Randy Clark is very well known in the Spirit-filled community, having been involved in supernatural ministry for over 20 years. He is both a contributor to and the compiler of Supernatural Missions. This book is a made up of fifteen chapters written by various authors. The contributors to this volume are: Randy Clark, Leif Hetland, Bill Jackson, Peter Prosser, Clifton Clarke, Rolland Baker, Heidi Baker, “D.J.,” Jonathan Bernis, Bob Ekblad, Lesley-Anne Leighton, Howard Foltz, and Donald Kantel. The book was written to fill a perceived need; there was not at the time a book that dealt with missions which incorporated power, presence, and presentation evangelism (page 1). This volume was compiled to answer the question, “How does the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit impact the way we understand and do missions?” (page 1).

Roger Olson’s challenge to Western Christianity about the power of God is a bold and biblical one. Questioning the status quo of our current version of traditional Christianity, he rightly believes that it has, “absorbed the worldview of modernity by relegating the supernatural, miracles, scientifically unexplainable interventions of God, to the past (‘Bible times’) and elsewhere (‘the mission fields’).”^[1]

Roger Olson

Several years ago, Olson sounded a similar alarm: “It seems to me that belief in ‘the supernatural’ is an essential part of traditional, classical Christianity (and I mean that normatively and not only historically). That is to say, denying the reality of the supernatural is tantamount to giving up Christianity. However, of course, many people who believe they are Christians deny the supernatural.”^[2] Olson began a recent article with the same alarm: “My claim is that most contemporary American evangelical Christians only pay lip service to the supernatural whereas the Bible is saturated with it.”

The perplexity of this is shared by many who consider themselves Pentecostals and Charismatics. It is a strange thing indeed for one who claims to be a Jesus-follower to simultaneously deny that the same power we see Jesus and His followers exercising in our day is now obsolete two thousand years later. Ironic is not a powerful enough word to describe a mindset which claims to abide by the worldview of the Bible while concurrently embracing an anti-supernatural, Enlightenment sentiment regarding the existence of the miraculous today.

Thankfully, while this may be common among various versions and flavors of Christianity, it does not seem to be so common among the vast majority of Americans. According to A survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion five years ago (2010), nearly 80% of Americans believe in miracles.^[3] Three years later (2013), that number was down to 72% per the Harris Poll.^[4] Five years later (2015), the Today Show’s recent survey among 1,500 people revealed that 76% of those polled believed that prayer could heal, revealing a sustained depth of belief in the miraculous and our connection to it.^[5] This touches on the bullseye of Olson’s post.

Many Pentecostals and Charismatics today would have a theological splinter in their soul if at least the idea of miraculous healing, if not the offer to pray for it, didn’t follow a person’s verbalization of their pain, suffering, or illness. Yet strangely, Olson’s experience reveals that too many of those who claim to follow Jesus, “avoid asking God to heal them…avoid any mention of demons or demonic possession and strictly shun exorcism as primitive and superstitious…look down on churches that anoint the sick with oil and pray for their physical healing…suspect they are ‘cultic’ and probably encourage ill people not to seek medical treatment…make fun of evangelists who claim to have prayed for God to re-route hurricanes but never ourselves pray for God to save people from natural disasters…have gradually adopted the idea that ‘Prayer doesn’t change things; it changes me’ and…regard petitionary prayer as something for children.” How horrific. That was my own behavior prior to 2004, and is an accurate description of the treatment I’ve received from others in the camp I left.

I share a similar story of healing along with Olson. I’ve had pretty severe allergies during the Spring ever since I can remember. Last year I felt filled with the faith to just go and ask a friend to lay hands on me and ask God to heal me. My friend did. So did God. I did not suffer with allergies for the remainder of the season last year, and have not suffered one day this year. And to my surprise, a lifelong allergy to milk has also been healed and I have enjoyed ice cream multiple times now with seemingly no effects. While I have not been to a doctor to verify this, my assumption is that if I no longer have the allergic reactions I used to have all my life, then something happened to me. And I also assume that if I can trace it all back to that single point in time when someone prayed for me, then the connection is legitimate. I asked. I had faith that God would do it. My friend believed. Two of us agreed on a matter touching the kingdom. And God granted it. No problems immediately thereafter.

