Jesus Christ Proved Himself God by His Wondrous Works

a) The Miracles of Christ

Miracles, as we have seen, are marvellous works, out of the ordinary course of nature, and produced by Almighty God. If the marvellous events can be known, then we can recognize them as historical happenings, and we say that we have knowledge of their historical truth. If the marvellous works can be known as truly beyond the power of natural causes to produce and as really produced by God, then we can recognize the miracles as sUch, and we say that we have knowledge of their philosophical truth. When both the historical and philosophical truth of miracles is established, then we are forced by reason to say: “The finger of God is here”; we are compelled to admit that God approves the doctrine in proof of which a miracle is worked; we are inescapably convinced that miracles are a proof of divine approval. Now, Christ wrought true miracles. Therefore, the doctrine in proof of which He wrought them is approved of God. But Christ’s doctrine concerns two things above all else, viz., His character as true God, and His mission as man’s Redeemer. Therefore, the miracles of Christ show unmistakably that God approves as true His claim to be God and man’s Redeemer. The Gospels mention many works of Christ which are unquestionably true miracles. He changed water into wine by the mere act of His will, He fed thousands with a few loaves and fishes, He walked upon water as upon dry land, He stilled the surging sea with a word, He healed the sick instantaneously, He gave sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf, He expelled evil spirits from the afflicted, He raised up the dead to life. The miracles of Christ cannot be questioned on the score of their historical truth. Christ performed them in public, sometimes before hundreds, sometimes before thousands. Nor were these witnesses all friends of Christ; many of them would have liked nothing better than the opportunity of saying that Christ played tricks and wrought no true miracles. But even His enemies did not deny the power or the miracles of Christ. In His trial the accusers did not allege any fraud in His works. They knew that He had raised Lazarus, four days dead, to life again; they did not try to deny this fact, but only plotted to kill Christ, lest the greatness of the miracle draw “the whole world” after Him. His enemies said that Christ cast out devils by the prince of devils, but they did not deny that He cast the devils out. Nor can we suppose that the great numbers of witnesses to Christ’s miracles were merely deluded, that they were credulous and gullible folk who only thought they saw wonders wrought. If anyone thinks that the Jewish people were dull-witted, and credulous, and likely to be mistaken about a thousand miracles performed publicly and in widely various ways, then he is himself deluded about some of the most patent facts of human history. If any modern thinks that the watchful Pharisees were deluded by Christ, then the modern is sadly deluded about the Pharisees. Even from what we know of the Jew of to-day—and he is singularly like his forefathers, perhaps more so than any other man of modern times—we understand that the public which beheld the miracles of Christ was neither overcredulous nor slow of mind. If we should adhere to the absurd delusion theory, we should be forced to the conclusion that the Jews of Christ’s time were mere morons and imbeciles. In spite of the impossibility of this theory, it may be well for us to pause upon it for a little consideration. We shall select for special study two of the miracles of Christ, viz., the raising of Lazarus, and the curing of the man born blind. 1. The raising of Lazarus (John xi) is a marvellous fact of indubitable historical truth. Lazarus lay sick at his home in Bethany. His sisters, Mary and Martha, sent for Christ, who had often visited their house and who was loved as their dearest friend, and they were confident that He would come and cure their brother. But Christ purposely delayed His coming, and did not set out for Bethany until Lazarus had died, and He knew, and told His disciples, of the death. When He arrived in Bethany, Lazarus had been buried for four days. Now—as we learn from the fact that he had to be “loosed” before he could walk unhampered—Lazarus had been buried in the Jewish manner, with the body closely wrapped in bands, with the face swathed tightly. Even if Lazarus were not dead when he was placed in the tomb, he must certainly have suffocated long before the lapse of four days. There were many with Christ when He came to the tomb, for we read that after the miracle, “Many of the Jews who were come to Mary and Martha and had seen the things that Jesus did, believed in him. But some of them, etc… Then, before many witnesses, in open day, He called upon the dead man, and Lazarus arose and came forth. There was certainly no delusion in this miracle. The people saw it; the Pharisees admitted it; the chief priests did not doubt it; the High Priest never questioned it. But priests and Pharisees “from that day … devised to put him [ Christ] to death,” lest the greatness of the miracle should make all believe in Him. If we can doubt the reality of this miracle we can doubt the existence of America or the fact of the French Revolution. If this miracle is not justified historically, there is no value in human history at all.

