“HOW HIGH OF A CHRISTIAN LIFE?”

A. B. SIMPSON AND THE CLASSIC DOCTRINE OF THEOSIS

by

Bernie A. Van De Walle, Ph.D.

            In Scripture, the idiomatic phrase “as far as the East is from the West” (Ps. 103) is used to communicate the idea of insurmountable distances. The East is understood as one extreme and the West the other—extremes that, by their very definition may never be brought together. In Christian history, East and West are also invoked as two Christian traditions which have very different histories, practices, and doctrines—perhaps differences beyond reconciliation. While each is still broadly labeled “Christian,” it is understood that foundational and significant differences exist between the two—including their respective understandings of the cardinal Christian doctrines of soteriology and teleology.[1]

            Perhaps the greatest of these doctrinal differences between East and West may be found in the Eastern doctrine of humanity’s ultimate and ideal destiny. For the Orthodox East, the goal of human existence and, therefore, of salvation is nothing less than the divinization of humanity or theosis. The theological and practical connotations of such a doctrine ring strangely in Western ears. Yet, theosis is not an obscure or marginalized doctrine within Eastern Orthodoxy. Rather, the deification of humanity is the major theme, the “golden thread.” Deification may rightly be identified as nothing less than the “religious ideal,”[2] the very “aim of the Christian life,”[3] and “the very essence of [Orthodox] Christianity.”[4] Deification is the telos, the goal and purpose of human life[5] and the final goal at which every Christian must aim. For Orthodoxy, “final salvation and sanctification mean. . .deification.”[6]

Read more: “HOW HIGH OF A CHRISTIAN LIFE?” A. B. SIMPSON AND THE CLASSIC DOCTRINE OF THEOSIS

The Fourfold Gospel Meets Contemporary Theology:

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

 

Stanley Grenz and Roger Olson’s 20^th-Century Theology: God and the World in a Transitional Age (IVP 1993) traces the currents and developments of twentieth-century theology through the categories of transcendence, on the one hand, and immanence, on the other. While a highly-influential text, its approach to the categorization and perceived relationship of recent theologies is not the only option available to us. I would assert that contemporary theologies and, perhaps more pointedly, contemporary soteriologies, may also be generally categorized by their relative propensity to emphasize the pre-eminence of either physicality or immateriality in relation to Christ’s saving work. That is, when discussing both the locus of human need and, consequently, the response of the Gospel, twentieth-century theologies tend to give pre-eminence (at least) to either humanity’s physical or spiritual condition.

I have been asked to address what the Fourfold Gospel might have to say to contemporary theology, in general. It is my pleasure to do so. As I do, I am going to use this continuum (somewhat contrived) of physicality and spirituality to do so.

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The Radical Holiness Movement and The Christian and Missionary Alliance:

Twins, perhaps, but not Identical

 

The religious climate of late-nineteenth century American theology provided the fertile setting from which a great number of Christian denominations and organizations would be born. Two such movements include the Radical Holiness Movement, founded upon the ministries of Martin Wells Knapp (1853–1901) and Seth Cook Rees (1854–1933), and The Christian and Missionary Alliance, founded by former Presbyterian, Albert B. Simpson (1843-1919). In a sense, therefore, both movements were born of the same mother, the theological and practical emphases of popular late nineteenth-century Evangelicalism. Consequently, one should not be surprised to discover that there are clear and significant similarities between the two. Yet, as any sibling will be sure tell you, it is just as important to note that, in spite of the similarities, there are also significant and defining differences. Through an examination of these two movements and, particularly, through an consideration of the lives and thoughts of their founding fathers, the goal of this lecture is to identify both the significant similarities and the noteworthy distinctions of these two supposed “siblings.”

Read more: The Radical Holiness Movement and The Christian and Missionary Alliance: Twins, perhaps, but not...

Part II

Historical Elaborations

Cautious Co-belligerence?

The Late Nineteenth-Century American Divine Healing Movement and the Promise of Medical Science

 

Bernie A. Van De Walle

 

[A] Introduction

            The late-nineteenth century was a time of monumental change. It witnessed a cyclone of transformation and progress rivaling, at least, that of any preceding era. Not surprisingly, it was a time of key advances in medical science. This era was home to Pasteur, Röntgen, Lister, and a number of lesser known, but still significant medical pioneers. These inventors and their discoveries radically reshaped and significantly advanced the practice of medicine. New advances seemed to be dawning with every new day. At the end of the nineteenth century, the promise of medical science seemed unlimited.

At the same time, significant change was seen in other areas; religion was no exception. It was the birthplace of the Divine Healing movement, a loosely associated group of religious teachers and practitioners who sought to promote and practice the healing power of the indwelling and resurrected Christ over that of natural means. This movement gained tens of thousands of adherents in a significantly short span of time. Key figures in this group included people from a wide-variety of denominations, men and women, ministers and physicians. Furthermore, this movement played an essential role in the birth of Pentecostalism,[1] the greatest religious movement of the twentieth century.

Therefore, there rose simultaneously on the American landscape at least two significant approaches to health and healing in the late nineteenth century, each with its own biased and ardent champions and devotees. In fact, the opinion of the late nineteenth-century Divine Healing teachers did not, as one might expect, thoroughly dispense with the value and goodness of physicians, their diagnoses, and medical treatment. While they did not completely dismiss the advances, usefulness, and propriety of medical science, they did assert that it was, at best, a deficient approach to the gravity, complexity, and depth of human disease. While they believed that physicians and their medical treatments may be gifts from God, they were convinced that medical science was fundamentally unable to bring to humanity the kind of health and life intended for them by God and found solely in the redeeming work of Jesus Christ.

This chapter will explore those common and key responses—both the affirmations and the denials—of the late nineteenth-century Divine Healing proponents to the growing popularity and use of medicine, remedies, and physicians.

