GakuseiDon

Paul reports that there were plenty of signs, wonders and miracles, though for some reason Paul doesn't list even one of them. A curious omission, perhaps, especially if the people of that time were interested in such things.

Romans15:
17 Therefore I have reason to glory in Christ Jesus in the things which pertain to God. 18 For I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ has not accomplished through me, in word and deed, to make the Gentiles obedient-- 19 in mighty signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem and round about to Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.

2Cor12:11
I have become a fool *in boasting; you have compelled me. For I ought to have been commended by you; for in nothing was I behind the most eminent apostles, though I am nothing. 12 Truly the signs of an apostle were accomplished among you with all perseverance, in signs and wonders and mighty deeds. 13 For what is it in which you were inferior to other churches, except that I myself was not burdensome to you? Forgive me this wrong!

The "signs of an apostle" apparently included "signs and wonders".

1Cor12:
7 But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all: 8 for to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings by the same Spirit, 10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills.

1Cor12:
27 Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually. 28 And God has appointed these in the church: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, varieties of tongues. 29 Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Are all workers of miracles? 30 Do all have gifts of healings? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? 31 But earnestly desire the *best gifts.

Gal3
5 Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?

Ben C Smith

A comparison of Romans 15.19 (which you quote)...:

...in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of the spirit, so that from Jerusalem and round about as far as Illyricum I have fully preached the gospel of Christ.

...with another Pauline passage, 1 Corinthians 2.4-5, yields what I take to be another claim to have worked miracles:

and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.

This appears to be a claim that at least part of the reason the Corinthians believed was miracles.

Earl asked about the epistles in general, so here is another instance, Hebrews 2.3b-4:

After it was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard, God also testifying with them, both by signs and wonders and by various miracles and by gifts of the holy spirit according to his own will.

This says that God worked miracles among those who first heard the message of the word and passed it on to us.

Ben.

Amaleq13

You might if you believed he appeared to you after his death.

Yes and appearing to perform miracles was apparently the sort of "evidence" that was capable of convincing folks what you said was true.

Pointing to specific passages from Scripture that you could argue were fulfilled also seems to have been considered impressive.

As you note in your book, such powers were both expected and easily accepted:

"Claims that Jesus had raised people from the dead are today not taken seriously by liberal scholars or the general public, but the Gospels show that the first century mind had no trouble accepting such feats." (The Jesus Puzzle, pg 61)

"One of the expected signs that the Day of the Lord was at hand would be the performance of miracles. Most important, God would confer upon men the power to heal sickness and physical disorders, including those caused by evil spirits." (pg 234-235)

Paul claims to have performed miracles and he never suggests this was unique to him. In fact, if the other apostles were not doing the same, it seems ridiculous to think that he wouldn't proudly proclaim this unique aspect to his ministry each and every time he argues that he is just as much an apostle as the others.

I would be interested in any scholarly opinion you can provide which explains why Paul fails to mention that the other apostles could not do what he claimed to do.

Don and Ben have provided the references. Actually, I'm surprised you haven't pointed to it as another "silence" when Paul talks about his own miracles but never mentions that Jesus did the same. I had to go back and check your book but you do appear to have missed that one.

Doug Shaver

Paul claims to have been only the last of several people to have had that experience. He did not invent this religion. He just joined an existing religion and became an advocate for it -- the only advocate of his generation whose writings have survived.

So, lots of people in Paul's time were fixated on the death and alleged resurrection of this man . . . but why? He must have done or said something very special at some time before he died. What was it? And why don't we hear anything about it from those in a position to know what it was?

EarlDoherty

Ah yes, when I decided to look up “miracles” in my Concordance after sending that last message, I knew I’d be getting a flood of responses to my challenge, all of them thinking they had laid me low. First of all, you’ll note that not one of you produced any account or even a reference to a specific miracle attributed to an apostle (such as we get in Acts and the Gospels) so that we could judge what sort of ‘miracle’ might have produced such dramatic faith in the new converts. No wonder I couldn’t remember offhand any such thing in the epistles. There aren’t any. Don himself prefaced his examples with the comment that “for some reason Paul doesn’t list even one of them,” and calls it “curious.” (Honesty in one’s opponent is always to be appreciated.)

What are liable to have been these unspecified “miracles”? Let’s look at one of those passages.

In 1 Corinthians 12 Paul is talking about “gifts of the Spirit” and he is clearly speaking not only of apostles like himself but of the people in his faith community, the ordinary Corinthian believer. Their inclusion in the “body of Christ” (verse 12 on), which is why he speaks of the distribution of the gifts of the Spirit beforehand, shows that.

If “miracles” can be accorded to the ordinary believer, if they can be dropped into a list like this without sticking out like a sore thumb (‘Gee, Demetrios got the power to cure a leper and raise the dead, and all I got was to tell when a preacher is telling us a lie?’), they couldn’t have amounted to much. In fact, that’s the very impression created by all these references. It’s a kind of stereotyped attitude that in such communities and among such apostles, any little thing that goes one’s way—and of course there are going to be a lot of them—can be taken as a sign and endorsement by God (who is always the agent of such things). In fact, there is even a touch of hyperbole about the whole thing (just like we find in modern televangelists who can find a miracle under every rock—along with themselves), as in 2 Corinthians 12:12, when Paul speaks about his own ‘feats’:

All three! And not a specification of any one of them. And to judge by the foregoing 1Cor. example, that’s understandable.

