God Squad: An apology to my high school physics teacher

Thanks for the enthusiastic responses to my column on how to fit miracles into a faith that does not require ignorance of science ("How do we reconcile nature and miracles?," May 29).

Q: I certainly sympathize with those attempting to explain apparent biblical miracles with naturally occurring cosmic events such as you proposed for the "crossing of the Red Sea." Unfortunately, this will only get you so far until it collapses of its own weight, e.g., the description in Exodus 17 of Moses holding his arms up with support that prevented the sun from setting, thus allowing Joshua's army to prevail over the Amalekites (I think). Can you imagine the cosmic disruption of the planets that would have occurred? Even more problematic (for us Christians) are the NT [New Testament] miracles that defy logic, e.g., the raising of Lazarus from the dead after several days in the tomb, even noting that he had begun to be odoriferous (John's Gospel and only in this Gospel).

If there were so many witnesses of this rather spectacular event, where was the Hebrew chronicler of events of the time, Josephus, and how did he not find it sufficiently important to mention? I prefer to think of all these faith stories, myths (?), as just that — stories of faith that attest to the depth of conviction of the reality of God. Certainly this concept is more easily applied to the Hebrew Bible since thousands of years passed between the events and their recording in probably 500-600 BCE, relying on word-of-mouth communication of these events.

I prefer to believe some imaginative descriptions were applied in the misguided attempt to convince others of the existence of God in these events, perhaps a bit easier for the Hebrew Bible than the Gospels of the NT, but, nonetheless, a satisfactory explanation for me.

Many contemporaries today describe events that defy logic and have been carefully described in any number of books that I am not willing to discount out of hand simply because they did not happen to me, even though I am schooled in the medical sciences and most of them concern spectacular healing events. Just my thoughts, and I look forward to reading your column weekly. — O

A: I agree, dear O, that the problem of miracles is more difficult for Christianity, which is based upon the historical truth of the Gospel accounts of the miracles surrounding Jesus' ministry, death and resurrection. Judaism and Islam, the other two Abrahamic faiths, do not require followers of the faith to affirm the truth of miracles in the Bible. The affirmation at the root of faith is that God is real and is working in the world to save us from sin and ignorance. How God works must remain a mystery.

Errata (or oops!)

One anonymous reader slammed me pretty hard: "Did you never take physics in school? Your writing of the Earth  'If it stopped spinning it would explode' made a dunce of you — and has a tendency to undercut the value of anything else you write. Try a brief Google visit to 'gravity,' where you will learn that gravity is caused by mass, and not the kind Father Tom celebrated. The moon neither spins nor explodes."

Hey, now you know. I am a very good rabbi, but a very bad physicist.