Miracles

This note on the interpretation of some Danish Romanesque frescoes was originally without an English summary. Because the text may contain some information of wider interest I have supplied an extensive summary with some additional comments, which was not in the Danish text concerning the Winchester College MS with the collection of Thomas Becket miracles from the 1170s by William of Canterbury, later Archbishop of Canterbury.

For my talks and debates on the resurrection of Jesus and other topics, see my youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK7fMevhmEe8hR_S0aTsV1Q

"One of the best Analytic Philosophy ebooks of all time" - BookAuthority .
‘By the end of Andrew Loke’s excellent book, he concludes that the most rational viewpoint is that the original percipients saw Jesus himself…. Loke is to be commended for an accessible and systematic approach to the resurrection of Jesus that helps the reader understand the full range of available options in considering the epistemic warrants for believing in the foundational claim of the Christian faith.’ –The Journal of Theological Studies (Oxford University Press)

This book provides an original and comprehensive assessment of the hypotheses concerning the origin of resurrection Christology. It fills a gap in the literature by addressing these issues using a transdisciplinary approach involving historical-critical study of the New Testament, theology, analytic philosophy, psychology and comparative religion. Using a novel analytic framework, this book demonstrates that a logically exhaustive list of hypotheses concerning the claims of Jesus’ post-mortem appearances and the outcome of Jesus’ body can be formulated. It addresses these hypotheses in detail, including sophisticated combinations of hallucination hypothesis with cognitive dissonance; memory distortion; and confirmation bias. Addressing writings from both within and outside of Christianity, it also demonstrates how a comparative religion approach might further illuminate the origins of Christianity. This is a thorough study of arguably the key event in the formation of the Christian faith, and the basis of the Christian hope of eternal life.

India through the decades has witnessed the prevalence of godmen. Often, these godmen who act as magicians, miracle-workers, healers, priests, mystics and masters of all spiritual energies, mislead public especially, the urban and educated and amass illegal wealth. The enormous human appetite for miracles is unrelenting. We want miracles to happen to us, particularly, when we are surrounded with insurmountable odds resulting in hopelessness and despair. A persisting problem, lack of awareness, financial, physical or social constraints, a failed support system and an environment fed on blind faith leads us to an address which offers hope, instant gratification and a promise to a miracle. Corruption and favouritism in India have shattered a common man’s belief in talent and merit, pushing him to surrender to the concept of luck and believing in miracles. Hence, there is need to create awareness among the urban people regarding Godmen. The objective of the study was to explore the impact of Godmen on the lives of urban society people. The hypothesis framed for the study was ‘There will be no impact of Godmen on the lives of urban society people.’ Primary data was collected with the help of self-constructed questionnaire which consisted of 17 questions. The sample comprised of 100 people living in Chandigarh. The data was analyzed and interpreted with the help of question-wise tabular representation. The study found that in the urban society, some people believe in Godmen or are influenced by them. Finally, paper would provide succinct suggestions for creating awareness among the people.

Depictions of the fantastic in modern literature established the fear oft he supernatural. Premodern literary texts lack such targeted evocations of horror. To find them, one must turn instead to Christian exempla, which seek to frighten readers in teaching them a lesson. Imaginations of Fear discusses the hitherto unappreciated significance of the “merveilleux chrétien” for the fantastic genre from its beginnings through the 20th century.

Die Phantastik etablierte die Angst vor dem Übernatürlichen in der Literatur. In vormodernen literarischen Texten sucht man hingegen vergeblich nach dem gezielt evozierten Horror. Er findet sich stattdessen in christlichen Exempla: Sie evozieren den Schrecken aus didaktischen Gründen. Von diesem Befund ausgehend, wird die in der Forschung konsequent negierte Bedeutung des christlichen Wunderbaren für die Phantastik bis ins 20. Jh. erörtert.

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In this paper we explicate the notion of a miracle and highlight a suitable ontological framework for it. Our proposal draws on insights from Aquinas’s discussion of miracles and from the modern ontology of powers. We argue that each substance possesses a characteristic set of natural powers and dispositions which are operative or become manifest in the right circumstances. In a miracle divine intervention activates the fundamental disposition inherent in each creature to be responsive to God’s call. Thus, a miracle brings something about which a substance’s set of natural powers and dispositions could not bring about by itself.

Jesus’ teachings in the Gospel of Mark provide the marching orders for holistic ministry, i.e., discipling people to faith in Jesus Christ, and demonstrating our own faith through our actions and service among the needy. The purpose of this article is to establish that the transformational experience of salvation, the ethical actions of social concern, and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, as they are seen primarily in the Gospel of Mark, are inextricably linked together in any expression of holistic ministry.

