Worldviews under Judgment
An Epistemology of Word and Spirit
Hermeneutics function as a special sort of epistemology. 2 Biblical hermeneutics are important especially to those who embrace an epistemology of revelation that grants Scripture an important role in that revelation. For Christians, the Spirit plays an important role in revealed theology and the theological worldview from which we interpret reality.
Whereas intrapentecostal discussions of hermeneutics often focus on what is distinctive to Pentecostalism, charismatics outside the Pentecostal movement proper tend to ask broader questions also engaged by noncharismatics: an epistemology that correctly relates Scripture and experience. 3
Biblical epistemology differs from the epistemological approaches with which many of us in the West intuitively function. Our philosophic heritage has conditioned us to particular ways of seeking truth, some of which (such as empiricism) do correlate with aspects of reality. The Bible, however, invites us to perceive a more overarching dimension of reality, namely reality about God the creator and redeemer, who is understood in more specifically theological ways.
Just before embarking on this discussion, I should note that many of the biblical passages explored or sampled below, which sometimes employ dramatically stark language, come from contexts reinforcing believers’ faith rather than contexts in which authors were seeking common ground for dialogue. They are not, then, the sort of language we normally employ in academic forums. Nevertheless, they offer demands on our personal and corporate loyalties, reminding us that Christ must ultimately be Lord of our epistemology as well as of everything else. This was something I admittedly did not always remember during my earlier academic writing.
Traditional Epistemic Approaches and Their Limitations
Every belief system takes for granted some philosophic premises that cannot be proven to others, premises that often cannot be proved by the belief system on its own. For example, empiricism offers the best developed method for learning details about creation itself. Nevertheless, even introductory philosophy often observes that one cannot prove empirically the assumption that truth can be learned only empirically. 4 The regularity of what we call nature, at least under given sorts of conditions, allows us to confirm observations by replication and experimentation.
We cannot, however, repeat historical events in the same way. The best available sorts of evidence that we find most useful for historiography, journalism, and interpersonal communication often fail to meet the stricter constraints of experimental science. 5 That is precisely because the activity of human beings offers less predictable regularity than is possible for larger natural entities on a less complex level. 6 In both cases, we may offer a range of predictions, but the complexity of factors involving human choices and activity differs from the range of random variation within structures with less information content. Historiography reflects a cosmologically much narrower sphere of interest than the chemistry and physics of the universe, and as such it both offers less epistemic precision and demands greater flexibility in evaluating various pieces of evidence.
While the scientific method is enormously beneficial for humanity, if all truth were limited only to what can be replicated in experiments, we would need to, as noted above, jettison not only theology but also such disciplines as historiography and journalism or anything else that deals with unique persons and unique events. We also do not normally conduct our relationships, including how we love, on purely empirical grounds, though we may understand empirical data (such as conditioning of neurological responses) that helps to explain such human connections.
Empiricism is thus useful and veridical within its sphere, but its sphere does not embrace all of reality, and empiricism does not even seek to ask, much less answer, some kinds of questions. This helps to explain why, again, an exclusively empirical epistemology cannot justify itself empirically.
Empiricism could examine evidence that one may present about God acting in the world, but the interpretation of that evidence (except for its potential falsification) lies beyond the competence of empiricism in the strictest sense. In fact, the process of interpretation itself involves more than simple observation and experimentation. Scientific theories use models and inferences from the best (currently available) explanation, though these should arise from accumulated empirical data and can be tested (and especially falsified) empirically. 7
Moreover, empirical knowledge is always subject to revision based on fuller evidence (say, the limitation of a regularity to previously observed conditions when a different regularity occurs under different conditions). 8 Frameworks based solely on an accumulation of even massive empirical evidence thus offer less certainty than appears in mathematics, given the logical necessity of the underlying axioms within their logical system. Such comments are not meant to demean empirical inquiry, which is, as I continue to emphasize, valuable and even necessary within its sphere. (For an extreme example, one would be advised not to consume random substances without attention to their observed and studied effects, particularly when those effects might prove to be lethal.) It is precisely because empiricism offers so much valuable information that I employ it here as an example of epistemological limitations.
Instead, my point is that this valuable epistemic approach is not comprehensive in explaining everything, particularly what we call metaphysical questions. 9 Simply because an approach does not address a subject directly does not mean that that subject cannot be addressed by any means.
