Dr Paul Allen

Jesus Speaks Regarding the Use of Medicine The Good Samaritan Jesus replied and said, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, and they stripped him and beat him, and went away leaving him half dead. And by chance a priest was going down on that road, and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, who was on a journey, came upon him; and when he saw him, he felt compassion, and came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them; and he put him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn and took care of him. On the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, 'Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I return I will repay you.' Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers' hands? And he said, "The one wh...

English: Riverside Reformed Presbyterian Church Information Board (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Daniel Doriani’s commentary on James contains an interesting quote. It is my experience that these people often typify cessationists as those who do not believe in supernatural or miraculous healings but this is really not the case. The disagreement really arises over whether or not the spiritual gift of healing is operative in the church today. This quote describes something that happened in a conservative, Reformed , Presbyterian context and something that I think is consistent with cessationist theology (even though cessationists may have some disagreement about what James refers to by anointing a person with oil). Doriani is not the only Reformed Presbyterian who has experienced this kind of blessing. During the autumn when I first studied James in earnest, a friend suffered a viral infection of the heart. While it was not a heart attack, it mimicked many of the symptoms of one. ...

Mark 1:29–34 Doctors note that sometimes people can have a psychologically induced illness, and if they get a new purpose or direction for living, they show relief from the symptoms—they don’t need the illness anymore. For some others, the “placebo effect” can have visible results. That is, if you think you’re going to get better, you often do get better. And when people came to Jesus, they believed he could heal them, so he did. But the fact remains: Regardless of how he did it, Jesus did heal them. Of course, even if you hold to this explanation for some cases, that doesn’t explain all of Jesus’ healings. Often a psychosomatic healing takes time; Jesus’ healings were instantaneous. Many times people who are healed psychologically have their symptoms return a few days later, but we don’t see any evidence of this in the gospel accounts. And Jesus healed conditions like blindness and leprosy, for which a psychosomatic explanation isn’t very likely. In addition to these, h...