Note 153 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

As regards the common substance of the narratives, it has in recent times been a difficulty to all theologians, whether orthodox or rationalistic, that the curative power of Jesus should have been exhibited apart from his volition. Paulus and Olshausen agree in the opinion,153 that the agency of Jesus is thus reduced too completely into the domain of physical nature; that Jesus would then be like a magnetiser who in operating on a nervous patient is conscious of a diminution of strength, or like a charged electrical battery, which a mere touch will discharge. Such an idea of Christ, thinks Olshausen, is repugnant to the Christian consciousness, which determines the fulness of power resident in Jesus to have been entirely under the governance of his will; and this will to have been guided by a knowledge of the moral condition of the persons to be healed. It is therefore supposed that Jesus fully recognized the woman even without seeing her, and considering that she might be spiritually won over to him by this bodily succour, he consciously communicated to her an influx of his curative power; but in order to put an end to her false shame and constrain her to a confession, he behaved as if he knew not who had touched him. But the Christian consciousness, in cases of this kind, means nothing else than the advanced religious culture of our age, which cannot appropriate the antiquated ideas of the Bible. Now this consciousness must be neutral where we are concerned, not with the dogmatical appropriation, but purely with the exegetical discovery of the biblical ideas. The interference of this alleged Christian consciousness is the secret of the majority of exegetical errors, and in the present instance it has led the above named commentators astray from the evident sense of the text. For the question of Jesus in both the more detailed narratives τίς ὁ ἁψάμενός μου; who touched me? repeated as it is in Luke, and strengthened as it is in Mark by a searching glance around, has the appearance of being meant thoroughly in earnest; and indeed it is the object of these two Evangelists to place the miraculous nature of the curative power of Jesus in a particularly clear light by showing that the mere touching of his clothes accompanied by faith, no previous knowledge on his part of the person who touched, nor so much as a word from him, being requisite, was sufficient to obtain a cure. Nay, even originally, in the more concise account of Matthew, the expressions προσελθοῦσα ὄπισθεν ἥφατο having come behind him, she touched, and ἐπιστραθεὶς καὶ ἰδὼν αὐτὴν he turned him about, and when he saw her, clearly imply that Jesus knew the woman only after she had touched him. If then, it is not to be proved that Jesus had a knowledge of the woman previous to her cure and a special will to heal her; nothing remains for those who will not admit an involuntary exhibition of curative power in Jesus, but to suppose in him a constant general will to cure, with which it was only necessary that faith on the part of the diseased person should concur, in order to produce an actual cure. But that, notwithstanding the absence of a special direction of the will to the cure of this woman on the part of Jesus, she was restored to health, simply by her faith, without even touching his clothes, is assuredly not the idea of the Evangelists. On the contrary, it is their intention to substitute for an individual act of the will on the part of Jesus, the touch on the part of the sick person; this it is which, instead of the former, brings into action the latent power of Jesus: so that the materialistic character of the representation is not in this way to be avoided.