for themselves. One of the great healer monks, Benjamin of Nitria, suffered a long and painful illness from dropsy but refused healing prayers so that he might partake of the sufferings of Christ.15 In essence, the monks inverted the Scriptures, making the normative biblical attitude toward healing the exception, and the exception, redemptive suffering, the normative. This inversion was passed on to subsequent Christian theology. It became the perfect alibi for those Christian who lost their faith