A New Significance for the Doctrine of Healing in the Atonement*
Keith M. Bailey
The doctrine of divine healing, once looked upon by many evangelicals as an embarrassment, now enjoys respectability both in the church and in the academic community. Doctors, psychologists, and psychiatrists who a decade ago would have smiled at the quaint notion of supernatural healing are now working at the integration of scientific and non-medical healing.
As the Christian and Missionary Alliance celebrates its centennial, the movement’s teaching on divine healing in the atonement takes on new significance. This doctrine was not an innovation of A.B. Simpson as some have assumed, nor was it just a popular theological fad of the times. It was a truth held by many in the church from apostolic times until the present. The belief in bodily healing as a redemptive benefit has distinguished divine healing from all other forms of non-medical healing throughout church history.
Healing in the Early Church
The ancient practice of anointing with oil in conjunction with the Eucharist implied the association of bodily healing with redemption. The liturgies and prayers that have been preserved from the Ante-Nicene period verify this position.
The Patristic writers associated divine healing with the resurrection of Christ. If healing is a manifestation of resurrection power it cannot be disassociated from the atonement. The death and resurrection of Christ are foundations of redemption. One is the necessary complement of the other.
Theophilus of Antioch said in his letter to Autolycus:
Here further, O man, of the work of resurrection going on in yourself, even though you are unaware of it. For perhaps you have fallen sick and lost flesh, and strength and beauty; but when you received again from God mercy and healing, you picked up again in flesh and appearance and recovered also your strength.1
Origen, another of the church fathers, in a Homily on Leviticus written about AD 241, explained the healing offered believers through anointing by relating it to the grain offering in Leviticus chapter two.
The grain offering was a type of Christ’s death, the only basis for the remission of sin. The association of healing with the remission of sins means that such physical healings were not general mercies or special acts of power, but the result of atonement.
A third Patristic testimony was from Tertullian in his work The Resurrection of the Flesh.
“He is come to seek and to save that which is lost,” What do you suppose that to be which is lost? Man, undoubtedly…The whole man…he will be wholly saved since he has by sinning been wholly lost. Unless it be true that the sheep of the parable is a “lost” one, irrespective of its body…Since, however, it is the bodily substance as well as the soul, making up the entire animal, which was carried on the shoulders of the Good Shepherd, we have here unquestionably an example of how man is restored in both his natures. Else how unworthy it were of God to bring only a moiety of man to salvation…Whereas the munificence of princes of this world always claims for itself the merit of a plenary grace! Then must the devil be understood to be stronger for injuring man, ruining him wholly? And must God have the character of comparative weakness, since he does not relieve and help man in his entire state?…2
Irenaeus was even more direct in his treatment of healing as a redemptive benefit.
The maker of all things, the Word of God, Who did also from the beginning form man, when He found His handiwork impaired by wickedness, performed upon it all kinds of healing…How can they maintain that the flesh is incapable of receiving the life which flows from Him when it received healing from Him? For life is brought about through healing, and incorruption through life. He, therefore, who confers healing and incorruption through life; and He, Who gives life, also surrounds His own handiwork with incorruption. As he suffered, so also is He alive, and life-giving, and healing all our infirmity…3
The ancient church believed divine healing to be a believer’s benefit provided by the finished work of Christ. The modern healing movement in which the Alliance was born appeals to the same scriptures and the same theological arguments found in the post-apostolic and Ante-Nicene fathers for the teaching of healing. The modern healing movement recovered an apostolic truth.
The doctrine of divine healing now faces its greatest challenge. Anthropology and psychology are no longer exclusively the study of theologians. The study of man’s physical and psychological makeup is largely from a secular point of view. Modern medicine holds to these same humanistic presuppositions.
Modern Healing Movement
The Message of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, by W.M. Turnbull and C.H. Christman, published by the Christian Alliance Publishing Company in 1927, quotes Dr. Kenneth Mackenzie as saying that Dr. Simpson was probably the first man to define healing in the atonement. Unfortunately, Dr. MacKenzie had not thoroughly researched this subject. Simpson’s position on healing in the atonement was not a new concept nor was he the first to write about it. A number of leaders in the holiness/healing revival of that period had preached and written on the subject.
W.E. Boardman of London published a book on divine healing the same year Dr. Simpson resigned his pulpit at the 13th Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. It sets forth the teaching that healing was procured by atonement. This concept had also surfaced in the writings of German revivalist Johann Christopher Blumhart.
