In last month’s issue, we considered the definition of a miracle (“Can Miracles Happen?” November 2000). We said that a miracle is a discernible, divine act in the world, outside, above, or beyond the natural order of things, which manifests some aspect of God’s power and love. We also examined two arguments for the possibility of miracles: one from God’s omnipotence, the other from a refutation of the anti-miraculist worldview. Now we will consider some common objections to miracles and address the question whether miracles can “prove” Christianity.
The most common objection is that miracles violate the scientific laws of nature and are therefore impossible. Of course, if the “scientific laws of nature” are inviolable, and if “miracle” means “a violation of the scientific laws of nature,” it follows that miracles are impossible. But are the laws of nature inviolable? And are miracles violations of them?
First, let’s be clear what we mean by the “scientific laws of nature.” Ordinarily, when we speak of a law, we mean a norm of conduct—what ought or ought not be done. But when we speak of the scientific law of gravity, for example, we don’t mean that physical objects have a moral obligation to fall to the ground when dropped. Scientific laws describe how things have been observed to act under certain circumstances, not how they ought to act.
If we maintain that the scientific laws of nature tell us neither how things should happen, nor even how they do happen, but how they must happen, then we’ve precluded miracles by definition. For if things must always act according to these laws, then there can be no miraculous exceptions—which is another way of saying that if miracles can’t happen, they don’t happen. But who says they can’t happen?
Let’s recall our definition of the “scientific laws of nature”—they describe how things have been observed to behave under certain circumstances. They predict for us how a ten-pound rock will behave when dropped from a tall building on a planet with an atmosphere of thus and so and a certain gravitational pull.
But—and here’s the crucial question—what if circumstances change? What if someone introduces a factor into the situation that doesn’t so much violate the law of gravity as circumvent it? What if, as the ten-pound rock plummets to earth, someone else intercepts it or impedes its fall? “Ah,” you will say, “but then someone has interfered!” Exactly. That’s what Christians hold about miracles: God has “interfered” with the normal course of how things behave.
Certainly, a given state of affairs follows as a matter of scientific law—as a description of how things, left to themselves, have been observed to operate. But that means only that non-free causes always produce the same effects in the same set of circumstances. But if God changes the circumstances or alters the causes in some way—if in fact things aren’t “left to themselves”—then there is nothing unreasonable about a change in the effects.
Thus we can say that when it comes to miracles God “interferes” with the normal outcome of things so that what would ordinarily follow doesn’t, or what wouldn’t ordinarily follow does. God doesn’t violate the laws of nature any more than a pool player (to use an example from C. S. Lewis) violates the laws of physics by causing a body at rest (a cue ball) to collide suddenly with other bodies at rest (the other billiard balls)—something which can’t happen unless the body at rest is acted on by another. The player’s decision to break up the balls isn’t caused or prohibited by any physical laws: It’s a matter of his free decision. Yet once he decides to do so, the laws of physics go into operation.
Or consider a man who opens a saving account by depositing $100 in the bank. Tomorrow he will deposit another $100. How much will he have in his account the day after tomorrow? Two hundred dollars, of course—unless his account is robbed, in which case the laws of mathematics won’t have been broken ($100 plus $100 will still equal $200), though the moral law against theft will have been. The inviolability of the law of mathematics may prove little comfort to the depositor, who will still be out $200 because of a thief’s interference. But at least the depositor doesn’t worry that somehow the universe is amiss as a result of mathematical laws running amok.
We can state the argument against the objection to miracles in general terms. Being all-powerful, God is capable of doing anything that’s logically possible. Miracles aren’t logically impossible violations of scientific laws (as we have seen). Therefore, miracles can happen. Without “violating” the very scientific laws he wove into creation, God can act outside the normal course of things to produce effects that go beyond what would otherwise happen.
