Miracles

The “Problem” of Miracles

[The] modern man acknowledges as reality only such phenomena or events as are comprehensible within the framework of the rational order of the universe.  He does not acknowledge miracles because the do not fit into his lawful order.  When a strange or marvelous accident occurs, he does not rest until he has found a rational cause (Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, 37-8).

Since the Enlightenment, there has been a strong tendency on the part of intellectuals to deny the validity of miracles.  This belief that miracles are impossible becomes an assumption before approaching the text of scripture. If one does not believe in miracles, then one must explain the miracles of Jesus in a natural way (psychosomatic healings, for example), or to argue that the early church created miracles in order to build up the authority of Jesus.

Graham Twelftree traces this view to David Hume, whose argument against miracles has influenced modern thought on the possibility of miracles.  Hume argued that for an event to be believed as true, it must have sufficient witnesses.  Since a miracle is something that is outside of the laws of nature, the witness to a miracle must be especially strong.  In fact, there is no witness to a miracle that Hume would accept as reliable, therefore there are no accurate reports of miracles, therefore miracles never happen.

In a “scientific age” things that once were thought to be miraculous can be explained.  Honestly, I am extremely skeptical when someone tells me they have experienced something supernatural (a ghost, for example).  My modernist mind pretty much goes into Penn & Teller mode and I look for the logical explanation behind the experience.  There is simply no way I am going to believe a ghost appeared, no matter who was telling me the story.  This skepticism is a product of the modern age.  Arthur C. Clarke once said that technology in a primitive culture is indistinguishable from magic. Mark Twain makes a similar point in A Connecticut Yankee.  A miracle is just science or technology which has yet to be discovered in a particular culture.

Two observations are appropriate here.

First, my personal modern skepticism has no business trying to explain the miracles of Jesus. In the Second Temple Period, miracles happened. Or at least, people presumed that miracles could happen and frequently did. the Jewish especially expected that the coming messianic age would be accompanied by miracles, including healing and resurrection.

If Jesus had appeared in Galilee and announced he was the messiah and could not do miracles, he would have been dismissed as a pretender, a fraud.  The conflict Jesus has with the Pharisees is not if he did miracles, but rather the source of his power to do miracles. To put it another way, the only the most un-historical Jesus would not do miracles.

Second, anyone who dismisses Jesus’ miracles is imposing their modern worldview on a pre-modern worldview. We are expecting Jesus to act like a proper Evangelical Christian, or Lutheran, or Pentecostal, or what ever our theological assumptions are.  The fact is, Jesus does not fit the categories of modern theological talk very well and it is a serious mistake to make him out to be exactly what we expected him to be.

In fact, I think I would call that idolatry.

Bibliography:
Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 37-38.
Graham Twelftree, Jesus the Miracle-Worker, (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity, 1999), 38-53.

Is The Supernatural Possible?

The third question Wilkins and Moreland use to introduce Jesus Under Fire concerns miracles. All scholars of historical Jesus have to ask, “Is the supernatural possible in ancient and modern times?” To me, this is two questions, are miracles possible, and if they are, were they present in the ministry of Jesus and his followers? (For the purpose of this post, I do not really want to deal with the second half of the question, are they present in the modern world.)

All four of the Gospels present Jesus as a miracle worker. He demonstrates his control of nature (walking on water), he heals, casts out demons from possessed people, and even raises the dead. In a pre-modern worldview, miracles can and do happen. God heals or reveals himself in extraordinary ways. Until the modernist worldview was applied to the Bible, there was no reason to doubt Jesus’ miracles.

A worldview based on the Enlightenment would never accept these stories because the supernatural simply cannot happen.  Or maybe a better way to say this it is that the record of an ancient miracle can never be submitted to a scientific test to determine if it is really a miracle.  Think of the Mythbusters as a classic example of rationalism. If someone walks on the water, Adam and Jamie are going to look for the rocks, proving that there is a rational reason for the apparent miracle.  They will “bust the myth” since they assume that miracles are impossible.  The same rational mind that dispensed with “ghosts and goblins” also got rid of waking on the water.

Post-modernism is more open to the supernatural.  Although someone with a postmodern worldview might be antagonistic toward Jesus, they would not rule out the possibility of the supernatural occurring. The problem with postmodern approaches to the Gospels is that the historical value of the text really does not matter for much.  The literary meaning of the text is more important, what the read draws out of the text that is meaning.

For the evangelical Christian there should be no problem with the idea that God did miracles in the biblical materials. The definition of a miracle is important. A miracle is a supernatural event which reveals something about God. A miracle is outside nature, something which by definition the Mythbusters can’t test. But it is also something which reveals God, not simply a strange event which has no real explanation. (Please note: this does NOT mean that God is going around appearing on moldy tortillas in Guadalajara to reveal himself!)

