Kara J. Lyons Pardue
WTS Conference 2008
Miracle in Mark: Theological Reflection on Science’s Questions
Abstract – Noting the complex of deeply rooted assumptions in NT scholarship concerning miracle and the
gospel accounts, this paper examines the theological impact of questions raised by general scientific sensibilities.
By adopting the binary categories of miracle/non-miracle and divine intervention/non-intervention—both of
which reflect the debate over an open- or closed-system cosmology—tracing the function and ubiquity of miracle
in Mark’s story of Jesus undermines the supposed distinctness of the two alternatives.
In a book review session at the most recent Society of Biblical Literature meeting in San
Diego, three respondents spoke in response to Richard Bauckham’s recent publication, Jesus and
the Eyewitnesses.1 Bauckham’s book already has made waves within New Testament (NT)
scholarship, but elaborating its argument here would not serve our current interest. What
makes the session worthy of note is that a central point of critique for two of the three
respondents2 was miracle, a topic that occupies a comparatively small space in the book itself.
These responses highlighted the perceived irreconcilability of miracle and history. Adela
Yarbro Collins raised the question of how modern interpreters should deal with miracles and
“cosmic” language in the gospels.3 James Crossley’s response took a more focused attack on
miracle’s problem to Bauckham’s approach; he reasoned pejoratively, “History is not a game
with a joker in the pack.”4 The irreconcilability of using the gospels as sources for a history of
Jesus’ life and accepting their narration of miracles was a subject of primary concern to the
majority of the panel, which made for a polemical session. Beyond that context, the concern
sheds light on entrenched convictions and biases regarding miracle in the discipline.
This paper starts and ends with Mark’s depiction of miracle in the life of Jesus. The
overarching question is this: Given Mark’s presentation of the story of Jesus in which
1 Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2006).
2 The three respondents in the Saturday afternoon session (Nov. 17, 2007) were, in order, John
Kloppenborg, Adela Yarbro Collins, and James Crossley.
3 Because I have neither the transcript nor the written version of Collins’s response, from the notes on
hand I can only assume this was pressing for a Bultmannian distinction between things consonant with a mythic
worldview and those compatible with a scientific worldview.
4
This quote is based on my notes on the session.
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Kara J. Lyons Pardue
WTS Conference 2008
supernatural events—miracles—intervene into history, how can we read the story
theologically and in light of a scientific worldview?5 David Hume defines miracle as “a
transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of
some invisible agent.”6 This understanding divides starkly between the natural and
supernatural, deeming “nature” a reality characterized by the non-intervention of external
forces (a closed system) and “miracle” as the intervention in that system of an external force
presumed to be of divine origin (an open system). These polarity pairs will be temporarily
accepted as ways of speaking about the story of Jesus in Mark, but the question of their aptness
as descriptors is one of the most basic interests of the paper.
Responses to miracl e in Mark
Mark’s Gospel itself inscribes several possible responses to miracle and it is safe to
assume that at least as many responses are available to a modern reader of the story as well.
Other ancient sources could be surveyed,7 but for the purpose of this study, I seek to
demonstrate that Mark does not presuppose that Jesus’ miraculous activity elicited uniform
perception, acceptance, or responses. These variety of reactions within Mark are: 1 amazement
In narrowing the question of this paper, it has been tempting to focus on modern attempts to explain
miracle, or to exploit trends in science that make the idea of miracle more compatible with modern thought. (For
instance, to rely on a physicist/theologian like John Polkinghorne might have made my inquiry easier.) It also
seemed appealing to dissect cleanly between history and theology. I have tried to avoid these tendencies, the
former more stringently than the latter.
5
6 David Hume, “Of Miracles,” from “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding,” excerpted in
Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, 3rd ed. (William L. Rowe and William J. Wainwright, eds.; Fort Worth:
Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998), 494, n1.
7 The other canonical gospels, certainly, would provide obvious comparisons for the function of and the
people’s response to miracle, but other ancient miracle accounts would help as well. Craig Evans, for instance,
surveys the rabbinic sources and finds links with Jesus’ miraculous power, particularly with the stories of Honi haMe’aggel and Hanina ben Dosa. Thus, additional material providing alternative sets of Jewish expectations,
contemporary comparisons, and interpretations of miracles’ significance—as was associated these men—could
have connections to Jesus. But we have already established a variety of interpretations and responses within the
Gospel of Mark alone, so for this study, it needs little expansion. For more detail, Evans’s own interpretation of
the connections, and a further bibliography, see Craig A. Evans, “Appendix Five: Jesus and Jewish Miracle
Stories,” in Noncanonical Writings and New Testament Interpretation (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers,
1992), 232-238.
