| Letter#52 Miracles
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| My dear Mr. Isaacs: |
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| The time has
come to deal with the question of miracles in this letter and the one to follow. I have
touched upon this question before, but not to the extent that the query in your first
letter warranted. This is a matter of primary importance, in fact it is basic to the Catholic religion, and real Judaism as well. It is fitting that it be dealt with at this stage of my series of epistles, as I have been stressing the divinity of Christ. The miracles that Christ performed, from the time He attended the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee to the time He ascended from the Mount of Olives to His heavenly home, prove the divinity of Christ more than any other things Christ did or taught. I would never have gone to the baptismal font; accepted the authority of the popes and bishops of the Catholic Church in matters of faith and morals; believed in the efficacy of the Sacrifice of the Mass and sacraments; or accepted unquestionably the teachings in the New Testament, were I not convinced beyond a shadow of doubt of the divinity and miracles of Christ. In fact I would not believe the Mosaic religion, and its Torah, to have been of God, did I not believe unquestionably in its miraculous origin, and the other miracles that are recorded in the Old Testament. I have long been aware of the fact that there are "Jews" who do not believe in miracles, and that they are in some of the synagogues. But they are not Orthodox Jews, the only Jews who have any adequate doctrinal relationship with the religiously great in the Israel of our forefathers of old. I was not at all surprised to learn, in the quotation you sent me, that there have been and there are non-miracle believing "Jews" in Jewry. I wonder what scholars Prof. Joseph Reider, Ph.D., teacher of biblical philology in Dropsie (Jewish) College, Philadelphia, had in mind when he said,
The Professor must have had scholars like Einstein, Freud and Marx
in mind, who are learned in fields foreign to religion. They logically reject belief in
miracles, as they do not believe in a personal God. Surely no other God than the God of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob could perform miracles, either directly or through some human
agent. Surely no "Cosmic God," if such exists, could perform a miracle, as it
must do cosmically what its evolutionary expanding self compels it to do.
The result was that the children of Israel were kept from the
promised land. And so are present-day Jews, who deny belief in miracles, likely to be kept
from the Eternal Jerusalem.
Those persons who reject the possibility of miracles
taking place generally hold them to be an interference with the recognized scientific
belief in the uniformity of the laws of nature; also that they are contrary to human
experiences. One such person confronted me in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, while I was
addressing an outdoor audience of about fifteen hundred persons. He stepped forward in
front of the crowd and, in a loud and well modulated voice, called out, "Can the
Immaculate Conception be demonstrated in a laboratory?" He, like nearly all
non-Catholics, did not know what the Immaculate Conception is, having in mind the Virgin
Birth. The answer was "No. Catholics are not so absurd as to believe that the things
performed by God but once after He created the universe; things that will never take place
again; things that are not within the natural order of occurrences, can be demonstrated in
a test tube. God, who made the natural order of conception, can if he wills, cause a woman
to conceive without man. That took place when the Blessed Virgin Mary conceived by the
power of the Holy Spirit. The Immaculate Conception, like the Virgin Birth just mentioned,
is a miracle. It is God causing Mary to be conceived in the womb of her mother without the
stain of original sin upon her soul. If you do not believe in a personal God; in the power
of God, the Maker of the natural law, to do something outside the natural order; if you do
not believe that any one was born in supernatural way, or that anyone has such a thing as
original sin upon his soul, then you cannot believe in either the Virgin Birth or the
Immaculate Conception." It was impossible for the gentleman to accept the answer, as
he did not realize that miracles do not interfere with, suspend, nor break the laws of
nature. |
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