Healthy Human Life

Health is God's original created intent: whole persons, healthy relationships, a thriving environment, and ongoing interaction with himself. In the Bible, human health is body-based, community-based, and deeply integrated in a relationship with God's creating Spirit. The Pentateuch, prophets, writings, Gospels, and epistles all are deeply, if not primarily, concerned with the ongoing and ultimate health of God's good creation. Scripture also has a wide perspective on the disruption of human health. It deals with the human tendency to violence, corruption, and self-destructive behaviors.

The recently renewed interest in health, vitality, and spirituality of all kinds has led to this articulation of a biblical spirituality in relation to human health. Surprisingly, when we look for spirituality in the Bible, we find real and embodied relationships. Everyone is for health and for the restoration of health. But what are health and healing? How does the Bible describe or define them?

Here is the result of ten years of conversations with health care professionals in a master's course on biblical perspectives on health and healing. The biblical witness can transform the way we practice the healing arts. This book provides a biblical foundation for health and its restoration.


""This is a rare book, a theologically savvy, solidly biblical, and deeply integrative contribution to faith and health. Grounded especially in Old Testament Scripture, this profound study of embodied human health will challenge and inform anyone involved in health care professions, churches, and theological study of the human person.""
--Joel B. Green, professor of New Testament Interpretation at Fuller Theological Seminary

""Bruckner, a seasoned biblical scholar, offers here a teaching book in the best sense--one that students of the Bible, those in the healing professions, and general readers will turn to for its wisdom and its scholarly, theological, pastoral, and human insights. The book inevitably becomes an outline of biblical theology as a whole, as a careful study of biblical healing must. The God of the Bible is a God of healing, and Bruckner's book helps us meet and know that God.""
--Frederick J. Gaiser, professor of Old Testament at Luther Seminary


James K. Bruckner is Professor of Old Testament at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago. He is the author of commentaries on Exodus (2008) and on Jonah, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah (2004) as well as of Implied Law in the Abraham Narrative (2001).