Article December 13, 1913 Issue

It is perhaps a pity that "A Christadelphian" has written...

Frederick Dixon—Birmingham, England

Birmingham Gazette

It is perhaps a pity that "A Christadelphian" has written to request that he be informed on what Christian Scientists base their claim to be faith-healers, because it so happens that in adopting the name of Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy repudiated any connection with faith-healing as it is commonly defined. I am not going to criticize faith-healing; I am merely going to point out that the description of Christian Science healing given by your correspondent is simply a travesty of the fact. This critic says that miraculous power to heal was conferred on the apostles and their immediate contemporaries and then withdrawn. Now, the Bible does not say that the healing was miraculous, and does not say it was temporary. There are two words in the Greek Testament translated miracle, and that only in certain places. One of these words means an act of power, and the other a sign, and neither of them ever had any supernatural significance. The word miracle was introduced into Christian literature by Jerome in the fifth century, and it had then no more supernatural meaning than the Greek words.

It is no use attempting to argue about this. The miracle was simply the proof, or object-lesson, of the truth of Jesus' teaching, and he made it an obligatory proof when he declared that those who believed on him would be able to do the works he did. In those words he himself made the power to perform so-called miracles the test of any one's right to the name of Christian. Unless you are going to alter the meaning of the Greek and English languages to make the Bible fit your own theories, it is equally impossible to maintain that healing was a temporary gift to the church. Your contributor says, "The power having been withdrawn from the church since the death of the apostles and their immediate contemporaries (for good and sufficient reasons), are we not justified in rejecting Christian Science faith-healing?" As a matter of fact, not a single statement in this will hold water any more than the statement about miracles. First, there is nothing in the Bible, as has been shown, to say that it was withdrawn. Second, there are no reasons at all given in the Bible, good or sufficient or otherwise. Third, who are to be defined as the immediate contemporaries? Like all the critic's other statements, these are nothing but a string of unsupported "ipse dixits."

Finally, Christian Scientists have never excluded leprosy, or anything else at all, from the operation of Christian healing. Every man, they insist, is a Christian in proportion to his power to repeat the works of Jesus, and to do greater works. At the same time, to say that no one who has not raised the dead is a Christian healer would be just about as sane as to say that no one but a senior wrangler is a mathematician, or no one but Grace a cricketer. The most unfortunate part of the argument, however, is the reference to leprosy, for Christian Science has healed leprosy, and, to give one instance, the patient was a medical man who had been in practise for a quarter of a century.

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