Routlidge Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Miracles

Does God at times miraculously intervene in earthly affairs? That is, do some events occur because God has entered our space-time continuum and directly modified or circumvented the relevant natural laws? Few philosophers today deny that this is possible. But many question whether we could ever justifiably maintain that such intervention has taken place.

According to some philosophers, it is not even necessary to grant that the types of events believers label miracles – for instance, healings or resurrections – actually occur as reported. Since the evidence supporting the occurrence of such events is the personal testimony of a few, possibly biased, individuals, while the basis for doubt is the massive amount of objective research upon which the relevant laws are based, it is always justifiable, according to this view, to conclude that such reports are erroneous. Others contend, however, that the presence of some forms of evidence – for instance, independent confirmation from reputable sources – could make it most reasonable in some cases to acknowledge that even the most unexpected of events had actually occurred.

Some philosophers also deny that we could ever justifiably conclude that an event could not have been produced by natural causes alone. Since we will never be in a position to identify all that nature can produce, they declare, it will always be most reasonable for the scientist facing a currently unexplainable counterinstance to a natural law to continue to look for a natural explanation. Many believers, however, are quite willing to grant that nature could in principle produce any event, since what they wish to maintain is only that nature does not do so in the case of miraculous interventions.

Finally, while many philosophers acknowledge that belief in direct divine intervention may at times be justifiable for those who already believe that God exists, some also argue that no single event or series of events could ever compel all thoughtful individuals to acknowledge the existence of a perfectly good supernatural causal agent, given all we experience – for instance, the tremendous amount of horrific evil in our world. Many believers, though, are also willing to grant this point.

Definition

The term ‘miracle’ is sometimes used in ordinary discussions to refer to the occurrence of any unexpected event – from the sudden

discovery of a lost possession to the unanticipated passing of an exam. Within philosophical circles, however, ‘miracle’ is almost always discussed in its more restricted sense: as a designation for an unusual event that is the result of direct divine circumvention or modification of the natural order.

Philosophers, as well as religious believers, differ on the exact nature of the conceptual relationship between miraculous divine interventions and the natural order. For those who understand miracles to be violations of natural laws, a miracle is not simply an event that nature did not alone produce. It is an event that nature could not have produced on its own – an event that will always be incompatible with the relevant natural laws (see Laws, natural). For example, as proponents of the violation model understand it, to maintain that someone has miraculously been healed, it is not sufficient to maintain simply that God was directly involved. It is also necessary to maintain that the state of affairs in question could not have occurred naturally (that no totally natural explanation could be forthcoming).

Other philosophers, and many believers, however, deny that a miraculous divine intervention must be defined as an event for which no plausible natural explanation is, or could be, available. It is sufficient, they believe, to maintain that God was directly involved. For example, to maintain that someone’s cancer has miraculously entered remission, it is not necessary to hold that nature alone could not have brought it about (to maintain that it could not have happened naturally). It is sufficient to maintain that nature alone did not do so in this case.

The possibility of miracles

Some philosophers (for example, McKinnon 1967) have claimed that the concept of a miracle, if defined as a violation of a natural law, is incoherent. Natural laws, they point out, are really only generalized descriptions of what does in fact happen. That is, these laws summarize for us the actual course of events. Accordingly, to claim that an occurrence is a violation of a natural law is to claim that the event in question is a suspension of the actual course of events and this is, of course, impossible. Events may well occur, they acknowledge, that seem at present to be incompatible with how we believe things normally happen. But a true counterinstance to what we now believe to be a natural law only shows the law to be inadequate. Since natural laws, by definition, only summarize what actually occurs, we must always be willing in principle to expand our laws to accommodate any occurrence, no matter how unusual. We can never have both the exception and the rule.

Others, however, take this line of reasoning to be based on a confusion. To maintain that a natural law accurately describes the natural order, they point out, is to say only that it correctly identifies that which will occur under a specific set of natural conditions. But to maintain that an event is a miraculous counterinstance to a natural law is not to maintain that some event has occurred under the exact set of natural conditions covered by this law and nothing more. To say that water has miraculously turned into wine, for example, is not to say that water has turned into wine only under the exact set of natural conditions under which the relevant laws tell us this will not occur. It is to maintain that an additional non-natural causal factor, namely direct divine activity, was also present in this case. Accordingly, these philosophers contend, unless it is assumed that supernatural activity is impossible, it cannot be assumed that a miraculous counterinstance to a natural law – a counterinstance produced in part by divine circumvention or modification of the natural order – is conceptually impossible. That is, unless it is assumed that supernatural intervention is impossible, we can have both the exception and the rule.

Of course, many individuals do in fact deny the existence of any type of supernatural being. And even some who affirm the existence of such a being – for example, process theists (see Process theism) – deny that this being can unilaterally intervene in earthly affairs in the sense necessary to produce miraculous events. However, few philosophers today maintain that the existence of a supernatural being, or the ability of such a being (if it exists) to intervene, can be demonstrated to be impossible. That is, while most philosophers agree that the existence of a supernatural being who intervenes in earthly affairs can justifiably be denied, most also agree that it is possible to maintain justifiably that such a being does exist. Consequently, few deny that miracles, even if defined as violations of natural laws, could occur. Since the time of David Hume (§2), however, philosophers have continued to debate vigorously a number of questions related to our ability to identify miraculous events.

The credibility of personal testimony

One such question is whether we need even acknowledge that alleged counterinstances to well-confirmed natural laws actually occur. Most philosophers agree that reports of repeatable counterinstances – counterinstances that can in principle be produced by anyone under a specified set of natural conditions – cannot justifiably be dismissed. But there are a number of philosophers (most notably Flew 1961) who believe that if the events in question are nonrepeatable – if they cannot be reproduced under specifiable natural conditions – the

situation is quite different. It is clearly possible, they acknowledge, that nonrepeatable counterinstances to well-confirmed natural laws have occurred (or will occur). They acknowledge, for instance, that nonrepeatable counterinstances to our current laws describing the properties of water or human tissue may have occurred (or might occur). However, the evidence supporting the adequacy of laws of this type, they point out, is very strong. These laws not only can be, but are, tested and reconfirmed daily by people with no vested interest in the outcome.

On the other hand, they are quick to add, reports of presently nonrepeatable counterinstances to such laws – a claim, for instance, that water has turned into wine or that someone has been raised from the dead – will be supported at best only by the personal testimony of a few people who may well have a vested interest in the outcome. Consequently, as long as alleged counterinstances remain nonrepeatable, we can never possess better reasons for believing that the events in question have actually occurred as reported than for believing that they have not. And therefore, following the Humean maxim that the wise person proportions belief to the evidence, these philosophers conclude that it is always justifiable to deny the accuracy of such reports.

However, there are those (for instance, Swinburne 1967) who believe that this conclusion is much too strong. They acknowledge that reports of seemingly nonrepeatable counterinstances to well-established laws must be approached with appropriate scepticism, since deception or misperception is always possible. But from their perspective it is unreasonable to assume that the evidence supporting even the most highly confirmed laws would always furnish a sufficient basis for dismissing reports of counterinstances to them.

First and foremost, they argue that to make this assumption fails to take into account the prima facie reliability of our visual belief-forming faculties. We all rely on these faculties daily and, in general, they serve us quite well. In fact, the general reliability of such faculties must be presupposed by those formulating our natural laws. Thus, in cases where we had no reason to doubt the reliability of these belief-forming faculties – for instance, if we were to observe a seeming counterinstance ourselves or if it were directly observed by a friend whose character and objectivity were beyond question – it is not clear, they maintain, that it would always be justifiable to decide in favour of the natural laws in question, even if they were very well established.

Moreover, these philosophers add, we might in some cases have compelling physical traces to consider. In the case of an alleged

healing that runs counter to well-established laws, for instance, we might have more than personal testimony. We might have objective data – photographs or videotapes or X-rays or medical records – that would stand as strong evidence for the occurrence of the event in question, evidence so convincing that it would be unreasonable to reject it. Thus they conclude that decisions concerning the accuracy of reports of alleged counterinstances – even if the events in question are nonrepeatable – must be made on a case-by-case basis.

Miracles as events unexplainable by natural causes

Even if some occurrences can justifiably be labelled counterinstances to our current laws, could we ever be in a position to maintain justifiably that any such event is permanently unexplainable scientifically? That is, could we ever be in a position to maintain that an acknowledged counterinstance is a state of affairs that nature could never produce on its own?

In addressing this question, it is important to clarify a potential ambiguity that has been glossed over so far in this entry. By definition, no specific state of affairs produced even in part by direct supernatural activity (by direct circumvention or modification of the natural cause/effect patterns) could ever be given a totally natural explanation. Accordingly, if we were ever in a position to maintain justifiably that some event was actually a direct act of God, we would automatically be in a position to maintain justifiably that this specific occurrence was, itself, permanently unexplainable scientifically.

As currently understood by most philosophers, however, the primary purpose of natural science is not to determine what nature has in fact produced. The main objective of science, rather, is to determine what nature is capable of producing – what can occur under solely natural conditions. For instance, the primary purpose of natural science is not to determine whether natural factors alone actually did cause any specific person’s cancer to enter remission. The primary purpose of science is to determine whether natural factors alone could have done so.

Hence, when philosophers ask whether we could ever be in a position to maintain justifiably that an event is permanently unexplainable scientifically, they are not asking whether we could ever be in a position to maintain justifiably that a specific state of affairs was not produced by nature alone. They are asking, rather, whether we could ever be in a position to maintain justifiably that a specific event could not have been produced by nature alone.

In considering this question, it should first be noted that no philosopher believes that we as human beings are in a position to state with absolute certainty what nature could or could not produce on its own. All acknowledge that the scientific enterprise is continually discovering new, often startling and unexpected, information about the causal relationships that obtain in our universe. And all freely admit that the annals of science record numerous instances in which supposed counterinstances to natural laws were later demonstrated to be consistent with such laws or revisions of them.

However, as some philosophers (such as Swinburne 1967 and Holland 1965) see it, some of our natural laws are so highly confirmed that any modification we might suggest to accommodate counterinstances would be clumsy and so ad hoc that it would upset the whole structure of science. For example, from their perspective, to attempt to modify our current laws relating to the properties of water to allow for the possibility that water could turn into wine naturally, or to attempt to modify our current laws relating to the properties of nonliving human tissue to allow for the possibility that a dead body could be resuscitated naturally, would make these laws of little practical value. Consequently, if we were in a position to maintain justifiably that a counterinstance to a law of this type had actually occurred, we would be required, for the sake of the scientific enterprise, to maintain that this event was permanently unexplainable by natural causes – that this event could never have been produced by nature on its own.

Critics (for instance, Basinger and Basinger 1986) consider this line of reasoning to contain a false dilemma. If faced with an acknowledged counterinstance to a natural law, even one that was very highly confirmed, we would not, they contend, be required at that moment either to modify the law to accommodate the occurrence or to affirm the adequacy of the law and declare the event permanently unexplainable by natural causes. Rather, since only naturally repeatable counterinstances falsify natural laws, the appropriate initial response to the occurrence of any seeming counterinstance to any law, no matter how highly confirmed, would be to acknowledge both the law and the counterinstance while further research was undertaken.

Moreover, these critics argue that such research could never make it most reasonable to conclude that something beyond the ability of nature to produce had actually occurred. If it were discovered that the seeming counterinstance was naturally repeatable – if it were found that the event in question could be produced with regularity under some set of purely natural conditions – a revision of the relevant laws would indeed be necessary. But then this event would no longer be

naturally unexplainable. On the other hand, if natural repeatability could not be achieved, the appropriate response, they contend, would still not be to maintain that this occurrence was permanently unexplainable. Since nonrepeatable counterinstances do not present us with competing hypotheses to the relevant law(s), the appropriate response, rather, would be to label the counterinstance an anomaly while continuing to accept the functional adequacy of the law(s) in question.

Even if this line of reasoning is correct, however, nothing of significance follows for those who maintain only that a miracle is an event that would not have occurred at the exact time and in the exact manner it did if God had not somehow directly circumvented or modified the natural order in the specific case in question. Only those who believe that a miracle must be a violation of a natural law – who believe that a miracle must be an event that nature could not have produced – are affected.

Miracles as acts of God

Regardless of the perceived relationship between miracles and nature, however, questions concerning our ability (or inability) to identify events as direct acts of God remain important. For many philosophers, the most significant question of this sort continues to be whether there are imaginable conditions under which all rational individuals would be forced to acknowledge that God has directly intervened. And although most philosophers believe the answer to be no, some (for example, Larmer 1988) believe an affirmative response is required. They acknowledge that with respect to many states of affairs which believers do in fact maintain have been brought about by God – for example, many alleged cases of divine healings – it is possible for a rational person to grant that the event has occurred as reported and yet justifiably deny that it was the result of direct divine intervention. But let us assume that someone who has been dead for twenty-four hours is raised from the dead when divine intervention is requested. Or let us assume that the missing fingers of a leper instantaneously reappear following a prayer for healing. In such cases, they argue, there would be very strong evidence supporting supernatural causation and no evidence supporting purely natural causation. In fact, the evidence would be so strong that to continue to hold out indefinitely for a totally natural explanation in such contexts would be unjustified in that this would simply demonstrate an unreasonable a priori naturalistic bias.

In response, critics (for example, Basinger and Basinger 1986) do not deny that there might be conceivable cases which, if considered in

isolation, would appear to make divine intervention a very plausible causal hypothesis. However, to acknowledge that God exists and has beneficially intervened in some specific case(s), they point out, is also to acknowledge that God’s existence is compatible with all we experience – for example, that it is compatible with the tremendous amount of horrific human pain and suffering that appears to fall disproportionately on the innocent and disadvantaged. And even if it is possible to claim justifiably that God’s existence is compatible with all we experience, it cannot be argued successfully that everyone must agree. Disbelief in God also remains a justifiable response (see Evil, problem of §6). Consequently, these critics conclude, the belief that there exists a solely natural cause for any specific occurrence always remains a justifiable option, regardless of the extent to which it may appear that divine intervention was involved.

