Chapter 11.9

Modern Miracle Working & Mind Cure

Not Everything Amazing is Supernatural

Table of Topics

A) Understanding Mind-Cure

B) Temple “Miracles” of Asclepius: 300 B.C.

C) Gravesite “Miracles” of Jansenists: 1700’s

D) The “Miracles” of Mary: Lourdes

E) The “Miracles” of Mesmerism

F) The Power of Positive Thinking

G) The “Miracles” of Another Mary: Christian Science

Extras & Endnotes

Primary Points

• The amazing power of psychological manipulation explains many phenomena in hypnotism, Christian Science, and SS.
• Psychological manipulation can cure very serious illnesses, but not physical, organic diseases that require a miracle.

A) Understanding Mind-Cure

Unfortunately, it is not only the fraud of “healers” that must be taken into account, but also of the healed. Imagine the intense pressure that is invariably present in a typical “faith healing” environment. Almost invariably the “healings” are performed on the stage, where everyone in attendance can see if you are healed or not. Everyone knows (according to super-supernaturalist doctrine), including yourself, that if you’re not healed, the reason may be because of a lack of faith in God or sin on your part. Imagine too that several people have already testified at the meeting that they were healed, and it has been communicated as proof that God really cares about them.

Now imagine the potential for intense personal disappointment with God and public embarrassment before your friends when you step onto the stage in front of everyone and have to admit that after the “healer” laid hands on you, you felt absolutely nothing. No doubt, many of us would be at least tempted to say, and even believe, that we at least felt something! Who would want to admit that they have been excluded from all the wonderful things God is supposedly doing for others in that meeting? And who wouldn’t even be tempted to outright fake, or simply imagine the ailment itself, and the subsequent “cure,” just to receive that same admiration of the others.

There is no doubt that such peer pressure is one of the most powerful forces in human nature, that it leads to a good deal of fraud in our lives, and faith “healers” use it as much as possible to their advantage. Both an ardent desire to “feel” some supernatural experience, and a heightened expectation that it will happen would seem to make one fairly susceptible to such an experience and it may not be supernatural at all, but simply psychological.

As we demonstrate the power of merely psychological suggestion and manipulation to affect the body physically, we encounter another reason that we hardly ever hear of miracles over Nature in super-supernaturalism. The King performed several of them and modern “miracle workers” perform none of them. This is because people can be manipulated, but Nature cannot.

If we are going to be able to discern between authentic miracle working and whatever else it may be, it is important to understand the differences between psychological illness which can be contracted and cured by psychological means, and real physical illness that demands something physical to happen, not just psychological. Dr. MacArthur relates:

Dr. Nolen explains the important distinction between functional [psychological] disease and [physical] organic disease: A functional disease is one in which a perfectly good organ does not function properly [because of psychological ailments]. An organic disease is one in which the organ is diseased, maimed, physically impaired, or even defunct. “Infections, heart attacks, gallstones, hernias, slipped discs, cancers of all kinds, broken bones, congenital deformities, [and] lacerations” are all included in the organic disease class.

Nolen claims faith healers cannot cure organic [physical] diseases. . . . Nolen points out that [faith healers] do not understand “psychogenic disease”—disease related to the mind. In simple terms, a functional disease might be a sore arm. An organic disease would be a withered arm or no arm at all. A psychogenic disease would be thinking your arm was sore. Nolen wrote:

Search the literature, as I have, and you will find no documented cures by healers of gallstones, heart disease, cancer or any other serious organic disease. Certainly, you’ll find patients temporarily relieved of their upset stomachs, their chest pains, their breathing problems; and you will find healers, and believers, who will interpret this interruption of symptoms as evidence that the disease is cured. But when you track the patient down and find out what happened later, you always find the “cure” to have been purely symptomatic [psychological] and transient. The underlying disease remains.” ^[1]

Again, neither Dr. Nolen nor we are claiming that God does not heal organic physical disease like cancer. But what the facts suggest is that there are no healers that can heal such diseases. And it is, no doubt, psychological, rather than physical healings that are predominantly claimed in super-supernaturalism.

Dr. MacArthur goes on to explain the impact that the power of suggestion can have on such psychological ailments:

Physicians as well as Charismatic healers can often influence a patient and cure symptoms of disease by suggestion. . . . Such cures are not miraculous but result from the functioning of the patient’s own autonomic nervous system.

Nolan also mentioned that . . . medical doctors use the power of suggestion to some extent. Nolan admitted that when he gives a person a pill or a shot, he often makes a point of telling the patient that the medicine will make them feel better in twenty-four to forty-eight hours. He gets far better results than if he gave the patient an uncertain message. ^[2]

In addition:

Dr. William Nolen explains that “the patient who suddenly discovers . . . that he can now move an arm or leg that was previously paralyzed, had that paralysis as a result of an emotional, not a physical disturbance.” It is known that “Neurotics and hysterics will frequently be relieved of their symptoms by the suggestions and ministrations of charismatic healers. It is in treating patients of this sort that healers claim their most dramatic triumphs. There is nothing miraculous about these cures. Psychiatrists, internists, G.P.’s and M.D.’s who do psychiatric therapy, relieve thousands of such patients of their symptoms every year.” ^[3]

The power of our emotional and psychological state over the health of the body has been known since ancient times. In Proverbs we read:

A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. (Pr 17:22)

A man’s spirit sustains him in sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear? (Pr 18:14)

Likewise, Dr. Leslie Weatherhead (1893-1976) noted in his very informative book, Psychology, Religion, & Healing:

Galen, the famous physician (A.D. 130-200) himself a Greek, but private physician to the Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, commented on the treatments thus: “We have proof that many serious illnesses can be cured solely by the shock administered to the mind.” ^[4]

Dr. Weatherhead was one of the most influential Christian leaders of Britain in the twentieth century, including the Honorary Chaplain to Her Majesty’s Forces. He was not only a gifted preacher, but pastor as well, and was an expert counselor. As the rise of such mind-cure cults such as Christian Science and Pentecostalism continued in the mid twentieth century, he wrote the book noted above. In an effort to help the Church understand what was happening in the mind-cure culture he wrote:

The human being is a very closely-knit unity of body, mind and spirit. In such a unity there cannot be disease at any point, at any level of being, without the whole personality being to some extent affected. . . .

