Book Review: Mental Disorders and Spiritual Healing

Mental Disorders and Spiritual Healing: Teachings from the Early Christian East by Jean-Claude Larchet is an examination of mental illness from an Eastern Christian perspective.

Larchet completes a definitive work on the history, perceptions, and practices of the Eastern Church on mental illness. One has to read it for its historical value. This text is not for those looking at therapeutic solutions for those suffering or dealing with a person struggling with some form of mental illness.

The author’s knowledge of modern psychological conventions and Eastern Church practices is finely interwoven. He provided substantial documentation.

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Ambrosiaster on the workers of miracles

The Ambrosiaster text gives a fourth century or later Latin perspective on the workers of miracles as described by St. Paul.
Paul wrote about this function in his First letter to the Corinthians (12:28).
Here is the actual Biblical citation:

And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues.”(NIV)

The key-text here is the “workers of miracles” which in the Greek text is δυνάμεις and in Ambrosiaster’s text, virtutes.

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