Note 258 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

The first-named narrative (Matt. viii. 23 ff. parall.) is intended, according to the Evangelist’s own words, to represent Jesus to us as him whom the winds and the sea obey, οἱ ἄνεμοι καὶ ἡ θάλασσα ὑπακούουσιν. Thus, to follow out the gradation in the miraculous which has been hitherto observed, it is here presupposed, not merely that Jesus could act on the human mind and living body in a psychological and magnetic manner; or with a revivifying power on the human organism when it was forsaken by vitality; nay, not merely as in the history of the draught of fishes earlier examined, that he could act immediately with determinative power, on irrational yet animated existences, but that he could act thus even on inanimate nature. The possibility of finding a point of union between the alleged supernatural agency of Jesus, and the natural order of phenomena, here absolutely ceases: here, at the latest, there is an end to miracles in the wider and now more favoured sense; and we come to those which must be taken in the narrowest sense, or to the miracle proper. The purely supranaturalistic view is therefore the first to suggest itself. Olshausen has justly felt, that such a power over external nature is not essentially connected with the destination of Jesus for the human race and for the salvation of man; whence he was led to place the natural phenomenon which is here controlled by Jesus in a relation to sin, and therefore to the office of Jesus. Storms, he says, are the spasms and convulsions of nature, and as such the consequences of sin, the fearful effects of which are seen even on the physical side of existence.258 But it is only that limited observation of nature which in noting the particular forgets the general, that can regard storms, tempests, and similar phenomena (which in connexion with the whole have their necessary place and beneficial influence) as evils and departure from original law: and a theory of the world in which it is seriously upheld, that before the fall there were no storms and tempests, as, on the other hand, no beasts of prey and poisonous plants, partakes—one does not know whether to say, of the fanatical, or of the childish. But to what purpose, if the above explanation will not hold, could Jesus be gifted with such a power over nature? As a means of awakening faith in him, it was inadequate and superfluous: because Jesus found individual adherents without any demonstration of a power of this kind, and general acceptance even this did not procure him. As little can it be regarded as a type of the original dominion of man over external nature, a dominion which he is destined to reattain; for the value of this dominion consists precisely in this, that it is a mediate one, achieved by the progressive reflection and the united efforts of ages, not an immediate and magical dominion, which costs no more than a word. Hence in relation to that part of nature of which we are here speaking the compass and the steam-vessel are an incomparably truer realization of man’s dominion over the ocean, than the allaying of the waves by a mere word. But the subject has another aspect, since the dominion of man over nature is not merely external and practical, but also immanent or theoretical, that is, man even when externally he is subjected to the might of the elements, yet is not internally conquered by them; but, in the conviction that the powers of physical nature can only destroy in him that which belongs to his physical existence, is elevated in the self-certainty of the spirit above the possible destruction of the body. This spiritual power, it is said, was exhibited by Jesus, for he slept tranquilly in the midst of the storm, and when awaked by his trembling disciples, inspired them with courage by his words. But for courage to be shown, real danger must be apprehended: now for Jesus, supposing him to be conscious of an immediate power over nature, danger could in no degree exist: therefore he could not here give any proof of this theoretical power.