Duke Divinity School

HIV and AIDS is one of the widespread communicable diseases in the world today. Many non-government organizations including faith-based organizations are working to help address this growing problem. HIV and AIDS education on the youth especially on the religious sector here in the Philippines where discrimination and misinformation is one of the biggest concern. With the increasing trend of HIV cases, there is much more to be done to contribute in achieving MDG 6.  The National Prevention Plan is on the right direction but a focused program on HIV among the youth is needed.

The rising number of non-communicable disease (NCDs) is a global health challenge. According to WHO, non-communicable diseases account for 38 million of the 56 million deaths each year. That is more than half of the cause. This includes cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic lung diseases. Health promotion can help address non-communicable disease like the control of hypertension. Health promotion contributes to controlling hypertension “through enabling people, to increase control over their health and its determinants, thereby promoting and sustaining good health. The health education of each clergy member of a particular region will be the health promotion activity effective for this NCD program. The purpose of the campaign is to persuade hypertensive church pastors to adopt a healthy lifestyle. This is best done by teaching individuals about hypertension and equip them with skills how to prevent it.

The Infant and Young Child Feeding is a program of the Department of Health focused on improving the nutrition of infants. This program addresses issues on equity and sustainable development by giving an opportunity for all newborn infants to grow up healthy. The goal of the IYCF program is to reduce infant and child mortality through optimal feeding of infants and young children. One very specific sub program to this is the Exclusive Breastfeeding for infants in the first six months.

The HIV Prevention Program of the Department of Health in the Philippines has the important factors to contribute in the sustainable development of the country. This program was created by Republic Act 8504 or the Philippine AIDS Prevention and Control Act of 1998 (SEPO, 2018). The Department of Health started the program in 1998 and was evaluated in 2011 by UNICEF focusing in the implementation process of the program. Process evaluation looks into the implementation of the program. It is a formative evaluation on the program designers, staff, internal and external entities checking into why the program is or is not working according to design (Management, 2012). I will argue that the HIV Prevention Program in the country was successful because it did not only focus on the individual behavioral change but intentionally addressed the social determinants of health affecting HIV transmission.

As a family physician, we are trained to practice a biopsychosocial-spiritual approach for a holistic patient care. But a doctor gains deeper appreciation for the importance of addressing a patient’s spirituality once he becomes a patient himself. My spirituality played a role in my recovery as a patient. This experience led me to appreciate the unique role a patient’s spirituality can play in one’s recovery. It has given me a different experience with God.

This article provides a brief overview of early Syriac sources useful for researchers in Byzantine history and late antiquity. As a guide for finding relevant material, it seeks to introduce the non-Syriacist to the contribution of Syriac literature in the transmission of Greek texts, preserved only in extant Syriac translations. It explains the characteristics of the Syriac language, including various alphabets and doctrinal terminologies, and offers an annotated bibliography of reference materials, along with a brief survey of Syriac literature up to the seventh century CE.

Medieval cultures in the East were generally more reticent than Western ones in describing warfare in bloody detail. As events that involved the death or mutilation of large numbers of people, battles are traumatic experiences that tend to inhibit creative literary description of them. The three cultures examined in this chapter approached the recording of war very differently. The Tang Chinese histories are formulaic, abstract to the point of statistics; they offer only names and casualty numbers. Byzantine writing about warfare is pragmatic, gives some operational details, and is concerned for the character of commanders, but avoids exalting them. Abbasid war poetry and chronicles glorify the moral superiority of Muslim commanders, especially in comparison to non-Muslim opponents, yet present the brute facts of battles in an epigrammatic way. All three cultures combined accounts of war with the exigencies of religion, which influenced their goals before battle and means of commemoration after battle. For the purposes of this chapter, ‘medieval’ will refer to the period between the seventh and thirteenth centuries. In taking an explicitly comparative approach, this investigation aims to illumine certain principles common to war-making in early medieval cultures, whilst also exposing religious biases that serve to differentiate opponents. Three cultures will be examined:
- the Tang dynasty in China (618–908),
- the Macedonian dynasty in Byzantium (867–1025)
- and the Abbasid caliphate in the Middle East (750–1258).

