[AI translation] Now, following on from the passage that was read, I would like to talk about something that was discussed in Bible class not long ago, the problem of miracles in the Bible. The question of how the believer of today should view and appreciate the miraculous events that are found in Scripture. It is interesting to note that in the past, centuries ago, it was precisely the miracles that Jesus performed that were seen as testimony to His divinity. Today, however, the whole spiritual climate has changed radically: today, hardly anyone would believe in the divinity of Jesus because of the miraculous way in which He was born and the many miraculous things He did. Today these miracles are no longer pillars of faith, but scandal stones. For many people, this is the critical point: the miracle! So it is precisely because of the person of Jesus that we read again and again in the Bible that the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised... This is what makes faith so difficult for a thinking person at this stage of scientific development! - So how do we relate to such miraculous narratives, such biblical miracles?There are those who put this question simply, saying: these are just tales, tales without any historical authenticity, like the legend of the miraculous deer from the Hungarian past. Or: They are just stories with symbolic significance, not because they really happened, but because they represent some truth, like the animal tales of Aesop. There are those who take an even more simplistic view of miracles and say: only the primitive world view of the people of that time saw miracles in those events, but today, when astronomy, biology, chemistry and psychology have explained many things, in the possession of such knowledge, what once seemed to be a miracle would no longer be a miracle. Just as, for example, a person who knows nothing about modern technology, if he saw and heard a pocket radio, would be amazed at the incomprehensible wonder, but with the necessary knowledge, the pocket radio is no longer a miracle, but is very understandable. So, as the knowledge of science expands, the possibility of a miracle becomes narrower and narrower, they say. But is this really true? Are the miracles we read about in the Bible really just legends of uncertain credibility, or are they now scientifically explainable phenomena? Are the miracles that give the divine revelation its almost straightforward character really so easy to explain away? Well, not so, my brethren. How is it then?
If we look at the miraculous events described in the Bible from a scientific point of view, we can generally divide them into two groups: one group includes those miracles which can be explained by natural science, i.e. which do not contradict the laws of nature as yet understood by science. God uses the natural course of things, that is, the laws of nature themselves, in such a way that they become a miraculous help to someone. God works through the laws of nature, and it is through the laws of nature that he does his will.- I have already told you the story of what happened a few years ago to two members of our congregation. A very serious believer, a lonely, elderly woman, was praying in the evening; at the same time she thought of a friend, also elderly and lonely, and felt that she had to call her on the telephone. He did so immediately. He dialled and the telephone in the other apartment rang. It turned out that the friend, in her great desolation and bitterness, was about to commit the suicide she had planned long ago at the very moment the phone rang. She felt as if an invisible force had seized her hand at the last moment. And when they began to talk, the suicide candidate slowly became comforted and calmed down - he is still alive today. What happened? A miracle? Not in the sense that something contrary to the laws of nature happened; for it is not supernatural for one person to think of another; nor is it supernatural for a telephone bell to ring, for if the wires are electrified, as must usually happen when a number is dialled, the bell of the number called will ring. This is a physical law. So nothing supernatural happened - and yet a miracle happened, because through all these natural phenomena God saved a man from suicide. Because the miracle is not that that woman remembered her friend, but that she remembered her friend at that very moment. And the miracle is not that the phone rang, but that it rang at that moment. And that "just then" - that's the miracle! Because behind it was God acting, through events moving within the framework of natural laws; that was the miracle. That's how it became a miraculous deliverance for a man.
So many of the miracles of the Bible can be "explained", in so far as it is an explanation. One is the parting of the Red Sea before the Jews. It is quite possible that a meteorologically known phenomenon, not at all contrary to natural law, occurred here. Perhaps an exceptionally high tide, coupled with a strong southerly wind from the south, enabled the refugees to cross the Red Sea to the present Suez Canal on dry land. After them, a strong tide and wind shifted the waters back on the pursuing Egyptians. One team escaped, the other was lost. So, from a naturalistic point of view, nothing miraculous, nothing contrary to known natural law, happened; but the miracle is that the tide came in at the very moment when a distressed people cried out to God for help. And here again it is that the tide came in, and the tide came in just when it was needed for help: that is the miracle!
Another example: the release of the apostle Peter from captivity in Jerusalem. It is written that in the prison, which was sealed with three doors, Peter was awakened from his sleep at night by the angel, and then led through three guards and three gates, out into the street - and disappeared from sight. And Peter was free to go where he pleased. Again, nothing miraculous in the supernatural sense happened, in my opinion. Rather, it is more likely that the "angel" - which literally means angelos, a messenger in Hungarian - was a secretly Christ-faithful member of the guard. Today, we would say that a believer was embedded among the prison guards, and this one secretly went to Peter's aid. He waited until the other members of the guard had fallen asleep, then quietly opened the doors and led Peter out, and when he was outside, told him to get out of the area... So it's very likely that this was not a supernatural manifestation of power from an angel descending from heaven, but a very understandable, traceable human action - the miracle being that there was a man among the guards at that very moment, and one whom God needed to clear the way for Peter to leave the prison. Was there by chance a man of faith? No! God had arranged things that way - so it was a miracle.