For many philosophers, though, the crucial question is not whether there are imaginable conditions under which all rational individuals would be compelled to acknowledge divine intervention but rather whether there are conditions under which those who already believe in God would be justified in doing so. Even if it is true that the occurrence of no single event (or set of events) can justifiably compel belief in divine intervention, it is also true (so philosophers such as Wainwright 1988 and Abraham 1985 contend) that the occurrence of no event (or set of events) – for instance, no amount of evil – can rule out justified belief in God’s existence as a supernatural causal agent in our world. And given this fact, it is argued, as long as believers themselves possess good theistic reasons for assuming that God has directly intervened in a given case – for instance, because the occurrence appears clearly to fit an accepted pattern of divine action – they are justified in making this assumption.

It must be added, however, that even if this is correct, an important inverse relationship between miracles and evil remains. For instance, to respond to evil by claiming that God cannot both grant humans significant freedom and yet beneficially intervene on a consistent basis is, at the same time, to cite a reason why miracles should not be expected with frequency. And to respond to evil by claiming that ‘God’s ways are above our ways’ places the believer in a less secure position to say when and where miraculous intervention has occurred.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Aquinas (Summa Contra Gentiles, III) says “those things are properly called miracles which are done by divine agency beyond the order commonly observed in nature (praeter ordinem communiter observatum in rebus).” A miracle, philosophically speaking, is never a

mere coincidence no matter how extraordinary or significant. (If you miss a plane and the plane crashes, that is not a miracle unless God intervened in the natural course of events causing you to miss the flight.) A miracle is a supernaturally (divinely) caused event - an event (ordinarily) different from what would have occurred in the normal (“natural”) course of events. It is a divine overriding of, or interference with, the natural order. As such, it need not be extraordinary, marvelous or significant, and it must be something other than a coincidence, no matter how remarkable — unless the “coincidence” itself is caused by divine intervention (i.e., not really a coincidence at all). Miracles, however, are ordinarily understood to be not just products of divine intervention in the natural order, but extraordinary, marvelous and significant as well. Thus, Aquinas says a miracle is “beyond the order commonly observed;” and Dr. Eric Mascall says that the word “miracle” “signifies in Christian theology a striking interposition of divine power by which the operations of the ordinary course of nature are overruled, suspended, or modified” (Chamber's Encyclopaedia).

The locus classicus for modern and contemporary philosophical discussion of miracles is Chapter X (“Of Miracles”) of David Hume's Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding, first published in 1748. He says “A miracle may accurately be defined, a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent” ( Enquiries, p. 115n). His slightly different definition of a miracle as “a violation of the laws of nature” appears to be central to his argument against justified belief in miracles. “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” (Enquiries, p. 114).

Miracles and Laws of Nature

Hume's argument against justified belief in miracles, as well as much subsequent discussion, appears to depend heavily upon the premise that “a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature.” However, the actual role such a premise plays in Hume's argument, and whether Hume meant to define a miracle as a violation of a law of nature, or merely to characterise a miracle as, in some epistemologically relevant sense, “contrary” to the ordinary course of nature is controversial. It is clear, however, that on most commonsense, philosophical, or “scientific” accounts of what a law of nature is, technically speaking miracles are not violations of such laws but instead are positive instances of those laws. This is because laws of nature do not, and are not meant to, account for or describe events with supernatural causes

- but only those with natural causes. Once some event is assumed to have a supernatural cause it is, by that very fact, outside the scope of laws of nature altogether and so cannot violate them. Only if one disregards the possibility of supernatural causes can known exceptions to laws possibly be regarded as violations of laws. However, in such a case there might be better reason to suppose that the exception simply shows that what was taken to be a law is not really a law, rather than that the exception is a violation of a genuine law of nature.

If the explanation I offer of Hume's argument against justified belief in miracles is correct (see the section below “Hume's Argument Against Justified Belief In Miracles”), then the premise that “a miracle is a violation of a law of nature” plays no significant role in his argument. The premise is a gloss for the underlying supposition that one cannot have an “impression” of a supernatural event. Because no such impression can be had, any allegedly miraculous event, simply because it is allegedly miraculous, cannot ex hypothesis be judged relevantly similar to any other event in experience. And any event that cannot be judged relevantly similar to others in our collective experience, cannot justifiably be believed to have occurred in accordance with Hume's principles of a posteriori reasoning. (Nor, can one justifiably believe that such an event will occur with any degree of probability whatsoever.) Before examining Hume's argument it is worth examining in detail the view that a miracle is a violation of a law of nature — an issue that far too much has been written about.

Hume is the pre-eminent proponent of the “regularity theory of causation.” In characterizing regularity theories of causation, Tom Beauchamp (1974: 36) says,

The modern claim is that universality and not objective necessity is that which is central to the concept of cause and also that which is implicit in any use of causal terminology. The philosophical problem of causation has thus largely come to be interpreted in this regularity tradition as the problem of the proper analysis of causal laws. Regularity exponents analyze laws as true, contingent, universal generalizations which are omnispatially and omnitemporally unrestricted in scope. Purported necessary connections between the antecedent and consequent events described in the law are regarded as gratuitous.

In fact, Beauchamp's view of the “modern claim” is problematic and the problem concerning a proper analysis of causal laws has not been resolved. But let us suppose that on Hume's view the conditions Beauchamp cites are sufficient for a statement to be a law of nature. That is: A statement L is a law of nature only if (i) L is contingent, (ii) L

is general, and (iii) L is true. Given these constraints, consider the following two questions.

1. Is there a law such that there might have been an event contrary to it? 2. Can there be a law L that is violated while a law?

Given the above criteria for laws of nature, the answer to question 2 is “no.” If an event occurred that fell within the scope of the laws of nature (i.e. was covered by those laws), but conflicted with the statement of the law, then either L would not be true, or else L would not be “general” — and therefore not a law of nature. The statement that the event occurred would be logically incompatible with the statement of the law of nature. Specifically it would be incompatible with the law whose status as a “law” is undermined because its truth or generality requirements are not met. If the event occurred, and we could know that it occurred and was “natural” (i.e. within the scope of the law), then we could no longer accept L as a genuine law. If laws of nature were descriptive of the scope and substance of everything that could logically happen, instead of their scope being limited to what can happen naturally (i.e., apart from supernatural interference), then of course miracles would not be possible. But that which is “physically impossible” — impossible within the constraints of the laws of nature — has a narrower scope than that which is logically possible. Apart from an argument to the contrary one need not assume that the logically and physically impossible are coextensive. To regard an event a natural is to regard it as falling within the scope of laws of nature, and anything that is covered by laws of nature cannot, ex hypothesis, violate them. Suppose an event assumed to be natural occurred, it really was natural and one could know that it did violate some alleged law of nature — no mistake was being made. Then this would show that the law it allegedly violated was in need of revision and was therefore not a genuine law at all.

However, suppose the laws of nature are regarded as non-universal or incomplete in the sense that while they cover natural events, they do not cover, and are not intended to cover, nonnatural events such as supernaturally caused events if there are or could be any. Then there is no contradiction in supposing that a physically impossible event could occur. A physically impossible occurrence would not violate a law of nature because it would not be covered by (i.e., within the scope of) such a law. So while the answer to question 2 is “no,” this does not rule out the possibility of supernatural interference with the natural — perhaps as Robert Young (1972) suggests, as one causal condition among many necessary for an event's occurrence. What it does rule out is understanding this interference as a violation of the laws of

nature in a technical sense. But this does not undermine the possibility of a miracle since the crucial element in the notion of a miracle — a “a supernatural interference with the natural order” — is not ruled out in showing that a miracle cannot really (strictly) be a violation of a law of nature.

If a miracle is not a violation of a law of nature, then how is it to be defined in relation to laws of nature? Question 1 above suggests a solution. A miracle can be defined as an event contrary to, but not a violation of, a law of nature. If “violation” is not being used in a technical sense, then a miracle can still be described as a violation of a law of nature — where “violation” would mean something like “contrary to what could have happened had nature been the only force operative. ” An event may be contrary to a law of nature without thereby invalidating it if it is caused by nonnatural forces - or in epistemic terms, if its occurrence can only be correctly explained in terms of nonnatural forces. A positive answer to question 1 follows from the fact that laws of nature do not describe, nor are they intended to describe, the logically possible. They only describe the physically possible. There is also a sense in which the positive answer to question 1 follows from the contingency of laws of nature. But his is not the sense that interests us. Even if the laws of nature were logically necessary, there could be events contrary to those laws if it is assumed that the scope of those laws is limited.

A violation of a law of nature by natural means is what one wants, normatively, to hold as a contradiction in terms — assuming insistence on generality (i.e., nonlocal empirical terms) in the statement of the law. One does not want to hold the occurrence of an event contrary to a law of nature due to nonnatural means as a contradiction in terms — at least not on the basis of an analysis of laws of nature. To hold this position, an analysis of laws would have to be combined with an argument against the possibility of nonnaturally caused events. (This is more or less what occurs in Hume's argument. Hume's empiricism and his theory of meaning are the basis of at least an implicit argument, employed by Hume, against the possibility of the supernatural in his discussion of miracles.) To say that miracles are impossible because violations of laws of nature are impossible is to improperly assume either (1) that a miracle must involve a violation of a law; or (2) that nothing contrary to a law of nature can occur because laws of nature circumscribe the logically possible and not merely the physically possible. But apart from distinct arguments to the contrary neither assumption appears to be warranted — at least not prima facie warranted.

To say, “an event is physically impossible and a violation of laws of nature if a statement of its occurrence is logically incompatible with a statement of the laws of nature,” and then to assume that laws of nature circumscribe that which is logically, and not merely physically, impossible is to rule out the occurrence of the physically impossible on ill-conceived logical grounds. It is to deal with the possibility of miracles in the most superficial of ways by defining them out of existence using either an indefensible concept of a law of nature, or supposing a suppressed argument against the possibility of nonnatural interference.

A law of nature cannot be violated by natural forces. It can only be undermined as a genuine law. This happens if something natural occurs that the law was supposed to account but in fact could not. But neither can a law of nature be violated by a nonnatural force. Nor can it be undermined, assuming we can distinguish natural from nonnatural occurrences. A law of nature is, whatever else it may be, a true description of both the physically and logically possible occurrences within its scope, in the actual world only if it is assumed that no nonnatural forces could exist or interfere. Otherwise, a law describes only what can happen as a matter of physical possibility. Its presupposed scope is limited to what can happen given only natural forces. It allows for the possibility that the physically impossible remains logically possible, assuming the possibility of nonnatural forces capable of interaction in the actual world. Thus, nonnatural interventions are not, strictly speaking, violations of laws of nature. An intervention is, however, physically impossible, because (or so long as) that which is physically possible is defined in terms of the scope of laws of nature. An interference that is outside the scope of the laws of nature does not violate any laws of nature by doing that which is physically impossible — that is — in doing that which is not possible given only natural forces.

Regularity theorists sometimes say that causal statements entail implicit or explicit reference to causal laws (e.g. laws of nature) and are instances of those laws. This appears to be false, or at least suspect, for a variety of different types of singular causal statements, including those in which a sufficient condition of X causing Y is dependent upon some subjective (nonphysical) factor. “The joke I was told caused me to ...” would not ordinarily be thought of as referring, either explicitly or implicitly, to a law of nature, or a general causal law, unless one were a strict determinist or maintained a strong form of a “covering law model” as essential to all forms of explanation. Even if there are some psychophysical laws, it is counterintuitive to argue that the meaning of causal statements, like the one above, implies a causal generalization. (Similarly, even if there are covering-law models

that imply historical explanation is generalizable, it does not seem to be part of the meaning of historical explanation in causal form that it be generalizable.) Even supposing that the causal statement has counterfactual force (e.g. “If I had not been told the joke I would not have . . .”), one would not intuitively argue that this statement is an instance of a causal generalization by virtue of its meaning.

Leaving these controversial cases aside, a statement that a miracle occurred, usually — as in the case of many of the biblical miracles - refers to God as causing something that is not the sort of occurrence that one would expect to be explainable in terms of laws of nature, if it could be explained at all. I am here supposing supernatural explanation to be a viable alternative and the one that might plausibly be chosen in a case like the Red Sea parting as depicted in the movie “The Ten Commandments” (i.e., not simply a low tide). If causal statements did require reference to laws of nature, then this would appear to rule out the possibility of miracles since a miracle refers to a type of causal statement whose nature rules out reference to laws of nature taken as generalized cases of which they are instances. (John Locke (1706) denies that miracles are not instances of laws. They are not, however, instances of laws of nature according to Locke. He thinks that to say they are not instances of any laws whatsoever (e.g. not even of supernatural laws) is to say that they are random occurrences, and he thinks that this is absurd.) Miracles are contrary to laws of nature, not “violations” of them and not instances of them. (Actually, miracles are vacuous instances of true laws of nature as I explain below.) Note that it is not simply a miracle's uniqueness that rules out such reference to laws of nature. It cannot be uniqueness since even miracles that are supposed to be repeatable, such as raising one from the dead, cannot in principle refer to laws of nature for a complete explanation of their occurrence. Presumably they must also refer to divine intervention.

A miracle's uniqueness presents only a preface difficulty for supposing miracles to be supernaturally “caused.” It is not difficult to show that causal terminology is applicable to statements about miracles. A regularity theory should be understood as requiring reference to laws of nature only when the causal statement is about natural events. More generally, a regularity theory requires reference to causal generalizations, but not necessarily to generalizations in terms of laws of nature. There is no reason to suppose that a miracle's uniqueness, if it is unique, cannot or does not carry with it implicit reference to a causal generalization. The counterfactual force that is constitutive of the meaning of some causal statements that specify necessary and sufficient material conditions for some event to occur may indicate the presence of an implicit generalization in the causal statement about a

miracle. Generally, if we say “X caused Y” we mean, in part, that if X had not occurred, then Y would not have occurred in the circumstances. But also implicit in the meaning of this is that if X occurred again, in relevantly similar circumstances, then Y would also occur again. To say that God caused X is to say that X would not have come about apart from God's activity and also that X would again come about if God acted similarly in a relevantly similar situation. If there is a supernature, then it is reasonable to suppose, as Locke did, that there are “laws of supernature” and that singular causal statements concerning the supernatural may be understood as implicitly assuming the generalizability of such singular causal statements in terms of those laws.

