Closely associated with the doctrine of providence and often discussed as a segment of that doctrine are miracles. The miracles associated with the Christian doctrine of miracles are primarily those recorded in the Old and New Testaments, but the discussion can also embrace postbiblical and even contemporary miracles.

Definitions of “miracle” by twentieth-century Christian theologians have tended to emphasize that miracles constitute a considerable variation from natural law or natural processes.

  • Both J. Gresham Machen and W. T. Conner defined “miracle” in terms of the transcending of natural law.

  • According to Norman Leo Geisler, it “is a divine intervention into, or an interruption of the regular course of the world that produces a purposeful but unusual event” which “cannot be predicted by natural means.”

  • For C. S. Lewis “miracle” is “an interference with Nature by supernatural power.”

Other authors have insisted on pressing beyond transcendence of natural law to other basic characteristics.

  • A miracle is “an event of an extraordinary kind, brought about by a god, and of religious significance” (Richard Swinburne, 1934-).

  • It is “that particular category of wonders which can be attributed to the intervention of a God who is unique and distinct from the world, such as the God of the Christians” (Joseph de Tonquedec, S. J., 1868-1962).

  • It is not only a supernatural “source of wonder” but also an event which is claimed to be revelatory of"God, his power, his activity, indeed his concern and love" (Michael Arthur Hugh Melinsky).

I. BIBLICAL MIRACLES#

A. OLD TESTAMENT#

Exodus contains more miracle narratives than any other book in the Old Testament. These include the turning of Aaron’s rod to a snake that swallowed other rods (7:8-13), the ten plagues of Egypt (7:14-11:10), the pillar of cloud and pillar of fire (13:21-22), the deliverance through the Red Sea (14:21-22, 29), the manna (16:4-5, 13-19), and the water from the rock at Rephidim (17:6-7).

Numbers contains the accounts of healing through the elevated serpent (21:8-9) and of the speaking by Balaam’s donkey (22:28, 30).

In Joshua there is the crossing of the Jordan River by the Israelites on dry ground (3:14-17).

The books of Kings contain accounts of the raisings of the son of the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17:19-23) and of the son of the Shunammite woman (2 Kings 4:32-35) and of the healing of Naaman (2 Kings 5:14).

Three principal Hebrew nouns are used in the Old Testament to identify miracles: ‘ôt, môpet, and nipla’ôt.

  • The word ‘ôt, normally translated “sign,” appears 29 times in the Old Testament; of these uses 25 refer to the plagues of Egypt or to the plagues, the Exodus, and other related miracles. The word appears repeatedly in Exodus (4:8–9, 17, 28, 30; 7:3-4; 8:23; 10:1-2) in reference to the ten plagues. When the word is used in Deuteronomy (4:34; 6:22; 7:19; 26:8; 29:3; 34:11), Joshua (24:17), Jeremiah (32:20-21), Psalms (78:43; 105:27; 135:9), and Nehemiah (9:10), it is usually joined together with môpet, translated “wonders” or “miracles,” and sometimes seems to refer to the Exodus as well as the plagues. But it could be used of a future prophet dreamer (Deut. 13:1-3).

  • The word môpet, a plural form, was probably derived from the verb yapa’, meaning “to shine, to be bright.” Hence môpet were “splendid deeds” or “wonders” or “miracles.” Such happenings served to evoke awe in the ones who recognized in them the working of God. Môpet appears 36 times in the Old Testament; of these usages refer to the plagues of Egypt or to the plagues and the Exodus. Although the term sometimes stands alone (Exod. 4:21; 7:9; 11:9-10; 15:11; 1 Chr. 16:12), it more often is coupled with ‘Ss to form the expression “signs and wonders” (Exod. 7:3; Deut.4:34; 6:22; 7:19; 26:8; 29:3; 34:11; Jer. 32:20-21; Ps. 78:43; 105:27; 135:9; Neh. 9:10).

  • The word nipla ôt, the niphal plural substantive of the verb pala’ which means “to separate” or “to be wonderful,” conveys the idea of “things done wonderfully” or “marvels.” The events to which this term was applied in the Old Testament were always extraordinary, but not all of them were miraculous. Nipla ôt was used of the plagues (Ps. 78: 12) and probably of the plagues and the Exodus (Ps. 105:5; 1 Chr. 16:12, 24). In Ps. 105:5 one may study the usage of both môpet and nipla ôt, and in Ps. 105:27 one may examine the usage of both ‘ôt and môpet. Dale Moody has contended that the accounts of the ten plagues and the Exodus are “a blend of the natural and the supernatural.”