The newly opening field of psycho-somatic disease shows most significantly that illnesses long regarded as entirely physiogenic [physical] are more truly described as the effects in the body of disharmony in the mind or soul; the organic concomitants not merely of psychological disharmonies, but of spiritual ones; of broken spiritual relationships with other people, such as in cases of hate and jealousy, where there is a refusal to love, and in broken spiritual relationships with God, such as we find after a shattering bereavement in which a patient experiences, over a long period, a bitter resentment against Him.

Even a hardy body cannot stand so grievous a wound in the spirit; nor the wound of bereavement, but that of resentment. Kindly visitors often have enough insight to see this. “You will make yourself ill,” they say, knowing that body, mind and soul are one, and the hurt of one is the hurt of all. ^[5]

Dr. Weatherhead wrote extensively on the power of positive thinking over the body including:

Behind all the discoveries of psychologists since Mesmer, behind the healing miracles in [e.g. Christian Science], lies one of the great truths about the mind. It may be expressed as follows: If the mind really accepts an idea as true, and if the idea is reasonable, it tends by means of unconscious processes, to actualize itself or come true. To bring about the entry of an integrating idea into a mind, so that the idea may “come true” and bring health, is called treatment by suggestion. . . .

If I am trying to get a person to accept an idea and I proceed to give him ten reasons for believing it is true, I may arouse those very critical and reasoning qualities in the mind which are likely to defeat the potency of the suggestion and which, therefore, I want to remain quiescent. . . .

The power of the mind over the body is so immense that it is hard to say where the line of limitation runs, or what cannot be achieved in the body so long as the necessary organic apparatus is there, and not materially damaged to such an extent that the mind has no machinery, as it were, to use. Therefore, if the mind really accepts, and believes through its whole depths, an idea suggested to it that pain is passing, that disease is being overcome, that health is returning, and the ideas are reasonable, then, in ways that seem miraculous to those who are not students of the phenomena, the mind gets its orders carried out in the body, and health is restored. . . .

Of course, the factor on which everything depends is the suggestibility of the patient-that is, the facility with which he accepts ideas into his mind without critical examination. This suggestibility depends on many factors. . . . In my experience, education is not a deciding factor. It is commonly believed that a “simple soul” is suggestible and that an educated person is not. There is no principle here, however. . . . A child is usually more suggestible than an adult, a woman more so than a man. Abnormal states of the brain can determine suggestibility, and “temperamental” people, hardly to be classed as abnormal, are more suggestible than the phlegmatic type.

The condition depends partly on the person offering the suggestion. Any lack of confidence he has in himself, or, doubt as to whether or not his suggestions will be carried out, conveys itself to the patient and decreases the suggestibility of the latter. The fame, prestige and impressive character of the operator are also important factors, as every child knows. Nervous and neurotic patients are more suggestible than normal people, introverts more than extroverts, sick or tired people more than those who have “rude health.”

The condition depends partly on what the patient “thinks of the whole business.” If he is scornful or critical to a great degree; if he thinks the operator is a fool; if he is afraid or resistant, if he is a student of hypnosis and is watching his own reactions, his suggestibility is lowered. The rapport between the person suggesting and the person receiving the suggestions is of the utmost importance. ^[6]

Here is one of several incidents by which Dr. Weatherhead illustrated these truths:

A young woman, called Miss A., suffered from a lameness which, she alleged, the doctors had declared incurable. I have no idea what the diagnosis was. She never attended my psychological clinic attached to the church, nor did she at any time have any treatment from me or from anyone known to me. Neither, as far as I remember, did I ever discuss her symptoms with her.

The movement known as the [Pentecostal] Four Square Gospel Movement held some services in a hall in the city, and Miss A. attended. I am told that hymns were sung one after another, including many that contained choruses which went “with a swing.” During intervals between these choruses any who wished to be healed were invited up to the platform.

Using a pair of crutches, Miss A. went up, and the pastor conducting the service laid his hands upon her and told her to believe that she was healed and could walk without crutches. In a state of immense emotional excitement, she threw them away and walked off the platform without them. I am told that an “electric excitement” spread through the hall.

A newspaper reporter attended at her home. Her photograph appeared in the evening Press, with sensational reports of her “cure.” . . . The excitement lasted about three weeks, during which Miss A. walked. Then it died down, and Miss A. began to limp, collapsed and was carried home.

When I last heard of her, she was using crutches and was as bad as she had ever been; with, furthermore, some very difficult problems to think about concerning the nature of faith, the power of God and the value of healing missions. ^[7]

Accordingly, Dr. Weatherhead remarks on the emotional manipulation and damage being done in such “ministries”:

[A]s we have seen, there can be healing without faith and faith without healing. Many a healed preens himself on his faith, when it is his suggestibility that has the important therapeutic factor. And that is a very different matter, depending largely on a mental make-up for which the individual is neither to be congratulated nor blamed.

On the other hand, many a patient is unhealed who has a virile faith in God in spite of his suffering; a loving, trustful dependence on Christ, though, for other reasons, he remains unhealed. It is a very serious thing so to mislead people about faith at a healing mission. Real faith differs vitally and fundamentally from suggestibility. . . .

The quality of a faith the object of which is God and the aim of which is harmony with Him is more desirable-even if the body is ‘unhealed’-than the hysterical suggestibility such as Miss A. manifested. For a week or two, the basic neurosis remaining, she was able to change the symptom of lameness for that of an emotional religiosity. For the time being, the prestige, the importance and popularity which the mission gave her acted as love-substitutes. They brought her admiration. It is possible that the lameness was conditioned, or even caused, by the deprivation of love.

Miss A. got no insight into her condition and developed no real faith in God. When the excitement of the mission faded, the spotlight of admiration grew dim, flickered and went out. Then, to get love in terms of sympathy (an essential need of a neurotic), the unconscious probably fell back on the old device of lameness. But harm was done to Miss A. and many others. . . .

