Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts by Craig S. Keener
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Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts
Craig S. Keener
Bibliographic Information
Author: Keener, Craig S. Full Title: Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts (2 Volumes) Publisher: Baker Academic (Grand Rapids, MI) Year of Publication: 2011 Pages: 1,172 pp. (across 2 volumes: Volume 1, xxxviii + 626 pp.; Volume 2, xxx + 516 pp.) ISBN: 978-0-8010-3952-2 Series: N/A
Author Background
Craig S. Keener (Ph.D., Duke University) is F. M. and Ada Thompson Professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, where he teaches New Testament. Prior to Asbury, he taught at Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University, where much of this project was completed. Keener is among the most prolific evangelical New Testament scholars of his generation, having produced major commentaries on Matthew, John, Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Revelation, and a magisterial four-volume commentary on Acts (2012-2015), as well as the widely-used IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (1993). His scholarly output is characterized by extraordinary breadth of research, meticulous documentation, and attention to both ancient contexts and contemporary global Christianity.
Using the Theological Traditions Reference Guide's categories, Keener is best classified within the Pentecostal/Charismatic tradition, though his academic work transcends that tradition's boundaries and engages the full range of Christian scholarship. Keener is married to Médine Moussounga Keener, a Congolese historian whose family's firsthand experiences with healing and miracles (including the raising of her sister from death) significantly inform the book's personal dimension and African case studies. His institutional affiliation with Asbury—a Wesleyan-Holiness seminary within the Methodist tradition—positions him at the intersection of Wesleyan, Pentecostal, and broader evangelical scholarship. Keener's approach reflects what might be called "charismatic evangelicalism" (increasingly designated the "Third Wave" or "Empowered Evangelical" movement): he affirms the ongoing operation of spiritual gifts including healing and miracles while maintaining commitment to biblical authority, critical scholarship, and theological rigor characteristic of mainstream evangelicalism.
Readers should be aware of several contextual factors that shape the book. First, Keener's marriage to Médine and his extensive fieldwork in the Majority World (Africa, Asia, Latin America) give him direct access to contemporary miracle claims in a way few Western biblical scholars possess—this is both a methodological strength (firsthand sources) and a potential blind spot (personal investment in the credibility of claims from his own circle). Second, his institutional location and scholarly reputation position him to challenge cessationist evangelicalism from within the evangelical academic establishment rather than from its margins—he writes as a Duke-trained biblical scholar, not as a popular Pentecostal apologist. Third, the book was written during a period (late 2000s) when the "New Atheism" (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris) was gaining cultural traction and when evangelical biblical scholarship was increasingly engaging global Christianity—both contexts shape the book's polemical edge and its emphasis on cross-cultural testimony.
Thesis and Central Argument
Keener's governing thesis is twofold: (1) Primary thesis: Eyewitnesses do offer miracle claims—claims comparable in character to those found in the Gospels and Acts—across cultures and throughout history, and vast numbers of such claims come from credible witnesses today; therefore, historians should not dismiss a priori the possibility of eyewitness information behind the miracle accounts in the New Testament. (2) Secondary thesis: Some contemporary miracle claims are best explained as genuine supernatural acts of God, and when methodological anti-supernaturalism is set aside, the cumulative evidence from documented cases warrants considering supernatural causation as the most plausible explanation for at least some of these claims.
The book responds to a specific scholarly problem: the methodological naturalism that has governed biblical criticism since the Enlightenment, particularly the influence of David Hume's argument (from An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748) that uniform human experience precludes the possibility of miracles. Keener argues that Hume's premise—no credible witnesses testify to miracles—is empirically false. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide claim to have witnessed miracles, including dramatic healings of blindness, paralysis, and even the raising of the dead. These claims come not only from the "pre-critical" ancient world or from the "superstitious" Majority World but from Western physicians, scientists, and skeptics who have encountered phenomena they cannot explain naturalistically.
The book's proposed contribution is scholarly, methodological, and apologetic. Scholarly: it provides the most exhaustively documented case ever assembled for the cross-cultural prevalence of miracle claims, particularly healing claims, throughout history and in the contemporary world. Methodological: it challenges the a priori naturalism that governs much historical-critical biblical scholarship and argues that historians should evaluate miracle claims using the same evidentiary criteria applied to other historical claims rather than ruling them out by philosophical fiat. Apologetic: it defends the historicity of the Gospel miracle accounts by demonstrating that eyewitnesses today report comparable phenomena, thereby removing the skeptical presumption that such accounts must reflect legendary development rather than eyewitness testimony.
Overview of Contents
Miracles is structured as an introduction, four major parts, five appendices, and a conclusion spanning 1,172 pages across two volumes. The argument unfolds in two concentric movements: the first half of the book (Parts 1-2) addresses comparative ancient sources and philosophical objections to miracles; the second half (Parts 3-4) presents contemporary miracle claims from global Christianity and addresses their interpretation. The cumulative effect is less a balanced academic monograph than an overwhelming case study in documentation—Keener buries the reader in evidence, often devoting entire chapters to cataloging miracle claims from specific regions or movements, with footnotes frequently occupying more page space than main text.
