Craig Keener in his work, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament, mentions Dowie and Lake as healers extraordinaire. But many of their claims have been revealed to be cons, including in the end, conning themselves.
Con Man, John Alexander Dowie
John Alexander Dowie and the Invention of Faith Healing, 1882-1889
John Alexander Dowie invented a new form of faith healing spectacle in the 1880s that was substantively different to all previous forms of “Divine Healing.”
Craig Keener in his work, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament, mentions that “fourteen” raisings from the dead are attributed to “one of the most famous healing evangelists,”[1] a Pentecostal preacher from the U.K., named Smith Wigglesworth (1859–1947). Keener adds that “Wigglesworth claimed that the greatest test of his obedience was when he called his just–deceased wife back to life but God told him to stop.”[2] (Really? The same God whose power allegedly raised her, also told him to stop? God should make up his mind.)
Ronnie Coyne lost his right eye in a baling wire accident when he was a boy, but claims he attended a healing service and afterwards could see out of his empty eye socket, either with his artificial eye in the empty eye socket or not. He grew up to become Rev. Roscoe Ronald Coyne, evangelist–healer. The late Mr. Coyne is no longer capable of being tested but his presentations can be seen in videos where the fraudulent nature of his claims become evident.
The following post is an extended endnote to an essay of mine to be published in fall 2019, “Tidal Wave or Trickle? Assessing Keener’s Miracles,” a chapter in The Case Against Miracles.
The Miracle of Speaking in Tongues?
As a former tongue–speaking Christian I tried spelling out what I was saying phonetically on paper and soon noticed the repetitive nature of many of the syllables, hardly much of a vocabulary. Also, people in the prayer groups I used to attend would sometimes “speak in tongues”
Thomism is Aristotelianism viewed through a Christian lens. For instance:
“The Eucharist, a Catholic mystery, needs Aristotle's thought to establish its philosophic legitimacy. Scholasticism, with its categories of ‘substance,’ ‘accidents,’ ‘genera,’ ‘substantial forms,’ is the sole authorization of this ontological three card monte which permits affirmation of the bread really, not symbolically—‘literally’ and not ‘figuratively,'