Consider the following objection to the characterization of a miracle as being contrary to a law of nature and outside its scope. Suppose, as I have, that true laws of nature do not have the form:

(1) Whenever an event of type C occurs, an event of type E occurs.

Assume instead that they are of the form:

(2) If an event of type C occurs, and there is no supernatural intervention, then an event of type E occurs.

Or, schematically:

(3) (C & N) → E

Now consider a case where an event of type C occurs, there is supernatural intervention, and no event of type E occurs. From the truth table of the conditional function it follows that this case will be a positive instance of a true law, where such laws are of the form (C & N) → E. (“P → Q” will be true if the first component is false or if the second component is true. In the case under consideration, the first component will be false if “N” is false — this is, if there is supernatural intervention as hypothesized.) Thus, a miracle is not contrary to, or a violation of, a law of nature, and it is not outside the scope of such a law.

My response to this objection is as follows. I agree that the case considered above (i.e., a miraculous event occurs due to supernatural intervention) is a positive instance of a true law of nature where such laws are schematically of the form (C & N) → E. Miracles do not violate true laws of nature because such laws contain the supposition, either explicit or implicit, that laws describe what will happen given the presence of only natural forces. However, once there is supernatural

interference, then no matter what follows C (whether or not E occurs), (C & N) → E will be trivially true just because N is false. (It would be true even if C is false.)

While it is true that a miraculous occurrence would be a positive instance of a true law, because true laws of the form (C & N) → E are never false if N is false (N is false if there is supernatural interference), I want to call attention to the fact that while miracles do not violate true laws (i.e., they are positive instances of them), they should not be thought of as “within the scope of the laws of nature.” This is because laws of nature are meant to account for, or describe, what occurs and what could possibly occur only apart from supernatural intervention. Laws describe what is naturally or physically possible. Because a positive instance of a true law of nature will be trivially true in cases of 〜N, it will not explain why E does not occur even though C does occur. It is the assertion of 〜N that does the explaining. Whether or not C occurred, or E occurs, (C & N) → E will be true when N is false. But if N is false (i.e., if there is supernatural interference), then the law of nature will not be able to explain either E or 〜E in terms of natural forces. Yet this is what one normally expects a law of nature to do.

By saying that cases of supernatural interference are outside the scope of laws of nature, one is thereby refusing to consider cases of (C & N) → E, when N is false, to be significant instantiations of laws of nature, even though they are formally expressible in terms of laws of nature. While laws of nature can, and do, formally account for such cases, there is no explanation of E's nonoccurrence in terms of the natural forces that it is usually assumed to be the concern of laws of nature to describe.

To think of miracles as positive instances of laws of nature is to trivialize what is interesting about them viz. their relationship to laws of nature, where such laws are understood as describing what will and can happen given the presence of only natural forces. Speaking of cases in which there is supernatural intervention as outside the scope of laws of nature is clearly truer to our concept of such laws as descriptive only of those things that occur due to natural forces alone. That is their scope. Therefore, even though miracles can formally be accounted for by laws of nature, materially speaking this inadequate. It is inadequate because this “accounting for” is really done by the supposition of the supernatural interference and not with the miraculous event being a positive instance of the true law (i.e., because 〜N results in (C & N) → E being true) as it would in cases where there was no supernatural intervention. Formally, even a positive instance of a true law can be “contrary” to a law of nature of

which it is a positive instance. This will be the case in all instances of which an occurrence being a positive instance of a true law is due to supernatural intervention — that is, in all cases which make (C & N) → E trivially true in supposing 〜N. This is formally unobjectionable but awkward. In keeping with ordinary usage it is therefore preferable to consider such positive instances of true laws as outside the scope of laws of nature, and to consider only positive instances of laws to be within the scope of laws if (C & N) → E is not true because of the falsity of N.

Hume's Argument Against Justified Belief In Miracles

Remarkably, the discussion of Hume on miracles has not been confined to, or even principally concerned with, whether or not Hume was correct in his argument against justified belief in miracles — and/or the possibility of justified belief in miracles. Instead, philosophical discussion has focused on exegetical issues concerning exactly what Hume was arguing. There is, for example, still no generally accepted view on the fundamental points of whether his argument (Part I of his essay) against the justified belief in miracles on the basis of testimony is (i) meant as an a priori or a posteriori argument; (ii) if that argument can be, or is meant to be, generalized to include first-hand experience of an allegedly miraculous event; or indeed, (iii) if his argument, whether regarded as a priori or a posteriori, is meant to establish that one can never be justified in believing in a miracle on the basis of testimony. Hume does not appear to claim that miracles are impossible — only that justified belief in a miracle on the basis of testimony (may be) impossible. His argument is basically epistemological. There are, however, grounds for supposing that a miracle is not even possible on Hume's account — at least not given his wider empiricist views.

Hume's position on miracles cannot be properly understood apart from his analysis of causation, a posteriori reasoning, and indeed the most fundamental element of his empiricism — his analysis of “impressions” and “ideas” (Book I, A Treatise of Human Nature, pp. 1-7). In fact, Hume's position on miracles has never been properly understood because its connection to his views on causation has never been adequately examined. There is considerable controversy over what Hume's position actually was — let alone what his argument for that position is. I offer one highly abbreviated interpretation. (For a more complete account of this interpretation see Levine: 1989: 1-52.) The bibliography contains citations to other interpretations completely at odds with this one and with each other.

To understand Hume on miracles the following question must be answered. Why did Hume think that one could justifiably believe that

an extraordinary event had occurred, under certain circumstances, but that one could never justifiably believe a miracle had occurred? The proposed interpretation of Hume's analysis of miracles in relation to his analysis of causation and his wider empiricism yields the only plausible answer to this question that I know of. This interpretation also shows why it makes no substantial difference whether we interpret Hume's argument in Part I “Of Miracles” against the possibility of justified belief in testimony to the miraculous as an a priori argument or an a posteriori argument since the arguments essentially coalesce.

Hume (Enquiries, p. 128) gives the following example of an extraordinary event that he thinks could be rendered credible on the basis of testimony.

...suppose, all authors, in all languages, agree, that from the first day of January 1600, there was a total darkness over the whole earth for eight days, suppose that the tradition of this extraordinary event is still strong and lively among the people: that all travelers, who return from foreign countries, bring us accounts of the same tradition, without the least variation or contradiction: it is evident, that our present philosophers, instead of doubting the fact, ought to receive it as certain, and ought to search for the causes whence it might be derived. The decay, corruption, and dissolution of nature, is an event rendered probable by so many analogies, that any phenomenon, which seems to have a tendency towards that catastrophe comes within the reach of human testimony, if that testimony be very extensive and uniform.

In this case not only is the testimony to the alleged event very extensive and uniform, but Hume also thinks it necessary that our past experience does not render the event completely unlikely. He argues that the eight day darkness can be “rendered probable by so many analogies,” assuming it is testified to extensively and uniformly. In such a case Hume assumes that the event is natural and that “we ought to search for the causes.” Hume compares this with another imaginary case (Enquiries, p. 128).

...suppose, that all historians who treat of England, should agree, that, on the first of January 1600, Queen Elizabeth died...and that, after being interred a month, she again appeared, resumed the throne, and governed England for three years: I must confess that I should be surprised at the concurrence of so many odd circumstances, but should not have the least inclination to believe so miraculous event.

Since both events are assumed to be equally well testified to, the reason that Hume thinks the former can be judged credible but not the

latter is that in the former case the “event is rendered probable by so many analogies.” One can object and say that this appears to be nothing more than a subjective judgement on the part of Hume. His experience suggests analogies for the former type of event but not the latter. The eight day darkness “sufficiently resembles” events that Hume has experienced, or believes in on the basis of experience, to warrant belief in the eight day darkness given that the event is extraordinarily well attested to. In the latter case Hume can find no analogies to draw upon from experience. Given the similarity, in relevant respects, of most peoples' experience (i.e., the experience of Scots at the time of Hume), Hume thinks that if people base their judgments on their experience (in accordance with the principles of a posteriori reasoning (Levine 1989: 5-12) extrapolated from his analysis of causation) they will agree that the former (extraordinary) event can be judged credible but not the (miraculous) latter. Hume would agree that if an individual's experience were very different from his own in relevant respects, than that individual could justifiably believe many things that he himself could not.

So despite Hume's a priori arguments against justified belief in miracles he argues that under certain circumstances the “evidence” may justify belief in the occurrence of an extraordinary event as long as we have experienced events analogous in type. However, an extraordinary event is not necessarily a miraculous one. In the case of extraordinary events that are well attested to and for which we have suitable experiential analogies, Hume thinks that the most we are justified in believing is that the event did occur — not that the event is a miracle. We are to “search for the [natural] causes whence it might be derived.” Such cases may even require us to reassess, to some extent, our estimation of what nature is capable of doing on her own, so to speak. Sometimes statements of laws of nature must be reassessed and altered in light of new experience. Also, we must be careful not to extend our judgments as to what to believe or expect of nature to situations in which all of the relevant circumstances are not the same. This requires explanation.

Hume relates the case of the Indian who refused to believe that water turned to ice. According to Hume, the Indian “reasoned justly” on the basis of his past experience. He refused, at first, to believe that water turned to ice, despite the fact that it was well attested to, because the event not only had the Indian's constant and uniform experience to count against it, but also because the event “bore so little analogy” to that experience (Enquiries, pp. 11-15). The Indian “reasoned justly” but he extended his judgments about the properties of water to cases where all the circumstances were not the same (i.e., the relevant circumstance here being temperature). In certain situations in which

we hear testimony to extraordinary events we may be in situations similar to that of the Indian. Indeed, according to Hume, if we justifiably believe that an extraordinary event did occur, then we should assume that we are in a situation just like that of the Indian. We should assume this because, as I shall show, there are logically compelling reasons why the consistent Humean, in accordance with the principles of a posteriori reasoning based on Hume's analysis of causation and his empiricism, can do nothing else. The extraordinary event should be judged “[not] contrary to uniform experience of the course of nature in cases where all the circumstances are the same” (Enquiries, p. 114n).

Why should we judge our situation to be like that of the Indian's? Are there logically compelling reasons for doing so? Hume does not explicitly say why, but it must be because our experience has shown us that situations like the Indian's do arise. On the basis of experience, when we are justified in believing in the occurrence of an extraordinary event, we should liken ourselves to the Indian. That is why, in a case like the eight days of darkness, “we ought to search for the [natural] causes whence it might be derived.” Experience demands it. It seems then, that according to Hume, when an extraordinary event is extraordinarily well attested to we have only two options. One is to accept the testimony and look for the event's natural causes. The other is to reject the testimony on the grounds that the event testified to bears no significant analogy to events we have experienced. Hume thinks that testimony, no matter how reliable, can never establish the occurrence of a miraculous event, in accordance with the principles of a posteriori reasoning — reasoning that is a type of causal reasoning according to Hume. He says (Enquiries, pp. 111-112),

It being a general maxim, that no objects have any discoverable connection together, and that all the inferences, which we can draw from one to another, are founded merely on our experience of their constant and regular conjunction; it is evident that we ought not to make an exception to this maxim in favor of human testimony.... This species of reasoning, perhaps, one may deny to be founded on the relation of cause and effect. I shall not dispute about a word.

Thus, Hume thinks that if we justifiably accept testimony to an extraordinary event, then on the basis of past experience, we must liken ourselves to the Indian and search for natural causes of which we are unaware. This would be for us the equivalent of the Indian moving north to “Muscovy during the winter” (Enquiries, p. 114n). (Think about the last astonishing thing you learned that nature could accomplish as a matter of course and you have a basic part of Hume's argument.)

Contrary to Hume one might try to argue as follows:

Is it inconceivable that we experience events for which no explanation like that suitable for the Indian has been forthcoming? It may be true that in some situations a seemingly naturally inexplicable event was later learned to have natural causes, but it is at least conceivable that there may be other inexplicable events for which no natural causes can be found. If experience can show that we are unable to find natural causes for certain events — though these events are every bit as well attested to as other events only some of which we have discovered natural causes for — then why must we liken ourselves to the Indian in cases where we justifiably believe in the occurrence of an extraordinary event? Why does experience demand that we either reject belief in the event's occurrence or believe it but posit natural causes for the event? Justified belief does not entail belief in a natural cause. Experientially you have not shown that it does. Moreover, if we had independent reasons for thinking that no cause of some extraordinary event could be found (e g., on the basis of prophecy), then it is conceivable that we could be justified in believing that an extraordinary event occurred without thereby likening ourselves to the Indian. The grounds on which we might reject the supposition of a natural cause could themselves be experiential (e.g., a prophet's track record). It does seem to be the case that we can always posit a natural explanation for an extraordinary event and base that supposition on experience. On the other hand, we may reject such a supposition, not only on the basis of a priori arguments of natural theology, but also on the basis of experience. For example, suppose that an extraordinary event that had some religious significance was prophesied, testimony justified belief in the event's occurrence, the prophet had been right about certain predictions made in the past, and no immediate natural explanation for the event that had the least bit of plausibility was forthcoming. The option of positing a natural explanation remains open, but experience does not necessarily demand that we avail ourselves of that option. Hume thinks that the most that testimony can establish is that an extraordinary event has occurred, not that a miracle has occurred. To support this one must establish the suppressed premise that we can have no good reasons on the basis of experience, for identifying an event as miraculous. Though Hume employs this premise he does not support it, and the example just given suggests a reason for believing the premise to be invalid.