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and/or fear;8 2 belief, proclamation, or following; 3 blindness or unbelief; 4 explanations of
Jesus’ power by a different cause; and 5 rejection. These are not mutually exclusive responses
and some may occur simultaneously or in succession within a given person’s or group’s
encounter with Jesus. While we consider each response in turn, broadly distinguishing positive
from negative, the examples will evince faith9 as the hinge point at which an interpretation of
Jesus’s activity swings to “miracle.”
1 Amazement is prevalent in the Gospel of Mark, whether in response to Jesus’
teaching or to an act of power.10 It can be a response concurrent with belief or can be a simple
reaction of awe. Mark does not place an explicit value judgment on amazement in response to
Jesus’ acts, it is treated positively only when it is accompanied by faith. Likewise, fear as a
response can be accompanied by belief.11 At times, even those closest to Jesus—sometimes
designated the “insiders” (4:11-12)—fail to evidence belief amid their fear or astonishment after
a miraculous occurrence.12
2 Just as belief can accompany or be absent from emotive responses, faith can simply be
noted in the narrative or can elicit a variety of responses. In the case of blind Bartimaeus, Jesus
notes his faith when he heals him, but Bartimaeus’s emphasized attribute is that he follows after
8 Mark includes a set of recurring verbs that typically denote people’s response to Jesus’ marvelous deeds
and teaching, whether fear (fobe/w, e1kfoboj), wonder (qauma/zw, e0kqauma/zw), or amazement (qambe/w,
e0kqambe/w ).
9 I will use belief and faith somewhat interchangeably, but hope that English terms will not hinder my
reference to the broader range of meanings, especially the more active meanings like trust and faithfulness, afforded
by the terms pi/stij and pisteu&w, terms which are used frequently in Mark.
10 Amazement comes as a response to teaching in 1:22; 6:1-3; 12:17; and to Jesus’ lack of response in trial
before Pilate in 15:5. Amazement as a response to miracles include the following: the healing of the paralytic man
in 2:12; the stilling of the storm in 4:41; and the healing of Jairus’s daughter (5:42).
Belief is noted in the stories of the hemorrhaging woman (5:33-34); perhaps in the crowd’s assertion
that Jesus has done everything “well” (7:37); and when a father claims for himself both belief and unbelief (9:24).
11
As in the disciples’ response to Jesus stilling the storm (4:40-41); the townspeople after the exorcism of
the Gerasene demoniac (5:15-17); the disciples’ fear at Jesus walking on water, which is tied to not understanding
about the loaves and having hard hearts (6:49-52); the Transfiguration constitutes a miraculous vision enacted
upon and about Jesus to which the disciples respond in fear (9:6).
12
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WTS Conference 2008
Jesus instantly (10:52). Although Mark’s peculiar interest in construing silence as a repeated
command from Jesus is well-appreciated (Wrede’s “Messianic secret”), some recipients of Jesus’
miracles spread the news in response, whether permitted or not.13 The most emotive
juxtaposition of silence and proclamation in response to a miracle straddles Mark’s muchdebated ending. The women are understandably frightened (e0ceqambh&qhsan) when, in a matter
of a few words, the young man in white completely reverses their understanding of the world:
Jesus who was crucified has now been raised (16:3-6). There are visible signifiers of his absence
in the tomb, pointing to the miraculous happening (16:7). But although the messenger tells
them to go inform the disciples and Peter that Jesus, verse 8—considered by most the earliest
extant ending14—ends with the women fleeing the tomb in fear, trembling, and silence. The
bulk of the manuscript tradition, however, includes the Longer Ending (16:9-20),15 in which
Mary Magdalene goes to those who had been with Jesus (toi=j met0 au)tou~) and proclaims that
she had seen Jesus alive (16:9-11). In this instance, as with miracles and proclamation elsewhere
in Mark, the news is not enough to spark belief in the hearers (16:11).
3 Mark is notorious as presenting a largely unbelieving or blind response to Jesus’
work (e.g., 4:12; 8:17-21). Beyond obduracy as a response to miracle, Jesus is hindered from
13 While a proclamation of Jesus’ identity is common from exorcised demons, humans also sometimes
spread the news of Jesus’ miracles. The leper proclaims his healing, despite being forbidden to do so (1:42-45); and
there is a noted correspondence between forbidding and zealous proclamation, o#son de\ au)toi=j dieste/lleto,
au)toi\ ma~llon perisso&teron e0kh&russon (7:36). The Gerasene demoniac is even commanded to tell his kin (pro\j
tou_j sou_j) what the Lord has done for him in the Decapolis (5:19-20).