Volume 1
Introduction: The Origin and Scope of the Project
Keener frames the book's dual purpose: to demonstrate that eyewitnesses offer miracle claims (the primary, less controversial thesis) and to argue that some claims are best explained supernaturally (the secondary, more controversial thesis). He recounts the personal catalyst for the project: his marriage to Médine, whose family experienced her sister's raising from death, and his growing awareness through African and Asian contacts that miracle claims pervade global Christianity. The introduction establishes the book's massive scope—over 1,000 footnotes cite personal interviews, correspondence, and firsthand sources from six continents—and its methodological premises: miracle claims will be presented at face value (as in anthropological research) before questions of interpretation are addressed. Keener acknowledges his bias toward supernatural explanations while insisting that the evidence itself, not his presuppositions, convinced him. The introduction also clarifies terminology: "paranormal" (used etymologically to mean "not normal," not psychic phenomena), "extranormal" (preferred neologism), and "supernatural" (divine causation).
Part 1: The Ancient Evidence (Chapters 1-3)
Part 1 establishes the historical foundation by comparing early Christian miracle accounts with Greco-Roman and Jewish parallels. Chapter 1 addresses methodological questions: What evidence exists for Jesus's miracles? How should historians evaluate ancient miracle claims? Keener argues that the Gospels' miracle accounts are multiply attested, early, and embedded in sources that also contain historically verifiable material—criteria that should make them credible unless one begins with anti-supernatural premises. Chapter 2 surveys Gentile Greco-Roman miracle accounts (healing sanctuaries like Epidauros, pagan miracle workers like Apollonius of Tyana) and early Jewish miracle workers (Honi the Circle-Drawer, Hanina ben Dosa). The chapter demonstrates that miracle claims were common in antiquity but notes significant differences in genre, theology, and attestation between pagan/Jewish accounts and Christian ones.
Chapter 3 compares early Christian and non-Christian miracle accounts directly, arguing that while supernatural elements are common across cultures (because human needs for healing are universal), the Gospel accounts are more historically grounded, less sensationalistic, and more theologically coherent than most Greco-Roman parallels. Keener engages Eric Eve's detailed form-critical comparison of miracle stories, arguing that formal parallels in narrative structure do not necessarily indicate borrowed content or legendary development—eyewitnesses today report healings using narrative forms similar to ancient accounts simply because healings involve similar elements (illness, prayer/invocation, recovery). The chapter concludes that the distinctiveness of Christian accounts suggests genuine tradition rather than borrowed mythology, but more importantly, that ancient parallels demonstrate miracle claims were not unique to Christianity—which means historians cannot dismiss Christian claims simply because they involve the supernatural.
Part 2: Are Miracles Possible? (Chapters 4-6)
Part 2 addresses the philosophical objections to miracles, particularly Hume's argument. Chapter 4 examines ancient skepticism toward miracles (Polybius, Cicero, Lucian) and modern Western anti-supernaturalism, arguing that both ancient and modern skeptics acknowledge some miracle claims while rejecting others on theological or philosophical grounds—which demonstrates that skepticism is not a neutral stance but a worldview commitment. Keener argues that modern Western anti-supernaturalism is ethnocentric: it assumes that Enlightenment rationalism represents the pinnacle of human thought and dismisses non-Western and pre-modern claims as "pre-critical" without actually examining them. The chapter challenges the claim that science rules out miracles, arguing that methodological naturalism (science studies natural causes) does not entail ontological naturalism (only natural causes exist).
Chapter 5 engages Hume directly, devoting 60 pages to dismantling Hume's philosophical case against miracles. Keener argues that Hume's argument is circular: Hume defines miracles as violations of natural law, defines natural law as established by uniform human experience, claims uniform human experience precludes miracles, and concludes miracles are impossible—but the conclusion is already contained in the premises. The chapter demonstrates that Hume's epistemology regarding testimony is inconsistent (he accepts weak testimony for non-miraculous events while rejecting strong testimony for miraculous events), his account of natural law is outdated (post-Newtonian physics recognizes that "laws" are descriptive generalizations, not prescriptive impossibilities), and his claim that no credible witnesses testify to miracles is empirically false. Keener engages Hume's critics (George Campbell, William Paley, Richard Swinburne) and demonstrates that Hume's argument, while rhetorically effective, is philosophically weak.
Chapter 6 traces the development of Humean skepticism through Western intellectual history, showing how Hume's argument became a dogmatic assumption in biblical criticism (Troeltsch's principle of analogy: historical method must assume all events are analogous to present experience, therefore supernatural events are historiographically inadmissible). Keener argues that this methodological naturalism is not religiously neutral—it is a theological commitment (deism or atheism) masquerading as scientific objectivity. The chapter surveys the shift in contemporary philosophy of religion and history toward openness to supernatural explanations (Richard Swinburne, William Lane Craig, Timothy McGrew) and argues that the Humean consensus is collapsing in academic philosophy, though it persists in biblical studies out of institutional inertia.
Part 3: Miracle Accounts beyond Antiquity (Chapters 7-12)
Part 3 is the heart of the book: six chapters presenting contemporary miracle claims from global Christianity, organized geographically and thematically. This section occupies over 400 pages and constitutes the book's most original contribution—no previous work in biblical studies has assembled such extensive documentation of contemporary healing claims.
