An excerpt from Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, by Craig S. Keener. From Pneuma Review Fall 2013.

From Part 3, “Miracle Accounts beyond Antiquity”

Chapter 7, “Majority World Perspectives”

Pages 238-241

For these countries alone, and for Pentecostals and charismatics in these countries alone, the estimated total of people claiming to have “witnessed divine healings” comes out to somewhere around 202,141,082, that is, about two hundred million. Among Pentecostals, an average of 73.6 percent claim to have witnessed or experienced divine healing, and among charismatics the proportion is 52 percent; given estimates of possibly half a billion Pentecostals and charismatics worldwide, we might be looking at claims of closer to three hundred million among them alone.¹⁵⁴ My estimates extrapolate on the assumption that numbers and percentages above are roughly accurate; in fact, all such figures are merely estimates, but they give us the best current ballpark figure to work from. Even if for some reason we later estimated only one-third of these figures (a much greater margin of error than seems likely), the numbers are already enormous even before we add (below) the noncharismatic claims.

Lest I be misunderstood, I must emphasize that in noting the prevalence of healing claims, I am not offering a blanket endorsement of all the beliefs on all issues that command majorities among these groups (elsewhere in the same survey), including beliefs about healings. I am also not suggesting that all claims of cures are authentic; still less am I suggesting that none of the claims could have alternative explanations,¹⁵⁵ though from my research I suspect that the majority of those who claim to have witnessed some miracles could specify some fairly substantive claims.¹⁵⁶ My point here is simply to invite attention to what this survey indicates about the vast numbers of people worldwide who claim to have witnessed supernaturally effected healings. The examples that I offer in the following chapters may make this observation more concrete, but my examples obviously pale before the statistics.

Such Claims Not Limited to Pentecostals

What may be more interesting in this survey, however, is the category of “other Christians,” with somewhere around 39 percent in these countries claiming to have “witnessed divine healings.” That is, more than one-third of Christians worldwide who do not identify themselves as Pentecostal or charismatic claim to have “witnessed divine healings.” Presumably many of these claimants believe that they have witnessed more than a single case. Note that these are not simply people who say that they believe that supernatural healing occurs; these are people who say that they believe that they have witnessed or experienced it.¹⁵⁷

Of course many of these claims would not withstand critical scrutiny, and presumably an even higher percentage would fail to persuade others predisposed not to believe. But those who would simply reject all healing claims today because Hume argued that such claims are too rare to be believable should keep in mind that they are dismissing, almost without argument, the claimed experiences of at least a few hundred million people. (Even if one were to err extremely on the side of modesty, one could easily speak boldly of “tens of millions” of claims.) In contrast to starting assumptions on which Hume built his case, it is no longer feasible to consider such claims rare.

As noted above, the greatest concentration of these claims is in Africa, Asia, and Latin America rather than in the West, though in chapter 11 I shall note abundant examples from the West as well. Non-Pentecostal Western Christian workers active in such areas often report dramatic phenomena similar to those reported by Pentecostals.¹⁵⁸ Worldview is probably one important factor in generating more faith recoveries in many non-Western regions;¹⁵⁹ for example, nearly a decade ago one of my students, a sincere Baptist pastor from India, complained that Americans he prayed for were rarely healed, but almost everyone he prayed for in north India was healed.¹⁶⁰

Accurate or inaccurate, reports of prophetism, dreams, visions, and healings (sometimes of incurable, terminal illnesses) on a massive scale characterize many areas where Christianity is expanding rapidly and with intense religious fervor among non-Christian populations.¹⁶¹ Although some¹⁶² Westerners historically used cultural dominance from colonial cultures or (especially in Latin America) force to spread Christianization, many indigenous evangelists today instead embrace the missiological model they encounter in Acts and believe that they are following Paul’s model.¹⁶³ One Western charismatic missiologist argues that whereas some Asian Christians appreciated Western missionaries bringing teaching about God, many Asian missionaries are now demonstrating God’s power through miracles.¹⁶⁴ Another writer recounts that missionaries to one region in Africa who merely left behind Gospels returned to find a flourishing church with nt-like miracles happening daily, “because there had been no missionaries to teach that such things were not to be taken literally.”¹⁶⁵ Indigenous readings of Scripture often noticed patterns there “that the missionaries did not want [local believers] to see.”¹⁶⁶

Although the most visible growth has occurred in the last three decades,¹⁶⁷ already in 1981, at one large U.S. seminary with students from many nations, Christiaan De Wet of South Africa wrote a thesis on signs involved in church growth around the world. He surveyed more than 350 theses representing most of the world and interviewed countless missionaries. He complained, “My research has turned up so much material on signs and wonders that are happening and churches that are growing, that it is impossible to use all of it.”¹⁶⁸ He noted that miracle claims help drive Christian growth in many parts of the world.

PR

This excerpt is from Craig S. Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, 2 volumes, Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2011. Used by permission. All rights to this material are reserved. Material is not to be reproduced, scanned, copied, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without written permission from Baker Publishing Group.

Footnotes appear in the full digital issue of Pneuma Review Fall 2013 and in the book from which this excerpt is derived.

In the days of Pasteur and Lister, was the Divine Healing movement out of touch with what American society believed about medicine?

Introduction

The late nineteenth century was a time of monumental change. It witnessed a cyclone of transformation and progress rivaling, at least, that of any preceding era. Not surprisingly, it was a time of key advances in medical science. This era was home to Pasteur, Röntgen, Lister, and a number of lesser known, but still significant, medical pioneers. These inventors and their discoveries radically reshaped and significantly advanced the practice of medicine. New advances seemed to be dawning with every new day. At the end of the nineteenth century, the promise of medical science seemed unlimited.

