Jonathan Zecher
I am a theologian and historian of Late Antiquity and the Byzantine Empire, with a special interest in monastic literature. In June 2017 I joined the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry at Australian Catholic University, after teaching for six years in the Honors College and Department of Modern and Classical Languages at the University of Houston. Prior to that I completed my doctorate in historical theology at Durham University in 2012, with a thesis tracing engagements with death among Greek Christian ascetic writers (4th-7th c.).
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In recent years, the "medical turn" in early Christian studies has developed a robust literature around health, disability, and medicine, and the health humanities have made critical interventions in modern conversations around the aims of health and the nature of healthcare. Considering these developments, it has become clear that early Christian texts and ideas have much to offer modern conversations, and that these texts are illuminated using theoretical lenses drawn from modern medicine and public health. The chapters in this book explore different facets of early Christian engagement with medicine, either in itself or as metaphor and material for theological reflections on human impairment, restoration, and flourishing. Through its focus on late antique religious texts, the book raises questions around the social, rather than biological, aspects of illness and diminishment as a human experience, as well as the strategies by which that experience is navigated. The result is an innovative and timely intervention in the study of health and healthcare, that bridges current divides between historical studies and contemporary issues.
Taken together, the book offers a prismatic conversation of perspectives on aspects of care at the heart of societal and individual "wellness" today, inviting readers to meet or revisit patristic texts as tracings across a map of embodied identity, dissonance, and corporal care. It is a fascinating resource for anyone working on ancient medicine and health, or the social worlds of early Christianity.
Peer-Reviewed Articles
scholarship on the conceptual role of medical knowledge and practice in early Christianity, to show: 1) spiritual direction constitutes a version of medical art defined by teleology of bodily and psychical health, which 2) relies on diagnostic skill in disease etiology to construct meaning for sufferers, and 3) for these very reasons can lead to the rejection of medical healing. The topic is framed by discussions of the cultural and hermeneutical aspects of modern medicine, which show that construction of meaning in illness is integral to clinical encounters and determinative of expectations of expertise. These points are made with
regard to ancient medicine through study of Galen of Pergamon’s teleology and diagnostic advice. Thereafter the study focuses on Basil of Caesarea and the Old Men of Gaza. These treat medicine as divinely providential, within a narrative of sin and salvation that defines a teleology of bodily health as conducive to spiritual well-being. Accordingly, Basil develops etiologies of disease that distinguish between natural and unnatural origins to prescribe either recourse to
or rejection of medical intervention. Barsanuphios and John of Gaza elaborate Basil’s etiologies according to their experience and demonology. Nevertheless, all three construct their authority over ascetic bodies in terms of medical expertise and suggest that spiritual direction dictates ambivalence toward, even rejection of medicine, insofar as its theological commitments dictate different conceptions of health and the range of meaning available in illness.
Book Chapters
To conclude, the monk lives with the memory of death, an event the expectation of which colours and drives his entire monastic life. Climacus has effectively synthesized the various thematics of death into an existential framework which opens up repentance in fear of judgment precisely as progress in hope of God’s mercy. Since it reveals each passing moment as an icon of eternity, the inexorable uncertainty of judgment focuses the monk’s gaze on the consequences of each thought and action, nailing him to fear and hope which can, through repentance, lead to love, rather than pinning him under the twinned deaths of despair and pride. Nevertheless, as mortality—a moment which is ‘coming and now is’—death delimits progress. It memorial urges immediate repentance, while its delay gives time whose eternal worth the monk understands. Simultaneously, the monk looks backward in self-examination and self-accusation if he is to confess and repent. Living in uncertainty yet capable for now of choices with eternal consequences, the monk is freed to become the mourner, the holy criminal, the penitent, the imitator of Christ in death and resurrection who, ever more aware of his own failures, practices ever more consistent repentance, possible ultimately only within and because of God’s mercy.
