The More the Miracle

In John 14:12 Jesus told his disciples that they would do greater things than the miracles that He Himself did. This has always been a tough statement to believe, at least for those Christians who aren’t on TV claiming to make diamonds materialize out of thin air. Let’s face it, Jesus’ miracles were more impressive than casting out the demon of restless leg syndrome.

One good explanation is that while Jesus did more impressive works, He was only one person. In contrast, God is able to do a far greater amount of works today through the millions of Christians in the world. These works are greater in the sense of greater quantity, not because they are more obviously supernatural.

Right now I am taking a seminar on Thomas Aquinas and reading from his Summa Theologica. Thomas described miracles as “those things which God does outside those causes which we know” (Ia., Q. 105, A. 7). In other words, a miracle is an effect the cause of which is outside of the natural order. It is something that happens because of a direct supernatural cause, not because of normal cause and effect within this world. Thomas also asked whether some miracles are greater than others. When compared to God’s power, one miracle is as easy for God as any other miracle. But, if we compare them to the amount of natural power—the powers of nature—that the miracle must overcome, then some miracles are indeed greater than others. (ST. I. Q. 105, A. 8)

If a miracle is greater the more it overcomes the powers of the natural order, what does that say about the works that God does through believers today? Consider which is more difficult: to cure a disease or to cause someone to turn to the Lord Jesus as their Savior? If God decided to work through a person to supernaturally cure a disease, that would be a miracle. However, many diseases can be cured by doctors without immediate divine intervention. Perhaps one day all diseases may be cured by medicine and therapy. The same thing could be true about many miracles. Maybe we could even build a machine that could part the Red Sea. But, we can never cause someone to turn to Christ without God’s work in their heart.

When someone turns to Christ in saving faith, it is because God has done a supernatural work in their heart. If left on their own—cause and effect—no one would do anything besides walk away from God forever. The sinful heart of the natural man is hard. There is no one who seeks God. (Romans 3:11)

So what is the greater miracle? Is it greater when God works through a person to do something that man could theoretically do by natural means, or is it greater when He works through a Christian to cause a hardened sinner to be born again? Let me suggest that when God uses a believer to explain the gospel message to an unbeliever, causing him or her to believe, that God is overcoming a greater natural force than if He caused the world to spin backwards.

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Alas, Thomas himself would disagree with this since he holds that "the justification of the ungodly is not miraculous, because the soul is naturally capable of grace" (ST. I-II. Q. 113, A. 10).  And by justification, Thomas means the transmutation of a person from a state of ungodliness to a state of justice, that is, of right order.

An Important Discussion With Luke

Sola Scriptura?

Christianity, in its best moments has always believed that our faith rests only on the Bible... and that these Scriptures were given without error.

"For our faith rests upon the revelation made to the apostles and prophets who wrote the canonical books, and not on the revelations (if any such there are) made to other doctors. Hence Augustine says (Epis. ad Hieron. xix, 1): 'Only those books of Scripture which are called canonical have I learned to hold in such honor as to believe their authors have not erred in any way in writing them. But other authors I so read as not to deem everything in their works to be true, merely on account of their having so thought and written, whatever may have been their holiness and learning.'"
-Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I.Q1. 8

If only we had always all been consistent with this...

How the Bible is Not Like the Telephone Game

It is not unusual to hear someone say that our Bibles are like the bad results of the telephone game. When kids play the telephone game, one kid whispers a sentence to the next kid who whispers it to another and on down the line. Finally the last kid repeats the garbled mess out loud and everyone gets a kick out of how butchered the message got in transmission. Critics assert that all we have are copies of copies of copies of copies, etc., of the original manuscripts and thus our current Bibles are like the results of the telephone game and we have no way of knowing what the original message was. (Some people will also say that the Bible is a translation of a translation of a translation, etc. Anyone making this claim doesn't know that all modern translations are made directly from the original languages.)

In reality, the manuscripts of the Bible are more like a tree. Imagine a tree with several branches coming off of the main trunk, splitting into other branches and then smaller ones yet. When the original copies of a Biblical letter—such as Paul’s letter to the Colossians—were written, other copies would be made for churches in other cities. Many copies would be made from the original and sent to various places in the Roman Empire. From those copies, other copies would be made for more Christians, and eventually to replace the old copies as they wore out. This means that there are multiple lines of transmission. This means that even if a change was made on one branch of the tree, it would not affect every other copy. Other branches would still be okay.

