| April 25, 2010 |
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The Church and the Academy need more of a collaborative partnership that seeks to insightfully integrate pastoral concerns and biblical scholarship.
is primarily a biblical study. Warrington looks first at healing in the Old Testament (briefly), then in the Gospels, in Acts, and in the writings of Paul and of James. In each case, he mostly simultaneously challenges easy assumptions about healing even while still asserting the biblical and contemporary validity of divine healing for the body. His study of the Gospels is the most systematically thorough, and possibly the most provocative. For him, the healing stories in the Gospels appear to be primarily pedagogical instruments teaching lessons about the messianic identity and ministry of Jesus Christ. They do not provide a model for contemporary practice. He does, however, affirm that “Lessons may be drawn from the healing ministry of Jesus that can be usefully applied in contemporary historical settings,” but adds that “cautious sensitivity needs to applied in presenting the healing ministry of Jesus as a model for healing praxis today.” Similarly in Acts, he denies healing (and exorcism), which he stresses becomes noticeably rarer after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, almost any paradigmatic modeling of healing practice for the Christians today, insisting rather that their purpose is to instruct about Jesus. He finds Paul, but James even more so, who he sees as actually holistic, to contain elements more instructive for continuing practice. Warrington says, “Recognizing James as having provided a model … is pastorally and theologically foundational.” James, therefore, is “a useful complement to the Pauline expectation of charismatic gifts of healing.”
A number of observations appear in order. First, Warrington’s Healing & Suffering should be received with welcome if for no other reason than its honest attempt to grapple intelligently and articulately with the hard questions concerning healing. Secondly, it is a gigantic leap forward from both the popular literature laying out this or that facilely formulaic model for almost automatically experiencing divine healing and academia’s all-too-common cessationism effectively shutting the door on any realistic expectation of experiencing divine healing. If it aims to be balanced between such extremes, for the most part it achieves that praiseworthy objective. Third, and quite important, it potentially provides solace for those suffering believers who may have been made to feel uncertain or even inferior because they have not (yet) received a miraculous healing. For these and other reasons like them, Healing & Suffering is a commendable book. And I must add that its insightful integration of pastoral concerns and biblical scholarship is most refreshing. I think both the Church and the Academy need more of this kind of collaborative partnership.
Appropriately relating the doctrine of divine healing and the experience of human suffering is perhaps one of the most pressing challenges for contemporary believers attending Pentecostal and Charismatic churches.
However, a number of reservations also appear in order. First, while it apparently intends to be a biblical study with pastoral sensitivity,
Healing & Suffering sometimes comes across (at least to me!) as too close to the reverse. Is it possible that we might struggle so stridently with the hard reality of those who are not healed, of those who one who continue to suffer, that we might approach the biblical witness with a bias against a really robust doctrine of divine healing? For instance, Warrington, based on a weak argument that Jesus’ recorded healings occur before his death (What about Rev. 13:8?), and with a much too quick dismissal of Matthew 8:14-17 and 1 Peter 2:24, essentially denies the doctrine of divine healing provided in the atonement. This apparent denial amounts to a major reversal of Classical Pentecostal belief and practice in almost all its historic and contemporary forms. That the doctrine needs careful explication perhaps no informed Pentecostal will argue. Denial is definitely extreme. Admittedly, as he usually does, Warrington leaves ample room for necessary nuances; but still, this seems a risky step biblically and theologically for historic Pentecostal belief and practice. Perhaps
Healing & Suffering only wants to “err on the side of caution,” so to speak. And, indeed, that may be a commendable correction to a general trend. Yet shouldn’t genuine
balance be striving more so not to err on either side? If we overshoot or if we undershoot, we still miss the target.
Tags: healing, keith, suffering, warrington
Category: Biblical Studies, Spring 2010
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