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Suzanna Del Real's avatar

Love this!!

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Eli W. Irving's avatar

Elaine Pagels’s Miracles and Wonder presents itself as thoughtful engagement with the story of Jesus, but beneath the surface it follows a familiar pattern. By approaching the Gospels with the assumption that miracles must be symbolic or psychological rather than real, Pagels ends up stripping them of the very claims that make them meaningful to Christians. This kind of reading may sound open-minded, but it quietly closes the door on the possibility that the Gospels are telling the truth.

Her reliance on later texts like the Gospel of Thomas, written well after the time of Jesus and the apostles, raises real concerns. These writings reflect communities with very different beliefs about who Jesus was and what his message meant. To treat them as equally valid sources alongside the canonical Gospels is not just misleading. It reshapes the historical record to fit a different agenda.

If you don’t start by ruling out the supernatural, the Gospels read as they were meant to. They are eyewitness accounts of events that changed lives and launched a movement. The resurrection wasn’t an idea or a metaphor. It was a claim about something that happened in the world, witnessed by real people who staked everything on it.

Pagels’s project doesn’t offer clarity. It offers reinterpretation that ultimately undermines the core of the Christian message. We don't need another reinterpretation of Jesus. We just need to hear what he has to say. Books like Pagel's don't clarify, they obscure. And, they need to be called out for it.

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