Miraculous healing is also attributed to the Toronto blessing – people have claimed alleviation from various medical conditions such as back pain, stuttering and dyslexia etc.
If the Toronto blessing experiences are genuine experiences of God, then God healing people may tell us something about his nature. This is a feature of other claimed Corporate Religious Experience, such as in
Lourdes in France, where many thousands of pilgrims have travelled and claimed rapid miraculous healing from various, often incurable conditions.
In terms of what the Toronto Blessing tells us about God, for believers Toronto provides prime example of both Gods benevolence (all-loving nature) and His omnipotence (being all-powerful). The idea behind this is that God is showing his loving and powerful nature by healing people. We may not understand why God chooses one person over another, but by God healing people he is showing his love and power.
However there are thinkers who will have issues with a God who does this kind of action. In “Gods Action in the World” Maurice Wiles says that the intervention of God is alien to His nature. Wiles believes that “there are no grounds for speaking of particular divine actions in respect to a particular phenomena”. He believes that God is acting universally as part of an ongoing miracle. He created and is keeping going the universe and all of creation. He believes that if God does individual acts these would be arbitrary and meaningless. After all if God can act to prevent suffering or to cure illness why doesn’t he do so more often?
If the Toronto Blessing tells us anything about God for Wiles – it would be that God is partisan and favours some people over others.
Similarly , Peter Cole, in his book “Philosophy of religion”, believes that acts of God such as the ‘miraculous healing’ at Lourdes are incompatible with a benevolent God, as they usually only benefit a very small number of people and if God is all loving he’d surely heal everybody?
Cole believes that God choosing one individual person over another to help is acting unfairly and therefore he cannot be completely benevolent. However, it could be argued that Christianity does come from a tradition where God helps or aids the individual e.g. parting the Red sea for Moses or giving a son to Abraham.
You could apply the thinking of Kierkgaard at this stage. For Kierkegaard, Faith is the most important task to be achieved by a human being. Kierkegaard believed that in order to be a Christian one had to take a ‘leap of faith’, you must trust God completely and accept that God is beyond human comprehension and act as he wills as he does not have to follow the dictates of human reason. Kierkegaard believed that God can do whatever He wants and the fact that it makes little sense requires that we must just accept with total blind faith.
Using Kierkegaard you could argue that it requires Faith to accept these experiences are real, and that if God chooses to heal or reveal himself to individuals then He can.
Faith, says Kierkegaard “leaves you suspended over 10,000 fathoms of ocean with no place to land. You have to make the leap with no assurance that you will be safe, no assurance that your beliefs are correct, no assurance that the God you are entrusting yourself to actually exists. Only when you have actually launched yourself out over the deep will you discover whether your faith has led you in the right direction. And by then, if you have guessed wrongly, it is too late to turn back.”
According to Christian belief God’s nature is one of benevolence (he is all-loving), omniscience (all knowing Hebrews 4.13) and omnipotence (he is all – powerful – Genesis 1.1-3). One would expect religious experiences to provide evidence for Gods nature.
Religious experiences usually change people’s lives, they tend to be extra-ordinary and usually cannot be explained in everyday language, “They provide insight into something other than the material world and are said to be by permission of God.”2 It is said to be a ‘non-empirical occurrence’, but all forms of religious experience are life changing. Corporate religious experience such as the Toronto Blessing involves a large number of people all having a shared religious experience.
William James identified four characteristics of what a religious experience entails in his book “The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)”, he said an experience should have,
“Noetic quality” – that is the experience should give some insight into meaningful truths acquired though intuition and is often said to be “revealed”. It should be “Ineffabile” – that is the experience cannot be described using everyday language – it is beyond words. It should be transient – the religious experience may have only lasted a couple of hours but the effects can last a lifetime (for example the conversion of Saul) Passivity – the experience is out of control of the person, people can appear possessed and behaviour, bizarre. James suggested there was a “two – way traffic” with religious experiences and outlined four “fruits” of religious experience – he said the experience should leave the person with an awareness of something beyond the trivial, material world and left feeling elated. They feel they have come into contact with a benevolent, omnipotent power, to which they self-surrender. After the experience their life moves towards a more spiritual, morally aware state, characterised by a sense of wonder at the universe.