In Wisd. of Sol. 19:6-8 the crossing of the Red Sea was interpreted as a refashioning of the created order.

B. NEW TESTAMENT#

Alan Richardson (1905-75) has prefaced his study of the miracles in the Gospels with an exposition of the power of God, especially the power of God in Jesus Christ.

Reginald Horace Fuller (1915), asserting that the “foundation miracles” of each of the testaments were the Exodus and the death-resurrection of Jesus, claimed that each of these had both “preliminary” and “accompanying” miracles.

  • For the Exodus the preliminary miracles were the plagues, and the accompanying miracles were “the dividing of the Red Sea, the pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day, the water from the rock, and the manna.”

  • For the death-resurrection of Jesus the preliminary miracles were the healings, exorcisms, and nature miracles performed by Jesus, and the accompanying miracles included the virginal conception, the transfiguration, and the resurrection appearances.

The canonical Gospels assumed the historicity of the miracles recorded; questions about historicity or the philosophical possibility of miracles came later.

1. Terms

Four Greek words wrer repeatedly used in the New Testament to convey the concept of miracle.

a. The noun dynamis, which can also mean “power” in general

It was used in the Synoptics, Paul, Acts, and Hebrews to mean “mighty deed or work” or “miracle”. The term could refer to miracles performed by Jesus (Mark 6:2e; Matt. 11:20a; Luke 19:3b; Acts 2:22b) or by his disciples (Mark 9:39c), to the nonperformance of miracles by Jesus (Mark 6:5; Matt. 13:58), to apostolic miracles (2 Cor. 12:12; Acts 8:13b; 19:11; Heb. 2:4), and to the gift of working miracles (Gal. 3:5; 1 Cor. 12:10a, 28d)

b. The noun erga, meaning “works”

It is disctinctively a Johannine term whenever it connotes miracle. Although erga can refer to the miracles as wrought by Jesus (John 7:3b; 15:24a), more often they are said to be by or from the Father (5:20b, 36b,c; 9:3-4a; 10:25b, 32, 37-38a; 14:10c-11)

c. The noun semeion, translated “sign” and quite similar in meaning to the Hebrew ‘ôt

It was used in all four Gospel, Paul, Acts, and Hebrews. It referred to a physical or material transformation that had spiritual significance. The term was applied to those miracles which Pharisees and others were seeking of Jesus (Mark 8:11-12; par. Matt. 12:38-39; 16:1, 4; Luke 11:29; John 4:48b; 6:30b), to miracles performed by Jesus (John 20:30; Acts 2:22b; 4:30b), to apostolic miracles (2 Cor. 12:12; Rom. 15:19a; Acts 2:43b; 5:12a; 6:8; 8:13a; 14:3; 15:12b; Heb. 2:4), to miracles wrought by Moses (Acts 7:36), and to pretended eschatological miracles (2 Thess. 2:9)

d. The noun teras, normally translated “wonders”

It was never used alone in the New Testament to refer to miracles wrought by Jesus. It was, apart from other terms, used of deeds of false Christ (Mark 13:22; par. Matt. 24:24). Teras, when joined with semeion to form the expression “signs and wonders”, was repeatedly used in reference to Jesus’ miracles. It was applied to those miracles sought of Jesus (Acts 4:48), to miracles performed by Jesus (Acts 2:22; 4:30b), to apostolic miracles (Rom. 15:19a; Acts 2:43b; 5:12a; 6:8; 14:3; 15:12b; Heb. 2:4), to Moses’ miracles (Acts 7:36), and to pretended eschatological miracles (2 Thess. 2:9)

Three other nouns, commonly used in pagan literature, are found in single occurrences in the New Testament.

  • Paradoxa - “remarkable things” in Luke 5:26

  • Thaumasia - “wonderful things” in Matt. 21:15

  • Aretai - “wonderful deeds” in 1 Peter. 2:9b

Although it may be argued that in the last text miracles are not necessarily the referent.

2. Classification

There have been various efforts to classify the miracles reported in the Gospels.

  • Edwin Basil Redlich employed a twofold scheme: miracles of nature, and miracles of healing. Hendrik van der Loos followed the same division.

  • Dale Moody, reaching beyond the Gospels, added miracles of history (Exodus, death-resurrection of Jesus) to the two categories of Redlich and van der Loos.