 

[A] Divine Healing Affirmations of Medical Science

            Almost to a person, Divine Healing advocates readily granted that doctors and many of their treatments exist by the providence of God. A. B. Simpson, founder of The Christian and Missionary Alliance, noted that physicians and their medical treatments are “among God’s good gifts” to humanity.[2] Charles Cullis, the renowned Boston homeopath and father of the Divine Healing movement in the United States noted the “valuable” role that doctors and their treatments may play and continued his own homeopathic medical practice in harmony with his ministry of Divine Healing.[3] Carrie Judd Montgomery, one of the Divine Healing movement’s more celebrated authors, speakers, and founder of the “Home of Peace” in Oakland, California, granted the skill of those physicians that worked with her during her own infirmity.[4] One lesser-known figure, Kenneth Mckenzie, a member of Simpson’s Christian and Missionary Alliance and author of no fewer than two significant texts on the theology and practice of Divine Healing, noted that only those with an immature theology of Divine Healing and “extremists” would deny that there is good in doctors and medicine.[5] Furthermore, the fact that most Divine Healing proponents continued to refer to physicians as “Dr.” shows that only by caricature could one assert that Divine Healing movement saw absolutely no good or use in consulting with physicians and implementing their prescriptions.[6]

            These affirmations of physicians and medical treatment by Divine Healing proponents, however, were not blanket endorsements. Rather, as we will see, they were limited to particular and specific arenas. What is particularly interesting is the seeming unanimity of the Divine Healing proponents in regard to those particular areas that they affirmed in regard to medical science. Almost universally, the Divine Healing teachers affirmed three separate but related aspects of the goodness of physicians and medical science: 1) the recent and substantial advances in medical science, 2) the physicians’ ability to diagnose the physical cause of disease, and 3) the physicians’ occasional ability to alleviate symptoms of disease.

 

[B] Affirmed the Recent and Substantial Advances in Medical Science

            The nineteenth century, as noted earlier, was a time of significant progress in the realm of medical science—advances not always appreciated by the religious establishment. The Divine Healing proponents were not so biased, however, as to deny that there were any real and worthy developments. Observing that the general progress in knowledge was a fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy,[7] Simpson also noted, “The progress of medical science in the past half century has been phenomenal. No fair-minded person can refuse to concede its value, notwithstanding all its limitations, counterfeits, and failures.”[8] On another occasion, he called recent scientific progress “radical and astounding.”[9] Cullis, in defending to the local authorities his establishment and placement of a “Cancer Home” in Boston, cited the recent progress in medical science as that which made the presence of such a home no real threat to the surrounding population.[10] These advances, though, were not without scrutiny and criticism. One of the advances, for example, that Simpson questioned was the developing medical science of eugenics that alleged that disease in all of its manifestations could, at the very least, be significantly limited by the legislated and selective breeding of humanity to do away with “the imperfect product.” He described such a program as “foolishness with God.”[11]

[B] Affirmed the Physicians’ Ability to Diagnose the Physical Cause of Disease

            Second, the Divine Healing teachers also affirmed physicians’ ability to often accurately diagnose the physical cause of disease. This affirmation, though, was more often implicit than explicit. R. Kelso Carter, a noted professor, author, and composer (he wrote the hymn “Standing on the Promises of God”), while eventually pursuing an avenue of physical restoration other than medicine, at no point doubted that the diagnosis his doctors gave him of “incurable heart disease” was accurate.[12] Montgomery never questioned that she suffered from spinal fever as her physicians had diagnosed.[13] Cullis often relied on his own medical training and expertise to identify the particular physical distress of those who came to him and trusted implicitly the diagnosis of others in the medical profession.[14] A. J. Gordon, noted author, educator, and pastor of the Clarendon Street Baptist Church in Boston, asserted that physicians are those who have the “ability to interpret . . . the laws of health to the sick” and implies that they are right to do so and may do so rightly.[15]

            One example of particular interest is found in Simpson’s discussion of the cause of the death of Jesus Christ. In order to make a theological point, Simpson appealed to the opinion of contemporary physicians, diagnosing across the centuries and relying on the biblical accounts, regarding the cause of Jesus’ death. He noted that many physicians attributed the death of Jesus, medically, to a “rupture of the heart. He did not die from the ordinary causes incident to crucifixion, but He died from a spasm that caused His heart to burst.”[16] Simpson not only leaned on the diagnosis of contemporary physicians of an event centuries previous but cited them as authoritative and accurate on an issue as theologically significant as the crucifixion.

[B] Affirmed the Physicians’ Occasional Ability to Alleviate Symptoms of Disease

 

            Third, the Divine Healing proponents affirmed the medical community’s ability to occasionally alleviate, if not eliminate, symptoms of disease. In his later retraction of one aspect of his earlier Divine Healing assertions, Carter noted that the actual practice of the key proponents of Divine Healing shows that, while their rhetoric may seem to leave no room for the use of natural means, each of them both prescribed and practiced the use of natural means.[17] Such is most evident in the life of Cullis who never relinquished his medical practice and continued to think of and identify himself as a member of the medical community with a practice, at least to a great degree, founded on the use of natural means.[18] Montgomery, speaking about the malady from which she was eventually divinely healed, did note that often her grandmother’s “old-fashioned home remedies” afforded her some level of comfort and relief as did the medication provided by physicians.[19] Gordon affirmed the “recuperative forces of the natural world.”[20] Even Simpson, who so strongly warned against the use of medicine, granted its “limited value” and cautious employ.[21] The Divine Healing proponents noted that, by divine providence, there was woven into the very fabric of creation some level of medical relief. The goal and practice of physicians was to identify these recuperative, “mechanical” powers of nature and apply them to those in need.[22] Some of the proponents called the employment of this recuperative power of nature which existed by the purposeful, beneficent, and creative power of God, the vis medicatrix naturae.[23] As it was part of the providential structure of creation, it should not be rejected, as far as it went, and may have been the best help that some could obtain.[24]

            It should be noted that one of the internal debates between the Divine Healing proponents concerned whether or not one could legitimately ask God to give his blessing to the use of means. Implicitly, the very discussion shows that, to varying degrees, each side admitted that natural means may bring about some measured effects, at least. If there were no effects, the question of blessing is, at the very least, much less pressing.

