Lightning and Love: Defining Miracles

[Josh]

Originally posted 12/28/05:

The following is a follow-up post to a teaching I gave about a Christian perspective on the subject of Miracles

Hi all,

I feel I need to post a few things to tie up some loose ends from Tuesday night's discussion. I felt there was some misunderstanding of some of the points I was trying to make. As I said, complicated stuff to learn, much less communicate.

It's not about all agreeing on everything, but I really hope that we at least understand what we're all saying and that we aren't dismissive of each other's points or the value of conversations like these.

First off, let me just reinterate some things I did NOT say or attempt to communicate:

1) That I want to 'explain away' miracles
2) That we can ever understand everything
3) That all miracles can be explained through the normal process of nature
4) That stories such as the Red Sea/ Jordan crossing are not miraculous
5) That technology is always a good thing

And next, a couple of things I was indeed trying to communicate:

1) That we can explain some miracles with our current scientific knowledge, but that they do not cease to be miracles (our brains, the destruction of Sennacherib's army, the Jordan crossing, etc..) These events have God written all over them.

2) That miracles can be 'miracles of timing', but that there are certainly many other kinds of miracles

3) That the central miracle of Christianity is the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus

4) That God is rational- although we might not be able to explain every miracle scientifically, He could (at least to Himself). Our finite minds will certainly never grasp the physics involved in resurrecting a human body, short of eternity, and I'm not convinced that we'll understand that even in heaven, but I think in heaven we will understand a lot of the 'how'in miracles- heck, we will be experiencing miracles all the time, having been freed from the constraints of our 4 dimensions.

5) That in the strictest sense of the word, all miracles are 'scientific' and 'rational' This shouldn't be confused with a definition of science that means 'all mankind has learned so far' or 'something that mankind will learn in the future', but scientific as in corresponding to a consistent reality that God has built into the universe.

In a nutshell, I'm saying that the "how?" of every miracle would make sense if God chose to articulate it to you.

This is a tough one, and I'd recommend reading Miracles (C.S. Lewis) or something like it before dismissing it.I'm not sure I can quite do it justice just now. And I'll readily concede that it's probably somewhat of a semantics issue for most of us.

6) That humans are made in God's image to be creative, but that creativity can have both good and evil effect. Similarly, the scientific revolution (initiated by Christians) was both a good thing and a dangerous thing, but it came about by a honest desire to ask God "how?", just like any son or daughter would ask a parent

7)That even things that clearly have a known scientific explanation (like rain or gravity)are miraculous in some sense, being that they are physical results tipped off by spiritual causes (at some point in the past). The Bible clearly speaks of natural phenomenon having some relation to God's activity (thunder, rain, lightning, etc..) I think we should embrace this instead of 'explaining it away'. It's just like the "love" analogy we used. We know that the feeling of love involves chemicals in the brain, just like we know lightning involves charged parti... (what does lightning involve anyway?? Help me out here someone), ANYWAY-- just because lightning and love can be shown to have 'scientific' explanations, that doesn't mean they can be 'explained away'-- there is a fundamental element of 'miracle' to them still.

8) That we shouldn't approach a miracle account in the Bible with a preconceived notion either that it 'couldn't really be a miracle' OR that it 'couldn't be explainable'. If the text seems to indicate that a miracle has some natural explanations that we can understand, then we should investigate that, if it doesn't, then we should accept that.

9) That curiousity is one of the signs we are made in God's image. Curiousity asks the "How" s and the "Why" s and "What does this mean for me"s-- and God is delighted when we ask all of those questions and more if we do it in the right spirit. Therefore, there should be no area of inquiry (aside from evil) that we outrightly reject or dismiss as unimportant. We aren't all the same and we can't all ask everything, but we must appreciate those who ask what they ask.

I add this last point because I sensed from a few that this discussion was perhaps irrelevent. I want to exhort you all to realize that all kinds of learning are relevant to our relationship with Christ.

Please follow up with questions and comments to continue the dialogue, which I know is important.