I felt a strange sensation last week, however, when talking to my dad about this. He asked me how I was holding up this Spring so far. I began to describe for him that I no longer seemed to struggle, and suddenly acquiesced. The force and joy with which I would have normally talked about it suddenly began to subside. That surprised me. My father is a cessationist to this day, and pastored as such for thirty years in the Southern Baptist Convention. Knowing his position seemed to create in me a bizarre sense of obligation toward his viewpoint. Thankfully I caught myself, reassured myself that there’s nothing wrong proclaiming the goodness of God even to a convinced cessationist, and finished the story by stating what happened to me in a matter-of-fact sort of way. My dad’s response was just what I had expected: “Hmmm. Okay, son. That’s great.” But with a tone of voice which seemed to belie his true feelings on the matter.

In the end, I share Olson’s suspicion that, “our contemporary evangelical avoidance of the supernatural in the physical realm of reality has little to do with intellectual questions and issues.” I also believe that, “it has more to do with wanting our religion to be respectable; above all we don’t want to be viewed by the world around us as fanatics. The abuses of the supernatural seen on cable television cause us to drop it entirely.”^[6] I think that’s the bizarre sense of obligation I felt when speaking with my dad. It was that feeling of “respectability,” yet obviously one based purely on culture instead of on the kingdom.

What is also just as obvious is that the abuse of a thing should never dictate the avoidance of that thing altogether. Yet strangely, this too, is a standard practice of cultural respectability. As Olson frames it, “the cure for abuse is not disuse but proper use.”^[7] I believe that Christians should labor diligently to not be conformed to the patterns of this world, but instead should continually place themselves in a place to be transformed by the renewing of their mind (Romans 12:1-2). The Enlightenment has poisoned our minds with the toxins of respectability and the genetic fallacy.^[8] The truth of Scriptures, contained especially in the life and ministry of Jesus and the early church as our lifestyle and pattern for the kingdom, provide the source material for this transformative renewal of our minds. This, along with an openness to miraculous experiences and participation in the power of God, will ultimately inoculate us from our cultural anti-supernaturalism and return the people of God to a place of effectiveness in the mission Jesus has called us to until His return.

Reviewed by Rob Wilkerson

Read the full article: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2015/04/embarrased-by-the-supernatural/

Notes

^[1] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/12/what-does-supernatural-mean-can-a-person-be-christian-and-not- believe-in-it/

^[2] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2015/04/embarrased-by-the-supernatural/

^[3] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124007551

^[4] http://secularpolicyinstitute.net/survey/americans-belief-in-god-miracles-and-heaven-declines/

^[5] http://www.today.com/news/there-afterlife-does-prayer-work-todays-survey-faith-spirituality-t14176

^[6] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2015/04/embarrased-by-the-supernatural/

^[7] ibid.

^[8] http://www.logicalfallacies.info/relevance/genetic/

Falling Under the Power of the Spirit

The phenomenon of falling under the power of the Spirit occurred in the revivals of Jonathan Edwards. His assessment was that a person may “fail bodily strength” due to fear of hell and the conviction by the Holy Spirit or due to a “foretaste of heaven.”[1] John Wesley recognized falling to the ground as a manifestation from God, and records many such instances in his ministry. In fact, George Whitefield criticized Wesley for permitting the phenomena until it began happening in his own meetings.[2] The Kentucky revivals of 1800-1801, which involved Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians, was replete with similar demonstrations.[3] In the early 1800s, the revivals led by Methodist circuit riding preacher Peter Cartwright (who was converted in the Kentucky revivals) were often accompanied by people falling under God’s power, including some Baptists.[4] Finney’s ministry also frequently manifested fainting or swooning, what he called “falling under the power of God.”[5] The Welsh revival of 1859 was accompanied by swooning as “waves of power often overwhelmed” people.[6] In the 1860s, Andrew Murray’s church started to speak out against people who began to shout and cry and swoon in a revival in his church, until a visitor from America told him about similar manifestations in American revivals.[7] Decades before holiness evangelist Maria Woodworth-Etter’s involvement in the Pentecostal revival, many people in her meetings fell under the power of the Spirit, including Carrie Judd (Montgomery), an early leader in the C&MA.[8] Moody’s associate R.A. Torrey testified of people falling under the power of God due to conviction of sin.[9] Torrey himself fell under power of the Spirit when baptized with the Holy Spirit.[10] Presbyterian missionary Jonathan Goforth makes reference in his book By My Spirit to the phenomenon occurring in his revivals.[11]

