Healing in the Pentecostal Tradition

This essay provides a historical and theological overview of the Pentecostal experience of divine healing. The essay argues that, for Pentecostals, the experience of divine healing carries a paramount significance to the “heart” of their spirituality and theology. Like the experience of Spirit-baptism and speaking in tongues, Pentecostals experience healing as a foretaste of God’s eschatological reign. The essay traces the development of healing practices among early and modern Pentecostals historically and theologically. Pentecostal practices of divine healing emerged out of various healing movements rooted in the earlier Holiness traditions, but they were later firmly developed into a doctrinal understanding associating healing with the atonement work of Jesus Christ. For Pentecostals, this move coincided with their promotion of the so-called “Full Gospel.” For Pentecostals, healing is a vivid manifestation of the “holistic” nature of God’s salvation wherein the atoning work of Jesus Christ not only frees individuals from their spiritual bondage to sin and death but also assures them of its overcoming power to experience freedom from the bodily bondage of sickness and disease. Delving into a “holistic” view of the life in salvation, the essay further offers a sanctificationist reading of healing while observing the challenges and problems that the “Word of Faith” movement generated over the years. In conclusion, the essay accentuates a strong eschatological impulse embedded in various Pentecostal practices of divine healing.