In the first years of the modern healing renewal movement, the idea of physical healing being redemptive met with little resistance. The first wave of reaction to this doctrinal position came from the Reformed theologians and was led by Benjamin Warfield of Princeton. His treatment actually admitted that healing was in the atonement but denied any present physical benefits from that fact. Warfield shows that reformed theology views the resurrection as the ultimate healing and relates that ultimate healing to the atonement.
By the early 1920s the spread of Pentecostalism with its practice of spectacular healing campaigns produced a new wave of resistance to divine healing. The excesses sometimes attendant to those meetings made the teaching of divine healing suspect. At the same time the new dispensational theology was being embraced by many evangelicals. The dispensationalists dismissed healing by making it a manifestation of the Mediatorial Kingdom. They concluded that there was no divine healing during the church age.
The writers of this period failed to research the theological roots of the doctrine of healing. Most of the books and papers written were negative and overlooked the theological issues. Many evangelicals rejected the doctrine of healing on dispensational grounds without examining the historical and theological evidence.
The early controversies over healing in the atonement were in-house wars among evangelicals committed to different closed systems of theology. Little exegesis of the scriptural texts can be found in the literature produced in this controversy even when such theological giants as Benjamin Warfield were involved. Most of the books written against healing in the atonement have been lying on bookshelves unread for more than a generation.
In the several years since the “healing in the atonement” controversy peaked among evangelicals, the attitude of scientists toward the matter of faith healing has radically changed. The recognition of psychic reality by many scientists has made the doctrine of physical healing more palatable to them.
E. Marshall Pattison, M.D., Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behaviour at the University of California says,
The early medical literature of the twentieth century commented upon faith healing as an interesting example of aberrant behaviour. Subsequent scientific discussions focused on the nature of the psychosomatic processes involved in faith healing, thus making the concept of faith healing acceptable to both a religious and scientific frame of reference.4
Pattison’s statement summarizes the change in the medical community’s thinking on divine healing during this century.
The American Medical Association’s Department of Medicine and Religion has released an official statement on faith healing. Dr. C. Pardue Bunch, of the American Academy of Family Physicians, has summarized the medical association’s statement.
Medical leaders recognize that man cannot be separated into parts for care and treatment of his illness. Man is a whole being. His health is affected by physical, spiritual, mental, and social factors. The faith of the individual patient is a vital factor in total health. It is not a matter of whether we agree or disagree or accept his particular type or degree of faith. The patient has faith and we must deal with the patient within the realm of his faith.5
The position of the medical profession on the validity of divine healing, as reflected in these statements, offers some encouragement to the church, but there is a missing dimension in all of these official statements from the sciences. The fundamental truth of redemption through Christ receives no mention. The medical profession makes faith the key word. Limiting the consideration of Christian healing to the faith factor has the practical effect of placing divine healing on an equal footing with all other forms of non-medical healing. Historically, Christian healing has been considered the work of Jesus Christ and redemptive in nature.
By recognizing the atonement of Christ as the procuring cause of divine healing, the church is declaring that physical healing for the Christian is much more than faith healing. While the benefit of healing is received by faith, that faith must be placed in the work of Christ and nowhere else. Since healing is a redemptive privilege of believers, it is never given without regard to the believer’s spiritual state and the will of God.
New View of the Atonement
The concept of healing in the atonement takes on new significance as science and the church go into dialogue about divine healing. The world view of the scientist may be radically different from the world view of the Christian. The scientist who accepts non-space-time experience as reality may believe that physical healings could come from the psychic experience but would not necessarily perceive the healing as a redemptive work of God of the Bible.
Morton T. Kelsey, an Episcopal priest and a Jungian psychologist, has written a study of healing in which he seeks to align the teaching of the church on healing and the insights of philosophy, psychology and medicine. Kelsey, drawing from the vast healing literature of the church, concludes that healing is in the atonement but redefines the theological meaning of the atonement in terms of a world view developed by psychologist Carl Jung. Kelsey summarized Jung’s views:
The vast psychic world with which man is presented through the unconscious contents and meanings, Jung found, as objectively real, and as meaningful and possible to experience as the physical world of space and time. In fact, Jung’s thinking can provide a philosophical base for modern experiential theology with an approach to healing.6
Kelsey waters down the doctrine of the atonement by making it an action of the spirit world upon the physical world. He appears to exclude the physical aspect of the atonement. Following Jung’s world view, Kelsey sees the incarnation as the Spirit of God becoming incarnate in one human being. Kelsey says that the events of Christ’s birth show the incarnation actually to be the ultimate extension of Spirit in human life.7
This conclusion denies the teaching of Scripture that the Son, the second person of the Godhead, became flesh. That is far different from the extension of the Spirit in human life. In accepting Jung’s world view, Kelsey abandoned the historic Christian doctrine of the incarnation and the atonement.