 

[A] Denials and Critiques of Medical Science

            Certainly, however, the endorsement of physicians and medical treatment by those involved in the Divine Healing movement was cautious and limited. While they affirmed the recent real progress made by medical science and affirmed its ability to diagnose and alleviate the physical cause of disease, they also made some stark denials that set them clearly at odds with the medical community. While some of the promoters of Divine Healing had critiques that were peculiar to themselves, there were five critiques that they all held in common and that were, for each of them, the central critiques of medical science.

 

[B] Denied There is Either Scriptural Precedent or Prescription to Consult Physicians or to Use Medicine

 

            First, the Divine Healing promoters denied that there is either scriptural precedent or divine prescription to utilize medicine, remedies, or to consult physicians. Simpson asserted that nowhere in Scripture did God prescribe medicines or remedies for his people.[25] When medical means are mentioned in Scripture, he noted, “such ‘means’ are referred to in terms not at all complimentary.”[26] There is no mention of God’s institution or blessing of the medical profession. When the people of God are sick, Montgomery noted, they are not to turn to the created order for relief. Instead, they are to seek God alone.[27] The only prescription found in Scripture for the sick is to turn to God in faith to be their healer,[28] to be Jehovah Rophi. In the New Testament, in particular, the only means the sick are to follow is found in James 5, to call upon the elders of the Church, whose credentials do not lie in their ability to manage the vis medicatrix naturae but in their being full of the Holy Spirit able to exercise the prayer of faith.[29] Given the absence of any other divinely prescribed means of dealing with sickness, Simpson asserted that to turn to medicine, remedies and doctors is not only unwise, it is, simply, both dangerous and impertinent.[30]

 

[B] Denied Cessationist Theology

            Second, they all denied the doctrine of cessationism that affirmed that, upon the establishment of the Church, the age of miracles came to an end.[31] Simpson asserted that the lack of the historic manifestation of Divine Healing, which he did not deny, was based on the promotion of a theology of cessation and the consequential lack of belief in its possibility, rather than on a change in the character or ministry of God in Christ.[32] Montgomery asserted that unbelief in the continuation of the miraculous was the reason that most people, both Christian and non-Christian, did not bother to pursue Divine Healing.[33] Gordon argued that, with the establishment and rule of a cessationist theology, average Christians who might otherwise assume the ongoing exercise of the supernatural were bullied into submission and unbelief.[34] They all noted that cessationism could not be sustained by Scripture.[35] Gordon wrote, “[Jesus] made no provision for the arrest of the stream of divine manifestations which he had started, either in the next age or in a subsequent age.”[36] To those who would want to limit the miraculous gifts to the founding era of the Church, he wrote, “[A]ntiquity has no monopoly of God’s gifts, and ancient men as such had no entrée into God’s treasure-house which is denied to us.”[37] He also showed how cessationism in regard to Divine Healing could not be sustained by a thorough study of Church history.[38] For these teachers, the ministry of God in Christ did not change from one era to another.[39] In one of his more famous hymns, Simpson reminded people that the Jesus who walked the Earth and healed was the same Christ “Yesterday, Today, Forever,” and his ministry did not significantly change either.[40]

            The Divine Healing practitioners credited the new instances of Divine Healing that were being manifest in their day to the renewed faith of some not only in the power of Christ but in the subsistence of the miraculous. That is, a more scriptural theology, or as Gordon called it, “primitive faith,” was reemerging in the church and, consequently, so was a more scriptural practice and manifestation.[41] This resurrection of a more scriptural theology, though, was not understood to be merely coincidental. It was, rather, part of the restoration of biblical Christianity that they believed would precede the return of Jesus Christ.

[EXT] With a reviving faith, with a deepening spiritual life, with a more marked and Scriptural recognition of the Holy Spirit and the Living Christ, and with the nearer approach of the returning Master Himself, this blessed gospel of physical redemption is beginning to be restored to its ancient place, and the Church is slowly learning to reclaim what she never should have lost.[42] [EXT]

 

 

 

[B] Denied the Legitimacy of Medical Science’s Exclusive Naturalism/Materialism

 

Third, they denied the legitimacy of the late nineteenth-century medical community’s predominant and excessive, if not exclusive, “materialism.”[43] Such a perspective believes that people are nothing more than bio-mechanical/physical beings and, therefore, cure is a strictly secular and physical affair. Consequently, the training of physicians occurred in a purely naturalistic way, biasing, if not blinding, them from the spiritual aspect of human being and certainly dismissing any chance of a psycho-somatic unity. If humanity is a purely physical being, then disease is understood as being purely physical as well. The supernatural, in general, and the spiritual aspect of humanity, in particular, is not only largely ignored in such a perspective, it is practically denied. The Divine Healing advocates noted that the very ideas of the miraculous, spiritual, and supernatural were illegitimate to the medical community and that “any anti-miraculous” theory was automatically favored.[44] Simpson noted that manifestations of Divine Healing had not subsided (certainly not to the same degree) in those countries, cultures, or eras that were less “modern” in their worldview and that expected the involvement of the supernatural in the whole of one’s being. He wrote, “It is not surprising, therefore, that [Divine Healing] comes natural [sic] to our simple-hearted converts in heathen lands, who know no better than to trust the Lord for both body and soul.”[45]

[B] Denied Medical Science’s Ability to Diagnose the Ultimate Cause of Disease

 

