Agnes Sanford: Apostle of Healing and First Theologian of the Charismatic Renewal, Part 2, by William L. De Arteaga

Pneuma Review Summer 2006 Part 2 of 2

Discover Agnes Sanford’s important influence on the charismatic movement in this article by historian William De Arteaga.

The Healing Light

It was during her ministry at Tilton Army Hospital that Mrs. Sanford wrote her first and most successful book, The Healing Light.²⁷ The book was based on the notes she prepared for an adult education class that she gave during the war. It was written in simple language. In fact, Mrs. Sanford read the text to her nine-year-old niece and was not be satisfied until the girl could understand it.²⁸ The manuscript was finished in 1945, but it was rejected by the major trade publishers. However, several chapters were serialized in Sharing magazine, the organ for the Order of St. Luke, the Episcopal healing order. Professor Glenn Clark, founder of the CFO camps, read the chapters in Sharing and recognized their superior quality. He offered to publish it through Macalester Park, his own publishing house. It initially sold slowly, partly because Macalester Park was not listed in Books in Print, and thus had difficulty in distribution, but word of mouth soon overcame that handicap.

The Healing Light might be termed the crown work of Christian New Thought. That is, Mrs. Sanford appropriated many of the motifs, vocabulary and insights from New Thought writers, but using her biblical knowledge as filter, eliminated the unbiblical aspects of New Thought, such as its drift into radical idealism (evil is unreal, as in Christian Science) and its sub-orthodox Christology. Central to her understanding and theology was the concept that the Kingdom of God is manifest through prayer and power on earth, and is not just “other-worldly.”

Among the New Thought motifs that Mrs. Sanford appropriated was that Christian spirituality could be described as a form of scientific endeavor. This was the initial intent of Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science, and it permeated all New Thought writings. It was common to many movements and ideologies of the Nineteenth Century, such as Marxism and psychoanalysis. In Mrs. Baker’s writings and other New Thought systems of radical idealism, the end result of this quest was little more than a doctrinal mythology with an authoritative, convoluted syntax and pretentious vocabulary that aped the science of the times.

In comparison, Mrs. Sanford was far ahead of her New Thought contemporaries in understudying what true science was and was not. Mrs. Sanford saw that true science was not a new system of doctrines, but a methodology of knowledge that involved exploration, testing, verification (and failure) and humility of spirit with which to attack a problem. Although this is well understood today, it was not so clear when Mrs. Sanford wrote The Healing Light.²⁹ Mrs. Sanford wrote:

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.” The scientific attitude is the attitude of perfect meekness. It consists in an unshakable faith in the laws of nature combined with perfect humility toward those laws and a patient determination to learn them at whatever cost…Through the Same meekness those who seek God can produce results by learning to conform to his laws of faith and love.³⁰

The title of her book, The Healing Light, points to the main thesis, that the healing power of God is light energy that is accessible to all who understand its lawful application in compassion and love. Agnes speculated that the healing light was the primal light that originated at the beginning of creation, and that this light is everywhere. On the practical level, Agnes guides the reader on how to use the free gift of God’s healing light for healing. This is done by visualizing God’s light flooding the afflicted person or area of disease. To many Evangelical and cessationist-educated Christians this seemed like occult hocus-pocus. In fact, the use of light in prayer is alien to Western Christianity, but common to Eastern Orthodoxy, which has a highly evolved theology of light, especially in reference to contemplative prayer.³¹ What is innovative about Mrs. Sanford’s work it not that it urges the use of light in prayer, but its use in healing prayer.

Among other advances in healing prayer that The Healing Light presented was Mrs. Sanford’s discovery on intercessory prayer for someone distant. The ex-Baptist minister who had previously advised her gave her the key to effective distance healing.