Archbishop William of Tyre’s (c.  1130–c. 1186) Historia Ierosolymitana is the only extant historical narrative produced in the Latin East in the late twelfth century. Consequently, the Historia is of enormous value for its insights into the polities of the Latin East, and as an example of how the First Crusade was remembered and represented in the second half of the twelfth century. Since the nineteenth century, scholars have reflected on the apparent absence of the miraculous in William’s narrative of the First Crusade, attributing this to an unusual lack of credulity on William’s part and seeing it as evidence of a sceptical mind before its time. However, this article argues that William’s ostensibly critical approach to the miraculous is in fact indicative of two things. First, this article argues that William was carefully constructing an image of himself, through the narrator, as a reliable curator of anecdotal evidence, the consequence being that his intended audience would be more likely to believe the miraculous material he did include. Second, it is argued that this strategy was important given William’s refocusing of the miraculous on the crusader conquest of Jerusalem in July 1099, in order that he might emphasise the divine significance of the events that led to the foundation of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, the place of his birth and the central subject of his Historia.

Hume famously argues that the laws of nature provide us with decisive reason to believe that any testimony of a miracle is false. In this paper, I argue that the laws of nature, as such, give us no reason at all to believe that the testimony of a miracle is false. I first argue that Hume’s proof is unsuccessful if we assume the Humean view of laws, and then I argue that Hume’s proof is unsuccessful even if we assume the governing view of laws. I conclude that regardless of which kind of view we adopt, the fact that a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature does not give us any reason to believe it did not happen.

This article is not so much interested in historical events and the validity of natural laws beyond the text. However, the form and strategy of the text itself is taken seriously and highlighted through the application of narratival and hermeneutical methods. My thesis is: the problem of the nature miracle stories cannot and should not be ‘solved’, because it is a constitutive dimension of this kind of text. Miracle stories are constructed upon a challenge, a tension, or even a paradoxon. They recount an event as having taken place in the past – in other words, they refer to and count on history – while breaking through the known, normal reality. In terms of narratology we can describe this tension as one between the factual narrative and the fictive content. In other words, the miracle stories belong to the “historiography genre” and to the “fantasy genre” at the same time.  The nature miracle stories are told precisely to evoke and provoke this tension. This tension is not only noted by the modern reader, but was already present for the ancient reader (e.g. against the background of debates on historiography) and can even be described on the textual level, namely by a character´s speech in the narrated world (e.g. “We have seen paradoxa today,” Luke 5:26).

In this paper, I focus on the narrative of the signs-and-miracles sequence presented in Centos chapters 23-34.  As I earlier showed how the pre-Easter proclamation of the Logos and the post-Easter proclamation of the Son of God interact with the Homeric subtext to structure the entire poem, the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how the sign-and-miracle stories interact with both the Homeric and Scriptural subtexts to encapsulate the entirety of kerygmatic Centos history in twelve brief chapters.

This article analyzes the elements of the personal sensibility and miraculous religiosity of two twentieth-century Polish visionaries, Servant of God Rozalia Celakówna and Sr. Wanda Boniszewska. The analysis is broken down into three sections. The first section elaborates on the concept of miraculous religiosity, which Polish sociologists and ethnologists of religion define as openness to any kind of miraculous occurrence. The second section provides brief biographies of Rozalia Celakówna (1901-1944) and Sr. Wanda Boniszewska (1907-2003). The third section describes the miraculous events (revelations, stigmata, proven prophecies) that occurred in the lives of both visionaries. The conclusion demonstrates how both visionaries manifested elements of miraculous sensibility; however, because both women avoided spectacular miracles and focused on their relationship with Christ (and not Mary), they definitely surpassed the scope of this research.

El relato de las Bodas de Caná del Evangelio de San Juan narra cómo Jesús convirtió en vino de gran calidad el agua que se guardaba en tinajas destinadas a las purificaciones durante una boda. Este episodio, considerado el primero de los signos realizados por Jesús, se enmarca dentro de una larga tradición de prodigios de la Antigüedad en los que interviene el vino. En el presente estudio me centraré en los motivos en los que coincide la narración evangélica con varios relatos que vinculan el origen del vino con Dioniso y determinados prodigios con fiestas dionisíacas.

