Book Reviewed
The Book of Miracles: The Meaning of the Miracle Stories in Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam.
Kenneth Woodward.
Simon & Schuster, 2000.
419 pp. $28.00

While fretting over the exact timing and scope of the Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln lamented that "these are not the days of miracles and I suppose it will be granted that I am not to expect a direct revelation. I must study the plain physical facts of the case, ascertain what is possible and learn what appears to be wise and right." Lincoln's lack of faith in miracles is shared by many of our contemporaries. We live in a world defined by science. We consequently are taught the virtue of limiting our beliefs to what can be sustained by "the plain physical facts of case," not expecting to observe miraculous interventions in the otherwise lawful operation of the universe. Nor are secular rationalists the only ones among us to dismiss miracles as pious fictions. Liberal theologians, too, distrust the stark supernaturalism found in scriptural traditions. They argue that we must "demythologize" scripture en route to developing an enlightened faith befitting our scientifically educated age.

Yet miracles have hardly disappeared from our contemporary cultural landscape. Indeed, as many as 80 percent of us tell pollsters we believe that "even today, God continues to work miracles." Best-selling books tout the power of petitionary prayer and comfort us with the news that angels and other higher powers are prepared to intervene in our behalf. Testimonials abound from people who see the miraculous where others might well see coincidence or chance. Most of these consist of anecdotal summaries of unanticipated cures, but others recount coincidental events (for example, missed airplanes or chance meetings) that prove uncannily fortuitous. It seems that most modern miracles occur in the individual or private realm. And thus while miracles have largely receded from the realm of our public institutions, they seem to continue to survive as answers to personal prayers or as beacons guiding our personal spiritual guests.

Kenneth Woodward's The Book of Miracles is written for both: those who believe in miracles and those who don't. Woodward, senior writer and religion editor at Newsweek, isn't concerned with either proving or disproving particular miracles. Instead, he explores the way in which stories about miracles "disclose the meaning and the power of the transcendent within the world of time and space"(p. 18). Neither miracles nor miracle stories exist in isolation he observes. Rather, they invoke a continuing religious tradition that testifies to the fact that the Other that is God can and does break through the mundane world, saturating it with meaning. Put another way, "miracles disclose the whole reality to those who can see only a part"(p.19).

Woodward provides us with a clear, readable overview of the classic miracle stories from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam alongside those from Hinduism and Buddhism. The Book of Miracles guides us through these miracle stories as they unfold within the sacred scriptures of each tradition and as they are subsequently amplified in the sacred biographies of the saints, sages, and spiritual masters. In the process, we are invited to reflect upon miracles not so much as supernatural events to be wondered at, but as divine actions to be examined for their spiritual and moral significance.

The central premise of Woodward's study is that miracles have meaning only within the boundaries of intact religious communities. In his words, "miracles demonstrate the postmodern principle that truth (especially religious truth) is always embedded in social constructions"(p.384). The miracles of Jesus, for example, echo those of the Hebrew prophets Elijah and Elisha; their miracles in turn echo those of Moses. Sufi mystics replicate the Night Journey of the Prophet Muhammad. Some of the miracles of Krishna offer new spins on the exploits of Vedic gods, while the Tantric master Padmasambhava becomes the "second Buddha." Woodward's talent lies in his ability to fashion a narrative that highlights this process of innovation within imitation. Newly emerging miracle stories are thus seen as vehicles with which living traditions generate the fresh from the familiar, the new from the old.

The Western world has viewed miracles as a signal of the presence of God. The early portions of the Hebrew Bible describe a time when God was present to the world in ways that God has not been since. The major miracle stories, all connected with Israel's formation as God's covenant people, were the result of God's will. In Genesis, only God works miracles, and in Exodus, Moses surfaces as an agent through whom God continues to work miracles. But, Woodward astutely notes, as the Hebrew Bible moves from the first book to the last, God gradually withdraws from human history. This is first seen as the control of miracles shifts from God to the prophets. Then, finally, God disappears from the biblical text, and miracles cease as well. Of course, miracles did not completely die out in Jewish history. Rabbis learned to gain access to God through the study of the Torah and mystics through both asceticism and esoteric lore, both revealing their holiness through the performance of miraculous deeds. In general, however, Judaism has developed a wariness of miracles, viewing them as a kind of outlaw power that must be constantly measured against the standards of traditional religious learning.

The Christian Gospels portray Jesus as a prodigious miracle worker. The stories of his life include six exorcisms, fourteen healings, three raisings from the dead, and eight nature miracles (such as calming storms, feeding five thousand people with a few fish and loaves of bread, walking on water). And this list does not include his birth or resurrection. While the precise meaning of these miracles varies somewhat from one Gospel writer to another, the miracles demonstrate the nearness of God and is compassion for sinners. The life of Muhammad, too, is understood to have been at a time when Allah drew near to the world. Muhammad's numerous miracles cover a broad range: his famed Night Journey to Jerusalem, multiplications of food, manifestations of water, power over nature, and healing. Yet never in the Qur'an nor in Muslim theological traditions do Muhammad's miracles take precedence over his ethical teachings.

