“As It Is Written”: Using Theology as a Scapegoat for Unbelief

According to a 2016 article in the Journal of Religion and Health, some 87.4% of American adults have prayed for divine healing, either for themselves or others, and about a quarter of those practiced the biblical command of “laying hands” on the sick (James 5:14).[1]

While some doubt the efficacy of prayer in healing the sick, others suggest that it is purely psychosomatic, or that, if it does happen, it is considerably rare.[2] Depending on where you live or what circles of Christianity you are a part of (among other factors) it may be that you have not known of anyone who has been healed through prayer.

Yet, healing is not as uncommon as some think.

A Canadian missions team (some of whom are close personal friends of mine) from the Wesleyan school Kingswood University in Sussex, New Brunswick, for example, recently traveled to Honduras where they saw a number of divine healings including a deaf woman who regained hearing.[3]

Meanwhile, if you live in rural Mozambique you may expect divine healing as part of your regular Christian experience. In an article published by the Southern Medical Journal, researchers tested 24 subjects who were deaf and blind before and after receiving prayer and found considerable auditory and visual improvements (i.e., that they were healed).[4]

And according to some estimates, 80 – 90% of Chinese believers converted to Christianity because either they or a family member were believed to be divinely healed.[5]

Typical responses by skeptical Western Christians toward such examples vary, but they often fall under three large categories:

1) Many of these people were not actually healed, but were psychosomatically relieved of pain which they interpreted as being divine healing[6]

2) God only healed these people because they lack proper medical care and we should not expect this kind of healing in the first world

3) These people were deceived or mistaken in some other way

In future blogposts I will address each of these objections, but for now I want to focus on the issue of faith as it relates to physical healing.

Despite what we have seen above - statistically a large percentage of the population prays for divine healing - why is it that so many modern Christians living in the North America and Europe doubt divine healing as a normative expression of God’s love and answer to prayer? I believe there are several interrelated factors, but that one of the core reasons is the use of theology as a scapegoat for unbelief.

Let me explain.

First world Christians have, to some degree, been influenced by a culture of anti-supernaturalist doubt. This doubt, while often guised as a form of discernment, can shape our prayers, both in substance and pattern. From the way we phrase our prayers, to the way we give up on intercession when things seem to (often subjectively) “not be God’s will”, it is a dangerous vortex of defeatism that many Christians find themselves in.

On the other end of the spectrum, some Christians just state we need to “press in” and “claim our inheritance” or that we need to fast more in order to bend God’s will to our own, often either intensifying their own disillusionment if their petition is not answered or causing some to conjure up their own perceived answers to prayer through various wild interpretations of natural events or happenstance.

Faith is thus sometimes viewed as either an agreement to a system of epistemologically cohesive ideas or as a passive belief that supernatural things “can” happen, but that these do not typify basic Christian experience. This latter interpretation of faith effectively nullifies the basic premise of faith as an expression of eager expectation for things hoped for and it is to this topic and related factors I want to explore.

Redefining Faith

In general, faith is understood by most evangelical Christians as a “non-meritorious” work.[7] In other words, faith is not something that gives credit or merit to a person as if they have actually achieved something by their own efforts, especially as it pertains to salvation. Because the word “faith” and “believe” can generically denote a kind of cognitive ascent to ideas, some Christians prefer to use the term “confidence” to help flesh out the semantic meaning of faith. It is not that faith cannot engage the intellect (indeed, it does), but that faith requires confidence in intangible things.

Since faith does engage the mind, this means that certain things, such as psychological and sociological factors, can distract us from exercising biblical faith. A prominent example is the repetitious statement within Church gatherings that it is “not always God’s will to heal”. While such statements may be true, they unintentionally negatively impact faithful expectations of divine healing. One would be hard pressed to think of situations where they did not feel spiritually “drained” or especially “on fire” for God, and likely note ambiguous factors such as the “atmosphere” being different or a general “thirst” among the people in the congregation.

