The Work
Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts was published in two volumes by Baker Academic in 2011. At approximately 1,172 pages, it is one of the largest single-author works of New Testament scholarship published in the twenty-first century. Volume 1 (Chapters 1-14) addresses the philosophical and historical questions about miracles in principle; Volume 2 (Chapters 15-16 and appendices) presents Keener's empirical case from modern and contemporary accounts of miraculous events, particularly from the global South. The work is extensively documented with over 3,000 footnotes drawing on medical journals, missionary reports, anthropological studies, and personal testimonies from every continent.
The book was awarded the Biblical Studies Book of the Year by Christianity Today in 2012. It was widely reviewed in both academic and popular theological publications and was recognized as the most comprehensive scholarly treatment of miracles since C.S. Lewis's Miracles (1947).
Biblical Engagement
Acts 2:43 - 'And fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles' - is one of the New Testament texts that Keener places at the center of his argument. He argues that Luke's account of apostolic miracle-working in Acts is not a legendary embellishment of historical events but a description of phenomena analogous to what is reliably attested in Christian communities today, particularly in African, Asian, and Latin American charismatic and Pentecostal contexts. If similar phenomena are well-attested in the twenty-first century, the prior probability of their occurrence in the first century is substantially increased.
John 14:12 - 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father' - is the key saying of Jesus that Keener uses to frame the New Testament's expectation of continuing miraculous activity after the resurrection. Against cessationist theology (the view that miracles ceased with the apostolic age), Keener argues that John 14:12 and similar passages (Mark 16:17-18, in its manuscript tradition; James 5:14-16 on prayer for the sick) establish an expectation of continued miraculous activity that the global charismatic movement has abundantly fulfilled.
Mark 1:40-45 - the healing of a leper - is one of the individual healing accounts that Keener examines as paradigmatic. His argument is that the Synoptic healing accounts are historically grounded in the activity of the historical Jesus, and that their character is best explained by genuine miraculous healing rather than by legend, misunderstanding, or psychosomatic effects. The specificity, the multiple attestation, and the embeddedness of the miracle accounts in the coherent narrative of Jesus's life and mission support their historicity.
John 11:43-44 - 'He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth' - is the most extreme case Keener addresses: the resurrection of the dead. Rather than treating this as obviously legendary, Keener documents numerous accounts from reliable contemporary sources (medical personnel, credentialed witnesses) of what appear to be genuine near-death reversals and, in some cases, clinically verified restorations of life after extended death. He does not claim these are identical to the Lazarus account, but argues they increase the plausibility that 'extraordinary' medical events can occur that current naturalistic accounts cannot fully explain.
Author and Context
Craig S. Keener (born 1960) is a New Testament scholar and professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary. He is the author of numerous major scholarly works, including commentaries on Matthew, John, Acts (4 volumes), Romans, and 1-2 Corinthians, and is recognized as one of the most prolific and rigorously documented New Testament commentators of his generation. His scholarship is characterized by extraordinary breadth of primary and secondary source research and by his dual commitment to mainstream academic standards and to evangelical theological conclusions.
His personal interest in miracles was intensified by his relationship with his wife Médine Moussounga Keener, whom he met while she was a refugee from the Congolese civil war. Her testimony of survival included accounts of miraculous intervention that Keener, as a scholar, felt compelled to take seriously rather than dismiss. The book is partly an act of scholarly integrity to experiences he had witnessed or heard from credible sources.
The cultural context was the global expansion of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity, which by 2011 had grown to approximately 600 million adherents worldwide - the largest and fastest-growing Christian movement in history. This movement is characterized everywhere by strong expectation of miraculous gifts of the Spirit (healing, tongues, prophecy). Academic theology had largely treated these claims with skepticism or silence; Keener's book was the first major scholarly attempt to engage them seriously.
The Philosophical Argument
The first portion of the book addresses David Hume's philosophical argument against miracles (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section 10, 1748): that no testimony for a miracle can be sufficient, since the uniform experience of humanity against miracles always outweighs the testimony of witnesses. Keener, following more recent philosophers of religion (particularly John Earman's Hume's Abject Failure, 2000), argues that Hume's argument is circular: it assumes that the 'uniform experience of humanity' includes no genuine miracles, which is precisely what is at issue. If the testimonial evidence is strong enough, Hume's prior probability argument cannot simply override it.
Keener then argues that the prior probability of miracles must be assessed in relation to one's worldview: if naturalism is assumed as a background condition, miracles are by definition impossible; but if a theistic worldview is at least defensible (as Keener argues it is), then the prior probability of divine action in the world - including healing and other miraculous events - is not negligible.
Empirical Documentation
The book's most distinctive contribution is its compilation of testimonial and documentary evidence for contemporary miraculous healing. Keener draws on medical journals documenting unexpected recoveries from terminal illness, anthropological studies of healing practices in non-Western Christian communities, and direct personal testimonies collected through an extensive network of contacts. He is careful about evidentiary standards: he distinguishes between strong cases (multiple witnesses, medical documentation, no natural explanation) and weaker cases, and he acknowledges the limitations of his evidence.
The range of cases covers healing of blindness, deafness, paralysis, terminal cancer, and - most dramatically - apparent reversals of clinical death. He draws particularly heavily on reports from Nigeria, Mozambique, China, and Brazil, where charismatic healing revivals have been accompanied by large numbers of testimonies of miraculous events.
Critical Reception
The book was praised by scholars who welcomed its empirical seriousness and its challenge to the automatic dismissal of miracle claims in academic biblical studies. N.T. Wright called it 'a truly remarkable and important book.' Sympathetic reviewers particularly appreciated the philosophical section's engagement with Hume.
Critical responses questioned the evidentiary standards for the contemporary testimonial material, the methodological issues in evaluating cross-cultural reports of miraculous events, and the logical gap between contemporary claims and the historicity of specific New Testament miracles. Some sociologists of religion noted that the presence of miracle testimony in a community does not distinguish between genuine supernatural events and communally constructed accounts of healing that serve important social and religious functions.
Legacy
The book established a new standard for scholarly engagement with the miracle question. It is now the essential reference for any serious academic discussion of New Testament miracles and their contemporary parallels. Its implicit theological argument - that the global charismatic movement's experience of miraculous gifts is the living fulfillment of the New Testament promise - has been influential in legitimizing charismatic claims in academic theological discourse.
Reading Alongside Scripture
Readers should study Mark 1:29-2:12 (the Galilean healing ministry of Jesus), Acts 3-4 (apostolic healing in the early church), 1 Corinthians 12 (the gifts of the Spirit), James 5:13-18 (prayer for the sick), and Hebrews 2:3-4 (signs and wonders as authentication of the gospel message).
Further Reading
- C.S. Lewis, Miracles (1947) - the philosophical predecessor, addressing the compatibility of miracles with a rational worldview. - John Earman, Hume's Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles (2000) - the philosophical study of Hume that informs Keener's argument. - Allan Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism (2004) - the best overview of the global movement whose experience Keener documents.