Instances of falling under the power of the Spirit also occurred periodically at C&MA meetings for two decades before Azusa Street. In 1885 A.B. Simpson, the founder of the C&MA, received what we would call today a “word of knowledge” that someone was resisting the Lord. A woman responded, saying it was her. She came forward, and as Simpson anointed her for healing, she was overcome, falling under the power of the Spirit seemingly unconscious for about half an hour, and she received a healing.[12] In 1897 at a joint C&MA/Mennonite camp meeting in Allentown, Pennsylvania, C&MA General Field Supt. Dean Peck preached six services in three days and described: “At service after service . . . I saw people fall as dead under the power of God.” He said it was a genuine revival from God and talked about such things happening among the Methodists 50-60 years ago, but are not frequent now because many revivals are of human manufacture.[13] Manifestations of falling also occurred during the 1907 revival at Simpson’s Gospel Tabernacle, apparently with his approval.[14] Presbyterian Greek professor T. J. McCrossan, who joined C&MA in 1923, while serving as interim president of Simpson Bible Institute, wrote in his book Bodily Healing and the Atonement: “Hundreds are healed, who do not fall under this power, because they simply trust God’s promises; and it is the prayer of faith that heals. Going under this power seems, however, to bring an extra spiritual blessing. . . . This power is not hypnotism. . . . This is not devil power.^”[15] McCrossan spoke out of the experience of his own life, for not only did he frequently assist Charles Price in laying hands on the sick with people falling, but he himself fell under God’s power and was enraptured with visions when he was baptized in the Spirit in 1921 through Price’s ministry.[16]

An excerpt from Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, by Craig S. Keener. From Pneuma Review Fall 2013.

From the introduction to Part 3, “Miracle Accounts beyond Antiquity”

Pages 209-210

The principle of analogy once used to argue against all ancient miracles (either the occurrence of some sorts of extranormal phenomena or their supernatural causation) now undermines that very argument. In Hume’s day, many Protestant theologians distinguished sharply between biblical and postbiblical miracles as part of their anti-Catholic polemic. Their polemic played into the Humean argument against ancient miracles based on the lack of many comparable modern claims. Many theologians in turn accommodated this nonmiraculous approach, further emphasizing the lack of postbiblical miracles and eventually often renouncing miracles altogether.

Today, however, abundant claims of miracles, particularly from the Majority World, challenge Hume’s skepticism about the existence of many credible eyewitnesses. Hume demanded “a sufficient number” of witnesses of unquestioned integrity and intelligence who would have much to lose by testifying falsely.¹ In today’s academic climate, many who testify to miracles have much to lose even by testifying truly; but I shall first respond to Hume’s quantitative demand. In contrast to the environment assumed by Hume, today hundreds of millions of people claim to have witnessed miracles. Moreover, eyewitnesses claim what they believe are miracles even in the West, and this has been the case through most of history, even when Hume framed his argument within the theological framework of academic circles often reticent to acknowledge miraculous claims. Some of these eyewitness claims involve even the healing of blindness, the raising of the dead, and nature miracles. I will treat some of these subjects in turn in subsequent chapters: claims from the Majority World (chs. 7–9); Western history (ch. 10); the modern West (ch. 11); and some specifically dramatic claims like those involving blindness, death, or nature (ch. 12).

Virtually no one would suggest that all claims reflect clearly authentic miracles (see discussion in ch. 13). Nevertheless, such claims, however we interpret them, clearly exist on an eyewitness level and hence need not be excluded from first- and second-generation testimony in the Gospels and Acts. Statistics suggest the vast numbers of claims; my primary interest in chapters 7–12 is to illustrate some of the variety of sorts of cases involved in them. While the primary point of these chapters is not the interpretation of events, some of these reports may have a bearing on that question. At the least, given the vast number and variety of claims, one can no longer simply take for granted that uniform human experience a priori excludes extranormal events for which many observers would find a specifically theistic interpretation particularly persuasive (see discussion in chs. 13–15).

PR

This excerpt is from Craig S. Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, 2 volumes, Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2011. Used by permission. All rights to this material are reserved. Material is not to be reproduced, scanned, copied, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without written permission from Baker Publishing Group.

Footnotes appear in the full digital issue of Pneuma Review Fall 2013 and in the book from which this excerpt is derived.

