Journeyman
A Journal for the Inquiring Christian

Vol. 1, No. 2, November 2001 Skepticism & The School of Miracles Overview: Avoiding the excesses of Protestant Pentecostalism and the skeptical, "fooled me once" reserve of the Reformed, does the Catholic tradition provide a comfortable middle position that allows for charismatic phenomena without getting silly about it? by Steven Augustine Badal The Role of Experiential Piety in Catholic Faith Recently I conversed with a Benedictine oblate at a local Anglican Catholic parish. Hanging from his neck was the customary medallion of St. Benedict riddled with sacred Latin acronyms. I commented how much I appreciate the medallion's spiritual significance, and even mentioned the special blessings supposedly connected with the medallion itself. “Oh yes,” said he, “there are many healing miracles associated with it.” I smiled, nodded, and went on my merry way. Years ago this kind of conversation would have annoyed me. For the most part I grew up in a decidedly Pentecostal church setting. The charismatic Christian life was the trademark theology of my boyhood religion. Understandably, in such a context, an entire mythos of supernatural events inevitably grew up around faceless (and usually unnamed) recipients of remarkable graces. It didn't matter whether I ever saw a miracle, or even experienced one firsthand—the expectation was that miracles and charismatic wonders accompanied the life of the church, and to believe otherwise was to grieve the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, years of frustration for not seeing a bona fide miracle pushed me to look for answers elsewhere. When my boyhood Pentecostalism eventually gave way to my young adult staunch Presbyterianism, I found considerable comfort in the writings of Reformed men who uncovered the reason why God apparently left me out of the loop of miracles: the charismatic gifts had ceased at the end of the Apostolic era. And for the longest time I labored under that assumption. The options seemed clear enough. Atheism and Deism were manifestly absurd opinions, but this business about God's special economy of miracles to confirm apostolic authority made much more sense and sufficiently explained my own experience (or lack thereof). I didn't seriously reconsider the question of miracles in Christian faith until my romance with catholic theology came to a head did. In my Presbyterian years, and without warning, I slipped into a debilitating skepticism. Who could blame me? One only needed to turn on his television to see the world is full of charlatans, duping hundreds of thousands into believing God is especially visiting their services with signs and wonders. Thankfully my inveterate love for church history and the lives of remarkable saints of ages past rescued me from a disturbingly cynical view of the miraculous. No longer do the legends and works of men like Saint Patrick or Saint Benedict strike a chord of doubt in my soul. The discovery that catholic theology proper doesn't have a category for “cessationism” was healing to me. Even so, neither am I slavishly looking for the miraculous. Aside from my own spiritual odyssey is the underlying question, “What is the proper place of the miraculous in a Catholic's faith?” With all this talk about “renewal” parishes (especially in the Roman context), it appears more than ever to be a relevant question. To Believe or Not Believe Princeton theologian Benjamin B. Warfield, in his little work Counterfeit Miracles, took issue with non-cessationist theology, as well as the many and sundry claims of miracles in Christendom's history, most notably in the Roman Catholic medieval context. Warfield rightly criticizes some of the obviously insane legends. One such example given is the account of St. Bernard of Clairveaux's encounter with the Blessed Virgin Mary, wherein the Holy Mother is said to have “literally” refreshed the saint with her own breast milk. (p. 95) This and other extravagant, if not distasteful, claims unfortunately stain our own history, making ourselves an easy target for the skeptic and critic alike. Similarly in our own day we are affronted with endless stories of equally absurd miracle accounts, not only in the Church, but also in all kinds of Christian sects outside the Church. An unguarded or promiscuous acceptance of all claims of the miraculous is a recipe for producing highly immature Christians. This defect characteristically requires not only a constancy of miracles, but also an accompanying escalating grandiosity that stretches the imagination. Consequently, there are never too many miracles or too wild. The Catholic's problem here is that there is nothing in our theology that would restrain truly remarkable acts of God in our history and our present. In other words, apart from one's own personal tendency to be skeptical, the faith is built necessarily on the possibility of intervention from on High. No amount of figuring, even by the likes of Warfield, can explain away the sheer volume of accounts of the supernatural. It's not so much a question of whether God is doing remarkable things in our midst even today, but which accounts do we believe