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 Concerning Biblical religion, Biblical Christianity  and the above : the terminology whether in those cases or in this,  has a similar referent.  A precise connotational usage attaches to these terms.  This is important for logical purposes, having systematic significance.

For specifically historical data, Harold Lindsell,  Battle for the Bible could be consulted.  For Gordon Clark's work,  Francis Schaeffer's and that of Cornelius Van Til,  which in their central common affirmations give some extended treatment of various aspects :  see Bibliography, under those celebrated names.

For amplification in a significant combination of areas: see supra - Section II, pp. 36ff., Section IV, pp. 75ff., and pp. 80-89 for example.

A useful denotative excerpt for our purposes of clarity follows from Schaeffer ( Escape from Reason, pp. 89-91). This simply indicates the designation area of the above terms.
 

In this setting the Bible sets forth its own statement of what the Bible itself is.  It presents itself as God's communication of propositional truth written in verbalized form, to those who are made in God's image. Functioning on the presupposition of the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system, both the secular and the unbiblical theological thinking of today would say that this is impossible.  But that is precisely what the Bible says it sets forth.  We may take, for example, what occurred at Sinai ... Moses says to the people  'you saw; you heard,' (Deuteronomy 5:23-28). What they heard (along with other things ) was a verbalized prepositional communication from God to man,  in a definite, historic space-time situation. It was not some kind of contentless, existential experience, not an anti-intellectual leap.  We find exactly the same kind of communication occurring in the New Testament, as for example when Christ spoke to Paul in Hebrew on the Damascus road.  Therefore, on the one hand we have the kind of propositional communication God gives in the Scriptures. On the other hand we see to whom this propositional communication is directed.

The Bible teaches that, though man is hopelessly lost, he is not nothing.  Man is lost because he is separated from God, his true reference point, by true moral guilt.  But he never will be nothing.  Therein lies the horror of his lostness.  For man to be lost, in all his uniqueness and wonder, is tragic.

We must not belittle man's achievements - in science, for instance,  man's achievements demonstrate that he is not junk, though the ends to which he often puts them show how lost he is.  Our forefathers, though they believed man was lost, had no problem concerning man's significance.  Man can influence history, including his own eternity, and that of others.  This view sees man, as man, as something wonderful.

In contrast to this there is the rationalist who has determinedly put himself at the centre of the universe and insists on beginning autonomously with only the knowledge he can gather, and has ended up finding himself quite meaningless. It comes to the same thing as Zen Buddhism, which expresses so accurately the view of modern man:  'Man enters the water and causes no ripple.' The Bible says he causes ripples that never end. As a sinner, man cannot be selective in his significance, so he leaves behind bad as well as good marks in history, but certainly he is not a zero.

Christianity is a system which is composed of a set of ideas which can be discussed.  By 'system' we do not mean a scholastic abstraction, nevertheless we do not shrink from using this word. The Bible does not set out unrelated thoughts.  The system it sets forth has a beginning and moves from that beginnlng in a non-contradictory way.  The beginning is the existence of the infinite personal God as Creator of all else.  Christianity is not just a vague set of incommunicable experiences, based on a totally unverifiable 'leap in the dark'.  Neither conversion ( the beginning of the Christian life ) nor spirituality (the growth ) should be such a leap.  Both are firmly related to the God who is there and the knowledge He has given us and both involve the whole man.
 

It might however be more felicitous, having made full concurrence on the thrust and portent of the passage, simply to add that, more fully,  Christianity is the presentation by God of His plan of salvation, divine revelatory and propositional output to man, truth which is absolute;  and in mercy, of Christ Himself, His eternal word and only begotten Son, as cornerstone of that salvation, who in love accomplished it by redemption vicariously, bearing sin's penalty and showing His eternal power and authenticity in being raised from the dead, victor over death, for man; and that the reception by faith of Christ, His word and His salvation with repentance personally, is crucial to its operation in any person.  That would be a more complete statement.

The precise meaning of the Report at this point may deserve explicit attention.

To determine this, we need to examine various related contexts.

