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In this episode, Trent shows how Protestant attempts to explain away Catholic miracles mirror atheist attempts to explain Christian miracles.
Transcript:
Welcome to The Counsel of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
All I need is a miracle, all I need is you. True wisdom from a 1985 hit by Mike + The Mechanics. Indeed, the truth of the Christian faith is guaranteed by a miracle, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And miracles have also been used as evidences for the truth of the Catholic faith in particular. So how should Protestants respond to Catholic miracles? That’s what we’ll be talking about today here on The Counsel of Trent Podcast with me your host, Catholic Answers apologist, Trent Horn. Hi, glad that you’re here. Before we do that, though, please hit the like button and subscribe to our channel. It will be a miracle if we hit a million subscribers by next month, but it’s actually quite possible by natural means to reach a hundred thousand subscribers next month. You can help us get there, so please hit the subscribe button.
All right, so in the Summa Contra Gentiles, St. Thomas Aquinas addresses the topic of miracles. And he says miracles were more common in biblical times because their testimonial power was needed to establish God’s different covenants. Aquinas did not deny, however, that miracles continued after the apostolic age. Aquinas even cites these later miracles as evidence for the truth of Catholicism saying, quote, “Yet it is also a fact that, even in our own time, God does not cease to work miracles through his saints for the confirmation of the faith,” end quote. This led early Protestants to ask, “How could the Catholic Church be in league with the antichrist if God had performed so many miracles through the saints?” The answer for some Protestants was that God did not perform these miracles at all. They were either pious frauds or demonic deceptions. John Calvin, for example, called them frivolous and ridiculous, so vain and false. Other Protestants became skeptical of any post-apostolic miracles, even miracles that allegedly occurred among other Protestants.
The scholar Thomas Kidd describes how a woman named Mercy Wheeler was healed at a Protestant revival service in the 1740s. She had an infirmity that prevented her from walking. Kidd says that many Protestants could not believe this miracle really happened because, as he writes, quote, “To 18th century Protestants, miracles were too closely associated with Catholicism, and anti-Catholicism served as an essential component of British Protestant identity. Opponents of the revivals attempted to associate the revivals with Catholic superstition whenever extraordinary claims surfaced,” end quote. So as a result, some Protestants adopted the same skeptical attitude atheists have long had against the miraculous foundations of the Christian faith. Now, to be fair, some Protestants are skeptical of all post-apostolic miracles, be they Catholic or Protestant. Among Protestants, there is a debate over whether miraculous gifts have continued into the present, this is called continuationism, or whether they ceased with the deaths of the apostles. This is called Cessationism.
An example of the latter view that strongly denies any post-apostolic miracle is the Calvinist author B. B. Warfield’s 1918 book, Counterfeit Miracles. Warfield dismissed Catholic miracles as being the byproduct of people he said were conditioned to believe miracles are common because of doctrines like transubstantiation. He writes the following. “The worldview of the Catholic is one all his own and is very expressly a miraculous one. He reckons with the miraculous in every act. Miracles suggest itself to him as a natural explanation of every event, and nothing seems too strange to him to be true,” end quote. For example, Warfield explains the way the healings at Lourdes as being the product of suggestion. And he says Medieval miracle stories came from, quote, “The thought of an age so little instructed in the true character of the forces of nature, and especially its deeply-seated conception of the essentially magical nature of religion and its modes of working,” end quote.
Hopefully, you should see the giant problem with a Christian saying things like this. If you replace Catholic with just Christian in these excerpts, you might think B. B. Warfield was actually the atheist Richard Dawkins. The Protestant author L. Philip Barnes notes the same thing and says, quote, “If the same considerations induced by Warfield in his dismissal of post-apostolic miracles were applied to some biblical stories, then a similar negative verdict would be required in the latter cases as the former,” end quote. You see the same parallel with atheistic arguments when comparing the evidence for Christ’s resurrection and the evidence for Marian apparitions. One common atheistic explanation for the resurrection is that the disciples hallucinated the appearances of the risen Jesus. However, the Protestant apologist Mike Licona says it would be, quote, “A mind-boggling coincidence that every one of the 12 disciples would have the same predisposition to have a hallucination.” This, he says, makes group hallucinations essentially impossible.
However, if early testimony from groups of eyewitnesses is enough to show that Jesus Christ was seen alive after his death, then why wouldn’t the same kind of evidence be good enough to show that the blessed Virgin Mary was seen alive after the end of her life in the form of Marian apparitions? Even atheists raise this point, albeit to discredit Protestant arguments for the resurrection. The atheistic biblical scholar Hector Avalos, for example, says that Marian apparitions, quote, “Form the closest parallel to the Jesus apparition stories. Marian apparitions have been reportedly witnessed simultaneously by millions of people, but most evangelical apologists do not see that as proof that Mary is alive,” end quote. The agnostic scholar Bart Ehrman provides similar evidence for Marian apparitions, and he writes the following. “Protestant apologists interested in proving that Jesus was raised from the dead rarely show any interest in applying their finely-honed historical talents to the exalted blessed Virgin Mary,” end quote.