Many healing works carried on today, even in the name of religion, are only spasmodic and sporadic illustrations of ill-regulated and half understood psychological phenomena. Many Christian Science cures, healing-mission cures and claims from Lourdes and other centers; many “healings” wrought often by cranks and charlatans, illustrate the power of the mind over the body, rather than the kind of thing Christ did. ^[8]

Even before Dr. Whitehead, B. B. Warfield (1851-1921) produced his landmark study on the history of the miraculous entitled, Counterfeit Miracles in which he documented several cases of “mind-cure.” He noted that scientists in a lab had been able, through the power of suggestion, to produce a bad burn on the skin or a red cross that appeared every Friday and disappeared for the other days of the week. He gave the same natural explanation to such things as the stigmata (i.e., the marks of Christ’s wounds on the body) of Francis of Assisi. ^[9]

More recently, several researchers and theologians have noted the great importance of recognizing the power of suggestion in evaluating the modern claims of super-supernaturalism to the biblical gifts of healing. Douglas McLeod relates:

[Magician Andre] Kole compares one well-known crusade audience and healer as an orchestra and its conductor. Inspirational, almost hypnotic music and dramatic presentations create a mood of expectation. The highly festive and emotionally charged atmosphere can stimulate the brain to release endorphins into the nervous system. These endorphins are pain suppressants two hundred times more potent than morphine. In short, these meetings work to grant real, albeit temporary, pain relief. ^[10]

Real relief, indeed, just not the miraculous kind.

Regarding the part that “suggestion” plays in modern faith healing, the secular Encyclopedia of Mystical & Paranormal Experiences (EMPE) states that:

There are numerous cases of cures that cannot be explained medically, but the high degree of expectation and the desperation of many of the sick have been known to effect false and temporary cures, with devastating emotional and physical aftereffects. ^[11]

Along the same lines, Dr. Geisler, under the heading of “Psychosomatic Healing” writes:

Christian psychiatrist Paul Meyer revealed that he healed a young woman of blindness by merely instructing her that when she awoke from sleep in another room, she would be able to see. The cure came just as the doctor ordered. Her sight was restored by the power of suggestion. Other doctors have recorded cures of chronic diarrhea by prescribing placebos. Severe skin disease and even lameness have been cured by such means. . . .

It is commonly known that up to 80 percent of disease is stress related (Pelletier, 8). These emotionally induced diseases can often be reversed by psychological therapy or “faith healings” where the proper mental attitude occasions a healing effect. . . . Psychological cures are most frequently successful on more suggestible personality types. Some studies show that the vast majority of people in the healing movement have these personality types. ^[12]

Accordingly, Dr. Turner admits, “most claimed healings [in super-supernaturalism] belong to the category of functional [psychological] diseases rather than organic ones.” ^[13] Accordingly, it is interesting to note that few, if any, of the healings performed by faith healers described in Jack Deere’s popular book, Surprised by the Power of the Spirit, are organic. It would seem that all of them could be placed in the category of “psychogenic . . . disease related to the mind.” The ones that could be organic are given the briefest description such as “the problem with her pancreas was gone.” ^[14] In addition, Mr. Deere describes some healings (supposed separated shoulder and neck pain) and remarkably claims, “Both of these examples are near the level of apostolic healing.” ^[15] Now that’s classic super-supernaturalism.

We see only two healings by delegated human miracle working in Deere’s book that could be considered of the miraculous, organic kind. Super-supernaturalist John White told Mr. Deere in a phone conversation that he felt “bone actually changing under his hands while he prayed for someone with a deformity.” ^[16] Curiously, Mr. White doesn’t say the person was ever permanently, completely, and convincingly healed in the manner the biblical gift of healing works, and it could be suggested that he felt bone moving, instead of “changing.”

The other possible example of an organic healing in Surprised by the Power of the Spirit is a second hand report in a book written about William Duma that evidently claims he raised a “young girl from the dead.” ^[17] If such claims are going to be simply thrown out with barely a one sentence explanation with no supporting details, why would anyone be expected to believe it? And why aren’t super-supernaturalists more careful to provide the details of such claims?

Mr. Deere does, however, provide a great deal of details when he relates the remarkable story of a boy who had been evidently pronounced dead in an African hospital. Both the father and another man prayed that the boy would be brought back to life and Mr. Deere claims that the boy did indeed come back to life. ^[18] If the story is true we rejoice greatly for the family. But the story does nothing to prove that the biblical gift of healing is operating today. The two men prayed for the healing, it did not happen by command, as was the case with those in Scripture who possessed the gift of healing. ^[19]

In summary, Dr. Robert Saucy, Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Talbot, writes:

We must . . . remember, before we identify a supposed supernatural healing as the result of the gift of healing, that supernatural healings can have other explanations. Some illnesses, including blindness, deafness, and paralysis, may be symptoms of psychological trauma or hysteria, not genuine organic diseases. Emotional healing campaigns with their powerful suggestions can produce at least temporary spectacular results in such cases. But these are not genuine miracles. . . .

“Miraculous” cures have been recorded that were produced by the power of faith and hope even when these had nothing to do with God. Scripture clearly teaches the psychosomatic union of the human spirit and body, whereby the state of the spirit has a powerful effect on the health of the body, positive and negative (cf. Ps. 38:3; Prov. 17:22). If faith and hope even apart from God can produce bodily healing, how much more faith in God. ^[20]

Dr. Saucy’s reminder that some fairly serious physical ailments can result from emotional causes, is important when we evaluate even some of the more spectacular healings occurring today. The healing of blindness, muteness, and even paralysis is no proof that a miracle has occurred, much less that someone possesses the gift of healing. Dr. Saucy also reminds us that these psychological healings need not even occur in a Christian environment.

Accordingly, Dr. Lutzer relates:

From time to time we read stories about the value of prayer in healing physical ailments. In one controlled study, it was shown that people who were prayed for recovered much faster than others; indeed, there were even some evidences of rather miraculous healings. Most important, the report said it did not matter who did the praying, nor the deity before whom the names were invoked. ^[21]

In the end, super-supernaturalism has deceptively, arrogantly, and illegitimately taken credit for performing miracles with God’s power, that actually had nothing to do with the supernatural at all. Mr. Hanegraaff agrees:

Like hypnotists and Hindu gurus, these “healers” use the same power of suggestion to create placebos for psychosomatic symptoms and sickness. In truth, however, there is nothing supernatural about this kind of “healing.” [Benny] Hinn and [Rodney] Howard-Browne can “heal” asthma, allergies and arthritis, but then, so can mesmerists and medicine men. ^[22]

B) Temple “Miracles” of Asclepius (300 B.C.)

