EXOD229 Medical Intervention: The Theological Dilemma. Application of this principle to medical intervention for the purpose of preserving life is not without theological and philosophical difficulties. It is to be anticipated that a theology which ascribes providential concern to the Deity will view sickness as part of the Divine scheme. A personal God does not allow His creatures, over whom He exercises providential guardianship, to become ill unless the affliction is divinely ordained as a means of punishment, for purposes of expiation of sin or for some other beneficial purpose entirely comprehensible to the Deity, if not to man. Thus, while the ancient Greeks regarded illness as a curse and the sick as inferior persons because, to them, malady represented the disruption of the harmony of the body which is synonymous with health, in Christianity suffering was deemed to be a manifestation of divine grace because it effected purification of the afflicted and served as an enobling process. Since illness resulted in a state of enhanced spiritual perfection, the sick man was viewed as marked by divine favor. Human intervention in causing or speeding of the therapeutic process is, then, in a sense, interference with the deliberate design of providence. The patient in seeking medical attention betrays a lack of faith in failing to put his trust in God. This attitude is reflected in the teaching of a number of early and medieval Christian theologians who counseled against seeking medical attention [See T.C. Allbutt, Greek Medicine in Rome (New York, 1921), p. 402). The Karaites rejected all forms of human healing and relied entirely upon prayer. Consistent with their fundamentalist orientation they based their position on a quite literal reading of [this verse]. A literal translation of the Hebrew text of the passage reads as follows: "I will put none of the diseases upon thee which I have put upon the Egyptians, for I am the Lord thy physician." [See Abraham ibn Ezra, Commentary on the Bible, ad locum]. Hence, the Karaites taught that God alone should be sought as physician. [See A. Harkavy, Likkuei Kadmoniyot (St. Petersburg, 1903), II, 148 and Harry Friedenald, The Jews and Medicine (Baltimore, 1944), p.9]. This view was rejected in normative Jewish teaching, but not without due recognition of the cogency of the theological argument upon which it is based. Rabbinic teaching recognized that intervention for the purpose of thwarting the natural course of the disease could be sanctioned only on the basis of specific divine dispensation. Such license is found, on the basis of Talmudic exegesis, in the scriptural passage dealing with compensation for personal injury [Exodus 21:18-19]. Ostensibly, this passage refers simply to financial liability incurred as a result of an act of assault. However, since specific reference is made to liability for medical expenses it follows that liability for such expenses implies Biblical license to incur those expenses in the course of seeking the ministrations of a practitioner of the healing arts. Thus, the Talmud, Bava Kamma 85a, comments, "From here [It is derived] that the physician is granted permission to cure."