Paul's Miracles As Evidence Of Jesus' Resurrection

The quality of evidence we have for Paul's encounter with the risen Christ is often underestimated. Here's a post I wrote a few years ago on the subject. And here's part of what I wrote there:

Paul's experience gave him the power to perform miracles, as we see in the remainder of Acts and in Paul's letters (Romans 15:19, 1 Corinthians 2:4, 2 Corinthians 12:12, Galatians 3:5). It should be noted that Paul sometimes refers to his miracles in contexts in which his authority was being questioned and among people who were skeptical of him for other reasons (the Corinthians and the Galatians). In Romans 15, Paul refers to such miracles as characteristic of his ministry in general. How would a naturalistic vision give Paul the ability to perform miracles of the nature of those described in Acts, miracles credible enough for Paul to appeal to them in contexts of controversy? Any argument that Paul was lying would have to address the evidence we have for his sincerity. Any argument that he was sincerely mistaken would have to address the nature of the miracles reported in Acts and the widespread acceptance of his claim to be a miracle worker, including in contexts in which people were willing to question him on other grounds. (He's criticized for his appearance, his speaking skills, his alleged lack of love, his view of the Jewish law, etc., but not for false miracles. His miracles apparently need no defense.) It's possible that somebody could have a hallucination, then conclude that he should be able to perform miracles as a result of that hallucination, then go on to mistakenly think he was performing miracles many times and in many contexts, having those miracles undisputed and widely accepted. But that's hardly the most likely explanation of the data.

Since I wrote that post in 2009, Craig Keener's Acts commentary has been published. He argues at length for the historicity of Acts, including its accounts of Paul's miracles. Here's a series of posts I wrote about Keener's work.