Miracles: What Are They?
Have you noticed how often the word miracle is used these days? Skin creams that make us look younger; computer technology; the transition of a nation from oppression to freedom; what a quarterback needs to pull off for his team to have a winning season. All these are called miracles today. Anything that takes extreme effort or which amazes people is now a miracle. I’m still amazed that airplanes stay in the air. But is that a miracle?
To begin our discussion we’ll first put forth a definition. To clarify the nature of a miracle will also require making distinctions in God’s activities in creation. Then we’ll respond to objections to the possibility of miracles. Finally, we’ll consider their apologetic use.
So, what is a miracle? In his book, All the Miracles of the Bible, Herbert Lockyer said that a miracle is “some extraordinary work of deity transcending the ordinary powers of nature and wrought in connection with the ends of revelation.”{1} Notice the three elements: miracles are supernatural, or the work of deity; they transcend or override natural law; and they are part of God’s means of revealing His nature and purposes to us.
In Acts. 2:22, Peter speaks of the “miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through” Jesus. This reference to miracles can also be translated power. Miracles demonstrate the supernatural power of God over nature and evil forces. This power was seen in Jesus’ healing the sick; calming the storm; and raising people from the dead. Such events occurred in opposition to the normal course of nature; they could only be done by a supernatural power.
The word wonders refers to the response the miracles evoked in the observers, a response of astonishment and fear. Observers knew they had seen something out of the ordinary, something that in its greatness could even be threatening to them.
Still a third word used by Peter in Acts 2:22 points to the revelatory purpose of miracles. There, Peter referred to the signs of Jesus. This word stresses that aspect of miracles which draws attention to the significance of the event. Signs point to or reveal something else.
First, they indicated a relationship between the miracle worker and God. In John 5:36 Jesus said that his works were evidence that he had been sent by God. Second, they pointed to a fuller activity of God still to come. As one writer said: “The power Jesus exhibited was a foretaste of the power to be revealed at the end of the age.”{2}
Also, miracles are revelatory themselves in that they reveal the nature of God. Jesus came to reveal the Father to us. He said he was the Savior, and he showed he was the Savior by doing saving things. He healed diseases; he delivered the demon-possessed; he saved from the fury of the storm.
So, miracles are from God; they override nature; and they reveal God. They aren’t simply amazing events. When just about anything amazing is called a miracle simply because it’s amazing, real miracles lose their significance.
Miracles and Providence
The word miracle is used so often and to describe so many things that it’s lost its power. One of the reasons events are called miracles which shouldn’t be–at least by Christians–is that we want to give due honor to God for His work in our lives. This is how it should be. However, in order to give miracles their due, we should distinguish the different kinds of activity of God in this world.
We can think of God’s involvement in three categories. First, what we call providence, which is God’s ongoing work in sustaining the universe He created and the people in it. He keeps the stars in place; He provides for our physical needs; and He is active in the governing of societies. People have come to learn that things work a certain way, whether they are believers in God or not. No explicit belief in God is necessary to explain such things. Events on this level are not miracles.
Second, God is active in what we might call special providence. “Special providences,” said theologian Louis Berkhof, “are special combinations in the order of events, as in the answer to prayer, in deliverance out of trouble, and in all instances in which grace and help come in critical circumstances.”{3} God’s hand is “visible” in a sense to Christians who have watched all the pieces to one or more of life’s puzzles fall into place in a very special way.
Our move to Texas to work with Probe is an example. When we survey all the events that led up to our move, we recognize that God had to have been involved. But that’s because we set these events in the context of the thinking, the decisions, and the prayers of people who sought God’s will. However, people who aren’t inclined to see God working in our lives would see nothing supernatural about such events. They might simply see that we made a decision to move, the leadership of Probe and our church concurred, and a bunch of other people who support us agreed. Is this type of occurrence a miracle? In my opinion it isn’t. Although God was involved in a special way, the laws of nature weren’t transcended.
The third category of God’s involvement is miracles that we defined earlier as events, which are supernatural in origin, transcend or violate natural laws, and serve a revelatory function in God’s redemptive work. Here the hand of God is clearly visible to anyone who doesn’t deliberately refuse to believe. The event is contrary to the normal course of nature; no scientific explanation is possible. Of a purported miracle, we might ask this question: Is it impossible that the event could have taken place without God’s special intervention to alter the inevitable course of nature?
