of the Orthodox will be useful to modern psychiatry, which, being “established on the model of medical science, a priori
excludes any relationship to religion and morality, and, therefore, arrives at a dead end notes the review of the study which was published on Thursday in the
newspaper, Nezavisimaya Gazeta – Ex Libris”.

J.-C. Larche pays special attention to craziness [“fools for Christ’s sake” – yurodstvo], defining it as a voluntary choice of one who attains a certain degree of spiritual perfection; attempting to define the specifics of a fool for Christ’s sake, as compared with other feats of Christian piety; trying to understand and explain the reasons the “holy fools” to behave “foolishly”.

Russian Source:  http://www.interfax-religion.ru/print.php?act=news&id=22392

English Source:  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OrthodoxNews/message/8451

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