True Health Isn’t Just Physical

Public interest in health has soared since the pandemic. The Global Wellness Institute reports that the wellness economy worldwide exceeded $6 trillion in 2023 and is projected to reach $9 trillion by 2028. Even studies with more modest findings reveal significant growth in health markets over the past five years. In one instance, 82 percent of surveyed U.S. consumers cited wellness as a “top priority” in their everyday lives.

COVID-19 has settled into the background, but its aftermath persists as we clamor for stronger immune systems, lower cholesterol, and ever-elusive peace of mind. We all strive for wellness.

Yet what does it mean to be “well”? That’s a central question Tyler J. VanderWeele takes up in A Theology of Health: Wholeness and Human Flourishing. VanderWeele is an epidemiologist who directs the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard and codirects the Initiative on Health, Spirituality, and Religion. His work guides academics toward a cohesive and all-encompassing view of health with the Christian worldview at its center. According to VanderWeele, true health doesn’t hinge on technology or trends but rather on union with Christ and conformity to God’s will.

Industrial Wellness

As the reports linked in this article’s introduction show, people pursue health in many domains—from pharmaceuticals, doctor’s visits, and nutrition to mindfulness, spas, and hot springs. The studies note trends in at-home diagnostics and wearable biomonitoring, as well as mounting interest in personalized health recommendations using biometric data. Does such technology guarantee wellness? Will the right diet, the best workout regimen, and the optimal cocktail of vitamins ensure we’ll always be healthy, whole, and flourishing?

Our instincts—and our Christian faith—tell us otherwise. Even if we carefully regulate our intake of protein and omega-3 fatty acids, our muscles will eventually shrink and our bones thin with age because “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). Even if we prioritize sleep and stress reduction, we’ll experience grief and exhaustion because, as Jesus said, “in the world [we] will have tribulation” (John 16:33).

While we’re called to steward the bodies God has given us (1 Cor. 6:19), no industry—even one worth $6 trillion—can sponge away the sin that stains our hearts and corrupts all creation. True wellness, health, and flourishing come only through Christ. Only through his wounds are we healed (Isa. 53:5). Only through faith in him can we truly be made well (Mark 5:34).

True wellness, health, and flourishing come only through Christ.

Defining Health

Harvard’s secular and pluralistic halls seldom encourage works on Christian theology, but VanderWeele, a Roman Catholic, has a track record of deftly navigating scholarly discussions across traditions. His experience teaching a course on religion and public health inspired the book, and he offers an overview of health theology not only for Christian scholars but also for “audiences who are not Christian, but who are directly engaged in public health or medicine, or in research and scholarship within these fields” (xvi).

In unpacking the concept of “health,” VanderWeele wisely differentiates between the health of the physical body and the health of the person. He notes that overall health depends on one’s physical condition but explores a much broader, more holistic concept that reflects human flourishing. “Understood theologically,” he writes, “to be healthy is to be whole, to be in perfect conformity with God’s intent” (7).

Christian readers will discern similarities between this definition and the shalom of the Hebrew Scriptures: a state of peace and completeness rooted in the covenant relationship between God and his people. “A state of full health, of wholeness, of flourishing, in which all aspects of one’s life are good, entails right relationship with God,” VanderWeele writes. “That relation with God, described sometimes as communion or love or charity or friendship with God, is central to human well-being” (21).

Accounting for Sin

VanderWeele develops a vision of health that (1) defines health as communion with God and alignment with his intent, (2) characterizes disease and poor health as consequences of sin (both personal and as effects of the fall), and (3) points to restoration through Christ as our only hope for true healing.

His exposition ties human illness to its root cause and highlights the gospel as our only remedy. “From a Christian perspective, this spiritual well-being, this charity of friendship with God, constitutes not the only but the most important aspect of the health of a person,” he explains. “It is what brings about the final and perfect flourishing, that communion with God, that is the final goal of the human person” (79).

Although his discussion touches on multiple domains of wellness (physical, mental, communal, and so on), VanderWeele acknowledges we cannot attain true healing while sin still grips the world. “We are in search for a greater wholeness, a fuller flourishing, a more complete healing,” he writes, “but, from the perspective of Christian theology that healing cannot come about without addressing sin as the movement away from wholeness as God intends it” (128). He elaborates further,

By our own efforts, however, we cannot fully prevent ill health or fully restore the health of persons. We cannot eliminate ill health. We cannot eliminate sin. For complete restoration and fulfillment of health and wholeness, we need the action of God. For compete restoration to health, we need the fullness of God’s salvation. (161)

That salvation, of course, comes only through Christ: “It is in union with Jesus Christ in his death that we are ultimately freed from sin and brought to new life and new wholeness” (220).

Narrow Audience?

As VanderWeele acknowledges, he writes from a “predominantly Catholic perspective” (xii). In keeping with this background, he draws heavily from Aquinas, with Augustine, the papal writings, and Aristotle also making regular appearances, but he references Scripture less frequently. While his exposition’s main points align with the gospel narrative, readers approaching A Theology of Health from a Reformed background will yearn for more biblical engagement, especially as Scripture has so much to offer on questions of healing and wholeness (Jer. 30:12; Isa. 53:5; Mark 5:34; Luke 5:31; Rev. 21:1–4).

‘For compete restoration to health, we need the fullness of God’s salvation,’ says VanderWeele.

VanderWeele also acknowledges that “the question of the intended audience of the book is a difficult one” (xiv). He targets scholars in health-related fields, but even those well versed in academic writing may struggle with this book’s repetitive sentence construction and the lengthy footnotes that distract from key arguments.

His aspiration to inform—but not evangelize to—those from non-Christian backgrounds gives the work a mildly conciliatory tone, with passive language during descriptions of redemption and the resurrection creating a sense of distance and with a “nontheological postscript” reframing the discussion in non-Christian terms. Perhaps to foster a spirit of unity, in a lengthy footnote VanderWeele suggests Buddhist loving-kindness meditation may have applications in Christian contexts. His intent seems charitable, but such an assertion risks sliding toward syncretism.

Yet even with these caveats, VanderWeele provides scholars in health-related fields with a robust, comprehensive, and theologically rich framework for understanding human flourishing. According to VanderWeele, true wellness springs not from one’s resting heart rate and step count but from the almighty God who gives us life and breath and everything (Acts 17:25). That truth—and the necessary salvation in Christ to which it points—promises us a greater healing, a greater wholeness than any industry this fallen, postpandemic world could ever offer.