In the Toronto Church, worshippers were certainly left feeling elated and surrendered themselves spiritually these “manifestations” (some people claim they surrender themselves to similar techniques to those used by hypnotists)
Teresa of Avlia (1515-1582) provided a “protocol” for identifying religious experiences and verifying their authenticity she said, “The experiences should be kept within the traditions of the church”, “the experience should be discussed with a spiritual advisor (to be taken seriously)”, “There should be some sort of change in the life of the person” (transciency). Teresa’s first rule provides a problem for most people where the Toronto blessing is concerned, as most of the ‘experiences’ at Toronto are not within the teachings of Orthodox Christianity and seems a far cry from the teachings of the New Testament.
There is the initial question about whether or not the Toronto blessing can be regarded as a religious experience, in accordance with William James criteria we can assert that the experiences were passive and ineffabile, and some claim to have been enlightened, so has noetic quality thus can be deemed to be a valid experience. Before we can answer the question of whether corporate religious experience such as Toronto can tell us anything about God, we must first examine the evidence and reach a conclusion as to whether these experiences are genuine as opposed to some kind “universal obsessional neurosis” – (a psychological illness as suggested by Freud) – a way of internalising fears – justifying our everyday existence and suffering and suffering by believing it’s all for a purpose. If they are genuine, they provide direct proof for God’s existence and from this it can be argued that we can learn about the nature of God. However if people do experience God in certain places such as Toronto, one can suggest that this is evidence for a patrician God, rather than one of benevolence.
Kant would have rejected this way of thinking and argued that is it impossible to experience a transcendent God (one who does not exist in space or time) because humans only have five senses meaning we can only experience things in our known universe. Kant concluded it is therefore impossible to experience God at all. We can only experience the world through our five senses – the phenomenal world, where as in reality itself there is much more to experience – the noumenal world therefore in reference to the question, you cannot know about God via the Toronto Blessing as God is totally beyond human capability to understand and experience God therefore we can learn nothing about Him.
If the experiences at Toronto are genuine, do these experiences tell us anything about God? The sociologist Margaret Poloma from Akron University says:
“The out pouring of the Holy Spirit witnessed in North America since the beginning of the century be characterised as a social movement struggling against the forces of institutionalisation” that is the groups of [Pentecoastal] Christaians are trying to avoid traditional ways of ‘quenching the Holy Spirit’ (finding a new way to celebrate their faith outside of the traditional confines of Christianity – that is traditional worship such as singing hymns and prayer.
Some philosophers such as David Hume want to rule out the possibility of any religious experience being valid because its contrary to human experience and reason, he claims that “Christianity is not reasonable and any Christian belief flies in the face (“subverts”) all understanding and experience” [http://mysite.wanadoomembers.co.uk/tsas_re/alevel/miracle.pdf]
Hume says “A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence” Therefore corporate religious experience, doesn’t tell anything about God as there is little empirical evidence to support the claims for the miraculous. Hume sees as religion is unreasonable and since “Uniform experience of natural law outweighs the testimony of any alleged miracle.” [http://www.iep.utm.edu/h/humereli.htm] the religious experiences at Toronto are deemed invalid.
Hume dismisses the accounts of miraculous events due to the witness’s lack of credibility, Hume suggested that to accept the credibility of a witness they must be intelligent, have a reputation to loose and nothing to gain. Witnesses of miracles described in the New Testament according to Hume lack credibility as they were usually fisherman who had a great deal to gain from claims of miracles which would make their God appear in a god light. However, some miracles have been verified scientifically by scientists ho are intelligent and have a reputation to loose, for example at Lourdes there have been 68 attested claims that a miracles has been preformed- bones have regrown where it was previously thought to be impossible, terminal cancers have gone into permanent remission.
Antohny Flew said that the power of such testimony may be difficult to dispute but this doesn’t mean the events are an act of God - the power of the human mind is still not fully understood, a hundred years ago video cameras and mobile phones would have been considered miraculous but are now an everyday commodity, similarly psychology has unveiled much of the mind which was previously a mystery though there is still a great deal about the mind which we know nothing about. Flew believed that instead of claimed ‘God did it’, money should be spent on research so we can gain a better insight into the human mind and the so called miraculous.
