Chapter 3 introduces the eight Byzantine churches housing visual depictions of Christ’s miracles and presents a thematic analysis of the cycle. The first part of this chapter examines the selection process of the episodes depicted in early Palaiologan cycles and their iconography. It theorizes how the choices were made about which miracles were included or excluded and delves into the political and theological concerns that might have affected this selection. The second part of the chapter assesses and explains the iconographic peculiarities of this period by examining the development of Christ’s miracles in the early Palaiologan period in comparison to earlier visual material.

Some situations are particularly challenging. These include high-stakes, high-emotion conversations, like when patients talk about miracles or when they request hastened death. In the case of miracles, it is because they understand how bad things are that miracles are invoked. In the case of requests for hastened death, the request is brought on by suffering or fear of suffering. In both cases, the first thing is to do is take a breath and then explore, rather than react from a place of emotion. Another challenge is when responding to emotion isn’t enough. This can occur when a patient really does want information, when patients are coping through intellectualizing, when the emotion is too overwhelming, or when the level of emotion (and sometimes physical agitation) is elevated to the point of feeling or being unsafe. Each of these requires a tailored response like giving information, nonconfrontation, or containment before being able to move forward. Finally, in situations when our own emotions become elevated, it is important to allow ourselves to feel while being mindful we remain of service to the patient, and that we get support from trusted team members and colleagues.

This chapter considers how the exceptionalism of Western naturalism was given legitimacy through an appeal to narratives of progress. These narratives were indebted to a Protestant model that divided history into two periods—one in which miracles were genuine, followed by another in which they were not. The latter was associated with fraudulent Catholic miracles. Protestants also understood the Reformation as having ushered in an age of light after a period of medieval darkness. Eighteenth-century philosophes generalised and extended this argument, contending that the miracle reports from all historical periods were fraudulent. History could now be divided into an earlier period characterised by a naïve credulity in relation to miracle reports, followed by a more mature phase of history during which there was increasing recognition of the falsity of miracle reports. These same eighteenth-century thinkers also arrogated to themselves the mantle of enlightenment. The progressivist histories characteristic of the early social sciences and endorsed by advocates of scientific naturalism were doubly indebted to religious models since they also drew upon providential or eschatological notions of historical directionality. This raises the question of whether their progressivist philosophy of history is problematically dependent upon covert theistic assumptions.

David Hume’s famous argument against believing miracle reports exemplifies several key issues relating to the emergence of modern naturalism. Hume uncritically assumes the universal and unproblematic nature of core conceptions such as ‘supernatural’ and ‘laws of nature’. Hume’s argument also presents him with a dilemma. He relies upon the weight of testimony to establish his case against believing miracle reports, but must also contend with the weight of testimony, across different times and cultures, to the existence of the supernatural. Hume resolves this by an appeal to historical progress accompanied by a dubious racial theory. These enable him to discount testimonies emanating from the past and from other cultures. ‘Hume’s dilemma’ has not gone away and, if anything, is even more acute since the traditions and beliefs of non-Western cultures are now more difficult to dismiss on the basis of dubious historical accounts of Western exceptionalism. This dilemma amounts to a tension between the ethics of belief and the demands of epistemic justice.

‘Strong’ theistic naturalism is advocated, so that the notion of ‘special’ divine action is rendered redundant while scientism and a ‘God of the gaps’ notion of God’s action are avoided. A version of this kind of naturalism can affirm miraculous events in the way that Augustine of Hippo seems to have envisaged, which may now be interpreted as analogous to the scientist’s notion of regime change. In this context, some of the insights of evolutionary psychology become important, especially in relation to the evolution of human religiosity, which has significant implications for developing religious pluralism.

Jesus was a Jewish preacher and, for some Jews, a Messiah. His first followers lived in Jewish contexts. Only gradually did the differences between Christians and the followers of other religions become visible. Thus, there was a parting of the ways between Christians and Jews, but it was never complete. Jews and Christians always observed and influenced each other. Christians also set themselves apart from the many groups they called pagans. Although they believed in the existence of the gods, they considered them to be demons. They also developed their own rituals and created places where they met, so that Christianity became increasingly recognisable as a religion in its own right.

“Superstition” according to Qābel is any belief which does not have a logical or rational explanation. This resulted in him questioning many aspects of traditional Shiʿi belief, such as acceptance of Qurʾānic miracles. This is not to say that he denied miracles, simply that he explained them in an unconventional fashion, attempting to use cause and effect. The result was a very unusual and not entirely convincing conclusion. Moreover, his worldview of Rational Shariah also questioned traditional aspects of belief related to the Twelfth Imam in occultation. He rejected, without reservation, the claims made by President Ahmadinejād that there was some kind of contact or communication with the Hidden Imam. Moreover, he lambasted those who believed Ayatollah Khāmenei was infallible (a characteristic more commonly associated with the Imams). All of these beliefs were indicative of the superstition which the politicians attempted to use for their benefit. Qābel’s criticisms were well placed, but there is a certain incoherence in these arguments which demonstrates the limitation of Rational Shariah.