[elizabeth]

Originally posted 12/28/05:

I think that we have to remember that miracles happen every day, when we see them or not. Sometimes every day phenomenon brings on a miracle and we did not even notice it. With our world so busy as it is, it is harder to see the "miracles" that take place under ordinary circumstances. I looked up on the internet to see what definitions there where and here are 2 that I found:

1.)any amazing or wonderful occurrence
2.)a marvellous event manifesting a supernatural act of God
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

I also think that each person has an internal feeling of what could or would be defined as a miracle. I like to believe that most things happen in my life because of miracles...

[Josh]

Originally posted 12/28/05:

Good, solid defintions (if perhaps a bit vague). The first one covers a lot of ground.

Wow, think of all 'the miraculous' happening all around us that we miss all the time!

I tell my students when we're discussing the beginning of the universe that they need to realize that it's a miracle that they are even sitting in their desks in the first place, considering all the things that had to happen to bring us all to the place where we're at.

[Josh]

Originally posted 7/6/06:

I just read in NT Wright's "Simply Christian" (pp. 115-116) this section that has bearing on this conversation:

"Some have tried to fit the events of Easter into ... the view [that] God and the world are normally poles apart. In this view, the God who is normally somewhere else, outside our world altogether, sometimes steps in anddoes dramatic things, which should (in this view) be seen as interventions into the ordinary course of events. That is what, for most people, words like "miracle" and "supernatural" mean today. An interpretation of Jesus' resurrection along those lines ("the greatest miracle") has then stirred up others to respond that 'that's all very well for Jesus, but what about everyone else? If God can do tricks like that, why didn't he step in and stop the Holocaust or Hiroshima?

The answer is that the resurrection of Jesus- and everything else about him, for that matter,... [only] makes sense within... the classic Jewish worldview... :

heaven and earth are neither the same thing, nor a long way removed from one another, but they overlap and interlock mysteriously in a number of ways; and the God who made both heaven and earth is at work from within the world as well as from without, sharing the pain of the world- indeed, taking its full weight upon his own shoulders. From that point of view, as the Eastern Orthodox churches have always emphasized, when Jesus rose again God's whole new creation emerged from the tomb, introducing a world full of new potential and possibility.... the resurrection of Jesus doesn't leave us as passive, helpless spectators. We find ourselves lifted up, set on our feet, given new breath in our lungs, and comissioned to go and make new creation happen in the world."

[Josh]

Mo wrote this elsewhere in response to this thread:

Everything that can be explained without God's intervention indicates that it happened without his intervention. If YOU want to believe that a lightning was sent by God, that's worth nothing to the truth. Even if God exists it doesn't mean that he sent the lightning.

Mo, here's the analogy I'm operating on: let's say I create a computer tennis program (can you tell I just got a wii?). When someone hits a ball in the program it can be totally explainable in terms of cause and effect within the program, right? But, at the same time, the program in its entirely isn't explainable except in light of it's creator. In a very real sense, I, the creator cause everything that happens within that program.

This is even a weak analogy because the Bible doesn't teach that God just created the program and walked away. It seems to teach that he is always currently sustaining the entire program with His own being in some way. So, we could all the more say that when certain things happen, though there may be naturalistic explanations within the system, they are also simultaneously brought about the Being that is "powering the system" all the time, so to speak.

Acts 17:28a
'For in him we live and move and have our being.'

Colossians 1:16-17
For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Opinion? Well, to some degree, but it seems to be what the bible teaches, so it's an argument based on the assumption that the bible is true.

[moritz]

Jul 24, 2008 20:52:56 GMT -8 Josh said:

Mo wrote this elsewhere in response to this thread:

Everything that can be explained without God's intervention indicates that it happened without his intervention. If YOU want to believe that a lightning was sent by God, that's worth nothing to the truth. Even if God exists it doesn't mean that he sent the lightning.

Mo, here's the analogy I'm operating on: let's say I create a computer tennis program (can you tell I just got a wii?). When someone hits a ball in the program it can be totally explainable in terms of cause and effect within the program, right? But, at the same time, the program in its entirely isn't explainable except in light of it's creator. In a very real sense, I, the creator cause everything that happens within that program.

