{"id":1555,"date":"2016-05-03T15:02:00","date_gmt":"2016-05-03T20:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/unsystematictheology\/?p=1555"},"modified":"2016-05-03T15:02:00","modified_gmt":"2016-05-03T20:02:00","slug":"do-you-believe-in-miracles-read-this-before-answering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unsystematictheology\/2016\/05\/do-you-believe-in-miracles-read-this-before-answering\/","title":{"rendered":"Do You Believe in Miracles? (Read This, Before Answering)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Have you ever witnessed a miracle?<\/p>\n

\"By<\/a>
By sofia.reshetnikova [CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>To even answer that question, we\u2019d have to come to some common agreement as to what we mean by miracle.<\/p>\n

People routinely claim to have experienced or observed miracles.<\/p>\n

The Catholic Church even has a Vatican-appointed team of miracle-claim-researchers, called the\u00a0 \u201cMiracle Commission\u201d<\/a> That\u2019s a team I\u2019d like to be on. Except I\u2019m not Catholic.<\/p>\n

But I do believe in miracles.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t, however, accept the common understanding of a miracle as an divine<\/em> interruption of the natural law. <\/em>This common definition hearkens back to the early Enlightenment period and is attributed to the English skeptic philosopher David Hume.<\/p>\n

In An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, <\/em>Hume defines miracle as \u201ca transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some visible agent.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you know anything about Hume, you know that\u2013Enlightenment skeptic that he was\u2013he didn\u2019t accept the possibility of miracles. As Keith Ward points out, in The Big Questions of Science and Religion<\/a>, <\/em>Hume\u2019s definition of miracles put divine action on the defensive, pointing out their absurdity. As Ward puts it,<\/p>\n

Why should God make a set of beautiful and elegant laws, only to break them when the Divine Being felt like it? Does this not make God some sort of mathematical criminal? (87)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This view of the world as defined by unbreakable law and impenetrability by a divine being led to an increasingly deistic view of history (by an increasing number of intellectual elites) and to the relegation of special divine providence to a bygone era.<\/p>\n

It struck a big blow (a blow which continues with perhaps ever greater intensity) to orthodox Christianity, replete with a view of divine creation of the universe, a virginal conception, numerous \u201cmiracle accounts\u201d in the Bible and especially those accorded to Jesus in the gospels, and a centrality of some kind of resurrection hope and afterlife.<\/p>\n

I would add that the definition of miracle as \u201ctransgression of natural law\u201d also gave, on the other ideological side of things, fodder for those who accepted supernatural providence to pit religious belief against science. We need only look to the six-day creationists as contemporary examples of this pitting of revealed religion (and miracles\/divine providence) against science.<\/p>\n

But Ward offers another definition of miracle, one which I prefer:<\/p>\n

Miracles as \u201cextraordinary manifestations of spiritual power\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This definition does not require a divine \u201ctransgression\u201d of laws of nature (\u201claws\u201d which the Creator is ultimately responsible for, anyway). It simply indicates that extraordinary, even unusual, things can happen from time to time in our universe and within our history.<\/p>\n

If there is such a thing as Spirit, then it\u2019s reasonable to assume that Spirit exerts some causal influence in the world\u2013even within the world in which the material may be the only \u201cthings\u201d that are directly observable by us. Ward, again:<\/p>\n

If nature is as a whole the manifestation of Spirit, then the laws of its operations will be manifestations of the nature of Spirit. To put this in theistic terms, the predictable regularities of nature will manifest the faithfulness and reliability of God, who wills that we should be able to understand and use these regularities. But if God is a supreme personal reality, it is to be expected that there will also be unique and more distinctly personal forms of manifestation, by which God is truly known in many forms of beauty, moral insight, and historical guidance. The universe will, in short, not be a machine. It will be more like (though not exactly like) a body, expressing both reliable regularities and specific personal action. (91)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When events are affected by God, or Spirit, or whatever you prefer to call it, then extraordinary events may occur, or new things may come to be that weren\u2019t before. Unusual and surprising turns may be taken. But this may only mean that we need to revise our understanding of what is excluded or included in the \u201claws\u201d of nature.<\/p>\n

One doesn\u2019t get the sense from Ward that revising the definition in this way opens up the field to any and every miracle claim. He\u2019s aware of the temptation and danger to invent \u201cinvisible and untestable spiritual laws to justify ridiculous opinions\u201d (90).<\/p>\n

But Quantum physics is pointing us into a world that is much more organic, much more indeterminate and open, and\u2013some would say\u2013much more spiritual <\/em>than the world (or worldview, rather) inhabited and understood by David Hume.<\/p>\n

In my view, the miracle of resurrection (should that prove to be a reality) would be just a way of saying that the world God created is one that does not end with death. That wouldn\u2019t be a transgression of a natural law, but its redefinition.<\/p>\n

In other words, a miracle as \u201cextraordinary manifestation of spiritual power.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Have you ever witnessed a miracle? To even answer that question, we\u2019d have to come to some common agreement as to what we mean by miracle. People routinely claim to have experienced or observed miracles. The Catholic Church even has a Vatican-appointed team of miracle-claim-researchers, called the\u00a0 \u201cMiracle Commission\u201d That\u2019s a team I\u2019d like to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[590,592,593,591,565],"class_list":["post-1555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-keith-ward","tag-miracle","tag-national-geographic","tag-science-and-religion","tag-the-story-of-god"],"yoast_head":"\nDo You Believe in Miracles? (Read This, Before Answering)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Have you ever witnessed a miracle? 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