These three categories are not rigidly divided. They form more of a continuum. The distinguishing mark is the visibility of God’s hand in a given event. Is He in the background, simply maintaining His created order? Or has He manipulated certain events to a certain end without making His presence clearly seen by all? Or has He acted so powerfully in the realm of nature that there is no other reasonable explanation?
The purpose of such considerations is that we might not use the word miracle too lightly. To accomplish their role, miracles must remain distinct from that which is simply amazing.
Philosophical Attacks: Miracles and Natural Law
Miracles have come under attack for centuries now. In short, objectors seem to assume that our lives’ experience is normative. With respect to environment, it is assumed that what we see in nature is all there is or can be. With respect to time, also, critics say that our experience today determines what could have happened yesterday, or that our limitations do not allow us to know what happened in the past. Let’s consider first the question of nature, and then at the problem of historical knowledge with respect to miracles.
Miracles came under heavy attack during the Enlightenment by deists and atheists, and later by liberal churchmen. In the heady days of the rise of science, many came to see miracles as violations of natural law. To the rationalists of that day, such a violation was an impossibility. David Hume, the Scottish philosopher, put it this way: “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, . . . is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.”{4}
This raises two questions. First, are natural laws inviolable? Second, how do we interpret the evidence?
First, the question of natural law. Some critics believe simply that there is no power higher than nature and thus no power that could supersede the laws of nature. This is naturalism, a philosophical belief that can’t itself be proved by what is seen in nature. This is a philosophical assumption, and we shouldn’t be put off by it. We believe that God exists, and being the creator of the natural laws, He is above them Himself and able to alter them. They don’t. To undermine the possibility of miracles, naturalists must prove there is no God to perform them. On the other hand, if we can show that non-natural events did or have occurred, the naturalist will have to find some explanation in his worldview for them.
Other critics may not argue from an atheistic standpoint, but they hold that a universe in which natural laws can be broken is inherently unstable. If miracles occurred, all would be chaos. We answer that if God is powerful enough to create nature and to override its laws, He is also powerful enough to keep the rest of nature in order.
Thus, the reality of natural law is no deterrent to miracles.
Second, how do we weigh the evidence for and against miracles? What about Hume’s objection that there is more evidence against miracles than for them? First, the abundant evidence of order at most suggests that miracles are the rare exception. But this is what makes them so significant! Consider, too, that the proper use of evidences includes being open to new evidences, including those of unusual occurrences. Second, evidences should be weighed, not just counted. So, to illustrate, we are more likely to accept the testimony of one person known for honesty and integrity over the evidence of five known liars. The quality of the evidence is what counts.
As I noted earlier, arguments against miracles based upon the workings of nature typically reveal an underlying philosophy of naturalism. But there is another kind of objection to miracles. That is, that history can’t bear the weight of proving miracles occurred in the past. We’ll turn our attention to that objection next.
Philosophical Attacks: Miracles and History
We have looked briefly at David Hume’s argument against miracles based on natural law. On the surface, Hume’s argument was against proving a miracle, not against the reality of miracles per se. His main point was that we can’t know whether a miracle occurred because our knowledge is gleaned from evidences, and the preponderance of evidence is always for natural law and against miracles. He believed that it would be more likely, that, for example, all the witnesses lied than that a person was raised from the dead. How was Hume so sure of this? “Because,” he said, ‘that has never been observed in any age or country.”{5} So, when someone said they saw a miracle, Hume said they were deluded or were lying because no one’s ever seen a miracle! It seems clear that Hume’s argument against knowing whether a miracle occurred was based upon his prior conviction that miracles don’t occur.
Of course, if no evidence could be sufficient to prove miracles in the present, records of miracles in history were surely faulty. If we don’t experience miracles today, Hume thought, there’s no reason to think others did in the past.
Anthony Flew, a contemporary philosopher, has built on Hume’s argument. He says there must be uniformity between the present (the time of the historian) and the past (when the event took place) to make any reasonable interpretation of the past. This is called the rule of analogy. The regularities of nature are part of our present experience, and we must assume they were the experience of people in the past.