C.S. Lewis proposed two patterns of classification, the one more elaborate and the other twofold. According to the first pattern, there were six kinds of miracles related to Jesus:

  1. Miracles of Fertility

  • Conversion of water into wine at Cana

  • Feeding of the five thousand

  • Feeding of the four thousand

  • Multiplication of fish

  • Virginal conception of Jesus

  1. Miracles of Healing

  2. Miracles of Destruction

  • Withering of fig tree
  1. Miracles of Dominion over the Inorganic

  • Stilling the tempest

  • Walking on the water

  1. Miracles of Reversal
  • Raisings from the dead
  1. Miracles of Perfecting or Glorification

  • Transfiguration of Jesus

  • Resurrection of Jesus

  • Ascension of Jesus

Lewis’s second scheme, involving miracles “of the Old Creation” and miracles “of the New Creation”, combines the categories of the first scheme.

Those miracles listed under the first three categories and the stilling of the tempest are the miracles “of the Old Creation”, whereas the walking on the water and the miracles listed under the last two categories are the miracles “of the New Creation”.

Not only have efforts been made to classify all the miracles in the Gospels but also New Testament scholars have found special configurations of miracle stories in the Gospels. Especially has this been true of the Gospel of John, wherein seven miracle stories seem to be associated with “the Book of Signs”:

  1. Water into wine at Cana (2:1-11)

  2. The healing of the official’s son (4:46-54)

  3. The healing of the lame man at the pool of Bethesda (5:1-9)

  4. The feeding of the five thousand (6:1-13)

  5. Walking on the water (6:16-21)

  6. The healing of the man blind from birth (9:1-34)

  7. The raising of Lazarus (11:1-44)

Some hold that the Fourth Evangelist borrowed and adapted these stories from a book which had come into existence after the Synoptics had been written.

3. Purpose

In studying the miracles recorded in the New Testament, one finds it easy to raise basic question about purpose

  • Why did Jesus perform miracles?

  • Why were miracles performed through the apostles?

  • Why were the miracle stories given such a prominent place in the New Testament, especially the Gospels?

a. Of Jesus’ Miracles

1) Purposes Connected with New Testament texts

a) Glorification

In the accounts of six different healings in the Gospels (Mark 2:12; Luke 7:16; 13:13; 17:15; 18:43; John 11:4) specific mention is made that either the one healed, those beholding the healing, or both gave glory and praise to God.

Does this recurring expression of praise and glory constitute one of the purposes for the perfomance of Jesus’ miracles?

b) Compassion

In the accounts of three different healings (Mark 1:41; Luke 7:13; Matt. 20:34) specific mention is made that Jesus had “compassion” or “pity” on those being healed.

Does this factor need to be included in the statement of purposes of Jesus’ healings?

c) Signification

In the “Book of Signs” within John’s Gospel miracles are clearly seen to serve as “signs” or attestations of the power and saving activity of God in and through Jesus as the Son of God. In the Synoptics miracles are connected with the drawing near of the kingdom of God. In John 9:3, 38 restoration of sight seems to be a step toward faith in Jesus as the Messiah. Wherever miracales are taken to be “signs”, they are seen as integral to the mission and ministry of Jesus.

Can this purpose be excluded from any listing of the purposes of Jesus’ miracles?

2) Modern Understandings of These Purposes

The earlier orthodox view, as expressed by William Paley, was that the miracles of Jesus were absolute proofs of His deity. Then came the Liberal Protestant view that they were expressions of power in the service of humanitarian compassion.

Form Criticism, represented by Rudolf Bultmann and Martin Dibelius, thought that the miracle stories yielded the primary view of Jesus as powerful wonder-worker. More recently, European New Testament scholars have brought forth a new emphasis upon the miracles as signs, not absolute proofs, of the kingdom of God as drawing near in the person, ministry, and death-resurrection of Jesus.

Paley’s proofs cannot be taken so as to exclude faith as an essential response to Jesus’ miracles. The compassion of Jesus need not be taken solely as representative of humanitarianism, for it can be seen as the divine compassion in the work of the God-man. The form-critical preoccupation with wonder-working fails to integrate miracles with the entire mission and ministry of Jesus. The newer emphasis on signs has much in its favor, but it need not rule out other purposes such as the divine compassion and the glorification of God.

b. Of Apostolic Miracles

The purpose of miracles wrought through the apostles has been a much less controversial issue. Most often these have been explained as signs of the kingdom of God or as confirmatory of the coming of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost.

c. Of Miracle Stories in the New Testament

What purposes led to such extensive inclusion of materials related to miracles? Alan Richardson has undertaken a detailed answer.

