Author: Jimmy Akin

I want to thank everyone who has been praying for my close relative who is in the hospital.

Thing were *very* grim as of yesterday morning, and we are by no means out of the woods yet. There are still some very puzzling and troubling things going on.

However, tonight we got news that provides a ray of hope.

While the primary condition is still mysterious and of unknown origin, it fits in a general category that is treatable and that usually responds very well to treatment.

So . . . there is hope in that regard.

Unfortunately, there are other grave symptoms that are not explained and that may not be fixed by the treatment.

So . . . things may still go in a bad direction.

But the news at the moment is on balance positive, and I wanted to share that, as well as expressing my profound thanks to everyone who has been praying.

Please keep it up!

I have a request that I'd like to ask of our blog readers.

Someone *very* close to me (not me, but someone *very* close) currently needs prayers.

I don't feel that the person would want me to discuss details in public, but this is a very close family member who is currently in Intensive Care.

It is *very* serious.

Depending on when you read this, cross-time prayers may be appropriate.

Remember, God can do anything.

Also: I'm a convert, so none of my family has the consolations of being Catholic.

*Please* pray.

I'm a big fan of modern medicine.

But I recognize it's limitations and weaknesses, too.

One of those is these: It largely ignores the role of nutrition, and in particular it ignores the role that nutritional supplements can play in preventing and treating various conditions.

Why is that?

One of the reasons is that doctors aren't given a great deal of training in nutrition. Another reason is that drug companies aren't interested in the subject.

Why is that?

Because they make their money off drugs–synthetic substances that they can patent and then charge lots of money for.

I don't begrudge them that. I'm glad that they're developing new drugs, and given the costs of doing that, they need to be able to make their money back and make a profit.

But there is one aspect to this that can be rather insidious.

You see, the human body contains a lot of different natural substances that it needs to run right. Sometimes it needs particular natural substances to repair itself.

But you can't patent these substances, and they are often easily derivable from natural sources that don't require a patentable process to extract them.

That means drug companies can't make money off them. Or, rather, they don't think that they can make the kind of money they'd want in order to invest in producing them.

So what do they do?

Often times they'll sink a lot of research dollars in coming up with a synthetic substance that mimics the function of a natural one or that stimulates production of a natural one in the body–or something along these lines–and this synthetic substance they can patent and make a lot of money off.

If they can sell it to doctors, who (just coincidentally) don't know much about nutrition or nutritional supplementation.

What's bad about that?

Well, for one, it costs patients (directly or via their insurance companies) a lot more money to pay for the synthetic substance when they could just take the original natural one.

For another, the synthetic substance may not work exactly like the natural one. It may, for example, have side effects that the natural one doesn't. (Because, y'know, it's not naturally found in our bodies. Though, N.B., that I'm not arguing that just because something is natural it's automatically harmless or harmless in a particular dose or automatically effective or effective at a particular dose.)

So I don't like this aspect of the situation.

What brought all this to mind?

IT WAS THIS STORY ABOUT A NEW INSOMNIA DRUG.

As a life-long suffer of insomnia (when people ask me "Where did you get your theological background?" I tell them "School of Late Night Studies"), I'm always interested in possible insomnia treatments, so I read the story. And guess what it says?

Okay, great. A drug company has come up with a drug that stimulates melatonin production and, as a result, people taking the drug sleep better than if they take a placebo.

Fine.

But . . . uhhh . . . excuse me. . . . why don't people just take some melatonin?

I mean, melatonin is a natural substance that is widely available. It's in every nutritional supplements store out there.

Why spend lots of money (directly or via your insurance company, which ultimately has to be paid for out of the customers' pockets) to take a drug that stimulates melatonin production when you could just take melatonin itself?

I can imagine reasons.

For example, some natural substances are ones that we can't nutritionally absorb by eating them. Some, for example, need to be taken sublingually so that they go into the bloodstream directly, bypassing the digestive system. And, in fact, there are sublingual melatonin tablets out there. Whether melatonin needs to be taken that way, I don't know, but it's available either way.

So . . . why?

The story notes toward the end:

Okay, so we are offered two reasons: First, over-the-counter supplements aren't regulated the way drugs are.