Eastern miracle stories reveal quite different theological conceptions. In Hinduism, the gods take human form to rescue the world from chaos. The miracles they work are signs of their divinity, commanding exclusive worship from their devotees. The Lord Krishna, for example, has appeared on earth many times in order to manifest his miraculous powers. Their basic purpose has been to inspire rapturous love of God and to teach us that all of life is the plan, or lila, of God. His miracles evoke awareness that for those who have the eyes to see, miracles happen all the time because all that is, is of God. In Hinduism, moreover, the power to work miracles is understood to be innate within everyone. The very paths that enable us to overcome ignorance and realize our inner-divinity simultaneously develop in us any number of supernatural powers: knowledge of our previous lives, clairvoyance, astral projection, and levitation.

Buddhism incorporates many of Hinduism's miracle traditions yet develops them to illustrate its unique understandings of liberation and the emptiness of all things. The legends depicting the life of the Buddha relate Gautama's transformation whereby he frees himself from the law of karma and enters into a timeless dimension of existence. The Buddha's supernormal powers and miraculous feats signal this transformation and demonstrate his autonomy over the usual causes and effects associated with finite existence. The ability to perform miracles has likewise characterized the spiritual progress and insight of various Buddhist saints over the centuries. Such miracles demonstrate their awareness of the illusory character of all physical forms and inspire others to take up the path leading to full liberation.

But what of modern miracles and their stories? Woodward devotes a scant sixteen pages to the modern era, providing cursory looks at the miracles attributed to the Catholic friar Padre Pia, the Pentecostal preacher Oral Roberts, the Hasidic rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and the Hindu saint Mata Amritanadamayhi. His general tone, particularly in the case of Roberts, is dismissive. This is, apparently, not the age of real miracles. Woodward believes that modern miracle workers such as Roberts have trivialized the miraculous, implying that God's normal relationship to us is manifested by miracles produced on our behalf and at our request. (The reader wonders whether Woodward is suggesting that ancient Hebrews weren't requesting to be delivered from slavery or that the sick whom Jesus healed weren't requesting help.)

Woodward's lack of evenhandedness in his critique of modern miracles extends into his three-page epilogue. Here Woodward laments the that fact contemporary Americans frequently view spirituality and religion as opposites rather than correlates. As a consequence, miracles are increasingly separated from the classic stories of the major world religions. The modern miracle now tends to become a sign of the God within us all, inspiring personal spiritual quests rather than worship of a scripturally described God. Woodward, seemingly forgetting almost everything he wrote about Hindu and Buddhist theology, condemns modern miracles for turning traditional Western views of miracles on their head. Where classical miracles ostensibly brought persons into conformity with tradition, today they inspire persons to seek divinity within themselves, trusting their own experience (where, he bemoans, contemporary persons believe all meaning resides) as a guide to truth. Thus, while Woodward believes that discernment is necessary in interpreting miracles, he is seemingly shocked at the idea that we¾like Lincoln or even the Buddha¾would seek to become lamps unto ourselves and as Lincoln put it, "ascertain what is possible and learn what appears to be wise and right."

Woodward's treatise on miracle stories thus both succeeds and fails. It succeeds in offering a concise, learned, well-written overview of the function of miracle stories in five major world religions. It fails, however, in sharpening our understanding of the human need for miracles, particularly in our own day. Miracles, as Woodward acknowledges, are often the focal point of an important polemic. This polemic, incidentally, is just as likely to be between believers of competing sectarian theologies as it is to be between believers and nonbelievers. Miracles, after all, may never exist. They may be nothing more than manifestations of ignorance or sheer credulity. Or it may be that while my religion can lay claim to genuine miracles, the wonderours claims found in other religions amount to little more than magic, human manipulations of nature in which no extramundane agencies are involved at all. It is really too bad that Woodward didn't pick up on the nuances of such polemics the way that, for example, Ann Taves recently did in her brilliant study of claims to supernatural experience (see Fits, Trances, and Visions, Princeton University Press).

I suspect that most contemporary Americans approach miracles with caution. On the one hand, they are wary of naïve credulity and do not wish to be duped into surrendering reason and independent judgment. Yet, they also continue to struggle with the whole issue of religious belief, vacillating between periods in which they dismiss the relevance of religious faith altogether and moments in which they yearn deeply for an encounter with a religious "more." This is why the roughly 20 percent of the American population who consider themselves to be "spiritual, but not religious" are more concerned with the question of whether miracles really happen than Woodward apparently is. If they never happened, then they can't be thought of as disclosing the reality or meaning of any purported transcendent reality, regardless of what the scriptures revered by the world's great religions say. Contemporary Americans, like Abraham Lincoln, understand that they must be prepared to operate on the basis that higher powers don't regularly intervene in our affairs. If they are to embrace any spirituality at all, it must be one built upon the foundations of intellectual integrity. Yet many, like William James a century ago, are constantly in search of the one white crow that will prove that reality is not nearly so uniform as our penchant for scientific clarity often leads us to think. The fact that these persons cast their net widely in the hope of finding at least a single miraculous event should be seen as evidence of as much spiritual maturity as might reasonably be expected in our era.