What is a Miracle?

According to the dictionary, the word miracle is a term that is applied by some to certain events or experiences: “1. an event or action that apparently contradicts known scientific laws and is hence thought to be due to supernatural causes, esp[ecially] to an act of God; 2. a remarkable event or thing; marvel; 3. a wonderful example [of something].”¹ To which a fourth definition must be added:  an event or action that apparently contradicts known scientific laws and the cause of which is unknown. This fourth definition is required because there are those who do not believe either in the supernatural or God. For such persons a miracle is a natural occurrence for which there is, as yet, no known explanation.

            What these observations mean is that a marvel or a wonder, or an out-of-the-ordinary experience is supernaturally caused (by God) only if you think it is. If you do not credit God with being the cause, it is not a miracle. In that case it becomes only an unexplained phenomenon. The situation is something similar to What Jesus experienced in Mark 6:5-6:

And he [Jesus] could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands upon a few sick people and healed them. And he marveled because of their unbelief.

It is a believer’s faith that turns a remarkable thing into a miracle by giving God the credit. Otherwise, it remains a remarkable thing with an as yet unknown cause.

Today, miracles are generally regarded either as positive supernatural acts and deeds done by God, or simply unexplained positive phenomena; hence, a miracle is a wonder or marvel that produces wonderment, astonishment, and awe in those who experience or observe them, leading them to ponder what they have experienced or seen. A negative event or action that seems to defy explanation is generally regarded as a calamity, tragedy, catastrophe, or natural disaster. Yet, for believers, even these tragic calamities are regarded as miracles and attributed to supernatural causes on the grounds that the biblical writers represent God as using the considerable forces of nature to punish the enemies of Israel.² So, in the rhetoric of the religious believer, both gracious and also cruel acts are attributed to a supernatural God. In sum: to describe something as miraculous does not make it an act of God, it only means that one regards it as such.

The word “miracle” is from the Latin, miraculum. It is derived from the verb miror, which translates into English as “to wonder, marvel, be astonished, be amazed, admire.”³ The Latin Vulgate (dated around 400 C. E.), however, does not use the word miraculum to designate a marvelous thing as a supernatural act by God. Such supernatural agency is common in later patristic literature and theology. “In the Vulgate the Gr[eek] words rendered ‘miracle’ in the English Bible…are translated respectively by signum (sign), prodigium (prodigy), and virtus (power).”⁴ Furthermore, the Greek English Lexicon by Liddell, Scott, and Jones (LSJ) does not employ “miracle” as a translation of the Greek word thauma, even though LSJ covers the New Testament period. In the rhetoric of the LSJ, thauma is translated, with respect to things or events, as a wonder or marvel and, with respect to one’s reaction to a wonder or marvel, as wonder or astonishment.⁵ And neither does Bauer’s German Greek-Deutsch Lexicon use “mirakel (miracle)” as a translation of thauma.⁶ But in the English translations of Bauer’s lexicon, however, one does find the English word “miracle” added to Bauer’s translations of thauma.⁷ LSJ challenges the English translations of Bauer’s lexicon where translators have added “miracle” as a translation of thauma. Apparently, even in academia, a wonder can become a miracle by the stroke of a pen.

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹Michael Agnes, Ed. in Chief, Webster’s New World College Dictionary (4^th ed; 2002), under miracle.

²For example, the author of Exodus portrays God using a plague to destroy the animals of the Egyptians (Exod (9:1-7), and hail to destroy their crops (Exod 9:13-32).

³C. T. Lewis, A Latin Dictionary for Schools (Oxford: Clarendon, 1964), 634.

⁴James Murray, primary and founding ed., The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 486.

⁵Henry G. Liddell, Robert Scott, compilers, A Greek-English Lexicon (rev. and augmented by Henry S. Jones and Roderick McKenzie; 9^th ed.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1940), 785.

⁶Griechich-Deutsches Wörterbuch zu den Schriften des Neues Testaments und der ϋbrigen urchristlichen Literature (4^th ed. 1952).