Adela Yarbro Collins cites a shift in consensus—from acceptance of the Longer Ending (16:1-20) from
the second half of the 2nd C. until the 19th C. to the present consensus that Mark’s ending at 16:8 is the earliest
recoverable ending—with the rise of paleography and textual criticism, especially after the publication of Westcott
and Hort’s critical edition of the Greek NT in 1881 (Mark: A Commentary, Hermeneia [Minneapolis: Fortress,
2007], 816).
14
15 R. Alan Culpepper cites the paucity of manuscripts ending at v.8 as evidence of the prevalent
“sensibility” that the Gospel could not have ended with the women’s fear (Mark, Smyth & Helwys Bible
Commentary [Macon, Ga.: Smyth & Helwys, 2007], 591). Neither he, nor I, would advocate for the originality of
the Longer Ending. Its near ubiquity in surviving manuscripts cannot persuade of its originality, but only that it
found its way into the majority text. It was at least the work of a very early reader of Mark, likely a secondcentury addition (Collins, Mark, 806).
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WTS Conference 2008
accomplishing acts of power (du&namij) by the unbelief with which he is met in his hometown
(6:5). Is Jesus’ unable to perform a miracle because they do not believe? Or is Jesus’ work not
understood as miraculous outside of the realm of faith? Unbelief is as inconsistent as belief
through most of Mark’s narrative; sometimes Jesus’ followers are able to perform exorcisms
and cure the sick,16 whereas at other times they cannot.17
4 Some who do not respond in belief proffer alternative explanations for Jesus’
miracles.18 Perhaps the most well-known and defamatory hypothesis for Jesus’ ability in
exorcism comes from some scribes from Jerusalem. They acknowledge his power to cast out
demons but attribute it to a demonic source, Beelzebul (3:22, 30). Here, unbelievers witness the
activity, but fail to deem it an instance divine intervention. Others—less negatively but still
insufficiently (8:27-30)–explain Jesus’ action in a manner that modern interpreters also utilize:
Jesus’ miracles are explicable as his reflection of OT figures, most notably prophets.19
5 Opponents of Jesus often respond in patent “rejection.” It is accounted for in the
narrative by a negative response to Jesus’ activity, but within the story—in the world in which
the miraculous action has certainly occurred—the rejection lacks explicit cause. Typically, it
comes after a miracle sparks a conflict between Jesus and Jewish leaders. The “rejection”
16 Note the explicit success of the Twelve when Jesus sends them out two-by-two (6:7-13). In Mark’s
longer ending, signs like ability to perform miracles “follow” those who believe (16:16-18).
17
In the instance of the boy with the mute spirit (9:17-29).
In Mark 3:21, it is not explicitly in response to a miraculous act that Jesus’ family or friends (whatever
is meant by “those from him,” oi9 par0 au)tou~) try to restrain him; it is response to reports that he is beside himself
(literally, e0ce/sth). This explanation from Jesus’ family or friends is immediately before the scribes’ suggestion that
Jesus can exorcise demons because he is himself possessed. A similar question of “source” of authority comes up in
another conflict narrative once Jesus has entered Jerusalem (11:27-33). The chief priests, scribes and elders inquire
by what authority/power (e0cousi/a) and who gave that e0cousi/a to do “these things” (tau~ta). Jesus’ rebuttal
inquires to the heavenly or human origin of John’s teaching. The leaders cannot answer, because acknowledging
either authority has known consequences (11:32).
18
19
A series of explanations for Jesus’ power are listed in the pericope immediately following his sending
out of the twelve disciples. Some consider Jesus to be the resurrected John; the risenness explains his powers
(6:14b). Herod seems to agree with this view (6:16). Others note the similarity of Jesus’ miraculous ability with
noteworthy personages from Israel’s past and suggest that Jesus is Elijah (6:15a) or a prophet like a prophet of old
(6:15b). In light of these three options for explaining Jesus’ power, Jesus’ question regarding how others identify
him in 8:27 seems intertwined.
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WTS Conference 2008
response is the one least conceptually accessible to the reader. The believing author provides
little insight into the unbelieving logic or perception of the event we read as miracle. These
opaque characters respond in anger or plan harm for Jesus. It is not the instance of the miracle
that is rejected, as far as we can tell, but Jesus himself is rejected (see 3:6; 11:18; 14:1).