The stress on religious language as chiefly symbolic is dealt with elsewhere; the
inner logic,  said to reside In each religion and the consistency affirmed to be perceived for each devotee, is alike elsewhere treated; the contrast between the rational, logical episodes of science and the 'supra-rational' and contra-distinct material of the religionist - these things are duly given our attention at length in the earlier phases of this work and need not be expounded here.  The results of those expositions however will be taken, and here used.

We have found that "religion" is given a certain status in this Report. It has a certain aloofness from an articulating God able and willing to speak with objective prepositional clarity. It has an infinite distance from this.  The contrary proposition is its raison d'être. To this extent,  the approach is in strict accord with a widespread modern theological movement, relatively humble before Kant, and able to dynamise itself with Hegel without essential loss of the noumenal nescience; such religion has been subjected to interpretation by Kierkegaard, applied by theologians as diverse as Barth and Altizer, and rationally rebutted earlier in this work (e.g. in Sections 1, 2, 3 above), and in great detail in my Predestination and Freewill, Appendix on Kant.

A variety of components have been collated in the Report, compared and thrust forth. This Report Religion partakes of some of the generalities from the background noted,  and of some of the particularities of its election, its choice and desire. The ways of its peculiar synthetic composition, however, are not susceptible to demonstration.  In fact, as has been exposed in detail, crass, central contradictions (for the Report deals with its basis in the field religion,  as a Class replete with potential for unification, as also elsewhere expounded in this work) are not cause for undue logical concern, for Report Religion. What exports reason however, is still susceptible to its re-import, and fails no less categorically in reason, for all the attempted distancing from it!

As to religions, the field is ALL of them, as we have pointed out, in the Report's eyes - if eyes it has.
It follows quite rigorously that in the intellectual and indeed rational sense, in the perhaps confining bounds of cold formal logic (too intellectualist at least in its Protestant formats, the Report tells us - and again we ponder this a trifle... in this, which appears meant to be the most agreeable of Reports with its most neutral of postures and most inoffensive of positions...):  religion is not valid.  The simple view is that logically, religion is not valid. In fact, of course, only Christianity in all the field of philosophy and reason, in approach to the ultimates, IS valid, as demonstrated in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock and That Magnificent Rock. Yet this is not the place to pursue that theme beyond attesting it. The point here simply is this, that however woefully ineptly, the Report Religion starts by the presupposition that this is the case, as an implication, sure and steadfast of its approach. Indeed, it DIVORCES fact from normal usage and even language from its less esoteric role!
 

• Yes, religion, in Report Religion,  lacks this which logic will not tolerate to be absent: consistency and actuality that stands the tests of logic in the grammar of accurate relationship.  In this setting, the criticism of Protestantism made by the Report (of course without reason, for logic is so cold, and perhaps it is not warm enough for the fires of the Report) seems to this writer, an essential compliment!

After all,  how be reasonable without reason; how argue without argument; how demonstrate without logic; and how show us what to do in a divergent and diversified situation, and how even depict it when it is not susceptible to the operation of logic, reason and accurate differentiation of concepts and content!: how do this when flat contradiction is permissible?  And flat contradiction, at the most central of levels, as demonstrated in this work earlier , is PRECISELY what the major religions engage in; and who has said, beyond this, that the major religions are the sole game for the hunter's gun, in defining RELIGION! What new abuse of logic is ever before us, in this Report Religion matter!

For THIS, being the area, the arena ? - of religion,  the winsomeness of logic is not really needed, or so we are taught. Without that discipline, the Report Religion defies the gravity of logic, and even the simplicities of concepts, embracing all, like some large bear, in the cuddling arms of concern, comfort and a certain added tearing of the ligaments of logic. Such patronising presumption is allied to the irrationality. In all these things, it is as mixed as the proverbial teenager, without the excuse, if excuse there be.

