THE BELIEVABILITY OF MIRACLES

 I'd like to discuss another general aspect of miracles: their believability. At this point, I think it is important to point out a criticism of biblical miracles that I have heard and read. That is that ancient people were credulous. They were too ignorant to realize that miracles can't happen and therefore saw them even when they didn't exist. One could, of course, turn this argument around to say that modern man is too narrow-minded to believe that miracles can occur and therefore he fails to recognize them even when they happen right in front of him.

C.S. Lewis: “Belief in miracles, far from depending on the ignorance of the laws of nature, is only possible insofar as those laws are known.” It is true that animists see no consistency to nature and therefore can't distinguish between a natural and supernatural event. But the same can't be said for the Jews or early Christians. They were keenly aware of what was a normal happening and what was beyond their experience, even if they didn't go so far as formulating their understanding in modern scientific terms. So how did those in the Bible view and describe happenings in the world? In terms of description. “There are two ways in which a phenomenon in nature may be described, either, first, with reference to the principles and laws of nature...or, secondly, with reference to the facts or results which an observer beholds. The first is called the scientific description, the second, the description according to appearances, or what is seen. These are equally real and equally true. The first is intelligible only to the scientific [mind]; the other can be understood by all in every age.” (J. H. Pratt, quoted in Bernard Ramm, The Christian View of Science and Scripture, p. 47.)

A simple example would be our common phrase “the sun rose and set.” It is perfectly understandable to us today just as it was thousands of years ago, whereas a detailed discussion of the rotation of the earth around the sun and around its own axis would only be meaningful to people in more recent ages. So phenomenological language is what is used in the Bible. Keep this in mind especially when looking at two very problematic Old Testament miracles, King Hezekiah's sundial where the shadow moved backwards and the Long Day of Joshua where the sun stood still. We will concentrate on these two events in a future lesson.

Proto-Scientists in the OT (Those who knew a miracle when they saw one)

Gideon (Judges 6:36-40): “I am going to lay a fleece of wool on the threshing floor; if there is dew on the fleece alone, and it is dry on all the ground, then I shall know that you will deliver Israel by my hand...Let me please make trial with the fleece just once more; let it be dry only on the fleece, and on all the ground let there be dew.”

As a good scientist, Gideon sets up a control test to make sure the first experiment wasn't a natural phenomenon. By the way, I know that some devout Christians take Gideon's actions as a model for us to use today. They believe that we are encouraged to cast a fleece to see what God wants us to do with our life. Actually, in the context of the story it is obvious that even though God does honor Gideon's request, it really demonstrates a great lack of faith on Gideon's part. God had already told him that he would be successful in battle but Gideon didn't believe Him – he was testing God. A charismatic Christian friend in New York once said that she knew she should stop smoking, but was waiting for a special sign from God to tell her to do so.

Elijah on Mt. Carmel (I Kings 18): “Chose one bull, cut it in pieces, and lay it on the wood, but put no fire to it. Call on the name of your god”...but there was no voice, no answer, and no response.

Elijah built an altar. Then he made a trench around the altar...Next he put the wood in order, cut the bull in pieces, and laid it on the wood. He said, “Fill four jars with water and pour it on the burnt offering and on the wood...Then the fire of the LORD fell and consumed the burnt offering, the wood, the stone, and the dust, and even licked up the water that was in the trench.”

As an even better scientist than Gideon, Elijah not only sets up a control test for the believers in Baal, but purposely stacks the deck against his own experiment. A true scientist throws every obstacle in the way of his own theory, and actually tries to disprove it. Only when it meets every test is it elevated to a law.