Miracles do not function in the gospels as an intellectual checkmate that renders belief
inescapable. Instead, the accessibility of miracle is dependent on faith. There is an authorial bias
toward acceptance of miracle, hence the positive treatment of such responses. This tendency
within the text is what a NT theologian like Adolf Schlatter means when he insists that “the
word with which the New Testament confronts us intends to be believed.”20 But even a
believing author like Mark is not blind to alternative and even opposing interpretations of
Jesus’ activity.
Responses to miracl e in light o f mod ern scien ce
Miracle is a central element of each of the gospels’ portrayals of Jesus’ life. We have
noted that performance of miracle or inclusion of miracle in a story did not automatically
guarantee acceptance from an ancient audience, even a narrated one. In Mark, belief is a key
interpretive factor, but this presents a conflict with modern scientific worldviews that generally
restrict truth to what is empirically demonstrable. This presents problems for readers of the
gospels by portraying belief in miracles, which cannot be proven, as intellectually irresponsible.
Hume famously raises the question of miracle and Bultmann that question nuances it in terms
of faith. Their terminology and binary conceptual categories will constitute the terms of our
engagement with them.
20 Adolf Schlatter, “The Theology of the New Testament and Dogmatics,” in The Nature of New Testament
Theology: the Contribution of William Wrede and Adolf Schlatter, Studies in Biblical Theology, 2nd Series (Robert
Morgan, ed. and trans.; Naperville, Ill.: SCM Press, 1972), 122.
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We will look to David Hume as exemplifying the philosophical rationale against
miracle, but echoes of his position are heard far and wide. He starts with the general
assumption that humans know experientially. Thus, we believe human testimony and accounts
of history not because we know a priori that humans are reliable and trustworthy, but because
we experience reality in conformity to testimonies and historians.21 According to Hume, a
report of a miracle, which is “a violation of the laws of nature” when firm and unalterable
experience has established the laws,22 must be weighed against the alternative of its not being
true. Given that some instances, like a sick person getting well, are not contrary to nature’s
laws by definition but are counted miraculous because they happen at the command of one
claiming divine authority, Hume finds it necessary to expand the definition of miracle. The
intervention by God or a divine agent, then, connotes a miracle because it brings a result that
would not have happened via non-intervention into natural processes.23
Hume delineates the choice that must be made between, on the one hand, believing a
testimony that the laws of nature have been violated or, on the other hand, believing the laws of
nature to stand and the person testifying to be either deceived or deceiving.24 His rational
determination, then, is obvious: “I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the
superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If
the falsehood of [a] testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates;
then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.”25 Hume’s weighing of
evidence, clearly, is no more insidious than the reasoning employed by the disciples in Mark’s
Longer Ending and Thomas in John (20:24-28). They weighed testimony and found it
21
David Hume, “Of Miracles,” 493.
22
Laws of science are, thus, observations of nature so repeated that they are rule.
23
Hume, “Of Miracles,” 494, n1.
24
Hume, “Of Miracles,” 494-495.
25
Hume, “Of Miracles,” 495.
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inconceivable that a dead man would live again; the weight of their own experience of their
resurrected Lord, however, changed their minds. Hume differs from these men26 in finding no
miracle within history sufficiently demonstrated to convince him of its veracity.27
This stark distinction between laws of nature and exceptional events crystallizes in
accepted, popular thought as a division between natural and supernatural. The weight of
evidence and experience lean heavily toward a naturalist’s interpretation of a world governed
by consistent, unbroken laws. These binary opposites are assumed and employed in varying
degrees in two distinct trajectories of biblical scholarship given as examples here.
For modern interpreters, one contemporary expansion of the “explanation” option
(already noted in Mark) restricts the question to the narrative level. This oft utilized
explanation understands miracle as a narrative device that is employed either to inspire
adherents or to identify Jesus with wonder-workers of Israel’s history. This keeps story at a
safe distance from history and escapes the question Hume raises so pointedly. The interpreter is
spared from having to reconcile the miracle account with the boundaries of modern science,
since the miracle exists only on the narrative or dogmatic level.
For those, conversely, who wish to use the four gospels as historical accounts from
which to synopsize a “life of Jesus,” miracle has been a sticking point. A different sort of
explanation is required to attribute a behind-the-text answer to the miraculous puzzle. In
nineteenth century Historical Jesus studies, we find some of the most amusing attempts at the
category of “explanation” as a response to miracle. Albert Schweitzer neatly summarizes Karl
Friedrich Bahrdt and Karl Heinrich Venturini’s treatments as non-supernatural interpretations
26 I use men here because in Mark 16:14 it is explicitly male disciples (the Eleven) who disbelieve and
incur rebuke.
