Miracles

From Summa Bergania

The most astonishing thing about miracles is that they happen.

—G.K. Chesterton

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by David Bergan - January 28, 2002

I have never witnessed a miracle. From a very young age I was taught that they exist. That bushes have burned without being consumed; that water has turned into wine; and that people have been raised from the dead. I cannot remember the days when I was taught these stories, and I cannot ever remember thinking at a time before I knew about them. Which means that these stories, then, are intimately connected to my rationality. Every mature thought of mine has been formed in their presence.

Yet, my experience has never confirmed the existence of miracles. Everything recorded by my senses from the day of my birth to the day I am typing this essay, has a natural explanation. That does not mean that everything I have seen is simple; I am still baffled and amazed at how my garage door opener works. What it does mean is that I understand that everything I have seen conforms to the predictable and dependable ways of nature. Whenever my garage door opener has working batteries, and the garage door itself has 110 volts of alternating current (and neither the gears nor semiconductors have been tampered with), I can expect the button in my car to hoist the solid door out of my way so that I can park my vehicle inside.

If I knew nothing about infrared beams, I expect that the first time I saw someone remotely open their garage door, I would think it a miracle. But the second, third, and fourth time of witnessing it would lead me to suspect that rather than a miracle, I was just seeing something natural that I do not fully understand. Many things are like the garage door opener. VCRs, computers, antibiotics, etc. They seem magical the first time, but become natural the more you use them. And we know for sure that they are natural when they quit working like they are supposed to.

Thus, I live in a time and place where it is common to experience awe-inspiring events. Also, as far as I can tell, my intellectual life has always abided in the same realm as stories about truly unique awe-inspiring, and naturally impossible events, even though I have never witnessed for myself an instance of this kind. The question is that if my experience cannot confirm the presence of miracles, then what by reason and authority keeps them possible?

Definition

Before proceeding with arguments about miracles, it is first necessary to define what they are. Classically miracles have been defined as violations of natural laws. For instance, levitation would be considered a miracle because it violates the law of gravity. However, common use of the word miracle includes a much broader scope. Outfielders make miraculous catches. Scientists make miraculous discoveries. And the birth of every baby is a miracle for its family. In these senses, the word miracle is used merely as a synonym for awe-inspiring. Indeed, outfielders have made awe-inspiring catches, but there have not been any so awesome that they violated a natural law.

Plus, another factor that makes them awe-inspiring is the climax of emotion we feel. When one baseball team has the bases loaded in the last inning of an important game with their best hitter up to bat, our emotions are deeply connected to the tension on the field. Then if the hitter pops two foul balls into home-run territory, and the third is sailing to the fenceline, any person that merely understands the rules of baseball gets wrapped up in the emotion of the moment. It is this peak of emotion that loosens our language about the event, and causes us to sling about religious terminology on something that was nothing more than a well-timed jump.

But the causal relationship runs both ways. Built-up emotions lead us to grant miraculous status to otherwise mundane events, but we can also see how witnessing an actual miracle would lead to built-up emotions. If I saw a man walking on the water toward my boat, it is unlikely that I would simply shrug my shoulders and continue rowing. Emotion and miracle are so intertwined that we can easily mistake one for the other.

That is why it is important to stick to a reliable bright-line^[1] definition of the miraculous, even if it means that we have to suck out the language that makes the event meaningful. All events that are meaningful are necessarily tied to our emotions, but the definition I am looking to rely on is one that circumnavigates the messy language of emotion which means it also misses the parts that make it mean something.

Richard Swinburne suggests that the classical definition of miracle is fuzzier than it looks.

Natural laws may be universal or statistical in form. Universal laws are of the form 'so-and-sos always do (or are) such-and-such'; statistical laws are of the form 'n% so-and-sos do (or are) such-and-such'. Universal laws state what must happen, statistical laws state what must probably happen, in a particular case...

From the eighteenth to the beginning of the twentieth century most men believed that all natural laws were universal. Yet since the development of Quantum Theory in this century many scientists have come to hold that the fundamental natural laws are statistical...

