–Last Saturday, the second of Easter, in his homily the parish priest told us that “Jesus did not walk upon the waters of the lake”; that it is merely a literary account. And he says the same whenever the Gospel reports some miracle.
–What wretchedness. In an interview a journalist recently conducted with Professor Andrés Torres Queiruga, he was asked: “You reject ‘miracles and even the resurrection of Jesus Christ as a miracle susceptible of empirical proof.’ Does your thinking remain within Christianity?” Answer: “Without doubt. As I do, so today think the majority of up-to-date theologians.”
The reality of Christ’s miracles must be treated, in order to confirm the Christian faith in them.
The denial of Christ’s miracles is relatively recent, at least as a cultural conviction. Beginning with the Century of Lights, in the eighteenth, and the subsequent Enlightenment that spread Liberalism, there is progressively introduced into the nations of the West a naturalism closed to all supernaturality. It does not necessarily deny the existence of God and of the supernatural, but it denies that they can intervene in this visible world, hermetically closed in upon itself. At bottom there is a denial of the mystery of the Incarnation and a certain kind of gnosticism. In those centuries the denial of miracles springs from schools of thought which, though they have very diverse and even mutually contrary formulations, come to share one same spirit: rationalism, deism, agnosticism, idealist, materialist, Marxist philosophy, etc. All deny miracles. Here I shall recall only a few names.
–Reimarus (+1768), “Concerning the Aim of Jesus and His Disciples” (1778), a posthumous book published by his disciple Lessing (+1781). –Kant (+1804), “Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone” (1793). –Strauss (+1874), the “Life of Jesus” (1835), a disciple of Schleiermacher (+1834). –Feuerbach (+1872), “The Essence of Christianity” (1848). –Renan (+1892), “Life of Jesus” (1863). –Bultmann (+1976), “Jesus” (1926). Modernism, from the end of the nineteenth century down to our own days, denies or casts doubt upon –which comes to the same thing– the miracles and everything that the Gospels present as supernatural. It thus introduces into the Catholic field the thought of those authors, already assimilated in rationalist and historicist critical exegesis by the liberal Protestants. So did Saint Pius X denounce it, summarizing their errors:
“In many narratives the evangelists reported not so much the truth as what they judged more profitable for their readers, even though it were false.” Specifically, “John’s narratives are not properly history, but a mystical contemplation of the Gospel… The fourth Gospel exaggerated the miracles, not only that they might appear more extraordinary, but also that they might be more apt to signify the work and the glory of the Incarnate Word… John claims for himself the character of a witness of Christ; but in reality he is nothing but an eminent witness of the Christian life, that is, of the life of Christ in the Church at the end of the first century” (1907, decree Lamentabili 14,16-18).
Jesus worked many miracles. As Saint John says at the end of his Gospel: “Many other signs also did Jesus in the sight of his disciples, which are not written in this book” (Jn 20,30); “which, if they were written every one, I think that the world itself would not be able to contain the books that should be written” (21,25). We already know that Jesus “went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and every infirmity among the people” (Mt 4,23). And casting out the demons. And we know too that neither his contemporaries, nor Herod, nor his worst enemies, the Pharisees and members of the Sanhedrin, called the miracles of Jesus into doubt: “What do we, for this man doth many miracles?” (Jn 11,47). It is therefore not excessive to affirm that whoever today denies the miracles of Christ is not a Christian. He does not believe in the Gospels, for the miracles form an essential part of them.
Saint Mark. Of the 666 verses, 209 (some 31%) refer to miracles. And this proportion increases if we look at the first ten chapters, those reaching up to the beginning of his Passion: of 425 verses, 209 (47%) describe miracles. René Latourelle comments on this datum by remarking that a Gospel of Mark stripped of its miracles would be like Shakespeare’s Hamlet without the prince (Milagros de Jesús y teología del milagro, Sígueme, Salamanca 1990, 68).