Hume has not specified adequate criteria for determining when an event can be judged suitably analogous to past experience as to warrant belief when adequately testified to. (This is probably because he thought no such criteria could be given — each extraordinary case

having to be considered on its own merits.) Experientially, there are no clear cut criteria enabling us to determine, with any degree of assurance, that an eight day darkness is analogous to past experience while a resurrection does not, in the least, bear any resemblance to aspects of our past experience that could make it at least as likely an event to be believed in as the eight day darkness. Could not a resurrection be found analogous to past experience in precisely the same way that an eight day darkness could (i.e., experience of the “decay, corruption, and dissolution of nature”)? In the absence of such criteria there is no logically compelling reason, and not even necessarily compelling experiential reasons, for assuming that the extraordinary event occurred (naturally) but a resurrection did not occur (miraculously). If the darkness can be justifiably believed in then so too can a resurrection. Furthermore, under the appropriate circumstances, not only could the resurrection be judged miraculous and not merely extraordinary, but so could the eight day darkness. The thing that would determine whether or not the event was to be judged miraculous would be whether we had reason to believe that God or God's agents caused the event — better reasons than for thinking that the event was caused naturally. It is conceivable that a judgment that God caused a particular event can be experientially warranted. Again, imagine a prophet who is known to predict future events accurately. The prophet has a track record of empirically verifiable prophecies concerning events of a most extraordinary nature. Or, imagine a case in which every time a “holy-person” pointed at someone that person lay down dead. An explanation of such goings-on can be sought in terms of natural (e.g., parapsychical) causes and abilities. However, would experience necessitate the acceptance of this explanation over the supernatural one? Hume has not shown that it would.

Hume would reject this argument — and therein lies the entire tale of his argument against justified belief in miracles — whether on the basis of testimony or first-hand experience. He would insist that his principles of reasoning about empirical matters, and his philosophical empiricism (i.e., his theory of “impressions” and “ideas”) show that supernatural explanation cannot be justified experientially. In the case of a prophet accurately predicting events, or the “holy-person” pointing their finger and people falling dead, Hume would say that experience justifies us in believing that the event prophesied will come to pass and that if the holy-person lifts their finger in our direction we are justified in running away — and foolish if we do not. But we are not justified in believing such events to be miracles.

We need to ask “What is it about experience, in the sense of expectations about future events or judgments about past events, that could justify the positing of a supernatural cause?” For positing such a

cause is necessary if one is to justifiably believe some event to be a miracle. Hume would say that positing such a cause is speculative. It can have no basis in experience. Even if some event really were a miracle, whether it be a resurrection, or “the raising of a feather, when the wind wants ever so little of a force requisite for that purpose” (Enquiries, p. 115n), we would not be justified in believing that it was anything more than an extraordinary event. Extraordinary events are at the limits of (our) experience, the supernatural is beyond it. Hume (Enquiries, p. 129) says:

Though the Being to whom the miracle is ascribed, be Almighty, it [the miracle] does not, upon that account, become a whit more probable, since it is impossible for us to know the attributes or actions of such a Being, otherwise than from the experience of his productions, in the usual course of nature. This still reduces us to past observations, and obliges us to compare the instances of the violation of truth in the testimony of men, with those of the violations of the laws of nature by miracles, in order to judge which of them is most likely and probable.

For Hume, a “cause,” insofar as it can be used as an item in reasoning from experience, can only be something that we can have an “impression” of. The cause of a miracle would have to be identified as something we could perceive, even if we were to posit some metaphysical “power” of this cause and attribute it speculatively to God. The “cause” of Lazarus's coming forth from the grave would have to be identified with Christ's beckoning — either his voice or some physical gesture — both of which we have “impressions” of and both of which are events “in the usual course of nature.”

If a resurrection were well enough attested to that it warranted belief, then that event could still only be assigned status as an extraordinary event with a natural explanation. Hume is thus constrained by his empiricism. He is constrained in such a way that had he been at the shore of the Red Sea with Moses when they were being chased (as in the movie version); and had Moses raised his staff and the Red Sea split up the middle (i.e., no low tide but raging waters on both sides); and had the Red Sea crashed to a close the moment the last Israelite was safe — killing those in pursuit; and had Hume himself lacked grounds for assuming he was hallucinating or perceiving events in any way other than as they were actually happening — Hume would still be constrained by his principles to deny that what he was witnessing was a miracle. This example suffices to show the unacceptability of Hume's argument. Indeed, assuming Hume would have agreed that had he been there with Moses, and had events transpired in a manner suitably similar to the way they are depicted in the film, he would have (readily) agreed that he was justified in believing that a miracle

occurred; then his argument against justified belief in miracles can be used as a reductio ad absurdum. Flew (1967: 349) is mistaken in his claim that “it be neither arbitrary nor irrational to insist on a definition of a ‘law of nature’ such that the idea of a miracle as an exception to a law of nature is ruled out as self-contradictory.”

A resurrection could only be well enough attested to to be justifiably believed if it could be judged as somehow analogous with something in our past experience. If it is, then it must be considered a natural event because, for Hume, anything analogous to our experience is at least analogous in the sense of suggesting that it too has a natural cause. We experience only that which occurs in nature and judgments based on that experience will not warrant positing causes outside of that experience. Suppose that some event actually was supernaturally caused. (Let us suppose Hume recognizes this as a logical possibility in his essay, though I do not think it is given his analysis of causation and his empiricism.) Hume would say that we could not, on the basis of experience, attribute a supernatural cause to the event because we experience only natural causes (i.e., events occurring in the usual course of nature). If an event were supernaturally caused we could legitimately say that we “experienced” some supernatural event, but the sense of experience used here would be an equivocation on Hume's usage This “cause,” being transcendent, and not discernible by means of “sense impressions,” “internal impressions,” or “impressions of reflexion” could not be an item of experience at all as Hume sees it. Thus, because Hume thinks that every cause must be regarded as natural, he is committed to the view that one could justifiably believe that an extraordinary event had occurred, but never a miracle.

Hume's a priori argument against justified belief in miracles actually coalesces with his a posteriori argument against such justified belief. On a posteriori grounds we could never justifiably believe testimony to the miraculous because we could never judge the occurrence of such an event to be similar, in relevant respects, to anything we have experienced. However, that a miraculous occurrence could never be judged relevantly similar to anything in experience (i.e., that there must be “a firm and unalterable experience” counting against belief in it) is something that we can know a priori, since a priori we can know that we cannot have an “ impression” of a supernatural cause. It follows from this that on a priori grounds we can also rule out the possibility of justified belief in testimony to the miraculous.

It follows from what has been said that unless one accepts Hume's analysis of a posteriori reasoning as a type of causal reasoning, and also accepts his analysis of causation, which ultimately rests on his theory of impressions and ideas — a theory that even staunch

empiricists should reject as simplistic — then there is no reason to accept his argument against the possibility of justified belief in miracles.

Of course, nothing in this critique of Hume's argument should be taken to suggest, in any way, that miracles have ever occurred, or that we are justified in believing that any have occurred. But it would be most surprising if some people at some time and in certain circumstances have not been, and will not again be, justified in believing in the occurrence of a miracle. However, nothing I have said suggests that that the evidence available for the occurrence of any alleged miracle warrants justified belief in miracles for most people - including those who really do believe in them.

Bayesian Analyses of Hume's Argument Concerning Miracles

There are various versions of Bayes's theorem. For example, John Earman (1993:307n4) employs the following:

Pr(H/E&K) = Pr(H/K) × Pr(E/H&K) Pr(E/K)

“The reader is invited to think of H as a hypothesis at issue; K as the background knowledge; and E as the additional evidence. Pr(H/E&K) is called the posterior probability of H. Pr(H/K) and Pr(E/H&K) are respectively called the prior probability of H and the (posterior) likelihood of E.”

Bayesian analyses are prominent among the several recent and allegedly novel interpretations of Hume's argument against the justified belief in miracles. However, since there is no consensus on just what Hume's argument is, or exactly what he is trying to establish, it is impossible that any Bayesian analysis, let alone a “Bayesian proof” of that argument, or a recasting of the argument in terms of some version of Bayes's theorem, will not beg crucial issues of interpretation. In so doing, such analyses, in and of themselves, will also beg fundamental epistemological issues concerning, for example, evidence. Furthermore, it is difficult to see how recasting Hume's argument in a Bayesian form can clarify the structure or substance of the argument without presupposing what the argument is.

On the interpretation of Hume's argument given above, a Bayesian analysis sheds no light whatsoever on the structure or substance of the argument, and can do nothing by way of either supporting or refuting the argument. Indeed, any Bayesian analysis of the question of

justified belief in miracles must be otiose until the difficult and essential questions concerning “evidence” in relation to an allegedly miraculous occurrence are resolved — at which point any Bayesian analysis will add little except the technical complexity of a formal apparatus that may or may not “clarify” the structure of Hume's argument.

The balancing of probabilities is of no use until it is decided what goes into the balance — that is, what constitutes the evidence that is to be subject to the balancing of probabilities. The point is this; apart from independent philosophical arguments — arguments that would in effect undermine the relevance of a Bayesian analysis to the question of the credibility of reports of the miraculous — no such analysis can, in principle, prove that no testimony can (or cannot) establish the credibility of a miracle. So-called Bayesian analyses of Hume's argument are not analyses of Hume's argument at all — but superfluous representations of it.

Are Miracles Religiously Significant?

Some contemporary theologians have claimed that the issue of miracles has been largely misunderstood and co-opted by philosophers and critics of religion for their own purposes — specifically in order to deny that certain central events the Bible alleges to have occur did occur. Thus, David Strauss (1835) claims that reports of miracles can be rejected “as simply impossible and irreconcilable with the known and universal laws which govern the course of events.” Theologians sometimes claim, for example, that there is no word for “miracle,” in the Old or New Testament. What are described there as “prodigies” or “wonders” or “effects of powers,” are interpreted by philosophers, but not by the Biblical writers, as “miracles.” Antony Flew (1967:347) says that according to Spinoza, as well as some contemporary theologians, “conventional interpreters of the Bible read far more miracles into it than it contains, because they constantly read poetic Hebrew idioms literally.” This may be true but it is also inconsequential. No matter how events such as a parting of the sea or a resurrection are described, whether as “wonders” or as “miracles,” it is clear that they were understood in Biblical times, as well as in contemporary times, to be in some remarkable sense “contrary to the normal course of nature.” People living at the time of Moses or Christ knew just as well as we do that seas do not “normally” part and that people are not, in the normal course of nature, resurrected. What is required for a notion of the miraculous is not some sophisticated notion of what a law of nature is, but just a strong sense of what constitutes the normal, natural course of events. And this is something the ancients had just as much as those living in a scientific age have.

Many people regard the philosophical dimension, the epistemological one in particular, of the issue of miracles as insignificant. Indeed, philosophy of religion, or at least natural theology and the analytic philosophy of religion is regarded as inconsequential by believers as well as some involved in the academic study of religion.

Nevertheless, I think that the philosopher's concerns are more closely allied with those of religious people than, for example, are those of the social scientist. This does not make them more important - just more closely allied. The philosopher is interested in the truth about religious truth-claims and (though many would disagree on philosophical grounds) can pursue that interest more or less independent of dogma, tradition, and what socio-scientific study tells us about the various functions of religion. Philosophical issues in religion are fundamental in a way that other areas of investigation are not. A system of beliefs may serve a variety of functions, personally and socially, but for the religious person these are consequences of the system of beliefs itself. They believe their systems of belief, their religion, to be more or less coherent and true. It makes a great difference to most believers who are traditional theists whether or not miracles could occur, and whether one could justifiably believe they did occur. One does not have to be a fundamentalist Christian, for example, to believe with Paul that the Christian faith is, in an important sense, a vain pursuit if the central miracles associated with Christianity did not occur. Indeed, one can assume that David Hume, Bertrand Russell and Richard Swinburne would concur. The same point can of course be made,mutatis mutandis, for Islam and Judaism or any tradition fundamentally connected to miraculous claims.

Apart from belief in miracles, one is left with a system of beliefs that has had and will continue to have enormous significance — good and bad — for people's lives. However, for the majority of persons for whom these beliefs have that significance, religion could no longer function in the way it does if they became convinced of the falsity of their beliefs. That seems to be verifiable. There is a sense, albeit perhaps not a very important one, in which one is involved in pretense if one practices a system of beliefs whose central tenets one denies. What one is practicing may be similar in significant respects to the religious tradition in question, but one will not be practicing that religion, nor will one properly be regarded as a believer.

Having said that, it should also be said that the issue of miracles is regarded as overly important by contemporary analytic philosophers of religion. Some 19th and 20th century philosophical theologians, as well as those in various disciplines within the academic study of religion,

including the philosophy of religion, no longer regard the issue of miracles as central or crucial, either to various religious traditions, to the religious life per se, and definitely not to the more fundamental questions of God and meaning in the traditional domain of philosophical theology. Philosophers of religion, even if sophisticated in terms of their analyses, naively attribute an importance to the issue that may not be altogether warranted.

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The term “miracle” is used very broadly in ordinary language. A quick review of news stories may turn up reports such as that of a “Christmas Miracle,” by which the Texas gulf coast came to be blanketed with snow by a rare storm. We speak of miracle drugs, or of miracle babies, and some household products purport to be miraculous as well. Philosophical discussion of the miraculous, however, is confined to the use to which religion–and in particular, theistic religion–puts that conception. These philosophical discussions center around two overlapping issues.

The first of these issues is a conceptual one: What is a miracle? Controversy over the conception of a miracle focuses primarily on whether a miracle must be, in some sense, contrary to natural law. Must it, in particular, be a violation of natural law? Supposing that it must be, a second question arises, namely, whether the conception of such a violation is a coherent one.