2. The cure of the man born blind, as narrated in the Gospel of St. John (ix), is a certain historical fact. Let us quote the charmingly direct and simple account of it as it stands in Scripture: “And Jesus, passing by, saw a man who was blind from his birth… . He spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle, and spread the clay upon his eyes, and said to him: Go, wash in the pool of Siloe. He went, therefore, and washed, and came seeing. The neighbors … said: Is not this he that sat and begged? Some said: This is he. But others said: No, buthe is like him. Buthe said: I am he. They said therefore to him: How were thy eyes opened ? He answered: That man that is called Jesus made clay, and anointed my eyes, and said to me: Go to the pool of Siloe and wash. And I went, I washed, and I see. And they said to him: Where is he ? He saith: I know not. They bring him that had been blind to the Pharisees. Now it was the Sabbath when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes. Again therefore the Pharisees asked him how he had received his sight. Buthe said to them: He put clay upon my eyes, and I washed, and I see. Some therefore of the Pharisees said: This man is not of God, who keepeth not the Sabbath. But others said: How can a man that is a sinner do such miracles? And there was a division among them. They say therefore to the blind man again: What sayest thou of him that opened thy eyes ? And he said: He is a prophet. The Jews then did not believe concerning him that he had been blind and had received his sight, until they called the parents of him that had received his sight, and asked them, saying: Is this your son, who you say was born blind ? How then does he now see ? His parents answered them and said: We know that he is our son and that he was born blind: but how he now seeth we know not: or who hath opened his eyes we know not: ask himself; he is of age, let him speak for himself. These things his parents said because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed among themselves that if any man should confess him to be Christ, he should be put out of the synagogue. Therefore did his parents say: He is of age, ask him. They therefore called the man again that had been born blind, and said to him: Give glory to God; we know that this man is a sinner. He said therefore to them: If he be a sinner, I know not: one thing I know, that whereas I was blind, I now see. They said then to him: What did he do to thee ? How did he open thy eyes ? He answered them: I have told you already, and you have heard: why would you hear it again ? Will you also become his disciples ? They reviled him therefore and said: Be thou his disciple; but we are the disciples of Moses. We know that God spoke to Moses: but as to this man, we know not from whence he is. The man answered and said to them: Why, herein is a wonderful thing that you know not from whence he is, and he hath opened my eyes. Now we know that God does not hear sinners; but if a man be a server of God and doth his will, him he heareth. From the beginning of the world it hath not been heard that any man hath opened the eyes of one born blind. Unless this man were of God he could not do anything. They answered and said to him: Thou wast wholly born in sins, and dost thou teach us ? And they cast him out. Jesus heard that they had cast him out: and when he had found him, he said to him: Dost thou believe in the Son of God ? He answered and said: Who is he, Lord, that I may believe in him? And Jesus said to him: Thou hast both seen him, and it is he that talketh with thee. And he said: I believe, Lord. And falling down, he adored him.” Notice that the man born blind was unmistakably identified. Notice further that not one among the neighbors, or among the Pharisees, even thought of doubting the miracle as a fact, as a marvellous happening. The miracle was wrought publicly, and with ceremony (for Christ made clay and anointed the man’s eyes and directed him to wash in a certain pool), and it seems that the ceremony was meant, at least partly, to call attention to the fact of the miracle. There can be no doubt whatever about the historical truth of this miracle.

