[ p. 103 ]
WITH the cures we have not exhausted the miraculous stories told in our Gospels. There are others, miracles performed on the inanimate world: walking on the water, stilling a tempest, multiplying food many hundredfold, and so on. And, on the border line between this class of miracles and the cures we have the stories of raising the dead: Jairus’ daughter, the widow’s son at Nain, and Lazarus. What are we to think of these?
To begin with, it should be said explicitly that not even dogmatic theologians nowadays hold that anyone is bound to accept and defend every story exactly as written. No one can doubt that in the first century there existed a tendency to heighten marvelous elements, nor can anyone doubt that this tendency has affected to some degree even our Gospel accounts. For instance, in telling of the healing of Peter’s mother-inlaw from a fever, Mark, the earliest witness, relates that Jesus took her by the hand and raised her up. Luke, in telling the same story, however, states that the fever was “great,” and that Jesus did not need to touch the woman at all; “he stood over her, and rebuked the fever, and it left her.” [1] We must remember, [ p. 104 ] moreover, that the same sort of control would not be exercised over the accounts of Jesus’ miracles as was extended to his sayings. It was necessary for the first disciples to have a substantially accurate record of what Jesus said, but no one would think that slight exaggerations of the marvels of his works were reprehensible. We must remember, likewise, that even were we assured of the best first-hand testimony, we should still be dealing with men not trained to exact observation in the modern sense, men who might very well omit the precise details really needed for an understanding of what actually took place.
Consequently, no one can deny the possibility, in individual cases, that events told as miracles were not really miracles at all. For instance, one story describes how Peter on a certain occasion had thoughtlessly pledged his Master’s word for the payment of the “temple tax,” a special assessment levied in the month Adar [2] for the maintenance of the regular worship at Jerusalem. [3] As the story reads, Peter is told to go fishing with a hook and line, to catch the first fish that comes up; “and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a shekel: that take, and give them for me and thee.” [4] The Evangelist appears to be relating a miracle; it would seem that Jesus knew that a fish with such a coin in its mouth was swimming in the lake, and by his power had summoned it so that it would be near and ready for Peter to catch; but it does not follow [ p. 105 ] that such was actually the case. Jesus’ words may have been a mere bantering bit of pleasantry. It is not said that Peter actually went fishing to find the coin; only, perhaps, that he was smilingly bidden to do so. Or it may be that Jesus directed Peter to pay the tax by a catch of fish that would provide the necessary money. Or there may be still other explanations.
Each individual story of a miracle constitutes, therefore, a separate problem, whose investigation must be left to professional historians; and even they, time after time, can only conclude with the verdict, “We do not know exactly what happened.”
And yet, although we may acknowledge frankly the reasonableness of modern explanations of some of the stories, experts tend more and more to be suspicious of too easy rationalizations of the accounts of Jesus’ powers. For one reason—and a very important one— the miracles, almost without exception, are marked with extraordinary restraint. Anyone familiar with the extravagance of the apocryphal gospels or the legends of the saints knows, without argument, that our Gospels breathe an entirely different atmosphere. For example, in the so-called Gospel of Thomas we read:
“The boy Jesus went through the village, and a child ran and dashed against his shoulder. And Jesus was provoked and said unto him: Thou shalt not finish thy course. And immediately the child fell down and died.”
[ p. 106 ]
Or, telling of one day when Jesus was at school:
“The teacher smote Jesus on the head. But Jesus was wroth and cursed him, and on a sudden he fell down and died.”
Our Gospels contain nothing like this. [5] The miracles of the Gospels harmonize with the picture in which they have their setting. To use Bishop Headlam’s words: “They are restrained; they are beneficent; they are not made the main purpose of the ministry; they take their place as something characteristic but subordinate; they exhibit the same spiritual power as the words and work of Jesus.”
But can we believe, in any true sense, that miracles are possible—“miracles” which cannot, by any twist of the imagination, be accounted for as it is possible to explain various miracles of healing. What are we to think of them ?
It will help us to answer this question if we first ask, “What is a miracle ?” Take this definition from Dr. Headlam: “A miracle means really the supremacy of the spiritual forces of the world to an extraordinarily marked degree over the material.” And he adds: “We believe that there is a spiritual nature in man responsive to the Divine Spirit, and that our spiritual nature can influence what we call our material nature. It often does so; in our own experience [ p. 107 ] we have probably known cases where its influence has been very great. It is not, therefore, unreasonable to believe that spiritual nature can be so strengthened and inspired by God’s Spirit as to make its power more effective.”
Unless, then, we have given up belief in a personal God—that is, a God who has within Himself something corresponding to personal power in us—there is no reason for giving up the further belief that there are, behind nature, possibilities of a directive will similar in action to the directive energy within us, though infinitely more powerful and at present acting in mysterious hidden ways and apparently only at supremely critical times. In other words, we may say, with Bishop Gore, that “human personality, which is the highest form of life known to nature, is a better image of God than physical forces or chemical combinations. Call God, if you will, supernatural, but at any rate you must think of Him as not inferior to man. Here, then, we have a conception of God which is in no way antagonistic to the reign of law in nature, but which gives it a new meaning. The very nature of God is law and order. Nothing arbitrary or disconnected in action can be conceived of in connection with Him. But the principle of the order of nature is now seen to be, not blind mechanism, but the perfect reason and the perfectly free will of the supreme Creator.”
There is no ground for the assumption that the physical world—the world of constant physical sequence and invariable law—is a self-completed and closed world, which can admit no influence from any [ p. 108 ] other world. The evidence is against this theory of a self-complete inclosure; it cannot account for the action of human wills; it binds in chains a personal God, making Him less free than His creatures. There are many signs that scientists today are themselves in revolt against such a conception of the world.
We must therefore be willing to approach the accounts of the miracles with minds both open and sympathetic; remembering that, just as the healing miracles are becoming increasingly more credible in the light of modern psychology, so we may rightly look for new knowledge which will increase the credibility of others. Such an attitude is vastly more sane than that of a past generation, which discarded entirely the miraculous element and sought to reconstruct the life of Jesus without it—simply and solely because they declared the events recorded to be impossible.
In any event, believers in Jesus’ deity no longer use the miracles in practical argument to convince unbelievers. As a matter of fact, the most orthodox theologians have long contended that Jesus did not rely upon his divine powers during his earthly life; but used human powers such as those with which we are endowed, only in his case fortified in unique degree by divine grace and in no way weakened by sin. [6]
So, if we regard the works of Jesus as evidences of the extraordinary power of an extraordinary person, with extraordinary spiritual gifts and an extraordinary nature, we shall be on the right path toward a fuller [ p. 109 ] understanding of mysteries that have always required faith for their explanation. Faith does not come because of “signs.” The Christian faith must be the result of an experience for us such as the apostles had in their life with Christ. We must live close enough to Christ and long enough with him to know him for what he is. Living with him, we find that his earthly life was a supernatural, creative element within the old world of sin and death, and therefore a miraculous intervention upon the natural development of history and life.
St. Luke iv: 38-39; compare St. Mark 1: 29-31. ↩︎
February-March. ↩︎
St. Matthew xvii: 24-27. ↩︎
The tax for each person was a half-shekel. ↩︎
The only possible exception is the story of the cursing of the fig tree. This story, however, has obvious symbolic value. The fig tree represents Israel, which brought forth “nothing but leaves.” Compare the allied parable in St. Luke xiii: 6-9. ↩︎
It should be noted that this conclusion was reached by purely theological considerations; it is not a reluctant compromise forced on the theologians by hard historical facts. ↩︎