Philosophers have also been concerned about what sort of observable criteria would allow us to identify an event as a miracle, particularly insofar as that means identifying it as a violation of natural law. How, for example, can we tell the difference between a case in which an event is a genuine violation–assuming that some sense can be made of this notion–and one that conforms to some natural law that is unknown to us? And given the occurrence of a genuine violation, how are we to determine whether it is due to divine agency, or whether it is nothing more than a spontaneous lapse in the natural order?

The second main issue is epistemological: Once we settle on what a miracle is, can we ever have good reason to believe that one has taken place? This question is generally connected with the problem of whether testimony, such as that provided by scriptural sources, can ever give us adequate reason to believe that a miracle has occurred.

1. The Definition of “Miracle”

In sketching out a brief philosophical discussion of miracles, it would be desirable to begin with a definition of “miracle;” unfortunately, part of the controversy in regard to miracles is over just what is involved in a proper conception of the miraculous. As a rough beginning, however, we might observe that the term is from the Latinmiraculum, which is derived from mirari, to wonder; thus the most general characterization of a miracle is as an event that provokes wonder. As such, it must be in some way extraordinary, unusual, or contrary to our expectations. Disagreement arises, however, as to what makes a miracle something worth wondering about. In what sense must a miracle be extraordinary? One of the earliest accounts is given by St. Augustine, who held (City of God, XXI.8.2) that a miracle is not contrary to nature, but only to our knowledge of nature; miracles are made possible by hidden potentialities in nature that are placed there by God. In Summa Contra GentilesIII:101, St. Thomas Aquinas, expanding upon Augustine’s conception, said that a miracle must go beyond the order usually observed in nature, though he insisted that a miracle is not contrary to nature in any absolute sense, since it is in the nature of all created things to be responsive to God’s will.

In his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume offered two definitions of “miracle;” first, as a violation of natural law (Enquiries p. 114); shortly afterward he offers a more complex definition when he says that a miracle is “a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent” (Enquiries, p. 115n). This second definition offers two important criteria that an event must satisfy in order to qualify as a miracle: It must be a violation of natural law, but this by itself is not enough; a miracle must also be an expression of the divine will. This means that a miracle must express divine agency; if we have no reason to think that an event is something done by God, we will have no reason to call it a miracle.

More recently, the idea that a miracle must be defined in terms of natural law has come under attack. R.F. Holland (1965) has argued that a miracle may be consistent with natural law, since a religiously significant coincidence may qualify as miraculous, even though we fully understand the causes that brought it about. Accounts of the miraculous that distance themselves from the requirement that a miracle be in some way contrary to the order of nature, in favor of a focus on their significance to human life, might be said to emphasize their nature as signs; indeed the term semeion, “sign,” is one of the terms used in the New Testament to describe miraculous events.

2. Miracles and Worldview

The outcome of any discussion of miracles seems to depend greatly on our worldview. The usual theistic view of the world is one that presumes the existence of an omnipotent God who, while transcending nature, is nevertheless able to act, or to express his will, within the natural world. Clearly belief in miracles is already plausible if our enquiry may presume this view of things.

The usual way of making this out might be described as supernaturalistic. Those who would defend supernaturalism sometimes do this through a commitment to an ontology of entities that exist in some sense outside of nature, where by “nature” is meant the totality of things that can be known by means of observation and experiment, or more generally, through the methods proper to the natural sciences.

Defenses of supernaturalism may also take a methodological turn by insisting that the natural sciences are incapable of revealing the totality of all that there is. While supernaturalists typically hold that God reveals his nature in part through observable phenomena (as for example in miracles, or more generally, in the order of nature), as we shall understand it here, methodological supernaturalism is committed as well to the view that our knowledge of God must be supplemented by revelation. Revelatory sources for our knowledge of God might, for example, include some form of a priori knowledge, supersensory religious experience, or a direct communication by God of information that would not otherwise be available to us. Knowledge of God that is passed down in scripture, such as the Bible or the Qur’an, is generally conceived by theists to have a revelatory character.

Supernaturalistic accounts of the miraculous very commonly make reference to supernatural causes, which are thought to play a useful role in the construction of supernatural explanations. However, as we will see in sections 10 and 11, belief in miracles does not obviously commit one to belief in supernatural causes or the efficacy of supernatural explanations.

In contrast to supernaturalism, ontological naturalism denies the existence of anything beyond nature; methodological naturalism holds that observation and experiment– or generally speaking, the methods of the empirical sciences– are sufficient to provide us with all of the knowledge that it is possible for us to have. Naturalism is sometimes further characterized as holding that nature is uniform, which is to say that all events in nature conform to generalizations (e.g. laws) which can be verified by means of observation. Naturalists do commonly hold this view– confidence in the uniformity of nature is an important part of the scientific enterprise– but strictly speaking this represents an additional metaphysical commitment regarding the nature of the

universe and its susceptibility to human understanding. If nature turns out not to be fully lawlike, this would not require the rejection of naturalism. A failure of uniformity, or what a believer in miracles might refer to as a violation of natural law, would imply only that there are limits to our ability to understand and predict natural phenomena. However, the naturalist is committed to denying the legitimacy of any attempt to explain a natural phenomenon by appeal to the supernatural. Naturalism denies the existence of supernatural entities and denies as well the claim that revelation is capable of providing us with genuine knowledge. Where the supernaturalistic worldview is quite open to the possibility of miracles, naturalism is much less sympathetic, and one might argue that the tenets of naturalism rule out the possibility of miracles altogether; see Lewis (1947:Ch. 1), Martin (1992:192) and Davis (1999:131).

Much, of course, depends on how we conceive of miracles, and on what we take their significance to be. One concern we might have with the miraculous would be an apologetic one. By “apologetic” here is meant a defense of the rationality of belief in God. Historically, apologists have pointed to the occurrence of miracles as evidence for theism, which is to say that they have held that scriptural reports of miracles, such as those given in the Bible, provide grounds for belief in God. While this argument is not as popular now as it was in the 18th century, the modern conception of the miraculous has been strongly influenced by this apologetic interest. Such an interest puts important constraints on an account of miracles. If we wish to point to a miracle as supporting belief in a supernatural deity, obviously we cannot begin by assuming the supernaturalistic worldview; this would beg the question. If we are trying to persuade a skeptic of God’s existence, we are trying to demonstrate to him that there is something beyond or transcending nature, and he will demand to be persuaded on his own terms; we must make use of no assumptions beyond those that are already acknowledged by the naturalistic worldview.

Because the history of modern thought regarding miracles has been strongly influenced by apologetic interests, the emphasis of this entry will be on the apologetic conception of the miraculous– that is, on the concept of miracle as it has been invoked by those who would point to the reports of miracles in scripture as establishing the existence of a supernatural God. It is important to bear in mind, however, that any difficulty associated with this apologetic appeal to miracles does not automatically militate against the reasonableness of belief in miracles generally. A successful criticism of the apologetic appeal will show at most that a warranted belief in miracles depends on our having independent reasons for rejecting naturalism; again, see Lewis (1947:11).

3. The Credibility of Witnesses

A major concern with the rationality of belief in miracles is with whether we can be justified in believing that a miracle has occurred on the basis of testimony. To determine whether the report of a miracle is credible, we need to consider the reliability of the source. Suppose subject S reports some state of affairs (or event) E. Are S’s reports generally true? Clearly if she is known to lie, or to utter falsehoods as jokes, we should be reluctant to believe her. Also, if she has any special interest in getting us to believe that E has occurred– if, for example, she stands to benefit financially– this would give us reason for skepticism. It is also possible that S may be reporting a falsehood without intending to do so; she may sincerely believe that E occurred even though it did not, or her report may be subject to unconscious exaggeration or distortion. Aside from the possibility that she may be influenced by some tangible self-interest, such as a financial one, her report may also be influenced by emotional factors– by her fears, perhaps, or by wishful thinking. We should also consider whether other reliable and independent witnesses are available to corroborate her report.

We must also ask whether S is herself a witness to E, or is passing on information that was reported to her. If she witnessed the event personally, we may ask a number of questions about her observational powers and the physical circumstances of her observation. There are quite a few things that can go wrong here; for example, S may sincerely report an event as she believed it to occur, but in fact her report is based on a misperception. Thus she may report having seen a man walk across the surface of a lake; this may be her understanding of what happened, when in fact he was walking alongside the lake or on a sand bar. If it was dark, and the weather was bad, this would have made it difficult for S to have a good view of what was happening. And of course we should not neglect the influence of S’s own attitudes on how she interprets what she sees; if she is already inclined to think of the man she reports as walking on water as being someone who is capable of performing such an extraordinary feat, this may color how she understands what she has seen. By the same token, if we are already inclined to agree with her about this person’s remarkable abilities, we will be all the more likely to believe her report.

If S is merely passing on the testimony of someone else to the occurrence of E, we may question whether she has properly understood what she was told. She may not be repeating the testimony exactly as it was given to her. And here, too, her own biases

may color her understanding of the report. The possibility of distortions entering into testimony grows with each re-telling of the story.

It will be fruitful to consider these elements in evaluating the strength of scriptural testimony to the miracles ascribed to Jesus. The reports of these miracles come from the four gospel accounts, which may not have been written by those who are supposed to have personally witnessed Jesus’ miracles. Some of these accounts seem to have borrowed from the others, or to have been influenced by a common source; even if this were not the case, they still cannot be claimed to be independent. Assuming they originate with the firsthand testimony of the apostles Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, these men were closely associated and had time to discuss among themselves what they had seen before their reports were recorded for posterity. They were all members of the same religious community, and shared a common perspective as well as common interests. Unfortunately, there are no independent reports from uninterested witnesses; while the gospel accounts tell us that there were miracles that took place in front of hostile witnesses, this will not help us when it is the accuracy of these very gospel reports that is at issue. (Later acknowledgements of Jesus’ miracles by hostile parties is, the skeptic will argue, evidence only for the gullibility of these writers.)

It is sometimes suggested that these men undertook grave risk by reporting what they did, and they would not have risked their lives for a lie. But this establishes, at best, only that their reports are sincere; unfortunately, their conviction is not conclusive evidence for the truth of their testimony. We could expect the same conviction from someone who was delusional.

Let us consider a particular report of Jesus’ resurrection in applying these considerations. Popular apologetic sometimes points to the fact that according to Paul in 1 Corinthians (15:6), the resurrected Jesus was seen by five hundred people at once, and that it is highly improbable that so many people would have the experience of seeing Jesus if Jesus were not actually there. After all, it may be argued, they could not have shared a mass hallucination, since hallucinations are typically private; there is no precedent for shared hallucination, and it may seem particularly far-fetched to suppose that a hallucination would be shared among so many people. Accordingly it may be thought much more likely that Jesus really was there and, assuming there is sufficient evidence that he had died previously to that time, it becomes reasonable to say that he was resurrected from the dead.

While this report is sometimes taken as evidence of Jesus’ physical resurrection, Paul says only that he appearedto the five hundred

without saying explicitly that it was a physically reconstituted Jesus that these people saw. But let us suppose that Paul means to report that the five hundred saw Jesus in the flesh. Unfortunately we do not have the reports of the five hundred to Jesus’ resurrection; we have only Paul’s hearsay testimony that Jesus was seen by five hundred. Furthermore Paul does not tell us how this information came to him. It is possible that he spoke personally to some or all of these five hundred witnesses, but it is also possible that he is repeating testimony that he received from someone else. This opens up the possibility that the report was distorted before it reached Paul; for example, the number of witnesses may have been exaggerated, or the original witnesses may have merely reported feeling Jesus’ presence in some way without actually seeing him. For the sake of argument, however, let us suppose that there was at one time a group of five hundred people who were all prepared to testify that they had seen a physically resurrected Jesus. This need not be the result of any supposed mass hallucination; the five hundred might have all seen someone who they came to believe, after discussing it amongst themselves, was Jesus. In such a case, the testimony of the five hundred would be to an experience together with a shared interpretation of it.

It is also possible that the text of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians has not been accurately preserved. Thus, no matter how reliable Paul himself might be, his own report may have been modified through one, or several, redactions.

There are, therefore, quite a few points at which error or distortion might have entered into the report in 1 Corinthians: (1) The original witnesses may have been wrong, for one reason or another, about whether they saw Jesus; (2) the testimony of these witnesses may have been distorted before reaching Paul; (3) Paul may have incorrectly reported what he heard about the event, and (4) Paul’s own report, as given in his original letter to the Christian community in Corinth, may have been distorted. The apologist may argue that it would be very surprising if errors should creep into the report at any of these four points. The question we must ask now, however, is which of these alternatives would be more surprising: That some error should arise in regard to 1-4 above, or that Jesus really was resurrected from the dead.

4. Hume’s Argument

In Section X of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume tells us that it is not reasonable to subscribe to any “system of religion” unless that system is validated by the occurrence of miracles;

he then argues that we cannot be justified in believing that a miracle has occurred, at least when our belief is based on testimony– as when, for example, it is based on the reports of miracles that are given in scripture. (Hume did not explicitly address the question of whether actually witnessing an apparent miracle would give us good reason to think that a miracle had actually occurred, though it is possible that the principles he invokes in regard to testimony for the miraculous can be applied to the case of a witnessed miracle.) His stated aim is to show that belief in miracle reports is not rational, but that “our most holy religion is founded on Faith, not on reason” (Enquiries, p. 130). Hume surely intends some irony here, however, since he concludes by saying that anyone who embraces a belief in miracles based on faith is conscious of “a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding” (Enquiries, p. 131); this seems very far from an endorsement of a faith-based belief in miracles.

There is some dispute as to the nature of Hume’s argument against miracles, and the Enquiry seems to contain more than one such argument. The most compelling of these is the one I will call the Balance of Probabilities Argument. (For a brief discussion of some of the other arguments, see the entry “David Hume: Writings on Religion.”) Hume tells us that we ought to proportion our certainty regarding any matter of fact to the strength of the evidence. We have already examined some of the considerations that go into assessing the strength of testimony; there is no denying that testimony may be very strong indeed when, for example, it may be given by numerous highly reliable and independent witnesses.