Christ, then, wrought marvellous events that are known as such. Now what of the philosophical truth of these marvels ? Can they be known to exceed the powers of nature and to be the work of Almighty God ? We assert that they can. i. The raising of the dead to life is surely not within the powers of created nature. It cannot be the result of any “hidden power or law of nature.” To attempt such an explanation is merely to perform an “artful dodge,“—a favorite gesture of those whose ugly theory of things does not allow them to believe in miracles or even to admit that evidence can be offered for their existence. There can be no hidden power of nature that works in a manner contrary to the course of nature : nature is consistent and not selfcontradictory ; and the very name “nature” is but the general term used to designate the regular, uniform, and constant course of activity observed in the world. Nature may be said to give life; but nature never gives life to a corpse. Our knowledge of nature and of nature-processes would have to be totally abandoned as so much falsity and futility, natural science would have to be destroyed, the laboratories of the biologist, zoologist, and botanist would have to be abandoned as useless, if nature could restore life once life has become extinct. Besides, even if nature could restore life, which it certainly cannot, the raising of a dead man at a word would still be a miracle. If nature had a hidden power within itself which brought Lazarus from death to life, why was that power exercised only when Christ called Lazarus to come forth? And why has it not been exercised in other instances without the word of God’s messenger ? We are forced by cold reason to conclude that the raising of the dead is not only a marvellous event, but that it is a marvellous event beyond the power of created nature to produce. Now, was it produced by Almighty God? Christ claimed to be God, and He worked this wonder, by reason of which “many of the Jews … believed in him.” Resides, the work was one of goodness and kindness; its effect was one that brought men’s minds to God and their hearts to submit unto His Law. Certainly, then, the work was of God. “By their fruits you shall know them,” is the practical test of the origin of any matter. We conclude that the raising of Lazarus is verified as a true miracle on both points of its philosophical character: it was an event outside the power of nature to produce, and it was produced by the power of Almighty God. It was, in plain terms, a true miracle. Therefore, it is an unmistakable and incontrovertible evidence that Christ is of God, and that His doctrine is true. Now, the doctrine of Christ is that He is God. Therefore, Christ is God. 2. The giving of sight to a man born blind is a true miracle. The fact that the man cured by Christ was born blind, is an evidence that no nervous disorder, no hypochondria, no auto-suggestion, had induced a merely temporary state of irregularity in the man’s vision that strong faith or suddenly aroused hope might dispel. Indeed, the man did not know who

Christ was when he felt the clay being placed upon his eyes and was ordered to the pool of Siloe. He was asked about Our Lord later, and responded vaguely that he thought Christ was at least “a prophet.” Only when Our Lord found him, after his ejection from the synagogue, was he given the gift of faith; only then did he learn to say, “I believe, Lord.” Now, no hidden power of nature can account for this restoration of vision which we consider here. If it could, why did it wait until the ceremony of anointing and washing was performed? Why did it wait for the orders of Christ before it functioned? Why did it function then? In this, as in the raising of Lazarus, we have not only historical truth of a strange event, a marvellous event; we have the philosophical truth of the event as a miracle, for it is obviously outside the ordinary course of nature, and was produced (as the character of Christ, the character of the event, and the fruits of the work show) by the power of Almighty God. Now this miracle was wrought to support the claim of Christ to be God, as we see from Christ’s words to the man who was cured. Therefore, Christ’s claim is true. In a word, Christ is God. From the two miracles that we have chosen out of the many performed by Christ, we perceive that these marvellous works of Our Lord can be known as true miracles, historically and philosophically, and that the delusion theory, which attempts to explain Christ’s miracles by explaining them away, is sheer nonsense.

Omitting detailed mention or study of the many other miracles of Our Lord, we come, in the following section, to discuss the crowning miracle of all, viz., the Resurrection of Christ from the dead.

b) The Resurrection of Christ

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, by His own power, from the dead, is the crowning miracle of His career. Indeed, it is more than a miracle; it is the fulfilment of a prophecy. In St. Matthew (xvii, 9) we read that, after the Transfiguration, Christ said to the three Apostles who had beheld His glory, “Tell the vision to no man till the Son of man be risen from the dead ” And in St. John (hi, 19) we read that Our Lord said to the Jews, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up… . He spoke of the temple of his body.” Again, in St. Matthew (xx, 18, 19) we read these words of Christ to His followers, “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man shall be betrayed to the chief priests and the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him to the gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and the third day he shall rise again.” After the death of Our Lord, the Jews said to Pilate (Matthew xxvii, 63) : “We have remembered that that seducer said while he was yet alive: after three days I will rise again.” Notice that Christ taught, and was understood by the Jews as teaching, that He would rise from the dead by His own power.