A Theocentric and Christocentric Epistemology
What would an epistemology look like with the biblical God as its starting point? By this I do not mean an epistemology of natural theology, which might seek to arrive at something like God as its conclusion. 10 Rather, what kind of epistemology would we expect if we start with the God revealed in Scripture? For example, what kind of epistemology underwrites the apostolic proclamation in Acts, where God’s activity in Jesus appears as the fundamental saving message? 11
Christ Re-presented by the Spirit in the Gospel
John 16 offers a particularly helpful depiction of this christocentric epistemology. In John 16:7, Jesus sends the Spirit to believers, so it is apparently through the believers’ continuing mission (cf. 20:21–22) that the Spirit goes on in the following verses (16:8–11) to convict the world. In these verses, the Spirit continues what Jesus has already been doing in the Gospel. Like Jesus, the Spirit convicts the world of sin. 12 Like Jesus, the Spirit confronts the world with judgment (cf. 3:19; 5:22, 27, 30; 12:31). Thus in 16:7–11, the Spirit reveals Jesus to the world through believers preaching him, since Jesus sends the Spirit to believers (16:7). 13 In 16:12–15, even more clearly, the Spirit continues to reveal Jesus to his own followers; as Jesus told the disciples whatever he heard from the Father (15:15), so the Spirit reveals whatever he hears from Jesus, including what is to come (16:13).
If we wish to frame this process or experience in epistemic terminology admittedly foreign to John, we may speak of complementary objective and subjective, or in this case historical and existential, aspects. The gospel is about acts of God in genuine history verified by witnesses (and continuationists would add, continuing to be supported by witnesses concerning experiences consistent with those first ones).
When people hear the gospel, however, they are confronted not merely with one worldview among others; in John’s theology, the risen Jesus is present in the message, presenting his demands by the Spirit no less plainly than he did on those who heard him in person. Thus in a similar manner Paul describes believers’ response to his preaching as accepting not merely human words, but the word of God, which proves divinely efficacious among those who believe it (1 Thess 2:13).
In a sense, then, we might speak of Christian epistemology as kerygmatic epistemology: founded on historical evidence, yet confirmed by the living testimony of God’s own Spirit. People become responsible for how they respond because God directly challenges their hearts in the gospel.
The historical particularity of this approach naturally will put some people off (an offense Paul finds epitomized in the cross), yet such historical particularity should be expected. Without it, we might at best suppose a deistic deity revealed in nature’s laws but excluded from our own reality in historically particular settings. For both theists and deists, if a universal God were to reveal himself in the physical universe, we might reasonably expect to find his signature in the regularity of the patterns of nature, particularly in complexity that defies the reasonable probability of coincidence as an explanation.
Yet we encounter not simply a divine intelligence delighting in fashioning a regular cosmos of any sort, but a God who appears to have a special interest in humans. If a universal God were to reveal himself in humans, we might expect humans to epitomize complexity. Humans do not in fact reside at the geographic center of the universe, but, so far as we have discovered, we remain the pinnacle of material complexity in terms of information content—perhaps somehow close to the center of meaning or purpose in creation.
If a universal God were to reveal himself in the particularity of human existence, we might be expected to look for that revelation in the particulars of history. There we might expect to find that revelation associated particularly with a people who (even if reluctantly at times) preserved a heritage of monotheism.
If we look at extant faiths that claim that heritage, it appears to me that the biblical prophetic tradition of God actively pursuing and challenging his people climaxes especially in the ministry of Jesus. The promised era of fulfillment that he ushers in empowers all of God’s people to be the prophetic community. That church history often fails to testify to this reality, as the history of Israel often fails to honor its prophetic tradition, should not blind us to the fuller realization of those ideals in periods of revival.
Experiential and Testimonial Evidence in Kerygmatic Epistemology
Both experience and testimony, thus both personal and communal components, play a role in this epistemology. The resurrection was public evidence (Acts 17:31), appealing to witnesses (Acts 2:32; 3:15; 5:32; 10:41; 13:31; 1 Cor 15:5–8). This was not, however, the only evidence that Luke affirms; he embraces an epistemology fuller than what we often find today. Jesus did not appear to everyone in Jerusalem, but to witnesses whom God chose (Acts 10:41). Although Cornelius hears Peter’s witness about Jesus rather than seeing Jesus for himself, Cornelius experiences the Holy Spirit (10:44, 46; cf. his earlier vision, 10:3–6). That is, Cornelius and his household receive confirmation through experience, after embracing the message by trusting the testimony.
Testimony and Experience in John’s Gospel
As noted above, in John’s Gospel Jesus’s interlocutors challenged the validity of his testimony, because he was the only one who had seen what he testified (John 8:13). Jesus responded, however, that his unique experience uniquely qualified him to testify about his claim, and that his Father testified with him (8:14, 17–18). His critics had a fleshly, worldly perspective, whereas he had a heavenly one (8:15–16, 23; cf. 3:11–13).
Those who receive testimony secondhand may nevertheless share thereby the salvific experience of the first disciples (John 20:29–31; 1 John 1:3; cf. 1 Pet 1:8, 12). John points out that Jesus after the resurrection would not reveal himself directly to the world, but to those who walked with him beforehand (John 14:21–23); this promise is initially fulfilled with Jesus’s appearances to his disciples in John 20–21. On the first of these occasions, Jesus imparts the Spirit (20:22), communicating Jesus’s presence to all believers (14:16–23).
