Jesus’ resurrection and miracles

Did Jesus really make the miracles told in the Gospel? Has he really risen? Here is what Pope Benedict XVI said in the general audience of April 15, 2009: “Consequently, it is fundamental for our faith and for our Christian witness to proclaim the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth as a real, historical event, attested by many authoritative witnesses. We assert this forcefully because, in our day too, there are plenty of people who seek to deny its historicity, reducing the Gospel narrative to a myth, to a “vision” of the Apostles, taking up and presenting old and already worn-out theories as new and scientific.”
In the words of the Pope the term “historic” is ambiguous: if we understand it in the same way we consider Julius Caesar a historical figure, we should conclude that believing in the resurrection of Jesus requires not an act of faith, but a forced assent, the same way we cannot allow ourselves not to believe that Julius Caesar existed. But “historical” can also mean “of historical significance”, that is “capable of having effects on history”; in this sense any novel can be considered historical, because it is able to arouse concrete effects in the people who read it, who are historical figures. However, the context of the Pope’s speech suggests that he refers to the first sense of the word “historical” that we have referred to. For this reason his statement is historically wrong, because history is a science, while instead Jesus’ resurrection is not a scientific fact.

From a philosophical perspective, after knowing metaphysics, we understand that applying the term “real” to something does not increase its concreteness. In the context of the three main ways of thinking I have talked about, metaphysical, anti-metaphysical and practical, practical thought turns to be the best tool for thinking about the resurrection. We can therefore say that Jesus is “really” risen, but meaning the term “really” not in opposition to dreams, fairy tales, fantasies, since reality itself can be considered a dream, but in opposition to what has not practical effects in our lives.
We might wonder: does then resurrection depend on our putting it into practice? This way we would fall into a new metaphysics, that is the metaphysics of our practice, which would become the source of salvation for everything, even for Jesus’ resurrection. Instead, it is a matter of understanding that practicing something does not mean making it real, but relating to it in the way that today appears to us to be the best. We do not save the resurrection by putting it into practice, nor does it save us in a metaphysical sense. The term “salvation” itself contains a metaphysical, totalizing temptation. It is better to say that the method of practicing appears to us better and, once this method is adopted, a Christian can realize that actually, in the Bible, even God has always referred to himself in relative, practical, not absolute ways.

After that, we can deduce that asking whether miracles happened in a way independent from believing makes no sense. Even official statements issued by doctors cannot make a miracolous healing “real”, because a few doctor’s statements don’t make science and philosophically “real” does not mean anything clear. It would be like thinking that we will better understand something if they explain it to us in an unknown language. When doctors say that a person who could not heal was healed, actually they have not demonstrated anything. When we face unexplainable events, science refers to research, faith refers to choice; in both cases any need to stop on a definitive conclusion gets disappointed. The insistence on doctors’ statements when talking about miracles is a dishonest effort to lighten the weight of the choice of faith, trying to steal some support from science, asking science for what it cannot give.

Then why does the Gospel tell about miracles? It tells them not to testify scientifically, historically, the existence of inexplicable events (it could not, even if it wanted to), nor to ensure that believers can comfort themselves by stealing scientific support from it, but to say that God is greater than human mind and is able to accomplish what man is not even able to imagine. This actually already applies to any person. What does it mean to be God then? God’s greatness does not lie on his ability to break the laws of nature, also because actually we don’t even know what breaking the laws of nature means, but in the fact that he offers a possibility of relationships able to get appreciated practically as superior to those possible with other people of this world.