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  • Medizinische Theologie: Christus medicus und theologia medicinalis bei Martin Luther und im Luthertum der Barockzeit
  • Kathleen Crowther-Heyck
Johann Anselm Steiger . Medizinische Theologie: Christus medicus und theologia medicinalis bei Martin Luther und im Luthertum der Barockzeit. Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, vol. 121. Leiden: Brill, 2005. viii + 369 pp. $160.00, €119.00 (90-04-4156-1).

Johann Anselm Steiger examines the close and hitherto unexplored connections between theology and medicine in the writings of Martin Luther and his followers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These connections were both literal and metaphorical. On the literal level, the presence of myriad medicinal herbs [End Page 452] and other substances was a clear sign of divine providence and benevolence. On the metaphorical level, Luther described the Word of God as medicine for the soul, described Christ as both a physician and an apothecary, and compared the pastoral functions of bishops and priests to the work of running a hospital. Steiger points out that Luther regarded both theology and medicine as "practical sciences" (p. 12): the former aimed to heal the soul, and the latter the body. This was more than an analogy, for bodily and spiritual health were intimately linked. According to Luther, in times of sickness a Christian should turn both to God and to a physician. It was wrong to refuse medical treatment, for this was a rejection of God's creation and divine plan, but it was essential to pray for forgiveness of sins and to be reconciled with God. Prayer without medicine was ineffective, but so was medicine without prayer. Whether a medicine worked or not was dependent as much on the patient's spiritual state as on his or her constitution or on the progress of the disease.

While Steiger persuasively demonstrates the importance of "medical theology" to Luther and to subsequent generations of Lutheran theologians, I was left wondering both why Luther found these themes so appealing and how uniquely Lutheran they actually were. As Steiger notes, the literal and metaphorical connections between medicine and theology can be traced back to the church fathers. They can also be found in early modern writers who were not Lutheran, a point that Steiger ignores. For example, he discusses the Paradise Garden (1587) of the Lutheran theologian Conrad Rosbach, a book in which descriptions of the medicinal virtues of plants were paired with descriptions of their spiritual meanings. Steiger presents this book as epitomizing a specifically Lutheran view of the relationship between physical and spiritual "medicine," but it was almost certainly modeled on an earlier work, Similitudinum ac parabolarum quae in Bibliis ex herbis atque arboribus desumuntur dilucida explicatio (1566), by the Dutch Catholic physician Levinus Lemnius. This suggests that medical-theological ideas were more widespread and less confessionally distinct than Steiger acknowledges.

It should be noted that Steiger's interest is primarily in the history of theology, not in the history of medicine. Accordingly, he does not examine the writings of any Lutheran physicians to assess the degree to which their theories, practices, or self-images were influenced by Luther's ideas. Although he suggests that the high value placed by Lutherans on the work of physicians and apothecaries had an influence on their social status, he does not pursue this topic.

Overall, though, this is a very useful book for scholars interested in the complex and shifting relationship between religion and medicine in the early modern period. The volume includes several seventeenth-century images of Christ as an apothecary, and critical editions of three Lutheran texts: Wilhelm Sarcerius's Der Hellische Trawer Geist (1568), Simon Musäus's Nützlicher Bericht . . . wider den Melancholischen Teuffel (1569), and Valerius Herberger's Leichenpredigt auf Flaminius Gasto (1618).

Kathleen Crowther-Heyck
University of Oklahoma

Footnotes

1. Charles David O'Malley, Michael Servetus. A Translation of His Geographical, Medical, and Astrological Writings with Introductions and Notes (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1953), pp. 168-88.

2. Michael Servetus, Obras completas, ed. Ángel Alcalà, vol. 3, Escritos científicos (Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza, 2005), pp. 255-77 (Spanish), 485-500 (Latin).

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