Miracles and the Christian Faith
For good or ill, the Christian faith embraces miracles. A miracle
is not easy to define because it’s one of those big rich words which,
if you define it loosely—it’s too loose to be useful. If you try to
define it rigidly, to crowd it into a circle of words, there are aspects
of it left sticking out. Even those philosophers that deny that a
miracle can be defined presume they know (without definition) what it is
that can’t be defined. But these are issues that must be dealt with in
other literature and there’s a mass of it.
By a miracle I mean an act of God, an act which by its timing,
context, nature and character leaves us in no doubt that supernatural
power is at work and that that supernatural power comes from the God
revealed in the biblical witness.
But here we’re dealing with actual and biblical miracles
rather than discussing their “possibility” on philosophical and
theoretical grounds. This means I’m taking the biblical texts at their
face value. Whatever the theological purposes of the narratives, I’m
following countless thousands of intelligent, competent and trusting
people down the centuries in accepting that the writers recorded
miraculous happenings in and connected with the life of Jesus of
Nazareth.
Some of the miracles are not as startling as others are. You know
what I mean, there are some events in Scripture that get our attention
and then there are others that make our eyes go big and round.
Christ’s healing Peter’s mother-in-law (Matthew 8), just by touching
her calls for attention but Lazarus’ coming from the tomb makes your jaw
sag (John 11).
The raising of Lazarus helps us (because it is so starkly miraculous) to get a hold on what miracle
means. He’s been dead long enough to be in a state of decay, Jesus
looks to heaven and addresses someone he calls “Father,” asking him to
raise Lazarus. A mere man, one like the rest of us, couldn’t have done
what was done to Lazarus so someone heard the words of Jesus, someone
invisible, and that someone instantaneously brought life and health back
to Lazarus.
Now, not all the miracles are as stark and clear as this one. This
event bore its own indisputable witness to the existence, presence and
working of the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. Some events
could be debated if they were looked at as independent events.
But when they’re allowed their place in the whole Story, in the
development and context of the life of this Jesus of Nazareth, something
is added to them and makes them more than acceptable as miracles—makes
them, in some ways, fully expected.
Whatever else is true, the Christian faith has miracles at its heart.
It isn’t the Christian Faith as the NT presents it if we strip
it of all its supernatural elements and offer Jesus as a fine man and
the NT scriptures as a source of some outstanding ethical teaching.
It isn’t uncommon to hear people say it would be easier to believe in
the Jesus of the NT if it didn’t speak of miracles. I don’t believe
that. I believe if we’re fair with the NT record we cannot believe
in a non-miraculous Jesus. Nor could we make sense of the NT record
itself for so much of the speech in the mouth of Jesus would be
inexplicable—it depends on his having worked miracles (see, for example,
John 6, the whole chapter).
But maybe, just maybe, if we doctored the text, it would be easier to believe; but would it be worth believing?