The next paragraph addresses the evidence already given, the testimony of the witnesses. Thomas refuses to believe his colleagues, because he has not seen Jesus for himself (20:25). When Thomas afterward experiences Jesus directly, he offers the climactic confession of faith in John’s Gospel: “My Lord and my God!” (20:28). Jesus does acknowledge this confession, with its model content, as faith, but affirms greater blessing for those who believe without having seen (20:29).
Immediately the author goes on to explain, essentially, “That’s why I wrote the signs in this book—so that those of you who haven’t seen may believe through my testimony” (cf. 20:30–31). This kerygmatic epistemology is clearest in John 16, already treated above. Here Jesus’s own presence confronts those who hear the message, as plainly as Jesus’s presence earlier confronted the world in person.
Those who have met God have access to an experience that they usually can communicate only by testimony, 14 but which outsiders cannot fully (experientially) apprehend, lacking any framework for evaluating it (1 Cor 2:14–15; 2 Cor 4:4–6; John 3:3, 8–12). Through testimony, though, some will go on to experience Jesus for themselves. This was what Andrew offered Peter, what Philip offered Nathanael and what the Samaritan woman offered her people: not mere arguments, but introducing others to Jesus himself (John 1:41–42, 46; 4:29). Arguments have their place, and Jesus offers some in the same Gospel; but Jesus also speaks in riddles (e.g., 7:28; 8:25), for it was up to the Father to draw those whose hearts were open (6:44).
Likewise, Paul declares that his gospel came to the Thessalonians not only as words, but in the experience of power, the Holy Spirit and full assurance (1 Thess 1:5; cf. Col 2:2). The gospel proved efficacious in turning them from idols to the living God (1 Thess 1:8–10). Paul explains that his gospel did not come with insincerity (2:1–12), and, most relevant to my topic, thanks God that his hearers recognized this message as God’s own speaking (2:13). Paul expected not human wisdom but the power of the Spirit to transform his hearers (1 Cor 2:4–5). 15 Paul recognized that Christ himself spoke in and through him (2 Cor 13:3; cf. 2:17; 12:19), and that Christ’s cross was visible in his own suffering and message about the cross (2 Cor 2:14–16; 4:10–11; Gal 2:20; 3:1).
In the Synoptics, too, Jesus suggests a revelatory epistemology that transcends exclusive dependence on human intellect. Without revelation, earthly wisdom cannot penetrate Jesus’s identity; the kingdom is given not to the wise and prudent, as if they are necessarily most meritorious, but to babes—to those who accept the message in faith (Matt 11:25–27//Luke 10:21–22; Matt 16:17). Those who receive the kingdom like children are those ready to depend on a heavenly Father (Matt 18:3). 16 Some of the early Christians, such as Paul, were very smart people; like some of the rest of us, however, Paul had to have the pride experientially knocked out of him to bring him to faith.
Jesus’s movement widely recognized the Spirit as the chief agent of divine wisdom and revelation (e.g., Exod 28:3; 31:3; 35:31; Deut 34:9; Isa 11:2; Acts 6:3, 10; 1 Cor 2:13; 12:8; Eph 1:17), suggesting that kerygmatic epistemology is pneumatic epistemology. The gospel includes both a narration of God’s acts and an inspired interpretation. In the gospel the Spirit reveals Jesus afresh, providing epistemic clarity and thus moral responsibility. Thus Paul expects that the full message of the Spirit can be embraced fully only by those conditioned by the Spirit (1 Cor 2:13–3:1). 17 Although Bultmann’s skeptical approach toward the narrative’s objective historicity gutted a central element of the gospel (1 Cor 15:1–7), 18 he was certainly right to recognize New Testament theology’s role for the existential dimension in the gospel’s reception. 19
Belief has been difficult for Western intellectuals shaped by the legacy of Hume’s skeptical epistemology. Immanuel Kant allowed room for faith and values, but in a subjective sphere distinct from objective reason; by further discounting any role for the subjective in epistemology, the Vienna Circle rejected the legitimacy of metaphysics. Many philosophers subsequently reintroduced metaphysics, but my point here is that those schooled in the modern Western intellectual tradition tend to marginalize the role of subjective experience in terms of certainty or knowledge. This tradition has certainly influenced my own thinking, for better or (often, I find) worse.
This often excessively skeptical approach, however, is no less historically contingent than the approaches it rejects, and runs counter to biblical Christian experience. “The Spirit testifies together with our spirit,” Paul notes, “that we are God’s children” (Rom 8:16; cf. possibly 1 John 5:6–7). The context involves the Spirit enabling us to cry out, “Abba, Father” (Rom 8:15), a subjective, relational experience and not exclusively an objective, rational recognition. “We know that he dwells in us,” John declares, “by the Spirit he has given us” (1 John 3:24). That is not John’s only test of faith, but it is one of them.