If the laws are statistical, an event whose occurrence is rendered highly improbable by them would seem to be an event 'of extraordinary kind'... However, there are events of an extraordinary kind which occur in perfect accordance with natural laws, which many might want to consider as candidates for being miracles.^[2]

An example would be if we watched a book fly off of the shelf in a library. It is possible (although highly improbable) that all of the vibrating atoms in the book could vibrate toward the aisle in a rare instance of large-scale Brownian motion and leap right onto the floor. We do not normally wear hard-hats when we go to the library, but natural laws do not rule out the possibility that a book could hit someone in the head.

The trouble with this reasoning is that soon nothing will be a miracle. It could be argued that it is statistically possible for the water molecules of the Red Sea to part the width of a mile for a short length of time. Worms could spit the right juices into a dead corpse to bring him back to life. Surface tension in little spots on the Sea of Galilee could be unusually strong for a few moments such that Jesus could walk out to the disciples. This reasoning does precisely the opposite of what scientific laws are meant to do. Scientific laws are meant to describe how nature conforms to certain principles, but this reasoning is arguing that nature does not conform to any such principles. Exceptions are no less reliable than the rule.

Just as the theory of evolution has not been observed to produce a new genus (and its claims to producing a new species are controversial), Brownian motion has not been observed to move any objects of significant mass. From a practical standpoint, we simply cannot figure the immensely improbable exceptions into our daily life. Moreover, it must be noted that the occurrence of these extraordinary events happens to people of faith. The sheer statistics for being raised from the dead are ultra-extraordinary on their own, but on top of those statistics we must add that it happened to the single sane person in the history of the Earth that claimed it was going to happen to him. If Jesus was raised from the dead, it must have been a miracle.

Possibility

A philosophy that accepts the possibility of miracles must accept two things: 1) That something exists outside of nature. 2) That something exists outside of nature that can have a direct causal influence on a part of nature.

Those who believe that nature is the totality of everything that exists are called materialists. Everything interlocks in a causal natural fashion. The cardinal difficulty that CS Lewis points out with this view is that nature has no claim on truth. Materialists may argue that all of our thoughts are the side-effect of natural processes, but that does not grant the true thoughts any priority over the false ones. Thus, he reasons, it is necessary to believe that there is something outside of nature where we can measure our thoughts to truth and falsity.^[3] This measuring stick of truth that neither sleeps nor slumbers, nor swings toward or away from popular opinions, Lewis reasons, can only be a transcendent and supernatural God.

But even if we believe in a transcendent and supernatural God, that does not guarantee that He is capable of having a causal relation in nature. Lewis continues his argument by stating that once we acknowledge that God and Nature exist, then there are three possibilities for their relationship:

a) Nature created God (God is a thing that emerged from natural minds), where Nature is self-existent and God's existence depends on Nature.

b) Nature and God are both self-existent and entirely independent (the dualistic philosophy).

c) God created Nature, where God is self-existent and Nature's existence depends on God.

Position (a), Lewis reasons, is absurd. Whenever something natural affects our brain we lose rationality rather than gain it. Toothaches distract us from doing math problems. Anger causes us to attack when it is not wise. But when rational thought governs our minds, it improves the Nature around us. Look at our walls, our shoes, and our own clipped fingernails. Nature seems to rebel against reason, where reason seems to try to enhance Nature. Thus it is ridiculous to imagine that Nature actually produced the thing it is constantly attacking.

Position (b) is better than (a), but still probably not true. Lewis asks just how likely it is that there are two eternal self-existent things that are completely independent and unaware of each other's existence. In order to do so, they would have to exist in a complete 'otherness' from each other. They cannot be in two sides of the same universe, because then they would still have the universe in common. More importantly, it would seem like they should not be able to co-exist in our minds at the same time - yet the more we think about them the harder it is to picture them completely separated. And even if we could train ourselves to never think about God and Nature at the same time, we still have to wonder why it is that our brains have some unique access to be able to comprehend two immense self-existent beings that cannot comprehend each other. If dualism really is true, then if our brain is natural, it can only comprehend Nature, or else it is spiritual and can only comprehend God (and other spiritual entities).