Even the Philistines practiced scientific methodology when they sent the ark of the covenant back to the Jews on a cart pulled by cows after they suspected the ark as the cause of a plague among them. Their priests said, “Get ready a new cart and two milk cows that have never borne a yoke, and yoke the cows to the cart, but take their calves home, away from them. Take the ark of the LORD and place it on the cart...Then send it off, and let it go its way. And watch; if it goes up on the way to its own land, to Beth-shemesh, then it is He who has done us this great harm, but if not, then we shall know that it is not His hand that struck us; it happened to us by chance.” I Samuel 6:7-9

And the cows headed off to Israelite territory instead of returning to their calves as would naturally be expected.

Proto-Scientists in the NT

Luke 1:34 Mary: “How can this be since I am a virgin?”

Matthew 1:18-19 “...she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.”

It wasn't ignorance of the facts of life that caused Mary and Joseph to question her pregnancy; it was because they knew exactly how babies were naturally conceived.

Matthew 9:33 The people's comment after mute demoniac speaks: “Never has anything like this been seen in Israel.” There was a similar response regarding the man born blind in John 9: “Never since the world began has anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind.”

John 20:24-29 Thomas: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” Thomas might even be called the patron saint of scientists in his demand for physical evidence for everything.

Peter looks ahead to our own time to express the feelings of modern believers in “scientism,” those who deny the existence of the supernatural. 2 Peter 3:3-7: “In the last days, scoffers will come...saying, 'Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since our ancestors died, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation!'” An example of this last attitude can be seen in the philosopher David Hume: “A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can be imagined.” Critics have taken this statement to pieces. In essence, what Hume is really saying is that miracles would be an exception to what we observe as usually happening; therefore they can't happen.

By contrast, we as Christians are told that we should “Expect Miracles,” as a popular motto tells us, everywhere. However, it is important to point out that there is sometimes a fine line between expecting miracles in our lives and demanding that God provide them. Remember Jesus' comment to Thomas: Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” (John 20:29) Yes, Thomas did possess true faith, but it was a lower form of faith compared to those who didn't see the physical evidence but still chose to believe.

    "An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.” (Matthew 16:4a)

    "For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom.” (I Corinthians 1:22(  It all boils down to this:

    "For we walk by faith; not by sight."(II Corinthians 5:7)

This leads into the next point I would like to make. “Belief that 'with God all things are possible' is a far cry from the assumption that all things are therefore probable. In assessing reports of unique or miraculous events, theists will always want to consider the quality and reliability of the source... and the principle of correlation... events are related with one another in a nexus of cause and effect.” (In other words, they are not arbitrary.) Willem A. VanGemeren, Dictionary of OT Theology and Exegesis, I, 93-94.

So how do we decide which events are true miracles? Whether we know it or not, there are a number of criteria we use in evaluating whether to believe in a reported miracle.

Criteria for Believability of Miracles

1. Historical Criteria Much of this boils down to the trustworthiness of the sources. Were they eye witnesses or did they rely on eyewitness accounts, are they impartial, how many independent witnesses are there, and how close to the time of events did they write down their accounts?

2. Consistent with Human Nature We often look at an account of a supernatural event and ask whether God or Jesus or an angel could have done it, but as C. S. Lewis said, we have little basis of comparison to judge what a supernatural agent could or would do. However, we do have a good feel for human nature and how humans act. So we should look at the behavior of men and women in a miracle story and ask whether it is realistic or not.

3. Improbable by Natural Means We can consider an event to be miraculous if the chances of it happening naturally are slim to zero.

4. Helpful Is it a positive or destructive act? This is sometimes a difficult criteria for us to apply, as we will talk about later.

5. Significant, especially from a spiritual point of view. Is it a trivial event, or even worse is the miracle story told to justify non-Christian beliefs such as Joseph Smith receiving giant angel glasses to translate the Book of Mormon into English without error, or various Hindu accounts of people being able to levitate? Even within the Christian tradition, dubious accounts of miracles were told to support a belief in the veneration of saints or sacred relics.

6. Consistent with God's Nature and how we know that He acts and has acted in other arenas, both natural and supernatural.

7. Matter-of-fact Narration Is the miracle described simply and without any unnecessary elaboration?Let me give you a few examples from the Bible and outside of it to demonstrate these various criteria.

