If you are a Christian like me, chances are that your take on the idea of “miracles” is similar to mine. Intellectually, you believe that Jesus really did heal the sick and raise the dead and was resurrected himself. Intellectually, you believe that (at least in general terms) that miracles and healings still happen today. But whenever you come across a claim of miraculous healing with an actual name, an actual time and place, attached to it, you immediately (although you might not openly admit it) become just a bit skeptical. Perhaps you’ve seen just one too many TV “miracle workers” who have proven to be charlatans. In any case, when it gets right down two it, you have sort of a split-personality when it comes to the topic of miracles. Intellectually, in general terms, you believe miracles occur, but practically speaking, when it comes to specific claims, you tend to be skeptical.
That really shouldn’t be too surprising, given the fact that most of us have grown up in a modern Western society and culture that was birthed out of the Enlightenment. Whether we like to admit it or not, many Christians in the West are effectively atheistic and secular when it comes to the topic of the supernatural actually at work in the world. We intellectually believe it happens, but was that guy really miraculously healed of cancer? Eh…maybe? Perhaps there is a natural explanation.
I’ll be honest, when it comes right down to it, that is what I find myself thinking most of the time. I even grew up in an Assemblies of God church, where, fairly regularly during the worship service, someone would speak in tongues and someone else would give an interpretation. I personally know many people who have experienced speaking in tongues, but it has never happened to me. Intellectually, I believe the Holy Spirit really does move people to speak in tongues, I also know full well that sometimes people fake it and am sometimes skeptical. In any case, it is something I’ve never personally experienced, so I’m a bit “on the outside” looking in.
A little over ten years ago, I read Craig Keener’s massive two-volume work entitled Miracles and came away with a lot to process. This past month, I’ve read his most recent, much more “user-friendly” book entitled Miracles Today: The Supernatural Work of God in the Modern World, and once again, it was quite a lot to process. Hence, the reason for this blog post. I want to give a brief overview and review of the book and, along with that overview, give some further thoughts and reflections about the topic of miracles in the modern world. Enjoy…
Let’s Start with a Criticism…sort of…
The title of Keener’s book pretty much gives it away as to what the book is about. Probably 80% of the book consists of stories of, you guessed it, miracles, particularly accounts of a wide range of miraculous healings in our modern world. What kind of healings, you ask? Well, healings from cancer, dwarfism, liver disease, paralysis, virtual brain death, brain tumors, lymphoma, blindness, deafness…the list can go on. Granted, as Keener himself admits, there are a few accounts that aren’t as strong as the others, but a whole lot of the accounts are verified by doctors who have admitted and testified (in their own words) that what they witnessed was miraculous.
And, as strange as it may sound, this leads me to the one “sort of criticism” of Keener’s book. Since every chapter is loaded with story after story of miraculous healings, halfway through the book reading about these healings almost gets a little old! Imagine a favorite song of yours. Then imagine you play that song over and over again for three days straight—chances are, even though you love that song, it’s going to get a bit repetitive!
An Example of Miraculous Healing
On the flip side, the fact that Keener documents so many accounts, it should get you to realize (even if you’re a hardened Western-Enlightenment skeptic!) that this is a big world, and that perhaps God really is at work in the healing business outside of our respective Western bubbles. But even with that, the healings Keener documents don’t just happen in third world countries (skeptics usually dismiss healing claims by saying they all come from primitive countries beholden to superstition, without advanced medicine). Keener documents countless accounts of healings that happen in the medically advanced Western world, under the supervision of medical experts and doctors.
In fact, Keener begins his book with the story of Barbara Cummiskey, who as a teenager was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and who, from the age 15 to 31, spent 75% of her life in the hospital. She suffered from chronic pulmonary disease, had frequent infections and pneumonia, and many of her organs just didn’t work, to where she had to be hooked up to various machines. She was described by one of her doctors as “one of the most hopelessly ill patients” he had ever seen. Long story short, on Pentecost Sunday, June 7, 1981, while some friends who had come to visit her after her church’s worship service were reading to her some cards and letters people had sent to her, she heard a voice say, “My child, get up and walk!” And she did—it was an instantaneous healing, and even though she hadn’t used her muscles for years, they were not even atrophied. Keener says that when he interviewed her in 2015, she had been fully healed and had led a normal life for the past 35 years.
The book is full of stories like this. Some just as, if not more so, amazing, and some perhaps not as quite as dramatic. In fact, at one point in the book, I was surprised to find a small account about what happened at Calvary Temple, the Assemblies of God church in Naperville, Illinois that was started by Bob and Karen Schmidgall in 1968. I was surprised because that was the church my family attended during my childhood in the 70s-80s. The Schmidgall’s children were in the same youth group as me. Now, this miracle wasn’t as dramatic as Barabara Cummiskey, but it certainly was interesting. Simply put, it involved a miraculous feeding. They invited members of the community to a church potluck, but everyone except Karen Schmidgall forgot to bring food. Keener doesn’t say how many people showed up, but he does report that Karen Schmidgall’s dinner that was enough for only six people ended up being enough for everyone, even with having some food left over.