27
This, Hume expounds in Part II, “Of Miracles,” 495.
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of the Gospels’ miracle stories.28 Highlights include Bahrdt’s explanation of Jesus’
multiplication of the loaves as a clever trick with the aim of convincing the disciples of his
miraculous ability. Bahrdt claims that others had gathered a great quantity of loaves in a cave
and Jesus stood at the entrance, concealing the opening. As the disciples were occupied in
handing out the loaves, Jesus would retrieve more loaves from within the cave’s hold.29
Venturini explains that from a modern medical viewpoint, Jesus’ healings were not miraculous.
Jesus traveled with a “portable medicine chest” and, while the text leaves out these details,
Jesus would administer the appropriate medicines to bring about a cure.30 Another mode of
naturalistic explanation is exemplified in Venturini’s assurance that the miracle of the wine at
Cana (John 2:1-11) was just a misunderstanding. The extra jars of wine were Jesus’ wedding
gift to the couple, but as John wrote the story as an old man he was confused and had likely not
witnessed the event altogether carefully, since he too may have been tipsy at the party.31
While the latter suggested explanations are amusing in retrospect, they represent the
acceptance of the insoluble division between natural and supernatural.32 Reconciling story to
history often requires painstaking explanatory hypotheses to make sense of (or discredit) the
story itself. These explanations apply binary distinctions like Hume’s wholesale, agreeing that a
history of Jesus’ activity cannot extend beyond the natural level.
Hume’s keen observation of humankind, however, also led him to detect a tendency of
desiring to believe the incredible. Hume credits agreeable emotions of surprise and wonder
Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, First Complete Ed. (John Bowden, ed.; W.
Montgomery, et al, trans.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 37.
28
29
Schweitzer, 40.
30 Even in the case of the Syro-Phoenician woman (Mark 7:25-30), John holds the woman in conversation
while Jesus slips away to administer a sedative to the sick child, curing her (Schweitzer, 43).
31
Schweitzer, 43.
32 Less amusing and potentially more damaging explanations of the Historical Jesus grace the
bookshelves of a local Barnes and Noble.
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(which surely correspond to the emotions of amazement, astonishment, and awe noted in
Mark’s accounts) with encouraging credulity in humans; and human credulity may encourage
the telling of miraculous accounts in turn.33 He would assert that modern, scientificallyinformed persons must weigh evidence and, thus, cannot partake in their (perhaps inherent, if
Hume is correct) inclination to credulity. This existential impasse of wanting to believe but
lacking adequate evidence to sustain belief is most clearly explored in Bultmann.
Bultmann writes with the goal of retaining faith without falling prey to the kind of
credulity or simple fideism ridiculed by Hume.34 The work of Rudolf Bultmann on the subject
of myth and “demythologization” has been praised and blamed in modern understandings of
miracle. Bultmann’s ascribes of “myth” to biblical texts that include supernatural events and
actors within the natural world.35 In defining “myth,” Bultmann reflects the absolute
distinction, which Hume employs, between the scientifically-observable realm of nature and
interventions thereof by the supernatural. For Bultmann, we must remember, the aim of
demythologization is not to excise “myth” or to present biblical witnesses as deceitful,36 but to
realize that all mythic language—and, thus, accounts of miracle—aims to point at a reality
beyond itself. Myths are ways of speaking truths of God, a God who is transcendent and, thus,
cannot be described without objectifying and that transcendence. Bultmann reminds that the
33
Hume, “Of Miracles,” 496.
34 In his reply to Jaspers’s accusation that he merely wants to ease the conscience of the unbeliever,
Bultmann makes this point outright: “The purpose of demythologizing is not to make religion more acceptable to
modern man by trimming the traditional Biblical texts, but to make clearer to modern man what the Christian
faith is … Therefore my attempt to demythologize begins, true enough, by clearing away the false stumblingblocks created for modern man by the fact that his world-view is determined by science” (Bultmann, “The Case for
Demythologizing,” in Kerygma and Myth, Vol. II [ed., Hans-Werner Bartsch; trans., Reginald H. Fuller; London:
SPCK, 1962], 182-3).
35 Bultmann is certainly not the first to use “myth”; D. F. Strauss had already applied the term to
supernatural elements in scripture.
