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Reflections on the Will of God With Regard to Physical Infirmity
Submitted by Joel Gillespie
For J.I. Packer
Systematic Theology III
RegentCollege
Jan. 16, 1989
Dr. Packer,
I have taken some liberty in this paper by writing it in the form of a letter to a friend of mine. This was in part motivated by the fact that I hate writing papers and love writing letters. But it also reflects the personal nature of the material, even the pastoral significance which it had for me. The “Frank” in the letter is a real person, a friend, who espouses the view given by Blue, MacNutt and Wimber. You, of course, have “power and authority” to handle and judge this format as you see fit. I at least hope that you enjoy reading it. Sincerely, Joel Gillespie
Dear Frank,
Since our last discussion on the subject of Divine healing I have had the pleasure of reading several books which relate to the topic, including those works which reflect you own viewpoint on the matter. Thank you for loaning some of these books to me. I have read Ken Blue’s Authority to Heal, John Wimber’s Power Healing, Frances MacNutt’s Healing, Andrew Murray’s Divine Healing, Joni Eareckson’s A Step Further, Henry Frosts’s Miraculous Healing, C.S. Lewis’s Problem of Pain, part of Warfield’s Counterfeit Miracles as well as essays and paragraphs from Packer, Tournier and Calvin. There are lots of ideas and perspectives swimming furiously about in my head, but some have settled clearly enough that I can offer at least some tentative working conclusions of my own.
I remember that the last time we talked you ended the conversation by suggesting that you couldn’t really be bothered by all of the speculations and protests which I was raising; for you it was a matter of looking in a childlike manner to the gospels and desiring simply to emulate the life and character of Jesus. I admire this sentiment, and confessedly, when you say such things it makes me feel a bit like a dusty old theological stick-in-the-mud. But I object to what you intended by this on two counts. First, on the level of experience, the whole issue is very poignant and real to me. I really do care about the people I know who are sick or broken-hearted, and thus I am drawn emotionally into the gospel healing stories. I can imagine these people being healed by Jesus, and I get excited about the possibility that they could in fact be healed. I pray for this all the time. But, and this is my second objection, my Bible is not simple a collection of healing stories, and many other parts of Scripture have to be weighed and considered, some of which apparently seem to you academic and speculative. The Bible forces me into a broader and deeper analysis of the questions involved than that which the healing stories themselves as apparently explicitly understood seem to force upon me. Indeed, there are tremendous theological and hermeneutical issues raised in the books whose views you espouse, and to interact with these is to move far afield from the simple sentiment which you expressed.
Actually, there are some common threads running through the books by Wimber, Blue, MacNutt, and Murray, and on at least two of these common themes I would like to concentrate for the duration of this letter. First, there is the matter of the goodness and mercy of God as revealed in the healings of Jesus, from which springs the issue of God’s will in regard to physical healing. Related to this matter are the questions of sanctification through suffering and the continuation of the Adamic curse. Second is the question of God’s will and sovereignty as it relates to the activity and work of Satan. I will touch on these in order and then conclude with a few short thoughts on the commissioning by Jesus of the twelve and seventy, a section of Scripture particularly crucial to Wimber and Blue.
First, I would like to consider in some detail the emphasis in these books on God’s goodness particularly as that goodness relates to our physical healing. Here MacNutt(1), Wimber(2) and Blue(3) each lay their primary theological foundation for understanding God’s desire to heal today. The basic argument is that since Jesus is the revelation of God, His compassion and merciful action reveal the heart of God toward the sick. God’s character is drawn out as one essentially of benevolent goodness, a goodness which yearns to grant the good of physical health. MacNutt writes, “The revelation of God in Jesus Christ is that we have a merciful Lord who saves and heals”(4). The very fact the God is love, argues MacNutt, should suggest to us that healing is an ordinary sign of His compassion, for healing is what loving fathers do for their children(5). What is lacking is not His desire and intention to heal, but our understanding of His nature as Jesus Christ reveals it:
There is a crucial need to return to the vision of God revealed in and by Jesus Christ, the tender, loving, compassionate God who raises men up and makes them whole(6).
For Wimber, this understanding of God’s character is summed up in a vision he had of God’s mercy, a vision in which he saw honey dropping out of the sky on to various people, some of whom were weeping and holding out hands to catch the honey, while others were complaining about the mess(7). Asking God about the meaning of what he had seen, Wimber hears God saying,
It’s my mercy, John. For some people it’s a blessing, but for others it’s a hindrance. There’s plenty for everyone. Don’t ever beg me for healing again. The problem isn’t at my end. John. It’s down there(8).
