Cautious Co-belligerence? The Late Nineteenth-Century American Divine Healing Movement and the Promise of Medical Science

 

Denials and Critiques of Medical Science

Certainly, however, the endorsement of physicians and medical treatment by those involved in the Divine Healing movement was cautious and limited. While they affirmed the recent real progress made by medical science and affirmed its ability to diagnose and alleviate the physical cause of disease, they also made some stark denials that set them clearly at odds with the medical community. While some of the promoters of Divine Healing had critiques that were peculiar to themselves, there were five critiques they all held in common and that were, for each of them, the central critiques of medical science.

Denied There is Either Scriptural Precedent or Prescription to Consult Physicians or to Use Medicine

First, the Divine Healing promoters denied that there is either scriptural precedent or divine prescription to utilize medicine, remedies, or to consult physicians. Simpson asserted that nowhere in Scripture did God prescribe medicines or remedies for his people.²⁵ When medical means are mentioned in Scripture, he noted, “such ‘means’ are referred to in terms not at all complimentary.”²⁶ There is no mention of God’s institution or blessing of the medical profession. When the people of God are sick, Montgomery noted, they are not to turn to the created order for relief. Instead, they are to seek God alone. The only prescription found in Scripture for the sick is to turn to God in faith to be their healer, to be Jehovah Rophi. In the New Testament, in particular, the only means the sick are to follow is found in James 5, to call upon the elders of the Church, whose credentials do not lie in their ability to manage the vis medicatrix naturae but in their being full of the Holy Spirit able to exercise the prayer of faith.²⁹ Given the absence of any other divinely prescribed means of dealing with sickness, Simpson asserted that to turn to medicine, remedies, and doctors is not only unwise, it is, simply, both dangerous and impertinent.³⁰

Denied Cessationist Theology

Second, they all denied the doctrine of cessationism that affirmed that, upon the establishment of the Church, the age of miracles came to an end.³¹ Simpson asserted that the lack of the historic manifestation of Divine Healing, which he did not deny, was based on the promotion of a theology of cessation and the consequential lack of belief in its possibility, rather than on a change in the character or ministry of God in Christ.³² Montgomery asserted that unbelief in the continuation of the miraculous was the reason that most people, both Christian and non-Christian, did not bother to pursue Divine Healing.³³ Gordon argued that, with the establishment and rule of a cessationist theology, average Christians who might otherwise assume the ongoing exercise of the supernatural were bullied into submission and unbelief.³⁴ They all noted that cessationism could not be sustained by Scripture.³⁵ Gordon wrote, “[Jesus] made no provision for the arrest of the stream of divine manifestations which he had started, either in the next age or in a subsequent age.”³⁶ To those who would want to limit the miraculous gifts to the founding era of the Church, he wrote, “[A]ntiquity has no monopoly of God’s gifts, and ancient men as such had no entrée into God’s treasurehouse which is denied to us.”³⁷ He also showed how cessationism in regard to Divine Healing could not be sustained by a thorough study of Church history.³⁸ For these teachers, the ministry of God in Christ did not change from one era to another.³⁹ In one of his more famous hymns, Simpson reminded people that the Jesus who walked the Earth and healed was the same Christ “Yesterday, Today, Forever,” and his ministry did not significantly change either.⁴⁰

The Divine Healing practitioners credited the new instances of Divine Healing that were being manifest in their day to the renewed faith of some not only in the power of Christ but in the subsistence of the miraculous. That is, a more scriptural theology, or as Gordon called it, “primitive faith,” was reemerging in the church and, consequently, so was a more scriptural practice and manifestation.⁴¹ This resurrection of a more scriptural theology, though, was not understood to be merely coincidental. It was, rather, part of the restoration of biblical Christianity that they believed would precede the return of Jesus Christ.

With a reviving faith, with a deepening spiritual life, with a more marked and Scriptural recognition of the Holy Spirit and the Living Christ, and with the nearer approach of the returning Master Himself, this blessed gospel of physical redemption is beginning to be restored to its ancient place, and the Church is slowly learning to reclaim what she never should have lost.⁴²

Denied the Legitimacy of Medical Science’s Exclusive Naturalism/Materialism

Third, they denied the legitimacy of the late nineteenth-century medical community’s predominant and excessive, if not exclusive, “materialism.”⁴³ Such a perspective believes that people are nothing more than bio-mechanical/physical beings and, therefore, cure is a strictly secular and physical affair. Consequently, the training of physicians occurred in a purely naturalistic way, biasing, if not blinding, them from the spiritual aspect of human being and certainly dismissing any chance of a psycho-somatic unity. If humanity is a purely physical being, then disease is understood as being purely physical as well. The supernatural, in general, and the spiritual aspect of humanity, in particular, is not only largely ignored in such a perspective, it is practically denied. The Divine Healing advocates noted that the very ideas of the miraculous, spiritual, and supernatural were illegitimate to the medical community and that “any anti-miraculous” theory was automatically favored.⁴⁴ Simpson noted that manifestations of Divine Healing had not subsided (certainly not to the same degree) in those countries, cultures, or eras that were less “modern” in their worldview and that expected the involvement of the supernatural in the whole of one’s being. He wrote, “It is not surprising, therefore, that [Divine Healing] comes natural [sic] to our simple-hearted converts in heathen lands, who know no better than to trust the Lord for both body and soul.”⁴⁵

 

Tags: american, cautious, cobelligerence, divine, healing, late, medical, movement, nineteenthcentury, promise, science

Category: Church History, Summer 2010