Miracles are an interesting topic. On the one hand, God created nature and so it makes sense that He has power over nature. On the other hand, God is unchanging and consistent, and therefore He does not contradict Himself: to the extent that nature is made in God's image, as man is, God would not contradict Himself by doing something that is out of agreement with His own nature. That is to say, when God does a miracle, He does not do it in a way that contradicts Himself. He would not simply overrule nature and do something completely inconsistent with Reality. Of course, nature is only a small part of Truth, or Reality, since God is greater than nature. Reality includes nature, but also includes more than nature.
In light of this, C. S. Lewis has offered the idea that miracles simply do fast and up close what God is always doing slowly and out-of-sight. As an example he uses turning water into wine. God is always turning water into wine through the miracle of photosynthesis, taking water that carries minerals, sunlight and air and turning it into grapes. For Jesus to make water into wine was not inconsistent with nature, but did it much faster. God is always healing people through the miracle of our immune system, so when Jesus healed people He was not inconsistent with that. He did much faster what happens every day slowly.
But what about calming the storm? And the Transfiguration? Raising Lazarus? Does Jesus simply contradict nature here? I think not. Storms always end, so the fact that Jesus ended one very quickly is consistent with C. S. Lewis' proposal. And after the Resurrection, Jesus again appeared in a new and different body, so this was again consistent with the greater Reality mentioned above. Raising Lazarus is perhaps the most difficult case, since he did not return with a resurrection body; but if God will raise us all to a new body, then raising us to a 'used' body is not inconceivable.
The resurrection body of Jesus was apparently very different from our earthly body. In the garden, on the Emmaus road, and on the shore of Galilee were all instances of His going unrecognized by His own disciples. This greatest of miracles will apply to us as well, we are promised, and so we cannot ever 'walk away' from miracles as an inherent, fundamental part of our faith. Lewis points this out as well. Christianity is based on miracles and especially the miracle of Christ's resurrection, and with hope of a coming miracle for ourselves.
This is one of the issues with faith and science. We are having an ongoing discussion about evolutionary theory and faith in our family, and there are a couple of things relevant to both Easter and scientific theory:
- Miracles are fundamental to our faith, especially the miracle of Christ's Resurrectoin. There is no escaping from miracles in Christianity. However, God does not act to contradict Himself or Reality in His miracles.
- God does not contradict natural law, but natural laws are only a portion of Truth, of Reality.
- To the extent that scientists insist that there are no miracles and that science somehow 'disproves' miracles, we must part ways; to the extent that Christians believe that God does miracles that are inconsistent with His own design of the universe and that Reality which is beyond this universe, we must question ourselves. God does not contradict Himself.
- In all things we must seek Truth.
Easter is all about the Truth. Again as Lewis points out, I am a Christian (as he also was) because it is true. I am not a Christian because it is socially acceptable, a convenient way to keep social behavior under control, or any other sociological hogwash along those lines. If Christianity is false, then it should be abandoned. And that is where the key conflict arises with the materialist scientists , which is by no means all of the scientific community, who argue that there are no miracles and promote evolutionary materialism. They ultimately are insisting that there is nothing but matter, energy and chance. Easter is the demonstration in history that there is more.
1 comment:
Madeleine L'Engle proposes an interesting idea about miracles. She proposes that, as you said, they do not go against natural laws, but that man has simply "forgotten" how to do them. So for instance, when Peter walks on water, he is remembering how to do something that man was always intended to do (pre-fall), and he is able to remember by focusing completely on Jesus. In that sense then, most of the miracles Jesus performed are "natural" for the perfect man, but "super-natural" for fallen man. So they would have some sort of material explanation, we just cannot understand the explanation. This would also make sense when thinking about contemporary miracles, of which the most common is probably healing. Like it or not, healings do occur, and something that is common among many of them is a feeling of heat in the area affected. Say I have back pain (which I do) and someone lays hands on my back and prays for me and God decides to heal me. As I'm healed, I feel heat in my back. Perhaps this heat is the material cause of my healing, but it is no less supernatural because man (the chap who was praying) could not have stuck the heat in there just right to heal me without God. But in focusing entirely on God, perhaps God allowed the person praying to "remember" how to do something super-fallen-nature.
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