In other words, the problem is in our view of God, not in His intentions for us. Interestingly, each author points to Jesus’ revelation about the nature of God’s fatherhood as shown in Matthew 7:9ff.:
Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or is he asks for a fish, will give him a snake. If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will you father in heaven hive good gifts to those who ask him.
The parallel passage in Luke, which is usually not cited in these works, says that the gift the Father in heaven wants to give is the Holy Spirit. But I’m content to consider this, at least for our present purposes, as a passage about the nature of the Father’s goodness. The Fatherhood of God over His children in Christ is the very essence of “the good news.” As MacNutt rightly asserts, the “heart of Christianity is at stake here”(9). But is it, I question, a fundamental aspect of God’s goodness towards me that He wants me to be free of suffering in the form of sickness in this life?
Now I want to affirm the truth that God’s goodness toward His children in Jesus Christ is in fact much deeper and richer than most of us will ever realize. And I would certainly agree that God in His goodness is keenly interested in every aspect of our lives. And we certainly know that He cares about our bodies because He has planned to give to us brand new, perfect, incorruptible bodies at the resurrection. Even in this life He cares about and is aware of the needs of our physical nature to the extent that He is never glad to see His children suffer in any way for whatever reason. Is it possible however that we care more about our physical health in this life than He cares about our physical health in this life? That is, is our physical health perhaps more important to us now than it is to Him? Well, I would think that our infirmities pain God even more than they pain us, for He is much more repulsed by sin and its effects than we are, and He loves us more fully than we love ourselves. But with a view to those good things which God’s goodness compels Him to want to give to us in this life, then I would says that our physical health is less of a compelling issue to Him than it is to us. This is to suggest that the “good” which He yearns in His Fatherly goodness to give to us is not primarily physical health, and it is not such that physical health would ordinarily be a required for us to have it. Indeed, I would propose that the good and perfect health which we so crave can be and actually often is (both in the having of it and the craving after it) a hindrance to our receiving the good which the Father really desires to give to us for our good.
If my daughter, whom I love more than I can say, albeit in a more self-interested way than God loves me, asks me for a good thing, a thing I know to be good for her, then I will indeed grant it if I am able, and I will delight that she was able to ask so appropriately for it. But there are many things that she may ask of me which are not in fact good for her. Even if she asks me for a “fish,” I will have to decide whether it is in fact good for her at the present time to have such a fish. If she asks me for a snake, even if she thinks that it is a fish that she’s asking for, then I will say no. I know better than she knows. My contention, Frank, is that often (sometimes, usually—I don’t know what the percentages are here) the health that we ask for is like asking for a snake, thinking it is a fish.
What is it about suffering, pain, trouble, and death that cause us so much anguish? Partly it is the pain in and of itself. Pain hurts, if you will forgive this tautology. Often our physical pain is merely a signal that something is wrong that needs attending to, and so in that sense it is a blessing. But in many cases our pain seems warrantless, wanton, purposeless. If it is pointing to the fact that something is wrong, it is merely pointing to the world as we know it – it is wrong, twisted, off-kilter. This confrontation with the twistedness of the world itself causes numbing anguish and pain. But for many of us, perhaps mostly us in the more affluent societies where high expectations of what this life is supposed to bring to us are constantly nurtured, pain and disease and physical disability and death shatter our hopes and dreams and expectations. A shattered bone ends the career of an aspiring athlete. Infertility combined with a high abortion rate puts an end to a long-cherished dream of having a family. A nagging lower pack pain sucks much of the enjoyment out of each day. Confinement in a wheelchair ends a man’s dream of pastoring a church he had yearned to serve. Finally, death approaches, and with it the final end to our aspirations and goals.
