Gary Derickson: The Cessation of Healing Miracles in Paul’s Ministry

Gary W. Derickson, “The Cessation of Healing Miracles in Paul’s Ministry”, Bibliotheca Sacra, Issue 155 (July-September 1998), p. 299-315.

This article by the Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at Western Baptist College attempts to show that Paul’s ability to heal diminished towards the end of his ministry and finally ceased. Professor Derickson gives an introduction to his subject by discussing some of the basic concepts of cessationism and makes reference to both sides of the miraculous gifts debate.

Derickson states that the debate about the cessation or continuance of the miraculous gifts is not about whether God can or does heal today, but whether or not God does so through human agents.

Definitions

Derickson understands that charismatics believe that miracles “performed by miracle workers” (p. 301) can and should be experienced today. He does not intend to deal in this article with every area of what he calls the “modern faith healing debate,” but, “Rather, it examines only one aspect of the debate, namely, the New Testament evidences concerning the status of ‘miracle workers’ as the Apostolic Age drew to a close” (p.301, footnote). However, the conclusion he draws at the end of his article is, “… it is wrong for proponents of faith healing to claim that God must work the same today as He did at the beginning of the church” (p. 315).

The thesis of this article cannot contribute greatly to the theological debate about contemporary spiritual gifts because of the difficulty that arises from Derickson’s definition of a “miracle worker.” Derickson’s definition of a supernatural miracle would be acceptable to the majority, if not all evangelicals. His suggested definition for miracles “worked” by human agents is what charismatics would have difficulty with. “The miracles discussed in this article are those that involve a human agent through whom they are worked. The following is a suggested definition: ‘Miracles by miracle workers are those acts of God which He chooses to perform through the agency of either an apostle or gifted person with the authority and ability to exercise miraculous power at will.’ Only those performing supernatural acts at will are considered miracle workers” (p. 302). On a positive note, this definition may help refine the cessationist position on “miracle workers” and therefore bring to greater contrast the differing views that exist in the “modern faith healing debate.” The greater the contrast, the less likely this theological debate will be trivialized into a useless squabble. The fact of the matter is that whether the church today should go to God with an expectation of the miraculous is a big issue—one that says much about the future of the church worldwide.

The question that is begging from Derickson’s definition of a miracle worker is whether or not anyone has ever worked miracles at will. One of the few points of general agreement among the diversity of the charismatic movement is their belief that there are anointings or giftings for the working of miracles, God working through a human agent. Charismatics and Pentecostals do not believe, however, that such healers and miracle workers are able to do these things at will. Most charismatics believe quite strongly that it is God who heals, even though it is often through a human agent.

Miracles: Performed At Will?

There are some passages in the Old and New Testaments that might seem to indicate miracles and healings were done by the will of the human instrument being used by God. Many examples also exist that indicate quite the opposite. There are many examples of healings and miracles which were “performed” through the agency of an anointed individual that had nothing to do with that individual’s personal volition. Consider some of the following miracles that happened apart from the will of man, yet men were the point of contact for the supernatural to take place.

Elisha the prophet was dead when a dead man came back to life having merely touched the bones of the dead prophet (2 Kings 13:21). Acts 5:12 says that “many signs and wonders” were done “through” or “by” the hands of the apostles, yet v. 15 implies strongly that Peter’s shadow falling on some he passed by was a means by which they were healed. Peter’s words do not indicate an ability to heal at will when he said, in Acts 9:34, “Aeneas, Jesus the Christ heals you. Arise and make your bed.”

Paul was the instrument by which “unusual miracles” took place. On the occasion of which Acts 19:11-12 takes place, it was God who did the work of these healings. There is no indication that these specific miracles and healings took place at the will of the apostle Paul. “Now God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul, so that even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out of them.” Rather, this passage seems to indicate that it was all God who did the work and that it was done according to His purpose and plan.

In Luke 5:17 there is a phrase that brings forward another difficulty in saying that miracles and healings at the hands of anointed individuals are performed by them at will. It says, “the power of the Lord was present to heal them.” This passage is fascinating when one realizes that the human instrument here used was God incarnate, the Anointed One Himself.

There are other incidents in Jesus’ ministry that would further call into question the concept of a miracle worker healing at will, if a “miracle worker” or “faith healer” were to minister following the pattern of Jesus. Many Pentecostals and charismatics believe that the ministry of Jesus is a model not only for the life of the believer, but also for the supernatural ministry. Of course, not all theologians, especially not cessationists, believe that God the Son ministered as if He were anointed by God the Holy Spirit. If this is how he operated, being led by the Spirit (see Matt. 4:1, Lk. 4:214), then passages such as Him putting spittle in the eyes of a blind man (John 9:6-7, Mk. 8:22-26), putting His fingers in the ears of a deaf man (Mk. 7:33), and His ministry at Nazareth when He could not heal many¹ (Mk. 6:1-6; Matt. 13:53-58) leave some problems for the concept of miracle workers healing at will. Why would He need to use spittle or His fingers if He could heal at will? Likewise, Jesus did not say that He cast out demons by authority that He possessed as Messiah and God, He said it was by the Spirit of God (Mt. 12:28).

1 Corinthians 12:4-11 states that the vast diversities of spiritual gifts are distributed not for the benefit of one, but the edification of the entire body of Christ. God is the one who works through the individual, distributing gifts and manifestations according to his good pleasure.

There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all: for one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings by the same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills.

