WEDNESDAY PONDERINGS – 4/15/20
Everything about Jesus was and is miracle: From His conception and birth to His death and resurrection. That God became human and dwelt among us is for life to be based on miracles. To quote Thomas Aquinas, “…miracles comprises those works wherein something is done by God, that nature can never do: for instance, that two bodies occupy the same place, that the sun recede or stand still, that the sea be divided and make way to passersby.”
Magic is fake and trick; it always has been. Magic is something humans do within the laws of nature to trick people into thinking the person has some great power and can “control” the supernatural. C. S. Lewis, in his book on miracles, said there are people who believe that all that exists is nature or the natural and that everything has a natural cause. If we don’t understand something it means that we haven’t discovered the natural cause yet.
The naturalists say there is no such thing as a miracle occurring: ‘nothing can come into Nature from outside, because there is nothing outside to come in, Nature is everything that exists.
St. Thomas uses the idea of the eclipse of the sun for native people who can only explain it by miracle, but that educated people understand it by astronomy—a natural cause. Certainly in the past many things were thought miracle when there were perfectly good natural reasons for them.
However, when it comes to Jesus natural causes do not apply. It takes a different kind of knowledge to understand Him. Lewis called it “super-natural”, or, the existence of causes beyond the natural causes of this earth. Lewis called it, Divine Reason, or, simply, God. Miracles cannot happen for naturalists; miracles happen all the time for supernaturalists.
Who are we to put limits on what can happen and what cannot happen, when we, in reality, know so little about the world. Michael Duff, a physicist at the University of Michigan states: ‘science is not a collection of rigid dogmas, and what we call scientific truth is constantly being revised, challenged, and refined’. For those who do not believe that nature is everything, there is a means of ‘knowing’—a type of knowledge—that is not part of nature and is prior to nature. God!
Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and His birth was miracle. His life was one of the God-man, where God existed as a human and lived with us (God with us). His life was full of miracles everywhere He went. He healed people, He did miracles of nature, He even raised the dead (Lazarus after 4 days). He fed over 5000 people with a few fish and loaves of bread. He cured the blind, the lame, the lepers and everyone He met in need. He walked on water.
But the one and only miracle that tops all others is the resurrection—even more than creation or the virgin birth. In Jesus’ Resurrection heaven began. Life in the age to come has started. And if anyone is in Christ, the New Creation has come the old is gone the new has come (see 2 Cor 5:17).
Life past this world, life after death, eternal life, heaven, life with God, or whatever you call it, has already begun when one has been resurrection—Jesus Christ our Lord.
So there are ways of knowing past the objective and scientific way. If you are stuck with only the naturalist view of reality then you are a very limited and closed minded person. We live under the miracles of Jesus and by the miracles of Jesus. Any open mined person must allow for the possibility of miracles and for miracle man, the God and lived among us.
“The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him” (Colossians 1:15-19).
Jim
