About 19 years ago, I wrote an article refuting the doctrine of "healing in the atonement." For a long time I've wanted to re-write it to kind of update it to my thinking and style of arguing now, but I haven't done it. Today (1/18/2019), I ran into somebody on line who was aggressively pushing this doctrine, which made me decide to go ahead and post it. I'm not going to bother to update it, so it may contain a few things here and there that I wouldn't say today, but I still agree with the main thrust of it. This article is kind of long, so I'm posting it in parts. I won't leave you in too much suspense, though. I'll post each part one day apart. Hopefully I won't have anything pressing to say in the middle of it.
HEALING IN THE ATONEMENT
I. Introduction
Healing theology can be broken into three major categories: 1. the belief that God no longer heals today, 2. the belief that God can and does heal today, and 3. the belief that healing is guaranteed under the atonement. In this article, I will be arguing for the middle view, that God can and does heal today, but that healing is not guaranteed in the atonement.
First I want to make a clarification about the phrase, "healing in the atonement." Christ's atonement provided us with a means to obtain a resurrection to eternal life with no more sickness, death, or suffering, so in that sense, yes, healing was provided for in the atonement. What I will be discussing is the popular teaching of healing in the atonement which teaches that the realization of all the benefits of the atonement belong to us in the here and now. That means that all Christians ought to be completely free of sickness, disease, and any kind of physical malady. The only thing standing between a Christian and perfect health is sin or a lack of faith, because healing is the privilege of all believers. In this article, I will argue that though Christ's atoning sacrifice provided a way for all of us to be free from sickness, pain, death, and sorrow, the realization of these provisions will not come until the resurrection, which Paul calls, "the redemption of our bodies" (Romans 8:23).
This discussion will touch on several peripheral issues such as the perpetuity of spiritual gifts, the source of sickness, holiness, the word of faith (i.e. "name it and claim it" or "positive confession") teaching, original sin, and the believer's assurance of salvation (i.e. whether or not you can lose your salvation). It's necessary to discuss the peripheral issues, but it would take a book to treat them in any kind of detail, so I'll try to stay focused on the main point and only discuss the peripheral issues to a minimum extent.
There are many different versions of the "healing in the atonement" doctrine, so not everybody who believes in it will believe every aspect of it that I discuss. I want to cover as broad of a range of understandings of it as I can without the article becoming too diluted to be able to follow. I probably won't cover the different versions exhaustively or in much detail. If you happen to believe that physical healing in the here and now is guaranteed in the atonement, please don't be put off by the fact that you don't believe in everything that I attempt to refute in this article. I'm not attempting to erect a straw man in order to tear it down. I'm trying to cover as many versions of the teaching as I can. If one of the points of the teaching I try to refute seems to you to be a misrepresentation of what you believe, it's probably the case that I'm not representing your belief at all, but somebody else's, and the fact that what I am refuting does not apply to you does not mean that physical healing is provided for in the atonement. It merely means that that particular argument does not apply to you. Failure to prove one thing does not prove the opposite thing.
I want to make a clear distinction between healing in the atonement and healing in general. I believe that God can and does heal people today. I believe in the perpetuity of the gift of healing. God may heal people in answer to prayer, and he may empower some with the gift of healing. What I am arguing against is the idea that physical healing is guaranteed. Too many people mistakenly assume that if a person doesn't believe in healing in the atonement that the person doesn't believe in healing at all, and that's just not the case.
Continue to Part 2.
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