Faith and Healing, Part 2

We have begun exploring faith and healing, but more broadly, this little series is about faith and miracles (healing being a prominent sort of miracle, in terms of significance if not frequency).

Before looking at the questions we raised in our last post, perhaps we should define miracles.  I am sure you know the well-worn quote, which was or was not spoken by Albert Einstein: “There are only two ways to live your life.  One is as though nothing is a miracle.  The other is as though everything is.”  We can begin here, but it’s not exactly a definition.  It is, in fact, a philosophy, an a priori philosophical commitment that miracles are possible or they are not.  If you want to discuss miracles and the role faith plays in them, you first must acknowledge their possibility.  As CS Lewis writes:

“Whatever experiences we may have, we shall not regard them as miraculous if we already hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural.  Any event which is claimed as a miracle is, in the last resort, an experience received from the senses; and the senses are not infallible…

“The experience of a miracle in fact requires two conditions.  First we must believe in a normal stability of nature, which means we must recognize that the data offered by our senses recur in regular patterns.  Secondly, we must believe in some reality beyond Nature.  When both beliefs are held, and not till then, we can approach with an open mind the various reports which claim that this super- or extra-natural reality has sometimes invaded and disturbed the sensuous content of space and time which makes our ‘natural’ world.” (“Miracles” from God in the Dock)

Miracles are, by definition, a suspension of what one might call “the law of nature” – or the normal order of things, as they are customarily experienced.  As the dictionary has it: “an effect or extraordinary event in the physical world that surpasses all known human or natural powers and is ascribed to a supernatural cause.”  Thus, Jesus walking on top of the water of Galilee or calming the storm with a sharp word or causing to see a blind man are all labeled “miraculous” because they are contrary to what we would call “normal” and “natural”.

Now among the various reactions to reports of this sort are two which deserve some special mention.  One reaction might be to doubt the veracity of the event itself.  The other is to assume that a perfectly naturalistic explanation lies behind the event (one recalls Arthur C. Clarke’s saying that magic is just science we do not yet understand).  I think this inherent skepticism reveals more about the presuppositional baggage of the reactor than it does about the event to which he is reacting.  If one presumes a naturalistic explanation to everything, one will never see miracles.  There are probably hybrid forms of this, even among my tribe of Christians.

Let me lay out my own presuppositional baggage by articulating the two extremes of the miracle spectrum in the Church.  On one end, we have cessationists, those who assert that the Age of Miracles has passed.  When I was a young Fundamentalist, we often quoted the verse from St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians: “When that which is perfect has come, that which is imperfect will pass away.”  In that thinking, the Holy Bible (only the 17^th Century Authorized Text, by the way) was the perfect which now superseded the imperfect.  There are probably other, more robust arguments for cessationism, but that was the one we yanked from our argument supply.

At the other end of the Miracle Spectrum as the Charismaniacs, of which there is not a monolith, but more of a mosaic.  They are at the far end because of their willingness to believe in the likelihood of the miraculous in everyday workings.  Not “wrong”, just at the extreme end.

And all along this Miracle Spectrum are various hybrids.  C’est moi.  I am not a cessationist.  At least, I am not one any longer.  Something about being baptized into the Holy Spirit and witnessing the supernatural workings of the Holy Spirit will change all that.  My bias is that the gifts Paul describes in his letters are gifts still for today.  Un-explainable healings still happen.  Words of prophecy (future telling) still happen.  The Holy Spirit is alive and well and active and working in God’s people.  But I greet news of healings with a seasoned skepticism.  Miracles are NOT normative; they are exceptional.  They were when Jesus lived; they are now.

So where does this leave us?  It leaves us with questions, which we will answer posthaste…

• Do miraculous (or difficult-to-explain) healings happen today?
• What role does faith play in the seemingly miraculous occurrences (such as healings)?
• If healings happen, how and why?  That is, is it the faith of the one being healed or the faith of the ones praying for healing?
• If healings happen, is faith required?  That is, if neither the receiver of the healing or the “giver” of the healing have faith, will that prevent healing?
• Is healing only given to some select people, or is it universally given to all in the Church?  In other words, is Paul’s choice of words (i.e., “to one”) merely an expression to be taken loosely (as in “everyone is going to see that movie”) or to be taken literally?