An excerpt from Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, by Craig S. Keener. From Pneuma Review Fall 2013.

From Part 3, “Miracle Accounts beyond Antiquity”

Chapter 7, “Majority World Perspectives”

Pages 214-219

A Multicultural Approach

Social scientists have noted that, despite a variety of interpretations, “people from all cultures relate stories of spontaneous, miraculous cures,” based on experiences that they have had.¹⁵ This observation has some relevance for how we approach biblical narratives involving healings. As Justo Gonzalez remarks in his commentary on Acts, the frequent denial of narratives’ historicity because of their miracle reports employs a questionable epistemological criterion. Bultmann denied that modern people who use scientific inventions can believe in miracles,¹⁶ yet “what Bultmann declares to be impossible is not just possible, but even frequent.” Miracles are, Gonzalez points out, affirmed in most Latino churches, despite the influence of the mechanistic worldview from much Western thought.¹⁷ Cuban Lutheran bishop Ismael Laborde Figueras notes that it is hard to find Latin American Christians who do not believe in miracles.¹⁸ Noted Latina theologian Loida Martell-Otero likewise emphasizes prayers for healing in the Latina community,¹⁹ and notes that Latinas’ experience helps shape their way of reading Scripture.²⁰

Some Asian theologians have likewise complained that the approach of Bultmann’s school is irrelevant to Asian realities. Asian worldviews, Methodist bishop Hwa Yung notes, affirm miracles, angels, and hostile spirits.²¹ Indeed, pace Bultmann’s rhetoric, most religious Westerners also fail to see any contradiction between miracles and the use of modern science²²—including a number of scientists.²³ “Modern” worldviews are too diverse to fit any one paradigm,²⁴ and despite his cultural assumption that his argument is true, Bultmann never provides a reason for it.²⁵ Cross-cultural studies suggest that socialization rather than exposure to science accounts for most of the skepticism in some circles.²⁶

Whereas fewer than 18 percent of Christians in 1900 lived outside Europe and North America, today more than 60 percent do, and an estimated 70 percent will by 2025.²⁷ As the center of world Christianity has shifted to the Global South, the dominant Christian perspectives in the world have shifted with it.²⁸ Although far from being the only groups involved in this shift, charismatic and Pentecostal forms of Christianity have been in the forefront of the recent expansion of Christianity, reportedly growing six times over in the three decades from 1970 to 2000.²⁹ Not surprisingly, readings of Scripture in the Global South often contrast starkly with modern Western critics’ readings.³⁰ These readings from other social locations often shock Westerners not only because others believe the early Christian miracle narratives to be plausible but also because these readers often take these narratives as a model for their ministries.

Thus Western scholar of global Christianity Philip Jenkins notes that in general Christianity in the Global South is quite interested in “the immediate workings of the supernatural, through prophecy, visions, ecstatic utterances, and healing.”³¹ Such an approach, closer to the early Christian worldview than modern Western culture is, appeals to many traditional non-Western cultures.³² Hwa Yung, the above-mentioned bishop of the Methodist Church in Malaysia, notes that the charismatic, Pentecostal character of Majority World churches reflects not so much direct influence by Pentecostals or charismatics as simply the worldview of the majority of humanity. They have simply never embraced the Western, mechanistic, naturalistic Enlightenment worldview that rejects the supernatural.³³

Referring to the analogous issue of hostile suprahuman forces, noted scholar of African religion John S. Mbiti complains that most Western scholars “expose their own ignorance, false ideas, exaggerated prejudices and a derogatory attitude” that fail to take seriously genuine experiences pervasive in Africa.³⁴ African psychologist Regina Eya warns that all claims to extranormal healing are dismissed by many Western scholars, the credible along with the spurious, because of the inappropriate application of traditional Western scientific paradigms to matters for which they were not designed.³⁵ Danny McCain, a Western professor who has spent more than two decades teaching in Nigeria, notes that “nearly all African Christians and most African theologians,” regardless of their views on other critical issues, reject Western antisupernaturalism. He acknowledges the existence of some false claims, but complains that “it is arrogant and unprofessional for Western scholars to outright reject the miraculous, totally ignoring the testimonies of thousands of people,” based simply on their own lack of such experience.³⁶