Romans 1 contrasts two options, the way of faith revealing God’s righteousness, and the other revealing involving his wrath. In the first option, God’s righteousness is revealed in the good news, embraced by faith from start to finish (1:16–17). In the second, God’s righteous wrath is revealed against humanity’s unrighteous suppression of truth by idolatry, which distorts the truth about God (1:18, 23), even though humanity should have known better (1:19–23).
These options also ultimately contrast faith as a perspective on reality, with minds corrupted by their resistance against divine truth. Refusal to honor God became the beginning of the sinful mind (1:20–22); neglecting the truth, humanity succumbed to foolishness. Ultimately God gave them over to failed minds because they failed to mind or acknowledge him (1:28). 20 Faith is opposed to the mind of the flesh; instead, it reveals the mind of the Spirit.
The corruption of human intellect in Rom 1:21–22, 25, 28, involves particularly human understanding about God and the principles that flow from that; the further one proceeds from directly theological and ethical matters, the less direct the influence of corruption. Paul is nevertheless clear that this corruption extends beyond the area where it starts, because no area of our life is completely independent from him (cf. Matt 5:34–35). If we demean God to the level of his creation, we eventually distort his image in and purpose for ourselves (Rom 1:23–27), and ultimately become incapable of proper moral discernment (1:28–32). 21 The greater the theological distortion, the wider the societal consequences and distortion of other truths. Theological soundness of mind is restored as the mind is renewed in Christ (12:2–3, inverting some of the language of 1:28). 22
Faith as an Epistemic Commitment
Faith, which is consistent with the mind of the Spirit, is an epistemic commitment. Evidence may be sufficient to invite belief, but rarely would thinkers today claim that evidence compels belief; belief involves a decision. 23 Even when it often produces unconscious recognition of the truth, this recognition does not compel adherence that acts as if the recognized reality is true. Christian scholars sometimes guard their moral life but surrender their intellectual life to the world’s skepticism. If Christ is Lord of our lives, however, his realm must include our intellect.
Epistemically, Christians need be no more reticent about their starting convictions than are others. 24 Everyone has starting premises that are difficult to justify on their own terms—for example, epistemologies that are empiricist, rationalist, or existential. We may explore the options, but ultimately when we decide to follow Christ, or to the extent that we commit ourselves to follow him, this entrusting ourselves to him, and so staking the direction of our lives on him, involves an epistemic commitment. I am well aware of this issue because I have personally struggled with it for years—balancing the intellectual value of open inquiry with personal commitment of my mind to Christ.
It was not that the conclusions of my inquiry undermined my faith; more often than not they confirmed my intellectual belief in Christ, although often requiring adjustments in some other preliminary assumptions. Nor was it wrong to weigh intellectual options while pursuing more secure conclusions, nor, for heuristic purposes, to bracket some questions as I pursued evidence where it would lead. The problem was that I sometimes allowed agnostic assumptions, adopted for small-scale heuristic purposes, to bleed over into larger areas, despite their incompatibility with the Christian beliefs that I already had reason to conclude on other grounds, and thus their incompatibility with my commitment to Christ as Lord.
Most of my academic work has built on open inquiry, to some degree bracketing my faith commitment from the exploration because the approaches accepted in the sphere of inquiry were limited. While in general this limited methodology caused no problems within the sphere of the issues addressed, it promoted a mental habit of bracketing faith out of the reasoning process when (for much of each day) I was in my academic mode.
This bracketing approach, however, risked spillover into my personal faith; data was sufficient to resolve many of the intellectual questions, but no quantity of data can ever fill the vacuum of a skeptical epistemology that refuses to permit faith with less than 100 percent evidence. This is because inflexible skepticism—the way I framed the questions that needed to be answered—can always raise new objections. When such a radically untrusting epistemology moves beyond a heuristic function to become a working mental premise, it can preclude commitments. Yet no one applies this radical skepticism to ordinary life; we recognize the difference between complete evidence and sufficient evidence. 25 I mentioned in chapter 1 the tension that this skeptical approach needlessly created when I applied it to my wife’s testimony.
As already noted, everyone works from some starting assumptions, whether methodological, cosmological or otherwise. Devoting our intellect for the service of Christ (Rom 12:2) means that we work from a grid, from assumptions attached to Christ’s Lordship. This does not mean that we cannot examine questions honestly, but our academic habit of placing the bar of evidence too high for anything to surmount it is not honesty; it is practiced unbelief. Full faith comes when we are convinced enough to personally rely on the worldview entailed by the truth that Christ is Lord. That grid need not (and for me does not) require uncritical embrace of everything affirmed by some Christian tradition. It does work from Christ’s Lordship and whatever that proves to entail, because this grid merits my commitment more than do other premises that wish to compete for my allegiance.