            The Divine Healing proponents, consequently, denied medical science’s ability to diagnose the central root and cause of all disease. For them, no physical aspects of disease are foundational but are, instead, always consequential and symptomatic. At the most foundational level, the cause of all sickness and disease is sin. Medical science’s excessive, if not exclusive, naturalism and its understanding of sickness and disease solely as a chain of physical causes and effects prejudiced it from considering this option. This is medical science’s fatal flaw. For the Divine Healing proponents, sin is the ultimate cause of all human suffering, including human disease.[46] Sin, as a force in the cosmos, has led to the disruption of the good created order and has resulted in the move to chaos and the disintegration of the created order of which human disease is but one manifestation. Therefore, medical science and its exclusive naturalism, at best, can only identify the symptoms of disease and can never get to the heart of the human predicament. “The doctor’s eyes are often more at fault than his hand,” wrote A. J. Gordon; he continued, “He cannot cure because he cannot comprehend the cause of our plague.”[47] Kenneth Mckenzie granted that medical science may make accurate diagnoses, to a degree. It fell short, however, since the heart of the human predicament is supernatural. Science may see the “fruitage” of human sickness, but “the roots of sickness . . . are spiritual.”[48] Given medical science’s naturalistic presuppositions, the Divine Healing promoters asserted that it cannot diagnose the cause of human disease at its most fundamental level. It is not that the human dilemma is “contranatural” but it is supernatural.[49] Therefore, if medical science hoped to accurately diagnose the cause of disease, it must lay aside its exclusive naturalistism. The understanding of sin—a supernatural entity—requires the supernatural means of revelation and illumination.[50]

[B] Denied Medical Science’s Ability to Treat the Ultimate Cause of Disease

            Consequently, the Divine Healing proponents also denied medical science’s ability to provide a cure suitable to the cause of humanity’s ills. By nature, medical science was only interested in the physical treatment of humanity. Consequently, medicine could never be a “sufficient remedy”[51] to the root and breadth of human disease. As such, it was an “imperfect institution”[52] and must be content with being symptomatic, at best.[53] Alleviation is within its grasp, for a time. The finality of cure, however, is not. It may address, to a degree, pain and discomfort but it cannot address and eliminate the root of the disease.[54]

            Sin is ultimately a supernatural matter and, therefore, it must be addressed with a supernatural response.[55] Like many in the medical profession, the Divine Healing proponents assumed that only “like cures like.”[56] The nature of the cure must be of the same kind as the disease. The cause of disease, while manifesting itself physically, is in essence supernatural. Therefore, its cure must be supernatural, too. For the promoters of Divine Healing, only one remedy is both suitable to the address the supernatural aspect and adequate to address the breadth of the diseased human condition. Only in Jesus Christ can one find relief from consequences of the onslaught of sin. “Christ is the remedy for the Fall, for sin and, therefore, for disease which is the result of sin.”[57] Faith in the “Great Physician”[58] is not only the only appropriate response to sin, it “is God’s remedy for disease as well as sin” (emphasis added).[59]

            As important as physical healing is for the Divine Healing teachers, it is not the priority. The need for regeneration and sanctification—the spiritual blessings of Christ’s work—is more fundamental. Consequently, the healing homes and retreat centers operated by some of these individuals focused their work on these essential items early in their regimen.[60] In addition to and prior to the exercising of an explicit ministry of healing, these homes sought to ensure that its guests had experienced the regenerative work of Christ and had, subsequently, experienced the sanctifying work of Christ, as well.[61] This would often occur through a routine of spiritual therapy that had as its base careful Bible study, pastoral counsel, and the exercise of the “Prayer of Faith” according to James 5. Charles Cullis wrote that his own practice was “to get [those under his care] to give themselves to the Lord Jesus first, and then . . . to pray for them [for healing].”[62] As a result, while many found the healing that they sought, many more would find spiritual blessing, even if they were not ultimately physically healed. Cullis boldly reported that while not all who came to his homes were physically healed, “none died until [their] soul [was] healed.”[63] This was not seen as underperformance of any measure. Rather, they reported that such was an even greater blessing than the healing that was pursued. In Cullis’ homes, which were exclusively reserved for those who had been pronounced “incurable” by their own physicians, this spiritual restoration far outnumbered the cases of physical healing and, Cullis reported, both host and guest believed that such ought to be considered success.[64] Those who were fortunate enough to be physically healed also had “as great a blessing . . . come to the soul as to the body.”[65]

 

[A] The Notable Exception: John Alexander Dowie 

            Those acquainted with the late nineteenth-century Divine Healing movement will note the conspicuous absence of one leading figure. John Alexander Dowie, the founder of the International Divine Healing Association, the Christian Catholic Apostolic Church, and the settlement of Zion, Illinois, was one of the best-known, if not notorious, figures in the late nineteenth-century Divine Healing movement.[66] Dowie echoed many of the denials made by the other Divine Healing advocates. He, like the others, denied, that there was scriptural precedent or prescription to employ medical science.[67] He staunchly opposed the assertion that the age of miracles was past.[68] He believed, too, that the root of disease was ultimately spiritual[69] and that science’s excessive naturalism disqualified it from being able to diagnose the ultimate cause of sickness and disease.[70]

            Dowie is distinct from the other figures, however, in his outright and vitriolic rejection of even the limited good of medicine and the medical profession.[71] First, he strongly and repeatedly denied that there was anything that could legitimately be called “medical science.”[72] Quoting numerous figures within the medical community itself for support,[73] Dowie claimed that medical practice had no scientific method and was nothing more than an on-going and disconnected series of guesses on the part of the practitioner.[74] There was no real science to it. Consequently, the concept of medical advance was an “ILLUSION” established by the medical community solely to establish its own reputation and power.[75] The whole business was, actually, an “infamous humbug.”[76]