Chapter 7 establishes the global scope of miracle claims through statistics and surveys: studies show that over 200 million Christians worldwide claim to have witnessed divine healing, with percentages highest in Africa (61%), Asia (46%), and Latin America (49%), and lowest but still substantial in North America (22%) and Europe (11%). Keener argues that dismissing these hundreds of millions of claims as "pre-critical" or "gullible" without investigation is ethnocentric. The chapter addresses methodological questions about using popular sources and "anecdotal" evidence, arguing that for claims about popular religious experience, popular sources are the appropriate primary sources, and that dismissing millions of firsthand reports as "merely anecdotal" is an evasion rather than an argument.
Chapters 8-9 present case studies from specific regions. Chapter 8 surveys Asia: Philippines (healing testimonies from Catholic, Protestant, and independent churches), Southeast Asia (dramatic healings among Cambodian refugees, Thai and Vietnamese Christians), South Asia (India's extensive healing ministries, Sri Lanka and Nepal), Indonesia (mass healings at evangelistic campaigns), South Korea (healing as central to Korean church growth), the Pacific (Papua New Guinea, Fiji), and China (healing claims from house churches despite government restrictions). Chapter 9 covers Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean: extensive testimonies from Nigeria, Mozambique, Congo, Kenya, Tanzania, Cuba, Ecuador, Chile, and Brazil. These chapters present accounts in rapid succession with minimal interpretation: blind eyes opening, deaf ears hearing, paralyzed persons walking, terminal cancer disappearing, mental illness healed through exorcism, and (most dramatically) the dead raised. Keener includes medical documentation where available but acknowledges that most claims lack formal medical verification—a point he addresses in later chapters.
Chapter 10 surveys healing claims in earlier Christian history: patristic claims (Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen report healings continuing in the church), medieval claims (particularly healing shrines), the Reformers' complicated relationship with healing (Luther and Calvin acknowledged miraculous healings while opposing Catholic appeal to miracles), Protestant healing reports in the 17th-19th centuries (often suppressed by cessationist theology), Lourdes and Roman Catholic healing in the 19th century (with rigorous medical documentation), Protestant healing in the 19th century (especially the Holiness movement), and early 20th-century Pentecostalism. The chapter demonstrates that healing claims are not a modern innovation but a consistent (if sometimes marginalized) strand of Christian experience across traditions and centuries.
Chapter 11 surveys contemporary Western claims: individual healing reports from physicians, scientists, and journalists (Keener interviews multiple M.D.s who report medically inexplicable healings); healing claims from Keener's own circle (students, colleagues, family members); prominent healing ministries (T.L. Osborn, Kathryn Kuhlman, Ralph DiOrio); Roman Catholic claims (particularly from charismatic renewal); Third Wave and Vineyard movement claims (John Wimber, Randy Clark); and various other Western sources. The chapter's purpose is to demonstrate that healing claims are not confined to the "superstitious" Majority World but occur in Western contexts among educated, critical thinkers.
Chapter 12 focuses on the most dramatic claim categories: healing of blindness (dozens of specific cases), healing of paralysis/inability to walk (dozens of cases), raising of the dead (over 50 documented cases, including Médine's sister), and nature miracles (food multiplication, storms calmed, protection from harm). This chapter is the book's most evidentially concentrated: Keener presents cases with the strongest documentation, often including multiple corroborating witnesses, medical records (where available), and follow-up verification. The cumulative effect is overwhelming—if even a fraction of these claims are accurate, the case for contemporary miracles becomes compelling.
Volume 2
Part 4: Proposed Explanations (Chapters 13-15)
Part 4 shifts from documentation to interpretation, addressing the question: How should we explain the claims presented in Part 3? Chapter 13 examines non-supernatural explanations: fraud (acknowledged in some cases, but implausible for the vast majority given the character of witnesses and the lack of financial motive), emotional arousal (real but insufficient to explain sudden recovery from organic conditions like blindness or paralysis), psychosomatic factors and placebo effect (genuine but limited—placebo can affect pain perception and some functional disorders but cannot restore sight to damaged eyes or mobility to severed spinal cords), and the power of religious practice on health (well-documented in medical literature but again insufficient for dramatic healings). Keener argues that while natural factors explain many claims, they cannot account for the most dramatic cases presented in Chapter 12.
Chapter 14 addresses biased standards in evaluating miracle claims: the Vancouver study (which used double standards to dismiss Pentecostal healing claims while accepting weaker evidence for non-miraculous events), the demand for medical documentation (often unrealistic given the contexts where most claims occur, yet available in substantial numbers of cases), and the rigorous standards at Lourdes (which remain the gold standard for documented healing claims but which many scholars dismiss on a priori philosophical grounds). The chapter argues that academic prejudice against religious claims leads to uneven evidentiary criteria: skeptics demand levels of proof for miracle claims that they do not require for other historical claims, then dismiss miracle claims when those unrealistic standards are not met.