Nevertheless, Hume tells us that no testimony can be adequate to establish the occurrence of a miracle. The problem that arises is not so much with the reliability of the witnesses as with the nature of what is being reported. A miracle is, according to Hume, a violation of natural law. We suppose that a law of nature obtains only when we have an extensive, and exceptionless, experience of a certain kind of phenomenon. For example, we suppose that it is a matter of natural law that a human being cannot walk on the surface of water while it is in its liquid state; this supposition is based on the weight of an enormous body of experience gained from our familiarity with what happens in seas, lakes, kitchen sinks, and bathtubs. Given that experience, we always have the best possible evidence that in any particular case, an object with a sufficiently great average density, having been placed onto the surface of a body of water, will sink. According to Hume, the evidence in favor of a miracle, even when that is provided by the strongest possible testimony, will always be outweighed by the evidence for the law of nature which is supposed to have been violated.

Considerable controversy surrounds the notion of a violation of natural law. However, it would appear that all Hume needs in order to make his argument is that a miracle be an exception to the course of nature as we have previously observed it; that is, where we have had a substantial experience of a certain sort of phenomenon– call it A– and have an exceptionless experience of all As being B, we have very strong reason to believe that any given A will be a B. Thus given that we have a very great amount of experience regarding dense objects being placed onto water, and given that in every one of these cases that object has sunk, we have the strongest possible evidence that any object that is placed onto water is one that will sink. Accordingly we have the best possible reasons for thinking that any report of someone walking on water is false– and this no matter how reliable the witness.

While objections are frequently made against Hume’s conception of natural law, in fact no particularly sophisticated account of natural law seems to be necessary here, and Hume’s examples are quite commonsensical: All human beings must die, lead cannot remain suspended in the air, fire consumes wood and is extinguished by water (Enquiries p. 114). This may be a naive conception of natural law; nevertheless it is true that, all things being equal, we can assign a minimal probability to the occurrence of a counterinstance to any of these generalizations.

At times Hume sounds as though he thinks the probability of such an event is zero, given its unprecedented nature, and some commentators have objected that the fact that we have never known such an event to occur does not imply that it cannot occur. Past regularities do not establish that it is impossible that a natural law should ever be suspended (Purtill 1978). However, regardless of Hume’s original intent, this is a more extravagant claim than his argument requires. He is free to admit that some small probability may be attached to the prospect that a dense object might remain on the surface of a lake; it is sufficient for his purposes that it will always be morelikely that any witness who reports such an event is attempting to deceive us, or is himself deceived. After all, there is no precedent for any human being walking on water, setting this one controversial case aside, but there is ample precedent for the falsehood of testimony even under the best of circumstances.

Accordingly Hume says (Enquiries p. 115ff) that “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 endeavors to establish.” We must always decide in favor of the lesser miracle. We must ask ourselves, which would be more of a

miracle: That Jesus walked on water, or that the scriptural reports of this event are false? While we may occasionally encounter testimony that is so strong that its falsehood would be very surprising indeed, we never come across any report, the falsehood of which would be downright miraculous. Accordingly, the reasonable conclusion will always be that the testimony is false.

Thus to return to Paul’s report of Jesus’ resurrection in 1 Corinthians: It may be highly unlikely that the original witnesses were wrong, for one reason or another, about whether they saw Jesus; it may be highly unlikely that the testimony of these witnesses may have been distorted before reaching Paul; it may be highly unlikely that Paul incorrectly reported what he heard about the event, and it may be highly unlikely that Paul’s original letter to the Christian community in Corinth has not been accurately preserved in our modern translations of the New Testament. Suppose the apologist can argue that a failure in the transmission of testimony at any of these points might be entirely without precedent in human experience. But the physical resurrection of a human being is also without precedent, so that the very best the apologist can hope for is that both alternatives– that the report is incorrect, or that Jesus returned to life– are equally unlikely, which seems only to call for a suspension of judgment. Apologetic appeals frequently focus on the strength of testimony such as Paul’s, and often appear to make a good case for its reliability. Nevertheless such an appeal will only persuade those who are already inclined to believe in the miracle– perhaps because they are already sympathetic to a supernaturalistic worldview– and who therefore tend to downplay the unlikelihood of a dead man returning to life.

Having said all this, it may strike us as odd that Hume seems not to want to rule out the possibility, in principle, that very strong testimony might establish the occurrence of an unprecedented event. He tells us (Enquiries p. 127) that if the sun had gone dark for eight days beginning on January 1, 1600, and that testimony to this fact continued to be received from all over the world and without any variation, we should believe it– and then look for the cause. Thus even if we were convinced that such an event really did take place– and the evidence in this case would be considerably stronger than the evidence for any of the miracles of the Bible– we should suppose that the event in question really had a natural cause after all. In this case the event would not be a violation of natural law, and thus according to Hume’s definition would not be a miracle.

Despite this possibility, Hume wants to say that the quality of miracle reports is never high enough to clear this hurdle, at least when they are given in the interest of establishing a religion, as they typically are.

People in such circumstances are likely to be operating under any number of passional influences, such as enthusiasm, wishful thinking, or a sense of mission driven by good intentions; these influences may be expected to undermine their critical faculties. Given the importance to religion of a sense of mystery and wonder, that very quality which would otherwise tend to make a report incredible– that it is the report of something entirely novel– becomes one that recommends it to us. Thus in a religious context we may believe the report not so much in spite of its absurdity as because of it.

5. Problems with Hume’s Argument

There is something clearly right about Hume’s argument. The principle he cites surely resembles the one that we properly use when we discredit reports in tabloid newspapers about alien visitors to the White House or tiny mermaids being found in sardine cans. Nevertheless the argument has prompted a great many criticisms.

Some of this discussion makes use of Bayesian probabilistic analysis; John Earman, for example, argues that when the principles of Hume’s arguments “are made explicit and examined under the lens of Bayesianism, they are found to be either vapid, specious, or at variance with actual scientific practice” (Earman 2000). The Bayesian literature will not be discussed here, though Earman’s discussion of the power of multiple witnessing deserves mention. Earman argues that even if the prior probability of a miracle occurring is very low, if there are enough independent witnesses, and each is sufficiently reliable, its occurrence may be established as probable. Thus if Hume’s concern is to show that we cannot in principle ever have good reason to believe testimony to a miracle, he would appear to be wrong about this (Earman 2000: See particularly Ch. 18 and following). Of course the number of witnesses required might be very large, and it may be that none of the miracles reported in any scripture will qualify. It is true that some of the miracles of the Bible are reported to have occurred in the presence of a good number of witnesses; the miracle of the loaves and fishes is a good example, which according to Mark (Mark 6:30-44) was witnessed by 5,000 people. But have already noticed that the testimony of one person, or even of four, that some event was witnessed by a multitude is not nearly the same as having the testimony of the multitude itself.

Another objection against Hume’s argument is that it makes use of a method that is unreliable; that is, it may have us reject reports that are true or accept those that are false. Consider the fact that a particular combination of lottery numbers will generally be chosen against very

great odds. If the odds of the particular combination chosen in the California Lottery last week were 40 million to 1, the probability of that combination being chosen is very low. Assuming that the likelihood of any given event being misreported in the Los Angeles Times is greater than that, we would not be able to trust the Times to determine which ticket is the winner.

The unreliability objection, made out in this particular way, seems to have a fairly easy response. There is no skeptical challenge to our being justified in believing the report of a lottery drawing; that is, reports of lottery drawings are reports of ordinary events, like reports of rainstorms and presidential press conferences. They do not require particularly strong testimony to be credible, and in fact we may be justified in believing the report of a lottery drawing even if it came from an otherwise unreliable source, such as a tabloid newspaper. This is surely because we know in advance that when the lottery is drawn, whatever particular combination of numbers may be chosen will be chosen against very great odds, so that we are guaranteed to get one highly improbable combination or another. Despite the fact that the odds against any particular combination are very great, all of the other particular outcomes are equally unlikely, so we have no prejudice against any particular combination. We know that people are going to win the lottery from time to time; we have no comparable assurance that anyone will ever be raised from the dead.

Nevertheless if we are to be able to make progress in science, we must be prepared to revise our understanding of natural law, and there ought to be circumstances in which testimony to an unprecedented event would be credible. For example, human beings collectively have seen countless squid, few of which have ever exceeded a length of two feet. For this reason reports of giant squid have, in the past, been sometimes dismissed as fanciful; the method employed by Hume in his Balance of Probabilities Argument would seem to rule out the possibility of our coming to the conclusion, on the basis of testimony, that such creatures exist– yet they have been found in the deep water near Antarctica. Similarly, someone living beyond the reach of modern technology might well reject reports of electric lighting and airplanes. Surely we should be skeptical when encountering a report of something so novel. But science depends for its progress on an ability to revise even its most confident assertions about the natural world.

Discussion of this particular problem in Hume tends to revolve around his example of the Indian and the ice. Someone from a very hot climate such as that of India, living during Hume’s time, might refuse to believe that water was capable of taking solid form as ice or frost, since he has an exceptionless experience against this. Yet in this case

he would come to the wrong conclusion. Hume argues that such a person would reason correctly, and that very strong testimony would properly be required to persuade him otherwise. Yet Hume refers to this not as a miracle but as a marvel; the difference would appear to lie in the fact that while water turning to ice does not conform to the experience of the Indian, since he has experienced no precedent for this, it is also notcontrary to his experience, because he has never had a chance to see what will happen to water when the temperature is sufficiently low (Enquiries, p. 113). By the same token, we ought to be cautious when it comes to deciding how large squid may grow in the Antarctic deeps, when our only experience of them has been in warm and relatively shallow water. The circumstances of an Antarctic habitat are not analogous to those in which we normally observe squid.

On the other hand, when someone reports to us that they have witnessed a miracle, such as a human being walking on water, our experience of ordinary water is analogous to this case, and therefore counts against the likelihood that the report is true. And of course our usual experience must be analogous to this case, for if the water that someone walks upon is somehow unlike ordinary water, or there is something else in the physical circumstances that can account for how it was possible in this one instance for someone to walk on water when this is impossible in the ordinary case, then it is not a violation of natural law after all, and therefore, by Hume’s definition, not a miracle. Jesus’ walking on water will only qualify as a miracle on the assumption that this case is analogous in all relevant respects to those cases in which dense objects have sunk.

The distinction between a miracle and a marvel is an important one for Hume; as he constructs an epistemology that he hopes will rule out belief in miracles in principle, he must be careful that it does not also hinder progress in science. Whether Hume is successful in making this distinction is a matter of some controversy.

a. Does Hume’s Argument Beg the Question?

Many commentators have suggested that Hume’s argument begs the question against miracles. (See for example Lewis 1947:103, Houston 1994:133) Suppose I am considering whether it is possible for a human being to walk on water. I consider my past experience with dense objects, such as human bodies, and their behavior in water; I may even conduct a series of experiments to see what will happen when a human body is placed without support on the surface of a body of water, and I always observe these bodies to sink. I now consider what is likely to occur, or likely to have occurred, in some unknown case. Perhaps I am wondering what will happen the next time I step out into

the waters of Silver Lake. Obviously I will expect, without seriously considering the matter, that I will sink rather than walk on its surface. My past experience with water gives me very good reason to think that this is what will happen. But of course in this case, I am not asking whether nature will be following its usual course. Indeed, I am assuming that it will be, since otherwise I would not refer to my past experience to judge what was likely in this particular case; my past experience of what happens with dense bodies in water is relevant only in those cases in which the uniformity of nature is not in question. But this means that to assume that our past experience is relevant in deciding what has happened in an unknown case, as Hume would have us do, is to assume that nature was following its usual course– it is to assume that there has been no break in the uniformity of nature. It is, in short, to assume that no miracle has occurred. In order to take seriously the possibility that a miracle has occurred, we must take seriously the possibility that there has been a breach in the uniformity of nature, which means that we cannot assume, without begging the question, that our ordinary observations are relevant.

It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that this criticism represents a victory for apologetic. While the apologist may wish to proceed by asking the skeptic to abandon his assumption that ordinary experience is relevant to assessing the truth of miracle reports, this seems to beg the question in the opposite direction. Ordinary experience will only fail to be relevant in those cases in which there was in fact a break in the uniformity of nature, i.e. in those cases in which a miracle has occurred, and this is precisely what the skeptic requires to be shown. It is tempting to suppose that there is a middle ground; perhaps the skeptic need only admit that it ispossible that ordinary experience is not relevant in this case. However, it is difficult to determine just what sort of possibility this would be. The mere logical possibility that an exceptional event may have occurred is not something that the skeptic has ever questioned; when I infer that I will sink in the waters of Silver Lake, I do so in full recognition of the fact that it is logically possible that I will not.

If the apologist is asking for any greater concession than this, the skeptic may be forgiven for demanding that he be given some justification for granting it. He may be forgiven, too, for demanding that he be persuaded of the occurrence of a miracle on his own terms– i.e. on purely naturalistic grounds, without requiring him to adopt any of the assumptions of supernaturalism. Of course the most natural place to look for evidence that there may occasionally be breaks in the natural order would be to testimony, but for reasons that are now obvious, this will not do.

It would appear that the question of whether miracle reports are credible turns on a larger question, namely, whether we ought to hold the supernaturalistic worldview, or the naturalistic one. One thing seems certain, however, and that is that the apologist cannot depend on miracle reports to establish the supernaturalistic worldview if the credibility of such reports depends on our presumption that the supernaturalistic worldview is correct.

