Church’s attitude to non-traditional medicine

  1. Lemma
  2. Отношение Церкви к нетрадиционной медицине
  3. Russian
  4. Asliturk, Miriam
  5. Natural and the supernatural > Magic - Scientific theories and disciplines > Medicine
  6. 22-07-2018
  7. Протоиерей Алексий [Author]. Отношение церкви к нетрадиционной медицине
  8. Православие.org.ua
  9. Russian Orthodox Church - traditional medicine - pseudo-medicine - medicine - psychology - superstitions - magic
  10. Click Here
    1. <p>Протоиерей Алексий (2015). Отношение церкви к нетрадиционной медицине. <em>Православие.org.ua.</em> Retrieved from: <a href="http://pravoslavie.org.ua/threads/otnoshenie-cerkvi-k-netradicionnoj-medicine.6768/">http://pravoslavie.org.ua/threads/otnoshenie-cerkvi-k-netradicionnoj-medicine.6768/</a> </p>

    1. According to the author, Archpriest Alexy, medicine is a system of scientific knowledge and practices aimed at recognising and curing diseases as well as preventing them. There is magical medicine based on magic and empirical medicine based on experience. However, experience is not necessarily scientific. This is why non-traditional medicine using herbs and the practice of chiropractors exist. These practices in fact put God “out of the equation.” A patient finds himself/herself subdued to the will of spirits and energies that are called through a ritual. There are also gray areas of medicine based on "pure ignorance and greediness" such as homeopathy. 

      The author points out that the Church has always approved of empirical scientific medicine and strongly disapproved of “magical” medicine. As to the so-called gray area, the Church has always been ready to discuss the issue. The problem became acute in the 20th century with the development of a psychotherapy that rationalized magic, for example the method of A.I. Nakhimovsky who in his Prakticheskaya psihkoterapiya: Rukovodstvo dlya vrachey speculated on the magical basis of the human psyche.