In addition to differing in their paradigms involving paranormal phenomena, many other cultures are in general more holistic, expecting spiritual beliefs to impinge on physical needs in ways that Western culture has often found uncomfortable.³⁷ For example, the concern of religion for health in traditional African thought³⁸ is likely a factor in the growth of African Independent Churches (AICs), most of which include a heavy focus on healing.³⁹ Newer Pentecostal and charismatic churches are also filling the same niche, sometimes at the expense of older AICs.⁴⁰ Because African culture has always connected healing with religion, African Christian movements that appropriated the biblical connection of healing with religion have grown, often challenging churchgoers in more Western churches who were secretly consulting diviners and traditional practitioners.⁴¹ Many newer churches have grown in Africa at the expense of more traditional ones, especially where the latter have refused to engage local cultures’ reigning cosmologies.⁴² In some areas, older mainline churches under indigenous leadership have likewise emphasized healing in a manner relevant to their African context.⁴³ Western observers may appraise such developments positively or negatively,⁴⁴ but what is minimally clear is that Africans from various belief systems are engaging issues that Westerners often ignore. At least some aspects of their interest in physical health are more in keeping with biblical cosmologies than much traditional Western Christian minimizing of the body is.⁴⁵

Regardless of how we interpret miracle reports and other supernatural claims, their frequency in various sectors of today’s world indicates that large numbers of intelligent, sincere people believe that such cures are occurring today, including through their own prayers. This is true even in the modern West; how much more likely would this be the case in a generally less skeptical culture like the world of the first Christians? There is no intrinsically historical reason to think that the Gospel writers had to invent such miraculous claims, or that Luke had to invent them even in the eyewitness “we” material in Acts (Acts 16:18; 20:10; 28:4–6, 8–9; cf. 21:4, 11, 19).⁴⁶ Nor is there any reason to insist that the reports must have originated in a reporter’s deception or imagination.

PR

This excerpt is from Craig S. Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, 2 volumes, Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2011. Used by permission. All rights to this material are reserved. Material is not to be reproduced, scanned, copied, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without written permission from Baker Publishing Group.

Footnotes appear in the full digital issue of Pneuma Review Fall 2013 and in the book from which this excerpt is derived.

An excerpt from Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, by Craig S. Keener. From Pneuma Review Fall 2013.

From Part 2, “Are Miracles Possible?”

Chapter 5, “Hume and Philosophic Questions”

Pages 161-167

The Circularity of Hume’s Approach

Houston challenges at length Hume’s belief that the general improbability of events in a particular class of event prejudges “the probability of the truth of an actual report of the event.”³³⁰ As I have been noting, Hume implies that he is arguing inductively. He actually, however, argues deductively based on a conclusion that rests on an inadequate range of data, partly because it has a priori excluded disagreeable evidence. Rather than allowing genuine induction based on evidence, Hume produced a deductive approach that a priori virtually excluded the evidence for miracles. He cites experience against experience—typical experience against rare experience, though both are attested by witnesses.³³¹ As is frequently noted today (including above), Hume’s argument against miracles is thus circular, assuming what it claims to prove,³³² an observation also offered by some of Hume’s contemporaries.³³³ His rejection of some experience on the grounds that it differs from usual experience actually contradicts his own empiricist tradition.³³⁴ The more genuinely inductive approach of English scientists of his era was to adjust research models and methods to accommodate new evidence from diverse phenomena, an approach that rendered their position immune to the arguments raised by the deists and Hume.³³⁵ Hume prevents his own argument from being falsified by rejecting evidence that contradicts his thesis. As Robert Larmer complains, Hume’s denial that any amount of evidence favoring miracles could ever be acceptable “commits him to holding that there are logically possible empirical events which no conceivable amount of positive evidence could ever confirm, but which a finite body of negative evidence disconfirms.” Hume at one point allows the relevance of empirical evidence for deciding the question but then contradicts his normal empirical approach by ruling it out of court.³³⁶

One may illustrate this predisposition in Hume’s own argument. As I have noted, he cites some strong testimony for some miracle reports but then uses the very strength of this testimony to argue that even strong testimonies are useless in favor of miracles, since (he asserts, without argument) these particular miracles may be dismissed!³³⁷ An early twentieth-century writer complained, “It is no use investigating these events, Hume says in effect, for no matter how conclusive your arguments for their occurrence, they cannot be accepted.”³³⁸

