In defence of miracles

Victorian biblical scholars agreed that the story of the miracle at Cana was crucially important for the fourth gospel as a whole, both theologically and structurally, and also as a richly symbolic reference point for some major currents of nineteenth-century religious thought. Taken to be the first of Christ's public miracles, it was a touchstone within a wider debate on miracles in general, one aspect of which was the question of which was the greatest. Most said the raising of Lazarus (the subject of chapter 6 below). Richard Chenevix Trench took a broader view, distinguishing between those miracles which Jesus ‘wrought’ – the main subject of his often reprinted Notes on the miracles (1846) – and those of which Jesus was the subject, namely his conception and his Resurrection, round which the ‘whole scheme of redemption revolves, and without which it would cease to be a redemptive scheme at all’. In contrast, Liddon emphasized the continuity between these two types of miracle, arguing that the Incarnation is the ‘one great wonder’, and that other miracles follow as a matter of course: ‘The real marvel would be if the Incarnate Being should work no miracles.’