The prophecies use the expressions, “till the Son of man be risen (not raised)”; “I will raise it up”; the third day he shall rise (not be raised) again”; “after three days I will rise again.” Now regarding the great miracle which fulfilled the prophecy, two things must be clearly known: (1) That Christ really died; (2) That Christ really rose again. If these two things are known for certain, then we have certain knowledge that Christ is God; for He is God by the divine approval contained in the wondrous miracle; and He is God by showing Himself master of life and death. 1. Christ really died. The four Evangelists testify that Christ died on the Cross. St. Matthew says that He “yielded up the ghost”; and all the others use the expression “gave up the ghost” St. Mark records the report made by the centurion to Pilate, certifying the death of Christ (Mark xv, 45). The soldiers who came to break the legs of the robbers who were crucified with Our Lord, saw that Christ was already dead (John xix, 33), and one of them “opened His side” with a spear, inflicting a wound that was sufficient of itself to cause the death of a man. When we consider what Our Lord suffered before the Crucifixion: the bloody sweat in the Garden, the still more bloody scourging with metal-tipped thongs, the agonizing and blood-letting crown of thorns pressed hard upon His head, the long exposure through the night and half of another day, during which His wounds went unattended, the bustle of the journeys back and forth between the tribunals, the toil of dragging the heavy Cross to the place of execution—when we consider all this, we must perforce conclude that Christ would have died before the Crucifixion if some more than human power had not sustained Him so that He might offer the ultimate Sacrifice upon the Tree. And then the Crucifixion itself, the great wounds that pierced hands and feet and were kept ever open by the weight of the hanging body, the agony, the thirst, the pierced side—these of themselves were more than sufficient to insure His death. Again, had not some superhuman power kept Him alive, Christ must certainly have died long before the lapse of the three terrible hours that He suffered upon the Cross. Christ was buried in the Jewish manner, embalmed with about one hundred pounds of spices (John xix, 39), bound about with linen cloths (Matthew xxvii, 59; Mark xv, 46; Luke xxiii, 53; John xix, 40), and shut up in a sepulchre hewn out of the rock. If a man in perfect health and strength were so bound up, placed in an almost airless chamber, covered with aromatic spices, he would suffocate in an hour. Even if the death on the Cross were not an established and indubitable fact, the death of the wounded and worn out Christ from such a burial, of some forty hours’ duration, would be beyond question. Certainly, then, Christ died. The brutality of His

2l8 treatment during the trial would alone have caused His death in a short time. The Crucifixion alone would have caused it. The pierced side alone would have caused it. The burial alone would have caused it. Surely, no one in his senses can suppose for an instant that Christ, who suffered all these things, survived them all. Christ is admitted on all hands as the greatest, the noblest, the most sublime of human characters. Now, Christ said He would die. Therefore, if He did not die, His prediction was false. But He afterwards approved of its recognition as a prophecy truly fulfilled. Can we suppose, then, that the greatest, noblest, most sublime of all men was only a cheap deceiver ? The thought is impossible. Christ, therefore, really died and was buried.

2. Christ really rose from the dead. The Apostles bore testimony to the fact. And the Apostles had nothing to gain by a deception, nor were they the men to try deception upon the raging populace and the mad Pharisees, from whom they had fled in terror when Christ was enduring His Passion. By preaching the risen Christ, the Apostles placed themselves in imminent danger of persecution and death, and they knew it. Still they maintained, even unto death, that Christ had risen by His own power from the dead. The Apostles, then, were certainly not deceivers in this matter.