Chapter 15 presents cases with the strongest medical documentation: healings at Lourdes (including detailed medical files), cases documented by Western physicians, philosophers' testimonies to unexplained healings, and examples from Keener's closer circle where medical records are available. The chapter addresses the question of gradual versus instantaneous healings (both occur, but instantaneous healings of long-term organic conditions are harder to explain naturalistically), discusses various interpretations (theistic, non-theistic suprahuman, naturalistic), and concludes that for a significant number of well-documented cases, the theistic explanation (God heals in response to prayer) is simpler and more plausible than naturalistic alternatives.
Conclusion and Appendices
The Conclusion synthesizes the book's arguments: miracle claims (especially healing claims) are surprisingly common in global Christianity, these claims include eyewitness reports of dramatic cures comparable to Gospel accounts, the frequency of such claims challenges the assumption that modern people do not believe in miracles, and the cumulative evidence suggests that supernatural causation is the most plausible explanation for at least some well-documented cases. Keener concludes that historians should not a priori rule out eyewitness testimony behind Gospel miracle accounts, and that scholars need not exclude the possibility of divine activity in such claims.
Five substantial appendices address related topics: Appendix A examines demons and exorcism in antiquity (ancient demonology, possession, prophylaxis, exorcism practices). Appendix B surveys spirit possession and exorcism globally today (anthropological reports, cultural elements, Western psychiatric perspectives, Christian exorcism practices). Appendix C compares Gospel miracles with later Christian hagiography. Appendix D surveys ancient approaches to natural law. Appendix E examines visions and dreams (ancient dream reports, contemporary claims in global Christianity). The appendices function as specialized studies supporting the main argument while keeping the main text focused on healing miracles.
Theological Evaluation and Critique
Exegetical and Hermeneutical Method
The book's exegetical engagement with New Testament miracle accounts is surprisingly thin for a work by a New Testament scholar. Part 1 (chapters 1-3) addresses Gospel miracle traditions, but the treatment is selective and oriented primarily toward establishing that miracle accounts exist in early sources rather than toward detailed exegesis of specific texts. Keener's method is comparative-historical rather than exegetical: he demonstrates that ancient sources contain miracle claims, that these claims share formal features across cultures, and that formal parallels do not necessarily indicate literary dependence or legendary development. This is competent historical work, but it is not the kind of verse-by-verse exegetical analysis that dominates Keener's commentaries.
The book's hermeneutical assumption—that demonstrating the prevalence of contemporary miracle claims removes the presumption against Gospel miracle accounts—is both the work's greatest strength and its most contestable premise. The strength: Keener successfully demonstrates that eyewitnesses do report dramatic healings today, which means historians cannot dismiss Gospel miracle accounts merely because they involve the supernatural. The weakness: establishing that eyewitnesses can report healings does not, by itself, establish that these particular Gospel accounts do report historical events—one still needs text-specific arguments about sources, redaction, and historical plausibility. Keener acknowledges this distinction (his primary thesis is about possibility, not actuality), but the book's rhetorical momentum often conflates the two arguments.
The most significant methodological question is whether Keener's analogical reasoning is valid. His argument: if eyewitnesses today report healings of blindness, paralysis, and raisings from death, then first-century eyewitnesses could have reported the same phenomena; therefore, Gospel accounts need not reflect legendary development. The objection: even granting that eyewitnesses today make such claims, one must still ask whether those claims are accurate—and if some contemporary claims are inaccurate (which Keener acknowledges), then demonstrating that ancient eyewitnesses could have made similar claims does not demonstrate that their claims were accurate. Keener's response is that the cumulative evidence for contemporary miracles is strong enough to warrant accepting at least some claims as accurate, which then supports accepting some ancient claims as accurate. Whether this response succeeds depends on one's evaluation of the contemporary evidence presented in Part 3—and that evaluation, in turn, depends partly on philosophical premises about supernatural causation.
Doctrinal Analysis
Measured against the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (381) and the Chalcedonian Definition (451), Miracles raises no concerns at the level of ecumenical orthodoxy. The book affirms God's sovereignty, Christ's deity and humanity, and the Holy Spirit's ongoing work in the church. The doctrinal questions it raises emerge at the confessional, ecclesiological, and epistemological levels, and they vary significantly across traditions.
From a cessationist Reformed perspective, the relevant confessional benchmark is the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), which does not explicitly teach cessationism but which has been interpreted cessationistically within much of the Reformed tradition. The classic cessationist argument (articulated by B.B. Warfield in Counterfeit Miracles, 1918) is that miraculous gifts ceased with the apostolic age because their purpose was to authenticate apostolic revelation, and with the canon's closure, that authentication is no longer needed. Keener's book is a frontal assault on cessationism's empirical premise: the claim that miracles do not happen today. If Keener is correct that hundreds of millions of Christians credibly report experiencing miracles, cessationism cannot be defended on empirical grounds but only on theological-exegetical grounds (cessationists must argue that the Bible teaches cessation regardless of what contemporary experience suggests).
Reformed readers engaging this book will be pressed to address several questions: (1) Does the Westminster Confession's affirmation that God "worketh all things according to the counsel of his own will" (III.1) require that God work only through ordinary providence, or does it allow for extraordinary providences? (2) If cessationism is true, how should one explain the hundreds of millions of contemporary miracle claims Keener documents—are they all fraud, delusion, or psychosomatic? (3) If some contemporary miracle claims are accurate, what exegetical grounds remain for affirming cessationism? The book does not engage cessationist exegesis directly (it cites 1 Corinthians 13:8-10 and argues that "the perfect" refers to the eschaton, not the canon, but does not develop the argument), but its cumulative empirical case makes cessationism increasingly difficult to maintain.