This also means—contrary to The DaVinci Code—that it would have been impossible for someone such as Emperor Constantine to change the text of the Bible, even if he had wanted to. There would be no way to gather and change all of these documents.

Scholars are able to determine where many manuscripts fit on this family tree by their age and shared characteristics. By comparing manuscripts, they are able to weed out any alterations and determine with great accuracy what the original text said.

In addition, there are several good reasons why the Bible is not like the telephone game.

1. The New Testament documents were in writing. They were not whispered one time, with the chance of mishearing one word for another. They were in writing and could be copied carefully and reviewed.

2. As mentioned, there were multiple lines of transmission. In the telephone game there is only one chain. The Bible has many branches. Even if someone got it wrong, other branches would get it right. Imagine a different version of the telephone game: One person whispers a message to four different people, and each of them whispers it to four more people, and so forth. Even if someone intentionally tried to sabotage the message, it would still be very easy to figure out what the original message was at the end of the game when you compared all of the final answers.

3. Bible scholars don’t just rely on the last version of the message. Imagine the same game of telephone from the paragraph above. Now imagine that not only do you get to hear the report from all the last people, you also get to hear other reports from many people early on in the tree. That would make it even easier to know with certainty what the original message was.

4. In addition to ancient manuscripts, we have over one million quotations from the New Testament by the early church fathers. Even if the entire New Testament was destroyed, it could be almost entirely reassembled just by using these quotes. Also, these quotes are from various points in history, meaning that changes in the Bible would also be reflected in these quotes. Further, in addition to the 5,700 Greek manuscripts that we have and the million plus quotations, we also have thousands of ancient translations of the Bible in languages such as Latin and Coptic. There are more than 10,000 manuscripts in Latin alone. Although these are translations, there are also very helpful witnesses to the original text.

5. Finally, there is a motivational difference between the New Testament scribes and kids playing the telephone game. Many kids—myself included—would intentionally try to garble the message in the telephone game. In contrast, the scribes were professionals who took great pride in their work. Copying these manuscripts by hand was painstaking work and they were motivated to do the best they could. They viewed these texts as sacred, not something to be careless with. The fact that many scribes would knowingly recopy a type-o, rather than fix it, shows that they were dedicated to copying the text as it was in front of them. Yes, sometimes there were mistakes as they looked at the wrong line, or a word with a similar ending. And there were times when the scribe would wrongly think that the text in front of him had a copying error in it, and by ‘fixing’ the ‘error’ would actually be making a copy error. But all of this shows that they were trying very hard to create an accurate copy.

In conclusion, the telephone game is a very bad and misleading analogy of how the Bible was copied.

Sources include Dan Wallace's debate with Bart Ehrman.

A Brief Message

I'm not sure how a kid wouldn't notice this, but...

My wife called me at the office and told me that my five-year old son had something to tell me. She put Eric on the phone and he told me that he was at school when he discovered that he was wearing two pair of underwear. When he got himself dressed in the morning, he put a new pair of underwear on but forgot to take the old pair off.

People may wonder how many times we dropped him when he was a baby, but this will not stop me from using this in a sermon the first time I get a chance. Ephesians 4 and Colossians 3 tell us that the Christian life is about taking off the old and putting on the new. As Ephesians 4:22-24 says, “You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” This should be our response to the free gift of salvation given to us through faith in Christ.

God doesn’t want spiritual nudists—who take off the old but do not replace it with new character. It’s not enough just to stop stealing; God wants us to work, doing something useful so that we can have something to share with those in need (Eph. 4:28). Don’t just stop being a drain on others, but be productive so you can help those in need. Don’t just take off unwholesome talk, but put on speech that builds up others according to their need (Eph. 4:29).

Don’t be a spiritual nudist, but don’t make the opposite mistake either. Don’t just add the good but fail to take off the bad. You may think it looks better on the outside, but it’s still disgusting.

I wish only five-year olds made this mistake.

Try to notice that you are still wearing your dirty underwear before you put the clean pair over them. Don’t just layer Jesus on top of your sin.