Legenda Vetus, Acta Processus Canonizationis et Miracula Sanctae Margaritae de Hungaria. The Oldest Legend, Acts of the Canonization Process and Miracles of Saint Margaret of Hungary. Ed. and annotated by Ildikó Csepregi, Gábor Klaniczay and Bence Péterfi, translated by Ildikó Csepregi, Clifford Flanigan and Louis Perraud. Central European Medieval Texts Series, vol. 8, Budapest: CEU Press, 2017. pp. 885.

This volume contains the most important hagiographical corpus of medieval Hungarian history: that of Saint Margaret (1242–1270), daughter of King Béla IV, who lived her life as a Dominican nun. Besides publishing the Latin text and the English translation of her oldest legend and the acts of her canonization investigation in 1276, on the basis of existing source editions, we have also added here a series of recently discovered documents on her fifteenth-century miracles, edited here for the first time.

This essay engages the history and aesthetics of slow, contemplative cinema, while drawing on the film-philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. In particular, this essay examines the expressive motif of the "miracle" in two examples of contemplative cinema, Dreyer's Ordet and Reygadas's Silent Light.

slow cinema, slowness, reflexivity, Reygadas, Dreyer, Gilles Deleuze

This article, originally published years ago in the Laughing Man, a journal of contemporary spirituality, examines accounts of the extraordinary manners of death attributed to mystics, saints and sages of numerous spiritual traditions, including Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism.

IT'S RAINING IN THE AMAZON HEAVY FOR DAYS, IN AREAS WHERE THERE HAS BEEN NO RAIN FOR 3 YEARS!!!!  AND THIS IS THE AMAZON DRY SEASON WHEN IT NEVER RAINS, UNTIL NOW!!!

DITTO SIBERIA, THE CONGO AND AUSTRALIA!!!!  MILLIONS OF TONS OF WATER. FOR ABOUT A MONTH SINCE WE SENT EUPHORIA TO THE AREAS  -  EUPHORIA WILL ALWAYS WIN.

In Mark chapter 5 we read the unusual story of an exorcism by Jesus. In every exorcism Jesus had done he had simply exorcised the demons out of someone. There was never a case of the demon being exorcised out of someone and into something else. But in this narrative the demons ask Jesus to be sent to the pigs and Jesus does exactly as they requested. The immediate result is that the pigs die and the final result is that Jesus is asked to leave that area. This is striking because the demons actually asked Jesus not to be sent out of the country (5.10). But now he is forced to leave the country. At surface level it appears that the demons actually managed to drive Jesus out of Gerasenes and stop him from ministering to the people in that area-thereby keeping the area in their control spiritually. This article takes a narrative approach to this story as explained in the gospel of Mark and argues that although it appears like a temporary defeat eventually Jesus succeeds and is able to minister to the people in that region.

I miracoli arrivano all'improvviso, come un fulmine a ciel sereno. La liquefazione del sangue di san Gennaro si ripete invece da secoli in occorrenze precise. «Nessuna legge naturale è in grado di spiegare un fenomeno che si verifichi soltanto in date liturgicamente significative» è stato detto. Eppure de Ceglia dimostra che nel Medioevo il sangue di san Gennaro era inteso come una sostanza semplicemente instabile e ricostruisce le vicende che hanno conferito alle sue liquefazioni l'euritmia che le rende cosí celebri. «I capricci non piacciono a nessuno. Davanti a comportamenti refrattari a ogni norma, all'inizio l'entusiasmo è incontenibile, poi i fedeli si stancano di un oggetto che, senza una chiara ragione, ora è in un modo ora in un altro, cosí lo abbandonano smorzandone gli slanci vitali. Ecco perché quel sangue non avrebbe potuto godere a lungo della libertà di gorgogliare come e quando desiderasse, trovandosi invece nella condizione di dover acquisire una forma: un modo di manifestarsi, cioè, cosí peculiare da renderlo unico nell'orbe cristiano».