When you think of someone, you always see the person in your mind. If you really believe he’s going to be well, you see him well. If he pops into your mind like your eyes saw him last, or like your friends tells you he is, all moans and groans and fever, that shows that your subconscious mind does not really believe he’s going to be well… When you pray for someone, dearie, you must learn to see him well.³²

This whole issue of the use of visualization also caused much controversy, especially in latter years when cessationist influenced Evangelicals such as Dave Hunt believed that all visualization was occultic. This of course has no basis in scripture, and visualization prayer, as a form of devotional aid to Bible reading, has a long history in Christianity.³³

In spite of the New Thought vocabulary of visualization and vibration, The Healing Light is biblically orthodox where it counts, in its Christology. In practical terms this meant that the “name of Jesus adds power to all prayer.”³⁴ Mrs. Sanford believed that it is only through Jesus’ name that the great works of healing described in the Bible can be achieved.³⁵ Mrs. Sanford’s participation in her husband’s Episcopal liturgy had given her an appreciation of the effectiveness of the sacraments in healing. She also discerned that the ordained clergy had a special anointing to heal.³⁶ Another indication of the biblical orthodoxy of The Healing Light is Mrs. Sanford’s understanding that God is both immanent and transcendent. “God’s light shines both within us and without us, and by learning to receive Him within we begin to perceive Him Without.”³⁷

This balanced, classical view of immanence and transcendence had practical consequences. She discovered that a prayer life of meditation (silence) and active mental prayer of praise, thanksgiving and petition was the way of optimizing one’s ability to be a channel for God’s graces and light to others. This is different from most New Thought writers who stressed meditation, but neglected worship of the transcendent, personal God.

Another major contribution to the modern Christian theology of healing found in The Healing Light is healing prayer as evangelization. “Some may wonder whether it is right to pray in the name of Christ and by the power of Christ for one who might not be willing to accept Christ. But after all, was it not that way when He was on earth? Did the nine lepers accept Him as Savior?”³⁸ In fact, in her personal ministry at Tilton Army Hospital Mrs. Sanford followed the pattern of first praying for physical healing, then evangelizing. It was an effective combination and a pre-cursor to the theology of “power evangelism” made famous decades later by John Wimber, founder of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship.

The years immediately after the publication of The Healing Light were both hectic and most fruitful for Mrs. Sanford. Her speaking engagements in teaching missions and CFO camps multiplied. The healing missions were often in Episcopal churches where the pattern of a two or three day teaching with healing service and Eucharist had been developed earlier by John Gaynor Banks, founder of the OSL. However, the missions were by no means limited to Episcopal churches, and in the South, where Mrs. Sanford’s work was especially welcome, the healing missions were given in churches of practically every denomination. CFO camps, were of course non-denominational, with participants coming from every denomination of Protestantism (and after the 1960s the Catholics began attending).

Baptism in the Holy Spirit

By 1952 the success of Mrs. Agnes Sanford’s first book, The Healing Light brought some unintended difficulties to her life. She was in demand as a speaker, and toured the US and Canada in CFO camps and independent healing missions, while at the same time trying to raise a family and support her husband as rector of a busy Episcopal church. She was exhausted, yet felt an inner compulsion to preach the Good News that Jesus lives and heals in the current age.

Providentially, Agnes had been scheduled for a healing mission in Tucson, Arizona. It was canceled when she arrived, and she took time to rest and pray with two local women who were also in the healing ministry. All three felt exhaustion from their ministry and cried out to God for relief. As they prayed for guidance, all three received the same direction, pray for “the Holy Ghost.” In obedience, the three women prayed for each other with the laying on of hands. The three were instantly healed of their exhaustion and other maladies and received an infilling of joy and peace.

None manifested the gift of tongues. They neither expected nor understood it. After Agnes had returned to Moorstown, one of them, Mrs. Marion Lovekin, went to a local Pentecostal meeting and received the gift of tongues, and wrote Agnes enthusiastically explaining her experience. Agnes wrote back saying she wanted no part of tongue speaking. Mrs. Lovekin wrote again showing her the biblical basis for tongues, and challenging her to meditate on the issue. Not long after, Agnes returned to Tucson and the three women again prayed together. Agnes lifted the “tongues” question to God in prayer:

… immediately I desired the gift of tongues with a great longing! And in another moment I spoke as they had spoken, in words that the conscious mind did not understand…I felt as though the love of Christ, already in me, now moved down, down to a deeper level…(Sealed Orders, 221.)

Agnes spent several days in deep prayer and praise, although still did not quite understand what had happened. Within a few weeks, on a healing mission in Florida, she stayed with a Christian woman who had the gift of tongues for years. The woman was able to resolve her theological and biblical reservations, and after that Agnes utilized tongues daily in private prayer. She also used the gift of tongues while writing, discovering that form of praying helped her avoid errors by giving her a “check” in her spirit if she wrote anything contrary to the Word.