Morton T. Kelsey says,
The atonement in terms of the world view we have presented is the spiritual result of victory worked out by Christ, as Spirit, in the physical world through Jesus, as man. If, as it appears, the outer action of ordinary men can influence events in the psychic, non-physical world, through active imagination even changing both psychic and physical circumstances, then the atonement is the supreme example of such actions.8
While making the atonement the basis of divine healing, Kelsey has so changed the meaning of atonement that his affirmation in no way reflects the doctrine as understood by the historic Christian church. He comes from a pseudo-scientific approach and arrives at a doctrine of atonement that is unbiblical.
The Scientific Perception of Spirituality
One cannot assume that the medical community’s understanding of the “whole man” concept and the Christian’s understanding of that concept are one and the same. Unfortunately many of the efforts to integrate Christian faith and medical science have only dealt with the surface matters. A careful examination of the medical conclusions reveals a totally different perception of the whole man from that held by evangelical Christians. The critical difference between the medical view and the Christian view is their respective definitions of man’s “spirit.”
By man’s spirit the secular disciplines mean merely his capacity for communication with psychic reality. The Biblical meaning of spirit implies man’s capacity for communion with the Creator-Redeemer God of Scripture.
A recent book entitled The Holistic Way to Health and Happiness says,
The spiritual dimension of your personality is the basis of your total satisfaction or dissatisfaction with living. Spiritual health generates a sense of personal fulfilment, a sense of peace with yourself and the world. It may also lead to a sense of unity with the cosmos or a personal closeness with God. The greatest reward of spiritual growth is the discovery that you have the power to be a self-fulfilling person despite life vicissitudes.9
The above quote is taken from a chapter entitled “Spirit: The Forgotten Dimension of Health.” The author suggests that spiritual growth may occur by reading Walt Whitman or the Bible. Prayer, according to this author, can be important in the healing process, but he spends most of the chapter on Transcendental Meditation as a means of spiritual growth. Obviously, Dr. Bloomfield has a different perception of spirituality from that found in the Word of God.
The terminology employed by the sciences must be clearly defined before relating a given term to a similar Christian concept. The term “faith healing” is not necessarily the equivalent of divine healing as taught by historic Christianity. The pagan culture in which the apostolic church ministered believed strongly in non-medical healing powers. Even in our own day most of the non-Christian world believes in supernatural healing.
The believer must discover from Scripture what is meant by divine healing and how it differs from all other forms of non-medical healing. If that distinction is not made the believer runs the risk of opening himself to the power of darkness.
The medical scientist and behaviour scientist for the most part deny the idea of human depravity. A recent scientific paper claims that man in his primal state reflects the true nature of man.
…we can say with some assurance what `man’ is like. And he is nothing like we expected. He is not evil or wickedly lustful, or selfish.10
In that same paper a thesis is proposed to put man in touch with his so-called primordial depths so he may discover his true nature.
The research in primal consciousness seeks to put man in touch with a part of his brain which existed millennia ago so he may recover his instinctive self. The study proposes this concept as a cure of the mental, physical and social void of modern man.
The ever changing theories in modern psychology range from sound premises based on research and adequate evidence to the bizarre theory of the primal consciousness. Since psychology deals with the complex nature of the human personality it cannot, as a science, substantiate all its claims by empirical evidence. It has been subject, more than other sciences, to the influences of philosophical presuppositions. The line between theory and fact is often blurred. The church must exercise discernment in accepting the claims of psychology. The church has forsaken the study of biblical psychology and far too often accepts the conclusions of secular psychology as dogma.
The Need for Biblical Psychology
The German theologian, Franz Delitzsch, published The Theology of Biblical Psychology in 1845. In 1855, A System of Biblical Psychology was published by Delitzsch in which he traces the history of human psychology from the early church to his own day. Tertullian, Gregory of Thaumaturgus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Origen all wrote dogmatic works on the nature of man. Delitzsch concluded that by the Middle Ages the study of Biblical psychology was more systematic and rested largely on the philosophies of Aristotle and Plato.