  • First, the primitive church had the conviction that the powers associated with the drawing near of the kingdom of God had been manifested in Jesus as Messiah and Lord. Miracles, being expressive of such powers, were parallel to Jesus’ teachings about the kingdom and were “the manifestation of the activity of the Spirit.” As “signs” miracles were “enacted parables, not mere ‘wonder-stories,’ or occasional works of charity … or mere historical reminiscences.”

  • Second, miracle stories served a didactic purpose. They teach Jesus as healer, exorcist, and bringer of the forgiveness of sins and provide material for Christian “instruction and exhortation.”

  • Third, the miracle accounts provided the occasions for the Evangelists to make spiritual applications beyond the accounts themselves, and here Richardson is less than persuasive.

One should add, as Anton Fridrichsen (1888-1953) has done, that the apostolic miracles were most likely included in the Acts and the epistles as part of the Christian mission. Thus “the miracles manifest that divine power which sustains the mission, acts through it, and has created all things new in the ethical and material realms.”

In summary, we have found that

  1. Jesus’ miracles were performed primarily as signs of the drawing near of the kingdom of God or the Messianic age but have allowed such secondary purposes as divine compassion and the glorification of God.

  2. Apostolic miracles were performed as signs of the Messianic age and the coming of the Holy Spirit.

  3. The inclusion of numerous miracle stories in the Gospels and in the Acts and the epistles is explicable in terms of the purposes of the miracles themselves and the needs of the early Christian community.

II. MIRACLES ACCORDING TO THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE#

A. PATRISTIC AGE#

It is not difficult to find evidence that Jews during the first and second centuries A.D. accused Jesus of having used magic to perform miracles. Justin Martyr, Origen, Arnobius, and Lactantius wrote of this accusation and framed an apologetic defense against it. Fridrichsen thought that this Jewish accusation helps to explain why second- and third-century Christian writers were slow to use Jesus’ miracles to prove the validity of His mission.

Later, Athanasius did see in these miracles the proclamation of Jesus’ lordship over nature, and Gregory of Nyssa magnified them as “greater than nature”. Augustine of Hippo has been said to have been “the first to draw up a systematic doctrine of miracles”.

B. MEDIEVAL ERA#

With Thomas Aquinas and the rediscovered Aristotle, when theology had become a science, the emphasis concerning miracle shifted from the purpose of miracles and the human faith-response to “the nature of the divine intervention in a miraculous event”. “The sign value” yielded to “the transcendence of God’s act of power”.

C. POST-REFORMATION AND MODERN PERIODS#

Because miracles were not a leading issue during the Protestanet Reformation, attention can next be given to the later periods. With the advent of Deism and the Enlightenment and the concurrent development of the natural and physical sciences, miracles became a major bone of contention, and especially was this true of the historicity or facticity of biblical miracles.

This “great debate” on miracle has within the recent past been traced in great detail by at least three authors:

  • John Steward Lawton, who traced it from the early Deists in the seventeenth century to the work of Alan Richardson (1941)

  • Robert M. Burns (1942-), who reviewed it from Joseph Glanvill (1681) through David Hume (1750)

  • Colin Brown, who scrutinized it from Benedict de Spinoza (1670) to Rudolf Bultmaun (1919) and Paul Tilich (1953)

III. THE VALIDITY OF MIRACLES#

Although the listing of every conceivable objection to biblical miracles or even every one that has been issued in published form would be an awesome, if not impossible task, it is feasible to give attention to some of the major lines of objection to biblical miracles.

A. MIRACLES AND NATURAL LAW: OBJECTION OF THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY DEISTS#

Beginning with the Deists, the objection has been raised that miracle is an impossibility because it violates natural law. Sometimes, it has been said that the ancients believed in miracles because they did not know the laws of nature but that modern people, aware of such laws, must therefore refuse to admit miracles.

Under such considerations, how is the term “natural law” to be defined? C.S. Lewis has noted that there are at least three different possible definitions

  • First, natural law could mean “mere brute facts [of nature], known only by observation, with no discoverable rhyme or reason about them”

  • Second, it could mean “applications of the law of averages” so that “impossible events” would be “so overwhelmingly improable - by actuarial standards - that we do not need to take them into account”

  • Third, natural law could mean “necessary truths” so that “the opposite would be meaningless nonsense”

Lewis argued that neither his first nor his second definition provides any “assurance against miracles”, but he noted that the third “seems at first sight to present an insurmountable obstacle to miracle”. Lewis concluded “A miracle is emphatically not an event without cause or without results. Its cause is the activity of God: its results follow according to Natural Law”.