Even the ever-present possibility of pain and sickness threatens our dogged, uneasy pursuit of comfort, stability, security and happiness. We are shaken and rattled when serious disability threatens. In the way that God has made us as a living species on this earth, I’m sure that this tendency to avoid pain and disability is to a great extent helpful for the preservation of human life. Undoubtedly it is a motivation factor enabling us to exercise dominion over the forces which assail us. But I can’t help but think that it also exposes our sinful inability to believe God when he tells us that our real inheritance is yet to come, and that we are to set our hope fully on the grace to be given when Jesus is revealed. Romans 5 and I Peter 1 give us a glimpse of how rich and full this hope is to be in out hearts. It is in our own best interest as God perceives our good that we grow more fully into having this perspective. Blue is certainly right when he asserts how much we are to strive to be like Jesus. Indeed, in Romans 8:29 we read that we have been predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son. Now for Blue this would mean among other things that we are to be compassionate and merciful as Jesus was, and that this compassion and mercy would lead to placing the same emphasis on healing in our ministry as Jesus did in His. I would agree up to the last phrase. The compassion and mercy which we are to “put on” (Col. 3:2) would lead us to seek to alleviate pain and suffering, to work for the good of our neighbor, and to care for his well-being. But to establish a healing ministry on the basis solely of this compassion presupposes the particular understanding of God’s goodness as described by Wimber and MacNutt and Blue. However, the development of Christ-like compassion and goodness does not presuppose such an understanding for these two reasons. First, mercy is not by any means the only quality that we can attribute to God or to Jesus in His earthly ministry. There is also for example His wisdom, His wrath, His Faithfulness, and His Holiness. Wimber’s vision here just doesn’t capture the fullness of God as to His purposes for us. Second, God’s goodness, that which seeks to do good as He understands good for His children, is a tough and fiery goodness. I think that C.S. Lewis captures what I would like to say, so I quote him here at length:
When Christianity says that God loves man, it means that God loves man: not that He has some “disinterested”, because really indifferent, concern for our welfare, but that, in awful and surprising truth, we are the objects of His love. You asked for a loving God: you have one. The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the “lord of terrible aspect”, is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist’s love for his work and despotic as a man’s love for his dog, provident and venerable as a father’s love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes. How this should be, I do not know: it passes reason to explain why any creatures, not to say creatures such as we, should have a value so prodigious in their Creator’s eyes(10).
Now there are some situations in life where I find that I have to, in a sense, cause pain in order to exercise love properly, such as when I discipline my daughter. And there are times with friends when I may have to say painful words for their good. When faced with sickness and suffering however, it is my job to exercise compassion and to do what I can for that person. But I have to realize even as I pray that God may in fact have another “good” awaiting that person that actually requires the continuation of the physical infirmity that I am seeking in obedience to Him to alleviate. It is not my place to love inexorably as God does when it comes to physical infirmity.
There is another aspect to growing into the likeness of Christ which must be mentioned. As I study the Jesus of the New Testament I seek to learn not only what His character qualities and habits were as He related to other people, but I also seek to understand His character as a Son as He relates to His Father. In doing so, I am astounded at His moment-by-moment dependence and trust and submissive obedience to His Father in all things. Now sickness and suffering have a way of providing a framework whereby one can perhaps enter more fully into this attitude of utter trust and dependence, for, as I said before, it shatters one’s dreams and forces one into a change of focus, into a re-evaluation of life, and hopefully into a greater dependence upon the sufficiency of His grace. True, it does not necessarily do this. An afflicted person may have a temper tantrum at not getting his way, he may get mad at God, and he may even curse God and die. But this is not the behavior of sons, but of babies, of rebels. Blue and MacNutt each seem to justify this type of response in their respective books. MacNutt suggests that the most tangible sign that God loves us is that He stoops, as Jesus did, to heal the wounded(11).Thus despairing people cannot believe that God loves them or that God is good if He doesn’t do something about their condition. Their condition stands as proof that God doesn’t care(12). These people need others who will direct them in believing prayer to the good and merciful God who stands ready to heal. Blue points to a woman who, after losing her child to leukemia, fell away from a lifetime of devotion to God, Who, as she perceived Him, “could have healed her but chose not to”(13). Blue doesn’t blame the woman, or God, but those who in a pastorally irresponsible fashion prayed “prayers of doubt” laced liberally with the phrase “according to Thy will”(14).
I would suggest that the irresponsibility lies with a society and a theology which nourishes such expectations of how God should act in response to suffering. Scripture simply does not warrant the supposition that we should have an expectation of good physical health in this life. Promises in the Old Testament to the people of Israel, i.e. that if as a people they obeyed God then He would give to them prosperity and protection from plagues and diseases are clearly contextualized in the era of the nation-state of Israel. These promises do show forth God’s care about the physical well-being of His children, but the question here is not whether God cares about our bodies (He does), but to what extent in this life, given the totality of what He wants to do for us and in us, does He care about them? There are promises in the Old Testament which speak of the activity of the One to come – promises which include bringing sight to the blind and binding up the brokenhearted – and these are of course fulfilled particularly and specifically in Jesus’ ministry. In Isaiah 53 we find that our ultimate physical healing finds its basis in the atonement. (I appreciated Wimber’s distinction here between healing “through” rather than “in” the atonement(15). Finally there are the promises in Isaiah 25:8 and 49:10 which are taken up in Revelation 7:17 and 21:4, in which we see that the final putting away of tears, which would include suffering of all types, is linked with the putting away of death, which of course will not come until resurrection day (1 Cor. 15:20-28).