Delitzsch says of the literature on man’s nature during Medieval times,
…Combining Plato with Aristotle, there is the attempt to read immediately in the Book of Nature, and to draw out of the depth of the soul’s consciousness; but men did not see their way to a free and undivided reference to the teaching of Holy Scripture; and even had they wished to draw from that source immediately, their ignorance of its language would not allow them to appeal to it at first hand.11
In his study of the history of Biblical psychology, Delitzsch determined the Reformers to be the beginning of “a really free scriptural inquiry” into man’s nature.
The first biblical psychology written in Germany was Melanchthon’s Commentarius de Anima published in 1540. This work used the Scripture as an apologetic for psychological concepts already acknowledged. Most of those conclusions were more philosophical than scientific. Melanchthon’s method prevailed until the work by John Albert Bengel (1752) was published. Bengel pioneered the study of human psychology by viewing philosophical conclusions on the subject in the light of Scripture.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Biblical psychology had taken its rightful place in the entire system of theology. A rather impressive literature of Biblical psychology emerged during the nineteenth century. Some German theologians considered Biblical psychology to be the rounding out of the doctrine of anthropology. The impact of the natural sciences was already felt by the church. By the middle of the nineteenth century some theologians were yielding to the criticism of Biblical psychology, maintaining that the Scriptures do not speak to knowledge of nature which comes out of empirical investigation. They also held that to be true of cosmogony. The theologians questioned the possibility of written Scripture speaking with accuracy to the nature of the material world and man’s physiology and psychology.
The critics of Biblical psychology eventually won the day. The literature in the field is practically unknown to modern theologians. The conclusions of the sciences regarding man’s nature have been generally accepted by the church and seldom questioned. Pastors and theologians tend to accept the psychology of the scientific community and search for a few proof texts to sustain those concepts they feel are applicable to their ministry. The problem presented by this situation is that the church, whose business is ministry to the needs of the human personality, is often working from a view of man’s nature that is philosophically contrary to the Biblical revelation of man’s nature. We are virtually without Biblical psychology.
The rejection of Biblical psychology left the modern evangelical theologians without a grid through which to view the rapidly developing sciences related to man’s nature. The bridging of the healing sciences and theology has been, for the most part, initiated by the scientist rather than the theologian.
Franz Delitzsch, professor of theology in Leipsci, Germany, wrote in the prolegomena of his great work a definition of Biblical psychology:
…under the name of Biblical psychology I understand a scientific representation of the doctrine of scripture on the physical constitution of man as it was created, and the ways in which this constitution has been affected by sin and redemption. There is such a doctrine in scripture.12
Delitzsch argues that the spiritual, psychological and mental aspects of man’s nature cannot be completely understood apart from the revealed truth found in written Scripture. For the Bible believing Christian, the wholeness of man is understood in terms of the Scripture. Such a Biblical psychology is essential to a sound doctrine of divine healing.
The area of the demonic also calls for a Biblical psychology. The nature and treatment of the demonic is exclusively redemptive. Apart from the atonement of Jesus Christ, no deliverance is possible. While medical treatment has effected cures in the mentally ill, the therapy and drugs have not cured the demonized. It is the power of the blood of Christ and the authority of His name that defeat the power of darkness and release the human personality from demonic bondage. Encounters with the power of darkness require the church to place its confidence in the blood of the Lamb of God. The deliverance of the demonized is a ministry of healing.
Warning Signals
The present trend to integrate the concepts of secular disciplines with the church’s doctrine of healing has already brought some evangelicals to a less than Biblical view of healing. An example of such syncretism appeared in a recent issue of Christianity Today. Rodney Clapp wrote an article dealing with new trends in the church’s ministry of healing. He coins the term “centrist healing” to describe the integration of “faith” healing and medicine. Clapp says,
Because it is ultimately concerned with healing, centrist healing will seek and use any means to achieve that healing. It is not a question of God getting the credit if the healing is direct and instantaneous, and medicine getting the credit if it is gradual and chemical related. Nor is it a question of the pastor or physician taking credit. The pastor, physician and chemicals are all instruments of healing. Anointing oil and penicillin can both be sacraments of health.
The approach of the centrist healing theory, described by Clapp, is completely secular in its viewpoint. On these terms healing is no more than an operation of the physical and psychological laws. Its ultimate objective, according to Clapp, is the healing of the individual. The Biblical doctrine of divine healing cannot be reconciled with the centrist position.
Divine healing has as its ultimate objective the glory of God. Scripturally, divine healing is a benefit for believers only. The healing of the believer and non-believer are two different things. While God can and sometimes does heal a non-believer in a sovereign action, the doctrine of divine healing is addressed to the people of God and rests on a covenant relationship provided by the atonement.
