Signs of the Times

[From "The Gospel Miracles," by David S. Cairns in The Contemporary Review, London, England]

The quaint phrase was used [by eighteenth century theologians] that God made "a sparing use of miracle," an expression which suggests that the eighteenth century divines thought of them as extreme remedies for desperate diseases, and quite unfitted for minor ailments. It is odd to trace in their writings, indeed, the influence of political ideas of the time. The outlook is that of Whig constitutionalists. When a deadlock happens the monarch may intervene, but all wise monarchs will make a sparing use of such intervention, and will only be really happy when they get back within the limits of the ordinary law once more. ...

It has been truly said that Jesus did not, as the traditional apologetic certainly makes him out to do, work his miracles to show that he could work them; any more than a poet writes poems to show that he can write them. If a poet does this, he shows himself by so much the less a poet. The great poet writes poetry because he cannot help it. So Jesus works miracles because he cannot help it. The love in him impels him to use the powers for human succor that are his by virtue of his unique faith in God and possession of His spirit. Further, to the prevailing mind of his Jewish contemporaries, the whole of the tragic element in human experience—disease, calamity, and premature death—was the reflex of a man's sin and separation from God. Whatever we may think of this view, there is no doubt that it was the current view of his time, and seen in that context, his great deeds of healing and protection of life and his own resurrection were inevitably taken as revelations of the love and the life that are in God and that God destines for His children. This is the secret of the extraordinary outburst of courage and joy that followed upon his resurrection: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." It is not only the power of sin that has been broken by his death; it is the power of death and tragedy that has been broken by his resurrection. The ideal meaning of the universe, the essential nature of God has been revealed. Thus to the apostles and first Christians, Jesus is "the Prince of Life." We have here, then, in the miracles of the gospels, something far richer than mere portents of power authenticating a divine mission. We have a revelation of God as He is, and of human life as it is meant to be, and of the great world of nature as meant to find its culmination in the final human victory over death. It is open to every one to decide for himself if this is or is not the theory of the gospels regarding the "miracles" of Jesus. If they do not mean this, it is difficult to know what they do mean. It seems clear also that the traditional theory is quite unscriptural at another point. The gospels do not represent the power to work miracles as inherent in Christ as the second person of the Trinity, but as the result of his being possessed by the divine Spirit. This is shown quite clearly by his expecting his disciples to effect achievements of faith in kind if not in degree like his own; and by Paul's descriptive ascription of the charismata to the possession by the Church of the indwelling Spirit of God. It follows from all this that the "miracles" were meant to be something far more than outworn credentials of our Lord's revelation. They are really parts of its substance. They are meant to be revelations of the love of God, and of the ideal destiny of man, of his coming sovereignty over the hampering bonds of materiality when the kingdom of God shall be perfected, and nature and history shall have finished their work and the divine purpose shall be fully disclosed.