Can modern people, schooled in science, seriously accept any notion that God created and can overrule the laws of nature? Geisler describes "signs," "wonders," and "power" and contrasts what the Bible means by a miracle with bizarre stories of saints, faith healers, and occultists.
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Norman Geisler (PhD, Loyola University) is president of Southern Evangelical Seminary and author or coauthor of over fifty books including Decide for Yourself, Baker's Encyclopedia of Apologetics, and When Skeptics Ask.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Good Evangelical Defense of Miracles,
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This review is from: Miracles and the Modern Mind (Paperback)
This book by evangelical scholar Norman Geisler is divided into a series of questions: Are Miracles... Impossible? Incredible? Irrational? Unscientific? Identifiable? Mythological? Historical? Essential? Definable? Antinatural? Distinguishable? Actual?
He begins by rounding up the usual suspects -- Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Hobbes, et al -- and dispatches their anti-supernatural, anti-miraculous arguments by pointing out logical flaws. (A book about miracles directed at the "modern mind" is first about getting God's foot through the door so that miracles become an active possibility.) For my purposes the most useful segment of the book was the section dealing with modern-day miracles. Modern-day Miracles. He covers these in his chapter "Are Miracles Distinguishable?" In general, Geisler views the miracles of both testaments as rock-solid facts but views modern-day evangelical miracle claims as shaky and lower-grade: * He views the reports of the raising of the dead in Mel Tari's 1971 A Mighty Wind (recounting the Indonesian revival) as dubious. Quoting George Peters, "I do not doubt that God is able to raise the dead, but I seriously question that He did so in Timor [Indonesia]. In fact, I am convinced that did did not happen". * He stresses the potential for "Mental Cures", and subsumes much of modern-day miracle reporting under this heading, which he pejoratively labels "faith-healing". He asserts "Some studies show the vast majority of people in the healing movement have [hysterionic and hypochondriac] personality types" (p. 120), but then fails to provide a citation -- no help to the earnest researcher here! * He makes a couple of claims which I viewed as weak: He asserts "miracles do not require personal contact", suggesting that supposed miracles triggered by e.g., the laying on of hands are in a different category than "true" biblical miracles. But, the laying on of hands is a New Testament practice, as is the anointing with oil, both of which provide what Oral Roberts characterized as a "point of contact" for believers to release their faith (and, in the case of the laying on of hands, for impartation to occur). Moreover, in the case of the woman with the issue of blood, the personal contact was precisely the woman touching the hem of Jesus' garment, which resulted in virtue flowing from Christ to the woman. Arguably, no personal contact, no miracle. Secondly, he asserts that biblical miracles "lasted; there were no relapses" (122). Surely this is an argument from silence. In at least one case, Jesus performed a notable miracle, and then said, "sin no more -- lest a worse thing befall you" which at least opens the door to potential relapse. Geisler's book was published in 1992, but much of it is based on earlier work. As a result, most of the citations date from the 1950s and 1960s. The annotated bibliography is very helpful and contains entries up to 1989. Conclusion: A good book to have on your shelf -- but not as compelling or essential as the more recent "In Defense of Miracles".
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