This leaves us with position (c), God created Nature. This position does not seem to have any logical flaws and it also conforms to our common experience of reason and Nature; where reason acts to benefit and sustain Nature, while Nature attacks and distracts reason from doing its job. Reason is the sovereign governing over the rebellious Nature. Furthermore, Lewis adds, hardly anyone who believes in God has trouble believing in Him as a creator, although he admits that his argument for creation cannot be proved as rigorously as his proof for God's existence.

If the argument so far is persuasive, that God exists and Nature is His creation, then it follows that miracles are (at least) possible. They may not be frequent, or God may choose not to perform them at all, but if Nature is His creation (and dependent on Him for existence either initially and/or continually) then He must have the capability to alter it.

The necessary assumption in order to continue.

Arguments from natural theology can only go this far. We cannot prove that any one of the many religions and denominations is true from metaphysical arguments alone (except that we can rule out the religions that contradict these metaphysical principles… if any exist). Therefore with the groundwork established which makes Christianity feasible, the only way to progress (from my point of view) is to assume its truth and explore the objections.

Hume

The most popular challenge to Christian miracles was an argument by David Hume in Section X of An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding. In this section Hume explains that "experience is our only guide in reasoning concerning matters of fact," and that "a wise man proportions his belief to the evidence." He continues:

All probability, then, supposes an opposition of experiments and observations where the one side is found to overbalance the other and to produce a degree of evidence to the superiority. A hundred instances or experiments on one side, and fifty on another, afford a doubtful expectation of any event, though a hundred uniform experiments, with only one that is contradictory, reasonably beget a pretty strong degree of assurance...

A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.^[4]

Hume is saying that the facts we learn about nature are gathered by our senses. Our minds then organize this data into natural laws when there seems to be significant data in favor of the law - when the probability suggests it. If we drop tennis balls out the window 100 times and every one of them falls to the ground, then that gives us 100% probability in favor of the law of gravity. The fact we have established is that a tennis ball will fall to the ground when dropped from a window.

If, after establishing this fact, we drop a tennis ball that floats for 10 seconds before falling to the ground, Hume says that we should find an alternative explanation for this one tennis ball or else disregard the observation entirely. All of the past experiments confirm the fact that dropped tennis balls fall to the ground, so any explanation that does not contradict this fact is infinitely more plausible than accepting one observation that breaks the rule. Hysteria, optical illusions, hallucinations, and eye disorders are all better explanations than believing that the tennis ball actually hovered, because to believe that it did hover stands in opposition with all other observations of dropped tennis balls.

Notice how careful analysis of Hume's argument shows that Hume is not actually arguing that miracles do not (or cannot) occur. Instead he is stating that if a miracle ever was to occur, we should not believe it because it is denied by all of our other experience.

This argument has two problems. First, contrary to Hume's claim, we do not use this sort of reasoning for everything else. Say that there was a saint who lived his life entirely sinless, until last week when one day he stabbed an innocent child to death in middle of a shopping center. According to Hume's reasoning, the majority of our past experience should brush this one instance of murder off of his record. He should not stand trial, because it would be easier to find some other explanation than one that directly contradicts the fact that this man is sinless. When he does come to trial, his lawyer will certainly bring a string of character witnesses to testify to his goodness, but they will not dispute the facts around the situation of the actual murder.

Moreover, let's take Hume's reasoning to the poker table. I have never witnessed a royal flush in Draw Poker. All of my experience stands against it, so I should be able to make a natural law that states that I never will see a royal flush. Then, if one day I was to draw a royal flush, it would be a miracle (since it violates my natural law) and I would have to immediately disregard that hand.