Like I said, the book is filled with stories like these—amazing to read in short snippets, but admittedly a bit redundant when you read the book in bigger chunks. Oh the irony—“All these accounts of miraculous healings…they are getting so common place! Ho hum!”
A Critique of David Hume and Western Skepticism
Before he gets to the accounts of healing, Keener begins his book with a critique of David Hume and modern, Western Enlightenment skepticism. Keener points out that it was David Hume who first defined miracles as violations of natural law, and that since he was coming at things from a more deistic perspective that said the universe works according to natural laws, then miracles are (according to his definition) impossible, because that would be a violation of natural law…and that doesn’t happen. Simply put, Hume conveniently defined the very acknowledgement of miracles out of existence.
The problem with that, as Keener points out, is that have been scientists and doctors throughout Western history—Isaac Newton, Blaise Pascal, Francis Bacon, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Faraday (just to name a few!)—who all acknowledged the reality of miracles. There were two further differences between them and Hume: (1) They were actual scientists (Hume was a philosopher) and were thus actual experts in the natural sciences (while Hume was not), and (2) They didn’t accept Hume’s faulty definition of miracles being violations of natural law.
As Keener points out, they (as countless medical experts and doctors since) knew full well that things happen in the natural world that defy what we erroneously call “natural laws”—as if the observable, repeatable workings of nature are actual laws that nature “obeys.” What we call “natural laws” are just that—the observable, repeatable workings of nature. But to say (as Hume did) that nature can only and ever work in those observable, repeatable ways is to say something downright nonsensical, for as the book (and countless scientists, doctors…and heck, everyday people) testifies to, there is a whole lot that happens in the natural world that doesn’t work according to those observable, repeatable ways.
Keener further points out that even in the Bible, the word often translated as “miracle” really means “act of power.” Thus, given our modern (Hume-influenced) assumptions that “miracles” are “violations of natural laws,” perhaps the word “miracle” isn’t a good one to use. What the Bible testifies to are special acts of God that are seen as signs of the inbreaking of God’s kingdom and rule. And in a nutshell, that really is what Keener’s book is about. The “miraculous” healings he describes in the book are just that—signs of God’s power. They are physical signs that testify that there is more to reality that just the natural world, and that in Christ, the great physician, God is in the business of bringing healing to His creation.
Now obviously, there are a host of issues and questions that come along with all that, and Keener touches upon them in his book. But the basic point of his book is simple: Yes, miraculous healings occur; yes, many are acknowledged by medical experts and scientists; and yes, they bear witness to God’s healing power in Christ.
Final Thoughts and Reflections
I want to end this short book review with a few reflections on the topic of miracles. I don’t know about you, but whenever I read accounts of healings and miracles, part of me think, “Man, I wish I could experience or witness something like that!” On second thought, though, I realized as I read the book that all these accounts of miracles pretty much were preceded by horrible and painful tragedies. Upon reflection, I’m actually okay not having experienced or witnessed healings or miracles like the ones in the book. Maybe it sounds weak, but don’t think I’m strong enough to go through some of the things many people in the book had to go through.
Secondly, as I read the book, I continually was reflecting on the mentality I’ve always had regarding miracles—the mentality I spoke of at the beginning of this post. Intellectually, I believe that they happen, and that God still heals today, but inside, there is that Western Enlightenment Humean skeptic that borders on cynicism at times. After reading the book, I find myself looking at my own upbringing in modern Western culture and thinking that, despite all the wonderful technological advances we are blessed with, despite all the learning, culture, and science we enjoy, maybe the flip side to all of that is that we are unknowingly imprisoned in cages of skepticism and cynicism that neuter our belief and faith in God and what God can do. Sometimes in the New Testament, we are told that Jesus can’t do his “deeds of power” in some towns because the people their didn’t have faith. Instead of misconstruing that to mean something along the lines that a lot of “health and wealth preachers” spew—that whole “name it and claim it” nonsense—maybe we should understand it as saying because some people put too much faith in themselves and in their own abilities, that, in their pride, they refuse to invite God into the room, for doing so would be an admission of their own smallness and limitations.
And that is why so many miracles happen among the poor, lowly, and needy. They are under no illusions of their own greatness, and they are able to accept that God truly is much greater and more powerful than them. Christ, after all, is among the humble, and his power will be found only when learn to peel our eyes away from our iphones and Tik Tok videos that imprison us in a false sense of illusionary greatness. Miracles don’t happen in unreal technological constructs. They happen in the real world, in valleys of dry bones.
Thank you Joel! I was keenly curious/interested in the miraculous and healings before our daughter got leukemia, perhaps because my mom has always been chronically ill or because my dad died suddenly at a younger age, but also because either it’s true or not true that God still does miraculous healings, and if it’s true (which I always believed) than I want to understand more. Then our daughter Thea got sick and we believed for her healing, I always had a deep sense that medicine wouldn’t do the trick. And I expected our lowly needy faith would bring that healing. It is hard to sit with the reality that it didn’t; to have watched her suffer unto death, yet still believe that God heals and does all of the miraculous things you describe. I believe it all the more, the more I read voices that I trust. There are two things that give me peace in the lack understanding: that God scooped Thea up into an even deeper healing, and that I/we will see her again and it will be good. I applaud and thank you for digging into a topic that is not easy speak to or understand in our polarised North American Christian faith community. I hate to see those that misrepresent God’s power and healing and the miraculous be the main ones representing it. Thank you for this post. Love from B.C.