In my debate with Doug from Hein Creek on the resurrection, an audience member asked me about the miracle of Fatima. That was where three children claimed to have seen an apparition of the Virgin Mary in Fatima, Portugal in 1917. After they reported their encounter, a crowd of thousands of people gathered on October 13th. Many witnesses claim the sun moved in extraordinary patterns across the sky, that it changed color, and that the ground and clothes that had been soaked by rain had become bone dry in a matter of minutes. Here’s what I said about the appearances of Fatima.
I don’t believe the sun or earth changed their normal rotation, but I think it’s very possible that God caused an optical effect to occur to make it appear what normally you would not have naturally seen that they saw that. I also think that we have… And what’s interesting here is we actually have better evidence for Fatima than for even the resurrection because we have contemporary newspaper reports describing the event right the day after that it purportedly happened of contemporary accounts talking about puddles drying up and multiple witnesses describing it. So I do think there’s very strong evidence for that.
Doug:
The quote of the day here in this live stream is that we have better evidence for Fatima than the resurrection. I can’t believe Trent said that.
Trent Horn:
In some respects, yeah. Notice I said that the evidence is stronger in some respects. For example, the apostles’ wrist suffering and death to proclaim Jesus rose from the dead, but the witnesses of Fatima didn’t do this. But just because the miracle of Fatima has more recent evidence does not mean the resurrection of Christ has insufficient evidence. Doug acted as if this were a concession, and it might’ve been for someone who denies Marian apparitions. In fact, Protestant apologists who have looked at the evidence for Marian apparitions don’t dismiss them as mere hallucinations. Instead, they’re convinced that the people involved saw some kind of extramental or actually existing phenomena. Mike Licona addresses the evidence for Marian apparitions that Bart Ehrman includes in his book on Jesus. And Licona says that Ehrman has not disproven Christ’s resurrection by talking about things like Marian apparitions. That’s because he hasn’t disproven the Marian apparitions.
Mike Licona puts it this way. “Ehrman merely assumes without any argument that visions of Mary are hallucinations. He states that groups had seen her. He admits that many of those experiencing the visions were educated professionals including doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, engineers, and lawyers. Even Muslims apparently saw her. And the person perceived as being Mary was even photographed.” And in his book, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, Licona admits the following. “For myself, I am not prepared to adjudicate on the matter of Marian apparitions. Because I am Protestant, I carry a theological bias against an appearance of Mary. However, I am not predisposed to reject the reality of apparitions in general.” It makes sense that Protestants would not explain Marian apparitions as being something like an improbable group hallucination, because that explanation would undercut their own arguments for Christ’s resurrection. Perhaps that’s why one popular Protestant response to Marian apparitions is that they are actually demonic impersonations of the Virgin Mary.
Licona writes, “Other supernatural forces, such as demons, could be behind some supernatural events in other religions.” This response goes all the way back to the 16th century counter reformation when authors such as Johann Marbach denounced stories of Marian apparitions as simply being encounters with the demonic. He wrote the following. “She was a false Mary whom the Jesuits conjured up with a form and the appearance of the Holy Virgin Mary. This they performed through their sorcery, and the company that they keep with the devil,” end quote. In my debate on the resurrection with the atheist Matt Dillahunty, I said we should operate on the assumption that reality is as it appears unless evidence suggests otherwise. Dillahunty refused to accept that principle. But if you do that, that would lead to all kinds of radical skepticism. But if you do accept this common sense principle, it seems clear that it at least appears Jesus rose from the dead. And if that’s true, then one is justified in believing that conclusion unless evidence suggests otherwise.
Even during Jesus’s ministry, his critics rejected this very principle by denying he was a wonder working prophet of the true God. They instead said Jesus casted out demons by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, or it was the devil doing it. In response, Jesus told them every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and a divided house falls. And if Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand? In other words, claiming Jesus was diabolical or demonically possessed violates basic principles of reason. Jesus’s healing of the sick and his firm commitment to serving the God of Israel means that he at least appeared to be a prophet. And in the absence of any evidence for Jesus’s demonic nature, such an explanation, on par with modern claims like that Jesus was just some technologically advanced alien, is just a weak way of explaining away the historical data instead of providing a genuine explanation for it.