Drawing a royal flush is not a miracle (and actually it is quite common when compared to winning the Powerball lottery), but the example shows how Hume's position argues in a circle. Because we ruled out the existence of Royal Flushes a priori, when one actually occurred it was impossible to accept it. We believe such-and-such does not exist, then see such-and-such and rule it out because we believe such-and-such does not exist. Many people deny the existence of witches on these very grounds. They do not believe that witches exist, so when they are introduced to one, they refuse to believe that she is a witch because they do not believe witches exist.

The second problem is this: What if a miracle happened regularly? In Theology in a Philosophical Context,^[5] Dr. LaMoyne Pederson wondered what Hume would say if every day starting tomorrow, all humans levitated from 3:00 - 4:00 in the afternoon and no one ever died. Hume's argument against belief in miracles would work for the first day, but as the miracle became routine, the probability would eventually swing back the other way. ^[6]

Arthur Peacocke

Peacocke's position against miracles is more of a personal belief than an argument. He begins his explanation with:

[The] world now appears convincingly closed to external causal intervention of the kind that classical philosophical theism postulated, e.g. in the idea of a 'miracle' as a breaking of the laws of nature.^[7]

Here is a similar observation to what I began this paper with. From our observations, nature seems closed. But just because it seems that way now does not mean that the world has always been that way. Significant miracle stories always appear around major religious turmoil. Martyrs and miracles go hand in hand. The reason we may not be observing miracles today could be because there is not massive religious turmoil. There certainly are not many Christian martyrs in the Western world, so it does not surprise me that there are not many Christian miracles. But again, Peacocke does not make an argument compelling us to believe that nature is causally closed to divine intervention; he just observes that it seems this way.

After a brief remark about how he assents to the aforementioned argument by Hume, Peacocke continues:

I have already argued that the scientist who is a theist infers the existence of a Creator God as the best explanation of the existence of the world and of its inbuilt rationality. For such a theist it is incoherent ever to accept the presupposition that God intervenes in the created processes of the world, in the divinely created fabric of existence, of which human beings are an integral and emergent part. A God who intervenes could only be regarded, by all who adopt a scientific perspective on the world, as being a kind of semi-magical arbitrary Great Fixer or occasional Meddler in the divinely created, natural and historical networks of causes and effects.^[8]

Again, I must note my frustration with Professor Peacocke, because he does not provide an argument. Instead of giving us a reason to believe that it would be contrary to God's being to intervene in nature, he just scoffs at the idea and resorts to a sophisticated form of name-calling ('semi-magical,' 'Great Fixer,' 'occasional Meddler'). It is perfectly coherent to believe in a meddling creator if we believe that humans have real free will. With free will and a propensity to sin, humans make a big mess. And just like my dorm room, when the mess finally becomes big enough, intervention occurs to clean it up.

A third quasi-argument in this part of the book follows:

This inevitably leads, in all hypotheses concerning how God might bring about particular events, to the problem of what has (infelicitously) been called the 'ontological gap at the causal joint'. For if God in God's own Being is distinct from anything we can possibly know in the world, then God's nature is ineffable and will always be inaccessible to us so that we have only the resources of analogy to depict how God might influence events in the world...

The problem of God's interaction with the world, if not the intractable problem of evil, is illuminated by such a panentheistic understanding of God's relation to the world. The total network of regular, natural events, in this perspective, is viewed as in itself the creative and sustaining action of God.^[9]

Here Peacocke suggests that his panentheistic model is superior to the classical philosophical model because his model allows God to be 'effable and accessible,' and He's off the hook with the problem of evil. It seems like a logically possible position to maintain, but not a convincing one. The benefits do not outweigh the costs. First of all, there are other (and in my opinion, better) ways around the problem of evil which I will discuss later. Therefore, this issue does not provide a benefit for either model. And secondly, to get a God that is understandable and accessible we have to sacrifice omnipotence, timelessness, and omniscience over future events. In other words, to make God understandable and accessible, we have to make Him simple.