Various writers have noted the circularity of Hume’s denial of these reports of miracles, for example, among Jansenists, which he denied on the mere basis that miracles cannot happen,³³⁹ a denial that some today regard as “obscurantist.”³⁴⁰ Hume viewed the evidence for Jansenist miracles (often immediate, credible, and multiple testimony) as stronger than that for Jesus’s alleged miracles,³⁴¹ so that denying the former made denial of the latter much simpler. But that at least some cures did occur is difficult to deny. After the pope condemned Jansenism in 1713, the ascetic Jansenist deacon Francois de Paris lived even more austerely and died in 1727. At his interment, a widow’s paralyzed arm was said to be healed, and many subsequent visitors experienced ecstasy and healing. Cardinal Noailles’s report in 1728 acknowledged genuine healings, and reported cures on the site included “cancerous tumors, … paralysis, deafness, and blindness.” Finally the king had the cemetery closed in 1732, whereupon one graffitist opined, “By order of the king, God is forbidden to perform miracles in this place.”³⁴² Officials secured considerable evidence that the most dramatic of these particular miracle claims were false;³⁴³ their evidence may be correct, or it may reflect the use of political power in a propaganda war. Certainly the claims of the now-marginalized Jansenists were amenable neither to mainstream Catholics nor mainstream Protestants. But Hume fails to note either these detailed challenges to their credibility (differentiating their claims from some other historical miracle claims) or the potential political motivation for the challenges (allowing that the healing claims possibly could be more reliable than their critics conceded).

Hume, like most Catholic and Protestant critics, could dismiss Jansenist reports, but some intellectuals closer to the events felt differently—that is, those who were closer to “direct experience” than Hume was. Consider the influential mathematician Blaise Pascal, who devised a calculating machine that was the forerunner of modern computers, invented the syringe and the barometer, devised the mathematical theory of probability (hence his famous wager about faith), demonstrated the possibility of vacuums, and so forth.³⁴⁴ Pascal’s commitments to Jansenism (and his reasons for penning the Pensees) were reinforced precisely by the healing of his niece, Marguerite Perrier, in a Jansenist setting, long before the more controversial cures noted above. A severe, long-term fistula in her eye disappeared during the touch of a consecrated relic on March 24, 1656, at the Jansenist Port-Royal monastery. From all the evidence available, the cure must have been organic and not merely psychosomatic. The repulsive odor from her wound, which had forced her separation from the other girls, and her apparent bone deterioration vanished immediately. Her case provided significant medical evidence and was verified by the diocese. The royal physicians examined Mlle Perrier, and the Queen Mother herself was persuaded by their positive verdict of a miracle.³⁴⁵ In the next few months, some eighty further miracle claims followed.³⁴⁶

The vast majority of us today would question the relic’s authenticity (a thorn from Christ’s crown),³⁴⁷ but the dramatic recovery is difficult to deny. Even the Jansenists’ critics acceded to the official recognition of the miracle’s genuineness, but whereas Jansenists cited it as a sign of divine approval, their detractors treated it as a warning.³⁴⁸ For Hume, however, writing in a period of established Protestant and Catholic polemic over whose miracles were authentic, all miracle claims were religiously partisan and thus unreliable.³⁴⁹ Though these miracles were recent, public, and attested by many witnesses—that is, they fulfilled Hume’s evidential criteria—he dismissed them as irrelevant because they would have entailed what he considered a violation of nature.³⁵⁰ His dismissal, then, rested on his argument challenged above; Jansenist claims were rejected by Hume, Conyers Middleton, and others not because of lack of evidence but simply because they were miracle claims.³⁵¹

Hume follows the line of argument established by a deist predecessor challenging recent miracle claims surrounding the Huguenots (1705). Deist Thomas Chubb emphasized the vast number of otherwise reliable witnesses, arguing that they were better attested than nt miracle claims, yet dismissed their credibility by appealing to the authority of consensus: “not one in ten believe it now.”³⁵² Other deists advanced the same form of argument, which Hume merely dressed in a special outfit, with Jansenists as the target.³⁵³ Hume could scoff at Jansenists with impunity, since they were too Catholic for Protestant tastes (Hume’s primary English readership) yet not acceptable to Catholics either.³⁵⁴