Saint John. His Gospel too, in a very theological key, gives special attention to the epiphanic force of the miracles worked by Jesus. The Protestant scripture scholar Charles Dodd, in his work The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (1953), divides the Gospel of John into two parts, the book of signs, the first twelve chapters, and the book of the passion. Very few are the miracles reported by the Apostle evangelist, if we compare it with the Synoptics, but almost all of them he describes and testifies with great deliberateness, in a minute, notarial manner, as in the raising of Lazarus. His redactional intention is patent: the formidable words of Jesus and his miraculous deeds illumine and authorize each other. Jesus calls himself “living bread come down from heaven” and “true food” after multiplying the loaves (Jn 6); he confesses himself “light of the world” after giving sight to a man born blind (9); he proclaims himself “resurrection and life of men” after raising a dead man of four days (11). If the miracles reported by Saint John are denied, his Gospel is practically eliminated. And the same happens with the other Gospels.
The Gospels inseparably unite in Christ the words and the works. It is a norm in force throughout all the Scriptures: “Revelation is realized through deeds and words intrinsically bound together: the works that God accomplishes in the history of salvation manifest and confirm the doctrine and the realities that the words signify; and in turn the words proclaim the works and unfold their mystery” (Vat. II, Dei Verbum 2).
In the Gospels the words of Jesus are inconceivable and also unintelligible and incredible if they are not illumined and guaranteed by his works. The full epiphany of God among men is made in the biblical manner, in words and in works. Therefore “Jesus of Nazareth was a prophet, mighty in work and word before God and all the people” (Lk 24,19). The Gospels report the words and the miracles of Jesus just as they were “seen and heard” by his chosen witnesses. To deny the historical truthfulness of the miracles is equivalent to denying the historical truthfulness of the words of Christ.
The miracles are fundamental motives for coming to the faith. The Apostles have, without doubt, a certain faith in Christ from the beginning, when they leave everything and follow him. But we are told that after his first miracle, the one worked at Cana, “he manifested his glory, and his disciples believed in him” (Jn 2,11). His second miracle in Galilee had the same effect: “Thy son liveth… and himself believed , and his whole house” (4,53). Similar occurrences (miracle > faith) are reported continually in the Gospels. When Jesus walks upon the waters, gets into the boat, the wind grows calm, and “they that were in it fell down before him, saying: Indeed thou art the Son of God” (Mt 14,33).
–Jesus at times reproaches the people for their unbelief: “Unless you see signs and wonders, you believe not” (Jn 4,48). But at the same time he adduces his miracles as motives for believing in him: “I speak to you, and you believe not. The works that I do in the name of my Father, they give testimony of me… If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not; but if I do, though you will not believe me, believe the works, that you may understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father” (Jn 10,25.37-38).
–The Apostles, immediately after Pentecost, in preaching the Gospel, present the miracles of Christ as truly convincing motives of credibility. “Ye men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as you also know”… (Acts 2,22; cf. 10,37-39).
And let it be noted that before the year 70, when the destruction of Jerusalem takes place –not a stone is left upon a stone–, the synoptic Gospels already spread abroad the miraculous deeds of Jesus, at times giving well-circumstanced and localized details (Naim, etc.) of the event. In those years there were still living many eyewitnesses of the miracles reported, and also many other Jews who could have denied the truthfulness of the accounts, had these not related things that really happened. The Apostles, Saint Peter, Saint John with special insistence, affirm with all firmness that they bear witness to what they have “seen and heard” (Acts 4,20; Jn 19,35; 1Jn 1,1-3; cf. 5,32; Catechism 126 and 515).
Moreover, when the Lord sends the Apostles to preach the Gospel, they too fulfill their mission with words and miracles, just as Jesus did: “they went forth and preached everywhere, the Lord working withal, and confirming the word with the signs that followed” (Mk 16,20).