In this largely symbolic areas as the Report Religion teaches, then; in this arena where the depredations of science are no more - the core that is protected in the very best nervous and uninformed clergymen sense that Punch magazine might have relished; in the area of "subjective" religious commitment,  as the Report has it - there is no room for the observer, datum-type of approach, the account of the apostle Paul in just that sense, notwithstanding. (Consult, with our earlier data on this topic, Acts 22:1-29, Daniel, Isaiah 6, Jeremiah 1 etc.. In the last case, the prophet is endued with a duty to enunciate propositions which are to become historical happenings not only for the Jews, but for other nations as well, at the hand of stated powers, and for stated reasons, for a stated period - a rather factual matter. If he had been wrong (Deuteronomy 13, he would have faced the death penalty for fraud in the area of divinity).

No, here we are contradistinct from the other 'pole' named in the Report.  Far from us, as mere religionists (the Report has understandable difficulty in saying what these are, p.129) is the field of "dispassionate" and "objective" theoretical understanding for its own sake. In Biblical Christianity, of course, Christ IS wisdom as well as truth (I Cor. 1:30-31, John 14:6, John 20 ), and it is for HIS sake, that He is to be worshipped. He like the apostles, CANNOT forbear in rendering factual report of factual data, without abrogation of sincerity and truth (John 8:26-38, Acts 4:1, 18-20). The bodily resurrection (I Cor. 15:1-4) was in point, and it was IMPOSSIBLE not to speak of these things, despite a specific, authoritative demand by the Educational Authority in Jerusalem, NOT so to speak, as we see in the above references. We turn now, again, from the data of Christianity, to take but one example of 'religion', to the generalisations of the Report. Let us survey in view of our past excursions into it, what it is here saying.

On the one hand, then, is science, its methods, its logic. its data, its objectivity such as it might claim during the transient life of so many of its hypotheses (but not with reason, in and by themselves - cf. That Magnificent Rock Ch. 5, Validity) ; on the other, are contradictory 'respected' religions taken as a closet filled largely with symbolic languages, subjectively consistent and true to an 'inner logic', even whilst blatant in their categorical contradictions of each other at the most central levels of WHO God is, HOW He communicates, if at all, and so on, as shown in detail in situ.

It is difficult, perhaps, for those not propagandised by long end sometimes subtle work by some religionists, and who are not indoctrinated by Kant or his philosophical and pseudo-theological family, to ingest, and more so to digest, the above distinction between the Report's characterisation of RELIGION, and to take the case, the Bible's characterisation of its religion. These positions, therefore, that of the Bible and that of this innovative Report,  appear as total, catastrophic, basic, recognised contradictions, with the reasons for such contradiction,  assigned by the Bible (as in Ephesians 4:17ff., Romans 1:17ff.) for example. Thus the CONSTRUCTION placed upon RELIGION, in this instance for one, is an ATTACK, a FRONTAL ASSAULT and one without reason of the slightest sufficiency, hurled forth with all the accuracy and grounding, of a missile sent from the USSR to Iraq, and slung from a high building in the hope it might land in Israel (with which Iraq stressed in 1991, she was and had been at war, since 1948).

What then of those who notice this missile in the form of the Report Religion?

They might relate that Christianity from the beginning has been a religion of facts,  facts and more facts,  whilst there have been the most intimate elements these were not envisaged as contra-factual to the least degree.  Categorically and reasonably, no truth is available, its Scriptures claim, except in the perspective of, and by the relationship with the one true God who has spoken,  and who,  having spoken, has shown the truth to man - metaphorically otherwise in darkness. (Cf. SMR pp. 100-101, 999ff. and 934ff; with Chapter 3.) In fact, the term used by Isaiah is 'great darkness' (Isaiah 9:6) whilst other elements are exhibited supra - Section II, pp. 36ff., Section IV, pp. 75ff., and pp. 80-89 for example. Moreover, the crucifixion happened in space and time, in fact at a date predicted with a great deal of system and detail hundreds of years in advance (SMR pp. 886ff.), and in keeping with many other facts which were specified with distinguishing exactitude and force, as part of the verifiability of the divine diction in the Bible (cf. Isaiah 41, 43, 48, Isaiah 34:16, and cf. Joyful Jottings 22, 23, 24, 25);  and the same is categorically claimed for the resurrection in Scripture, as the watchful reader will recall, in the above hyperlinked references to earlier Sections.

