The Concept of Miracles
The biblical concept of miracle is not equivalent to the apologetically colored notion of miracles in the neoscholasticism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As we have already seen, the gospels speak of Jesus’ “deeds of power” and “signs.” Obviously these refer to miracles. But in the Old and New Testaments, the concept of miracle was still wide open. It was not about “natural laws” in the modern sense and most certainly not about breaking them. For the Bible a miracle is something unusual, inexplicable, incomprehensible, disturbing, unexpected, shocking, something that amazes and that explodes the ordinary, something by which God plucks people out of their indifference and causes them to look to him. But—in precisely the opposite direction—miracles could also appear in the midst of the everyday: for example, in the experience that God continually supports and sustains the created order (Ps 136:4-9). For biblical people God is constantly speaking to his people, and therefore every happy result, every story of rescue, even the glory of creation can be experienced as a miracle.
Since the appearance of modern thought, however, miracles have fallen into the slipstream of enlightened criticism. The world is to be explained in secular terms, that is, with respect for its own laws and processes. In view of this paradigm shift, theology sought to protect miracles and in the course of its apologetic defense it defined them more clearly, as “events contrary to nature.” So this means that God breaks natural laws. From time to time he intervenes directly in the world’s causal connections in order to demonstrate his power in a plausible way.
But the Bible spoke of things that were unusual, amazing, having sign-character, and not of a rupture of natural laws at certain points in time. This openness of the original biblical concept of miracle makes room for today’s theology to formulate the uniqueness of miracles more appropriately, that is, more in accordance with the nature of creation.
If we are better to understand the nature of miracles, we have to consistently apply what theology has discovered regarding the notion of “grace” to the question of miracles. It often happens that theological problems attached to a particular point have long since been resolved in other parts of theology. What has today’s theology of grace to say in this regard?16 It says that when a person receives grace from God two freedoms encounter one another: the freedom of God and that of the human being. God never intervenes in the world by avoiding human freedom and independence. God does not replace by his own action what human beings ought to do. God does not put divine freedom in place of human freedom. Divine grace does not destroy human action but makes it possible and builds it up.
At the same time the theology of grace insists, as a consequence of the theology of creation, that God does not act as an “intra-worldly cause” (causa secunda). That is, God does not intervene directly in the world, going around the lawful course of creation. It is true that God is constantly and unceasingly at work, but in his own way. He acts as the world-transcending cause outside and beyond the world (causa prima). So the doctrine of grace arrives at the formula: God must do everything, and the human being must do everything. Where God’s work happens in history it is entirely and completely the work of God—but at the same time it is entirely and completely human work.17
These insights from the doctrine of grace must now be applied to miracles, for a miracle, as we have said, is only a special case of God’s constant work in the world. If we see a miracle as part of what God has always been graciously bringing about in the world, we must say that a genuine miracle is done by God, but precisely not in such a way that God sets aside human action and the laws of nature. Rather, every miracle is at the same time always a bringing to the fore what human and nature are able to do. Natural laws are thus not broken but elevated to a higher level. The miracle exalts nature; it does not bore holes in it. It does not destroy the natural order of things but brings it to its fulfillment.18
This view of miracles has the advantage, in any case, that natural scientists are not deprived from the outset of any opportunity to consider the theological concept of miracles possible. Indeed, they cannot do otherwise than proceed as they do, since they have to speak of natural laws that—at least statistically—are not broken. Their scientific presuppositions and premises obligate them to reckon with a homogeneous field of physical causes.19 Theology has no right to try to talk them out of that position.
The view of miracles presented here is favored above all, however, by the fact that it can take seriously the independence of nature and the human. This is immediately apparent in Jesus’ healing miracles: in the gospels they occur only when someone “believes.” Jesus says to the woman with the hemorrhage, “Daughter, your faith has made you welclass="underline" go in peace, and be healed of your disease” (Mark 5:34). So it was her faith that healed the woman, her belief in Jesus as the savior. But it was her faith, and if she had not had such faith she would not have been healed of the “scourging blows” (thus the underlying Greek word) of her illness. Here we find a fully independent meaning of “faith” in the context of miracle stories. It appears nowhere else in antiquity. Ancient miracle stories were always about whether or not the witnesses or recipients of the action are persuaded of the reality of the miracle. Here, in contrast, the sick person herself must believe; otherwise, she will not be healed.
We find many similar passages in the gospels.20 Again and again faith in God is demanded—in God, who is now acting in Jesus. This is about God’s creative power, but also about Jesus, who in every miracle stands in God’s stead. If that faith is not present, the miracle cannot happen. In Nazareth, Mark says quite explicitly, Jesus could not work any miracles because they did not believe in him there (Mark 6:5-6). So Jesus is elementally dependent on faith if he is to heal. In Mark 11:23 Jesus dares a radically pointed statement: “Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and if you do not doubt in your heart, but believe that what you say will come to pass, it will be done for you.” Human action in miracles cannot be more sharply emphasized: without faith, nothing happens. This is the proper context for the observation that Jesus healed only individuals. He did not perform any group healings. It was only the apocryphal Acts of apostles that began to tell of mass healings. This again shows that the inbreaking of the reign of God is not a spectacle. God’s action is tied to the faith of concrete people. The reign of God needs believers who freely open themselves to it.
What is true of people is also true of so-called nature. It too must “share” in the action, must participate, must play its part. Natural laws are not broken; they are put in service of a new and greater whole. No ordinary human action, certainly not one undertaken in freedom, puts the corresponding natural laws (such as the principle of inertia) out of effect. When a human being acts by free decision, then spirit, person, freedom, or whatever we call it interferes with the material world—but not as if human freedom eliminated natural laws; it does not abrogate but “elevates” them. In this connection we can speak of the “plasticity,” the “malleability,” of matter or nature.21 Analogously to the synergy between spirit and matter, God’s action, when it enters the world through the faith of a human being, does not destroy the laws of matter but raises them to a new level.