Does God still perform miracles today?
Dr Gary Burnett offers this review of Craig Keener'southward recent volume, Miracles Today: The Supernatural Work of God in the Mod World, Baker, 2021.
Craig Keener is a significant and hugely respected New Testament scholar. If this book had been written by almost anyone else, I confess, I'm not sure what I would have fabricated of information technology, containing equally it does account later on middle-watering account of healings and other miracles, including raisings of the dead. And I say that as someone who was involved for many years in a charismatic church, and who believes in a visible ministry of the Holy Spirit, in divine healing, speaking in tongues and so on.
Only, over the years, personally, I've seen very niggling in the manner of dramatic healings and other miracles and so I suppose you become "squeezed into that same onetime mould" of thinking as everybody else does, that in our modern, scientific world that sort of stuff doesn't really happen, or, perhaps, might do rarely. Although I've said I believe in miracles, I oasis't really expected to see annihilation of the sort. And then, of course, many of us have seen the preachers who lay hands on people and push them over and things like the apparent lengthening of legs, and known heart-breaking stories of people assertive for a miracle and and then existence terribly disappointed to the detriment of their faith.
Then I came to the book intrigued that such a volume might be written by someone like Craig Keener, many of whose commentaries, books and journal papers I was very aware of. His monumental one,200-page Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, though, had somehow passed me by, so I came to Miracles Today fresh, with no knowledge of the author's previous work in this area.
The book begins, arrestingly, with an business relationship of the miraculous healing of Barbara Cummiskey, who suffered for many years with multiple sclerosis. She spent many of those years in hospital, suffering a diversity of dreadful infections, and became almost blind and unable to walk. Coming to what was assumed to be the last weeks of her life, her body was contracted in a permanent foetal position. 1 Sunday, every bit friends from her church were visiting, Barbara heard a vox telling her to get up and walk. And, that's what she did, something she'd been unable to exercise for years. She was all of a sudden no longer blind, her deformed easily and anxiety were working just fine and she no longer needed the oxygen she'd been dependent upon.
Keener has interviewed this woman and the doctors who treated her and has been able to verify this remarkable story. At this early bespeak I was hooked, I could feel myself get-go to become excited and faith starting time to stir.
The rest of the book consists largely of account after account of miraculous events, mostly healings from effectually the globe that have been shared with Keener by eyewitnesses. Many of these take been verified by medical professionals and Keener provides dates, names and circumstances for each business relationship, approaching the overall task with considerable academic rigour.
After that initial account, and before he begins the various chapters on dissimilar types of miracles, Keener helpfully discusses the question of what constitutes a miracle, why people assume that they do not happen and whether science could be said to disprove miracles. He spends a lilliputian time, showing, quite convincingly, the difficulties with David Hume'southward definition of a miracle equally a "violation of natural police," his view that miracles cannot occur, and his dismissal of eye-witness testimony. After a further discussion of the value of eye-witnesses, the occurrence of miracles in Christian history and in all sections of the church, Keener begins in hostage with his accounts of modern miracles.
He proceeds by grouping miracles into various chapters – and then you can read accounts of healings from virtual encephalon death, from cancer, and from blindness, and of resuscitation of the dead. In that location are scores of accounts, to the extent that, interesting as they are, information technology becomes a little difficult to read huge chunks of the book at once. But maybe that'southward a good thing. I institute, in reading the book over the space of a few weeks, that it was offset to have an result on me, chipping away at my…well, allow's exist blunt, unbelief. I found my religion strengthened and renewed, not simply at the idea that I might come across God work a miracle former soon (though I'1000 not now discounting that), but more that, if God really is at work all around the globe, breaking in and doing things nosotros telephone call miraculous, and so that means something for my prayer life, and it ways something for my expectations across this life.
So, if God is mending broken limbs and removing tumours, then I might await something to happen when I pray for this person or that situation. The book, so, has been an encouragement to pray more and to practice so expectantly. And, every bit Christians, we all believe in the resurrection and beingness present with the Lord after we die. Of course we do. And, equally St. John says, "blessed are they who have non seen and yet accept believed." Merely somehow, every bit I read Miracles Today, and I came face up-to-face with God existence very tangibly at work in today'due south globe, I found my sense of conviction in God's future for the world and for me heightened. That's non unimportant, the older y'all get.
Miracles as signs, and so. That'southward very much the style Keener sees them: "extraordinary signs…special acts of God that get attention and communicate something about him." In a earth where Keener recognizes that everybody dies and most people do not become miraculously cured from illness, he sees the miracles he has recounted as "already" signs of the kingdom which "nurture hope for its 'not even so' consummation."
The book, although largely recounting many attested miracle stories, is more that. Keener discusses a range of topics including why at that place are more miraculous events taking place in the developing world, what happens when healing doesn't happen, and God existence at piece of work in modern medicine. Forth the way, I was impressed by his own account of healing and healings within his family unit.
Since reading the book, I've had time to try and integrate it into my thinking and, I hope, to some degree, way of life. God is at work in all sorts of ways, in the mundane and the ordinary, in the trials and difficulties of life, often only through his presence or through the support of others. Sickness and suffering are the lot of all of us at some fourth dimension or another, and sadly, are what makes upwardly daily life for huge numbers of people in the world, including Christians, many of whom are suffering terrible persecution.
And yet – Keener'southward phenomenon accounts are a much-needed reminder of God's presence in the earth and they are a spur to religion. They help usa accept our eyes off the trials and the mundane and the ordinary and encourage united states that God is, indeed, at piece of work in the globe. And, if we take the faith to encounter information technology, in our ain lives.
Dr Gary W Burnett taught New Attestation for many years in the Institute of Theology at Queen'due south University Belfast and is the author of a number of books, including the recently published Paul Distilled.
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