However,  the nature of the Report is here our concern; though a contradistinct view, and one expressly challenging precisely what the Report Religion is propounding, is found in Biblical Christianity; which  should help us to focus both.

In this setting of the Report, then, with all the components noted above and discussed throughout this work, each in its site and relevant area, what shall we do with the particular context on pp. 206-7, of the Report?  It notes the tendency for children with religious upbringing to 'go on believing in religion and miracle stories until about eleven years of age', with something of the attitudinal feeling of a Vet. who is noting that dogs untreated with the flea collar, go on having the little pests till their owners show more responsibility, and look after them!
 

The Report then proposes a difficulty.  It opines that such children do this 'even though these stories seem to conflict with their modern scientific world view.'  By the secondary stage, of High School years,  we find that this belief is breaking down and doubt and confusion are setting in.  Two reactions are there noted. Some, we are advised,  reject religion out of hand.  Others solve the alleged confusion by developing a duality of world views - the everyday scientific world,  remains intact,  whilst God inhabits some religious world, they advise. In this, something called 'religious events', the Report indicates,  occur.

All this, of course, is the exact opposite of what number of distinguished scientists in fact assert (since science is specifically mentioned, in terms of generalisation, a procedure in general outgeneralling the topics). Hundreds of Ph.D. graduates in related science areas, it is understood from careful reports, hold that it is rather 'science' in the form of a philosophic intrusion, which is being manoeuvred into a field which is not its own.

Thus Professor E.H. Andrews, a most distinguished of British scientist, in his work, "Is Evolution Scientific?" gives a most fastidiously careful exhibition that the reality of the confusion is not at all between Bible and Science, but between scientific errors of method, and Bible truth. When the former are avoided, the latter is all cohesion with science, properly so-called. With Doctorates in Science and Philosophy, Professor Andrews, like Lord Kelvin, perhaps the most adorned of Englishmen, academically, in his century, and many others of great originality in the field, from Newton, Boyle, Faraday, Maxwell  to Von Braun, is one who has detailed the matter from his own position. Numbers of distinguished scientists  do precisely this. Works of simplicity and clarity in this field include that of Dr Gary Parker, in his Creation: The Facts of Life.

In The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, That Magnificent Rock and and in others of the 22 volume work, In Praise of Christ Jesus, various exhibitions of this particular fact are exhibited in considerable detail, logically, procedurally and empirically: not least in pp. 140ff., of the work first cited in this paragraph and Chs.1 and 8, of the second and in A Spiritual Potpourri, Chs. 1-9 inclusive, Wake Up World! Your Creator is Coming... Chs. 4, 5, 6,  Epilogue,  Stepping Out for Christ, Chs. 2, 3, 9,10.

The Report however makes cultural assumptions without apparent effort to do more than what some other religions do, simply announce the datum to be 'believed', in this case, as in some others, and hence does not qualify in these areas, as a rational religion, far less a 'secular' one.

The Report, so free and frank, is without any other responses in its coverage here.  It does go on to advise what it must deem the appropriate thing to say in such a context - it presumably does not leave out the obvious on purpose.  It brings a sort of rest, or quiescence to the tension it so interestingly devised by noting 'this intellectual difficulty ... can lead to a growing appreciation of the religious meaning of these stories,' The 'literal way' is ironed out with the advances in discernment of the religious terminology,  felt to be  suitable for the religious world which, for the Report Religion, we will recollect,  does not work like ours, or with our logical structure. While this is an undoubted magical quality in this religion's notions, it must be realised that it becomes more serious than mere imaginative flights, when it is part of the religion to attribute to other religions, the deficiency which it generalises as belonging to all religion. This it does with such a lack of evidence as perhaps to become an all-time record, even for an Educational Authority, in providing an anti-example of logical behaviour for its students.

