Why believe in the miracles of the New Testament? That was a question I remember being asked as an evangelical undergraduate in my introductory New Testament class at the University of Virginia. After doing some reading of such evangelical authors as Lee Strobel and consulting various Protestant pastors and professors, I discovered that there are indeed good reasons to believe in the miracles as depicted in the Bible.
For starters, when compared to many other ancient historical events, the sheer amount of evidence supporting the reality of Jesus’ miracles is overwhelming. The Gospels are four separate accounts of his life, written within a generation or two of his ministry, and share many overlapping details, including miracles. The first-century Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke present versions of the same miracles, such as the healing of the demoniac, the cleansing of the leper, the stilling of the storm, and the healing of the withered hand. All four Gospels relate the story of the feeding of the five thousand. And passages in other New Testament books also mention Christ performing miracles, including Hebrews 2:4 and 2 Peter 1:16-18.
Then there’s the testimony of early extra-biblical Christian sources. For example, the early-second-century Christian Quadratus refers to Christ’s miracles, asserting,
The works of the Savior were ever present, for they were true. Those who were cured and those who were raised from the dead were seen not only while being cured and while being raised. They were ever present, not only while our Savior dwelt among us, but also for a considerable time after he had departed. In fact, some of them have survived to our own time.
Another second-century Christian, Justin Martyr, wrote, “That it was predicted that our Christ should heal all diseases and raise the dead, hear what was said . . . and that he did those things, you can learn from the Acts of Pontius Pilate.”
Early extra-biblical non-Christian sources also describe Jesus as a miracle-worker. The first-century Jewish historian Josephus labels Jesus as “one who performed surprising deeds.” The second-century Babylonian Talmud claims that Jesus “practiced sorcery”—likely a reference to his alleged miracles. The second-century Roman physician Celsus in turn says that Christ “acquired some miraculous powers” while staying in Egypt as a young child.
Admittedly, there are many accounts of other ancient figures performing miracles. But nothing compares to the amount of evidence from the first and second centuries documenting Jesus as a miracle-worker. It would be one thing if this were all the historical record said of Jesus—perhaps he was a clever illusionist whose followers conspired with him to trick people for personal gain. But we also have a large corpus of his teachings, which portray not some cynical huckster, but a man presenting an incredibly rigorous and complex ethical system, who demanded selfless charity, humility, and sacrifice from his followers, many of whom died for him.
Granted, for the skeptic, this may not be particularly convincing. Even if it seems as though miracles were performed, there must be some natural explanation for all of this. Perhaps Jesus persuaded people to share their food to the thousands who came to hear him preach. People purportedly raised from the dead only seemed dead, just as we periodically have examples now of those presumed to be dead suddenly waking, sometimes at their own funerals! But for Protestants of faith, as I once was, the best conclusion was the most direct: thousands of people witnessed Jesus causing miraculous events, with no natural explanation, and those events were remarkable enough to be recorded not only by his followers, but by Jews and pagans as well.
When I converted to Catholicism, I did so largely because of questions of authority: who has the authority to determine the contents of Scripture and who has the authority to interpret what Scripture means. It was only later that I began investigating some of the most famous miracles in the history of the Church: Marian apparitions at Guadalupe, Lourdes, and Fatima; the Shroud of Turin; Eucharistic miracles. What I realized is that events that as a Protestant seemed to me hokey and absurd were based on verifiable evidence, just like Christ’s miracles.
Robert Spitzer, S.J. in his recent book Christ, Science, and Reason: What We Can Know About Jesus, Mary, and Miracles, demonstrates how compelling the evidence of such explicitly Catholic miracles truly is. After a chapter documenting much of the same ground on Christ’s miracles I’ve cited above, Spitzer systematically recounts this evidence. In his chapter on Guadalupe and Fatima, he explains how Aztec peasant Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin miraculously found Castilian roses in the middle of the winter and brought them to the local bishop, an event attested to by contemporary historical records. Moreover, the agave tilma—the clothing worn by Juan Diego, in which he carried the roses and upon which the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe appears—should have decomposed over four hundred years ago, and the pigment and brightness of color of the original figure of the Madonna should have degraded.
The Miracle of the Sun at Fatima is in a sense even more impressive because of its proximity to us. Fifty thousand people were present on October 17, 1917 alongside the Portuguese peasant children Lucia dos Santos, Francisco Marto, and Jacinta Marto to witness the strange phenomena of the sun’s brightness and movements, which incredibly did not cause damage or discomfort to onlookers’ eyes. Though many of the crowd were devout Catholics, there were also plenty of skeptics, such as Avelino de Almeida, the editor-in-chief of Lisbon-based secular masonic daily O Seculo. Yet Almeida, along with many other journalists, government officials, scientists, professors, and doctors, publicly confirmed the events of that day. Indeed, there are photographs of the crowd gazing at the sun that day.
On what basis does the Protestant deny such miracles, which are based not only on the same types and amount of corroborated eyewitness testimony, but in the case of such things as the tilma or Shroud of Turin, extensive verifiable scientific evidence as well? If there is as much, if not more eyewitness testimony for Marian apparitions as there is for Jesus’ miracles as described in the New Testament, why not believe them?
It’s a question I often ask myself reflecting on my own time as an evangelical who so confidently defended the historicity of Jesus’ miracles. For myself, I think the answer is a combination of ignorance regarding the particulars of such miraculous stories and a certain unfair a priori cynicism toward anything regarding Marian miracles. I presumed that the Catholic Marian doctrines were erroneous, so obviously these Marian apparitions and miracles must be, too.
Yet as Trent Horn has persuasively argued, this line of thinking evinces an unwarranted prejudice against Catholicism. Ironically, there is no substantive difference between this and the unwarranted prejudice many non-Christian skeptics have toward the Bible and Christianity. In truth, the Protestant refusal to accept post-apostolic miracles such as those expertly defended by Spitzer is ad hoc and arbitrary, revealing an incoherence in Protestant thinking. Whatever standard we apply that leads us to believe the miracles of Christ and his apostles as depicted in the New Testament, we must apply that same standard to specifically Catholic miracles, too.