In the gospels, Jesus does miracles in order to reveal something about himself and his relationship with God, specifically that he is the Messiah. If a messiah appeared in the first century and he did not do miracles, he would not have been taken seriously as a messiah. In Matthew 12:38, for example, the Pharisees ask Jesus to do some sort of sign. This indicates that for the Pharisees, the messiah ought to be giving a sign of some kind. (Ironically they do not believe the miracles he has done, and when asked, Jesus does not give them a sign.)

Of the three questions I have used to introduce historical Jesus studies, this is the one that requires a certain amount of faith. I can show rationally that there was a Jesus and that much of what is said about him in the Gospels is accurate. I can show that the gospel writers were not creating myth but explaining who Jesus was and what he claimed to be. But it is very difficult to show that Jesus did miracles without falling back to my pre-conceived view that God can do miracles if he wants to.

The Historical Reliability of Jesus’ Miracles

There are a number of sources outside of the New Testament which indicate that Jesus had a  reputation for being a miracle worker.  The non-Christian writer has no real reason to create a Jesus that preformed miracles especially of those miracles were intended to validate his message.  While the evidence is meager, it is an indication that Jesus’ reputation as a miracle worker was known outside of the Christian community by people that would have no interest in enhancing Jesus’ reputation.

Jesus Walks on the water

Josephus attributes miracles to Jesus, as does the Babylonian Talmud.   In the second century Origen quotes the heretic Celsus as thinking that Jesus learned his magical arts in Egypt, and when he returned to Galilee he did miracles in order to claim to be God (in Contra Celsus, 1.38, cf 1.160).  Celsus is late evidence since he is living at the end of the first century and likely only knows Jesus through the Gospel traditions.  A rather indirect piece of evidence is that the name of Jesus is associate with healing spells and exorcisms.  The evidence for exorcisms is rather late (AD 330), but rabbis forbid using Jesus name in healings as well.

The so called criterion of authenticity can applied to the miracle stories.  For example, all strata of the tradition indicates that Jesus did miracles, including Mark, Q, M/L, and John.  This ought to satisfy the criterion of Multiple Attestation since miracles appear in all of the various forms suggested by form criticism.  Given the methodology of even the Jesus Seminar, one can confidently conclude that Jesus had the reputation as a miracle worker, that he claimed to do miracles, healings, etc.

The criterion of plausibility argues that an event is more likely historical if it is a plausible event.  If this is applied to the miracles, many will dismiss miracles because they do not seem plausible.   What is or is not plausible is highly subjective, and very often implausible events actually occur.  To me, it is implausible that anyone claiming to be a messiah in the Second Temple Period would not do miracles.  While the modern worldview would dismiss miracles as implausible, the Second Temple Period would require them if Jesus was to be taken seriously as the messiah!

The criterion of embarrassment is more helpful.  If a deed seems like it might have been an embarrassment to the growing theology of Jesus, and they passed it along anyway, it has a greater claim to validity.  The healing of the woman with the flow of blood, for example, has Jesus healing the woman without really consciously thinking about it, the power just “went out of him” and he did not know who it was that touched him.

In addition, Jesus was known to have been a man of prayer, yet there are no stories in which Jesus prays in connection to a healing.  If the early church were going to create or enhance the prayers of Jesus (which they very well may have), it is remarkable that they did not create prayers to be added to the miracles of Jesus. This means that Jesus did not heal in the same way Jewish holy men healed, through prayer and ritual.

In short, it is historically plausible that Jesus was known as a miracle worker during his own lifetime, even if the modern thinker dismisses the possibility of miracles.

Isaiah 61, Jesus and Healing

The gospels claim that Jesus was a healer of all kinds of diseases. Jesus is constantly called upon to heal, and on several occasions he takes the initiative to heal.  His ministry of healing was not at all like modern faith healers – in fact, in several cases the individual healed does not express faith in Jesus (Mark 2:1-12, the paralytic, Mark 7:24-30, the daughter of the Syro-Phoenician woman). In Luke 22:51 we might even say that the person healed was decidedly anti-Jesus since he was one of the servants of the priests who were arresting Jesus.

Christ and the, Paolo Cagliari 1571 Centurion

Healing was an expected part of the Messiah’s coming.  Isaiah 61:1-4 says that the age of the Messiah will bring physical healing and liberation from oppression.  This text is spoken by an individual who is anointed by the Lord (a messiah) for the purpose of preaching the good news of the end of the exile.  Notice Isa 61:3 describes the reverse Zion’s mourning and 61:4 describes the rebuilding of the ancient ruins.  It is this passage that Jesus quotes in Luke 4 as being fulfilled in his ministry.  After he announces that he is the fulfillment of Isa 61, he begins healing many (Luke 4:31-37, a demon; 4:38, Peter’s mother-in-law, 4:39-40, many diseases and demons). Similarly, in Matthew 11 Jesus answers John’s disciples by alluding to the Hebrew Bible.

