Wow! Thank you Oscarr. Your response is thoughtful, considered, and must have taken quite a while to put into a post. I am
really grateful!
I get your point, and I agree that medicine can be a great blessing for which we can thank God as it relies on his creation's processes. But if God gave medical advancements primarily for the unsaved, to give them more time, isn't an indictment against us? I mean, Jesus did miracles and expected repentance in response (Matthew 11:20-24). If the church had been able to do as Jesus did--more explicitly, if
we were doing as Jesus did and taught his disciples to do, and (I would argue) told his disciples to teach the disciples they made to do, and so on down the line to you and me--people would have had much more on which to build their faith than just extra time.
That point aside, I completely agree that prayer is not a binding contract.
I fully agree that saying "you will be healed" is entirely bogus unless you, like Jesus, can back that statement up by doing it. I don't know anyone who can do that. There seem to be people who more see healing come more commonly than they see it not come (see
here for my observations regarding that), but no one who has a 100% success rate.
That, however, is
not the same thing as saying "it is always God's will to heal the sick." Again, I would point to Jesus as a possible defense for that statement. In contrast to it, I'd like to suggest it is also bad teaching to say, "Sometimes God heals. Sometimes he doesn't. So if you pray and the person isn't healed, it must not be God's will." If that was the case, we might have expected Jesus' response to the disciples when they failed to heal the demonic boy to include a "sometimes it just doesn't happen" clause.
I am wary of building a theology on the basis of my own experience, not because my experience isn't valid but because my experiences might actually indicate that I failed rather than that God didn't want the same outcome as I did.
I'm not saying preaching is irrelevant. Heaven forbid! But Jesus said "Woe to you Capernaum" not just because they didn't respond to his preaching but because he had done miracles there and they did not repent. I think miracles have more importance than you are giving them credit for. I'm lacking any absolutely definitive verses however, so I need to acknowledge that this is my opinion. I think I'm right, but it is still only my opinion.
Thank you. That helped clarify some of my own thinking for me. I think a part of where I disagree is in the idea that miracles are not as much the gospel as the preaching is. I'm going to have to give that idea some time to ruminate, but my initial thoughts have to do with the range of meanings of the Greek word
sozo, and the way that the Greek word
iaomai is used by Peter (1 Peter 2:24) to figuratively mean salvation even though it literally means "healed" (I realize he's quoting Isaiah 53:3), and with the way Isaiah 53 talks about both physical healing and salvation (for the physical healing, I appeal to Matthew's quote from it in Matthew 8:17), and with the ideas possibly being mingled in bi-cola constructs (the Hebrew poetic technique that has what you might call rhyming ideas) in verses like Psalm 103:3.
Are you familiar with Inaugurated Eschatology? The idea that the kingdom is here now, but not yet. I think I could be gravitating toward that with these thoughts, though I don't know it's necessary.
Yes and no. That's a bit of a misquote, and I think you know that. Jesus is saying blessed are those who have not seen him, not those who have not seen miracles. The full quote from John 20:29 is, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." Nonetheless, your observation remains true. Many have become Christians without seeing a miracle in the process (notwithstanding the fact that salvation is a miracle). At least in the West, this is currently probably the norm.
Fair point. The gospel message, that of salvation through faith in Christ because of his atoning death, is
still the gospel message regardless of whether there are miracles. Clearly, the same cannot be said of miracles on their own.
I agree with this to, but (yes, I know: big surprise!) I think we tend to combine those verses regarding false prophets with our general Western anti-supernaturalism and disregard some people
because of their association with the miraculous, rather than evaluating their fruits as Jesus told us to do.
Sorry, I mentioned the Jews only to highlight what Jesus didn't say to the father of the sick boy in John 4:43-54 (
not the father of the demoniac, as I incorrectly stated before). I don't think we can assume a priori that Jesus comment, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe” (John 4:48 ESV), was a slam rather than an observation of the necessity of miracles. If it was a slam, why did Jesus go on an d heal the boy? Or perhaps whether he healed the boy or not is irrelevant to the comment. Nonetheless, I think we may be coloring Jesus' comment based on our bias when we see it as a slam. Or we might not. I'm not
really decided on that.
I'm not sure I'm getting your point. Sorry. I think you're going to have to expand on that a little before I understand where you're going with it. It's probably something obvious and I'm just missing it.
Yes, while Jesus may be the "friend who sticks closer than a brother", I agree that we accept him as both savior
and lord, not just savior and definitely not just a friend. Of course, per my ongoing thinking on healing being a part of the gospel (a very Pentecostal theology, I think), I'm inclined to say the primary tool is preaching
with miracles accompanying (what Peter either prayed for or assumed in Acts 4:30). In fact, on a side note, I'd say that combination should be normative in church too: 1 Corinthians 12-14 presents the necessity of both.
You're going to have to defend that statement for me to buy into it. In Matthew 4:23 and Matthew 9:35 both have Jesus "teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness," so he's already going into the synagogues. And Matthew 4:17 says, "
From that time on Jesus began to preach, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near'" (emphasis mine). There is no corresponding verse saying he stopped doing that. Also, when he sends out the 12 in he says, in Matthew 10:7-8, "As you go, proclaim this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give." So, that was the message he taught his disciples to preach. I'm not seeing a change in his preaching regarding the Kingdom or repentance prior to and after John's death. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying I need something more than just your statement. Right now, it's looking a lot like an argument from silence.
This is sadly very often true on both counts. I'm originally from healing service. The church bulleting, however, encouraged people not to come if the had "expectations." Another C of E church I attended was more charismatic. We actually had a man named John Wimber come and teach on healing and I got a word of knowledge which led to a instantaneous healing (I think I mentioned that occasion in an earlier comment, but I could be mistaken). On the other hand, there is a church in Colorado, USA (where I now live) that teaches a very clear cut "Word of Faith" doctrine: your faith is the power that heals; unbelief prevents healing; words activate faith; saying anything negative creates that reality in your life. Along with that, they're also very heavy on Prosperity: God wants you rich. I think every item on that list is unbiblical and some of them are ungodly!
Regardless of whether one concludes miracles are a necessary part of preaching of the gospel (the idea I am now contemplating) or that the preached message is all that's needed, your words are equally true: "All we can do is to be faithful and to share the gospel of Christ where we get the opportunity and trust God for the results." Amen!