The Byzantine emperor Leo VI (886–912), was not a general or even a soldier, like his predecessors, but a scholar, and it was the religious education he gained under the tutelage of the patriarch Photios that was to distinguish him as an unusual ruler. This book analyses Leo's literary output, focusing on his deployment of ideological principles and religious obligations to distinguish the characteristics of the Christian oikoumene from the Islamic caliphate, primarily in his military manual known as the Taktika. It also examines in depth his 113 legislative Novels, with particular attention to their theological prolegomena, showing how the emperor's religious sensibilities find expression in his reshaping of the legal code to bring it into closer accord with Byzantine canon law. Meredith L. D. Riedel argues that the impact of his religious faith transformed Byzantine cultural identity and influenced his successors, establishing the Macedonian dynasty as a 'golden age' in Byzantium.

This essay proposes to present an analysis of how the emperor Leo VI (r. 886‒912) used scriptural language and biblical references to mold his vision of proper Christian political identity. He was not following cultural norms, but rather deliberately attempting to set them. As an elite, educated porphyrogennetos of the middle Byzantine era, Leo was comfortable using and referencing scriptural materials. Moreover, he was also unafraid to do that most un-byzantine of things: innovate. In particular, biblical references from one political document attributed to Leo VI – his military manual, the Taktika – reveal his particular approach to using the Bible.
Based on evidence from the Taktika, this essay will present a preliminary sketch of Leo’s exegetical method, and then consider how this contributes to his concept of ideal Byzantine Christianity. His use of scripture is interesting for its creativity, flexibility, and sometimes-overt cheekiness. It thus provides an initial direction for theorizing the use of religious language in Middle Byzantium.

The author examines the military manual of the Byzantine emperor Leo VI the Wise. It is a unique work of consolidation and innovation: while Leo's Tactics draws upon Earlier military texts, he also imbues it with Christian ideals - that is, he presents a Christianized general. This balance of imitation and innovation would appear to give a new lease of life to the military manual. These chapters appear to agree that one aspect of military thinking is the focus on how to conceptualize the enemy. Whereas the Greeks and romans considered themselves as superior fights to their foreign (barbarian) enemies, by the Byzantine period there appears to be a  recognition that this was no longer the case. In this sense, Maurice and Leo balance between following the generic traditions of the military manual and creating texts that are relevant to the shifting realities of warfare in that period.

The Amphilochia of Photios (d. ca.895) is a collection of letters that explain difficulties in the scriptures and related doctrines of the church. In Amphilochia 9, Photios applies himself to harmonizing what appears to be a conundrum in Orthodox theological anthropology:

How does one reconcile the saying of David ‘human life is like grass’ (Psalm 102.15) with the proverb of Solomon ‘man is great and precious’ (Prov 20.6)? [Πως του θεοπατορος Δαυιδ ειποντος ‘ανθροπος ωσει χορτος αι ημεραι αυτου’ και εξης, ο τουτου παις Σολομων αποφαινεται ‘μεγα ανθρωπος και τιμιον ανηρ’;]

This is more philosophical than exegetical, in terms of the content of these particular biblical sayings from the wisdom literature of the LXX. Photios approaches the problem with several concerns in mind. First, he must deal with the immediate question of the significance of humanity in the divine oikonomia. Second, the sayings of two of the Byzantines’ favourite biblical models of kingship, David and Solomon, must be reconciled or harmonised without impugning either David (a model claimed by Basil I) or Solomon (the model later applied to Basil’s son, Leo VI). As biblical prototypes, the wisdom of these two Israelite kings, particularly for Byzantine emperors, cannot be overstated. After the period of exile in which Photios wrote the first 75 treatises of the Amphilochia, he rather famously authored two mirrors-of-princes, directed to the newly-baptized Boris-Michael of Bulgaria and to his former pupil Leo VI, so his analysis of these conflicting sayings is also useful to understanding how he theorized kingship and authority.