The God of St Paul and miracles (1)

A cursory look at correspondence appearing in The Times between June 22 and 26 clearly referred to Ramon Casha’s letter of April 24 titled No Evidence Of God. The subjects covered were the time the gospels were written and the creation of the world but the controversial fallacies “God of the gaps” and “there were no miracle cures” were overlooked.

... the gospels were written within a generation of Jesus- John Azzopardi, Żabbar

The “God of the gaps” theory reminds me of St Paul’s resplendent inspired intelligence and missionary zeal when he visited the Acropagus (Acts 17:22) and said: “Men of Athens I see that in every respect you are extremely religious. For as I was going about and observing objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: To the unknown God. What therefore you worship in ignorance, thus I proclaim to you: God who made the world and all there is in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples...” Later, he mentioned a Man, risen from the dead, who will judge the world with justice, referring to Jesus Christ.

St Paul did an excellent job in filling the gap for sceptics, who can freely, serenely, convincingly and perhaps compellingly call the Almighty God of St Paul.

A book, Mysteries, Marvels, Miracles, covers a myriad of supernatural phenomena and a vast panorama of Catholic miracles reaching back for centuries, attested by men whose truthfulness, impartiality and knowledge of the facts exclude all reasonable doubts and give us the absolute certainty we require about God’s attributes and Jesus’ historical existence on earth.

Are we to attribute Fr Albert J. Habert and Joan Carroll Cruz with the titles of the most voluminous spinners ever of make-belief (king and queen – respectively) of liars and creators of the longest litany of chicanery?

Or is it more sensible to acknowledge that God has indeed favoured the saints with amazing gifts and marvellous powers over nature, testifying to His own almighty power and to the truth of the Catholic Church?

For me, miracles are the confirmation of Jesus’ divine authority and it would be futile to claim that they cannot, or do not, happen. If there’s a God who can create a universe out of nothing, then there’s One who can work out miracles. The only book in the world which has been miraculously confirmed is the Bible, both by the fulfillment of predictive prophecies and also by the miracles performed by those who purported to be speaking for God.

A little consideration about the account of Christ’s lifetime: if the Crucifixion was as early as 33AD, Paul’s conversion was about 35AD. Immediately after, Paul was ushered into Damascus, where he met a Christian named Ananias and some other disciples. His first meeting with the Apostles in Jerusalem would have been about 38 AD. At some point along there, Paul was given the Christian Creed, which had already been formulated and was being used in the early Church. These are key facts about Jesus’ death for our redemption plus a detailed list of those to whom he appeared in resurrected form – all dating back to within two to five years of the events themselves! That’s a whisker away from contemporaneity and the gospels were written within a generation of Jesus, substantiated by eyewitnesses supplying first-hand information.