The Most Improbable Things Possible
Another common objection to miracles is a more philosophical one. Miracles, so the argument goes, even if not strictly impossible, are highly improbable. In fact, miracles are the most improbable things possible. Thus, any other explanation for an allegedly miraculous event is more probable than a miraculous explanation. (Philosopher David Hume is usually credited with developing this objection.)
The trouble with this argument is that it assumes we can know how probable or improbable a miracle is. In terms of natural, scientific laws, miracles are the most improbable of events. But miracles don’t operate according to scientific laws; they go beyond them, as we have seen. They operate according to God’s free decision, something that no scientific law can take into account.
Miracles are no more improbable on the basis of scientific laws than a change in your airplane’s departure time is improbable based on your airline’s flight schedule. The change of schedule, in other words, can’t be known by looking at the schedule itself. Likewise with the laws of nature and miracles: We have no way of knowing from the regularity of natural laws whether something irregular—a miracle—will interfere with them. Thus the objection that a miracle is more improbable than any other explanation won’t hold.
A third objection often raised against miracles is that they imply that God created a defective world, since he has to intervene miraculously in its regular workings. There is something to this objection, from a certain point of view. The world even before the Fall was imperfect in the sense that any created object is less than perfect compared to God. No matter how perfect the original creation was, it is possible it could have been improved on. In other words, we needn’t assume that the cosmos—even as it was before the Fall—was the “best of all possible worlds,” or even that such a thing as the “best of all possible worlds” is possible.
It follows that God is always free to “add” to the natural order. Prior to the Fall, if God had so willed, such an “addition” wouldn’t have been to correct a deficiency due to sin but for the sheer joy of elevating the lower to the status of the higher, adding still greater perfection to the inherently limited perfection of creation. We know that God did this with man, by calling him to share God’s own divine life of grace.
Since the Fall, however, God’s grace is needed for man even to be himself—to live up to what God created him to be by nature, as well as for man to share the divine life. We can imagine, then, that God might want to intervene in his creation to set things straight not because he fouled them up in creating but because free, created beings—angels and men—abused their freedom and brought disharmony into creation. Miracles can be one way (there are others) God sets right what some of his creatures have damaged.
One thing we must not do is think of miracles as being necessary because God was caught off-guard by man’s abuse of freedom. It is not as if God set in motion the story of man only to be caught unprepared by man’s actual choices and thus forced to “improvise” through miracles. God in his omniscience knew from the outset that creation would be abused. From the outset he willed to “write straight with crooked lines.” Though he could undoubtedly choose other methods, miracles are simply part of the process God has chosen above and beyond what he does in the created order itself.
A variation of the objection that miracles imply a defective world is the argument that while God could work miracles, he wouldn’t. For some people, the very fact that God went to the trouble to establish a natural order argues against his working miracles. But, as we have seen, God could have reasons to work miracles even though he established a natural order. In fact, without a natural order miracles would be impossible—you can’t have an exception to the rule without the rule. So the mere creation of a natural order doesn’t imply that God wouldn’t work miracles.
Miracles in Other Religions
Another objection to miracles is that they can’t be used to substantiate Christianity’s claims to truth since other religions that contradict Christianity also claim miracles. But it doesn’t follow that other religions’ claims to miracles are reliable. And even if in some instances miracles in other religions can be substantiated, it doesn’t follow that a given miracle necessarily validates a religious truth-claim contrary to Christianity. We can well imagine that God might miraculously heal the sick son of a praying Hindu mother without thereby validating Hinduism as such or validating it over Christianity.
Furthermore, what appears to be a miracle in another religion might not be a miracle at all. Not that the event in question would necessarily be a hoax or even an unexplained natural phenomenon. In last month’s article, we distinguished between “major” and “minor” miracles. Major miracles, we said, are done strictly by divine power, even if mediated through a creature. Minor miracles, on the other hand, are done by beings that transcend the visible, corporeal order of nature, i.e., angelic beings.
