latest email to Dr. Nolland

Dear Dr. Nolland,

Thank you for your last email. It was very thought-provoking! I see now what you meant when you warned me against spending too much time investigating the questions of methodology. I could very easily spend the next 6 years ruminating on the philosophical questions involved here.

However, I wanted to at least make another go at giving you an idea of the direction I want to go in, and why. Here are my thoughts, and my answers to some of your questions.

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I’ve stated my research question as an exploration of “the function of miracle in the early church.” The reason I wish to examine this subject is that I think it can shed light on several other questions which are pertinent to the church today. For example: “Was miracle-working limited to Jesus and the Apostles, or was it intended for disciples of all ages?”; “Was the purpose of miracle-working to authenticate the gospel, or is it part and parcel of kingdom proclamation (or both)?”; and then there are innumerable correlated questions related to healing, exorcism, and the nature miracles. I believe that understanding the function of miracle in the early church would be invaluable in answering these questions.

I say “function” because I’m looking not simply at whether they happened, where they happened, when they happened, etc. Beyond these issues I’d like to get at why they happened. I’m interested in their purpose—what the intent was of those who did miracles, and their effect on those who observed or were otherwise impacted by them. For example, taking the healing miracles: was their primary function that of health-care for the believing community, or were they primarily an evangelistic tool aimed at the non-believing world?

In using the word “miracle” I run into a problem, as this particular word was not in existence at the time. Furthermore, there are several Greek words translated “miracle” (or a closely related idea) in the English Bible, namely dunamis / dunameis, semeion, ergon, and teras. I think it is fair to say that, while the subjects of my inquiry did not have a single term which corresponds directly to our word, I can argue for a category of related ancient phenomena which can be referred to as “miracle”. This does not mean that my first century audience would understand exactly what I mean by “miracle”, because I believe there are significant differences between our idea of the “miraculous” and theirs. But, I think they would recognize a meaningful affinity between the things we regard as miracles: healings, exorcisms, nature miracles, etc. In some way these kinds of things were apparently regarded as “spectacular,” if 1 Corinthians 14 (among many other texts) is any evidence. (In answer to one of your questions, I am inclined to include exorcisms within this category because they seem to share so many characteristics with the other “miracles”, especially the other healings. I don’t have a good reason at this point to exclude them.)

Were the witnesses amazed and astounded by Jesus’ miracles for the same reasons a modern person would be? An exploration of their cosmological worldview will be useful; modern people tend to think of a miracle as something that violates the “laws of nature,” or involves something “supernatural.” The miracles must have been amazing at least partly because “that’s not the sort of thing one sees every day”; they were “other than normal.” However, there are certainly non-ordinary things a first-century person would not have classified as a “miracle.” Beyond this, I’ll need to explore their understanding of nature vs. “super-nature” and their understanding of cause and effect.

I have chosen to limit my inquiry to “the early church.” I haven’t clearly defined this period yet, but I think it would need to begin with the earthly ministry of Jesus. I certainly need to examine the miracle-working of Jesus and the earliest disciples in the Gospels, as it seems to establish the starting point from which I’d trace any sort of developmental trajectory. The first point along the trajectory would be the miracle working of the Apostles (and others) immediately following Pentecost, as recorded chiefly in Acts. The end-date of my inquiry is harder to decide upon. I would want to at least include evidence from the earliest post-Apostolic period, as this would be important in answering the questions involved in the cessation debate. In terms of texts, I would certainly include at least one Gospel and Acts—which argues for choosing Luke-Acts as my primary text. I’d most likely want to include 1&2 Corinthians as well, given its discussion of the miraculous charismata. Finally, I’d need to choose something from the post-Apostolic period: perhaps an early church Father or one of the Apocryphal works? The question of including non-biblical sources is something I haven’t worked out yet. I would want to include them as much as is feasible, as their perspective would be helpful in establishing a more credible historical argument. At least, I would need a good reason to exclude them, if I’m hoping to do “historical” investigation. This gets into some questions of methodology, which I’ll try to discuss now.

In terms of my language, I should probably clarify what I mean when I say “historical,” “sociological,” and “theological.” I am still learning how these methods are used and how they’re distinct from one another. By “historical criticism” or “historical method” I mean that sort of investigation which deals with the historical setting of the relevant documents: the time & place they were written, their sources, the events, dates, persons, and places mentioned in the text. The goal of this method being to write a chronological narrative of the pertinent events, revealing their nature and interconnection.

On the one hand, my investigation of “the function of miracle in the early church” is by definition a historical investigation, because I am interested in “what actually went on” as opposed to simply what those who produced the written sources wanted to report. I would like to know (as much as is possible) the historical questions of who worked miracles, what sort of miracles they worked, what their goals and aims were in miracle-working (this is at least partially a historical question), and what the effect was on the church of such miracle-working. Of course, the problem is that all I have in terms of evidence are those very written sources. I don’t, however, think this is an insurmountable problem.

From my reading it seems that this sort of investigation can get bogged down in questions of what constitutes “objective” history versus subjective interpretations by particular authors. I particularly like what I’ve read of N.T. Wright on this subject, and his proposed critical-realist approach. I believe this critical-realist approach has great promise for my line of inquiry. It allows me to explore the historical questions related to miracle-working (in particular their meaning, function, and significance within a given worldview) without being paralyzed by the problems related to the source texts (e.g. authorial intent, bias, subjectivity). I realize that I will have to address the fact that each author had a goal in mind in writing the text, beyond simply recording historical facts. Nevertheless, I should be able to propose a reasonable hypothesis that “fits” the relevant data and makes sense of the evidence.

In asking about goals, aims, and intentions, I think my exploration begins to take me into the realm of sociology and anthropology. In my last email I mentioned the “sociological” approach. By “sociological interpretation” I mean trying to reconstruct the “social world” of early Christianity vis-à-vis miracle-working. What were the symbols, rituals, and language used that gives us some insight into what their experience of miracle-working was like? Given their social world, what significance might the miracles have had that is not readily apparent to us? In terms of “ritual,” what is the significance of laying-on-of-hands, the “name of Jesus,” or anointing oil? How do we understand the significance of Peter’s shadow?

Much of what I’ve examined that explores questions from a sociological approach involves the creation of social “models,” and then the application of these models to the biblical setting. This seems to be what distinguishes this method from that which is just a good investigation into the “historical setting.” In my study there could be some value in exploring the function of miracle in other cultures (both ancient and modern), and applying these insights. Of course, the challenge will be to find situations with enough similarities to the one I’m examining that I can draw useful conclusions.

Finally, I take “theological interpretation” to mean describing what the biblical texts (or events) meant to their original hearers/readers. This approach has some overlap with the sociological and historical approaches (in the same way that society, history and theology overlap). In this study, I imagine the question will be how the miracles fit within the larger themes of the New Testament (and the Old Testament). After all, any question of “function” seems to imply that there is some purpose within a larger whole. To begin with, what was the function (or purpose) of Jesus’ miracles in his earthly ministry? At some point I’ll need to address a question that you raised in one of our earlier meetings: how do we reconcile Jesus’ suffering and death with his miracle-working? And, how do you make sense of miracle-working power in an early church where persecution and martyrdom were so common (and so effective in the larger goal of spreading the gospel)?