            Dowie also denied that medical “science” could alleviate symptoms. He believed that there is no cure in medical science[77] and that is was, therefore, of “no value.”[78] Rather, Dowie asserted that the means employed by medical “science” did far more harm than good. He labeled the drugs administered by physicians “poisons”[79] and surgical procedures “butchery.”[80] Hospitals were “murderous vivi-section holes from which the victims rarely escaped with either money or life.” These institutions were “sacred to Disease and Death” wherein physicians practiced “prolonged and nameless tortures.”[81] Most, if not all, medical patients were worse off after their treatment than they were before. Worse still, Dowie charged that medical practice was responsible for “hundreds of thousands of deaths,”[82] more than “WAR, PESTILENCE AND FAMINE COMBINED.”[83] Not only were people physically poorer than they were before, Dowie contended that many were driven into poverty paying their medical bills, as well.[84]

            It will come as little surprise, then, that Dowie denied that physicians and medicine were in any way manifestations of the grace of God. Rather, Dowie boldly alleged that their source was diabolical. Physicians, “AS A PROFESSION, ARE DIRECTLY INSPIRED BY THE DEVIL” and, in their medical practice, are the Devil’s servants.[85] Dowie described these “MONSTERS” as worse than either Herod, who killed the children of Bethlehem, or the pagan Druids, who offered up virgin sacrifice.[86] The diabolical character of the medical community was manifest in the performing of abortions, the murder of patients, the doctors’ addiction to drugs, and their insincerity regarding the legitimacy of their practice.[87] The diabolical nature of the practice of medicine, however, is most clearly seen in its desire to stop the practice of Divine Healing, attempting to remove Christ from his rightful place as the Healer.[88] Consequently, Dowie would contend “DOCTORS AND DRUGS ARE NECESSARILY THE FOES OF CHRIST AS THE HEALER.”[89]

 

[A] The Popular Reputation of Late Nineteenth-Century Medical Science

            From an early twenty-first century perspective, we can see that the late nineteenth century, undoubtedly, was a time of great and monumental change in medical practice. The late nineteenth century saw the advancement of microbiology under Louis Pasteur, the vast improvements to an antiseptic surgical context resulting from the work of Joseph Lister, and the development of x-ray technology by Willhelm Röntgen. The implementation of these advances vastly improved not only medical diagnosis and practice but, perhaps more importantly, the chances of full recovery from medical and surgical procedure. Despite these very significant advances, however, medical science and medical practitioners in the late nineteenth century were held in low esteem by the general public and the denigration of the American physician was common.[90]

            Scholars of the history of medicine have pointed out no fewer than four separate though related reasons for this low view of medicine in late nineteenth-century America. First, during this period, the licensing requirements of government for those practicing medicine was rather low.[91] This afforded various practitioners no level of civic endorsement and, consequently, no level of civic respect. Practically, many physicians operated on the fringes of society and were, for the most part, not accountable to the magistrate or anyone else for their methods.

            Related to this idea is the second reason for the low level of esteem: the relative lack of formal education that most physicians of the day had received.[92] Prior to the late nineteenth century, the training in the practice of medicine was usually limited to an apprenticeship. New candidates would receive their training at the hands of an older practitioner and, consequently, be limited in their training by the opinions, practices, and resources of that particular mentor. Given this method of training, many of the great advances taking place in the wider medical community were not known, endorsed, or widely practiced, in some cases, for decades. Physicians and their apprentices simply continue to use those methods that had held sway for decades, which they knew best, or those that they personally felt were most effective and appropriate. While medical schools were present and enrolled large numbers of students, the quality of both the schools and students was suspect. Most medical schools of the day, since they did not need any type of sanction, were little more than “diploma mills.”[93] Furthermore, it was possible, in those days, for one to be admitted to a medical school when that same person would not meet the most basic requirements of a good liberal arts school.[94] The curriculum at most of these medical schools “required attendance at only two four-month lecture sessions. There was generally no clinical training sessions, no laboratories, and, for that matter, no admissions requirements. Even as late as 1870, only a very small percentage of medical students had earned a bachelor’s degree.”[95] It was not until the 1890’s when American medicine would begin to come of age.[96]

            A third reason that the medical community was held in low esteem in the public eye was due to the medical community’s constant, public, and often vitriolic internal disagreements on both the diagnoses and, consequently, the method of treatment of almost any illness.[97] Part of the reason for this stems from the medical “doctrine that there was one cause and therefore one cure of disease.”[98] Post-enlightenment healers, following the lead of Isaac Newton, sought to understand the single "fundamental force or principle responsible" for disease in all of its manifestations. This would lead to the various "sectarian" schools of medical science such as mesmerism, Grahamism, hydropathy, etc.”[99] Disagreement, of course, rose over the nature of this singular and rudimentary cause of disease. Consequently, there were equally divergent opinions and practices concerning the mode of effective treatment. Having put all of their proverbial eggs in one diagnostic basket meant that if one were to disagree with a practitioner on any level, it would be understood to be a lethal attack on the whole of that practitioner’s medical understanding and ability. Such attacks could not be taken lightly if one wished to continue practicing medicine and attracting patients as the competition for business was great. This led to constant internal yet very public sniping and “professional quarrels.”[100] This level of division did little good for the reputation of physicians or to instill the confidence of a watching public.

