So I guess he wasn’t a jurisprudence fetishist.
Hodge: Ah, so it’s a test you’re looking for. We don’t do tests!
Tyrian: No, of course not. They never do tests. Not many real deeds either. Oh, conversation with your grandmother’s shade in a darkened room, the odd love potion or two, but comes a doubter, why, then it’s the wrong day, the planets are not in line, the entrails are not favorable, ‘we don’t do tests’!
The miracle stories in the NT were tied to a larger narrative that illuminated some aspect of religious faith, the relationship between God and humankind or about what God will or won’t do. They were not, in and of themselves, discreet examples Jesus’s power or authority.
Looking in from the outside, the NT was all written in hindsight as later generations of Jesus’s followers tried to make sense of his ministry and sudden death. The stories were not written in a style that suggested that they should be taken literally. Instead, they were part of a much larger narrative of a new way of thinking about the relationship between God and Creation and of living a spiritual life.
Well then, you’ve got a problem, because the literally true New Testament says something very close to that.
In Mark chapter 6, it says that when Jesus returned to Nazareth (his home town) and started preaching, the people there wondered where he got off, acting like a big shot.
“6:3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him.”
Jesus responds by saying a prophet is without honor in his own country, but of course that is wrong. Islam was a big hit in Arabia. Buddhism was a big hit in India. Zoroastrianism was a big hit in Persia. Christianity is fairly remarkable in that its success and growth was mostly among people who had never heard of Jesus, were not familiar with the Jewish prophecies, and had no way to check the stories they were told.
At any rate, Mark says:
“6:5 And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them”
In other words, the people who had known him most of his life had never been very impressed with him, and when he came back to his home town after acquiring a reputation as a miracle worker among those who wanted to believe, he STILL couldn’t do anything impressive among those who weren’t self-selected to want to believe (i.e., the type of people who seek out faith healers).
IMO a better question is, why can’t Christians do miracles on demand?
Jesus promised, on several different occasions, that anyone with faith would get whatever they asked for in their prayers. He didn’t say it had to be noble or unselfish. He didn’t say “Sometimes the answer is ‘no.’” He didn’t say that the answer would eventually come in the form of some ambiguous sign or event.
He said that if you tell a mountain to cast itself into the sea, it would do so. He made it as clear as possible that your request could be petty and spiteful, by cursing a fig tree for not having any figs, even though it wasn’t the proper season for it. And he did this on exactly the same occasion that he said you would get ANYTHING you want.
And yet, I’ve never known or heard of a Christian who can do anything special. I’ve known some very nice Christians, some very intelligent Christians, and some very generous Christians. But I’ve never known one who even claims, let alone demonstrates, that he can get whatever he prays for. I always get one of the mealy-mouthed excuses I listed above.
Why is that?
Analyzing it in terms of story, since I don’t believe in Jesus except as a fine fellow I’d have been glad to share a cuppa joe with:
It doesn’t seem unreasonable to me for Jesus, as depicted in the Gospels, to hvae refused to be a miracle-monkey. His primary message was a moral and spiritual one. If it had been his ambition to establish an earthly kingdom, he could have done that without troubling to incarnate. Just pick a shrub to set aflame, choose a prophet to show that to, and start hurling lightning bolts.
Jesus’ intent is clearly to make the people of Israel and/or the world better moral actors, not to make the world physically or politically perfect. Doing too many miracles would distract from his purpose.
He shouldn’t have done any miracles at all then. You can’t just do a few and then expect everybody to forget all about them.
Can’t say I agree. Mythic Jesus did miracles sometimes out of compassion, sometimes as attention-getters, and at least once as a deliberate provocation to the Sanhedrin. But since his mission was to change people’s perceptions about what God was, it was necessary for him to demonstrate his bona fides.
That said, as I think on it, the OP seems based on an erroneous assumption, as I can’t recall Jesus frequently declining to perform miracles. He declined to perform certain sorts of miracles: i.e., wonders with the aim of directly overthrowing the politcal order. But except for the incident with Lazarus brother of Mary & Martha he never declined to heal anyone, and in that case he was delaying to make things more spectacular and piss off the Sanhedrin more. He was on a schedule, after all.
Even Jesus didn’t believe that:
Well, you can’t do too many, either. It dilutes the brand.
Doing a bunch of miracles and then expecting everybody to ignore them on focus on your preaching would be kind of like Angelina Jolie expecting anybody to pay attention to a word she’s saying while she’s naked and playing with herself.
I don’t understand. Please elaborate on this point. In detail.
Surprised no one has mentioned the most significant instances when Jesus refused to (1) perform a miracle or (2) expect one:
In the bolded sentence, which I’ve also seen rendered as “Thou shalt not put the Lord to the test,” Jesus seems to be citing some OT passage that explicitly rules out asking God to perform Stupid God Tricks. Perhaps some Bible scholar here can identify it. Anyway, if he refused to do miracles on demand on any later occasion, there’s a reason given.
Of course, no reason for the reason is given, it’s just Word of God or, putting the same concept in a form with which all of us who were not parthenogenetically decanted into adulthood are familiar, “Because I said so!” So the OP is still not completely answered.
I would pay attention to every word. I have not the slightest doubt I would be able to recite them all afterwards, verbatim and with thespian verisimilitude. Even if she is discoursing on late-Byzantine church architecture or superstring theory.
Thank you for your witness.
Show me where she told him to do the wine trick.
Are you sure Jesus would have agreed with that statement?
It’s cited above. John 2:1-4.
Maybe she doesn’t explicitly tell him to “change water into wine,” but she’s pretty clearly telling him to do something about the wine problem and he’s annoyed by it.
Well, I can understand that. He’s a thirty year old man, and his mommy is telling him what to do. Not only is she volunteering him for miracle duty, she probably already told the mother of the bride that her baby would take care of the problem. Not many people would like that situation, but also, not many people would refuse their mother something that cost them basically nothing if it made her happy. Plus, if G-d didn’t want him to do it, it wouldn’t have happened, right? He probably got all pouty and said something like “It’s not going to WORK, Mom, because it’s not the right TIME!” And then she said, “Well, try anyway!” Then he got all huffy, and it worked, and that made him annoyed.