From a Pentecostal/Charismatic perspective, Keener's work provides the most sophisticated scholarly defense of healing and miracles yet produced within the tradition. Classical Pentecostal theology (articulated in the Assemblies of God's Statement of Fundamental Truths, 1916) teaches that divine healing is provided in the atonement and available to all believers through faith and prayer. Keener affirms this theology while introducing several qualifications that some classical Pentecostals may find uncomfortable: (1) Not all healing claims are accurate—some reflect fraud, self-deception, or exaggeration. (2) Not all illnesses are healed—God's purposes sometimes include suffering, and faith does not guarantee healing. (3) Natural and supernatural factors can coexist—medical treatment and divine healing are not mutually exclusive. These qualifications represent a maturing of Pentecostal theology away from the occasionally triumphalistic claims of early Pentecostalism toward a more nuanced position that Keener (following Gordon Fee and others) calls "empowered evangelicalism."
Pentecostal readers will appreciate the book's validation of their experiential testimony—Keener demonstrates that Pentecostal healing claims, far from being fringe phenomena, represent a global Christian reality—but they should note that Keener's academic methodology differs from popular Pentecostal apologetics. Keener does not claim that all Pentecostal healing claims are accurate or that faith alone guarantees healing; he argues that some healing claims are best explained supernaturally and that the cumulative evidence warrants openness to supernatural causation. This is a more modest claim than classical Pentecostal theology's healing-in-the-atonement doctrine, though it is compatible with that doctrine if properly nuanced.
From a Wesleyan-Arminian perspective, the book's affirmation of God's healing work resonates with the Wesleyan tradition's emphasis on divine-human cooperation and on the Holy Spirit's present work in sanctification and Christian perfection. The Wesleyan tradition has historically been more open to healing and miracles than Reformed cessationism, particularly through the Holiness movement (19th century) which influenced early Pentecostalism. Keener's institutional affiliation with Asbury positions the book within the Wesleyan-Pentecostal conversation, and Wesleyan readers will recognize in Keener's work a sophisticated defense of supernaturalist Christianity that is biblically grounded, historically informed, and epistemologically careful. The book does not engage Wesley's own writings on healing (Wesley published The Desideratum: Or, Electricity Made Plain and Useful in 1760 and believed in both natural healing and answered prayer), but Keener's approach is broadly compatible with Wesleyan theological method's attentiveness to experience and Scripture.
From a Roman Catholic perspective, the book engages Catholic healing claims extensively, particularly Lourdes, and treats them with unusual respect for an evangelical scholar. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992) affirms that "signs and wonders" accompanied the Gospel's proclamation and that the Holy Spirit continues to work through "charisms" in the church (799-801), which is compatible with Keener's thesis. Catholic readers will note, however, that Keener does not engage the Catholic theological framework for evaluating miracles—the distinction between charismatic gifts (given for the church's benefit) and sanctifying grace (given for the individual's salvation), the role of the saints' intercession in healing, or the ecclesiological significance of miracles (confirming the church's holiness). Keener treats Catholic healings as evidence for God's supernatural activity but does not address the Catholic claim that Lourdes miracles validate Marian apparitions and Catholic doctrine. This is a methodological decision (Keener is doing historical work, not Catholic theology), but Catholic readers should recognize that Keener's use of Catholic evidence does not entail acceptance of Catholic interpretation.
From an Eastern Orthodox perspective, the book's affirmation of ongoing divine activity and its challenge to Western Enlightenment rationalism resonate with Orthodoxy's consistent supernaturalist tradition and its critique of Western theology's rationalistic tendencies. Orthodox theology has never embraced cessationism, and miracles (particularly healing through icons, relics, and holy water) remain integral to Orthodox piety. Orthodox readers will appreciate Keener's documentation of global healing claims and his critique of naturalistic biblical criticism, though they may find his focus on Pentecostal-charismatic experience and his relative neglect of sacramental healing theologically thin. The book does not engage the Orthodox theology of theosis (deification) or the role of sacramental mysteries in healing, both of which represent significant Orthodox contributions to Christian healing theology.
Engagement with Secondary Literature
The secondary literature engagement in Miracles is simultaneously the book's most impressive achievement and one of its most significant limitations. The bibliography of secondary sources spans 166 pages (885-1050) and includes over 3,000 entries covering biblical studies, philosophy of religion, philosophy of science, anthropology, sociology of religion, religious studies, medical literature on religion and health, missiology, and popular religious sources. No previous work on miracles approaches this bibliographic comprehensiveness. The interviews and personal correspondence section lists over 200 individuals from six continents whom Keener interviewed or corresponded with directly. The documentation is staggering in scope and demonstrates Keener's characteristic scholarly thoroughness.
