Apologeticae sive Theologiae Fundamentalis, Tomus I: Demonstratio Christiana

Jesus healed neither by physico-medical nor by psychico-medical power, but by divine power.

1. Jesus did not heal by physico-medical power.

Not a few of the older and of the more recent rationalists¹ maintain that Jesus healed all, or at least many,² of the sick in the manner and by the means with which pharmaceutical medicine is wont to cure. But to anyone who inspects the Gospel healings, however briefly, it is evident that Jesus neither acted as a physician nor could have acted as one. Of the countless sick persons who were cured, let those be recalled whose cure is described by the evangelists in greater detail.

Paralytics: the centurion's paralytic boy, absent afar off, is cured by the sole command of a word:³ another paralytic lying on his bed is raised by a mere voice: "Arise, take up thy bed, and go into thy house."⁴ What physician raises paralytics in this way? Jesus heals four blind men by touching their eyes;⁵ He gives sight to a man blind from birth by smearing clay upon his eyes and commanding him to wash in the pool of Siloam.⁶ Touching, smearing, washing are not ophthalmic remedies. Congenital blindness, moreover, was incurable then, nor even today can it be cured except by surgical operation.⁷ — A boy deaf and epileptic ("lunatic") from birth and at the same time possessed Jesus heals by rebuking the demon.⁸ In the same way He heals one deaf-mute,⁹ and another by touching his ears and tongue and saying: "Ephpheta, be opened."¹⁰ These things are certainly foreign to the medicine of the mute and the deaf. — He cleanses ten lepers by commanding, "Go, show yourselves to the priests";¹¹ He frees another leper with the word: "I will; be thou made clean."¹² By the mere nod of His will, therefore, He removes that dread disease, to the curing of which modern physicians are still unequal.¹³ — A woman suffering a flow of blood (menorrhagia) for 12 years is healed by the touch of the fringe of Jesus' garment, although she had before spent all her substance on physicians,¹⁴ and in fact she could naturally have been cured only by surgical operation and medicinal therapy.¹⁵ — A man having a withered hand (atrophie, Muskelschwund) Jesus heals with the words: "Stretch forth thy hand,"¹⁶ a woman bowed down (by an affection of the joints and by resorption) for 18 years He raises with the words: "Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity";¹⁷ a dropsical man He restores by a simple touch;¹⁸ a man infirm for 38 years He restores to health by commanding: "Arise, take up thy bed, and walk."¹⁹ No one will deny that no physico-medical art heals in this manner.

2. Jesus did not heal by psychico-medical power.

Very many modern critics, since they cannot explain the healings of Jesus by physical therapy, invoke psychotherapy. They maintain, namely, that Jesus was endowed with such psychic power, that is, with such natural force of will and of soul, that He was able to heal the sick by hypnotic or even post-hypnotic suggestion.²⁰ But Jesus neither used suggestion nor could He use it for healing the sick.

He did not use suggestion. Psychotherapists cure but few of the many sick persons offered to them, and those only by short sessions frequently repeated, and with such success that very often, or almost always, they relapse. Jesus, however, healed all the sick, as many as were offered to Him; He healed them without loss of time and labor: by a word alone, a nod, a command of the will; finally He healed them with lasting success, and not even one relapsed into his former state of infirmity. Therefore He in no way acted the psychotherapist.

The adversaries strive to prop up the psychotherapeutic thesis by saying that Jesus, before He healed, demanded faith from the sick. Hence they simply call the Gospel healings healings of faith (faith healing, guérisons de foi, Glaubensheilungen), i. e., healings whose cause was a fiducial faith in the medical skill of Jesus. But they argue thus without justification. For Jesus did not seek faith for a medical end, but for a moral and religious end, since all His works looked to the salvation of souls²¹ and especially to confirming the testimony of His messianity and divinity.²²

Moreover, this faith, although it was a condicio sine qua non under which Jesus worked, was nevertheless not the cause of the miracles. This is clear, since very often He did not demand faith from the sick, but from the persons standing around. E. g. He heals the daughter of the Syrophoenician woman from afar because of the faith of the mother who asked;²³ He heals the pagan centurion's boy at a distance, asked by the boy's master himself;²⁴ He heals Malchus, destitute of all faith;²⁵ He repeatedly comes miraculously to the aid of His disciples at a time when they are of little or of no faith.²⁶ Hence unbelievers gratuitously assert that Jesus used suggestion. Rather:

He could not use suggestion to bring about healings. Suggestive therapy, as we have proved in another place,²⁷ removes only hysterical diseases, i. e., diseases which have arisen either by autosuggestion or by heterosuggestion; organic diseases completely elude the efficacy of psychotherapy. Now it is at least evident that not all the sick offered to the Lord suffered from hysteria, unless perhaps almost the whole Jewish people at the time of Christ was deranged. Nay, it is certain that very many of the sick healed by Jesus did not suffer from hysteria. Who, for example, would accuse the centurion's paralytic boy of hysteria? who the dropsical man? who the man with atrophy? who the lepers? who Malchus wanting an ear? Finally, those versed in neurological medicine attribute the marks of hysteria to none of the sick of the Gospel.²⁸

Therefore the healings could be effected by Christ no more by psychic power than by physical force. Hence they are supernatural works, nay, immediately divine, since God alone rules over infirmities and health with supreme dominion. Therefore Jesus Christ, endowed with infinite power over infirmities and health, is true God.