So, one is simply hard pressed to find a basis in the Bible, in terms of specific promises, which would justify the expectation that God will ordinarily heal, miraculously at least, the bodies of His children in this life. What Scripture does from the outset promise – by way of a penal curse – is a life of difficulty and hardship ending in death. Sickness and disability are all part of that principle of degeneration leading to death which can be seen as the punishment by God of a sinful race. It is instructive to me that the New Testament makes it very plain, for instance in Hebrews 2:8 and 1 Cor. 15:20-28 and Rev. 20:14, that death as an operating principle of earthly existence will not be abolished until the resurrection. What should astound us is that God has enabled so many of His children to live a life of such relative ease – this is indeed a testimony to His grace and goodness. Sadly, in societies where God has been most gracious in this regard, we find not only widespread unthankfulness, but even a broad-based rejection of God. What we have in light of what we deserve is so amazingly good, that it seems preposterous that we would continually harbor such high expectations of what we should be given in this life. In my mind it is this unrealistic, unthankful expectation which results in rebellion against God when He fails to heal.
Blue, who strongly objects to the passivity which a “sanctification through suffering” mentality produces, notes that ordinarily in Scripture, when God wants to teach a lesson through physical suffering, he lets the afflicted person know what the lesson is, and then, when the lesson is learned, He removes the affliction(16). Putting aside Blue’s rather curious understanding of Paul’s blindness, one senses that Blue’s concept of sanctification through suffering is limited to incidences of specific divine judgment(17). There are two problems with this idea. First, our primary treatise on the matter of suffering—the book of Job—leaves no doubt that God’s purposes in allowing or bringing suffering are often quite mysterious. Second, there is in fact a real sanctifying potential in physical suffering. Those qualities of Sonship already mentioned can deepen and then shine forth to dazzling effect in the one bearing righteously a physical affliction. Paul Tournier’s reflections here are worth reading(18). Now the active acceptance of physical suffering may not be what the New Testament primarily means when it speaks of suffering for Christ’s sake. But the bearing of physical suffering certainly requires the development of hope, patience, dependence, endurance and submissive trust. Surely not every Christian virtue in which the physically afflicted person could grow as a result of his sickness is monopolized by those suffering under the hand of persecution. Indeed I would take issue with MacNutt here in regard to the relationship between physical pain and the taking up on one’s cross(19). Granted one does not voluntarily take up sickness, and usually (but not always) sickness does not come as a result of living for Christ’s sake. But the attitude which on e has toward suffering is voluntary, and this Christ-like attitude can indeed be taken up for Christ’s sake. Innumerable are the cultural forces, the false comforters, the physical pains which fight against the growth of this perspective, and the cross one bears is that struggle one undergoes to maintain these qualities of sonship while being assailed on all sides by temptations to become angry or bitter. I would count as one of these temptations the narrow understanding of God’s goodness as espoused by Wimber, MacNutt and Blue.
The second major area which I think needs to be thought through more carefully by those participating in healing ministries is the question of God’s will as it relates to the activity and work of Satan. Our writers assert that the Bible leaves no doubt that Satan is behind disease. Not only did Satan instigate the original disobedience which brought about the existence of death and sickness and sorrow, but as Blue and Wimber point out, Satan and his demons were directly behind various sicknesses which Jesus confronted. I would agree with Blue’s statement that while not all sicknesses are the work of demons, they may all be seen as the work of Satan(20). MacNutt captures the same idea in saying that Jesus “everywhere treats sickness as a manifestation of the kingdom of Satan which He has come to destroy”(21). The prevalent and abiding presence of sickness in this world points to the very nature of this world as one ruled by an evil power. In the coming of the kingdom in the person of Jesus there begins an assault on these evil powers, or in the words of the apostle John, “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, that He might destroy the works of the devil” (I John 3:8). I must say that I appreciate the emphasis which the writers put on the reality of the confrontation between God’s kingdom and Satan’s pseudo-kingdom. Wimber, in an extended footnote, quotes Calvin’s eloquent description of the mission and work of the devil, who is “the author, leader, and architect of all malice and iniquity…everywhere called God’s adversary and ours also”(22). Satan thus is waging a defensive war against the assault of God’s kingdom. Blue likens the battle line between these two kingdoms to the fluid geopolitical boundaries between various minor kingdoms in Saudi Arabia(23). Both sides suffer losses, both win victories, the tide of the battle changes, but God ultimately wins the war. Satan is seen as continuously thwarting God’s will and his advances (or the strongholds of his defensives) take place in opposition to the will of God.