Care must also be taken lest natural law be seen as fate or as a force that does the governing of the natural order. Rather, God utilizes what human beings call natural law. It is a statement of nature’s regularities, and miracles is a deviation from or transcending of natural law, but not a violation of natural law.

Patrick Nowell-Smith (1914-) has suggested that miracles may be indications in the midst of the changing sciences of scarcely known or yet to be clarified natural laws.

B. MIRACLES AND SYNOPTIC CRITICISM: OBJECTION OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY BIBLICAL CRITICISM#

New Testament literary criticism moved during the nineteenth century toward certain widely accepted conclusions. Among these were the his torical unreliability of the Gospel according to John and the source-document hypothesis for the origin of the Synoptic Gospels (Mk, Q, M, L).44 Some New Testament critics and others assumed that Synoptic studies would lead to the conclusion that the earliest views of Jesus and his ministry were without miracles. Such persons tended to assume that they could eradicate the miracles from the Synoptic portrait of Jesus.

Source criticism of the Gospels, however, did not yield such expected conclusions.

  • Mark’s Gospel, considered with Q the earliest materials, con tains references to some 18 miracles, not counting the transfiguration and resurrection of Jesus.

  • Q, presumably a collection of the sayings or teach ings of Jesus, contains one miracle account, the healing of the dumb demoniac (Matt. 9:32-34).

  • Efforts to date miracle narratives late and to ascribe these to the later fantasy of the primitive church or of the Gospel writers contradicted the then accepted early date of Mark with its abun dance of miracle stories.

  • Efforts to expunge the miracle accounts from Mark on the basis that these had not been a part of the original Gospel of Mark were lacking in support from textual criticism.

The attempts to dis cover a nonmiraculous Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels failed except by methods that were unhistorical and/or uncritical.

Not only the canonical Gospels but also, to use Lewis’s term, “the grand miracle,” the incarnation, points toward miracles.

C. MIRACLES AND SCIENTIFIC TESTINGS: OBJECTION OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY NATURALISM/SCIENTISM#

Much contemporary rejection of biblical miracles has stemmed from the idea that modern science invalidates miracles. It is often said that only that which can be tested scientifically can be accepted as valid. Such a statement assumes both that scientific testing is based on all existent data and that scientifuc testing always results in an absolute uniformity of occurrence.

By the same line of thinking, objection can be made to the existence of God. Such conclusions, however, are not, strictly speaking, drawn from the use of the scientific method of observation and verification alone but rather from its being overshadowed by the philosophy of scientism, which excludes any possibility of knowledge from another seource and knowledge of another kind.

Although it may deal with occurrences not readily explicable in scientific terms, scientific testing has no means for taking into accounts the redemptive or re-creative purpose and activity of God.

D. MIRACLES NAD THE TECHNIQUE OF MENTAL HEALING: INTERPRETATION OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY PSYCHOTHERAPY#

Previously discussed objections to biblical miracles have been efforts entirely to invalidate those miracle accounts, but this one seeks to reinterpret those accounts. This viewpoint applies specifically to the healing miracles of Jesus. Such healing incidents are interpreted as mind-cures, or forms of mental healing, wherein Jesus is said to have msatered the technique of mental healing - a technique which modern man can also employ.

In the later nienteenth century, Mrs. Eddy’s Christian Science and the parallel New Thought movement began to claim to be able to dispel the illusions of illness and suffering from the minds of those who suffered and to effect “healing”. Beyond these movements, there have been those who have claimed that the healing accounts in the Gospels were ealry examples of mind-cures that have been repeated many times in later centuries.

The psychotherapeutic approach to the healings by Jesus gives little or no emphasis to the power of God or to miracles as signs of the kingdom of God. Furthermore, those who take this approach to the healings of Jesus can deny all other biblical miracles on naturalistic or other premises.

E. MIRACLES AND DEMYTHOLOGIZING: OBJECTION OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY BULTMANNIANISM#

Rudolf Bultmann’s demyuthologization of the New Testament was based on a definition of “mythology”, which included the miraculous in the mythical.

Mythology is the use of imagery to express the other worldly in terms of this world and the divine in terms of human life, the other side in terms of this side.

