The Possibility of Miracles

In one of my very first posts on this blog, I made The Historical Case for the Resurrection of Jesus.  There, I noted that unless one already believes that miracles can and do happen, one is unlikely to find the historical evidence for Jesus’s resurrection convincing, and I briefly pointed to some of the evidence that miracles do in fact happen in the modern period.  In this apologetics series, I will delve a little deeper into the issue of miracles.  I will argue that miracles are possible, that there is good evidence that miracles happen, and that there is no good reason to doubt the accuracy of reliable eyewitness testimony to miracles.

What is a Miracle?

Skeptic David Hume famously defined a miracle as “a violation of the laws of nature.”^[1]David Hume, Essays and Treatises on Various Subjects, Volume 2 (Edinburgh: George Caw, 1800), page 120.  This is a very strange and confusing definition.  As atheist John Loftus comments, “What does it mean to violate natural law?  While miracles must have a cause that lies outside natural law itself, they wouldn’t violate the principles of cause and effect–miracles would just have a supernatural cause.”^[2]John Lofuts, Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity, Revised and Expanded Edition (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2012).  If a supernatural agent acts in the natural world, this in no way violates the laws of nature.  For example, the law of gravity says that an object will fall to the ground due to the force of gravity.  But if I intervene and catch the object, it will not fall to the ground.  I have not “violated” the law of gravity; I have merely exerted an upward force that counteracts the force of gravity.  In the same way, if an object is falling and, say, an angel intervenes and catches the object, it will not fall to the ground.  The angel has not “violated” the law of gravity; it has merely exerted an upward force that counteracts the force of gravity. 

So, we will need a better definition of what a miracle is.  We can start by saying that a miracle is an act of God or another supernatural agent.  This definition, however, is inadequate.  According to classical Christian theism, God is the Creator and Sustainer of all that exists, and so there is a sense in which every event which occurs is an act of God.  Thus, Christian believers frequently thank God for good events which occur, without necessarily believing that these events are miraculous in nature.  

So, we will need to expand our definition to say that a miracle is “an act of God or another supernatural agent that intervenes in the normal course of events in the natural world.” This is a much better and clearer definition than Hume’s confused one.^[3]People sometimes loosely use the word “miracle” to refer to unlikely events or coincidences, but this use of the word “miracle” would not fall under our definition.  Strictly speaking, a … Continue reading

There is some gray area here regarding whether religious experiences qualify as miracles.  I would say that, if the person having the religious experience is completely certain there is no other reasonable explanation for what they are feeling other than a supernatural act, then it would qualify as a miracle.  However, for the purposes of this series, I will set aside the category of religious experiences, since it is unlikely that a skeptic will be convinced that another person’s religious experience was not merely psychological in nature.  

Are Miracles Possible?

Many modern people are convinced that miracles simply cannot happen.  They argue that superstitious, premodern people may have believed in miracles, but now that science has shown us the laws of nature, we know that such things simply cannot happen.  

This is a very philosophically confused argument.  Science tells us what the laws of nature are.  It tells us absolutely nothing one way or the other about whether supernatural events can happen.  Miracles simply fall outside science’s field of study.

Some argue that the methodology of science sets aside supernatural explanations, and so it would be unscientific to believe in miracles.  This makes as much sense as arguing that because the methodology of history studies the past, it would be anti-historical to believe in present or future events.  

The reason the methodology of science limits itself to naturalistic explanations is that the purpose of science is to better understand the patterns and workings of the natural world.  This naturalistic methodology of science in no way implies metaphysical naturalism, the belief that the supernatural does not exist.  It just means that, if supernatural events do occur, we cannot investigate them through scientific experiments.  This is because supernatural events are free actions of personal agents, and so cannot be subjected to repeated, controlled experiments.  If we want to examine whether miracles occur or not, we must use the methodology of examining eyewitness testimony to miracles.  This is the same methodology used by historical investigation and other academic disciplines; it is in no way unreasonable or “unscientific.”  

Premodern people may not have had as extensive an understanding of the laws of nature as we have today, but they understood very well that there are normal patterns of events in the world and that some things are simply naturally impossible.  They understood very well, for example, that iron does not float (2 Kings 6:1-6) and virgins do not get pregnant (Matt 1:18-25).  If they saw such things happen, they did not shrug their shoulders and say, “Well, sometimes these things just happen.”  Rather, they understood very well that these things were naturally impossible, and so they recognized that something supernatural had occurred.  So, it is completely false to claim that premodern people believed in miracles because they did not know the laws of nature.  

Some people argue that, even assuming God exists, God would never actually do something miraculous.  This argument relies on a deistic conception of God, in which God creates the world and sets it in motion, but never intervenes or communicates with human beings.  But how can one know that this deistic conception of God is true?  One can argue that a Supremely Perfect Being would not be the kind of being who would miraculously intervene in nature, but this is highly speculative.  Different people have very different intuitions about what exactly a Supremely Perfect Being would be like, and how does one know that one’s own intuitions are accurate?  The vast majority of monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, etc.) believe that God performs miracles, and there is nothing inherently unreasonable in believing that an omnipotent being would do so in certain circumstances.  

According to the Christian concept of God, God always intended to be in intimate relationship with His creation, to fill it with His Presence, and to eventually bring it to perfection in union with Him.  The sin of humanity has temporarily derailed God’s plans for His creation, but, Christians believe, God is at work through Jesus to bring about the fulfillment of His original plans for His creation in spite of this.  So, from the standpoint of Christian theism, it is actually the lack of the active Presence of God in the world that is “unnatural,” while the Spirit of God indwelling and transforming His creation is, in a sense, the most “natural” thing of all.  A miracle, then, from this perspective, is the furthest thing from a “violation of natural law.”

Even if one is not convinced that a miracle-working God exists, one must at least acknowledge that it is possible that such a God might exist (There is really no argument against the existence of God except for the problem of evil, and, as I argue here, that is really not a strong argument, at least against Christian theism).  And if it is possible that such a God exists, then it is possible that miracles might happen.  Everyone, then, whether they believe in God or not, should examine the evidence for miracles with an open mind.

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