John’s concern for holding in tension the humanity and divinity of Christ is also reflected in his treatment of Jesus’ miracles. Being the last gospel written, John offers a correction or at least an additional perspective regarding the normal, almost magical understanding attached to the miracles of Jesus. John makes the case that many of Jesus’ miracles may involve sufficient natural explanations that might counter the usual miraculous or magical understanding. But John was not content to leave the matter of miracles in the hands of naturalists.
By and large the liberal wing of the modern church has latched onto naturalistic interpretations of Jesus’ miracles—and that exclusively—to the point that the supernatural has been eliminated from the liberal perspective. However, the elimination of the supernatural was not what John was up to.
John did not eliminate the supernatural. Rather, he put it into perspective by making a much more convincing case for the supernatural by admitting that some natural explanations make the truly supernatural all the more viable by showing that such a consideration is not from a wild-eyed literalist or fundamentalist perspective. In addition, such an admission shifts the locus of the miraculous.
While a pre-modern, simplistic, and magical perspective dissolves in the light of science and a plain Modern reading of the text, a more genuine and meaningful perspective arises when you don’t simply dismiss Scripture as nonsense but continue to trust that it is true.
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