The first work Agnes wrote in this manner was Behold Your God (published in 1958).³⁹ This was her first attempt at serious theological reflection since The Healing Light of 1945. It came after two novels, which Agnes termed her “teaching parables,” and two children’s books. Mrs. Sanford’s brother badgered her for something more “meaty” and suggested a commentary on the creeds. Agnes felt this was a word from the Lord and she began work on Behold Your God. It developed as an extended commentary to The Healing Light, demonstrating a considerable deepening of her thought. The references to the creeds were reduced to incidental after thoughts.

Like The Healing Light, Behold Your God was simple in language and humble in its presentation. Mrs. Sanford admitted, for example, to being befuddled by the theological discussions of the Holy Spirit that dealt with a filioque debate that separated Christendom in the Eleventh Century. Yet, her understanding of the Holy Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit, as well as her understanding of the spirit of man were both pioneering and profound.

By the time Mrs. Sanford wrote Behold Your God, she had witnessed wide varieties of healing, from demonic based spiritualism, to Christian Science and metaphysics, to authentic Christian and Spirit-filled healing. In her understanding, godly spiritual healing could come at any one of three levels, which she related to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.⁴⁰ At the first level, any person who believed in one God, and who prayed believing would be granted some healing power. This was true regardless of whether or not one was a Christian. This position, which some Christians believe is impious, is biblical. The healings in the Old Testament all took place not because of faith in Jesus, but because of faith in God as healer (Jehovah-rohi). Agnes saw the contemporary equivalency of Old Testament healing in those in the Christian Science and the Metaphysical Movements who had strong faith in God, though they saw nothing uniquely divine in the person of Jesus. However, once a person believed in the divinity of Jesus, and made a commitment to His Lordship, the person was elevated into a healing power double that of the Old Testament position. The third and highest level of healing was reached when a believing Christian accepted the person and baptism of the Holy Spirit and received the gift of healing. Mrs. Sanford’s insight makes clear the sad situation of the contemporary world, Metaphysical believers can be healers, while “born again” Christians, who believe in cessationism, are often completely ineffective as channels of God’s healing power.

Mrs. Sanford saw the practice of positive thinking and visualization (holding a desired goal in the imagination) as having similar levels of power. Visualization is God-given and available to any believer in God. The power of visualization and positive thinking are increased when a person becomes a Christian and adds the name of Jesus to his prayer-visualizations. A third level is reached through the power of the Holy Spirit.⁴¹ Agnes looked at the biblical evidence and saw a pattern that explains this: Jesus taught first faith (i.e. positive trust expectancy) to his disciples and only revealed his divine nature later in his ministry.⁴² (Behold Your God, 35-36).

This concept of “levels” of spiritual power was broadened to explain the relationship between the powers of the soul (the “psychic” powers) and the powers of the Spirit-filled human spirit.

The Holy Spirit does not do violence to our natures, but only increases and develops in us gifts that are already potential to our natures. Some people have natural-born spiritual sensitivity, and if they use them only in the realm of meditation and spiritual living, avoiding séances, Ouija boards and automatic writing, the gift can be greatly used in God’s service (Behold Your God, 146).

Agnes believed that certain natural powers of the soul are increased when a person becomes Christian and fulfilled with the baptism of the Holy Spirit. For example, the gift of prophecy is a spiritualized fulfillment of the soul’s ability to perceive non-material realities, often manifested in pre-cognitive dreams. Similarly, the gifts of wisdom and knowledge are increments of powers of the soul to make intuitive judgments. This is a modern version of the traditional Catholic doctrine that “grace perfects nature.” It was later used by Catholic theologians of the renewal to explain to fellow Catholics the gifts of the Spirit.⁴³ This understanding of the gifts is contrary to that of many other Pentecostals and charismatics, who base their understanding of the gifts of the Spirit on Calvin’s doctrine of “total depravity.” In this theology, the human soul was so ruined by original sin that anything “psychic” is sinful. This position – popularized by Watchman Nee and well established among Evangelicals, Pentecostals and charismatics—does not make biblical sense. It makes, for instance, the prophetic dream of Pilot’s wife a psychic and sinful experience, quite contrary to the biblical text (Matt. 27:19). However this theology is so set among evangelical and a majority of charismatic circles that when Dave Hunt and other critics of Mrs. Sanford call her theology “psychic” and “occultic” because of its nature-to-grace basis, the accusation felt “true” in spite of its biblical contradictions.