Mind cure has been a popular practice of pagan religions for centuries. In ancient Greece around 300 B. C., temples of the god Asclepius became very popular for healing purposes. Asclepius was the Greek god of medicine and healing, and his symbol of a snake-entwined staff remains an emblem of the medical profession today.

The common practice to be healed at these temples was for the person to go through a ritual of purifications, sacrifices, and prayers and then sleep on the floor overnight. And in this holy of holy places, where snakes (the symbol of Asclepius) were often crawling, some cures were reported. Most of them were merely psychological in nature and were no doubt effected by the rituals, environment, and expectations of the “healed.”

Others appeared to be more supernatural in nature and obviously demonic, occurring in the name of a false god symbolized by snakes. For example, many of the “miracles” occurring were “miracles of punishment, in which illnesses and misfortunes come upon those who withhold from the temple a gift of money that was intended for it, or cheat the god in financial matters, make fun of his cures, or break the prohibition against looking into the interior of the sanctuary with its sleeping room.” ^[23]

Nonetheless, Dr. Hans-Josef Klauck, Professor of New Testament and Early Christian Literature at the University of Chicago Divinity School, writes in his informative study regarding the miracle worship of Asclepius:

No doubt the power of suggestion, autosuggestion, and psychosomatic elements made a substantial contribution to successful healing. Some of the illnesses, such as paralyses, disturbances of the senses of speech and sight, fantasy pregnancies and childlessness may have had psychological causes, and in such cases, healing may mean the removal of blockages in the psyche. There were spontaneous remissions of the symptoms of illness, thanks to the attitude of expectation, to the preceding journey, the initial visit to the splendid sanctuary, the accompanying rites, and the mysterious sleep in a holy place. It will also have been useful to enjoy treatment in a remote country district with many baths and well-planned nourishment. ^[24]

Dr. Klauck goes on to differentiate the “healings” of Asclepius with those in the NT:

There are no catalogues of miracles in the New Testament [as we have from the temples of Asclepius]; they are textual elements which have their place in a larger, overarching narrative [i.e. the authentication of diving revelation]. . . . Nor does [the biblical miracle worker] need a clearly defined sacred area; the institutionalised practice of healing [as in the Greek temples] is replaced by the charismatic [supernatural] healing praxis. Fees are not required, and no miracles are inflicted on human beings as punishments.

In Epidaurus there are no exorcisms [again, perhaps suggesting demonic, not just psychological cures], since the world is understood differently there, and no evil demons are known as yet; in the New Testament, exorcisms belong together with the healings as fundamental elements of the tradition about miracles. ^[25]

C) Gravesite “Miracles” of Jansenists (1700’s)

We have elsewhere documented the “miracles” of relics described by St. Augustine in the fifth century and suggested that psychological factors, rather than supernatural power was at work. ^[26] Much later in the eighteenth century, something similar occurred surrounding the gravesite of Francois de Paris, a deceased leader of a rather heretical “Christian” cult called the Jansenists.

As we have written elsewhere:

[T]he Jansenists were not Christians, as they, “rejected justification by faith as the Protestants understood it and held that the full Christian life was possible only through the Roman Catholic Church.” Convulsive fits, trances, Prophetic utterances, miraculous cures, gravesite worship of dead saints, and “speaking in tongues” were all characteristics of this group that were eventually rejected by both Protestants and Roman Catholics. ^[27]

Nonetheless, the Jansenists claimed that miracles were occurring by the power of a recently deceased deacon named Francois. As one historian writes:

On the day of the interment an elderly illiterate widow knelt in prayer, kissed the deacon’s feet, and was reported healed of a paralyzed arm. It was the first of many reported cures. The cemetery became a cultic center of pilgrimage. Within a year of the burial, the deceased deacon’s brother erected a monument that consisted of a black marble slab raised upon four supports, having just enough space for someone to crawl between the slab and the grave proper. It rapidly became a practice to crawl into this space, seeking the deceased deacon’s intercession. Many who came experienced ecstatic convulsions and did not go away disappointed. . . .

By the summer of 1731 vast crowds of visitors frequented the tomb, which had become the site of the activities of frenzied convulsionaries, claiming to be inspired by the Holy Spirit through the deceased holy man’s intercession. The Jansenists saw the miracles as continued divine vindication of their cause. ^[28]

Yet it is precisely because of the damning doctrines of the Jansenists that we doubt such miracles were empowered by God, and suggest again either merely psychological or even demonic forces were at work.

D) The “Miracles” of Mary: Lourdes

Interestingly, the greatest healing revival in the Church cannot be claimed by Evangelical super-supernaturalists. Even their combined history of claimed “healings” does not match that of the Roman Catholic shrine in Lourdes, France.

Concerning its origin, Yale University Professor and Church historian Kenneth Latourette explains that in the mid 1800’s there was:

a rising tide of devotion to the Virgin Mary. . . . It seems to have been in this atmosphere that in 1858 a peasant girl, Bernadette Subirous, believed that the Virgin appeared to her eighteen times in a grotto near Lourdes, in France, and that at the Feast of the Annunciation she said she had heard her say: “I am the Immaculate Conception.” ^[29]

Pilgrims thronged to the place [and] miracles of healing were reported, and within a half century the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes is said to have attracted more than five million visitors. Devotion to . . . Mary also became widespread. ^[30]

Commenting on Lourdes in 1917, Dr. Warfield wrote:

The immense success of Lourdes as a place of pilgrimage has been achieved in spite of the [obscurity] of its origin, and is to be attributed to the skill with which it has been exploited. Under this exploitation, it has distanced its rivals, superceded all its predecessors, and has [become] the greatest healing shrine in the world. . . .

