Here’s a great article about healing, Healing In Redemption, by the author, Joe McIntyre of one of my favoirite books, E.W. Kenyon, The True Story. Every Christian should have a copy of this article if just for the footnotes and references.
Here’s a couple blurbs:
Another hindrance to the idea of healing in the atonement is the influence of Platonic Dualism on the Church. An increasing number of scholars are challenging our Western presuppositions and noting that we are viewing reality through a Greek influenced lens, rather than a Hebrew perspective. Marvin Wilson says that we “have often found ourselves in the confusing situation of trying to understand a Jewish Book through the eyes of Greek culture.” One of the ways in which we are guilty of this mistake, according to Wilson, is viewing our world dualistically, instead of as a “dynamic unity.”
Unlike the ancient Greek, the Hebrew viewed the world as good. Though fallen and
unredeemed, it was created by a God
who designed it with humanity’s best interests at heart. So instead of
fleeing from the world, human beings experienced God’s fellowship, love
and saving activity in the historical order within the world. According
to Hebrew thought there was neither cosmological dualism (the belief
that the created world was evil, set apart and opposed to the spiritual
world) nor anthropological dualism (soul versus body). To the Hebrew
mind a human being was a dynamic body-soul unity, called to serve God
his Creator passionately, with his whole being, within the physical
world.
Timothy Smith notes, “The Hebrew sensibility, as
contrasted with that of Hellenic Platonism, stressed the wholeness of
human beings, the unity of their psychic and physical existence, and
the bonds that link social experience to inward spirituality.”
I am suggesting that the reason many scholars want
to limit the work of the atonement to our spiritual needs (forgiveness
of sin) is rooted in the dualism pointed to in the above quotes. The
most natural way for the Hebrew mind to read Isaiah 53 would be
holistically, applied to the total man, not just the soul.
Semitic scholar Michael Brown observes, “In our
contemporary occidental mentality, we tend to separate the concept of
‘healing’ and ‘forgiveness.’ Yet. When the psalmist prayed, ‘LORD, have
mercy on me; heal me, for I have sinned against you’(Ps.41:4/5), he
recognized that his sin was the source of his sickness, and that God’s
‘healing’ would make him whole again in body and spirit. The ‘either
physical or spiritual’ dichotomy often seen in comments on OT verses
with rapha [the Hebrew word for healer/healing] is extremely faulty. In
fact, regardless of one’s understanding of the etymological origin of
Semitic rapha, OT usage insists that references to the Lord as Israel’s
rope [healer] be taken in the broadest possible sense.”
Here’s another blurb:
"So
often God’s sovereignty is offered as the answer when we don’t
experience the things promised by the word. "God is sovereign over His
sovereignty" someone said. (Whatever that means!) Charles Spurgeon said
"Before he pledged his word he was free to do as it pleased him; but
after he has made a promise, his truth and honour bind him to do as he
has said. To him, indeed, this is no limiting of his liberty; for the
promise is always the declaration of his sovereign will and good
pleasure, and it is ever his delight to act according to his word; yet
is it marvelous condescension for the free spirit of the Lord to form
for itself covenant bonds. Yet he hath done so(my italics)."
Go read the whole thing, here.