It was the task of demythologization to reinterpret the miracle stories of the Gospels by putting them into the categories of an existentialist self-understanding. The resurrection of Jesus was included in the scope of demythologization, for, unlike the death of Jesus, it was detached from history and reduced to the faith of Christian believers in a continuing Jesus.

SUMMARY#

In summary, Deists and others have raised major objections to biblical miracles in terms of natural law, biblical critics and others in terms of Synoptic criticism, naturalists and the devotees of scientism in terms of scientific testing, and the Bultmannian school in terms of demythologization, and psycho-therapists have set forth an alternative approach to Jesus’ healings.

IV. MIRACLES: POST-APOSTOLIC AND CONTEMPORARY?#

Have genuine miraacles occurred during the postapostolic history of Christianity, and do they occur today? If so, for what purposes and with what results do they occur? These are questions on which Christians today are by no means agreed.

A. THE QUESTION OF OCCURRENCE#

Christian denominations or confessions and individual Christians have held to three basic views.

1. Biblical Era View

According to this view, miracles occurred only during the biblical era and as part of salvation history recorded in the Old and New Testaments. Presumably, a major argument is favor of this view is the interpretation of Jesus’ miracles and of apostolic miracles as “signs” of the drawing near of the kingdom of God in the person, ministry, deeds, and death-resurrection of Jesus. The signs would not be needed in later centuries aas they were in the first.

Benjamin b. Warfield held that miracles, designed for “authentication of the Apostles as messengers from God”, ceased to occur after the death of the disciples of the apostles. Accordingly, all events which have been claimed to be miraculous in later centuries were not so.

2. Biblical and Patristic Era View

Certain Anglicans have held that miracles continued to occur during the age of the Church Fathers and ceased to occur early in the fourth century A.D. This conclusion is derivative from and dependent on a certain view of the special importance of the patristic age.

3. Unlimited Era View

This view refuses to limit the occurrence of miracles to a specific age and insists upon the occurrence of contemporary miracles as well as miracles during preceding centuries. Roman Catholics, Pentecostals, and Neo-Pentecostals at the end of the twentieth century strongly affirmed this view, but others undoubtedly held it, if with less insistence.

Not a few denominations have never take any overt action with reference to any of these three views.

B. THE CITING OF EXAMPLES#

1. Roman Catholic Marian and Hagiological Miracles

Numerous claims have been made and testimonies given with reference to healings among Roman Catholics through the intercession of the Virgin Mary and the canonized saints of the Roman Catholic Church. These have especially been cited during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, prior to Vatican Council II, and in connection with well-known Marian shrines such as Lourdes in France, St. Anne de Beauprex in the province of Quebec in Canada, and Guadalupe in Mexico.

Certain Protestants and other non-Roman Catholics reacted critically to such testimonies, labelling these events as “miracle mongering”. Miracles occassioned by the intercession of those saints not yet canonized have also been deemed necessary to the procedure for canonization.

2. Pentecostal and Neo-Pentecostal Miracles

During the twentieth century numerous claims relative to divine healing were made by persons in Pentecostal churches and in the Neo-Pentecostal movement that began during the 1960s. Especially were these miracles said to have occurred through the agency of persons exercising the spiritual gift of healing, and often such healings were said to have occurred in public healing services.

3. Trans-medical Miracles of Healing through Prayer

Claims have also been made, usually apart from any organized effort vis-à-vis healing, as to the occurrence of miraculous divine healing after and in response to intercessory prayer and beyond the resources of God-given medical science and practice.

It should be carefully nnoted that all assertions concerning miraculous divine healing in the contemporary era are subject to scientific testing and medical review. One should also be aware that there has been a paucity of claims to present-day miracles of nature or history.

C. THE PROPOSAL OF PURPOSES#

If contemporary miracles do indeed occur, as so many have claimed, what may be said to be the purposes of such, so far as we may know? It seems necessary to reexamine those purposes previously identified for biblical miracles: signs of the kingdom, divine compassion for human need, and glorification of God. It may be difficult to see how contemporary healings can be significant signs, unless it be in settings in which the Christian gospel is being introduced, but no such difficulty seems to apply to compassion or glorification. In a sea of callous humankind and amid religious movements that show little of the glory and power of the one God, miracles may be part of God’s contemporary doings.

SUMMARY#

In this chapter, we have examined biblical miracles in respect to their terminology, classification, and purposes; we have identified certain aspects of the history of the doctrine of miracles; we have explained and answered major objections to miracles raised within the last three centuries; and we have examined the issue of postapostolic and contemporary miracles.