6. Conceptual Difficulties: The Logical Impossibility of a Violation

Recent criticisms of belief in miracles have focused on the concept of a miracle. In particular, it has been held that the notion of a violation of natural law is self-contradictory. No one, of course, thinks that the report of an event that might be taken as a miracle– such as a resurrection or a walking on water– is logically self-contradictory. Nevertheless some philosophers have argued that it is paradoxical to suggest both that such an event has occurred, and that it is a violation of natural law. This argument dates back at least as far as T.H. Huxley, who tells us that the definition of a miracle as contravening the order of nature is self-contradictory, because all we know of the order of nature is derived from our observation of the course of events of which the so-called miracle is a part (1984:157). Should an apparent miracle take place, such as a suspension in the air of a piece of lead, scientific methodology forbids us from supposing that any law of nature has been violated; on the contrary, Huxley tells us (in a thoroughly Humean vein) that “the scientist would simply set to work to investigate the conditions under which so highly unexpected an occurrence took place; and modify his, hitherto, unduly narrow conception of the laws of nature” (1894:156). More recently this view has been defended by Antony Flew (1966, 1967, 1997) and Alastair McKinnon (1967). McKinnon has argued that in formulating the laws of nature, the scientist is merely trying to codify what actually happens; thus to claim that some event is a miracle, where this is taken to imply that it is a violation of natural law, is to claim at once that it actually occurred, but also, paradoxically, that it is contrary to the actual course of events.

Let us say that a statement of natural law is a generalization of the form “All As are Bs;” for example, all objects made of lead (A) are objects that will fall when we let go of them (B). A violation would be represented by the occurrence of an A that is not a B, or in this case, an object made of lead that does not fall when we let go of it. Thus to assert that a violation of natural law has occurred is to say at once that all As are Bs, but to say at the same time that there exists some A that is not a B; it is to say, paradoxically, that all objects made of lead will fall when left unsupported, but that this object made of lead did not fall

when left unsupported. Clearly we cannot have it both ways; should we encounter a piece of lead that does not fall, we will be forced to admit that it is not true that all objects made of lead will fall. On McKinnon’s view, a counterinstance to some statement of natural law negates that statement; it shows that our understanding of natural law is incorrect and must be modified– which implies that no violation has occurred after all.

Of course this does not mean that no one has ever parted the Red Sea, walked on water, or been raised from the dead; it only means that such events, if they occurred, cannot be violations of natural law. Thus arguably, this criticism does not undermine the Christian belief that these events really did occur (Mavrodes 1985:337). But if Antony Flew is correct (1967:148), for the apologist to point to any of these events as providing evidence for the existence of a transcendent God or the truth of a particular religious doctrine, we must not only have good reason to believe that they occurred, but also that they represent an overriding of natural law, an overriding that originates from outside of nature. To have any apologetic value, then, a miracle must be a violation of natural law, which means that we must (per impossibile) have both the law and the exception.

a. Violations as Nonrepeatable Counterinstances to Natural Law

The conception of a violation may, however, be defended as logically coherent. Suppose we take it to be a law of nature that a human being cannot walk on water; subsequently, however, we become convinced that on one particular occasion (O)– say for example, April 18th, 1910–someone was actually able to do this. Yet suppose that after the occurrence of O water goes back to behaving exactly as it normally does. In such a case our formulation of natural law would continue to have its usual predictive value, and surely we would neither abandon it nor revise it. The only revision possible in this case would be to say “Human beings cannot walk on water, except on occasion O.” Yet the amendment in this case is entirely ad hoc; in its reference to a particular event, the revision fails to take the generalized form that statements of natural law normally possess, and it adds no explanatory power to the original formulation of the law. It gives us no better explanation of what has happened in the past, it does nothing to account for the exceptional event O, and it fares no better than the original formulation when it comes to predicting what will happen in the future. In this case O is what might be called anonrepeatable counterinstance to natural law. Faced with such an event we would retain our old formulation of the law, which is to say that the exceptional event O does not negate that formulation. This means that

there is no contradiction implied by affirming the law together with its exception.

Things would be different if we can identify some feature (F) of the circumstances in which O occurred which will explain why O occurred in this one case when normally it would not. F might be some force operating to counteract the usual tendency of a dense object, such as a human body, to sink in water. In this case, on discovery of F we are in a position to reformulate the law in a fruitful way, saying that human beings cannot walk on water except when F is present. Since the exception in this case now has a generalized form (i.e. it expresses the proposition that human beings can walk on water whenever F is present), our reformulation has the kind of generality that a statement of natural law ought to have. It explains the past interaction of dense bodies with water as well as the original formulation did, and it explains why someone was able to walk on water on occasion O.Finally, it will serve to predict what will happen in the future, both when F is absent and when it is present.

We may now, following Ninian Smart (1964:37) and Richard Swinburne (1970:26), understand a violation as a nonrepeatable counterinstance to natural law. We encounter a nonrepeatable counterinstance when someone walks on water, as in case O, and having identified all of the causally relevant factors at work in O, and reproducing these, no one is able to walk on water. Since a statement of natural law is falsified only by the occurrence of a repeatable counterinstance, it is paradoxical to assert a particular statement of law and at the same time insist that a repeatable counterinstance to it has occurred. However there is no paradox in asserting the existence of the law together with the occurrence of a counterinstance that is not repeatable.

b. Miracles as Outside the Scope of Natural Laws

The force of this line of reasoning to deny that natural laws must describe the actual course of events. Natural laws do not describe absolutely the limits of what can and cannot happen in nature. They only describe nature to the extent that it operates according to laws. To put the matter differently, we might say that natural laws only describe what can happen as a result of natural causes; they do not tell us what can happen when a supernatural cause is present. As Michael Levine (1989:67) has put the point:

Suppose the laws of nature are regarded as nonuniversal or incomplete in the sense that while they cover natural events, they do not cover, and are not intended to cover, non-natural events such as supernaturally caused events if there are or could be any. A physically

impossible occurrence would not violate a law of nature because it would not be covered by (i.e. would not fall within the scope of) such a law.

On this understanding, a physically impossible event would be one that could not occur given only physical, or natural, causes. But what is physically impossible is not absolutely impossible, since such an event might occur as the result of a supernatural cause. One way to make this out is to say that all laws must ultimately be understood as disjunctions, of the form “All As are Bs unless some supernatural cause is operating.” (Let us refer to this as asupernaturalistic formulation of law, where of course it is causal supernaturalism that is at work here, as opposed to a naturalistic formulation, which simply asserts that all As are Bs, without taking account the possibility of any supernatural cause.) If this is correct, then it turns out that strictly speaking, a miracle is not a violation of natural law after all, since it is something that occurs by means of a supernatural intervention. Furthermore, since statements of natural law are only intended to describe what happens in the absence of supernatural intrusions, the occurrence of a miracle does not negate any formulation of natural law.

The supernaturalistic conception of natural law appears to offer a response to Hume’s Balance of Probabilities argument; the evidence for natural laws, gathered when supernatural causes are absent, does not weigh against the possibility that a miracle should occur, since a miracle is the result of a supernatural intervention into the natural order. Thus there is a failure of analogy between those cases that form the basis for our statements of natural law, and the circumstances of a miracle. Probabilistic considerations, based on our ordinary experience, are only useful in determining what will happen in the ordinary case, when there are no supernatural causes at work.

7. Conceptual Difficulties II: Identifying Miracles

We have seen two ways in which the concept of a miracle, described as an event that nature cannot produce on its own, may be defended as coherent. We may say that a miracle is a violation of natural law and appeal to the conception of a violation as a nonrepeatable counterinstance, or we may deny that miracles are violations of natural law since, having supernatural causes, they fall outside the scope of these laws. Nevertheless, conceptual difficulties remain. Antony Flew (1966, 1967, 1997) has argued that if a miracle is to serve any apologetic purpose, as evidence for the truth of some revelation, then it must be possible to identify it as a miracle without appealing to criteria given by that revelation; in particular, there must be natural, or observable, criteria by which an event can be determined to be one

which nature cannot produce on its own. Flew refers to this as the Problem of Identifying Miracles.

Let us see how this problem arises in connection with these two conceptions of the miraculous. Are there natural criteria by which we can distinguish a repeatable from a nonrepeatable counterinstance to some natural law? Suppose some formulation of natural law (All As are Bs) and some event that is a counterinstance to that formulation (an A that is not a B). The counterinstance will be repeatable just in case there is some natural force F present in the circumstances that is causally responsible for the counterinstance, such that every time F is present, a similar counterinstance will occur. But suppose we do our best to reproduce the circumstances of the event and are unable to do so. We cannot assume that the event is nonrepeatable, for we have no way to eliminate the possibility that we have failed to identify all of the natural forces that were operating to produce the original counterinstance. The exceptional event may have been produced by a natural force that is unknown to us. No observable distinction can be made between a case in which an exception is repeatable, having been produced by some as–yet undiscovered natural force, and one that is not. Worse yet, the naturalist will argue that the very occurrence of the exception is evidence that there is in fact some previously unknown natural force at work; where there is a difference in effects, there must be a difference in causes– which for the naturalist means, of course, natural causes.

Nor does the difficulty go away if we adopt the supernaturalistic view of natural law. On this view, natural laws only describe what happens when supernatural forces are absent; a genuine miracle does not violate natural law because it is the effect of a supernatural cause. Suppose an extraordinary event occurs, which the apologist would like to attribute to a supernatural cause. The following two states of affairs appear to be empirically indistinguishable:

1. The event is the result of a natural cause that we are as yet unable to identify. 2. The event is the result of a supernatural cause.

This, of course, is due to the fact that we do not observe the cause of the event in either of these cases– in the first, it is because the cause is unknown to us, and in the second, because supernatural causes are unobservableex hypothesi. Thus the issue here is whether we should suppose that our failure to observe any cause for the event is due to our (perhaps temporary) inability to fully identify all of the natural forces that were operating to produce it, or whether it is because the cause, being supernatural, is in principle unobservable. If Flew is right,

then in order to identify the event as a miracle, we must find some way to rule out the possibility of ever finding a natural cause for it; furthermore, if the identification of this event as a miracle is to serve any apologetic purpose, we must find some empirical grounds for doing this.

To complicate matters even further, there is yet a third possibility, which is that:

3. The event has no cause at all.

That is, it is possible that the event is simply uncaused or spontaneous. It is clear that there can be no observable difference between an event that has a supernatural cause, since such a cause is in principle unobservable, and one that fails to have a cause. The challenge for an account of miracles as supernaturally caused is to show what the difference is between conceiving an event as having a supernatural cause, and conceiving of it as simply lacking any cause at all.

The implications of this are quite significant: Even if the naturalist were forced to admit that an event had no natural cause, and that nature is, therefore, not fully lawlike, this does not commit him to supernaturalism. It is possible that nature undergoes spontaneous lapses in its uniformity. Such events would be nonrepeatable counterinstances to natural law, but they would not be miracles. They would fall within the unaided potentialities of nature; the naturalist need not admit the necessity of supernatural intervention to produce such events, because their occurrence requires no appeal to any transcendent reality. Indeed, should we become persuaded that an event has occurred that has no natural cause, the naturalist may argue that simplicity dictates that we forgo any appeal to the supernatural, since this would involve the introduction of an additional entity (God) without any corresponding benefit in explanatory power.

8. Supernatural Causes and Supernatural Explanation

The apologist, however, will insist that this is precisely the point. Describing an extraordinary event as the effect of a supernatural cause, and attributing it to divine intervention, is justified by the fact that it offers us a chance to explain it where no natural explanation is available. Assuming (as the naturalist typically does) that nature operates according to physical laws, the occurrence of an apparent exception points to some difference in the circumstances. If no difference in the physical circumstances can be found, then the only explanation available is that there is some supernatural force at work. It is unreasonable to reject such a supernatural explanation in the

purely speculative hope that one day a natural explanation may become available.

The notion of a supernatural explanation deserves careful attention. The naturalist will surely argue that the conception of a supernatural explanation– together with its cognate, the notion of a supernatural cause– is confused. This position is motivated by the conviction that the notions of an explanation and of a cause are fundamentally empirical conceptions.

First, as regards the conception of a cause: Paradigmatically, causation is a relation between two entities, a cause (or some set of causal circumstances) and an effect. Now there are many cases in which we witness the effect of a cause that is not seen; I might for example hear the sound of a gunshot, and not see the gun that produced it. Furthermore I will be able to infer that there is a gun somewhere nearby that produced that sound. This is an inference from effect to cause, and is similar to what the apologist would like to do with a miracle, inferring the existence of God (as cause) from the occurrence of the miracle (as effect). But what makes my inference possible in this case is, as Hume would point out, the fact that I have observed a regular conjunction of similar causes with similar effects. This is precisely what is lacking when it comes to supernatural causes. I cannot ever experience the conjunction of a supernatural cause with its effect, since supernatural causes are (by hypothesis) unobservable– nor can I make an inference from any phenomenon in nature to its supernatural cause without such an experience. Indeed given the very uniqueness of God’s miraculous interventions into nature, it is difficult to see how the notion of divine causation could draw on any kind of regularity at all, as empirical causes do.

It is true that science often appeals to invisible entities such as electrons, magnetic fields, and black holes; perhaps the apologist conceives her own appeal as having a similar character (Geivett 1997:183). These things, one may argue, are known only through their observable effects. But the causal properties of such natural entities as electrons and magnetic fields are analogous to those of entities that are observable; this is what entitles us to refer to them as natural entities. Furthermore, these properties may be described in terms of observable regularities, which means that entities like electrons and magnetic fields may play a role in theories that have predictive power. Thus for example, an appeal to electrons can help us predict what will happen when we turn on a light switch. God is not a theoretical entity of this kind. Far from being able to play a role in any empirical regularities, God’s miraculous interventions into nature, as these are conceived by the supernaturalist, are remarkable for their uniqueness.