Probably no one doubts that cures are made at Lourdes; any more than men doubt that similar cures have from the beginning of the world been made in similar conditions elsewhere—as of old in the temples of Asclepius, for example, and to-day at the hands of the Christian Scientists. ^[31]

Although Dr. Warfield admits that not every cause of the miraculous events occurring at Lourdes can, or need to be explained, he does conclude that:

To all appearance, all these cures are the same kind and are the products of the same forces set in action after essentially the same fashion. These forces are commonly summed up . . . under the somewhat vague term “suggestion.” . . . It means at bottom that the immediate curative agency is found in mental states induced in the patient, powerfully reacting, under the impulse of high exaltation, on his bodily functioning. ^[32]

A writer in The Edinburgh Review for January, 1903 had this to say of the use of “suggestion” at Lourdes, and the similarities seen in more recent healing ministries are obvious:

What is so painful and so repulsive in Lourdes and similar centers of popular devotion is not so much the fanaticism of the pilgrims . . . as much as the deliberate organization of hysteria, the training of suggestion, the exploitation of disease. Everything in the pilgrimage is calculated to disturb the equilibrium of the faculties, to stimulate, to excite, to strain. . . . The incessant religious exercises, the acute tension of every sense and power, all work up to a calculated climax. ^[33]

Dr. Warfield concludes:

“The whole place,” says Benson, “is alive with Mary.” That is the very reason why we are sure that the marvels which occur there are not the direct acts of God, but are of the same order as the similar ones which have occurred at many similar shrines, of many names, in many lands, serving many gods. ^[34]

There are several reasons then to doubt the divine or supernatural nature of what is occurring at Lourdes. First, it promotes the unbiblical worship of Mary. As we discuss elsewhere, there is no support in Scripture or early Church history for the “Immaculate Conception” or sinless birth of Mary, ^[35] and any “vision” that promotes it or the false worship of Mary requires suspicion. As Dr. Weatherhead put it concerning his own study of the Lourdes phenomenon: “There is an injunction to have faith in the Blessed Virgin, and one is almost wearied by the endless chanting of “Ave, Ave Maria.” ^[36]

Secondly, there is little if any indication that the cures at Lourdes are supernatural in nature at all. The Nobel Prize and Oscar winner George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) once caustically commented that the healings at Lourdes, France, left him unconvinced. He saw many crutches and wheel chairs on display, “but not one glass eye, wooden leg, or toupee,” ^[37] which would have been the results of real physical, organic healings.

Likewise, Dr. Lutzer comments:

Even the most devout observers admit that only a small percentage of the hundreds of thousands of sick who come to Lourdes experience healing of some kind. At least 90 percent of those seeking cures go away without benefit. . . .

I have visited the shrine of Guadeloupe in Mexico and have seen crowds crawl on bleeding knees for hundreds of yards, approaching the shrine with the hope that they will win the favor of the Virgin Mary. Many are women with infants in their arms, hoping to appease her and enter into the sufferings of Christ. In Mexico, a form of Christianity blends nicely with pagan superstition and legends. ^[38]

If we think that Mary performs these miracles instantly and completely, we are mistaken. When a physician wondered why the Virgin contented herself with healing a sore on the child’s leg but not replacing the entire deformed foot, the answer given was that the scar on the leg remained as a testimony to the greatness of the miracle. Indeed, we are told that many miracles are partially accomplished so that the recipient remains in “grateful memory of the benefit received.” ^[39]

And evidently, whoever, or whatever it was that appeared to little Bernadette, was not even able or willing to heal her as she was, “a lifelong asthma patient and this disease was the cause of her death.” ^[40]

Super-supernaturalism cannot claim a greater number or degree of miraculous cures than those at Lourdes done in the name of Mary. Nonetheless, there are some striking and rather alarming similarities. Both the miracles at Lourdes and those occurring in super-supernaturalism demonstrate the importance of a controlled environment to take advantage of the psychological weaknesses of some. The need for a controlled environment may also be precisely why, that although many claim to possess the authentic gift of healing today, as yet, no one has visited a hospital and put it out of business. Which those who really possessed the gift in the early Church, not to mention Christ, could have certainly done.

Contrary to modern “healers,” we notice in the NT, that Christ and the Apostles healed spontaneously in a number of different environments and circumstances. This is a far cry from the pre-planned, advertised, high-power, emotionally charged events where modern “faith healing” is attempted today. The miracles performed by Christ and the Apostles were not done in revival meetings or in worship services. The majority of miracles recorded in the NT were done in the open among the unbelieving public. The few miracles which occurred in a somewhat private setting were not in church but in people’s homes.

There is no biblical precedent whatsoever for the modern super-supernaturalist healing services conducted today. The biblical pattern for healing in the Church today is provided in James 5 where we notice that the elders are to go to the sick person’s home and pray for them.

So it would seem that “natural” powers of suggestion and manipulation can indeed effect the physical body a great deal, and there is no doubt that many of the positive effects that result from some of these ministries are due more to the mental state of the victim than the “miraculous” powers of the healer. And if modern healers simply confessed that they were merely running “psychosomatic health clinics,” the need to investigate their claims would be greatly diminished. But again, they do it in the name of Christ-empowered miracles and that warrants further response. Especially when it becomes evident, as it will below, that the more miraculous cures probably involve demonic powers.

E) The “Miracles” of Mesmerism

One of the most famous examples of a psychological “healer” was Franz Mesmer (1734-1815). Dr. Whitehead’s description of his “ministry,” again, has several resemblances to modern day super-supernaturalism:

With appropriate music, Mesmer appeared in a lilac robe of finest silk. In his hand was a long, iron wand, powerfully magnetized. He passed slowly among the patients, fixing them with his staring eyes, making passes with his hands and touching them with his wand. Many, we are told, recovered. Many passed into convulsive states or delirium. . . .

He magnetized water and sold it to patients. He magnetized their clothes. They ate from magnetized plates and breathed a magnetized atmosphere. A patient had only to carry some magnetized charm and he could not fall ill. In a word, Mesmer . . . took a retrogressive path back towards magic, incantation and spell.

Money flowed in, and his name was honored for a time, but when challenged by scientific authority he prepared a paper full of false assumptions and unproved claims. The Academy of Medicine and the Academy of Sciences appointed commissions of enquiry. Both rejected his claims, asserted that the phenomena included nothing incapable of an alternative explanation and dismissed Mesmer as a charlatan. . . .