Nonbelievers and even antibelievers can contribute valuable insights about the grammar, history and even literary characteristics of Scripture. By definition, however, they do not understand Scripture in the fullest personal sense that Scripture invites, because such understanding includes embracing its truth (by virtue of which one is no longer an unbeliever), not simply explaining the grammar. The level of understanding is different, just as there is a difference between explaining the chemical properties of ink on a page and reading it, or, more analogously, between examining a map and following it.
Some Examples of Faithful Reading
Earlier chapters have addressed issues such as taking into account cultural context (chapter 8), reading narratives (chapter 1), and interpreting miracle accounts (chapter 6). Here I briefly revisit these issues in light of the present question of epistemology.
Works addressed to particular churches or circles of churches are not necessarily relevant only to these churches; thus Revelation invites each of the churches to hear what the Spirit says to all of them, even though the message to each church was specially tailored for that church (Rev 2:7, 11, 17, 29; 3:6, 13, 22).
But what do we do when we cannot understand what the Spirit was saying to a church because the language and culture are obscure to us? Most Christian readers in most cultures will apply directly to themselves passages such as “Be strong in the Lord” (Eph 6:10) or even the armor of God (6:11–17), often without giving much thought to the imagery’s sources from Isaiah or Roman military apparel that this passage addressed to its ancient audience.
Readers usually become more judicious and alert when the context advises slaves to obey their holders (6:5); suddenly they recognize that they are dealing with a different culture. Similarly, modern Western readers often see no need for first-century setting when reading Paul’s counsel regarding the Lord’s supper in 1 Corinthians 11:17–34; the preceding passage about head coverings, however (11:2–16), they often dismiss as irrelevant to their own culture.
Such readings are drastically inconsistent, as a comparison with other cultures’ readings could illustrate. For example, half my university students in northern Nigeria believed that Christian women in all cultures should wear head coverings to church; they treated holy kisses, however, as a first-century custom. In my wife’s culture in Central Africa, where people could employ kisses in greeting, holy kisses proved more intelligible than mandatory head coverings. What we assume as cultural often depends on what differs from the reader’s own culture. This does not offer a consistent way to read Scripture. 26
A more consistent way of reading Scripture is to recognize that even if (as Christians affirm) the message of Scripture is for every generation, its particulars do not apply equally in all circumstances. For a conspicuous example, Paul explicitly addressed the Corinthians when he wrote 1 Corinthians (1 Cor 1:2); if we take this affirmation seriously, it must shape how we read the entire letter, whether Chloe’s report (1:11), food offered to idols (8:1–10:33), head coverings (11:2–16), or how the Corinthians ate the Lord’s supper (11:17–34). Paul regularly brings to bear universal principles on particular situations, but because he writes to a local setting he does not have reason to pause to explain which elements are universal and which are concrete applications of those principles.
To figure out the reasons for Paul’s concrete applications, we ideally need to know something about the original culture and settings that he addressed. 27 Rather than expecting everyone to digress from their other work for a few years, I believe that a primary responsibility of at least some biblical scholars should be to make this information available to ordinary readers. Once this information is available, conversion of the shared principles to readers’ settings is often intuitive. By “principles,” however, I do not refer to seeking to extract from texts “foundational propositional truths,” the concern with “principlizing” articulated by some scholars. 28 I mean something more like recognizing how Paul contextualized God’s message for his setting, and how his contextualization models for us ways to recontextualize that message for new settings. 29
Once we can get a sense for the original setting, we can begin to use the concrete applications as case studies, as models for how we can concretely apply the same principles. Paul read earlier biblical accounts as models relevant for his own audience. Thus, for instance, stories of Israel’s sins in the wilderness, though describing and written to settings different from Paul’s, provided warnings for the Corinthians who were tempted by the very same sins. “These matters happened as examples for us,” Paul admonished (1 Cor 10:6). They “happened to them as an example,” and “were written as a warning for us” (10:11).
Although ready to apply Paul’s letters directly and without much thought for their first setting, some have been more reluctant to apply narrative. Some use narrative only for reconstructing past salvation history. Their historical insights are usually valuable, since these accounts provide a narative structure of the Bible, with other material (such as prophecies and letters) offering samples of the message that went to given generations. Yet these narratives also contain patterns of the ways that God worked in some circumstances, and we can learn from these patterns. Scripture itself invites this approach: “All Scripture is God-inspired and beneficial for teaching, for reproof, for improvement, and for the sort of training that involves righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16). 30
Traditionally Pentecostals, like many others, 31 approached Acts as a model. 32 Whether Acts actually teaches us that tongues-speaking should always accompany baptism in the Holy Spirit is a legitimate question on which Pentecostal scholars today themselves disagree; tongues are not narrated in every instance when people receive the Spirit in Acts. Nevertheless, tongues are repeated frequently enough to suggest that Luke intends a connection. In my view, argued in chapter 3, the clear connection is that tongues evidenced the character of baptism in the Holy Spirit in Luke’s emphasis: power to speak for God across cultures (Acts 1:8). This does not require interpreters to suppose that tongues evidence which individuals receive this empowerment, but Luke’s association of tongues with mission does suggest that the connection in Acts is not arbitrary. That is, Luke is teaching something in his narrative.