and on what basis? Before we can identify a reasonable standard to judge these things, it might be helpful to consider why such signs exist. Does God mean by the miraculous to simply remind us that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever? Possibly, but more probably we see God's acts as a means of affirming and confirming the Church's message: Jesus Christ. One can certainly put more stock into a miracle-account that has at the center an obvious Christ-serving purpose, than one can in a story that smacks of an agenda to prop up the miracle for the sake of the miracle. In this vein I'm reminded of the story of St. Abercius and his wonderworking ministry, who healed the possessed with the very staff he used to zealously turn over the idols erected in his city. When Marcus Aurelius summoned him to heal his daughter (Faustina) of an unclean spirit, St. Abercius commanded the unclean spirit to depart and remove with it a huge stone altar used for pagan oblations. And the account continues that the exorcised devil lifted the altar into the air and carried it away to Phrygia. Even as amazing a story this is, the blessed Abercius' willingness to stand in the public square and proclaim Christ Jesus as the true God was the point of the account. His fidelity to fight idolatry in the name of proclaiming Jesus inspires us to join him in proclaiming to the world the true God. It seems much more reasonable to believe the sort of accounts that serve to sanctify Christ in our hearts. We should be wary of the tales that make much of the miracle-worker and has no reasonable associated theology. I cannot but help to reject claims that God is, for example, visiting revival meetings and supernaturally filling teeth with gold-fillings in the name of revival. Usually such revivalism is fraught with a doctrine of the Holy Spirit that supplants the centrality of Jesus Christ, and exalts a kind of pious entertainment or sideshow. Which miracles to believe and whether to believe them are then anchored in a solidly Catholic and Orthodox criterion: the revelation of Christ. And whenever such stories serve to sanctify Him in our hearts more fully, and to amplify His saving presence, we can have a sort of holy vulnerability, opening ourselves up to the reality of God's continuing witness in our own time to Christ's Lordship. The obvious omission in my “solution” is the verifiability of such accounts. Sometimes it's practically impossible to verify every account, and we need to recognize that a charitable disposition to accept the stories as true is not an absolute acceptance. Christians shouldn't be afraid of the falsifiability of any miraculous claim; after all, Jesus' own resurrection opens up itself for such examination. The Pauline defense is theological (if Jesus is not raised, then…), but it is also practical in that he challenges the skeptic to essentially go talk to the 500 to whom He appeared. Nevertheless, we can't corner ourselves into absurd theological and factual errors if we admit that any one claim could be false. Recently I encountered an Evangelical charismatic who denounced any that would question whether the dead were actually being raised by one of his favorite revivalist evangelists. The charge was that if one needed reasonable evidence for these claims that he had no faith to begin with. But this of course is not the Scriptural way. And as Catholics we shouldn't settle to accept a claim simply because it's passed on by sincere, loving people. A charitable disposition does not exclude a critical eye. Personal Renewal Not only do we need to examine the circulating legends soberly, but we also need to be mature about engaging the supernatural. By this I mean how we pursue “encountering” God also needs to be put in check. The Spirit-gifted life itself has an end in view, and a muddied theology can spoil the riches of such a life. About 99 percent of the Roman Catholic parishes in my area are styled as “Charismatic” or “Renewal” parishes. Some of them are virtually indistinguishable from some the Protestant Pentecostal denominations in terms of worship and emphasized theology. I'm quite aware of the mixed feelings this sort of thing brings up among the Roman Catholics in general. There are traditionalists who simply don't feel comfortable with the new way of doing things, and then there are the “pioneer” clergy who believe this is exactly the sort of thing that will revitalize the Roman Church. A prevailing feeling among these kinds of parishes is that a renewed emphasis on the Holy Spirit and His work will produce the kind of vibrant Church life that is found in many Evangelical sectors. I think the naysayers to such a movement have more valid concerns than do the advocates. The Protestant Charismatic way of encountering God is chiefly a-sacramental and a-christological. The life of the Church is supposed to center around Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is sent from the Father to ensure this reality. The problem with Roman Catholic parishes reconstructing the mood and movements of the Liturgy upon whatever they perceive the Holy Spirit might want to do is that by doing so they have already