In John 2, Jesus created wine--instantly--that was judged to be the finest. If our own modern judgments are of any comparison to those of ancient sommeliers (an idea I think is demonstrable from other Scripture texts, such as Is.25:6) then his wine came from grapes "that never existed [and] information is coming to us from no source at all." The wine Jesus produced at the wedding of Cana was surely "vintage" quality, but only minutes "old."
Water Christ certainly called for and may have substantively transmuted into the resulting wine; but since we aren't talking alchemy here, there's no dodging the fact that someone with an accusatory bent could find Jesus guilty of "deception" on the same grounds that God (it is said) would be so guilty for creating things with an appearance of age or "in motion" as another poster posited.
I think most miracles partake at some level of the same "problem." Natural rules: be they physical, temporal, chemical, biological, etc., are supervened and overruled, in order to bring about a revelation that demands accepting God's explanation, as much as he wills for us. Some of the miracles of the Bible are executed under a form of subjection to natural phenomena and environment; Jonah's great fish actually swam around in the salty Mediterranean. The "cloud the size of a man's hand" must have been laden with vapor lifted from the same then-present Sea, soon to deluge the parched territory of Samaria.
Yet, other miracles are intrusions from beyond this universe. Jesus created meals for 5K and 4K people, whatever it was he made of the presentation items he was shown. We creatures may not be able to create or destroy matter, but God is not bound to the reliable habits he instituted for the preservation and propagation of the cosmos.
I am not the "crusader" for YEC or a young earth I once was, though I still regard my unaltered positions on those questions as the "fittest." There are more important theological issues, even to be found in and around Gen.1&2. There are arguments I consider "worthy" against my position, the existence of which drive me to deeper thought, reflection, humility, and devotion. But any claim that undermines supernatural intervention in the universe, on the challenge that God might otherwise appear deceptive, is not worthy. These may as well cross out most if not all the miracles in the Bible, as made up stories or as events otherwise explainable on naturalistic grounds.
Water Christ certainly called for and may have substantively transmuted into the resulting wine; but since we aren't talking alchemy here, there's no dodging the fact that someone with an accusatory bent could find Jesus guilty of "deception" on the same grounds that God (it is said) would be so guilty for creating things with an appearance of age or "in motion" as another poster posited.
I think most miracles partake at some level of the same "problem." Natural rules: be they physical, temporal, chemical, biological, etc., are supervened and overruled, in order to bring about a revelation that demands accepting God's explanation, as much as he wills for us. Some of the miracles of the Bible are executed under a form of subjection to natural phenomena and environment; Jonah's great fish actually swam around in the salty Mediterranean. The "cloud the size of a man's hand" must have been laden with vapor lifted from the same then-present Sea, soon to deluge the parched territory of Samaria.
Yet, other miracles are intrusions from beyond this universe. Jesus created meals for 5K and 4K people, whatever it was he made of the presentation items he was shown. We creatures may not be able to create or destroy matter, but God is not bound to the reliable habits he instituted for the preservation and propagation of the cosmos.
I am not the "crusader" for YEC or a young earth I once was, though I still regard my unaltered positions on those questions as the "fittest." There are more important theological issues, even to be found in and around Gen.1&2. There are arguments I consider "worthy" against my position, the existence of which drive me to deeper thought, reflection, humility, and devotion. But any claim that undermines supernatural intervention in the universe, on the challenge that God might otherwise appear deceptive, is not worthy. These may as well cross out most if not all the miracles in the Bible, as made up stories or as events otherwise explainable on naturalistic grounds.