La liquefazione periodica del sangue di san Gennaro non è ufficialmente riconosciuta come miracolosa dalla Chiesa cattolica, che piú cautamente ora parla di prodigio. Ma il fenomeno è stato per secoli chiamato miracolo in testi liturgici approvati dall'autorità ecclesiastica e in discorsi di vescovi, cardinali, papi e santi. L'Inquisizione ha inoltre sottoposto a formali processi coloro che lo hanno attribuito a cause naturali. La questione del riconoscimento ufficiale, se ha un senso per gli ultimi cinquant'anni, ne ha dunque tanto meno quanto piú ci si spinga indietro nel tempo. Perché quel mutare in determinate circostanze fu di fatto considerato un miracolo ed è questo ciò che interessa allo storico. Come si può però far storia naturale di qualcosa che per definizione supera l'ordine del creato? La ricostruzione che qui si abbozza non si interroga sul miracolo in sé, bensí sulla cultura che lo ha identificato come tale. Obiettivo di questo lavoro è infatti ripercorrere in chiave antropologica gli sforzi compiuti da uomini e donne del passato per concettualizzare un fenomeno complesso e sfuggevole. Il miracolo di san Gennaro assurge cosí a punto di osservazione privilegiato da cui ripercorrere non solo la storia di Napoli, ma anche e soprattutto l'evoluzione della mentalità di chi, persino in terre assai lontane, con quell'appuntamento periodico si è nel tempo confrontato. E consente di delineare una storia della meraviglia e della sua funzione conoscitiva. Un racconto di cuori che battono all'impazzata, di mani che pregano e di gole riarse dalle incessanti giaculatorie. Ma anche di occhi che scrutano alla ricerca di un senso. O semplicemente di un perché.

There is a popular assumption in many Pentecostal circles that if something powerful happens in Jesus’ name—a healing, dramatic answered prayer, dream—conversion to Jesus will immediately follow. Signs and wonders are seen as the answer to the mission problem of a slow response to the gospel. My thesis in this essay is that among the great world religions with their vibrant folk religious practices “signs and wonders” acquire a much more ambiguous status. While works of power are necessary to bring people to faith in such environments, they are generally not sufficient in and of themselves to create a robust commitment to Jesus. I begin by defining “signs and wonders” and then offer a definition of the notion of “necessary but not sufficient” as it relates to encountering God’s power. In this section I narrate some of my experiences with people in the Thai setting where the manifestation of God’s power was not a fast track to conversion and which caused me to start investigating this subject. In the second part I theorize as to why works of power are not always sufficient to produce faith in the context of a world religion like Buddhism and then in the third section look at the biblical evidence for a mixed response to miracles. Finally, I examine some of the implications for ministry on the ground among people with worldviews where signs and wonders are not likely to lead to immediate allegiance to Jesus Christ.

Dit artikel verkent een specifiek soort moeiten met geloof in wonderen: argumenten en aarzelingen die te maken hebben met wetenschap en met een wetenschappelijk wereldbeeld. Daarmee bedoel ik een wereldbeeld dat geïnformeerd is door de natuurwetenschappen, in het bijzonder de fysica en de biologie, maar ook moderne ontwikkelingen in de geesteswetenschappen, zoals het ontstaan van de historisch-kritische methode in de exegese. Sinds de Verlichting heeft de ontmythologisering van de wereld langzaamaan gestalte gekregen in het dagelijks leven van veel mensen, in het Westen althans. Tegelijkertijd moeten we dit niet overdrijven: paradoxaal genoeg heeft de secularisatie juist ook allerhande wondergeloof, niet gedisciplineerd door enige traditie of liturgie, weelderig laten tieren.  In het publieke discours echter, zeker onder hoogopgeleiden, wordt met verwijzing naar wetenschap, geloof in wonderen vaak als problematisch ervaren. Wonderen zijn toch in strijd met de wetenschap? Waarom zou je in iets geloven dat we vroeg of laat helemaal wetenschappelijk kunnen verklaren? Opmerkelijk genoeg zijn dergelijke bezwaren in de literatuur veel minder goed uitgewerkt dan de meer filosofische bezwaren die we bij Hume en Spinoza aantreffen.  In dit artikel wordt een poging gedaan deze bezwaren toch serieus te nemen en te bezien wat ze betekenen voor geloof in wonderen.

Static levitation is a form of marvel with metaphysical implications whose long history has not previously been charted. First, Pliny the Elder reports an architect's plan to suspend an iron statue using magnetism, and the later compiler Ampelius mentions a similar-sounding wonder in Syria. When the Serapeum at Alexandria was destroyed, and for many centuries afterwards, chroniclers wrote that an iron Helios had hung magnetically inside. In the Middle Ages, reports of such false miracles multiplied, appearing in Muslim accounts of Christian and Hindu idolatry, as well as Christian descriptions of the tomb of Muhammad. A Christian levitation miracle involving saints' relics also emerged. Yet magnetic suspension could be represented as miraculous in itself, representing lost higher knowledge, as in the latest and easternmost tradition concerning Konark's ruined temple. The levitating monument, first found in classical antiquity, has undergone many cultural and epistemological changes in its long and varied history.

