Milagre

A cura da mulher ao tocar nas vestes de Jesus, que sofria uma hemorragia por doze anos.

Um milagre é um ato de intervenção sobrenatural de Deus. Milagres são realizados pela agência imediata ou pela simples vontade de Deus, sem o uso de mecanismos capazes de serem discernidos por sentidos empíricos e, em muitos casos, destinados a autenticar a comissão divina de um mestre religioso e a verdade de sua mensagem. Religiões monoteístas como Judaísmo, Cristianismo e Islã acreditam que o universo é o resultado de um ato milagroso de criação por Deus. Além de fornecer diretrizes morais básicas, a [Bíblia]] é um livro de história que registra a criação de Deus e sua interação com o reino físico. Milagres realizados por Deus, Jesus, e seus servos ou discípulos aconteceram ao longo da história, incluindo os tempos modernos. Tal história sobrenatural pode de fato impedir uma interpretação naturalista da história da Terra.

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Um milagre é um evento que excede o poder produtivo da natureza, e um milagre religiosamente significativo é um milagre detectável que tem uma causa sobrenatural. Para fins práticos, não precisamos de mais nada. As reivindicações paradigmáticas em discussão - que um homem que morreu foi ressuscitado vários dias após sua morte, por exemplo, ou que a água foi transformada instantaneamente em vinho - satisfazem não apenas esta definição, mas também a maioria das propostas alternativas apresentadas seriamente.

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Milagres antigos

Bíblicos

Dentro do texto da Bíblia, há muitos milagres documentados. Todos eles são usados por Deus para promover Seu plano divino para a humanidade.

Antigo Testamento

A palavra milagre na Bíblia Hebraica chamada de Antigo Testamento é designada por nes ou oth que ambas significam "um sinal". Embora os Judeus aceitassem a realidade dos milagres, havia certas categorias de milagres que eles esperavam que apenas o Messias fizesse. A Torá fornece instruções para que um leproso purificado se mostre ao sacerdote, mas nenhum israelita jamais foi curado da lepra. A única cura do Antigo Testamento aconteceu a um gentio, Naamã, o Sírio 2Reis 5 . Portanto, os rabinos concluíram que limpar um leproso seria um sinal do Messias.

Os rabinos reconheciam a possessão demoníaca e tinham a fórmula para expulsar demônios. Essa fórmula dependia de aprender o nome do demônio. Já que um demônio mudo não permitiria que sua vítima falasse, não havia como saber seu nome e, portanto, nenhuma maneira de expulsá-lo. Portanto, a expulsão de um demônio mudo era considerada algo que somente o Messias seria capaz de fazer. Uma terceira categoria de milagre messiânico foi curar um homem cego de nascença.

Tudo isso Jesus fez, usando assim os próprios ensinamentos dos Rabinos para demonstrar a eles que ele era o Messias. A reação dos espectadores nestes casos mostra que eles reconheciam as implicações. Mateus 9:32-33 , Mateus 12:22-23 , Marcos 1:40-45 , Lucas 5:12-15 , Joao 9:32

• Criação — Diz-se que a criação do universo, da Terra e da vida na Terra ocorreram ao longo de apenas seis dias. A descrição específica dos eventos de criação são descritos no primeiro capítulo do Genesis.
• Arca de Noé — Os humanos e a infinidade de animais terrestres que habitam nosso mundo estão vivos apenas hoje devido a um milagre. Conforme Genesis 6-8 , um dilúvio global destruiu toda a vida na Terra, exceto aqueles que Deus salvou por meio de suas instruções a Noé para que ele construísse uma arca. Uma vez que a sobrevivência de grande parte da vida na Terra dependia de um ato de intervenção sobrenatural, um naturalista nunca poderia interpretar corretamente a evidência do dilúvio. Os naturalistas devem, em vez disso, manter a pressuposição de que a vida foi capaz de sobreviver à formação das camadas de estratos sem assistência sobrenatural. Além da criação em si, esse milagre é o mais significativo na prevenção de uma interpretação naturalista da história da Terra.

Pillar of smoke leads the Israelites.

• Moses — The book of Exodus describes the oppression and mass departure of the Israelites who had been enslaved by Egypt. God performed numerous miracles during this period, many through his servant Moses.
  • The Burning Bush — God calls Moses from a burning bush to set him on a mission to help free the Israelites from slavery.
  • Plagues Upon Egypt — God set several plagues upon the Egyptians before the Pharaoh would release the Israelites.
  • Pillars of Cloud and Fire — After departing Egypt, God led the Israelites by a pillar of cloud during the day, and a pillar of fire at night so they could travel in the dark.
  • Parting the Red Sea — To escape the Egyptian army, God instructs Moses to part the waters of the Red Sea and the Israelites pass through on dry ground.
• Elisha

Novo Testamento

Jesus Cristo é o único fundador de uma grande religião mundial que teve Seus milagres registrados em uma geração. This special feature is of importance when conducting historical criticism through exegesis on the New Testament and specific miracle claims. Critics occasionally try to attack the miracles of the biblical text by claiming other religions report the same phenomena. The argument usually states that if Christian claims are to be taken seriously then all other major religion's miracle claims should be taken equally seriously. This is usually stated without consideration of the early reporting feature of the Bible. It is not enough to say that other religions claim the same, because credibility lessens the wider the gap is from the event and time of writing about that event. An especially important consideration in historical investigations because the wider the chronological gap is the more potential for falsehoods to form. Non historical elements about a particular event in history maybe incorporated quickly as well in few instances, so while early reporting of miracles by Jesus is good evidence of substantive history within the NT, it should not be taken alone.