Rudolf Bultmann, “New Testament and Mythology (1941),” in New Testament and Mythology (Schubert
M. Ogden, ed. and trans.; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 9. The deceitfulness or at least naiveté of biblical
authors is at least implied by Hume, who was a known atheist.
36
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content or Sache of these stories, toward which elements of myth point, is the goal toward
which an interpreter aims.
Bultmann’s desire was to allow the Bible to speak truthfully to persons within a context
that is irrevocably impacted by the scientific age.37 This “type” of person, which he calls the
“modern man”—a person touched by modern science—would understand, like Hume, that this
world is wholly natural. Bultmann holds that to require such a person believe the various
“mythic” elements that involve supernatural incursions into the world, as we know it, presents
a stumbling block. If the “scandal” of the Gospel is reduced to believing a certain set of ancient,
objectified ideas, it is a sacrifice of intellect and not faith that would constitute the “scandal” of
the Gospel.38 Bultmann will not allow the ska/ndalon or “stumbling block” for a believer to be
relegated to the conflict between science and a set of required truth-claims; this amounts to
forcing the decision between science and the stories as they are found in the Gospel.
For Bultmann, faith is more difficult than agreeing to list of things contrary the modern
worldview; the result of the swapping of worldviews is that a modern person would not have to
invest herself in faith, but to simply make a series of consenting checkmarks on an imagined list
of historical “facts.” Faith alone is truly the scandal of the kerygma, in Bultmann’s view. That
is, objective data is insufficient to prove that in Jesus’ death God accomplished salvific and
eschatological transformation for humankind.39 This scandalous faith—that in a particular
person, Jesus, God’s eschatological act of salvation took place—has no recourse for “proving.”
37 I do not aim to be an apologist for Bultmann, but he deals with the collision between experience and
reason, on the one hand, and Scripture and tradition, on the other. (He does not use those terms, explicitly,
although his “existential” focus is tied to the Wesleyan category of Christian experience.) This crisis should be all
the more central for Wesleyan theologians, who, while they may not end up with Bultmann should journey with
him in the struggle for ancient texts to speak meaningfully to the present.
38
Bultmann, “New Testament and Mythology (1941),” 3.
39
Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, vol. I [Kendrick Grobel, trans.; Waco: Baylor
University Press, 2007; Reprinted in one vol. with a new introduction from original English version ( New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1951, 1955)], 3.
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Miracle and “d ivine intervention” in Mark
In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is never a neutral character. From the first verse through the
opening conflated quotation attributed to Isaiah (1:2-3), Jesus is the Christ or Messiah, the Son
of God,40 the one before whom a messenger is sent in preparation, and is called “Lord.”41 When
John the Baptist appears and describes the one coming after him, Jesus’ position is solidified as
the one pointed to in the Old Testament citations. A special connection to God is first
established on the narrative level as the heavens are rent open, the dove descends at Jesus’
baptism, and a voice speaks from heaven (1:10-11). Absent of the back-story and establishment
of character traits to which we’re accustomed in modern stories—and even to varying degrees
in the other gospels42—Mark’s story of Jesus jumps immediately into his temptation and
ministry, after establishing him as the beloved Son of God with a voice from on high. We might
to do well to think of God’s intervention in the world in this person as Jesus’ character
development.43
Given Jesus’ auspicious beginning in the Gospel of Mark, it is difficult to ascertain what
should be designated his first miracle. Is it survival in the wilderness with the beasts for 40
days (1:12-13)? Is it calling disciples who have no recounted prior experience with Jesus and
their unquestioning and immediate response to follow (1:18, 20)? Certainly, we can at least read
a miracle by the time we find Jesus in Capernaum on the Sabbath, having taught with authority
in synagogue (1:21-22). It is there that Jesus casts out from an unclean spirit a man; this spirit
rightly identifies Jesus as “the Holy One of God” (1:23-26). Jesus relieves a physical ailment
“Son of God” in 1:1 is a text variant (found in many manuscripts, for example, in the first corrector of
Sinaiticus [)1] and Vaticanus [B]) that the editors of the Nestle-Aland (27th ed.) do not consider original but
include within the texts in brackets.
40
41
Kuri/oj is the Greek term typically used for the Lord (hwfhy:) in the LXX.
42
Genealogies, birth and annunciation narratives in Matthew and Luke; the Prologue in John.
43
Jesus’ observable backstory is preserved as counter-evidence to his miraculous ability in Mark 6:3.
