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Zusatztext 42034249 Informationen zum Autor Eric Metaxas is a senior fellow and lecturer-at-large at The King’s College in New York City, where he lives with his wife and daughter. Klappentext The #1 bestselling author of Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther explores miracles in an inspiring response to the "New Atheists" Not since C. S. Lewis in 1947 has an author of Eric Metaxas's stature undertaken a major exploration of the phenomenon of miracles. In this groundbreaking work! Metaxas examines the compatibility between faith and science and provides well-documented anecdotal evidence of actual miracles. With compelling-sometimes electrifying-evidence that there is something real to be reckoned with! Metaxas offers a timely! civil! and thoughtful answer to recent books by Richard Dawkins! Christopher Hitchens! and Sam Harris. Already a New York Times bestseller! Miracles will be welcomed by both believers and skeptics-who will find their minds opening to the possibilities. INTRODUCTION Most readers will consider this volume a departure from my previous oeuvre, and from my recent biographies it is certainly a departure. In fact, the subjects of those books, William Wilberforce and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, do not seem to have had any experiences that could be described as miraculous, at least not in the sense of that word as it is used in this book. Their deeply inspiring lives—their extraordinary actions and accomplishments—were manifestly fueled by their passionate faith in the God of the Bible, yet we have no record of that God speaking to them or revealing himself to them in any ways that would qualify for mention in a book like this. So perhaps we should let their exemplary lives stand as evidence that one can have a world-changing and even saintly life of faith without miraculous experiences. This is a helpful counterpoint to the thinking that these experiences are the ne plus ultra of the Christian faith. On the other hand, let this book and the accounts herein stand as a helpful counterpoint to those who believe such stories impossible. In considering what form this book should take, I felt a large part of it should be miracle stories themselves, since they are perhaps the best evidence we can have for miracles. (Some readers may wish to skip directly to those stories and read the first part of this book second, a choice I would cheerfully countenance.) I decided to limit the book only to the stories of people I knew personally. This naturally limits the scope of what stories I could include, but the advantage is that I wouldn’t have to wonder about the character and credibility of the people telling these stories. It also underscores how tremendously prevalent such stories are. I did not scour the known world for these tales but only asked people I knew well enough to trust their accounts. There are many friends and acquaintances I did not ask because it became clear to me that had I asked every friend for stories like these, I would have had far too much material for this book and might never have finished it. But the wealth of the miracle stories I was able to find within a fairly close circle of friends makes one wonder how many other stories are out there among my friends, and yours. I vetted these stories and all their details as carefully as possible. It was vital to me to get as much specificity as I could, and anything that did not seem clearly to be a miracle, I simply did not include. I often asked questions to get clarification on things. Many times the person telling the story was assuming something that—unless I teased it out and made it explicit—would have felt like a hole, whether in the logic of the story or in the artistic shape of it, or both. I asked questions I thought the reader would ask and tried to answer them in the course of telling the story. I heard some stories that very likely were miracles but that m...
