The Sum of the Parts: Not only did Jesus DO miracles, he WAS the miracle.
It has been said that the test of a person’s greatness is their use or abuse of power. On this score how did Jesus fair, we may ask?
The four gospels’ collective portrait of Jesus is not just that he was a doer of miracles, but that he was himself a miracle. In all of world history, never has there been any other historical figure to whom so many miracles have been attributed, from birth to death—nay, even beyond death. Never another historical figure to whom so much other-worldly power has been ascribed—power over disease and disability, power over nature, power over demonic forces, power over discourse, and power over death itself. In conjunction, never has there been an historical figure to whom so much humanitarian goodness has been attributed. Power and goodness.