What I want to take strong issue with is the idea clearly advanced by all of the writers that things happen to us apart from or outside of the will of God. By “will” here I mean God’s will of decree, that is, His decision-making concerning those events which will or will not come to pass. This aspect of God’s will is very different from God’s prescriptive or moral will, that is, those things that He commands or demands of us as His creatures. Certainly Satan is always succeeding in inciting people to disobey and thus thwart God’s moral will. But can it be said that he ever succeeds in any way in thwarting God’s will of decree? The picture which I get from Blue and Wimber of God is that of a good, well-intended general in a war zone, planning his assaults, wondering where and when the next counter attack will strike, bringing in reinforcements to fill up the gaps in the lines, hoping, but not certain, whether in a particular assault his men will succeed. Joni compares this kind of God to a repairman who “nervously runs behind Satan with a repair kit, patching up what the devil has reined, mumbling to himself, ‘Now how am I going to work this one out for good?”(24).
If in a particular circumstance the battle-line is the infirmity of one of God’s children, what are we to say of God’s will of decree with respect to the infirmity? Does the fact that the infirmity is Satan’s doing mean that it is not also God’s will of decree that the infirmity rest on the person as it does? Again, I think that Job helps us sort this out. In Job there is a clear picture that God is in control of all events, even those in which Satan or evil men are the responsible agents. In Job 2, God Himself brings up in His conversation with Satan the righteousness of Job. “Have you considered my servant Job?” Is this not an invitation on God’s part? Then Satan says to God, “But put forth Thy hand and touch his bone, his flesh.” Then God says, in effect, “Very well, I will, I will put forth my hand and do this. Yes Satan, you shall be My hand as it were. Job is under your power, only spare his life.” What was Job’s response to the affliction brought upon him but “shall we not indeed accept good from God and not adversity?” This is not of course the response of one who had a narrow view of God’s goodness, but of a righteous man, who “did not sin with his lips.”
Two points jump out at me here. First, Satan was the agent immediately responsible for afflicting Job’s body with boils and sores. Can we not say definitively that in Job’s affliction he was harassed, hounded and tormented by Satan? Of course we can. But in the very same event in which Satan had intentions for evil (an improper response to suffering), God had intentions of His own, intentions that had to do both with Job’s ultimate good and with God’s glory. The same could be said about the most unjust and wicked act ever perpetrated by man – the crucifixion of Jesus. Here it was by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge—by God’s absolute will of decree—that wicked men under the influence and control of Satan disobeyed God’s clear moral will and put to death the innocent Son of God. One could think here also of the testimony of Joseph, who, in reference to his brother’s wicked deed of selling him into slavery proclaimed, “you meant it for evil but God meant it for good” (Gen. 50:20).
My point here is that for a person to be sick or to suffer in any way at all does not mean that Satan is at work and God isn’t, or that in the sickness Satan is thwarting God’s will, or that God’s interest is necessarily that of destroying this “work of Satan.” I would suggest that the real desire and work of Satan is in thwarting the good, whatever it is, which God desires to bring out of the sickness, which of course, He has ordained. The Lord is in fact behind, at least in terms of His decree, even sickness and death. The same can be said when Satan brings sickness as an obstacle to a missionary or evangelistic effort. Are we to say that such sickness is not decreed by God? Joni points out the following three scriptures which help clarify our understanding here(25): “And the Lord said to him, “who gave man his mouth, or who makes him dumb and deaf, or seeing or blind? Is it not I, The Lord?” (Ex. 4:11). “I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I the Lord, do all these things” (Is. 43:7). And in Lamentations of all places we read,
Who is there who speaks and it comes to pass unless the LORD has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that evil and good go forth” (Lam. 3:37, 38)
So, again, Satan and God both are seen to will the same events, but for different reasons. Satan’s purpose is always to counter God’s moral will, to work against God’s glory, to hamper the development of Christlikeness in God’s children. His very purpose in afflicting one of God’s children is to cause the person to get angry at God, to curse God, and then, I suppose, to die with this anti-God disposition.
