How the accounts are interpreted

• Hume's 'Essay on miracles' argued that because we have no present day, direct experience of miracles ourselves, it is not possible to trust the accounts of Jesus performing miracles, either the Gospel must be accepted or rejected
• Edward Schillebeeckx identified a second way that Jesus' miracles can be interpreted: as having spiritual or metaphorical meaning for today
• Perhaps Jesus is the source of calm in daily life and people need to let him into their lives instead of living in fear and troubles
• NT Wright discusses that it is more important to think of what the Gospel writers are doing in reporting the miracles, Jesus not only heals people but he cures groups excluded from society and gives them a relationship with God. Wright might suggest that we need to think of more ordinary people who experience turmoil
• In Wright's interpretation, Jesus' miracles show a greater authority than simply a power to alter the way the universe usually works.
• Jesus is able to gather the community of all Israel for the renewed covenant and the forgiveness of sins, and the reach of this gathering goes far beyond the categories of people who were socially accepted at the time
• Jesus is inaugurating god's Kingdom of Earth which is more than the world was before. In the case of Jesus walking on water, he steps into the boat and joins them and brings calm, a foretaste of his Kingdom
• John 9:1-41 is about Jesus healing the blind man, it is possible that this action could be read as a sign of Jesus' power, or as having a message for this sick today, that Jesus can heal them.
• People believed that illness was caused by sin, but in the case of the blind man, it asked the question of whether any sin could justify someone being blind. There is a ficus on those whose circumstances cannot be caused by their own action
• John records Jesus making a link with those who he is- "This happened so the works of God might be displayed in him... While i am in the world, i am the light of the world"

  Jesus identifies his action as a pointer to the power of God working in him
• Jesus spoke with the blind man later after he performed the miracle and says " For judgement i have come into this world, so the blind can will see and those who see will become blind"

  This action is linked to the wider purpose of Jesus' mission, perhaps suggesting that wright's thinking could be right.