[Dialogue] Spong on Miracles and evangelism

[KroegerD at aol.com]

November 8, 2006 
Miracles IV - Interpreting the  Healing Miracles 
When we begin to dissect the miracle stories of the gospels, it is easy  to 
notice some fascinating connections. The nature miracles, for example, are  
clearly the retelling or reworking of earlier biblical stories about Moses or  
Elijah. One can see the similarities between Moses asking God to feed the  
multitude in the wilderness with heavenly bread and Jesus feeding the multitude  in 
the wilderness with five ever-expanding loaves. The story of Jesus walking on 
 water has its ultimate root in the story of Moses splitting the Red Sea. 
That  feat was then celebrated in the psalms and prophets in such words as God is 
able  to make "a pathway in the deep" and God's "footprints can be seen on 
the water."  When those words are then applied to Jesus in the gospels they 
represent a God  claim far more than they are a story of the supernatural.  
When we come, however, to the narratives in the gospels that portray the  
power of Jesus to bring healing to the people, the problems get more intense and  
the debate becomes more emotional. Miraculous healings by Jesus have been  
associated with his divine nature for so long that many feel that to question  
the literal accuracy of these stories is to attack the very essence of the 
Jesus  story, which portrays him as a God-presence. If God can do miraculous 
healings,  the argument goes, could not Jesus, as part of who God is, do the same? 
It is an  interesting thesis and demands a careful and considered approach to 
the  definition of both God and Jesus.  
I begin this discussion by noting that we have no record of Jesus doing  
supernatural acts of healing until the gospel writing tradition begins around 70  
C.E. That means that we know nothing of this miraculous tradition until at 
least  40 years, or two full generations, after the earthly life of Jesus had 
come to  an end. There are some biblical scholars who date what is called the Q 
material,  which appears in Matthew and Luke, and the recently discovered 
Gospel of Thomas  as earlier than any of the written gospels. Whether those claims 
can be  sustained or not is still hotly debated in New Testament circles and I 
 personally tend to doubt them, but the fact remains that neither of these 
two  sources contains a description of a miracle story or a healing episode. 
There  are also no accounts of Jesus doing miracles in the writing of Paul (50-64 
 C.E.). Certainly no one can suggest that this fact diminishes Paul's view of 
the  divine Christ, since Paul has one of the highest Christologies in the 
entire New  Testament. So the door is pushed ajar just a fraction to the 
possibility that  the narration of the supernatural healing miracles might have a 
purpose other  than that of being descriptions of events that actually occurred. 
I ask you to  hold these possibilities in your minds for just a moment while 
we proceed to  uncover some biblical data and to assess some biblical facts 
that might put new  light on this subject.  
There is a fascinating narrative told us only in Matthew and Luke, which may  
offer us a clue as to how miracle stories came into the Christian tradition.  
These two gospel writers take a story from Mark describing how John the 
Baptist  was imprisoned and executed and expand it. In their expansion John in 
prison  sends a messenger to Jesus asking the messianic question: "Are you the one 
who  is to come or must we look for another?" It is a question that could not 
have  arisen until the debate about whether or not Jesus was the anticipated 
messiah  began to be engaged, which surely occurred well after his death. The 
way Jesus  was made to respond to John's question is also noteworthy. He did 
not say 'yes'  or 'no.' He said, rather, "go back and tell John what you see 
and hear, the  blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk and the mute sing." No 
miraculous tales  were included in the narrative, but Jesus was portrayed as 
claiming that these  signs have gathered around him. What was that answer all 
about? What did it  mean? What was Jesus being portrayed as trying to convey?  
Only those who are deeply familiar with the Hebrew Scriptures would have any  
clue as to the context out of which Jesus was speaking. He was referring to 
the  35th chapter of Isaiah, written in the late years of the 8th century 
B.C.E. The  historical situation was that the Northern Kingdom of Israel had fallen 
to the  Assyrians. Its citizens had been carried off into captivity, where 
they became  the "Ten Lost Tribes of Israel," disappearing into the DNA of the 
Middle East.  The Southern Kingdom of Judah would, in that same critical moment 
of history,  accept vassalage to the Assyrians and pay tribute in exchange 
for tiny vestiges  of freedom. It was a bleak time in Jewish history and that 
bleakness gave rise  to intensified messianic hopes. The Jews began to dream 
about the coming of the  Kingdom of God. In time tales about the one who would 
usher in that kingdom  would be added to that dream. This figure was called by a 
variety of names: 'the  anointed one' (maschiach in Hebrew, messiah in 
English), 'Son of Man,' the 'new  Moses,' the 'new Elijah' and even the 'Son of 
God.' When Isaiah wrote he went on  to depict the signs that would accompany the 
dawning of this Kingdom of God. The  pain of the world, he said, would be 
transformed, wholeness would replace  brokenness and perfection would overcome 
imperfection. What Isaiah was really  doing was to create a new image of the 
Garden of Eden into which all people  would be invited to enter. He described this 
vision in these words:  
"The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and  
blossom like the crocus. It shall bloom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and  
singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given to it. The majesty of Carmel and 
 Sharon, they shall see the Glory of the Lord, and the majesty of our God" 
(Isa.  35:1-2).  
