I would place healing in the context of miracles and suffering at large. There are times when God is willing to perform a miracle in order to save somebody’s life, and times when He deems for Providential reasons that such a miracle is not the best. Suffering is not always bad and sometimes it is to be desired.

Examples: 1) The sicknesses and disease that many of the OT prophets suffered. 2) The martyrdom of all but one apostle, John. 3) The way in which Scripture embraces suffering as redemptive in nature when united with the sufferings of Christ. 4) Jesus suffered immense injury, and was himself not healed.

Regarding 4, the only way to dismiss the lack of healing of Jesus is to A) say that he is an exception to the rule (but what do you do about the other apostles) or B) say that there is a difference between healing for injury caused by people and injury caused by other things like accidents, genetics, viruses, environmental factors and our own stupidity (e.g., some broken arms, cavities, etc.).

Scripture says that we are afflicted in *every* way, but not crushed. I would think that would have to do with disease as well as persecution. After all, Job was afflicted with boils. Elisha, himself, died of a sickness. The man who had a double share of the spirit of Elijah. Did the wonder worker not have faith enough to get healed himself? Does God now answer all our requests for healing AD, while he didn’t before BC?

The thorn in the flesh passage of Paul is a great example because it places sickness in the larger context of suffering. The reason many people associate Paul’s thorn in the flesh with sickness is that he calls it a personal weakness. “Three times I besought the Lord about this, that it should leave me; but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in
weakness.’”

When Paul says that he has suffered the loss of all things, might one of them be health? Can you imagine someone being beaten and left for dead and not suffering physical ailments as a result? Paul seems to think that the sufferings which he suffers are a share in Christ’s suffering.

“Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, based on law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God depends on faith; that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his suffering, becoming like him in his death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” Phillipians 3:8-11

There really isn’t room in a single comment to address these ideas well, but that’s my shotgun approach.

MB

Great to hear from you again! And I like the points you’ve made. I think you and I are probably pretty much on the same page from what you’ve written.

My position on this issue has changed over the years. I think Greg Boyd is on the right track with his “God at war” theodicy. If you haven’t read his two books on the topic, you must do so.

For most of my life I have been a functional deist. I essentially believed that God almost never interfered with the chain of cause and effect. Lesslie Newbigin has helped me to see that this is simply the Enlightenment plausibility structure.

Here is a quick list of my view:

* God is always doing everything he can do (without violating the free will he has granted his creatures) to overcome evil.

* God has given us the ability to influence the future through spiritual power (primarily prayer) in a similar way to how we can influence the future through our physical acts.

* We must learn how to exercise spiritual power in much the same way that we must learn how to walk, speak, or throw a ball.

* God wants to be able to trust us with his power to do what we want. This, of course, requires significant spiritual discipline for our desires to be refined so that they conform with his will (as hinted at in the Lord’s Prayer).

* God does not capriciously grant some miracles and withhold others. It only seems capricious because we don’t understand all the factors involved. (See the book of Job.)

This is just a quick list, and I may have overlooked some important points.

God Bless,

Rod

When a passage from the gospels includes a group of people “unincluded” from the action, isn’t the message simply such groups exist? I don’t believe the interpretation “from silence” needs to be that Jesus overlooked them for any reason other to illustrate the reality in which we live. If we notice them in the passage, maybe that means we should notice them around us. Or we could also say the instruction for us is to be in the spirit and know on whom around us, Jesus is focusing. If we target the one He knows is ready to hear what we have to say, what will be the fruit? If we are going to interpret “from silence”, I think we should be willing to expand the possible inferences as much as we can. Not that all inferences are necessarily accurate, but let us consider all to avoid overlooking something important.

RE: word document on healing scriptures.

Crosswalk.com will put the complete list at your disposal at any time! in context, out of context, in various versions and with a link to the Greek meaning. Why are you typing a document?

By the way, this topic spans two Blogs and it’s important to be reading both–just in case anyone hasn’t discovered that.

The other Blog is: http://www.spiritualtramp.com/

Thank you for your gracious response. I appreciate dialogue with you, bro, and am so glad that we’ve gotten to know each other well enough to have these conversations!

The John passage is one that I have heard mentioned before as evidence that Jesus did not heal everyone. And let me interject that “argument from silence” is not automatically an invalid argument. I don’t ever want to give the impression that I think that. An argument from silence can be support for a conclusion. However, it usually needs to be accompanied by other non-silent arguments. It’s those non-silent arguments that I’m hoping to find!

I don’t claim to perfectly understand that passage in John, but I think the following thoughts apply:

1. God does providentially choose to heal some who are not expecting or asking for it. He singled this guy out and asked him if he wanted to be healed, even though the man didn’t think it was possible at the time because he only knew of one particular way to get healed.

2. The man’s response to Jesus’ command to get up and walk tells us whether or no he believed, don’t you think? He could have just stayed there saying, “Ha ha. Very funny. I haven’t walked in 38 years.” But it says that he got up and walked.

3. The argument from silence part is where we start to put our theology back into the passage, and this is my difficulty with the argument from silence in this case.

Interestingly, you said: He only healed the one man but the passage does not say that He didn’t heal anyone else who asked., with which I would agree (and I think it’s a vital point to be made). But then, you said, My conclusion stems from that out of all the sick people there, Jesus only chose to heal one (as opposed to all). That contradicts your earlier statement.

I think if asked if Jesus ever said no to such a request, I would have responded correctly, but I never thought about it that way. Thanks, bro!

You’re very welcome I do think that, of all the points that I have been trying to make, this one is the one that I have found to be the most compelling in my own mind and what changed my thinking on all of this.

I’ve mentioned before that it is extremely eye-opening to go through the gospels and make a note of every mention of healing. In my case, I created a Word doc (which I have since lost, but am seriously considering re-creating) with the passages typed out. Every one of them (it was like 7 pages long, I think). And then I read each one carefully looking for indications of 1) Jesus choosing not to heal when asked, and 2) the correlation according to Jesus of faith with healing.

It is a study I would highly recommend. Why? Because it puts biblical evidence right in front of our faces. Not commentary. Not experience. Not arguments from silence. Not assumptions. And not separated by long stretches of other narratives. Just seeing each of those healings put one right after the other gave me some indication of the amazing consistency of descriptions. And it made me see the heart of God as revealed in Jesus so differently from what I had always been taught and believed.