Clapp’s claim that anointing oil and penicillin can both be sacraments of health reveals a totally different perception of unction from that of historic Christianity. Penicillin heals by natural laws and anointing oil symbolizes healing by direct, divine intervention. These two approaches to healing cannot be equated. No spiritual conditions or personal relationship to God are required for the successful use of penicillin in the treatment of illness. The anointing is an ecclesiastical rite performed in Christ’s name and under conditions laid down in Scripture.
One may argue, since God created the natural laws by which the application of penicillin aids healing, how can that be different from divine healing? While God is the first cause in all true healing, the recovery of a sick body through chemical treatment is a common grace that can be enjoyed by the most ungodly as well as the believer. It is not redemptive and is in no way dependent on a blood-bought relationship with God. Divine healing is a believer’s privilege. It is a supernatural intervention. The conditions for claiming divine healing are essentially spiritual in nature.
Whatever interaction the church’s ministry of healing may have with medicine and psychology, the distinction between common grace and redemptive benefit must be maintained.
Conclusion
The present interest in divine healing by scientists has the potential for blessing or it could create problems for those evangelicals that have historically taught and practiced this doctrine. The inter-disciplinary study of non-medical healing presents a challenge to those church bodies committed to the doctrine of healing as presented in written Scripture. The present discussion between scientist and theologian calls for a fresh affirmation of the redemptive aspect of divine healing.
At present, medicine and psychology are setting the terms on which their disciplines and the church meet in the study of non-medical healing. There is an urgent need of a solid, Biblical theology of human nature and physical healing. In too many instances the concepts of the healing sciences are accepted and some feeble effort is made to relate them to proof texts. The flow should be moving the other way. Theologians should be able to take the initiative and address the healing scientists with the body of truth on man and the healing of his whole being as found in revealed Scripture. The church must also use this same theology to test every premise of the sciences, for the church and the sciences can only meet at the point of truth.
How then can the Biblical doctrine of divine healing be reconciled to the disciplines of modern science? They cannot be fully reconciled for they operate in two spheres. Science contributes to the body of knowledge about man, but does not and cannot address his spiritual nature. The church must use candour in dealing with modern science’s proposals to a happy marriage of medicine and the church in the ministry of healing. What must be surrendered to have such a union with the secular sciences? Since divine healing is procured by the finished work of Christ for His redeemed people, the church is the agency of that ministry and it must be carried out in conformity to written Scripture.
To assume this position is not to discount the value and benefits of modern medicine and psychology. It means the church must scrutinize the philosophical presuppositions in which these secular sciences are established and be prepared to resist the non-Christian concepts in medicine and psychology.
When the church interacts with medicine and psychology it must be selective so as not to compromise the truth. The church dare not surrender its Christ-given ministry of healing to secular movements outside the church. Christian healing comes from a system of truth that admits man’s fallen condition and believes that condition to be the root cause of human illness. It teaches that the redeemed sinner can enjoy the benefit of physical healing now on the basis of faith in the stated promise of Scripture. The church has historically believed divine healing to be a blessing of redemption.
As the Alliance enters its second century of ministry, the doctrine of healing in the atonement becomes an important issue. It is upon this sure ground the church must stand as it meets the growing interest of the public and the sciences in non-medical healing. That which makes the biblical doctrine of healing different is its concept of man’s depravity and its complete faith in the redemptive work of Christ. Divine healing is not just some unknown spiritual force healing the human body. Christian healing contends that the healing is the direct intervention of the living Christ on the basis of His death and resurrection.
* His Dominion, 13(4): 2-12 (1987).
1. Evelyn Frost, Christian Healing (London: A.R. Mowbray & Co., 1940), p.103.
4. Compiled by Claude A. Frazier, M.D., Faith Healing: The Finger of God or Scientific Curiosity? (New York: Thomas E. Nelson, 1973), p. 105.
6. Morton T. Kelsey, Healing and Christianity (New York: Thomas E. Nelson, 1973), p. 105.
9. Harold H. Bloomfield and Robert B. Kory, The Holistic Way to Health and Happiness (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), p. 244.
10. Arthur Janov, Primal Man: The New Consciousness (New York: Crowell, 1985), p.455.
11. Franz Delitzsch, A System of Biblical Psychology (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clarke, 1890), p.5.
Source of Information:Keith Bailey, New Significance for the Doctrine of Healing in the Atonement