WorldWhat are Miracles?Miracles are an integral part of the story of Jesus. Taking just the first nine chapters of Luke, we are told not only about the extraordinary circumstances of his birth, but the numerous exorcisms that he performs, the dramatic healings of lepers and paralytic, and even the raising of two dead children back to life. Add to this the stilling of the storm (in chapter 8) and the feeding of the five thousand (in chapter 9), and you have a picture of someone with extraordinary power. There is little doubt, historically speaking, that Jesus was famous as a miracle worker. The many stories of his miracles are spread throughout the four Gospels, and even Josephus, the Jewish historian, records that Jesus was known for his "surprising feats". We will come back to consider why Jesus' miracles are important, and what they mean, but first we need to deal with a more basic issue. Can we, as modem people, believe that these miracles really happened? Can we accept that the laws of nature were broken or suspended so that Jesus could walk on water, or feed thousands of people with a single cut lunch? These stories seem so strange to us, so outside our experience, that we almost instinctively doubt their credibility. Can we believe in miracles? And if we can't, can we believe in Jesus? Before we answer these questions, there is a more basic problem to solve. What are “Miracles”? The first step towards understanding the miracles of Jesus (and the Bible generally) is to understand what Luke and the other Bible writers thought a “miracle” was. This is because they thought about the whole subject very differently from most 20th century people. How modern people regard miracles For us, a "miracle" is where the normal laws of nature are supposedly suspended or broken, indicating that some "god" or supernatural force has been active. Someone might be "miraculously" healed of cancer, for instance, and since there is no other explanation available, we shake our heads and say "Well, maybe there is a God after all". This way of viewing miracles stems from how 20th century Western people think about the world in general. Most of us assume that the world is like a giant complex machine or organism, with millions of interlocking parts. Science has discovered how many of these parts work, and has formulated laws and principles by which we can predict how "the machine" will operate. According to this way of thinking, the world runs along under its own steam. If there is a "God", then he might have been responsible for designing the world, and even setting it running, but he isn't involved in its day-to-day operations. In fact, the only way you know he exists is when he puts his fingers into the machine and dabbles with it, producing what we call a "miracle". How the Bible Regards Miracles In many respects, people in biblical times thought very differently from us, not only about miracles, but about the world in general. But this is not to say that they thought completely differently. They knew, for example, that the world was a regular and orderly place. Like us, they noticed the patterns of nature - day and night, the seasons, and the rain. They knew that if you dropped something, it fell, and that if you stood on water, you would sink. They understood that the world operated according to certain patterns and you could make the most of these in order to live successfully - for example, if you planted your seed at the right time of year, in the right kind of soil, under the right weather conditions, you could be fairly certain of getting a good crop. However, unlike us, they regarded all this is as being the work of God. They saw the world not as an independently operating machine, but as something that God had made and continued to sustain and uphold. It was God who caused the sun to rise, the rain to fall and the seasons to come and go. They knew God to be the sovereign ruler of all things, who kept everything going in his great power and wisdom. And precisely because he was in charge of everything, God could change his normal way of doing things and act in an amazing or unusual way, if it suited him. This way of thinking about the world is often called “theism”. According to biblical theism, a miracle is not God sticking his finger into the works of the machine so as to prove his existence. It is simply God working outside his normal regular patterns. This, then, was what the writers of the Bible (like Luke) thought a “miracle” was - some work of God that was surprising or noteworthy or unusual, and which was performed for some important reason. The Modern Objection to Miracles With this background in mind, it is not difficult to see that many of the objections that people have to the miracles of the Bible are either not very relevant or not very clever. Some have argued, for example, that because 1st century people were primitive and did not understand science, they were prepared to believe anything. However, this is hardly reasonable. 1st century people, like us, knew that dead people stayed dead. That was their experience, as it is ours. That is why they mourned, as we do. They also knew that people who had been paralytics for 30 years didn't suddenly get up and start walking. And this is precisely why they called it a "˜miracle' or a "˜wonder' when Jesus raised the dead girl to life, or healed the paralytic. They believed that the God who ruled the world was well able to do such things, and regarded it as an amazing and exciting occurrence when he did so. Another argument against miracles is that it is so unlikely that a genuine miracle would ever happen that we should dismiss all claims of miracles as being inherently unreliable. According to this argument, it is much more likely that the people involved mistaken or deceived or were themselves deceivers - and so we should not trust their testimony. This approach has a number of problems, not the least of which is that it rules out testimony about all unusual or extraordinary events. Take for example the following occurrences:
Each of these events is strange, unusual, and highly unlikely. Yet there is excellent historical evidence that they all, in fact, occurred. Extraordinary things do occur. That they don't occur very often is what makes them extraordinary! To say, therefore, that the miracles attributed to Jesus could not have happened, simply because they are beyond our own normal experience, is to prejudge the question entirely. It is to make up our minds without looking at the evidence. It is like someone who lives in the tropics refusing to believe in the possibility of such a thing as ice, simply because they have never seen or touched it. If theism is true, then the occurrence of miracles is quite reasonable. Miracles are simply the extraordinary (as opposed to the ordinary) workings of the God who made the world and continues to rule it. What is more, if Jesus is God's representative - if he speaks and acts with all the power and authority of God - then it would seem quite consistent for him to be able to perform what we could call "miraculous" feats. If theism, and Christianity, is true, then the miracles recorded of Jesus are almost to be expected. The first thing to work out, then, is whether theism (and Christianity) is true. One final thing needs to be said about the miracles of Jesus. The Meaning of the Miracles We have already said that for Luke (and the other Bible writers) miracles were not some proof of God's existence. They already knew that God existed and was powerfully in control of the world. Miracles were simply God acting in a striking or amazing way to achieve a particular purpose. In other words, the important thing about the miracles of Jesus is not so much that they happened, but what they signified or meant. We get an important clue to the meaning of Jesus' miracles from this episode in Luke, chapter 7:
In response to John's enquiry about whether he really was "the one", Jesus sends back the report of all the miracles he has been doing (as well as his preaching of the good news). Clearly, Jesus thinks this is all the answer John should need. And in light of the Old Testament, it was. John, like Simeon and Anna (of Luke Chapter 2) and many of the Israelites of his time, was looking forward to the Messiah, the One who would come in God's name as God's ruler, to bring redemption and victory for Israel. The Old Testament prophets had promised that this would happen in passages like this one:
Or the passage from Isaiah that Jesus quoted in the synagogue in Nazareth:
The miracles that Jesus performed were the signs of the Messiah. They were the powerful indication that God had fulfilled his ancient promises, that the time had come, and that "the One" that Israel had waited so long for had arrived. For further reading: Kirsten Birkett, Unnatural Enemies: an introduction to Science and Christianity. (Matthias Media, 1997) Reproduced with Permission from John Dickson “Simply Christianity” (Matthias Media and John Dickson 2001) |
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