So…Alban was a martyr who was killed at the onset of the fourth century. Accompanying Alban’s execution were a number of miracles that were recorded and that, frankly, were so hard to believe that many later Christian historians doubted them and even redacted them from accounts of Alban’s life and martyrdom. I think they are worth giving a moment’s consideration nonetheless, and Butler reports them as straight fact.

First, a judge ordered that Alban be scourged publicly. When Alban took those thrashings with great sangfroid, the judge became so enraged that he ordered Alban to be beheaded, also publicly. So far, this is very much the pattern of many martyr stories. Next, the entire town thronged to watch Alban’s execution, but the only pathway to the hill on which Alban was to be executed included a small bridge over a raging river. But it ended up taking so long for everyone to cross this bridge that Alban, wanting to get this all over with, said a special prayer and the river stopped flowing and parted (à la Moses and the Red Sea) so that he and a thousand or so could walk across the dry riverbed and up the hill.

This miracle was quite enough to lead the executioner to throw down his sword convert to Christianity on the spot–even offering to die in Alban’s place. So this, of course, led to a delay in the proceedings until another executioner could be located. With all these people standing around on a hot day, waiting for a substitute swordsman, they became thirsty. So Alban again prayed and up from the ground flowed a spring that quenched everyone’s thirst.

Executioner Number 2 finally arrived. Alban presented himself to be beheaded, and down came the sword. At the exact time that Alban’s head fell to the ground, so did both of this executioner’s eyes. Yup, the eyes popped right out and landed next to the head! Add a thousand converts from that crowd who then took the Gospel into Wales, and you have the Alban Legacy.

Yet, as mentioned above, these miracles (well, if you can call what happened to the second executioner’s eyeballs “miraculous”) became a source of embarrassment rather than pride for the Church, once the Age of Enlightenment took hold. How far can you bend human reason without breaking it? Consider Alban’s story set alongside that of Ambrose (discussed on my June 19th blog post) and Ambrose’s dream by which he was told to dig at a certain spot and find remains of two previously unknown martyrs there. This comparison foregrounds the question facing Christianity of wanting to be a powerful and miraculous religion, but not so much so that it comes across as ridiculous. A dream? Yes, absolutely. Eyeballs popping out? Maybe not so much.

Christianity has had to face how many times it can go to the well of proclaiming the seemingly impossible before people lose all belief in the authenticity of the Church’s claims. Can you accept someone’s being really dead and two days later popping up alive and then forty days later floating up into the sky? OK, but can you accept that this person was born to a woman who conceived him without having had sex? Yes, but can you then accept that this mother was herself born without sin when everyone before her since Adam and Eve had been born with the taint of sin?

But what about the angel Gabriel that appeared to Mary to announce her Divine pregnancy also appearing to Mohammed, some six hundred years later? Uh-oh. Umm… Was there never was any angel? Or should one believe only Mary’s assertion about her pregnancy was unrelated to sex, but not that Mohammed was given a message to proclaim? Really?!

This whole miracle stuff is troublesome. Did the executioner’s eyes plop out of their sockets? If they did, then what are we to draw from this event? That bad things happen to bad people who do bad things to good people? If only!!! Also, if God cared enough to pop out the bad executioner’s eyes, why not save the good, would-be executioner-turned-convert who, like Alban, was instead beheaded that day? Or is executioner #1’s martyrdom its own reward?!

These questions become just so many puppy dogs chasing their tails until we approach the issue of what purpose miracles serve for a religion. They purport to be an outward, physical manifestation of a power greater than human capacities, transcending human expectations and experiences. They require that humans who were not present for the reported events suspend disbelief as …. a gateway to insight? a prerequisite to belonging to the club? an opportunity to let go of rigidity? a form of intellectual suicide making such miracle-believers subsequently easier to manipulate?

Thoughts?