There are of course great mysteries here in terms of the interplay of these opposing forces. My concern is that whatever else we may not understand; we must agree and accept that our sovereign God has decreed whatever it may be that has come into our path. If it is sickness that has come into our path, then it has come at least by the permissive decree of God. So then the question comes, why are we to counter sickness if it God has permitted or decreed it?
First of all, it is God’s express moral will for us that we be merciful and compassionate toward all who are sick and suffering. As we grow in mercy and compassion we also grow into the image of Christ. Second, it is God’s will that we grow in all attitudes of Sonship – all those attitudes of mind of dependence and submission and trust which Jesus had toward the Father – and which God desires to see enhanced through and in all experiences of life. So, with respect to our own sickness, we pray for healing to God as Sons, yet accepting and trusting all things from His hand as for our good. Third, as mentioned in the discussion on God’s goodness, it is not within our sphere of wisdom and authority to assume we know what the good is that God intends in a given circumstance. The Creator and the creature simply have different roles here. We should always pray for our own infirmities and for those of others that God’s “inexorable” love could be shown, that he would make Himself known in the fullness of His goodness, hoping and desiring that God’s good would include healing, submissive at all times to the good which God intends, thankful in all which He brings our way. It is appropriate at all times to ask for miraculous healing. Of course when God does move in response to prayer to heal miraculously, then one can say that in His goodness He decreed both the prayer and the healing in response to it. If one fails to pray and God thereby fails to act, then in regard to God’s will, the one failing to pray has disobeyed God’s moral will, but this disobedience and the effects of it are themselves in harmony with God’s will of decree. And of course, one may in his prayers be asking for something which God has not decreed in any way whatsoever, but the asking is still the obedient and dependent and appropriate thing to do.
I could recommend for your perusal Henry Frost’s book, which in my judgment has the healthiest perspective overall. You might read his general conclusions on page 114 f.
Ken Blue bases his healing ministry on his obedience to the commands given to the twelve and to the seventy-two as Jesus gave them authority to cast out demons, raise the dead, and heal the sick. Dealing with this hermeneutical issue would take another twenty-five pages, as would a discussion of the role of signs and wonders in the ministry of Jesus. But that will be for another letter. The question in regard to the commission given to the twelve and seventy-two is to what extent do Christ’s instructions there have a general, permanent and universal validity? Are Wimber in Power Evangelism and Blue in Authority to Heal thus correct in seeing themselves as bound in obedience to these specific injunctions?
The pressing question as a result of what has been written in this letter is this: if what I have written is correct, then what bearing should it have on the development of a healing “motif” in terms of a healing emphasis in a local church? Such an emphasis would certainly not take on the flavor of what is described by Blue, Wimber, or MacNutt, but what would it look like? I’m still working on that.
I eagerly await your long list of “yes, but’s.”
Sincerely,
Joel
Endnotes
(1) Francis MacNutt, o.p., Healing (Notre Dame, Indiana: Ave Maria Press, 1974), pp. 98-108.
(2) John Wimber, Power Healing (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1986), pp. 47-82.
(3) Ken Blue, Authority to Heal (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP, 1987), pp. 70-78.
(4) F. MacNutt, Healing, p. 104.
(5) Ibid., p. 100.
(6) Ibid., p. 107.
(7) J. Wimber, Power Healing, p. 70.
(8) Ibid., p. 70.
(9) F. MacNutt, Healing, p. 100.
(10) C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, (London: Fontana Books, 1957), pp.34-35.
(11) F. MacNutt, Healing, p. 104.
(12) Ibid., p. 35.
(13) K. Blue, Authority to Heal, p. 26.
(14) Ibid., p. 26.
(15) J. Wimber, Power Healing, p. 167.
(16) K. Blue, Authority to Heal, p. 26.
(17) Ibid., p. 26.
(18) Paul Tournier, The Power of Persons (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), pp. 141-155.
(19) F. MacNutt, Healing, pp. 75-88.
(20) K. Blue, Authority to Heal, p. 85.
(21) F. MacNutt, Healing, pp. 42.
(22) J. Wimber, Power Healing, p. 287.
(23) K. Blue, Authority to Heal, p. 83.
(24) Joni Eareckson and Steve Estes, A Step Further (Grand Rapids, Min.: Zondervan, 1978), p. 136.
(25) Ibid., p. 138
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