Hume recognized abundant reliable witnesses for such a case and that by all normal means of inquiry, one would conclude that a miracle occurred. Nevertheless, Hume felt justified in dismissing such evidence by appealing to his premise that miracles are impossible.³⁵⁵ It is difficult to comprehend what would qualify as circular reasoning if this approach does not. Hume could logically deny that any evidence for a miracle can be compelling only if he could a priori show that miracles are “logically impossible (that is, conceptually impossible, like a ‘square circle’ or a ‘married bachelor’)”; yet Hume does not do so.³⁵⁶ Some critics further counter that Hume’s own approach is epistemologically flawed in that it proves referentially self-defeating.³⁵⁷

Hume’s argument is not inductive; rather, it is designed to support his conclusion. When he cites the need for public events attested by many credible eyewitnesses and then dismisses even their testimony, his language is too general to function as a full argument in itself. Rather, he is simply listing ad hoc characteristics that Christian apologists cited in favor of the apostolic witnesses, which he then finds deficient.³⁵⁸ His failure to provide a complete argument at these points invited severe critique from his contemporaries.³⁵⁹

Other Noninductive Elements in Hume’s Approach

Other factors also indicate that Hume is not arguing inductively. I have noted first that Hume does not argue inductively, but constructs a deductive argument against miracles based on a probability rigged by his nontheistic starting assumptions. A second observation is that Hume’s explicit exclusion of beliefs of “ignorant and barbarous nations”³⁶⁰ reflects ethnocentric bias that the vast majority of scholars would reject as unacceptable today. This is a serious problem, but I reserve a more extensive response to it for my discussion in later chapters (most explicitly in ch. 7). Suffice it to note now that he was again adopting a typical deist argument; John Toland, for example, condemned superstitions that flourished among “ignorant and barbarous” peoples.³⁶¹ Third, Hume explicitly mentions even some European miracle claims from his own era (i.e., the Jansenists) but then rejects them, because, he contends, miracles cannot happen. I have already commented on the circular character of this reasoning.

Fourth, Hume uses many bogus claims of miracles (already rejected by many Christian critics) to deny the reality of any miracles.³⁶² This guilt-by-association approach, however, reflects the logical fallacy of false analogy, of generalizing based on specific cases without examining other cases that may differ in relevant details.³⁶³ Hume thus effectively argues here against a straw man. To proceed genuinely inductively, Hume would have to examine each miracle claim and show it to be false; and he still would not have foreclosed the possibility of some miracle claim. So long as he proceeds inductively, a single confirmed miracle would disprove his case.³⁶⁴ Indeed, reliable witnesses for sufficiently numerous different miracles, if genuinely independent, support the class of events.³⁶⁵

It is impossible to prove a negative by induction when one has observed a limited range of data, and it is precarious to infer an inflexibly negative rule by induction when abundant eyewitness claims exist that one merely refuses to admit as evidence. Inferring from superstitious supernatural claims that all supernatural claims must be rejected is logically analogous to rejecting any form of theism because we have found earlier forms of polytheism wanting. The latter argument would have been more scandalous in his day, however; his milieu was better prepared to reject direct divine action in nature than to reject theism in general.

PR

This excerpt is from Craig S. Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, 2 volumes, Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2011. Used by permission. All rights to this material are reserved. Material is not to be reproduced, scanned, copied, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without written permission from Baker Publishing Group.

Footnotes appear in the full digital issue of Pneuma Review Fall 2013 and in the book from which this excerpt is derived.

James W. Goll and Julia Loren, Shifting Shadows of Supernatural Experiences: A Manual for Experiencing God (Shippensburg: Destiny Image, 2007), 244 pages, ISBN 9780768424973.

James W. Goll and Julia Loren did not simply write another book on supernatural experiences. Emerging out of their own lives and academic study, this book has been written for those who want to know more about the different kinds of supernatural experiences they can encounter. James and Julia believe that anyone who seeks God can meet him in powerful and tangible ways.

It is essential to read any book which deals with supernatural phenomena with appropriate skepticism and discernment. At the same time, we need to remain humble and open minded to see how we can experience God’s gifts and presence in our lives. This book implies that every believer can have supernatural experiences like visions, trances, even out-of-body experiences. But is this true? Or are these experiences only for certain believers?

The authors seek to answer many questions about spiritual experiences. What are the types of spiritual experiences that are common to humankind? How can you tell if an experience comes from the Holy Spirit or from somewhere else? What is a figment of our imagination? What arises from our minds and psychological or emotional states? Or what, perhaps, may originated in the demonic realm? What do you do with those experiences? (15). For the most part, the writers have answered these questions. However, discussing the interaction of the demonic within the realm of supernatural experiences—it is mentioned only a few times throughout the book—seems incomplete.