Although his position has developed somewhat, 33 Gordon Fee originally aroused reaction by arguing for greater caution in use of narrative models than he felt characterized many other Pentecostal scholars. 34 Fee is the quintessential model of a faithful Pentecostal scholar, and I esteem him as a mentor; indeed, long before I had met him I listened repeatedly to tapes of his NT course until I had taken thorough notes on and mostly mastered the material. He was one of the only role models that some of us younger Pentecostal, aspiring scholars found available. Although criticized by some fellow Pentecostals for his hesitation regarding narrative precedents, he has been a model of Spirit-filled scholarship for myself and many others.
Most scholars today, however, would not agree with his early hesitation regarding narrative. In the past few decades, biblical narrative criticism has highlighted the importance of getting theology from narrative, even more fully than the previous generation’s attention to redaction criticism had. 35 (Fee’s current articulation of deriving theology from narrative, nuanced after dialogue with some Pentecostal colleagues, is fairly mainstream and unobjectionable.) 36
In addition to developments in narrative criticism, today we also know that ancient biography and historiography regularly sought to inculcate moral lessons, political agendas, and so forth. Such an observation does not mean that we should allegorize narratives, the way that some Greek philosophers allegorized old myths that they found offensive. 37 Whatever may be said for mythography, ancient writers of historiography and biography did not normally expect their readers to allegorize their narratives, but they did expect their readers to draw lessons from them. This expectation is often explicit in their writings, 38 and we are remiss if we neglect such interests. After all, “all Scripture is God-inspired and beneficial for teaching, refuting error, correction, and training for right living,” so God’s servants may be fully equipped to serve him (2 Tim 3:16–17). Ignoring the training value of narrative, the largest major genre in Scripture, leaves the church only partly equipped.
By grafting our lives into the biblical narrative, we become part of the extension of that narrative. Early Pentecostals often viewed Acts 28 as open-ended, 39 a conclusion that narrative critics today have usually reaffirmed. 40 So long as the mission remains to be completed, we continue to need the Spirit’s power to fulfill it (Acts 1:8), and that same power is promised to us (2:39, evoking also God’s promise in 1:4). Likewise, we who continue this mission remain part of the narrative of salvation history, a narrative (from our vantage point postcanonical) to which Acts points. Revelation similarly speaks of God’s people from all nations, and the continuing conflict in this age by the peoples of Babylon and the New Jerusalem. We who give our allegiance to the lamb remain part of the narrative envisioned in Revelation.
Miracles provide an important example of where divergent epistemic approaches lead to diametrically contrary interpretations, both in biblical narratives and in modern ones. Thus, for example, the crowds were duly impressed by fire from heaven (1 Kgs 18:39), but Jezebel promised to kill Elijah, sending him into despair (19:1–3). God attested with signs his message in Iconium, but its citizens divided over the message (Acts 14:3–4).
Responses to and worldviews about miracles differ dramatically today as well. One Mozambiqan pastor reportedly raised seven people from the dead, and could not understand why the foreign interviewer seemed so interested; the pastor simply expected God to do miracles as he did in the Bible. 41
Miracles belong to an epistemology of faith as well as to concrete material realities. Countless events that a recipient experiences as a miracle are explained quite differently by those who do not believe. Whether we accept an experience as miraculous typically depends on prior assumptions and the burden of proof. Thus, for example, if someone recovers after prayer from a usually fatal illness from which someone occasionally recovers (perhaps without prayer), those who prayed will see God’s hand, but those who define a miracle only as a violation of nature (following Hume here, not the Bible) will question it. It is appropriate for us as believers to see God’s hand regularly, but those who think in terms of “evidence” (the way we must argue in the academy) may reject as miraculous any actions explicable “without appeal to God.” Others are skeptical no matter what explanations seem plausible.
Some skeptics carry this skepticism to remarkable lengths. Thus, for example, from a medical standpoint cataracts do not disappear immediately without surgery. A number of cases, however, report the instant disappearance of cataracts after prayer. 42 Someone committed to unbelief, however, can refuse to allow the evidence through their interpretive grid, rejecting claims that do not fit the “reality” they have constructed. They can challenge the credibility of the witnesses, videos, or even medical documentation; or they can explain the event away as a natural event working according to natural principles not yet understood (e.g., psychic power). 43 I know some of the witnesses for some of these reports, however, and one would expect psychic power, if that were the explanation, to have more consistent results (in contrast to the less known will of God as what philosophers call an intelligent, personal agent). Moreover, the common factor in a large number of reports (nearly all of those available to me) was prayer in the name of Jesus.