In case we were left, stubbornly, in any doubt about the meaning of this Report Religion,  we find it here  quite helpfully carries on to indicate: 'There are indications from both psychology and anthropology of the power of myths in the formation of the personality and in binding societies and communities together.' The thoughtful reader is left without any ground for imagining that truth is the criterion, discernible,  categorical logically expressible truth.  This is incontrovertible. That is the approach of Report Religion to religious activity. Doubtless, it relates in some way to the liberties to be found in its own.

Well then,  it is in this context, both general and particular, that we must see the reference to 'miracle stories ... even though these stories seem to conflict with their modern scientific world view'. This is the religious core, according to the canons of this 'faith', it is the subjective,  the realm of contradictory claims which need not be logically resolved, of subjective 'commitments' that live, for the Report Religion,  in an arena where a seemingly hostile science is placated by the refuge of myths and involvement,  of sensitivity and respect,  of the combination of opposites and the complementarity of antagonisms.

To be just to the Report Religion,  it would seem that it could reply: 'Whether or not a miracle occurred is entirely irrelevant.  If science permits it, well perhaps it did; though in that case, it was no miracle, merely something incorrectly misinterpreted through ignorance, and honestly but wrongly believed to be miraculous.' In short, however, in the summation of it: miracles, strictly so-called: these do not occur. That is its doctrine. Lots of others who promote agnosticism, though not all, are so inclined to commit their faith.

Oh, in the religious worlds they are very ... real, it appears to be conceived; but in this one,  well there is no room except in what Francis Schaeffer so tellingly refers to as the 'upper story',  that little symbolic world of its own (Escape from Reason, The God who Is There,  He is There and He is Not-Silent).  Indeed, perhaps Jungian archetypes and Jungian libido-formulations may mystically cast their shadowy images formed from strangely gelled prototypes and strangely translucent cognition of libido-thrust, and coming with marvellous intellectual force from no designable entity in particular.

No matter: this is commonplace with this type of thing. THEY know what they tell us from bases and grounds which preclude the knowledge (for us, in practice, but not for them - Marx and Freud as well as Darwin are in this category cf. SMR pp. 611ff., and contrast pp. 582ff.). It is well.  It is all ... other, different, not humbled by mere logic, or lacerated by mere calculation.  Void of demonstrable grounds, flirting with fantasy and bereft of coherent perspicuous rationale, it is suitable for some species of
(federalised ?) religion.  It may be felt suitable for patients too, who are in putative need of Jungian^*57 art therapy.

It was found - the reader may infer - refreshing that it was reported, some years ago, that Jung in the late part of his life had made an acknowledgment.  It was to the effect that no integration of the personality could be effectively achieved without the supernatural.  Now as our preceding points have intentionally implied, such a term (at least, in its Biblical) connotation) has greater conceptual substantiality than is the case with dynamic, Jungian abstractions, bereft of ideational cohesion in the area of Creator, creativity and creation.  Indeed, such an area is pertinently addressed by C.S. Lewis,  and succinctly in his Mere Christianity, Fontana I959, Edition 9, pp. 33:- 34 ). While it is true that  the coherent concept of aseity may for some startle the imagination, it does not - as rather extensively indicated in my Predestination and Freewill baffle the intellect. On the contrary, it fires, inspires and delights it in its unique coherence, internal harmony and explicative power, as is normal in Biblical concepts, and shown in many fields, in the trilogy, The Shadow of a Mighty Rock.

The case of Jung is of great interest ; for while he often seems to evince some type of  keen, intuitive, medical and clinical flair, yet  metaphysically his usages have significant points of resemblance with those of the Report.  In this symbolic area of its religious theme, there is for its part, however, a kind of therapeutic psychiatric counselling and life-enticing, intellect-deprecating ring: as widely documented throughout the present work. As to Jung, he was not apparently interested in 'stabliising' his field where authority was needed for healing, as he held, by injecting an innovative substitute. He seemed more interested in the need, than any moulding of his clients as butts for empirically useful, or callowly assumed 'beliefs'.  However frustrated by the indelible empirical facts of the human soul which he appeared to find, and the failure of his field to cover that need, he seemed to regard his field as individual, rather than a societal focus for  some species of virtual mental ray treatment. Indeed (SMR Ch.4, Part 1), he found the NEED for authority - proving immiscible with is own light views of religion, at the propositional level;  but then,  he admitted the tangled wrangle of frustration. In this, his empirical care is noteworthy.