But there are not only miracles in the Bible that are embedded in the laws of nature, there are also miracles - and this is the other group - in which natural laws are actually broken. For example, when Jesus says to the paralytic, "Get up, take up your bed and go home", and the paralysis is instantly removed: this is a case that cannot be called a natural healing. Or when Lazarus, who has been dead four days, cries out to the grave, "Lazarus come forth" - and the dead man comes to life, this cannot be reconciled with any known law of nature. Here is a miracle in a totally inexplicable, supernatural sense. This is what natural science says: it doesn't happen, it can't happen, it can't happen! It is impossible. It is contrary to all the laws of nature. Here, then, we are really dealing with the most fundamental question of our faith. Is it a question of whether we believe in a God who created this world with all its natural laws, or in a God who was created into this world by our imagination? The Bible tells us that God is the Creator. You know that cheap argument that an old astronomer once said: I have searched the universe with binoculars, but I have found God nowhere in it. Of course not! For it is not that God is somewhere in this world, but that this world is in God, in the palm of God's hand, in God's love. Our faith, then, does indeed reckon with a Power, an Intelligence, a Love and Wisdom, a living One who is above the world He has created and the natural laws He has implanted in it. He has the power to reach into and change the processes of causality, or gravity, or psychic law.
Let me illustrate this with just one example. Look: what happens when I raise my arm like this? The force of gravity pulls the molecules of my arm downwards, and yet these molecules rise upwards. This upward movement of the molecules is the result of causes that are invisible from a naturalistic point of view, because the will that is at work here is invisible. It can therefore also be called a miracle, since the dimension from which this part of the body moves is unknown to physics and chemistry. Of course, no one considers it a miracle, because we are used to the idea that behind such movement is the power of someone's will. So what is actually happening is not that a natural law is suspended, but that somewhere in the whole of the causes there is a cause at work that is from another dimension: not physical, but spiritual - and yet it has an effect on the material world. Now then: could not God, from a dimension unknown to us, intervene in the natural world, even without violating natural laws? For if God did not have the power to do this, if all the events of our lives were to take place according to predetermined laws, like a film that has been shot and cannot be changed, then there would be no point in praying!
But anyway, today's science is much more cautious than to say categorically that something is impossible! Since we have known the structure of the smallest part of the material world, the atom, since energy has been released in matter, since we have known that matter does not "exist" but "happens", and since we have known that natural events are not governed by mechanical laws of causality, as was once imagined, but a mysterious energetic process that is more akin to an operation of the will, since the possibility of miracles has been reckoned with in science - since the biblical miracles have been reimagined in modern physics. They are imaginable: this does not mean they can be explained, because what God does always remains a mystery.
Nor is this the solution to the problem of miracles for us. It is that there is only one miracle: Jesus himself! Not His works in the first place, not His healings, not His resurrections, but His person. The incarnation. God appearing in the flesh. God coming among us in Jesus, the Creator made creature in Jesus, the supernatural Power submitting to the laws of nature in Jesus, the divine Holiness taking upon Himself human sin in Jesus, the eternal Life suffering death in Jesus: that is the miracle! Whoever surrenders before this miracle, which truly transcends all understanding, will have no problem with the other miracles of the Bible or of God! For the one who surrenders to the miracle of Christ experiences the miracle on himself, on his own heart, on his own emotions, on his own nature. God prefers not to reach into the world of atoms and molecules with his miraculous power, but into the human heart. Is there a greater miracle than the transformation of a man's life? The liberation, the purification of man from the pulling downward gravity of sin and death? Who can explain the miracle of a man's reflexes of emotion and thought, which have been conditioned to hate, malice, envy, suddenly begin to work in a different way, and a warmth of love, goodness, peace, flows through the nerve pathways... And such a miracle really happens in me when my soul is connected to the Miracle: to Jesus! For with Jesus the world of God has entered this world. The miracles of the Bible are also signs that the redemption of the world from the power of sin and death has begun. The Saviour is here!
I was talking to a hospital patient the other day. A medically hopeless case. He knows it. He said, I do believe in miracles. I told him: don't believe in miracles, believe in Jesus! And now let me say the same to you: don't believe in the possibility of a miracle like this or that, but believe in Jesus Christ! And then you will see all at once that the world around you, all of life, will be filled - with many precious miracles! Signs of God's incomprehensible, great love!
Amen.
Date: 16 April 1961.