How would people know that the Kingdom of God had broken into human history?  
Isaiah answered that question with what he called the signs of the Kingdom:  
"Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf  
unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a hart, and the tongue of the dumb  
sing for joy, and a highway shall be there and it shall be called the Holy Way.  
And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing, with  
everlasting joy upon their heads. They shall obtain joy and gladness, and 
sorrow  and sighing shall flee away" (Is. 35: 5, 6, 8a, 10, 11).  
Jesus in his answer to John the Baptist was portrayed as making the claim  
that in his life Isaiah's signs of this in-breaking Kingdom were present. Go  
tell John what you see: the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk and the mute 
 sing. When the Kingdom comes, the gospel writers were saying, all of those  
things that represent the reign of God must become visible. So, when people  
ascribed messianic claims to Jesus, they also had to attribute messianic acts 
to  his presence. That is how and why, I believe, the tradition developed in 
which  healing miracles were attributed to Jesus. It was not that these things 
actually  happened so much as it was, that this was the way his followers 
interpreted who  Jesus was, and how they described the power that they experienced 
in his person.   
The next step required of those of us who want to become proper interpreters  
of the gospels is to expand our definition of these aforementioned 
infirmities.  What kind of blindness, for example, was it that was to be overcome? Was 
it  physical blindness or spiritual blindness? Did it have to do with sight, 
insight  or second sight? Was it more about those who, despite the fact that 
they had  eyes, could not see who Jesus was? Was it about those who, though they 
had ears,  were in fact deaf to his message and reality? Was it about those 
who were  physically crippled or spiritually crippled? Was it about those who 
could not  speak because they had not yet entered the experience for which these 
words were  originally formulated?  
When we analyze the healing episodes in the gospels, we find that all of them 
 speak to the wholeness, the fullness of human life. In Mark's Gospel there 
are  two episodes about sight being restored, two episodes about hearing being  
restored, three episodes in which the physically lame and the mentally 
impaired  are cured, and two episodes in which the tongues of the mute are loosened 
so  that they can speak of the new reality. These are the data that cause me 
to  suggest that these stories were not literal events that happened but  
interpretive narratives added to the memory of Jesus in those years between his  
death and the writing of the gospel accounts. They were designed to interpret  
both his life and his death in the light of their dawning understanding of him  
as "the first fruits" of the Kingdom. He had become the life in whom they 
first  saw what the Kingdom of God was all about.  
If that reconstruction has substance, it would account for why miracle  
stories are not attached to the memory of Jesus in earlier writings. It would  also 
suggest that even healing miracles were originally designed to be  
interpretive symbols, not descriptions of literal events.  
If such was the original intent of the gospel's healing stories, one thing  
becomes immediately obvious. That is, that the literal minds of the western  
Gentile Christians clearly distorted these interpretive symbols because they did 
 not understand the Hebrew texts that lay underneath these stories. It also  
suggests that if these stories were never intended to describe events that  
actually happened, that fact ought to be obvious in the stories themselves.  
Next week I will begin to focus on representative miracle stories in the  
gospels to see how well these ideas play when the texts themselves are analyzed.  
I will look in particular at the "sight to the blind" stories in the gospels 
to  see if we can find in them interpretive, non-literal hints of their 
original  meaning. I believe we can and, when we do, a whole new level of 
understanding  the Bible in general and the gospels in particular opens before our eyes. 
So  stay tuned.  
John Shelby Spong  
_Note from  the Editor: Bishop Spong's new book is available now at 
bookstores everywhere  and by clicking here!_ 
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060762055/agoramedia-20)   
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Kelly Crow, via the Internet, writes:  
In response to your Q&A, The Difference between Fundamentalists and  
Evangelicals, I would like to point out that the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran  Church of 
America) would be considered more progressive than conservative.  
The name is the unfortunate result of a merger between the Lutheran Church of 
 America and the American Lutheran Church many years back. Some leaders at 
the  time were aware of the draw that "Evangelical" churches were having and, 
being  aware that evangelism is not traditionally a strong trait of Lutherans, 
thought  adding evangelical to the name would be a reminder to Lutherans to be 
more vocal  about their faith.  
I have attended both Episcopal and Lutheran churches, and feel at home in  
either setting. Although my views are more liberal than either denomination is  
ready to embrace, I feel confident that, with time, the churches will evolve.  
Could you please mention that Evangelical is a word meaning 'to teach  
Christianity' that has been hijacked by conservative groups? The term seems out  of 
place in the name of the ELcA denomination, even to Lutherans, but I think  
many progressive thinkers would feel comfortable and welcomed there.  
Dear Kelly,  
All religious words have many sides to their meaning and history. In England  
the evangelical began as the Protestant or Low Church tradition in the Church 
of  England. In that period of history evangelicals lived in tension with the 
 Anglo-Catholic or High Church party of that same church. They also had more  
subtle variations within each of these 'parties.' One could be a liberal  
evangelical or a scholarly evangelical. Unfortunately, the word today has become  
identified with an unthinking neo-fundamentalism. Thank you for reminding us  
that the word evangelical was once a much larger word than it is today.  
John Shelby Spong 
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