This book can serve as a starting point to develop an experiential theology. From this book one can learn how to articulate personal supernatural experiences and compare them with biblical examples. This book clearly deals with pneumatological (study of the Holy Spirit), and ecclesiastical (church) issues. One example is the recognition that the church is a pneumatic community, and that we should test supernatural experiences in a communal setting. As Jim Goll states, “In a world of imperfect people, God-given revelation can be mixed with competing information from sources that are not from God. People functioning as prophetic mouthpieces or visionaries are imperfect instruments, though vital to the Church today” (218). This underscores the need to develop a process of communal discernment that allows the Spirit of God to validate or disregard supernatural encounters.

This fascinating book will inspire, confirm and uplift those who are interested in learning about supernatural experiences given by the Holy Spirit. Some readers may find accounts similar to their own experiences, and others may be introduced to personal encounters with the Holy Spirit unlike anything they have known before. Although one has to be careful not to generalize supernatural experiences, this book can serve as a tool to develop a theology of supernatural experiences. It was thought provoking yet spiritual, indicating that God has much in store for us.

Reviewed by Rony Reyes

Daniel R. Jennings, The Supernatural Occurrences of John Wesley (Oklahoma City: SEAN Multimedia, 2005), 155 pages.

This is a book I wanted to write but never did. In seminary in the 80s, I realized with increasing clarity and conviction contemporary Pentecostalism’s unspeakable debt to the incredible career of the Rev. Mr. John Wesley. I determined then to someday identify and extract from his amazingly exhaustive Journals occurrences of Pentecostal-like phenomena in his meetings and ministry. Alas, but other things crowded out this well-conceived intention and I failed to follow through. Rev. Daniel R. Jennings, a graduate of John Wesley College and theological student at Liberty University, a church planter and campus pastor as well as an international speaker, has succeeded in succinctly summarizing “supernatural occurrences” that Wesley reports over the course of his protracted and prolific ministry at the center of one of the greatest revival movements in Christian history. How enriching and uplifting to discover that the Oxford don intellectual and able organizer of Methodism was also intimately acquainted with the inner workings of the spiritual realm and the trans-natural world. Supernatural Occurrences will be a boon to all students of revival, Wesley, and Wesleyanism as well as those who simply desire a practical and proven pattern for powerful ministry.

Jennings’s approach is simple and straightforward. After the briefest introduction to the life and career of Wesley, he immediately proceeds to list extraordinary phenomena from Wesley’s Journals. A chapter each is dedicated to spiritual warfare, miraculous healing, slaying in the Spirit, holy laughter, speaking in tongues, and other “unusual manifestations” of the Spirit, as well as prophecy, visions and dreams, divine retribution against enemies, experiences with angels, and supernatural answers to prayer. Generally, Jennings lets Wesley speak for himself, himself only extracting and organizing for readers the relevant material. Wesley, himself an adept editor and extractor of others’ writings, would probably be pleased. Occasionally, Jennings adds concise and non-cumbersome footnotes for explanatory purposes where modern readers benefit from attention to historical context. Sometimes Jennings includes his own non-intrusive interpretative analysis. The clear consequence of reading Supernatural Occurrences is an unmistakable impression that Wesley’s revivalist ministry was commonly characterized by what are today almost universally recognized as charismatic type encounters, events, and experiences.

The cover from the 2012 reissue of The Supernatural Occurrences of John Wesley.

Jennings continues with chapters surveying Wesley’s interpretation of baptism with the Holy Spirit and his opinion on miracles. Setting Wesley’s views on Spirit baptism in an Anglican hermeneutical context, Jennings argues that he thought of it in terms of conversion-initiation with an emphasis on sanctification. Recent dialogue in Pneuma: the Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies,between acknowledged Wesley experts Donald Dayton and Larry Wood, each taking opposite sides in this discussion, should warn readers against oversimplifying or underestimating Wesley’s belief and experience on Spirit baptism. Personally, I probably favor the view that Wesley’s dynamic and developmental pneumatology encompassed conversion-initiation with a focus on sanctification along with space for subsequence and empowerment themes. Of course, Jennings is correct that Wesley supported the possibility of speaking in tongues but never taught the doctrine of initial evidence.