The School of Pastoral Care⁴⁴

One of the most important achievements of Mrs. Sanford during the late 1950s was the founding of the School of Pastoral Care. She and her husband Ted were deeply grieved by the destructive nature of the instruction provided by the major seminaries, which resulted in pastors who knew little of effective prayer and nothing of healing or exorcism.⁴⁵ The Sanfords wanted a place where pastors, medical professionals and seminarians could be taught the spiritual dimensions of healing and effective prayer and integrate these with in their professional ministries.

Although the Sanfords loved the institutions of the church missions and especially the CFO camps, both had limitations. They attracted few ministerial or medical professionals, and because they were open to all, had the problem of slow learners or persons too deeply wounded or neurotic to receive much instruction. To remedy these shortcomings the Sanfords founded the School of Pastoral Care. It was based out of Westborough, Massachusetts, their “retirement” home, with Ted as first director and administrator. The Episcopal diocese of Massachusetts provided their retreat facilities for the School. The first School began in October, 10, 1955, lasting from Monday to Friday. The audience was limited and screened to include only pastors, medical professionals and seminarians. The participants at this School, and the ones following came from practically every denomination of mainline Protestantism. The program taught effective prayer, prayer for physical healing, inner healing and deliverance. The staff for this and all subsequent school included an ordained minister, a medical professional (physician or nurse) and a lay person experienced in prayer and bible teaching. Like the CFO camps, time each day was spent on practicing with each other the lessons of prayer and healing.

In the first years, Ted and Agnes were invariably the main instructors, with one of their medical friends rounding out the team. The School was founded after the Sanfords had experienced the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, and as a result, the curriculum incorporated the Baptism of the Spirit and its role in healing. The School began to multiply in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In 1956 two branches were begun in Texas and Ohio. One was begun in Austria in 1961, and this was followed quickly by others in England, Canada, Holland and New Zealand. The Canadian branch was particularly influential, and for a period, the Anglican hierarchy in several Canadian dioceses used the School as part of their priest’s continuing education program.

Mrs. Sanford as First Theologian of the Renewal

The Charismatic Renewal broke out in 1960, triggered by the publicity surrounding the Rev. Dennis Bennett’s “tongues” incident at his Episcopal Church in California.. It reached its crescendo in the mid 1970s. In the beginning years of the Renewal many of Mrs. Sanford’s books served as the primary theological inspiration of the movement. The Healing Light was its first healing textbook. Two other books were also influential, Behold Your God, published two years before the Renewal began, but circulated among Mrs. Sanford’s following at CFOs and denominational churches, and The Healing Gifts of the Spirit, published in 1966 while the Renewal was in full bloom.

From the very beginning of the Renewal there were some who believed Mrs. Sanford’s theology was “far out” and occultic. Besides the “strange” nature-to-grace theology, critics would point to her belief in the “pre-existent spirit” as proof of her unorthodoxy. Significantly, the concept of the pre-existent spirit is clearly indicated in both the Old and New Testaments. For example in Jer. 1:5, God addresses the prophet Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.” (Note also: Eph. 1:4 and 2 Thes. 2:13.) The idea seems heretical to contemporary Christians because it was ruled off the theological agenda as in the Fifth century by a Byzantine Emperor who fancied himself as a great theologian, and wanted to discredit the earlier theologian Origen. His prejudice became part of the theological consensus of the Medieval Church and went unchallenged during the Reformation period.

The Rev. Ted Sanford died in 1960, and five years later Agnes moved to Monrovia, California, to be close to her children. From there, she continued her teaching and speaking ministry and wrote her last books, including her autobiography, Sealed Orders. In California, she developed what might be called her “nature” ministry, which involved praying for the non-human created order. This is a ministry ignored by most Christians and entered into only by few persons such as St. Francis and George Washington Carver.

