Speaking of miracles

Do miracles occur today? If we evangelicals express caution in response to a question like that, we’re either accused of being Cessationists or told that we lack real faith in the God who is the same yesterday, today and forever. So, how should we respond to our charismatic friends when they confidently report frequent miraculous healings (or, indeed, any other sort of miracle) happening in their churches? How should we respond to media reports of Roman Catholics claiming miracles in the name of Mary MacKillop? We are quite properly wary of extravagant, unverified claims of healings, just as we are of claims that the face of the Virgin Mary has ‘miraculously’ appeared on a pizza crust. But is there a risk that we have, unintentionally and unknowingly, slipped into a post-enlightenment ‘closed universe’ world view, in which miracles are impossible (or, at least, highly unlikely)? Is there a risk that we tacitly end up endorsing our rationalist and humanist friends when they sneer at miracle claims? By our caution or silent acquiescence on the subject of modern miracles, might we end up undermining the biblical miracles? I want to suggest that there may be a better way for us to think about miracles, and that the key to opening that door is found in language. To begin with, what does the word ‘miracle’ mean? Oddly enough the dictionaries are of little help here. Most dictionaries, as their first definition, seem to stress that a miracle is something that is essentially inexplicable—in human terms, at least—and therefore best explained as a supernatural intervention. They offer other secondary definitions and metaphorical (or as the Oxford calls it, ‘weakened’) uses of the word, but this linking of the inexplicable and the supernatural seems to be where they all start. Rather rashly, I want to suggest that they are all wrong. Ludwig Wittgenstein, a Cambridge professor of philosophy, famously said that the meaning of a word is its use in the language. ¹ And all modern lexicographers would agree: they are not prescribing how words should be used but reporting how, in fact, they are used. In that context my contention is that the dictionaries are commonly misreporting ‘miracle’ when they put their stress on inexplicability as the essential defining characteristic of a miracle. It is certainly not difficult to find citations that employ ‘miracle’ in the sense of ‘inexplicable’—and there seems to be an unexamined assumption that this must be the starting point. However, as Wittgenstein also said, we should not simply say “it must be so” we should look and see.² And when we do that the core meaning of ‘miracle’ shifts ground in a startling way. The best example of this is the use of ‘miracle’ by journalists. In the absence of a research grant I cannot offer an exhaustive statistical study of the journalistic use of ‘miracle’, but in its place I offer an impression—an overwhelming impression—formed from my decades of work as a professional journalist. Namely, that ‘miracle’ is routinely used not to mean ‘inexplicable’ but ‘wonderful’. The standard use of ‘miracle’ by journalists is to label something that is (a) unexpected, and (b) very good news. When two men trapped in a mine collapse are found to be still alive in an underground chamber, journalists call this a ‘miracle survival story’. When a baby is found alive in the rubble five days after an earthquake, it is immediately photographed and labelled a ‘miracle baby’. When mountain climbers are found alive after being trapped for days by a blizzard, the headline is likely to read “miracle on the mountain”. I don’t need to multiply the examples because we’ve all seen or heard the word used in exactly this way by the news media for as long as we can remember. Furthermore, in ordinary conversation we use ‘miracle’ in very much the same way. When a friend goes through major surgery and then is pronounced free of cancer, it is quite normal, and common, to hear the word ‘miracle’ used to describe the outcome. Unbelievers will routinely use ‘miracle’ to label their survival in, say, a road accident: “It’s a miracle none of us were killed!” Again, your own experience will call examples to mind of the word used this way. Notice that there is no suggestion of a suspension of the laws of nature and no suggestion of divine intervention, merely that something really wonderful has happened. This is exactly what the etymology of the word would lead us to expect. ‘Miracle’ is first recorded in English in 1154, coming into the language from the Latin miraculum (‘object of wonder’) via French (those Normans again). And this notion, that ‘miracle’ means a ‘wonder’ (unexpected good news), fits well with what the Bible tells us. For a start, a biblical miracle does not require the suspension of the laws of nature. This may happen, but it’s not necessary for it to be a miracle in the biblical sense. The classic example of this is the parting