They held the view that his cures were due to the mental suggestion which he exerted over his patients. “It is impossible not to admit,” they wrote, “that some great force acts upon and masters the patients and that this force appears to reside in the magnetizer.” ^[41]

Not surprisingly, the word “mesmerize” (i.e. hypnotize) was derived from Mesmer’s fame, and James Braid invented hypnotism in the mid 1800’s, basing his research on Mesmer’s work.

F) The Power of Positive Thinking

Similarly, Dr. Whitehead wrote concerning the Frenchman Emile Coue’ (1857-1926):

He was an apothecary, not a doctor, not a highly educated, but a very charming man, interested in psychology. . . . For a score of years he studied and experimented, and then the light shone. The patient did not need the suggestive therapy applied by another, as in hypnosis. Within himself [the patient] was the power. He did not need a trance state so that direct access to the unconscious could be obtained. Ideas, if repeated again and again in a confident voice, eluding as much as possible the attentions of the [logical mind] and especially if repeated at those times when the mind was most receptive-namely, on awakening and on falling asleep, would sink into the subconscious and unconscious parts of the mind and work the expected wonder.

So, said Coue’ to his patients, “Say every morning and evening, ‘Every day in every way I am getting better and better.’ “And,” he added, with unconscious humor, “don’t think what you are saying. Say it as you say the litany at church!”

Astounding success followed. At the height of his fame a hundred people a day thronged his garden at Nancy and filled the little parlor, where, with no ostentation and none of the paraphernalia of Mesmer, Coue’ saw his patients. He was no showman. He did not even explain his theories to his patients. He got them practicing the formula, modifying it to suit individual requirements. There must be no negatives. There must be no naming of the illness. The unconscious would snatch at the name, and no good would be done. . . .

So to the lumbago patient, for example, Coue’ would say, “Say this over and over again, ‘My back is easier. I am able with greater and greater ease to bend it,’” and so on.

It is the imagination- Coue’ taught-that procures for an idea its acceptance into the unconscious, and the unconscious has almost complete power over the body. We have already seen that an idea received into the unconscious can even produce a blister or a rash on the skin. No effort is required to believe that if Coue’s method really does get ideas into the unconscious, bodily benefit is certain. ^[42]

Not surprisingly, Coue’s works were foundational to the later ministries of other proponents of positive thinking such as Norman Vincent Peale and Robert Shuler, both of whom quoted Coue’. Likewise, as discussed elsewhere, we see the unbiblical notion of an irrational and presumptuous “faith” as practiced in the super-supernatural “faith movement.” ^[43]

Nonetheless, the “miracle workers” of super-supernaturalism cannot claim any healings superior to what promoters of positive thinking have for generations.

G) The “Miracles” of another Mary: Christian Science

Of course the most famous healer through mind-cure was Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910), founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist. Accordingly, Dr. Lutzer writes:

I’ve browsed through books published by this religious group, reading one account of healing after another. But in most instances these miracles are those that can be explained psychologically; we cannot discount the power of the mind to overcome some of the maladies of the body. ^[44]

An online source relates that Mrs. Eddy was married three times, experienced a great deal of deep depression, and suffered her entire life with physical ailments. In her autobiography she claims that her deceased mother audibly spoke to her from the dead, calling her into the Lord’s ministry. ^[45]

Her own “healing” began as a patient of Phineas Quimby, who basically used the techniques of Anton Mesmer described above. In her original writings, “Eddy gave Quimby much credit for his hypnotic treatments of her nervous and physical conditions and initially thought his brand of mesmerism entirely benign.” ^[46] Over the course of time, “She became convinced that illness could be healed through an awakened thought brought about by a clearer perception of God. She eventually called this spiritual perception the operation of the Christ Truth on human consciousness.” ^[47]

Dr. Weatherhead writes of her:

Mary seldom went to school, because she was constantly ill, especially, it is said, from nervous disorders, including convulsive seizures and hysteria, which troubled her from childhood till the end of her long life. Even when she was writing her text-book and denying the reality of suffering, she was herself a sufferer. All her biographers testify to this, including Sibyl Wilbur, who ‘is the author of what is described as the official life of Mrs. Eddy.’ Dr. Ladd, the family physician, is said to have described her as hysterical and bad-tempered. . . . Mark Twain also accused Mrs. Eddy of plagiarism. . . .

And all through her life she was haunted by the fear that others were causing her to be ill and to suffer both mentally and physically by directing the evil thoughts towards her. . . . [I]f her biographers are to be trusted, all her life she was a pathetic victim of morbid terror and chronic anxiety. ^[48]

There are additional questions of her character as well. Dr. Weatherhead writes:

One woman-Mrs. Comer-after a course of “metaphysical obstetrics” which included no anatomy at all, undertook to officiate at [the birth of her grandchild]. Both mother and baby died, and a charge was brought against Mrs. Comer for criminal neglect. But when Mrs. Comer referred to Mrs. Eddy, the latter gave her no sympathy, and is said to have denounced her as an incapable pupil. ^[49]

Nonetheless, Mrs. Eddy was extremely popular in her day. Dr. Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies at Penn State, in his insightful book, Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History, relates:

Though New Thought [psychological/spiritual cults] prefigured modern-day [“healing”] movements, it was also rooted in older ideas with its constant thought of prosperity, its opulent-consciousness, its belief in the limitless possibilities of the individual, [it was] simply American psychology on dress parade.” . . .

This combination of the familiar and the exotic proved irresistible, so that by the 1920’s Christian Science and New Thought ideas became a national presence. ^[50]

Accordingly, Dr. Weatherhead wrote:

In 1879 she came to Boston to found her church called “The Church of Christ (Scientist),” with herself as President. . . . The services consisted of prayer, a reading from Science and Health, a reading from the Bible and a talk by Mrs. Eddy if she were present.

When this church was opened thirty thousand people sought entrance, and five services were held in succession in an attempt to accommodate all who sought entry. . . . Shortly afterwards, however, Margaret Dunshee [the treasurer of the church], with seven other prominent students, withdrew, having publicly charged Mrs. Eddy at a service with “ebullitions of temper, love of money and the appearance of hypocrisy,” and, therefore, of being unfit to lead the movement.