            Finally, the unpleasant, strange, and often fatally ineffective methods of many physicians did not help the profession’s reputation. “Bleedings, sweatings, blistering, and the use of drugs aimed at inducing vomiting or diarrhea were the most common therapeutic techniques.”[101] Mercury, now widely known for its deathly effects, was used to treat a variety of diseases in the nineteenth century including tuberculosis, constipation, and headache. “Those hardy patients who did not die in the course of these largely futile endeavors were at the very least weakened by the ordeal.”[102] The terms “butchery” and “stupendous humbug” were words used in the secular media to describe the medical profession.[103]

            No single case brought more attention to the inability of medical science in the late nineteenth century than that of President James Garfield. The well-publicized and closely-watched case of Garfield’s ultimately ineffective medical care showed the inability of, assumedly, the nation’s best doctors and latest techniques to deal with something as straightforward and as common as a gunshot wound. Garfield succumbed to his wound after a number of days despite round the clock medical care. The failure of the nation’s leading physicians and their “medical science” to restore him shone clearly and brightly in the spotlight.[104]

 

[A] Conclusion

            Though it may come as a surprise to some, the view that the Divine Healing proponents held of medical science was not at all out of step with that of American society. The American public, in general, held medical science and medical practitioners in low esteem. The vicious attacks of John Alexander Dowie were not necessarily the isolated rantings of an extremist. The secular media was just as likely to use the words “poisons,” “butchers,” and “murderers” when talking about contemporary medical practice and practitioners. On balance the Divine Healing practitioners actually appear to have been more gracious than many in the secular press when it came to discussing the promise and possibilities of medical science. They cited medicine and physicians as providential. They believed that creation was divinely and intentionally endowed with properties that could assuage human suffering. The mandate of medical science, they said, was to discover these and to apply them appropriately.

            Still, the Divine Healing proponents suggested only a limited appropriation of the offerings of medical science. While the Divine Healing proponents did not completely dismiss the advances, usefulness, and propriety of medical science, they did assert that it was, at best, a deficient approach to the gravity, complexity, and depth of human disease. Therefore, they encouraged only the guarded employ of these “scientific” means and methods. Their reasons for doing so were numerous. First, they realized that much of what was promoted as medical science had not been well-proven and may have had side-effects as distressing as the disease itself. Second, they were convinced that medical science’s anthropology and hamartology were both myopic and, therefore, its means to relieve human distress was short-sighted and deficient as well. Finally, they realized that there was a tendency for the advances and successes of medical science to usurp the primary and necessary, if not exclusive, role of Jesus Christ as Healer. This, above all, was intolerable for the Divine Healing proponents.

            The champions of Divine Healing argued that Christians, especially, should seek their healing, not from a deficient medical science, but from the omnipotent and unchanging Christ directly and alone. In addition to those cautions listed previously, they argued that such an approach was the sole and repeated prescription of Scripture. Therefore, it was the only sanctioned course for the believer. Second, they believed that Christ alone was the only appropriate and adequate solution to the depth and breadth of human disease. Humanity’s disease was more than just physical. It affected the totality of the human condition. Only the atoning work of Jesus Christ was able to deal with the destructive effects of sin on humanity, in its depth and in all of its manifestations—spiritual and physical.

            Both medical science and the practice of Divine Healing have long histories. Each also saw momentous growth and popularity in the late nineteenth century as part of the larger and wider interest in holism and health. It is of no surprise, then, that key figures related to these movements would interact with the nature and developments of the other. They did, after all, seek to address the same human needs even if from two different perspectives. While both medical science and the Divine Healing movement sought to combat the problem of human disease, they did have fundamental disagreements about how it ought to be pursued and the legitimacy of the other perspective. Therefore, their relationship could be described as a cautious co-belligerence, at best.

 

[1] See Donald W. Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1987).

[2] Albert Benjamin Simpson, Earnests of the Coming Age and Other Sermons (New York: Christian Alliance Publishing, 1921), 98–99; Albert Benjamin Simpson, The Old Faith and the New Gospel (New York: Christian Alliance Publishing, 1911; repr., Harrisburg, Penn.: Christian Publications, 1966), 59.

[3] Charles Cullis, Faith Cures; Or, Answer to Prayer in the Healing of the Sick (Boston: Willard Tract Repository, n.d.), 6.

[4] Carrie F. Judd, The Prayer of Faith (Chicago: Revell, 1880), 12.

[5] Kenneth Mckenzie, Divine Life for the Body (New York: Christian Alliance Publishing, 1926), 1–2.

[6] Judd, Prayer of Faith, 85.

[7] Simpson, Earnests of the Coming Age, 5.

[8] Albert Benjamin Simpson, “Divine Healing,” Living Truths 3:4 (October 1903): 172.

[9] Albert Benjamin Simpson, Life More Abundantly (New York: Christian Alliance Publishing, 1904), 38.

[10] W. H. Daniels, ed., Dr. Cullis and His Work: Twenty Years of Blessing in Answer to Prayer. The Hospitals, Schools, Orphanages, Churches, and Missions Raised Up and Supported by the Hand of the Lord through the Faith and Labors of Charles Cullis, M.D. (Boston: Willard Tract Repository, 1885), 224–25.

[11] Simpson, Life More Abundantly, 38.

[12] Russell Kelso Carter, The Atonement for Sin and Sickness: Or, A Full Salvation for Soul and Body (Boston: Willard Tract Repository, 1884; repr., New York: Garland Publishing, 1985), 19.

[13] Carrie Judd Montgomery, Under His Wings: The Story of My Life (Oakland, Calif.: Office of Triumphs of Faith, 1936), 50.

[14] Cullis, Faith Cures, 16.

[15] Adoniram Judson Gordon, The Ministry of Healing: Miracles of Cure in All Ages (Chicago: Revell, 1882), 144.

[16] Albert Benjamin Simpson, The Lord for the Body, rev. ed. (Camp Hill, Penn.: Christian Publications, 1996), 79; Albert Benjamin Simpson, Discovery of Divine Healing (New York: Alliance Press, 1903), 117.

[17] In Chapters 7 and 8 of his measured retraction of previous doctrinal convictions, Carter points out how leading figures in the Divine Healing Movement all “practically” used medical means personally or referred others to them. These figures include but are not limited to Cullis, Simpson, Gordon, Montgomery, and Dowie. Russell Kelso Carter, “Faith Healing” Reviewed after Twenty Years (Boston: The Christian Witness Company, 1897; repr., New York: Garland Publishing Co., 1985). Carrie Judd Montgomery acknowledges that they all had been inconsistent in their treatment of faith and medicine (Prayer of Faith, 80).

