Medical Kenosis: The Ethics of Self-Emptying and the Limits of Medical Authority

Modern medicine has often conceived of itself as a project of mastery over bodies, disease, and mortality. While medical humanities has challenged this expansion of technical and institutional authority, the moral and relational dimensions of healing remain difficult to articulate within prevailing clinical frameworks. This paper proposes the Christian theological concept of kenosis, i.e., altruistic self-abnegation, as an ethical framework for redescribing healthcare. Drawing on theological and medical humanities sources, it explores how a 'kenotic' medicine might resist reductive explanations of suffering, emphasize accompaniment over cure-based interventions, and challenge clinicians’ moral authority within the therapeutic relationship. Deployed appropriately, medical kenosis can bolster medical humanities by providing a theological resource for interrogating contemporary crises in healthcare. At the same time, it can recover the relational conditions necessary for healing, reimagining care as being-with and being-for the patient.