Likewise, resuscitations from death (or at least deep coma that appears to be death) are not easily explained psychosomatically. Yet ten such close eyewitness accounts appear in my own circle of friends and family. As I pointed out in a recent article, such an accumulation of incidents appears highly improbable as coincidence. 44 “Unless premature burial is dangerously pervasive, the proportion of resuscitations connected with theistic settings appears extraordinarily higher than the number of spontaneous resuscitations in the general population. At least ten people that my family knows well claim direct experience with theistic resuscitations, a figure that easily could be expanded if we include associates of those we know.” 45
If one deems such resuscitations merely rare anomalies explained by coincidence, the improbability of the accumulation of coincidences demonstrates that this typical nontheistic explanation is extraordinarily improbable. If one’s starting estimate for the coincidence of one of these anomalies in one’s circle were as high as one chance in ten (a very generous concession; Hume and members of his circle presumably had none in their circles)—that is, of a misdiagnosed death and instant recovery during prayer—one might thus suppose one chance in ten billion for ten such claims in one’s circle. One cannot presuppose much higher probabilities of average resuscitations in one’s circle without assuming that a radically inordinate number of people are being buried prematurely. What are the odds that I was the one person in ten billion with such a coincidence, and I just happened to be one of the few persons writing an extensive book concerning miracles? Based on normal understanding of probabilities, is it not more rational to suppose that prayer sometimes has something to do with recovery?
Again, someone committed to disbelief in miracles can argue that my circle includes a disproportionate number of liars. 46 We know the witnesses too well to accept that objection as persuasive, but one would hope that even skeptics should be given pause. Why should skeptics hold so tenaciously to a worldview that is essentially a presupposition (miracles are not accepted as known in their circles) to the degree that they would dismiss other people’s testimony as false, even when critical scholars who know them affirm their trustworthiness, precisely in those cases where eyewitness testimony challenges their philosophic presuppositions?
As already suggested, such an inflexible epistemology that deems as liars eyewitnesses who do not simply confirm one’s existing knowledge would make impossible history, journalism, and a variety of other disciplines. “Science demands replicable events!” they may protest. But miracles are by definition not replicable; if they were, skeptics could then dismiss them as part of nature. 47 History is also not replicable; we must use for each area of inquiry the epistemic method appropriate to it. “But we can evaluate the likelihood of kinds of events by analogy,” some protest, “and there is no analogy for miracles.” Such an argument against there being any analogy for a miracle is circular: it works only if one has already dismissed all other miracle claims. If that a priori approach is not closed-minded, circular reasoning, I cannot imagine what would qualify as such.
Such responses to miracle reports today should not surprise us. We often suppose that if people simply saw some incontrovertible miracle, such as someone being raised who had been dead for a few days, they would believe. Yet Scripture is more realistic about human character. John’s Gospel testifies that whereas many witnesses who observed Lazarus’s raising believed, some apparently responded by reporting Jesus’s works to religious leaders who opposed him (John 11:45–46).
Jesus’s signs did often lead to faith (e.g., 2:11; 11:42, 45, 47–48; 12:11; 13:19; 14:29; 17:21; 20:8, 30–31), 48 but in other cases they simply made observers more responsible for their unbelief (12:37; cf. 6:26, 30). Some could not believe, because God himself blinded them, handing them over (as I understand it) to their choice of unbelief (12:38–40). Some others believed secretly but were more concerned about what others thought of them than about God’s demands (12:42–43). Even those who did not see directly could believe through reliable witnesses’ testimony, if they were willing to do so (19:35; 20:30–31; cf. 1 Pet 1:8).
Similarly, one may think of Pharaoh’s recalcitrance despite repeated plagues in Exodus. Indeed, most of the plagues against Egypt could have been explained naturally, as amplifications of plagues that were already part of Egypt’s ecosystem. 49 Even Pharaoh’s magicians eventually recognized God’s power as greater than what they could duplicate by natural (or magical) means (Exod 8:18–19), but Pharaoh himself was too invested in a different worldview. For Pharaoh to see the God of Israel as more powerful than the gods of Egypt (Exod 12:12; Num 33:4) struck at the core of his theology and of his own identity, for he was seen as divine. Even the death of the firstborn, which transcended any natural explanation from Egypt’s ecosystem, persuaded him only temporarily; after that Pharaoh pursued Israel to the sea.
