SYNOPSIS.--The question, both old and new, now confronting
theologians.--Their recent retreat upon the minimum of miracle.--The
present conflict of opinion in the Church.--Its turning-point
reached in the antipodal turn-about in the treatment of miracles
from the old to the new apologetics.--Revision of the traditional
idea of the supernatural required for theological readjustment.
The present line of thought has now reached the point where an important
question confronts us,--a question not wholly new. Within the memory of
living men theologians have been compelled to ask themselves: What if
the geologists should establish facts that contradict our Biblically
derived doctrine that the universe was made in a week? Again have they
been constrained to put to themselves the question: What if the
evolutionists should supersede our doctrine that the creation is the
immediate product of successive fiats of the Creator by showing that it
came gradually into existence through the progressive operation of
forces immanent in the cosmos? Still again have they had to face the
question: What if modern criticism by the discovery of demonstrable
errors in the Sacred Writings should fault our doctrine that, as the
Word of God, the Bible is free from all and every error? In every
instance the dreaded concession, when found at length to be enforced by
modern learning, has been found to bring, not the loss that had been
apprehended, but clear gain to the intellectual interests of religion.
Now it is this same sort of question which returns with the
uncertainties and difficulties widely felt in the Church to be gathering
over its hitherto unvexed belief in miracles as signs of a divine
activity more immediate than it has recognized in the regular processes
of Nature.
The majority of uneducated Christians still hold, as formerly in each of
the points just mentioned, to the traditional view. Miracle as a divine
intervention in the natural order, a more close and direct divine
contact with the course of things than is the case in ordinary
experience, they regard as the inseparable and necessary concomitant and
proof of a divine Revelation. To deny miracles, thus understood, is
censured as equivalent to denial of the reality of the Revelation. But
it is rather surprising, because it is rare, to find a man of such note
in literature as Dr. W. Robertson Nicoll affirming[35] that one cannot
be a Christian without believing at least two miracles, the virgin
birth and the physical resurrection of the Christ. Without comment on
the significance of this retreat upon the minimum of miracle, it must
here be noted that a minority of the Church, not inferior to their
brethren in learning and piety, believe that there are no tides in God's
presence in Nature, that his contact with it is always of the closest:--
"Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than hands or feet."
All natural operations are to them divine operations. "Nature," said Dr.
Martineau, "is God's mask, not his competitor." While his agency in
Nature may be _recognized_ at one time more than at another, it _exists_
at any time fully as much as at any other. In the interest of this
fundamental truth of religion they affirm that miracles in the
traditional sense of the word, and in their traditional limitation to
the small measure of time and space covered by Biblical narratives,
never occurred. Events reputed miraculous have indeed occurred, but
simply as unusual, inexplicable phenomena in the natural order of
things, the natural products of exceptionally endowed life, and, whether
in ancient time or modern, the same sort of thing the world over. To the
argument that this involves denial of a supernatural Revelation they
reply that it is mere reasoning in a circle. For if one begs the
question at the outset by defining supernatural Revelation as revelation
necessarily evidenced by miraculous divine intervention, then, of
course, denial of this is denial of that, and how is the argument
advanced? But, besides this, the question-begging definition is a
fallacious confusing of the contents of the Revelation with its
concomitants, and of its essentially spiritual character with phenomena
in the sphere of the senses.
The turning-point in this argument between the two parties in the Church
has been reached in the antipodal change, already referred to, from the
old to the new apologetics,--a change whose inevitable consequences do
not yet seem to be clearly discerned by either party in the discussion.
The contention that denial of miracles as traditionally understood
carries denial of supernatural Revelation has been virtually set aside,
with its question-begging definition and circular reasoning, by the
apologetics now current among believers in at least a minimum of miracle
in the traditional sense of the word,--especially in the two chief
miracles of the virgin birth and the physical resurrection of Jesus. As
an eminent representative of these the late Dr. A. B. Bruce may be
cited. These adduce "the moral miracle," the sinlessness of Jesus, as
evidential for the reality of the physical miracles as its "congruous
accompaniments." "If," says Dr. Bruce, "we receive Him as the great
moral miracle, we shall receive much more for His sake."[36] But what a
turn-about of the traditional argument on the evidences! The older
apologetes argued: This crown of miraculous power bespeaks the royal
dignity of the wearer. The modern apologete reasons: This royal
character must have a crown of miraculous power corresponding with his
moral worth. In this antipodal reverse of Christian thought it is quite
plain that for evidential purposes the miracle is stripped of its
ancient value. And it has already been observed that modern knowledge
has now transferred many of the Biblical miracles to the new rooms
discovered for them in the natural order of things. It is not premature,
therefore, for leaders of Christian thought to put once more to
themselves the question, constantly recurring as learning advances:
What theological readjustment should we have to make, if obliged to
concede that the ancient belief in miracle is not inseparable from
belief in a supernatural Revelation, not indispensable to belief
therein? What modified conception must we form, if constrained to admit
that the living God, ever immanent in Nature, intervenes in Nature no
more at one time than another? What, indeed, but a revised and true in
place of a mistaken conception of the term _Supernatural_?