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(not explicitly due to possession) when he heals Simon’s mother-in-law and the fever leaves her,
after Jesus merely takes her hand and raises her (1:29-32). Other healings and exorcisms follow.
It is the manipulation of natural phenomena—stilling the storm (4:35-41),
multiplication of the loaves (6:34-44; 8:1-9), walking on water (6:48-51), and the resurrection
(16:1-8, 9-14)—that often cause the most offense to modern readers. 44 But reading these
miraculous accounts within the story of Mark, they have almost no affect on the belief of those
present.45 These acts of divine intervention into or subversion of nature serve to identify Jesus,
but not to elicit faith. It is only through the “eyes of faith”46 that these miraculous instances are
interpreted as acts of divine power.47
Faith is central, not only to Mark’s portrayal of miracle, but in Bultmann’s
reconciliation of science and scripture. While Bultmann moves us beyond Hume, the problem
with Bultmann’s program demythologization meets us as we read gospel texts. In Mark, the
“history” of Jesus is faith proclamation through and through; the divisions of supernatural and
In his response to Bauckham, Crossley wished to distinguish between miracles consistent with natural
possibility—that is, that ones that can be explained scientifically through modern medical understanding—and
miracles that require a subversion or incursion into the natural order unavailable to a mortal—like the stilling of
the storm (my session notes). Thus, I suppose an exorcism might be explained as Jesus providing relief to an
epileptic, rather than defying laws of displacement by walking on water.
44
45 In Mark, the only exception is the resurrection appearances, which are found in the controversial
longer ending (16:9, 14).
46 Paul S. Minear, Eyes of Faith: A Study in the Biblical Point of View (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1946). I
am reliant on the use of “eyes of faith” in an article by Richard B. Hays in my employment of the term (“Reading
the Bible with the Eyes of Faith: The Practice of Theological Exegesis” in Journal of Theological Interpretation 1.1
[2007], 5-21).
It is not out of theological sentimentality that Richard Hays advocates a different sort of biblical
interpretation in light of Jesus’ resurrection, but because the gospels, like we have noticed in Mark, bear witness to
a such a revolution of understanding: “Finally, reading Scripture in light of the resurrection will provoke us to
rethink our methods for studying the Gospels. New Testament scholars since the Enlightenment have, on the
whole, been sympathizers of the Sadduccees; that is to say, they have constructed historical accounts of the
formation of the Gospel narratives that bracket out the resurrection as a real event in history. The theses of
Robert Funk … are in fact nothing more than extensions of modernist presuppositions that have influenced much
mainstream New Testament exegesis for the past two centuries: God does not intervene in the processes of
history; incarnation, resurrection, and judgment are mythological conceptions; Jesus could not have prophesied his
own death and resurrection; the resurrection narratives are legendary; and so forth. If, however, God did raise the
crucified Jesus from his tomb, such critical commonplaces should be among the first elements of the status quo to
be overturned” (Richard B. Hays, “Reading Scripture in the Light of the Resurrection,” in The Art of Reading
Scripture, Edited by Ellen F. Davis and Richard B. Hays [Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2003], 237).
47
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natural break down in the story of Jesus’ ministry. This is, perhaps, why Bultmann found it
necessary in his New Testament Theology to focus on Paul and John,48 ignoring most of the
gospels. Bultmann enforces a stark division between the work of Jesus and proclamation about
him.49 Bultmann places the scandal of the gospel wholly on faith, not in the minute details of a
mythical worldview. In doing so, he frames the question of miracle in a way Hume, as an
atheist, never could. But when we read Mark with the eyes of faith, we identify this particular
human as the agent of God. Doing so does not remove the miraculous and supernatural
elements from the story, but places them under a lens informed by faith. They are, thus, not
separate objective assertions to which a modern person must assent, but descriptors of the life
of the one in whom our faith has its origin.
We have noted in Mark, Jesus’ very coming is an act of divine intervention—literally,
the coming in—of a divine character into the flesh and very pages of human history. Theology
gives us the terminology to describe such a premise: incarnation. That is, the “transcendent”
divine life and human particularity (history) become bound together in the person, Jesus of
Nazareth, the Christ. Within Mark’s narrated “way of the Lord,” we cannot parse out which of
Jesus’ acts is miraculous or “supernatural” from which is human or “natural.” Salvation is
couched in terms of this intervention into human space; the conflict is overcome between
human capacity and the divine accomplishment of impossibility (10:27).50
Perhaps the one place where intervention and non-intervention are distinguished is in
the narrative of the Passion. Concurrent with thoroughgoing divine intervention in Mark is
Jesus’ steadfast focus on the Passion, evidenced in his speech throughout the gospel (e.g., 8:31,
48
And, arguably, reads John only in Pauline terms (perhaps a Lutheran tendency).