However, church after church was built in city after city in America. In 1888 there was a “triumphal demonstration” in Chicago, when once more people jostled one another to get near her, and people who touched her claimed that they had been healed. ^[51]

We again have proof that, contrary to the claim of modern super-supernaturalism discussed elsewhere, popularity does not equal divinity, and very successful and spiritual movements can have causes other than God. ^[52] Nonetheless, for all of her popularity and claims to miraculous cures, Mrs. Eddy had, at best, tapped into the power of suggestion for the healing of the body, and at worst, was just another miserable fraud.

She even lied about how she came to discover “Christian Science.” Dr. Weatherhead relates:

Mrs. Eddy herself is alleged to have “discovered” Christian Science as follows: She fell on an icy curbstone and was carried helpless to her home. The medical verdict was that she only had three days to live. Calling for her Bible, she opened it at the healing of the palsied man. “The life divine which healed the sick of the palsy, restored her, and she rose from the bed of pain, healed and free.” In her autobiography, Retrospection and Introspection, she says:

My immediate recovery from the effects of an injury caused by an accident, an injury which neither medicine nor surgery could reach, was the falling apple that led me to the discovery how to be well myself and how to make others so. . . . Even to the homeopathic physician who attended me, and rejoiced in my recovery, I could not then explain the modus of my belief. I could only assure him that the Divine Spirit had wrought the miracle, a miracle which later I found to be in perfect Scientific accord with divine law.

But about this Frederick Peabody writes:

Unfortunately for her reputation for veracity and fortunately for the truth of history, Dr. Alvin M. Cushing, the physician who attended Mrs. Eddy . . . is still living. . . . Dr. Cushing expressly, and under oath, denies that he at any time believed or said that Mrs. Eddy was in a critical condition, or that there was no hope for her, or that she had but three or any other limited number of days to live, and he, with great positiveness, says that she did not, on the third or any other day of her illness, say, or suggest, or pretend, or in any way whatever intimate that she had miraculously recovered or been healed, or that, discovering or perceiving the truth of the power employed by Christ to heal the sick, she had, by it, been restored to health, and he further says that, on the contrary, on the third day and later days of this illness, he himself gave her medicine, and again in August of the same year called upon her four or five times and gave her medicine. ^[53]

The fact that Eddy benefited from medicine and medical attention here, and when she was elderly, especially exposes her fraud, as she consistently derided others for doing the same. In fact, Ms. Eddy’s teaching has deceived many into neglecting medical attention at the cost of lives:

In a number of nationally publicized cases in the early 1990s, prosecutors charged parents belonging to the Christian Science church with murder or manslaughter after their children died of likely curable ailments without being medically treated. The best-known of these was the Twitchell Case in Massachusetts, in which parents David and Ginger Twitchell were convicted in 1990 of involuntary manslaughter in the death of their two-year-old son Robyn, who succumbed to a bowel obstruction. ^[54]

One of Mrs. Eddy’s lasting legacies is her book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which is read weekly in Christian Science Sunday services along with the Bible. In another lie, she claimed it was divine revelation, stating in the Christian Science Journal, January, 1901:

I should blush to write of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures as I have, were it of human origin and I apart from God its author, but as I was only a scribe echoing the harmonies of Heaven in divine metaphysics, I cannot be super-modest of the Christian Science textbook. ^[55]

However, while the last hundred pages of Science and Health contain testimonies of people being healed from the mind-cure formula of Christian Science, two prominent attributes of the book is its plagiarism and nonsensical prose. It is a well established fact that Mrs. Eddy copied her most foundational ideas from the mesmerist Phineas Quimby, even though she denied this throughout her life. ^[56]

As for its rather psychotic content, Dr. Weatherhead wrote:

Even when one tries to bring an unprejudiced mind to the study of this amazing book and to understand its message, one finds it to be the most involved hotch-potch of vague, and sometimes contradictory, metaphysics that one has ever read, without any discernible order or rational sequence of ideas.

When, in later years, Mrs. Eddy had to face a charge that she was mentally incapable of managing her own affairs, Senator Chandler found his evidence in the state of mind that was revealed in the pages of Science and Health. “Mrs. Eddy’s book,” he said, “alone is proof that she is suffering from the following systematized delusions and dementia.” ^[57]

The real nature of Mrs. Eddy’s healing “ministry” was exposed by an attorney of whom Dr. Weatherhead writes:

This lawyer says that in the course of his legal enquiries he has had access to private letters of Mrs. Eddy, and he writes a most damning indictment of her, calling her “the champion fraud and imposter of the age.” “She is mercenary, insincere and shameless. . . . Upon theft and falsehood she has laid the foundations of the ‘religion’! by the sale of which she has accumulated a fortune,” which he assesses at “upwards of a million and a half dollars.” The whole system of Christian Science he calls a “monstrous fraud,” and challenges “Mrs, Eddy and the whole Christian Science combination to dare to prosecute” him for libel.

He quotes a letter from Mark Twain, who calls her “that shameless old swindler, Mother Eddy,” and altogether paints a picture of a hysterical, uneducated and pretentious opportunist, callous about her own child and first husband, guilty of deliberate deceit and lying. He accuses her of hatred; saying of one she disliked, “I’d like to tear her heart out and trample it under my feet,” and of so completely losing her temper in one house-that of Mr. and Mrs. Alanson Wentworth-that she “with obvious intent put coals from her stove upon a heap of newspapers in the closet, tore up the feather bed, and even cut to pieces the carpet on the floor. ^[58]

Speaking as well of the apparent greed of Mrs. Eddy, Dr. Jenkins writes:

In other money-making schemes the faithful were pressured to buy books, photographs, and approved memorabilia, perhaps the most outrageous of which was a souvenir spoon depicting Eddy’s birthplace. The spoon was recommended for “grace and healing” and retailed for an impressive $5 in the 1890’s. For modern readers, Eddy’s profitable practice recalls the therapy movements of the 1970’s [how about super-supernaturalism today?!], in which trainers were said to grow rich by peddling mysticism to a gullible public. ^[59]

As for the latter years of her life, Dr. Weatherhead writes:

In her retirement she could still wield despotic power. Fisher tells us that at two days’ notice any member, of three years’ standing and upwards [of the Christian Science Church] might be ordered, on pain of excommunication, to serve in Mrs. Eddy’s household for a period of more than three years. ‘He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me’ was the text quoted in support of this astonishing manifestation of authority. . . .

