In the Bible God is seen as intimately involved in the fortunes of his people and so will act and react thus showing that he is a personal God. This is shown in Joshua 10 where he embodies the image of the “father” who loves his people by sending hailstones to defeat the Egyptians to save the Israelites. This therefore coincides with anthropomorphic image of God from the New and Old Testament, where God is seen as a super human who can command the universe and perform miracles.
The greatest miracle that God performed is the creation of the earth from nothing ‘ex nihlo’ and “God said let there be light and there was” Genesis 1. It shows an all powerful transcendent creator who stands apart from the universe and nature. Therefore showing that as God is involved in the world then he is able to break the laws of nature-which is what a miracle is defined as. The central miracle which Christianity is based upon is incarnation and so the truth of incarnation is reflected in the most famous miracle of Christianity which is the resurrection. Therefore it is argued that there is no inconsistency in that Jesus could perform miracles because he was God incarnate and miracles are a natural action of an omnipotent God. Faith is the main reason that Christians believe in miracles and as the Bible is inspired by the word of God and as it contains miracles it must be true. However some people such as Bultman argue that miracles are “demythologising” and are damaging to faith,
b) “The presence of miracles in the bible suggest God is unreliable” Discuss (17)
The image that the Bible gives us of God is that he is all loving and performs miracles for the greater good of his people. In Psalm 19; 7 “the law of the lord is perfect, reviving the soul” however the image of a perfectly good god who is immutable can not exist with a God who has a relationship with his creation. Wiles see Gods miracles as unreliable as his actions are spontaneous by only intervening in certain circumstances, and disregarding others. How can this conform to the ideology of the “all loving father” where God will perform a trivial miracle such as Jesus transforming the water into wine but will not intervene in mass genocide (The Holocaust). Libby Abhuwalia says that this presents a picture of an all loving, powerful god who helped the first century but not the current, as seen in the Holocaust. In turn this debases the whole idea of God and portrays a God who is not worthy of worship.
Wiles uses the Teleological argument to argue that the world is so intrinsic that there is no need for there to be an intervening God and so therefore no need for Miracles. Therefore if a ‘miracle’ does happen Macquarie and Hick argues that miracles are accidental events that highlight the lack of understanding of natural laws which Science has given us. Bultman also argues that miracle stories get in the way of faith “for the modern scientifically minded thinker”
If God created the world perfectly then why is there a need for him to intervene in his creation? Christians argue that the existence of evil is from God giving free will in Genesis 3 and so realised that free will is ultimately better then forcing good upon people.