The Church believes in the miracles and teaches that they are motives of credibility. She knows that in the life of Jesus his most “incredible” words –I am before Abraham, Lord of the Sabbath, Light of the world, Bread of immortality– are made “credible” by means of his miracles, prodigious deeds that are formidable “motives of credibility.” The Second Vatican Council affirms that Christ “supported and confirmed his preaching with miracles in order to arouse and strengthen the faith of his hearers” (Dignitatis humanae 11). “The miracles of Jesus confirm that the kingdom has already come upon the earth [as he himself argued]: ‘if I by the finger of God cast out demons, doubtless the kingdom of God is come upon you’ (Lk 11,20; cf. Mt 12,28)” (Lumen gentium 5; cf. 58; Dei Verbum 4).
The First Vatican Council in the constitution Dei Filius (1870) teaches: “in order that the submission of our faith might be in harmony with reason [Rom 12,1], God willed that to the interior helps of the Holy Spirit there should be joined exterior arguments of his revelation, namely divine facts, and above all the miracles and the prophecies which, showing forth in luminous conjunction the omnipotence and infinite knowledge of God, are most certain signs of divine revelation, suited to the understanding of all” (Denz 3009). Therefore, “if anyone shall say that no miracle can occur, and that consequently all the accounts of them, even those contained in Sacred Scripture, are to be relegated among fables or myths, or that miracles can never be known with certainty, and that the divine origin of the Christian religion is not rightly proved by them, let him be anathema” (3034).
The Catechism of the Church: “The miracles strengthen faith in him who does the works of his Father: they testify that he is the Son of God” (n. 548). It is evident that if Christ was to lead men to the knowledge of his divinity, it was necessary that he work miracles. And he worked them in great number. “By his gestures, his miracles and his words, it was revealed that ‘in him [Jesus] dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead corporeally’ (Col 2,9). His humanity thus appears as the ‘sacrament,’ that is, the sign and the instrument of his divinity and of the salvation he brings: what was visible in his earthly life leads to the invisible mystery of his divine sonship and his redemptive mission” (n. 515).
Demythologizing exegesis, however, has penetrated the Catholic field not a little. The distrust of the historicity of the words and deeds of Christ, as they are written in the Gospels, affects many Catholic scripture scholars and theologians. The Episcopal Commission for the Doctrine of the Faith denounced this error, for example, in the Note (18-VI-2008) it published on the book by José Antonio Pagola, Jesús. Aproximación histórica (PPC, Madrid 2007). The systematic distrust of the historicity of the Gospels leads of itself to the denial of their historicity. The rupture between the historical investigation of Jesus and faith in him, that is, the interpretation of Sacred Scripture apart from the living Tradition of the Church, can lead to “an arbitrary use of the gospels, incompatible with the faith” (Note 20). In several articles on this blog (76-79) I studied with some care these aspects of Pagola’s work. But let us look at some other examples.
I have at hand the Comentario al Nuevo Testamento produced by several authors (Casa de la Biblia, Ed. Atenas-PPC, Madrid 1995, 745 pp.). And with regard to the Gospel scene to which I alluded at the beginning, Jesus walking upon the lake (Jn 6,16-21), I consult the exegesis that Professor Felipe Fernández Ramos devotes to it in commenting on the Gospel according to Saint John (263-339). He begins by openly denying that the author of the fourth gospel is the apostle Saint John: “…its author could not have been John the son of Zebedee… Moreover, we believe that its author does not belong to the circle of the Twelve” (269). And the miracles it relates of Christ, at least some of them, are not to be understood as historical facts, nor likewise the post-paschal events.
Jesus walks upon the waters. “As for its historicity, the fact is more theological than historical. This means that the walking upon the waters did not take place in the manner the gospels narrate to us” (288). A fact that did not take place in the manner recounted in the Gospels is a fact that has not occurred, that has had no existence, neither in the manner narrated nor in any other. Theological facts, as far as I know, do not exist. The only real facts are always historical, that is, they are events that have happened.
And since I have the book in hand, I glance at other miracles of the life of Jesus.