However, the engagement is uneven across disciplines. The biblical studies engagement is strong: Keener cites Bultmann, Käsemann, Crossan, Meier, Allison, Wright, Twelftree, and other major figures in historical Jesus studies, and he engages the form-critical debate about miracle stories' literary development. The philosophical engagement with Hume and his critics is competent though not groundbreaking—Keener's treatment of Hume (chapter 5) synthesizes existing critiques (Campbell, Paley, Swinburne, Earman) rather than offering new philosophical arguments, but the synthesis is clear and effective. The missiological and anthropological engagement is extensive: Keener draws on fieldwork studies, missionary reports, and anthropological research on healing and spirit possession across cultures.
The most significant gap is in systematic theology and philosophy of religion. Keener does not engage the extensive theological literature on providence, divine action in the world, and the relationship between natural and supernatural causation. Contemporary debates about divine action in quantum mechanics (Russell, Polkinghorne), divine action as "top-down causation" (Murphy, Clayton), and the compatibility of divine intervention with natural law (Larmer, Swinburne, Plantinga) are mentioned but not engaged substantively. The book operates with a relatively naive supernaturalism—God intervenes to heal, sometimes dramatically, through mechanisms we do not understand—rather than engaging the sophisticated theological and philosophical attempts to articulate how divine action relates to natural processes. This gap is both a strength (the book remains accessible to non-specialists) and a weakness (it does not address the conceptual difficulties that make many scholars hesitant to affirm supernatural causation).
The engagement with cessationist literature is minimal. Keener cites Warfield's Counterfeit Miracles and notes John MacArthur's Strange Fire (2013, published after Keener's book), but he does not engage the exegetical case for cessationism substantively. The book's strategy is to overwhelm cessationism with empirical evidence rather than to refute it exegetically—but this leaves cessationists an escape route: they can maintain that Scripture teaches cessation while acknowledging that many contemporary "miracle claims" are either (a) not genuine miracles (naturalistic explanations suffice) or (b) demonic counterfeits (2 Thessalonians 2:9, Revelation 13:13). Keener anticipates this response and argues that the sheer volume and character of contemporary Christian healing claims makes both explanations implausible, but the book would be strengthened by more direct exegetical engagement with cessationist proof-texts.
Strengths
The documentation of global healing claims is unprecedented. The book's most significant contribution to scholarship is its comprehensive documentation of contemporary miracle claims from global Christianity. No previous work—whether in biblical studies, theology, religious studies, or anthropology—has assembled such extensive evidence for the prevalence of healing claims across cultures, traditions, and centuries. Keener demonstrates conclusively that hundreds of millions of Christians worldwide claim to have witnessed or experienced divine healing, that these claims span Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Pentecostal, and independent traditions, and that they include dramatic cases (healing of blindness, paralysis, terminal illness, and raisings from death) comparable to Gospel accounts. This documentation alone justifies the book's publication and makes it required reading for anyone addressing the historicity of Gospel miracles. Readers who dismiss this evidence without engaging it demonstrate precisely the dogmatic prejudice Keener is challenging.
The philosophical critique of Hume is accessible and effective. Chapter 5's dismantling of Hume's argument against miracles synthesizes existing philosophical critiques (Campbell, Paley, Swinburne, Earman) in a form accessible to biblical scholars and theologians who lack extensive philosophical training. Keener demonstrates that Hume's argument is circular (it assumes the conclusion it purports to prove), that Hume's epistemology regarding testimony is inconsistent (different standards for miraculous and non-miraculous claims), that Hume's account of natural law is outdated (laws describe regularities, not metaphysical necessities), and that Hume's premise of uniform human experience is empirically false. The chapter will not satisfy professional philosophers—it does not break new philosophical ground—but it effectively challenges the uncritical acceptance of Humean premises in biblical studies and makes the philosophical case against miracles appear far weaker than many biblical scholars assume.
The cross-cultural and trans-traditional scope challenges ethnocentric prejudice. One of the book's most rhetorically effective strategies is its demonstration that healing claims are not confined to one tradition, region, or educational level. Keener presents claims from Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, Pentecostals, charismatics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Baptists, and independent churches; from Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, North America, and the Pacific; from uneducated villagers and Western-trained physicians, from Majority World pastors and Cambridge-educated theologians. This breadth undermines the dismissive explanations typically offered for healing claims—they cannot all be attributed to superstition, lack of education, or cultural pre-modernity when Western physicians with medical training report medically inexplicable recoveries. The cumulative effect is to force the reader to confront either (a) that supernatural healing occurs, or (b) that hundreds of millions of people across all cultures and education levels are deluded, dishonest, or self-deceived. The latter option, while technically possible, strains credulity.
The personal narratives create an existential challenge to skepticism. The book includes extensive firsthand accounts from Keener's own circle: his wife's sister raised from death, his students healed of serious illness, his colleagues' testimonies, physicians of his acquaintance reporting cases they cannot explain. These personal narratives create an existential dimension absent from most academic treatments of miracles: they force the reader to decide whether Keener—a respected biblical scholar, Duke Ph.D., author of major commentaries—is lying, deluded, or accurately reporting what he and those he trusts have experienced. Readers may remain skeptical of the interpretation of these experiences, but dismissing them without consideration involves impugning Keener's honesty or competence. This is a rhetorical strength (it makes skepticism personally uncomfortable) but also a methodological weakness (it blurs the line between scholarship and testimony in ways that make critical evaluation difficult).