of the Red Sea before the fleeing Israelites. “The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night”—thus employing the laws of nature, not suspending them (Exod 14:21). As another example, the doors of the prison holding Paul and Silas in Philippi appear to have been shaken open by an earthquake rather than unlocked by an angel—another instance of God’s sovereign power employing rather than overriding natural means (Acts 16:25-26). Clearly God can either use the laws of nature (his laws after all) or dispense with them. And we mustn’t make the mistake of thinking one action is greater than the other, since both equally display God’s sovereign power over his creation. If anything, it is when God uses the natural order to achieve his wonderful goals that we most clearly see God’s presence as the constant, directing power in the world around us. Hence, a biblical miracle cannot be called a ‘divine intervention’ since God is constantly present, sustaining and ruling the world. Calling a miracle ‘divine intervention’ is like calling a bus turning a corner ‘driver intervention’—the bus driver was there all the time doing what bus drivers do, just as God is present all the time sustaining and steering the world (e.g. Hebrews 1:3). Consequences flow from this understanding of ‘miracle’. In the first place we should be comfortable calling that which is surprising, unexpected good news (i.e. wonderful) a miracle. Secondly, whatever means were used to achieve this miracle (surgery, the mine rescue crew etc.), we should give God the ultimate credit since every good thing comes from the Father of the heavenly lights (Jas 1:17). We can, perhaps, by our words show unbelievers (and others) how to thank God for good news. The point is that inexplicable miracles are not more divine than humanly explicable miracles (or ‘wonders’) of the same category. Try this thought experiment: imagine four patients suffering from the same disease, and all four recovering—but for different reasons. The first recovers through surgery, the second through pharmaceuticals, the third through a combination of alternative treatments and the natural recuperative powers of the human body, while the recovery of the fourth follows intense prayer and is medically and humanly both unexpected and inexplicable. Which of the four did God heal? The answer, of course, is all four. There can be a temptation to attribute the fourth patient’s recovery to a miracle and the others to explicable means involving no divine intervention. But that sort of thinking is unbiblical. That is deism: the belief that God made the world and left it to run of its own accord, only making occasional, sporadic returns to intervene briefly and miraculously. The Bible totally rejects such deism. The Bible is theist not deist, seeing God as continuously present, sustaining, supporting and governing the world moment by moment, molecule by molecule. While some Christians will want to label the fourth recovery a miracle and claim some special status for it, unbelievers will (for the most part) be quite happy to label any of the first three recoveries ‘medical miracles’. (“Have you seen Aunt Suzie lately? It’s a miracle she’s as well as she is!”) What I’m suggesting is that we, as Christians, should become comfortable with this everyday conversational-cum-journalistic use of ‘miracle’. More than that, I think we should employ it (often) ourselves as a way of dealing God into the conversation, and pointing to the goodness of God behind the good news of healing or survival. Some Christians will resist this suggestion. A friend recently told me that God had miraculously cured her childhood asthma in adulthood. When I remarked that there is a pattern of childhood asthma spontaneously disappearing in adulthood, she was most unhappy. Why? I suspect firstly that we have fallen into the error of failing to give God the glory for wonderfully good news that proceeds from natural causes. Somehow we have dealt God out of that equation and accepted the materialist/atheist view that if science can tell us ‘how’ then God was absent from the process. We need to drag this unexamined assumption out into the daylight and deal with it biblically. Secondly, my friend seemed to feel that if God had used his (not uncommon) means to deal with her childhood asthma she was (somehow) less ‘special’. As long as it was by nature inexplicable my friend felt she had been singled out for God’s special attention. Wanting to be singled out in that way is unhealthy—that is the old fallen, sinful nature once again wanting it to be all about me! The other objection I’ve heard to the above remark that all four healings in our thought experiment are from God is that this must mean that God heals unbelievers—even atheists! Well, yes it does. Jesus teaches that (in this world) God pours out his goodness on both his own people and on those who hate and reject him: “For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt 5:45). The bottom line is that everyone who is ever healed (whether explicably or inexplicably) is healed by God. And those healings that are wonderfully unexpected good news we should call miracles (regardless of whether the means employed are explicable or not). So do we have to draw any distinction then between the miracles reported in the newspapers and the miracles reported in the Bible? Yes, I think we do. The Bible seems to talk about miracles in two ways. First, they are covered by the ‘power’ word family (dunamis)—and this fits well with the newspaper/conversational use of ‘miracle’. Whether it was the power of the rainstorm that extinguished the bushfire or the power of the rescue helicopter that lifted the missing hiker off the cliff, unexpected good news (a wonder) can be seen as having power at work behind it. We just have to be ready, of course, to point out that the power behind the power is God; it’s God who gives to humans the intelligence and ingenuity to perform surgery or dangerous rescues. But the Bible also uses the ‘sign’ word family (semeion) to talk about miracles. This alerts us to the fact that in Scripture miracles have a double role: as both a wonder and as a part of God’s revelation. Every scriptural miracle plays a part in the Bible’s plot line of the history of salvation. Every miracle performs some role in God’s self-revelation and the revelation of his plan of salvation. Jesus feeding the multitude and then controlling the waters of the Sea of Galilee point us towards seeing Jesus as the ‘new Moses’—leading his people out of captivity (i.e. the captivity of sin) and into the promised land. Every time Jesus heals, he is, in effect, saying by his actions “it shouldn’t be like this” as he undoes the corrupting effect of the Fall on the natural world—pointing us towards his ultimate conquest of sin on the cross (since it is sin that brings eternal death, and sickness and suffering are but the shadow that eternal death casts across this world). If we are reading the Bible with gospel eyes we should see this component in every biblical miracle. So biblical miracles are (for want of another expression) ‘revelation miracles’ as well as being unexpected good news in the everyday conversational sense of ‘miracle’. This means that no modern miracle can ever be the functional equivalent of a biblical miracle since God’s revelation is now complete: the Bible is, in the words of the Westminster divines, “the whole counsel of God”. That is to say that Jesus is God’s ‘last word’; with the coming of Jesus, and the recording of Jesus by the apostles, God’s revelation is complete. Experiencing a miracle may be a personal revelation of God’s power and goodness for an individual, but this is not a ‘revelation’ in the scriptural sense. The revelation of God’s character, God’s plan of salvation, God’s overall plan for human history and so on is now complete. The Bible is a complete book, completed by the arrival of Jesus Christ and his revelation. Nothing speaks with the authority of the Bible, and that means nothing can be added to the Bible. A curse is pronounced in both Old and New Testaments on those who attempt to add new messages or new material to Scripture (Deut 4:2, Rev 22:18). We can, then, talk about modern miracles and be quite comfortable with the word ‘miracle’ without equating modern miracles functionally with biblical miracles. What practical steps might follow from this approach to the language of miracles? The following are possibilities: 1. We can encourage the use of ‘miracle’ to label unexpected good news—thus employing the normal, everyday meaning of the word. 2. We can be ready to point to God’s love, power, and wisdom as the source of every bit of unexpected good news (every miracle). We need to reclaim the active presence of a loving, powerful, wise God in every good thing that happens in this fallen world. 3 We can oppose the restriction of the word miracle to the inexplicable. This is most often done by two totally different groups: (a) atheists (who want to talk about ‘the laws of nature’ with no God to provide them), and (b) by some Roman Catholics and charismatics who want to see God at work only in the special not in the everyday. 4. And to group (b) above we can gently but firmly reject their claims that modern miracles have exactly the same function as the biblical miracles. This approach can give us evangelicals a comfortable, realistic and biblical way to talk about modern miracles, while, at the same time, preserving for biblical miracles their special role in God’s revelation. It also helps us avoid muddled and fruitless arguments about the so-called ‘laws of nature’ while reasserting God’s loving, powerful and wise control of all events in this world—not just the odd or inexplicable ones.

Endnotes

1. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, section 43, translated by GEM Anscombe. 2. ibid., section 66.