Our discussions and lead commentaries on Catholica these days serve as a catalyst not only for discussion on our own forums but often on other discussion boards and email lists in diverse parts of the world. One on-going discussion that has generated a lot of interest in various places has been the viewpoints various people have shared on miracles — and the wider question of how does this Mystery we try and describe with the word, God, interact with life, with us, and with Creation? Human beings have long been in awe of Creation, and of the intelligence and power of the Creator who thought it all up. Our increasing education and scientific insights have given us a changing appreciation of these big questions about the nature of God's relation with his Creation and the if and how God might interact with it all, and with us, given this changing understanding we have of how Creation itself is put together. Professor Len Swidler has been working on some of these questions in a new book and he recently shared with a group of us a small section from that book on this question of miracles. He has kindly given us permission to reproduce this section of the forthcoming book on Catholica. Professor Swidler taught theology at the University of Tübingen with Joseph Ratzinger and today he holds the Chair of Catholic Thought and Interreligious Dialogue at Temple University, Philadelphia.

Professor Swidler's introduction…

Having described, however inadequately, how I understand Modernity, and what/who I believe to be the heart of Christianity, Yeshua, I think it important for my fellow "reluctant Christians" that I give some attention to at least the more common problem areas of Christianity. Of course, in the past they were not problematic, but rather supportive. However, in the mental world of Modernity they often have become blocks rather than bridges. Here are the ones that I will deal with, again, however briefly and perhaps inadequately:

• Miracles;
• Resurrection of Yeshua;
• Immortality of the soul;
• The Divinity of Yeshua; and
• The Trinity.

[This present commentary is limited to discussing the first of these, "Miracles". …Ed]

The problem posed by "miracles" with our modern knowledge…

What exactly is understood by the term "miracle"? The word from its Latin root, miraculum, literally means "something to wonder at". However, it is normally refers to some happening which cannot be explained by customary natural causes. Until the age of Modernity almost everyone was convinced that such miracles happened with some regularity. Of course, today many millions are still similarly convinced. However, for most persons living thoroughly in the mental world of Modernity, such happenings contrary to the known laws of nature don't take place.

Of course, one can "logically" argue that if God is in fact the Source of all reality, if God is the creator of the "laws" of nature, then it follows that God can also suspend the laws God made. However, if one were going to go down that thought path, then one would have to ask why is such an incredible amount of obviously unnecessary, wasteful suffering allowed by this all-powerful God who then just "cherry-picks" a few problems to solve by suspending his own natural laws? Think about this starting just with sentient creatures who experience pain — all the way from trillions of microscopic beings all the way up to billions of humans. It makes of God into the worst image of a stereotypical Oriental Potentate who occasionally arbitrarily frees a miserably wracked creature. It's hardly an admirable image of a "loving" God.

No, physical scientists surely can "wonder" at the marvels of nature, and social scientists at the even more intricate "miracles" of the human psyche. However, they/we are extremely reluctant to look for occasional reversals of the laws of nature, whether physical of psychical, because over the past two thousand years a pious Christian (or some other God-fearing person before them) has sent a prayer — or even a lot of them — to the organizer of the cosmos. This would be to assume that God is an Omnipotent who can be persuaded to alleviate pain in only a tiny fraction of the numberless and numbing amount of suffering that has coursed throughout the 13.7 billion years of the universe's existence, and on into the future. I as a less than perfectly kind human would be profoundly insulted were such said of me; a fortiori, a perfect God would hardly thereby be lauded.

So, what does one do with what surely look like miracles in the New Testament, especially those said to have been performed by Yeshua?

To begin with, although, as Walter Grundmann writes in the prestigious Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, "The Hellenistic Jewish world is full of miraculous happenings and gods and miracle-workers," most of the "miracles" recorded in the New Testament are healings by Yeshua. Moderns are familiar with so-called faith healings, that is, those unexpected healings of the human body which in fact occur because the person involved had an intense faith, and trust, that it would occur— and it did! If a person has a unusually strong will to live, s/he can at times overcome an injury or disease that an ordinary person would succumb to. We are slowly learning about how such "mind over matter" events operate — how, for example, optimistic persons tend to live longer and have fewer maladies that do pessimistic persons: a measurable release of endorfins in the brain, for example, which then have a healing effect on affected parts of the body.

It is important to note the specific reportings of this faith healing in the healing "miracles" of Yeshua. Many times he said to the afflicted person, "your faith has made you whole" (Mk 5:34, 10:52; Mt 9:22; Lk 8:48, 17:19). Another time when two blind men asked to be healed, he asked them whether they believed he could do so, and they said, yes: "According to your faith let it be so" (Mt 9:28; cf. 15:28). When this faith was lacking, he was unable to effect a "miracle" of healing: "He did not work many miracles there because of their lack of faith" (Mt 13:58). Clearly these healing "miracles" depended on the trust, faith, of the afflicted person, which presumably then released the healing bodily action.

The Greek word used in the Gospels that refers to what we usually translate into English as "miracle" is dynameis, "powerful action" (whence our English words, dynamic, dynamite!). A major function of these dynameis was to provide a sign that the teachings coming from Yeshua were truly "from God". This is why the ancient prophets would "foretell" the future, so that the Israelites would be moved to believe that the prophet was indeed God's "spokes-person", as the Greek pro-phetis literally means. Consequently we have gotten things exactly backward by reducing the term prophet to mean someone who foretells the future. Apparently at the time of Yeshua he also ran into a similar problem, for his opponents kept asking him for "signs", for which he reprimanded them severely, calling them an "evil and adulterous generation" (Mt 16:4).

In brief: the Christian living in the mental world of Modernity does not need such an external "sign", miracle, of the dynamis, the power, of Yeshua. It is Yeshua's spellbinding teaching, and consequent living of it, that draws the Modern person. Therein lies Yeshua's dynamis, his miracle, and if reflected on seriously, and substantively put into one's life, it is dynamite!

At the same time, one should not discount prayer, but rather redirect it. Think of Yeshua's prayer in Gethsemani. He sought a deeper inner union with God, wrestling with his deep fear of what faced him. He must have told at least one of his followers of the inner struggle he had when he "sweated blood" — the details of what he said in his prayer, of his coming back to talk with his friends not once but three times, all these exclude the likelihood that his prayer "That this cup may pass...." could have just been made up later. Yeshua's prayer was to put himself "in sync" with what was going to unfold as best he could, and he did thereby find an inner calm: "Not as I will, but as your will" (Mk 14:36).

What are your thoughts on Dr Swidler's commentary?
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©2008 Leonard Swidler

[Index of Commentaries by Prof Len Swidler]