In a story related to this author by Mrs. Barbara Schlemon, Agnes was scheduled to give a healing lecture in a nearby town, and the minister who was to drive her found her in her home amidst her house plants with arms upraised and deeply in prayer. He asked Agnes what she was doing and she said “I’m praising the Lord with my prayer group, and they are doing a better job!” Psalm 96:11-12 would support this unusual view:

Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it; let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them. Then all the trees of the forest will sing for joy; they will sing before the Lord, for he comes, (NIV)

Agnes wrote a powerful book on this aspect of her spiritual life, Creation Waits (1978). In it, she gives multiple examples of her experiences with nature prayers. In her view, the secret to prayer power in this area is standing in the authority of a child of God:

“It is far more effective to talk directly to sea or sky, wind or storm, than simply to ask God to do this or that. We are God’s agents upon this earth. When praying for people we ask in His name and by His power, because we so often lack the necessary understanding of the people for whom we pray. In praying for nature, however, it is more effective to speak directly to wind or storm or tempest. That, after all is the way Jesus stilled the storm. “Peace, be still!”⁴⁶

Mrs. Sanford’s later theology was quite insightful and prophetic. She felt many charismatics were immature, and divisive of the unity of the church as a whole. Her book, The Healing Gifts of the Spirit (1966) was written in the early years of the Renewal and there she warned her readers that receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit was “strong medicine.” A person who has a weak self-concept, or a poorly disciplined Christian life, may have serious problems handling the energies of the Holy Spirit⁴⁷ She was particularly leery of the value that the new charismatics placed on the gifts of tongues. Especially destructive, she believed, was their doctrine of “initial evidence,” derived from the older Pentecostals. She saw that this belief often produced nothing more than subconscious babble, an opinion often mentioned among charismatic leaders, but rarely written.⁴⁸

Mrs. Sanford was particularly concerned about the damage caused by imprudent ministries of exorcism. For a period in the 1960s there circulated a teaching that any personality fault or sin was due to a demonic spirit. Thus people were being delivered from “spirits” of smoking, over-eating, criticism, etc. Agnes insisted that exorcism should be the ministry of last recourse. She had witnessed damage done to persons who were put through charismatic exorcism rituals when in fact they needed counseling or inner healing.⁴⁹ Eventually her suspicions of the Renewal softened. From her home in Monrovia, she learned to appreciate the “Jesus People,” those most exuberant, hippie children of the Charismatic Renewal, and her heart went out to them. Her last novel, Route 1, (1975) shows the Jesus People in a positive light.⁵⁰

Just how much her speaking engagements and writings helped to bring the Charismatic Renewal out of its initial immaturity and theological naiveté is one of those things that is impossible to quantify. She personally spoke to thousands in that decade, and touched many more through her books. She was especially influential in the Episcopal and Roman Catholic branches of the renewal. This should not be taken to mean that Mrs. Sanford was the only person of the 1960’s who had a mature theology of the Holy Spirit and gifts of the Spirit. In fact, the Renewal was blessed from the very beginning with outstanding leaders who had excellent theological training and insights.

However, by the late 1970s many charismatics were becoming leery of Mrs. Sanford’s theology. Some were unconvinced that the ministry of inner healing had any biblical warrant, more believed her theory of the pre-existent spirit was “far out” and cultic. As the Calvin-Nee theory that all psychic activity was inherently demonic became part of charismatic/evangelical consensus theology, Mrs. Sanford’s more “Catholic” theology of the levels of spiritual powers was also seen as erroneous. Thus even before the caricature of Mrs. Sanford appeared in Dave Hunt’s The Seduction of Christianity many leaders of the Renewal were distancing themselves from her and her theology.

Mrs. Sanford went to be with the Lord on February 21, 1982, Transfiguration Sunday. She was full of vitality and curiosity to the very end. A week before she died she planned to go up in a two-person glider and had been excited about it. To her daughter and to several close friends she said, “You know, I might not come back. I might just keep right on going!”⁵¹ There seems no doubt that she knew she would continue to a higher place.

Mrs. Sanford’s Place in the Charismatic Renewal

There is little doubt that in spite of the controversies she generated, Mrs. Sanford was indeed the first theologian the charismatic renewal. The Healing Light, issued as a Logos International paperback, became the healing text book of the early charismatic movement.⁵² She discipled many of the leadership of the charismatic renewal, including a handsome young priest named Francis MacNutt who met her at a CFO camp and eventually passed on the core of her teaching to the charismatic movement with his vastly influential works on healing.⁵³