Some of the more studied miracle occurrences in the New Testament are;

• Star of Bethlehem — The birth of Jesus was marked by a light that led oriental scientists from distant countries to the exact place where Jesus lived in Bethlehem. Although many try to employ an astronomical phenomenon to explain this event, several aspects of the light defy naturalistic explanations.
• Jesus — The canonical gospels contain closely parallel accounts of the life of Jesus Christ and His ministry, which include the numerous miracles He performed. Christ also was subject to a miraculous resurrection event in history (Acts 1:21, 2:24; 1 Corinthians 15:4-5).
  • Jesus Raising the Dead — Predefinição:Bible ref, Predefinição:Bible ref, and Predefinição:Bible ref contains the story of Jesus resurrecting the young daughter of a synagogue ruler following her death.
  • Jesus Walking on Water — Predefinição:Bible ref, Predefinição:Bible ref, and Predefinição:Bible ref describe an event where Jesus walks on water to reach the boat in which his disciples were traveling. When Peter sees Jesus, he also gets out of the boat and walks to Him on the water.

Milagres modernos

Many modern skeptics claim that miracles are impossible because they violate the laws of nature discovered by scientific enlightenment for the past several hundred years. They support a completely material worldview where there is only the natural world discovered by our sensory system. There are only completely natural causes with completely natural effects, that constitute laws of nature that then give predictability for experimentation of the scientific method. John Lennox a prominent Christian scholar has taken particular issue with this stance by atheists that disregards free will during his public debates and interviews. Lennox essentially has articulated an example of how something from the outside can effect something on the inside of natural laws. For if you had 100 dollars and went to bed to wake up with 50 dollars, the laws of arithmetic could not tell you anything other than the difference between numbers. Yet it does not take long to realize that the money was stolen. The laws of arithmetic have not been broken is the point, in fact they remain completely unaffected by the change in the amount of money. Lennox states; "it is my knowledge of the regularity of the law, if you like, that enables me to tell that someone has put their hand in the drawer." Knowledge of scientific law allows the person in the example to understand two important things about science and miracles that must be thought of together. First, that the law-like regularity of nature remains unbroken and unaffected by free will. Secondly, and more importantly the example demonstrates how personal agency, that is free will, can produce a radical change from outside the confines of a natural law. Extrapolating up to that of the will of God, this is precisely how He is able to cause miracles within nature while at the same time not violating the laws of nature. For example, we don't set aside or violate the laws of gravity in order to achieve powered flight. Rather we invoke another set of laws, that of aerodynamics. Clearly we still need gravity to be operational to provide the necessary atmospheric pressure that allows aerodynamics to work. Neither set of laws breaks or violates the other. We simply use another set of laws to achieve the goal. In this regard, God created a grand architecture that integrates his various laws for his own purposes. When he performs a "miracle", he is using pre-existing laws of the creation. The Resurrection for example, is not a suspension or breaking of law, but of leveraging one or more other laws to achieve the goal.

It is recorded in John that Jesus said; Predefinição:Bible quote

C.S. Lewis, Gary Habermas, Norman Geisler and Christians who engage in Christian historical and legal apologetics have made arguments that miracles are reasonable and plausible. There are many accounts of modern miracles, particularly outside the West. For example, the book Megashift, by James Rutz, recounts many miraculous incidents. The reason that few are seen in the West is the unbelief which pervades the Western church. The majority of clergy do not acknowledge the authority of scripture; some do not even believe in God; and the same skepticism is trained into Westerners from birth by their culture. It is hardly surprising, then, that God's power is rarely seen in the West. Predefinição:Bible ref

It is necessary to beware of fake miracles. First, there are some ministries that claim to do miraculous healings, but these are either false — a woman was told she was cured and told to stop her medication; she died — or so subtle as to be unverifiable. For example, claims of cures of having one leg shorter than another (a very rare complaint, according to doctors) have been very frequent in certain quarters. Second, miracles are not necessarily a proof of divine power. The source of power for miracles is the realm of the spiritual, but not every spirit is good. God allows evil spirits a certain degree of power, and many spiritualists, mediums, psychics and faith healers get their power from these evil spirits. One must study the Bible to know how to discern between what is truly from God and what is from Satan.

One Biblical example is that of Pharaoh's magicians (Jannes and Jambres, according to Jude) who could reproduce some of the first of the signs and plagues, such as turning staffs to snakes and the plague of blood. Predefinição:Bible ref

O historiador e os milagres

Craig Keener in his 2011 two-volume work called Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts specifically addresses the bias of scholarly discourse against interaction with miracles. Originating in the work of David Hume, skepticism about miracles has dominated the academic understanding of biblical scripture since his time. Keener calls this line of criticism a "long-standing albeit declining Western philosophic tradition". The bar is set to an unreasonable level that "no individual miracle claim could ever be accepted as valid." Although limited by no archeological evidence for the miracles of the New Testament within the Bible, Keener determines conclusions that have to be met by "Humean" skeptics.

Objeção humeana

David Hume (1711 to 1776) articulated one of the most famous arguments against miracles within An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.

Referências

• Are Miracles Logically Impossible?
• Miracles and Modern Scientific Thought by Norman Geisler
• "Miracles are not possible," some claim. Is this true?
• Miracles, C.S. Lewis, HarperCollins, NY, NY, 2001 (originally published by C.S. Lewis in 1947)
• Megashift, James Rutz, Empowerment Press, Colorado Springs, 2005, ISBN: 0-9669158-2-8

Ligações externas

• A miracle by any other name would be … called science?-Atheists believe in miracles By Calvin Smith. Published: 10 November 2011