Supporters of “The Blessing” claim that it has transformed their lives, both physically and spiritually. In his book “Interrupted by the Spirit” Terry Virgo noted:
“People began to testify of wonderful change in the lives. Many displayed a new hunger for God and a new zeal to see him glorified. Bad relationships were healed and weak marriages were wonderfully strengthened. Formally depressed people were changed beyond recognition.”
Believers of the blessing hold that corporate religious experiences such as the Blessing is a sign from God that he is about to reveal his omnipotence to the world, they believe that lives are being transformed by this divine power and bizarre manifestations such as barking and laughing are simply evidence for the sheer power of the force causing the experience, that is they believe that experiences such as is direct evidence for the existence of God and an example of his power. Spiritual, emotional and physical healing attributed to the Blessing is evidence of a benevolent God. However, even some Charismatic Christians have claimed that the behaviour is attributable to the Devil rather than God, Rodney Howard Browne himself says the words, “"Hooray for Satan in um `elp us you're here" while the man is still doing the running dance..” [http://www.cephasministry.com/toronto_unmask.html]
Psychologists such as Freud would completely dismiss claims of any religious experience as “wishful thinking” and describe religion as an “universal obsessional neurosis” which address our fears and enables individuals to cope with the dangers in society. Freud believed the mind creates the illiusion that is religion of a way of dealing with the dangers of the outside world. For Freud religion was a neurotic illness arising out of the unconscious mind caused by repressed sexual neuroses. Karl Marx would also dismiss the experiences, believing that religion was “the opium of the people” – nothing more than a sedative to keep the people under control
Although it is clear the movement has had a tremendous impact, is it the result of the Holy Spirit or hypnotism? Clark simply exploited the gulliability of the public, employing techniques used by cults to just “let the experience happen” or even bully them into experience the blessing? If God is responsible for such manifestations, what does this tell us about the nature of God?
If God was responsible I believe this would be evidence for a rather neurotic God, possibly a God who would rather waste his power by granting demonic manifestations to believers to prove his power (even though “thought shall not test the Lord”), than curing suffering not so much in humanity but in animals and in nature, (human suffering is the price of free will). Manifestations from the Toronto Blessing do not conform with the traditional concept of God.
By stepping back from the Blessing it is clear to see why we have the initial reaction of uneasiness, the blessing rests on faulty ideas about how God operates in the universe. It would be vary rare to find any Christian movement, no matter how controversial, from which no good as come and the Blessing is no exception, for what ever reason, people are feeling rejuvenated, emotionally cleansed and physically healed. We will probably never know if these so called “fruits” associated with the Blessing simply a spiritual placebo effect, or whether there has been some sort of divine intervention Should the non-believer simply dismiss the claims as some form of mass hysteria? If the blessing brings happiness to people does it really matter what caused such feelings? – I don’t think so.
Bibliography
http://www.billygraham.org/LFA_Article.asp?ArticleID=19
http://www.victorious.org/chur46.htm - " from the book 'what people ask about the church' by dale a robbins"
http://www.rickross.com/reference/general/general617.html
www.tacf.org/revivalnews/archives/mmpfruit.html
Terry Virgo - interrupted in the spirit 2/95, charisma. p29 in tsas notes
“The Toronto Blessing and real Christianity” Tony Payne St Matthias Press 1995
“Philosophy of religion (access to philosophy) ” Peter Cole Hodder Murray; 2Rev Ed edition (June 30, 2004)
“The thinkers guide to God” - Peter Vardy & Julie Arliss – John Hunt publishing Ltd 2003
“The puzzle of God” Peter Vardy Fount; 3Rev Ed edition (August 2, 1999)
www.tsas-re.freeserve.co.uk
“Varieties of religious experience” William James Modern Library; New Ed edition (May 11, 1999)
http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:Ek2qFLA0C6UJ:hirr.hartsem.edu/research/research_pentecostalism_polomaart8.html+margaret+poloma&hl=en&gl=uk&ct=clnk&cd=4
[http://www.cephasministry.com/toronto_unmask.html]
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