This is even a weak analogy because the Bible doesn't teach that God just created the program and walked away. It seems to teach that he is always currently sustaining the entire program with His own being in some way. So, we could all the more say that when certain things happen, though there may be naturalistic explanations within the system, they are also simultaneously brought about the Being that is "powering the system" all the time, so to speak.

Acts 17:28a
'For in him we live and move and have our being.'

Colossians 1:16-17
For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Opinion? Well, to some degree, but it seems to be what the bible teaches, so it's an argument based on the assumption that the bible is true.

Josh, aren’t you inflating the meaning of the word “miracle” a bit? If you want to define miracles by merely anything linked to God, then everything is a miracle and we need another word for the thing we mean when we speak of walking on the water or waking the dead. I would define miracles as specific interventions by God; incidents which are impossible to explain within the laws of nature or our experience. Everything that IS explainable with human logic, such as surviving an almost fatal accident, is to be factored off. Sure, such incidents COULD be miracles, but we can’t know this. That’s just guessing.

On a different note: I find your last explanation somewhat confusing. Haven’t you guys said in other threads that God isn’t responsible for suffering and evil? And now you’re emphasizing the point that I was trying to make earlier, that God is responsible for EVERYTHING existing, provided that he’s omni-everything. To use your own words: the creator caused everything that happened within his creation. Maybe you can explain to me how the creator can have caused everything and still not be responsible for what’s going wrong?
Correct me if I’m mistaken: If you link a lightning to “physical results tipped off by spiritual causes (at some point in the past)” this sounds a lot like determinism to me. A chain auf cause and effect. I wonder how you’re gonna explain that free will can exist within determinism. I read the article you provided but it was hardly more than a lot of begging the question mixed with arbitrary opinion. It couldn’t dissolve the paradoxon at all.

Here are just a couple of quotes to substantiate my point:

“But our free will follows from the divine love. To love someone is to make them free. To enslave them is always a defect of love.“

Opinion

“Now since divine love is God's very essence…”

Begging the question (thanks Chris )


“…therefore if one of these two truths had to come first—in the sense of being more primordial and non-negotiable than the other—it would have to be freedom.”

Opinion

“God loves me too much to allow that. He would sooner compromise his power than my freedom.”

Begging the question

“Actually, he does neither.“

How does he know all these things? He must be a BILD-reporter*

“That means we are really free. We are free precisely because God is all-powerful.”

I want to repeat for the record that free will probably doesn’t exist anyway.


* BILD is a German yellow-press newspaper. They sell a lot of gossip, assumption and opinion as if it was fact.

[Josh]

Mo, I don't know how I overlooked responded to this eons ago...

I would define miracles as specific interventions by God; incidents which are impossible to explain within the laws of nature or our experience.

I would agree that your first phrase is a good definition for what we normally call miracles. In my above discussion about lightning I was just pointing out that because God can be linked ultimately to lightning, it does give even lightning somewhat of a miraculous nature (though in a different sense than a miracle like the resurrection).

I disagree with your second phrase, that miracles should be defined as incidents which are impossible to explain within the laws of nature, because we don't know all the laws of nature, and I believe that if we did then those 'incidents' wouldn't be impossible to explain. However, I agree that what we typically call miracles are impossible to explain within our experience.

Haven’t you guys said in other threads that God isn’t responsible for suffering and evil? And now you’re emphasizing the point that I was trying to make earlier, that God is responsible for EVERYTHING existing, provided that he’s omni-everything. To use your own words: the creator caused everything that happened within his creation. Maybe you can explain to me how the creator can have caused everything and still not be responsible for what’s going wrong?

I did explain it:

let's say I create a computer tennis program (can you tell I just got a wii?). When someone hits a ball in the program it can be totally explainable in terms of cause and effect within the program, right? But, at the same time, the program in its entirely isn't explainable except in light of it's creator. In a very real sense, I, the creator cause everything that happens within that program.

Can't you see that in one sense the programmer isn't responsible for the tennis ball being hit and in another very different sense he is?

The programmer didn't make the decision to hit the ball but he did make the decision to even make the hitting of the ball possible. Without the programmer, the ball would never have been hit, and in that sense and that sense only is the programmer responsible for the ball being hit.

Not sure what article you were referring to, but I suspect it was on another thread.