In other words, who we surround ourselves with can affect our capacity for faithfulness.

When it comes to the topic of physical healing then, we cannot deny the importance of faith in the equation. It is “The prayer of faith” (ἡ εὐχὴ τῆς πίστεως) that will heal the sick, not the prayer of doubt or the prayer of manageable expectations.[8] In James’ instructions on petitioning God for wisdom, he states that a person must ask “in faith, with no doubting” and that anyone who prays doubtfully “must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.” That this passage was viewed as a general rule for petitionary prayers can be seen in several early Christian works including the Shepherd of Hermas, [9] the Epistle of Barnabas,[10] the Didache,[11] and an exegetical work attributed to a certain Cyril: “For if you have not believed that He fulfills your request, do not approach Him at all, lest unwittingly having uncertainties you be found accusing Him who is in every way powerful.”[12]

Moreover, Jesus instructs his disciples to pray and that “if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you. So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11:23-24; cf. Matt 21:21-22). This is not atypical of Jesus’ words about the connection between faith and healing elsewhere (Mark 2:5, 4:40, 5:34-36, 9:23-24; Matt 8:10, 9:28).

Such bible passages are viewed with suspicion as belonging to the “name it and claim it” crowd and, as result, are sometimes minimized or ignored when discussing the need for faith in petitionary prayers.[13]

Naturally, it is possible to believe that God is sovereign, does not need to heal someone, and other complex theological factors while simultaneously hoping for healing. Yet, in practice these belief systems almost compete against one another, not because Scripture is contradicting itself, but because we are imposing our own expectations via theology into our petitions.

I want to be clear: it is not that theology itself is dissuading us of biblical faith. Rather, we are using theology inappropriately in an attempt to free ourselves of the responsibility of praying with faith.

Quantifying Faith

Another issue related to what we observed above is the difficulty people have in quantifying faith. Put differently: how much faith is required for God to answer petitions? Is there such as a thing as degrees of faith?

The Scriptures seem to point in that direction.

In a discussion with the apostles found in Luke, for example, the apostles tell Jesus to “increase” (πρόσθες) their faith (17:5). Jesus replies, stating: “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you” (17:6). The fact that faith can be increased or quantified by size seems to logically mean that there are degrees of faith.

Likewise, in the book of Romans, we are told that a person should prophesy “in proportion to our faith” (12:6). This appears to mean that a person’s prophetic abilities (whether the frequency of utterances or other pragmatic factors) is somehow dependent on the prophet’s degree of faith.[14] Paul also lists “faith” as one of the spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12:9 and as a fruit of the Spirit (Gal  5:22). Simply having the Spirit does not guarantee that a Christian will always exercise this kind of faith, just as some Christians do not always exercise self-control or patience.[15]

The author of Hebrews famously refers to faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” To have faith is to hope for things that are not tangibly accessible to us in the moment and, as a result, requires a degree of belief beyond ascent to logical ideas. We are not in a position to determine how much faith is required for x to occur. We are likewise not meant to create mathematical formulae for our prayer lives. But we must also contend that, without being legalistic or “conjuring up” faith, that petitionary prayers do require some amount of faith to be efficacious. If this were not the case, why would warnings about doubting be given?

Absolving Doubt Through Divine Sovereignty

Sovereignty is understood as the exercise of God’s supremacy in the world. That is to say that God’s will and pleasure are meted out as he wishes (Isa 46:10; Dan 4:35; Eph 1:11). Psalm 135:6 best encapsulates this idea: “Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.” In an attempt to uphold this belief, Christians sometimes inadvertently succumb to a mechanistic or deterministic prayer model in which the need to exercise faith is circumvented due to a misunderstanding of divine sovereignty.