The tragic rejection of Mrs. Sanford’s theology by large sections of Evangelical, and charismatic leaders is a sad case of the persistence of theological conservatism confusing denominational theology and prejudices with true heresy. In every case I have outlined in this paper, Mrs. Sanford took solidly, and literal biblical positions that were declared “heretical” not because they contradicted scripture, but because they were expressed in New Thought vocabulary and would not fit into the mold of cessationist-influenced Evangelical theology. Mrs. Sanford and her work reminds one of the great Third Century theologian, Origen, who pioneered the discipline of Christian theology. He was rejected as a heretic by more-conservative and often ignorant critics and his writings anathematized. It is only in recent decades that Origen’s monumental contributions to Christian theology and his fundamental orthodoxy have been appreciated.⁵⁴ It took over a millennium to begin to clear Origen’s name and appreciate his true role in Christian history. Hopefully, Mrs. Sanford’s achievements and fundamental orthodoxy will not take that long to be reestablished.

PR 

Notes

²⁷ Agnes Sanford, The Healing Light (St. Paul: Macalester Park, 1947). At the time of printing, an excerpt from Agnes Sanford’s book Healing Light was available online at this location: http://agnessanford.wwwhubs.com/sanford2.htm

²⁸ Taped interview with Dr. Harry Goldsmith, August 1983. Dr. Goldsmith was severely wounded as a young soldier in W.W.II, healed by Mrs. Sanford’s prayers at Tilton, and became her life-long friend.

²⁹ Compare her basic understanding of science with the seminal work of Sir Carl R. Popper, especially his technical The Logic of Scientific Discovery (New York: Science Editions, 1961), and the more readable Conjectures and Refutations: the growth of scientific knowledge (New York: Basic Books, 1962).

³⁰ Healing Light, 21.

³¹ See for example: George A, Maloney, The Mystic of Fire and Light: St. Symeon, the new theologian (Denville: Dimension Books, 1975).

³² Healing Light, 145

³³ Quenching the Spirit, chapter 17, Visualization and the Christian,” and Brooks Alexander’s masterful article “Mind Power and the Mind’s Eye,’” SPS Journal 9, no 3, (1990), 8-20.

³⁴ Healing Light, 64.

³⁵ Ibid, 128

³⁶ Ibid., 94.

³⁷ Ibid.. 77.

³⁸ Ibid., 139.

³⁹ Agnes Sanford, Behold Your God (St. Paul: Macalester Park, 1958).

⁴⁰ Behold, 136-137.

⁴¹ Compare with Brooks Alexander’s essentially similar position in his “Mind Power And The Mind’s Eye,” SCP Journal 9 #3, (1991) 8-20).

⁴² Behold, 35-36.

⁴³ Rene Laurentin, Catholic Pentecostalism (Garden City: Doubleday, 1977), 134.

⁴⁴ The Sources for this section are a taped interview with Dr. J. Howard Rhys, former director of the School of Pastoral Care (Aug. 13, 1983) as well as his article, “The School of Pastoral Care,” The Living Church, 162 (May 30, 1971), 8-9. The web site for the School is: www.schoolofpastoralcare.net

⁴⁵ Agnes’ heartfelt prayer for the renewal of the seminaries is found in her devotional work, Twice Seven Words (Plainfield: Logos International, 1971), 93.

⁴⁶ Agnes Sanford, Creation Waits (Plainfield: Logos International, 1978), 16

⁴⁷ Healing Gifts, 14.

⁴⁸ See: David du Plessis, “Mr. Pentecost Looks to the Future,” Charisma (May 1985), 95.

⁴⁹ Healing Gifts, 144, ff.

⁵⁰ Agnes Sanford, Route 1 (Plainfield: Logos International, 1975).

⁵¹ Story related to author by Mrs. Sanford’s daughter, Mrs. Virginia Clark, in telephone conversation in Aug. of 1986.

⁵² Healing Light (Plainfield: Logos International, 1972).

⁵³ See the introduction to Francis MacNutt, Healing (Notre Dame: Ave Maria, 1974).

⁵⁴ See the seminal work by Jean Danielou, Origen, Trans. by Walter Mitchell (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1955).

This article is an unpublished paper “Agnes Sanford: Ecumenical Teacher, Apostle of Healing Prayer and  First Theologian of the Charismatic Renewal” originally presented on March 15, 2002 at the 2002 Society for Pentecostal Studies Conference convened at Southeastern College in Lakeland, Florida. Used by permission of the author.