[18] Paul G. Chappell, “The Divine Healing Movement in America” (Ph.D. diss., Drew University, 1983), 141; Cullis, Faith Cures, 5–6.

[19] Montgomery, Under His Wings, 50.

[20] Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 144.

[21] Albert Benjamin Simpson, The Gospel of Healing, rev. ed. (Harrisburg, Penn.: Christian Publications, 1915), 70.

[22] Daniels, Dr. Cullis, 348; Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 144.

[23] Simpson, Earnests of the Coming Age, 26, 98; A. J. Gordon uses a slightly different name, the “vis medicatrix” (Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 186).

[24] Simpson, Gospel of Healing, 41, 70, 114, 183.

[25] Simpson, Gospel of Healing, 67.

[26] Simpson, Gospel of Healing, 68.

[27] Judd, Prayer of Faith, 82.

[28] Simpson, Gospel of Healing, 45; Albert Benjamin Simpson, Genesis and Exodus, Christ in the Bible 1 (New York: The Word, Work, and World Publishing, 1888), 205.

[29] Carrie Judd, “The Lord Our Healer,” Triumphs of Faith 5:12 (December 1885): 272.

[30] Simpson, Gospel of Healing, 44, 70.

[31] Gordon noted that the opinion of the Divine Healing figures is at odds with the greatest majority of Christians on this issue. Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 3; Carter, Atonement for Sin and Sickness, 23.

[32] Simpson, Gospel of Healing, 10–11; Albert Benjamin Simpson, Messages of Love; Or, Christ in the Epistles of John (Nyack, NY: Christian Alliance Publishing, 1892), 76; Simpson noted that unbelief resulted in a lack of healing in Jesus’ day and it continues in the same way (Gospel of Healing, 19).

[33] Judd, Prayer of Faith, 26.

[34] Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 3.

[35] Judd, Prayer of Faith, 26.

[36] Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 54.

[37] Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 37.

[38] Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 1f. Gordon also appealed to the Church Fathers who identified the ongoing role of the miraculous in their own day, a time past that when a cessationist theology would say that miracles had ended. Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 60f.

[39] Carrie Judd, “The Name of Jesus,” Triumphs of Faith 4:5 (March 1881): 34.

[40] Particularly verse three:

[EXT] Oft on earth He healed the sufferer

                By His might hand;

Still our sicknesses and sorrows

                Go at His command.

He who gave His healing virtue

                To a woman’s touch

To the faith that claims His fullness

                Still will give as much. [EXT]

Albert Benjamin Simpson, “Yesterday, Today, Forever,” Hymns of the Christian Life, rev. and enlarged ed. (Harrisburg, Penn.: Christian Publications, 1978), 119.

[41] Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 64.

[42] Simpson, Gospel of Healing, 10–11; Albert Benjamin Simpson, Leviticus to Deuteronomy, Christ in the Bible 2 (New York: The Word, Work, and World Publishing, 1889), 119.

[43] Albert Benjamin Simpson, The King's Business (New York: The Word, Work, and World Publishing, 1886), 71; Albert Benjamin Simpson, The Present Truth (South Nyack, NY: Christian Alliance Publishing, 1897), 106; Kenneth Mckenzie, Our Physical Heritage in Christ (New York: Revell, 1923), 17, 53.

[44] Carter, Atonement for Sin and Sickness, 23; Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 4; Charles Cullis, M.D., introduction to Dorothea Trudel; Or, The Prayer of Faith, Showing the Remarkable Manner in Which Large Numbers of Sick Persons Were Healed in Answer to Special Prayers, 3^rd and enlarged ed. (Boston: Willard Tract Repository, 1872), 18.

[45] Simpson, Discovery of Divine Healing, 11.

[46] Simpson, Gospel of Healing, 30; Judd, Prayer of Faith, 66.

[47] Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 191.

[48] Mckenzie, Divine Life for the Body, 103.

[49] Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 44.

[50] Daniels, Dr. Cullis, 345; Simpson, Lord for the Body, 101.

[51] Albert Benjamin Simpson, "Question Drawer," Living Truths 4:3 (March 1904): 179.

[52] Judd, Prayer of Faith, 81

[53] Simpson, Gospel of Healing, 30.

[54] For this reason, Simpson cautioned against seeing medical means as cure. He wrote, “It is no use to apply your medical treatment to mere symptoms and try invigorating air and good nourishment so long as that cancer or ulcer is feeding on the vital organs. Get the root of evil removed, then your hygiene will be of some value”; Albert Benjamin Simpson, Practical Christianity (New York: Christian Alliance Publishing, 1901), 108.

[55] Simpson, “Divine Healing,” 172.

[56] Richard Harrison Shryock, Medicine in America: Historical Essays (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966), 171.

[57] Simpson, Discovery of Divine Healing, 18; Judd, Prayer of Faith, 66.

[58] Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 191.

[59] Simpson, Lord for the Body, 19; Judd, Prayer of Faith, 66

[60] Simpson, Old Faith and the New Gospel, 60.

[61] Daniels, Dr. Cullis, 347; Simpson, Old Faith and the New Gospel, 61.

[62] Charles Cullis, Tuesday Afternoon Talks (Boston: Willard Tract Repository, 1892), 24.

[63] Cullis, Faith Cures, 30.

[64] Daniels, Dr. Cullis, 19, 344.

[65] Cullis, Faith Cures, 31. The proponents of Divine Healing also noted that there were many Christian doctors who would in their private practice operate in much the same manner. In their consultation with patients, they would ascertain their spiritual condition and proceed accordingly (Simpson, Gospel of Healing, 81).

[66] Kenneth Mckenzie noted that Dowie, along with Cullis and Simpson, constituted the “three great figures [that] loom against the sky-line of the last quarter of the nineteenth century” when it comes to Divine Healing. In particular, Mackenzie called Dowie “the apostle of healing in his day” (McKenzie, Physical Heritage in Christ, 17, 20).