Weaknesses and Limitations
The absence of detailed exegesis of Gospel miracle accounts. For a book titled The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, the actual exegesis of New Testament miracle texts is surprisingly limited. Part 1 (chapters 1-3) establishes that the Gospels contain miracle accounts and that these accounts have formal parallels in ancient literature, but detailed verse-by-verse exegesis of specific pericopes is absent. Keener does not systematically address the form-critical arguments for legendary development of miracle stories, the redactional differences among the Synoptics' miracle accounts, or the historical-critical debates about which miracles are early and which reflect later theological development. The book's strategy is to bypass these debates by demonstrating that eyewitnesses today report comparable phenomena, but this strategy does not replace the need for text-specific arguments about the historicity of particular Gospel miracle accounts. Readers seeking detailed exegetical defense of Gospel miracle historicity will need to supplement this book with John Meier's A Marginal Jew volume 2 (1994), Graham Twelftree's Jesus the Miracle Worker (1999), or Craig Keener's own later The Historical Jesus of the Gospels (2009).
The criteria for evaluating miracle claims are insufficiently developed. Keener acknowledges that not all miracle claims are accurate—some reflect fraud, exaggeration, or self-deception—but he does not articulate clear criteria for distinguishing credible from non-credible claims. The book proceeds by overwhelming the reader with volume rather than by developing a rigorous methodology for evaluation. Why should we accept these claims as accurate while rejecting those claims? Keener's implicit criteria appear to be: (1) multiple corroborating witnesses, (2) medical documentation where available, (3) character of the witnesses (are they trustworthy?), (4) dramatic and immediate nature of the healing, and (5) lack of plausible naturalistic explanation. These are reasonable criteria, but they are never systematically articulated or consistently applied. The result is that the book reads more like a massive collection of testimonies than like a rigorous evidential case. Skeptical readers will note that even applying these criteria, the best documented contemporary cases (Lourdes healings with extensive medical files) still fall short of the kind of proof that would convince a naturalist—and if even the best cases are insufficient, how can the thousands of less-documented cases be compelling?
The treatment of cessationism is strategically evasive rather than exegetically substantive. Keener's primary argument against cessationism is empirical: if miracles happen today (which the evidence demonstrates), cessationism is false. This is an effective apologetic strategy—it shifts the burden of proof to cessationists to explain away the contemporary evidence—but it does not address cessationism's exegetical case. Cessationists argue from 1 Corinthians 13:8-10 ("when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away"), Hebrews 2:3-4 (miracles confirmed the apostolic message), and the absence of a New Testament command to continue miracle ministries that miraculous gifts were temporary. Keener mentions these texts but does not engage them exegetically. The book would be strengthened by systematic exegesis demonstrating that Scripture does not teach cessation, followed by empirical evidence demonstrating that cessation has not occurred. Without the exegetical argument, cessationists can maintain their position by arguing that contemporary "miracle claims" are either naturalistic or demonic rather than divine—an argument Keener addresses but does not definitively refute.
The philosophical treatment of supernatural causation is insufficiently nuanced. Keener argues that some miracle claims are best explained by "supernatural causation," but he does not articulate what this means philosophically or theologically. Does divine healing involve (a) direct divine intervention suspending natural laws, (b) divine action through natural processes that science cannot yet explain, (c) "top-down causation" in which divine intention affects quantum indeterminacy, or (d) some other model? Contemporary philosophy of religion and theology of divine action has developed sophisticated accounts of how God acts in the world (Swinburne's "violation of natural law," Polkinghorne's "top-down causation," Russell's "quantum divine action," Murphy's "noninterventionist objective divine action"), but Keener does not engage this literature. His account of supernatural causation is pre-critical: God heals when God chooses, through means we do not understand. This simplicity is rhetorically effective and pastorally satisfying, but it does not address the conceptual difficulties that make many scholars hesitant to affirm supernatural intervention—particularly the question of why God heals some and not others, and whether divine healing involves violating, suspending, or working through natural laws.
Engagement with the Broader Scholarly Conversation
Miracles enters multiple scholarly conversations simultaneously: historical Jesus studies, philosophy of religion, anthropology of religion, and theology of healing. Within historical Jesus studies, the book functions as a comprehensive response to the Humean consensus that has governed biblical criticism since Troeltsch. The most important dialogue partners are John Meier's A Marginal Jew volume 2: Mentor, Message, and Miracles (1994), which offers the most detailed historical-critical treatment of Jesus's miracles from a moderately skeptical perspective; Graham Twelftree's Jesus the Miracle Worker (1999), which defends the historicity of Jesus's healing ministry; and N.T. Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God (1996), which situates Jesus's miracles within Second Temple Jewish eschatology. Keener's contribution is primarily evidential rather than exegetical or theological: he does not offer new exegetical arguments for Gospel miracle historicity, but he removes the skeptical presumption that eyewitnesses could not have reported miracles by demonstrating that eyewitnesses do report comparable phenomena today.