But alas, already an invalid, even Mrs. Eddy could not keep death at bay much longer. She was so eager in her pretence at being physically well that for some time, Dakin tells us, a woman who was very much like her-Mrs. Leonard-was induced to sit in her carriage and be driven from her house every day, muffled to the ears and, even in a closed carriage carrying a light sunshade. A famous American paper . . . exposed the facts about this paltry deception. Having called in doctors whose names are given by Dakin, and having used drugs, though all her life she had denounced both, Mrs. Eddy died of pneumonia on December 4, 1910, aged eighty-nine. ^[60]

The parallels between the Christian Science cult and the historical foundations of modern super-supernaturalism are rather obvious and have been discussed elsewhere. ^[61]

Extras & Endnotes

Gauging Your Grasp

1. What are the ways we demonstrate amazing power of psychological manipulation on the human body? How does this relate to explaining many phenomena in super-supernaturalism?
2. What limitation is shared by both modern “faith healers” and psychological manipulation in terms of the types of diseases that can be cured?

Recommended Reading

• Books 10 and 11 of Knowing Our God.
• Counterfeit Miracles by B. B. Warfield (Banner of Truth Trust, 1972). A classic on the topic of miracles and miracle working.
• The Faith Healers by James Randi (Prometheus Books, 1989). The author, as a magician himself, exposes the fraud in several modern day “faith healers.”
• Counterfeit Revival by Hank Hanegraaff (Word, 1997), a very well researched critique of modern super-supernaturalism by a Charismatic Bible teacher.
• Power Encounters: A Critique of the Deliverance Ministries Movement, David Powlison (Baker, 1995).

Publications & Particulars

1. John MacArthur, Charismatic Chaos (Zondervan, 1992), 252. ↑

2. Ibid., 251. ↑

3. Norman Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Baker, 1999), 300. ↑

4. Leslie D. Weatherhead, Psychology, Religion, and Healing (Abingdon, 1952), 105. ↑

5. Ibid., 314 ↑

6. Ibid., 111, 122-4. ↑

7. Ibid., 198 ↑

8. Ibid., 488. ↑

9. B. B. Warfield, Counterfeit Miracles (Banner of Truth Trust, 1972), 84–91. ↑

10. David McLeod, Surprised by the Power of the Spirit: A Review Article, EmJ 10:1 (Summer 2001), 137. ↑

11. Rosemary E. Guiley, Harper’s Encyclopedia of Mystical & Paranormal Experience (EMPE) (Harper Collins, 1991), 258. ↑

12. Geisler, 301. ↑

13. Max Turner, The Holy Spirit and Spiritual Gifts (Hendrickson, 1998), 334. ↑

14. Jack Deere, Surprised by the Power of the Spirit, (Zondervan, 1993), 40. ↑

15. Ibid., 71. ↑

16. Ibid., 20. ↑

17. Ibid., 123. ↑

18. Ibid., 205. ↑

19. Regarding the vital distinction between praying for a healing God does and commanding a healing by those in Scripture with the real gift of healing see section 11.1.B. ↑

20. Robert L. Saucy in Are Miraculous Gifts for Today, Wayne Grudem, ed., (Zondervan, 1996), 129-30. ↑

21. Erwin Lutzer, Who Are You to Judge? (Moody, 2002), 25. ↑

22. Hank Hanegraaff, Counterfeit Revival (Word, 1997), 241. ↑

23. Hans-Josef Klauck, Magic and paganism in early Christianity: the World of the Acts of the Apostles (Augsburg Fortress, 2003), 167. ↑

24. Ibid. ↑

25. Ibid., 167-8. ↑

26. Regarding the psychological nature of the “miracles” of relics described by St. Augustine see section 11.7.B.5. ↑

27. Regarding the charismatic nature of the non-Christian cult the Jansenists see 4.10.E.1. ↑

28. Reference unavailable. ↑

29. This unbiblical Roman Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception claims that Mary was also born in a sinless state. For further discussion see section 13.8.D. ↑

30. Kenneth S. Latourette, A History of Christianity, Vol. 2 (Hendricksen, 1975), 1088. ↑

31. Warfield, 106, 110. ↑

32. Ibid., 112. ↑

33. Ibid. ↑

34. Ibid., 123. ↑

35. For further discussion of the Immaculate Conception doctrine in Roman Catholicism see section 13.8.D. ↑

36. Weatherhead, 151. ↑

37. Geisler, 303. ↑

38. Lutzer, Judge, 209, 214. ↑

39. Erwin Lutzer, Seven Convincing Miracles (Moody, 1999), 57. ↑

40. Weatherhead, 151. ↑

41. Ibid., 107-8. ↑

42. Ibid., 122-4. ↑

43. Regarding the unbiblical and presumptuous “faith” as practiced in the super-supernatural “faith movement.” see chapter 6.11. ↑

44. Lutzer, Seven, 57. ↑

45. “Eddy, Mary Baker” on Wikipedia, online at http://www.wikipedia.org. ↑

46. Ibid. ↑

47. Ibid. ↑

48. Weatherhead, 156, 158, 159. ↑

49. Ibid., 161-2. ↑

50. Philip Jenkins, Mystics and Messiahs: Cults and New Religions in American History (Oxford University Press, 2000), 56. ↑

51. Ibid. ↑

52. Regarding the claim that very successful and spiritual movements like charismaticism can have causes other than God, see chapter 10.15. ↑

53. Weatherhead, 163-4. ↑

54. “Eddy” at Wikipedia. ↑

55. Josh McDowell and Don Stewart, Understanding the Cults (Here’s Life Publishers, 1982), 123. ↑

56. Walter Martin, Kingdom of the Cults (Bethany, 2003), 250 ff. ↑

57. Weatherhead, 166-7 ↑

58. Ibid. ↑

59. Jenkins, 57 ↑

60. Weatherhead, 161-162. ↑

61. Regarding the parallels between the Christian Science cult and the historical foundations of modern super-supernaturalism see section 10.14.C.1. ↑