On Healings and Miracles

Healings and so called “miracles” (nothing is miraculous to God): these things are the outworking of the future state of creation; the fulfilled aim of God’s creation.  The goal of creation is realized in the culmination of all things, or, the recapitulation of all things in Christ Jesus…the eschaton. 

                In the end, there will be no death, sickness, disfigurements, or demon possessions.  Healings and “miracles” are a transfiguring of the present reality into the future state and realization…a creation free from sin and death and all subsequent consequences thereof.  These things are realizations of the life to come that is now already here and now as well.  They show us a glimpse of the life to come, a life that exists in the fullness of communion with God. 

                The goal of creation is not found in the beginning of, but at the end of all things.  We know this to be true not only of humanity but the whole of creation as well.  It is in this regard that healings and the miraculous make sense and only in this regard.  We know that salvation has come upon us because natural laws are transcended beginning particularly with the Incarnation of the Savior.  Such happenings are the breaking into of history and nature that Kingdom which is to come.  We see this is true especially whenever we compare these miraculous happenings with Jesus’ resurrected state.  His resurrected body, while in communion with the created order, was not subject to it.  His resurrected body transcended the barriers that are normally placed upon the human condition.  For one, He rose from the tomb.  Second, He was not immediately recognizable.  He also walked through walls and appeared and disappeared at will. 

                All of this points to the fact that, although man is a creature, he does not have to be a slave to “nature” and the calling of the Christian and the Church is to transcend natural necessity.  It is to acquire true freedom through our communion with God.  It is to be free as Christ is free in His current state.  Healings and “miracles” point to a reality which is greater than the one which we now live in.  It points to a reality where man will no longer be a slave to, nor struggle against, his nature and passions, which are rooted in the biological hypostasis, not the ecclesial one. 

                Healings and “miracles” point to the immanent reality where true freedom exists; freedom in communion….freedom as communion.  They are signs of a world that is both set free from sin and death and of a world that has actualized the goal that its Creator had for it from the beginning.

                They are an unveiling in the same sense that the Transfiguration was an unveiling, but only to a lesser degree.  The transfiguration displayed the consummate reality of the Kingdom coming in its fullness as Christ was receiving it atop Mt. Tabor (Daniel 7).  Healings and miracles display the effects of that consummate Kingdom reality on the present state.  Healings and Miracles occur on a micro scale, so to speak, while the Transfiguration is on a macro scale.  Transfigured reality is the fulfillment of that which healings and miracles are set out to achieve.  Healings and miracles occur in the present reality as the world progresses towards transfiguration; they are the outworking of a cosmos that is being transfigured.