Another reason for doubting that God can possess causal powers analogous to those enjoyed by natural objects arises from the fact that God is typically conceived as lacking any location in space– and on the view of some philosophers, as being outside of time as well. Causal relationships among natural entities play out against a spatio-temporal background. Indeed it would seem that to speak of God as the cause of event in nature encounters something similar to the Problem of Mind-Body Interaction. (This should not be surprising given the usual conception of God as a nonmaterial entity, i.e. as mind or spirit.) All of the cases of causal interaction of which we are aware occur between physical entities that are fundamentally similar to one another in terms of possessing physical properties such as mass, electrical charge, location in space etc. Thus we know for example how one billiard ball may move another by virtue of the transfer of momentum. But God possesses none of these qualities, and cannot therefore interact with physical objects in any way that we can understand. God cannot, for example, transfer momentum to a physical object if God does not possess mass.

It may be argued that the conception of an explanation is inextricably intertwined with that of causation, so that if the conception of a supernatural cause is an empty one, the notion of a supernatural explanation can hardly be expected to get off the ground. The apologist may respond by distinguishing the sort of explanation she intends to give, when she attributes a miracle to divine agency, from the sort of explanation that is common to the natural sciences. In particular, she might characterize them as personal explanations, which work to explain a phenomenon by reference to the intentions of an agent– in this case God. (See for example Swinburne 1979: Ch. 2) Now, it is true that personal explanations do not have quite the same empirical basis as do scientific ones; nevertheless, like scientific explanations, they do typically have empirical consequences. For example, if I explain Bertrand’s running a red light by saying that he wanted to be on time to his meeting, I have given a personal explanation for Bertrand’s behavior, and it is one that is testable. It will be supported by any observations that tend to confirm the hypothesis that Bertrand is due for a meeting and that being on time is something that he desires, and it will be undermined by any that are contrary to it, such as discovering that Bertrand does not believe that any meeting is imminent. Furthermore this explanation also serves as a basis for rough predictions about other actions that Bertrand might be expected to perform, e.g. he will likely take other steps (possibly involving additional traffic violations) in order to make it to his meeting on time.

The most obvious way in which appeals to divine agency fail to be analogous to the usual sort of personal explanation is in their failure to yield even the vaguest of predictions. (See Nowell-Smith 1955) Suppose, for example, that we attribute a walking on water to divine intervention; from this description, nothing follows about what we can expect to happen in the future. Unless we can introduce additional information provided by revelation, we have no grounds for inferring that God will bring it about that additional miracles will occur; he may, or he may not. Indeed, as far as this kind of predictive expansion is concerned, we seem no better off saying that some event came about because God willed to occur than we would be if we said of it simply that it had no cause, or that it occurred spontaneously. (Indeed, often when someone says “It was God’s will,” they are calling attention to the inscrutability of events.) In light of this fact, there is no reason why the naturalist should find such a supernatural explanation compelling; on the contrary, faced with a putative miracle, if his concern was to explain the event, he would be justified in following Hume’s advice and continuing to hold out for a natural cause and a natural explanation– one that possesses predictive power– or in the worst case, to simply shrug off the incident as inexplicable, while denying that this inexplicability warrants any appeal to the divine.

An objection here may be that all of this makes use of an unnecessarily narrow conception of causation– one which arbitrarily seeks to restrict their use to the natural sciences. Undoubtedly the word “cause” is used in a very diverse number of ways, and it is surely wrong to say that no sense can ever be attached to a statement of the form “God caused x to occur.” The same may be said regarding the notion of an explanation. But it is the apologist who tries to understand supernatural causes as analogous to the sort of causes that are of interest to natural science. If supernatural causes are not sufficiently similar to natural ones, they cannot be expected to fill the gap when natural causes are found to be lacking.

The most fundamental challenge to someone who wishes to appeal to the existence of supernatural causes is to make it clear just what the difference is between saying that an event has a supernatural cause, and saying that it has no cause at all. Similarly when it comes to the prospect of giving a supernatural explanation: Supposing that someone walks on water and we are unable to find any natural explanation for this, what warrants our saying that such an event has a supernatural explanation, as opposed to saying that it is inexplicable and being done with it?

9. Coincidence Miracles

Given the difficulties that arise in connection with the suggestion that God causes a miracle to occur, a non-causal account deserves consideration. R.F. Holland (1965) has suggested that a religiously significant coincidence may qualify as a miracle. Suppose a child who is riding a toy motor-car gets stuck on the track at a train crossing. A train is approaching from around a curve, and the engineer who is driving it will not be able to see the child until it is too late to stop. By coincidence, the engineer faints at just the right moment, releasing his hand on the control lever, which causes the train to stop automatically. The child, against all expectations, is saved, and his mother thanks God for his providence; she continues to insist that a miracle has occurred even after hearing the explanation of how the train came to stop when it did. Interestingly, when the mother attributes the stopping of the train to God she is not identifying God as its cause; the cause of the train’s stopping is the engineer’s fainting. Nor is she, in any obvious way, offering an explanation for the event– at least none that is intended to compete with the naturalistic explanation made possible by reference to the engineer’s medical condition. What makes this event a miracle, if it is, is its significance, which is given at least in part by its being an apparent response to a human need.

Like a violation miracle, such a coincidence occurs contrary to our expectations, yet it does this without standing in opposition to our understanding of natural law. To conceive of such an event as a miracle does seem to satisfy the notion of a miracle as an event that elicits wonder, though the object of our wonder seems not so much to behow the train came to stop as the simple fact that it should stop when it did, when we had every reason to think it would not.

A similar account of the miraculous comes from John Hick’s conception of religious faith as a form of “experiencing-as.” Inspired by Wittgenstein’s discussion of seeing-as in the Philosophical Investigations(194e), Hick has argued that while the theist and the atheist live in the same physical environment, they experience it differently; the theist sees a significance in the events of her life that prompts her to describe her experience as a continuing interaction with God (1973:Ch. 2). A theist, for example, might benefit from an unexpected job opportunity and experience this as an expression of divine providence; the same event might not move an atheist in this way. Regarding miracles in particular, Hick (1973:51) writes:

A miracle, whatever else it may be, is an event through which we become vividly and immediately conscious of God as acting towards us. A startling happening, even if it should involve a suspension of natural law, does not constitute for us a miracle in the religious sense of the word if it fails to make us intensely aware of God’s presence. In

order to be miraculous, an event must be experienced as religiously significant.

Holland gives no indication that he wants to describe the miracle of the train in terms of experiencing-as. Nevertheless it seems reasonable to say, with Hick, that in Holland’s example, while the child’s mother has seen the same thing that the skeptic has– the stopping of the train– she understands it differently, experiencing it as a miracle, and as an expression of divine providence.

But now a new problem emerges: If the question of whether an event is a miracle lies in its significance, and if its significance is a matter of how we understand it, then it is hard to see how the determination that some event is a miracle can avoid being an entirely subjective matter. In this case, whether or not a miracle has occurred depends on how the witnesses see it, and so (arguably) is more a fact about the witnesses, and their response to the event, than it is to the event itself. (See Smart 1964:35) But we do not typically analyze human agency in this way; whether or not Caesar crossed the Rubicon is not a matter of how anyone experiences things. The question of whether Caesar crossed the Rubicon is an objective one. Surely the theist wishes to say that the question of whether God has acted in the world, in the occurrence of a miracle, is objective as well. And surely this fact accounts for the attractiveness of a causal account of miracles; any dispute over the cause of a putative miracle is a dispute over the facts, not a dispute about how people view the facts.

10. Miracle as Basic Action

This is a serious criticism, but it overlooks something very important about the character of actions generally. To ask whether a human being has acted is surely to ask an objective question, but it is not always to ask a question about causes. Arthur Danto (1965) has argued for a distinction between two types of action: Those that are mediated, and those that are basic. (See also Davidson 1982, who refers to basic actions as primitive.) I act in a mediated way when I perform action x by doing y; for example, if I turn on the light in my study by flicking a switch, my turning on the light is a mediated action. My flicking the switch is also a mediated action if I flick the switch by moving my fingers. Notice that, when we say that I turned on the light in a mediated sort of way, this may carry causal implications: In this case, the light’s coming on was caused by the switch’s being flicked, and the switch’s being flicked was caused by my fingers’ moving. But not all of our actions are like this. When I move my fingers in order to flip the switch, I do not bring about their movement by doing anything else; I just move them. Thus to say I have acted in moving my fingers

does not imply that I caused anything to happen. Yet clearly it is, in some sense of “fact,” a fact that I moved my fingers.

It is possible, of course, that my fingers’ moving has a cause, such as the firing of various neurons. But my neural firings are not actions of mine; they are not things that I do. It is not as though I set about to fire my neurons as part of a procedure aimed ultimately at bringing it about that my muscles contract and my fingers move. And even if I did, there would have to be something that I did immediately in order to set the chain of causes going, or there would be an infinite series of actions I would have to perform in order to turn on the light— I could never so much as start to act . Thus the possibility of being able to describe my fingers’ moving in terms of physical causes, and of thereby being able to give a natural explanation for this in terms of neural firings and the like, does not rule out the possibility of saying that in moving my fingers, I have acted.

Some philosophers believe that the truth of a libertarian account of free will implies that the free actions of human beings have no natural cause. This parallels the way that the traditional view of miracles has understood the manner of God’s action in a miracle. (J.P. Moreland has discussed the analogy between free human actions and miracles in this regard; see Moreland 1997.) Such a libertarian view of human action may be correct. It is important to recognize, however, that we do not have to settle the matter; we do not have to show that someone’s moving of their fingers has no natural cause in order to attribute this movement to their agency. Thus analogously, a believer in miracles may insist that there is no natural explanation for various miracles such as the creation of the universe, Moses’ parting of the Red Sea, or Jesus’ resurrection. But if miracles are basic actions on the part of God, then our attribution of divine agency to such events does not require us to show that these things cannot be explained by reference to natural causes. Whatever we must do to identify an event as a miracle, if a miracle is conceived as a basic action on the part of God, it cannot involve a requirement to show that it has no natural cause.

To ascribe a basic action to its agent is not to make any claim about its cause; thus if miracles are properly conceived as basic actions on the part of God, it is not the case that “any assertion that a miracle has occurred is implicitly a causal assertion” (Levine 1994:39), though this view is widely held. On the contrary, the ascription of a miracle to God will be logically independent of any causal analysis. (For a detailed discussion of this point see Corner 2007, and particularly Ch. 4.)

11. Wittgenstein: Miracle as Gesture

This leaves open the question of how we are to identify an event as a miracle, if this does not involve a causal analysis. One approach is to think of a miracle as a gesture on the part of God. In Culture and Value(1980:45e), Ludwig Wittgenstein writes:

A miracle is, as it were, a gesture that God makes. As a man sits quietly and then makes an impressive gesture, God lets the world run on smoothly and then accompanies the words of a saint by a symbolic occurrence, a gesture of nature. It would be an instance if, when a saint has spoken, the trees around him bowed, as if in reverence.

It is interesting that Wittgenstein should speak of a gesture as a symbolic occurrence. A human bodily movement becomes a gesture when it takes on a particular kind of significance. The significance of a bow, for example, lies in the fact that it is an expression of reverence or respect. Being able to identify a bending at the waist as a bow requires us to be familiar with the culture in which this particular bodily movement has the significance that it does. Nevertheless, the question of whether someone has bowed is an objective one– it is, we might say, a question about the facts. Thus the analogy of a miracle to a gesture may give us a way to view miracles at once as signs, allowing us to say that the character of a miracle lies, at least in part, in its significance within what Wittgenstein would call a “form of life,” and at the same time insist that the question of its significance is an objective matter.

If a miracle is like a gesture in the way Wittgenstein thinks it is, then supposing that a miraculous event should occur, part of what makes it possible to identify that event as a miracle is an appreciation of its significance. But a miracle does not take on its significance in a vacuum; the significance of a miracle, like the significance of a gesture, is dependent on a certain sort of context. This context is established, at least to some degree, by one’s view of the world; whether one is able to identify an event as a miracle will depend on one’s ability to integrate it with a worldview in which the possibility of God’s acting in nature is already acknowledged. Such a limitation poses no problem for theology generally, which might legitimately regard such a view of things as its starting point. It will, however, be fatal to any apologetic appeal that seeks to establish the credentials of theistic religion by pointing to the occurrence of a putative miracle and attempting to establish, on grounds that are consistent with naturalism, that this event gives compelling evidence for the existence of God.

Peter Winch has recently taken up Wittgenstein’s comparison of a miracle to a gesture:

A certain disposition, or movement, of a human body can be called a ‘gesture’ only within a context where it is possible for it to be recognised and/or reacted to as a gesture… Such a possibility depends, at least in large part, on the reigning culture within which the action occurs. (1995:211, emphasis in the original)

Winch observes that our recognition of a gesture is typically immediate rather than inferred. Thus for example, if we are introduced to someone and they bow, we would not normally arrive at the conclusion that they are bowing by means of an inference, after first eliminating the possibility that their movement has a natural explanation; on the contrary, if we are sufficiently familiar with bowing as a cultural institution we will immediately recognize the character of their act. Furthermore, our recognition of the fact that they have bowed will typically be shown in our reaction to their gesture, e.g. in our bowing in return. Analogously, we express our recognition of a miracle not by looking to see if it has any natural cause, but by responding in the manner characteristic of theistic religion; with awe, perhaps, or with gratitude for God’s beneficence. (This is the response of the mother in Holland’s miracle of the train.) But, just as our ability to recognize, and to react appropriately to, a bow depends on our being immersed in a particular culture, so might our ability to recognize a miracle and react to it in the characteristically religious way. If Winch is correct, then the skeptic, who seeks to show that a putative miracle has a natural cause, is proceeding in the wrong direction– but then so is the theist who tries to show that the event cannot be explained scientifically. Such a theist commits the same error as one would who thinks that in order to show that a particular gesture is a bow, we must show that no physiological explanation can be given for it.

The mainstream theistic approach to miracles is, at the moment, one that would prefer to employ a method similar to that used in the natural sciences. Philosophers taking this approach are unlikely to be satisfied with the conception of a miracle as a gesture. But if Winch is right, this is an indication of how deeply embedded science has become in modern western culture, and an indication as well of a drift away from the kind of religious culture in which the conception of a miracle originally found its home.