#1 Michael Grant wrote a book entitled Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels. Not too surprisingly, he systematically dismissed each and every account of a miracle in the Gospels as having inadequate proof from the viewpoint of historical criteria. But as many have pointed out, historical proof is highly subjective and if taken to its extreme would deny the existence of most historical events over a few hundred years old as being inadequately proved. But, very surprisingly, at the end of Grant's book he looked at Jesus' resurrection and concluded from the historical evidence that it must have actually happened. F.F. Bruce's Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament is book that I would recommend if any of you are interested in seeing what early historical evidence there is for events in the NT recorded outside of the Bible.

#2 Besides historical criteria, here is another factor that is often overlooked – how realistic is it?

Acts 12:6: “The very night before Herod was going to bring him out, Peter, bound with two chains, was sleeping between two soldiers, while guards in front of the door were keeping watch over the prison. 7. Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He tapped Peter on the side and woke him saying, 'Get up quickly.' And the chains fell off his wrists.”

If you remember the situation at the time, Herod had just finished killing the apostle James and was no doubt planning to execute Peter the next day. An elder in our church back in New York once gave a sermon on this story and admitted, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that he felt it was the hardest event to believe of anything in the Bible. His problem wasn't with verse 7. His problem was with verse 6, trying to understand how Peter could manage to sleep soundly under such conditions; he felt that it just wasn't consistent with human nature. By the way, I think I have the answer to Peter's behavior:

Jesus said to him[Peter]... “'Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.' (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God).” John 21:18-19a

Of course, Peter could sleep soundly; he knew that he wasn't going to die for a long time to come.

Let's go back to the jailbreak. Acts 12:12-17 is filled with realistic and even comic touches of human behavior: Rhoda gets so flustered that she leaves Peter knocking at the door; the group praying for Peter's release doesn't believe it when it actually happens (sort of like the story of a special prayer group assembled to ask God for rain, but none of them bother to bring their umbrellas); Peter's attempt to shut them up so he can explain what happened; and lastly Peter's decision that he had better not press his good fortune by sticking around; he needs to skip town.

Another good example of realistic human behavior is found in John's account of the healing of the man who was blind since birth. The Pharisees start quizzing his parents as to whether he really was blind. The parents are afraid of what will happen to them if they tell the truth so they basically say, “How would we know? Ask him – he is of age.” If this story was made up, there is no way the author would have left any doubt in the readers' minds that the man was indeed blind; he would have had the parents swearing on a stack of Bibles, or Torahs, that he was born that way.

Next is an interesting example from outside the Bible. The skeptic Isaac Asimov wrote an essay with the clever title “Pompey and Circumstance.” The Roman general Pompey entered the Holy of Holies of the temple in 64 AD. Asimov reviewed Pompey's remarkable rise to power before that event and explained that every single political and military move Pompey had made was successful, whereas after entering the Holy of Holies, every decision he made was the wrong one and he died in disgrace. Asimov said that if anything could convince him of the existence of God it was this. His basis for determining that supernatural agents might be involved was the low probability of the events occurring naturally.

A number of miracles are recorded for Jesus as a child in the infancy gospels (2^nd to 6^th century). He killed several of his playmates when they bothered him until the neighbors complained to Mary, who made him stop. He also turned his friends' toy birds into real ones and made them fly away. The boy Jesus wasn't all evil however. When his father Joseph botched a carpentry job, which was apparently quite often, Jesus magically evened out the legs of tables and chairs made by him. We have trouble believing these stories because they are often cruel, trivial and not recorded until centuries after the supposed events.