One of the things I sometimes think about (and it came up while I read this book) is about those times when healing doesn’t occur–which Keener openly says seems to be most of the time. When I was in grade school, a family in our church had a toddler who came down with leukemia. Everyone in the church continually prayed for her healing, but eventually she died. The strange thing (i.e. supernatural thing) that happened, though, was what happened at the moment she died. I don’t remember what the actual time was (let’s say 12:30 pm), but at that very time Kimmy passed, there was a woman from the church who was at home who, out of nowhere got a vision of Kimmy in heaven, completely healed. This woman had no idea that Kimmy had died–but it was at the very moment she died that the woman had the vision.
The older I get, the more I realize two things: (1) That pain and suffering are a part of this life, and that everyone goes through their share of tribulations, and (2) There is a deeper reality that undergirds and intersects with our known natural world. Occasionally, whether it be in healings, or unexplainable visions, or just a variety of spiritual experiences people have, we are giving fleeting glimpses of that future restoration and new creation, here in the present.
Sounds like an interesting book. I have personally known two people that once spoke in tongues when part of a charismatic Christian group. One later became a member of the Church of Christ which didn’t believe speaking in tongues happened today. When I questioned that person about her previous experience, she said she now realized she was just going into a state of euphoria and was basically jabbering. The second person later became an atheist. He too said the same thing of his previous experience. Concerning miraculous healings, the more I delve into the inner workings of the Universe, which involves quantum theory and such, the more it seems to be that there are many things about the natural world we still don’t understand. Many of these miracles we hear of could just be the Universe doing more improbable, yet possible, things according to natural law. This seems a better answer than that God plays favorites.
Well, one of the striking things in the book is how the healings he described happened immediately after, or during, prayers for that person in Jesus’ name. It’s worth a read. But I don’t see how one can read some of these accounts and conclude that it is just the natural universe doing random, improbable things. Also, I’m not sure describing healings as “God playing favorites” really is an adequate way to describe them.
Thank you for pointing this book out and reviewing it. I have the two-volume set but haven’t tackled it yet. This new work seems more tractable.
Your point about the Bible just saying “act of power” is helpful. Such acts are also associated with the word “sign”, as if the important thing is to point elsewhere, such as to the kingdom of God, God Himself, or the gospel message. In that sense, I once looked at every miracle in Acts, and noted that the vast majority are associated with people coming to believe. Similarly, Jesus performed healings when asked by John’s disciples if He was the Messiah — the acts pointed to the answer.
Could it be that such pointers are culturally dependent? So that, in an enchanted culture such as the first century, people would notice the miracle but still be able to look beyond it to the related message. But today, many miracles would be so notable that in some situations people wouldn’t be able to get past them. Perhaps a result of Hume’s definition. At any rate, maybe there are different things that God would use as pointers today.
What frustrates me about Keener’s book is that he NEVER gives you enough details to rule out conventional explanations. It’s a massive waste of paper.
Jim made a good point above.
Does a “miracle” or an “act of power,” always have to be something extraordinary like a healing or resurrection? Or are there many more smaller, “mundane” miracles which we miss because we’ve been conditioned to expect something big?
Certainly with charisms or spiritual gifts, I think many people’s default position is gifts like speaking in tongues or miraculous healings, when in Ephesians 4 Paul lists other, more “mundane” giftings, such as the gift to be apostles, shepherds, evangelists and teachers, the gift of building people up and equipping people for ministry, etc.. And yet even the “miraculous” giftings such as tongue-speaking or prophecy Paul insists in I Co. 14 are designed for the edification of the church as a whole, not one’s own private edification.
Maybe miracles work in a similar way as spiritual gifts?
Pax.
Lee.
At 6 years of age I had an illness resulting in being hospitalised for 9 months, and not expected to live. I permanently lost all body hair, I lost my finger nails and teeth which came back. I also learned that this illness can return in the early 20’s and be terminal. After much prayer and many years of struggling, in my later 20’s and beyond it became a normal part of me. I used to think about God giving us the desires of our heart as we delight ourselves in the Lord (Ps 37:4). One day I became aware that I didn’t need hair and had stopped praying for healing (physical and emotional).
I eventually became a psychologist, initially working mainly with young people, and then mainly adults (I’m retired now). Sometimes, when sessions came to an end I would inquire as to what helped the most in their sessions. The most common answer was my compassion and my confidence that our working together could make a difference in their lives (and that gave me so much joy). God’s empowerment (strength) is made perfect in our weakness. He didn’t heal me hair physically but helped me respond to my life experiences in ways that brought inner healing, blessings to others, and glory to our God. I believe God does intervene supernaturally (like unexplained physical healing) to fulfil His purposes, and my experience was my miracle.
How I wish there were more testimonies of what can happen in our lives when our prayers go unanswered the way we want yet we are drawn even closer to God and His love in it.