49
Bultmann, Theology, vol. I, 45.
While the question comes in the context of the incompatibility of wealth and salvation, the disciples
expand the question to “Who can be saved?” (kai\ ti/j du&natai swqh~nai) and Jesus ascribes to God a “break” with
natural law (like a camel going through the eye of a needle) that constitutes the possibility of salvation (para_
a)nqrw&poij a)du&naton, a)ll0 ou) para_ qew|~: pa&nta ga_r dunata_ para_ tw|~ qew|~; 10:26b-27).
50
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34-36; 9:12, 31; 10:32-34, 45; 12:1-12). In 8:31, Jesus teaches, in fact, of the necessity of his
suffering, rejection, death, and resurrection;51 this implied divine purpose is made explicit as
God’s will (ta_ tou~ qeou~) after Peter’s rebuke (8:33). The interest in the Passion is also
evidenced on the narrative level in the detail in Mark’s telling of the suffering and crucifixion.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, it is God’s ability, yet lack of intervention, that Jesus’ anguish
brings into view. For in 14:36, Jesus’ Father is the One who can work any miracle or powerful
act (pa&nta dunata& soi), and despite Jesus’ ardent wish that the course of things be reversed,
he submits the Father’s will.
At Jesus’ crucifixion, even the biblical citation in the mouth of Jesus points to God’s lack
of intervention in this event.52 It is for divine intervention that Jesus cries out in anguish, “My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (15:34), but we find no miracle enacted to save this
beloved Son. Such intervention is what the disciples are expecting (8:31-33). Onlookers taunt
Jesus for his inability to rescue himself and, the last time, in response to the lack of any divine
agent’s intervention on his behalf (15:29-32, 36). The God who intervened in a series of events
to demonstrate God’s kingdom come in power in the transformation of Jesus’ appearance and
company of OT leaders par excellence (9:1-8), to heal, to feed, and to save, here does not save his
own Son, but gives him up as a ransom for many, as Jesus had predicted (10:45).
The climax of the Gospel, the extended treatment of Jesus’ passion and death, involves a
series of events in which God’s intervention is not demonstrated. What results from this nonintervening miracle is greater and more “world-altering” than the intervention that precedes it
in the narrative, if the rest of the NT witness is to be trusted. This nonintervention is not the
dei= to_n ui9o_n tou~ a)nqrw&pou polla_ paqei=n kai\ a)podokimasqh~nai … kai\ a)poktanqh~nai kai\ meta_
trei=j h(me/raj a)nasth~nai.
51
At least on the most basic narrative level, Jesus and his invoked Psalm experience abandonment.
Further, Psalm 22 (LXX Psa 21) ends in an upswing of hope, and it could evoke in the hearer resonances of hope
for Jesus as well.
52
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end of the story, but it is the key to the story. The true miracle for humankind is not in the
subversion of nature, but in the undoing of the natural processes that culminate in death
through the death and the resurrection of this one who has intervened among us as both human
and God.
Conclusion
It was tempting, in the course of thinking through this paper, to eschew the scientific
objection to miracles. I wanted to set aside Hume and those who will have either pure,
modernist history or nothing. Claiming the province of biblical theology, I might have cast
aside the question of history as irrelevant. But an attempt to parse out intervention from nonintervention as discerned within popular adoption of modern, scientific concept of nature has
highlights miracle’s inextricability from non-miracle in Mark. Paradoxically, however, these
categories of intervention and non-intervention showcase what is the height of Mark’s
narrative. The Passion narrative is at pains to signify the non-intervention of God. It stands
out from divine intervention elsewhere by its stark absence in the story of Jesus’ suffering and
death. Binary categories, imprecise elsewhere in the Gospel, precisely describe the experience of
Jesus’ suffering and crucifixion: abandonment, that is, non-intervention.
This returns us to the observation of Mark’s opening that Jesus’ very coming—the
“way of the Lord”—is the inauguration of divine intervention. God intervenes in the person of
Jesus. Thus, divine non-intervention in the cross is, ironically, still uniquely powerful because
Jesus the Lord is the one who dies. This particularized intervention is emphasized at the re-entry
of miracle at Jesus’ resurrection. It is this Jesus—the Nazarene, the one crucified—that is raised
(16:6).
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