How we see miracles depends on our interpretive grid, our faith. If some are naïve in believing every report they hear, others of us are too skeptical. Indeed, even buying into David Hume’s definition of miracles as violations of nature prevents us from recognizing most of God’s activity. Plagues that struck Egypt’s ecosystem or God blowing back the sea by a strong east wind (Exod 14:21) are not violations of nature. As mere coincidence, however, they are extraordinarily improbable, especially cumulatively. Indeed, so is nature itself; nothing is more improbable as an accident than a language more complex than any originated by humans—the complexity of DNA. And we humans are most complex of all.
Some naturalistic explanations for cumulatively improbable miracles appear to believers as grasping at straws; the hypothesis of God is a much simpler and more plausible explanation. For those with faith in pure naturalism, however, any explanation that excludes God is better than any explanation that includes him, because God is a priori excluded from their explanatory scheme. That is, unbelief is a worldview, and some hold it so tenaciously, placing the bar of evidence infinitely high (or at least as high as needed to reject any proffered evidence), that they can accept no evidence. The Bible speaks of moral blindness, of inability to see truth, sometimes even among God’s own people (Isa 6:10; 29:9; 42:18–19; 43:8; 56:10; Jer 5:21; Ezek 12:2).
This is all to say that worldviews shape how we read miracle accounts, just as worldviews shape how we interpret reality more generally. We may start with a “hermeneutic of trust,” as Richard Hays helpfully puts it, 50 or a hermeneutic of suspicion. 51 As charismatic Catholic scholar William Kurz notes, a hermeneutic of suspicion, unless used with discretion, is incompatible with reading Scripture as God’s Word in the interpretive community of the church. 52 Or even as Jewish scholar Geza Vermes warned NT scholars reading early Jewish texts, “Religious writings disclose their meaning only to those who approach them in a spirit of sympathy.” 53
Suspicion has its place, as Israelite wisdom recognizes (Prov 9:16; 22:3; 27:12); indeed, Prov 14:15 warns that the naïve person will believe anything someone says, whereas wise people will consider what they are getting themselves into. Some people are untrustworthy, and human perspectives are always incomplete. Nevertheless, God is worthy of our trust, and at some point our resistance to true signs becomes culpable unbelief (Num 14:11, 22; Neh 9:17). 54
We may have various reasons for explaining away the text’s demands or treating them as irrelevant. Whether we call it philosophically a Humean paradigm, culturally Western skepticism, or exegetically a hermeneutic of suspicion, theologically it fits what the Bible depicts as unbelief, i.e., unbelief in the true God of Scripture. From a biblical perspective, unbelief is just as characteristic of modern atheistic paradigms as it was true of ancient polytheistic or other paradigms.
The God of the Bible is not the God of deists or the definitive non-deity of atheism; yet in the West often even Christians have committed syncretism with deism. We allow for answers to prayer so long as they do not diverge from the norms of natural expectations; otherwise they are all suspect, from reliable witnesses as well as from unreliable ones. 55 We depend on God’s good gifts to us, such as resources, technology, and education, but we frequently act as if God could not help us were we stripped of such blessings. We hold to a form of godliness but deny its power (cf. 2 Tim 3:5). Some have asked whether, if (speaking purely hypothetically) God’s Spirit were withdrawn from our churches, we would do anything differently than the way we now do it.
That observation is relevant not only to miracles, but to experiencing and obeying Scripture more generally. Jesus summons not only the rich ruler to surrender his possessions to care for the poor (Luke 18:22), but all his disciples (12:33; 14:33; cf. 3:11; 19:8). When the Lord poured out the Spirit, one immediate effect was that God’s people shared what they had with those who needed more (Acts 2:44–45; 4:32–35); this practice later continued in sharing by churches in different regions (Rom 15:26; 2 Cor 8–9), dictated by the Spirit (Acts 11:27–30). Traveling apostles sacrificed even more dramatically (1 Cor 4:11–12; 2 Cor 11:27). A genuine pneumatic theological focus, then, should yield sacrifice rather than boasting in wealth.
Some churches dismiss such claims in Scripture as hyperbole (though the purpose of hyperbole is to invite our special attention). They then dismiss similar claims by St. Francis or John Wesley or Charles Finney as legalism, and even much tamer claims by modern contemporaries such as Ron Sider as Marxism. 56 Meanwhile we spend most of our resources on ourselves, though Scripture shows that God made parts of the global church stewards of resources so that everyone would have enough to live on. In some parts of the world Christians’ children die from malnutrition and inexpensively preventable diseases like malaria while we struggle with an epidemic of obesity (in the majority of cases without a good genetic reason for it). We have adopted our culture’s worldview of materialism and sometimes even a virtual social Darwinism (let those less fit to survive die off). The biblical solution to such an approach is not mere intellectual rethinking, but repentance; not conversation, but conversion.
Reading with faith means reading biblical narratives with expectation— expectation that God will speak to us in some way because the God who is active in the narrative world of the text is the real God who is also active in our world. 57 This reality is easier to believe in circles where such views are reinforced, but even in cultures where they are not, we must learn to “inhabit the text.”