Commenting on this, Assemblies of God Theological Seminary professor Stanley Horton says, “It is evident from this also that God does not give out His grace and gifts in one big deposit. There is no reservoir of these gifts in the Church or in the individual. For each gracious gift we must look to the source anew. … it is evident that the Holy Spirit is sovereign in bestowing gifts. They are apportioned according to His will, which is the will of God. We can seek the best gifts, but He is the only One who knows what is really the best in any particular situation. It is evident also that the gifts remain under His power.”³

Bittlinger, the European charismatic, defines spiritual gifts by saying, “A charism is a gratuitous manifestation of the Holy Spirit, working in and through, but going beyond, the believer’s natural ability for the common good of the people of God.”⁴

Students of the Word will be wise if they learn what Jesus meant when He explained the centrality of faith to the supernatural ministry. Consider the instance in Matt. 17:14-21 when Jesus answered the disciples who asked why they could not cast out the demon causing epilepsy in the boy whom Jesus cured. “Because of your unbelief,” He told them. If these same disciples were later the ones who performed miracles at will, then were they being instructed by Jesus on this occasion to place their faith in their own God-given ability to heal? On the contrary, their faith was to be in God who uses them as instruments of healing and conduits of the miraculous.

It is quite interesting that one of the primary passages used by cessationists, including Derickson, to say that the miraculous gifts are no longer needed is one that clearly says that these very miraculous gifts are given according to will of God. Hebrews 2:4 does not even mention the agency of man when it says that the message of salvation was authenticated by “God also bearing witness both with signs and wonders, with various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to His own will” (NKJV). Yet it cannot be proven that the signs the author refers to were not “performed” at the hands of God’s messengers for the very reason that God has chosen this agency to bring the message of salvation.

The miraculous ministry of the Holy Spirit is not a different work than His work of grace in the believer’s life. If it is He who works in the believer mightily (Col. 1:29, see also Eph. 3:20) that which the believer cannot do—filling him with all the fullness of God (Eph. 3:19), making known the riches of salvation (Col. 1:27), showing him how to live by faith in God the Son (Gal. 2:20)—why would His ministry of supernatural gifts be something He bestows on the believer for him to perform at his own will? When the Holy Spirit regenerates the spirit of a man or woman, He does not leave them to work out the rest of their salvation. The believer is not sanctified by his own will, nor kept secure in relationship with Christ by his own will. These take place because of the Spirit’s work of grace in the life of the believer. Likewise, the Spirit’s work of empowering and anointing the believer for ministry must also be His work of grace and not the believer, by his own volition, pulling out miracles from some deposit of power he has been given.

Three Reasons for Cessation

Derickson uses three lines of argument to show that Paul could not heal at will at the close of his ministry. First, Paul’s later epistles and other later New Testament books do not mention signs, wonders, and miracles very much or only in the past tense. Secondly, Paul did not, and therefore could not heal men who would have been of help to him in ministry: Epaphroditus, Timothy, and Trophimus. Finally, Hebrews 2:3-4 says that signs and wonders have already accomplished the task of authenticating the gospel and are no longer necessary.

Derickson acknowledges that his first argument—how the later books of the New Testament do not say much about the miraculous—is an argument from silence. He attempts to demonstrate a pattern of diminishing importance or mention of the miraculous in Paul’s ministry and epistles. He describes Paul’s first Roman imprisonment as “The demarcation between the period of miracles and the beginning of the church’s present experience …” (p. 306).

He recognizes that an argument from silence really cannot prove his thesis and accedes that even charismatics have used a similar argument from silence to say that there was no need to mention that which was fully operative in the church. He believes, nevertheless, that this does reflect a pattern. “This silence … does not prove in itself the cessation of miracle-working, [though] it may imply it” (p. 308).

Derickson’s second argument is to demonstrate Paul’s inability to heal three crucial co-workers in his later ministry. This argument, from the perspective of this writer, comes down to whether or not Paul could ever heal anybody. If Paul was the one who could heal by his own will, then Derickson has a point. If, however, Paul was only anointed to heal according to God’s will under the leading of the Holy Spirit, then this argument demonstrates nothing.

The third argument brought forward to show the diminishing miraculous ministry of Paul is the typical cessasionist interpretation of Hebrews 2:3-4. Derickson deals briefest with this third argument, relying on arguments presented in the past by cessationists such as B. B. Warfield (see p. 300-301), Thomas Edgar, and Charles Ryrie. He does acknowledge that the aorist tense, as used in this passage, is sometimes used without a past tense meaning (p. 314). One charismatic, former Dallas Theological Seminary professor Jack Deere, has noted that unlike the typical cessationist argument, the word translated “confirmed” in Hebrews 2:3 is never used in the New Testament of miracles authenticating a messenger, just the message of God.⁵

Derickson quotes opponents to his overall view as he draws his final conclusions, but does not answer them and only points to the conclusions drawn from his previous two arguments. He also shores up his conclusion by quoting or referring to numerous other cessationists. His conclusion rests on a definition of miracles being performed at the will of the human agent, therefore his argument will not be accepted by charismatics who, for good reason, do not accept his definition.

Reviewed by Raul L. Mock

Notes

¹ Matt. 13:58 says “He did not many mighty works there” but Mk. 6:5 says “He could do no mighty work there.”

² 1 Cor. 12:4-11, NKJV, emphasis mine

³ Stanley Horton, What the Bible Says About the Holy Spirit (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1976), p. 211-212, 213.

⁴ A. G. Bittlinger, Gifts and Ministries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973), p. 20.

⁵ Jack Deere, Surprised By the Power of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993), p. 277.