“The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment and condemn the people living today, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah. But look—something greater than Jonah is here!”
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It’s also something you have to see firsthand to believe.
Two occasions come to mind. A flicker of revival I witnessed around 2008 in a conference at a reformed cessationist church. The speaker was preaching about the power of Christ’s rescuing mercy even in the pit of hell. The group was so moved, it was like watching a wave come across the crowd, and we started to sing a worship song spontaneously.
The other was an entirely natural group trance at a 1998 Jane’s Addiction concert. If just one person would have spoke up, it would have shattered the paralysis.
I only have to see it in the statistics or on the BBC to believe it. Nature is rewarding the superstitious; it is its own reward. That they see things that aren’t there. And what makes you think, how do you know, that I haven’t seen such firsthand?
Neither do they take place in the presence of both together or the superstitious alone. As the statistics show. But let’s say these signs and wonders, these ‘modern healings’ are real. What are they for? Reward to the faithful? They certainly reward the organizers. That’s not why Jesus performed them. They were to subvert the established order of social inequality. Not reinforce it. They led to eusociality.
We all have the same sign. Believers and unbelievers. Being a believer doesn’t mean you have to believe in other claims, which are a distraction. Believers need to point to the miracle of distinctive eusociality. They can’t. Non-believers actually can. Believers actually oppose that.
So, back to the OP, how can anyone be persuaded there is medical evidence of modern healing when there is none whatsoever (which is consistent of post-Apostolic God with Jesus’ Jonah remark. Which of course He contravened Himself all the time)? If there were, scepticism couldn’t arise. If there were medical evidence I, Dawkins, Dennett would have to believe it. But that would be a sign, so it can’t be done.
PS ‘these’ days are the days of the past 1950 years? Since ‘Let us remove hence’?
And what miraculous proof of miracles do we have?
The only case that matters would be a faith denying miracle.
You can only have a miracle for your faith if you don’t need it.
What is a “faith denying miracle”? Google has zero results on the phrase.
Is it that hard to work out in the context?
I am obviously evil and adulterous as I am implicitly seeking after a sign, when all I have to do is believe the sign of the prophet Jonah. Have faith. If I need a miracle to have faith, that is a forbidden paradox. And if I have faith, then I will see miracles everywhere. Even ‘tho’ they’re not there.
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I can be real slow to understand things. It took me a good couple of hours to get how “being is” and “nonbeing is not”.
So what is a faith denying miracle?
Can’t read that mate. You’ll have to post it to the thread, not in reply to me.
Sorry Klax, I’m not following. It seems as if you have decided to stop receiving replies from me in the middle of a conversation.
It’s OK mate. If you reply to me, I can’t see you at all. If reply to the thread, I can.
And I explained repeatedly that asking for a miracle is a denial of faith, even according to Jesus Himself. Who freely performed miracles. Even to those who asked. But they didn’t ask out of asking Him to prove Himself. Now I have no problem whatsoever with Jesus either way. I think He’s great. Whether He’s God incarnate or not. I don’t have an attitude problem with Him. I’m not His enemy. So I got my mind right. But there is still no evidence whatsoever for modern day or any other kind of supernatural healing. None.
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Ok. I see what you mean by a faith denying miracle. Fortunately the NT doesn’t frame it’s epistemology in rigidly strict rationalistic terms. There is a wide ranging relationship between the miraculous and knowledge.
“I believe, help my unbelief.”
And there is the sign of Jonah for which there is a reasonable belief in the miraculous breaking through our apparently closed system.
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That’s where we are different. I have a problem if Jesus isn’t the way.
And it seems that God honored my unbelief in the best historical arguments I could find for the resurrection being no better than believing what another person saw.
Acts 2:14-36 was the key that unlocked the certainty that I now have.
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The NT could not frame its episteme in any rationalistic terms. Reason is subservient to culture and ‘revelation’ in it. Rationalism is epistemological. The NT certainly has a wide ranging relationship between the miraculous and knowledge. Philosophy has come a long way since.
“I believe, help my unbelief.” was said in person to Jesus by a desperate, honest man. And Jesus made belief/unbelief irrelevant. As any real miracle would. It isn’t my problem.
Jonah isn’t reasonable as history. Superb literature, yes. I love it. For its meaning at the time. Written centuries after its setting. Up there with Job. It’s reasonable for its sublime humanism. God was becoming a responsible adult by the C6th.
I gave you the like because I sympathize,
And here even more so. It’s a brilliant passage. I lost my certainty when I lost the Pericope Adulterae John 7:53–8:11. I can’t get it back.
Aye, if Jesus is not God incarnate, then its all just the greatest story ever told. But His morality is still the finest of its time for all time.
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The the sign of Jonah is the resurrection of Jesus. And I never could find certainty about that as a historical fact. Probable maybe, yeah at best. So that passage from John you referred to is no big deal for me after reading NT criticism on and off for 20 years.
It was being convinced that Jesus was a myth and thinking I could know God through a philosophical argument that opened up that most unbearable skepticism I earlier referred to.
And it’s when God visits you and there is that presence that surpasses all understanding, then you can appreciate what the NT has to say about the self-evident testimony of the Spirit.
A triune God is too good to not be true. Otherwise he is just a lonely God, and yet in Christ he became that to deliver us from sin. The greatest most outrageous story ever told.
May he make his way known to you.
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The grounds of belief in God is the experience of God: God is not the conclusion of an argument but the subject of an experience report.
The sign of Jonah was made up by Jesus as we all deconstruct and make up typologies from ancient literature; He saw Himself throughout the TaNaKh, He was right for the wrong reason, and/or wrong for the right reason. There is absolute certainty that it is excellent philosophical and theological fiction. God or no God, the Jonah fantasy did not happen. 30 years ago it was gospel for me. Losing it to literature and the re-development of civilized thinking didn’t come as a loss, unlike the unbearable loss of the Pericope Adulterae.
It’s all deeply subjective.
I see your pain in trying to know God philosophically without Jesus: it can’t be done as we both know.
And I’ve had numinous and extremely… coincidental experiences, but no Gideon’s fleece. So the Spirit has to testify harder in my case now. And I’ve asked.
The trinity doesn’t work for me any more as God the Son is a back projection too far. Jesus works theoretically as a human-divine natured hybrid, but not in any atonement theory I’ve ever come across, apart from mine. I like the outrageousness regardless, but our milages vary.
His way I know. What I want is Him. I can’t have Him.
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That is a lie whether you believe it to be I don’t know and neither do I judge you.
What the arguments do not prove is that you are not God. It’s the rational possibility of solipsism that will sweep even the best philosopher off their feet. If they are honest about it. And from the place of abandonment they can seek after the God that did not have to know loneliness. And those who seek him will find him.
Indeed God doesnt change His ways, which is precisely why He still heals today. There is no indication in the NT that there was a limit to the time God would provide gifts to the church, which include healing and miracles.
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Experience can be denied as can the obviously inferable causes behind some events. Take Maggie for instance. She could add 2 + 2 and get 4 (and so should her readers), and we’re not talking about ternary numbers.
It’s important not to lie to yourself (and then blame God).
[Blessed is the one who] …speaks truth IN his heart.
Psalm 15:2 NIV