One particular example of this model is the preface “if it is your will to do x” within petitionary prayers. This pattern is often interjected into prayers based on readings of Luke 22:42 and the book of Job more generally. On the surface, such prayers may seem to be upholding a high view God’s sovereignty. Yet, in practice they may actually be absolving doubt through the guise of divine sovereignty. In other words, we are again using theology as a scapegoat for failed petitions.

R.C. Sproul has said that “authentic faith always manifests itself in a zeal for obedience.”[16] In his context, he was referring to the fruit of justification by faith. Yet, his words apply also to the issue of believing prayer. It is possible (and biblical!) to hold the idea of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility in tension. Jesus’ prayer and the story of Job are not meant to have us spiraling into despair when our prayers are not answered as we would like. Rather, they are meant to comfort us when God’s will becomes apparently contrasted with our own with the hope that our will conforms to his!

Scripture and Doubt

Note that throughout I have not stated that people have not been healed because they did not pray enough or did not have enough faith, even though perpetual prayer and faith are often a requirement for answered prayer in the Bible. Nor have I said that it is always God’s will to heal and that if you have not been healed you have somehow been disobedient, even though we are to pray with a fervent expectation that God will indeed heal the sick.

Divine healing, like much of the Christian faith, is not hit-or-miss. Rather, it is a mystery.[17]

Still, others in an attempt to protect believers from dangerous false teachings are quick to point out things like “this is not normative,” despite scriptural evidence to the contrary! These, I believe, come from a place of good intentions and a desire to represent God’s character well and to ease failed expectations. Yet, what it can do is create an atmosphere of doubt so that “this is not normative” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Such “faith” is easy.

It is easy to live in a mechanical relationship with God without ever needing to exercise biblical faith. God’s love and justice can easily become abstractions or neat theological ideas to preach a sermon on, rather than demonstrable events (Luke 11:42).

It is easy to live with Scripture as your god, rather than the miracle-worker and healer (John 5:39-40).

It is easy to know theology, but not do anything about it (Matt 2:3-5).

It easy to use the Bible to determine what God should do (John 6:30-31).

But that’s not how God calls us to pray.

He calls us to believe in the impossible (Luke 1:37) and to diligently seek him (Heb 11:6), not theologize away the need for faith.

May we, therefore, be drawn into a more radical belief that doesn’t look at our outward circumstances and expectations, but trusts in God and allows us to bend to his will.

Blessings,

Merrill G. Greene

Notes

[1] Jeff Levin, “Prevalence and Religious Predictors of Healing Prayer Use in the USA: Findings from the Baylor Religion Survey,” Journal of Religion and Health 55 (2016): 1136-1158.

[2] For a compilation of miracles (most of them healing) in the modern world, I recommend Craig S. Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts (2 vols.; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011).

[3] https://www.kingswood.edu/ablaze-spring-2022

[4] Candy Gunther Brown, Stephen C. MD Mory, Rebecca MB Williams, Michael J. McClymond, “Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Proximal Intercessory Prayer (STEPP) on Auditory and Visual Impairments in Rural Mozambique,” Southern Medical Journal 103.9 (September 2010): 864-869.

[5] G. Oblau, “Divine healing and the growth of practical Christianity in China” in Candy Gunther Brown (ed.), Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011), 313.

[6] On the issue of divine healing and medical evidence, see the comments by Candy Gunther Brown, “Pentecostal Healing Prayer in an Age of Evidence-Based Medicine” Transformation 32.1 (2015): 1-16.

[7] C.E.B. Cranfield, Romans (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975), 1:90: “For Paul man’s salvation is altogether—not almost altogether—God’s work; and the faith spoken of here is the openness to the gospel which God Himself creates.”

[8] Likewise, in the long ending of Mark, various miracles are listed as occurring only to “those who believe” (τοῖς πιστεύσασιν). Although this ending is likely not authentic to Mark’s Gospel, it is an early attestation within the Church that faith was a requirement for the miraculous.

