Christianity's Network Of Miracles

People often object that there isn't enough evidence for Jesus' resurrection or that the resurrection alone wouldn't give us enough reason to be a Christian. I've discussed both of those issues elsewhere. What I want to do in this post is address the network of miracles that the resurrection of Christ is associated with. Though the resurrection is prominent in Christianity, it doesn't exist in isolation. As Peter explains in Acts 2, the same Jesus who was attested by the resurrection (2:32) also was attested by other miracles he performed (2:22), prophecy fulfillment (2:30), and the miracles of the early Christians (2:33), for example. The resurrection is unusually significant in some contexts, but scripture appeals to a large number and variety of miracles. So should we. One context in which it's important to take a broader view of Christian miracles, instead of limiting our attention to something like Jesus' resurrection, is competition with other miraculous belief systems. Much as Moses outperformed the magicians of Pharaoh and the book of Revelation portrays Christ as overpowering the Antichrist, it's significant that Christianity has demonstrated more supernatural power than its competitors.

I won't try to link to every post we've written about Christian miracles, but I want to link to some representative examples. You can find an index of our posts on Biblical prophecy here. Concerning Jesus' pre-resurrection miracles, see this post. On apostolic miracles, see my post here about Paul. Many of the Biblical miracles are credible without holding a traditional Christian view of the Biblical documents in terms of their authorship, dating, and such. But arguments for a traditional view do add some weight to the case for Biblical miracles. Some of our posts arguing for a traditional view of the documents are linked in the index here. On miracles in the modern world, such as healings and exorcisms, see here and here.