How do the miracle stories in the Synoptic Gospels contribute to our understanding of Jesus and his ministry? 
Since the first witnessing of them and through the thousands of years that followed, throughout the world, the miracles of Jesus have become a major point of discussion.  Using the synoptic gospels as the key text and by referring to the works of scholars such as Alexander Balmain Bruce, James Kallas and others, this essay seeks to contribute to our understanding of Jesus and his ministry, with the intent of drawing out their significance.

A few weeks ago I was approached by one of my students who was attempting to write a short letter regarding the history of Nicholas (Nikolaos) of Myra, a bishop of the early Christian Church. After helping her analyze some of the more credible evidence of his life and works I thought it would be worthwhile write a short post regarding the topic.

У раду ће бити анализирани подаци које пружају житија о чудесним излечењима на гробовима српских светитеља током средњег века. Описи исцељења које дају поменути извори омогућиће нам и да увидимо на који начин су се преплитали религија и медицина. Увидећемо уједно и које болести су сматране за најтеже у српској средњовековној средини.

در علم کلام، ذیل مبحث نبوت عامه، از معجزه به عنوان یکی از راه های تشخیص نبی راستین گفتگو می شود. ماهیت معجزه، تعریف منطقی آن و تفاوت گذاردن میان آن با سحر و شعبده و نیز نحوه دلالت معجزه بر صدق نبی، اهم موضوعاتی هستند که متکلمان سعی در تبیین آن ها دارند. در همه تبیین های گوناگونی که متکلمان فرق مختلف از معجزه ارائه داده¬اند، معجزه فعل مستقیم خداوند تصویر می شود که بر خلاف جریان عادی امور رخ می دهد. برخی فیلسوفان مسلمان همچون فارابی و ابن سینا در بحث از ویژگیهای نبی، توانایی انجام معجزه را همچون خصلت نبی تصویر کرده اند و بر این اساس معجزه را فعل مستقیم پیامبر دانسته اند. هر یک از تبیین های کلامی و فلسفی از معجزه از چهارچوبی تبعیت می کنند که متکلم و فیلسوف وقایع جهان را بر مبنای آن تفسیر می کنند. لذا از نظر عمده متکلمان که بر خلاف فیلسوفان علیّت را انکار می کردند و برای اشیاء طبیعتی قائل نبودند، وقوع معجزات امری ممکن تلقی می شد و در این تبیین خود را با هیچ دشواری مواجه نمی دیدند. اما فیلسوفان در تبیین امکان وقوع معجزات همواره با دشواری هایی مواجه بودند. فیلسوفی چون ابن رشد برای رهایی از تنگناهای فلسفی، موضوع معجزات را از حیطه مباحث فلسفی بیرون دانسته و مداخله فیلسوفان در آن را ناروا پنداشته است. به موازات این دو جریان، برخی متکلمان و فیلسوفان نیز به نقد نظریه معجزه روی آورده اند.
کلیدواژه ها: معجزه، کلام، فلسفه اسلامی، نظریه عادت، علیت

The eleven books of poetry by Venantius Fortunatus include well-loved hymns, figure poems, epigrams on miracles, and elegies in the voices of abandoned or exiled women. The sixth-century poet began his career in northern Italy before moving to Gaul, where he wrote for the remainder of his life—praising kings and elites of the Merovingian dynasty and describing the natural scenery and society of his adopted homeland during the transition from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages. In his lively and inventive style, Fortunatus also addressed verses to religious figures such as his patron Gregory of Tours and to holy women such as Radegund, founder of the Convent of the Holy Cross in Poitiers, and Agnes, the Convent’s first abbess.

Fortunatus’s imaginative metaphors and wry, self-mocking humor ensure his place in the canon of Christian Latin poets. This volume presents for the first time in English translation all of his poetry, apart from a single long saint’s life in verse.

The figure of Socrates features prominently in the works of earliest Christian authors and their attempts to negotiate a viable relation between pagan intellectual tradition and the exigencies of a newly founded religion. The analysis of all relevant ante-Nicene Greek and Latin texts shows that early Christian writers reconstruct "Socrates" with a striking degree of interpretative freedom. Although it is impossible to establish a unified perspective on Socrates in these texts – let alone a positive one, as many previous commentators thought –, the interpretations of the Athenian sage are not entirely haphazard. I argue that they are heavily constrained by apologetic aims of early Christian authors and closely connected to epistemic justification of faith by means of miracles, superior moral behaviour, divine inspiration and prophecy, and, finally, the emphasis that is placed on the limitations of human, all too human, wisdom.