Unfortunately,  the Report, for its part,  is actually at work to assign its specificities (or their limits and type) to its clientele; and perhaps worse (for even Scientology - SMR p.686 and cf. pp. 684-687, 365ff.  more generally -  does not have State access for its promotion), it seems bent on securing NO EXIT for those who, being young, it would indoctrinate. Between so much of the self-fulfilment and delectation views, and those of being crucified with Christ, there is such a gap, a chasm, that it is a complete universe of division, even to the point of either having GOD who IS, take you graciously to His side, and having MAN, the man who has come to be and is in eminent and real danger of mutilating his life to the point of the most dismal of destinies through his endless presumptions and assumptions in the face of his actual condition, as your LORD and director. Man has many proposals; they fail empirically and logically in the many so continual, as to be repetitious almost to redundancy; yet he does not learn. Why now, in this very illogical domain, he would even TEACH! (Cf. Crucified with Christ, in Barbs, Arrows and Balms Item 3, and Index on this topic.)
 

At worst, Jung yet appeared to avoid this clinical-style invasion from preconceived premises into the field, let alone that of the young, in the role of a professional secular educator; so that the Report by contrast does something for Jungianism. It is not, however, apparent that this would be appreciated by that clinician! 'Empathising' in its interpretations, stabilising in its treatments, concocting realities to unify its treatments, the Report Religion appears a cultural synthesis, extrapolated into religious intensity and presumption: this is not even by all appearance, in the realm of that radically liberal philosophy of Jung.

It may, to this point,  indeed be admitted that much educational literature is somewhat therapeutic in derivation or attitude;  and perhaps at times in aptitude.  Elements of Kohl ( 36 Children, Reading  How To),  of John Holt's work ( How Children Fail,  How Children Learn),  of that of David Holbrook
(English for the Rejected, English in Australia Now),  and notoriously Neill ( Summerhill) as well as a dimension in Otty (Learner-Teacher) are expressive of this type of concern and coverage.  Whether it be in analysis of the child, of the situation, of the method, of the curriculum: there is an occupation, sometimes a pre-occupation with therapy, sometimes more harshly, more presumptuously and intrusively, sometimes more tenderly conceived^*59.

Perhaps, therefore, it is not surprising that a Report that would seem to relate in some way to the field of education, should be so pragmatic and so practical as to give slight attention indeed to the matter of truth in religion: logically demonstrable, incontrovertible truth. The concept seems to be inversely proportional in emphasis, to the assumptions and invasions of the field with words all too cognate in logical care, to that assumed for the field.  Much less is it found to dwell on vigorous, compelling and arresting categorical truth. Virtually denouncing truth, it makes this truth its very true annunciation. So do educational philosophies of the age, indulge in self-contradiction as if not satisfied with contradicting God, they have no other option than to start contradicting themselves. Indeed, having done the one, they are quite certain to do the other, since the removal of absolute truth from practical availability means that all propositions made with the intention of telling us the actual situation in its reality, are and must be futile.

Whatever, however,  the educational,  philosophical and theological background - and these dynamic forces are in heavy contemporary operation, are 'popular',  and (to use Report-style thought) are beginning to incorporate themselves in the symbolic mythology of the twentieth century: we have this evidence in the Report of its attitude to factuality and logic in the schema purveyed. We have it in just the way we have earlier displayed; and we have it echoing about us as we ponder the environment of its terms, both contextually and contemporaneously... in the province of the pseudo-miraculous. In its 'authentic community' of preferred culture, the Report Religion stands like a Moses without a mountain, mending broken tablets.

