The Scandal of the Miraculous: Against Tamed Versions of Christianity
A few years ago I was taking part in a discussion of C.S. Lewis’s classic work, Mere Christianity. The specific question that day was over the source of the Law of Human Nature, an internal moral legislator which, according to Lewis, we all find “pressing in on us.” As Lewis argues, there are really only two live options for explaining the existence of that Law within all of us which seems to compel certain virtuous behaviors and subsequently condemn us for moral failings. Either the Moral Law, like all else that exists, is “just there” as some evolutionary by-product, as the atheist might argue, or perhaps there is Something (Someone?) behind the Law that is more like a mind. Since blind chance and intentionality are mutually exclusive, either the materialist or the “religious” explanation of the Moral Law must be the better of the two.
In the midst of our discussion, one of the participants made a fascinating observation, noting (with first-hand knowledge) how there are basically two “acceptable” views within today’s university setting concerning the source of such things as the Moral Law. The first tolerable view is a robust atheism that flatly denies the existence of any being that cannot be explained using the same resources with which we investigate all other phenomena within the known universe – including, obviously, one that might serve as the “mind” behind the Moral Law. In other words, if such a being does not present itself to one or more of our five senses, it does not exist. The other acceptable view is a rather toothless theism, more practically akin to deism, which rather shyly admits the possibility of “Something” out there, but only because something other than the material universe is needed to help explain the reality of the Moral Law, or for that matter, the material universe itself. For such a sheepish theist, that “Something” out there is recognizably similar to what people have generally referred to as “God,” but is nevertheless too vague to specifically identify, except to say that “It” is not all that interested in “It’s” creation nor involved with mankind in any profound way.
One potential problem with this weak-kneed theology is with the very nature of the Moral Law, an ever-present reality that continually presses its “oughtness” on each and everyone of us. This tends to count against the idea of a God who is essentially uninterested in His creation. In other words, if there truly is a divine source behind the Law, it stands to reason that the unceasing activity of that Law upon the conscience more naturally points to a God that desires some direct and consistent involvement with those who have been subjected to that Law, and not a deistic God who wound up the world and went away on other business. The Moral Law, after all, is not like other natural laws (such as gravity, entropy, etc.) that serve as descriptions of the way things normally operate. In contrast, the Moral Law is a set of prescriptions for the way in which humans ought to behave (but frequently do not). It seems to follow, therefore, that the Moral Law’s continuous influence on human behavior and conscience points to a God who has not quietly withdrawn from this world out of indifference to His creation, but is Himself the Agent behind that ceaseless work of moral legislation.
There is, however, another serious problem – at least for Christians – with this academically-palatable theism that views God as a useful, even necessary, postulate but little else. To be sure, no less than atheism itself, such a bland view of God finds itself in direct conflict with the living God revealed in the pages of the Bible, a God who displays the distasteful little habit of frequently “invading” His creation, perhaps with a view toward reminding us that He is more than just the conclusion that follows from the premises of a syllogism. The fact of the Creator’s occasional and uninvited invasions into the world of His creatures is, to put it bluntly, the scandal of biblical Christianity. According to the Apostle’s Paul tightly-woven argument in 1 Cor 15:12-19, our faith is either solidly founded upon the miraculous bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ or it is palpable nonsense. There is no third option. If Christ is not raised, we believe and preach in utter vanity. Christianity stands or falls on the verifiability of miracles in general, and at least one grand miracle in specific. This bedrock of biblical faith is simply too disreputable a proposition for many who consider themselves one with the intellectually sophisticated.
This is not altogether surprising. Apart from grace, estranged and sinful man wants nothing to do with a holy God who, for His own part, simply will not leave us alone. As C.S. Lewis observed, while we wish for the comfort of a divine grandfather in the sky, because of the hardness of the Moral Law we cannot help but find God to be our greatest terror instead. What we really want is a God we can control or manipulate, not a God who has an ultimate claim upon our lives. The last thing we will countenance is an omnipotent God who “interferes” at His discretion with the ordinary course of nature, a terrifying consideration that introduces a unwanted element of unpredictability into the universal equation. And, of course, we care little for a morally-concerned God who bothers to visit His wayward creatures with “thou shalt nots” and other bothersome “restrictions.”
In the 1950s, German theologian Rudolf Bultmann became widely known for his modernism-driven program of “demythologizing” the Bible. What Bultmann attempted to do was to “rescue” the bare kernel of truth in the gospel by stripping it of the allegedly mythological “trappings” of a first-century cosmology that sophisticated twentieth-century man could no longer embrace. Today, even though we have “advanced” to post-modern thinking, and are therefore a little less averse to a generic idea of the supernatural, we continue to stiffen our necks at any hint of exclusivity when considering such a reality. We protest in rising crescendo at the audacious assertion that a specific Deity has performed specific acts in specific historical contexts. Our remonstration reaches fever pitch once we learn that by Divine design these concrete and verifiable events, recorded in specific documents, together point in harmonious attestation to a specific Lord and Savior to whom all men must and will eventually give a personal account (Acts 2:22; Phil. 2:9-11). In the end, while postmodern man is quite pleased to consider the notion that he is “not alone,” he does not, however, countenance the thought that whatever happens to be “out there” might have ultimate power over him and the universe he inhabits.
We have been given the charge to believe the testimony that God has given concerning His Son (1 John 5:9-13). The miraculous cannot be divorced from that testimony and remain faithful to the truth. Therefore, we must never convey to others a “tame” version of the gospel that hushes up the untidy fact that Jesus routinely performed acts attributable only to a God who rules over both man and nature. He is a Savior who declares men forgiven; He is a Lord who demands the sea be calm. We must never be found guilty of transforming a God who has much to do with His own creation into a lesser deity more palatable for today’s neo-pagan unbeliever. We must never make God “more respectable” to contemporary minds by expunging our testimony of the biblical witness to the miraculous. Of all the world’s faiths, in Christianity alone do the basic tenets stand or fall with the outrageous notion that God has personally invaded human history and there left His indelible fingerprints through one unique Man. Far from being appendages that we can surgically remove at our discretion, the miracles recorded in the Bible are at the very heart of the most basic theme in Scripture. God, far from being distant and unconcerned, is a fearsomely holy God who, nevertheless, so deeply and intimately loves His estranged creatures that He would humbly tabernacle among us in the Person of His Son. And, by so doing, the God of the miraculous did the most wondrous of all in providing for our eternal rescue from the relentless guilt levied upon us by the hands of an unyielding Moral Law.