Nor were the Apostles themselves deceived about the Resurrection. They were not credulous. At the beginning, they were slow to believe that Christ had really come to life again. In spite of the fact that Our Lord had foretold it to them more than once, His death upon the Cross was so terrible a thing, so shattering a reality, that they were left bewildered. When the women came to tell them of the Resurrection, they were hopeful and eager enough, but they did not take it for a fact until some of them ran to the grave to see for themselves whether the corpse of their beloved Master were not still where it had been laid. Christ, risen glorious from the tomb, appeared to many. He appeared to Mary Magdalen, to Peter and John, to the two disciples on their way to Emmaus (a village some eight miles from Jerusalem), to the disciples gathered together when Thomas was absent, and again when Thomas was present and was allowed to touch Our Lord and to make certain of the reality of His wounds. And St. Paul testifies (1 Corinthians xv, 6) that on one occasion Christ was seen by more than five hundred at once. Even the enemies of Christ believed in the Resurrection as a fact, and they did their best to hush the matter up. They offered bribes to the guard that had stood watch at the sepulchre to say that while they were asleep the disciples of Jesus stole the body away (Matthew xxviii, 13). Well may St. Augustine say of this frantic and futile gesture: “O unhappy shrewdness! Do you then trust sleeping witnesses ?” How could the soldiers swear to what had taken place while they slept? This was the ultimate breakdown of all the plotting of the crafty Pharisees; this was their last argument against Christ; this was the vain and half-witted cry of the great “leaders of the people” who had been so sleek and smug and confident in the outcome of their removal of “that seducer”; this was the last gasp of their insane fury when they saw all their schemes defeated; and so blind was their rage in defeat that they contradicted themselves without noticing their absurdity: “Say you, His disciples came by night, and stole him away when we were asleep.” The Pharisees knew that the Resurrection was true, and they hated its truth with a bitterness past all expressing. They had hated Christ living among them, they had gloated over Christ dead, and they feared and hated Christ risen from the grave. Their very hatred is proof positive that Christ had really come back to life again; for no man fears his enemy entombed, and no man hates the shadow and pretense of one who has been alive, but is now dead. Christ had plainly said that He would rise from the dead. If He did not, then He posed as a prophet when He was not a true prophet. If he did not, then He is a base and contemptible deceiver. How, then, can men hold Him admirable, and yet deny His Resurrection ? No, if we admit that Christ is even a good man, we are forced to admit that His Resurrection is a plain fact. And those that deny the Resurrection are usually the very first to protest that they regard Christ as the greatest of men; that they esteem Him as the noblest and truest of teachers; that they admit Him to be the greatest power and the most lasting influence for good that ever came into the world! They will admit this, but they will contradict themselves by refusing to admit His Resurrection. Truly, the “unhappy shrewdness” of the Pharisees has still a place among men. Those that deny the Resurrection in the name of “freedom of thought” or of that mysterious thing called the “open mind,” have neither freedom nor openness, but are closed in the ugly prison of a philosophy that permits neither the one nor the other. A pertinent remark of Mr. G. K. Chesterton comes to mind here, and, even at the risk of slight irrelevance, it shall be inserted (Orthodoxy, p. 278 f.) : “Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly and fairly, while believers in miracles accept them only in connection with some dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them.” Christ, therefore, really rose from the dead.

The conclusion which follows upon the fact of Christ’s death and Resurrection is inevitable: He is true God who says He is true God and performs such a stupendous miracle in support of His claim. He is God who says He is God and shows Himself God by His mastery over death. Can reason, then, refuse to admit that Jesus Christ is indeed true God?

Certain objections, foolish indeed, but advanced by men of seemingly sound mind, must be answered here. They must be mentioned and answered because they are themselves proofs of the divinity of Christ. For these objections show to what lengths of absurdity a man can go in order to argue himself out of belief in a fact that stares him in the face; and, truly, if it were not a fact, he would not be so frantically eager to deal with it (even to dispose of it) as to forget the plain requirements of rational thought and begin to gibber. i. Christ was not dead when He was laid in the tomb; He was worn out, and had passed into a state of trance or coma. Yes, Christ was worn out! Worn and wounded and bruised beyond anything that human nature can survive, He was laid in that airless grave. Wrapped up in linen cloths, covered with a hundredweight of pungent spices, He was sealed in and left for dead. This was on Friday afternoon. Yet on the next Sunday morning—with no intervening care for His wounds, no air, no light, no food—

