Thursday, November 17, 2011
Craig Keener's Work On Miracles Is Out
For those who don't know, Craig Keener's two-volume work on miracles recently came out. It's more than a thousand pages long, and I'm not far into it yet. It appears to be a great treatment of the subject, and the endorsements are impressive. You can read them at the site linked above.
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I've just started reading it myself. I was always convinced that the best way to demonstrate the historicity of NT miracles was to establish ancient and modern analogies to them. Keener's book seems to be a massive step in the right direction. No longer will the sceptic be able to dismiss NT accounts because of their 'outlandish' claims. Now someone needs to thoroughly argue Keener's 'secondary' thesis, viz. that not only do eyewitnesses claim experience of miracles, but that the best explanation of at least some of those claims is that the miracle actually occurred more or less as described. Then naturalism will be completely debunked.
ReplyDeleteIn Keener's book, part 3 has the following:
ReplyDeletePart 3: Miracle Accounts beyond Antiquity
7. Majority World Perspectives
8. Examples from Asia
9. Examples from Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean
10. Supernaturalism in Earlier Christian History
11. Supernatural Claims in the Recent West
12. Blindness, Inability to Walk, Death, and Nature: Some Dramatic Reports
Related to those chapters, here are two interesting books freely available online.
The Ministry of Healing by A.J. Gordon
which can be downloaded at the following links
http://xythos.gordon.edu/Archives/Gordon_Herritage/Ministry%20of%20Healing.pdf
or
http://books.google.com/books?id=FEAXAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+ministry+of+healing
or
http://ia700400.us.archive.org/19/items/ministryofhealin00gordiala/ministryofhealin00gordiala.pdf
and...
The Suppressed Evidence by The Rev Thomas Boys, M.A. published 1832
http://books.google.com/books?id=5B0PAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Proofs+of+the+Miraculous+Faith+and+Experience
JD: ... a massive step in the right direction ...
ReplyDeleteAnnoyed: ... books freely available online ...
If you're in search of knowledge, it is a wonderful time to be a Christian.
J.D.,
ReplyDeleteI haven't gotten far into Keener's series yet, so I don't know to what extent he accomplishes what you're asking for. My expectation has been that he would do more than establish what you call his primary thesis. What you refer to as his secondary thesis is something that's already been argued for many times and for multiple miracles (e.g., Jesus' resurrection and modern paranormal phenomena, like the mediumship of Leonora Piper). Even where there hasn't been an argument that goes into as much depth as, say, Michael Licona's book on Jesus' resurrection, there's often been enough to render a miracle's historicity probable. We could ask for more. Maybe what you're saying is that it would be good to have a book, or series of books, that gathers a larger quantity of such arguments into one place and develops the arguments even more than they've been developed already. If that's what you're saying, then I agree. But I don't want to leave people with the impression that a sufficient argument for the historicity of miracles hasn't yet been produced. What Keener accomplishes, and what we would want future books to accomplish, is a matter of degree, not kind. The case for the historicity of miracles has already been made well for a long time. Keener adds some further quality to that case, but it's not as if we didn't have a sufficient argument until his series came along, nor do we need to wait for his series to be supplemented by something else. Naturalism has already been debunked in that context.
Even if Keener failed to make his case, he provides a lot of raw material which others can use to prove his case. Keener is not a philosopher, so he may lack the sophistication to rigorously prove supernatural causation as the best inference from the data. But others can use his extensive anecdotal evidence as a point of departure for doing just that.
ReplyDelete"Maybe what you're saying is that it would be good to have a book, or series of books, that gathers a larger quantity of such arguments into one place and develops the arguments even more than they've been developed already. If that's what you're saying, then I agree."
ReplyDeleteYes, that was exactly my point. I am aware of the various defenses of mediumship, poltergeists, etc. But I would really like to see a comprehensive collection of the best cases, argued with philosophical rigor.
A philosophical defence of the reliability of miracle accounts can be based on a Bayesian analysis. What such an analysis with respect to miraculous events looks like can be seen in the paper entitled “A Bayesian Analysis of the Cumulative Effects of Independent Eyewitness Testimony for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ”, written by philosopher John M. DePoe. The paper can be read in the following link:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.johndepoe.com/Resurrection.pdf
Well-documented cases of paranormal and miraculous events can be found in the following book:
Dieter Ising, Johann Christoph Blumhardt: Life and Work: A New Biography, Translated by Monty Ledford, Eugene 2009.
In particular informative in this respect are the chapters “The Events Surrounding Gottliebin Dittus” (pp. 162 ff.), “The Awakening Spreads. Healings” (pp. 202 ff.) and “Healings” (pp. 326 ff.).
To get an idea how well these events are documented, one may go to the following link, then go to the link “Search inside this book” and have a look at the section “Sources and Literature”.
http://www.amazon.com/Johann-Christoph-Blumhardt-Life-Work/dp/1606085395/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1289074764&sr=1-1
A description of these events is also presented in the following excerpt from the first biography of Blumhardt:
http://data.plough.com/ebooks/Awakening.pdf
As for the events surrounding Gottliebin Dittus the following link contains a first hand account of them:
http://sites.google.com/site/davidkeames2/blumhardt%27sbattle
J.D. said:
ReplyDeleteYes, that was exactly my point. I am aware of the various defenses of mediumship, poltergeists, etc. But I would really like to see a comprehensive collection of the best cases, argued with philosophical rigor.
Hi J.D.,
Hm, you're probably already aware, but on the slim chance you're not, I thought it might be helpful to you to mention Stephen Braude has some books here. As well as some video interviews and the like on Closer to Truth and elsewhere.
I believe Michael Sudduth has some relevant material on his website.
I don't know how philosophically rigorous this book is but I've heard good things about Randi's Prize by Robert McLuhan. Based on reviews it sounds like it's more along the lines of popular level but intelligent journalism.
But again you probably already know about these. Apologies if so.