The raising of Lazarus. It is “a parable in action… In any case, it should be clear that the validity of the sign and of its content is not called into question by its historicity”; or, to be more exact, by its non-historicity. Apparently, whether the fact really occurred or not in no way affects its signification. “The last of the signs narrated… had to be a picture of exceptional beauty and attraction. The evangelist has achieved his aim. He has offered us an audiovisual so captivating… To remain in the materiality of the fact would mean its radical impoverishment” (303-304). The fact, then, the alleged miracle, let it be clear, is the least of it; what matters is the signification that the narrator wishes to express through the fact narrated. Although in reality, one thinks, it is very difficult to explain the meaning that a fact which has not happened can have.
The resurrection of Christ and his apparitions to the disciples receive in that work the same exegetical treatment. The resurrection: “things did not happen thus. We are in the world of representation” (329). The apparitions, in which the disciples see, hear, touch Jesus, eat with him: “physical contact with Jesus could not have taken place. It would be an antinomy. Nor is it possible that he perform the other bodily actions attributed to him, such as eating, walking, preparing the meal on the shore of the lake, offering the holes of his hands and side to be touched… This kind of action or manifestation belongs to the literary domain and is merely functional; it is resorted to in order to underline the identity of the Risen One, of the Christ of faith, with the Crucified, with the Jesus of history” (330). According to this interpretation, these are accounts of facts that are highly significant, but that are not historical, since they in no way happened: neither as they are reported by the Gospels nor in any other manner. They are simply impossible facts, and therefore they could not have been real.
Forgive me, but when I hear it said what God can and cannot do in this created world, there comes to my memory the word of the Psalm: “he that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh at them: and the Lord shall deride them. Then shall he speak to them in his anger, and trouble them in his rage” (2,2-3).
If the miraculous facts of Jesus Christ are to be understood not from their historical objectivity –denied or cast in doubt– but looking only at their sense and signification, then also the words of Christ that we read in the Gospels will have to be understood in a sense not real but purely symbolic and allegorical: “before Abraham was made, I am,” “no man cometh to the Father but by me,” “I am the way, the truth and the life,” “my flesh is meat indeed,” etc. Consequently these words are not the firm rock on which the faith of the Church can be founded. And going a step further: why not also deny the historicity of the words, if the historicity of the facts is denied?… There will be some who might answer me: “indeed, we deny not only the historicity of the miracles of Jesus, but also that of his words.”
Did Jesus Christ walk upon the waters? We find the account of this miracle before the year 70, the year of the total ruin of Jerusalem, in the gospel of Saint Matthew (14,22-23) and in that of Saint Mark (6,45-52); and at the end of the century it is confirmed by the gospel of Saint John in the passage already cited (6,16-21).
–Matthew. Peter’s boat is sailing far from the shore, and the raging sea puts it in peril. It is night, “in the fourth watch,” between the third and the sixth hour. “Jesus came to them walking upon the sea,” which is possible only for Yahweh (Job 9,8; Hab 3,15; Ps 76,20; Is 43,16; Wis 14,1-4). The disciples, “on seeing” Jesus walking upon the waters, say that “it is an apparition,” and “for fear they cry out.” Jesus calms them with words that identify him with Yahweh: “It is I, be not afraid.” They all kneel and confess: “Indeed thou art the Son of God.”
–Mark. The boat in “the fourth watch” is already in the midst of the sea, and the wind is contrary. “On seeing him walk upon the sea, they thought it was an apparition and began to cry out, for they all saw him and were troubled,” without having recognized him. As in Matthew, the scene takes place “immediately” after the multiplication of the loaves. In this phase of the public life of Jesus the disciples needed these miracles. “He went up to them into the boat, and the wind ceased. And they were exceedingly amazed, for they understood not concerning the loaves, for their heart was blinded.”
