I have invited Dwight Welch, a Disciples of Christ seminary student and occasional blogger to offer his sense of the Christian faith from a liberal/progressive position. In service to my own denominational tradition I have been making these pages available to people who, like me, are seeking opportunities to explore and share their faith with the broader public. This should be the first of at least two pieces. I invite you to engage Dwight in conversation.
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A Progressive Christian
Take on Miracles
Over the last month or so there have been a number of articles on the question of miracles, the resurrection, and healing. This has spurred my own thought on these questions and I appreciate the opportunity Bob Cornwall has given me to try to put down some of these thoughts in the form of a post. My hope is to raise some questions, both for myself, and others in a way which can advance the discussion.
As a liberal protestant what does one do with supernatural interventions? Bruce Epperly and others have suggested that it is possible that we’re not dealing with the supernatural at all. That, instead, there may be features of our natural world, which can account for and open us up to these miraculous stories of the past as well as their present happenings. The indeterminacy of quantum mechanics, for instance, is lifted up to break down the old mechanistic accounts favored by the natural sciences. The energestic accounts make a universe far more personally responsive than the old atomistic ones.
But I still think some caution is needed in this front. Whatever happens at the quantum level is not so varied as to make the macro level operate under a new set of rules. And in the macro world, we still do not see things like physical resurrection occurring. There is nothing we know about biology nor do we have experiences that we can point to that indicates such occurrences today. That does not mean that the door is closed on such things. Epistemic humility requires as much.
But it does suggest that we may be facing the limits of what theology can talk about. In other words, given that God is far more than we can describe, we can presume our theologies will not exhaust God’s doings in the world. But there may be limits, given our knowledge of the world, which theology is in a position to say. In that the only response may be a holy silence when it surpasses that knowledge.
But if God is the God of this world then knowledge of the world should give us clues about God. When some Christians dismiss evolution, or other areas of consensus in the sciences, a distorted picture of the world and of God emerges. So getting it right or at least getting as close as one can get given the circumstances has theological implications. In that, I get nervous about some miracle stories or descriptions of resurrection which seem to be at odds with the consensus of the sciences or the kind of world they describe.
Even if we remove the category of the supernatural, the sense of the scriptures, is that miracles are extraordinary occasions. In the Second Testament, such stories are usually followed by the people being in “awe” after the miracle. But if we agree with Whitehead that God should exemplify the categories of our world, not be an exception to them, then maybe looking for God in the extraordinary should be suspect; or at least not necessary. In principle, one should likely find that how God operates in the ordinary or the extraordinary follows much the same lines.
Again that doesn’t close off the extraordinary. But it does suggest a kind of continuity in experience and in the character of God and God’s doings that can make any occasion a possible source of divine disclosure, even if some moments are more dramatic or profound in their impact on us then others. In that sense, we’re back to the old definition of miracles from Friedrich Schleiermacher. Any occasion which points to God and God’s doings, God’s purposes, God’s character in the world can be properly understood as a miracle. A smile or a calm sea both suggests much of the same thing. And it should if we’re on to something in our analysis.
In that case, the way that we might appropriate miracle stories today would be to discern the character of God as it its being told in the story of healings, for instance, to see if it has continuity with the kind of God we understand ourselves to serve. That may go outside of the question of did it happen or would it happen. But one can imagine how the character of God in such and such a story might be translated to our time. What brings healing today? What opens our eyes today? What acts in our lives so we can be included in the community as opposed to being cast out to the edges of town? When can new life happen even when some sought to kill it?
The hope is to engage those resources of scripture which can illuminate our experiences, of God, of one another, and so on. Some of the language of scripture does just that. But some do not. I had a high school student in my church liken faith in God to faith in Santa Claus. While only one has reindeer, both were equally fantastic in his mind, based on something that was wish fulfillment and not evidence based. I think as much inside the church as outside of it, we face a credibility crisis in the claims our faith tradition has made. To the degree that we can relate to the resources of our faith tradition and the world as we know it, we may be able to confront that problem. I think that has been the charge and the motivation for religious progressives in general and this discussion in particular.
The hope is to engage those resources of scripture which can illuminate our experiences, of God, of one another, and so on. Some of the language of scripture does just that. But some do not. I had a high school student in my church liken faith in God to faith in Santa Claus. While only one has reindeer, both were equally fantastic in his mind, based on something that was wish fulfillment and not evidence based. I think as much inside the church as outside of it, we face a credibility crisis in the claims our faith tradition has made. To the degree that we can relate to the resources of our faith tradition and the world as we know it, we may be able to confront that problem. I think that has been the charge and the motivation for religious progressives in general and this discussion in particular.
Dwight Welch is finishing his final year at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis as a MDiv student with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and serves as a student pastor at First Christian in Sheridan Indiana. Previously Dwight did graduate work in philosophy while serving as a campus minister at University Christian Ministries at Southern Illinois University. Although not blogging as often as before, Dwight's blog is entitled the Religious Liberal.