At the same time, the late nineteenth century also saw religious change. There was the emergence of the Divine Healing movement, a loosely associated group of religious teachers and practitioners who sought to promote and practice the healing power of the indwelling and resurrected Christ over that of natural means. This movement gained tens of thousands of adherents in a significantly short span of time. Key figures in this group included people from a wide-variety of denominations, men and women, ministers and physicians. Furthermore, this movement played an essential role in the birth of Pentecostalism,¹ the greatest religious movement of the twentieth century.

Therefore, there rose simultaneously on the American landscape at least two significant approaches to health and healing in the late nineteenth century, each with its own biased and ardent champions and devotees. Yet, the opinion of the late nineteenth-century Divine Healing teachers did not, as one might expect, thoroughly dispense with the value and goodness of physicians, their diagnoses, and medical treatment. While they did not completely dismiss the advances, usefulness, and propriety of medical science, they did assert that it was, at best, a deficient approach to the gravity, complexity, and depth of human disease. While they believed that physicians and their medical treatments may be gifts from God, they were convinced that medical science was fundamentally unable to bring to humanity the kind of health and life intended for them by God and found solely in the redeeming work of Jesus Christ.

This chapter will explore those common and key responses—both the affirmations and the denials—of the late nineteenth-century Divine Healing proponents to the growing popularity and use of medicine, remedies, and physicians.

Divine Healing Affirmations of Medical Science

Almost to a person, Divine Healing advocates readily granted that doctors and many of their treatments exist by the providence of God. A. B. Simpson, founder of The Christian and Missionary Alliance, noted that physicians and their medical treatments are “among God’s good gifts” to humanity.² Charles Cullis, the renowned Boston homeopath and father of the Divine Healing movement in the United States noted the “valuable” role that doctors and their treatments may play and continued his own homeopathic medical practice in harmony with his ministry of Divine Healing.³ Carrie Judd Montgomery, one of the Divine Healing movement’s more celebrated authors, speakers, and founder of the “Home of Peace” in Oakland, California, granted the skill of those physicians that worked with her during her own infirmity.⁴ One lesser-known figure, Kenneth McKenzie, a member of Simpson’s Christian and Missionary Alliance and author of no fewer than two significant texts on the theology and practice of Divine Healing, noted that only those with an immature theology of Divine Healing and “extremists” would deny that there is good in doctors and medicine.⁵ Furthermore, the fact that most Divine Healing proponents continued to refer to physicians as “Dr.” shows that only by caricature could one assert that Divine Healing movement saw absolutely no good or use in consulting with physicians and implementing their prescriptions.⁶

These affirmations of physicians and medical treatment by Divine Healing proponents, however, were not blanket endorsements. Rather, as we will see, they were limited to particular and specific arenas. What is particularly interesting is the seeming unanimity of the Divine Healing proponents in regard to those particular areas that they affirmed in regard to medical science. Almost universally, the Divine Healing teachers affirmed three separate but related aspects of the goodness of physicians and medical science: 1) the recent and substantial advances in medical science, 2) the physicians’ ability to diagnose the physical cause of disease, and 3) the physicians’ occasional ability to alleviate symptoms of disease.

Israel’s Divine Healer. Michael Brown. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995. Pp. 462.

For those who believe that God miraculously heals today, this book is a decisive argument in their favor. I am not aware of any other book that so thoroughly offers a theological and exegetical foundation for divine healing, especially from the Hebrew Scriptures and the perspective of Messianic fulfillment in the New Testament.

Part of the Studies in Old Testament Biblical Theology series edited by William VanGemeren and Tremper Longman III, the author of this work has come to be well known to many classical Pentecostals in recent years. Dr. Michael Brown finished this book before his tenure as the Messianic Jewish scholar of the “Brownsville Revival” in Pensacola, Florida.

Brown begins with a detailed word study of various roots associated with “healing” in the Hebrew Scriptures. Even those unfamiliar with Hebrew will see quickly the holistic understanding of “healing” in the Jewish mind. Just as salvation is not mere fire insurance, healing—as understood in Hebrew—includes all aspects of restoration to “full” life.

Next, Brown looks at human physicians and ancient healing deities to establish the similarities and distinction between Israel and its ancient neighbors. He notes that minor injuries (cuts, fractures) were taken care of by natural means while internal and serious conditions (fevers, severe pain) were always seen as an attack from something outside of man. Brown uses numerous examples to demonstrate that it was “normal” to have physicians in ancient times that set bones and treated wounds, and (at least in Israel) without necessarily invoking magic or the supernatural. One point of interest in this chapter is the debunking of 2 Chron. 16:12 as a general critique of physicians and modern medical practice. Brown argues that the context of Asa’s reign and early major victory demands that Asa languished in his disease of the feet not because he made inquiry (Brown says that the word for the “inquiry” Asa made always has a spiritual connotation—this was more a visit to a witchdoctor than a family practitioner) of physicians but because he relied on the arm of flesh and not God. Godless trust in man was Asa’s sin, not trust in doctors. Brown says “To the ancient and Near Eastern—and biblical!—mind, it was impossible to countenance a major god/God who did not heal” (p. 53, emphasis his). Even the Greeks combined doctor and savior as complimentary (p. 59). There are also numerous explanations of rabbinic thought, as diverse as it was, on the subjects of healing and physicians.