[67] John Alexander Dowie, “Prayer and Testimony Meeting,” Leaves of Healing 1:6 (October 5, 1894): 84; John Alexander Dowie, “Doctors and Medicines,” Leaves of Healing 1:4 (September 21, 1894): 61; John Alexander Dowie, “Zion's Onward Movement,” Leaves of Healing 2:25 (April 10, 1896): 389.

[68] John Alexander Dowie, “The Opening of the Beautiful Gate of Divine Healing,” Leaves of Healing 1:1 (August 31, 1894) 5.

[69] “Disease, the foul offspring of its father, Satan, and its mother, Sin, was defining and destroying the earthly temples of God’s children, and there was no deliverer”; John Alexander Dowie, “He Is Just the Same To-Day,” Leaves of Healing 1:22 (February 15, 1895): 341.

[70] The only thing that Dowie seemed to affirm in medical science was its intermittent ability to diagnose the physical cause of human sickness. Like the others, Dowie would cite the diagnosis of physicians approvingly and without question while at the same time denying their ability to either understand it fully or do anything about it.

[71] Dowie’s writings on the medical profession must be read in light of the persecution he faced, especially during the mid-1890’s, at the hands of the Chicago medical community, who brought Dowie and his Healing Homes under the scrutiny of the Chicago press, Health Department, Building Department, Police Department, and, even, the local Post Office.

[72] “Where is the science in medicine? There is none. There are no physicians of any standing to-day in any department of medicine who will declare it to be a science” (Dowie, “Opening of the Beautiful Gate,” 5). “There is no science in medicine; not the first atom of foundation for science in medicine” (Dowie, “Zion's Onward Movement,” 390).

[73] Dowie, “Opening of the Beautiful Gate,” 5; Dowie, “Doctors and Medicines,” 61–63.

[74] Dowie, “Zion's Onward Movement,” 390.

[75] “THE ALLEGATION THAT DOCTORS AND SUREGEONS ARE IN THE POSSESSION OF A FORMULA OF A WELL ESTABLISHED SCIENCE, IS AN ABSOLUTE LIE” (Dowie, “Zion’s Onward Movement,” 390). Note that all capitalizations in Dowie quotations in this section are original to Dowie.

[76] Dowie, “Zion's Onward Movement,” 393.

[77] “I believe, and I can prove it, that doctors and medicine do not heal” (Dowie, “Prayer and Testimony Meeting,” 84). “The alleged cures are not cures, and the patent poisonous drugs are shams and lies” (Dowie, “Zion’s Onward Movement,” 394). The abandoned crutches, braces, etc., that were displayed at the front of the tabernacle show Dowie’s belief that Divine Healing is powerful and effective and that medical science is impotent. These appliances were aids, at best, and never cures.

[78] Dowie, “Zion’s Onward Movement,” 389.

[79] Dowie, “Doctors and Medicines,” 61.

[80] Dowie, “Zion’s Onward Movement,” 390; John Alexander Dowie, “A Letter to the Friends of Zion Tabernacle,” Leaves of Healing 1:22 (February 15, 1895): 337.

[81] John Alexander Dowie, “Divine Healing and the Chicago Doctors: A New Attack on the Divine Healing Homes,” Leaves of Healing 1:36 (June 14, 1895): 563.

[82] Dowie, “Prayer and Testimony Meeting,” 84.

[83] Dowie, “Zion’s Onward Movement,” 392.

[84] Dowie, “Zion’s Onward Movement,” 389.

[85] Dowie, “Zion’s Onward Movement,” 390.

[86] Dowie, “Zion’s Onward Movement,” 390, 393.

[87] Dowie, “Zion’s Onward Movement,” 393–96.

[88] “Men were doubtless willing then, as they are now, to give glory to one another, and account for Divine Healing in every way but the right way.” Dowie, though, is also sure to note that many within the Church are accomplices in this move. “They declare that medical science has taken the place of Divine Healing, and that no longer do we go to Christ but to the doctor. This is the teaching of a great part of the church concerning Divine Healing to-day” (Dowie, “Opening of the Beautiful Gate,” 5; Dowie, “Zion’s Onward Movement,” 393).

[89] Dowie, “Zion's Onward Movement,” 394.

[90] Shryock, Medicine in America, 150–51. John Duffy notes “while individual physicians were admired, the profession collectively continued to have little public respect”; Duffy, From Humors to Medical Science: A History of American Medicine, 2^nd ed. (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 167.

[91] James H. Cassedy, Medicine in America: A Short History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 67.

[92] Shryock, Medicine in America, 152.

[93] Duffy, From Humors to Medical Science, 167.

[94] Shryock, Medicine in America, 152.

[95] Robert C. Fuller, Alternative Medicine and American Religious Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 16.

[96] The men who would bring about this change “were [not only] far better educated than their predecessors, [but] nearly all of them had studied [outside of America] in Vienna, Paris, and other European medical centers” (Duffy, From Humors to Medical Science, 192).

[97] Shryock, Medicine in America, 151.

[98] Shryock, Medicine in America, 171.

[99] Fuller, Alternative Medicine and American Religious Life, 13.

[100] Shryock, Medicine in America, 155.

[101] Fuller, Alternative Medicine and American Religious Life, 14; A. J. Gordon lists these as well, showing not only their ineffectiveness but their barbarism (Gordon, Ministry of Healing, 176).

[102] Fuller, Alternative Medicine and American Religious Life, 14.

[103] Shryock, Medicine in America, 151.

[104] Duffy, From Humors to Medical Science, 190. Simpson pointed to the Garfield case, and that of President McKinley, as well-known examples of the ineffectiveness of physicians and medical treatment; Simpson, Lord for the Body, 131; Albert Benjamin Simpson, “The Doctors and the Lord,” Living Truths 1:6 (December 1902), 307.