⁷W. Bauer, W. F Arndt, and F. W. Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, (a translation of Bauer’s 4^th ed., 1957). The 2^nd edition of the English translation, 1979 by F. W. Gingrich and F. W. Danker (a translation of Bauer’s 5^th ed.). The 3^rd edition of the English translation, 2000 by F. W. Danker (a translation of Bauer’s 6^th ed.).

Do You have a Favorite Pew Spot?

My daughter asked me last Sunday: “Where do you sit in church and why did you select that spot?” I thought readers might like to hear my response, even though they may not have reflected on where and why they situate themselves in a particular spot in the auditorium/sanctuary for religious services. My daughter was curious because she sits toward the back.

I am not sure there is anything significant about where one sits in church. There may be about why they sit there, so we may learn something about ourselves by asking the question. I am relatively certain that position in religious acts has little significance to God (if God there be),¹ although I think it is probable that church goers sit where they do for a variety of reasons, both conscious and unconscious reasons.

The Baptist church I attend is a three aisled church with two rows of pews. I regularly sit in the fourth pew from the rear of the church next to the outer aisle on the left facing the pulpit. I tell myself I sit there for utilitarian reasons, since it is under the loudspeaker, which aids in my fading hearing. But there are loudspeakers evenly spaced throughout the auditorium, which raises questions about the utility aspect of where I sit.

I like to sit towards the back of the auditorium because I can easily see most of the people attending the service that morning. And I also like to sit on the aisle because I can easily and more quickly get out of the pew when the service is done and not get caught in the crowd exiting after the service. Because of my balance problems, I have difficulty walking in a crowd, even with a cane.

I find this pew position to be quite comfortable. I have learned the names of those who generally sit around me, who, like I, usually also sit in the same place each Sunday. I have grown accustomed to viewing the service from where I sit, and there is something to say for the comfort of familiar surroundings. Besides, sometimes you like to be around people you know before the service begins. In fact, now that I think of it, everyone I know, attending the service, seems to sit generally in the same place each week.

There is, however, another possibility: that I sit where I do in church for reasons I may have repressed in my unconscious. Unlike the tax collector in Jesus’ story about two men, a Pharisee and a tax collector praying in the temple (Luke 18:10–14), I may have repressed the real reasons I sit where I do. The tax collector in the story seems fully conscious why he stands some distance away to offer his prayer to God (18:13). His distant location in the room corresponds to his sense of alienation from God and perhaps from others as well (18:13).

Sigmund Freud is usually given credit for discovering the unconscious, which he defined “as a reservoir of primitive motives and threatening memories hidden from awareness” in the mind. It is “[i]n classic Freudian theory, a part of the mind that houses emotional memories, desires, and feelings that would be threatening if brought to consciousness.”²

It is possible that I have subconsciously repressed my reasons for sitting where I do. For example, I am not formally a member of the church I have been attending for about four years. They consider me a “regular attender,”³ a classification the church formally recognizes. Thus, I may unconsciously take up a position toward the back of the auditorium because it is a position commensurate with my formal level of participation in church activities. That is to say, I sit where I do to reflect my status as a nonmember who is not fully involved in church activities. Hence, I may unconsciously think I ought to sit in the back some distance away from the center of activities at the front. I hasten to add that my conscious reason for sitting where I do is that I find it a comfortable spot, but who knows what is really going on in their repressed unconscious?

Why do you think you sit where you do in religious services?

Charles W. Hedrick
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University

¹For example, there is no prescribed “position” for prayer, for example: see Hedrick, “Representing Prayer in Mark and Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 22.3 (Fall 1995), 254.

²P. G. Zimbardo, R. L. Johnson., and V. McCann, Psychology. Core Concepts (6th ed.; Boston: Pearson, 2000), 342.

³A category of relationship to the church. For example, the “Church Roll” is titled: “Members and Regular Attendees.”