I honestly find atheism more attractive than this theology. But there is scarcely any difference between them anyway, because if all of God's action is natural, we might as well say that natural action is all that there is and use Ockham's razor to slice God out of the picture. To accept Peacocke's model we must reject Jesus as the Son of God (pg. 165) and reject his resurrection (as an act against nature). We trade the ultimate story of atonement and redemption, grace and forgiveness, true sacrifice and self-abandonment out of love, for a sterile and simple theology that nicely integrates science and cleanly dodges the problem of evil.

For me, this is not an enticing bargain. First of all, I suspect that the history of the world cannot be naturally pieced together as easily as dominant science maintains. But even if it could, I do not have any trouble believing that the reason God did not need to intervene until humans emerged was because beforehand there weren't creatures with real free will running around and creating a nuisance. Both models allow for creation through evolution, but the classical theistic model can still make a world if evolution is proven false as a means of explaining the existence of all living and extinct organisms.

Second, where the problem of evil is dodged by Peacocke's model, the classical theistic model allows the possibility for it to be confronted and conquered, rather than just avoided. In 'Why I Don't Believe in Miracles,' Philip Hefner cites a story from an evangelist where a gunman shot three clerks working at a hotel reception desk. The fourth ("Christian") woman stayed home from work because her mother had a vision indicating trouble. The evangelist presumptuously said the vision was a miracle from God, but Hefner had trouble accepting this because he wondered how a loving God would only save one woman when He easily could have saved all four.

My guts agree with Hefner. If it was a miracle, it does seem like a contradiction. But on further reflection I begin to wonder if Hefner, too, wasn't being presumptuous. In The Fellowship of the Rings when Frodo and Gandalf are talking about the time when Frodo's uncle, Bilbo, stumbled upon Gollum (a wretched creature whose mind had been poisoned by the evil Ring of Power for 500 years) and took his ring, Frodo shouts, "What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!" To which the wise sage Gandalf replied, "Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand... Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all the ends."^[10]

Hefner presumes that three who were shot deserved life; and I think that every Christian accounting for his or her own actions should make the same presumption. But I hesitate to hold God up to the same standard. He can see all the ends. He can determine who deserves death and who deserves life. He can determine when a healing miracle actually heals and when it just prolongs agony. Peacocke's (and seemingly Hefner's) model do not take these factors into account. They reduce all issues of pain and death into the simple notion that both of them are bad. Again, we should certainly treat one another according to this prescription - we should not seek to harm or kill anyone else. But I cannot remove from my mind the notions that some pain builds character and some deaths are deserved or merciful. Pain and death are powerful surgical tools that only should be used with the infinitely delicate touch of the Master's hand.

Peacocke's model is essentially anthropomorphic. He builds God out of the human duty to pain and death.

Bibliography

• Hefner, Philip. "Why I Don't Believe in Miracles." Newsweek May 1, 2000: v135 i18 p61.
• Hume, David. An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding. New York: The Liberal Arts Press, 1758.
• Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples). Miracles: A Preliminary Study. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1947.
• Peacocke, Arthur. Paths from Science Towards God. Oxford: Oneworld, 2001.
• Swinburne, Richard. The concept of miracle. New York: St Martin's Press, 1970.
• Tolkien, J. R. R. The Lord of the Rings (One-Volume Edition). New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1954.

Notes

1. ^  'Bright-line' being the opposite of a fuzzy line. A definition that makes it clear whether a certain event was a miracle or not.
2. ^ The Concept of Miracle by Richard Swinburne. pg. 2-3
3. ^ For the complete argument read chapters 3 and 4 of Miracles.
4. ^  An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume, Section X, pg. 118, 122
5. ^  Fall 2000, Augustana College
6. ^  This depends on how the probability is figured. If Hume is expecting us to take just our own experiences, it would take one day more than the number of days we had lived prior to the beginning of this phenomenon. But if he calculated the probability based on hours, since 23/24 of our day would confirm the natural law and only 1/24 of the day would contradict it, the levitating act would always be a miracle.
7. ^ Paths from Science Towards God by Arthur Peacocke, pg. 56
8. ^ Ibid. pg. 56-57
9. ^ Ibid. pg. 57-58
10. ^ The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, pg. 56