Critical Responses If the New Testament record is reliable here, never had any other age of the world witnessed such a dazzling display of “wonders,” “signs,” “powers,” and “works” of God. But much effort has been expended through the centuries to explain away Jesus’ works of power, some explanations more speculative, some more rationalistic than others, but all having as their chief aim the reduction of Jesus to manageable human dimensions. Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), the Dutch rationalist philosopher,