stepped out of sync with the rhythm of the Spirit's symphony to Christ. This new form of service is “open-ended” with no real consummation in view; it's just another charismatic service wherein the Spirit is doing “His thing” and not advancing the eschatological theme of Christ's Lordship and saving presence. Another associated problem with a push into charismatic renewal is the superficiality of who has what gifts. The expectations simply transgress theological realities. Not everybody at the local Sacred Heart of Jesus parish is a tongue-talking prophet and miracle-worker. Scripture and tradition clearly prove that most Christians are invited to a rather “normal” spiritual walk. Pressures to speak in tongues or prophesy can prove to be more dangerous than helpful to those who aren't creative enough to convince themselves they are really prophesying or really speaking with the tongues of angels. The focus shifts from the truly universal gift of the Kingdom of Jesus in the Church to the not truly universal gifts of the extraordinary, and this leaves many out of the “inner-circle” of the super spiritual. The responsible approach to this is to teach about the extraordinary gifts in the same terms I discussed in the section of miracle stories. By sanctifying Christ in their hearts some are clearly given faith to heal and prophesy; but the gift we should hunger after is, according to Paul, charity. For in sacred charity the Kingdom is expressed in its brightest and cleanest form. One can't but help to notice how much weight Jesus puts on faithfulness as expressed through love, and how insignificant the wonderworkers of the Church are accounted if they're not marked by a life of love. The charismata will truly cease in the perfection of the Kingdom at the appearing of Christ, and in some ways those “extraordinary” gifts are nothing more than a reminder that perfection is on its way; but those who abide in holiness and love for Jesus are in no need for these signs since their very lives are the very fulfillment of prophecy, tongues, and healing. Personal renewal therefore does not consist in looking for more sign-gifts from the Spirit, but in a desire to be a kind of precursor of the beatific vision to the world around us. We should be very sensitive to the holy impulses to be like Christ to all men. To be open to the Holy Spirit is another way of saying we are open to participating in the sufferings of Christ, and if that includes empowerment to bear the infirmities of people around us through miraculous healings, so be it; but it's not about pursuing a healing or deliverance ministry at the local church. The true gifts grow out of an intense acquaintance with the life of Christ. You can't organize or make a “healing ministry” any more than you can make a Mother Theresa of Avila or a St. Abercius. These remarkable people are fruits of the New Paradise, nourished by the branches of intense devotion to Christ in the Sacramental life of the Church. This is the main reason why I believe the catholic “renewal” movements fundamentally fail in the task of producing renewal — the focus is curved inward and misplaces the efforts in reproducing extraordinary charisms. A Closing Word for Godly Skeptics Whether we ever come close to really seeing the miracles we hear so much about or whether we ever truly possess an amazing sign-gift from the Spirit is really left to God's wisdom and discretion. We should not let these things overrun what really matters to God. We should be willing to downplay an imbalanced emphasis on these things if it means that we will preserve the mystical life we have in the Church. On the other hand, we shouldn't close our hearts and minds to the reality that the Church was founded on miracles and is replete with amazing proofs of its divine origin. We should celebrate the lives of reputable men and women of God whose works of charity, whether in signs and wonders or in martyrdom, are themselves living signs and wonders of Christ's reign over all. We shouldn't be afraid of the miraculous somehow violating something within us. Our very Baptism is miraculous; the very Eucharistic meal is miraculously transformed into the Body and Blood of Jesus. The very existence of the Church is a miraculous body, preserved for 2,000 years in an altogether amazing faith. If God decorates us with some extraordinary acts and charisms, we should receive it with joy and faith. In the truest sense of the word, Catholics are the real Pentecostals. Our sacrament of Baptism initiates us into the life of Jesus, and the oil of confirmation seals us with the same Pentecostal Spirit that was poured out on the original 120. If the Holy Spirit of Truth sanctifies our hearts and minds, we are free to kiss Mr. Miracle on the cheek and frown on Frau Fraud for preaching a promiscuous credulity with every sensational story she bears. Orthodox Christians have no agenda except to embrace whatever properly testifies to Sacred Tradition and Scripture. The cessationists should be no more comfortable in our communion than the sensationalists. Both violate the sober spirit of our faith, and we need not entertain either guest personally or corporately.