1952 Geloof en Wetenschap : Orgaan van de Christelijke vereeniging van natuur- en geneeskundigen in Nederland - pagina 122

18 DOES THERE EXIST A CHRISTIAN MEDICINE 7 First of all it is of importance who puts this question: the patient, the scientific doctor, the believing doctor, the world or the church? How is it at all possible to judge about Christian and non-Christian? It is clear that we have to be extremely careful with this verdict. Christians are those who are touched by the word of God, whose last and only ambition it is to place themselves totally to this call, though it be by the method of trial and error, who know that God carries out this work, his plans even with our weak strength. Christian is not a thing beside others. In reality there is not a single Christian business in this world. Who dares really speak of a Christian school, knowledge, party, government and such like? In this respect it is easier to define the negative, what it is not than the positive. We easily call modern medicine built on a basis of natural science unchristian. Indeed this medicine has proclaimed this for itself. Christian medicine is certainly neither identical with a biblical healing art, which for instance would distil therapeutic data from the Bible or work with texts from the Bible where another prescribes digitalis. We agree that a miracle cannot be „performed" without more ado, still less can be imitated but is only granted to the believer and experienced in faith. In the miracles of Jesus God has revealed his omnipotence and love but the how remains an enigma. After all if the miracle could be explained biologically it would no more be a miracle. Who would dare to deny that God can still work miracles everywhere at pleasure? It is the same presumption to consider a miracle impossible on scientific grounds as it is on the other side to count with it, to handle it so to say as if it were to our disposal. To a question what I as a physician thought possible of the miracles from the New Testament I could only answer this: How shall I as a physician make bold to judge about the limits of what is possible for God ? Have we not just learned how hmited our knowledge is? The physician who wants to be a Christian should in my opinion distinguish himself by strict objectivity and thoroughness. What about this objectivity? It cannot be denied that on the basis of natural science, the healing art of our days has scored enormous results to the welfare of mankind, which none of us could or would do without anymore. It would not be objective, nay unchristian not to make the most of these results. The further they got, however, the more they had to acknowledge that life cannot be explained by physical and chemical problems and that everything points to an existing plan which is in constant evolution. Every life is of one time, every moment something that cannot be repeated. The more science progresses, the more it comes to unbridgeable gaps, because the land on the

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