In one of my blogposts I've been having a discussion on healing with rgbrao. Read the entire discussion there. But I wanted to create a new blogpost for one of the questions rgbrao asked and my response to it.
rgbrao wrote:
Ok. So a common line given by Cess's is that while healing does take place, there is no such thing as the gift of healing that inheres in a person.
My response w/ recourse to Sorites (aka the paradox of the heap) is that the gift of healing has to be possible. Sorites is similar to the Bald Man paradox. Let me post that here from Oxford Reference:
"Suppose a man has a full head of hair: if he loses one hair he will still have a full head of hair. But if he loses enough hairs he will become bald."
~ Likewise in reverse. If we add a single hair to a bald man, he is still bald. Add yet another and he is still bald. And another and another... we are still constrained to saying that the man is bald yet we know that he is no longer bald. There simply is a point where we have to say that the guy is not bald.
Like so if we say that the gift of healing does not exist and I point out to an event, say Joe's being healed upon prayer by Jane, and say Jane has the gift of healing, Cess's will say no. One healing does not a healer make. But what if Jane repeats the event with Joan and then later with Jeff and another, and another, etc.
Then can we say Jane has the gift of healing? I think so.
Ok. I picked up the Concentric Cessationist lingo from Daniel Wallace in this article. https://bible.org/article/uneasy-conscience-non-charismatic-evangelical
He does not go into it too deep however.
Thanks!
Raj
Here was my response:
Yes, I've been aware of the sorites paradox for years. I've used it in various arguments. I disagree with you and agree with the cessationist. No matter how many times someone is healed by the prayers of person X, that, by itself, doesn't prove that X has the gift of healing. Since, it could be the pray-er's godliness that God is responding to [as per James 5:16b], or that person's "grace of faith" [as distinct from "the gift of faith"]. Or maybe the pray-er is exercising the gift of the working of miracles, or maybe the gift of faith, or maybe has cast out an evil spirit of infirmity.
So, I agree with the cessationist, that no amount of successive successful healing is proof anyone has the gift of healing (technically giftS [plural] of healing). Also, I don't think the gift of healing guarantees that everyone he prays for will be healed. Only that he has more extraordinary success in praying for healing than normal.
On the one hand, as a Calvinist, I think people are only healed if God decreed the person to be healed at that time. Yet, on the other hand, as an extreme continuationist, I believe that it's theoretically possible for someone to successfully heal anyone at any time given God's promise that all things are possible to him who believes [Mark 9:23]. As a Calvinist I believe that faith is always ultimately the gift of God [whether via the normally developed "grace of faith" or the extraordinary temporarily endowed/deposited "gift of faith"]. I believe God encourages Christians to always have faith for healing, even though God might not have decreed person Y be healed at time T. I believe we should leave God to work in His sovereignty as He pleases, but attempt to always have faith at all times for healing as God encourages and commands us to. There is an apparent contradiction in that, but not a real contradiction.
Having said all that, I think there might be times when God might supernaturally reveal that it's not His will to heal person S at time T maybe ever [e.g. it might be his time to die]. But unless God clearly and unambiguously reveals it's not His will to heal person S, then we have biblical warrant to do our best to exercise faith for S's healing. EVEN THEN, maybe faith might be able to "trump" God's revealed intention. Remember how God revealed to Hezekiah that he was about to die, yet God heard Hezekiah's prayers and granted the king 15 more years. Or think of how Jesus, speaking as God's messiah, told the Syro-Phoenician that He was sent to the House of Israel and basically implied that He wasn't going to heal her daughter. Yet, because of her persistence, Jesus healed her daughter anyway. In such cases, I would have to say that God ultimately intended to heal them. God's secret decree to heal, was hidden by His temporary revelation that it wasn't His intention (at least at time T1) to heal (thought it was at time T5).
Again, see this excellent article by Vincent Cheung. There is a sense in which, as he said, "Faith trumps everything."