So if it appears that Jesus was actually the son of God and raised the dead and rose himself, then we should accept that explanation. Merely because there’s a possibility that he was demonic, that doesn’t mean that that is a real possibility that we should entertain, especially in the absence of evidence for it. And the same thing should apply to Marian apparitions. Just because it’s possible this is a demonic impersonation doesn’t mean we should take that seriously unless there actually is evidence for it for any particular Marian apparition. And also, there’s evidence against the claim that Jesus was operating under demonic powers. Because why would an agent of the devil use miracles to motivate people to adopt a belief system that’s ordered toward rejecting the devil?
If that explanation works for justifying the miracles of Jesus, then it works for other Catholic miracles, including Marian apparitions. When it comes to approved apparitions, such as those of Fatima, we can ask why would the devil impersonate Mary in order to encourage people to belong to a church whose members promise in their baptismal vows to renounce Satan and all his empty works and all his empty show? Now, another objection would be that, if Catholic miracles prove Catholicism, then miracles performed by Protestant pastors prove Protestantism. For example, Craig Keener’s two-volume work, Miracles, describes Protestant missionaries and pastors who are claimed to have performed miracles like healing people, and in some cases, even raising the dead. Some early Protestants even said that images of Martin Luther were incombustible, they wouldn’t burn even when thrown into fires that were being stoked with Martin Luther’s books. Now, some of these stories and accounts may be apocryphal or never happened, but that’s also true of some Catholic miracle accounts, especially those that were written centuries after the events that allegedly happened.
But to say no Protestant miracle claim is authentic because Protestantism is false would be to engage in the same kind of prejudice that Protestants like B. B. Warfield practice when they say that no Catholic miracle claim could ever be authentic. And they say that, at the outset, that’s prejudicial. Does that mean miracles or mighty works, if we’re reluctant to always call these things miracles, can’t tell us anything about the agents performing them? Well, if these acts involve the suspension of the laws of nature, then at a minimum they tell us the agent’s message should be taken seriously because there is a supernatural power behind it. In some cases, this might be a malevolent power bent on deceiving people. And that could be the case with some non-Christian mighty works or miracles. But we shouldn’t rush to a demonic explanation unless evidence suggests it. God may be the power behind a miracle, but his divine act does not constitute an endorsement of everything in the miracle worker’s theology.
The Apostle John told Jesus, “Master, we saw a man casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him because he does not follow with us.” In response, Jesus said, “Do not forbid him, for he that is not against you is for you.” In other words, the exorcists who did not follow Jesus were ignorant of his true identity, but that did not prevent God from giving those exorcists spiritual gifts so they could do good in the world. So that means that God might perform miraculous deeds in order to confirm some aspects of Protestant theology, the ones that all Christians affirm, like the need to repent and believe in the gospel or the deity of Christ.
But what’s more difficult for Protestants to explain are miracles that involve things like the Eucharist or relics. Miracles that seem to confirm not just Christian theology but distinctly Catholic theology. So in that respect, if it appears that God is revealing that Catholic practices such as offering the mass or venerating relics have faithfully handed on what was first given to the apostles, then unless evidence suggests otherwise, we should believe that this is what has happened and is being confirmed in Catholic miracles.
The Catholic philosophers Tyler McNabb and Joseph Blotto make this point as well in the context of the events such as Fatima. They write the following. “We should expect that if a figure who represents a specific Christian tradition appears, then it would give credence to the truth of that tradition, assuming the figure does not denounce said tradition. For instance, if Martin Luther appeared with a message from God, then many would consider this to be evidence that the Protestant tradition is correct over the Roman Catholic tradition. Or if John Calvin showed up with a message from God, then this would serve as evidence that the reformed Protestant tradition is correct over other Protestant traditions, and Roman Catholicism as well. Likewise, the fact that God chose Mary to reveal his message in a Roman Catholic context, that is, a context where heavy Marian devotion is both common and seen as biblical, gives us evidence that the Roman Catholic tradition is correct,” end quote.
In conclusion, Protestants should not be dismissive of Catholic miracles, lest their approach be used to dismiss biblical miracles as well. And Catholics should not crow about the alleged lack of Protestant miracles, lest they undermine their own case also. Instead, Protestants should be open to the existence of Catholic miracles and seriously consider and discern what God is revealing through those miracles, especially miracles that occur in uniquely Catholic contexts, such as the Eucharist miraculously becoming flesh or apparitions of the blessed Virgin Mary or incorruptible saints. Hopefully, they’ll conclude that God has continued to bless his people with signs and wonders for the new covenant he has made with them through Christ’s one, holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. Thank you so much for watching this episode and I just hope that you have a very blessed day.
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