Conference Presentations
Book Reviews
In recent years, the "medical turn" in early Christian studies has developed a robust literature around health, disability, and medicine, and the health humanities have made critical interventions in modern conversations around the aims of health and the nature of healthcare. Considering these developments, it has become clear that early Christian texts and ideas have much to offer modern conversations, and that these texts are illuminated using theoretical lenses drawn from modern medicine and public health. The chapters in this book explore different facets of early Christian engagement with medicine, either in itself or as metaphor and material for theological reflections on human impairment, restoration, and flourishing. Through its focus on late antique religious texts, the book raises questions around the social, rather than biological, aspects of illness and diminishment as a human experience, as well as the strategies by which that experience is navigated. The result is an innovative and timely intervention in the study of health and healthcare, that bridges current divides between historical studies and contemporary issues.
Taken together, the book offers a prismatic conversation of perspectives on aspects of care at the heart of societal and individual "wellness" today, inviting readers to meet or revisit patristic texts as tracings across a map of embodied identity, dissonance, and corporal care. It is a fascinating resource for anyone working on ancient medicine and health, or the social worlds of early Christianity.
scholarship on the conceptual role of medical knowledge and practice in early Christianity, to show: 1) spiritual direction constitutes a version of medical art defined by teleology of bodily and psychical health, which 2) relies on diagnostic skill in disease etiology to construct meaning for sufferers, and 3) for these very reasons can lead to the rejection of medical healing. The topic is framed by discussions of the cultural and hermeneutical aspects of modern medicine, which show that construction of meaning in illness is integral to clinical encounters and determinative of expectations of expertise. These points are made with
regard to ancient medicine through study of Galen of Pergamon’s teleology and diagnostic advice. Thereafter the study focuses on Basil of Caesarea and the Old Men of Gaza. These treat medicine as divinely providential, within a narrative of sin and salvation that defines a teleology of bodily health as conducive to spiritual well-being. Accordingly, Basil develops etiologies of disease that distinguish between natural and unnatural origins to prescribe either recourse to
or rejection of medical intervention. Barsanuphios and John of Gaza elaborate Basil’s etiologies according to their experience and demonology. Nevertheless, all three construct their authority over ascetic bodies in terms of medical expertise and suggest that spiritual direction dictates ambivalence toward, even rejection of medicine, insofar as its theological commitments dictate different conceptions of health and the range of meaning available in illness.
To conclude, the monk lives with the memory of death, an event the expectation of which colours and drives his entire monastic life. Climacus has effectively synthesized the various thematics of death into an existential framework which opens up repentance in fear of judgment precisely as progress in hope of God’s mercy. Since it reveals each passing moment as an icon of eternity, the inexorable uncertainty of judgment focuses the monk’s gaze on the consequences of each thought and action, nailing him to fear and hope which can, through repentance, lead to love, rather than pinning him under the twinned deaths of despair and pride. Nevertheless, as mortality—a moment which is ‘coming and now is’—death delimits progress. It memorial urges immediate repentance, while its delay gives time whose eternal worth the monk understands. Simultaneously, the monk looks backward in self-examination and self-accusation if he is to confess and repent. Living in uncertainty yet capable for now of choices with eternal consequences, the monk is freed to become the mourner, the holy criminal, the penitent, the imitator of Christ in death and resurrection who, ever more aware of his own failures, practices ever more consistent repentance, possible ultimately only within and because of God’s mercy.
necessary first to situate the Ladder and its author within the literature of the Greek ascetic tradition, within which Climacus consciously wrote. In the Introduction I develop ways Climacus draws on and develops traditional material, while arguing that it must be treated and interpreted in its own right and not simply as his ‘sources.’ I then examine the vocabulary of death and the lines of thought opened up in the New Testament. Chapter One argues that the memory of death plays an important role in Athanasius’ Vita Antonii. Chapter Two surveys material from the fifth- and sixth-century Egyptian and Palestinian deserts in which memory and practice of death are deployed in a wider variety of ways and
are increasingly connected to ascetics’ fundamental understanding of self and salvation. Chapter Three examines the sixth-century Quaestiones et Responsiones of Barsanuphius and John of Gaza in which further elaboration of the same thematic is discernible. Chapter Four concludes this thesis with a sustained
reading of John Climacus’ Scala Paradisi in which the various thematics centering on memory and practice of death are synthesized into the existential framework and practical response, respectively.