As to the Report Religion: it appears at least to be  a miraculous religion in this, however, that it seizes by apparently miraculous powers, the knowledge that the miraculous CANNOT be acceptable to 'science' = man's knowledge of normative happenings in the way the world is constructed. In fact, the consistency with the supernatural is so evident in Biblical Christian Theism, that the ONLY miracle in the superstitious sense that one can find remaining, is this negative concept of the Report Religion, as if  the God who made law cannot act within the sphere of reference which He made, with the same power with which He made it. What in the world that is supposed to have with science, it is impossible to determine. It is almost as if it is saying, had better not so act!

There appears a wholly irrational detestation of the whole field, when as has been exhibited often on this site, the whole of creation, merely as a start is a miracle, for the institution of its laws and devices, is assuredly not their procedure; and as energy has not been enough for infinity, it cannot have come with commencing (cf. That Magnificent Rock Chs.7, 1, 8, The Shadow of a Mighty Rock Chs. 1,2,3 and see Creation in the Index of both the trilogy and The Rest). The derivation of laws IS an intrusion, and the institution of laws and devices IS an arrival into Nature, indeed even of Nature. As such, science merely in fact observing the maintenance, is separated from the arrival as in that sense, miraculous.

Whose miracle is the relevant question; and the relevant answer, is that of the entity who stands in the possession of the type of power necessary to institute the form and order and law and operation of spirit, mind and matter; which, as shown in detail in The Shadow of a Mighty Rock, is known as God Almighty.

The appropriate approach to this particular sub-topic, when scientific method is returned to from this outlandish excursion into prejudice in a cultural milieu, to reality,  is this: WHAT DOES HAPPEN in these areas, and what is the evidence? That is again a matter of the milieu of one's own operation; for the Biblical Christian,  the principles and promises of the Bible, the attestations of results when its procedures are followed.

• Supernatural intervention in general, and observed miracles in particular are simple applications of the fact of the Creator using His discretion in the creation.

 
• They do not happen in such a way as to remove the world's tests, but can in perfect consistency happen in such a way as to attest God's power over it, and in it, rather like that of a little boy who can interfere with the train network he has made, when he so desires, though he may not often wish to do so, since the purpose in principle, was to build a system.

To use again Schaeffer's language, however,  Biblically miracles are distinctively designated for the 'lower story', the structure of space-time episodes.  The intrusion of creative supernatural power ( the term 'irruption' has been theologically employed) into the space-time arena , while it impacts within the system, does not alter the characteristic mode of its operation.  The Natural format is furnished with miracle at divine discretion.

This fact is heavily emphasised in the Bible, as co-substantial with its whole approach. It is, for example, signally illustrated in the bodily resurrection of the Messiah, evacuation of that Messiah from the space-time format assumed for His mission ( ascension^*60 ), to resume at length the form of deity - Philippians 2:5-II, John I:I-I4, John I7:5; cf. SMR Ch.6). Biblically, the 'lower story'  is not left unfurnished; and the extra cost, contingent on the undelightful human racism of the human race, and its other individual sins,  we are advised, has been paid for those whom it concerns ( John 3:I6,  I John 4:2,  John 1:1-14, Colossians 1:19ff.). These, they have been educated with that most essential of all the elements of the field, because their hearts are susceptible, their cultures are no longer those of race and place, but of the Creator who made the place. They find that He has a way with Him; and in this dimension, miracle is just one of the elements.
 
 

• Indeed, this faculty and facility in the realities of Biblical Christian Theism,
• added to its unique logical validity amongst all philosophies and religions,
• as often demonstrated on this site,
• its evidential singularity,
• its vulnerability in the field of verification, transmuted by the facts into triumph,
• its lone efficiency in terms of scientific method, though it is not per se science, in meeting the criteria without flinching, again unique in the areas of discourse involved,
• its utter eminence and transcendence in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ (SMR Ch.6, Repent or Perish Ch.2, Barbs, Arrows and Balms Appendix IV), and in the unmerited love which requires no competition of imperfect endeavours for distinction but rather confers membership in the family of God:

This indeed has already been shown: META-RELIGION. It is NOT symbol, but substance; NOT suggestion but DEMONSTRATION, NOT mere HOPE but justified FAITH, based on the Creator as OBJECT OF FAITH, the REDEEMER as WAY for faith and the Bible as the word to faith, propositional, redemptive, personal and profound. Even if it were not so, the Report Religion is irrational in terms of the realities exposed above; but in the face and light of these facts of the faith in Jesus the Christ, this, the religion of fact is merely crucified by such false generalisations as that monument to folly achieves, just as LOGIC was long crucified, by this and all that rejects the Lord (Repent or Perish Ch.7).