That's not a sufficient argument. Lots of things, including food, isn't regulated the way drugs are, and it's a good thing, too. Imagine what would happen to your ability to eat if every single meal you consume had to be prepared under strict, patented processes that had been rigorously scientifically tested for safety. Even the cost of the healthiest food in the world would skyrocket.

Lack of comparable regulations thus isn't a reason on its own. If one wants to argue that something should be avoided if it hasn't been regulated the way drugs are then one needs to show (a) that it needs to be in the same class as drugs and (b) that the regulations on drugs are calibrated correctly.

The second reason was that OTC melatonin products "have not been consistently shown to help treat jet lag and other sleep disorders."

That is a fascinating statement for sooo many reasons.

For instance: "Consistently"? Is that an admission that some studies have shown them to help these conditions, though not all? Just how many studies? What the ratio? How were they done?

And . . . just how many studies have been done on the new melatonin-encouraging drug? One?

Something like a third of all studies turn out to be wrong. Is the stution that we have a bunch, though not all, studies saying melatonin helps sleep disorders but only one saying that the new drug does?

And if the drug company is interested in arguing to Reuters that their drug is preferable to natural melatonin (note that the story says "they pointed out" these arguments), why did they only test it against a placebo instead of melatonin itself?

Interesting questions!

Since 1963 there has been a growing debate in Protestant circles regarding the way in which St. Paul's teachings–particularly regarding justification–are to be understood. A significant number of authors, including Kirster Stendahl, E. P. Sanders, James Dunn, and N. T. Wright, have concluded that the standard accounts of Paul's teaching developed since the Reformation are simply wrong, that they read Paul's conflict with first century Judaizers anachronistically against the Reformers' struggle with the Catholic Church and what they perceived Catholic beliefs to be.

Although these authors have their own opinions about the details of what Paul meant, and while each gives different nuances to their understanding of Paul, there are certain commonalities among their thoughts, and this has given rise to the term "the new perspective on Paul" as a way of naming their school. (Though some of them have said, "the new perspectives on Paul" would be more accurate.)

MORE ON THE "NEW PERSPECTIVE."

One of the common themes in new perspective writings is that when Paul says we are not justified by works of the Law he does not have in mind the common Protestant claims that we do not earn our position before God or that we do not have to "do anything" for our salvation or similar conceptions that rely on the concept of "law" as something abstract, philosophical, or universal.

Instead, new perspective authors hold, the Law that Paul has in mind is something concrete and specific: the Mosaic Law or Torah.

Adherence to the Mosaic Law was constituitive of Jewish identity, and by saying that we are not justified by works of the Law what Paul was saying is that we are not justified by obeying the Mosaic Law, by being a faithful Jew.

Instead, we are justified through faith in Christ, through conforming to him rather than to the Mosaic Law.

What would a Catholic make of all this?

He might take it different ways. Through the history of Catholic thought there have been a variety of perspective on Paul (no pun intended), and the Church has not mandated one over the others.

However, it is worth noting that in the Year of St. Paul that Pope Benedict proclaimed, he devoted his weekly catecheses to St. Paul, and just of late he has been talking about Paul's teaching on justification, works, and the Law.

I've been having to sit on this story for a while as I waited for complete English translations of the audiences to start becoming available, but the first relevant one is now out and the second is due this Wednesday.

So let's look at two things that Pope Benedict had to say. First, there's this:

So Pope Benedict's thought on this point appears congruent with that of the new perspective on Paul, at least in its broad outlines.

But the Pope went on to day something else, which may be even more surprising for some.

A few years ago, when I was writing a lot about jutification, I pointed out (and the thought was not original with me but had been developed by other Catholic authors) that, although the common Protestant assertaion that we are jutified "by faith alone" is intrinsically misleading, contrary to the language of Scripture (the only place that the phrase "faith alone" appears in in James 2, where it is rejected), and I don't like it, nevertheless the phrase can be given an orthodox reading if it is understood to be referring to faith formed by charity or fides formata caritate.

That didn't please some on both siders of the confessional aisle, who wanted to see an irreconcilable conflict between Catholics and Protestants on this point such that the phrase "faith alone" could
not be given any meaning acceptable from a Catholic perspective.

Pope Benedict seems to see it differently. Immediately after the above quotation, he states:

SOURCE.