Then we have to ask if any of these “miracles” are said or implied to have been the reason for the believers’ conversions. I’ll give you Romans 15:19, although again, such unspecified “signs and wonders” are simply a stock-in-trade, with no reason to think that they are any more dramatic than the foregoing. It’s all part of Paul’s package, by which he believes he has won over the gentiles. And we can be sure that all those travelling apostles and rivals Paul speaks of have the same stock-in-trade, so we needn’t wonder that he doesn’t point up his own talents in contrast to a lack of them in others. That is another indication that the ‘stock’ doesn’t amount to anything too dramatic or unusual. (And if that’s all it took to convince various audiences that the man you were preaching had risen from the dead and was the Son of the God of Abraham, the occupation of apostle must have been a pretty easy one.)

Ben offers Hebrews 2:3-4 as well. But in discussing this passage at length in my Article 7, I point out that the ambiguity of the Greek makes it uncertain whether such signs came at the time of the initial revelation, the time of its passing on, or as a reinforcement of the message as the years went by. And again, without anything dramatic being reported, one can see in this “signs and wonders” simply interpretations of relatively mundane things which point to the presence of God and his Spirit. (Of course, interpreting this whole passage as speaking of a revelation and not about the preaching of Jesus himself, as it clearly needs to be, we needn’t worry about whether they persuaded even the first recipients of the revelation into believing that a recently crucified man was the Son of God and had risen from his tomb.)

But I think the more overall revealing passage is Galatians 3:3-5, using the NEB:

Here, God is working miracles in the community following their conversion, and it is miracles performed by (if we can even go that far) members of the community itself. Is this more healing of lepers and raising the dead? Hardly. It is the same ‘interpretation’ of ordinary events which the community sees, or is persuaded to see, as something miraculous or a sign of God’s presence and approval. Always, we should note, a sign of God’s presence and approval, not that of Jesus, God working among them, not Jesus. And I will thank Amaleq for one thing: yes, in instances like this one might expect a reference by way of comparison to Jesus’ miracles, at least some of the time.

So. No evidence whatever that these “signs, wonders and miracles” are anything that could have been dramatic enough to convince a new listener that a man back in Judea, executed as a common criminal, one which these apostles never give any information about in regard to his life, his teachings, his death, or indeed of that purported resurrection. (Not even that the tomb was empty or the stone rolled back or an angel standing over it or guards struck dumb, or…) No evidence that these “signs, wonders and miracles” could have been sufficient to convince any Jew, or even a gentile, that such a crucified man was the pre-existent Son of God, agent of creation, sustainer of the universe, conqueror of the demon spirits, and rescuer of souls from Hades.

In fact, Amaleq has made a better point than he realizes. If Paul (or anyone here) is going to claim that his own “signs, wonders and miracles” were what converted the gentiles, does anyone honestly think that he would not also have appealed to Jesus’ own miracles (which would have been regarded as far mightier than the unspecified “miracles” that Paul and other apostles may have performed) as evidence for what Paul was urging them to believe about his recently crucified man? Will anyone claim that this is not a compelling reason why Paul could not possibly have failed to “care” about what Jesus had done during his life, that it would not be a compelling reason to learn about and use that life to further his preaching message? Give me a break.

Have you heard the expression “damning with faint praise”? Well, what we have here is a case of “damning your own argument with faint evidence.”

Earl Doherty

EarlDoherty

No, the question to be asked is, why would you imagine that you had received a vision of a man, if you didn’t know that man or knew nothing about him or his death and resurrection that was dramatic or compelling enough to have produced such a vision?

Earl Doherty

Von Smith

Ghost: I am the ghost of Cesar Chavez.
Homer: How come you look like Cesar Romero?
Ghost: Because you don't know what Cesar Chavez looks like!

Ben C Smith

Your position on Paul requires a pretty intensive and intimate knowledge of Paul, yet you did not know that Paul claims to have worked miracles, and to have done so as part of his initial evangelization (Romans 15.19). Am I the only one who finds this faintly disturbing?

Yes, it is. What does this do to what Amaleq13 said?

The spirit had been poured out; it was the last days. Miracles were everywhere. The apostles performed them during their evangelization, and their converts performed them in their gatherings as the church.

This is one of those head scratchers again for me. The game is up; both questions of yours were answered. Paul claims to have used miracles in his evangelization, period. Paul claims that his converts used miracles after that initial evangelization, period.

That is a pretty good point, and has been ever since Wells made it in the eighties. I cannot speak for Doug, but I myself have serious questions about how many miracles were actually attributed to Jesus during his lifetime.

Ben.

Toto

What does Romans 15.19 actually say?

The KJV for verses 18-19:NIVYoung's LiteralThere is a puzzling "not" in there - that Christ did not work through Paul? That Christ did the miracles, not Paul? The NIV translation makes more sense in English, but what exactly is the author of Romans saying? Is Paul actually saying that he performed miracles, or that miracles were performed?

Ben C Smith

No. Paul envisions two classes of deeds, those which Christ has done through Paul and those which Christ has not done through Paul (perhaps things which Paul has potentially done on his own, without Christ; this is probably a hypothetical category). Paul is saying that he will speak only of the former, not of the latter.

Ben.