The combination of violent crimes, gruesome and prolonged execution spectacles, and natural disasters created an atmosphere of tension and fear in late 1780s Mexico City. Scientists of the era identified the flaming clouds that Gómez described above as an aurora borealis. But most people in this era would not have read these scientific interpretations. Instead, shocking natural phenomena prompted a turn to their faith in the supernatural for explanations and remedies. This reaction drew from both European and Indigenous connections between the divine and the physical world. Gómez himself communicated a sense of the ineffable links between human acts and natural phenomena (perhaps caused by unseen supernatural entities) in the first quote by juxtaposing an earthquake with the execution of five men. The skepticism of the European Enlightenment did not diminish the Novohispanic belief in miracles.

This chapter provides a cultural history of the wicked advocate from the tenth to the nineteenth centuries in order to argue that advocates’ corrupt practices of justice and protection reflect deep-rooted problems in the history of local administration. It starts with monasteries’ miracle stories about advocates suffering in death as punishment for their crimes in this life. It then turns to the Swiss legend of William Tell and analyzes the earliest versions of the legend in order to demonstrate that Tell’s rival, the wicked advocate Gessler, abused his position in ways similar to those of other advocates. This chapter then discusses Friedrich Schiller’s play Wilhelm Tell to show that concerns about corrupt practices of justice and protection extended into the early nineteenth century. Local legends about bad advocates, some of them preserved today on the Internet, provide additional evidence for the enduring value of stories about wicked advocates who are punished for their bad deeds.

This chapter covers a large literary category which I call ‘hagiographical’: it includes miracle stories that involve the Virgin Mary, full-length Lives of the Virgin (which began to be produced from the late eighth or early ninth century onward) and two Apocalypses. Many of the texts studied here are composed in a colloquial style that may have appealed to wider audiences in non-liturgical settings. This genre thus contrasts with the liturgical texts that are studied in the first four chapters: according to hagiography, Mary assumes power and agency that goes beyond her theological role in giving birth to Christ. Christians appeal to this female holy figure as one who is able to appeal to Christ and who is willing to help sinners or supplicants who despair of God’s direct favour. Christological teaching persists in these texts, but the emphasis has shifted to Mary’s intercessory role among Christians.

This essay shows that Duns Scotus firmly believed in the dignities (plural) of human nature—both the natural human dignity celebrated by Aristotle, who maintained that the material world was made for the sake of rational animals, and the supernatural dignities paid to humankind by God in the Incarnation and to particular human beings by predestining them to glory. When it comes to identifying more concretely the features in which such dignities consist, Duns Scotus’s metaphysical views—about essential powers and about what is essential to powers—combine with his theological conviction that, when it comes to patterns of Divine concurrence with or obstruction of natural powers, God has different policies for different states of human history—to complicate his method.

This chapter covers a large literary category which I call ‘hagiographical’: it includes miracle stories that involve the Virgin Mary, full-length Lives of the Virgin (which began to be produced from the late eighth or early ninth century onward) and two Apocalypses. Many of the texts studied here are composed in a colloquial style that may have appealed to wider audiences in non-liturgical settings. This genre thus contrasts with the liturgical texts that are studied in the first four chapters: according to hagiography, Mary assumes power and agency that goes beyond her theological role in giving birth to Christ. Christians appeal to this female holy figure as one who is able to appeal to Christ and who is willing to help sinners or supplicants who despair of God’s direct favour. Christological teaching persists in these texts, but the emphasis has shifted to Mary’s intercessory role among Christians.

The teaching of creation has been much misunderstood and under-developed because it has been taken to be primarily about how the world began a long, long time ago. Religious naturalists have often abandoned this teaching so as to give a more scientifically informed characterization of our cosmos and humanity’s place within it. Wirzba argues that this is a big mistake because the rejection of the idea that our world is a divinely created world makes it impossible to speak of life as a gift. This chapter develops what it means to say that each creature is gift cherished and sustained in its being by God. As such, it opens the idea of creation to encompass life’s meaning and purpose, and it creates a way for people to become involved in the nurture and healing of our world and our shared life. The logic of creation, upon further examination, is not about God’s power “over” the world but about God’s presence to the world in the forms of love that invite human participation in it.

Maimonides is one of the most radical defenders of apophaticism, the view according to which no positive attribute can be truthfully applied to God, and that God is consequently ineffable. His apophatic theology has several important dimensions, and it is in the Guide for the Perplexed that he offers the most elaborate account of his views.

The two authors come apart here, not simply because Ruse is a nonbeliever and Davies a practicing Christian. Ruse was raised a Quaker and so, thinking theologically, he thinks in a Quaker context. More than anything he is accepting (or he would be if he were still a believer) of apophatic theology. One cannot say what God is but rather what He is not. How one works out the details of the Trinity are not that important. One is committed to the Trinity on faith, and for the rest – “now we see through a glass darkly.” For Davies, by contrast, theology is grounded in the thinking of the great theologians. He believes one can make progress on understanding the Trinity. Here is where the clash comes, not so much because Ruse is a nonbeliever, but because his theology tells him that all such attempts as those of Davies are bound to fail. 1 + 1 + 1 ≠ 1.