This argument presupposes that there are no miracles occurring now. How do critics know this? Either they must be omniscient, or they must begin with a naturalistic worldview which by definition precludes miracles. One also wonders how Flew could accept any unique, singular event in history, such as the origins of the universe and of life, if regularity is a requirement for historical knowledge.
Other critics say the problem is with the study of history per se. They argue that historical knowledge is too subjective for us to know what really happened in the past. Our own values, worldviews and prejudices color our understanding so that there aren’t any historically objective facts. But if this is so, the critic’s own judgment about historical knowledge is too colored by his own values, etc., to be taken as objective fact. As philosopher Frances Beckwith notes, this also means that no interpretation of history can be considered bad, and that there is no reason to revise history (except perhaps for the historian’s amusement).{6}
It would seem that those who deny miracles are typically predisposed against them. If this is the case, is there any apologetic use for miracles? Let’s look at this next.
The Apologetic Use of Miracles
“Miracle was once the foundation of all apologetics, then it became an apologetic crutch, and today it is not infrequently regarded as a cross for apologetics to bear.” So said a German theologian in the early part of this century.{7} While it’s true that evidential apologetics emphasizes the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus, miracles in general play little role in apologetics today.
What’s the proper role of miracles in apologetics? First, of course, Christians need to answer the charge that miracles can’t happen, and that the Bible, therefore, isn’t true. Miracles are an integral part of Christianity; to side-step objections to them by downplaying their role is to abandon the cause.
But what about persuasion? In Scripture, were miracles used as evidence to persuade unbelievers?
We see in the New Testament that miracles did serve as evidence and they brought some people to belief. When Jesus raised Lazarus “many of the Jews . . . put their faith in Him” (Jn.11:45; see also Acts 2:22-41; 5:12-16; 6:7,8; 8:6-8; Rom. 15:18,19). But note that some went to the Pharisees and ratted on Jesus.At other times Jesus chastised the Pharisees because they believed neither His words nor His works (Jn.10:22-32; 15:24). Not everyone believed in response to miracles (cf. Acts 14:3,4).
Remember that Jesus didn’t do miracles for people who had no faith-such as the people in His hometown (Matt. 13:58)–or for those who insisted that He prove Himself to them-such as the Jewish leaders (Matt. 16:1-4). When He ministered in His hometown, for instance, people took offense at Him, and Matthew says, “He did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith”. Matthew also reports that Jesus refused the Jewish leaders when they came to Him “and tested Him by asking Him to show them a sign from heaven” (16:1-4)
No, Jesus’ miracles were done in response to faith. But this wasn’t necessarily explicit faith in Jesus as Savior. It could have been simply the openness to God of people who were willing to hear. By doing miracles, Jesus identified himself as the Messiah who had been prophesied.{8} People either recognized the fulfillment of prophecy or simply recognized the hand of God, or both.
Someone might ask, even if people won’t accept miracles, might they not respond to the simple preaching of the cross? Remember that miracles were part of God’s revelation of His redemptive activity. They were set in the context of the spoken message of Jesus. People who refused the spoken word also refused to accept the evidence of miracles. As Abraham said to the rich man in Jesus’ parable, “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” (Lk.16:31)
Thus, in answer to the question whether miracles can bring people to belief in Christ, they can if the deep-down knowledge of God that Paul said we all have (Rom.1:20) is first awakened. But for those who have deliberately shut God out of their lives and their worldview, miracles won’t do any more to convince them than hearing Scripture will.
Miracles, then, provide evidence for the identity of Jesus and for the truth of the message He proclaimed especially when paired with prophecy. They should thus be a part of the package of evidences we employ. We will not convince everyone of the truth of Jesus Christ. But if God chose miracles as confirming evidence, we should not shun them.
Notes
1. Herbert Lockyer, All the Miracles of the Bible, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1961), 13-14.
2. Colin Brown, ed. New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1976), s.v. “Might,” by O. Betz
3. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1941), 168.
4. Douglas Geivett and Gary Habermas, eds. In Defense of Miracles: A Comprehensive Case for God’s Activity in History (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 33
7. Colin Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), 281.
8. Ibid., 286-87.
©2001 Probe Ministries.