Are miracles possible?

Signs that point

The Bible does not offer miracles as spectacle. John calls Jesus' miracles signs, things that point beyond themselves, and tells us why he wrote them down:

Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.

John 20:30-31

At Pentecost Peter called Jesus "a man certified by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs" (Acts 2:22), and Jesus himself set his works forward as witnesses:

If I am not doing the works of My Father, then do not believe Me. But if I am doing them, even though you do not believe Me, believe the works themselves, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in Me, and I am in the Father.

John 10:37-38

Athanasius, quoting these words, reasons that as the invisible God is known through the works of creation, so "it may be known from His works that He Who can do these is not man, but the Power and Word of God" Athanasius, On the Incarnation 18. Why Jesus did his miracles is the subject of Why did Jesus perform miracles?

Behind this lies the Bible's view of nature. In Christ "all things hold together" (Colossians 1:17). The sunrise is already God's faithful upholding; a miracle is the same God acting in an unusual way for a purpose. So the laws of nature describe what happens when nothing intervenes; they do not decree that nothing can. Nor does Scripture ask us to believe every wonder. A sign that comes true is still to be refused if it leads after other gods (Deuteronomy 13:1-3), and false Christs will "perform great signs and wonders to deceive even the elect, if that were possible" (Matthew 24:24).

Hume's argument and the replies

The most famous argument against believing in miracles was made in 1748 by the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Heard at its full strength, it runs like this. "A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence." The laws of nature are established by firm and unalterable experience: "There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation." Hence his maxim: "no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish" Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding 10. He then turns to the facts as he saw them: no miracle has been attested by enough witnesses of good sense and integrity to rule out delusion; people love the marvellous; such stories abound, he said, among the unlearned; and the miracles of rival religions cancel one another out. Hume did not set out to show that a miracle cannot happen, but that testimony can never be strong enough to make one credible.

There is a true warning here. People misperceive, exaggerate and are deceived. Christians too must not believe every story of a wonder, but "test all things. Hold fast to what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21).

The first reply is that the argument answers the question in advance. C. S. Lewis pointed out in Miracles that we can know the experience against miracles to be uniform only if we already know that every report of one is false, and that is to know already that miracles have never happened. If God exists, miracles are possible; only if naturalism is true, the view that nature is all there is, are they ruled out from the start.

Second, Lewis questioned naturalism itself. If all our thinking is only the outcome of causes that are not reasons, then the thinking that arrived at naturalism has no claim on our trust either. Naturalists reply that evolution has shaped a reason we can rely on, a debate taken up in Science and faith. Lewis also held that a miracle does not break the laws of nature but brings a new event into nature from outside it; once it has happened, nature takes it up and carries on in her usual way C. S. Lewis, Miracles.

Third, probability and testimony. How likely an event is depends on what else we already believe. If there is no God, a dead man rising is all but impossible; if there is a God who made the world and means to save it, his Son's rising is not like just anything happening. Some philosophers point out, too, that the chance of several independent and honest witnesses all being wrong in the same way can become very small. History is full of events that never repeat, and we know them by testimony.

The five roads use these replies differently. Classical apologists first show that God exists, which opens room for miracles; presuppositional apologists question naturalism as a starting point; evidential apologists ask us to weigh not miracles in general but one event, the resurrection (The historical Jesus and the resurrection). Reformed epistemologists hold that belief in God can be rational without arguments, and a cumulative case sets the testimony to miracles among other clues. The same question is taken up in Are miracles possible?

Miracles after the apostles

Whether miracles continue after the apostles' time is a question on which Christians differ. In Counterfeit Miracles (1918) B. B. Warfield argued that the miraculous gifts were the credentials of the apostles and ceased with the apostolic age Warfield, Counterfeit Miracles. Those who hold this view point to Paul calling signs and wonders "the marks of a true apostle" (2 Corinthians 12:12), and to Hebrews, where God affirmed the first witnesses "through signs, wonders, various miracles" (Hebrews 2:4). Many Reformed Christians and some others hold it, and still believe that God hears prayer and can heal today. Pentecostal and charismatic Christians, and many in other churches, the Reformed among them, read that the Spirit gives gifts of healing and the working of miracles "as He determines" (1 Corinthians 12:9-11), and expect such gifts today, testing them by Scripture. Both pray for the sick (James 5:14; see What the Holy Spirit does in the New Believers course).

In conversation

If a friend says that science has shown miracles to be impossible, you can invite them to consider with you whether that is a conclusion drawn from evidence or a starting point brought to it. Science tells us how nature usually behaves; whether nature is all there is, no experiment can settle. Take Hume's warning to heart as well: do not pass on stories of wonders lightly, and keep the conversation centred on the resurrection. In the end a miracle points to the one who did it. The next lesson, The problem of evil and suffering, takes up the most painful objection of all.

Practice