–John. It is now “deep night,” they have gone far from the shore, the wind blows hard and the lake grows rough. “They see Jesus drawing near to the boat, walking upon the sea, and they were afraid.” They do not recognize him. And he identifies himself: “It is I; be not afraid.” The “I am” of the gospel of Saint John expresses an absolute sovereignty, an unlimited power, which Yahweh alone possesses over all that is created, also over the waters of the sea. The sea, in its continual, powerful, threatening movement, often signifies in the Bible chaos, the force of the Evil One (Is 57,20; Jer 5,22; Jude 1,13). From the sea rises the Beast which, empowered by the infernal Dragon, seduces and dominates the world (Apoc 13,1). When Christ finally returns and establishes a new heaven and a new earth, “the sea shall be no more” (21,1): there will no longer be a place for evil… And the disciples “saw Jesus walking upon the sea and drawing near to the boat.”
The historicity of the scene is certain. It is certain because it is affirmed by “the Gospel, the word [of God], the message of the truth” (Col 1,5). But many other arguments can help one to believe in that miracle. –The testimonies are multiple and concordant. –The man Jesus, walking upon the waters, is unimaginable for Jewish monotheism: Yahweh alone can do it. –The apostles play a lamentable role: they do not recognize Jesus, they think they see an apparition, they are filled with panic, they give uncontrolled shouts, they understand nothing. Never would a chronicler have dared to recount that of them if it were not the truth that happened. He would simply have described them as lucid disciples, full of joy and enthusiasm. –The setting out at night in the boat and the sudden storm are episodes connatural to the life of the disciples. –In the course of the public ministry of Jesus, the scene takes place in the transition between the preaching of the Kingdom and the growing revelation of his personal identity. –If the Church had invented the event, she would have taken greater care to make the narrators agree on certain small discordant details.
Jesus walked upon the waters of the sea. The event is historical. The passing of God among men is in Christ sometimes humble and simple, at other times fascinans et tremendum. As it should be. The Lord holds dominion over all creation, also over the dark and malignant power of the raging sea. The miracles, that is, the facts such as this one, to which the Apostles and evangelists bear witness because “they have seen and heard it,” give rational motive to our faith and confirm it.
The exegesis that denies the miracles or casts them in doubt –which comes to the same thing–, although it has been reproved many times by the Church, has become so widespread among Catholic scripture scholars that it has now come to be preached and taught frequently in parishes, catecheses and groups. In fact, a Commentary such as the one I have cited, which undoubtedly has other very valuable aspects, no longer arouses either alarm or resistance. Works such as this are spread widely and peacefully through Catholic publishing houses and bookshops, with hardly anyone denouncing them. The professors who for many years have been teaching these errors remain in their chairs because their Bishops or religious Superiors do not remove them. And very few are the orthodox Catholic professors who publicly impugn the works of those authors. The arrogance of the “up-to-date theologians,” who wield scientifically the liberal critical and historical exegesis, has produced in many Catholic professors a paralyzing fear of appearing antiquated and superseded, sunk in the “sheol” of the true exegesis, faithful to the Magisterium. They have been left speechless.
An appeal to parish priests and catechists who on some subjects teach against the doctrine of the Church. In the presence of the Lord, pause to think about what you do, specifically, when you deny a miracle. As Saint Peter said, “I know that you did it through ignorance” (Acts 3,17), without evil intent, out of a bad docility to the ideological fashions that present themselves as the latest word of truth. But, in the presence of the Lord, look at what you do: be no longer “as children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the wickedness of men, by cunning craftiness by which they lie in wait to deceive” (Eph 4,14). Receive the teaching of the Church, Mater et Magistra, for she alone leads to adult faith, to the condition of “perfect men, unto the measure of the fulness of Christ” (4,13). Know the evil of what you do and its consequences:
Whoever denies a miracle of the Gospel, such as the walking of Jesus upon the waters, denies, or authorizes himself to deny, all the rest. Why not?… And let them remember what the Church teaches: “if anyone shall say that no miracle can occur,” that those of the Gospel are to be understood as mere literary accounts, or that “they can never be known with certainty,” let him be anathema (First Vatican Council: Denz 3034). Have pity on the people who have been entrusted to them, and have pity on themselves.
Author: Fr. José María Iraburu