An angel can act on physical objects using his “natural” power, a power that seems supernatural to us in the sense of transcending the order of nature we know through our senses. To be precise, this power would really be preternatural: a power that transcends the created order of the visible world but not the created order of the invisible world.
What we call “minor miracles” when they are done by good angels are often called demonic prodigies or false miracles—the Bible calls them “lying wonders” (2 Thess. 2:9)—when done by fallen angels. When a demon-possessed girl’s head spins completely around, as in the movie The Exorcist, it is a demonic prodigy, not a miracle, because it occurs by preternatural power and because a malevolent being (a fallen angel or demon) does it. If we apply the distinction between minor miracles and demonic prodigies to alleged miracles in other religions, we can see that one possible explanation for what appears to be a miracle in another religion is demonic activity.
Of course, opponents of Christianity will raise the legitimate question of how we distinguish between genuine miracles and false miracles. Various criteria could be considered, including the character or purpose of the “miracle,” the method or circumstances in which it occurs, and its moral effects. But the point here is the mere existence of non-fraudulent, scientifically inexplicable phenomena needn’t be taken as miraculous validation of non-Christian claims.
Miracles as Proof
Can miracles prove the truth of Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular?
According to Vatican I, “In order that the obedience of our faith be nevertheless in harmony with reason (cf. Rom 12:1), God willed that exterior proofs of his revelation, viz., divine facts, especially miracles and prophecies, should be joined to the interior helps of the Holy Spirit; as they manifestly display the omnipotence and infinite knowledge of God, they are the most certain signs of the divine revelation, adapted to the intelligence of all men. Therefore Moses and the prophets, and especially Christ our Lord himself, performed many manifest miracles and uttered prophecies” (Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius, chapter 3).
Canon 4 of chapter 3 of Dei Filius anathematizes “anyone [who] says that no miracles are possible, and that therefore, all accounts of them, even those contained in Holy Scripture, are to be dismissed as fables and myths; or that miracles can never be recognized with certainty, and that the divine origin of the Christian religion cannot be legitimately proved by them.” Further, canon 5 of chapter 3 rejects that “the assent to the Christian faith is not free but is produced with necessary arguments of human reason; or that the grace of God is necessary only for that living faith which works by love.”
So, on one hand, “exterior” signs such as miracles can be “proofs” of Christian revelation and of the divine origin of Christianity. But, on the other, assent to Christian faith can’t be produced “with necessary arguments of human reason.” How do we reconcile these two seemingly contradictory statements?
The solution hinges on the proper meaning of the term “external proof.” Miracles are said to be “exterior proofs.” In the believer, they are “joined to the interior helps of the Holy Spirit.” In other words, miracles can produce “motives of credibility”—indirect “proofs” that God is acting or revealing himself or evidence that it’s reasonable to believe.
While these may make a man morally certain that he should believe the Christian message or embrace the Catholic Church, they don’t directly prove the truth of what God has revealed or compel assent to God’s word with logical necessity. In other words, they don’t compel the man to believe. Miracles may point a man to God’s action and even intellectually dispose him to faith, but the grace of faith is still necessary for him to believe. This explains why intelligent people could witness the miracles of Jesus and yet still not believe. It remains possible for one to reject the grace of faith, notwithstanding the rational force of miracles and arguments based upon them.
Miracles are signs of God’s action, even morally convincing signs, yet they remain signs the intellect isn’t compelled to accept. So in that sense they do not directly prove the truth of the Catholic faith.
Conclusion
In last month’s issue we showed reasonable grounds for thinking miracles can happen. Here we have formulated reasonable answers to objections why miracles can’t happen. But whether miracles in fact do happen or have happened is another issue altogether. Christians believe a solid case can be made for particular miracles, especially the grand miracle of the Incarnation. Honest inquirers must decide for themselves whether the evidence supports that conclusion and whether, should the Holy Spirit move them to do so, they will give their lives to Christ if the answer is “yes.”