It is sufficient that Christ Himself was crucified; it is time, for many now, that they repent and seek the Lord, becoming rather crucified WITH Christ; for there is the fruit of salvation, and in this is the significance of life which transcends symbol, that devotion and dutifulness, that reason and responsibility, that knowledge of God which is as near as love, as profound as validity, as just as virtue and as free as creation; for it is His new creation in which all His people are members (II Cor. 5:17ff.). What then the Report Religion has said inaccurately from the first, it is now necessary to say at the last, of Him to whom this honour is due.

If people neglect Him, it is their loss; but they are not forcibly indoctrinated with no right of withdrawal. it is rather before God, in the end, where there is no right of withdrawal; for those who do not see fit to accept from His mercy, the salvation which in love He proffers, must in all truth, accept judgment according to truth, where the light is not shaded, facts are not shrouded and destiny gives what is due. What is due to Christ, however, is what is in love donated to His people, who being His, love Him: and have you not noticed, where love is, and the more so by far where it is also where the power is, there is a transformation.

With God, that transformation is not only emotional, in the texture of personality, for His people when they become His, and so grow in Him: it is spiritual, profound, and a regeneration. There is a generation of the regenerate, who are called a special people (II Peter 2:9); and it is this which is the 'authentic' community, not from the symbolism of words, but from the actualities of the operation of the Creator who, having created, and loved and sent His Son for sin (I John 4:7-10), uses that same power to re-create (II Cor. 4:6, Colossians 3:10, Ephesians 4:24).

Those who are His are not so only in mouth (Isaiah 29:13), for it is an affair of the heart, of the mind and of the spirit (Matthew 22:37-38); nor are they only His in deed (Matthew 7:18ff.), for it is an affair of the spirit (John 4:14,22-23); but in all of these things, they being His, so act (I John 3:9). And where they sin (I John 1:7ff.), they repent; but not as those who pretend (II Cor. 7:9ff.); for what young man pretends to love his bride of heart: but as those who seeking with all the being, to walk with God, and aided in this by His Spirit, have in Him the "desire of the nations" (Haggai 2:7, Isaiah 11:10). It is Christ who has been reported - I John 1:1-4, I Peter 1:1-8, II Peter 1:16ff); it is Christ who, not in symbols but in sacrifice (Hebrews 9:23-28) has shown and done and spoken (Matthew 11:4ff.); it is to Him that the children need to come (John 5:39-40): but NOT by force (John 3:16-19), and NOT by the injunctions of society (Hosea 8:4-12, John 14:30), but freely (Isaiah 55:1-4, Romans 5:15, Romans 6:23, Galaians 3:1-13, 5:1, Romans 3:23ff', Ephesians 2:1-10).
 
 

*57
Therapy

See for conceptual backgrounds Carl Jung's Psychological Types, Psychology of the Unconscious,  Modern Man In Search of a Soul,  Contributions to Analytical Psychology.

*58 Reported

The report was given a sizeable coverage in a magazine.  While it has not been seen confirmed ( or otherwise ) subsequently, the relevant point is the impact such a report made on this reader, in view of the metaphysical situation previously noted in Jung, and referred to above.
 
 

*59 Conceived
For more detail in these regards, see my English Methods, Prolegomena and Book
Assessment ( I977) assignment.
 

*60 Ascension
See : Mark I6:I9 . Luke 24:51   John 20:I7.  Acts 1:11, 3:2I : and
correlatively Luke 1:34-38,  Philippians 2:6-11, Romans 8:3.