Within philosophy of religion, the book is best situated alongside the "reformed epistemology" movement (Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff) which argues that belief in miracles can be "properly basic" (not requiring evidential justification) and alongside the evidentialist defense of miracles (Richard Swinburne, Timothy and Lydia McGrew, William Lane Craig). Keener's approach is evidentialist: he argues that the cumulative evidence for contemporary miracles is strong enough to warrant belief in at least some supernatural healing, and that this contemporary evidence supports accepting ancient miracle claims. The most important philosophical dialogue partners are Swinburne's The Concept of Miracle (1970) and Earman's Hume's Abject Failure (2000), both of which dismantle Hume's argument and defend the rationality of miracle belief. Keener synthesizes these arguments effectively for a biblical studies audience.
Within anthropology of religion, the book engages extensive anthropological research on healing, spirit possession, and shamanism across cultures. Key dialogue partners include I.M. Lewis's Ecstatic Religion (1971), which surveys possession phenomena cross-culturally; McClenon's Wondrous Events (1994), which argues that paranormal experiences are culturally universal and biologically based; and Csordas's The Sacred Self (1994), which examines Catholic charismatic healing ethnographically. Keener's use of anthropological research is selective—he mines it for evidence that healing claims are cross-culturally common but does not engage anthropological theories about why such claims arise (functionalist, psychoanalytic, or cognitive explanations).
Within theology of healing, the book contributes to the Pentecostal-charismatic-evangelical conversation about the continuing availability of spiritual gifts. Key dialogue partners include Gordon Fee's God's Empowering Presence (1994), the most sophisticated Pentecostal exegesis of Pauline pneumatology; Jack Deere's Surprised by the Power of the Spirit (1993), a former cessationist's account of changing his position; and John Wimber's Power Healing (1987), which articulates Third Wave theology of healing. Keener's work represents the academic maturation of Pentecostal healing theology—it provides the empirical and philosophical foundation for what Fee, Deere, and Wimber argue theologically and experientially.
Conclusion and Recommendation
Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts is a monumental, unprecedented, and profoundly important scholarly achievement—the most exhaustively documented case ever assembled for the global prevalence of contemporary miracle claims and the most sustained challenge to anti-supernatural biblical criticism produced within evangelical scholarship. Its genuine contributions—the comprehensive documentation of healing claims across cultures and traditions, the effective philosophical critique of Hume, the cross-cultural scope that challenges ethnocentric dismissal of miracle claims, and the existential challenge created by personal narratives—represent paradigm-shifting scholarship that will force biblical scholars to reconsider the methodological naturalism that has governed Gospel criticism for two centuries. Its weaknesses—the absence of detailed Gospel exegesis, the insufficiently developed criteria for evaluating claims, the strategically evasive treatment of cessationism, and the philosophically unsophisticated account of supernatural causation—are real and significant, and they mean that the book is more effective as an evidential resource and a challenge to prejudice than as a comprehensive defense of Gospel miracle historicity or as a systematic theology of divine healing.
The book succeeds brilliantly at its primary thesis: eyewitnesses do offer miracle claims comparable to those in the Gospels and Acts, therefore historians should not dismiss Gospel miracle accounts a priori on the grounds that such events could not have been reported by eyewitnesses. This is an important, necessary, and (in this reviewer's judgment) successful argument. The book is less successful at its secondary thesis: that some contemporary miracle claims are best explained supernaturally. This argument will persuade readers already open to supernatural explanations and will create cognitive dissonance for skeptics, but it does not provide the kind of rigorous evidential case or philosophical sophistication that would compel naturalists to reconsider their worldview. The book's ultimate value depends on the reader's starting position: those committed to methodological naturalism will find reasons to remain skeptical despite the evidence; those open to supernatural explanations will find the evidence overwhelming; those uncertain will be pressed toward openness but may remain agnostic about specific claims.
Read with critical awareness and supplemented with detailed Gospel exegesis (Meier, Twelftree), philosophical sophistication (Swinburne, Earman, Plantinga), and systematic theological reflection on divine action (Polkinghorne, Murphy, Larmer), Keener's Miracles is an indispensable resource for anyone addressing the historicity of Gospel miracles, the credibility of contemporary healing claims, or the philosophical defensibility of belief in divine intervention. It will not settle the debate—no single work can—but it has permanently shifted the terms of engagement.
Recommended for: Ph.D. students in New Testament and historical Jesus studies; biblical scholars working on Gospel miracles; philosophers of religion engaging the miracles debate; missiologists and anthropologists studying global Christianity; Pentecostal-charismatic scholars seeking academic validation of healing theology; cessationists willing to engage substantial counterevidence to their position; any serious reader seeking the most comprehensive treatment of contemporary miracle claims available in academic literature.
Not recommended for: Readers seeking detailed exegesis of specific Gospel miracle accounts—this book provides evidential and philosophical foundation but not verse-by-verse exegetical argument; those committed to methodological naturalism who are unwilling to consider evidence for supernatural causation; readers without significant theological and philosophical background who would benefit from a more introductory treatment; those seeking a systematic theology of divine healing rather than an evidential compendium; readers allergic to exhaustive documentation and extensive footnotes—this book's scholarly thoroughness borders on the overwhelming.
Overall Assessment: ☑ Highly Recommended | ☐ Recommended | ☐ Recommended with Reservations | ☐ Not Recommended
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