[9] The early Christian work Shepherd of Hermes states the following about doubtfulness: “ He said to me: “Get rid of doublemindedness from yourself and do not be doubleminded at all, to ask anything from God, wondering to yourself, ‘How can I ask and receive anything from the Lord, since I have sinned so much against him?’ Do not think this way, but turn with all your heart to the Lord and ask from him without doubting, and you will know his great compassion, that he will never abandon you, but will fulfill your soul’s petition. For God does not keep resentments the way people do, but is himself without resentment, and has mercy on what he has made. So you, cleanse your heart from all the madness of this world and from what was described to you before. Ask of the Lord, and you will receive everything, and you will lack nothing that you have asked for, if you ask of the Lord without doubting. But if you doubt in your heart, you will receive nothing that you asked for. Those who doubt God are the doubleminded, and they will obtain nothing that they asked for. But those who are mature in faith ask everything, trusting in the Lord, and they receive it because they asked without doubting, not doubleminded at all. Every doubleminded person who is not converted will be saved only with difficulty. So cleanse your heart from doublemindedness, put on faith which is strong, and believe in God, that you will receive everything you ask. If sometimes you ask something of the Lord and receive what you asked somewhat slowly, do not be doubleminded because you do not get your soul’s request quickly. It is surely because of some temptation or transgression of which you are ignorant that you receive your petition slowly. So do you not cease from asking your soul’s request, and you will receive it. But if you become discouraged and doubleminded while asking, blame yourself and not the giver. Look to this doublemindedness: it is evil and senseless and uproots many from the faith, indeed even those who are very faithful and strong. This doublemindedness is the daughter of the devil and does much harm to the servants of God. Disdain doublemindedness and you will conquer it in every action; put on strong, powerful faith. For faith promises all and brings all to completion, while doublemindedness, which does not even trust in itself, fails in everything it does. So you see, then,” he said, “that faith is from the Lord above and is very powerful, but doublemindedness is an earthly spirit from the devil that has no power. So you, serve the faith that has power and you will live to God, and everyone will live to God who has the same attitude” (Herm. Mand. 9).

[10] “Thou shalt not doubt whether a thing shall be or not be. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain.” (Ep. Barn. 19:5)

[11] “You shall not show doubt whether [something] will be or not” (Didache 4:4).

[12]  See Martin Dibelius and Heinrich Greeven, James (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), 80.

[13] The apologist Mike Winger of BibleThinker notes that when preparing for his hour and a half teaching on Mark 11:23-24 he “really struggled in prep for this study. At first I found myself wanting to just make sure that this passage wasn't used for the kind of stuff Kenneth Copeland teaches. But I sensed that, in my desire to avoid a particular interpretation, I might be blinding myself to what the passage is saying. So, I took a different approach, one that I try to always take but one that was particularly difficult for me to do this time around. I took myself out of the debate over "name-it-and-claim-it" teaching in the 21st century and instead sought to thoroughly understand how this radical passage makes sense in the context of Mark and the rest of the New Testament. The result has been a really rewarding study on the power of prayer and the reality of faith in the midst of suffering. This passage doesn't fit "name-it-and-claim-it" and it doesn't fit cessationism either. My hope is that I can bring clarity with this study and stir up faith. Faith for miracles and faith for suffering.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvA5ZWDSdmo

[14] The Greek word for “proportion” here is ἀναλογίαν and is used of mathematical proportions (LSJ). For whether “faith” here is meant to be generic faith or the Christian faith more specifically, see BDAG, πίστις.

[15] Compare Romans 12:18 where Paul states “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all”. That human responsibility is part of the Christian lifestyle and depends on a number of mitigating factors (personality, age, gender, etc), we should also expect that people’s capacity for faith all differ to some extent.

[16] R. C. Sproul, Can I know God’s Will? (Lake Mary, FL: Reformation Trust Publishing, 2009), 19.

[17] This sentiment was expressed by the missionary Heidi Baker whose ministry Iris Global is known for physical healing. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5xzVgACo2M.