Why would healing be a part of the messianic age? The coming age is a time of the New Covenant, when Israel and Judah will no longer be under the curse of the Law, but under the blessing of the New Covenant.  The First Covenant promised a physical curse for breaking the law, but a physical blessing for keeping the Law. The New Covenant will enable the people to keep the covenant, therefore the coming age will be a time when the curse is reversed and people are physically blessed with real health.  In the coming age, God will deal with sin, even destroying Death (Isa 25:6-8). God’s representative, the messiah, will initiate that period of health and prosperity.

Mark 2 is a most remarkable healing because it seems designed to reverse contemporary assumptions about disease and sin.  If a person had a disease or other serious physical problem, it might very well be an indication of sin (as in Job, for example).  When the paralytic was lowered through the roof, Jesus does not heal him, but rather forgives his sin.  This provokes a response from the teachers of the Law, since only God can forgive sin.   Perhaps they thought that if Jesus really could forgive sin, he would have healed the man.  Jesus goes out of his way to point out that he has authority to forgive sin (a divine prerogative) and heals the man to show that his sins have in fact been forgiven.

How are Jesus’ healing ministry related to us today? We are really back to the “already / not yet” of the Kingdom. Jesus dealt with the problem of sin on the cross, but the Kingdom is not yet fully consummated.  The future, fully realized Kingdom will be a time when the curse of sin is reversed.  Today we have the spiritual blessing of the New Covenant, but not necessarily all of the physical blessings.

Two implications follow from this.  First, the Church is not under the curse of the Law – physical illness should never be seen as a direct punishment from God because of your sin (or your parent’s sin). It might be, since sin is usually “punished” by the natural results of that sin.  But you cannot say your illness is a result of the curses of the Law.

Second, you cannot say your good health is a result of your positive spiritual life. Again, it might be (guilty conscience could cause an ulcer), but there is not contract with God that guarantees you health if you are living out your Christian life properly.

I realize this runs counter to popular teaching from evangelists about healing, but these teachers seriously misunderstand Jesus’s miracles when they tell people their illness is a result of sin or their success is a result of spiritual maturity.

 

The “Problem” of Miracles

[The] modern man acknowledges as reality only such phenomena or events as are comprehensible within the framework of the rational order of the universe.  He does not acknowledge miracles because the do not fit into his lawful order.  When a strange or marvelous accident occurs, he does not rest until he has found a rational cause (Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, 37-8).

Since the Enlightenment, there has been a strong tendency on the part of intellectuals to deny the validity of miracles.  This belief that miracles are impossible becomes an assumption before approaching the text of scripture. If one does not believe in miracles, then one must explain the miracles of Jesus in a natural way (psychosomatic healings, for example), or to argue that the early church created miracles in order to build up the authority of Jesus.

Twelftree traces this to David Hume, whose argument against miracles has influenced modern thought on the possibility of miracles.  Hume argued that for an event to be believed as true, it must have sufficient witnesses.  Since a miracle is something that is outside of the laws of nature, the witness to a miracle must be especially strong.  In fact, there is no witness to a miracle that Hume would accept as reliable, therefore there are no accurate reports of miracles, therefore miracles never happen.

In a “scientific age” things that once were thought to be miraculous can be explained.  Honestly, I am extremely skeptical when someone tells me they have experienced something supernatural (a ghost, for example).  My modernist mind pretty much goes into Penn & Teller mode and I look for the logical explanation behind the experience.  There is simply no way I am going to believe a ghost appeared, no matter who was telling me the story.  This skepticism is a product of the modern age.  Arthur C. Clarke once said that technology in a primitive culture is indistinguishable from magic. Mark Twain makes a similar point in A Connecticut Yankee.  A miracle is just science or technology which has yet to be discovered in a particular culture.

Two observations are appropriate here.  First, my modern skepticism has no business trying to explain the miracles of Jesus.  In the Second Temple Period, miracles happened.  In fact, people expected that the messianic age would be accompanied by miracles, including healing and resurrection.  If Jesus had appeared in Galilee and announced he was the messiah and could not do miracles, he would have been dismissed as a pretender, a fraud.  In fact, the conflict Jesus has with the Pharisees is not if he did miracles, but rather the source of his power to do miracles.

Second, anyone who dismisses Jesus’ miracles is imposing their modern worldview on a pre-modern worldview.  We are expecting Jesus to act like a proper Evangelical Christian, or Lutheran, or Pentecostal, or what ever our theological assumptions are.  The fact is, Jesus does not fit the categories of modern theological talk very well and it is a serious mistake to make him out to be exactly what we expected him to be.

In fact, I think I would call that idolatry.

Bibliography:
Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 37-38.
Graham Twelftree, Jesus the Miracle-Worker, (Downers Grove: Inter-Varsity, 1999), 38-53.