A summary of Jeffrey John's book "The Meaning in the Miracles".
The Guardian Editor section used to include summaries of books "condensed in the style of the original", and that is what I have tried to do here.
Introduction
The author starts by referring to two Scripture teachers from his school.
One of them believed the Bible in the most literal possible sense, and
considered the meaning of each miracle story was to prove the supernatural
nature of Jesus. The other teacher, in the interests of being relevant,
dismissed anything that sounded supernatural. Her explanation of the
miracles was therefore naturalistic (e.g. the calming of the storm was a
convenient coincidence) or moralistic (e.g. the feeding of the five thousand
was achieved by inspiring everyone to share the food they had). Both
teachers assumed that the only interesting thing about the miracles was the
question of what did or did not happen, and both therefore missed the point.
What we need to do is look for the meaning.
"Let us ask the miracles themselves what they tell us about Christ, for they
have a tongue of their own, if it can only be understood. Because Christ is
the Word of God, all the acts of the Words become words to us. The miracle
which we admire on the outside also has something inside which must be
understood. If we see a piece of beautiful handwriting, we are not
satisfied simply to note the letters are formed evenly, equally and
elegantly: we also want to know the meaning the letters convey. In the same
way a miracle is not like a picture, something merely to look out and
admire, and to be left at that. It is much more like a piece of writing
which we must learn to read and understand." -- St Augustine
a) Each miracle story is a literary creation with a theological purpose.
The gospel writers were steeped in Old Testament Scripture, and constantly
use threads of prophecy-fulfilment, symbolism, or allegory to create a new
story which reapplies the truths, hopes, patterns and meanings of the
scriptural past to the present.
Therefore the key to unlocking the theological meaning of a miracle story
requires knowledge of the Old Testament. The author therefore recommends
following up the cross-references in the Bible, and using a good commentary.
b) The stories must be understood in their own religious, historical, social
and political context. A story such as the healing of a woman with a
haemorrhage shows Jesus overturning a taboo which subjugated and oppressed
women, and was nothing less than revolutionary. Read properly, it
challenges the Church to assess its own treatment of women today as
powerfully as Jesus challenged the gynophobic conventions of his own time.
A similar point can be made about most, if not all, of the healing miracles.
They seem to have been deliberately selected by the evangelist to show
Jesus healing at least one of every category of persons who, according to
the purity laws of Jesus' society, were specifically excluded and labeled
unclean, or who was set at varying degrees of distance from worshipping in a
temple. They are demonstrations of Jesus' healing power and compassion for
the individual, but that is not the main point. Far more relevant to us is
the miracles' universal significance: the overturning of social and
religious barriers, the abolition of taboos, and Jesus' declaration of God's
love and compassion for everyone, expressed in a systematic inclusion of
each class of the previous excluded and marginalised. How often has the
Church failed to follow this inclusiveness and, and preferred instead to
create and cling to its own taboos?
c) Principalities and powers. The gospels continually refer to demonic
powers,, and we must avoid the pitfalls of literalism and reductionism. We
are not required to believe in the existence of demons with forked tails,
nor even, necessarily, in the powers as being entirely distinct, self
existent entities, but nor should we simply dismiss them as if they were
merely outdated dramatic trappings which no longer mean anything in a
"scientific" age. The New Testament uses the same terms to mean both
supernatural forces and the very real powers which represent them on earth.
(They are not inherently bad.)
Just as the healing miracles often imply reinclusion of a whole class of
excluded persons, the power of sin and rebellion against God, and the
healing that they require, must be understood as operating corporately as
well as individually.
d) Faith. One of the many paradoxes in the gospels is that at first sight
the miracles seem to be intended as straightforward demonstrations of Jesus'
divine power, but at the same time the gospels contain strong warnings about
the dangers of being impressed by signs and miracles, and Jesus himself
appears to be extremely wary of being known simply as a wonder-worker, and
is scathing about those who seek signs for their own sake. A personal
belief in Jesus that goes deeper than self-interest and the mere worship of
power is at least part of what the gospels mean by "faith".
e) Eyes to see (and ears to hear). When the disciples fail to understand
the significance of the miracles, they seem to incarnate both the particular
spiritual blindness of Israel and the general spiritual blindness of all
humanity. Mark in particular appears to believe that God had willed a
temporary spiritual blindness to come upon the people which actually
prevented them from understanding. The hope, prophesied by Isaiah, remains
that one day all the blind eyes will be opened. All the gospel miracles of
Jesus healing the blind are to be interpreted in terms of this theology of
revelation: their point is not medical but spiritual and theological.
Summary: the background knowledge of a miracle is indispensable if we are to
get the spiritual meaning. All the miracle stories contain profound
teaching which is of indispensable relevance today, teaching that all too
often gets passed over because we do not get past the "miraculous" packaging
and the endless issue of "did it happen?" We should aim to share the same
perception of the truth that impelled the evangelists to write the miracle
stories in the first place.
That covers the introduction -- the rest of the book consists of analysis,
from the above perspectives, of almost all the miracles. Each chapter also
has some devotional materials.