Signs and Wonders: In Defense of Miracles
Signs and Wonders: In Defense of Miracles
The Gospels record at least thirty-six miracles performed by Jesus throughout his roughly three years of ministry. But John 20:30 indicates that, “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book.” There are other hints that Jesus performed “many” other miracles. We see in Matthew 4:23 that “Jesus went throughout Galilee teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.” Again, in Matthew 12:15 it states that “a large crowd followed him, and he healed all who were ill.”
The miracles of Jesus served two overarching purposes:
(1) They were acts of compassion showing that God loves us and that he cares deeply about the suffering we experience. If God did not care, then he would not have healed people and he would not have bothered to come at all.
(2) The miracles were a confirmation of Jesus’ divinity and are precisely what we would expect if God came into our world.
Many people (even some Christians) struggle to believe the biblical accounts of Jesus’ miracles. Miracles do not sit well with people in a modern, scientific age. Walking on water, calming storms, multiplying food, healing lepers, giving sight to the blind, raising the dead – can we really believe this stuff? But if we consign Jesus’ miracles to myth and deny his divinity, it leaves us with just another Jewish man, who said some radical and outrageous things, that got him crucified by the Romans.
Miracles, by definition, lie outside scientific explanations. Miracles are God’s intervention in nature. To assert that miracles are not possible is really atheism. The real question is not whether miracles occur, but whether God exists. If God exists, then miracles are possible; in fact, they are highly probable. Miracles are an extraordinary event that is an exception to, not a violation of, natural law, done by the power of God (an agent who transcends physical nature) to create or confirm faith. A miracle is not breaking any of the laws of nature, rather it is the intervention of the supernatural in nature. The laws of nature are not violated, they are bracketed. When a miracle occurs, nature reacts by receiving the miraculous event by immediately taking over where it left off. As C. S. Lewis asserted, “Miraculous wine will intoxicate, miraculous inception will lead to pregnancy, inspired books will suffer all the ordinary processes of textual corruption, miraculous bread will be eaten and digested. The divine art of miracle is not an art of suspending the pattern to which events conform, but of feeding new events into that pattern.” (Lewis, Miracles: A preliminary Study (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1947, 71).
Only the creator of the physical universe can interfere with the normal operation of the laws of nature. Miracles are singular unrepeatable events. The odds against a miracle occurring are high, but that doesn’t mean there are no miracles. We must weigh the evidence presented. For example, we should rightly be very skeptical of any claim by a person who claims they saw a person rise from the dead. However, if a man, like Jesus predicts his death and resurrection, there is an empty tomb, and this claim is confirmed by many witnesses who attest Jesus appeared to them many times after his death, and it led those witnesses to give their lives for that claim, then we must weigh this evidence and consider it credible.
We cannot rule the claim out just because it is highly unlikely or we would have to rule out all kinds of events that we know did happen, but are not repeatable and are highly improbable. For instance, the creation of the universe, the fine-tuning of our universe, the origin of life, DNA and consciousness, the existence of complex, specified information in the rational order of the universe, these are all miracles since they were one-time events that are not repeatable and are highly improbable, i.e., beyond virtual zero probability. We recognize the same cause and effect order as do naturalists, but theists believe that the natural order depends on God for its existence, its order and its continuance.
We all believe in something miraculous, something that cannot be explained through space, time and matter, something that cannot be explained through physics and chemistry. Whatever the cause of the universe is, it didn’t involve space, time and matter as they are the result of that event. We are looking for something that is non-spatial, non-material and non-temporal, and therefore is beyond physics and chemistry, as it doesn’t have any physical or chemical properties. So all of us have to admit that something extra or supernatural (beyond the laws of nature, i.e. a miracle) is the cause of the universe.
With regard to the resurrection of Jesus, we must explain the evidence for it. Yes, generally dead people stay dead, but simply because resurrections are improbable, does not mean they cannot happen. It all depends on the background information. Rather than reject it outright because it is unlikely, we must contend with the fact that there are many eyewitnesses of just such an event. We must look at the evidence surrounding the claim made in the New Testament.
The fact that Jesus’ own brother, James, who was an unbeliever while Jesus was alive, became one of the leaders of the church after Jesus’ death, and the fact that Paul, who originally persecuted the church, ended up the most prolific writer of the New Testament, help show the validity of the resurrection claim over and above the background that dead people tend to stay dead.
The witnesses say Jesus taught that he was the promised Messiah, the Savior of all mankind who takes away the sins of the world. They testify that Jesus verified these claims by working numerous miracles. They also claim that Jesus was brutally executed by crucifixion and that Jesus appeared to them after his death, over forty days, teaching them, sharing meals with them, and offering other proofs of his resurrection. Their testimony is not based on a fleeting glimpse in a crowd. It is based in detailed, personal, face-to-face encounters with Jesus on numerous occasions over an extended period of time. These experiences turned them from skeptics into confident believers. Rather than being biased in favour of Jesus’ resurrection, these witnesses were actually disinclined to trust what they heard and saw. Their first response was doubt and disbelief.
Though the content of the testimony is extraordinary, its character is compelling. The accounts are clear and lucid, giving an abundance of detail. They read like the testimony of one intimately acquainted with the facts of the issue, someone who was personally involved with the process, who was physically present to the events recorded. The witnesses’ repeated exposure to Jesus both during his ministry and after his resurrection rule out any possibility of psychological deception or delusion. In short, their testimony rings true.
What extrinsic evidence exists to impeach these witnesses? There are no contrary witnesses to these events. There is no evidence of faulty observation or impaired recollection due to disease, illness, intoxication, or mental or emotional instability. Scholars agree that these witnesses were both competent and honest. They had no impure motives such as wealth, ambition or power. They had the opportunity to know the truth, were mentally capable, and the documents of their testimony are reliable.
The life, death and resurrection of Jesus were not something that happened in a split moment of time. The testimony relates to actions and statements made by Jesus many times, over an extended period of time. There is no vacillation, no uncertainty. They preached the same message over and over despite the tremendous physical peril it put them in. These men and women were so certain of the truth they were preaching that they were willing to stake their lives on it. This kind of evidence compels confidence.
The evidence for Jesus’ death and resurrection is overwhelming (see my book “How Science Has Discovered God: Physics, Metaphysics and Beyond” for a complete discussion). The New Testament contains six independent testimonies to the fact of the resurrection. These six men (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter and Paul) wrote 24 of the 27 books of the New Testament. Included in their testimonies are various eye witness accounts as well as reports of other interviewed witnesses of the risen Jesus, including one of over 500 people at one time.
Simon Greenleaf, Professor of Law at Harvard from 1833-1848 has been called the greatest authority on legal evidences in the history of the world. When Greenleaf applied legal evidences to the resurrection event, he concluded that it was an historical reality. In the 1930’s, a British journalist trained in the law, named Frank Morrison, set out to disprove the resurrection. However, using the tests of evidence permitted in a court of law, he became convicted, against his will, of the truth of the resurrection, detailing his findings in his book, Who Moved the Stone. In the 1990’s, Lee Strobel, an atheist American journalist, also trained in the law, interviewed many biblical scholars and he summarized his findings in his book The Case for Christ, where he too, comes to believe in the resurrection. C.S. Lewis acknowledged the evidence for the historicity of the Gospels was a major factor in his conversion from atheism. The religious and political authorities of Jesus’ day had every reason to quell the Christian movement by refuting the resurrection story, but they were unable to disprove it. John Stott insists that the silence of Christ’s enemies “is as eloquent a proof of the resurrection as the apostles’ witness.”