He rose in full strength, in glorious bodily perfection, and was able to move aside the “very great” stone that closed His grave! On Sunday morning, some forty hours after His burial, the worn-out Christ was able to discard His weakness, to walk firmly upon His pierced feet, aye, and before evening of the same day, He was able to walk eight miles to Emmaus, where He sat at table with two of His disciples! More: merely because He had been in a trance in the tomb, He was now able to appear and disappear at will, to enter through closed doors into the room where His frightened followers were gathered ! He was able to stretch out those strained arms without a trace of stiffness or inconvenience; He was able to lift up food with those pierced hands without a sign of discomfort; He was able to endure the hand of Thomas in the wound of His side without a twinge of pain! Surely an “unhappy shrewdness” has suggested this trance theory to stubborn minds. And, in addition to its intrinsic absurdity, this theory makes Christ the greatest deceiver that the world has ever known. 2. The disciples of Christ were nervously wrought up by the terrible events of the Passion and Crucifixion ; they had been told by Christ that He would rise on the third day; their “expectant attention” made them see visions; they only fancied they saw Christ, for Christ was not really risen, nor was He with them at all.—We have seen that the disciples did not actually expect the Resurrection. True, Christ had foretold it, but the prophecy was a terrible thing for them to take literally; they had certainly thought that the Lord would somehow fulfil His word without the horrible facts of the Passion and the Cross. Had not Peter been told that Christ was to be betrayed to the chief priests, and condemned, and scourged? And did not that same Peter draw his sword in a furious refusal to believe that such things had to be ? Like many, nay, like all of the pronouncements of Christ, the prophecy of the Resurrection was not clear in the untrained minds of the Apostles until the fulness of knowledge came with the descent of the Holy Ghost. In some dim way they had known that terrible things were to happen to Christ; yet, somehow, they felt that their all-powerful Master would manage the whole matter without actual disaster; and even after the most solemn prophecy and prayer of Christ, the best beloved of the Apostles went calmly to sleep. So also, after the Crucifixion had stunned them with its reality, the disciples hoped that somehow, in His own mysterious way, the Lord would rise again, but they certainly did not look for Him to walk with them, and talk with them, and eat with them, as He had done before His death. The news of the Resurrection did not find the Apostles “expectantly attentive”; they doubted it, and some of them ran to the tomb to make sure of its truth or falsity. St. Thomas flatly declared that he did not be lieve it; he would accept no testimony; he said that only the actual presence of Christ would convince Him of the Resurrection, and, for fear that he should come to suffer hallucination, he would not even accept the appearance of Christ as testimony, unless he could touch Him and make sure of His wounds. The two disciples on their way to Emmaus did not expect the Resurrection; they said sadly that they had “hoped that it was he that should have redeemed Israel,” but that hope was obviously only a sorrowful memory with them. Surely, these two disciples were not victims of “expectant attention” when they suddenly and unexpectedly recognized Christ in the breaking of bread. No, the Apostles were not victims of any hallucination; plain facts render the thought absurd. Besides, like every theory in denial of the Resurrection, this theory leaves Christ as the archdeceiver of all times! For He had foretold His Resurrection, and if it did not happen as He foretold it, then He is a false prophet. And yet the doctrine of this false prophet is the admiration of all men, and has had power literally to “transform the face of the earth!” We conclude, then, that sound human reason cannot escape the recognition of the Resurrection as a fact, as the fulfilment of a prophecy, and, above all, as an astounding miracle. We need not pause longer to examine its philosophical truth as a miracle, for none but God is master of life and death, and if a man rises from the dead, God is the author of that wonderful resurrection. And since, as we have amply seen, there can be no doubt about the historical truth of the miracle, we have no choice but to accept it as absolute evidence of the truth of Christ’s doctrine and mission; as proof, absolute and forever incontrovertible, that Christ is very God.

Summary of the Article

In this Article we have reviewed our knowledge of miracles as unquestionable proofs of God’s approval of a doctrine or mission as divine. We have verified the miracles of Christ as true miracles, investigating two typical examples to demonstrate their historical and philosophical truth as miracles. Then we have studied the crowning miracle of Christ, the glorious Resurrection from the dead. We have seen that the Resurrection is a most certain fact, and that it is absolute proof that Christ is true God.