Let's next compare two supposed miracles that on the surface are somewhat similar. In a story from the Middle Ages, St. Veronica is said to have wiped the sweat off of Jesus' face with her veil while he was on the way to the cross. Lo and behold, a technicolor image of his face appeared on it, and it had the miraculous property of curing those who looked at it. Compare this story to the Shroud of Turin. The current evidence says that there is probably nothing miraculous about the image on the shroud, but intrinsically it is much more likely to be authentic than Veronica's veil. We know that Jesus on one occasion referred to power leaving him when a woman touched him, so it is just possible that during the resurrection, Christ's energy passed through the shroud and left an image behind by charring the cloth. The one story is just more inherently believable than the other.

Another important criterion comes from C. S. Lewis. He states: “Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.” As an example, he discusses Jesus' first public miracle: turning water into wine. This what God does all the time in nature; Jesus merely speeds up the process. So here is a quick chemistry lesson on wine production. Photosynthesis in a grape vine starts with an ultraviolet light-catalyzed reaction of water and carbon dioxide to produce sugar. Then a fermentation reaction transforms the sugar into ethanol. Just think for a moment, what if the Bible said that Jesus took a vat of olive oil and turned it into wine? Even though we know that Jesus could have done it, it would be much harder to believe intrinsically since it has no correspondence at all to what happens in nature.

Or look at the multiplication of the loaves and fish, both of which occur naturally all the time, but at a much slower rate, of course. St. Augustine: “For who even now feeds the whole world, but he who creates the cornfield from a few grains?” As Trench said, “God's every-day miracles (production of grain) had grown cheap in man's sight by continual repetition.” Again, consider, what if the Bible had said that Jesus took the two fish, said a blessing, and the fish turned into enough roast lamb to feed everyone. Wouldn't we have more trouble believing that since it has absolutely no correlation with how God acts in the natural world?

Then there is the last criterion, how the miracle story is told. The biblical accounts of miracles are told in an almost matter-of-fact manner and involve at most a few simple words or actions. Compare this to magical incantations and rituals that must be recited in a certain way in order to work, or the accounts from the Middle Ages that go into great detail on how a certain miracle was performed. Here is one from the Infancy Gospels describing how Mary helped to cast a demon out of a girl that was afflicted:

“The time was come when Satan was wont to seize her. In this same moment this cursed spirit appeared to her in the shape of a huge dragon, and the girl seeing it was afraid. The mother said to her, Be not afraid daughter; let him alone till he come nearer to thee. Then show him the swaddling cloth which the lady Mary gave us, and we shall see the event. Satan then coming like a dreadful dragon, the body of the girl trembled for fear. But as soon as she had put the swaddling cloth upon her head, and about her eyes, and showed it to him, presently there issued forth from the swaddling cloth flames and burning coals, and fell up on the dragon. Oh, how great a miracle was this, etc. etc.” I have changed some pretty foul diapers in my life where the fumes could have killed a dragon, but none of them ever burst into flames.

That story illustrates the principle expressed best in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Mikado, where a lie is said to contain “merely corroborative detail intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.” One of the hallmarks of a lie is that it is usually embellished to try to make it more believable. By contrast, most of the miracles in the Bible are told very simply. Also notice from a significance point of view, that the story of the swaddling cloth has the effect of glorifying Mary more than Jesus.

Getting back to these criteria, how do we determine the plausibility of a reported miracle? It all boils down to one thing: Does it have the Ring of Truth. One of Jesus' miracles that could be said to flunk some of the categories of believability is the withering of the fig tree, as described by Mark. But we will talk about that in another lesson.

We sometimes put unnecessary barriers to belief in our own way and in the way of others when it applies to biblical miracles. And sometimes even brag about how our belief is stronger than that of others, like the White Queen did when she said, “Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” The harder the miracle is to believe, the greater our merit in believing it anyway. I remember a discussion with someone about how long the days of creation were. I was told, “You just don't believe God had the ability to create the universe in six days, but needed billions of years to accomplish it.” My unhelpful response, using the same argument, was: “You obviously don't believe God had the ability to create the universe in one day (as it appears to state in Genesis 2:4), but needed a whole six days to do it.” The question is not whether God could have done something in a certain manner, but in what manner he actually did do it.